Lupis

'Good to see you are keeping your reputations at constantly being late to class Mr Drake, Mr Daxter,' Professor Goodwitch said with a hint of annoyance as Lupis and Garris rushed through to door to the combat arena, keeping false smiles on their faces as the rest of the students watched them from their seats.

'Well, we can't change things now. Not after all this time,' Garris said, sitting down with Lupis in the two empty seats at the front of the class, while all the eyes of the class continued to stare at them.

Professor Goodwitch grunted with a mixture of disgust and possibly humour? 'Well, as I was saying to the class before the two of you decided to stumble in, we are starting a new unit this week. We are starting to look at how we can focus the power of our aura through using our own physical strength. This means that when your aura levels begin to lower, you can use your own energy to replenish it.'

'This is however, a very dangerous tactic. If you use up too much energy to restore your aura, you may end up falling unconscious.'

'I know that some of you are already familiar with the concept of having to use your own energy for other combat means that just physical combat, so this course may be easier to you,' Professor Goodwitch said, looking at Lupis and a few other students in the audience.

'Because of this,' Goodwitch continued. 'For the first lesson I will be using you select few students to demonstrate to the rest of us how to do this.'

Lupis and the other students like him moaned in protest for a moment before Professor Goodwitch lifted her crop from the side of her leg and slapped it hard against the podium at the edge of the stage.

'Enough!' she barked. 'Mr Drake and Ms Firefox, would you both be so kind as to come forth and demonstrate to us all?'

'Is this an order or a-'

'Now Mr Drake,' she said angrily, narrowing her eyes at him.

Lupis stood up with a sigh, feeling Garris give him a reassuring pat on the back.

'Good luck man!' Garris said, a false smile on his face.

'Thanks for the confidence in me,' Lupis said, vaulting up onto the stage. Looking over, he saw Tris also climing onto the stage, her bright blue eyes meeting his multi-coloured ones.

She had changed a lot in the two months that he and his team had been gone. Her long orange hair was even longer now, reaching down to just above her waist and her orange fox ears poked upwards at the top of her head.

She no longer wore her orange tank top and short skirt, but was wearing a more practical attire for combat. She bore an orange shoulder length shirt with red armour on the tops of her shoulders and along where her ribcage would be.

She still wore a skirt, however it was much longer than what she originally wore and reached just above her knees. It was a dark red colour like her shoulder armour, mixed with intricate orange designs. Short red boots reached halfway up the lower part of her legs.

Tris gave Lupis a quick smile as they both walked towards the centre of the stage. 'Good to see you back Lupis, even if you look as bad as you do right now,' indicating to his shabby appearance.

'Very funny Tris.' Lupis said, shaking her hand to show sportsmanship. 'Good luck for this.'

Tris let go of his hand and taunted to him. 'I don't need luck, it's only you that I'm fighting.'

As she walked to her side of the stage, she gave him a quick wink before turning away. Lupis followed suit, heading to his own end of the stage.

'Now I want both of you to treat this like a normal fight, however, when your aura levels begin to drop, I want you to try and use your personal energy stores to replenish it.' Professor Goodwitch said, far away from Lupis and Tris as she knew that battles between students in this class could get wild quickly.

Both Lupis and Tris nodded towards their instructor and pulled out their weapons, ready for combat. Lupis kept the blade in his right hand, Hesperus in it's blade form, whilst he flicked his wrist and converted his other blade into its whip form. Tris pulled out her own two blades, extending one of them so that the blade was the length of Lupis' whip, and the other one shorter so that it was more to the size of a dagger. Her blades gleamed with an orange light, indicating that they were fuelled by dust.

'Let the match begin!' the Professor shouted.

Lupis waited for a moment, allowing Tris to rush closer to him as he widened his stance and prepared for the upcoming onslaught of attacks. He flipped Hesperus around, so he was holding the blade backwards and brought it up across his body as Tris' longer blade slammed into his own. There was a lot of power in the strike as the orange dust that fueled her blades created a small explosion, jarring his arm. Shocked for a second, he quickly darted backwards as the shorter blade came along, barely avoiding the blade as it slashed across where his stomach previously was.

He saw Tris move to jab at him with her dagger almost immediately after her swipe, and deflected the blow with his sword, pushing it over to the side, feeling the same jarring feel as he deflected the attack.. Knowing how she fought, he pushed himself off of the floor moving into a flat spin in the air. He felt the steel of the longer blade brush against his back and once he landed, he wrapped his left arm around her right, and threw her over his shoulder, hauling her towards the floor.

What saved her was her uncanny agility due to her faunus heritage. She landed on both feet, with one hand supporting her, whilst her other was still in his grasp. She dropped down lower and flicked out her leg, sweeping his feet out from underneath him.

Letting go of her arm, Lupis fell onto his hands and rolled backwards, hearing her blades scratch against the floor where he just was. As he got back to his feet, he flicked his wrist and sent the end of his whip flying towards Tris' leg.

She blocked the attack with her sword, but the whip wrapped around her blade and with a powerful pull, he yanked the blade out of her hand and sent it skidding across the floor behind him. Cheers erupted from the audience as Tris was disarmed, but Lupis was too focused on the battle to really care.

Flicking his wrist again, the whip flew towards Tris again, who backflipped over the edge of the weapon, landing just outside of his reach. Lupis saw her crouch on the ground, and could see the muscles in her legs tensing. Prepared for her next move, he flicked his wrist again, throwing the whip into the air as he was expecting her to leap upwards to get closer to him. However she charged forwards after thrusting herself forwards, kicking off of the wooden flooring and ran shoulder first into his side, thrusting her knife towards his side.

Her shoulder connected, but he was barely able to deflect the stab with the hilt of his blade, pushing it aside, but falling backwards nonetheless. He attempted to bat her backwards with his fist, but she dodged out of the way and rolled to the side, taking a hold of her longer blade and turning around in a defensive stance, the longer blade held out front and the smaller blade held backwards behind the first blade. Lupis saw her smile as she saw the telltale sign that he had used his semblance. A small trickle of blood ran from his nose, and he quickly wiped it away with the back of his glove.

Lupis looked at her for a moment, deciding on his next course of action. Once his mind was made up, he darted forwards, his whip trailing behind him whilst his sword was held backwards. He did not bother to defend his body, instead leaving his sword pressed flat against his arm as he got closer to Tris. When he saw her take a swing at him, he dropped to his knees and used his momentum to slide under the blade. Too fast for anyone to see, he whipped his hand around and the end of his whip caught around Tris' ankle. Stabbing his blade into the floor, Lupis stopped moving and pulled hard on his whip, pulling Tris' leg out from underneath her and she sailed into the air. Jumping upwards, he slashed across her chest once with his blade before kicking her hard in the stomach, sending her flying backwards across the room. He landed nimbly on the floor, and raised his head, ready to dash forwards again, tensing his legs as he prepared to charge.

Tris shakily stood up, shocked from the pain she felt across her chest.

'If you do not mind Mr Drake, as this is a demonstration, I would prefer that you now allow Ms Firefox to replenish her aura with the tactic I have asked you to demonstrate.'

Both of them looking over, they saw their aura levels on the large screen at the back of the hall. Lupis' aura was still at 100%, but Tris' had taken a drop, and was in the yellow level due to the brutal slash that Lupis had made across her body. It had only affected her aura and had not actually cut her.

Tris looked away, closing her eyes. Before long, Lupis began to notice that her aura was slowly rising again. It didn't rise very much before Tris opened her eyes, gasping loudly. Lupis quickly flicked his whip, setting it into its sword form and sheathing both of them as Professor Goodwitch walked across to the centre of the stage, looking out to the other students.

'This students,' Professor Goodwitch started. 'Is what most of you will be like when you first attempt something like this. The amount of energy required to restore aura is astronomical, but you can learn to use less energy the more that you practice. You can begin to use less energy and restore more of your aura the more capable you become with this tactic.'

'You will be practising this for the next few months with random partners every class so that you can still keep up with regular combat training for the Vytal Tournament. Mr Drake, Ms Firefox, you are both excused for the rest of the lesson and you may watch the rest of the battle. However, I am expecting you to both be back and battling for tomorrows class.'

The sound of students moving around to find another partner was deafening and it was not long before Lupis heard Garris approaching him from behind, and clapping a hand on his shoulder. 'That was a really good fight man. You probably didn't have to hit her so hard though.'

Lupis took a quick chuckle as he saw Tris make her way over to the both of them. 'That was a good fight Lupis,' she said smiling. 'Good to finally have a worthy opponent again. I've been getting a bit bored of everyone else in the class.'

'What about me?' Garris asked, smiling towards the faunus girl.

She looked at him with a blank expression before saying, 'Nah, your stance is still too wide and your attacks are too obvious,' before walking off the stage, poking her tongue out at him.

Lupis laughed at his partner whilst Garris pouted at her comment. 'Come on Garris, we should find you someone else to work with. Someone else will need an opponent seeing as I've already had my turn.'

Garris acknowledged him, turning away silently for a moment before turning back to him with a joking look. 'Can we make sure they're good looking though?'

Lupis chuckled slightly before saying, 'I'm sure Jason still needs a partner, he looks a bit lonely over there.'

'I said good looking. I would have thought that you out of all people would be the least likely to be deaf!'

So hopefully this chapter was slightly better. I took a few things into account and did my best to write things slightly differently. However, if there are still problems with the story, the only thing that will make it all better is reviews! Constuctive criticism is what I am really looking for, as long as it is constructive and not just criticism.

Thanks, P