Corwyn Ambers - VI
Corwyn secured his gauntlet, getting ready for his coming fight.
[spoiler=Corwyn's Kit] https://i.pinimg.com/564x/7f/2a/2a/7f2a2aff9eeb7b46b820eedf634e82ef.jpg[/spoiler]
It was the semi-finals to the end-of-the-year Tourney. A way to wrap-up the year in Remnant's ever competitive nature within the combat sport scene. He flipped his helmet on, before turning his hood up. Breathing in deeply, Corwyn focused his mind for the coming battle.
Ruby had already won all of her battles, both of them having gone to Tai and asked the man to put them in opposing brackets. The man caved easily to Ruby's pouting eyes and their joined offer to bake him a spread of delicious desserts.
"Ready?" Tai asked as he entered the locker room. "Yang's already out there, warming up."
Corwyn grunted as he rolled his shoulder, getting a feel for his pauldron. "How do you think I'll fare?" He asked.
Corwyn had made the decision to not use any of his Enchantments on Malleus or the Thunderers within this tournament. Qrow had been fucked up by his Thunderous Wave, and if a Veteran Hunter struggled to walk off his blow with a ringing head, then a pre-academy preparatory student had little odds of surviving.
It made him weary of using his Hammer's Enchantments, but the same couldn't be said about his Armor's.
Stormplate's reactive Lighting Cloak could leave serious injuries on someone without Aura, but with it, it was more annoying and hampering than it was potentially lethal. The added fact that his Aura was huge, Stormplate's Aura was also of great significance; around two thirds his Aura, and the fact that by using Stormplate, damage they took to their Aura was dramatically lessened.
This was due to the fact that Stormplate was living steel, and it was a shit-ton harder to damage steel than it was to damage mortal flesh. That inherent durability of steel allowed him to 'soften' his Aura and allow the force to dissipate through the armor and focus the kinetic discharge throughout his body and the entire set of armor.
It was an advanced technique usually used by shield wielders, taken to an extreme by Corwyn to affect his entire suit of armor and his body. It was an amazing technique that just clicked with him and also made him look down on other Hunters who scorned armor users.
Tai paused and thought about what he'd seen and heard from Corwyn's performance. "Yang's been training harder lately." He gave credit, "But she's also been in a strange headspace, changing, maturing. Fights are always up in the air, but from what I know of your Semblances…she doesn't really stand much of a chance if she lets you take control of the flow."
"We both know that's not how Yang fights." Corwyn muttered.
Tai snorted, "No, but you're scarily good at letting opponents think they're in control."
"And then the riptide comes."
Tai nodded, "And then the riptide comes." He repeated.
Corwyn's fingers laced around his hammer's handle, before he headed out into the tournament grounds with Tai on his back. Corwyn headed to the center, eyes staring through the ports of his helmet and locking onto Yang.
Closing his eyes, he focused on his Aura, feeling the world within a radius around him, granting him three-sixty degrees of sight and awareness of his being. Opening them, he got into his fighting stance.
Yang was casual, grinning as she was wont to do with a relaxed posture. Her aura was tight and ready, and she was taking this seriously. However, Yang didn't really do serious outside of emotional stuff, and so her taking this fight seriously was more her engaging more attention to how much adrenaline she can suck out of the fight before winning.
"Go Corwyn!" He smiled slightly as he heard a particular cheer from his girlfriend.
"Awe, look at her go." Yang said with a slight bit of mocking tone in her voice, "Hate to disappoint her, but you're going down here Wyn."
Corwyn rolled his eyes at the pre-battle banter, personally not really a fan.
"The battle begins at three!" Tai started his countdown, "One, Two, Three! Fight!"
The class quieted down as the two fighters stared at one another, Yang grinning cheekily as she sauntered side to side, "What, just gonna stand there tin-man?"
Corwyn was usually a defensive fighter, but he saw no reason to not go on the offensive today. He started to shuffle forward, moving his polearm closer to his wind-up position on his right. Yang tilted her head at the advance, before chuffing and grinning, before charging forward with a hook leading forward.
Corwyn swung forward, his hammer screaming through the wind as he struck down, aiming for her shoulder and collarbone.
Yang laughed as she slapped the hammer to the side with a twist of her body, dodging and parrying its momentum with a surprised grunt at its sheer weight and force. Her left arm swinging forward, discharging a shotgun blast towards his chest, a mask of glee on her face.
Corwyn positioned his body to the side, letting the pellets deflect off his plate, calling back his polearm and repositioning for yet another strike. To get her off of him, though, and stepped forward and gave her a shoulder check, sending Yang skidding back as he significantly out massed her.
Yang's eyes narrowed, not having expected someone to close the distance on her with a longer weapon, retreating a few feet as she was pushed back. Glancing over to the monitor, she saw they were both still at one-hundred percent Aura, making her stare at Corwyn with queer eyes.
Corwyn himself felt Stormplate's aura reserves and chuckled as he accurately estimated them at 99.3% and climbing from 99.2% in the scant second that exchange had taken place. Stormplate synergized greatly with The Necklace of Meditation, as the necklace was placed over it, and its Sea of Souls effects to rapidly regenerate Aura. Without a real mind to overwhelm, the effect allowed the artificial soul to regenerate Aura at stellar rates.
"Yang! You have to hit him really hard!" He heard Ruby yell out from the stands, making him stumble slightly from the betrayal.
Yang directed her confused and bewildered expression to Ruby, "Duh!" She yelled at her sister.
He heard Ruby give her sister a raspberry, before the two combatants focused on one another again.
Yang started shuffling forward bobbing and weaving, only to cringe back as he swung a horizontal swing toward her side. Once clear of the maul head, she charged forward but was unprepared for the speedy morph and was forced to dodge to the side in a quick roll to avoid the downward slam. Corwyn grinned as he felt the tides start coming in, combat ramping up as he stomped towards the teenager, his hammer swiping forward and being blocked by a gauntlet, another fist slamming itself into his plate, doing jack shit.
He pushed her back and thrusted with his hammer, the edge of which clipping her in the cheekbone and making her grunt in frustration, pouncing towards him to land a short combo of four hits at his chest. Once again, doing nothing. At this point he was getting concerned. Why was she hitting his armor?
At least try to go for the joints…
He mentally shrugged the thought away as he lashed out with a kick, pushing her into his range and sending a side swing towards her head. She raised her arm to block, but it was a feint as he morphed into an upwards swipe that struck her elbow with a harsh clash, aura protecting the limb from being maimed, but pain making the girl flinch back.
Corwyn winded up the next swing and slammed it down into her braced hands, protecting her skull, sending her into the ground face first. He grinned, only to grimace as flames started to emit from her aura. She growled and shot up with a lash of a fiery fist aimed at his groin-plate. He raised a knee, letting his greave block the blow, skidding back on one foot from the force of the attack.
She charged at him with a fist going for his helmet, and with a tilt of his head and a tilt of his torso, the arm went past his head.
He shoved her off of him with his hammer's haft, before going for her ribs with his weapon, which the raging girl failed to notice in her tunnel vision and cried out in pain as she was thrown several feet into the air and came crashing down in a tangle of limbs.
She crawled up and snarled at Corwyn, charging towards him again, only for her eyes to widen as a javelin promptly planted itself into her shoulder. The weapon bounced off her aura, despite how sharp it was, no thunderous boom following as he'd willed the enchantment to not activate; yet, despite all of this, the strength, sharpness, and weight of the projectile had the charging girl flip sideways and fall once again into a mess of limbs.
Her shoulder raged in pain as she tried to get up, only for the arm to give out and have her fall once again. Corwyn waited for her to get up, glancing at the thirty seven percent mark on her aura. He put away the second javelin back into Stomach, bracing himself as Yang shot at him once again, good arm cocked back; only for Corwyn to go low and use his hammer's reach to swipe at her feet.
She jumped; Corwyn rolled forward. She missed him entirely, and Corwyn dodged the bull's charge. She snapped around to see him once again bracing, and charged once more, ready for him this time; yet instead of striking at her legs or a weakness; he struck her wrist.
The hammer and an extended gauntlet met, the lighter of the two being thrown to the side, and her shoulder screamed as it was wrenched out of its socket. One of Corwyn's hands removed itself from his weapon, before latching around the still charging and in-momentum girl's neck. She hung in place as he lifted her up, fire blazing around his gauntlet's hand as he glanced over at the monitor.
There, fourteen-percent hung under her name, with Corwyn still at a hundred.
Yang followed his gaze and froze at the sight, before he dropped her.
"Sit."
She sat, blankly staring at the number.
"Winner! Corwyn!"
------
Yang I
She sat in the stands with an icepack on her arm. The set was painful, but such was the issue for dislocated shoulders. Whispers around her muttered about how she was having an off day, or how bland the fight was. To that…she could sort of agree.
Corwyn fought…strangely. Everyone else liked movement. Lots of it. They darted around, practically dancing in combat. Some that were burly and strong like Corwyn charged and beat the shit out of people. Even that was movement, but Corwyn…
It was like fighting a statue. It never really felt like he was moving, like he was dancing, like he was in the throws of combat. Instead, it felt like he moved and everything else followed. Weight, Mass, Strategy, Space, Timing; calculated, measured, thoughtful.
While fighting him, she saw what he was doing. Shoving her around, using his weapon like he did, the minimalist movements, the unreal reaction times and planning and plotting of using her telegraphed attacks against herself, and using his telegraphed attacks to lead her where he wanted her. The usage of his stupid armor, perfectly accentuating the combat style, or perhaps the combat style was built around being armored?
Whatever it was, she knew what had happened down there. She'd been outplayed, out-skilled, and countered in full. Corwyn knew everything about her combat style, she'd felt that there. Him playing with her charges like she was some raging Grimm ticked her off, but also clued her into what she needed to fix.
Fuck learning new combos and fist techniques, she needed to fix her game style, figure out how to get to a foe and how to fuck with them so she can do those combos and techniques. The other thing she figured out was that her semblance was ass against someone who could figure her style out. It fucked with her emotions, yeah, but she was still sort-of in control. She needed to fix that, and fast. Getting led around by the nose was fucking annoying.
The yammering was getting annoying and so she stood up and headed to go see her sis. Needed to give her some advice about fighting that wall of steel she called a boyfriend.
She headed down to the girl's locker room, only to find her sister and her boyfriend standing at the entrance. Corwyn had his helmet off an admittedly handsome grin on his face as he listened to whatever Ruby was yapping about.
Corwyn was one of the quiet ones. She never really hit off with him, really ever, because he was…reclusive in a way. She idly remembered a few times she'd spoken to him, but there was always a hint of…off-ness about him. Like he never really enjoyed her talking to him. That was strange, and she may have made a few offhand remarks about him being gay because of that fact to a few of her friends, which in further retrospect made those looks even worse…
Oh. He disliked her.
The sudden realization was a bit hard to stomach. She'd had enemies, yeah, plenty of divas and gossip girls who didn't like her, or ex-boyfriends and jealous boys who channeled that into anger and aggressiveness. However, to suddenly realize that Corwyn, the guy who was dating her sister, didn't like her; well, it kind of hurt.
Her attention from that realization was taken by Ruby suddenly blushing. A bit of mischief entered her as she lurked closer, well-practiced skills of spooking her sister put into this bit of effort in eavesdropping.
"You'd like it, wouldn't you?" Corwyn was whispering, but a bit of Aura put into her ears allowed his words to filter in. "Collar around my neck, doing whatever you want." Yang's face burned the same as Ruby's, eyes caught onto the knight's form as he took her sister's chin and bent down, planting a soft kiss on her lips. "Wonder how you'd play? My face between your thighs, a feast. Or perhaps you'd like me to do something more…degrading." She heard his chest vibrate, a primal growl that made both her and her sister's legs weak.
She heard her sister's weak voice pipe up, "W-what if you win?" She whispered.
"Hmm." She could feel the dread pooling in her stomach, a strange suspense building. "I'll tie you up, nice and snug. Strip you down, before playing, toying, teasing. You'll beg, you'll whine and moan, but I won't let you release. Just a constant build onto a restful edge where you'll be just a touch away from bursting."
Yang was next to the bleachers, granted the perfect view of her sister's conflicted face. She was frozen, wondering what she was meant to do.
'They're already this far?!' She screamed in her head. She was a virgin for Brother's sake! How!? How!?
A mention from Qrow whispered into her mind. 'It's always the quiet ones.'
With a burning face she strode back to the bleachers, sitting down and waiting for the match to start. It came quickly, both teens striding onto the field. Ruby didn't even seem like she'd just had such an arousing conversation, the same innocent smile on her face as she stared down the intimidating knight.
Dad walked over and inspected the two, before nodding. "On three! One, Two, Three! Fight!"
Corwyn tilted his head, "What are you doing?" He asked.
Ruby grinned, "What do you mean?"
He glanced over to the screen and Yang felt her eyeballs fall out.
Ruby's Aura was dropping stupidly fast!
Corwyn pulled out a javelin that somehow fit inside his backpack and chucked it weakly at her sister. The weapon promptly went through her.
Wat?
"You're going to run out of Aura if you keep doing that, Rose." Corwyn stated with confusion edging in his voice.
"I know." Ruby answered evenly.
"...Oh. Oh…" Corwyn suddenly made sounds of realization. "Really?"
"Yup!" Ruby giggled.
"Well, I guess you're making me work for it anyway." He muttered.
Ruby laughed.
She saw everyone else being visibly confused at what was going on, and slowly she realized what Ruby was doing.
She was losing on purpose.
Yang bit her lip, before nodding with respect, "You go girl." She whispered.
"Winner? Corwyn." Dad stated with confusion as Ruby skipped over to Corwyn and hip bumped him, to which Corwyn's gauntlet started to fuzz up Ruby's hair to her frustration. The two poked and prodded, their ramblings lost as they strode out of the hall off to…
Yang blushed again.