[h2][color=9e0039]Vladimir Plasimov-Drakka[/color][/h2]
[color=9e0039]"Hmph. We'll see about tha-"[/color] he started, before being interrupted by the shark Faunus' friendly punch to his upper arm. Turning to face her, he ended up quite surprised at her request for a race, of all things. It was at this moment that the platforms to his left began to flip upward, flinging their occupants toward the forest. Turning back to the shark girl with a grin on his face, he only had time to say [color=9e0039]"Looks like I get a head-start. Toodles."[/color]

The next moment, he was spinning through the air at high velocity, the forest sailing by below him like an ocean of green, yet ever so steadily it began accelerating toward him as his upward momentum failed and gravity began to take its toll. The young man yawned at the approach of the trees, then aimed his pistol roughly downward and, every couple of seconds, fired it once or twice to reduce how fast he fell. This was not as effective as he'd hoped, but still enough that he dropped into the forest canopy at an angle, rather than falling straight down like a rock; once in the canopy itself, and doing his utmost to ignore the slowly-increasing annoyance of being whipped by a great many twig-sized branches per second, he did he best to keep an eye open for a suitably wide branch to use as a hook. In short order, he spied one in the near distance, coming up fast as he fell; aiming Breath, he activated the mechanism to open up its grapple mechanism, then fired once, sending the beartrap-like hooks flying toward the branch, succeeding in scoring a direct hit that clamped the end of the gun around the branch's width. Almost immediately, Vlad's momentum changed, sending him soaring in an arc around the branch that threatened to slam him into the ground full-force if he wasn't careful; waiting until just the right moment, he retracted the grapple toward himself, increasing his speed as the circle he was travelling round shrunk, but placing himself at just the right distance to...

All at once, the grapple unhooked itself and retracted back to the main body of the oversized pistol, sending the man running along at ground level, his feet barely keeping up with the speed at which he found himself moving, and he realised that he was almost certainly going to trip and fall if he didn't resolve that problem immediately. A large and probably quite old tree found itself a victim of his momentum-reducing strategy, ending up with a sword wedged into its wood and carving a circle through its many layers as Vlad's body span round and round, gradually slowing down until, finally, he ceased to move altogether, rather dizzy but no worse for wear. Taking a few moments to breath deeply, both to minimise the adrenaline pulsing through his system and to recover his sense of balance, he absent-mindedly pulled Maw through what little of the tree's wood remained connected to its stump, yanking the weapon free, then finishing the plant's execution by pushing the upper half of its trunk with one foot, slowly overbalancing it until it fell with a great crashing of smashed branches and impacted dirt, resulting in a small clearing of sunlight in the forest's otherwise-shady interior.

Left with his own thoughts for a short moment, he smiled to himself at how successful his landing strategy had been, then steeled himself for the journey ahead. Chances were, he'd need all his wits to acquire whatever "key piece" it was that Ozpin had mentioned, and a fair portion of his combat skill to boot. Beyond that, he couldn't say, but he was quite sure he'd be fine regardless. Orienting himself in the direction he believed he was flying a few moments ago, he began to pace forward, sheathing his sword momentarily to reload his gun, and keeping both in hand, in case anything happened to fly out at him from nowhere.

[@Chickn][@Turboshitter]