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Post by Deleted on Aug 17, 2018 16:21:09 GMT -4
Darren was perhaps one of the most polarizing figures at U.A. High. A lot of people knew him, and it seemed everyone had a strong opinion about him. They used these strong words to describe the man. Dangerous. Stupid. Reckless. Charismatic. Legitimately insane. One thing that everyone could agree on, though, was that Darren for all of his faults was a force to be reckoned with. The guy was strong. He had a quirk that was so powerful that most of the class was envious of it and also had the confidence to match. The guy helped run the Martial Arts club, and by all accounts was an absolute fiend when it came to hand to hand.
Alex wasn’t exactly sure he wanted to join the Martial Arts club, but he was sure that he wanted to see where he stood in relation to his classmates. Darren was almost certainly the strongest of the students in Class 1-C, so he was going to be the boy’s first target to match. If he started with Darkshine as his bar to match, that would take years if he ever crossed that bar. Another student, though, that he might be able to do in a matter of months. A year at most, which was a much more bite sized goal that he could grind towards. It was much more attainable, because they were all at least theoretically at least a step below actual pro heroes.
Plus, the quirk matchup as Alex understood it was awful. Darren could, as far as he could tell, move faster than the boy could ever hope to possibly move his shadows and thus could outrun his quirk in a way that almost no one else could. It was a disadvantage, and one that he would have to learn how to overcome if he wanted to improve. There would always be bad quirk matchups, and only by playing through the matchup would he ever be able to think of ways to circumvent those bad matchups. Also, if he could get up to the level of his classmate it meant that he was already among the most powerful students in the entire school.
If he could manage to beat Darren before the year was up, well, that just meant that he was in contention for the absolute best that U.A. had to offer and well on his way to becoming a pro hero strong enough to not be seen as an off brand Darkshine knockoff. For now, though, he was more than willing to get his shit kicked in for as long as he was learning in order to reach that point. Darren said he would meet Alex in Training Room A, so that was where he was waiting after he had showed up more than a bit early to hype himself up to ensure that this wasn’t a complete waste of his classmate’s time. His goal for the first round was just to get a solid hit in, just one to prove to himself that he could attack Darren and then he could work from there to something more. Something closer resembling a victory.
That is, if his classmate even ended up showing up. Unreliable was another term that the boy had heard other students use to describe Darren, but hopefully it wouldn’t be the case this time. This was fighting, and by all indications the speedster loved the opportunity to kick people’s teeth in. The only bad part today was today it was Alex’s teeth that were going to be smashed, but it was a sacrifice he was willing to make at the altar of improvement. Everyone had to start somewhere, after all.
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633 Posts
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Post by Daimon Darren on Aug 18, 2018 20:15:52 GMT -4
Ever since that thing on TV with Darkshine and the thunder dude, the vice president of 1C had been restless. The shadow manipulator had been running left and right, putting extra zeal in his heroics classes and asking for training from anyone who was willing to provide it. Darren was such one person.
It was a good idea to come to Darren for training. The frizzy blonde had extensive experience handing people their asses on a silver platter, on account that he enjoyed it far more than the average, sane, mythical “well-adjusted person” was supposed to.
When Alexander came to him asking for training, Darren cheerily accepted. He never refused a spar and always accepted them cheerily, as if it was an ironclad principle of his to never back down from a fight. Darren held him to no such standard. If he wanted to refuse a fight, he would refuse in a heartbeat.
Thing was, the delinquent thoroughly enjoyed the thrill of punching people and risk getting punched yourself. As such, he accepted fights in a heartbeat instead.
Unlike usual, he scheduled it for a Sunday. As he was often getting requests, he established that he’d fight people on Saturdays afternoons and rest on Saturday morning (the morning ending at 2 p.m. in Darren’s mind), Sunday morning and Sunday afternoon. Homework was always relegated to Sunday evening if it was done at all.
However, Darren had a new job of the kind that didn’t pay: volunteer work. He mused about if he could still be called a volunteer when he was being forced by his mom to do it in the first place. Nonetheless, the job in question had him waking up early and working all day Saturday.
The blonde delinquent came in eight minutes late precisely, yawning loudly and stretching obnoxiously as he entered the room. 15:30 was too early in the morning.
“Sup,” he told the class president, superbly ignoring his own tardiness. He extended his palms outwards with his fingers interlocked. They produced a satisfying cracking noise. “Whenever you’re rea... Waaaaaah… Ready,” said the delinquent, yawning again. “You get a free first shot, I’m tired today.” |
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Post by Deleted on Aug 19, 2018 15:29:13 GMT -4
Darren hadn’t shown up at the appointed time, but Alex couldn’t exactly say he was surprised. He hadn’t expected his classmate to show up on time, and honestly it just meant he had a bit of a break to shitpost on U.A. chats for a couple of minutes before his opponent decided to appear. ”Thanks for helping me.” he said matter of factly when his classmate finally walked in, without preamble. Alex wasn’t here to waste anyone’s time, so he was more than happy to get on with it. It was good to see the sentiment was shared by his classmate, and while he thought the invitation to attack first was cocky… it was also probably warranted. The American wasn’t exactly a powerhouse, and while his fine control over his quirk was extremely good the actual power behind his shadows was more than a little lacking at this point.
They had agreed previously that using quirks was fine, so Alex started off by shrugging and firing off his quirk. He wasn’t the most creative of lads, so it just amounted to a massive frontal assault with everything that he had. No use beating around the bush, so he just pooled all of the shadow that he could see around him and blasted it all forward at Darren from each originating shadow. Matter violently ripped out from their normal containers and flung forward with violent intent towards the speedster.
He didn’t expect any of it to hit, of course, because extended speed on his constructs wasn’t exactly something that he could do at the moment. He could do bursts of speed, but then again so could Darren. He needed to get a feel for how the speedster moved to have a chance, and these bouts would most likely be exceptionally quick. He either kept the speedster at a distance and pummeled him, or Darren got in close and absolutely fucking destroyed Alex. Those were basically the only two ways this could go, because the American wasn’t delusional enough to think he stop a snowball’s chance in hell in matching his classmate in melee combat.
So he fired off a mass frontal assault, and would continue to throw frontal assaults for the entire bout to see how it worked out. It would show him where he was at and would give him a starting point to improve on later. Plus, picking up some sparring bouts with the class’s resident puncher was a great way to get used to getting hit. No more of this getting irrationally pissed off when smacked around a couple times or losing his cool when it happened. When he lost his cool he also lost the part of his quirk he was actually good at in control, so he was worse than useless when he allowed his emotions to overtake him in any sort of combat scenario. That would change when he learned enough to pack some oompf behind his attacks so they were more dangerous, but even then it was less than ideal.
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633 Posts
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Post by Daimon Darren on Aug 21, 2018 18:15:46 GMT -4
Darren only nodded to the vice president’s thanks. He did not need to be thanked for accepting a spar; he was happy enough to be given the opportunity to throw hands.
And hands Alex threw, if by “hands” you understood “shadows”. Darren's eyes opened a little wider. He had seen the quirk in action before -- and as such only wrote down ‘shadow boi’ on his ballot when he voted for Alex -- but never directed at him.
It was a rather interesting quirk to be on the receiving end of, estimated the resident delinquent of UA High. Naturally created shadows suddenly became a lot less natural when they solidified into a moving mass of thick darkness. It looked like black ink, living black ink that was headed towards his face at a rather dangerous speed.
Thankfully, dangerous speeds were something the blondie was very used to, as his own quirk propelled himself at these dangerous speeds. He did just so to avoid the black mass coming at him in a straight line, side stepping like a dog yanked by his leash a second before it hit.
Despite the rough nature of the initial movement, Darren was showing his stuff, regaining his balance like he had never lost it with a seemingly effortless shuffle of his feet. And then, Darren got closer, and fast. The second of deep blue crackling on his skin gave it away, but he was still closing in on his classmate at the speed of an Olympic sprinter.
He slammed his left foot down in front of Alex and with another crackle and a half power blast, he lifted himself up knee-first in the precise direction of the vice president’s face, who was now likely experiencing the funny feeling that was seeing a knee getting closer.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 21, 2018 19:58:50 GMT -4
Huh. It looked like Darren couldn’t change directions as fast as he could move in a straight line. That was good information to know, as was the fast that he couldn’t create shadows fast enough to catch him when he was already mid-movement when going in that straight line. He also learned that being reactive with his defensive shadows did not work. He had to use those in advance or have a good distance to begin with, because the tiny amount of distance between them wasn’t enough time for him to reactively shield himself properly. Shadows started coalescing to block the knee when he saw the blow coming, but they lacked any real hardness past the point of paper by the time the knee itself connected to the American’s head.
His instinct to getting hit was to reach out with his quirk to counterattack, but he wasn’t exactly used to getting hit that hard and ended up just firing off his quirk randomly for a couple of seconds while he remembered what planet he was from and what he was doing. He wasn’t used to getting hit with that sort of force and being disoriented like that, and honestly his first reaction was just getting really pissed off. He caught the impact with his jaw and pain and the immediate reaction to put his left hand up to his face to check for blood clouded his vision, but he reached out with his right hand to try and grab something, anything of the blonde’s to get a read on where he was so he could unleash another salvo of shadows. If he couldn’t get a handle of where Darren was with a blind grab, he would just fire that salvo in the rough direction of ‘in front of him’ out of instinct and anger.
Not once did it cross his mind that perhaps reaching out a hand blindly for the founder of the U.A. Martial Arts club to grab might be a bad idea. Not once did it cross his mind that perhaps he should do his best to create some distance. Nope, he just got hit and was pissed off and what little thinking there was in the boy’s brain to begin with just completely shut off. He just wasn’t used to getting hit, and unfortunately that couldn’t exactly be solved with anything except getting hit enough to finally get over the initial reaction of turning into a giant dumbass whenever smacked around. If he wanted to be a hero, he needed to be able to keep his cool under pressure so he could actually accurately use his quirk. He had a long way to go to reach that point, because blindly firing it off probably just wasted a lot of energy and could feel his body start to get colder from the use of his quirk at maximum intensity. It wasn’t too noticeable just yet, but it would only get worse as time passed and eventually become unbearably bad to move around in. Learning how to fight sucked, it turned out.
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Post by Daimon Darren on Aug 23, 2018 23:28:32 GMT -4
Darren felt a strong blowback in his knee, and that was his cue to pull back. He had it down to a reflex now; he loved using this flying knee move of his a little too much and often ended up taking a counter-attack to his own face when gloating from the superior point of view one had when one’s knee was flying into someone’s face.
Alex looked quite disoriented, so much that Darren’s mind superposed the stars flying around his classmate’s head on his vision, with a spiral eyes special effect for added impact.
He fired his quirk randomly, half the shots not even in Darren’s direction. The Darren in question fired his quirk and his body around to avoid the one that were in fact headed in his direction, using smaller, precise activations that allowed him to change direction without having to feel his stomach swish in his belly too much. It was understandably an unpleasant feeling.
The reason was that when he changed directions quickly like that with his autokinesis, his blood lagged behind -- picture the water in a bottle you’re shaking -- and it cause a variety of effects. When he cancelled his momentum with another activation, blood was suddenly chased from one half of his body and it felt cold there for a second.
It was a more of a problem when he used it to jump up and down. As any fighter pilot could tell you, it’s a bad idea to have your blood forced away from your brain and an even worse idea to force it the other way, on account of making your brain essentially explode. Very little was funny about that indeed.
As such, Darren avoided changing direction so suddenly at higher speeds, having to brake like a racecar so he didn't blow his head up while cornering. That part was actually quite fun. Darren liked skirting the edge a little too much for his health and safety. Darren cared only a little about his health and much less about his safety.
Alex reached weakly with one hand and Darren backstepped lazily, observing the hand curiously. He tried a whip kick at it with its left.
“Looks like you can’t do shit in melee,” he said matter-of-factly. “It’s no fun if I rush you when you’re defenseless.” He stepped back, a lot more this time, on account of the backstep being accompanied with an activation of his quirk. Darren got smaller all of a sudden. He shouted from afar: “New rule! If I punch you, I have to go back there. Funnier that way, right? And you can actually do something here. Cmon. Strut your stuff.” |
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Post by Deleted on Aug 24, 2018 11:12:51 GMT -4
The blind grab, unsurprisingly, didn’t exactly work. The hand grasped air, and was knocked harshly to the side by a sudden and extremely painful impact. Shooting pains went through the boy’s hand and then up his arm, because he took the full force of that impact in a very small area. The instinct was to wrench his hand back, and then suddenly the attacking stopped. He moved his hand from his face and rubbed his aching right hand with his left as Darren talked and went far back to create distance. The boy’s jaw and hand at least quickly dulled into throbbing pain instead of shooting pain, which was a decided improvement and something he could work with.
If Darren would’ve continued the attack, Alex would be a bloody pulp right now and knew it. The blonde was right when he said the American couldn’t do anything in melee, so his only shot was ensuring that the speedster never made it to that range. He was far enough back to where Alex figured he had a shot, and if every time he got punched Darren had to go back there – well, this would be a great time to try out some shit.
His classmate was a little bit out of the darkness manipulator’s range, so he would adjust and try something new. His body was largely useless in combat situations, as Darren said he was useless in melee combat. Which gave him an idea. An idea that was so risky that even Alex wouldn’t have gone through with it if he had stopped to think about it for more than two seconds. He started sprinting towards Darren while creating two walls to each of his sides to box himself in as he ran. He also used his own shadow to manipulate two balls of matter that he had at both shoulders, and his plan was simple. The second that he saw Darren make a melee attack towards him he was going to blast him with the matter from both walls and the two orbs all at once from multiple directions while flopping down to the ground to make himself a smaller target.
The slide would be done by dropping his back to the floor suddenly and used his hands and butt to cushion the impact so that he could have full vision of Darren and adjust his shadows accordingly. The ideal situation would have the speedster slammed into one of the parts of the wall still remaining and probably smash through it, but if he was thrown over the remaining part of the wall that was fine too. If he attacked high or around waist level, the American would be untouched as well. He had absolutely no plan for how to follow up if his plan actually worked, and even less of a plan of what to do if Darren simply attacked low this time and both of them got rocked. He only imagined the immediate success of his tactic, and not a step past that initial success.
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Post by Daimon Darren on Aug 26, 2018 16:58:00 GMT -4
The next attack Alex was to attempt was a strange one. The scarred -- what was up with the scar, anyway? Questions for later, thought Darren -- vice-president of class 1-C was running towards him, making two walls of darkness to either side and two big balls of darkness above his shoulders. A number of jokes were pressed at the back of Darren’s mind, were asked to come back later, when there wasn’t a wall of darkness or two coming at their body. The jokes agreed that would be unfortunate and patiently waited. Maybe he had been too harsh with the flying knee, he thought. It really seemed like Alex’s plan was to run into him and slam him with darkness. Well, thought Darren. At least, it was an attempt at doing something original; it was commendable. He crouched for a second, sparked with blue electricity, jumped normally, and then jumped with a release of his quirk, leaping over Alex and his walls like a videogame plumber. He looked down to see Alex flop on his ass, hit by, seemingly, a particularly mean mass of air. “What the fuck are you doing?” Darren asked in English when he landed. “You gotta trap me, yes, but not like that, put shit where I’m going, but don’t come to me with that shit. I was thinking like a sneak tentacle to grab my leg or some shit. That’s what all the ‘i manipulate shit’ quirk guys try to do to me for a reason,” he added didactically. “Think of it like this. I’m quick, but I won’t go where I don’t wanna go. Think about that for a second and come at me like you mean it,” he said. The jokes knocked again. They were given a quick examination. They were all terrible, except one. They were kicked out of Darren’s brain by the back door, except the one. " Alex's Salty Chocolate Balls," he mumbled to himself, and decided that it would be the Darren-approved name of this attack. Even when Darren genuinely wanted to help a fellow classmate improve -- admittedly because he wants a better fight -- he could not keep himself from being, well, Darren: cocky, sure of himself, turning everything into a joke, riddled with an obvious superiority complex and incredibly condescending in his explanations, and no matter how right he was, it had a tendency to make people not listen. Which is why Darren preferred action. And by action, he meant blasting himself forward with his power again, and using alternating left and right activations to zig-zag towards Alex. It should be easy enough for him to predict, thought the blonde delinquent with a satisfying sense of patronizing superiority and a big, kind and extremely annoying smile. |
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Post by Deleted on Nov 1, 2018 7:25:24 GMT -4
Alex 21 exp
Darren 15 exp
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