Chapter 166 - 160 - Just Stop Beating Me

Penny beams widely in anticipation, but Pyrrha is still looking around as if in a daze, though she manages a small scowl at her opponent, her weapons Miló and Akoúo̱ already in hand.

Dr. Oobleck starts counting down as General James Ironwood calmly sits to observe the fight, Nora Valkyrie and Lie Ren cheer for their teammate while Jaune Arc simply watches anxiously, and Emerald Sustrai leans forward with a glare

Dr. Oobleck "3, 2, 1..." Oobleck starts counting as he leans forward. "BEGIN!" Dr. Oobleck yells for the match to begin.

Suddenly, Penny is surrounded by Floating Array, gesturing the swords around to her command before launching a volley of them at Pyrrha, who runs towards them and leaps through or deflects each aimed blade. The swords fly into the air until they turn around and come back to the fight.

Pyrrha, now having returned the shield to her back, twirls the javelin to block each sword swipe of Penny's, dropping her weapon when she needs to somersault away after being hit by a slash, only to magnetically return it to her hand as Penny readies another wave of blades.

Pyrrha rushes forward and jumps on an incoming sword, swinging down on Penny, only to have the ȧssault halted by a collection of blades, though she leaps away from the retaliatory slice as Penny backs away as well.

She tries to defend against the multitude of swords with the length of her weapon but is forced back regardless, prompting Pyrrha to roll the shield from her back onto her arm with her polarity.

'I don't want to use my Polarity heavily since it has gotten stronger but maybe I can immobilize her instead.' Pyrrha thought while dodging the attacks.

She wanted to give the look that she was struggling in the fight so she can end it quickly so no mishaps happen. She still needed to prepare for the fight against Yang later.

"Whoo, yeah! Goooo Pyrrha!" Nora screamed from the stands knowing that she got this.

Emerald narrows her gaze further, continuing to concentrate on Pyrrha. She is waiting for the perfect time to use her semblance.

Pyrrha spins wildly as she deflects and dodges each sword, until she gets close enough to Penny to deliver a few slashes with the spear, sending her flying back as Pyrrha bats aside the blades called to their wielder's aid.

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 on the approaching champion. Pyrrha was expecting that and dodges that moving to the side bobbing and weaving out of the path.

With every sword sent toward her, she would deflect one and move closer to Penny. Once she was close enough she was about to swing when another sword came from a blind spot. It rushed her aiming at her ċhėst but only managed to push her back.

Penny was surprised at this thinking that she would have won but she noticed that the sword wasn't touching Pyrrha but was kept in place by what looked like floating flakes.

Penny zoomed in on what she was seeing and saw that it was small pieces of what should be metal covering the tip of her sword stopping it from doing damage to her. Pyrrha had jumped back to make it seem that the attack had worked.

If one attack wasn't going to work then Penny would send all eight of her swords together and launched them.

Emerald smiled at this as she could use this to her advantage. With Emerald still squinting down on the arena, the sharp sound of Emerald's Semblance is heard as Penny's eight swords double, then triple, multiplying into an unreal thicket of blades.

She used her semblance on Pyrrha to make her believe that she was being attacked by 50 swords instead of 8 swords.

Pyrrha closed her eyes feeling the magnetic force around her with her semblance. She noticed that only 8 of them were real while the others were fakes.

She dropped her weapon on the ground while lifting her hand and controlling the iron sand under her armor and makes it form a shield in front of her.

The sword crashed into the iron sand shield stopping them in their tracks. Pyrrha moved her hand while concentrating with her eyes closed still sending more toward Penny who tried avoiding but was slower than the sand.

Pyrrha used one of the swords to cut the wires to the other swords when she noticed that the wires were keeping her from getting moved further away from the ring.

'This isn't how things are supposed to go! I need to hurry and do something about this.' Emerald thought while using her semblance again feeling tired.

She wanted Pyrrha to see that Penny was breaking through so she can crush Penny instead. Instead, Pyrrha relied on her semblance to feel that she was still there but was seeing something else.

Pyrrha was thinking that someone was interfering with her fight. Pyrrha finished the fight by placing Penny outside the arena. The buzzer sounded letting her know that the match was over.

Pyrrha breathed out since using her semblance like that was exhausting. She had only recently been able to do it but it was tiring on her.

"We have our winner for this match! Pyrrha Nikkos will move on to the next round with such a great showing!!!" Dr. Oobleck announced to everyone in the crowds who were cheering at how exciting the match was.

~~~

Back in the hallway, Mercury's face was completely swollen with some snot dripping from his nose and his lip was busted.

"I'll tell you. Will you just stop beating me now?" Mercury said hearing that there was no reason for him to be getting beat like this.

Inside the arena in a spot that couldn't be seen that well a man with a Faunus mask stood there with a scowl on his face looking at everything.

"It seems that I have to do something myself since they are so incompetent." The masked man said while pulling up a sniper rifle.

~~~

Pyrrha was waving toward the crowd when Penny got back on the stage and waved toward Pyrrha.

"That was absolutely magnificent. I would like to congratulate you on your win against me. You surprised me with the large amount of metal that you controlled. It was spectacular Ms. Nikkos!" Penny said in an upbeat manner while holding her hand out for a handshake.

Pyrrha grabbed her hand and was about to shake when she saw a red dot appear on Penny's ċhėst and she saw something fly past her face and hit Penny in the ċhėst.