Grades are important

Reyla frowned as she walked towards the building where her evaluation was to take place, the echoing clicking of her sandals providing her with nothing to distract herself with as she made her way to her destination. Her recent move to the fourth division had come with a bit of a caveat, namely that in order to determine what tasks she'd be best suited for they wanted to test her combat potential.

The need for a test like this made sense, though it didn't necessarily make Reyla any more comfortable. Not that she'd show any nervousness, or that she wasn't well accustomed to, and secretly rather excited by, getting into combat she'd had the misfortune to be given time to do some minor research on the one evaluating her. Key word there being minor, all she'd had time to find out was the fact that her examiner wasn't in the fourth, and that she was extremely strong.

Hopefully this test wouldn't rely on how much damage Reyla was able to do to her opponent.

Regardless, Reyla was committed to provide a good showing, she wouldn't allow anything less from herself, and with that in mind she calmly opened the doors, strolling in with an air of confidence as she went to meet her trial.

Reyla was greeted by the sight of a tall, fairly well built blond woman pushing herself up from a sitting position with the aid of a frankly overly large blade. From the smell in the air she'd likely just been cleaning the blade, though the what the blade implied more caught Reyla's interest.

While it was true that having a longer blade meant that more force could be put behind it, the larger the sword the harder it would be to control it's momentum, and given that she somehow doubted that someone who couldn't use their weapon would be given any kind of authority, testing or otherwise, in the seireitei it was a fairly safe assumption that the woman in front of her could also control that blade.

So why did she feel so weak? What Reyla had found out and what the woman's equipment implied was that the blond headed girl in front of her was an absolute powerhouse, not a normal run of the mill Shinigami. Something didn't add up here, unfortunately demanding an explanation would be uncouth and possibly detrimental to Reyla's evaluation, so she held her tongue and kept her face in a mask of serenity.

When she was close enough that she could be easily heard Reyla bowed to the woman, Magnolia, and Introduced herself. "My name is Reyla Natori, it's a pleasure to meet you." Normally Reyla wouldn't have bowed to anyone who felt to be of the level of strength that the woman in front of her projected, but all of her instincts screamed at her not to underestimate this woman.

Standing back up Reyla continued, "And yes, that is why I'm here."

Reyla had no qualms admitting that she wasn't particularly skilled with hand to hand combat, or at all for that matter, but what skill she had with her blade meant that she had no doubt that the subtle movements that Magnolia had made were to prepare her for a fight, or at least to prepare her to dodge the hits coming towards her.

Reyla needed no other prompting to begin, and immediately fired off a spell. "Hadō number six, Nenshorai!" As Reyla swing her hand out a flash of red lightning leaped from her fingertips towards Magnolia, and even though there wasn't nearly enough distance between them for the spells blast to have much force behind it, especially since Reyla had skipped the incantation, the size and amount of light produced by the spell wouldn't decrease, meaning that with luck it would temporarily blind magnolia.

As soon as the blast was released Reyla leapt up into the air and created a platform underneath her feet as she drew her blade and pointed it towards where Magnolia was, prepared to follow her as she escaped the blast, and began to incant, "Bind them with the holy symbol..."

Magnolia was fast, in less than the blink of an eye she was in front of Reyla, one open hand rising fast enough to audibly tear through the surrounding air as in sped towards her, it was almost to fast for Reyla to react to.

Almost.

She knew that if she wanted to keep her focus she wouldn't be able to avoid taking at least a glancing blow, so she didn't try. As she spoke, if Magnolia wanted to interrupt Reyla's casting she'd have to do something more unexpected than rushing out of what was an obvious distraction, Reyla dispersed the platforms she was standing on and began to drop like a rock and managed to allow her off arm to relax just in time to turn it towards Magnolia so as to take the blow on her shoulder and transfer most of the momentum into flipping back and spinning as she fell, creating and pushing off of another platform as soon as she was angled correctly to rocket underneath Magnolia facing towards her as she finished the incantation, "Bakudo number 20, Binding Cross!"

Reyla used the flash of light generated as the sealing cross left the tip of her blade to cover her rapid decent from the ground, where she noticed she was definitely not doing well. She had no doubt that Magnolia was holding back for this, but even with doing everything she could to lessen the blow Reyla's entire left arm was throbbing with a dull ache, another hit like that and she doubted she'd be able to use the arm for the rest of the bout. What was more was that she was beginning to feel the fatigue in her legs from her rapid use of Shunpo, it wasn't a problem yet but Reyla knew her limits, and while her reserves for casting spells were fairly high she wasn't quite as skilled with using the more mobile arts that her kind were known for and if she attempted to use them to dart around the battle field like that any more she'd run out of energy well before she made a decent impression.

With all of that in mind Reyla took up a defensive stance, she doubted that Magnolia would allow herself to be caught by her binding, or that it would hold her long if it did, and prepared to meet her next strike.

As Magnolia dropped Reyla knew that she would be coming in for a physical strike, or at least she assumed she would. Regardless it was clear that an offensive move was coming, so she reacted accordingly, "El Escudo!"

With those words a shimmering green barrier sprung up in front of Reyla just as Magnolia's first blow landed, the sheer strength of the blow causing cracks to spider web across it's surface.

The barrier withstood the first punch and the second elbow strike, but shattered with the sound of crashing glass as Magnolia's backhand came in contact with it, bits of the hardened Reiatsu actually flying back and scraping across Reyla's cheek, drawing a bit of blood. Reyla hadn't been cowering behind her shield without a plan of action however, and as soon as the barrier shattered she pulled her blade up , running the edge forcefully along Magnolia's fingers as she sliced off the chunk of her Haori that the woman had grabbed.

Unfortunately she wasn't able to jump out of the way of the leg sweep in time, and as she felt her legs pulled out from under her she tucked her head and arms in to herself and rolled away as she hit the ground, springing back up on her now aching ankles as soon as she was able.

Ignoring Magnolia's question for a moment Reyla curiously brought her free hand up to her cheek and pulled it away, looking at the blood. Before she could help herself her mind began to race with possibilities, though realising she was still in combat she halted herself, belatedly realizing that her notebook and pen were floating beside her, having been pulled out of her haori in her telekinetic grip as she furiously began to notate her thoughts.

Snapping her attention back to the matter at hand Reyla grabbed her notebook and pen out of the air and shoved them in her Haori before settling back into a battle ready stance and responding.

"That would depend on the purpose of the offer. If you mean that you were to offer me a position in the gotei as an officer for no real reason, then no. If you were to ask me to take the mantle of a high ranking member in earths government, or even in our own if the goal was to identify a mole or other threat, with an actual reason that necessitated the fallacy then yes. Information is a tool to be used as necessary."

Reyla had considered lying, but she felt that this was more of a trick question. After all, everyone's first response, regardless of the truth of the matter, to a question like that would have to have been a resounding no in an attempt to impress their evaluator.