Chevaleresse

Curtain Fire all the things

Masaru sat up, frowning at Laver's explanation. "Just, don't do it without asking. Okay?" Without waiting for Laver's reply, he heaved himself upward the rest of the way into a standing position. "Nishiki, I haven't taken a beating like that in years. . . Hell, I don't know if I would have survived if no one had been around to fix me." He looked around. "Where'd the bastard go, anyway? I'm not going to forget this."

Indeed, Masaru didn't seem to be in the state to speak coherently, much less process why exactly Laver needed consent to heal him. The man did, however, nod slightly, head shifting up and down a bit relative to his body.

Masaru groaned a bit at the prodding, but otherwise didn't react. The fact that Andre had applied a near-lethal amount of force in something that was an angry brawl at worst was likely to blame for the man's current impaired state. Through a very thick mental fog, he attempted to pull himself off the ground and stand up; the actual result was more of just another groan of pain as he pulled his legs in closer to his body.

The flurry of unseen punches did a pretty good job of halting Masaru's forward momentum. Hit after hit landed, searing him with intense heat - something he wasn't actually particularly resistant to, given his draconic grandsire had been a lightning breather instead of the more "traditional" variety. The first series of blows spun him partway so he was facing Andre head-on; the rest battered him backward, until he was pushed back out of the attack's reach, at which point he took one step toward Andre - and immediately crumpled, collapsing forward into a heap with a singed odor about him.

Hiroki shook her head. Home. . . The place she'd grown up in was an odd topic for her, to say the least. Sure, her family was there, and she'd spent nearly her whole life there. . . but after the tournament ended, she hadn't really intended to go back whether she won or lost. Granted, she didn't really have any plan at all for what happened after, but it hadn't even occurred to her. She reached out and took the cloth, absentmindedly folding it into a neat square before sliding it into a nigh-invisible pocket, despite how uneasy the thing made her feel. "Watcher wanted to help? I wonder why. . . Um, good luck with Envy."

Accepted Characters Rocky Furter (KJ) Polly Geist (Felix) William Hearthstone (Monsieur Divergent) Lin Zoren (IntSys) Edmund Blackadder (Cronos) Seong-Min Jeong (Rec4lls) Exorcia Miranda (Cool Girl) Chloe Kauai (Powder Miner) Omni (Cinder99) Shaun Goldsworth (Pigeon) Idunn Thormundsdottir (ElfCollaborator) Aiko Fuyumi (Twinwolf) Other Students Pending. Faculty and Staff Pending.

Hello, dear student! I am Minerva Agnusdei, President and founder of the Aurora University for the Preternaturally Gifted. I am delighted to inform you that you have been accepted to our ambitious new school, and I hope to see great things out of each and every person we've chosen to attend. Enclosed in this letter, you will find several items that will be essential to the first days of attendance, including a class registration form to be returned as quickly as possible as well as a document collecting some vital data we will need about you. . . -Acceptance letter from Aurora University So what is this? Setting Rules Character Sheet With that, there's not much else to say, other than dropping an invitation for the Discord server. I hope you enjoy the game! Credits

"Don't brag until you've won, beast!" A bit hypocritical, perhaps, to call Andre a beast, but Masaru wasn't particularly concerned. He let Andre throw him back a bit, as he worked it into his next move. He angled his shoulder toward his opponent, and then burst forward, a clap of thunder and lightning punctuating his charge. Perhaps he was overcommitting to the attack, but it was fast and dangerous; even a graze or a near miss would fill Andre with lightning again.

Mitsurugi doesn't flinch as the blood sprays her with toxins and worse. She could weather something like this easily. The queen seemed to be subdued for now, so she sprung backwards - off of seemingly nothing - and sent a slash in the direction of the angrily buzzing swarms. Basic Attack on Combee Wall, Reduced Earth and +5 damage apply

"Aw, come on. Bel, you gotta bulk up a little, I thought I was gonna get more of a workout from tossin' you around." Taking Pierce->B, btw.

"Right then. Up ya go, miss." Myrdwyn landed next to the woman, and without waiting for her to get onto the wyvern herself, scooped her up into the same kind of carry she'd used on Kaito - though she wasn't quite as careful, given her not-bleeding-out state - before depositing her behind where Myrdwyn herself sat. "I'll, uh, be right back for ya, Belros." Rescue Cremia, Canto to K7, hand Cremia to Kaito The wyvern rider more or less tossed the woman down toward her husband, though not so far as to be dangerous. She'd either land on the ground with a bit of a thump, or Kaito would catch her "all romantically and stuff."

Masaru could probably pick up on the magical surge that accompanied the transformation, but in his state, wasn't too concerned with actually figuring out what it meant - all he saw was that Andre had stopped moving, which gave him a moment to prepare a stronger attack. He hopped up to his feet and into a stance for a brief moment, a fighting one with hands clawed and the back arm higher than the front. He only held this for the briefest moment before bringing his arms together over his head and crashing down at Andre with a sledgehammer-like strike.

Masaru hadn't expected the uppercut - apparently he'd overestimated how long the brawler would be helpless. It didn't matter, though. He threw his chest backward and his legs forward, going almost entirely horizontal as he drove a foot toward Andre to meet his "Dragon" Punch. If he had been calmer, he would probably have been offended by the move not having anything draconic in nature whatsoever, but for now Masaru just shouted wordlessly as he tried to kick at Andre.

Andre's convulsing didn't seem to slow Masaru down. If it were a simple spar, he might have calmed himself, but instead he elected to forget that throws in most martial arts consisted of using leverage and the opponent's momentum. He grabbed at Andre's leg and attempted to throw him bodily down the hall, whipping him around in a half circle before releasing the other man and chasing after him as he flew.

Masaru started to follow after Liliya, then stopped at Andre's comment. He slammed the blade down into the ground one-handed, actually driving it into the stone brick flooring with the sound of cracking rock. "I've given you your warnings, and yet you continue to insult me. Don't say you didn't see this coming." Masaru whirled and lunged toward Andre in one motion, a hand balled up into a fist and wreathed in blue lightning - a gut punch was what he was going for, but the quarter-dragon would take what he could get.

"It's built in. Some believe that an association with a thing can give a technique the properties of that thing; in this case, a dragon's raw power. I don't know if it's true." He turned to face Andre, a deep scowl evident on his face. "I don't care how useful this magic is. I don't care if your 'friend' conquered this monolith by himself. Do not associate yourself with such a thing in my presence further, or we will come to blows. Do you understand me?"

"It doesn't fit into my style well, and I don't actually have it practiced that well. The guy I learned it from could execute the same thing twice as fast and actually applied it in the one fight I saw him in." Andre was rambling again, but he pieced together what he was trying to say - and he did not appreciate it. "No, it does not render people berserk." Masaru said the line flatly as he turned to give Andre a hard look. "And don't even think about implying that I would use something so vile again."

"A demonstration? I could do one, I think, just let me think. Most of the ones I use are for physical enhancements, so they're not too flashy, and something tells me the thunderclap might be a bit much for inside. . ." He walked a short distance to an intersection in the halls, to give himself a bit more room. "Hmm. . . No lightning, since that's me and not the form. . . Oh, I know just the thing." He stretched his arms and legs out, leaning one direction and then the other. "Don't really use this one in combat, but it looks plenty flashy, just let me remember the stance." He swung his blade at the air in front of himself twice experimentally, then pulled back into a pose with one foot forward and his weapon pointed straight backward. He moved into another pose, moving his opposite foot forward as he reversed the blade's position, holding it over his head and pointed forward. With a loud warcry, he thrust the weapon down and forward. As he did so, a burst of flame formed along the weapon in the shape of a dragon with maw opened; at the apex of the thrust, the jaws lunged forward another few feet and snapped closed before dissipating in a burst. "Does that give you an idea of what they're like?"

A foe to defeat. This is. . . simpler. Wordlessly, Mitsurugi leapt forward, almost faster than the eye could follow, drawing her blade in a smooth motion that became an upward slash toward the gargantuan bee-thing. Basic Attack on Dark Vespiquen

"Bladeforms - though they can be used with any kind of weapon - are a type of, how would I put it? A magical martial art. Certain stances and poses can help you channel energy to strike harder and faster; it's a large part of my combat style. I've seen people replicate the kinds of effects sorcery can produce with them before. It's hard to generalize it more than that; much like other kinds of magic, there are dozens of schools."

Masaru watches the proceedings with interest. "Hm. As I said, your magic is quite interesting. It seems to be a bit easier to pick up than wizardry or something like bladeforms, if not quite as powerful as them. At least to start. I suppose I haven't seen anyone but you do this variety of magic." Magic influenced simply by how people thought it should work? It seemed strange, to him, but then again magic had always more or less just done what he wanted it to do.

Servant's Quarters "Well, I don't use a whip, but yes. I, along with a few other people I gathered along the way, got paid to solve various problems. Like I said, it was mostly clearing ruins and such, but we also dealt with bandit raids, monster hunts, caravan escorts, that kind of thing. Got offered a couple infiltration missions and the like, but that's never been the kind of thing I wanted to get involved with. Anyway, you asked about magic; it's mostly flinging thunder and lightning around, or enhancing my own strength further." He quieted down, however, as Mar started his demonstration/test. He was intrigued to see how the old orc did things in his world.

Masaru - Servant's Quarters "Well, no, magic is and isn't hereditary. You can learn it, it's just an arduous process. Some wizard tried explaining it to me once, something about reshaping your soul to better channel the mana around you. Not really sure, to be honest, but I've been able to use magic since I was born. As for what I do for living, I'm a professional adventurer. Usually exploring ruins and such, clearing them out so scholars can take notes and what have you." That worryingly familiar feeling of confusion crept up over him as his expression changed to match in response to Andre's ramblings about cats. "So, um. . . How do cats survive with no limbs?"

"Depends on who you ask. Lots of people say that dragons were the first things to exist in the world, and they created everything else on a whim. I'm not sure, myself; draconic magic can do some pretty crazy things, but I feel like if dragons could create life whenever they wanted, they wouldn't bother manipulating the mortal races into serving them. Others, of course, will say that this god or that one is responsible for creating people. My faith says that Nishiki didn't create humans, but he did fill them with the important things; emotions, intelligence, that sort of thing." He thought for a moment. He didn't talk about his religion often; he followed a creed that suited his life, not the other way around, so he rarely concerned himself with the finer details and origin stories and such. "I'm not a religious scholar, though. If we ever take a trip to Sararhiod, I'll have to track you down a priest if you want a better explanation." "As for the origins of magic, I'd have to go with people always being magical. My sorcery comes from my grandfather, but there are plenty of non-draconic sorcerers out there. Wizardry has been around for a really long time, too, though I'd imagine it took at least some time for ancient people to figure out." He shook his head. "Poor wizards. Gotta train for years to do what I can do as easily as breathing."