The following day I was waiting off to the side with Leona while Professor Goodwitch explained to the class what they would be doing today. I was getting my own smaller reminder lecture on what was considered acceptable to use against students. Which so far seemed to be 'do not break them more than we can fix them' and 'keep property damage to a minimum'.
Nothing I hadn't been told repeatedly already, but Leona seemed to doubt my ability to keep my surroundings intact even when sparing.
…though considering some of the bouts she'd watched between me and Arya on occasion perhaps that was a little justified on her part. I had a habit of being rough on the environment.
I decided to do the mature thing about that and ignore it until it was inconvenient not to and instead I focused on evaluating the team I would be sparring against first. Team JNPR, pronounced Juniper.
It wasn't hard to follow Professor Goodwitch's reasoning for choosing them for the first team fight. Two of the members, Nora Valkyrie and Lie Ren, were obviously close friends and trained/fought together even before coming to Beacon and their fourth member was Pyrrah Nikos, multiple time champion of the Mistral Regional Tournament and someone who should be more than capable of working with relative strangers. The only real wildcard was their leader, Jaune Arc, who had been pretty lackluster in class but had shown a decent grasp of team tactics during the initiation test.
Theoretically, it was the perfect team for a demonstration. Good enough to put on a show for the rest of their class, but also one of the more balanced groups personality-wise as well so if they did lose, it wouldn't cause a massive drama filled rift in their team.
Practically…
Well, we were about to find out.
The five of us moved to the stage while Goodwitch repeated the rules of the fight. Standard tournament rules and time limit, a combatant was eliminated when their Aura dropped to the red zone, and another added rule that it would be considered my defeat if I was disarmed for more than half a minute or all my weapons were destroyed.
I almost cracked up when I heard about that rule. Glynda must have been feeling particularly vindictive when she thought that one up. Even if Torashinai only just qualified as a Noble Phantasm, it was still almost indestructible by conventional weapons. And the thought of me ever being completely disarmed was a particularly nasty joke.
I didn't have time to laugh, though. Immediately after the rule refresher, Professor Goodwitch began a countdown and started the match.
At the word 'begin', the four members of Team JNPR ran forward in a staggered line. Nora reached me first and overcommitted with a leaping overhead swing that would leave her wide open if she missed. Or at least she would have been open if Ren hadn't been angling to cover her with his two machine pistols from the side.
A hail of gunfire forced me to abandon my initial counterattack and use Torashinai to shield my eyes. And while I could have just relied on my Aura and other defenses to simply ignore the bullets, that wouldn't really help JNPR learn, would it? Besides, Pyrrah had mistimed Nora's attack and was a half-step behind anyways. So I had time to react even while taking things a little easy on them.
Just as Nora recovered from her attack I stepped forward and caught her in the chest with a kick that sent her sailing back towards her partner before moving to parry her teammate's weapon in spear mode. I couldn't fully pay attention to where she landed but I was pretty sure that while Lie Ren managed to dodge his partner, Jaune hadn't been so lucky and ended up getting slammed into. Beyond that though, I was simply more focused on gauging how skilled Pyrrah was so I didn't do something utterly humiliating like lose despite being an assistant teacher.
And based on my initial impression, she was certainly skilled.
I ducked, parried, and counterattacked several times and each one she kept up with me. What was really impressive was how even when I physically drove her away, she simply changed her weapon configuration to keep the pressure on. It was one of those things that was simple to think up, but exceptionally hard to actually put into practice. Especially since she didn't rely solely on her sword/spear/gun thing, but also used her shield offensively when it suited her.
I slapped Pyrrah's shield away with Torashinai and tilted my head out of the way of another spear thrust so I could punch her in the stomach. I barely had time to appreciate that she snuck a hand down to soften the blow before Ren was on me in a series of more sweeping attacks. Allowing Pyrrah to disengage and run off to retrieve her shield.
But Ren wasn't quite skilled enough to hold me off one on one and I quickly scored several blows on him with both my sword and a few punches. All the students had been introduced to Torashinai's ability to inflict pain as if their Aura wasn't even there so Ren shouldn't have been surprised by it, but it was one thing to get a light rap on the arm to show the effect and another to get beaten by several sword blows. Eventually Ren focused so much on Torashinai that he missed it was a feint and got his feet swept out from under him.
I followed up with a halfhearted attack, but he rolled away fast and far enough that I missed completely.
That gave me enough space to take stock of the rest of his team. Pyrrah had gotten her shield back and was waiting to engage again, Ren had backed off even further to catch his breath, Jaune was yelling something at Nora, who was–
My eyes widened when I turned to look at the orange haired girl only to see a trio of heart-decaled grenades flying towards me instead!
I theoretically could have just tanked the grenades. Even before getting Aura, my existing defenses were strong enough to handle whatever a new student like Nora could have gotten her hands on, especially since Glynda would restrict anything that had a chance of overly damaging her classroom, but at the same time I didn't like being exploded!
Without thinking, I threw Torashinai forward in a way that immediately detonated two of them and moved so the third detonated harmlessly behind me in a cloud of bright pink smoke.
Well then. It seemed I could ramp things up a notch or two.
I dismissed the Torashinai that I had thrown away and traced another copy to replace it in my hand. Then, with an admittedly unnecessarily dramatic sweep of my arm to clear the smoke, I leapt out at where I had last seen Juane and Nora. I took a brief moment to acknowledge that Ren and Pyrrah had moved closer to cover their teammate's flanks again, but focused on the two in front of me for now.
Juane was actually the one that reacted to me first, nearly tripping over himself in his uncertainty on what to actually do about me, but he was moving before Nora.
Not that it helped him because moving first didn't mean reacting correctly and when I successfully baited him with an overhead feint, I swept Torashinai around to bash him in his stomach, kicked one of his legs out from under him, and then grabbed him by his breastplate to maneuver him in front of Nora's own hammer attack when his teammate moved to assist him.
The girl's eyes widened in horror as she failed to pull her blow and Jaune went crashing off to the side somewhere and I distantly heard Professor Goodwitch announcing his Aura was in the red.
Knowing she was going to be a little impulsive after not only missing her attack but actually eliminating her teammate also, I gave Nora a taunting smirk and a 'come at me' gesture she immediately bit on.
Her first attempt was overtelegraphed and I easily ducked around the attack while hitting her with a few quick strikes from Torashinai where she left herself open. Her second and third were less so, but still enough to get a glancing hit in while I dodged. I'd have liked to get another solid hit in, but a stream of gunfire from Ren forced me to back off and I was immediately pounced on by Pyrrah again while Nora escaped to recover.
The red-haired champion did a good job of holding me off so I couldn't sneak in any really solid hits before the other two rejoined the fight. This time Nora was being slightly more restrained to not allow a repeat of what happened to Jaune, but ironically it was making things easier for me because it screwed up her and Ren's timing. More than once I saw him pause or hesitate because he expected Nora to be somewhere else.
And that gave me my next target to eliminate and an opportunity not long after.
Nora eventually realised that she was being too cautious but overcorrected back into 'overly aggressive' territory that manifested in another grenade shot directly at both me and Pyrrah, who just happened to be too close.
Pyrrah jumped to get away and the grenade 'just so happened' to twist more towards me in a way that had me narrowing my eyes at the champion and her very discrete Semblance use. Not willing to let her get away with that, I once again threw Torashinai – this time at Pyrrah instead of the grenade and was unsurprised when she managed to bat the sword away despite the obvious surprise on her face.
What she wasn't able to deal with were the ten copies of Torashinai that I suddenly projected and launched at her, knocking her clear across the stage while I projected another copy and sprinted directly towards Ren.
The boy did his best to withstand my sudden assault but after a brief exchange that involved two solid hits to his ribs, Goodwitch announced his Aura reached the red zone and he was eliminated.
At the announcement I pivoted and rushed towards Nora. She was obviously upset that I eliminated her partner but that didn't affect her form too much. No, her biggest issue was that she was obviously very unused to being on the defensive without Ren's support to help her shift momentum and only a few moments later her Aura hit the red as well and she was also eliminated.
Now it was just me and Pyrrah.
Something our audience was apparently thrilled at because I heard a few cheers for the 'Invincible Girl' from the crowd. Something Pyrrah heard as well and I saw a small disappointed frown flash across her face before she returned to a neutral mien.
Right, I remembered that Pyrrah actually didn't like the attention that stemmed from her fame all that much and had decided on Beacon instead of the closer Haven Academy in an effort to distance herself from it.
That was an issue I doubted I could help with very much but there was another of hers that I could at least identify for her earlier so she could start working on counters. Namely her lack of experience with sudden overwhelming, wide area attacks as seen by her getting hit by something similar earlier.
This time when I pointed my sword at her and started tracing copies of Torashinai, I didn't stop at ten. I went for broke and projected over a hundred of them and let them hang just long enough for Pyrrah to register the sheer amount of weapons being pointed her way, and pulled the mental trigger firing them all forward just when I saw her freeze up at the sight. I waited to see how she would react…and then openly frowned when Pyrrah did nothing and allowed the rain of swords to hit her.
Professor Goodwitch called the match as my victory, but I could only internally shake my head at the result.
This was the third time.
The third time in this world that my opponent decided to give up or retreat in the middle of the fight instead of giving it their all.
It was certainly a theme I did not appreciate in the slightest. And while I couldn't force Goodwitch into another fight and couldn't currently find Raven, Pyrrah had no such protections from me.
And if she thought I was going to let her get away with throwing the match just so she could attempt to slip the 'Invincible Girl' title, I was going to show her that not giving her best in my class had consequences.
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