//------------------------------// // Pros and Cons // Story: The Peaceful Warrior: Jedi in Training // by Valiant Knight //------------------------------// "A lightsaber is an interesting weapon. A blade unique in the history of warfare. A paradox, not unlike the Jedi who wield it: those peaceful warriors, who kill in the service of life. Have you ever noticed? The blade is round. It has no edge. But it is a lightsaber—which means it is nothing but edge. There is no part of this blade that does not cut. Curious, yes? Symbolic, one might say." ―Vergere (Jedi Knight) <<<==>>> "Woah! Cool costume!" Some guy in the convention crowd called to Paul as he walked past. Paul cast a nod to the man, after all, his Jedi costume was pretty cool. He had spent months looking for the perfect cloak. He had found it on ThinkGeek for fifty seven bucks, and it was well worth it. He also had the same cloth pants and tunic as a Jedi, as well as the boot-like shoes. Right now, he had the hood down to show off his self-made Padawan braid. Sadly, there was no way to replicate a lightsaber in any realistic way beyond the models you could find online. So he had to settle for one of those. Other than that, the only thing throwing off his cosplay was a backpack that housed his laptop, water, snacks, and other essentials such as a copy of his favorite book series, The Chronicles of Narnia, just to pass the time during lulls in activity. Right now, Paul was at Comic-Con International 2015 cosplaying as his OC Jedi, a human from Naboo named Palus, a Jedi Sentinel in training. He was there for the big reveal of the new teaser for Star Wars: The Force Awakens. As he neared the center of the convention floor, he looked around to catch sight any other cool costumes around him. Instead, he noticed a small booth heavily laden with wares. The goods covered the tables, hung over all the walls, and even lay stacked on the ground. As Paul moved closer, he could make out individual replica items ranging from Batman's tool belt, to Mjolnir, to... That can't be right... Paul thought. He saw a lightsaber handle, and it looked just liked he pictured Palus' to be. There's no way. He insisted to himself. It has to be the biggest coincidence. So he moved over to the little booth and picked it up from where it lay on the ground, cast aside. "Excuse me sir?" He asked getting the attention of the man on the other side of the table. "How much for this?" The man scoffed before answering. "That trinket? I would only ask five dollars at most for such a trivial item." Paul, wondering how the man could dislike the beautiful lightsaber handle, pulled his wallet out of the hidden pocket with his personal items, including his phone, iPod, and Comic-Con pass. He payed the man, then took off his backpack and opened it up. He placed his old lightsaber replica in there, then put the bag back on and looked to the new purchase. It was exactly as he imagined it. It was a chrome colored double bladed lightsaber handle with many ridges running the two feet of length, but had a smooth, grippable, two handed handle. Too bad he couldn't figure out the blade color. Oh well, he could always use his imagination and say it was the same yellow as Palus' lightsaber. As he began to walk off, he held the lightsaber handle and toyed with it, splitting into its two halves and putting them back again. After he put it back together one time, his thumb eventually found the activation switch. He continued messing around a bit with it, when his thumb activated the switch, and a curious thing happened. The twin-bladed yellow lightsaber hummed to life, sprouting three foot beams of superheated plasma from either end. As Paul stared in shock, he saw a flash of light and he blacked out. <<<==>>> As Paul awoke, he sat up and looked around at his immediate surroundings. He was in a lightly wooded area, and there was a dirt path leading around a bend ahead of him. As he stood, Paul felt like he was being watched, so he looked around through the trees to see if anyone was there. No, that's not quite right. He decided. He wasn't being watched, but he could tell that there was something nearby. A lot of somethings. He momentarily put it out of his mind as he remembered the lightsaber. He quickly turned his eyes to the ground and scanned for the blade. He saw it and reached down to pick it up. Once he did so, he turned it over in his hand, looking at it. He tentatively gripped it and activated the blades, being careful not to point either end at himself. Once again, it hummed to life in front of him. The yellow blades were mesmerizing, causing him to lose focus for a second. He dropped the saber and it turned itself off as it left his hand. Paul shook back to reality when the blades went dark, and he leaned down to pick it up. He decided to put in further study later, and find civilization now. After all, there was a path here, so people couldn't be too far away, right? It suddenly dawned on him that he had been dumped in the middle of nowhere by some guy at Comic-Con after purchasing a functioning lightsaber from him that looked exactly the same as his Jedi OC's did. How crazy would this day get? He remembered his phone and grabbed it out of the pocket to check cell reception, but found that that he had no signal, so he put it back and decided to get moving. Paul shook his head and went to follow the path when he noticed his backpack on the ground, so he picked it up, dusted it off, and put it on before heading out. <<<==>>> An hour later, Paul was a ways down the path, and still had the same feeling that there was a crowd around. However, as he continued, he felt two larger presences nearby, and it unnerved him, as they seemed primal, feral even. He was walking, wondering why he could sense so many things nearby, and what these two new ones might be, when he glanced into the treeline and saw a pair of glowing green eyes. He stopped and looked at whatever it was, when he sensed sudden movement directly behind him. He instinctively turned and held up his hands in a defensive position while clamping his eyes shut, but when nothing happened, he risked a glance. What he saw baffled him in two ways, firstly, what it was, secondly, what it was doing. First was that he thought it was some sort of coyote or something, but made out of wood and held together by a green energy. Second, it was just floating there, squirming and gnashing its jaws at him. Paul dropped his hands to grab his lightsaber, and it fell to the ground. He almost missed the correlation. I was doing that! He thought. I was holding up the thing with my hands, just like a Jedi! He noticed the coyote thing running at him again, and sensed the first one moving behind him. So he drew his lightsaber, split it in two, and held the two blades out, one at either threat. Paul knew he stood little chance against them, as he had no skill with a blade, but they didn't know that, and he used that to his advantage. He maintained an air of confidence, trying to appear unfazed. The coyotes seemed to realize the danger of the weapons, and halted their attacks about five meters away. They began to circle around Paul, lunging occasionally, probing for weaknesses in his defense. After long, tense minutes that felt likes days, the second one jumped at him, and he brought around both sabers, slashing into it by pure luck. The coyote's yelp was cut off as it was split down the middle and Paul was misted with a small amount of sap. He quickly turned back to the first one as it growled and continued to circle him. However, when it got to its fallen brethren, it stopped. It completely turned away from Paul and sniffed the corpse of the dead tree coyote. After a couple seconds of sniffing, it lifted its head and howled a wail of agony into the sky. When the howl died away, the beast turned back to Paul and growled. It lunged at him and he brought his lightsabers around. One of them struck the coyote thing in its left front leg, the other took off half of its muzzle. However, the coyote landed on him and brought them both crashing to the ground. The beast tried to bite down on him with its jaws, but they were no longer there, so it used its undamaged front leg to gash Paul's left arm open. "AAAAHHHHH!!!" He screamed as the claw ripped through his cloak, his tunic, and then his arm. His lightsaber fell from his left hand, deactivating. His right, however, brought up its blade and slashed through the beast as if it were butter. *Thump* The head hit the ground... *THUMP* Followed by the rest of the body. Paul deactivated his lightsaber and pushed to his feet using his good arm. "Stupid dog thing," he said as he kicked the body. He leaned down and grabbed his saber off the ground, taking it to move his left arm too much as he put the halves together and clipped it to his belt. Having done this, he carefully pulled his arm out of the torn sleeve, then ripped the fabric off at the shoulder to use as a tourniquet and slow the blood running from the six inch gash on his arm. The gash was deep enough to be pushing out blood at an alarming rate. Dream or no, he thought after he had put it on. That hurt like a mother. He continued walking down the path and began wondering what was actually going on in his head. He was now convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was dreaming due to the absurdity of such creatures as the ones that attacked him. <<<==>>> About forty five minutes later, Paul began to sense more presences nearby. He had done some thinking as he walked and figured that, as a Jedi, he could sense any living creature, plant, or animal. That sounded about right to him for dream logic. He figured that was why he felt like he was constantly in a crowd. He was surrounded by trees the whole time. These new ones weren't like the wooden beasts had been. These were peaceful and tranquil. Well, for the most part. There was one that was so all over the place that he had no idea what to even think. He could tell, however, that there was something off about all them. I wonder what my dream is preparing for me here... He thought as he drew closer to civilization. Five or so minutes later, he staggered round a bend and caught sight of civilization. Even with the tourniquet, he had lost so much blood that he could hardly see straight anymore. He stopped and stared. There were medieval looking buildings mixed in with somewhat modern buildings and technology. That's not what he was staring at though. No, he was staring at the inhabitants, none of which had noticed him yet, thankfully. They were all small pastel colored horses. Some had horns, some had wings and flew, and some were just regular small pastel colored horses. Well, as "regular" as he thought that could be. He stood flabbergasted at where in his brain this had come from. He had never even heard of this kind of thing before. I must be hallucinating from the blood loss, he thought. He eventually stumbled forward towards the town full of small colorful horses, trying to get their attention. He only achieved his goal by falling on his face loud enough for one of the inhabitants to hear him and look over. As Paul's vision started to fade, he saw the horse run towards him, yelling over its shoulder. Wait, he thought. Why is it yelling over.. it's shoulder? His thoughts became cloudy. Silly horses... you can't... talk. Talking... is for people! And with that final thought, he lost all semblance of consciousness. <<<==>>> Twilight Sparkle had been having a good day. Sure, she had to meet with the mayor and discuss the library's funding, but other than that, it was a fairly nice day. Certainly nicer than the previous day when Pinkie forgot her own birthday. Now that had been an interesting day, to say the least. "So I think that about wraps it up," the mayor said. "Thank you, I--" Twilight was cut off by Rainbow Dash crashing through the doors of the mayor's office. Twilight jumped up out of her chair and turned to Rainbow to ask what was wrong, but was cut off. Rainbow started talking faster than Twilight thought even Pinkie could, and Twilight couldn't understand a word she was saying. She seemed to be spewing random nonsense, and she was frantic. "Rainbow!" Twilight yelled, cutting the pegasus off mid-sentence. "I need you to speak slowly. What happened?" "Okay," she took a deep breath."I was taking a short break from bucking clouds when I heard a pony call for help. So I flew as fast as I could over to the pony and saw this weird thing lying on the ground, and one its forelegs was covered in blood. The pony said that he had heard the thing fall over, and it wasn't moving when I got there, so I came to get you, because you always know what to do when something weird happens in Ponyville." She gasped for air after speaking so much in one breath. "Where?!" Twilight called back as she ran for the door. "The road to Whitetail woods! It's on the outskirts of town!" Rainbow called after her before collapsing in a heap from all the adrenaline wearing off. Twilight, however, was just having it flood her system as she teleported towards where Rainbow had said it was. Twilight got as close as she could with one teleport, then opted to run the rest of the way. I hope I'm not too late! She thought. I'm not going to let an innocent creature die on my watch! She rounded the last bend, where a crowd of ponies had gathered. "Look out," she yelled as she approached. "I'm here to help save it!" The crowd began to part a little bit as she approached. "Move! Get out of my way!" She yelled. More of the crowd moved. "I said, 'Get out of the way!'" She repeated. Finally, the whole circle of ponies opened up to reveal Dr. Scalpel mending the creatures gash on its foreleg. Twilight stopped in her tracks, her help wasn't needed here, somepony else had already taken care of it. She felt odd, not being the hero for once. She had already saved Equestria and Ponyville from a few disasters since her arrival, and she felt... bad... No, it wasn't bad, it was just odd, yes odd. She felt odd because she wasn't the hero this time. She turned to leave, but then she noticed the things on the end if the creatures forelegs. They looked like Minotaur hands, but the face was wrong for a Minotaur, it had little to no muzzle to speak of, and it's ears were on the sides of its head. At least, she thought they were ears, they didn't look much like any ear she knew of. Twilight was interested now. She began to get closer. If it has hands like a Minotaur, then it probably stands like one too, she thought. She kept moving closer. If it stands like one, then that means it's bipedal and most likely-- "Excuse me, miss?" Twilight looked up at Dr. Scalpel. "Yes, Doctor?" She asked. "I'm going to have to ask you to back away while I wait for Nurse Redheart to arrive and help me take this creature to the hospital," he stated very matter-of-factly. "Oh... um, right," Twilight acknowledged sheepishly. "I may have gotten a teensy bit to close there, haha." "Any closer and you would have kissed it miss," the doctor replied curtly. "Ah, Nurse Redheart, yes, if you could help me carry this creature to the hospital. I want to keep it there for observation in case my healing magic didn't work quite right." The voice began to trail off as they left Twilight behind. "It was a very rushed job, this, I hope it isn't hostile when it wakes up, though. Oh, how dreadful that would be..." Twilight stood there, staring at the small pool of blood collected on the ground, as well as the trail the led up to it from the direction the creature had come. She pondered what to do. There were two choices before her. Go back into town, follow the doctor and observe the creature, or go back down the path it came from, learn what happened. Both had pros and cons to them, and neither was the "correct" choice, but she had to choose one of them. After a brief mental debate between two parts of her mind, they decided to follow the road back down where it came from and discover what had happened to it. So, with a quick turn, Twilight started a short journey about an hour's walk down the road. <<<==>>> After a brisk trot for a few minutes, and a walk for the rest of the way, Twilight arrived on a grizzly scene. There were two dismembered Timberwolves on the ground, as well as a large pool of blood from which the trail originated. Twilight, ever the curious scientist, moved closer to the two corpses of the wooden wolves. She approached the one that looked less destroyed and looked to see what had happened. To her surprise, it looked as if whatever had dismembered it had done so with two clean cuts, perfectly cleaving from the front of wolf's right shoulder to the left midsection and from the right midsection to the back of the left hip. There was charring around the edges of the cuts, almost as if the cutting device had been so hot as to instantly begin burning the wood. It almost looks like the laser-vision from that super pony in one of Spike's comic books, she thought. What was it, Supermare? That sounds right. The seems similar to the effects of Supermare's laser-vision, as silly as that sounds. Twilight moved on to the next Timberwolf, which was lying almost in the pool of blood, and had blood on one of its claws. This one, however, had much more cut away from the main body mass than the other. Twilight thought that one seemed to have been hit in either the left foreleg or the muzzle first, as the left leg from elbow down was with the muzzle, far from the rest of the body. The main body of the Timberwolf lay unscathed, unlike the last one, but the head had been removed from the shoulders in the same manner as all of the other attacks. Twilight assumed that this must have been the work of a skilled warrior, taking on and defeating two Timberwolves at the same time, even if they did receive an injury. But what sort of being would be able to commit such violent acts? She thought. How would they be able to live with themselves? I don't understand what that creature is, why it's here, or what its intentions are, but I know that I'm not going to let it hurt any of my friends! She turned and began to walk back home, knowing that she had plenty of time to get back, as the creature had passed out from blood loss, and that it would take a long time to regain consciousness afterwards, especially since there wasn't any blood to give to the creature. She continued down the path when a thought struck. Oh no! What if it's able to regenerate blood cells faster than ponies? She thought. What if it wakes up before I get back? What if it hurts somepony, because I wasn't fast enough to stop it? I have to get to Ponyville! And with these thoughts, Twilight blinked out of existence, trying to teleport as close as she could back to home. <<<==>>> Twilight arrived after only two long-range teleports. She ended up only feet from where the dangerous being had collapsed. Seeing the blood on the ground only spurred her further to reach the hospital and warn the ponies there. It wasn't a long distance to the hospital, and she had come close to the bottom of her mana pool, so she decided to run the rest of the way. Her drive have her stamina she didn't know she even had, and she made it to her destination within minutes. She burst through the door and saw Nurse Tenderheart in the waiting room. "Nurse!" She called frantically, getting Tenderheart's attention. "Where is the creature you brought in? It's very dangerous!" Tenderheart, to her credit, did her best to remain calm in the light of Twilight's frantic accusation. "Yes, ma'am, the creature is right this way, but I can assure you, he will be out for quite some time, a few days at the least," she said as she led him to a room guarded by two of Ponyville's sanctioned guards, Star Glow and Star Shine, twin brothers. "Good afternoon, ma'am," they greeted in unison with their deep baritone voices. Twilight was used to it though, as she often passed the two when she went to Sugarcube Corner every Friday for her "Thank-Celestia-It's-Friday" cake from Pinkie Pie, and they greeted her the same way every time. Tenderheart, however, jumped a little bit when they spoke, causing the guards to almost break their stoic expressions. When she recovered, she walked up and gave them each a soft punch in the shoulder. "I thought I told you two not to do that," she complained. "You know it scares me half to death!" "Sorry, ma'am," Shine said. "Sorry, ma'am," Glow said. "Thank you. Now, Ms. Twilight here says that the creature in there is very dangerous, so I came here to let you know in case it wakes up and tries and to get out," she explained. "Noted, ma'am," they said in unison again. "What did I just say about that?" She asked. "Sorry, ma'am," Glow apologized. "Sorry, ma'am," Shine apologized. Tenderheart hmphed indignantly as she walked away, leaving Twilight alone with the guards. Twilight was about to follow suit, when one of the guards asked a question. "If you don't mind my asking, ma'am, what makes you say he's dangerous?" Glow asked. Twilight looked at them nervously. "Well, didn't you wonder what could have cut it like that?" "'Him', ma'am, he's not an 'it'... But yes, I did wonder, and I can't place what it could have been," Shine answered. "It was a Timberwolf," she answered. "It- I mean he- took on two Timberwolves and came out with only that scratch on his foreleg." The two guards stared in shock. "Two Timberwolves?" Shine asked. "And all he got was a gash? No bites or anything?" Glow asked. Twilight shook her head. "Nope, not a single thing else from what Dr. Scalpel said when he found the creature. But that's not the worst part. "I followed the blood trail from his wound back down the road and found the two Timberwolves in pieces. But the cuts were clean. There wasn't even a ragged edge along the whole swipe. It was like they were cut in half with a laser or something. It was almost like something straight out of a comic book!" The guards stood in silence. "You two should be careful," Twilight said as she left to go home. She decided to make daily trips back until the creature woke up. But for now-- her thoughts were interrupted by her stomach growling. I'm hungry.