With both Carim and Hayate throwing their weight around thanks to their high military ranks, it wasn’t too difficult to secure a location for the trial to take place. The combat training simulator that they got was roughly the same size as the arena where the Battle Tactics Symposium took place a while back. Considering the nature of one of the trial participants, security was tight with only a selected number of people cleared by Hayate to witness the event that would take place.
At the moment, everyone was assembled in the control room. Aside from the two participants in the trial, Hayate had summoned Yuuno and Shamal to lend their assistance as a Barrier Expert and as the Chief Medical Officer respectively. To say that they were surprised by Olivie’s presence was an understatement but Hayate promised that she would explain things later to them so they kept quiet at the moment.
Shamal found being in this room a bit more unnerving, especially with the way that woman, who looked like a grown up version of Vivio, looked at her. Hopefully, this particular event wouldn’t take too long and she can get back to her normal business.
“Contenders will start with visual contact 200 metres away from each other,” began Hayate as she started laying down some ground rules. “The chosen battleground will be a basic open field so Yuuno-kun, if you please?”
“Sure.” With the flick of the switch, the previously bare metal room changed into a grassy field complete with a blue sky and bright sun.
“You… recreated the land so easily? This is…” For a moment, Olivie looked like a kid who had witnessed the coolest thing ever.
He did his best to stay focused on Hayate and ignored the urge to start asking questions to the woman who resembled the last Sankt Kaiser. “I’ve finished setting up barriers around the simulator as well.”
“Will these barriers hold properly?” asked Carim.
“Trust me; he’s good with that sort of thing,” said Hayate with a smile. “He kept damage to a minimum during that 5 on 5 Belka versus Mid battle when we were kids. Ah, those were good times!”
“I only remember passing out because of everyone going at maximum power without giving me a heads up,” grumbled Yuuno.
“My hat got busted.”
“At least your hat was still in one piece at the end, Vita,” said Shamal as memories flooded back to her. “Mine got totally blown off! Although I did find it funny seeing some of Signum’s hair stand up like that.”
“I’m glad you found that amusing,” replied Signum in a flat tone.
“Let’s not get off track here! Anyways, how many rounds should there be? What will the time limit be per round?” Hayate snapped her fingers just as she remembered something else. “What about Life Points? Are we sticking with 3,000 per fighter? And we didn’t even set spell damage parameters to calculate effects!”
“Why are you making it so complicated?” asked Olivie from her spot.
“Eh?”
“I don’t exactly know all this Life Point stuff and how you compute damage calculation but back in my day, there are only two rules in a fair trial by combat. One is that it ends when the opponent surrenders or is completely incapacitated and two, no blows that are lethal in nature. There, that’s it!”
“Uh…”
“That works for me,” said Signum.
“… fine, we’ll do it that way but Shamal will be on stand by for any serious injuries.” Carim hoped that this would allow them to get things going. “If you two are ready, please step through the door to the field.”
The two silently left the control room and made their way to their respective starting positions. On her end, Signum summoned her usual Knight Garments and her device, Laevatein. In a smooth motion, she withdrew the sword from the scabbard and waited for her opponent.
“Realize, Ehrgeiz!” The dress that Olivie wore vanished to allow the blue battle garments to settle around her body before silver metallic armour formed around her chest area and silver footwear covered her feet. Each arm had a gauntlet, made out of the same silver metallic material as the armour, phase in and wrap itself around the appendage with the length running from just above her elbows to the tips of her fingers. Her blonde hair was tied in a tight bun thanks to a rather large blue ribbon.
With her armour settled and in place, she got into her stance. Her left leg up, her left arm stretched out with the palm facing skywards while her right arm was bent back so that the back of her right palm hung near her face. “Sankt Kaiser, Olivie Segbrecht—attacks!”
Signum held up her blade just as her opponent charged at her with a burst of speed to rival that of Testarossa. “That is well. Knight of the Sword, Signum Yagami meets battle——!”
One would think that the orientation session with their new combat instructor would go pretty easily. A simple breakdown of what they would learn over the next few weeks plus a light session to show off what abilities they had to their teacher.
Instead, they were all subjected to a gruelling training session in a combat training simulator where their objective was to tag their teacher with whatever they had in order to end the exercise. It sounded simple enough. But considering said teacher was the infamous Ace of Aces, that task proved to be most difficult.
“Come on, this can’t be all that you have!”
‘That damned devil…’ was the shared thought of most of the new students. With the amount of intense training that she often gave to her recruits, it was easy to see how she earned that other nickname of the White Devil. Unless they had a stroke of luck soon, she was going to work them to the ground for the next thirty minutes and pretty much leave them all exhausted.
Fortunately for them, Lady Luck did smile their way. Just as someone made a last ditch effort to use an attack spell, a tremor was felt through out the simulator for a brief moment. This caused the trajectory of the spell to shift just enough to graze the tip of one of her hairs.
“D-did we…?”
Nanoha gave a small smile as she made her descent and deactivated both Raising Heart and her Aggressive Mode Barrier Jacket. “I got tagged so today’s exercise ends in your victory. And because you all did so well and gave it your hardest, I’ll let you off early today!”
A tired but joyful cheer came from the students. “Thank you, Instructor!”
While they shuffled off the field to head for the showers, Nanoha sent a telepathic call to the building’s administrative centre. “Excuse me?”
“Yes, Captain Takamachi?”
“I felt a light tremor a few seconds ago in Combat Training Simulator A. Can you pinpoint where that might have originated?”
“Just a moment…” There was a pause until the operator got back to the Captain. “That apparently came from Combat Training Simulator B.”
Nanoha’s eyes widened as she realized that was right next door to her own simulator. “Who’s in there?”
“The only information I have here regarding that chamber is that a combat evaluation is being run there under the supervision of Major General Carim Gracia and Lieutenant Colonel Hayate Yagami. There’s no further information such as who is participating in the exam.”
“Thank you.” Shutting off the telepathic connection, Nanoha stood in the middle of the chamber to collect her thoughts.
Were they people she knew? Maybe she could talk Hayate-chan into getting those powerhouse recruits into her class. After all, in order to create tremors that even she could feel from her spot must mean that there were very powerful combatants in that room going at it inside. It was exciting just wondering what powerful mages those new exam participants could turn out to be.
With that thought in mind, she swiftly headed towards the exit so she could try and catch the action. There was no way that she would let a chance like this to grab new students pass up!
See other episodes by Yasanagi
(Posted Wed, 15 Jun 2011 16:36)
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