Professor Arc

Chapter 51

"-and your father forced him out of business!"

Weiss felt a pang of guilt in her stomach, and made to apologise – only to pause when Yang held an arm in front of her, glaring at the dark-skinned man who'd spoken.

"What Weiss' dad does isn't anything she can control." Yang growled. "If you want to blame someone, blame him. Don't try to push your issues onto my teammate."

Yang...? Weiss stared at her partner's sister for a moment, before taking a deep breath to calm herself down. Yang was right, it wasn't her fault and she couldn't let it affect her composure. For all she knew, it might be their plan all along. The professor had driven the importance of planning into their heads. He'd also pointed out Yang's biggest weakness of rushing in without a plan, but it seemed this Flint and Neon instead wanted to play with her head. A clever ploy...

The audience around them started to chant, as the countdown for the match slowly began. Weiss bent her legs, prepared to dodge in any direction at a moment's notice. She inched her eyes to the left, in time to see Yang imperceptibly nod behind them. Weiss blinked once and looked back to their opponents.

Flynt Coal and Neon Katt, students of Atlas. The leader focused on using the sound waves generated by his trumpet as a weapon, while the other used simple melee combat combined with speed and agility – hit and run tactics using her roller blades. An unorthodox style for sure, but together it worked well. They'd watched the team's last few fights on VODs and saw how Flynt could control and set the battlefield while Neon harassed their opponents.

It was a good strategy... but they'd only ever shown the one approach to their battles. Did they have flexibility? They'd soon find out.

"Begin!" Port commanded.

Flynt drew his instrument to his lips, fingers flying across it as he sent out a blast of musical weaponry.

Weiss was already backing away, however, and as Yang did the same, she scraped Myrtenaster across the ground and summoned a wall of ice before them. It cracked slightly as the attack held, but the solid structure did its job of preventing the soundwaves from hitting them – and also blocking off their line of sight. If Neon came around, she'd be alone and cut off from support. Wisely, the faunus realised and chose not to.

"We can't let him set the tempo," Yang said. "We need to shut him down and fast."

Weiss wondered idly if Yang even recognised her pun, for it was one of the only good ones she'd ever heard from the girl. "We can't stay on the defensive. I've no idea if his attacks use ammunition, but if it's a Semblance, then he will be able to keep this up forever." Left unsaid was that her ice walls could not, since those required dust.

"We could use freezer burn," Yang suggested, "obstruct their vision?"

"It wouldn't work. His attacks have pushed aside physical objects before, I'm fairly sure he could drive the smoke away easily enough. She could just skate around the outskirts too, making it just about impossible to catch her."

The wall started to crack a little more, but Weiss sighed and summoned another behind it, the two taking a step back.

"How do you counter sound?" Yang asked.

"Take it out at the source, I suppose... that, or counter it with more, louder sound. You wouldn't be able to cancel his out, however. Not unless you can perfectly match it."

"I don't need to match it though, do I?" Yang grinned. "I just need to stop it doing what it's meant to. We hear loud noise all the time. He's doing something special to make it actually cause damage."