Sparring

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My sister was visiting, and we wrote more of this!

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Undyne watched as Ironhide tapped against a panel on the wall high above her head. They had agreed to teach each other what they knew, teach them how the other species fought, and he had taken her here, to this room far below the surface, deep in the bowels of the Arc. As a monster who had lived for ages in the Underground, Undyne wasn't intimidated by being so far below ground.

Ironhide grunted after a minute. "Okay, I just loaded a basic flatland simulator. Nothing too advanced, but there won't be anything we can damage in here."

Undyne snorted. "Maybe not the way you fight. With monsters' fighting style, though, it makes sure you can't ever damage anything." She paused. "Aside from maybe your opponent."

"Hm," Ironhide rumbled as he thought that over. "You mean, like, your attacks only do damages on one's Soul, not any physical damage?"

Undyne nodded, grinning, her ponytail waving with the movement. Then she paused. "Well. In a FIGHT, anyway. If I wanted to, I could break stuff with my attacks."

"Interesting. I can't do an attack unless I'm trying to break stuff. There's no such thing as a... FIGHT in our world, anyways..."

"Yes there is!" Undyne proclaimed with a sudden ferocity, her toothy grin stretching wider. "You just didn't know about it before!"

Ironhide watched curiously as the fish monster summoned her spear and slammed the butt end of it into the ground. Everything turned black, and Undyne suddenly appeared in front of Ironhide, but she didn't look like she usually did. She was lit by an extremely white light from an indeterminable source, so all her color was absent, except for the turquoise glow of her Magic spear. The mech looked down at himself, and saw he looked the same way.

Thrusting her spear in the direction of the mech whenever she made a point, and grinning wide enough to show off just about all her teeth, Undyne began her tutorial on FIGHTing.

"This is the FIGHT GUI! You see those buttons? The orange ones, FIGHT, ACT, ITEM, and MERCY? Those are your options! They're, uh, kinda self-explanatory. BUT! If you lower someone's HP enough, or ACT a certain way, you can usually spare them without killing them. And then, your HP! It's your HOPE! Attacks in the battle GUI won't actually hurt you, so you can keep running at MAXIMUM POWER no matter how many hits you take! But if your HP drops to 0, then you'll die! So keep a careful eye on your HP gauge, and win the FIGHT before you die! Although, since we're just sparring AND we don't want to kill each other, we'd stop before one of us died. If you need to, though, and you have some monster food in your inventory-- subspace, I think I heard you guys calling it-- then you can go to ITEM to eat it and regain HP." Undyne paused. "Oh! And then, turns! We each get a turn! When it's your turn, you get to choose between FIGHT, ACT, ITEM, or MERCY. If it's not your turn, and your opponent chooses FIGHT then you can't fight back until it's your turn, you can only dodge their attacks until then." The fish monster crouched down in a ready position, gripping her spear loosely. "Now then! Enough talking! It's time to see what you robots are made of! I'll let you go first; don't hold back!"

*Undyne is letting Ironhide make the first move.

Ironhide hesitated for a moment, then reached out and poked the faintly glowing FIGHT button. After a pause, he glanced at Undyne again. "Um, now what?"

Undyne flashed him a toothy grin. "You FIGHT, mech!"

"Just... normal? Okay." The red mech lifted his arm, cannon whirling, and shot. A glowing ball went whirling through the air toward the fish monster.

Undyne, being the battle-hardened Captain of the Royal Guard that she was, avoided with ease, but the smile she gave Ironhide was a more or less friendly one, with a touch of her usual fiery competitiveness. "Too slow! ... But good for a first try. Now dodge this!" Without even looking at it, Undyne smashed her fist into her FIGHT button, and summoned a turquoise, glowing spear to her hand. Then, with a gesture, she sent five or six spectral spears shooting towards her sparring partner.

Ironhide, being himself a battle-hardened veteran of a centivorn-long war, ducked, twisted, and dodged, moving faster and more elegantly than one might expect from one his bulk. He stopped moving as the last spear faded and fizzled out of existance. The mech grinned. "Heh. Ya missed." Still grinning, he punched the FIGHT button. His cannon whirred to life again, and he let loose three blasts in quick succession.

Laughing as she leaped around his shots, Undyne countered, "That's because I was goin' easy on you!" She smashed the butt of her spear into her FIGHT button, this time sending likenesses of her weapon stabbing out of the ground around the mech's feet with astonishing speed.

Exclaiming loudly, the Weapons Master of the Autobots danced around like his feet were on fire. "Fragging glitch! That's a mean trick."

Undyne snickered.

With a grimace, watching his HP bar drop by a few points, Ironhide tapped the FIGHT button thoughtfully. "So, I can just use any attack I'd use in real life, basically?"

Undyne shrugged. "I mean, I guess. I can do anything I can do normally! But I use Magic, not cannons!"

"Hm." With a twist of his wrist, he accessed a secondary weapons subspace in his arm and un'spaced a broadsword. An evil grin spread across his face as he brought the sword down in a violent slash.

Undyne had the grace to look slightly surprised before she lunged backwards. The tip of Ironhide's blade clipped her arm, though, and did just a few points of HP damage. The monster seemed not in the slightest bit discouraged by this, instead letting out an excited "NNNNNYAAAGH" and suplexing a boulder that she carried in her inventory specifically for that purpose. Then she sent a multitude of spears flying towards Ironhide, faster than before.

Ironhide grinned as they came hurling toward him and shifted his grip on his sword. With a grunt, he dodged, spun, got hit on the shoulder. His HP dropped a few more points. "Now," he said as he settled back into a fighting stance, "Watch this."

He bounced the sword slightly in his hand, shifting his grip again and sending an electrical pulse through his limbs. The sword began to glow a sharp, electric blue.

Undyne watched, the eyebrow above her eyepatch raised in curiosity. Then, as Ironhide swung his blue-glowing sword forward, she just grinned, and stood absolutely still... And Ironhide's sword passed harmlessly around her.

Ironhide paused. "That's... new? Normally, energized, this thing is one of the deadliest bladed weapons I have."

Undyne let out something between a laugh and a snicker. "But it's blue!"

"yeah," A new voice interrupted. A glance showed a short, stocky figure standing beside Undyne. "blue attacks won't hurt you if ya stand still for 'em." Sans grinned at Ironhide. "here's an easy way to remember that: just imagine a stop sign. whenever you see a stop sign, you stop, right? so just imagine a stop sign, but blue." Sans paused a moment, then continued without allowing anyone to question his logic. "anyway. have either of you seen my sock?"

Undyne gave Sans a confused look. "Don't you have, like, socks everywhere all over the Arc?"

Sans just shrugged. "yeah, but none of them are the sock i'm looking for. this one doesn't have sticky notes from papyrus on it yet."

For a long, long moment, Undyne just gave Sans a Look. Then, "No, Sans. I have not seen your sock. And we're trying to have a battle here!"

Sans just shrugged again. "okay, okay, geez. i'll let you get back to socking each other, then!" Sans let out a final chuckle.

*It would appear Sans has left the battle GUI through the same strange method from whence he came.

Ironhide hesitated again. "Okay, so energized stuff... basically doesn't work." With another pulse, the blade turned off.

Undyne shook her head. "No, it does work, but it only hurts you if you're not standing still, like this!" With that, she lashed out with her spear, which was now glowing a brilliant cyan.

Ironhide flinched, but stood steady as the spear sailed straight through him without causing him to lose any HP points.

"Interesting." And with a grin and a quick stab at the FIGHT button, lifted his cannon arm and shot while slashing at the same time.

Undyne let out a laugh as she twisted to dodge the simultaneous attacks. "HA! You're getting the hang of this!" Then she retaliated by shooting off alternating blue and normal attacks.

The Autobot laughed out loud as he danced lightly on his feet, only one spear grazing his shoulder plating. "Good shot!" he huffed as he wasted no time lifting both arms and shot both cannons at the same time.

Undyne twisted precariously between the two shots. They would have missed, but for her long ponytail that just brushed one projectile, unfortunately counting against her. After a moment to let out an annoyed shout at herself, Undyne lashed out, sending up spears from the ground.

With an unmechly yelp, Ironhide took a leap to the side, then jumped again, barely missing a spear-point. He retaliated with a sweeping, twirling motion with his broadsword.

Undyne ducked and dodged, successfully avoiding harm. Then, standing straight, she paused, her hand over her FIGHT button. "Hey... Ironhide..." A slow grin crept over her fact. "Wanna try something harder?"

Ironhide grinned and hefted his sword. "Bring it."

Undyne hit her fight button, then swept out her spear in a wide, unavoidable arc, and suddenly, Ironhide was haloed in an aura of green, and found a large, broad spear in his hand. Undyne just grinned at him. "Wanna guess?"

Ironhide shifted – or tried to. His feet were stuck to the ground. With a widening grin, he lifted the spear. "I guess I gotta block now. Good thing I'm good at that. Had a lot of practice. Bring it."

Undyne's grin widened into something that would be vicious were this not a friendly sparring match. "You're on." Then she gestured, sending spears flying at Ironhide from all directions at astounding speed.

Silently, the massive mech crouched and lifted the spear, optics flashing as he concentrated and upped the energy in his fast-twitch tension lines. Centivorns of training and experience were called on as he spun the spear in a fast circle, making two spears fizzle out of existence, then abruptly twisted the weapon in the other direction, knocking aside another spear. The motion of the twist caused his body to turn to the side, which allowed the remaining spears to sail by.

"Hah!" he exclaimed with a grin.

"Good!" Undyne congratulated.

Before she could say anything else, Ironhide let loose a volley of shots. Undyne avoided them.

Then she gestured, and as spears started flying towards Ironhide, some, just before hitting him, twisted around to attack from the opposite side.

"Frag!" the mech roared as he knocked the ones coming at him from the front aside and hurried to sweep his spear around behind him to attempt to ward off the ones that had changed direction. He managed to knock one apart, but another struck him directly in the back.

Undyne laughed victoriously. "Still, though. Pretty good for your first time with Green Magic!" Then she paused. "... But how're you doing on HP? I don't wanna kill you by accident!"

Ironhide glanced at the bar. "Still pretty good, but I think I've got the hang of it for the moment. No need to push too hard. Unless you have more basics to teach?"

Undyne just shrugged. "That's all for FIGHTing. There's still ACTing and MERCY, but you'd probably want to talk to Toriel or Frisk about those."

"Okay, easy enough. Good fight, by the way."

Undyne flashed her trademark grin. "You too! We should do this again sometime." With that, she reached for her MERCY button to end the battle.

*Undyne is sparing Ironhide.

The lights faded back on to the flatland projection and Ironhide sent a comm to the Arc to end the simulation. The flat, blank ground around them pixelated and fell apart. "Agreed, we do have to do this again."

Together, the two sparring partners walked out of the training room, and the lights turned off behind them.

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