Destiny Colosseum ~ Training Rooms

[Flyg0n]

Koa trotted through the hallway near the training rooms, sniffing the air occasionally. The notion of actually tracking someone by scent was... pretty weird still. But useful. Starr had come this way, and all that remained was figuring out which training room she was using.

Ever since what happened in Maple's Voidlands, he couldn't stop thinking about her. Something about the way she'd spoke, the words she'd said... His heart ached oddly thinking about it. He needed to talk to her.

Was she like him?

His ear twitched and he glanced towards one of the rooms and sniffed the air again. There she was. With some hesitation, he stepped into the room, trying his best to look casual.

She was at one end of the room, and it looked like she might've just finished wailing on a substitute. He paused.

Maybe this wasn't a good idea. Maybe she wouldn't want to talk to anyone, especially someone she barely knew. He could just turn around and leave...

Just act normal.

"Hey Starr," he called casually.

 

[Negrek]

Rocky let Nate sleep, albeit not for nearly as long as he wanted to. It wasn't even noon the next day before he was knocking on Nate's cardboard box and reminding him (like he'd forgotten) that they were supposed to train with Mia and he couldn't lie around all day. Which only made Nate more inclined to do so, just to spite him, but after an hour or so he had to admit he wasn't getting any rest like this anyhow. And he couldn't help but be curious about what the familiars were capable of now, too.

"You better not start in on some shit about me being nice to that dumbfuck mightyena," Nate said as they made their way through the halls under the colosseum. "I'm through with that anyhow. Ain't like I want to be friends or nothing like that."

"Okay," Rocky said. "I don't think Mia would care anyway."

Yeah. That she wouldn't.

Rocky bounded ahead and into an open training room. Maybe he was hoping to try some basic attacks out on a substitute or something, get that few minutes' advantage over Mia. Nate snorted, but he was smiling as he followed the familiar on through.

 

[Cresselia92]

A silver blur, and a wide slash. The shadow-fueled ice sword cut through the training dummy as if it was made of butter. A clean cut, straight in the middle of the dummy, and its two halves fell to the floor. The dark smoke and black ice covered the unfortunate target.

Standing in front of them was Icetales, exhaling clouds of ice from his nostrils while a shadow aura enveloped both his body and his mind. Bright blue eyes stared intently at the dummy and shard shadowy claws coursed through them, with the Ninetales feeling proud of himself.

But then, that sense of pride waned, and Icetales turned around and moved toward his box with the ice swords. He put down the one he had in his jaws, which broke apart as soon as the shadows left its blade.

“Golly, I am running out of swords…”

Then forge more. It is not like thou hast a problem with budget nor time.

“Perhaps I should…” Icetales tilted his head and his tails flicked in thought. “Unless I manage to summon that scythe at will.”

It appears that it only appears whenever our desire of hope and our deepest darkness emerge at the same time. Quite the near impossible situation to recreate during a moment of relaxation.

“Hmm… Thou hast a good point.” With a deep breath, Icetales dispelled the aura surrounding his body, and turned toward his bag. “Speaking of relaxation, I could use some tea right now…”

As such, the Ninetales stride toward his own bag and produced his cup of mint tea. He sipped some of that fresh liquid, and felt most of his stamina being restored.

Ah, indeed! Nothing was better than some good tea! Pity that he had no company to share it with…

 

[Negrek]

"I can't believe Mia was too busy to train today," Rocky said dejectedly. "She always wants to train. It's her favorite thing!"

"I mean, you could always take a break," Nate said hopefully. "They got some decent matches scheduled up above, you know. The machamp S'more working on his godly training and all. Or we could go to the beach or something. Or just go home, you know, ain't nothing like a nap when--"

"No. This is my training time, and I'm training," Rocky said firmly. "Besides, I want to see you do your Radiance again! You never even used it except for that one time. I want to figure out what it does!"

"Not this shit again," Nate grumbled. "I guess if you're really jonesing to stand around for half an hour with nothing happening, sure."

The path to the training room was familiar by now. Rocky had gotten a time slot booked a couple months ago, continuing out who knew how far. He was planning to keep his training time with Mia even after Nate left. Nate shoved open the door, same as usual, feeling dimly melancholy. There wasn't much time left.

 

[Namohysip]

Ten Substitutes lined themselves up in strange ways around one of the training rooms, each one with a head that glowed oddly. That wasn't natural. Crawling around on the ground, tail up, eyes focused, was a Charizard. His wings were folded back and his orange scales were covered in a thin layer of soot. "Almost..." he whispered to himself, adjusting the arm of a doll by a few inches like it actually mattered. "Just a little more... Yeah, that's it. Okay, now for this one..."

 

[Ambyssin]

A hardy clang shook the training room. Nero and Bahamut bounced away from each other, the former digging in his talons to stop his skidding and the latter flapping his wings behind him before stabilizing his levitation. His upper right wing twitched. A small wormhole appeared before him. Bahamut thrust the Shining Blade in his upper left wing into it.

Nero crouched down and jumped, but a second wormhole appeared underneath him instead of to either side. Staring down the oncoming blade, he tilted his head crest down and unleashed a flurry of Air Slash crescents. Bahamut sliced through them with ease, but they propelled Nero enough for him to grab hold of the wall with his talons and shoot off it.

Bahamut closed the portals and instead wound up to bat Nero with his large tail. The silvally appeared to expect this, however, as his beak was wide open and clamped down on the grayscale light.

"Disgusting!" Bahamut looked to slam his tail into the floor, but Nero let go and rolled out of the way. "I thought you preferred to fight at a distance."

"Gotta be adaptable." Nero puffed out his chest. "It's what I was built for." He slowly wagged his tail. "Well, how does it feel?"

"Feh." Bahamut dispelled the blade. "I still don't see where the fun in this comes from."

Nero faceplanted. "I should've figured."

Bahamut would've rolled his eyes if he was capable. More to the point, the mutt was being too generous to him. He played along at first, but Bahamut smelled a rattata. The necrozma believed he'd worked it out. "How much longer do you intend to try and distract me from the rest of the team?"

Nero's beak tightened. "Uhh, well, jealousy is an ugly emotion." He nervously scratched a cheek bolt with a hind leg.

"It's not as though they seek me out." Bahamut sat down, occupying far too much of the floor space. "Besides, Diyem's the one they need to lodge whatever grievances they have over leaving with."

"You can help, though." Nero looked down. "You have plenty of memories of leaving places you didn't want to."

"Unwillingly," Bahamut growled.

"... like some of your teammates?"

Bahamut went silent at that. Infernal chimera.

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

"An' of course, I wish ya the best of luck t'you in all yer future endeavours. Keep that spark bright, y'hear?"

"Yes, Ms. Brisket. I will! Thank you again!"

There. That was the last one. Her final student's final lesson. It had been so ordinary, she'd almost forgotten the significance of the event while she drilled the kid on proper breath regulation while using priority moves. Her last lesson was just a Quick Attack practice. Mundane as it got. She stared at the dummies they'd just been beating on together. Scuffed. Some scratches.

Are you disappointed? Not in the kid. In yerself.

Despite herself, a passing thought suggested taking on a new student just to get rid of the feeling.

One ear pricked. She heard pawsteps. Biped, mammal . . . canine? Canine. She wasn't expecting any other appointments...

"Door's open," she called, her eyes still on the training dummies.