Chapter 13- Neo
0. Nothing happened. I stood in my usual, nonchalant way and Xavier remained in his own strange stance. He was stooped down low with a sword in each hand. On his left side, he held the sword backward so the blade ran parallel to his forearm. His right hand held his sword the typical way, but was balled into a fist on the ground. Nervous whispers echoed around the room as people watched the two of us staring at each other. At first glance it seemed like nothing was happening, but as I watched my teammate's usually green eyes, one turned blue and they both started glowing. They got brighter and brighter until flames started flowing out of them, leaving trails of blue and green flame as he stood up a bit.
I shifted my own eye color, which I tend to do when I'm in an uncomfortable situation, but then I remembered what Ozpin had said about Xavier and his sister. If they'd been caught by the police while robbing a bank, then I should be able to easily beat either of them. Having found new confidence, I stabilized my eye colors and started strategizing. Two glyphs (one green and one blue) encircled his blades. The sword on his left burst into blue flame and the right one burned green. He charged me, leaving trails of colorful fire in his wake.
Just as he got close I teleported away and left a shadow. I could already tell this guy would be a much tougher opponent than Yang. If I was going to beat him, I'd first have to study his preferred mode of attack. I watched from behind as he started spinning at the last minute, creating a spiraling tornado of blue and green flames as he barreled past the projection of me.
At first, it looked like he'd completely missed. The shadow hadn't shattered and he'd travelled just to the right of it. But just as this thought occurred to me, my projection fell apart. It still didn't shatter, but the head, both arms, and several chunks of the torso slid off with the sound of scraping glass. Xavier's wakizashis were so sharp and hot with the flames that they'd cut right through my shadow without shattering it. The dismembered parts of the shadow exploded into countless little pieces as they hit the ground. I'd have to be really careful, as those swords would no doubt completely deplete my aura with just a few strikes.
Realization flooded into my teammate's eyes as saw the pieces shatter. He charged again, but this time he held up a hand as he came close and four red glyphs appeared around me. I teleported outside of the small box of glyphs and watched as they blew up around nothing, engulfing half the ring with fire and propelling Xavier in a new direction. This allowed him to change course and charge me again incredibly fast. I knew would just be wasting aura if I were to teleport. I'd already learned all I could about his fighting style from that trick and he'd probably expect me to do it again anyway. Then I had an idea. I leaned forward on my parasol and smiled at my attacker, standing as still as I could to look like one of my shadows.
Just as I'd expected, Xavier thought I'd teleported again and spun around, sliding to a stop in front of me, with his left hand just within reach. My parasol swung into action, swiftly disarming his left hand and knocking him over on his side. As he tried to recover and slash at me with his awkwardly positioned right hand, I had plenty of time to kick his no longer flaming sword away and disarm his right hand. His eyes returned to their normal green, no longer blue or glowing.
My opponent rolled backwards onto his feet and reached out a hand to create a glyph between us, but I pulled a move on him similar to the one I'd used on Yang in the hallway. I deflected his hand down so the glyph would form on the floor, kneed him in the stomach, rolled over his back, and caught his neck with my parasol. This time, instead of throwing him forward by his neck, I held him in the same place until the glyph blew up, I teleported out of the way before the fire could deal too much damage to me, but I could still feel the heat of Xavier's flames and they launched their creator toward the ceiling. He fell with a thud outside of the ring and the buzzer sounded again, marking my victory.
Most people would've had hard feelings toward me for disarming them twice, fooling them three times, and blowing them up with their own power, but Xavier was a good sport. He just collected his swords, shook my hand and thanked me for the match, and returned to his seat smelling of smoke and burned gasoline.
"Alright, Neo wins once more," Professor Goodwitch commented as she stepped back into the ring. She waved a little black stick that looked like a riding crop and all the blown up and charred pieces of the ring returned to normal. "That was the last of the student battles for today. Neo, if you'd like, you may choose another student to assist you in a match against a professor." There wasn't a hesitation. Before I knew what I was doing, I was pointing straight at Orion. He stood up from his chair, bowed sarcastically to prompt laughter from the audience, and made his way down to my side.
"Alright, now who would you like to fight?" Again, there was no hesitation. I was pointing at a grumpy-looking Professor Port. He didn't look too happy to see how easily I'd beaten the other two. The professor looked to Orion as he stood up and brought his blunderbuss with him into the ring.
"Orion, Ozpin told me all about what you did for Blake, and for that I hold the utmost respect for you. That being said, if you really think that you and this puny criminal stand any chance against me, then you're more naive then I could imagine." He turned his head and glared at me as he finished. Orion calmly took off his sunglasses and put them in a case in his trench coat.
"I've been helping people escape the wrong side of history for a long time," Orion replied. "I've helped hundreds, and if there are two lessons I've learned in all that time, they're that you should never judge a person on their past life, because you don't know and you don't need to know why they they did the things they did, and that it's the people who talk themselves up the most who are the most fun to destroy." He concluded with a cold, crooked smile that could've frozen fire. The look was amplified so much by the presence of his silver eye that the professor actually took a few steps back.
Goodwitch cleared her throat and started the countdown on the screens above.
