51 Improvement

"Why do I have to fight you all again?"

Standing in the middle of the arena, Emiya looked at the surrounding girls who had all brought out their weapons.

"Who was the one that disappeared for weeks without a word?" Yang smiled slamming her knuckles together.

'*Sigh* I knew I shouldn't have agreed to this.'

Mentally sighing to himself, he regretted promising that he'd help everyone prepare for the Vytal Festival.

"Plus we want to see how much we've improved compared to before." Pyrrha chimed in.

Seeing the resolute looks in their eyes, Emiya gave in and decided to see if they actually managed to grow stronger in his absence. "Fine, just start when you're ready."

*BEEP!*

In the blink of an eye all of the girls fired their guns at once.

Snapping his eyes open, a strong gust of wind rushed out of Emiya's body and sent the bullets flying back at a speed that was near impossible to track with the human eye. Tapping his foot on the ground, his body suddenly flickered and vanished from sight only to appear above Ruby and Blake.

*BANG!* *BANG!*

Firing off two rounds from his jackal, he watched as the girls changed their formation to adapt to his new position.

Stabbing her rapier into the ground, Weiss created an ice wall to intercept the bullets while Pyrrha threw out several shurikens. Controlling their speed and direction with her semblance she targeted the airborne Emiya.

'She's added shurikens to her arsenal… Not bad.'

Summoning out a sword beneath his feet, he kicked off it and dodged the incoming shurikens and landed in the distance.

"RUBY!!" Weiss yelled.

Activating her semblance, a red and yellow intertwined tornado came rushing at the grounded Emiya. With their speed enhanced by Weiss's time dilation, the tornado broke apart as the two sisters spun together hand in hand. Letting go of Ruby's hand, Yang used the momentum to shoot towards Emiya at a speed that neither she nor Ruby had ever reached before. Her hair begun to glow as yellow aura gathered around her fist.

"EMIYAA!!!"

"Yang?"

*BOOM!!*

A thin cloud of dust covered the room as the entire arena trembled at the collision between the two.

"That took him out right?" Blake asked slightly uncertain.

"Yeah, not even he could tank a blow like that." Weiss answered looking at the dust cloud.

As the dust cloud settled down, a fiery Yang and an unharmed Emiya grabbing her wrist stood before them with a smile plastered across his face.

"You've definitely got stronger blondie." He grinned.

"Heh, you still blocked it didn't you." She grinned back.

"That just means that you've still got a ways to go."

"Who said its over?" She replied.

Feeling that something was off, Emiya instinctively moved back just barely evading the hammer that came swinging at his head.

"Hoho, if I didn't know better I'd say you were trying to kill me." He chuckled looking at Nora.

"Boooooo! Why did you dodge?!" She pouted.

Shrugging, Emiya turned his attention towards the girls in the distance.

"I'm waiting."

As if on cue, Yang dashed towards him and threw out a couple of semblance empowered fists.

'She's faster than she was last time we sparred.'

"How did you get so fast?" Emiya asked dodging her fists.

"I put weights on my body everyday until it naturally adjusted." She answered continuing her assault.

'Quite smart.'

Slapping away her fist he struck her pressure point in order to lock her body in place like he did all those months ago. But to his surprise he felt his fingers hit something hard.

"What?"

Seeing his confusion, Yang smiled.

"Not this time pretty boy."

Ducking under another blow, Emiya understood that she had fortified her defense in order to counter his pressure point sealing technique.

"You padded out your outfit. Clever girl." He complimented.

Of course if he reinforced his fingers he could have easily penetrated her defence, but this was more about seeing their improvement than him beating them.

"You haven't seen anything yet." She grinned staring at the area behind him.

"ICE FLOWER!!"

Jumping into the air, he felt the bullet infused combo attack pass right underneath feet and slam into Yang covering her in ice.

*BOOM!*

As if expecting Emiya to dodge the attack, Nora was already in the air swinging her hammer down at him.

'Hmm, they've gotten better at coordination.'

Raising his arms up above his head, he felt a tremendous amount of force crash into him and was sent him flying back towards the arena.

*BOOM!*

'As strong as ever.'

Standing up from the crater that had formed beneath him, he found himself surrounded by a ton of floating shuriken ready to stab into him at a moments notice.

'And here's Pyrrha for the finisher.'

Lowering his guard for a second, he let his animal instincts take over. Dodging the bombardment of shurikens aimed at him, he broke through the encirclement and dashed towards Pyrrha avoiding every trap lay out for him.

Arriving in front of her, he was just about to throw her out of the ring until he heard the sound of a sword tearing through the air.

Moving to the side, a purple arc of light passed by him and slammed into Pyrrha's shield pushing her back.

"Y'know its not nice to sneak up on people." Emiya muttered turning around to face his assailant.

"Alls fair in love and war." Blake replied flatly.

"I see you've been reading different kinds of books since I've been gone." Emiya teased reminding her of the book that he stole.

Hearing him say that caused her face to instantly redden.

"I still want my book back!"

"Sure, we can even read it together if you want. And who knows, we might even find some interesting positions to try out." He shrugged.

"T-That… doesn't sound to bad." She lowered her head in shame.

'Truly a pervert'

*BEEP!*

The alarm sounded out indicating that they had reached the time limit.

'I guess I lost.'

But instead of celebrating their victory, the girls had solemn looks on their faces.

"What's with the sad faces? You won didn't you?" Emiya asked confused by their expressions.

"Won my ass! You didn't even use your swords or reinforcements against us!." Yang complained brushing the ice off her body.

"Yeah! And you could have dodged most of our attacks but you took them head on instead." Weiss interjected

"You noticed!" Emiya exclaimed in shock.

"OF COURSE WE NOTICED!!" They screamed.

"Impressive." He said in a fake tone.

"YOU!"

"Okay everyone calm down." Pyrrha said calming the raging Yang and Weiss.

"The match was never about winning in the first place, we just wanted to see how much we've improved right?"

"Tch, yeah."

Smiling at their pouting faces, Pyrrha turned to face Emiya.

"So have we improved?"

"Yeah." Emiya said brushing a stray hair out of her face.

It was only now that he noticed that both Weiss and Pyrrha had their hairstyle made into a bun.

'They took my advice.'

"Adding shurikens was a nice touch, if you could use them while also using your gun then you'd be the king of ranged combat." He complimented before turning towards Ruby.

"You've gotten more creative in using your semblance, I didn't think you could use a combo attack like you did with both Yang and Weiss this soon. I'm impressed." He said giving her a head pat before turning to Weiss.

"Weiss-cream, you've become quite the team player. From protecting Ruby and Blake from my gun to using your glyphs to increase the speed of Ruby's semblance is both creative and effective. Not to mention that ice flower attack that nearly hit me. You've come really far." He smiled and turned to Nora.

"Ah, my pancake buddy, you've definitely gotten better at grasping opportunities. If this was a couple of months ago you would have probably just charged at me without a plan. But look at you now, taking advantage of me being distracted by Yang and the Ruby and Weiss's ice flower attack. Tch, you've gotten quite sly." Nora smiled at that comment.

"And what can I say about you blondie, if I have to be honest, I'd say you've had the biggest improvement out of everyone present. Not only did you become faster than before, you also knew about your previous weaknesses and did something to fix them. Not to mention you're getting better at controlling your rage. At the rate you're going, I doubt there would be a lot of close range fighters that are able to fight you for extended periods of time."

'Now if she can keep her cool then she won't have a problem fighting Adam.'

Turning to the last fighter of the group, Emiya gave his analysis.

"Sadly I didn't get to fight you properly, but from what did happen I can confirm that your ability to conceal your presence is way better than before. If you're planning to become an assassin in the future, I'm sure you'd have a high success rate."

"So in short, I think you guys may actually be over qualified for the Vytal festival."