Chapter 197: Vytal Festival (16)
Chapter 197: Vytal Festival (16)
~Third POV~
The crowd is looking forward with determination as the announcers' voices are heard, muffled behind the brick walls with Oobleck speaking out hyping the crowd, "All right, it's now time to begin the randomization process for our final fight!"
The sound of the roulette is heard faintly, with everyone waiting patiently for the final fight of the Vytal Festival for the night with Oobleck speaking over the intercom system, "It looks like our first contender is... Penny Polendina from Atlas... Will she be the one to end the continuous winning streak?"
Port speaks out with everyone, the crowd being dead silent knowing the opponent Penny will be facing for tonight, "And her opponent will be... Jack Nights from Beacon! Hero vs Hero! A once and quite possibly lifetime of our generation! Man, vs Machine! Who will win this manly match up!"
Down in the arena of Amity Colosseum, Jack smiles to his opponent for the day while Penny politely salutes her opponent's hands on her hips in excitement, "Sal-u-tations, Jack Nights! It's an honor to finally meet you again!"
Jack chuckles at Penny's positivity being incredibly upbeat about the match replying to her calmly, "It's a pleasure meeting you again Penny. And this time under better circumstances? I can't believe it right?"
Penny laughs at Jack, remembering the last time they fought against each other, "Hahaha! Yeah, the last time that happened was when you fought to save me. This time, however, it's for fun. This is going to be so much fun!"
Oobleck over the announcement system to draw everyone's attention, "Fighters, are you ready?"
Penny beams widely in anticipation, and Jack readies his M.V.S. already in hand twirling it around readying for the fight at hand.
Oobleck begins counting down as General James Ironwood calmly sits to observe the fight, Nora Valkyrie, Pyrrha Nikos, and Lie Ren cheer for their teammate while Team RWBY watches anxiously, with everyone heart's beating faster in anticipation with Oobleck leans forward, "3, 2, 1... BEGIN!"
*Woosh*
Suddenly, Penny is surrounded by Floating Array, gesturing the swords around to her command before launching a volley of them at Jack, who runs towards them and leaps through or deflects each aimed blade with his own.
The swords fly into the air until they turn around and come back to the fight with Jack rushing in hyper-focus against Penny with a grin on his face speaking to her, "Come on Penny I know you can do better than that!"
Jack, twirls his M.V.S. to block each sword swipe of Penny's, then using one downward motion releases a <Soul Energy Cutting> aiming it at Penny's direction her eyes widened but then snapped her fingers as the blades that Jack blocked soon began to change into small energy based cannons right away.
*PEW*
Using her own miniature energy-based cannons to fire at Jack's own <Soul Energy Cutting> attack to counter as the two attacks collided creating a small burst of explosion causing the two attacks to cancel each other out.
Jack readied his fighting stance with his M.V.S. in hand while as Penny readies another wave of blades.
Port voices out in excitement at the match between Jack and Penny appreciating each other's display of strength, "My word! What a tremendous display by Miss Polendina! And Jack comes back with his own showing his strength of using that Aura cutting attack! Truly we are in the presence that stands above the rest!"
*Brrr*
Fully covered in fire using <Fire Manipulation> created a pillar of fire with Jack raising his sword along with the fire getting Penny's attention right away switching her energy cannon with Ice Dust for what was coming next.
Swinging down in Penny's direction a fire-based energy attack followed with his sword swinging down on Penny, only to have the assault halted by a collection of energy cannons with Ice Dust stopping the fire attack in its tracks making Penny escape to the far sides of the arena realizing she saw this trick before with Weiss against Pyrrha.
*Shiiii*
Though Penny leaps away from the retaliatory slice of fire fine using her energy cannons with Ice Dust she frowns realizing it cause a smokescreen of steam making it difficult for her to find Jack inside of it.
Penny readies herself again with her energy cannons at the ready and more swords coming from her Floating Array in the chance Jack comes attacking again prepared to react accordingly from him.
Nora cheered with her arms wide alongside a fist-pumping Ren, Pyrrha, and Ruby, "Whoo, yeah! Goooo Jack! Win this for our Team JNPR?!!!"
With the large steam hiding Jack Penny rethinks her strategy of what to do before she finally swings her arm down followed by her energy cannons and swords all attacking the steam to force Jack out.
*PEW*
*Woosh*
*PEW*
*Woosh*
Jack soon comes out from the steam using <Soru> wildly as he dodges each sword using <Kami-e> until she gets close enough to Penny to deliver an <Rokugon> at her making Penny's eyes widen at this.
*Shiii*
*BOOM*
Using the <Rokugon> sends a large shockwave attack at Penny, sending her flying back as Jack sees her defended with a forcefield Jack smiles at the scene holding his M.V.S. in his hand readying for the next attack as Penny's swords return to her.
Penny slides to a stop and makes a new series of motions, the weapons folding up until she's circled by several laser rifles, a few of which open fire Jack with him taking his stand still while he began to use <Fullbring> to 'pull' Penny's energy attack when a small unnoticeable blue energy pulling her energy attack away from him.
Jack avoids the blasts going off in weird directions not leading to him and fights off ahead using <Soru> to rush at Penny seeing her energy attack missed entirely of the intending target but decides to go on a different approach.
*Woosh*
Penny rockets forward, weapons firing behind her like a jetpack so she can leap into the air, then come up with an energized meteor on her opponent avoiding the clash from Jack but then stops in his tracks.
Quickly utilizing <Geppo> to catch up to Penny in the sky following after her making her lips twitch very noticeably as she spoke, "Jack you really are a tenacious kind of guy? You know, that right?"
Jack hearing that merely replied with a grin of his own replying back to Penny, "Yeah. I'm kind of like that to my enemies. Maybe it should be you to have brought more swords in the very finals?"
However, what Jack didn't expect was a simple response back with Penny snapping her fingers at Jack's response, "Hmm… Good point. Let's see how you handle it."
*Snap*
When one snap was heard Penny's eight swords doubled, then tripled, multiplying into an unreal thicket of blades. At the sight of this, Jack was surprised, and the cloud of weapons thickens to even block the crowds around him.
Penny sends them all forward, hundreds strong in Jack's eyes, who was surprised by this quick thinking using <Glyphs> all around in front of him using their repelling ability to repel all of the swords coming down fast.
Using the <Glyphs> to repel all the swords coming after him with Penny changing them into energy cannons Jack clicked his teeth but the smile on his face clearly deny the feelings of worry but filled with the excitement of what's to come next.
A true fight that might make him put in more effort than it's worth…
Yet…
One thought came into Jack's mind when fighting Penny with disappointment in his tone, 'Sigh, if it were any other time, I could at least enjoy this a bit longer. But I have other things to do after this that need my attention and Aura level. If I fought any longer then I would be drastically wasting my Aura what needs to be used next.'
Thinking bitterly of the fight of a lifetime he was experiencing with Penny a phrase entered his head already knowing what to do, 'You may have won the battle, but I will win the war. Yeah… I really hate doing this, but this needs to be strategically done for what's to come next…'
"I surrender."
Pausing at the sounds of Jack surrendering everyone's mind froze in place as did the Headmasters listening but more so his own team froze along with Team RWBY showing expressions of surprise on their faces.
Only one word could describe the current situation that everyone soon heard throughout the televisions in Remnant along with the Kingdoms in surprise, "WHHHHHAAAATTTTT!!!!!"
Oobleck hears ask about Jack's surrender as Penny returning back her weapons confusion on her face, "I—'m sorry but did you Jack Nights say you wish to surrender? Like as in right now? Where was the fight getting to the good part?!!"
Jack casually smirked at this and nodded in agreement confirming this with him thinking how he essentially screwed over everyone, of the bets made against the finals, 'Yup. Not the victory everyone was expecting, right? At least this way I can earn the large amounts of winnings that people made bets about me winning while in return making a certain Headmaster rage out at this.'
/////
Elsewhere inside Headmaster Ozpin the Headmaster clenched his coffee cup tightly enough to shatter while mumbling to himself, "I owe a lot of Lien to James, and Theodore now… damn it… why couldn't you have won? I would've made thousands to supply my chocolate addiction?! DAMN IT!!"
While Ironwood seeing this suddenly felt surprised and a bit blue-balled at the situation but suddenly grinned happily to himself, 'Not the match I was expecting the results thinking of when I had in mind Penny winning with the modifications made… but I'm not going to deny the chance of actual millions of Lien I get from Oz rubbing his students in our faces when it was Atlas that won. Oh, I bet that old fossil is livid with Jack surrendering. I guess there is a just God out there after all.'
Theodore in his own Academy seeing this rubs his hands together happily laughing out loud at the scene before him, "HAHAHA! I'm going to be rich from this bet! I knew there was someone out there that can beat Jack! Hahaha!"
While the two Headmasters celebrated their own personal victory against Ozpin bragging off his student heroes would win everyone else made bets of Jack winning against the finalist Penny suddenly spit out their own blood at what just happened.
Even Jack pitted himself in the bet he would lose.
/////
Returning to the Amity Coliseum he and others that voted for Penny to win suddenly lost a lot of Lien that day with Jack thinking to himself seeing the failed mission on his screen with a smile, 'Fortunately for me victory didn't really matter to me much this time around. And for what's about to come next though should earn me more EXP than what I could get from the Vytal Festival mission rewards.'
That and another reason was for Penny to be publicly accepted as a person by everyone showing that even someone like Jack could be put into a corner lowering their guard up along with their expectations of him.
But mostly for Jack viewing his Scroll seeing the SDC CEO and other corrupt officials in league with Jacques.
The SDC CEO Jacques came along with the idea implanting to take Weiss away seeing the match to surprise Weiss along with all his political corrupt partners within the Schnee Dust Company are all within the right range for a sudden purging when the attack happens during the Vytal Festival.
Everything that came to Jack was soon all according to plan as victory or loss to him was irrelevant to what was to come next saving as much AP and stamina for the big fight ahead were needed despite his planning.
Soon an image of Jack's next mission became apparent turning his lucky go face turn serious the second he saw the next mission that needs to happen the turning point of the RWBY world.
[Ding!]
[The Quest is created.]
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Destiny Quest: Battle of Beacon
Description: Salem and her forces have finally decided to launch an attack on the final days of the Vytal Festival when everyone would be there to kill off Ozpin's current reincarnation and steal off the Maiden powers for her subordinates.
Objective: Make sure you repel/defeat/kill the enemy forces.
Rewards: Stat Points +100, and 10,000 EXP.
Failure: Death of Penny, Team JNPR, and RWBY.
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Jack frowned seeing the failures says it clearly he can't fail now thinking to himself calmly despite the chaos going to happen next, 'Everything is in the end game now. And like always there's only one thing left to do… Time to game on.'