(Alright, some notes before chapter. This is going to sound like cheating, but I’m skipping ahead 3 weeks’ time in story. This is due to writer’s block over how to make the events of those weeks meaningful without dragging the story down, and because Murphy doesn’t seem to want me to write about them. I had writer’s block for a month regarding them, and then, when I finally break, my comp corrupts the file it’s saved in. Still, only 2 major new cast members join us, and since they’re not OC’s, it’s not a big deal. Anyway, we join our story, a fight scene in progress)
The white unicorn’s coat is slick with sweat, his breath coming out in deep gasps that fill the air in front of him with steam. The morning air is cool and crisp, heightening your senses, making you feel the motion of his body as he looks at you, swaying this way and that, his horn sparkling with magical blue energy. About him, half a dozen swords hang in the air, their hilts shimmering with his magical glow, their smooth, sharp forms cutting the late morning light and throwing off flashes of light with ever bob and motion.
Your own blade sits in your hand, the hilt slick with sweat, but the grip on it not allowing it to slip from your hand again, as it had done before. Holding it straight up, you give it a quick spin in the air, moving your fingers quickly, as you switch it from your left hand, you your right, and back again, the touch of the grip feeling harsh on your bare skin, but also comforting. The unicorn, an eye on you, spins his own blades, which are near identical copies of yours, save the handles, which are made of some kind of wood, instead of the shimmering Prism Stone.
Without a sign from the unicorn, one of the blades that spun shot forward, its arc changing direction in midair, whistling towards you. With reflexes honed by weeks with your blade, you lash out with it, knocking the offending weapon aside, even as a second barrels down on you. Not for the first time, you wish you were wearing gloves, that you might catch the other sword with your free hand, but since that’s not an option, instead you spin, and using your vambrace, you batter into the blade, causing a ringing sound to fill the air in the field where you’re fighting.
With the unicorn still concentrating on his blades, you slash with yours, aiming for the one point of weakness in his weapons, the hilts. Living up to its name, SpectrumFlash creates a blinding rainbow, as it slices through the hilt of the first blade like it wasn’t there, and then quickly you bring it around, severing the second weapon’s hilt with equal ease, the two blades, no longer supported by the magic of their wielder, fall flat upon the bare earth with thuds, as you turn back towards your ivory opponent, who already has two more of his arms headed for you.
Lacking spin, these fly like arrows towards you, intending to skewer you like a pig, but you dance around them, stepping first to the left, and then the right, allowing them to fly freely, the pair changing directions in long arcs, as you see the unicorn grunt, trying to kill their momentum, while also defending himself with his remaining weapons. The pair of swords is at odd angles, to prevent your approach, while their brethren change course, but you smirk as you toss your sword at the unicorn instead of waiting for his attack, the unexpected tactic forcing him to quickly change where his blades are, even as you rush him.
Your armored feet dig into the earth, throwing up small clumps of dirt as you dash towards the unicorn, who tries to bring his weapons around to block you, only for you to take the sheath from your belt, and hold it to your lips. Instantly he covers himself with a powerful magical shield, as you blow into the sheath, out of the end of which pours a gout of flame that even you can feel in the air, as it burns the earth into a glassy sheen, while striking the two weapons before you, the wood of their hilts turning to ash and letting them drop, while you continue running, getting behind the unicorn.
“Wah?!” was all he can say, as he drops his shield, and tries to turn, but before he can, you position your sheath along the ground, and smirk.
“SpectrumFlash!” you cry out, and your weapon, laying in the dirt past him where it had landed, springs to life, and like a ray of sunlight, flashes towards you, your hand releasing the sheath just as the blade smacks home with a satisfying clack, the whole thing rocketing out of your hand, and smacking the unicorn stallion in the back right knee, causing him to fall down, and giving you, for the first time in an hour, and opening.
“Hyah!” you shout, as you dash towards him, leaping into the air, your body slamming into his heavily, as your arm quickly finds his neck, and you twist it around, bringing your left arm so that you can grab the writs with you right, putting the unicorn into a choke hold.
“Got you!” you tell him, tightening your grip as much as you can, and slumping against his back, making it that much harder for him to shake you off.
“Oh do you now?” says the unicorn with an almost evil smirk, and you brace yourself harder, trying to prevent what you know is coming next. With a whipping motion, the stallion bucks upward, slamming his back into your chest, and trying to force your arms apart, before coming down and dipping his head into the dirt, dragging you forward, and nearly pulling you off his back. Nearly because you use your legs to brace against the forward motion, and as slick as his sides are, covered with lather, you are able to remain in position as he bucks again, and again.
By your count, it is the fifth forward that finally tosses you, your left leg slipping ever so slightly on a smooth patch of hair, and then your arms’ grip coming just a little loose. That was all it took, with the next back buck, and then forward, you go flying, getting a whole ten yards from where the stallion stands, before your back slams hard into the dirt, the air in your lungs coming out with a wheeze, even as you feel a sharp pain in your side, and can hear a crack that tells you a rib is now out of place, even as you force air back into your sore lungs.
“Shining!” shouts a female voice, and you try to get up, only to be forced down by both pain, as the cracked rib digs into your side, and by a hoof on your armored chest, a pink alicorn standing over you, her crystal coat glimmering in the midmorning sun. Almost as fast as her, several other forms crowd around you, the most important being a purple dragon, who uses his claws to quickly start undoing the catches on the sides of your breastplate, allowing him to open it up like a car hood, and then pull at the chain mail covering beneath.
“I’m tellin’ ya, you guys shouldn’t play so rough,” complains the dragon as he works his claw down your chest, uncovering the offending rib. Princess Cadence, with a rather annoyed look on her face, leans down and touches her horn to that part of your body, a glow coming from the tip of it, and passing into you. Instantly you feel the touch of magic inside you, your rib mending like it was never broken, while muscles and tendons go back to normal, feeling like you’d had a day’s rest from your last match, making you smile up at her as she rises.
“I know a dozen sports teams that would love that trick back home,” you tell her, as you and Spike slip your armor back on, working the chain mail over your chest again, and then snapping the breast plate into place, before you rise to your feet and look around.
“So you’ve said, though if I had to deal with more of your people doing this to themselves, I think I’d just let them suffer,” says the Crystal Princess, trotting back over to the small crowd you and Shining Armor had watching you. In it were a few Apprentices, Twilight, as well as a few odd ponies who’d seen the gathering and decided to see what’s up.
“You know you like watching,” you chide her as you dust yourself off a bit, and then go to retrieve your weapon. Shining does the same with his, using a cloth thing to grip the hits above where the wood had been severed, and placing them into a chest full of such weapons. Seeing you moving easily enough, the crowd finally gives you a bit of applause, the dull thunk of hooves coming together rattling around, as well as two large dog paws slapping against each other, Rex smiling over at you, and giving you a thumbs up.
“Heh, I’ll say she does. Still, that wasn’t a bad trick. Two weeks of training, and you’ve already started to get the hang of the blade,” says Shining, as the last of his weapons clatter into the trunk, and you feel your chest swell out with pride, considering what had been happening the last couple of weeks.
First you’d started a bit of exercise training with Rex and the Captain, the pair working out routines between them to improve your physical form. That had run into problems almost immediately when the training dummy they’d designed, which reminded you of those martial arts dummies with the spinning sections that had wood sticking out of them, were ineffective when you had your armor on, but were so powerful they tended to break bones without it, twice nearly cracking you skull open before they’d given up on that.
In the meantime you’d gotten to walk around Canterlot with Vinyl, Octavia, and what you’d come to call, the ‘Honor Guard’. The Guard was made up of Rainbow, Soarin, and Spitfire, who, while all having fun, also took their job waaay too seriously sometime, at least four times shoving you into alleys or doors when some stranger approached. In addition to the three Bolts, who literally followed you everywhere, from bed to bathroom, you also had one of the Princesses, the Captain, or at least one member of DawnChaser’s Apprentices, or more likely, some combination of the three
Not that you minded…much. Soarin standing over you when you peed was getting annoying, but still, everypony was fun to hang out with. You’d learned even more of Equestria, and its neighbors, gotten to meet new and interesting people, animals, and a golem that was neither, and you’d actually gone on real dates with Octavia, getting DawnChaser to setup an allowance like thing for you so you could treat the gray mare to a night on the town at least once a week, usually taking her to some fancy restaurant or another.
You’d even gotten to hang out with Twilight and Rarity a bit more, the former having taken up her old room in the Castle to do some ‘special studies’, while the latter had formed a partnership with Frazzle, the pair of them quickly growing what had been two successful design careers, into what was fast shaping up to be a small fashion empire, with at least two stores opening soon to handle additional orders they kept getting.
Of course, after that first week, Shining Armor and Cadence had arrived, supposedly to say thank you for defeating Discord, who was still locked in a tower somewhere. As it happened though, Shining Armor had come for a second purpose. It seemed he and the Captain were old buddies, from the days when Shining had been part of the Guard as a special unicorn branch. He also, as it turned out, was the premier swordspony in all the world, able to use his magic to lift a dozen blades at a time, and deftly control their flight.
As soon as the congratulations were out of the way, you began the training from Tartarus. First he’d insulted your swordsmanship, telling you you wielded the weapon like a club, rather than the elegant feather it was supposed to be. Then he’d proceeded to beat on your with his blades, smacking you this way and that, just to show you how much you had to learn, before proceeding to instruct you, using his magic to push at your joints, jerk you hair, and finally get you into basic stances, which he then had Rex work you through, the dog showing you how to move your legs and arms to maximize the power behind each swing, while still keeping your guard up.
“Alright, reflex test, if you would Miss Spitfire,” said Shining Armor as he trotted to the side of the field. All three Wonderbolts soon had that rather mean looking grin they got on their faces when this type of training came up. Looking at each other, they silently moved their hooves, talking in that odd sign language you’d learned the Bolts all had, before they took to the skies in a flight pattern that had the trio going in a circle around you.
“BEGIN!” shouted Shining, and instantly fire begins to rain down at you, the bolts kicking out and aiming their kicks towards you, sending a flurry of magical bolts at your position. With reflexes that were sharpened through hours of gaming back home, you block them, moving your vambraces to intercept the shots, the shimmering Prism Stone of your armor glowing slightly from the magical energies, before dissipating, as you shift your stance to get the next one.
“Good, keep the heat on him, don’t give him any time to think,” you heard the stallion say outside your little exercise, but only the edges of your mind really registered the voice as you kept moving your arms in a blur around you, trying to keep the fire from striking your exposed head or hands, which was proving ever more difficult as the impacts drove your arms out of position, forcing you to shift on your feet more and more, as a cloud of dust started to rise around you from stray shots striking the dirt.
Suddenly one of the bolts strikes your back, throwing you off balance, and you know it’s all over. Still you try to keep up, blocking furiously, but a few heartbeats later, another gets through your defenses, causing a stinging sensation as your hand moves just a few seconds too late. Then the first pours in from all sides, smacking you around, and making it hard to breathe, before finally it stops, and you slump down to the ground, defeated and exhausted.
“Not bad, a full three seconds longer than last time,” says the unicorn, as he trots over, using his hoof to push you back onto your feet, and then bracing himself against you to provide balance.
“That’s not saying much. Still not more than a minute,” you remind him, not quite what you’d expected. After you’d proved fairly quick on the uptake with a sword, partially due to the swords you’d made with you power being the type that helped guide your hand and body in battle, and thus training you before you’d even started with a real one. Blocking spells with your armor was still not something you were as good at as Shining or the Captain, who’d both proven capable of not just holding their own against the Bolts fire, but also able to turn the battle around.
“Any improvement is to be celebrated, my young friend. And in that vein, I would suggest some down time. It’s getting close to noon, after all,” said the Captain as he trotted over, followed by the crowd that had been watching starting to break up. Most had their own lives to get back to and only came out to the edge of the city near the Professor’s lab because the Princesses often made appearances here. Cadence almost always was on the sidelines to provide healing, while Luna and Celestia sometimes came just to watch, and laugh at you, as Celestia seemed to find your falls quite amusing.
“I suppose I shouldn’t rush things,” you admit, remembering that first session you’d had with the bolts. In that one, you’d gotten beat, bad. Heck, as much as you were getting used to breaking bones, mostly due to how much stronger everypony was than you, you still remember those particular wounds with sharp clarity. You’d actually thought, after picking up the sword quickly, that blocking would come naturally too, only to spend several minutes getting beat all over the field, including one rather embarrassing moment when Rainbow Dash got under you and held you in the air by firing at you.
“Exactly. No colt I’ve ever met got the hang of the sword as easily as you are. Keep trying, and I’m sure you’ll get this down, and then we can move on to some more advanced techniques,” said Shining, as he and Cadence walked off, their course taking them towards a road that led to the palace. The instant the pair was out of sight, the Pony Professor finally made an appearance, coming out of the lab, along with Rex who was holding a familiar looking case that made you sigh.
“Not bad. I never would have thought you could get that close to him a week ago, after he tossed you halfway across the green with a few strokes of his mighty blades,” commented DawnChaser as he quickly used his magic to start cleaning up the field, collecting soil samples as he did to study the residual magic you and Shining had left in them.
“You know, if you’d just come outside to watch, Shining would probably let you setup some instruments to scan us during the fight,” you tell him as you walk over towards Rex, who sets the case down.
“Hmm, he might, but his wife would probably try to kill me if I even asked,” he comments idly, running something that looked like a tricorder over one of the samples as Rex opened the case, and you held out your arms to him.
“What the hay did you do to her anyway?” you ask, remembering the first, and only, time you’d seen the pair together. The normally lovely, happy Pink Pony Princess had gotten a cold air about her, and just stared at him every time the Pony Professor said something, and then zapped him the instant he brought up experimenting on you, driving him out of the room. Even the apprentices seemed to find that behavior surprising, though you could tell that Deasly knew something and just wasn’t telling.
“No, no, I’m afraid that’s between Mi Amora and myself. Nopony else need concern themselves with our affairs,” he said, shuddering a bit before returning to his scanning. Rex merely scoffed at that, as he reached over towards your arms and with a snap and a flash of magic, undid the bands around them. Instantly you felt your arms get twenty times heavier, and you knew if you tried to do any of those fancy tricks now, you’d probably hurt yourself.
“Man I wish I could leave those on all the time,” you comment, rubbing your wrists a bit where they’d been.
“Not good idea. Dog magic very strong, but very harmful if on too long,” he tells you, returning the strips of cloth to the case, which he’d been teaching you contained more than just strength bands, but in fact had things like water breathing, speed enhancement, and even one that was supposed to make you more attractive, which he still refused to let you wear on one of yours and Octavia’s dates.
“So you’ve said,” you tell him sadly, and watch with a forlorn look as he seals the case and does that thing with his fingers that locks it with some kind of dog magic that makes it so only he can open it, before carrying it back towards the house.
“Aw, cheer up. You know you’ll eventually be able to go all tiny godling on us again sometime, right Professor?” says Spitfire, trying to console you.
“Yeah, and I’ll probably be bite sized again when it happens,” you say rather dejectedly.
“Speaking of bites, can we go get some pie? I haven’t eaten since this morning,” says Soarin, as he and Dash land beside you, and the rainbow maned pegasus smacks him in the gut.
“That was only a few hours ago, Soarin’. I swear, sometimes it seems like you shouldn’t be able to fly the way you eat,” she chides him, and then looks towards Spitfire, who smirks at her. It seemed that after only a few months on a squad, Dash had grown quite close with her mates, and the mares then just stare at Soarin with smiles, making the stallion sigh.
“Actually, I could go for some food myself. Since I know where you want to go, shall we start there? I’m sure the proprietor is already waiting for us,” says the Captain, and nods towards a road that leads more into town than towards the palace, and you nod, brightening as you do. Waving goodbye to the Professor, who idly shouts to come straight back for some more tests, the fives of you, the bolts in the air, and the Captain walking beside, his ebony coat an interesting counterpoint to your seemingly white armor.