[color=goldenrod][i][h2][center]Gerard Segremors[/center][/h2][/i][/color]

As one would have expected, facing a thinking opponent rather than a rote automaton, tactics were dropped and swapped when proven unviable. Training beneath the Hammer and Mirror Knight must have been wildly different experiences, given the gap in methodology employed by their respective taskmasters, but more clear than anything was the shared byproduct—

[color=goldenrod]"Incoming high!"[/color] he barked, sabaton digging into the earth from heel to toe as forward momentum cut into a spring on the diagonal, sudden change in course exaggerating the distance between him and the silvery orb's trajectory. [color=goldenrod]"Falling short, brace!"[/color]

— be it by directed exercise or by simply throwing oneself into as much fire as could be handled, the pair of Reonites had both gained really [i]good[/i] eyes, keen, active, and measuring. Gerard's caught the endless torrent of mana that forced Gertrude to earth as light, turning his amber irises gold, before they darted up to read the disk of spun nighttime, motes of silver starlight already gathering within its mass to form a second, and finally Gisela's still-moving mouth and [i]pointed[/i] hand. [color=goldenrod][i]Oh, how flattering, me first.[/i][/color]

Right at [i]him[/i]. Hard to misinterpret.

Impact. Even at this distance, he felt the shockwave shake his bones, wind kiss the skin of his face, and the ghosts of lives past flash somewhere deep below his thinking mind. The destructive force of each was evident, if this was their appetizer— no moment of it digging into the earth by the look of things once the dust cleared, either. Not an instant to play with the idea of deflecting.

He set forward again, wishing for all the world their erstwhile Lioness peer could have been here to eat crow for giving him grief for his hill sprints in the waking world. The surge in speed brought him ahead of Fleuri, close to the crater the first had left as the second came hurtling down.

[color=goldenrod]"No more cover fire from Gertrude, not until we get some pressure off her!"[/color] he reported, scooping his free hand to the upturned earth and pulling free a gauntlet full of gravel, the stone beneath the soil pulverized within the crater. He was tougher now by leagues, but he'd be lucky to endure more than one before his bones were similarly shattered. It felt close enough to a near miss from Cyrus's hammer. [color=goldenrod]"We need to cut off that chanting before she picks us or the guys below off,"[/color]

The second silver orb sailed in, lead diligently for his motion to hit him square in the surcoat— but he'd seen something within that instant of the first strike. Building off that sense of not having any time to try and deflect, parry, redirect.

The moment it hit something besides air, then, it went boom. 

With a swiping motion not wholly dissimilar to Renar's below, he cast the rubble into the air ahead, as a fistful of somethings suddenly were in the way as the orb breached that final dozen meters from their heads.

[color=goldenrod]"Any ideas?"[/color] he asked, as premature thunder cracked overhead.