The Swifting Story

by SwiftyKaz

Chapter 3: The Rivalry Part 1

The morning came that day with the sun starting to rise over the horizon and in the palace, a certain black statllion was starting to wake up due to the fact he set the alarm clock to an appropiate time. He leaned across to check the time on the clock. 5.30am.
'Good' he thought 'enough time for me to get a shower and get ready for the training session'. Swifty got out of bed, groggy as hell, went over to get a cup of coffee. He got a cup, poured some coffee mix into the cup and flicked the switch to boil the kettle. Whilst Swifty was waiting for the kettle, he thought back to the bag the maid gave him last night. He went over to the bag to see what was inside the bag, almost tripping up against the stool. Just as he was about to open the bag, the kettle was ready and made a beeping noise, which startled Swifty. 'Sweet Celestia! Thats one fast kettle'.
He poured the water into the cup, poured some milk in, gave it a spin and left it to cool down a bit. He then went to take a shower, hanging the towel on the rack outside the shower. What seemed a few minutes later, he got out of the shower, dried himself with the towel and went to check the time. It was 5:50am. 'Oh crap!' he just realised that it was 10 minutes to get to the training room from his room. He got himself ready, drank a bit of his coffee and went to the training room, locking the door behind him. 'I'll have a look at the bag later, right now I need to get there before I get in trouble!' he thought whilst running to the training room.

It was 6:00, Swifty got to the training room in the nick of time, where the first pony he saw in there was Hard Punch, his newly-made friend from last night's session. Hard Punch saw Swifty and ran up to him, giving him a death-grip-of-a-hug. "Hello..to you too...mate" Swifty choked out. Hard Punch then let go of Swifty and they both trotted to join the rest of the group. Once everyone was ready, the captain began to speak to the group "Welcome fellow ponies, to your first session of the year. Now, before we start, a year of training and hard-work will not be easy, as some fellow students found out the hard way." Many of the students gulped, but none of the less, the captain carried on "But when you put your mind into it, it will flow like the wind in the sky. There are other stuff I have to tell you first..."

The captain told the group then about the timetable of our sessions, the tournaments we would have, any breaks we would have (so long as you didnt leave Canterlot for the year) and other stuff that Swifty didn't hear as his mind was onto the stallion across the room, who was giving him a eagles stare, but he shrugged it off and continued to listen to the captain. "As the first part of the session, we will be giving you a physical workout to improve your physique..."

The rest of the session went on quite well, tiring and painful but quite well. The time was somewhere in the dusk and the day went as followed: they had their warmup session which lasted an hour. The morning session was about the students showing others their own skill (which Swifty stole the show) and then having the students pairing up with each other to follow the techniques shown (which Swifty paired himself up with Hard Punch). The afternoon session was the grappling session, that session left many students tired the most as each student tried to outperform each other (which pleased the captain). Each student looked like they would pass out but they all kept their fighting spirits high and would keep going. Fortunate for them, the captain looked at the students and spoke to them
"You have done well my students, the amount of effort and determination from you should be kept throughout each session."
The students were pleased of the captains words, however the captain carried on "Fortunately for you, you still have one
more session for today and this session will be at the end of each day. This session will truly test your combat skills and your endurance. This is the Sparring session."

The students faces were met with horrified faces when the captain announced the word Sparring. The sparring session consisted of 1 on 1 fights in the ring. The rules were semi-contact, no knockouts and no shots below the waist.
1 round each for 5 mins for each student and the session would last an hour. (If you work out the maths, thats 12 fights per student) Each student got randomly picked against another randomly picked student and each student had some protective gear.
Sometime into the session, when Swifty's name got picked, he looked determined to fight. His opponent at the time was the last student to be picked, which was the stallion that looked at him earlier on. The stallion was white and had black hair and matching tail. His cutie mark was of the famous Yin/Yang symbol, except the white side was black out so it almost looked like a black circle. The captain announced the name of the student, Yang.

The two trotted into the ring and gave eachother the bow before the match started. Yang looked at Swifty
with the face of seriousness, which Swifty noticed and just sighed to himself. The bell rang and the match had started.

3 minutes into the match, the two were evenly matched, both traded well placed shots with perfectly displayed techniques and both were using thoughtful tactics. Swiftys tactic was Block & Counter, he would wait until their opponent striked, block the shot and counter back with an effective hit to the exposed area. Yangs tactic varied, becuase he depended on the opponent tactics and use one that was effective against it. Swifty was enjoying himself, as he was in a mock fight with another fellow student but at all times, controlling his anger so that noone would be seriously injured.

Yang on the other hand was the opposite, he was devistated that someone was able to be equally skilled as him. He would not have at it no longer and suddenly exploded at Swifty, charging at him, taking him down to the ground and throwing strikes at the black stallion.

Swifty was stunned at this whilst trying to defend himself from the attacking student. Swifty was freaked out a little as he thought back to the fight he had against the ponies that almost cut his brother up. Then at that point, hell was unleashed as Swiftys anger took over his body and he fought back with punches of his own and managed to get Yang of him. But it didnt end there as Yang was on the floor, trying to fight back but Swifty kept attacking the white stallion which at that point caused Yang to bleed when Swifty landed a hard punch to his nose.

The captain and the guards saw what was happening when Swifty attacked back and galloped into the rig to break up the fight. The students had that face of shock when they saw blood, even Hard Punch shivered at that point. The captain and the guards managed to separate the two from each other, both were struggling to get free but Swifty broke free and continued to attack the white stallion but more gaurds came by and successfully seperated the two again.

Swifty was dragged out of the training room but not before Yang shouted agressively to Swifty "This will not be the end of this, I guarentee it" whilst making the motion of cutting his thorat. Swifty was more angry at Yang, but could not do anything about it, for now at least.

When they made it to Swiftys room, they unlocked the door and dropped Swifty on the bed. The guards then proceeded to return to the training room whilst the captain remained in the room. He looked at Swifty hard for a few seconds, then began to speak out:
"I can see that the princess was not lying about your condition. Do not worry, the princess told me about you last night. Your condition is not anything like I saw before. You are able to be more aggressive when provoked but also more tactical. And you go into a trance that makes your eyes go red."

Swifty was a little surprised but nonetheless he spoke to the captain "Yes, all that is true. I don't know how it started, but when I get prevoked I think back to the bad things that have happened. Like the attack against my brother yesterday." "My mind would go back to that scenario and suddenly I just want to kill anything or anypony nearby without any second thought. And that I would know what they would do before they do it."

At that point, Swifty was in tears. The captain did nothing else but confort the poor stallion.

After a few minutes, the captain trotted to the door and looked back to tell Swifty "I will go back to the training room to calm
everypony down. You can get an early rest should you choose to do so." The captain left the room, leaving Swifty alone. Swifty just lied down on his fromt and cried onto the pillow, thinking about his parents death, his brother and all the bad things that happened to him, cursing himself. He did this for the next hour. After he was finished, he wiped the tears away and went to check the time, it was 9:00pm.

He then agreed to go to sleep, but not before checking the bag. He opened the bag and looked at what was inside of it. There was his music player which was in black and red, with all his music on and also with matching earphones, also there was some books for him to read, a notepad with a pack of pencils, his childhood toy that he swore never to leave without and lastly a photo inside a photo frame, which said 'Never forget, brother - Shadowbeat'.

The photo was him and Shadow smiling at the camera at a field. Swifty held the frame close to him and closed his eyes for a few moments. 'Wherever you are, I'll never forget' he thought. Swifty put on his earphones and played a song from the music player and began to fall asleep whilst holding the picture close to him.

A/N: I'm so very sorry about the LONG update. To be honest, not only there was stuff that I had to do but also I wasn't fully committed into continuing. I thought about deleting the story and forgetting about it. But when I look at the number of views, I thought that I should at least finish the story. So that's what I will do. Please forgive me and hope you like it.

I don't know when the next chapter will be, I guess it will come when it comes.