A Few Weeks Later...

“So we’re all alone today,” Krystina clapped, getting everyone’s attention, walking to the center of the practice room, “Today the plan is we’re going to do some more training in preparation for the final ranking battle this semester!”

Pulling out a clipboard from her bag, Krystina continued, “After this ranking battle it’ll be winter break, where the trains will be taking us back home! So let’s end this ranking battle off on a good note! Gotta defend our 1st place again~!”

“Yeahhh~ Go teammm....” Hiroshi cheered, trailing off and freezing in place watching no one else join him, “I guess we need to do some more team bonding exercises...”

Laughing Vladimir leaned over, giving Hiroshi a half hearted punch in the shoulder, “We’ll work on it, let’s make our goal to be the loudest cheering team in the school shall we?”

“Yeah!! That’d be really fun!” Erina added, sliding over so they could sit together, “We should like, come up with a name and stuff...”

“You know we already have a team name right, Erina?” Yuiko asked, grinning as she took a seat completing the circle, “We’re called team Phoenix remember?”

“Oh yeah!” Vladimir nodded, laughing while adjusting his sitting position, “We can work with that! Let’s like... make some team cheers over the break!”

Watching her four team members become engrossed with how to increase their team spirit, Krystina sighed with dead fish eyes, “Hey... heyyy, not done explaining what we’re doing~ heyy~ earth to Yui, Hiro, Vlad, and Eri...”

“Hmm...” Krystina murmured, tapping her foot as she watched them continue on ignoring her, “Alright I didn’t want to do this...”

Rapping everyone on the head with her clipboard, Krystina laughed with a brilliant, yet eerie smile, “Hey guys~ we can leave this to later... right~?”

“Yep!”

“Mhm, yup.”

“You got that right boss!” 

“Yes, yes of course...”

“Good to know!” Krystina smiled, sitting down in the circle, “So today we’re just going to be practicing our techniques, mostly just building upon what we’ve been learning in class. The teacher’s have all been helping us hone in on a combat style we want to focus on, so today we’re just going to be practicing that a bit more since I feel like that will be the most productive thing we could do today. Best we do something a little more fun before the end of break, yeah?”

“Sounds like a plan.”

“You heard the boss.”

“Let’s get moving everyone...”

“Yep, yep, let’s all be productive...”

With a wide smile on her face as she watched her team members scramble off to get going, Krystina cheered, “Good luck, everyone! End of practice today we’ll be updating each other on what we did as always!”

Hearing their replies of affirmation, Krystina nodded in satisfaction before pulling out a book on anatomy, flipping through the pages as she began muttering about shocking her muscles to move faster...

Nearby, Vladimir was carrying out some mumblings of his own, pulling out his leather bound journal and flipping through his notes, musing, “I wonder... the teacher mentioned how although metal isn’t very flashy... still was more versatile... so gotta pump those creative juices...”

Flicking his hand Vladimir created a crude sword made of metal, swinging it around and moving through some motions, “Maybe a close combat specialist?” 

“No that won’t work... the premade weapons are so much better...” Vladimir nodded, letting the crude sword dissipate, “How about...”

Meanwhile, as Vladimir wracked his brains trying to get his creative juices flowing, his metal attribute friend and peer, Hiroshi, was having... similar troubles...

Pulling out his own journal and flipping through the pages, Hiroshi mused, “I should’ve written my ideas down... they’ve all disappeared into thin air...”

“All these pages are empty... I wonder if Vlad wrote down anything,” Hiroshi muttered, flipping through his completely empty journal, “I’ll ask him later, I’ll try and think of something on my own for now.”

Erina, on the other hand, had found a direction in life, pumping herself up to the point where one could make a case that stars were beaming off of her, “I’ll just completely overpower them with magic! Absolutely blow them out of the water!”

Sitting down on the ground in an open area away from everyone else, she took a moment, laying back onto the ground to stare at the ceiling, stretching as she grumbled, trailing off at the end, “Well I thought of a direction, but I don’t want to practice...”

Pushing herself off the ground, Erina took a moment to gather her thoughts before standing up, psyching herself up to continue practicing her magic, “I got this, I got this, if I tire myself out I have an excuse to eat more sweets!”

On the other side of the practice area, taking a moment to meditate and focus, Yuiko took some time to review everything in her head, “So Fire or lava or magma whatever people like to call it... very much suited more towards offence than defence, so I guess I’ll just go with what my teacher recommended, combining it with martial arts, they did say I was pretty good at martial arts after all.”

“Alright that’ll work,” Yuiko nodded, satisfied as she started to warm up her body a bit for martial arts, “None of my classmates have beat me in martial arts yet anyway, so it’ll probably work out.”

Moving through the motions, Yuiko tried her best to manifest magic to infuse into her attacks or follow her attacks, yet felt she was missing something, deciding to sit back down to gather her thoughts once more. 

Taking a moment to rest before brainstorming solutions to her problem, she chuckled, glancing around, “Vlad and Hiro seem very lost... not too surprising as they seemed stumped before. Erina of course is just trying to use more and more spells as always, and...”

“Now what is Krys doing...” Yuiko muttered to herself, squinting at Krystina in confusion, “She seems to just be electrocuting herself. She mentioned something about movement speed and how that was the most important thing for battle... I wonder if she got that from another anime...”

Falling back to lay on the ground, Yuiko spread her arms and legs into a starfish position to stare at the ceiling, “I’m stuck, maybe I’ll ask Volcano about this sometime... he seems like he’d know something that could help me.”

Esiyx

You know I realized i messed up a scheduling thing a few chapters ago...

anyway

Happy holidays everyone!!!

if you celebrate it~ happy christmas~

thank you so much for reading, i would love if you could leave a comment~!!