Episode 2: Chapter 2: Qualify

Chapter 2 of Episode 2 of Order of Seasons

Natalie quickly spun around and blocked an incoming attack from Aquaria’s harpoon, and then rushed over to engage her in close quarters. Aquaria was quickly reeling the spear portion of the harpoon back in, but not fast enough as Natalie launched her across the stage and into the wall. The buzzer sounded signaling the ring-out, meaning that Team WATR was down to only three members. Natalie quickly rushed over to her brother’s side as he was battling against Waris and her trident. A quick move by Nathan caused Waris to miss her target with a lunge and instead plant her weapon right into the ground, leaving her wide open for an attack. Nathan quickly took his clubs and landed a blow on Waris’ face that sent her up into the air and right into the other half of Blue Wavecrest as Natalie leapt right over Nathan and took Waris with her and threw her into one of the mountain ranges that had spawned from the map. As soon as she landed, she heard another buzzer sound for her opponent’s defeat. She pumped her fist in the air in celebration and then quickly landed about twenty yards from where Miles and Evan were going toe to toe with the other two opponents, Revrum and Tupp. Miles was engaging Tupp with his nunchucks, while Evan was engaged with Revrum’s twin sai. Revrum attempted to disarm Evan by latching his two sai onto Evan’s spear, but as he did so, Evan did a quick twist with his right arm to throw Revrum off balance leaving him wide open for a quick hit from his gauntlet to knock him off balance. Nathan looked up at the screen and realized that Revrum hadn’t fallen below the 15% threshold yet, so he quickly threw one of his clubs and hit Revrum right in the stomach, finishing off the little aura he had left. Meanwhile, Miles was busy going back and forth with Tupp’s nunchucks. It seemed that Miles had the upper hand, but a quick flick of his weapons and Tupp knocked Miles’ white sword out of his hand. He then started gaining more ground, as it was clear that Miles wasn’t as skilled with just one sword as he was with two. But before any serious damage could be done, Natalie started blasting several rounds at Tupp to keep him from advancing, Evan ran over to stall him, while Nathan grabbed Miles’ sword and threw it back to him.

            “I could’ve gotten it myself Grover.”

            “Yeah, but your aura is a bit weak now. Better safe than sorry.”

            “Fair enough.” With that said, Miles rushed in and did a quick X-slash and reduced Tupp’s aura to 3%, ending the match. Then, a hologram of Professor Ozpin appeared in the middle of the battlefield.

            “Congratulations Team NEMN. You have officially qualified for the Vytal festival re-issue, now newly named, The Restoration Tournament.” As soon as he said those words, everybody in Team NEMN went ecstatic. They started hugging each other, pumped their fists in the air, and even danced a little bit. As they made their way off the battlefield, they got back up into the stands with their friends.

            “Awesome job guys!” Yang said as she gave Nathan a huge hug.

            “You guys really handled yourselves well out there!” Weiss said as she shook Evan’s hand.

            “Yeah, it was no sweat.” Miles said as he sat down.

            “Says the guy who literally had to be saved by their team leader at the very end?” Blake joked as she gave Miles a punch in the shoulder. Everybody laughed at this, and even Miles cracked a smile.

            “Well, you’re not wrong.” Miles said as everybody else sat down. Then Professor Oobleck came over the loudspeaker and said,

            “The next qualifying match will be Team JCTB VS Team CFVY. Please report to the staging area for your next battle.” Some cheering rose up from the crowd, while Miles leaned over to Nathan.

            “Talk to me Grover. I know our friends lineup and strategies forwards and backwards, but what can we expect from CFVY?”

            “Well from what I’ve gathered, they seem like a very power oriented team. Coco and Yatsuhashi both provide pure brawn with little speed, while Fox and Velvet while packing a punch, clearly prefer agility over pure power. And even still, Velvet has a huge advantage with not just her weapons technology, but also her ability to mimic other fighter’s styles. For example, lets say that my fighting style is great against fighters like Ty, but against Christy I would be a sitting duck. Velvet could take a photo of Christy’s weapons, mimic them with her camera box, and then step for step, mimic Christy’s movements. I’m honestly not sure how Jacob and company are going to get past that.”

            “Well if there’s one thing I’ve noticed that’s good about Team JCTB, it’s that they communicate very well. That should help them formulate a good plan.” Miles said leaning back in his chair. Meanwhile, on the battlefield, the teams had lined up and the two biomes had been selected. The geyser biome and the lava biome.

            “Well this is just great.” Christy groaned.

            “It’s fine Christy.” Jacob said as he adjusted his knives. “I’ve done some research on these biomes, and I think I might have an idea to help maximize your abilities. We’ve got the lava biome right behind us, and if they force us back there, that’s not the best situation. We need to force them into the geyser fields.”

            “I’m on it.” Ty said with confidence as he drew his sword. The countdown began and everybody got in their ready positions. As soon as the horn sounded, Ty morphed his sword into bazooka form and started unloading on Team CFVY. They instantly jumped backwards into the geyser fields, slightly drifting apart while doing so. As soon as they started to drift apart, Team JCTB began advancing into battle. Coco realized they were going to be pinned unless they did something, so she quickly morphed her weapon into gatling gun form and opened fire on her opponents.

            “Everybody line up behind Ty!” Jacob yelled as he moved out of the way of the oncoming barrage. Everybody did as instructed and Ty took the full force of Coco’s weaponry, and continued to move forward.

            “Velvet! Flank them!” Coco yelled to her teammate, which she responded by activating her weapon and mimicked Coco’s weapon and ran over to the left and tried to force them to spread out. But just as she started firing, Brooklyn had already morphed her weapon into shield form and was keeping Velvet’s copy at bay. As soon as they made it onto the outskirts of the geyser fields, Jacob took one of his knives out and started examining the ground.

            “Brooklyn, keep Velvet distracted. Christy, get ready to take Fox down. Ty, keep me covered until I find what I’m looking for.” With that said, Brooklyn rushed towards Velvet with her shield still up. Velvet realized that she wasn’t going to gain any ground in ranged combat, so she quickly shifted her weapon into the exact copy of Yatsuhashi’s weapon and smashed the hologram sword right into Brooklyn’s shield, causing a few geysers to go off in the process. Meanwhile, Jacob was still scouring the ground while Ty was still taking most of the punishment from Coco’s attacks.

            “Jacob, I hate to bother you with whatever you are doing, but I can’t keep this up forever before I start taking serious damage.”

            “Almost found it, there!” As soon as he said this, Jacob took the knife in his hand and stabbed it right into the ground. “All right then, make sure this knife doesn’t come out of the ground until I say so.”

            “And why does that matter so much?”

            “Just trust me on this Ty! Now then, go and take care of Yatsuhashi. Christy and I will distract Fox and Coco for a few minutes. Brooklyn! Just keep doing what you’re doing!”

            “Yeah, got no other options at this point!” Brooklyn yelled as she parried another large strike from Velvet, who was now wielding Nathan’s billy clubs.

 

 

 

 

            “You know, it’s really impressive.” Nathan said while watching Velvet’s movements intently.

            “What do you mean?” Miles asked looking away from the action for a few seconds.

            “Well, the thing is that normally, when somebody tries to copy somebody else’s movements or rhythm, I can usually tell if they are faking it. But with Velvet, she completely mimics every single motion to perfection. When she was mimicking Yatsuhashi, I couldn’t tell who was who for a split second.”

            “Huh. Impressive. Do you think there are any flaws in her battle plan?”

            “Not that I can see from up here.”

 

 

 

 

Jacob and Christy continued to dodge the constant barrage of bullets from Coco’s gun as well as the constant attacks by Fox. Meanwhile, Ty and Yatsuhashi were going toe-to-toe, trading blows, but it was clear that tanking all the shots from Coco earlier meant that he was almost down to basic aura defenses. Meanwhile, Brooklyn was clearly struggling with Velvet who was constantly changing between weapons to keep her off balance.

            “Jacob, if you’ve got a grand plan, I think we need it now!” Brooklyn yelled as she attempted to block the copy of Pyrrha’s weapon.

            “Almost time. Give it another minute.”

            “WE DON’T HAVE A MINUTE!” Brooklyn yelled again before getting smashed across the stage towards the center as Velvet had switched to Nora’s hammer. Jacob quickly looked up at the board and saw that Brooklyn was almost to the danger zone for aura level, Ty was starting to take serious damage, and he knew that he and Christy couldn’t dodge the tag team onslaught for much longer.

            “Fine! Christy! Pull the knife!” Christy didn’t even look back to acknowledge his call. She just jumped straight back to the knife and pulled it out of the ground. As a direct result, all of a sudden all the geysers went off at once creating a giant field of steam.

            “Christy, take down everybody you can as quickly as possible.” Christy nodded at her leaders request, and walked right into the giant field of mist. Ty and Yatsuhashi didn’t really change their course of action that much as they were already engaged in close quarters combat. However, both Coco and Fox were completely blind. Coco tried to blast a few rounds into thin air, but nothing changed as the mist still lingered over the battlefield. She then decided the best course of action would be to work her way over to Yatsuhashi and see if he could use his sword as a giant fan to blow away the steam. But before she took three steps, right in front of her appeared almost out of nowhere, Christy; using swift movements to disarm Coco and deplete whatever aura she had down to about 7%. The buzzer sounded signaling that the team leader had fallen, causing Fox to start panicking. He quickly started running as fast as he could to the center of the arena to get out of the smoke screen, but was almost knocked right back into it when Brooklyn was sent flying from one of Velvet’s attacks, this time with Yang’s gauntlets. Fox noticed that Brooklyn was taking her time getting up, and raised his weapons to deal the final blow, but before he could swing his arms down, something latched on to his weapons. He turned to see Jacob with his sword hooked in the crevice of his own weapons. Fox quickly pulled his weapons out of the lock and took a step back and got ready to face off against his new opponent. The two of them traded blows at amazing speeds, neither of them really having any form of an advantage. Suddenly, almost out of nowhere, Velvet got a step ahead of Brooklyn and rushed straight towards Jacob mimicking Ruby’s scythe and speed. However, right before she landed a huge hit on Jacob, Brooklyn jumped in the way of the incoming attack, and took the strike full force. The strike sent her flying back into the smokescreen, and dropped her aura levels down to about 2%, knocking her out. Jacob realized this and decided to enter his time dilation state. He quickly got around behind Fox, and did a quick one-two slice and knocked him down with one last swipe to his legs. The buzzer sounded signaling that he was out of the competition. Velvet realized that she was losing teammates, so she quickly jumped back away from Jacob, switched to Weiss’ weapon, and launched a wind glyph to blow away the steam from the geysers. When it finally cleared, Christy was on the receiving end of a punch from Yatsuhashi, knocking her out, but in turn, Yatsuhashi was also left wide open, giving Ty the chance to knock out his opponent, giving his team the edge. Ty walked over to Jacob, and Velvet looked at her two opponents realizing that she was down to her last legs. She decided to try and balance the tables by mimicking Ty’s weapon in sword form. Ty rolled his eyes, and rushed straight at Velvet, clashing blades. There was a large burst of energy from the clash, but a split second afterwards, Velvet was sent flying backwards out of the ring and into the force field, resulting in a ring-out.

            “Yeah, you may be able to copy my weapons, but pure strength is something that comes naturally for me.” Ty said in triumph as he slammed his sword into the ground in victory, and then went over to help Brooklyn up. Jacob sheathed his sword, and walked over to get Christy back to her feet. The crowd cheered as Professor Ozpin gave Team JCTB the right to participate in the tournament and they left the arena. As they made their way to the stands, they got applause and support from their friends.

            “Good work out there Jacob.” Pyrrha said patting him on the back.  “You did good leading your team.”

            “Debatable, but thanks Pyrrha.” Jacob said as he sat down.

            “Next up, we have Team CRDL facing off against Team JNPR.” Professor Oobleck announced. As Team JNPR made their way down into the arena, everybody got excited.

            “Yeah!” Natalie yelled in anticipation. “This is going to be awesome!”

 

 

 

 

Everybody started pouring out of the arena, completely dumbfounded.

            “I can’t believe they won that fight in like thirty seconds.” Evan said in complete disbelief.

            “Yeah.” Nathan nodded in agreement. “Hey Miles, you know off the top of your head what the record is for fastest victory?”

            “I don’t actually. Blake?”

            “If I remember right, it was recorded at 33.02 seconds on the dot.”

            “Yeesh. Overkill much?”

Author's Note

Please review/share/enjoy!

Reviews

[Shep]

Cool, that was some fancy footwork and battle skill all around. I loved it now all my friends will compete in the tournament. Movin gon to the next chapter Please be kind and return the love.