SCHOOL IS DONE AND I AM HOME!

Shadescribe - Yup, that's the hope! Audrey doesn't know what she's trying to get into, and Maria has a pretty good idea of what could happen. So hopefully Maria will be able to keep Audrey from Learning Things.

Anyway...here we go!

Chapter 25 – Atlantis Revisit, part 3: Sparring the Newbies

Maria's POV

When we hit the surface a few hours later, it felt like the entire sub was being hit by some sort of mini-earthquake before it settled down into a gentle rocking sensation.

Kida looked up sharply from the book she had been reading with Milo, looking suddenly alarmed. "What happened?! Did we hit something?"

"Feels more like we just got above the surface of the water," I replied. I put down the book that I'd been reading for the second time in my life – Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea – and rose to my feet. "Which means that there's real sky above our heads and I'm due for a spar." A grin crossed my face.

"A spar?" Milo repeated, raising an eyebrow.

"Yeah. Audrey asked me if I'd be willing to test some of the new muscle that they picked up. I figured that I might be able to get a good judge of character in while I was at it, since Lea and Riku are planning on doing the same thing." My face scrunched up. "Don't want another incident like what happened with Rourke, so I'd rather nip things in the bud before they go too far."

Milo gained a more serious expression and nodded in agreement while Kida's startled expression turned into something else that was a little unreadable. "Sounds like a good idea. We should probably try to find a way up to an exit, then."

I nodded in agreement, then stood up from the chair that I had been sitting in. It was a good thing that it had been bolted to the floor; I doubt that me flying across the room when the submarine had surfaced would have been a good thing.

The door to the library flew open abruptly, and someone ran into the room – a skinny young man, probably someone who ran messages across the sub to people. "We've hit the surface; I can take you up."

"Excellent!" Kida leapt to her feet, nearly knocking Milo over in the process and almost sending his glasses flying off his head. "I cannot wait to see it!"

Milo chuckled as he adjusted his glasses and rose to his feet. "It has been a long time since I've been up here. I doubt that the sea has changed much, though."

"Weren't you seasick the last time you were out at sea?" I asked, raising an eyebrow as Kida started over to the door.

Milo spluttered a bit. "Th-that's not important."

Kida chuckled, grinning brightly. "Come! I do not wish to miss the sun!"

We followed the young man out of the library and through the corridors until we came to a large hatch at the top of a long ladder, probably somewhere in the middle of the sub and on the floor above the one the library was in. The door at the top was already open, and bright light was streaming in—sunlight.

Kida let out a gasp, then scrambled up the ladder, pushing the young man who had led us there aside in her eagerness to get out of the sub and look at the world outside it.

Milo looked over at me, and I smirked and chuckled in response before he followed after her, and I after him.

The one thing that hit my eyes first was how bright the world was. I had to cover my eyes from the sky for a second while my eyes adjusted to the glare of the sunlight bouncing off the water around us. I lowered my hand, looking up at the clear blue sky above us. "So, where on the sea are we, then?"

"Off the coast of Africa." Whitmore appeared in my line of vision, causing me to blink in surprise. "We're far enough out that you can't see the continent, but we're not far from the Straits of Gibraltar, either."

"So, the old theory about Atlantis being somewhere near Greece wasn't quite all that far off?" I was glad that I'd thought to memorize a basic map of the world and that my robotic mind was able to pull it up without too much trouble.

"Apparently." Whitmore smirked. "Now, what's this I hear about you testing some of our new recruits?" He glanced over at a group of people standing a fair distance away, standing on what I guessed was the front of the sub.

I suddenly realized that the submarine was huge. Probably helicarrier big, even, but I haven't been on one of those to really say for sure.

I rubbed the back of my head, watching the group at the other end of the sub mill about, probably stretching and doing basic warm-ups. Lea and Riku were standing nearby, and it looked like they were in the middle of a conversation.

"Audrey suggested it," I said. "She thought it'd be a good idea to see if there were any of them who'd be able to stand against what we could do. I'd kind of like to judge their character, too…don't want what happened last time we were all together to happen again, you know?"

Whitmore gained a grim expression. "Yes, I know. I was very careful when selecting crew members this time, but if there were any that managed to slip past, it would be good if the three of you double and triple-checked before we get into searching for that fool." Whitmore's nose crinkled in disgust; I nodded in agreement.

"Hey, Maria!"

I turned my head and caught sight of Audrey waving over at us from the bow of the sub.

"Get your metal butt over here so that we can get this thing started, huh?! Or do I have to drag you over here?"

"You'd better not keep her waiting," Whitmore said with a knowing twinkle in his eye.

I smiled a little. "Definitely not." I then jogged over to where Audrey and the others were standing, noting that there were five guys standing at the end of the boat with various amounts of muscle on their skeletons.

"Wait." One of the men – a dark-haired, dark-eyed fellow with an army buzzcut – looked between Audrey and me. "Are you telling me that we're going to have to fight a girl?"

"It's called sparring, not fighting," I replied. "And if it was a fight, I wouldn't have given you a moment's breather to even make that comment."

The guys looked between each other with uneasy expressions.

"Yes, you'll be sparring against Maria," Audrey said. "She hasn't been around for a while and she's gotten into different stuff, so I want to see what she's made of."

"Even with that armor, she's still exposed," another guy pointed out – lighter brown hair, green eyes, again with the army buzzcut. Was Whitmore grabbing guys from the military for this? Or were they off duty right now? "It doesn't look all that strong on her legs, stomach, and arms. And she could get a concussion if someone hit her head."

"If they can," I replied. I frowned. "Never really thought about getting a helmet, though. Maybe I'll look into it later. As it is, though…."

I rapped my knuckles against my head, hard enough that the guys could hear the metallic feedback that resulted, even if it was slightly muffled because of the synthetic materials that covered my head and made me look human.

"I don't think that you're going to have all that easy of a time giving me a concussion," I finished.

The guys stared at me with wide eyes.

"So!" Audrey clapped her hands together, getting their attention again. "Who's going against who? There's five of you and three of them, so you're not going to be going after them all at once."

The five guys looked at each other again as I folded my arms across my chest and raised an eyebrow at them expectantly. If they were going to choose, judging from the looks they were giving me, they were probably going to try to find a way out of sparring with me.

I frowned at the thought. Why they'd want to do such a thing was a bit mind-boggling. I mean, sure I was a teenager, but I could hold my own. So what was the problem?

It took me a moment to remember from my dad's history lessons that I was right in the middle of the time that women weren't exactly looked at as equals when it came to some of the things that men did. So they didn't want to fight me just because of my gender.

That particular thought made me all the more eager to prove them wrong about that particular idea.

A small smirk crossed my face. "What, are you guys too chicken to take me on? I've faced monsters that are bigger than you before and have come out nearly unscathed!" I motioned for one of them to come forward with my right hand, my smirk turning into a grin. "I bet that you guys can't say that you've faced a demigod of time and lived to tell the tale before. I'll wipe the deck with anyone of you."

That seemed to get their attention. Lea and Riku were staring at me with surprised expressions, while Audrey's eyes were wide with disbelief and doubt.

The dark-haired, dark-eyed man with the buzzcut stepped forward. "I don't believe that you could have done that. You don't look strong enough."

I held out my hands and summoned twin spheres of fire, causing the men's eyes to widen further. "I don't have to look strong enough when I already am strong enough."

"Are you some kind of witch or something?!" demanded a blond-haired, blue-eyed fellow.

"Nah. My dad just got dunked in something when he was a teenager and gave me superpowers." I clenched my fists, snuffing the fire. "So? Who wants to take me on?"

"Dunked in what?" Audrey muttered, frowning.

"All right; fine." The guy with blond hair and green eyes stepped forward. "If you really think that you can take us on, take me on."

My eyebrows rose slightly, an interested expression crossing my face. "Very well, challenger. Let's see if you can take me out." I jumped back, and a blast from the hidden jets in my feet launched me back a short distance, allowing me to land a good distance away from the guys we were going to test and from everyone else, who were standing around the railing at the edge of the deck.

"You can fly?!" Audrey demanded.

I snorted and shook my head. "Nah, not like that. These are just meant to let me keep up with people more easily when I'm on the ground and launch me longer distances when I'm jumping." I tapped on a metallic red boot with a couple fingers. "It'd take too much energy to use them to fly, and besides – it'd probably only count for hovering anyway."

The man who'd said he'd serve as my challenger looked startled at my statement, then shook his head and gained a more determined expression. "Is that a part of your fighting strategy?"

"Normally? Nah." I paused. "There's lots of things that I can do in a fight, actually, but I don't think that doing them all here is a good idea. I'd rather not burn you or accidentally cut a tendon or something." To prove my point, I held up my left arm and clenched my fist.

Shing!

A curved blade popped out of my arm, curving around my fist and acting as a sort of guard.

Audrey yelled an exclamation in Spanish that I'd rather not repeat. The others stared with varying degrees of shock as well.

"So, yeah, not gonna be using that." I relaxed my left hand, letting the blade disappear back into my arm. "So, what are you going to do, bud?"

The man stared back at me with an incredulous expression, then shook his head and ran forward, holding his arms out wide. Was he intending to grab me in a hug?

I sidestepped him, going into a half-crouch and sticking out a leg; the other's momentum kept him going, and his ankles slammed into my armored calf and he fell face-first onto the deck.

"I've fought creatures that were built for speed; don't think that you can startle me just by attempting to come at me and pull me into a bear hug," I said, rising to my feet again.

My opponent got slowly to his feet, rubbing his nose. He looked at me with a furious expression that seemed to hint at the fact that he was annoyed with a woman for having managed to get the better of him at something. Then he got into something of a half-crouch himself before lunging forward again, swinging with his right fist.

I ducked, then rammed into him, knocking the wind out of him and sending him crashing to the deck on his rear end. "You're leaving yourself wide open! Man, you mustn't have all that much experience!"

The other coughed, then pushed himself up to his feet. "You're trying to rile me up, aren't you? Well, it's not gonna work."

"Bravo to the man who doesn't like banter," I replied, rolling my eyes. "You mustn't have much snark in you, do you?"

I think I might have pushed him over the edge at that point, because then he lunged at me again a lot more quickly than he had last time. I almost side-stepped it, but then I decided to do something else.

I stood firm.

He rammed into me with enough force to blow a normal human over, but I was ready for it, with knees bent and hands out and ready to catch his arms as he came at me. There was a loud screeching noise as I scraped against the deck for a moment, but then we stopped short.

The man blinked in surprise, the anger that had been in his eyes fading into confusion.

"A little augmented strength as a result of a mechanical form never hurt anybody," I said. "I never got into sports back at home, though, so after I got my armor I didn't really keep up the habit."

"Wh-what are you saying?!"

I gripped his arms a little more tightly and leaned forward for a moment, feeling him push back against me and send me scraping across the deck a little again. "I'm saying that you're really underestimating me because all you see is the pretty face, not what happens to be underneath."

Then I slipped down and under him, sending him crashing head first into the deck as a result of his own momentum.

I heard scrambling across the deck as I sat up and got to my feet, and Sweet came over and helped my opponent into a sitting position. He looked at the guy's eyes and looked over at me.

"Well, he's dazed, and he might have a concussion," Sweet said flatly. "How'd you do that?"

"I think that was judo. My cousin Joshua was showing me a few moves that could easily disarm an opponent without hurting them over the last year, so I picked up a few things. If I was holding myself back from using my fire and my swords, I figured that I might as well put them to good use." I shrugged. "Joshua's a lot better than me, though. It's almost like he can see which direction you're going to come from without you even taking a step. I don't think that I'll ever get to be that good, though."

"Well, he's not going to be doing any fighting anytime soon." Sweet helped the man to his feet and led him away.

"So, what'd you think?" Lea called over.

"He may have only been hotheaded because he was facing against an opponent he never thought would be able to best him," I replied. "Hopefully, the next four will keep their heads better." I frowned. "You guys are going to spar against them too, right?"

"Ladies first," Riku replied with a knowing smirk.

…well then.

The next guy to step forward was the blue-eyed blond. He actually looked a little nervous, so the short spar I'd just had seconds ago must've made him nervous.

"How strong are you?" he asked.

"I've never tested myself against human opponents, so I don't know if I can really give you a proper answer on that." I shrugged. "But I don't think that I'll be causing concussions to everyone all the time. I prefer more long-range stuff with my fire – oh, and this." I held up my right hand and shifted it into my Buster.

Audrey freaked. "Where did you – how – how do you use that?!"

I grinned at Audrey's reaction. "I'm not showing it off here." I let my right hand shift back; my new opponent relaxed considerably. "If we run into anything that deserves a blast of energy to the face, though, you'll know what it does."

Audrey started ranting in Spanish again, and my second opponent made his first move, slowly moving to the left while most of my focus was on the mechanic of the group. I started circling back instantly, surprising him.

"Trying to figure out if I've got a weak point?" I asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Something like that," came the reply. He frowned, trying to keep the nervousness out of his eyes in favor of determination instead. "Did you really fight a demigod?"

"I've fought lots of demigods." No need to mention that they lived in another dimension, especially not in the presence of the main part of the crew. "If you want to be specific about one, make a random guess."

"Time?"

"Basically a giant dragon. A roar from him basically throws you in and out of the timestream and could rip you to pieces. The best thing I did was cover my ears and use my lungs to blow a flamethrower at him."

I got a disbelieving expression.

I shrugged. "Eh. Say what you will about it, but it happened."

My opponent shook his head, then gained a determined frown and charged forward, swinging back his left fist. I moved out of the way, but then his right fist came forward and slammed into my side.

Clang!

"Aah!" My opponent stumbled back, gripping his right hand as his fingers twitched in pain.

"What? Thought that was weaker armor and could make a dent in me?" I motioned to the gray armor that protected my stomach area. "Trust me, that stuff's pretty hard, too. You're not gonna be able to knock the wind out of me that way."

He gritted his teeth. "Take it off and make this fight fair, then!"

"No can do. This stuff's like a second skin, and besides, as soon as I got it, I couldn't remove it, even if I tried. The best I can do to make these fights fair is hold back on the whole fire-blasting, slashing, and shooting thing."

WARNING! WARNING!

I felt a presence come up behind me suddenly, and I whirled sharply as my Buster activated and blasted the figure who was behind me. "Stun Shot!"

The dark-haired, dark-eyed guy was sent flying back a short distance and slammed into the ground, sparks flying from his limbs as he lay there limply.

Exclamations of shock went around the deck as I lowered my Buster and deactivated it; Sweet ran over in order to look the man over.

"He's just stunned and momentarily paralyzed," I called over. "He'll be fine in a few minutes, but I wouldn't recommend sticking his finger in an outlet."

Sweet shot me a look, startled and aghast. "You could have given him a heart attack!"

"The charge is too low for that," I replied. "Momentary heart palpitations, maybe, but I've been hit with plenty Thunder Waves and Thunderbolts to know the difference between the two. My Stun Shots are somewhere just above paralyzing and way below nerve-frying; he's fine. Physically, anyway – I don't know what was going through his head to give him the idea that it would be a good idea to sneak up on me while I was facing down someone else."

I turned to look back at my second opponent as Sweet started to drag the ambusher off. "So, do you want to keep going, or do you want to let Sweet have a look at your hand and just bow out instead?"

The man looked conflicted at that, then nodded slightly and stepped back. "I still think this would have been more even if you'd been without your armor."

"Probably. But then I might have responded by defending myself with small shields of fire instinctively and gotten your fingers burned."

The rest of the fights were handled by Lea and Riku, who went for hand-to-hand rather than pulling out their Keyblades – that would've really titled the fight in their favor. I ended up standing off to the side with my arms crossed over my chest and watched the men's stances, how they went for Lea and Riku, but I mostly watched their expressions.

By the end of it, I was more sure about some of the members of the group that could possibly be let into the inner circle, but I still wasn't entirely sure as to who it was that we could end up letting in.

For that, I would have to actually talk to them, not test their fighting skills, but that was probably not going to happen for a while, depending on what exactly ended up happening now that we were back on the surface of the world.

It made me both nervous and excited: an exploration of a time period that I hadn't lived in back on my world, and a hunt for a man who had turned into an extremely dangerous monster when I had last seen him.

This world was really going to get turned upside down.

Heh. Maria's too strong for her own good. XD