//------------------------------//
// Rise 
// Story: Rising Under Dawn 
// by Draknus2009 
//------------------------------//

	The wind was rushing through through my mane, the clouds wipping past my body at high speed. I couldn't be stopped, I was moving to fast. I couldn't even slow myself down... wait, what?
I wasn't slowing down, I couldn't slow down! My wings would not move, I couldn't even feel them! What's going on? The ground was rushing towards me. At the speed I was moving I only had a few seconds before I became a puddle of goo on the the ground. Come on wings! Respond! I command you too open up and break my fall!
No matter what i did they wouldn't budge. I looked back behind me and... oh. My wings weren't there. They simply. Weren't. There. Utter shock caused me to slow my frantic movements, but my mind was moving faster than before. What was I going to do? My wings were gone, I couldn't stop, move, or do anything!
The ground was so close, only a second or two now. I closed my eyes, preparing for the inevitable impact, resigning myself to my fate. I felt nothing. No crack of bones on solid earth, no wind, not even the sun on my fur.
I waited a few seconds and some feeling came back to me. Slowly, but surely I felt my heartbeat, my breath, and, thank Celestia, my wings! My eyes came open and I jumped up from my position on my back. Before I even realized it I had noticed the first pony I saw and delivered a flying wing powered kick into their side. Needless to say, they went flying into a group of others that had been right behind me a moment before.
"Please Stop."
I turned around at the voice and saw a blue unicorn  stallion with a green and blue mane and a red cross cutie mark. "Who are you?" I asked with a bit of an edge in my voice.
The unicorn raised his head high, "I am Dr. Blight Cross. I was called here when you collapsed."
I opened my mouth to speak, but in a sudden flurry of dark brown the dojo master kicked me in the side in the exact same way I had kicked him just a moment earlier. I ended up flying across the dojo that I only just realized I was in, and hit the wall. I then collapsed on the floor, suddenly dizzy from the sudden hit.
"You had me worried you idiot," Master Earth Bane said, or rather yelled, at me.
Dr. Cross hurriedly trotted up to me and helped me up. "Mr. Bane! This young stallion just underwent a terrible case of severe trauma. Your actions could have caused him to faint again, and I,m actually not sure if he'll get up again if he goes under from one of your kicks."
Earth Bane just kept on yelling, "This dojo has no room for weakness and you are no exception! Just because you have a strange reaction to magic doesn't mean you can just faint whenever you want!"
"Wait a second," I said. "What reaction to magic?"
Bane was about to speak again, but Cross pushed him out of the way. "You collapsed from an excersize that was meant to help you fight off magical attacks that target the mind. The excersize was meant to cause an illusion of your greatest fear."
"I think that part worked." I said, shuddering at the thought of free falling with no wings to save me. "But what went wrong?"
"Your body rejected the magical influence. It treated the magic like a virus and the cells in your body attacked the magic," Cross explained. "This is normally impossible since magic in itself is not a physical thing, but somehow your body has developed a way to do such a thing."
I thought hard about his explanation. "So my body flushed the magic out like some sort of cold?"
"Not exactly. Since magic isn't a physical thing like a virus such as the common cold, it, well..."
"What is it?" I asked. 
Blight Cross looked hard at me, and I got the feeling that he was almost studying my reactions. "First let me just state that I don't have any evidence to support this theory yet, but I beleive that your body absorbed the energy from the magic. The reason I'm not sure that this is the case is because your body should have shown signs of increased energy levels for at least two to three days. Any extra energy that you had disappeared after the first hour Where it went I can't be sure, but it might have just been a glitch in the machine."
My head was really spinning now. Energy absorbtion? Machines that are malfunctioning when attached to my body? Wait, machines attached to my body? "You didn't give me any drugs did you?"
"No, why do you ask?" Cross asked.
"Just wondering. Anyway, what do want me to do? Go to some lab so that they can study me? I'd like to find out what this is doctor."
Cross smiled, "Oh, good. I won't have to work very hard convincing you then. I would like to have you come to my office once a week, preferable thursdays for some tests."
"Thursdays, got it," I said.
"Good, now I suggest you go home and get some rest. Your going to need it."
I waited until almost everypony was gone. Then I turned to Earth Bane and asked, "Do you mind if-"
Earth Bane interuppted, saying exactly what I was thinking, "Do I mind if you skip work on Thursdays? No, no I don't."
We sat next to each other for a few moments, staring into the sky that was just visible through the window of the dojo and over the skyscraper that was in the way. Princess Luna had really made the sky pretty tonight. 
"Just one more thing before you leave," Said Earth Bane.
"Yeah?"
"Don't tell anyone that I'm giving you Thursdays off work."
I smiled to myself. It was just like Earth Bane to worry about his image like that. " I promise."
Earth Bane trotted to his room in the back of the dojo, I stayed in front of the window for a moment longer, then headed out into the dark streets of Las Pegasus.
*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*


My apartment was on the top floor of a building located on the eastern edge of the city. I would have flown to save time, but sometimes I felt like walking home. It felt good to fly and be above everything at times, but I liked having some down time every now and then. Seeing the skyscrapers that populated the sides of the streets towering above you...
My thoughts were broken by the sound of scurrying behind me. I turned around and to see a brown hoof disappear behind a trash can.
"Who's there?" I called out. No one answered.
I paced carefully toward the trash can, and keeping my distance I peered around it. No pony was there. Instead there was a fake brown hoof on a stick just sitting there. Then an alarm went up in my head, I spun to the the side just in time to avoid the spinning blades that had almost decapitated me.
I followed the pair of bladed disks as they flew up and around. They flew like frisbees, but they were coated in a brownish aura, signifying that their movement was being controlled with magic.
The blades spun back around towards their owner, a brown unicorn with a bloody skull as a cutie mark.
"Nice to meet you, Pegasus. It'll be fun to cut you up."

END. Chapter 1