"She was so cool! Did you see how she redirected the chainsaw from the other contestant?"
Jaune chuckled at the excited Nora while carrying her on his back with Ren quietly pursuing the catalog for herbs and health drinks that he found at a stall near the Arena.
"I did Nora, we went there together remember? And yes, Pyrrha Nikos was very good."
It was praise that came from the heart. Jaune knew that if he were to face the girl that just won the Championship for the fourth time, he would be hard-pressed to defeat her, even with the power afforded to him with his mechanical arm and absurdly high amounts of Aura.
Although, it would be a completely different story if he were fighting to kill and operate outside the bounds of rules. He could tell, just like his companions could as well, that Pyrrha Nikos, while immensely talented and probably had the ability to take all three of them at the same time if they were inside an arena, was inexperienced in actual fights to the death and was too used to fighting inside set rules.
All in all, it was entertaining to see the fights, and was Lien well spent.
However, things soon took a turn for the worse.
It was just as the group was leaving the arena alongside the rest of the spectators, that Nora tapped the hands of both Jaune and Ren and pointed to a shady-looking man heading into an alley immediately after going out.
What was peculiar, was that another man from inside the arena led an unsure-looking Pyrrha Nikos into the same alley.
"…That doesn't look good."
"And it has nothing to do with us."
"Come on Ren, don't be like that-"
"Nora. It has nothing to do with us. Who Nikos associates with has nothing to do with us. Please, just let it go."
Nora turned quiet at Ren's rebuke and kept stealing glances at the alley as they passed, wishing to investigate since her instincts were telling her that something was wrong with the picture here.
And she was not alone in the thought.
Unknown to her, both the boys shared the same feeling as her. But unlike Jaune and Nora, Ren had suppressed those feelings.
For him, it was not worth it to risk the safety of his only family in this world for the sake of some stranger whom he had no contact with.
It may be a cold and cruel way of thinking, but for Ren, the lives of his friends mattered more than those of some strangers.
"Didn't you say we could easily take her?"
"I didn't expect her to be this strong"
Pyrrha Nikos was not having a good day.
It started out great. It was the day of the finals and she won once again, cementing her place in the Arena.
The cheers of the crowds were flattering, and the money she would get from this gig was even more exciting since it would help alleviate the burden on her mother significantly even if she only accepted a part of the prize money, saying that Pyrrha should save it for her own future. And then there was also the income she would get from all the advertising after this.
But she also felt a little sad. Because she had already made the decision to become a Huntress, and this would be the last competition she was taking part in.
However, the emotions that her agent felt were completely different from hers.
He was very furious, especially since he would be losing a lot of money if she quit the arena when she was at the top of her game. But she remained firm in her decision.
She wanted to be more than a glorified gladiator, fighting to entertain people. She wanted to put her skills to use to protect people, to protect her mother.
So it was with great reluctance that she followed her agent to a shady-looking alley, if only for the sake of the fact that he had worked with her for four years.
And of course, her gut feeling proved to be right as she was instantly surrounded by a group of people, some of whom she recognized as her former opponents in the ring.
Pyrrha had already gotten into a combat stance, even without her weapons, while her former agent started going on some spiel about why he was doing this.
Taking advantage of his stupidity, Pyrrha easily took care of the weakest target in the area, the agent himself.
Since he was a civilian, she made sure to control her strength and only broke his hands and legs, leaving him on the ground, squealing like the pig he was.
Then came the problem of facing five combatants, armed with their preferred weapons, while she did not have her own.
Fortunately, she was not some helpless girl, and her title as the Invincible Girl, no matter how much she hated it, was earned through her hard work.
The steel of the weapons bent to her will as all the attacks aimed at her missed marginally, allowing her to get into the guard of her opponents and demolish them in hand-to-hand combat.
Then, things took a turn for the worse.
The first thing she felt was a searing pain from her back. Turning around showed that the reason was a hooded man with a mask on his face, his hands igniting in flames as he took a martial arts stance.
The sheer aggression from the man put her on the back foot and she was forced to defend herself as the flaming fists of the attacker started to chip away at her Aura.
Just a few seconds into the fight, she immediately realized that this man was not just a random Thug with Aura and Semblance.
This was a Huntsman, and a rogue one at that if the way he was clearly aiming to either maim or kill her was anything to go by.
Against an opponent like this, she doubted she would stand a chance even if she had her weapons with her since they were made of Civilian-grade metals and they would be no different than glass in front of a fully trained Huntsman.
As the fight dragged on, the opponent did not speak a single word and continued to be on the offensive, not giving Pyrrha any chance to catch her breath, until finally, Pyrrha made a mistake and the Huntsman went for the kill, his fist aimed straight at her neck, intending to either crush her throat, or if he was lucky, outright blow her head off her shoulders.
Fortunately for Pyrrha, help arrived from a very unlikely source.
The nameless Huntsman's senses screamed danger, forcing her to give up on attacking Pyrrha and turn around, just in time for a Warhammer to blow him cleanly across the Alley as if he were a dodgeball.
And right across the Alley, waiting for the flying form of the Huntsman was a blonde-haired teenager who held out his mechanical arm and clamped onto the Rogue Huntsman's neck in a vice-like grip, which given his mechanical arm, was much more literal than the Huntsman was comfortable with.
However, the Huntsman showed the true difference between a fully trained Huntsman and a Huntsman-in-Training.
With a flare of his Aura, the nameless Huntsman burst into flames, forcing the teenager to let go. Taking advantage of this, the Huntsman delivered a devastating blow directly into the abdomen of the teenager, throwing him into the wall.
"Jaune!"
The girl wielding the Warhammer tried to rush the Huntsman, but now that she no longer had the element of surprise, the Huntsman easily evaded the swings of her hammer and started attacking the girl,
Unfortunately for the Huntsman, he failed to notice another figure slink into the Alley, right behind him, before the figure drove the blades attached to his guns into the Huntsman's neck, giving a fatal blow.
But despite the blow now slowly leaking from his mouth and the spurts of blood erupting from his neck, the man grinned in madness.
"Long live the Crown!"
The man rushed past everyone and captured Pyrrha in a crushing hug while igniting himself with his semblance, but he was not done.
He swiftly pulled out a fire dust crystal and crushed it in his pals while igniting it, intending to blow himself up along with Pyrrha.
But just as Pyrrha resigned herself to her fate, a mechanical hand burst through the shoulder of the man, severing the arm holding the dust crystal as a longsword severed his head.
The last thing Pyrrha saw before falling unconscious due to her exhaustion was the form of the blonde teenager with his white aura flaring like a white flame around his body as he stared coldly at the dead body while a boy with black hair arrived at the blonde's side and said something to him.
Author Notes: Jaune's Prosthetic arm Image:
(https) : / / i dot postimg dot cc/ZRqsgh1Z/Prosthetic-Hand dot png
Replace the dot with '.' and remove the spaces.