Practice Arena

Students are sparring with one another, hitting targets, and practicing their technique. The air is filled with the dull clangs of metal-on-metal, thuds, and kicked up dust.

Roy makes his way to the center of the arena, Joyeuse hanging over his shoulder.

Pausing for a moment, he takes in a deep breath.
"Hey! Any of you punks feel like getting wrecked?! Don't be shy! Hell, I'll even take two of you on at once!" he shouts.

Roy could hear laughing, and turned to face its source.

"You laughing at me punk?" Roy bellows angrily.

Roy grabbed a knife from his belt and threw in Shard's direction. The knife digs into the wall, just next to his head.

Roy was pleased to see that this guy wasn't a total wimp. And gave a smirk.

"You know, that sword of yours looks like a piece of crap..." unsheathing Joyeuse and tossing the scabbard aside as he walks closer to Shard.

He then stands sideways, facing Shard taking up a fencer's stance.

"Let's see if your skills match that scrap-metal you've got there"

He turns his blade upwards towards Shard.

"At your ready, punk!"

Nero was currently firing into two moving practice targets when he saw something in his peripheral vision, a glint of metal, seeing a knife hit the wall beside Shard, and sighed. 'this will end badly' was all he thought as he strode over to about five meters from Roy "Because I'm bored of practice targets, I'll join this fight as well." And with that, he pulled out his pistols, transforming them into long combat knives.

Not even turning to face Nero, eyes on Shard

"Tabby, huh? That explains the smell"

"Yeah, sure, kitty cat, feel free to join in, just don't blame me if you end up being stung"

Roy begins using his footwork to orbit Shard, so Nero and Shard are within his line of sight.

Nero chuckled for a second to both of them, before replying sternly "First of all, that's racist, second of all, fine, if you don't mind being cubed, and possibly fed to my pet human." he joked with the last part of course, he didn't have a pet human, and he didn't want to have it come to that, he continued, speaking to an official "A single round, no rules, except for these. No nutshots because that's just low, last one unconscious wins, and the fight will be called a draw if it doesn't end in half an hour. Deal?" He looked to each of them, his golden eyes surveying their movements as he got into a stance.

"Ugh, enough talk, ladies! Let's go!"

Roy dashes towards Shard and lunges his blade at Shard's abdomen.

Nero chuckled as Roy rushed into battle. 'the mistakes of an amateur.' he thought, waiting for the opportune moment to strike or defend, and no earlier or later, he stood there, but changed his right hand weapon into a pistol once more and aimed it at Shard's leg, firing a single bullet as Roy was being grabbed.

"Tch! Get your dirty hands off me!"

Roy stabs Joyeuse into the ground behind him and kicks out of Shard's grasp. He then uses Joyeuse to pivot back onto his feet and throws a knife at Shard.

Nero had just enough time to register the knife flying towards him, dropping his pistol and pulling his right arm back, his hand gripping Roy's knife's handle at the speed it was going and Nero spun in a perfect circle, letting the knife go three quarters through, the knife spinning towards it's thrower as Nero caught his falling pistol with his right hand just before it hits the ground.

"Nice trick, I'll do you one better"

Roy throws another knife directly at the incoming one, causing the two to collide mid-air above Shard. The resulting impact would trigger an explosion.

Nero slightly smile "Hmm. That seems efficient. I think I'll stick to my pistols though. Guess you brought a knife to a gunfight dude." And with that, he aims a pistol at both of his opponents, firing a few shots at each person and smirking.

Roy charges forward, passed the downed Shard in a zig-zag path. The rounds whiz through the air, narrowly missing Roy as he darts in.

"Gotta be faster than that, kitty cat!"

He throws Joyeuse ahead of him into the ground in front of Nero at a 70 degree angle, jumps on the hilt and backwards into the air and throws two knives at Nero. One at Nero's feet, the other at the base of Joyeuse, causing it to shoot into the air, where Roy catches it and lands far back away.

Nero sighed, and cartwheeled out of the way of the knife, and it exploded, propelling him faster as he spun, he kept firing; ahead of Roy this time, before he ended up stopping at a wall, which he promptly kicked off from, rolling forwards and stating "So do you, c'mon, I'm getting bored here."

Roy uses compact slashes to pick off the rounds heading his way. And lands. He sees that the two are preoccupied with each other, but Shard's closer. So he darts in at attempts a hurricane of slashes at Shard.

Roy sees Shard move, but not enough for it to effectively be in a position to counter "Nu uh, you ain't leading me!"

He halts his charge, leaps backwards into the air and throws a knife right at Shard.

He'd then run a wide circle around Shard, but when he's close enough to Nero, he'd change his charge and let loose a hurricane of slashes at Nero, instead.

Nero glanced at the flasher bolt "Arrows? You need to upgrade." He said....before it activated "Oh, that's so unfair! Blinding me? Not cool." he complained as he tried blinking and rubbing his eyes to rid himself of the blindness, oblivious to the fact he was getting close to a knife that was stuck in the wall, and gasping as it jumped out of the wall and into his back, groaning and pulling it out, his vision returning as he examined it. "Son of a bitch." he muttered under his breath, before throwing the knife at Shard.

Shard caught Roy's knife with his boot, freezing his leg half-way up his shin, and in the process, positioned himself so Tabby's knife would hit his back and bounce off his armour.
This ice'll leave a nasty freeze-burn after this. Hell, it stings as is. Bastard will pay for that!
Stomping his icy foot so as to remove the knife, Shard gritted his teeth, ignoring the pain for the most part.
This pain is nothing compared to bandit punishment. Maneuvering with this is gonna be a bitch. It'll make a good club in the meantime, at least.
"Thanks, Bozo. Now I have a blunt weapon to add to my collection" Shard says, motioning to his frozen leg.
Grabbing the knife Tabby had thrown, Shard leapt forward, landing on the frozen leg and using it to slide forward, going to trip Roy up. If he succeeded, he would use the knife to cut Roy as he slid.

((OOC, he's still got Shrapnel, it's just way too big for the accuracy he needs here.))

Nero's eyes glowed, indicating he was using his semblance; healing. The stab wound in his back rapidly healed as Nero sighed, he pulled out a scroll, and saw his aura was at about 3/4 capacity, he put the device away and put his pistols together while backpedaling, making sure to not go near any possible bolts that Shard had set, forming his sniper rifle "Time to get serious about this." And he fired at Roy's legs, hoping to down him.

Roy sees the cat-boy checking his scroll.

'Hah! Now I've got'cya!' when suddenly Nero pulls out a rifle and fires a round.

'Shit'

Roy has no choice, he dives his full body into a ground roll to the left. The round was going way to fast for him to take lightly.

Regaining his footing, as Shard comes sliding in towards him. Roy would intercept Shard by grabbing the wrist with the knife in it, pry it away from him, leap off, and tuck-and-roll away.

"Auditioning for "Swan Lake" on ice, freak?"

Nero chuckles, shaking his head, and keeps going backwards, intending to keep his fighting ranged as he lined up a shot once more, and firing again, this time at Roy's arms, managing to line both arms up with his Sniper Rifle, not being so forgiving, the round he fired was Ice dust enhanced; it'll freeze the area it hits.

When Roy regains his footing, he can feel his body being pulled backwards.

'The fu...?' his thought is interrupted by a high speed round giving off a pale blue flash as it passes just in front of him.

'Damn cat! I'm gonna skin his ass.'

Instead of resisting the bolt's pull, he jumps backwards towards it, using the gravitational pull to slingshot himself over and away from it.

He turns his body around to see he's headed right for Shard. So, he cuts his palm with his knife to get some blood on it and throws it at Shard. Then readies Joyeuse and prepares to strike from above.

Nero saw Shard aiming, and had surmised what he'd do, several reactions formed in his mind, he concluded 'You can't dodge them all...' and spins 90 degrees, letting his right hand let go of his Sniper rifle, the ones aiming for his legs going right past as the other two hit his upper and lower right arm, his right hand closing and Nero winced, before dropping Alpha in such a way that it fired at Roy and Shard when it hit the ground, providing covering fire as Nero yanked the arrows out with his left arm, and rapidly healing them, his eyes flashing entirely gold and he quickly picked Alpha back up, and started to move while firing at the two opponents he saw with Ice dust enhanced bullets.

((OOC What's with you two and ice? ))
Ok, two projectiles, and Tabby's gonna fire, how can I use my position to get an advantage?
And in that instant, Shard had an idea.
He twirled Shrapnel around, leaving a dent in the floor before using it to swat the blood-tipped knife in Nero's general direction. Then spinning himself a little, he emptied Shrapnel's dust canister to pull up a bit of the floor and use it as a barrier between him and Nero's sniper shots... A barrier Roy was going to be on the wrong side of. However, due to his predicament of having he leg covered in ice, the spin set him off gravity. He fell and cracked his head into the floor, disorienting him. Checking his head, Shard found that the back of his head was bleeding. Not heavily, but losing blood from the head is never good.

As Roy begins to swoop down, a wall of rock comes up to meet him, raising him higher.

*PING* *PING*

The rounds from Nero struck the rising rock wall beneath him. Roy knew what was next, it was just like his ice knives. He jumps forward and off the rock wall in order to avoid the freeze-over.

Clearing the wall, and landing on the other side, Roy turns, spits down at Shard's head wound and strikes with Joyeuse.

Nero sighed, and calmly stepped out of the knife's way, thinking [i] 'now they're behind cover, well, at least I can reload.' he ejected his rifle's magazine, inserted a new one, and lay down on the ground, making a lot less of a target, should they come out.

Roy's slash seemed to have been as effective against Shard's cloak as it would be against chain-mail. But there was no time to think about it now, Roy could see Shard raising his arm with his wrist-mounted dart-gun. He quickly intercepts Shard at the wrist as he fires off rounds but his side is met with a hook from Shard. Unfortunately for Roy, Shard was a level above him in strength causing him to slowly lose out and that blow to the side wasn't helping. But Roy wasn't so weak that he couldn't cause the shots to miss...most of them. As the 5th shot fires out of Artbrust, Roy is overpowered, and the 6th shot manages to graze his side, slicing through his tunic, and out the back of his cloak, leaving a hole outlined in Roy's blood and a bit of spatter.

The wound isn't deep enough to do any critical damage, but, it did hurt. Nonetheless, he realizes that he can't in terms of strength, here. He breaks his grip on Shard's wrist and takes a step backward pulling Joyeuse from Shard's cloak. Shard quickly tries to escape, but Roy removes his cloak and throws it at Shard (like a net). As his cloak soars through the air, he notices the hole and the red stain and immediately becomes engraged. He ducks low, and like a bull drawn to a red target, thrusts Joyeuse, point-first, forward with a deep fencer's lunge into the bloodied perforation hoping to stick Shard on the other side.

As Roy thrust his sword and drew it back, he felt no feedback. Something was wrong. There's no way he'd be fast enough to dodge it! But as the cloak sunk to the ground he'd realized the large outline of a body beneath it begin to take shape. Roy took a step to the side, jumped up, and attempts to finish off Shard with a downward stab, gripping the hilt with both hands and putting his entire body weight behind Joyeuse's blade-point as he descended.