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

by ShadowDurza

Rise Again: Part 7

Sitting on the provided seat in his corner, Alphonse barely reacted at all to the oddity of the energetic corner girl, Pinkie administering treatment to the various bruises, cuts, and abrasions he’d received from his opponent’s furious counterattack from multiple angles at one time. Boros, having seen too much over his long and colorful life to be phased by anything, ignored the phenomenon as he leaned in close to his young charge. “I gotta be honest kid, I can’t think of much to say that could help you out here.

“For starters, your opponent is obviously a mirror elemental. His element specializes in repelling and reflecting other magics, especially immaterial magics like the fairy element you’ve got! Your physical fighting style is heavily based on intimidation and misdirection, but he seems to thrive under intimidation with instincts too acute to fall for an ordinary trick. Unlike Krank, who could effectively attack, defend, and counter thanks to his laser-focus, Ellis is a bit more all-over-the-place, which seems to compliment his defensive and reactive fighting style. But you’re the kind of guy who can pull out a comeback when you shouldn’t possibly be able to by all sense and logic! Now go out there and do the impossible!”

Alphonse rolled his eyes, not for the first time. He took a swig from a bottle provided by the pink hooves from the void and spat extra-sloppily into the bucked held by the other pair of hooves while a fifth hoof made one last dabbing of sweat off his brow. “Gee, thanks for the vote of confidence master! You know I mean to surprise!”

With a final harumph, Alphonse got up out of his seat and began his drudge back to center ring, irreverently cracking his finger and neck joints along the way. Reappearing with the right number of limbs, Pinkie raised an eyebrow at the outgoing competitor before giving a likewise confused look to his trainer. “Um… Weren’t you supposed to give him some advice? Or at least get him pepped up?”

Boros just rolled his eyes with a cocky grin. “That is how I do those things, with Alphonse specifically. You tell him to do something, and he’ll really, really want to do the exact opposite. The most you can do is just let him know something while framing it in a matter-of-fact sort of way. And the only time he ever gives his all to a fight is if he goes in with a chip on his shoulder, something he’s P.O.’d about that he wants to take out on the next living thing that looks at him funny. Otherwise, he drags his feet at the thought of having to do something that requires actual effort and perseverance.”

Alphonse, with a slight limp, made his way to the center of the ring while his opponent had to shut his eyes while he took each step forward. Somehow knowing exactly where to stop before opening them. The referee raised his hand. “Ready?” Alphonse materialized his whip and gave a few threatening lashes and flicks while Ellis gulped and turned his head away as he extended his hand for his wand to appear in his grip, pointing forward. The referee swung down his arm. “Fight!”

Despite the fight resuming, neither competitor took the initiative. Simply circling around one another holding their weapons at ready for a few moments. Knowing what they’ve seen before, the crowd was utterly silent, the tension in the air preventing them from protesting what would normally be a lull in the show.

However, things started getting going once again when Alphonse took a stance and started flailing around his whip to get some momentum going. In response, Ellis braced himself holding his wand back in a vertical position. Alphonse then swung back his whip, making Ellis take a stance resembling cowering as he erected a buckler-sized reflective barrier. However, right as Alphonse finally lashed his whip, he seemingly disappeared into a puff of green smoke and reappeared right behind Ellis in another puff right as struck at his opponent’s back, sending him staggering with a bellowing holler of shock and fear. The referee appeared between both combatants and made his call. “Critical hit! Ellis, three! Alphonse, two!”

Back in Alphonse’s corner, Pinkie Pie was jumping and hollering (randomly bringing out pom-poms, flags, noise makers, and air horns she kept who-knows-where) along with the rest of the stadium’s crowd at that play, and reacted with an excited confusion to Boros’s look of concern. “Hey, why the long face? That was a great comeback!” Her question asked not missing a beat from her bounces.

Boros narrowed his eyes as he stared right at the battlefield. “Like I said before, a lot of Alphonse’s fighting style is taking advantage of his opponent’s vigilance and striking adjacently while their focus is where he wants it to be. But I have a feeling that any trick he uses won’t work twice, because my gut tells me his opponent’s fighting style runs on the same principles.”

Back in the ring, with Ellis taking an abnormally long time to get ready to fight yet courageously denying multiple “Can you keep fighting?” prompts, the referee signaled the competitors to continue. However, right when the signal came, Ellis made a haphazard series of gestures with his wand and disappeared. However, moments later, he reappeared a distance away from his previous position, along with nine duplicates lined up together like bowling pins before they each scattered in a scrambling retreat in all directions.

At this, Alphonse maintained his scowling composure, but arrogantly wiped his nose with his free wrist before banishing his weapon in a flash of green sparkles. Then, he crouched down as four orbs of bright-green light appeared hovering over his back. Two large and two small green insectoid wings unfurled from Alphonse’s back that started buzzing before he took to the air with a lunging jump.

Alphonse gazed at the scrambling illusions beneath him with his usual contemptful visage. However, his features relaxed as he took a deep breath and crossed his hands in before him, fingers extended. From each digit grew a glowing bright-green emanation in the shape of an oak leaf. With a swift flicking motion, Alphonse sent each of these small dart-like constructs soaring, each curving its trajectory to home in on each figure.

Each projectile harmlessly passed through each illusionary figure except one far to Alphonse’s right, who batted aside his missile with his aura-wrapped wand. At that, Alphonse got a sinister grin as the real Ellis’s already frantic expression grew sickly pale.

Turning to his prey, Alphonse re-angled his body and dive bombed. On his way down, Alphonse extended his off-hand as it glowed in a green aura and conjured a spinning ring-like blade of energy. With a swing of his arm, he sent this new attack flying towards his opponent ahead of his own charge. This seemed to catch the normally vigilant Ellis off-sorts as he dodged it with a hasty spinning motion.

However, Alphonse broke off his charge to touch down next to his opponent, banishing his wings construct and making a deliberate gesture with his still-glowing hand. Ellis’s eyes grew wide and he suddenly jumped, having anticipated the magical projectile to abruptly dart off course to fly back at him as it soared below his feet.

Suddenly, with a toothy grin and a wicked glint in his eye, Alphonse re-summoned his whip and made a rapid, elaborate twisting motion to send it curling around the helpless Ellis. With a full-body twist, Alphonse pulled his ensnaring weapon taught and with a dashing, wrenching motion, flailed around his opponent and slammed him into the hard ground before jumping right on top of his stunned body.

The referee appeared next to the fallen fighter and made his call. “Knockdown and a pin! Ellis, three! Alphonse, five!” However, right when the official made the two-count, Ellis expanded a bubble of silvery, chromatic light around himself that threw his opponent off his body.

At that display, Pinkie’s eyes seemed to grow several times their normal size before what looked like the air inflating them flowed into her cheeks to be released as a highly excited scream. “Wowee zowie! What a move! And I didn’t even know he could fly!”

Boros crossed his arms and nodded with a self-satisfied smile. “Taught the boy everything he knows, but even I couldn’t have figured out a better way to turn the tables on Ellis! It’s one thing to take advantage of a warrior’s personal habits to undermine their tactics, but getting him hard with a trick within a trick is something else! Not to mention the psychological aspect of it all, how can a foe act if they second guess every tactic they can think of when they have reason to believe their opponent might use it against them!”

Signaling for Alphonse to undo his whip’s binding on his opponent after they’d successfully dislodged them from the pin, he gave Ellis his extra-long personal period before signaling both competitors to resume. Meeting his opponent, the profusely sweating Ellis made a big gulp, closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and extended his wand. In a flash of light, his weapon changed shape, roughly retaining the same length, but extending a more flat, broader shape down the length of the shaft.

At this development, Pinkie Pie stood on her back hooves to mime the concerned gesture and experiment of Boros. “Huh. How is that any different from his old weapon?”

Glancing at the pink corner girl, Boros self-consciously moved his hands from his chin and elbow to his hips (only to have this gesture mimicked by her as well). “Hm… as a rule, human warriors typically don’t attune to overly-magical or enchanted weapons. We prefer to use such things as sidearms or off-hand weapons to support our attuned weapons. But when we start developing transformations, you can expect exceptions to start showing up.

“Wands and staves are made with the ability to generate their own magic so that we don’t have to expend our reserves or use our own reserves with greater potency, efficiency, or sophistication, wands in particular favoring more elaborate and complex spells. Weapons that appear less conventional, like that gunbai war-fan he just made, often carry custom enchantments by the weapon holder in exchange for their loss in practicality.”

Back in the ring, after a brief staredown, Alphonse adjusted his stance and lashed his whip at his opponent. In response, Ellis haphazardly struck a more firm stance and used his weapon’s new shape to deflect the oncoming strike. This exchange was repeated several other times while the aura Ellis typically enshrouded his weapon in steadily grew more intense with each deflected strike.

When Alphonse ceased his attacks to catch his breath, Ellis took another gulp and deep breath before extending his fan and waving it around in a series of elaborate poses. Then, he took his weapon in both hands, pointed it at his opponent, and let fly a shell-sized projectile of magic with a heavy recoiling motion. Alphonse’s scowling eyes widened and with a wave of his free hand erected a square wall of solid green light, however, the projectile shattered the wall, leaving Alphonse to brace his weapon with his free hand and awkwardly deflected the attack with his whip’s guard. With Alphonse left stumbling, Ellis half-closed his eyes, rushed screaming and hit Alphonse in the lower jaw with a wide upward-swinging strike with his weapon. The referee appeared between both competitors and made his call. “Knockdown! Ellis, six! Alphonse, five!”

The referee began his count. Alphonse started groaning and stirring at four and regained enough of his senses to rise at seven. Back in Alphonse’s corner, Pinkie Pie released the breath she held while Alphonse was on the ground (for no reason whatsoever) and started freaking out, waving her hooves around. “Wowie, wowie, wowie! What the hay was that?”

Boros sighed and cocked his head to the side. “Apparently, Ellis isn’t as ruled by instinct as we’d thought. He’s shifted tactics, adopted a much more simple defensive strategy rather than running and hiding like he’s been doing. It’s not uncommon for warriors gathered in the same fraternity to develop advanced abilities based on the basic abilities of their brethren. That gunbai has an enchantment based on Krank’s stockpiling spell on it, and it seems that Ellis can supplement the stockpiled energy with enough magic from his own reserves to apply meta magic to the regurgitated attacks, such as to pierce barriers normally strong enough to repel offensive spells of a weak enough magnitude.

“Like I keep saying, the more simple the way of fighting, the fewer weaknesses it has in itself. The only weaknesses left would be on part of the fighter, but that’s not always something you can easily take advantage of. This way, Ellis has fewer blind spots for Alphonse to exploit.”

Back in the ring, Alphonse and Ellis had commenced another standoff, circling around an unfixed point staring one another down, or at least they would be staring one another down if the very visibly nervous Ellis could maintain eye contact with his intimidatingly determined opponent for longer than a second. However, Alphonse’s consistently hostile expression abruptly softened, which drew Ellis’s attention despite his anxiousness. Then, Alphonse unexpectedly gave him a grin of admiration and flashed a peace sign, giving Ellis a totally perplexed expression.

Then, Alphonse dropped his stance as he straightened up completely, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath. Then, with both hands, started a series of rapid yet intricate gestures and chanted so deeply it came off as completely incoherent mumbling. Suddenly, Alphonse's whole body was bathed in an intense green light that gave off bright flashing sparks. Opening his eyes wide, he suddenly crouched and took off recklessly rushing to his opponent. Ellis was so taken out of sorts by this stratagem that he could do nothing as his opponent scooped him up in a bear hug.

Sensing what was about to happen, the referee, who’s duties normally require him to stay close to the blast radius to observe and make appropriate calls, suddenly turned around and took off drifting wrapped in an aura as fast as he could. A moment later, both combatants were lost in a bright flash as almost a third of the ring was consumed by a series of firework-like concussive blasts of bright-green force.

The crowd was utterly silent as they were half-blinded and left out of sorts by the display. It took a few minutes for everyone to collect themselves and the dust to clear, revealing both fighters lying on the ground completely motionless. The referee then appeared before them and took extra care to examine both the small mirror elemental and the lanky fairy elemental. He then moved to the exact point between them and raised both arms. “Double knockdown! No points awarded! One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten! Double K.O.! Both competitors are out of the match!”

Boros and Pinkie rushed into the ring to collect Alphonse, while Otto and Krank rushed out and dotingly scooped up their small, incredibly courageous friend. Careful to balance the unconscious human on her back, Pinkie turned her confused expression to his trainer. “What was that all about? Besides the fact that I don’t often see a blast of magic like that, why would Alphonse do something like that just for something like this?”

At that, Boros could only shrug. “Most of what he does is a mystery to everyone he knows, and that’s exactly how he likes it. But from what I can tell, he grew to respect his opponent the more he fought him, and out of that respect, he resigned to take himself out to take his opponent with him so as to be able to express that respect without shaming the ones he’s loyal to.

“No matter how much magic one can store in their own reserves, typical humans can only release so much of it at one time. It takes years of experience for a human warrior to utilize the entirety of their power at one time, so he made up the difference with meta magic. He might present the visage of an antisocial downer, but its obvious to anyone watching him fight that when it comes down to do his duty, he’ll want to go out as flashy as possible.”

Pinkie turned her head to look the way she was going, but glanced at the peacefully resting human on her back and gave an awkward smirk. “I think I can understand that… Maybe…!”

Author's Note:

Again, sorry for the lengthy release and unannounced hiatus, AGAIN! AGAIN! I want to say that this time it's because of a holiday we use for a family gathering and the fact that the previously mentioned death required us to work on getting things arranged, but really, my only real excuse is that inspiration can be a real b◇tch. Not one of my prouder reoccurring moments just sitting there with the text doc open and nothing coming to mind.