Training
Once Applejack started talking more clearly, her coordination proved good enough to begin weapons training. Since Dante knew she'd be tagging along whether she could fight or not - the few small jobs he'd been on, she'd insisted on being strapped to his back while she sniped with Artemis, if nothing else - he decided to begin training her right away. Besides, it had been three years since he'd taken her in. He was pretty certain she was ready.
However, since she was so small, he didn't want her training with magical weapons. For one thing, the last time she tried to play Nevan, the discordant sounds of her banging on the strings had caused the bats summoned to turn themselves inside out, so he didn't want to see what would happen if she tried to wield Cerberus, not to mention what would happen with Beowulf actively fighting her. For another thing, her magical reserves weren't very large, so he didn't want to risk her burning herself out during training.
Towards that end, he had crafted non-magical copies of Cerberus, Beowulf, and Nevan's scythe form for her to train on, as well as getting a pair of electric guitars to teach her to play on. And today was the first day of training.
"Alright," Dante said, kneeling in front of Applejack. "What do you want to start training with?"
"Puppy!" Applejack said happily, pointing at the nunchucks.
Smiling, Dante handed her the ordinary metal nunchucks while he picked up Cerberus. "Alright. I'm going to show you a few movements, and you try to mimic them." When Applejack nodded, he spun Cerberus around a few times, keeping the movements simple.
Applejack attempted to mimic his movements, and promptly smacked herself in the head, knocking her hat off. As she fell on her back, she giggled. "Oops!"
Dante helped her back to her hooves. "Let's try that again," Dante suggested, "only without hitting yourself this time."
Applejack made the attempt, only to promptly smack Dante in the nuts.
"Why do you like that target so much?" Dante asked, clutching at himself.
"Can't reach no higher!" Applejack complained, reaching as high as she could. Without weapon assistance, she barely reached Dante's knees.
"Fair enough," Dante admitted, sitting back to think.
Applejack glanced down at the nunchucks in front of her, her tail waving back and forth.
"Could you pass me an apple?" Dante asked. "I think a snack will help me think."
Applejack reached into the basket beside her, pulled out an apple, rolled it down her back, and launched it into his hand with a flick of her tail.
As Dante caught it, an idea occurred to him. "You're pretty good with your tail," he pointed out.
Applejack shrugged. "I like spinning it," she said, waving her tail around.
Stepping over, Dante took the ring of the metal nunchucks and slipped it under the band holding her tail tied the way she liked it. "Try it now," he suggested.
Blinking, Applejack hunkered down as she lifted her tail and began twirling it. The nunchucks spun, spinning around the ring in response to her movements. She grinned widely as she shifted her body weight, making the nunchucks change their angle of spin and shift around her. Reaching back, she caught one prong attempting to go into one of the strikes she'd seen Dante do, but a second prong struck her in the head, knocking over.
Dante rubbed her head gently. "Pretty good," Dante said reassuringly. "A good start as far as how to wield it. When your magic is strong enough, Cerberus will respond to your magic to shift arrangement to your fighting style. That should work quite well."
Applejack grinned widely. "Ah did good?" she asked happily.
Dante chuckled, finding her inexplicable accent adorable. "You did good. So what should we train with next?"
Smiling, Applejack pointed to the scythe. "Slashy!"
Chuckling, Dante picked up the full sized scythe and the pony sized one. "Like with Cerberus, once your magic is strong enough, Nevan can shift herself around in weapon form in response to your magical impulse, so lets focus on just teaching you scythe combat."
They went through a few basic stances and passes, just enough for Applejack's muscles to get used to the movements. Once she was able to do each one, they went through it a few more times.
"Alright," Dante said at last. "Now let's see how you do with Beowulf." He handed her the duplicates while pulling on his own copies.
Before he'd even gotten his on, Applejack was already throwing punches with her forelegs and kicks with her hind legs, striking the wooden dummy he'd set up as a target.
Dante smiled. "Seems Virgil was right about those being well suited to you," he muttered. He sat back to watch her handling herself. She certainly seemed to know how to throw punches and kicks. Eventually, she started to breathe heavily. "Okay, that's enough for today!" he called out to her.
She looked up at him with a huge grin. She was plainly enjoying herself, but the way her coat was matted with sweat showed she was plainly exhausted.
"First a bath," Dante said, scooping her up and setting the weaponry aside, "then a light snack. Then I'll start teaching you to play guitar."
Bathing Applejack was always a treat and a half. She didn't fuss about bathing, and Dante was careful enough not to get soap in her eyes. It was after the washing was done that made it fun, though, as Applejack would splash Dante as best she could the instant the soap was washed off her, which then quickly devolved into a splash fight.
"I think my biggest regret is that she'll have grown out of this before I get a chance to manifest and join in," Nevan murmured as she watched Dante and Applejack splash each other, laughing the whole while.
"I want to splash fight!" Agni pouted.
"Me too!" Rudra agreed.
"Ball..." Cerberus whimpered.
After drying her off, Dante and Applejack each had an apple before Dante pulled out the electric guitars. "Alright. Let's see what we can do about teaching you to play-" He paused, seeing what she was doing. "Why are you putting Beowulf on?"
Smiling, Applejack showed Dante the claws at the end of the foreleg gauntlets, which she could manipulate with minimal magic. "Gots ta have picks!" she pointed out.
Chuckling, Dante rested his guitar in his lap. "Alright. Watch how I hold the strings."
They spent the rest of the evening till dinner doing their best to make sweet music together.
Stats
Page generated in 0.028 seconds
Total duration
1,061 users online
1,871,381 hits today, 2,004,447 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
Key word being their best.
Great to see Dantes softer, caring side here. Keep up the good work. While it's hard to wait AJs next mission, these chapters are so heart warming that I just hope for more and more of them.
I'm starting to fear that this will soon end...
5811126 Nah, they still have Devil May Cry, DMC4, and DMC 2 to get through. In that order.
5811126 i will worry about that when aj reach an age similar to the show
This was such an adorable chapter
Always nice with some character-building downtime.
"Okay... so this alternate version of Applejack is part demon, Alternate Rarity is a superhero and got Nightmare Moon like powers, and Alternate Rainbow Dash has a cool magical armor, Why do we even need us?" Applebloom asked
"Isn't obvious? We are the only ones who got a giant robot!" Scootaloo said and made Megas Strike a cool pose.
"I still can't believe Scootaloo got her cutie mark for making Megas dance Ballet when we meet That demon named Satanus or something."
"Hey, you have any idea how hard was to do that?" Scootaloo protested, she was a bit ashamed her talent seemed to be dancing, but then, she was honest about being hard to make Megas dance. It had been harder than the highest difficulty on Dance Pony Chanel 5 Revolution!
"Sorry, but now I am the only pony of the three of us who has no cutie mark."
"At least your magic got quite strong with all the practicer of powering up Megas." Applebloom said. "The last time you used telekinesis you ended lifting a whole house."
"True, and now we are in a cool crossover event with other heroic ponies to save the multiverse!"
And thus Applejack played the song of her people.
*insert generic video of appuls here*
i am convinced applejack was playing this song
nothing you say will convince me otherwise
FOR THE LOVE OF THE GODS MAN CHANGE THE LAST LINE!!!!!
5817157
What's wrong with the last line?
5817282 "making sweet music together" is not something you do with your daughter. And it's definantly not something to do with a child. its slang for sex dude.
5817342
Since when? I was taking it out of "All Dogs Go To Heaven", where it's literally part of a song about singing.
5817349 I've been hearing it since I was 4 and I was born in 1993.
5817363
I was born in 1987 and never heard it used that way.
Simply put, it may well be such a phrase, but it's not only slang.
5817368 that's a fair point. I'll just avoid that sentence and pretend it does not exist. Other than the unintentional mental scarring I love the story.
*sends "Guitar Hero" in the mail anonymously*
Careful with that. I know you didn't mean anything by it, but Cauchemar had a point when he said it can be used as slang for sex.
But it was very cute, and it was funny when Nevan and Company got all butt-hurt when they couldn't get in on the fun.
Carry on!
5811403
Megas?
Pfft!
They clearly should pilot Getter Robo. Or Shin Getter Robo.
fc04.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2012/145/e/7/getter_one_by_zaiyaki-d510r4d.jpg
fc05.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2012/146/7/7/getter_two_by_zaiyaki-d514spa.jpg
fc09.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2012/147/4/7/getter_three_by_zaiyaki-d51ahs4.jpg
To those who are unaware, this us all in a way one mech. Getter Robo is the FIRST combining mecha series, it pioneered the concept. It is anime series where combining can be interrupted, no transformation as free action. Each pilot controls one jet, which getter it is depends on which jet is in main control.
Best summary: 3 jets, 3 forms, 3 captains
5834456 i looked up getter robo after seeing this comment...and i wasnt all that impressed with it, sure the concept was solid, but the robots created just looked derpy and the combination sequence wasnt even that interesting...
5818137 Wrong mailbox... whoever this is from. I think I have enough GH.
7361241 Hold on... *loads the GH into a cannon, enchants it to return to sender, fires it back* Better.
7373097 *gets hit in face with GH*
Balls...
Giggity.
7904975 [youtube=https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ODKY7Y1ZeDM] giggedy giggedy goo
Yeah that explains alot.
8648239
Also
5811403
Are these the ',Three More Things' Crusaders?
Ya know... in my dirty, dirty mind...
I imagine her voice at this age sounds like Apple Bloom.
8968897
No the robot is similar but is not part of the pwnyverse three more things is though.
9052671
No just no.
7904975
NO GIGGITY!
10342026
🎶Ya gotta back it up now🎶.😅
I am kind of thinking of
https://m.