TentacleLord — Roleplayer Guild

Ivan waited in the dueling hall with bated breath, casually staring around at his fellow students with a lazy grin hiding his intense excitement for what was to come. He knew that he had a rather… odd place in Beacon’s school system due to his late arrival, but there wasn’t anything that could be done about it now. Instead, there was a task that he had to accomplish. He was the most recent acquisition to Team Silverpoint, and what better way to show off to his new teammates than to absolutely trounce his opponent in this mock duel? The gunslinger’s white teeth flashed underneath the brim of his over-large and exceptionally floppy hat in a lopsided smirk, casually strolling forward as his name was called. He made a show of his approach to the dueling arena by punctuating his actions with as many flourishes of his overly large poncho as possible, making certain to pull of his hat with the grandest gesture he could managed as he bowed low to his opponent. He straightened up slowly, removing the poncho with a disdainful shrug and a flick of his wrist. Ivan’s voice was clear of anything but amusement and the barest hint of contempt as he looked at his opponent, already judging the green-haired man to be little more than an annoyance. “Oh? I’ll be sure to treat you kindly, man. Wouldn’t want to rough up your pretty face.” Merlin waited silently for his name to be called. He paid no mind to the students in his surroundings, but his focus was more to the surroundings itself. Everything was a prop that he could exploit for the purpose of creating a show . He would use every little aspect of this battlefield as a weapon to be used to not only defeat his opponent in battle but in showmanship as well. He stopped his inspection of the environment around him and switched it to the people who were in his general vicinity. He noticed a few of his teammates and gave a small smile. Even though he was just recently placed with this team, he could sense that they were all good people. After a few more moments of watching the people around him, Merlin snapped back to his original task and began surveying the surroundings once more. Merlin was startled when his name was called. He was so focused on his surroundings that he hadn’t noticed how long he had been sitting there. None the less, Merlin regained his composure and stood up. He picked up his signature black hooded cloak, and put it on relatively quickly. At least that is what it looked like to anyone watching him. What spectators didn’t know was that, in the timespan of him picking up his coat and putting it on, he had created a full line of black and yellow runes on the upper inside seam of the hood. After the runes were done, and the cloak was snug against his body, Merlin finally picked up Deep Magic and began to move. He moved swiftly up to the dueling arena, and stopped at his designated starting position. He watched as his opponent made his way to his own starting point, making grandiose movements underneath his poncho to accent his movements along the way. The man wearing a poncho then took off his hat and bowed towards Merlin. He then slowly stood back up and took off his poncho. Merlin closed his eyes, smiled at the strange man, and began to wave his hand. “Oh? I’ll be sure to treat you kindly, man. Wouldn’t want to rough up your pretty face.” Merlin’s opponent said with amusement and very slight hint of contempt in his tone. Merlin smiled at the man, stared into his eyes, and began to speak softly to his opponent. “I wouldn’t get too confident, friend. I don’t like being underestimated and those who have done so regret it.” Merlin stopped for a moment to add a little suspense in the air, “Now, would you mind dropping the tough guy act and let’s make this a show to remember!” Merlin put a large emphasis on his last few words. Even though he was speaking softly the entire time, the last few words were spoken with such crystal clear clarity that the words seemed to have echoed throughout the entire arena. Ivan’s features froze, the cocky light dying in his eyes as his opponent took to the field and shoved his banter back at him. That… wasn’t supposed to happen. The gunslinger flexed his fingers inside the gauntlets as he waited for the Goodwitch woman to signal the start of the match, feeling the gentle pressure of Leviathan’s trigger on his right palm as he slowly pushed against the miniscule force, testing his boundaries and making certain that he was ready to beat this confident pretty-boy’s face into the dirt. The heavy pressure of the massive handgun on his forearm was reassuring, if nothing else. He flashed the other student with another grin, showing teeth and a complete lack of mirthful emotion, all the while adopting a loose stance that let both hands hover close to his hips, and more importantly, his ammo supply. Goodwitch gave them both a hard stare, and then called: “Start!” As soon as the stoic and commanding voice yelled for start of the match, Ivan sprung into action. A resounding boom cut through the air before the final syllable had left Goodwitch’s lips, slamming the sheathed weapon into Ivan’s waiting hand faster than the eye could follow. He skipped backward in the same motion, raising the heavy weapon to eye level and staring directly at Merlin’s well-kept features. Before the echo of the first shot faded, he pulled the trigger twice more. The sound came out in a cumulative explosion of force, impossible to distinguish the individual shots in the sonic assault. The bullets snapped forward at hypersonic speed, each time aiming for vital spots on his opponent(Namely the head and chest, respectively), aiming to deplete his opponents Aura before the real combat began. Merlin kept his unwavering smile as his opponents cocky attitude faded away and finally started taking the match seriously. There was a deafening silence as they waited for the starting signal. The silence was soon broken by the sound of Goodwitch’s voice and then the sound of three large booms immediately right after. Merlin’s body reacted instantly by shifting and abruptly swinging the head of Deep Magic up and across his chest and face,deflecting the two bullets away from his body. Merlin looked at his body and then his opponent in a moment of shock. Luckily, he had previous training in deflecting bullets while he was at Signal, and his muscle memory kicked in. Merlin quickly recovered from his shock and retaliated in kind. His once unnerving smile turned into an expression of deep concentration towards the task at hand as he pressed a series of buttons on the body of Deep Magic. Just a moment later, the orb at the top of Deep Magic began to glow a bright red. With one swift movement, Merlin quickly swung Deep Magic from one side of his body to the other. Half way through the swing, A glowing red ball seemed to peel away from Deep Magic’s orb and was then sent hurtling towards Ivan’s chest. Merlin had used and explosive type of dust that explodes on contact. Merlin was hoping that, even if his attack doesn’t hit him directly, the blast radius would knock him back enough to prepare his next attack. While his first attack was still flying through the air, Merlin reach into his pocket and pulled at a stereotypical playing card. Using his semblance, He began to summon a small set of white runes along the rim of the card. Three. The great red ball of Dust hurtling at breakneck speed at his relatively undefended chest was definitely a new trick. He’d gathered that the other man was some sort of caster when he’d pulled out the staff, but it was always unsettling to have to fight someone who was able to bend Dust itself to their will. Ivan shifted his line of fire slightly to the left and fired, smirking arrogantly at the thought. The baritone crack smashed through the air as the gunslinger’s semblance activated, turning the would-be attack into an effective propulsion method to escape the possibly incapacitating attack. Four. Letting the force of the blast carry him back several feet, Ivan landed on all fours, bringing Leviathan up to bear on his opponent as soon as he stopped sliding backwards. Yet another resounding boom shook the air as the next shot headed for Merlin’s now exposed hand and playing card. Five. Merlin frowned slightly as he watched his opponent suddenly propelled himself away from the blast radius of his attack. Merlin quickly looked down at the playing card to check on the status of the runes. The runes were almost complete, but his opponent had already recovered and began to take aim. Merlin, almost as soon as Ivan pulled the trigger, quickly activated his Runes of Protection that he had placed within his cloak. A semi-transparent,yellow, and spherical barrier suddenly surrounded Merlin, and his cloak, and created a visible force field between him and the bullet. The barrier began to absorb all of the kinetic energy that the bullet had packed within it almost as soon as the bullet touched the yellow wall. Merlin was hoping to save the previously hidden power until later in the fight, but he had miscalculated the prowess of his opponent. Merlin finished what was left of the white runes on his card, pulled out another playing card from one of his sleeves, and began to summon a set of red and black runes on it. Merlin slowly, but surely was creating a game plan, but he had to set it up without his opponent noticing. This didn’t bother him though. He had performed this type of task many times while he was a street magician. As soon as the runes were complete on the second card, Merlin cancelled the barrier. With some swift button presses, Merlin began to infuse the head of Deep Magic with light a blue type of freezing dust. Merlin quickly swung his trusty staff toward his opponent, releasing the blue ball of the dust slightly towards the right of his opponent. Using the momentum of the swing, he let himself spin around a full three hundred and sixty degrees around. Merlin then flung the two cards that were in his left hand toward his opponent. The two cards, using the extra velocity created from Merlin’s spin, flew through the air at a far above average speed. While the card with the white runes stayed on course towards Ivan, the card with both the black and the red runes veered away from it’s sister card and towards the left side of Ivan. Ivan’s green eyes widened considerably as his latest attempt at taking down his opponent was foiled by a bubble. Grunting something incoherent underneath his breath that vaguely mentioned ‘casters’ and ‘unfair advantage’, he took the opportunity to reload, casually watching the other man’s movements inside the glowing yellow sphere. Letting the spent casings fall to the floor, he pocketed the remaining bullet as the other man’s semi-secretive machinations began to come to fruition. The gunslinger was halfway through sticking a speed-loader marked with red tape into Leviathan’s massive cylinder, a confident smile playing on his lips, when the yellow sphere fell and a blue orb rocketed toward his right side, causing Ivan to swear profusely as he stumbled forward, jamming the ammunition in fully and closing the revolver as he hit the ground. Looking up, he barely caught the flash of Merlin’s playing cards leaving the green-haired man’s hand. That left very little options. Save the crazy ones. With a yell, Ivan pulled the trigger twice. The first shot(Accompanied by an ungodly sounding scream as it tore through the air) rocketed toward Merlin at supersonic speeds, trailing fire and tipped with a sparkling crimson light. Leviathan shot back into its booster mode casing, enjoying recoil sans Ivan’s semblance. The second shot instead transported all its power to recoil, and launched the rather foolish youth forward, trailing a line of brilliant flames, and directly under the humming card laced with gleaming white runes. Two. Still sliding, Ivan rolled and pointed the great handgun at his opponent, an arrogant and rather hysterical grin plastered on his features as he closed the gap between the two. He pulled the trigger three more times in rapid succession, aiming to overpower the chance of another magic bubble with literal firepower and the horrible screaming noise that burst forth with each of the fire-based blasts. Five. Merlin watched as his the first attack he had sent, the ball of dust, to Ivan’s right and created a large, complex structure completely made of ice. The structure somewhat reminded Merlin of a hairdo that was often sported by one of his favorite manga characters. The next thing he saw was Ivan’s body hitting the ground and rocketing himself towards Merlin. Merlin’s fingers quickly began striking the familiar buttons on Deep Magic as he saw Ivan flip over and take aim. The bottom tip of Deep Magic began to glow brightly with the same light blue color as before. Merling firmly gripped the body of Deep Magic slammed the ground in front of him. The resulting burst of ice dust created a thick wall of ice between him and the gunslinger. Unfortunately his ice barrier was only partially successful. One of the three bullets that had been shot had hit a weak spot on the ice wall and melted straight through, hitting Merlin in his left arm. The force of the impact sent him sliding back a few feet and took a good chunk of his aura in the process. “Damn, that smarts!” Merlin said aloud with a hint of pain in his voice. Merlin, after recovering, gave a wicked grin. This was becoming quite a show and he knew it. He didn’t have another moment to waste, Merlin quickly slid out of his cloak and through it up into the air in front of him. Activating the Runes of Stillness that he had hidden in his hood, the cloak completely froze in space. The cloak had frozen in such a way that it it looked like a floating platform, and that is exactly what Merlin had in mind. He smashed a few buttons on Deep Magic and started to run towards the floating cloak. Jumping up onto the cloak, the cloth completely rigid underneath his feet, he wound up and leaped once more into the air. He vaulted elegantly over the 10-foot wall and looked down to acquire his target. Once Ivan was in his sights, Merlin swung his staff downwards. The ball of dust released was the same explosive dust that he had release near the start of the match. Once released, Merlin landed onto the ground and made a mad dash towards the ice structure that reminded him of a manga characters hairdo. The confident grin spread even further as the green-haired youth tossed up the ice wall, his powerful and, more importantly, expensive bullets making short work of the impromptu defense. Ivan let loose a harsh burst of laughter at the exclamation of his now slightly singed opponent and barely caught the flash of movement before the other man vaulted up and over the ice wall, slinging the same brilliantly red destructo-orb that the gunslinger had dodged in the opening seconds of the match. Ivan’s grin spread some more as he pushed up rapidly with his feet, launching himself sideways. Or at least, he would have if the floor wasn’t now covered in ice and rapidly cooling water. Ivan’s impact against the cold ground knocked the wind out of him and rolled him on his back, where he got the last second to badly angle his heavy gauntlets over his face and chest before the explosive struck. The kinetic force punched against his body and ripped apart most of his defensive Aura as the flames scorched at the top layer of his clothes. Hacking coughs racked Ivan’s body as he rolled onto his belly, catching a glimpse of his opponent making a beeline for the spiky fortress of ice that had been previously set up. He pointed the gun forward at Merlin’s now cloakless back, and fired again, the screaming bullet again bleeding a preposterous amount of fire from a brilliantly crimson tip. Merlin never looked back towards his opponent. He had figured that his opponent would be disabled for just long enough that he could have made it all the way to the ice fortress, but he soon found out that wasn’t the case. After another resounding boom, and large pain in his right shoulder, Merlin was sent tumbling forward and away from his target. When he finally recovered, he found himself far left of the ice sculpture, and his aura was getting dangerously close to entering the red zone. He quickly began to survey the ground around him and saw that the card with the black and red runes on it was laying only a few feet away. “Okay then. New plan!” He said as he reached over and grabbed the card. He then quickly spun around and flung the card towards his opponent. He then reached into his back pocket and pulled out five more playing cards, and Merlin began to place red, black, and yellow runes on each. “Let’s finish this!!” he yelled. Ivan grunted as the red and black card hissed past his ear, causing him to abandon his attempts to get up to throw himself aside and onto the ground once more. He lay on his side as he emptied the cylinder of the spent casings marked with red tape. The gunslinger considered his next move, basing his movements on the assumption that his two shots had done as much damage as the dangerously powerful blast that the caster had hurled his way. That meant that this next engagement would be the last. Ivan staggered to his feet as he selected yet another speedloader from his pouch. Slamming the blue-marked cartridges into the waiting chambers, he responded to Merlin’s yell with one of his own. “Ready when you are, pretty-boy! Let’s go!” He began to jog forward, moving slowly but rapidly gaining speed as he leveled Leviathan at his opponent and pulled the trigger twice. The baritone crack of the gun was accompanied by an indescribable noise that was almost musical in nature as twin blue lights launched forward at the cards, trailing freezing mist as they went. Merlin watched as his opponent began his charge, and Merlin reacted in kind. All of his runes have now finished, and all that was left was to end this fight with style. Watching his opponent carefully as both forces were charging full force at each other. It didn’t surprise Merlin in the least when Ivan lifted his gun and began to fire. This much he was prepare for. Lifting his hand and throwing two of the 5 cards in front of him, Merlin quickly activated the Runes of Protection and the Runes of Stillness on both of the cards. The same magic familiar yellow bubbles appeared around the cards. Both cards, completely frozen in space with magic barriers around them, stood between the two bullets and Merlin. Within the blink of an eye, the bullets slammed into the yellow bubbles and exploded with frozen power. The next thing that Merlin saw were two frozen orbs floating in mid air. The iced dust packed within the bullets had completely frozen the air around the barrier, creating the illusion of two frozen orbs just mindlessly floating in space as they continually bounce off of the yellow force field. Merlin, to avoid hitting the two frozen spheres in the sky, quickly threw another one of the cards in front of him and activated the Runes of stillness. He then used the now makeshift platform to vault over the two orbs and, evidently, his opponent. While Merlin was in the air, an idea came to him. He had just figured out the perfect way to end this match, once and for all. As soon as he reached the apex of his forward vault, Merlin activated the lone card that had flew by Ivan’s head just prior to the final charge. The Runes of Explosions glowed a bright red before creating a large explosion near the ice wall. This was only to distract his opponent. A second was all he would need. He then began his descent. Landing gracefully behind Ivan, positioning himself in such a way that Ivan was now in between the frozen orbs and himself. He let go of Deep Magic and quickly grabbed one of the cards from his other hand. He then gave another wicked grin as he slapped both cards right onto Ivan’s thighs and then activated the Runes of Stillness on both of the cards. Now both cards were frozen in space right next to Ivan’s body, thus limiting his movements. Merlin then grabbed the collar of Ivan’s shirt and whispered, “Sorry Mr. Tough Guy, but it seems that our little show has to now come to an end. I bid you Adieu.” The events that happened next went as follows: Merlin, first, deactivated the Runes of Protection and let the frozen orbs begin to drop. Soon after, he then activated the Runes of Explosions that were on the cards inside of the to ice orbs. This created an immense amount of pressure within the frozen balls. The pressure inside the orbs built up so rapidly that the structural integrity of the orbs quickly began to deteriorate. When the deterioration it it’s pinnacle, the orbs fractured into many different pieces. It was then that the pressure inside of the two frozen orbs was finally release, and it generated powerful source of wind blew out in all directions, thus scattering the frozen orb shards in all directions at a very high velocity. The shards would hit everything within the arena that wasn’t already being sheltered by an object, or in Merlin’s case, Ivan. Ivan couldn’t believe his luck, barely able to contain his rambunctious peals of laughter as he felt the green-haired youth’s rough grip at the back of his neck. He reached back, grabbing Merlin’s arm with his heavily gauntleted right fist as the other man finished his ominous speech. “Nah, why don’t you stay? We’re just starting to-” The handcannon, pressed against the gunslingers forearm, barked once, trailing blue mist. “-Get to-” He began to hurl the caster around to in front of him, utilizing brute strength in tandem with his semblance enhanced shots. The gun fired again. “-Know-” It fired for a third time, bringing Merlin around into Ivan’s waiting left arm. “-Each other!” He grabbed the man in a bear hug, holding him in the direct path of the explosively propelled shards. Merlin was in a state of shock as his opponent flipped the tables around on him. Now in a very uncomfortable one way Man-Hug, Merlin had to think of a way out of this situation fast. His aura was low enough that if he took the full brunt of his own attack, he may take physical damage that his aura can’t stop. Merlin, with the very short amount of time he had left, had only one option left to do. Activating the Runes of Explosions located on the cards firmly holding Ivan in place, Merlin watched as the concussive blast deflected all of the incoming shards, but he was so close to Ivan and the explosion reached his body. The force of the blast pushed Merlin hard against Ivan’s arms as the fiery blast wreaked havoc on his aura. After everything was said and done, Merlin pulled up his Scroll’s status bar only to be greeted with a harsh glowing red. “Damn, That was one hell of a show” Merlin said aloud. Ivan released the combat-oriented battle hug, stumbling backwards, coughing as the black fumes from the explosive runes wafted around him. He didn’t bother checking his Scroll. A dull ache had settled over his limbs, and his scorched clothes and slight burns told him all he needed to know about his aura level. Righting himself fully, he looked around the icy wreckage of the arena with a tired and self-satisfied smile playing on his features. Well, that accomplished enough for his introduction. And it wasn’t a loss, per say. Stepping back into range, Ivan rapped his opponent on the shoulder and proffered his hand. “Agreed, pretty boy, you fought well. Kept up with the great Ivan Oakley, and that’s saying something.” “Yup. Hopefully our audience enjoyed the match. That all that matters at the moment,” Merlin had a long pause, “ Just to let you know. I won’t let the next time end like this, but for now I guess we just move on….Man, I’m starving. I think I might go grab some grub after this. Feel like joining?” He asked as he reached out and shook Ivan’s hand. Ivan’s infectious grin spread even wider. His grip was firm but not crushing, and he was apparently satisfied with Merlin’s handshake. “I’m game, pretty boy. I’m gonna watch my teammates first. Gonna see if they’re any good.” Despite the newfound comradery of the two, the professor seemed unamused. “While you will both receive full marks for your tie, I advise against leaving any of the classes before lunch. You may return to your seats now.” Goodwitch looked down at her scroll to get the next pair of names.

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