//------------------------------// // Get Me Off This Crazy Train! // Story: Cause, Effect, and Consequences // by Coltsguy //------------------------------// You know what? That whole 'DODGE!!!' thing isn't as funny on the other end. You know what else isn't funny? Having a shield up while a FUCKING XENOMORPH stares at you is not funny either! You know what? Before I get too into this let's just pick back up where we last ended. "That was not as funny when you're the one getting hit." "I know," Discord responded with a chuckle. "but it's still plenty hilarious on my end." I stood up, keeping a wary eye on the Pidgeot flying in the sky above me. As soon as I was on my feet, it broke off of its pattern and dove at me with its wings glowing. I know damn well enough that it's using some kind of move and waited a bit before jumping to the left out of the way. It was still a bit too soon as it adjusted the path it was on and managed to clip me slightly on my arm. Hello pain my old frenemy. I see you decided to pay me a visit. Despite having some physical reinforcement to my body courtesy of my new found magic, I could still get hurt with enough force applied. The Pidgeot, as much as I could tell, wasn't flying as fast as Rainbow Dash was that one time, so I guessed that it was amplified by whatever move it was using. "Hey Discord," I asked as I moved up to a kneeling position, "are you using a pokemon from the anime or the manga?" "What difference does that make? I'm still surprised that you managed to at least partially dodge that Steel Wing attack." "Well, in the anime it's the same as the game and they can only use four attacks. In the manga they can use any attack that they learned over their lifetime. At least that's how I remember it. I'm not really using my enhanced memory right now." "Huh, I didn't know that. And I still don't care!" he yelled while throwing his arms up whimsically. "Asshole," I muttered quietly. I moved back to my feet once again and the Pidgeot responded by swooping around for another run. Just like last time, it barreled right towards me with it's wings glowing. I tried thinking about something to knock it off course or make it veer away, but nothing came to me as I dove out of the way a little better that time. I still missed the timing a little, but at least that time it only grazed the back of my shirt. I rose once again to one knee to give the Pidgeot a look. Again it was circling above me waiting for me to get to my feet. I decided to take advantage of the pattern it was giving me to try and think of some kind of tactic. I could try to block it, but anything short of a decent steel wall would get demolished by the Pidgeot's power and I didn't really want to hurt the thing anyway. Well, I might as well go with the most obvious approach. I snapped my fingers and rose to my feet as my brand new Pikachu stood in front of me. Yeah, I probably could have went with an Electavire or a Luxray or something other than the cliche of Pikachu. Hell, I have a level 84 Raikou I could have imagined into reality. I guess it was just the first electric type I could think of since it was pretty much the mascot of the show. It did the job of giving the Pidgeot pause for going right in on me. Honestly though, it was half of the plan I had come up with. The first half continued as the Pidgeot finally came in on me again with it's entire body aglow. Sky Attack I think since it wasn't blue. "Hit it with Thunder," I commanded. Pikachu obeyed and with a shout of its name fired an enormous yellow charge at the approaching bird. The Pidgeot didn't waver in its path and met the Thunder attack head on. It didn't quite seem like anything was happening for a few moments until an explosion erupted from the point of contention. Nothing happened again for a bit as the cloud of dust spread out from the epicenter. Then, the Pidgeot flew straight up out of the cloud. It looked a bit singed in places, but it looked like it was going to come around for another pass. This time, a trail of light came from behind it and it shot forward faster than ever before. "Dodge!" I yelled while instantly realizing the irony at what I had done. The Pikachu dodged left and yet the Pidgeot came straight for me. It came at me so fast that I barely had time to throw the ball in my hand at it. With Pidgeot flying at me so fast it had no time to dodge the Master Ball I chucked at it. The ball impacted on the Pidgeot, it instantly turned red, and was sucked into the ball. It was a formality at that point to watch the ball shake before a small amount of what looked like sparks erupted from the front and a low pitched ping rung out. I walked over and picked up the ball and held it out at arms length. "Heh, alright. I caught a Pidgeot," I said calmly. "Pi-Pikachu!" the Pikachu said with a jump in the air. Corny. "Thanks for the assist. You should get going back home now." The Pikachu nodded and I snapped my fingers. With a flash, the little critter disappeared. I contemplated keeping the Pidgeot for a bit. I mean seriously, wouldn't you want to have a giant bird that could carry you around and help you fight? Of course, caring for something like that was also a big responsibility and I wasn't sure I could handle that. With a groan, I snapped my fingers and the Master Ball disappeared. "Congratulations!!!" Discord cheered. The ball cap, foam finger, and pennant flag making him look like a cheering fan. "You've passed the first round of training." "Great," I responded with a flat tone. "How many rounds are there?" "Only three today. You passed the easy round. Now it's time for the intermediate round." Discord snapped his fingers and this time... a person appeared. She honestly looked very confused at her surroundings. Or at least she would if she could see her surroundings. "What's going on? Where am I?" "I honestly am not too sure right now," I answered her. "Well you better be sure or else I'm going to shove a boulder so far up your butt that you'll be eating pebbles for life!" Oh yeah. That attitude was a definite sign that I was staring at Toph Beifong from Avatar. She looked a little older than from the show though; probably mid teens or so. She was wearing the traditional earth bender uniform minus the shoes. If you don't know why she wasn't wearing shoes then a brief explanation is that she is blind, but can see using earth bending as a form of echolocation. She can be a bit of a hot head, but when she fights she's calm, cool, and waits and listens. "Well, I think some chaos spirit just sent you here to train me by fighting me. I don't think I like him very much right now." "Neither do I from what it sounds like. It also sounds like you were expecting something to happen though. That's all I need to hear to go ahead and take out some anger on you." "What?" "Don't worry. I won't rough you up too bad." Toph widened her stance and put her hands palms back about half an arm's length from her face. That was sending bad signals to my brain. "Look, I really don't want to fight you." "Why? Is it because I'm a girl? Or maybe it's because I'm blind?" she spat at me. "You just threatened to shove a boulder up my ass! I wouldn't want to fight anybody that made that kind of threat to me. Blind, girl, elderly, or a freaking monkey! Do I look like the kind of guy who who can beat anybody? Wait, don't... don't answer that. That was a stupid question." "No kidding." "Look, can we please not fight? I really don't want to get beat up." "Quit being a baby!" With a stomp of her foot, a beach ball-sized rock came out of the ground and levitated in front of her. Then with a fluid motion she sent the boulder straight at me. I threw myself to the right to dodge and brought my gaze back to her. Toph had already brought up another two boulders and sent them right at where I landed. There was no way I could dodge those boulders while I was still prone on the ground. Instead, I acted fast and pushed them off course with my magic. Not by much though since they impacted near me enough to rattle my body from the tremors. "How did those miss?" she asked with some suspicion evident in her voice. "I didn't feel you do anything to them." "It's called magic. It's a big thing on this planet," I explained to her. "Yeah right. It's probably just some kind of bending I haven't heard of before." "Oh come on!" She shifted her stance and a flat spire of rock shot out at an angle in front of me. I didn't have any time to dodge so I watched as the spire slammed into my chest and and I was hurled into back into the tree line. I think what surprised me most was that it barely hurt. I mean, I was just impacted by some rocks, hurled almost a hundred feet, and I think I landed on some roots because that didn't feel like just ground that I bounced off of. Oh yeah, the constitution thing. I keep forgetting about that. I really need to stop forgetting that. I rose to my feet once again and rested my hand against one of the trees for support. I looked at Toph to see if she was getting anything ready for me. I couldn't really tell much, but she didn't seem to be moving. "What's the matter Creampuff? Still worried about fighting a blind girl?" "You seem to have some pretty big issues about not being looked down on. I bet you had some real overprotective parents or something." "What do you know?!" she yelled as she jumped forward. Again my problem was that I saw her doing something, but was unsure of what. I barbed her with some knowledge that I had of her parents to try and throw her off her game, but that would only serve me once since I'm not a very articulate speaker under pressure. Thankfully, I didn't need to know much about bending to see a whopper coming my way. Her leap forward ended with her sweeping both of her arms forward from the sides. As she did, two large columns of earth burst from the ground and then redirected themselves right at me. The move was so telegraphed that I actually had enough time to think and teleported away. I ended my teleport right behind her and before she could make any sense of what just happened, I wrapped her up in a bear hug and lifted her off the ground. Needless to say, she wasn't very pleased about it. "Let me go!" She struggled against my grip, but with leverage and enhanced strength she wasn't going to break free easily. "Why don't we call this a draw? I'm willing to hug it out as you can see." "I can't see, remember?" "It's a metaphor, damn it. Don't be all literal about it. I don't want to fight you because in general I don't like fighting. I suck at it which is why the dick hiding around here somewhere wants to toughen me up through training by getting me to learn how to use magic better. His preferred method seems to be trial by combat and he wants you to be my current lesson. Is that what you want? To be some jerk's lesson for me?" She stopped struggling at hearing that and let out a huff. "Of course I don't!" I set her back down hearing that. She crossed her arms and let out an indignant humph. "Fine. You don't seem to be lying to me, but I'm still upset. I wanna know what's going on right now or I'm going to bury you in an avalanche of dirt!" she finished by pointing her finger right in my face. "I already told you the short version," I said and sighed a bit. "I suppose that's not good enough for you though." "No. It's not." "Well, I'm not sure how long you're going to be here but I supp-" "Oh enough of this already!" Discord's voice cut in. "I brought her here so she could toughen you up and this has been a huge disappointment!" "And that would be the dickhead who brought you here." "Yeah? Well he's a dead man!" Toph instantly moved into a new stance and threw some freshly carved boulders out of the ground straight at Discord. He simply snapped his fingers and turned them into a cloud of bubbles. "I'm not who you're supposed to be fighting either. Let's just skip straight to the last round." As Toph moved towards Discord ready to unleash something else, Discord snapped his fingers and instantly Toph disappeared. In the place she was, a horrible creature took her place. It was one of the worst creatures you would ever want to come into contact with. It was a xenomorph. Oh and just for the icing on the cake it wasn't the normal kind either. I'm talking about the one that comes from a human. It wasn't even the one that came from a dog in Alien 3. It was the motherfucking hybrid from Alien vs. Predator: Requiem. Yeah, I'll admit that I had to magically change my pants if you catch my drift. As the thing turned towards me, I threw up a magic barrier faster than I ever have before. It didn't stop the xeno from charging me though. As it came running at me, I poured magic into that shield hoping that it couldn't bust through. When it did reach my shield, it bounced right off with quite the thud. Knowing that it couldn't get through, I let out a sigh of relief and wiped some sweat off of my forehead. I looked back at it as it unleashed a mighty roar that I bet would have made that manticore from earlier cower in fear. My shield flickered a bit as my concentration faltered slightly, but my fear of being ripped apart kept it from coming down. The xeno-predator stopped it's roar and started to pound and claw at my shield. Watching that monstrosity trying to get to me actually made me notice something about the shield I was using. After a few times of trying to get through, I could feel the energy that was compromising the shield. I could notice how it would fluctuate when the xeno hit it and I could feel how much energy was going into and out of it in between. The odd nature of what I was feeling helped to calm me down during the assault. Not a lot, mind you, but enough to try and think rationally about my predicament. After a couple of minutes of trying, the monster stopped attacking and backed off a few feet. From there, the two of us just stared at each other for a bit. As much as I didn't want to be there, as much as I wanted that... thing to go away and never come across me again, I knew that if anything came across the two of us that it would focus it's attention towards that and it could easily start a streak of horror that could not be stopped without great cost. The issue was how to do it without possible collateral damage. Well, the usual fallback option for that was to kill it with fire. I decided to test the limits of my shield by doing the only thing I could think of that would kill that bastard for sure. I snapped my fingers and then cranked as much energy as I could into my shield. In retrospect, I was surprised that I didn't hear anything. I think that's a byproduct of having watched too much television. With my dad in the military I should have really known that. Other than having my shield ready and knowing it was coming, I was completely unprepared for the napalm bomb I dropped on us both. Holy crap! I only partially knew what to expect. Even through my shield I could feel some of the heat that was being thrown off from those flames. My shield was able to protect me from the hot, molten death that spread all over the place. The xenomorph, however, didn't have my protection. It's screams of agony were haunting even to me. It thrashed about trying to get the fire to go out, but I knew that was impossible. Once napalm ignites it becomes impossible to put out without a ton of chemicals. It just burns until it's components are exhausted. After almost a minute of trying to put out it's burning body, the xenomorph fell to the ground. It's body spasmed on occasion for a bit longer. I kept my eyes upon it the whole time despite not wanting to see this occur. I don't think that there's a single person who's right in the head that would want to see something burn to death. It was just sickening and the smell... Holy shit, I still don't know how I managed to not throw up. After five minutes of waiting for it's body to twitch again and not doing so, I used my magic to clear the area of any still burning mess and having done that I finally dropped my shield. I still backed up a few more feet from the corpse, conjured a rock, and tossed it at the head of the thing to check it. Only after nothing happened did I take a deep breath and sigh. I still got a bit of a whiff of the charred remains, but knowing that the thing wouldn't be trying to tear me limb from limb made it sting a little less. "E gads what a mess you made!" I turned to my right to see Discord strolling out of the treeline waving his paw in front of his face. He probably could smell the burnt odor in the air. "You have a ten second head start before I come to pummel you for siccing that... that... thing on me!" "Oh come now. I wouldn't have let it do anything more than maim you before I helped you out." "Ten...Nine...Eight..." "Oh you think you could do anything to me?" he asked with a nonchalant smile. "Seven...Six...Five..." "Still, you did a great job despite scorching part of the forest, but it can always bounce back." "Four...Three...Two..." "Oh! I almost forgot I'm having my usual tea time with Fluttershy today and I don't want to be late! Toodles!" he said and disappeared in a flash. "Oh that cheating bastard!" I exclaimed. He knew I wouldn't do anything with Fluttershy around. "I'm going to get him so bad for that later!" My stomach growled at that moment. I looked down and rubbed it a bit while thinking about how long I had been there. I took a look at my watch and according to it I had been out there for about three hours. That didn't really make any sense. Oh wait, it had been three hours since I left the house, not since I started my training. That made more sense. "I guess I'll head back home for a bit and eat there. No way I'm going to stick around here." I took a look around at the hazardous zone I had created. Discord hadn't fixed anything up so I snapped my fingers and the place looked just like it did before we started out here. With nature restored and balance attained, I teleported back to my place content in knowing that I was better than... well I wasn't sure how much better I was than before. The only real thing that had changed was that I was informed about the magic I had. Other than that, I guess I just picked up a small amount of combat experience. ...Hooray?