Volume 2

Chapter 2:

Gusts and Geists

Loud. That was the only word that Lee could think of to describe the sensation of being in the stadium during the Mistral Regional Tournament; despite knowing before entering that this was a major sporting event on Remnant, he had not quite been prepared for the sheer decibel levels that the roar of a crowd numbered with 6 digits could produce. From what Lee could remember of his previous life, the largest professional sports stadiums in America held anywhere from 50,000 to 100,000 spectators, with a few even going a little beyond that. But, Lee was pretty sure that Mistral Stadium could hold up to 200,000. So combine the noise of that crowd with the mix of rock, pop, and rap music that was being played over the stadium's multitude of large speakers and Lee was pretty sure that there was no sporting event back in his homeworld capable of producing quite so much noise.

'It's just something I'm gonna have to get used to if I wanna make it as a tournament fighter.' Lee thought to himself as he entered one of the stadium locker rooms, thus escaping the noise for the moment. 16 matches were scheduled for the day, and all 32 contestants were required to remain on the tournament grounds until either they were eliminated or the last match was complete. So it made sense to have the contestants occupy the locker rooms. To call them mere locker rooms, though, would be doing the facilities an injustice. When Lee thought of a locker room, he would think of a single large, concrete room, with rows of lockers, some benches in between, and perhaps an area with showers. Just enough to meet the needs of a sports team to both store and change into or out of their gear, but the room would not have a whole lot of open space. Mistral Stadium's primary purpose, however, wasn't to host a typical sporting event. Sure, it could, and it regularly did. But that didn't change the fact that Mistral Stadium was meant to host a combat tournament. The combat tournament, even. But, it had no attached grounds for the competitors to warm up on. So, the locker rooms were a lot more spacious, with some large, open areas in which a competitor could do just that. Most of them happened to be doing so, either by performing stretches and other light exercises, or by performing basic katas with their weapons.

Lee was no different.

'I still can't believe you decided to change your loadout.' Lee flinched, very nearly sending part of said loadout flying as his backhanded slash was interrupted. 'Whoops, sorry-not-sorry!' Annoyed, yet equally amused, Lee shook his head, as if trying to clear a distracting thought, and resumed his kata. 'Ooooo, giving me the silent treatment, now, kid? You do realize I live in your head, right? How long do you think that's gonna last?' With a roll of his eyes, Lee performed a flourish, spinning the weight of his new weapon around his hand and wrist. 'Well, at least you seem to be well adjusted to the weight. Can you fight with it, though?'

It had been fortunate for Lee that Neo was so understanding of his desire to switch weapons yet again. Shortly after joining the gang and his existing talents had been assessed, Lee had, with funds graciously loaned to him by Neo, crafted a pair of heavy Dust-infused gauntlets. Perfect for someone whose two most relevant combat skills seemed to be Dust manipulation and hitting things with their hands. After the fateful encounter at Fairbrook, though, in which he had… obtained Summer's weapons, as well as access to her persona, he had chosen to craft a version of those instead. These had lasted him a good while, but after an incident during which a memory of Summer's had overlain reality, resulting in Lee very nearly maiming his opponent the same way he himself had been maimed by Summer, he had decided he needed to change yet again. Thankfully for both Lee's conscience and Neo's credit card balance, the kusarigama had, once disassembled and smelted down, yielded most of the materials necessary to create his newest weapons. The rest had come from the axe which he had been impaled by during his very first minute on Remnant.

Smirking, Lee continued his kata, and allowed his body to flow with the momentum. With a leap and a flip, that momentum was channeled into an overhead slash of his blade; perfect for finishing off a staggered opponent, and certain to make the crowd go wild. 'You tell me, Summer.'

'Showoff. Sure it'll look good for the crowd, but try that move against anybody like me or my old team and you'll end up paying for it with a whole lot of pain. I'd recommend saving that one for the Grimm… Not that you care to learn from my experience, but what do I know? I'm just one of Remnant's most famous Huntresses, with 2 decades of experience, all of which is conveniently available to you with only a thought, if only you would ask!'

A slight flare of Lee's nostrils and an equally imperceptible narrowing of his eyes were all that betrayed his opinion of Summer's salty commentary, but was easily explained to anyone who was watching as healthy self-criticism of the move he had just performed. With how long Summer had been in his head, Lee had gotten pretty good at suppressing outward reactions to her. 'Oh, come on, don't be such a sourpuss about it! Do you have any idea how many aspiring Huntsmen would kill to have a tool like me at their disposal?'

At that, his facade cracked. 'Seriously, Summer?'

'...Okayyyyyy, poor choice of words on that one. My bad.'

'Yeah… That aside, almost all of them would agree with me that the side effects are not worth it. Do you have any idea just how freaky it is to suddenly feel your body go into autopilot while you relive someone else's memory? Not only is it basically cheating in an event like this, but I don't exactly learn anything from the experience if I'm just using your muscle memory, without actually knowing how I did it. Besides, our Semblances are totally different. If I continued to rely on it, I might have tried to do something that would work for you, but would just end up getting me hurt or killed.'

'I fail to see how that would happ-'

'You were able to consciously control every single one of your body's functions, and ignore most psychological limits that us mere mortals subconsciously impose on ourselves in order to avoid self-injury, right?'

'Yes, but don't know if I agree with putting my abilities on a pedestal like that, since your own Semblance is also bullshit.'

'Point, but there are plenty of ways that yours allowed you to move your body in ways which mine couldn't. That scorpion kick you concussed Emerald with? If something had happened during a fight to trigger that particular memory sequence, it would have torn my groin, assuming I could even get my leg to move like that in the first place, possibly left me with a hernia, and definitely left incapacitated me at the worst possible moment. That's just one example that I know of. I'm sure you can think of plenty of others that might even be worse. So, for the umpteenth time, it was too damned risky to use weapons and a fighting style that resembled yours so closely, which is why I decided to change.'

'Yeah, yeah, I get it, just like I got it the 22 other times you explained it. That aside, I think our Semblances might be more alike than you think.'

'How so?'

'As you mentioned, mine is being able to control my body's natural processes.'

'The floor is indeed made of floor, yes yes.'

'Ass. You believe yours, on the other hand, to be the ability to slow your perception of time.'

'Believe?'

'Hang on, I'll get there! Impatient ass kids these days… Jeez. Anyway! On its own, it seems to make sense; used correctly, it's a very good ability, certainly no worse than the average Semblance. But that's not the only special ability you have Lee; Cinder aside, how many of your friends can manipulate Dust the way you can? Actually, scratch that. How many people have you ever heard of being able to do that?'

Now seated on a bench, Lee tilted his head and scrunched his face up as he really considered that question. On a basic level, anyone with Aura could use it to perform simple elemental attacks, and anyone with some training and an applicable Semblance could also use Dust to modify and/or amplify the effects. But neither of those applications was the same as being able to manipulate Dust freely. As Summer mentioned, Cinder was an obvious exception, since her Semblance appeared to be Pyrokinesis, and he had never seen her display the ability to use any other of the basic elements. So, not including himself, the next best example he could think of had been Winter Schnee.

After the tragedy of a mission in which he had made her… acquaintance, Lee had done a little bit of research into her Semblance. Unsurprisingly, a simple Archive* search was not enough to reveal exactly how it worked; such detailed information on a Huntsman was something no sane government would allow to be so easily accessible. However, that didn't change the fact that as a Schnee, Winter was a public figure. There were plenty of eyewitness accounts of Winter having used her Semblance during her brief (as of yet) career as an Atlesian Specialist, and there had been articles which mentioned it being highly similar to the Semblance of Nicholas Schnee, her late grandfather. Her Semblance seemed to be one of the rare ones that are passed down through families, with only minor changes, if any.

Aside from those two examples, there had been plenty of other, less notable people who had shown up on Archive searches for other elemental abilities. But, it was rare that those abilities were versatile enough that their users could be said to be freely manipulating the element that went with it, and it was even more rare for there to be more than a single element involved. There could occasionally be two; Fire with Ice, for example, or Earth with Lightning… After a moment of intense concentration, Lee could recall one instance of someone who had a Semblance which utilized three; a prominent warrior serving in Mantle's army during the Great War had apparently been able to create localized storms, complete with howling winds, razor sharp hail, and deadly lightning. But there had yet to be another Semblance that was both that versatile and that powerful. But if what Summer seemed to be implying was correct…

'They're all Semblance based… which means Cinder lied to me.'

'Yes, the floor is indeed made of floor.'

Lee could only snort in exasperation; he'd deserved that one.

'Yeah, yeah, I know, nothing new there. But I get what you're saying now; my ability to manipulate the elements with Dust has to be related to my Semblance. But I fail to see the relation between that and being able to slow down my perception of time, unless you're about to tell me I'm a psychic, which doesn't seem likely since you seem to think my Semblance operates similarly to yours. So how…'

'Think, Lee; my Semblance is Total Control. Your Semblance allows you to control the elements, and also your perception of time. Meathead and Himbo moments aside, you're actually a fairly smart kid, and I know you know the answer to this one; if your Semblance was only affecting your perception of time, then just how would you be able to move your eyes fast enough to keep up with what you're seeing?'

'I… huh. if that was the case, I wouldn't be able to, since only my brain would be sped up; or, put more simply, my thoughts.To actually be able to move my eyes in response to those thoughts, my brain would have to be able to send new signals through my nervous system… And for my eyes to actually react to them… It's not my perception slowing down, it's my brain and eyes speeding up. And for that to be what's going on, that would mean…

Lee's eyes widened in astonishment as he reached his conclusion. 'Holy shit; are you saying what I think you are?'

An apparition of Summer appeared before him, just so Lee could see the shit-eating grin on her face. 'And just what am I saying?'

'I'm manipulating the electrical currents in my body! Which means that it should be possible for me to achieve true super speed…'

'Super strength, too, kid.'

'... Holy shit, you're right! But wait, wouldn't I risk exploding my limbs if I tried that?'

'Maybe if you tried to do that right away, but usually, bodies are adapted to reduce the kickback of using a Semblance. My daughter Ruby, for example, has super speed as a side effect of her Semblance, but she doesn't cramp up or strain her muscles any more than anyone else who runs a lot. And the answer to just why that doesn't happen, is Aura. I know you've already realized this, but Aura absorbs a lot of the negative kickback from Semblances. And the rest, well… you thought about it earlier, with Neo.'

'Anime logic.' Lee deadpanned; it had been one of the very first things Lee had realized about this world, once Aura and Dust were explained to him during his first few days on Remnant. Those two things could explain away almost all of the differences between the way physics worked here on Remnant compared to his home universe. He just wished that there was a little bit more of a concrete science to how Aura operated, from the effects it could create, to the rate it had to be consumed to replicate the necessary energy, all the way down to just how and what it was generated by. But, that was a problem that scientists on Remnant had been trying to work out for decades, with only marginal progress being made. In the meantime, Lee would just have to accept that it worked. Somehow.

Wait a minute… Lee had thought of anime logic earlier, but that hadn't been exactly what he was thinking! He had been thinking of H-logic, and if Summer was aware of that thought, then that meant:

'You were listening?!'

'I wish that was all it was…'

Lee was absolutely mortified. 'Summer!'

'Dammit it's not like I wanted to! But I live in your head! Normally I distract myself by going through your other memories, but I was just finishing up with your memories of Mass Effect, which meant I had to pop back in for a moment while I thought of something else to play and thatjustsohappenedtobethemomentshedidthatthingwithhertongueanddeargoditfeltlikeshewastryingtoexorcizemethroughyourjunkanditwassuperconfusingbecauseobviouslyI'veneverbeenonthereceivingendofthatbeforebutohgodnowIunderstandwhymenenjoythatsomuchitsnowonderyoucantfunctionwhensheeatsapopsicleoraburritooranythinglikethatsoitsgoodshestoppedwhenshedidbecausethatgavemethetimetorecovermywitsandjustgobackforanothermasseffectplaythroughandholyshitimramblingwithnoneedtostopforairimmastopnow.'

Lee groaned, having gotten the gist of what Summer was saying despite maybe catching every third word. 'I'll remember to warn you next time. Moving on! Before we got sidetracked, you convinced me that there's more going on than I thought. But are you sure it's elemental control? Gravity Dust still seems to trip me up…'

'Kid, the fact that you can get even a little bit of a response from a Grav Dust crystal without using any other catalyst should answer that question.'

'Hmm… we sure that's not just the Earth in the crystal I'm manipulating?'

'Could be, but I doubt it.' From Summer's tone of voice as she denied his conclusion, Lee gathered he was about to be in for a lecture. Summer materializing herself on the bench across from him only seemed to lend credence to that prediction. So, Lee made sure to get comfortable and listen carefully.

'If I had to guess,Lee, you're just not visualizing what you want to do well enough to actually make it happen. Which might be because, subconsciously, you don't recognize gravity as an 'element.' Not in the same way you do the others. It seems everything you do with the other 'elements' has some sort of tangible effect which is immediately obvious; be it a gust of air or flame, or a spike of earth or ice. You have an intrinsic understanding of those 'elements', and that one show you watched, Avatar? It gave you plenty of ideas of how to use them. Even the dilated time perception thing you do is an obvious result, at least to you, of electricity being transferred between your neurons faster. For gravity though, there isn't some tangible effect which ties in to any specific 'element,' like there is with the others, and that's where logic is tripping you up. For gravity, you need to think of something different; there's no visible effect to help you along. But kid, you have the perfect source to draw from to help out your imagination. Remember how I said I was playing Mass Effect from your memories? I wasn't lying; you remember it well enough that I got the full game experience, randomness of the AI in combat and everything. From what I could see, the basic premise of the game seems to involve manipulating the mass of objects… and what is gravity but the attraction between separate masses? Maybe if you tried to do something from those games using Grav Dust, it would be possible.'

Lee took a moment to really take that in. Summer made some pretty good points, afterall, and her explanation of why the other elements worked the way they did for him captured his thought process perfectly. So with that in mind, he decided she might have a point with her theory about his difficulties with Gravity Dust.

'Mass Effect, huh? The games described mass effect fields as a field where you can either increase or decrease the mass of all objects within it. To generate such a field, though, you needed to subject Element Zero to an electrical current using dark energy. Obviously, this isn't the Mass Effect universe, or, more precisely, one where Element Zero actually exists. But Element Zero aside, the physics are based in solid theory, so for the sake of argument, let's assume it works the way the game claims it would. Dust seems to operate outside the chemical structure I'm used to, but if we ignore chemical composition and go for effect once catalyzed, Grav Dust would be the closest to Eezo. Electri-Dust for the electrical current, of course, but Dark Energy… Aura? Holy shit. Summer, I think we might be on to something here!'

By the end of that impromptu brainstorming session, Lee was grinning like a loon, scaring away everyone else in the locker room, but he hardly cared by that point. Who would, after figuring out that they had a real chance at replicating Biotic abilities?

'Yeah, yeah, keep it in your pants, Kid; you'll have plenty of time to safely test it later. One thing at a time, you've got more pressing issues.'

'Yes, Mom.'

Had Summer a tangible body, Lee fully would have expected to get cuffed over the head for that snark. As it was, Summer made do, and leveled him with the most unamused glare she could muster. With it being about a year since Summer had taken up residence in his head, Lee was largely immune to such antics by now, but that didn't change the fact that her disapproval over such a comment was clearly expressed.

Snarkiness aside, Lee did understand the point Summer was making; cool and plausible as their theory sounded, it remained just that: a theory. Theoretical. And though it may have been a tournament environment, and thus somewhat safe in the sense that there were trained medical personnel on hand to deal with potential injuries, that did not change the fact that trying out new moves in a combat situation was not a good idea. He would have to wait until he had some downtime just to find out if it was possible, and in the event where it was, he would need to spend some time practicing until he could do it without completely messing up. It was one thing to briefly lose control of something like fire or ice; as scary as that could be, at least it was easy to put out a fire or melt ice. Losing control of a gravitational field, however… Well, Lee wasn't quite sure of exactly what could happen, but he was certain the consequences had the potential to be catastrophic.

"Attention on the tourney grounds, attention on the tourney grounds: Match 9 of Round 1 will commence in 10 minutes. Competitors Reiko Yanagi and Cerulean Enfield, please report to your respective entrance tunnels. I repeat, competitors Reiko Yanagi and Cerulean Enfield, please report to your entrance tunnels."

"It's pronounced Caerulean…" Lee grumbled aloud. It wasn't that hard to pronounce the a in 'Caer;' it should have been obvious that it was there!

"Maybe you shouldn't have written it as 'Cær.'"

If anyone had something to say about Lee seemingly flipping off a random spot in front of one of the lockers as he left the room, nobody felt strongly enough to bring it up, leaving him with only the laughter in his head.

A little under 10 minutes later…

Adrenaline. Once again, Lee was beginning to feel that wonderful hormone beginning to be pumped through his system in preparation for the fight he was about to experience. As usual, Lee was tuning the announcer's introductions out, paying only enough attention so that he could grin and perform a flourish for the crowd at the appropriate moment in his own. Rather than listen to whatever they might mention about his opponent, he was more focused on sizing her up himself.

At first glance, Lee wouldn't have normally assumed the woman across from him, seemingly in her late 20s, was a fighter; while he could admit that a combat skirt combined with shorts made a certain amount of sense for a female fighter who didn't want to compromise their modesty in exchange for mobility, the same could hardly be said of a kimono, even if it was knee length. The kimono was a very light purple, the lack of saturation leading it to be almost white. But, not quite, as the furred collar, which actually was white, provided the needed contrast to prove that the kimono wasn't. Again, impractical colors for an outfit one would expect to take a lot of wear and tear, such as that one would expect to encounter in a combat tournament. The black face mask, knee socks, seemingly made of kevlar or some similar material, and wooden sandals seemed to be the most practical parts of her ensemble…

Lee quickly revised that assessment, upon noticing that his opponent, Reiko, wasn't openly displaying a weapon. Lee took another look at her suspiciously rigid collar; he didn't think that there was enough space between it and her neck/chest area to conceal a weapon. Thus, the only other place which made any sort of sense had to be her sleeves, which were loose, baggy, and, judging by how low they drooped while the girl held her hands at elbow height in a "ghost" pose, had plenty of space to conceal a weapon or three.

She's obviously got something hidden behind those hands. What's small enough and makes sense? A knife? Wrong shape, doesn't fit the aesthetic. Kunoichi. Kunai? Maybe, but that pose… Mistrali culture shares similarities with Chinese and Japanese cultures... Reiko… Rei… Ghost? Figure that part out later. Kunai seem likely, so how to dodge…

Of course, Lee wasn't the only one taking the chance to do a last minute assessment of his opponent. Across from him, Yanagi was scrutinizing him as well.

Gray slacks, slight bell bottom, concealed boots. High quality? Nothing that looks like a muzzle, nozzle, or any sort of mech-shift components, but based on his footage, getting kicked by him will hurt. Avoid his legs. Blue-green sunglasses, and his shirt is both of those colors at once… Is that a sun and clouds? Makes sense, his name is Cerulean… He's using katana-like blades now, and those bracers are completely new; interesting. If he can still swing his arms as fast as he can kick, I'll have to be careful. Better start with that…

With both competitors obviously in the zone, the excitement in the arena reached a feverish pitch, the noise crescendoing into a deafening roar… only for silence to come over the ring itself as the spectator barrier was activated, replacing the cacophony of the crowd with the dull electronic hum of the shields generators. Taking this as his cue, Lee settled into his fighting stance. Right leg forward, toes pointed directly at his opponent, and left leg back, foot perpendicular. Hips lowered into a crouch, level with his right knee, and body leaned forwards towards that knee, low so that his elbow was held just next to his shin. Right hand in a loose grip facing forwards, which resulted in his sword pointing to his left, and the left arm held back and slanted upwards for balance, other sword still sheathed on his back. To anyone on Remnant, it was a bizarre stance, though not completely unheard of, since it was a modified Kung Fu stance. However, anyone from Earth would recognize it as The Goku Stance.

Amazingly, however, Lee's stance wasn't much more bizarre than his opponent, Yanagi's: contrary to what he would expect from someone he in turn expected to open up with a kunai attack, Yanagi's stance didn't seem to be one designed to maximize the momentum of a throw. Her own body was turned slightly to the side, left hip pressed forwards, but with her knees turned slightly inwards and her hands still hanging from her wrists at a bizarrely acute angle, Lee was suddenly unsure of his assessment. He wasn't sure exactly what she would do, but the way she was shifting her weight seemed to suggest-

"BEGIN!"

Lee pushed off the arena floor, and, not having had time to shift his weight in response to Reiko's stance, lunged backwards, originally intending to dodge a thrown projectile. However, with his opponent having also jumped backwards, this was a mistake.

'Shit!' Lee swore internally, as the expected projectiles never came. He twisted in midair, body turning 180 degrees so that his left side was forward, and lowered himself into a crouch again, this time landing in a runner's stance. Since Yanagi had shown she would prefer to keep him at a distance, Lee knew he needed to prevent that… But even as he stepped off, his eyes widened.

'Are those… shit!'

Having already started his rush before he had seen just what Yanagi had done, and his Semblance not active, Lee was not able to stop himself in time; with a panicked shout, he slipped, dropping into a split that had every male in the audience wincing in sympathy.

On the jumbotron, Lee's Aura levels took a slight dip.

When the fight started, Yanagi had leapt back too, and while Lee had been correct in the assumption that Yanagi's weapon would be revealed, his guess of just what it would be had been wildly off the mark. Instead of a kunai, rope dart, wind hammer, or any other sort of thrown or chained weapon, Lee fell victim to something which turned out to be far more dangerous: a steel marble launcher, mounted on a bracer strapped to Yanagi's left forearm. She hadn't had time to fire off more than a dozen before Lee was charging at her, but the placement had been impeccable, one sliding under each foot at the perfect moment.

'Ow fuck Jesus Christ that hurts! Fuuuuuuuuuck!' Lee was screaming internally as he threw his fists towards the ground, his hands slamming into the floor and halting his split, mercifully allowing the marbles caught under his feet to slip free, before he caused any further strain to his groin. Feet back on solid ground, Lee was able to kip back up into a standing position… But even in the small amount of time he had taken to do that, Yanagi had created more distance, which she used to continue to fill the space between them with more marbles.

'Okay Lee, think; how do I get close enough to attack her without slipping again?' Even as Lee thought that, he started dashing to one side, hoping that maybe he could outpace her… But, to his rising frustration, he couldn't strafe faster than his opponent could rotate. 'Shit; am I really gonna have to use that already?' He had hoped to make it through at least the first couple of rounds without having to reveal any of his more esoteric abilities, but since he had decided against implementing guns into his blades…

Which began to glow pale green, while his eyes glowed cyan.

'Oh? It seems I've pushed him into using his Semblance.'' Reiko mused to herself as she took note of the change, muted by the sunglasses, but still easy to see from up close. Even as she took the time to analyze this, she made sure to retain the initiative, turning and strafing along with Caerulean so that he could not get around the marble field. 'The footage of his previous fights suggests that it just gives him a boost to his reaction speed, but that won't be enough to get him through my marbles. There has to be more to it than that…'

Indeed, there was. Reiko Yanagi was correct in her deduction that Lee's Semblance granted him increased reflexes. A couple of days ago, Lee had believed it to merely be Slowed Time Perception; this was wildly incorrect. While it was definitely something his Semblance allowed him to do, that wasn't what his Semblance was. No, as Summer had oh-so-helpfully pointed out, slowed time perception was merely a side effect. His actual Semblance, for the longest time dismissed (by Lee, at least) as something that anyone with the proper mindset and access to Dust could do, was actually something quite a bit more… multi-faceted.

In an instant, Lee planted a foot and juked, his momentum, previously arcing around Yanagi, now carrying him directly towards her. Body held low to the ground, arms tucked to one side, elbows back but blade pointed forwards. But when he had turned, he had thrown a lone slash… And from the edge of his blade, a gust of wind blew out, scattering the marbles in his path... Emboldened by this success, Lee adopted a wild grin as he charged, resembling a predator ready to pounce. "I've got you!"

"Do you, now?" Came the retort, tone bland as Yanagi casually raised her arms, hands still folded downwards at a bizarre angle. However, rather than the relaxed position her fingers held before, they were now tensed, almost as if they were grabbing something…

Were Lee a normal opponent, limited to human speeds of reaction, he might not have had time to process just what that meant. But since his Semblance was currently active, and with it, the electrical currents in his body being sped up, he not only had time to perceive that motion, but to shift his eyes to the side and widen them at what he saw. 'Oh shit!' Time seemed to slow almost to a stop as Lee frantically tried to stop himself from stepping where the rolling carpet of marbles was about to be…

It wasn't quite enough. Though he had succeeded in slowing himself enough to avoid ending up completely out of position, his lead foot still ended up catching a marble beneath it when he made what would have been the last step before he stopped; instead of safely coming to a stop, Lee's foot slid out from beneath him, causing him to awkwardly lunge sideways and slam his back knee into the ground. Which was painful enough, evidenced by the small chunk of Lee's Aura that disappeared from the meter, but that was hardly the end of it. Afterall, one does not make it to the Mistral Region Combat Tournament by failing to punish their opponents for mistakes. In this case, Lee had made a mistake by losing his footing within a few steps of his opponent, and she took advantage of that to slam a sock-covered shin into his face. The devastating roundhouse kick left him on his back, and his Aura finally down in the yellow.

Wham-Bam!

Lee's Aura wasn't the only one to take a dip, though! He hadn't been able to stop the kick from hitting him, but he had been quick enough to use the momentum from it to his advantage; rather than fall flat on his back, Lee had gone down on his right shoulder, then his left, and then his head, rolling over into a Turtle Freeze, from there into a continuous Windmill, and from there, a Rising Windmill, the rapidly executed breakdance sequence allowing him to both quickly return to his feet and return the force of the kick that had hit him, with interest. With Lee back on his feet, and Yanagi seemingly staggered, Lee took the opportunity to close the distance once more…

But he wasn't the only one capable of reacting quickly. Though her Semblance did not increase her reaction speed like Caerulean's did, Reiko did have about a decade of experience on him; it wasn't the first time she had been kicked like that, and it likely wouldn't be the last, either. 'He's better than I expected. Let's see how he deals with this!'

When Lee had kicked Yanagi, feet connecting with her arm and then her shoulder, Yanagi had been forcefully spun away, staggering to keep her feet. However, in the brief moment before Lee had halted his momentum and charged, Yanagi had also been able to get control of hers. Instead of stopping, however, she transitioned into a leap and spin, simultaneously keeping her distance and her momentum. From the sleeve of the same arm that she had attempted to swing at Lee when she forced him to slip, there was a flash of light as another projectile was flung Lee's way.

Shing!

Metal rang as the projectile was deflected by the blade of Lee's sword, mere inches away from having slammed into his face. And with such proximity and his Semblance active, Lee was able to see, in the moment before deflecting it, that it was a shuriken. And in the moment it took him to process that, yet another was flying towards him.

Shing! Shing! Shingshing! Shingshingshingshingshing!

Before he knew it, Lee was under a constant barrage of shuriken, his momentum ground to a complete halt. Only his Semblance-boosted reaction speed was preventing him from getting hit, blade and body moving faster than he ever had in order to either deflect or dodge each shuriken as they flew in from different angles.

'Well, at least I know what her Semblance does. Now I just gotta figure out how to work around it before she wears me down.'

Indeed, those watching might have begun to see that as a foregone conclusion. Though Lee himself did not have the time to spare a glance at either his scroll or the jumbotron to check his own Aura meter, he knew that keeping his Semblance continually active for as long as he was being forced to had to be taking a toll. And that wasn't even considering the migraine he was sure to experience once the adrenaline wore off. By that same logic, his opponent shouldn't be able to keep up her assault forever…

'But where's the fun in that?' Rather than weather the assault and hope his Aura would outlast Reiko's ability to maintain the assault, Lee decided that, win or lose, he would much rather just fight. So, he changed his strategy.

"Aerora!"

Lee accompanied his shout with a sweeping slash of his blade, accepting a few glancing blows in the process as he traded defense for offense. Along the slash's trajectory, a wide, blade shaped arc of air energy raced towards his opponent, carrying with it those shuriken which happened to cross its path.

"Woah!"

Finally, Reiko was forced to pause her onslaught as she backflipped over the attack, evading most of it, but taking a couple of glancing blows from her own shuriken caught in its wake. That was hardly the end of it, though. With Caerulean now holding the initiative, and using an offensive aspect of his Semblance, his own assault was relentless. Slash after slash after slash was sent Reiko's way, the air blades completely uninterrupted by her attempts to retaliate, her shuriken either being disrupted when they crossed trajectories with the air blades or dodged entirely with Reiko having less concentration to spare on them. Fortunately for her, however, the shuriken weren't her only means of fighting back.

A slash went wide as Lee suddenly lost his footing, slipping slightly as a marble rolled itself under foot. He was quick to correct his balance, and sent another slash Yanagi's way, hoping to keep up the momentum, but the damage had been done; that brief moment of distraction had provided all the time Yanagi needed to stabilize. While Lee had been correcting his footing, Yanagi had caught hers, and raised both hands high, palms bent backwards at almost 90 degrees. Lee's hasty strike did hit her, but with nowhere near enough force to interrupt the attack she was preparing.

"Oh sugar-honey-iced-tea…" Lee muttered as he saw every single one of the marbles and shuriken suspended high above him, surrounding him on all sides; he had no choice but to prepare to defend himself. The light emanating from his eyes grew more intense as he dilated his perception of time to the maximum he could currently push it without guaranteeing himself a world of self-induced pain. That done, Lee quickly drew his second blade, and took his stance.

Reiko's arms flung downwards, palms very nearly slapping her wrist. With the motion, the assembled projectiles were launched downwards, forming a

"Fusillade!"

Oh no, a cliffhanger! :D

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Until next time!

-Denkura