A Twirl Here, A Slice There, And— Oh Look, The Head Came Off!
Ace Blade arched her back, leaning forwards, then backwards, right before craning her neck in all three hundred and sixty degrees. Once she was satisfied with her small stretching session, she let out a long sigh.
She looked out at an endless sea of light blue wireframe pony constructs of every race. Some of them were flying around, but most of them were mindlessly trotting past each other. A few of them were gymnastically ducking and sliding through the crowd.
It was those gymnastic ones that you had to watch out for. In almost every training session one of those jerks would sneak up from behind her and shove a knife through her back, or they’d shoot her from a blind spot, or they’d just trap her and gang up on her.
Ace breathed in sharply, then breathed out again, then in, then out. With each breath, she could feel her strength gathering.
She had to remember she couldn't be too careless here: the constructs could never hurt her, but she didn’t want to wreck the place.
The whites and cream colours of the giant marble hall were quite pretty, there was a mirror in the back that made the room look twice as big, and the plants made things a bit nicer on top of that. It would be quite a shame if any of those things were damaged. Also, standing a few paces behind her was a new earth pony friend of hers that came by to watch. If she remembered his name correctly, he should have been Plastic Tactics. It would be a shame if he got damaged too: he had such a pretty pink mane that matched his white fur.
After taking one more deep breath in and letting it out, waking herself up as much as possible, she shook out her orange mane and tightened the straps of her gold and white armour over the white fur of her chin and underside...
Finally, she leapt into the air and dove right towards a nearby pony construct.
It immediately lowered itself into a battle stance, but the fool wasn't paying attention to its neighbours, and nearly tripped a couple of ponies behind it.
Ace was ready to take advantage of that mistake.
She continued swooping down, straight towards the growling, battle ready construct, but banked at the last moment. She was now coming up against the unprepared, stumbling constructs behind it, and she tilted her body to the right so her wing was pointing towards the ground. The blades on her wing passed through a construct like a hot knife through butter, making a funny sound like tearing paper.
She swiftly kicked the broken construct back against the supposedly battle ready one, right before flying up in a loop and coming right back down on top of it. She watched it shove off the rapidly evaporating construct before her left wing tore through the back of its neck.
Ace flew up to admire her work, but quickly realized that might have been a mistake.
Now the entire army of constructs was staring at her. To be honest, it was pretty scary to have a thousand lifeless eyes staring back at you, but Ace didn't take the hardest challenge just to let some stage fright scare her off.
Suddenly, wireframe arrows, spears, tomahawks, and cannons all shot at her. But a frontal attack was easy to dodge: she dove to the floor and skimmed the ground as she flew, her direction parallel to the front of the army. She still had to dodge the occasional cannonball or spear that happened to be pointed in the right direction, but it wasn't nearly as bad as it would have been up above the crowd. Plus, the suckers had some pretty bad aim.
Ace noticed that she was nearing the edge of the room, but decided to try playing dumb. To any outside viewers, it looked like she was about to slam headfirst into the wall. Instead, she flared her wings, twisted her body, and coiled and kicked her legs, rebounding off the wall in less than a second and heading directly into the crowd, right under all their skirts and kilts, if they had any.
As she slid under the first unsuspecting pony construct, she held her left wing up so it sliced right through its torso like a knife through water. Still sliding through the crowd, she made sure to look for the constructs that hadn't readied themselves and cut away those weaklings first. To her left and right as she slid, pony after pony would jump, fall, or trip, and she would hold out a wing. It was exhilarating, obliterating those lifeless objects left and right, and for a while it felt like it would last forever. That was, until friction finally slowed her down.
She picked herself up off the ground.
Now she found herself standing still in the middle of an enraged crowd of constructs, each of them holding up some kind of weapon. What did she ever do to them? Other than kill randomly, of course.
Ace noted the burning fuse on the cannon, the tension in the stances, and the tightness of the bows. She ducked right before the cannon fired, letting it obliterate the Darwin award winning constructs behind her, and then she rolled into the opening it created.
She slid right up against a bow wielding construct that hadn't yet turned towards her and lightly slid her wingtip across the back if its neck. She grabbed the bow from its evaporating hooves and the quiver from its back and twisted, haphazardly firing arrows at the sword and spear wielding constructs while her wings took care of nearby enemies. She didn't want to hit the bow and cannon wielding constructs, not while they were taking care of so much of the crowd for her.
After a good twenty or thirty kills, she leapt into the air to find a less readied part of the army while she dodged some badly aimed arrows. It was good to know how to fight when someone was expecting it, but that was another training session. Right now she was trying to rack up as many KOs as possible.
Ace dove into another section of the crowd, pirouetting upon landing and throwing her wings out, destroying five or six constructs right there. Now she leapt forward, using one of the bodies as shields and stabbing past it with her wing, killing another construct. She used the same strategy to kill yet another construct on her right.
She didn't get to find out how many wireframes she could kill using that same strategy, because some jerk unicorn in the crowd had to make an expanding shield that ignored everything except her.
The shield slammed against her, nearly throwing her against the training room wall. But right before she hit, she pressed the tips of her wings down. She wasn’t going to go down without destroying that annoying unicorn first!
Feeling the anti-magic crystals slicing through the shield like a hot knife through butter, Ace quickly twirled in a circle, cutting a out a hole. She pressed her barrel against the circle, breaking through it like a cat burglar.
She swooped down behind the unicorn construct jerk, trying to stay out of its line of sight. However, it already felt her break through its shield, and had readied another.
Ace flared her wings, pushing herself back before the next shield came. When it drew close, she reached down and carved another circle with her right wing. She was lucky enough that the circle grew with the expansion to allow her through.
Once she passed the construct’s barrier, she twirled and slapped its horn with her wing, cutting it off. Then she continued her twirl to cut off its neck. She didn't stop there either: a few other constructs had huddled against the unicorn construct, so she sliced through all of them diagonally as she twirled in a small circle right above the ground.
Somewhere in the crowd, while Ace was dispatching a few of the lesser constructs, several more unicorn types took note of her trouble with shields. While the shields didn’t stop her or defeat her, they did slow her down tremendously, and that could be useful.
Another annoying shield crashed against Ace, and this time she was much closer to the wall. Now though, she was prepared: it didn't take her even half the time to carve into the shield and push through. She didn't expect yet another shield to come immediately afterwards, but she was able to slice through it too. The shields after that were easy to predict, and she was starting to get a little less excited.
She was just about to slice through the second unicorn construct jerk that was making the shields when she noticed another shield coming from the opposite direction. As it slammed against her, she used the extra momentum to help her cut the nearby unicorn’s head off. This wasn’t going to be much fun if they just made shields one after another.
Another shield exploded out from the crowd before Ace had time to deal with the first, and she was lifted up into the air as the two shields hit her from exact opposite directions. By now though, getting through them just took a single practised flick of her wing.
But when the third wave of shields rammed against her, she had to rapidly move her left wing back and forth to cut through them in time, while her right wing dealt with the shields in front of her. Dealing with one shield was hard, but three? now things were starting to get interesting again. She could feel herself falling back into the zone.
In fact, she must have been grinning like a maniac, because she felt like a god!
She beat her wings in the spaces between the shields, throwing herself towards the nearest unicorn whenever she wasn’t being pushed back.
When the nearest unicorn construct saw her approaching, it tried increasing the frequency of its shields, but it wasn't enough to stop Ace. In fact, It seemed like she was only gaining speed, and it wasn't long before she had reached the unicorn and sliced through its face while she sported a vicious grin on hers.
Now that one of the unicorns was taken care of, she could practically feel her wings slicing through the other two. Progress was much faster now that she didn't have to deal with three of those annoying shields, but she still kept on the lookout for any new ones.
She felt like she was in a trance as she chuckled and cut towards the next closest unicorn, slicing the shield to her left, then the one in front of her, then beating her wings, then repeating. She couldn’t tell if time was going faster or slower as she homed in on the now retreating unicorn.
When she finally got close, she twisted around and threw her wing down, cutting the cowering unicorn and the pony constructs it hid under in half. In that same motion, she turned towards the next shield maker.
Ace blasted forward with one powerful beat of her wings, then sliced through shield after shield with quick, practiced spins. Finally, with one last twirl of her body, the last unicorn’s head lay beneath her.
She allowed herself a moment to gather her breath after taking out that last construct. Senselessly murdering fighting mannequins was exhausting.
Of course, that breather was taken while she spun around and let her wings swim through the nearby constructs’ bodies.
In that moment, she briefly wondered why she didn't have to deal with a thousand projectiles while the shields were up. Perhaps the shields didn't allow projectiles through either. It made sense.
But this wasn't the time for thinking.
She glanced around and noticed a few constructs ducking and sliding through the now sparse crowd, heading straight towards her. Oh boy, It looked like the advanced constructs were up next!
Ace lowered her body to the ground, using the nearby evaporating constructs as body shields.
One of the special earth pony constructs picked up a body touching Ace’s left side and threw it upwards before shoving a bladed hoof underneath.
Ace flew up, and was almost caught by the flung construct, but it evaporated in time. She twirled downward and sliced through the first special construct while it tried to pick itself up. It must’ve been out of shape.
Another construct killed and carried one of its neighbours, leapt off of someone in the pile of slaughtered pony constructs, and swung the fresh body against Ace.
Ace dodged the body with a back flap of her wings, and then she dodged the blade that came right after it. The sheer viciousness of that attack was inspiring, but the construct needed to work on its form: now that its back was facing her, she spun and sliced right through it.
She could see another construct glancing at various objects in its surroundings, most of which were downed constructs and their various weapons. It was probably plotting some dumb trap, so she grabbed and threw the one she just killed right at it.
While Ace’s wireframe victim fell, the living construct tried to move around to make up for the blind spot, but Ace kept moving behind the body, staying out of sight. Since moving wasn't working, the special construct spun in a circle, throwing its bladed hooves outwards.
Ace just stomped on the evaporating construct she threw when it hit the fool on the ground, crushing both. Then she made sure to shove a blade through for good measure, and also because it felt good.
In that instant, like day turning into night, Ace Blade was cast into darkness.
She crouched and looked up instinctively. She was pleased to see a large dome of wireframe pegasi hovering above her.
Without hesitation, Ace grabbed the recently downed construct by the hooves and swung. Some of the pegasi broke formation as they dodged the body, and that was all that Ace needed: she flew up from right behind the body and twirled past a few unsuspecting pegasi, cutting them to ribbons.
Now outside of the sphere, she banked and trailed her wing along the bodies, cutting through pegasi after pegasi. She occasionally had to twirl in midair or shift positions as the constructs continued to break from the formation. Why couldn’t they just stay in neat little circles for her?
Actually, it was almost starting to get boring again as she twirled, spiraled, and sliced through the dome of panicking pegasi. There was a problem when she destroyed only the top half of the dome with her spiral, and the other pegasi were far enough away to guard themselves. But instead of creating a better formation, they just huddled into a ball!
Begrudgingly accepting the free points, Ace swooped down and cut through a line of bodies in the middle of the group. At that point, there were only twelve pegasi left, and they were still hesitating, heck some of them looked like they weren’t even going to try attacking!
Ace blasted into the group to her right and destroyed six constructs with a quick spin. She lightly touched the floor before she pushed off and ferociously beat her wings toward the next group. She cut them apart with a few quick spins as well; it was easy when their backs were turned.
Okay, forget almost boring, this was definitely getting a little too easy.
Ace Blade looked around. Surrounding her was now a small dead army, all rapidly evaporating. Soon the room would be clean, and she would have to beg her superiors for some better training.
But then, a loud stomp rang out from behind her.
Ace’s head jerked around.
She backed up in surprise at what she saw. Instead of the normal blue pony constructs, she was facing a bright red alicorn construct.
Ace sported a lopsided grin. This would be a nice change of pace.
The alicorn grinned back. Most would have been terrified by the equally psychotic grin, but Ace might have been getting a little aroused. She quickly shook her head to snap out of it.
The alicorn pointed its horn at her and shot out a beam of pure magic.
Ace sidestepped the beam and dove at the alicorn construct.
The alicorn shot again, once again missing.
When Ace was close, the alicorn leapt into the air and charged its horn again, this time showering beams in every direction.
Ace danced around the pretty columns of death, twisting her way towards the end boss. Soon, she would be close enough to slice with her wing, and she would have defeated a mighty alicorn!
Sensing the pegasi's relentless approach, the alicorn switched spells. Instead of beams, it shot out shields in rapid succession. The previous unicorns couldn't make the shields quickly enough to do anything more than slow down Ace, but the alicorn could make up for that by flying towards her at the same time.
When Ace tried to cut through the shields and move forward to kill the end boss that decided to become yet another annoying shield maker, she found that there wasn't enough room in between the spheres for her body. Despite all her effort as she sliced through shield after shield, she quickly found herself pressed up against a wall.
The pressure was increasing by the second. Any more and the training would end. Ace was desperate and losing hope, but she kept slicing through the shields absent mindedly, her previous bloodlust still guiding some of her actions.
She started slouching as she spun, reluctantly accepting defeat, but she perked up after a moment when she realized that, for some reason, she still hadn’t lost.
It seemed that the force of her body against the wall was more powerful than any force she could make in the air. That would be useful.
So, like a master of hip hop dancing, she pressed her front hooves against the wall and threw her body into an even faster spin. She kept her wings angled against the shields and continued cutting. As she picked up speed, she stood up fully on the wall.
The alicorn construct flared its wings, stopping right before it reached the pegasi that somehow managed to cut through all of its shields. It hadn't anticipated Ace surviving that, but it knew hesitating was bad. It charged its horn, readying another beam.
Ace didn't hesitate either: once the last shield crashed against the wall around her, she pushed off of the wall and spun, wings flared and angled correctly. She didn't need to see the alicorn; she could triangulate it by seeing where the shields had crashed. It was obvious that it was right behind her.
Ace felt extreme satisfaction when her wings chopped through the alicorn again and again, reducing it to foot-long slices of construct.
She stopped the spin and slowly descended to the ground, panting. She looked around for any more constructs, but all she saw was magical evaporation.
After a few seconds, the room was completely clean, save for the sweaty pegasi in the center.
Ace Blade let out a satisfied, hot breath. She wanted to laugh, or giggle, or hop around giddily; this training was always so much fun!
She turned and looked at her friend. Plastic Tactics, wasn't it? "So," she yelled out, smiling, "How'd I do?" She flew over to the pony.
"Hmm," Plastic said, his muzzle buried in a notebook. Why he would ever want to look at that notebook instead of watching her fly through the air the whole time was something Ace had trouble understanding. "You could use a bit more training against those shields,” he continued. ”If it's a wall behind you, you're fine, but they could force you into a trap."
"Hmm." Ace frowned. She wasn't sure if it was possible to defeat those alicorn shields.
"Wait"—Plastic looked up—"if you can only beat the shields when you're against a wall, then it's because you don't have enough force. What about chemical or magical propulsion?"
Ace tilted her head. She never heard about 'chemical or magical propulsion' before. "Did you just make those up?"
"No." Plastic deadpanned. “How do you think flying chariots stay up?” He raised an eyebrow, asking the question like it was obvious. Jerk.
“Well excuse me for not knowing something.” Ace pouted.
“Huh?” Plastic tilted his head. “Oh, no no no, I didn’t mean to offend!” He shook his head rapidly, obviously flustered. “Magical propulsion is part of an enchantment applied to chariots meant for transporting—”
Ace sat down. This could be a long lecture, most of which she might not understand, but it was fun to hear people talk excitedly about things.
"So," Luna said smugly from behind the false mirror, taking her gaze away from the battle. "What do you think of our improvements to the training program?"
Celestia's gaze was still caught by the empty battlefield, fear and awe etched onto her face.
"Hey, 'Tia!" Luna tapped her hoof.
"Wha?" Celestia turned.
"So, what did you think?" Luna repeated.
"U— Uh," Celestia stuttered, "it's... uh," Her mouth hung open as she glanced back to the battlefield.
Luna smirked. "I take it you're impressed."
Celestia nodded meekly.
"I still need to make some more rooms for team training." Luna turned back towards the battlefield, still smirking. "You can't have two guards practising in the same place like that."
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*slow clap* well done, very well done
5764508
Thanks!
Oh, to everyone who read it: there should be two or three spots where Ace left herself open. Do you think you can find them?
yes Luna bring back the art of combat
You named your character "Ace Blade"?
5767429
I was also thinking of Windshear, but Ace Blade was more in your face and matched her personality better. I know 'Blade' may not seem very pony-like because it represents a weapon, but I'm not gonna give a pony who's practising slaughtering an army a pacifistic name. Plus, this is Equestria, where ponies' names can sometimes match their professions. (Shining Armour?)
What would you have named her?
Honestly kind of mehish.
The story seems to be 'pony with amazing super magical weapons, equipment, and training, vs harmless constructs'. It's not battlefield or bodyguard training.
Honestly against any actual trained opponents it seems like she'd suffer pretty drastically. Sure, she can fight vs obvious, unarmoured, untrained, and unaware opponents, but how often are bodyguards in that position?
It does highlight, however, one of the problems with the common idea about ponies and pony magic. Pony magic is defensive and utility, not offensive. The use of shields, while ultimately repetitive, is their main combat use. I am mildly disappointed with their uselessness. It seems to be that these constructs cannot hurt, nor even effect anyone. If they did have useful weapons or equipment, then Ace Blade would not have succeeded.
5769763
You make a lot of assumptions. That doesn't mean you don't have some good points though.
First off, this story was initially only meant to be one long fight scene, as I wanted to perfect writing those.
Second, the constructs may be armored, but her wing blades may be powerful enough to cut through anyway. This is more plausible when you consider she was supposed to be one of the elite of the guard (Though I suppose it's more of a military in this case). Still, I could've added something about her wing blades being able to cut through almost any armour.
Also, the constructs are trained. They have offensive and defensive spells, they have weapons that would defeat, but not kill Ace, and they used strategy and teamwork in combat. Still, they're more like randomly leveled opponents in a video game: they may learn and fight together, but it can be hard or impossible to make an AI work as well as anything with a brain. I did try to indicate their limitations in their thoughts, but I still might have made them too normal. I don't understand why you would think all of her enemies were untrained though, especially when I groups of ponies fighting and ganging up in her with weapons and offensive spells, and I really don't understand how you came to the conclusion that she'd suffer if she went up against actual trained opponents. Sure, they might be stronger or faster, but she doesn't only practice this specific method of training, (I stated this in the story,) and here's a lot more to fighting than strength and speed. It'd be like saying Jackie Chan would be bad at fighting one on one because he was able to fight a whole building of people.
And there are many times where the constructs are aware of her, and she purposefully gets out of their sight. Why would you think it would be a good idea to keep your enemy aware of you?
I did, however, state in the beginning that the constructs weren't able to hurt anything. It's obvious this is a training exercise, so I don't know why you would think they should be able to hurt anything. Having punching bags that could kill the soldiers you're trying to train would just leave you with a dead army.
Like I said, you do have some good points. However, I think you're expecting some sort of epic amine battle where Ace could die during a training exercise. (She did almost lose two or three times by the way.) Why would you expect that?
5769957
To reply, may I address your individual points?
That it is a fight scene does not appear to me to be relevant, as I feel it was obvious. I was not criticising that, to be clear. My real problem was with the 'level' of opponents, and the difficulty that they posed to fighting with.
The fact that they had armour is the thing, though. Armour that she can just cut through with her set equipment doesn't matter to the story, because it's just window-dressing. The Stormtroopers in Star Wars don't have real armour, they have a uniform. The droidekas do have armour (in the sense that they are protected).
Also, real armour is pretty sturdy. You can't actually cut through maille or plate harnesses. Because it's actually made of steel. This actually brings me on to the other point about armour. You say she's been given lightened armour, which, fair enough, magic. Real armour, though, didn't actually weigh you down. Especially plate harness.
The constructs don't actually pose a real difficulty to Ace. This is the problem. She has fancy equipment that means that they are almost literally completely defenceless against her.
Why do I think they are untrained? They fire ranged weapons into a melee. They gang up against her (usually not a real thing outside criminals). They go to her. And they die in droves. If they were an actual threat (which, let's be clear, they aren't) she wouldn't be able to deal with thirty of them in a fight. Maybe five or six, if she was lucky. Even if they aren't that good. Fighting tires you out, and if you make a wrong move, you don't get a second chance.
I don't think it would be, but she isn't actually unaware of them, which is the most likely scenario in an actual fight.
I did, however, state in the beginning that the constructs weren't able to hurt anything. It's obvious this is a training exercise, so I don't know why you would think they should be able to hurt anything. Having punching bags that could kill the soldiers you're trying to train would just leave you with a dead army.
I didn't say you should have punching bags that kill people. But look at almost every actual army in history. You start with the punching bags, so you know how to stab with your sword. But then you practice with other soldiers. Other soldiers who don't react the way you necessarily want them to.
I'm not expecting her to die. I'm not expecting an epic anime battle, which is what I was, however, given. I'm expecting a difficult fight that she won not through being better equipped, or able to destroy their every defence, but by cunning tactics that she has to work out on the ground.
I didn't really get that.
5770073
Okay, I'll take that first criticism. The Star Wars example after that doesn't really help your point, as I'd much rather compare my fight scene to real life than movie fight scenes.
Many things can cut through maille or plate harnesses. Any tools used to cut metal would work, and there are some, like plasma cutters or water jets, that might be able to cut through just as quickly as Ace's wingblades would. If they were further designed to cut through things as weapons and not as building tools, then no armour would block against them. There is a similar situation with guns: even though a bullet proof vest can block a handgun at close range, it cannot block sustained fire from an AK-47 for more than a few seconds. There are also many weapons more powerful than AK-47s, such as armour piercing hand gun bullets. They're just expensive.
Note that Ace didn't get hit once. There were a few times she was left open, and she failed some of the last practices, but here she survived by dodging everything.
Um, yes it did? Plate armour can weight up to 60 lbs, way more than the 5-30 lbs some runners use for training, and way more than enough to weigh down something meant to fly.
She almost lost two or three times. Plus, she had to dodge every attack, so it's not as if she walked right through them. Also, I stated that some of the special Earth Pony Construct had bladed hooves, which you can assume are the same as her bladed wings. The special pegasi didn't get to use bladed wings, whether they had them or not, because their formation broke and then they tried to run away.
Are you serious? Larger armies fight smaller armies all the time. If there's an advantage in numbers, even if its versus one, there's no reason not to use it.
I do see the point about not firing into the crowd though. Then again, that could be another point where I could have Ace be amazed about how stupid the AI can be when they don't stop firing into the crowd.
Eh, fighting that many opponents isn't unheard of in kung-fu movies, and those are closer to real fights than star wars. There are also times people make mistakes, but they aren't taken advantage of.
Sometimes. There are times where your opponent isn't aware of you, but you're aware of them. For example, she could be in a gang's headquarters, trying to blend in at first.
Did you know video games are now being used in the military?
There are scenarios that are way too dangerous or expensive to practice in real life. If anyone tried to set up this fight scene in real life, with all the weapons, I can guarantee you someone would get hurt.
Besides, there are AI in many fighting/war games, like Super Smash Bros., Halo, or Starcraft, and people can use those to get good at playing, even if multiplayer can be harder.
I could continue to point out things, but I feel that won't really be satisfying, as you probably already have your own idea about how a good fight scene would go.
Instead, how would you change this so it was better?
Finished reviewing story for the Goodfic Bin. Since the story doesn't really make itself memorable, I've rejected it from submissions folders.
Details are you-know-where.
5770222
Well to jump in here, there's nothing at stake in this story. If Ace had fallen flat on her face and gotten "killed" in the opening seconds of the simulation, all that she would've suffered is some embarrassment in front of a friend. A friend your readers know nothing about or about his relationship to Ace and thus can't even fully care if she does get embarrassed. What do we care?
Your description says that she trains every day. For hours. Which means this fight is the culmination of her training. But, again, we don't see any of that build up. We can't fully appreciate her amazing fighting prowess because we've never seen anyone in this entire story universe actually be in a fight. Not even her. To even fully appreciate where she is now as far as simulated fights go, we'd have to have see where she used to be.
Lastly, you had to drag the Princesses in. They exist in this story solely to lend their legitimacy to this advertisement for Ace. Ace is so amazing that even Celestia is scared of her! Celestia wasn't scared of Discord or Sombra or Chrysalis but she's stammering and stuttering in open-mouthed awe at the glory that is Ace Blade. Really? C'mon!
To improve it, I'd put the Princesses right there watching and judging her. This is her big chance to maybe get promoted to the next level up of the Royal Guards. And her boyfriend can be there too, I guess. She's got something to prove and there's something tangible at stake, something that she wants and been training hard for. So she goes into the simulator to demonstrate her skills. While she's doing so, she could reflect back on how far she's come, note the various things that have now become second nature that seemed impossible earlier in her training, and try to guess whether or not she's impressing the stone-faced demigoddesses watching her every move. One lengthy fight scene later, the Princess Duo withhold her score for a melodramatically appropriate length of time before revealing...that she passed! Or didn't pass! Or that there was a plot twist the whole time! In any case, something actually happened to a character that we (hopefully) care about and thus we're emotionally invested in the story and maybe want to see her again in a sequel.
5923491
Well, I agree that your first two paragraphs would've improved it. I suppose I was more focused on making a fight scene than a story.
I disagree with your third paragraph though. Chrysalis and Sombra weren't Celestia's subordinants. Comparing her reactions to them and her reactions to Ace is like comparing someone's reactions when giving them a gun and when pointing a gun at their face. Plus, if she wasn't behind a false mirror with her sister, she would have likely reacted differently.
Your last paragraph seems close to what I was thinking of doing for a continuation of this, but it wouldn't have been a one shot.
If I get enough free time again to really practice martial arts, drums, or anything that requires practiced movement, then I'll probably completely remake this story with all the suggestions I've received. And it won't be a one-shot. For now though, I'll be working on a MLP story involving mathematical proofs. That way, I can take my love of writing, my fondness for ponies, and my infatuation with math, and combine them into something awesome.
The earth pony kept his head? That was not what i expected!