***Reese***

"Reese, catch!" Arslan pushes her opponent's arms to the side with one hand and hurls the heavy, black ball in my general direction, and I bodycheck my adversary before shifting my board onto my back, leaping and catching the ball, landing into a roll and carrying the ball over the goal line, slamming it onto the ground for good measure.

"And that's another point for us! 3-1, c'mon, boys, pick it up!"

Bolin helps Nadir – whom I kinda knocked over making sure he didn't get the ball – up, and the two walk over towards us, picking up the ball. "Can we get new teams? The two of you together always beat us."

"Well, yeah, 'cause we're awesome, right?" "Right!" Arslan and I exchange a high-five as the boys just frown.

"You still do not have to be quite so rough," Nadir says "This is just for warm-up, no need to overdo it. Besides, aren't there rules against this sort of thing?"

"Funny enough, no," Arslan says.

"Yeah, you just need to toughen up," Bolin adds, patting Nadir on the back rather forcefully, which he registers with a cough. "Ow! Bolin..."

I have no idea who actually came up with the 'rules', as they may be, for our game, which is pretty popular at Haven, mostly just as a warm-up. We learned it from some upperclassmen early on, but I don't think I ever met the guy Calvinball was named after, if there even was one. Either way all that counts is getting the ball into some vaguely-defined goal, with full use of Aura and weapons, all other rules are either nonexistent or completely mutable. There's definitely no rule against roughing or whatever Nadir claims, because that would defeat the point if you ask me. But our Team quickly banned me using my hoverboard as a, well, board, because with that I was practically guaranteed to score once I got the ball, unless Arslan got a lucky shot with her rope.

"I think we can call it for now anyways," Arslan says "We should all be sufficiently warmed up, so let's get going."

"Reese, you're with me," Bolin says as he walks over to the bag Arslan brought with her, taking out a small flag with a round stand, then walking over to the other half of the field and I follow him. Time for some CtF, it looks like.

Most people are watching the first set of matches right now, and the training grounds are almost deserted – save for a pair of other Teams who look like they're from Atlas –, so we could have a whole field for just the two of us, but that'd be just overkill, even on my board I don't normally need that much space.

Arslan is with Nadir for now, which means she's gonna hold back again. Not that she really should go all out – not even I have too much of a shot at beating her when she does –, but if you don't push people a bit every now and then, they're not gonna get stronger either. I think I'm gonna take on Nadir after this and make sure to push him to his limit, Arslan is much too nice sometimes.

But first things first. Bolin sets the flag down in the middle of our half of the field and then stands in front of it, making a 'come at me' gesture at me, and of course I oblige. As usual, the two of us are pretty evenly matched, and even the 1-1 we eventually settle on takes quite a while to reach. I head over to the other two and tag in for Arslan, who in turn goes to fight Bolin.

"Hey, how about this," I ask as Nadir transforms his rifle into a sword and I jump off my board, taking it into one hand. "I saw this fancy tea house in the city yesterday. If you land a real hit on me, I'm gonna treat you. Sound like a deal?" After a moment of deliberation he nods. Really? What was there even to think about. "Great. But just so you know, unlike our dear leader, I'm not gonna hold back. Now let's go!"

Our bout of training goes about as well as expected. Which is to say not that much. Nadir lets himself get driven backwards by me far too easily, and if I let up for a moment is too hesitant to quickly strike, even if I keep telling him I have a ton of Aura left so there's no way he'll hurt me.

I'm probably being a bit unfair to him, all things considered. It's not that he's a bad fighter per se, he's just not good with melee and fights against other Hunters instead of Grimm, that's like his one major weakness. I can't recall the exact title, but he is a scion of a very old and traditional family, so he's seriously well-mannered, educated, and has quite a few practical skills – including survival stuff –, but if you just run at him with a sword he kinda becomes like a deer in the headlights.

However, in turn, Nadir's actually pretty ace with his gun, doing some neat shooting at distances where I'd be lucky to hit the broad side of a barn. In fact he'd rather never use his sword and instead shoot all the things from a safe distance.

I don't see why you wouldn't go with a straight-up sniper rifle then, but Nadir says an assault rifle is much more versatile and that a sniper rifle would be too disadvantageous at closer ranges. And he really can mow down Grimm at point-blank range with it, except he lectured me once it's not actually point-blank, but should be called 'close quarters' instead, 'point-blank' being well over 200m for his rifle, according to the specs, and 90-something meters for my guns, something about bullet drop-off or whatever. Either way the thing really packs a punch, it's got high-caliber rounds or some such.

But sometimes bullets just won't cut it, or you run out of ammo, or need a blade to block attacks or whatever, so whenever we have time to train, the rest of us try to put Nadir on the spot and get him to step up his melee game. It helps some, and he definitely has improved since ABRN's formation, but he still has absolutely no chance of actually beating me in a melee duel.

I can tell Nadir is trying his best, though – besides the bit where he doesn't follow up on any of his strikes –, so I eventually go back on what I said about holding back and intentionally slip up, allowing him to get in a hit into my flank, which is of course completely stopped by my Aura.

"See? Told you you wouldn't hurt me. I mean, you couldn't if you tried. Had I actually ever hit you, your Aura would be out five times over by now."

Nadir sighs. "I'm well aware of that. Which is exactly why we're training like this, is it not? But now it's just fair we focus on an area you need to practice as well. I'm sure Arslan brought some shooting targets with us."

Ugh, shooting. The only shooting I actually do is at pretty much point-blank ...right, close quarters, range, I suck at reliably hitting stuff more than 20 meters away. I really only got the gun part of my weapon so I have something to use at range, that doesn't mean I'm particularly good with it, though most Grimm are relatively large targets at least. In reality the number of Grimm I actually felled with the gun mode is probably still in the single digits, mostly I just annoy or distract them a bit before either someone else nabs the kill or I go in and slice them up in melee.

So yeah, I suck at shooting, and I'm too impatient to take the time to aim my shots even while practicing, and Nadir knows that. I'm pretty sure this is his way for getting back at me a bit.

Just then, as we're about to get some targets and set them up on the side of the field, we're interrupted by a familiar cheery voice. "He~ey, found you!" The rainbow in Faunus shape darts across across the training field, waving, and Neon skids to a stop right in front of me and Nadir. "There you are!"

"Hey, Neon, what's up?"

"Nothing much. That's why I'm here after all, the battles this morning were totally boring."

"So you saw the matches?" Arslan asks as she and Bolin, having noticed we have company, stop their sparring match and join the three of us "How did they go?"

"Both went pretty boring."

Arslan clicks her tongue in a clear sign of annoyance "I meant the end result."

"Both very boring and foreseeable early on." Neon is totally doing that on purpose, though I'm not sure it's such a smart idea pulling that on Arslan, she doesn't know her well enough for that yet.

"...Let me rephrase: Who won the first two matches?"

"Well, why didn't you just ask for that? First Team SLTE [Slate] from Atlas beat Shade's Team AQMN [Aquamarine], they just wrecked them 4-0, and one of the guys even still was at 100% Aura when they won."

"Shade lost again?" Arslan asks and Bolin nods "Yeah. That's five Teams lost now for them, and not a single win yet."

"Actually there is one." Neon corrects him. "The second battle, Team ALBT [Alabaster] from Shade beat Team LVND [Lavender] of Beacon. That fight was way dragged out and they ended up just winning by attrition, no one had more than 25% or so Aura left at the end. Like I said, boooring."

"So you decided to search for me." I say and Neon nods with a grin

"Exactly. I figured instead of watching boring battles, I could have my own interesting battle instead. I mean, you do still want to know about my rainbow, right?"

"Well, yeah."

"Well then you'd better beat me. Right now the total score is 3-2 for me, so you'll need to win twice in a row."

"Heh, that won't be a problem. So, instead of skating or stuff I first propose a duel. Plain and simple, just like in the Tournament. First to drop below 16% Aura loses, anything else is free game."

"You're on." Neon twirls her nunchucks around and tosses them in the air before catching them. "Ready?"

"I will be keeping track of your Aura." Arslan announces, taking out her Scroll. "Get into position." As she registers Neon's and my Auras, the two of us walk to the relative middle of the field, standing a few meters apart, and I unfold my hoverboard, still keeping it in my hand.

"Let's go, Reese! Try not to fall off your board."

"You should be the one watching out not to fall on your face, because you'll be going down."

"You'd have to catch me first. Come at me, sis!"

"Oh, I will. Bring it!"

Ignoring our trash talking, Arslan raises a hand, then swipes it down. "Ready? Begin!"

AN: It continues. Once more with thanks to my beta, Dongyrn. Not really much else to say here.