Family Begins With You

by Jmaster49

Arc XX Episode VIII: Magic Training

Adagio walked over to the empty side of the field as she rolled her eyes. “This better not be an attempt to embarrass me.”

“C’maaaawn--you trust me, don’tcha?” Sunset asked as she playfully leaned forward with her hands behind her back.

“No,” Adagio replied flatly with a hand on her hip, “But I’m interested in seeing what you have planned. Fire and water don’t exactly get along well. So how exactly are we going to combine these abilities?”

“Like so--” Sunset created a whole fireball and started tossing it back and forth between her hands. “Just skim a little off the top and keep your mind focused on the aether you’re creating. Right, Twilight?”

Nearby, the purple nerd was busy with her nose buried deep in her notes. So deep that all she replied with was a silent thumbs-up.

“A-heh…yeah…” Sunset awkwardly bounced off of Twilight’s silence.

All while Adagio giggled as she generated some water from her hands. “Okay then. Sounds simple enough. What shall we do next?”

“Look over here,” Sunset tilted her head towards the other end of the soccer field, then turned around. There were several test dummies made of cardboard that had been set up for the sole purpose of training. “Now watch this. A regular fire attack does something like this…” With a wave of her hand…

FWOOSH!

The fireball flew and burned the target to a crisp. “Simple and easy to understand, right? Your turn, Adagio--hit that other one for me, please.”

“Alrighty…” Adagio flung her hand forward and shot a blast of water at the next target--

SPLASH!

It was so powerful that it bore a hole right through it, causing it to fall over moments later, resulting in more interested murmurs from the students.

“Alright, good stuff,” Sunset added, then stood alongside her, “Now…let’s attack at the same time and see what’s different.”

Adagio shrugged her shoulders and raised her hand once again. “If you think it’ll work…”

Both girls focused their power…and--

SPLASWOOSH!

The fire and water combined and turned into a blast of steam that fanned out over the field. It was so hot and moist that it caused the rest of the dummies to wither away until they disintegrated!

“Huh…” Adagio muttered as she watched the targets disappear. “Well that’s certainly new. I guess we should start combining our new abilities more often, hm? How do you know so much about this?”

“I studied this quite a bit back in Equestria,” Sunset replied with an uneasy smile, “...until I started to fall off due to slacking just a tad. But--but! I’m back at it full force--”

Suddenly, she was cut off by an impatient Rainbow Dash who ran up to, and stood between them, throwing her arms over their shoulders. “Less talking--more magic blasting! That was so cool! I wanna do that too!”

Sunset rolled her eyes. “Rainbow, we’ve been over this--your thing is speed--I don’t think you can weaponize it into a projectile.”

“That’s what you think!” she replied while folding her arms, “I’ve got the Speed Force! You know what I can do with that--?!”

Aidon got up from a nearby chair and cleared his throat. “Okay, everyone, take your seats.” Once the trio of girls sat back down, he’d then carry on with the lesson. “Alright. As Sunset described there are ways to mix magic together and create brand new spells that one can’t create on their own. Now who wants to begin testing this out?”

“ME!”

“ME NEXT!”

“OVER HERE!”

Various overlapping shouts erupted from the group of students as a result. They were clearly invested and wanted to learn as much as possible, so Aidon would grant them that wish.

“Alright the next key steps are…”

He would then proceed to lecture them more on how to combine certain spells to create new ones, such as Rainbow Dash’s speed combined with Flash Sentry’s soundwaves in order to create a literal sound barrier to block out incoming damage, and Sandbar’s sand abilities mixing with Micro Chip’s nanomachines to create a sandworm that was capable of phasing in and out of reality! Granted, it wasn’t all perfect, as the intense strain left them all extremely drained and short of breath afterwards, but the spectacle was still there for the brief moments it was present.

Once class was over, and most of the students had left for their next class for the day…

Aidon stretched his arms out and took a breath--even he was winded from how much micromanaging he had to perform in order to keep everyone in check throughout each lesson. “Whew…that was a bit harder than I would’ve expected. But at least everyone’s learning.”

Then, from the corner of his eye, he’d see an orange hand offer him a bottle of water. “Hm?”

“You might want this, sir,” Sunset offered, “Sorry--that was way more intense than I would’ve expected.”

“No kidding,” he replied as he accepted the water and took a sip of it. “I’m honestly surprised that you were willing to help out with such a task.”

“Well, it’s got a lot to do with how I was raised,” Sunset continued as she sat down next to him on the bleachers, “Princess Celestia was pretty much the only family I had since my folks weren’t around too much. She was like a weird combination of a teacher and a guardian of sorts…until I turned my back on her.”

“Mm…” Aidon shut his eyes for a moment as he recounted Sunset’s past…

Sunset took a sip of her own water and went on. “...but ever since I made up with her, I’ve decided to dedicate my time to protecting this world instead. And that’s pretty much the reason why I joined this class--so I can pass on Celestia’s methods of how she taught me onto other people.” She rubbed the back of her head while looking down towards the ground. “A bit of a cheesy reason I know, but--”

“Perfectly valid,” Aidon cut her off, “While I’m not the biggest fan of Princess Celestia as an individual, I heard her credentials as a teacher were top-notch. Respect begets respect as they say.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” Sunset replied with a nod, “she was far from perfect, but she helped me get to where I am now. Can’t deny that. Even if I was a biiit off my rocker when I was younger.”

“Good to hear,” Aidon got up from his seat and stretched his arms out. “Alrighty. Time to get ready for the next class. You should get going as well.”

“Hold up, Professor!” Sunset quickly jumped up from the bench and walked after him, “There’s one more thing I’d like to ask.”

Aidon turned to her. “Hm? What is it?”

With a nervous smile on her face, Sunset twiddled her index fingers over each other. “Well…I was wondering if you ever had any spare time…could you teach me dark mag--”

“No,” Aidon said bluntly as he turned and kept walking.

“Dammit--well, it was worth a shot…” Sunset huffed to herself as she pouted.