Chapter 3: The Class Representative Selection Match
Despite the rigorous studying and the brutal training sessions which were more like beatings, the week went by rather quickly and before I knew it, it was time for the Class Representative Selection match. By now I had by some miracle finished reading all the textbooks Chifuyu-nee had given me and reached a level in kendo that Houki deemed "acceptable". The match was about to start, many students gathered in the stands, excited to watch the first and only male pilot face off against a National Representative Candidate. Me and Houki were in the preparation room as I was waiting for my IS.
"You better put up a fight! As your teacher it would look bad if you lost too easily" Houki spoke.
"If you are so concerned about that then maybe we should have practiced with the IS since, you know, this is an IS match!" I replied.
We spend all our time in kendo training so unfortunately we didn't have a chance to practice with the IS.
"It couldn't be helped. You personal unit hadn't arrived yet"
"We could have gone over battle theory!"
Suddenly a screen appeared in front of us.
"This is Cecilia Alcott's IS, Blue Tears. It is a long-range type" Yamada-sensei's voice spoke from the intercom. The IS on the screen was mainly dark blue with traces of black covering its lower legs and a layer of white covering its knees. The Is had two sets of wings the were floating near the pilot. Each set consisted of two blue airfoils like devices. Additionally, there were two other blue airfoil like devices that hovered around Cecilia detached from her IS and were connected to black and blue cylinders. The IS was wrapped around Cecilia who was in her IS uniform which was in a similar shape to an old-style school swimsuit. In her IS hands she was holding a long rifle which was blue save for the tip of the rifle and its rear sight.
"Orimura," this Chifuyu-nee's voice called. "Your personal IS has arrived. Get ready immediately"
Suddenly from behind us a metalic door opened revealing an IS. Its legs and arms were very thick resembling gauntlets. Its wings stood above the armsand resembled a beak but much bigger and thicker. The IS was coloured silver with a dull blue around the bottom of its wings and its feet. I stared at it in amazement.
"This is your personal IS, Byakushiki!" Chifuyu-nee stated.
"We have limited time in this area so you will have to learn how to maneuver with it in the arena"
"Ok Orimura-sensei," I said even though I had no idea how I was expected to both beat a representative candidate and learn how to pilot an IS in the same match.
Soon I was in my IS suit which consisted of a tank top and tight fitting shorts. Byakushiki stood in front of me.
"Suit up now," Chifuyu-nee ordered. "We are tight on time so format at it during the fight"
I reached for it, my hand gently touching it and once again, I felt that flood of information on me. The Byakushiki was different this time, I could feel it, like all the information had been neatly sorted.
"Is everything ok Orimura-kun?" Yamada-sensei asked.
"Yes, everything is fine," I said.
"Lean back into it," Chifuyu-nee ordered.
I turned my back to it and leaned back.
"That's right, just like you are sitting"
Byakushiki wrapped itself around me, its heavy armor covering my arms, lower torso and legs.
"Access" a robotic voice called. "System start" In front of my eyes a gallery of screens filled with information appeared in front of me.
"IS come with a function called absolute defense," Yamada-sensei called. "It is designed to save the pilot from anything life threatening. However ,when it activates, shield energy will be drained. Do you understand Orimura-kun?"
"Yes," I replied.
"Are you ready for Orimura?" Chifuyu-nee asked.
"Yes, I am ready"
"Okay" replied Chifuyu-nee with a smile.
I turned forwards towards the battle arena. "I'm off then"
"Do your best!" Houki said with a determined look.
"I will" and with that I took off towards the battle arena.
Charging into the arena felt exciting, almost like going on a ride in an amusement park. The rush I felt from moving at such a high speed was amazing. What wasn't amazing was who I was greeted by, Cecilia Alcott in her Blue Tears.
"I'm surprised you even showed up," she proclaimed proudly.
"I'm a man of my word" I replied while glaring at her.
"I guess, but a man of his word is still a man and no man can even hope to beat me. This is your last chance."
"What do you mean?"
"I am obviously going to win this so if you apologize I may forgive you" she said smugly. Why did I expect anything else.
"Not a chance!" I spattered angrily
"Then, don't say I didn't warn you!" and with that she pointed her long rifle at me and fired off a bolt of blue laser energy at me.
I was caught off guard however, I was quick enough to block the laser with arms resulting in an explosion and a force that caused me to fall. I landed on the arena ground on my feet struggling to keep my balance. I was unscathed but I noticed my shield energy drop by 50 units. I had no time for rest as Cecilia sent a barrage of lasers in my direction, forcing me on the run. I glided through the air, narrowly dodging her lasers which hit the arena energy barrier and transformed into bursts of light.
"Dammit! I can't keep up with Byakushiki's response speed!" I remarked. Cecilia was enjoying herself.
"Yes, dance! Dance to the performance of Cecilia Alcott and Blue Tears.
Eventually, her hits started to connect, draining my shield energy as a result.
"Crap! She is chipping away at my shield energy. Equipment! What equipment do I have?" I looked through the Byakushiki equipment selection. The screen showed the sprite of a sword. "A sword?, I guess it's better than nothing" And with that I selected it resulting in a long, heavy grey sword forming in my hands. I quickly used it to block one of Cecilia's lasers. Cecilia stopped for a moment to stare at me so I quickly seized the opportunity to charge at her.
"Challenging me with close range equipment when I'm a long-ranged gunner?" she remarked. "How foolish" and with that she shot a laser in my direction. I narrowly dodged it and continued my charge towards her.
While the sword allowed me to block her lasers making dealing with them easier, I was still struggling to get close to her and was losing more shield energy than I hoped. Eventually, I started to get closer towards her, becoming more used to her pattern of firing. The longer I fought the more her lasers seemed to resemble Houki's strikes from our training
/
"OW!" I yelled in pain. Houki had once again striked me with the kendo sword knocking me to the ground. I lost count of how many times this had happened. "Get yourself together Ichika!" Houki exclaimed. "You have to try and predict my movements". "Yeah, yeah, I know" I said dragging myself off of the floor"
/
Soon I had found and opening and charged at her full speed. Cecilia just grinned.
"You're the first to last this long in your first battle against Blue Tears" she spoke. "You have my compliments" I ignored her as I kept charging. "But it's time to end this" and suddenly, from her hovering black and blue device, the airfoil parts broke into four smaller blue chips. These drones charged at me firing lasers. I quickly stopped my charge in order to evade their barrage. I was getting overwhelmed, shot at from every direction until all I could do was block with my sword, but that wasn't enough as one of the lasers connected with my IS, blasting me into the arena energy barrier. I seized this opportunity to fly far away from the drones and hopefully closer to Cecilia's unit, but the drones continued firing at me, obstructing my path. I didn't have enough shield energy to fly through them so if I wanted to take her down I would have to deal with the lasers first, but this was easier said than down however as the drones had good coordination with each other, preventing me from getting close enough, and if I tried to charge at Cecilia she would call the drones back to block me off.
However, I did notice something strange, Cecilia through all this did not move, not even to shoot at me with her rifle even when I would have been completely open. She seemed completely concentrated on controlling the drones which gave me an idea. I charged at one of the drones that was more isolated from the others. As I expected, the drone started flying towards the others while the others came closer to assist it. Then suddenly, I charged towards Cecilia at a high speed. She seemed a little surprised but just recalled her drones towards her. Once they were right behind me and began firing, I flew down, U-turning back towards them and charged right at them. The drones that had just fired couldn't react quick enough which gave the opportunity to strike one. My blade cut it in half resulting in a small explosion. I quickly began shredding through the rest of them until all there was left was smoke from their explosion. After the dust settled, Cecilia looked at me shocked.
"You left yourself wide open!"
"I noticed that after deploying the drones, you stopped moving" I spoke as I charged towards her. "So I figured that you couldn't move while using them" For a second, Cecilia stood there in shock before regaining her composure and smiling confidently.
"I see that you are not as brainless as you seemed" she said while I continued zooming towards her. "You were quite smart to figure that out" I was getting closer. "But you made a mistake" her confident smile now turned malicious, I was now within a few seconds of reaching her. "In assuming that those were the weapons I had!" and suddenly, the hips of the IS opened like a sliding drawer and from the holes came two missiles that were being held by tubes. I immediately stopped my charge and turned around but the missiles had already launched.
I desperately flew away as fast as I could. I was low on shield energy so if those missiles struck me it would game over. But despite my best efforts to move erratically, the missiles just followed me like a predator, matching my every move.
"Your efforts are pointless!" Cecilia yelled, her smile being bigger than it had ever been. "These are guided missiles, they will follow you to the end of the Earth!" The missiles kept getting closer and closer until when I tried to make an erratic turn to dodge them, they turned effortlessly and charged right at me striking me at point blank in an explosion. The whole stadium gasped at the result, and were at the edge of their seats waiting for an IS unit to fall from the sky, but seconds had passed and there was no falling unit leaving the spectators stunned. Once the smoke cleared, an IS unit could be seen, but it wasn't the Byakushiki, or at least, it wasn't the Byakushiki that had entered the battle.
This Byakushiki was white instead of silver, the dull blue was now replaced by a more vibrant blue and now there were traces of gold around the unit. The wings had also expanded, being much bigger, almost resembling the wings of a phoenix. I admired my new IS unit in amazement. A screen in front of me appeared that read "First Shift Completed. Settings updated". The shield energy meter now read "200". 'Oh yeah' I thought recalling what I had read about shifts in the IS textbooks. Achieving a shift essentially meant getting an upgrade. It means that your IS has updated itself to match your fighting style better. The first shift is the easiest to acquire but the other shifts require a lot more training and experience so you become more in tune with your IS or something like that.
"You were fighting on default settings this entire time!" Cecilia shouted while staring at me in anger. "Should have expected such foolishness. No matter, I will destroy you anyways" and with that she launched two more of her guided missiles at me. I looked again at the Byakushiki's equipment selection. Now a new weapon appeared titled, "Yukihara-2". I selected it and in my hand appeared a sword, the same design as the previous one but white instead of grey. While choosing the sword I noticed something else, an ability menu. There were two abilities available, "Reiraku Byakuya" and "Ignition Boost". I selected both of them and they took effect immediately. First, visible blue energy suddenly started flowing through Yukihara-2. It covered the entire blade turning it into a lightsaber like weapon. The second change was that my unit suddenly became way fast. My speed had easily doubled and I was now rocketing towards Cecilia. I soon reached the missiles but I struck both of them with Yukihara-2 and they broke into 's expression went from one of anger to that of fear. She tried shooting lasers at me with her rifle. I turned and dodged the lasers easily but I was having difficulties controlling the Byakushiki at such a high speed, having to loop around with every turn, however it didn't matter as I was easily closing distance at Cecilia. Before I knew it, I was right next to her. I pulled Yukihara-2 back, preparing to strike and then swung it at her. The blade was closing distance and I could see the expression of terror on Cecilia's face. The blade penetrated through her side and was moving towards the core until…
My IS unit stopped moving. The energy covering Yukihara-2 dissipated. For a second, me and Cecilia stared at each other in shock. "End of match. Winner: Cecilia Alcott" a voice on the intercom spoke at loud. What? How? I looked at my unit's shield energy, it was at 0. I was very confused, how did my shield energy drop all of a sudden. I hadn't been hit ever since my IS achieved its first-shift and my shield energy was at 200. What happened?
Upon my return to the preparation room I was greeted by Houki, Yamada-sensei and Chifuyu-nee. Houki had a look of suspense, as if she was waiting for something to happen, Yamada-sensei was looking at Chifuyu-nee with a worried expression while Chifuyu-nee was looking at me sternly. I stared into Chifuyu-nee's eyes, holding my breath as I anticipated her response.
"You didn't do too bad," Chifuyu-nee said, breaking the silence. "But you still have a long way to go" I felt relieved at her statement as it meant that I hadn't totally screwed up.
"But Orimura-sensei, why did my IS run out of shield energy so quickly after transforming?" I asked, hoping to finally answer the question that has been bugging me since the battle was over. "It's because you used a Barrier Invalidation Attack" Chifuyu-nee said. "What happened is the consequence of fighting without understanding your weapon's ability" "Barrier Invalidation?" I said, confused at what Chifuyu-nee meant. "It goes through the opponents barrier and inflicts damage directly to the pilot, forcing absolute defense to take over. It's Yukihara's special ability and it played a big part in my win at the first Mondo Grosso. However, such an ability requires a lot of energy so it will use up your own shield energy to power it.
"I see, so that's why Byakushiki's remaining shield energy level plummeted," I said, now understanding the situation. "The Barrier Invalidation ability inflicts damage on the opponent while draining the user's energy in the process" Yamada-sensei spoke. "So you can think of it as a double edged sword" 'So that's the deal' I thought. I essentially had a glass canon of a unit. I wasn't upset at this revelation, having one attack this powerful is kinda cool, like a finisher move, but I could tell it would take a lot of work to actually make proper use of it. My workload just keeps on piling. "Your IS is in standby now," Yamada-sensei said, pointing down at my wrist where, wrapped around my wrist was a bulky silver bracelet. "But it will activate whenever you call for it. There are regulations which you can read in this book" she handed me a thick book. "Please read carefully" I felt my soul drop.
Later that day, around the evening, Houki and I were walking back to our dorms. "I guess that makes her the Class Representative" I said with a sigh. I wasn't too interested in the title of Class Representative, it sounded like a lot of work which I had plenty of, but losing was still annoying. "Next time, be more aware of your limits," Houki said coldly, looking away. Always so cold "But still," she said, turning her head towards me, "For your first match you did well". "Yeah I guess that just means I gotta train more," I said, reflecting on my current situation. "By the way your training really paid off. Helped me predict the movement of the lasers" I said hoping to lift up the mood. Houki's eyes seemed to light up at this statement. "Re-really?" she stuttered for a moment before her expression switched to a more stoic one. "Of course, my teaching was brutal and instructive to help improve your reaction time. But it looks like we will need to train harder and incorporate the IS in our training". "Does this mean you will continue training me?" I asked eagerly. "If you don't mind?" she asked. "No, I'd really appreciate it" and we both shared a smile.
Later that night, the winner of the Class Representative Match, Cecilia Alcott stood in the shower. She stared at the wall of the bathroom while the steaming water from the shower head struck her body. She was reflecting on the match she had earlier, specifically, the end where Ichika Orimura almost defeated her. She was 1 second, one missed shot from her laser earlier, one dodge he could have lucked out on for him to have had enough shield energy to finish her off, and that thought haunted her. "Why does that matter, you won anyways" she said out loud, as if hoping that if she said it aloud it would make it more true. 'Sure, he had an opportunity to win but it couldn't be helped. You had no way of knowing that he had that ability not to mention, you put enough pressure on him for him to deplete all his shield energy' she reassured herself in her mind. 'It's natural that at high level IS matches fights will be close even if you are the superior pilot'. 'But this wasn't a high-level match,' her consciousness reminded her. 'This was a match for the class representative. You weren't fighting a highly trained and experienced opponent. You were fighting someone who had only discovered that he could pilot an IS a month ago and only received their personal unit right before the match. Not to mention, he was fighting with default settings for most of the match. How did he get so close to beating her!' Cecilia just couldn't understand. 'Was he some sort of prodigy? Afterall, he was the brother of Chifuyu Orimura. No, that couldn't be the case. He might be better than she thought but he still struggled a lot during class and could barely remember the basics' but then a scary thought crossed Cecilia's mind. 'Am I not as good as I thought?' 'No! Surely not! I am Cecilia Alcott, England's representative candidate. I defeated all in path towards the title of representative candidate' but as she thought more about her achievements, the less grand they seemed. When her parents had died, she had inherited her family's fortune. This meant she could afford the best instructors to help her become a National Representative Candidate. And all those opponents she had defeated, most of them barely knew how to pilot an IS. Achieving the title of national representative candidate required high grades as well as excellent IS piloting, which was not so easy to achieve, especially the latter. Even trying out an IS unit was very expensive so only the richest families could afford that. Had she really bought her way to National Representative Candidate?' She gritted her teeth. It felt like her pride was crashing down, and it was all because of one man. "Damn you Ichika Orimura! Who are you?"
Author Note: Hello readers and thank you once again for reading. In this chapter we had our first IS match which I quite enjoyed writing. I didn't make too many changes to the fight itself as I thought the original was pretty good. I mainly wanted to make Ichika a bit better at IS battles or at least show off his potential more by making him come up with an actual plan to take down the drones while also showing his weakness in recklessly charging in. I want to develop Cecilia more as in the original her character kinda stops developing here and we never really get an explanation as to why she changed so quickly and abruptly. I wanted to give her character more backstory and give more of a reason for her actions and behaviors. I hope you have enjoyed this chapter, if you want to share you thoughts on this chapter, positive or negative feel free to leave a review but for now, this is TheGraySirpent signing off.