My Little Pony Heart of Friendship: Tales of a New Beginning

by ShadowDurza

Rise Again: Part 5

In Sloop’s corner, Rarity went to work, gently dabbing away the surprisingly few dirt smudges with a moistened kerchief embroidered with Sloop’s personal emblem. Then she went to work applying a pallet of salves mixed with powders colored to compliment Sloop’s skin tone, hair and eye colors depending on the points of abrasion. “I’ve heard of accessorizing for every occasion, but bijoux de bataille? And just when I’d thought I’d seen everything from you humans!”

Quickly deciding that notifying Rarity of her severe breach of conduct would distract her from her present duties, Boros decided to accommodate both of them with his coaching. “I won’t disagree, we’ve basically got an elemental power for everything. The magic of a ring elemental like Oro Jackson falls into a special category of elements that don’t exactly have a clearly defined nature, so it can accommodate a diverse range of abilities. Like portal creation, as you’ve just seen.

“Abilities like his can bend both the flow of the battle and the battlefield itself to his advantage. But your fighting style is every bit as adaptive as his, and it’s evident that you have a slight edge in raw power. You have two avenues to victory: Firstly, you need to be able to anticipate his next move and use an ability of your own to counteract. Secondly, when it becomes evident that he’s starting to lay some groundwork for a big play, you need to press him full force to divert his attention away from his preparations.”

At that, Rarity made a peppy gesture, pointing one hoof in the air while flexing the other. “What ho, good chap!” However, upon relaxing herself to try to wipe the smeared salve on Sloop’s cheek, she craned her neck around her charge/muse to look directly at Boros. “One thing I’ve been wondering about, in their pre-fight banter, Sloop and Oro seemed quite… familiar about it. A bit deeper than just guild versus guild. Almost like some kind of… blood feud. May I inquire?”

At this, Sloop followed his final slurp of water with a crude spitting in a bucket Boros was carrying, getting a somewhat startled look out of his corner girl. “If you’d like to inquire, just read a comic. There has to be millions of them taking up space in a bunch of kids’ bedrooms! Waste of good paper and ink, jolly well!”

Before Rarity could enquire further, the gong sounded once again and Sloop got up and marched back to the ring with a much more undignified slouch. After both competitors made their way to the center of the ring, the referee raised his arm. “Ready?” Both competitors materialized their weapons and pointed them at one another. The referee swung down his arm. “Fight!”

This time, Oro didn’t engage in a direct opening clash. As he practically drifted out of the way of Sloop’s shots, he slid his armbands off his forearms, causing each to float in a hexagon in front of him through which he started letting fly his bolts. However, Sloop wasn’t caught unawares this time as he quickly dashed to the side, deflecting the surest shots with multiple compass points layered on top of one another affixed to his forearms.

Suddenly, Sloop made a direct break towards Oro, his arrowguns blazing. Oro quickly reconfigured his offensive array into a defensive one, using each of his rings to ward off each of Sloop’s attacks. However, after circling around to Oro’s other side, Sloop made one seemingly stray shot hidden among his continuous onslaught. As the bolt of magic drifted into the area Sloop once tread, it hit an invisible compass point and rebounded directly towards Oro, who’s concentration on his opponent’s frontal assault resulted in a clumsy evasion and getting hit in the thigh. The referee appeared in between both fighters and made his call. “Clean hit! Sloop, three! Oro, three!”

Back in Sloop’s corner, Rarity couldn’t help but wear a concerned expression despite this development, and Boros took notice. “Still thinking about what Sloop said?”

Rarity gestured to Boros with a confused expression. “Comic books? What does that drivel have to do with anything?” (Meanwhile, Spike suddenly made a hard sneeze in his commentator’s box).

Boros made an expression of deep contemplation, scratching his fuzzy chin. “Ah yes, ‘The Life and Adventures of Scrooge McMasters’ Even I had a few comic books that I fished out of the trash I slept in when I was a kid. When Sloop’s ancestor decided to get into the visual storytelling market, he realized that he couldn’t think of any adventures more crazy and amazing than the ones he went on to earn his fortune, so he went the route of slightly embellished autobiography. Panning for gold in monster-infested caves, fighting off bandits transporting cargo across underground rivers, zombies and power-hungry dark sorceresses, crazy stuff I tell you!”

Rarity scratched her own under-muzzle in consideration. “I suppose that makes sense, but what does mister Oro Jackson have to do with that?”

Boros gave a knowing expression and gesture into the air. “Well, every great adventure story needs a great villain, a foil, a dark reflection of the hero. And few were more of a match for Scrooge McMasters in this regard than Flint Jacques.

“Whereas Scrooge prided himself on earning his fortune the hard way through sheer effort and capability, Flint exploited the desperation of the impoverished of Old Core Metro, giving them the most bare of necessities while he pocketed the gold and jewels they dug up in the most lethal caves in the Heart of the World.

“But even that wasn’t enough, he didn’t appreciate his riches at all if it meant he could only wear silver next to McMasters’s gold. He tried every trick in the book to climb to number one, either through treachery and lies in order to get to the next fortune to be made first, or trying to bump Scrooge off his pedestal and into the grave, all the better if his friends and family ended up as collateral damage.”

At that, Rarity recoiled slightly. “Goodness me! And that was for children?”

At this, Boros just scoffed. “You should hear some of our radio dramas!”

Once the referee gave the okay to fight, Sloop immediately reloaded his arrowguns to maximum capacity and Oro immediately redeployed his rings. However, Sloop paused for a moment and held his twin weapons extended, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. Rather than take advantage of this state of being, Oro furrowed his brow and appeared to purposefully hesitate. Sloop then abruptly opened his eyes with a determined expression and brought them together, holding the pointed barrel of one to the back of the other. With a bright red flash and twist, both arrowguns had become a single heavier weapon, the back one’s barrel-less body sticking out of the back of the front one at a ninety-degree angle.

Sloop trained his weapon’s new form onto his opponent and let fly a rapid barrage of glowing projectiles, these ones much smaller than his standard, appearing to only consume one of the twelve clips of ammunition for every ten shots. However, with a gesture, Oro re-oriented his rings to meet this barrage, using each ring’s energy-based complement to redirect each projectile away from their user.

However, Sloop used this focused defense to meet his rapid offense to his advantage, wielding his weapon with only one hand to create a north/south sphere and rapidly punching into it, causing the sphere’s twin to appear near the wall of rings for his fist to strike each of the six, causing Sloop to confidently declare, “North!” Following each of the struck rings being wrapped in a bright red aura, the other compas sphere quickly reoriented itself closer to Oro, who raised his arm-mounted crossbows to meet it. Despite this newfound barrier, Sloop made a strike into the initial orb regardless, seemingly ineffectively hitting his opponent while declaring, “South!”

Soon after being wrapped in the complimentary bright blue aura, the initially enchanted rings suddenly started vibrating, with their user gaining a sudden strained expression. However, whatever struggle Oro appeared to be experiencing, he appeared to lose as each of his rings flew towards and stuck themselves against his body. Taking advantage of his opponent’s momentary state of confusion, Sloop rushed to him, extending a bright red arrow from the knuckles of his free hand so as to add something extra to his oncoming strike.

As Sloop got in range, he brought around his fist in a wide hook, the arrow he affixed to it flashing bright red as it barreled to his opponent’s head. However, despite the enhanced speed and force of his opponent’s strike, Oro’s eyes focused on the oncoming blow and he twisted his whole torso out of the way. As he came around, recovering from his evasion, he clenched a fist and around his knuckles appeared a seventh gold ring, which adjusted its shape and size to serve as what looked like a rudimentary knuckleduster. As he swung himself standing straight up, he brought his fist around and got the still-recovering Sloop with a full-force uppercut right to the chin.

Sloop’s eyes grew unfocused as he awkwardly backpedaled a few steps after being forced into an odd back-leaning posture by the counterattack he received from his opponent. A moment and a half later, he precariously teetered upon one leg before going down flat on his back. The referee appeared between the opponents and made his call. “Knockdown! Sloop, three! Oro, six!”

Soon after this declaration, the referee began his count. As the count went on without any reaction from Sloop, Rarity suddenly got a look of great concern. She glanced at Boros, who had a grim but assured expression, shaking his head upon glancing at the corner girl. “That was a perfect hit. Even an iron elemental wouldn’t get back up after taking something like that directly. But that’s the risk he took when he went in close to end it with one hit. He couldn’t have known Oro kept one ring de-manifested just in case.”

Back in the arena, the referee’s tone grew steadily higher as he approached the final count. “Seven… Eight… Nine… Ten! Knockout! Rising Dragon’s Oro Jackson wins! Prancing Pony’s Sloop Masters is out of the match!” The crowd roared as the referee appeared next to the victor and raised his arm. Back in their corner, Boros gestured to Rarity to head out and retrieve their charge.

The trainer and corner-girl combo rushed out into the area and gingerly hoisted the dazed and confused Sloop in a natural position upon her back. As they slowly made their way back to their corner, Boros passionately but gently attempted to coax his young former student to some semblance of lucidity. When Sloop’s eyes suddenly regained focus and he began sitting up under his own power on Rarity’s back, Boros leaned in close. “If we’re being honest here, I really don’t know what to say. Nobody can know what it’s like to carry a legacy like yours, so I won’t judge you over your contempt of the commercialized elements of it. But I want you to know that I personally think anything your ancestor did or did to anyone else means nothing to you or what you do today, and that goes double for him, the only other person who could possibly know what that kind of burden feels like.”

A few seconds after what Boros hoped was his words registering with Sloop, he closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and patted his unicorn friend’s neck. “Wait…” The three of them ceased their steady march. He craned his neck back where he came from and Rarity wordlessly accommodated, bringing her human friend in a position to face the direction they came.

The victor, Oro Jackson, was the first to take notice of this development. After waiting for the crowd to quiet to a background murmur, Sloop abruptly raised his arm, forming his fingers into the peace-sign. At this development, the referee could only look at his victor with a neutral expression. Suddenly, Oro’s expression softened and he raised his own arm high to return this gesture. Once the meaning behind this development set in among the crowd, they all raised a passionate cheer that dwarfed all others before. After about a minute of basking in this adoration, the both of them lowered their arms and marched back to their corners with thankful expressions.