Menagerie's Falling Star

Part Fourteen: Unknown Factor

   Right now, we see a ship cruising along the oceanic sea on a Sunday evening. Inside one of the passenger rooms, our ODST resting in bed as a peaceful, cloudy sky is viewed beyond the window. Currently, he's multitasking by watching the broadcast of the Vytal Tournament from his scroll and reading his Bible. At this point, the tournament is in its singles stage. A member from each remaining team. So far, four teams are remaining. Teams JNPR, RWBY, a random team from Atlas, and the poorly abbreviated CMEN (pronounced Crimson).

   To Frost's interest, Cinder's the supposed leader of Team CMEN. However, the person representing CMEN this round is Mercury Black. 'Shame I didn't get to see Firefly fight.' Frost thought, as he read about David warning Abishai from striking down the Lord's anointed King of Israel, Saul. 'I wonder what her techniques are like. At least I got to see how her teammates and their opponents fought.'

   Facing Mercury is the blonde brawler from Team RWBY who definitely didn't sexual assault a guy publicly, Yang Xiao Long. 'Surprised no one got her ass charged.' Frost thought, as leaned back on his bed. From what he learned from the highlights, Yang seems to be a brawler. Her semblance, as Frost finally noticed, goes on the basis of storing in received physical damage and using it as a boost for her attacks. So, in other words, Yang's practically dealing extra damage towards her opponent just by getting hurt in a fight.

She also seems to be using a bare-handed fighting style, with her main weapons being a pair of gauntlets that can even retract into bracelets. Her fighting style seems to revolve around these, as she combines her punches with explosive shots from those gauntlets for short to moderate ranged attacks. They seem to have a lot of recoil, but the blonde brawler seems to use it to augment the force of every punch she throws and accelerate her movements. To make it more interesting, the recoil also reloads and prepares the gauntlets for the next shot.

'Quite an agile one Miss Xiao Long is, as well.' Frost thought again, as he kept on reading. 'Based on what I watched, she's quick enough to dodge shots and highly durable in the aura department thanks to that fight with those two pilots..... Speaking of Pilots, I'm guessing they're just like Echo... I'm just getting off topic now.... Yang's over reliance on her semblance and her lack of emotional control, especially when angered or frustrated, are big exploits if I were to fight her....'

As for Mercury, he appears to be quite an opponent towards Yang. Based on what's filmed, Mercury is a very acrobatically agile kickboxer. To add onto it, he seems to have quite the speed. The fight against Team CFVY's (pronounced as 'Coffee') fashionista leader, Coco Adel, and her giant of a team member, Yatsuhashi Daichi, proves to be a testimony. Coco was armed with a purse that, to Garett's surprise, can turn into a minigun. However, despite that, Mercury managed to both outrun and evade the bullets that followed right after. Interestingly, his weapons seems to be like that of Miss Xiao Long's but for his legs.

It took Mercury's mint-haired partner, Emerald Sustrai, to separate Coco from Yatsuhashi by chain link-wrapping and yanking her into the nearby forest. Therefore, it was Mercury versus the towering brute. To answer the ODST's curiosity, Mercury eventually staggered Yatsuhashi and knocked him out with ease by relying on swift and quick reflexes to counter and block Yatsu's attacks before delivering a series of complex kicks that resembled to Frost as that of Tae-Kwon-Do. However, Mercury's break-dancing fight style also resembles that of Capoeira. Those, along with Mercury using his hands to grapple, block or redirect opposing attacks, made Frost question who the fuck trained him. He doesn't seem to be fighting to defeat his opponents. He seems to be fighting to destroy his opponents.

   As for Emerald, she's an interesting piece. She disappeared as Mercury engaged Coco and her partner, before randomly yanking Coco into the forest. What happened next gave Frost a raising eyebrow. It first started off normal. Emerald used the trees as a high ground against Coco. Just like Mercury, Emerald seemed to be swift enough to evade Coco. She started to swing around the trees, evading Coco once more, before vanishing behind one. From the camera's point of view, Coco was first looking at the trees before she suddenly looked behind herself to speak as if there's someone right there with her. Yatsuhashi's elimination by Mercury seemed to shock Coco as she turned around to take a glance behind her back before taking up a shakingly defensive posture. Only to be defeated by Emerald, who snuck up behind her.