You're Gonna Go Far, Kid. (Open)

"Yeah get 'im!"
"Mind the cross! Mind the Cross!"
"... Counter, Counter him for Dust's sake."
The dense throng seemed to ripple and flow, a living creature in the center of the massive gym hall that stood at the Training Ground's center, the axle of the wheel, such that it was hard to find one of the private arenas without passing through it first. Aegle guessed, correctly as it turned out, that there was an exhibition taking place. In between the knot of spectators, ever shifting, she caught flashes of color and light. Over their shouted encouragement and advice, she heard the clash of steel on steel, flesh on flesh, and the occasional roar of exertion or grunt of pain. Part of her wanted to go and join the crowd, to press herself to the front of that ring of onlookers and share in their excitement. She almost did too, her course towards the heavy bags wavering ever so slightly as she passed. It was the other part of Aegle which kept her from doing so though. The part that often fantasized about being noticed among such a gathering, of being called out for an exhibition match of her own, that she might be the one getting encouragement and advice shouted at her, that she might be the one meeting steel with steel and flesh with flesh.

Aegle hesitated, staring into the crowd, seeing the flash of weapons over their head, watching them surge and fall back in time with the hectic pace of the violence hidden from her view. She tried to imagine a way that her hopes might be recognized, that she might be challenged. Such challenges were far from uncommon following a particularly exciting match, and this match looked to be an exciting one indeed. Would someone catch her eye from across the circle. Once the final blow was struck, would they come over, grin a fierce and determined grin, and ask her to show them what she had? Probably not. Perhaps she could approach someone instead. Someone big and tough who she knew would give her a fight as exciting as the one which was unfolding right now. Aegle grinned to think of it, imagining the shock, then sudden and intense resolve on her would-be opponent's face. Then, just as she was taking her first step towards the crowd, that imagined expression changed. Not to amusement, but embarrassment, discomfort. She imagined her would-be opponent looking away, eyes shamefully averted, and she hesitated once more on her course.

It wasn't like she could blame them, this spectral stand-in of her own creating, not when they were acting the way everyone did when asked to fight her. Even her own classmates. She tried not to feel the rejection, imagined as it was, but she had felt it so many times that it was almost like the real thing.

Aegle adjusted her course, hefted the dufflebag on her shoulder, and passed right the crowd and the fight it surrounded. She tossed down her kit, the resulting thud swallowed by the thunderous roar of combat unfolding, as were the subsequent, quieter thuds of her fist striking the bag. As were the sounds of her exertion and the pounding of her heart. She hit the bag harder, faster, feet scuffing the boards beneath, trying to drown out the world around her. She stood alone and apart, with only the bag for her opponent. An opponent that never refused her, and never backed down. Its cracked, leathery face grinning, its heavy stance full of resolve, it stood stolid and implacable.

She did not notice the double doors leading into the central hall open, nor did she see the two figures who walked through it. One was familiar enough, a woman Aegle would have recognized from a number of places across the campus. The other, dressed in his parade best, would have filled her heart with excited recognition, were that heart not presently set on giving the bag the fight of its life. Too focused was Aegle, however, to notice either adult as they approached the throng of students, drawn in by the siren call of combat, just as Aegle had been.

Sol gravitated towards the sounds of battle like a moth drawn to flame. Interest, curiosity, and perhaps a darker impulse than even he was aware of, called him with meaty thuds, sharp exhalations as the air was driven out of the lungs by blunt force, the scuffing of boots on stone, the singing of fists flying. A siren song of savagery. He had to smile at the thought of it, with all of Beacon's airs and assumptions of civilization, still here were two children, beating the shit out of each other, and not only was this acceptable, it was encouraged. People were cheering. At least Atlas Academy knew what it was.

"Why are they fighting?" He inquired as he and the mousy secretary wedged themselves into the crowd that had packed itself around the spectacle like a horde of scavengers around a recently downed prey.
"The Vytal Festival, most likely they are training." The bespectacled woman admitted, pressed on all sides, while Sol's oppressive presence and six feet of height kept others back from him.

"Or settling a grievance." Sol mumbled.
The one eyed lordling smirked with an air of superiority. Where he was from in the north of Mantle, most all grievances not criminal in nature, were settled by trials of combat, and even some that were, in cases where the tribunals were feeling lenient, or motivated by politics. He'd participated more than once in such displays, whether to defend his honor, to seek justice, or simply to satisfy his own temper, and the times when he had won were some of his happier memories.
After observing the conflict for a few moments, he half started to hope that this sparring session was a personal one, and that some slight or dishonor was responsible for the woefully inbalance in skill and strength on display. The lighter combatant was clearly faster and more agile, but he was making little use of this advantage, while the larger fighter was simply weathering the assault and allowing his opponent to wear himself out. There was little technique on display, and both were clearly amateurs, uncomfortable, or unfamiliar with facing another person. That was, until the slighter fighter unleashed a blanket of heat at his enemy.

The brute countered with his aura, and projected a protective field to surround himself. He did his best to pretend that the attack had not phased him, and produced an unconvincing grin as he plowed through the blow and charged at the smaller teen, but Sol saw the ripost for what it truly was, a desperate last ditch. That flame wave had hurt, and it was likely that the protective barrier so hastily erected had cost a great deal of the stamina that remained to the thuggish fighter. The wariness of the brute evaporated with the realization that his foe could and would hurt him if he didn't do something, and along with that weariness, any mercy departed as well. The blind fury of the following assault as the brute snatched hold of his target and proceeded to beat him senseless against the floor had nothing of technique or intellect in it, it was an animal response to mortal peril, a triggering of the fight or flight reflex, and it was likely that the dull ape was no longer thinking thoughts that made any sense as anything other than inarticulate feral impulses. It was a mindless barrage, one that any skilled or experience warrior should have been able to thwart, but against another novice it was simply a question of physics, and the larger force overcame the lesser.

While the crowd was enthralled by this unexpected turn of brutality, and lusted after the bloodshed like a pack of slobbering dogs, Sol was growing bored of it. Brutality no longer had any novelty to him, and soon it would not for these students either, their innocent fascination with violence would not long outlive their first truly pitched battle, and many would not outlive it bodily either. The thought made Sol feel a little ill, as he wondered just how many of these children would be alive and whole a month, a year, a decade from now. 

It was as he recoiled from this thought, turning away physically as if flinching from a bright light, that he caught from the corner of his vision, something streaking towards the ceiling, as if someone had fired a silent shot out of the throng. It was just strange enough, and yet familiar enough, to one used to finding objects travelling at high velocity in his peripheral vision, to set all of Sol's instincts on such an edge that it almost hurt. Responding to a subconscious command, an instinct as deeply programmed as the killing frenzy that overtook the thuggish boy in the ring, Sol's blood stream was flooded with stress hormones and adrenaline. As the corners of his vision turned a subtle red, and his heart hammered like an autocannon in his chest, he was all at once perfectly ready for whatever unknown threat was approaching. It was a reaction, as simple as chemistry, a stimulus added to a catalyst of battle hardened nerves and a war weary mind, that made the body ready for a fight.

There was an instant of sick expectancy, like that moment between hearing the distant report of an artillery emplacement, and hearing the whistling of the plummeting shell, like that moment between the gunshot and the pain. An impulse, so old and hardwired by a thousand close calls and a thousand more that had found home that Sol had learned a long time ago not to question them, his gaze was drawn to the center of the arena. Perhaps the trajectory of the streak he'd seen had been enough for the subconscious processes of a mind well accustomed to tracking ballistic arches to know where the blow would fall. Perhaps he'd heard something approaching, or perhaps he'd seen it and the thought had simply bypassed his upper brain functions by some other scorched highway that gave it quicker access to his motion functions, past the tiresome bureaucracy of his synapses. Perhaps he'd simply sensed it, or perhaps he'd guessed, but whatever the case was, he was looking right at it when it happened.

A streak of white light struck from the ceiling and impacted the floor with an audible blow that rang like a peel of thunder. Those in the closest row staggered back, as their uniforms were whipped up an a tumult of excited air, while others held their ears and covered their eyes. Some people screamed, others gasped, some tried to flee only to find themselves penned in by those behind, while still many were simply silent and afraid. Just like the recruits always were when the shells fell in their ranks. Sol half expected to see the fighters reduced to a heap of offal and meat, and half expected to find his own body littered with shrapnel. 

Here comes the pain... Any second now... I will feel the metal in my guts and my chest, and it will all be over...

But what his gilded gaze found instead, standing atop the mostly intact combatants, now long past the ability to put up any sort of fight, was a faunus. That was when Sol's apprehension, his fear, his years of trauma, transmuted seamlessly into seething anger.

"I am going to win the Vytal tournament, but I need a team. Somebody fight me!" She said, her face flushed, black hair whipped about her head, voice shaking, feline ears folded close to her scalp, and Sol realized fully what had just happened and why, and his anger boiled right over into outrage. A killing wrath, a fatal FURY filled him. Of all the underhanded, lousy tactics, but to barge in on another's battle, to ambush two foes while they were unaware and engaged upon each other... Of course it had to be a goddamn faunus too. 
Was this the kind of student they were making here? Well Sol had a few lessons he might teach as well, starting with this upstart of a mongrel.

"It's a fight you want?" He snarled, as he barged through the stunned line of students, golden eye blazing, voice booming like an earthquake, "You had one right there, until you set upon it with treachery!"
Sol's growling bass tone, a commanders voice that could cut through the din of a battlefield and inspire even batteries of cannons to silence, snapped the crowd out of their stunned silence, and their attention turned as one from the faunus girl to the towering figure in a parade cap and billowing blue riding cloak. No sooner had eyes found the piercing golden orb that leered furiously in that socket did murmuring start up as recognition grabbed hold. 
"The One-Eyed Dragon.... it can't be."
"The Black Hand..."
Were some of those things whispered, until one voice rose up over the others, given volume by the shock of the speaker. 
"That's Solomon Moon!"

Sol wasn't listening, as his dubious monikers bloomed in the crowd like bloody flowers. He was unclasping his cloak, and removing his hat, exposing the jet black of his tied back hair, and the rich finery of his shirt both. His chest, bearing a lacquered breastplate of segmented dust treated rings, gave him a serpentine aspect well deserving of the name "Dragon", whilst his family crest stood out in relief upon his paldrons and shin-guards, the broken facade of Remnant's own celestial neighbor. His shirt was a deep almost bloody red, and his gloves a pearlescent ivory white. His boots were polished to a high shine of boiled black leather, with silver trim and buckles accenting it all. The crowning feature, like a bloodstain on silk, was the sword that dangled from his belt, it's hilt a vorpal black wrapped in crimson braid, while the scabbard itself seemed to be made of parts both technological and organic, from the trigger and magazine assembly near the mouth to the overlapping red scales that surrounded the dimly translucent blue of the body that seemed to pulsate with it's own inner light. It was the weapon of a veteran hunter, and it looked like a part of him. 
As his cloak and hat hit the floor, Sol affixed a bracer matching his scabbard in style to his left wrist, with a sharp metallic "snap", before cracking the knuckles of his left hand against the palm of his right, emitting a series of sounds like bones breaking on a wheel.

"You think this is a game?" He snarled, something approaching madness shining in his eye, "What if I want to play too?"

There was a soothing, almost hypnotic rhythm when it came to the Heavy Bag. It wasn't as good for practicing her forms as shadow boxing, nor was it as good for her timing as the speedbag, but there was something so satisfying about the shock of impact which reverberated up her arm with each swing. It was the bag's implacability she loved the most, it's refusal to budge more than a hair's breadth, even from her hardest punches. She could hit the bag as hard as she wanted, as many times as she wanted, and it would always swing back into place, ready for her to hit it again.

Left, right, sway, reset. Left, right, sway, reset. Left, right, switchup, right, left, sway, reset. Right, left, sway, reset. Over and over, she swayed in, planted her feet, jabbed, hooked, then swayed back and did it again. Sometimes, when the moment felt right, she would slip into southpaw, but the rhythm did not change. Most days, Aegle could have lost hours to the heavy bag, but today her pace was especially deliberate. She tried to pretend it wasn't, that today was just like any other, and get lost in that familiar, intoxicating rhythm of blows. Then a shout would rise up from the center of the hall, or the sound of an especially heavy impact, and that would be enough to break the spell. Time and again, Aegle redoubled her efforts, and again some sound of the closeby combat would slip in, like a knife between the ribs, and utterly shatter her concentration.

"What is wrong with me." Aegle panted into her upraised fists, before slapping the heel of one palm repeatedly against her stubbly scalp, like that could somehow rectify matters. It wasn't even like fights in the center hall were a rare things. Other students were always showing off or settling grudges or just training against one another. It was rare for there not to be some sort of spar taking place. How many had she watched herself, and never with anything more than a bit of giddy excitement for seeing her schoolmates strut their stuff.
Frustration cocked back one of her fists, then anger sent it into the bag with all her strength behind it. The bag, as always, barely moved. Aegle, meanwhile, was driven half a step back, having not had her feet properly planted. She knew why it was different though, she was just trying to pretend it wasn't, but it was simply a matter of maths. How many fights had she watched, versus how many she'd fought in herself.
"Jeeze..." throwing down her fists in defeat, Aegle stomped one foot and then, far too roughly, raked her fingers back over her scalp, "Lookit you," She growled at herself, "Actin' like it's such a big deal that no one wants t'fight ya."
Aegle often wondered if there was something wrong with her. She wondered if they had a word for it. She'd thought about asking Vulcan, who would almost certainly know if there was, but hadn't wanted to explain why she was asking.
"Who're y'kiddin'?" Aegle muttered, before a loud crackling whoosh made her flinch and drew her utterly unwilling gaze towards the center of the hall, "Of course there's somethin' wrong with... What's that?"

Something shot up from the edge of the spectators ringing the fight. Something dark and too quick moving for Aegle to get a really good look. Her eyes tracked upward and, for just a moment, she thought she made out someone crouching on the ceiling. That baffling moment was quickly eclipsed when, a split second later, a lance of light slammed through the ceiling and drove whoever was standing there back down to the floor below. Everyone who had been watching the fight seemed to surge back, and Aegle took an involuntary step back with them, blinking away the streak of purple that now throbbed across her eyes.
"What the heck was that?" she asked no one, loping forward for a closer look, her own travails briefly forgotten. A glance up at the ceiling revealed no hole there, much to Aegle's surprise. She pressed her way into the knot of onlookers, already surging forth against whatever tide had driven them back, though their mood was decidedly muted beside the almost ravenous excitement of a mere moment before.
"I am going to win the Vytal tournament, but I need a team. Somebody fight me!" someone shouted from within the circle. Aegle, penned in by a half dozen other bodies trying to get a better look, could make out only a few shreds of black fabric before she was swept back by the jostling spectators, half of whom were actually trying to get away from whatever was unfolding in the middle. She would have been pushed down entirely, were it not for the press at her back, but as it was, she still had little hope of actually seeing what was going on.
"Hey, " Aegle wheezed, tugging on a nearby sleeve. A pallid face, rapidly flushing, regarded her from above the press of bodies, "What's goin' on?"
"Some faunus just jumped," The taller student said, blue eyes flashing behind thin framed glasses, "She wants someone to fight her."
Aegle's heart swelled, fluttering like a trapped bird at his answer. Immediately, she tried to press the final couple of strides, suddenly desperate to step into the ring beyond. She met steep resistance, as yet more students tried to press back and out of the circle.
"It's a fight you want?" Somebody shouted from the other side of the hall. Focused as she was on not getting overrun though she was, Aegle did not fail to recognize the gravelly voice, nor did she fail to recognize the fury that filled it.
"You had one right there, until you set upon it with treachery! You think this is a game?"
"Who's that?" Someone closer by asked, in a hushed and fearful tone.
"The Black Hand." Someone answered her, his own voice just as hushed and betraying of his shaken nerves.
"The Black Hand? Who's that?" Another student asked. Aegle caught a glimpse of the Commander's imposing silhouette, the fierce glare in is eye like a golden lance, piercing whomever was stood before him.
"That's Solomon Moon." She grunted. "Shove over, yeah?"
"No?" Said the first voice, which sounded vaguely familiar too, now that Aegle heard more of it, "I don't know you. You don't go here. I would know if you were staff. Who are you to come here and dictate to me how we do things? This boy, he won. He's known for taking it a little too far, all I did was save the people up front from having to drag him off another idiot who was too dumb to ignore his challenge."
"What's he doing here?" Someone else asked. Gods, there were a lot of people here.
"If you wanna play, the kids here are about a decade too old. We have a tournament to get ready for." The faunus continued, unperturbed by the sudden wash of unnerved whispers traveling through the circle of onlookers.
"Figures a faunus wouldn't want to fight him..."
"Coward! You too good for a fair fight!?"
"Yeah, fight her! Send her off with her tail between her legs!"

It was astonishing just how quickly the mood had shifted from one of fearful disorder to rabid anger. Aegle was pressed back yet again as more of the spectators found their voices and added them to the swelling din.
"Rip her ears off!" One of them shouted, followed by "Leave her be, you black bastard!" A elbow swung out of nowhere, knocking Aegle square on the chin, sending a crash of white waves across her vision. The voices became a muddle, the press a blur. Her thoughts came loose in her head, and rang about her skull like the clanger of a bell, adding its own dissonant voice to the baffling clamor about her.
"Put her in her place!"
Whose place?
"He'll kill her. Someone should stop them..."
Y'are someone, aren't ya?
"This ought'a be good..."
Doesn't sound like she wants t'fight him...

A hand found Aegle's shoulder, and its touch seemed to anchor her in a world gone fluid as running paint. She lifted her eyes and found a pair of bespectacled eyes peering down at her, framed by hanging locks of mousy hair. She blinked the stars out of her eyes, gave her best unsteady grin, and let the woman help her up.
"A-are you alright?" She asked.
"Guess so..." Aegle murmured. Her mouth felt off, like her tongue was too thick or something. She found she was outside the ring of spectators. "What happened?"
"It's just terrible..." The mousy woman said, lower lip quivering. She looked familiar, but Aegle couldn't seem to place her. Her head felt mussy, like it had been packed full of cotton. "If only the headmaster were here..."

Lily could see her mistake the moment it slipped past her lips. Her ignorance manifested in the form of boiling rage which could only be described as restrained because the man radiating that rage had not yet acted on it.

She could feel something as his eye fixed on her. Her instincts were screaming at her to get out. To run far away until the danger was safely behind. She felt as if the gaze of a predator far beyond her level of skill had been fixed on her with ravenous intent.

She didn't think she could win, and judging from the general, often hateful murmurs of the crowd, nobody else really seemed to have much faith in her either. Her opponent also seemed to think very little of her chances here, closing the gap between them, apparently just so she'd be able to smell his breath as he hurled another insult at her. For Lily's part, she did not flinch, nor shy away as he began his hateful tirade, standing there and absorbing the verbal abuse like a sullen punching bag.

She felt the very slightest pang of mirth when he shouted about this being a place one learns to kill, considering she had spent a fair amount of time preparing herself for this tournament in exactly the opposite way.

In fact, if killing were truly an option, then she would have greatly preferred for his back to be turned. A quick flash and it would be over. Painless. She had executed many grimm in this fashion, sometimes stalking her prey for hours until a proper vulnerability presented itself.

The very small number of men that she had killed had also been dispatched in this manner, and this was all before she had learned how to build a proper hunter's weapon. She had refined her skills a lot since coming to Beacon.

So why, after all of that, did she still feel every one of her finely honed instincts telling her to get out now, and with great urgency?

She searched for a voice. Some words from somebody to tell her how to deal with this situation. She was sure her mom had said something that might apply here, or maybe her dad? However, before any words could come to mind and steady the young faunus, Sol's arm extended above him.

Adrenaline pumped through her, hastening her reaction. Her eyes darted toward the movement even as her legs carried her backward on animal instinct. Her back was pressed against the cool stone of the wall just below the viewing stands. Her arms were raised when the wave of heat emanating from the explosion passed through her, accompanied by a thunderous clamour which she could feel resonating in her bones, and reverberating through her. If not for the stone wall supporting her, she was sure she would have fallen to her knees.

She had seen the glow of orange from behind her arms, but it wasn't until the light and the sound fell away that she peaked from behind her armored arms to see the devastation that should have ended her life.

She saw a bloom of black smoke, and could hear nothing but a high pitched ringing in her ears. Even flattened against her head as they were, that sound had shaken her to the core and momentarily robbed her of her sense of hearing. Taking a wobbly step forward, everything seemed to catch up to her at once. She had come here for this. She needed experience. This would be experience more real than anything she could have hoped for. Among the many ways in which she had been training herself, she had found no proper training method for how to act in the face of fear this overwhelming. If she ever wanted to improve, to be the sort of person who acted when she needed to, she had to start now.

It was with a bitter wince that she recalled the last time she had been taken with such a sentiment, but unlike then, the danger did not extend to anybody else should she fail.

She gritted her teeth as his thunderous words began to reach her over the sound of the ringing in her ears, and took another step forward, this one less wobbly than the last.

She marched forward, step by step until she once again held the ground she'd initially occupied. Each step forward left the faunus feeling as if she were pushing against gale force winds, so palpable was the fury in his words, but she would not back down. If everyone could see the coward she was, she would have no chance of putting together a team that could win.

She would be brave, even if it killed her. A possibility that seemed far too possible in her estimation to ignore. A tempation passed her mind quickly, but she steeled herself against it. Clora had been very specific about how she was and wasn't allowed to fight. She could neither inflict death nor dismemberment upon opponents on the school grounds. Furthermore, she cannot blind, or otherwise permanantly injure anybody. Breaking of bones is highly discouraged, but forgivable, so long as it is not intentional.

The team had noticed a certain tendency of Lily's to go for the throat in combat, both figuratively and literally. She had a knack for exploiting weaknesses.

The man in front of her exuded an overwhelming presence, and Lily could fine no weakness in him, save for perhaps the fact that he seemed to expect little from her. A weakness that could only be properly exploited if the man in question had some intention of holding back to bridge the gap in experience. Judging from the content of his speech, he intended to make a blood sacrifice of Lily. However, she would speak before being gutted on the altar of this pompous foreigner's family pride. Much to the young faunus' surprise, the words came without being bidden.

"I could honestly care less who you've killed or what your family name is. I don't and won't understand politics." She made a mental note to start studying the histories of the kingdoms more carefully. She had been lagging behind in those studies, and she hoped she wasn't starting something with some tightwound ambassador. She chided herself for not recognizing the name.

"Where I come from there is a saying. The strong devour the weak." It was something that the tribe had repeated often. She still remembered the difference in those words when they had been spoken against her, just before her time with them had come to an abrupt end.

She had survived, and become strong. She would survive whatever happened next. She would survive and learn more of strength. She would survive until she found his weakness, and then she would win.

"As far as I can tell, I have to fight you now. Because like it or not, I will see the likes of you again. Over and over until one of 'em finally puts me down. The sooner I know what I'm dealing with, the sooner I can prepare effectively." She said, her eyes were no longer timid, but burning dangerously like those of an animal pushed into a corner.

"If I don't fight you now, I'm admitting to all these people that I'm too weak to stand by my words." At that, she took a step back, and assumed a ready position. She held her hands in front of her. The black armored weapon was still in it's first form, the finely woven metal protecting her arms and long hooked claws protruded from where her fingertips normally ended.

"I came here to prove myself didn't I?" She said, inviting him to make the opening move. She was a defensive fighter, and intended to utilize her speed to evade him until she had a basic understanding of his fighting style.

Sol listened with a level of patience that most who knew him would have called alarming, if not uncharacteristic.

It was as if an invisible thread were being drawn taught with each moment that the cyclopic lordling restrained himself from some outburst of fantastic violence, and the entire crowd, save a few notable exceptions, seemed to cower in expectation of the inevitable snap. A gap behind the cat-faunus had already began to grow, as those behind her, weary of what an actual assault might look like from a man thought a fifteen meter wide explosion constituted a warning shot, decided that they would rather not risk being even remotely in the line of fire.

"I could honestly care less who you've killed or what your family name is. I don't and won't understand politics."

Sol sneered at the arrogance of it, further twisting a face already grown ugly with his barely restrained contempt. How could this savage be so proud of her own ignorance? Not that it mattered, the introduction hadn't been for her benefit, but rather for that of the crowd of spectators. Anonymity ill-suited Solomon Moon, and he wanted these soft Valanese dogs to remember the lessons he was going to teach today, and the name of who taught them.
Still he did not say anything, as he paced back and forth, feet gliding beneath him in wide steps, balanced on his toes, left side angled towards his foe to present as narrow a target as possible, while the stupid mutt continued to prattle on inanely while presenting the full breadth of her body to him. In that instant, he had no doubt that he could kill her, and quickly.

As she began talking about some saying that her tribe, of no doubt inbred troglodytes that barely stood above paleolithic in their culture, had regarding strength Sol smirked, as he glanced about. A simplistic view from a simple creature, but still containing a nugget of truth, like a kernel of corn lodged in a mountain of shit. Had he expected this girl to be capable of coherence in the next minute or so, he might have supplied a more nuanced interpretation of that saying, but at this point it seemed like a futile waste of breath. His patience was quickly reaching his limit, and the words of the girl seemed to just be noise to him by this point. It was when she implied that she would "meet the likes of" him again and again that Sol's ability to be politely silent finally failed.

He yawned, loudly, projecting his voice in that same way that made the room shake, utterly drowning out everything that came after from the faunus, his jaw seeming to unhinge like a constrictor, mouth opening almost comically wide as he made a dramatic show of covering it with his right hand. His left hand remained pointed at the girl.
"Are you done?" He asked, in spite of the fact that she clearly hadn't been, "Are YOU Done? You know, my father had a saying too. "Brave words are for fools and cowards. If you've got killing to do, best get right to it." So I ask, are you a fool? Or are you a coward? Because you sure do talk a lot."

He watched her posture, noting the the subtle preparations that she was making, the way her weight was balanced away from him, the way she seemed to be waiting, stalling, and then he understood.
"I'm a busy man, So here's my first lesson. If you really mean to be the best, you will heed the words of one recognized by Mantle as one of the best killers of our time. " He declared, projecting his voice to the point that he was undisputed, the loudest thing in the entire school, "You know, during the Great War, both sides developed terrible weapons that could obliterate even a trained hunter with as much ease as a pulled trigger, but afterwards Atlesian tacticians found that the efficacy of these units were a lot lower than they had expected. It turned out that the wielders of these great weapons had only ever used them on the Grimm, or on targets, and hesitated to discharge them upon living thinking human beings. The held their fire until the enemy's threat was immediate, when they could have easily destroyed them at long range, and then they stopped firing the moment the enemy fled."
Sol laughed, but it was in disbelief, not amusement.
"This meant battles were drawn out for days, entire fronts failed. Casualties were hundreds of times higher than necessary when a single resounding victory could have ended the whole war. It was found in the other great powers too. Vale, Mistral, Vacuo, all soldiers were united by a reluctance to harm their fellow man, it was a part of their DNA, something transcending borders and culture, but the price was high." He continued, addressing the entire crowd, before his words turned sour as rotten milk, "Sympathy, Compassion, MERCY! These things killed more soldiers in the Great War than the combined arms and claws of men and Grimm. You see? That's the real difference. Any idiot can defend themselves, but to want to win, to be willing to kill your foe to do it, to do what it takes! To strike first, to strike without mercy, to end them rightly! That is the only true difference between the meek and the mighty!
Sol's face seemed to glow with the hideous light of his smile as he drew a cigarette from the cuff of his left sleeve and showed it to the girl, before flicking it straight upward in the space between them. The roll of paper tumbled high, end over end, and Sol fixed his gaze back on the girl.
"You think you've got what it takes? You've got until that hits the ground to make your move and prove it. Otherwise, you forfeit, and reveal your own cowardice." He continued, pointing and leering smugly at the girl, while the roll of paper and it's contents in the time it took Sol to speak, having fallen to about head level by this point, due to strike the ground in but a moment.

The moment seemed to stretch, to elongate and distort. That instant, like thousands of others that had come before it, immediately preceding the first shot seemed to yawn open like a chasm that could swallow the whole world. Sol's heartbeat thundered in his head like the fanfare of heavy artillery, while stress hormones and stimulant neurotransmitters charged screaming into his blood vessels, as every inch of his body was honed until the edge was razor keen. The world seemed to clarify as his brain shifted gears like a fantastic engine of war, to resolve until everything was sharp and hard, and dangerous. The higher functions of his mind seemed to melt away, and that older, more savage part, the pre-human, pre-mammalian, the reptile brain asserted itself. Things that would have been inextricable from experience, like color, like sympathy, like beauty, grew vague except for their intrinsic relationship to the imperative. Goals, dreams, and aspirations all bowed aside to make way for that singular imperative, that pre-human, pre-mammalian, that serpent's imperative. Every cell in his body turned, in lock step, to the solitary ambition of survival, of conquest.

And then the moment passed, and what followed was as outside of the control of Solomon Moon as was the trajectory of a bullet that had passed the breach. The trap had been laid, the bait taken, and his actions were as, swift, automatic, and mechanical as a beartrap snapping shut on the paw of an unfortunate animal.

The instant he saw the girl move, as she blurred into a streak of colorless light, Sol, on a reflex that completely bypassed the higher centers of his brain and took a shortcut directly to his muscles, triggered that part of him that was neither a muscle nor a thought, but behaved much like both, and reached out towards that tumbling roll of paper just as impossibly fast fingers closed around it. A will of liquid fury, of wild joyless conflict, of pure distilled destructive intent, pierced the crystal hidden within the paper wrapping so cleverly disguised as a roll of tobacco, and turned every atom of the object inward upon itself and tore it asunder from within with weapons made entirely of it's own parts. 

Sol had the advantage, because while the girl was fast, she was still bound by physical laws, whereas Sol's riposte took place at the speed of thought, faster even for he hadn't really thought at all, other than to have his will execute a practiced series of commands that took place so near to instantaneously that it made no difference. The reaction that triggered was even faster, because the atomic sabotage took place quite literally at the speed of light.

"SHRAAAAK-eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee"

Sol shut his good eye with milliseconds to spare as a second thunderous report shook the arena, like an angry god was using the whole school as an anvil and a mountain made of dynamite as the hammer. So loud it was that all present who did not have eardrums made of carbon-steel heard only a small pop and then a thin high pitched whine as the traumatized cilia of their inner ears were shaken to pieces by vibrations that had less in common with sound than they did with an explosion. Beginning on a point clutched between the faunus' fingers and spreading outwards at a speed that filled the entire arena instantaneously, a blinding, bleaching white luminescence blanched the entire display with fingers as incandescent as the corona of the sun itself.

The row of students closest to the fight fell to the floor, the sudden deprivation of their two primary senses causing such intense vertigo that they could no longer maintain their balance, while the row behind staggered back and fell as well, unable to hear their own screams beneath the shrill droning that now filled their ears. Blind and deaf, everyone else who had the misfortune of facing the fight scattered in senseless confusion, many tripping and falling and scrambling to climb over themselves in complete and utter panic, as if the force that had infected and ignited the hidden crystal had somehow transmitted itself into the crowd as well, and Solomon Moon, the source of the panic, paid the chaos no mind as anything but what it was, Collateral Damage.

Sol had no time to worry about the welfare of his audience. The girl was moving far too quickly for him to trust that she wouldn't simply rush him blindly. Through the shanked soles of his jack boots, the one eyed warrior felt the vibrations of something metallic embedding itself in the arena floor nearby. He didn't even attempt to speculate on what it might be, and instead opened his golden eye to find something that looked like a smear of colorless light being dragged along in a counterclockwise arch around him. His gaze momentarily drawn by the swooping streak, he flicked his eye towards where his other senses told him the impact had been. He spotted the glinting line that transected the two points and understood what it meant as he drove his right hand up to the wrist into the stonework at his feet and clutched urgently for purchase. As the line was deflected across the curvature of his wrist, confirming Sol's suspicion of the wire's purpose and composition, he sprang off both feet while maintaining his grip on the floor, boot-heels narrowly escaping the razor thin wire as it sheared through the air where once he'd been standing. Now balanced on one hand, feet and body inverted above it, Sol felt his grip fighting the pull of the line, as the snare completed a full revolution of his wrist. The thin woven line should have sliced his hand right off, but it merely cut into the silken cuff of Sol's white glove and little more.

Sol realized with a maniacal thrill that if the girl was at the other end of that line, then she was now the one ensnared by him. Grinning savagely his pulled his feet back towards the floor as the line passed by, and planted his heels, teeth gritted as he pulled his hand out of the floor and rolled his wrist to catch the line in his fingers. He allowed the streak of light to complete another revolution, spinning on his heels, and leaning back against the weight like an Olympian hammer tosser. He spun along with her, shifting his balance in his hips and legs in time with the revolutions to maintain the speed and prevent the line from entangling him further. On the third revolution he had grown to anticipate the momentum enough that he could act.

He abruptly reversed the direction of his spin and put all the considerable strength of his body, and the equally considerable strength of things that were not of his body, into bringing the flight of his foe to as sudden and vicious a halt as possible. The line briefly had a little bit of slack fed into it as Sol spun clockwise counter-directional to the feline fighter, only to have that slack suddenly taken up again as he pulled against the flight of his enemy. The effect was like cracking a gargantuan bullwhip, except instead of a thin strip of leather on the furthest end, it was a living being. The horrible whiplash killed all of the momentum of the blurred shape at the end of the line, forcing her back into unceremonious resolution with the rest of reality, and likely doing a considerable amount of damage all on it's own, but Sol was not done.

"Do you know me, now? BITCH!" He spat through teeth gritted in effort as he swung the line high over his own head in a straight up and down arch and then slammed the unfortunate creature at the other end down against the floor on the opposite side of himself.

"Are you done?" Commander Moon asked, impatience and contempt written on his proud Atlesian countenance, then more forcefully as though he might not have been heard, "Are YOU Done?"
The question was like nails across the chalkboard of Aegle's mind. She had been listening to what the faunus girl was saying, captivated by the idea of her heritage and her culture. She felt a weird sort of pull inside her, like she ought to be doing something, like something really bad was about to happen. She looked up at the tall girl beside her, whose cold golden gaze seemed to so perfectly mirror the dangerous glimmer in the commander's one remaining eye.
"You know," Solomon continued, lip curled into half a sneer, "My father had a saying too. 'Brave words are for fools and cowards. If you've got killing to do, best get right to it.' So I ask, are you a fool? Or are you a coward? Because you sure do talk a lot."
"Does she ever." Said the tall girl, mirroring the commander's expression of bored contempt.
"When else should she?" Aegle asked, puzzled by them both, "S'not like she wants to kill him, yeah? S'not the same thing, y'know?"
Looking down, quite like she had forgotten the small thing squeezed against her side, the taller girl grinned a nasty grin back at Aegle.
"If she's not trying to kill him, then he's going to kill her." She said, blunt as a hammer blow. She seemed to take great pleasure in pointing that fact out. Aegle felt her face grow warm, and not just for the bruise still spreading across her jaw. None of this made any sense to her. Why should Lily want to kill the Commander, and why should the Commander want to kill her? All she had wanted was a fight and a team, so that she could enter the tournament at Vytal. When had that turned into life or death?
"I'm a busy man," The Commander told the room in his deep, authoritative voice, "So here's my first lesson. If you really mean to be the best, you will heed the words of one recognized by Mantle as one of the best killers of our time."
The crowd spread a out a bit further, affording Aegle a bit of breathing space, though she was forced to continue watching the fight, framed between the elbows of taller students. Her eyes found Solomon Moon's, and she watched his face with interest. Surely he had a world's worth of things to teach her. She remembered well the things he'd said at the gallery, the insights he had provided, and the suggestion of deep wells of experience that meeting had implied, wells left untapped in the short time they had spent together.
"During the Great War, both sides developed terrible weapons that could obliterate even a trained hunter with as much ease as a pulled trigger, but afterwards Atlesian tacticians found that the efficacy of these units were a lot lower than they had expected. It turned out that the wielders of these great weapons had only ever used them on the Grimm, or on targets, and hesitated to discharge them upon living thinking human beings." He swept the room with his golden eye, as though he could see this same hesitation in those surrounding him. Enraptured as she was, Aegle did not notice they way some students tensed up and others shrank back, in defiance or admittance of that perceived weakness. She was too busy imagining the swarming front lines, as row upon row of Atlesian soldiers stood fast against the disorganized Valanese. A wall of order and control against a swarming chaos tide.
"They held their fire," Solomon explained, as in disbelief of his own story,"until the enemy's threat was immediate." a wall of cold iron opening in a rain of dust upon the gathered masses. Commander Moon dropped his hand, and the hail of gun fire stopped. "They could have easily destroyed them at long range," He told the gathered students, "and then they stopped firing the moment the enemy fled." he shook his head. Aegle did too, but not for shared disbelief. Was this really the same man who had spoken to her so softly of art and the merits there of? How could that man condemn men for not wanting to kill men? Solomon's eye slid its weighty golden gaze back onto Lily but, when he spoke, it seemed he was speaking to Aegle instead. Answering a question she'd not spoken aloud.
"This meant battles were drawn out for days, entire fronts failed. Casualties were hundreds of times higher than necessary when a single resounding victory could have ended the whole war. It was found in the other great powers too. Vale, Mistral, Vacuo, all soldiers were united by a reluctance to harm their fellow man, it was a part of their DNA, something transcending borders and culture, but the price was high.
"Sympathy, Compassion, MERCY!" With each word, the commander's voice grew louder, a hammer made heavy by the weight of his contempt. He raised a hand, as though he could have held the concepts he described, and made to crush them as naught but empty wind.
"These things," He said, voice dropped to a deathly hush, "Killed more soldiers in the Great War than the combined arms and claws of men and Grimm." Casting the crushed notions aside, he swept them all again, as though challenging them all to disagree.
"You see?" He asked, as though he hoped they might and feared they did, "That's the real difference. Any idiot can defend themselves, but to want to win, to be willing to kill your foe to do it, to do what it takes! To strike first, to strike without mercy, to end them rightly! That is the only true difference between the meek and the mighty!
"You think you've got what it takes?" He asked, not just Lily, but every would be hunter who had stayed to hear his lecture. Then, with the force of a wolf breaking a rabbit's neck, he snapped his attention back to Lily. In the same motion, he plucked a thinly rolled cigarette from some secret pocket in his pristine uniform.
"You've got until that hits the ground to make your move and prove it." He showed Lily and everyone watching the cigarette, then flicked it casually skyward. "Otherwise, you forfeit, and reveal your own cowardice."

Aegle did not get a good look of what happened next. It all happened so fast. There was a blur of light that left purple streaks across her vision, followed by a flash so bright that it seemed to slam into her with physical force. By the time her throbbing vision cleared, Aegle was down on one knee with what felt like a mountain hanging off of either. Beneath the purple haze haunting her burning eyes, she saw the Commander stood back on his heels, one arm up raised. Perhaps it was just the disorientation speaking, but it seemed to Aegle like he was flying a kite. Then she noticed the white blur moving in quick circles above his head.
His lips curling, the Commander shouted something Aegle could not hear above the screaming whine that filled the training hall, before seeming to tug whatever he was flying. Whether the line he was holding snapped, or some other force had intervened, she could not tell. All Aegle knew was that the Commander pulled in one direction, and the white blur went the exact opposite. A glove of twisted metal slapped down right in front of Aegle, so close she felt the wind of its passing on her flush face. Then, a moment later, the white blur landed on the opposite side of the hall, where it shattered to reveal the faunus contained within.
"And that's the end of that." The voice was barely on the edge of hearing, a quiet buzz which Aegle but barely heard above the roaring whine that had taken up residence in her head. She looked up to find the tall girl carefully combing a few loose strands of hair back into place, otherwise unruffled by the blast that had flattened most of the room.
More sounds started to trickle in. Quiet groans and other muffled sounds, as the whine slowly cleared. Then, above them, a louder if not all that steadier voice.
"You're someone who learned all the wrong lessons," Lily was standing up, pulling herself out of the pile of twisted limbs she'd landed in, "About why it sucks when people fight each other." Somehow, she hadn't been destroyed utterly by whatever the Commander had done to her, but it was clear just how badly he'd hurt her, even from where Aegle was kneeling.
"You're the type of person," The faunus said, shouted almost, as she staggered under the weight of her own body, barely keeping upright, "Who thinks strength makes anything permissible. You're the kind of person who never learned not to swear in front of children. And you might be the type of person who takes out the competition ahead of time. Smart. Efficient."
Lily closed her eyes, as if steeling herself, as though barely keeping herself from screaming. She swayed half a step forward and looked like she might simply pitch over entirely. Aegle made herself stand, an effort requiring her to fight the intense impression that the world had been tipped ninety degrees to the left.
"I still got two legs. They're my biggest strength. I came here to fight and don't intend to give you the satisfaction of making me back down. Why did you come here today, Solomon?"
"Dumb furball doesn't know when to give up." Said the tall girl, then, "She made her bed. No one made her fight him."
Aegle, wondering if she'd said something and just not heard it, struggled to make sense of all that had just happened.
"I'm sure she did her best."
The tall girl flicked a disinterested glance Aegle's way, then shrugged, "Her best was never going to be enough."