Chapter Seventeen
After a quick trip to the bathroom to clean up Ryu team DRGN headed off to their next class. When they entered the room they were greeted by Ruaridh King and took their seats.
Once everyone had settled down Ruaridh stood up and turned on a large screen behind him.
"Good afternoon students, I am your practical defence teacher, I'm sure I've met most of you at one point or another but for those who don't know my name is Ruaridh king, if you want to write it down."
"Quick roll call, do we have teams DRGN, STRM & URCA?" he asked to which the students looked around and mumbled a yes. He then stated a slide show showing an array of different hunters and huntresses fighting with a wide verity of different weapons.
"I will be teaching you how to make the most of any weapon you currently have or may obtain. Now I'd like to some of the classes weapons to see what sort of verity we have, let's have the first by first letter of first name of each team." This caused the teams to flick around between each other until Damian, Mary and Amber walked forwards. When told to present their weapons Damian immediately felt a little out of place as both girls' weapons where small and elegant while his was large and clunky.
"Okay Amber let's start with you," this caused Amber to turn bright red and hide behind her weapon, "Amber?" while amber struggled to compose her self-everyone started to eye up her weapon which looked like a simple black box, hung around her on a strap.
"Th… This is Warning." She mumbled, she then took a deep breath and started again. "This is Warning Call, it is a weapon of my own creation, and it has three modes, it is currently in a compact travel mode and with a flick of a switch," upon hitting the switch the weapon jumped to life, folding out into a small rifle shape and it started to emit light form various openings. "It turns into a sub machine gun. I decide when building it that bullets are a little in inefficient so Warning Call uses needles coated in dust as ammo, more of a hassle to obtain but much more effective." She was now looking a lot calmer. She then flipped another switch and the weapon sprung to life again. "Its final form is a bat so I can hit things that get to close."
"Now that is a great example of a complex multi-function weapon, you can see that its designer thought of a multitude of scenarios and how to overcome them. Damian you're up next." Damian pulled his Fenrir of his back and felt a little embarrassed about how simple his weapon was.
"Ugh yea this is Fenrir, it's a missile launcher. It can store twelve rounds and I can fire them all of in about four seconds which usually makes any problems disappear." Damian felt bad about that fact he had nothing more to talk about.
"Now this on the other hand looks like a simple yet effective weapon, I'm guessing you have some sort of melee centric fighting style or semblance to cover you when things get to close for missiles?" Ruaridh asked.
"Yea I do, I have a raw strength semblance which also makes carrying Fenrir easier."
"See the hunter in question has taken their unique fighting styles into account when crafting their weapon."
"Well I didn't build it all myself," Damian interrupted, "My dad helped me build it, he's a miner so he knows a bit about explosives."
"Good good, okay last up was Mary, what you have to show us because I have no clue what that is." Mary giggled a little before lifting her metallic ball aloft.
"This is my weapon, the Vacuum ball, it is a weapon only usable by me as it revolves around using my semblance of air flow control to pull in targets and crush them."
"Ah I see. This is what I guess you'd call, fine turned for personal use to the point it is also useless to anyone else." This caused Mary to frown. So he quickly followed up with "Which is not a problem." He paused and grumbled something to himself.
"Does anyone have any questions for these there?" to which the class didn't respond. After a moment Ross raised his hand. "Yes ross ask away."
"Mr King I was wanting to ask, what is your weapon?"
"Well I guess I can show you. You three can sit back down." He said as he walked over to a locker. Once he returned to the centre of the room h presented a shield that was nearly as large as he was.
"Teach I'm not sure how to tell you this but a shield is not a weapon." Timothy said trying to hold in his laughter.
"You'd be surprised what this much mass and surface area can do to a person and yes I know the shield is not a weapon smart ass." He then slammed the shield into the ground causing a deafening sound and a rod popped out of the top, he then pulled on it and out came a whole great sword. "This is Bannockburn my shield and sword."
"So you're a simple type like Damian." Timothy cawed.
"I will hit you." Ruaridh replied bluntly. "Aren't you another Hyper-specific type like Mary?"
"No man I got a water cannon that can be used by anyone." He replied proudly.
Ruaridh walked to the back of the class room and started to write something on the bored. Once he was done he step to the side to show a bold sentence stating. "New rule of class: if your weapon is worse than the person you are talking to you should stop talking." Which caused the majority of the class to laugh at Timothy.
"It would see we have a lot of pent up energy here so how about a quick fight for us to analyse. Any volunteers."
Timothy started to stand up but upon seeing Ulrik doing the same promptly sat down.
"Okay Ulric your pretty melee focused from what I gathered from your test data so why not someone else close and personal."
"You have files on use?" Ulrik asked
"Well of course we do."
"Then why did you ask the students to show off their weapons earlier."
"I mean it was mainly for everyone else's benefit."
"Okay" Ulrik finished with a little shake of head.
"Anyway Damian how about you fight him." Damian gave a blank stare.
"You want me to use Fenrir in a crowded classroom?"
"No I want to see that Semblance you were talking about."
"I mean I can't" Damian replied. Gagana leaned over and whispered to Damian.
"What's wrong? Normally you love fighting."
"Now that is just untrue. I just get in a lot of fights."
"So what's the problem now?"
"Oh I just don't feel like it right now you know?"
"Seriously." Gagana replied with a cold expression and proceeded to push Damian out of his chair.
"Okay I'm going I'm going." As he walked to meet Ulrik Ruaridh punched something into is scroll causing his desk to move up to the wall and all the students' desks and chairs to move backwards leaving a large open circle.
"Okay lets a have a little spare. First person whose aura begins to faultier will be declared the loser and then the crowd shall tell us why the outcome occurred so make sure you pay attention." Ulrik extended his hand.
"Let's have a little fun." He said with an odd smile. Again Damian found Ulrik hard to read but he decided to no fallow the issue and instead shook his hand and then walked and entered a wide fighting stance. Ulrik on the other hand dropped into more of a sprinters stance but looked ready to fight none the less.
-Clank Clank-
Ruaridh slapped his sword of his shield to incite the match. Damian looked back to Ulrik and frozen when he wasn't there. He quickly dodged back as launched an upper cut strait off the bat. Damian could sense that Ulrik was going to be tough so he switched to a more defensive stance. Ulrik let lose a torrent of punches. Damian was able to block with his raised arms. Ulrik swung in from the right, Damian took his chance. He ducked and countered with a gut punch. Ulrik wince and stepped back. Damian keeping up his advantage charged forwards with a left upper cut sending Ulrik to the floor. As he hit the floor Damian slammed his elbow into his gut again. Damian backed off and waited for Ulrik to crawl to his feet as he gasped for air.
"Ulrik you're getting pretty beat up do you want to continue?" Ruaridh asked. Ulrik spat on the ground, generating some disgusted looks.
"I'll be just fine." He replied wiping he face with his hands. A moment later he charged at Damian, entered a defensive stance again. Damian was having a harder time blocking, Ulrik was attacking relentlessly, using his speed to make sure Damian couldn't get an opening. Damian felt his aura draining away so he let out a roar and activated his semblance. Ulrik darted back dew to the sigh of Damian's giant red bear form. Damian gave Ulrik a pause to see if he would withdraw but when it seemed like that wasn't going to happen he leaped at Ulrik. In this form Damian had a fair bit more reach so Ulrik kept at ranged ant started using more highflying moves. Damian lashed out swipe after swipe but he couldn't hit Ulrik. He could feel himself slowing down and he could see Ulrik had picked up on that too. He chased Ulrik into a corner, but Ulrik jumped, bounced off the wall and spin kicked Damian in the face. Damian crashed to the ground. Ulrik walked over to Damian and planted his foot firmly on Damian's chest so he couldn't move.
"That was a good fight." Ulrik said as he panted. He put on a grin which Damian returned.
"What do you mean was?" Ulrik's face turned to shock as Damian rolled. Ulrik started to fall and Damian grabbed him from behind and began to crush the life out of him. Ulrik tried to escape but he was truly stuck. Damian suplexed Ulrik. With the sound of the two hitting the ground Ruaridh called the match. The class cheered and booed and Ruaridh walked over to the boys.
"Both of you though well," he said excitedly, "this will give us at least a weeks' worth of theory and discussion." The two boys gave upbeat groans. The two teams walked over and picked up their leaders.
"That was so cool!" Nathan said gleefully.
"Yeah we were all on the edge of our seats" Ryu added trying not to sound too impressed.
"Okay students that about wraps us up for today you can all do whatever it is students do with their free time these days." Ruaridh announced to the class.
"What should we do it's still a bit till dinner?" Nathan asked.
"Is food all you can think about?" Gagana asked.
"Meals are a universally accepted way of passing the time." Nathan replied.
"Can we just go back to our room and chill for a bit?" Damian asked.
"Sure thing." Ryu said as he pulled Damian onto his shoulder. Nathan supported him on his other side and said.
"Off we go."
"Hay Damian can I speak with you for a moment?"
"Never mind." Nathan said mid step. They turned around to see Ross holding Ulrik up.
"Ulrik isn't in much of a state to talk but I know he'd want me to give you this." Ross pulled out a little card from his breast pocket and handed it to Damian.
"Sorry about that by the way," Damian replied as he took the little card, "and thank you."
"No worry Ulrik seemed like he was enjoying himself to the end." Ross said waving off Damian's comment. Cheshire peered out from behind the boys and pulled Amber out with her and said.
"That was a grand fight see you lot latter." And she pulled Amber off before she could say anything.
"I guess I'd better follow them, bye." Ross said as he jogged after his team. As they passed around the corner Gagana shuddered.
"That girl creeps me out. Something about those bright yellow eyes and that toothy grin."
"I second that." Ryu added.
"Third…ed." Nathan added.
"That's a bit mean you barely know her." Damian said defensively.
"It's just an observation." Ryu replied.
"Yea and what you aren't around to hear ain't going to hurt you." Nathan finished.
"Fine let's just get back to the room." Damian said now too tired to care.