Chapter 3: Tauer
The teacher paired students up, stating each pair would fight another and they would be graded based on performance, adding that winning or losing doesn't matter.
Mondy was paired with a taller timid girl with slightly darker skin tone, slim build, and reddish brown hair. She was wearing dark pink glasses that complimented the dark purple eyes underneath. She wore a form fitting sleeveless qipao, with a zipper down the front and extended just past her hips. The qipao was a dark muted blue, with dark red edges including the edges where the zipper came together. She wore dark leather pants whose color matched the edging on her top. Her feet were covered by black and blue running shoes. On her hips were metallic ball-shaped... things hanging from her leather belt. Mondy wasn't quite sure what they were. And then she was wearing what looked like a metal backpack and metal bracelet. "Uh hi, I'm Mondy, Mondy Blauer what's your name?" she asked, her white tail flicking behind her nervously.
Tallis jumped and yelped when her partner walked behind her and introduced herself. Tallis had looked up from the large scroll she was holding but was surprised when she had to actually look down.
The girl was short and skinny, yet with some muscle definition, standing to only about Tallis' chin. She had chin-length, dark blue dyed hair that framed her face and covered her right eye with a long fringe. Her pale coral eyes were filled with kindness and honesty. She had three curved blue lines along her cheeks made to look like whiskers or maybe tiger stripes. She wore a loose, midnight blue, short sleeved jacket over a black v-neck shirt which was worn over a white tee. Around her neck was a thin hot-pink collar and a necklace displaying two crescent moons one on top of the other, one white and one blue, arranged to make a '3' shape. She also wore a short dark blue battle skirt, black leggings, and white boots that extended just past her ankles.
"U-ummm h-h-hi I'm Tallis. Tallis Topaz and this is…" pointing to the large backpack attached to her back and sighed "my backpack" Tallis had just built the object on her back and hasn't been able to test it in combat so she kept it a secret, even from her partner because she didn't trust just anybody around her tech.
Tallis not sure what her partners weapon is, scratched the back of her neck and looked at Mondy's hips which held two short staves clipped to the belt. "You use staves? What else can they do? They have to have some other capabilities." Tallis now realizing she sounded skeptical and like she was mocking Mondy, jumped to correct herself but was interrupted by Mondy's excited babbling.
"Oh, yeah!" Mondy excitedly detached her weapons, spinning them in her hand, and tail swishing. "These are Zuerst and Zweite, they have hidden blades!" to emphasize her statement the blades extended out the ends. "They can combine to make Neigen," she sheathed Zweite's blade into the bottom of Zuerst, creating a polearm weapon, "I can make the blades pop out either end of each one, but only one end at a time on each. In Neigen form the blades can come out both sides at the same time," once again her sentence was punctuated by a blade extended out the bottom of her weapon so both ends had blades.
"I can get a lot of cool combos out of these," She said sheepishly, tail curling, realizing she was rambling and separated her weapons and simultaneously retracted the blades and replaced them on her belt. "I'm a bit of a weapons nerd. What about you? What weapon do you use?"
Tallis let her jaw drop as she watched Mondy swing her weapons around and extend the blades out and then began clapping like a giddy school girl when she saw her combine them "THAT'S SO COOL!" Tallis blushed hard realizing the whole class was staring at her for her outburst, turning to face her partner she frowned "Nothing special I suppose, not like those. I engineer and build my own technology but no swords or axes or anything" Tallis looked down at her scroll and pressed a few buttons and the four spheres that were attached to her hip hummed to life and then detached themselves and encircled Tallis. Tallis' expression goes from sad to happy when she notices Mondy's wide eyed expression "What? They aren't special, they can utilize dust and fly around and feed me statistics of the battlefield as well as give a rough estimate of a Hunters Semblance if used during the fight."
Tallis now thinking about the object on her back and then looked Mondy in the eyes, "You're a weapons nut… can you keep a secret?" Tallis smiles widely when Mondy nods quickly in agreement and asks, "There's more?!" Tallis giggles quietly and then points to the "Backpack" and whispers to Mondy "This is Scout, it's actually a combat drone but I haven't been able to test him in combat yet. You can't trust anyone here with new tech like this. Atlas would take advantage of it and make weapons of mass destruction so I won't tell anybody or share any of my secrets. Except to a fellow weapons connoisseur like yourself." Quickly looking up from Mondy, Tallis was startled to see the professor come in so early.
"Alright everyone paired up? I sent your opponents to your scrolls. Get geared up and ready to fight, oh and, this counts as a large portion of your grade, I forgot to mention that. Good luck," the teacher announced in a clipped tone.
Mondy looked at her scroll, "Nickel and Puce? That's not so bad," Mondy looked at Tallis and her expression dropped, "What's wrong Tallis? You look like you've seen a ghost."
Tallis was now pale white and staring at the ground in shock but slowly shifted her gaze to Mondy "Mondy I can't do this! I have no physical combat training and my drones have only ever shot at stationary targets and…" she points toward Scout "he has only ever been turned on in my house and hovered for a few minutes! I'm not ready! I'm gonna fail!" Tallis placed her hand on her chest and began hyperventilating and panicking in her seat "if I… they… they have lots of combat training, I can't even punch my pillow without hurting my fist!".
Tallis begins packing up all of her belongings when she is startled when she suddenly feels Mondy's hand on her arm. "Hey, we got this," Mondy said confidently. "With your tech and my weapons, we'll totally own those two dipsticks. Don't worry about fighting, I'll cover you while you do your... drone stuff. They are pretty slow fighters, so my speed should outmatch them. Just keep moving, and they won't be able to hit you." Mondy smiled as she kept her own doubts to herself, Tallis didn't need to hear those right now.
Tallis stared dumbfoundedly at Mondy as she spoke so confidently to her but shook her head "But my drones!... You know what…" Tallis stared down into her bag for what seemed like hours and finally took a deep breath and exhaled. Looking back up at Mondy and nodded "Ok, I think I can do it… I just have to trust my technology right? and I think I trust you. It's now or never right?!" Mondy smiled in agreement.
Talis reached down into her bag and pulled out an object that was circular in shape but with a hole through it like skinny doughnut. "Check this out, if it works the way it should…" Tallis separated the object from one end and then placed it over her wrist, the "bracelet" clamped down on her wrist and suddenly a bright scroll display wrapped around Tallis's forearm that displayed all of her Drones data and locations along with a video feed of each drones built in cameras.
"Pretty cool huh?" Tallis looked down disappointedly at her display, doubting herself and scout when suddenly Scout buzzed and vibrated and hummed to life "OH MY GOD!" Tallis jumped and quickly removed Scout and set him on her desk and then everything started to flicker and his lens cover quickly sprung open and Scout quickly launched upward and hovered for a moment before returning to the spot on Tallis's back. "Okay ummmm… oh hiiii" Tallis waved to Puce who was looking at her with an expression of surprise and fear. Shooting her look at Mondy she smiled widely "Scout wasn't ready cause I couldn't get him to stay on for long this is the longest he has stayed active. I must have messed up in the coding somewhere, ohhh I'm gonna have look into this!" Tallis was now bouncing up and down while her brain began running at a thousand miles an hour on her tech.
Mondy didn't have time to nerd out over everything she was seeing as the teacher announced their team was up. Mondy and Tallis made their way to the sparring area where they faced Nickel and Puce. Mondy pointed to Nickel and whispered to Tallis, "See the big guy with the sword? Do you think your drones can hold him off for a little bit while I take care of Puce? You don't have to beat him, just... keep him distracted, can you do that?" Mondy's tail swished with uncertainty.
Tallis was shaking when she looked up at Mondy and weakly nodded "d-d-do you need help? Or do you just want me to do my… drone stuff to him?" Tallis nodded once more when Mondy pointed at the sword wielder. Tallis turned her attention towards Nick, brought her left arm up and pressed a sequence of buttons and the four smaller drones sprung to life and formed a diamond around Tallis. Tallis tapped on two drone icons and a list of options extended down containing the commands: Scan, Scout, Attack, Defend, and Return. Tallis quickly tapped attack and two drones flew forward right in front of Tallis and instantly scanned the battlefield and deemed Puce and Nickel as Hostile.
With Tallis's nose pinned to her wrist scroll she was a totally different person, very calm and calculated. "Let's do this" she said with a nod.
The teacher watched as the students readied for battle, once he was sure they were prepared he said into a microphone, "You may begin."
Mondy rushed forward making sure to close the gap between Tallis and their enemies as Tallis quickly jumped back, and as she did Scout used his jets to propel her a bit farther but she stumbled back a little. Not used to Scout being active Tallis had a lot to learn about him but she quickly returned to her scrolls display and pressed on Nickels Emblem and the drones quickly honed in on him, firing bolts of fire. Nickel fired desperately at the drones with his revolver in his left hand and whenever they came close enough he would try swinging his sword in his right hand, but was never fast enough. The drones scanned his battle style and quickly decreasing their distance and staying close and behind him making it hard to get a good swing.
With Nickel properly distracted, Mondy turned her attention towards Puce, who was armed with wrist guns and claw blades. Puce fired with semi-auto fire rate at Mondy as she approached. Mondy jumped and maneuvered carefully to dodge the bullets, all while closing the gap further.
Puce slashed at her but she blocked the attacks easily. His weapons didn't give him as much leverage as hers, but they were still just as sharp. Mondy clashed again with him and pushed against his claws to jump back when she leapt forward, slashing at him with both weapons, this time however she disappeared in a blue flash before his eyes.
Mondy suddenly appeared behind and slightly above him as quickly as she disappeared, still slashing with her swords. Puce however had not seen her reappear, and so was completely defenseless to her back strike, knocking him down. Mondy quickly sheathed the blades and formed Neigen with a spin and cracked Puce on his head. Though his Aura protected him, the force still knocked him out both out of consciousness and out of the round.
On the other end of the battlefield, Nickel was starting to spot patterns in the drones flight paths, and his shots were getting closer and closer to their intended targets until finally a bullet grazed the outer shell of one drone, not quite damaging it.
Tallis got a notice on her scroll that read "Drone Under Fire" and one the icons began glowing red but it was still fighting, and one of her standby drones popped up with data about Mondy and her ability reading "Extreme Speed Dash". Tallis didn't allow herself to get distracted so she scanned the field and saw Puce out cold and out of the round. She had no need for defenses because Mondy was quickly closing in on Nickel so she sent her other two stand by drones out to attack.
The two incoming drones charged their shots and fired Ice dust at Nickels feet which froze him in place and one of the attacking drones fired an ice shot not far in front of Mondy allowing her to jump on the new ice obstacle in her path, giving her an advantage over Nickel's height and reach by approaching from an unexpected angle. Mondy extended one blade out of Neigen, which she used to slash at his torso just before landing, then knocked him down by thrusting with the blunt end of her weapon. When Nickel recovered from the blow he saw Mondy standing above him, her blade to his throat, forcing him surrender.
A horn blared, signalling the end of the fight. Mondy pulled her weapon away from Nickel, offering him a hand standing back up, which he took gratefully. Mondy spun around to face Tallis with a giant grin and tail flicking uncontrollably. "Oh my god! We were AWESOME! Did you hear the crowd when you activated your drones, they were all like 'woooaaahhh!' and the guys were like 'whaaat?' and then your drones were all like 'perkooow,' and 'pew pew pew,' and I was all like 'hyah, WHAAAAA!' and then you froze the guy and gave me that jump AND IT WAS JUST SOOO COOOOL!" Mondy finally took a breath and realized she just bombarded Tallis.
"Wait... we won?" Tallis asked, oblivious.
"We didn't just win we wiped the floor with them!" Mondy shouted, which earned a "Hey!" from the guys. "Heh sorry, I mean you guys fought well!" she turned back to Tallis with eager eyes and a tail flick, "If we can continue to get grades like these we'll be able to go to any Huntsman Academy we want! We could be partners and totally kick butt!"
Tallis was still in shock at the win and began to fall backwards but gave her a boost forward and into Mondy forcing Tallis into a hug "I… I didn't think I could do it… You said I could do it and I did it! I didn't even need Scout!" Tallis let go of Mondy and began to bounce up and down with joy. Tallis looked at Mondy in awe after she realized Mondy wanted to be partners
"Wait you want to be my partner?"
"Of course I do! Who wouldn't?" Mondy gestured at the crowd of students still staring at her drones.
"I was always called weird though because I never had an actual weapon or any combat skills. You saw me I almost fell on my butt, no balance" Tallis frowned but her drones returned to her and she looked at them and then to the two boys limping off the field and then too Monday with a smile.
"Well none of that matters now, cause you got me, I can teach you some balancing tricks and some basic hand-to-hand, I mean you don't have a tail but that's okay!"
Tallis's eyes lit up and she hugged Mondy again and then held her out "Which academy! There are so many!" Tallis let go off Mondy and pressed a large circle on her wrist scroll and the drones returned to her belt.
"There's only four," Mondy laughed, "and Beacon of course, it's the best! My sister went there for her training and she's an amazing fighter."
"Beacon it is. And I have to meet your sister!" Tallis exclaimed as they walked off the arena and continued to talk endlessly.
AN: Hello! We were so excited about this chapter and we felt kinda bad about the shortness of the previous chapter so we decided to release this one at the same time. We had a blast writing this chapter and seeing how Tallis and Mondy would interact. Thank you all so much for reading, from now on we'll be releasing chapters one at a time, once a week.
(Thyme): if anyone reading this has read my story, GNMT, you'll recognize Mondy as I decided to reuse her for this fic. She's just so much fun to write, though it should be noted that she is a little different than the GNMT version, for example she wears much darker clothes and her personality is a slightly different.
Once again, thank you all for reading, please leave a review, we'd love to hear your thoughts on our story so far or any questions you might have!