I'd like to say that immediately following my rather amazing one liner Ner' and I leaped towards each other and clashed in a brilliant blaze of bad-assery. I'd like to say that we exchanged blows that were so fast the eye couldn't follow them accurately. I'd really like to say that I was just a teeny tiny bit faster than Ner', and therefore was able to land a decisive victory blow in ten seconds flat.
I'd like to say all that, but that would be lying.
And lying is bad.
The actual fight was a bit more like this:
~~~What's this?! A scene transition!? Already?~~~
I was running two-legged in circles about the perimeter of the arena Ner' had constructed, screaming, and flailing my forelegs wildly above my head in the vain hope that doing so would accomplish something productive. Around and above me swirled a swarm of vaguely bird-shaped skeletons. Each moment a dozen small birds would swoop in from different angles to nip at my flesh, drawing blood. Sure, my regeneration could handle the minor wounds no problem, but so many cuts so swiftly add up, and my energy has limits.
My awesome glowing light wings had been abandoned almost instantly. I didn't actually know how to fly, or even if I could fly, with them; they were just a showy drain on my energy. My sword had been abandoned too, the skeletal birds were too agile to hit with it, in favor of two roughly shield-shaped planes of light hovering over my two forelegs. I'd found that if I swung the shields wildly enough I could actually hit the flighty buggers, and even a glancing blow from the solid light was strong enough to break their delicate bones and hot enough to char them a bit. Hence the flailing.
Ner' found my plight to be quite amusing, but he did not sit idly by while his minions did all the work. No, he was actually shooting magical bolts from the Pawner as fast as he could load them. Luckily he was a terrible shot and I was a swiftly moving target. Only one or two bolts discharged their magic anywhere near me, but close was all Ner' needed with the power those shots were packing. The floor was pocked with craters and cracks within seconds. Each bolt's effect was as random as it was deadly. My only saving grace was that Ner' didn't seem to care if the effects from his bolts annihilated his own minions, he ended up destroying quite a few more birds than I did,
Then he fired a bolt which exploded in midair, splitting into thousands of tiny slivers which rained down in all directions. Each of those slivers burst into flame as they flew. When those slivers struck a solid surface -mostly they impacted the stone floor around me or the skeletal birds flying about me, but one or two did find my hide- they each exploded into a thousand even tinier splinters. Then those splinters exploded again into particles too small to see.
You heard me right, the bolt exploded not once, not twice, but three times. And it was on fire. The few slivers that did hit me produced great, gaping wounds in my flesh that my regeneration had a difficult time patching up.
Plus, a little niggling part of my mind worried that, perhaps, the bolt had been made of some poisonous heavy metal, like cadmium or lead, and that those tiny slivers of possibly poisonous metal had infected my bloodstream and that even if I won the fight I would die a slow, agonizing death from heavy metal poisoning.
A larger part of my mind told the worrying part that there was no way Ner' would use heavy metal poisoning as a weapon since it was so slow and inconvenient. Lacing the slivers with a virulent nerve toxin on the other hoof...
The largest part of my mind, the part focused on running and flailing, told the other parts of myself to shut up and let me concentrate on not dying.
The first part retorted that concentrating on not dying was exactly what I was trying to do. Heavy metal poisoning was a hell of a way to go, but was treatable by doctors.
The second part of my mind was treated to the ludicrous mental image of me giving myself a "you're a moron" look while I simultaneously gave myself my patented madpony grin.
I grimaced as I got a headache.
Of course, that was when Ner' decided to start a casual conversation. "I must say, your regeneration is most impressive." He punctuated the end of his sentence with a bolt which was actually just a whole bunch of lava that got everywhere. It burned my hoof and I tripped over a bird, my momentum sent me sprawling. "Is it a natural ability?"
Luckily my twin shields survived my fall, as I needed to hide behind them from a bolt from the Pawner that was actually a hail of spinning knives. The knives clattered against my shields, the force of the blows pushing me back several feet along the stone floor. As the knives fell to the floor I saw that they had all been partially melted by the heat my solid light shields generated. "Nope," I said. I peeked around my shields, but instantly had to retract my head to avoid a second hail of knives. "The sorceress did some magicy, sciency stuff a while back using something called a 'ponyviscerator' that basically gave me superpowers. I have no idea how, though."
I fired a quick laser at Ner' while he reloaded, but one of the remaining birds intercepted the shot and burst into a puff of ash.
"Fascinating. Truly fascinating. I wasn't aware non-natural regeneration of your caliber was even possible. I'll need to catch up on any advances in magic I may have missed while I was away." He fired a bolt which burst apart into several thick books that scattered about the room. Ner' seemed surprised by the development and our fight paused momentarily as both of us inspected the books. From what I could read on the covers of some they appeared to be trashy romance novels.
I raised a questioning eyebrow at Ner'. He didn't make eye contact with me and seemed vaguely embarrassed about something. Curious, I picked up the closest book. On closer inspection it appeared to be--.
One of Ner's skeleton birds swiped the book from my hooves, but not before I'd gotten a pretty good look. All of the remaining skeleton birds gathered the books into a pile which Ner' lit on fire with a spell.
"Ner'," I asked slowly, "why do you have erotic fan-fiction featuring yourself and Princess Celestia? Also, why did said erotic fan-fiction get shot out of the Pawner?"
He blushed and mumbled something about magic and the Pawner's enchantments making a convenient hammer-space. He ignored my first question.
I fired another laser at him, but a sharpened spike made of bone erupted from the ground just in time to deflect my shot. Ner' furrowed his eyebrows in irritation, his previous embarrassment completely gone. "You can keep trying to catch me off guard," he said, "but it's not going to work." As if to prove his point I fired three more lasers as he talked only for more bone spikes to intercept them all.
"You may be able to deflect my lasers," I admitted, "but how will you fare against this?" I focused my magic into the shape of a baseball. Then, just because I could, I made myself a baseball glove and hat too. I then manually turned my hat around so it was facing backwards to show how serious I was being about the situation. With a grunt I pitched the ball as hard as I could at Ner's face.
My lasers traveled through the air nearly instantaneously, because that's what lasers do, right? Well, my baseball didn't. My throw was almost laughably weak, and Ner' had plenty of time to make a spike in front of the ball to block it.
The look of complete surprise on Ner's face when my baseball deftly dodged around the spike and nailed him right on the nose was delicious. "Take your base," I quipped.
Unfortunately, my hit hadn't done much in the way of damage. It merely blackened the tip of Ner's nose a bit. "Since when did you have that level of control over your magic?" Ner' asked.
I shrugged. "Balls are easy to control." To demonstrate I created another ball of light and made it orbit around my head like a miniature moon.
"Good to know," Ner' nodded and... was he taking notes? He was! He'd produced a small yellow pad of paper from somewhere, probably the Pawner, and was scribbling furiously on it.
It was at this point that I realized something.
"You know something, Ner'," I said, he glanced up from his notes. "We both kind of suck at fighting." Ner' raised a single eyebrow at the destruction we (mostly him) had wrought on our battlefield. Hardly any of the floor was left intact and scorched and shattered bones were strewn about like leaves.
I scoffed and waved a dismissive hoof at all that. "Sure you're scarily powerful and I'm tenacious, good looking, and have a couple tricks up my sleeve, but that doesn't mean we actually know how to fight. For one thing, your aim is shit." Ner' opened his mouth to protest, but, after a moment's hesitation, closed it and conceded my point with a nod.
"Another thing, why aren't these birds regenerating like that thing is?" I asked, pointing to the spinning construct engaged with my friends. It looked none the worse for wear, unlike my friends who were all bleeding from numerous lacerations. Luckily none of them were dead, though I did see the Courier's big gun lying in a shredded heap.
"They should be," Ner' grumbled, "but something about the way your light magic works is disrupting my hold on the bones. It's almost as if you've also infused it with a cocktail of raw elemental energy, but I know you're not smart enough to pull that off."
I let out a soft "Oh," when I realized what he was talking about. "That's not me, actually," I explained. Then I fired a laser at him, just in case. Ner' deflected it with a roll of his eyes. "I've got some elemental guys that live in my head and help me out of tight spots. My guess is they're the ones doing that."
Ner' gave me a scrutinizing look and simply said, "Curious."
We both lapsed into silence after that. We watched my friends fight Ner's construct, though Ner' kept one eye on me, probably wary for any more sudden lasers. As we watched, the sorceress, who had been hiding in a corner while the Courier and Fphant had done most of the fighting, fired a spell at the construct.
Like every other time something had been shot at it, one of the construct's flailing limbs slashed out to block. Unlike every other time something had been shot at it, said limb simply puffed out of existence and didn't regenerate. A victorious grin spread across the sorceress's face and she immediately began charging up her horn for another shot.
"Clever girl," Ner' breathed, "she's somehow managed to weaponize teleportation magic."
I cocked my head to the side. "How do you know what kind of spell she used?" The spell hadn't looked any different than normal.
"I have a mental link to every minion under my control," he explained, tapping the side of his head with a hoof. "Those bones are currently about a mile underground, encased in solid rock. Only teleportation magic could have accomplished such a feat."
"Cool," I said. We watched the sorceress blast a couple more pointy bits into oblivion in silence. The rest of my friends, realizing that the sorceress was the only one actually doing anything productive, moved to support and defend her. Watching my friends fight, I got an idea. "Hey Ner', can they see us in here?" I asked. I assumed they couldn't hear us, since we couldn't hear them, but I didn't know if the transparency of Ner's shield was one way or not.
"No, they can't." Ner' saw my growing madpony grin and cautiously took a couple steps away from me as if I might explode. "Why?"
"I just had a brilliant idea!" I exclaimed. "But I need your help to pull it off."
Skeptical Ner' was skeptical.
I scoffed at his skepticism. "It'll be fun!" I assured. "Trust me." I didn't relent with my madpony grin and eventually Ner' caved.
"Fine, but no trying to kill me while I help you," Ner' warned.
My grin widened. "The thought hadn't even crossed my mind," I lied. "About how much time do you think we've got before my friends beat your minion and break through your barrier?"
Ner' considered that for a bit. "About fifteen minutes, give or take."
"Perfect!" I motioned to the wrecked floor. "First we'll need to get this cleaned up," I pointed off to one side, "then we'll need a table and enough chairs for everyone right over thataway..."