Malcolm Tent
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Wish upon the Stars chapter 635
🕑 Added 2024-05-28 21:47:31 +0000 UTCThe rest of the banquet was uneventful. We were too small potatoes to get face time with any of the other representatives really. My grandpa greeted them, but since he wasn’t admitting to BEING my grandpa right now, that didn’t help me or my friends much, and even Chelsea didn’t warrant an introduction to any of them except Princess Levinia.
No, the most interesting thing to happen was after the banquet when Callie and I headed to my mom’s place with Chelsea. We were taken to a large reinforced training area, and Callie sat out the first lesson so I could get a feel for my training.
Mom had me change into a rough spun set of long sleeved, loose fitting clothes to train in, to match the outfit she was already dressed in. The training room had its own changing area, and when I came out, she was waiting in a sort of meditative pose. “Alright.” She said. “First thing I need is to see what you can do up close. Trigger your Mephistopheles form.”
I did so without question, my hair consumed in black flame and my body filling with strength. I whirled my staff in slow circles, getting ready to attack…but I hesitated.
My mother smiled warmly. “Shane. Honey. I love you, but you don’t need to worry about hurting me. If you combined every attack you’ve ever made together into a single blow and directed it into my exposed eyeball, I wouldn’t even tear up. It’s sweet that you’re concerned, but honestly it’s almost absurd.”
Callie burst out into giggles. “It’s not that. He’s just not sure he can bring himself to attack his mommy.”
“That is a gross oversimplification!” I snapped. Then I trailed off. “And not how I would phrase it.”
My mom chuckled at me. “It’s sweet. But like I said honey, don’t think of it as an attack. You’re incapable of harming me. This is just training, and between my control of my power and your lack of threat, this is the safest activity you’ve ever been involved in. For both parties.”
Intellectually I knew that. But this was my mom. Absent or not, she was one of my earliest memories, and attacking her just felt wrong. I shook that off though. She was right. She was so much stronger than me that worrying about harming her might as well be literal delusion. This wasn’t an attack, it was just training. I trained with people I cared about all the time. Like Callie.
Shifting my stance, I positioned myself firmly, then thrust out with the staff, twisting and extending my upper body as the end of the weapon smashed into her face with an explosion of dark fire.
The flames cleared, and she was standing there unharmed, warm smile still in place, not a hair out of position. “Ok.” She said with a chuckle. “Not bad, but I suspect you can do better than that. Come on, I want you to make a serious effort. I need to see where your limits are to bring you past them.”
With that first strike out of the way, I felt more confident in the training. I blurred forward, thrusts and smashes hitting her from every angle. She didn’t even bother to block, and my most powerful hits didn’t phase her. Looking closely I was pretty sure she was actually shifting minutely with the impacts, and it took me a minute to figure out that she was trying to keep my staff from breaking, which was somewhat intimidating.
Still, I unleashed a series of my most devastating strikes, and only stopped when she held up a hand. “Not bad.” She said calmly. “I can tell your skill is boosting your blows quite a bit, and it’s Path empowered. I’d put that at…twenty thousand Might maybe? Which combined with your Impact is nothing to sneeze at in E-rank.”
I could hear the but coming. “But…” I said leadingly. “What am I doing wrong?”
“Well, several things.” She admitted. “Your staff form is brutish and simplistic, but I’m not a staff user and can’t do much for that. But your application of power is too focused. Let me ask you a question, what is Might?”
I answered automatically. “A measure of the physical force an ability or Skill can bring to bear. The side effect improves your physical strength.” She seemed to be waiting for me to continue, and I wracked my brain for more. “It lets you impart more force.”
Her face lit up. “And what is force?” She asked. “Scientifically speaking. Your educational downloads had to have covered this.”
“Force equals mass times acceleration.” I quoted easily. “Callus wasn’t THAT backwater.”
She just chuckled. “Now, barring certain temporary abilities you can stockpile, you can’t really change your mass. So how can you generate more force?”
“Acceleration.” I shrugged. “I need to move faster. Maybe I could create a speed form, then I-” I froze. Because…I had a speed form. Or rather, I had a Might form. Mephistopheles was about pinpoint power output. I could unleash blasts of powerful force from my staff. I’d been using that to make attacks, but force could be applied in plenty of ways.
Stepping back, I wound up and took a running start, passing my mom completely, I planted my staff on the ground like a pole vaulter, pushing off and channeling a large blast of energy from the end touching the floor, hurling me up into the air.
As I came to the top of my arc, I considered my form. I could attack with my staff, but my body was the tool with Mephistopheles. That was how forms worked. Staff forms could contain more than staff blows. I activated Ripple Running, and when I landed let my knees bend, pushing off and channeling the burst of power through my feet this time.
I exploded off the skill platform (which admittedly shattered as I came off) and flashed down towards my mom.
Leaning forward, I sent myself into a whirling series of front flips to build up speed, bringing my staff up and around in the most devastating smash I could, unleashing a massive blast of black flame as smashed into her…or trying to.
When the dust cleared, she’d caught the blow easily and was holding my entire body in the air. She let me drop, chuckling. “Excellent. That was exactly where I wanted your head to go. Sorry I couldn’t let that attack land. That much force would have shattered your weapon if it had hit me head on, and I know it’s new.”
“Fair enough.” I laughed. “Any notes? The enhanced mobility is good, but I’m sure there’s more I could be doing.”
She grinned at me. “Of course. I’m going to be teaching you some of the moves of my Stellar Flame Fist. Once you learn them bare handed you can apply those principles to your staff art. Not just this form either. You’ll be taking a big step in manipulating flame in general.”
That did sound really cool, so I nodded, stashing my staff in my ring so I could focus on throwing hands.
“Now, the Stellar Flame Fist is made up of multiple techniques and stances, and I’m not teaching you all of them.” She said solemnly. “It would take too long, and be counterproductive besides. In fact, I’m trying to avoid you learning the Skill, because it’ll be far too complex for you to integrate into your existing Skillset. So I’m only teaching you three of the stances. The ones that I think will be most helpful.”
I frowned. “But if I don’t learn the Skill will I still be able to do the moves?”
“Of course.” She said confidently. “The Stellar Flame Fist is a martial art dedicated to the manipulation of fire. My dad’s purification flame, your black flame, it doesn’t matter what you’re using to shape it, the actual stances themselves work the same. Besides, earning this Skill wouldn’t be so easy. I doubt we’d have time for you to pick it up, considering it’s the Skill that earned me my title.”
I watched as she took a firm stance. “First attack is one that I think will benefit you in terms of combat damage. Your flames are powerful, but you just pour more energy or multiply the destruction. You don’t do anything with them shape wise. Can you call them and hold them in front of you?”
Holding out my hands, I pulled on Mephistopheles. It was surprisingly hard without the staff, my brain wanted to fight the energy. But I triggered Piece of Mind, and was able to focus one of my parallels on keeping up the image of staff training. “Yeah, I got it.” I grunted.
“Perfect.” She beamed. “Now, for this particular attack, the shape we use is simple. Just pack as much fire as you can as tightly as you can. I want you to imagine the flames are a star, and you’re condensing it down until not a single drop of force could fit in there without detonating the sphere.”
I nodded, focusing the flames down. I had to activate another parallel to hold it, because Mephistopheles was NOT designed for prolonged attacks. I felt the strain in my soul as one version of my kept a staff framework in mind, one of me condensed the fire, and one produced more flame.
My mother watched calmly, and when I finished, she smiled in approval. “Now, aiming that attack at me. I want you to punch it. Imagine your fist is providing that list little spark of force, setting off the explosion, but the force needs to travel through the sphere and burst out the other side, letting the power escape that way. This attack is called Cosmic Collapse.”
I felt a surge of amusement through the bond from Callie, at the fact that my mother and I had a similar dramatic naming sense, but I ignored it.
Exhaling slowly, I left the bright sphere of power in the air as I hauled back and punched it, almost unthinkingly triggering Mercy Kill when I punched it to give it that little extra bit of kick as it detonated.
A massive explosion of black flame erupted from my fist, a wedge of dark flame consuming the area my mom was standing in with a cone shaped torrent of fire. Some part of me panicked a bit at the image, but I forced it down. My mom was fine, I couldn’t hurt her. But that had been…holy shit that had been a BIG attack.
As it cleared, I found her grinning at me brightly. “Perfect!” She squealed happily. “Did you put a little extra sauce on that one? I was expecting it to be thirty five or forty thousand Might worth of force. That was closer to fifty.”
“Uh, yeah.” I said with a cough. “I used one of my finishers. Mercy Kill.”
With a beaming smile, she clapped me on the shoulder. “Perfect. That was exactly what we wanted. We’ll practice that until you can use it on command, then you can try to channel it through your staff. I picked that one because it should work even better with the staff than the fist because of the way the force ruptures the opposite side of the bubble.”
“Yeah, I can see how it would.” I said with a laugh. “But what about the other two, you said we’d be learning three.” I was pumped, this training was way more fun than I’d been expecting. My mom was a much better teacher than Zeke or Abel.
Focusing back up, she nodded. “Good point. You can practice that after I teach you the next one. Since we talked about momentum and acceleration, the next one should be easy enough to learn.” She cracked her neck, eyes blazing with excitement. “This next move is one of my versatile and has gotten me out of quite a few scrapes. It should be particularly compatible with your black flames. I call it…the Supernova Step.”
Comments
CringeWorthyStudios
Oh gods I love Sasha, she’s amazing. It’s like watching a mix of Shane’s friendliness, Callie’s sense of humour and Bethy’s enthusiasm in the same person and it’s great. Thanks for the chapter!
