I added more to this chapter.
Enjoy!
Disclaimer: I don't own anything related to Mario or its franchise; it belongs to
Nintendo and their affiliates. I just am really grateful to its creators for giving
me such a wonderful game and media series to write about!
I also don't own anything related to Harry Potter, all that belongs to J.K. Rowling,
but thanks go to her as well because, using her wonderful work, I can expand this
story to make it more interesting.
I also don't own anything related to Naruto.
Chapter Four
It was a good thing I was wearing light, casual clothes because as the day progressed, it got hotter. The General led me from the palace steps to a giant field. The grass was vividly green and the land was full of tiny flowers and gently sloping hills. I found the most interesting thing was that it was eerily similar to the background on my old laptop computer, complete with a sky that was getting bluer by the minute.
"Where are we going?" I decided to ask.
General Zair and I hadn't spoken to each other beyond those brief words at the castle. Now we were miles behind it in what looked like the middle of nowhere. I wondered idly if this was just an open area he wanted to train me at.
"We're here." The pale man spoke in answer.
I watched him tuck his hands into the pockets of his steel-grey pants and move his foot back and forth in the grass. I wondered at that, because it looked like he was just pushing the dirt around. Then I saw an entire patch of grass move aside as if it were nothing more than a cleverly-disguised rug. A brown wooden hatch was revealed, and the General used the toe of his grey boot to lift it open. It thumped against the ground and gave light to a set of stone stairs.
"What the..." I trailed, because this was just too weird.
"After you," General Zair spoke with slightly raised black brows.
I glanced at him in disbelief so he just sighed a little and started heading down the stairs. I couldn't see him after about the fifth step so I sucked in a breath, released it, and descended after him.
"Glad you decided to join me, boy." General Zair's voice resounded.
I couldn't even see him because the hatch slid shut after me and we were bathed in total darkness. I was cautious in the way I climbed down each stair, taking my time and listening for the general's footsteps ahead of me. Suddenly there was light and I could see it came in the form of blue fire directly from General Zair's pale right hand. He had it extended towards a small cage on the wall. It was shaped like a honeycomb and there was a pipeline stemming from it that led to another identical one, and that one led to another and so on. The fire the General lit traveled through those tiny pipelines and lit all the other honeycomb fixtures so that the entire place was illuminated.
Semi-illuminated.
It was still kinda' dark, but there was enough light for me to tell that the place was pretty huge. It was expansive and full of strange equipment and weapons and devices. It was like a cross between a gym and a torture chamber; it wasn't at all appealing. Somehow, though, the General seemed to fit right in with his smoky grey clothes and pale grey skin. I scratched my arm and nervously looked at all the equipment again.
What, does this whole city operate underground?
"Why is the training area down here?" I asked the general.
General Zair tilted his head and asked, "Do you remember when you said Chai Kingdom seemed...clean?"
"Yeah." I replied.
"It's not."
I didn't see how that answered my question at all, but General Zair was pulling a white cigarette out of his pocket so I figured that's all I'd get out of him. He lit it up with his thumb and waved me over to where he was walking near a machine.
Now this thing looked like another combination; carousel and treadmill came to mind. The thing was like a circular track on cylinder beams with a series of interlocking metal material covering it. There were banisters on both sides and a gate with a couple steps leading up to it.
"Go on," General Zair called to me as he walked off to the side.
While he went over to the nearest wall, I stepped onto the thing I'd just call a treadmill for now. General Zair was standing near a panel of shelves and from one of them he pulled a clipboard and a black pencil and a starch piece of paper. He came back over to me and tucked the pencil behind his ear. Only now did I see it was sort of pointed at the tip, his ear that is. He held his clipboard at his side and stood to my left.
"You should stretch your body." He advised me.
I shrugged and then did as he suggested. I pulled my arms over my head, bent down to my feet, and swung my arms side to side and across my chest.
"Before initiating any formal sort of training, I'll need to first see where you stand on the scale of physical aptitude." General Zair explained. "I'll take you through various stations to assess the current condition of your body."
"Alright." I nodded.
That makes sense; get the body in gear in general before starting any special lessons, I thought.
The General then reached for something in the same boxed area that the gate was located. It looked like a giant cane, like a crank-shaft thing.
I think that falls under the 'carousel' aspect of this machine.
He pulled the shift backwards a little bit and my body lurched forward a little because the ground under my feet had begun to move. It was a small change from immobility, just a slow rotating movement. I let the mat carry me forward before I started walking. General Zair nodded from his place at the gate and I continued walking. That lasted for about a minute before he pulled the shift backwards a tiny bit more. I picked up the pace slightly. We didn't need to talk to each other for me to get the gist of this exercise.
This isn't so bad, I figured while making my third or fourth revolution around the moving track.
In a few minutes, I was re-thinking those words.
The General had steadily increased the pace to the point to where I now had to jog. I wasn't the most athletic person around, but I wasn't a slob by any standard, either. I could handle the pace, but I was starting to sweat, especially when the minutes wore on.
Again General Zair increased the pace and I had to compensate. Each footfall came quicker than the last, my breathing turned to panting, and the moisture accumulated on my arms and chest and legs. The dim, sooty walls of the underground training room seemed like a blur as I rounded the track again and again.
I don't know when, but somewhere along the line I had to break out into a sprint. The only sounds I heard was the whirring of the beams under the machine, the thumping of my trainers hitting the floor, and the blood rushing in my ears. I could feel my heart beating furiously in my chest as I ran, just ran like the devil was on my heels. I could barely make anything out as it flitted past my vision but I could have sworn I saw a new light in the General's black eyes. I didn't question it.
About ten long, agonizing minutes later I glanced at him again and he was definitely watching me intensely. He moved his hand further, further, further back until I was barely staying on my feet as I ran the track with all my might.
Uh, you can stop now, I thought, but I didn't speak those words because that would require work and oxygen that I just couldn't spare at the moment. I was too busy trying to maintain the flow of air into my lungs and keep from stumbling. To help myself, I focused on one single spot and just pushed myself to keep going.
Is he gonna' stop or what?
Ten more minutes passed and I felt myself starting to shake with every corner I rounded. I glanced with candid desperation at the General, hoping he'd see my clear struggle to go on and grant me some kind of reprieve.
He brought the shift all the way back.
The next two seconds happened in the blink of an eye. I felt the moving track whip from under my soles as the speed increased. My head plummeted and I vaguely recall throwing my hands in front of my face protectively. From there my head hit the track and I was jerked onto my side and flew through the gap in between the railing and the mat. My back hit the wall and then there was pain. Lots of pain.
Let's see, I gauged, my hands hurt, my head hurts, my ankle hurts, and my back is killing me.
I laid my palms against the sooty floor and winced because they were a bit raw from where they'd gotten mat-burn against the track. My back was smarting as I sat up but it would pass. As for my ankle, well, I cradled and massaged it for a couple seconds and the pain also went away. My head just felt a little tender but thanks to my hands getting in the way of the track, there wasn't a cut or anything. There would be no lasting damage.
A pale hand stuck out in front of me.
"Are you alright?"
I took the General's proffered hand warily and he helped me to my feet. His grip was strong and he kind of yanked me but the man didn't seem to harbor any ill-will, which made this even more confusing.
Why wouldn't he stop the machine?
"I'm fine." I told him quietly. "Just sore."
General Zair nodded once and pulled his pencil from behind his ear. He took a second to scribble down some notes and then put the writing utensil away. He then led me to another station in the underground room. It was a spot near the corner and looked like an obstacle course.
"Cool," I hummed to myself, thinking this would be a tad less strenuous than the last exercise.
I rolled my shoulders and remembered being in grade school and doing things like this on field days. Granted, the things took place outside rather than indoors but it had the same variety of activities. There was a rope lining wall to wall that formed a sort of lane for the area.
"I'm going to be right here," General Zair spoke, going over to the wall.
He was at the left of me and the rope barrier, standing near a panel of switches. I frowned because I'd seen him use his fire to brighten the place already, so those weren't light switches.
"What are those for?" I asked him.
General Zair's mouth twitched. "You'll see."
Great, I frowned briefly.
I stepped up onto a raised metal platform and saw that the next exercise was self-explanatory. At my feet there was a cord with wooden handles. I knew how to jump rope. Again, grade school. The task was too simple for words. I started jumping and didn't stop until I saw General Zair flip one of the switches. That's when I paused because the metal platform was moving.
What?
I watched the metal under my feet slide backwards to reveal a pit of sand. It was like the platform was filled with it. I glanced at General Zair and he gazed back solemnly.
"You'd better keep moving," he warned.
Quickly I saw why; my feet were sinking. The sand was sinking fast under my feet, swallowing up my black trainers and dragging me down. I frowned and fought to free myself.
"What is this?" I asked aloud.
I got no answer but I didn't want to find out how low I would go if I stayed still, so I started jumping again. It kinda went without saying that jumping rope was about a million times harder when I was standing in quicksand. The stuff kept weighing me down and making me stumble and trip.
General Zair flipped another switch.
This time, little green vines started sprouting from the corners of the sand-filled platform. They started whipping at my legs and I could feel the sting even through the hem of my pants.
Ow, what the hell?
Faster I jumped, though I had no choice now. It was the only way to stay above the sand and avoid getting snapped at, too. I was totally sweating now, and it made holding onto the wooden handles that much harder.
Focus, I urged myself.
I glanced at the General and, though he didn't flip anymore switches, he was watching me jump with eyes alighted excitedly. I frowned but that little wayward glance cost me; my right foot sank an inch too deep and the rhythm I'd built up stuttered and, long story short, I fell to my hands and knees into the sand.
As I sunk, I glanced pointedly at the General. He first took his time writing something on his clipboard, which meant I had to endure the sticky sand creeping up my pants legs and the weird vines slapping me in the face. When the General did reach over and flip the switch, the vines withered and retreated and the sand slipped from my body like water. I hurriedly climbed to my feet and got the hell away from that platform before anything else could happen.
I almost forgot, though, that there were more obstacles in front of me. The platform, now closed and innocent-looking, was the first in a line of activities. '
Just great.
The next thing looked relatively simple, but I gazed at it with ware. It seemed like a regular pull-up bar. The two poles connected at the top with a long one in the middle. However, there was also a platform at the base of this structure and that made me shiver a little; I almost didn't want to go through with this. For a training session, this seemed pretty extreme. I glanced at General Zair and saw him gazing at me expectantly with those hawkish black eyes.
"I trust you are familiar with this exercise?" He asked me.
I nodded then asked, "Are all the platforms filled with sand?"
"Oh, that wasn't sand." General Zair spoke with a flash of a smirk. "And to answer your question, no. That was the only one."
Okay, so that made me feel a bit better. I still stepped up onto the platform carefully, though. I stood under the black metal bar and clapped my sweaty hands together, then rubbed them on my pants and jumped a bit to latch onto the pole with both palms. I wrapped my fingers around the bar tightly and was glad that the metal was quite dry; a little rusty, but dry.
General Zair watched me almost as closely as I watched him while I pulled my body up and over the bar again and again. I was keeping my eye on him to see if he'd flip anymore switches. About two minutes passed, and he didn't flip a single one.
But he did push a button.
I stilled in my movements with my weight pushed totally onto my hands and my upper body above the bar. Below me, the platform was sliding to the side just as the other one had and something started whirring. I did not like the sound of that. Before I could get out any accusations, the General pushed yet another button and the two ends of the bar vibrated. I blinked and saw what appeared to be two cords of barbed wire protrude from the corners of the pole and then connect in a line above my head.
"What's going on?" I asked, trying not to sound frantic.
"You'll see." General Zair told me. "Keep your chin up."
I did, but I was trying not to freak out. The whirring noise below me turned out to be a set of rotating blades rising up from the platform. It looked like three giant metal saws, spinning and getting closer and closer to my feet. As if that weren't hellish enough, I kept getting poked in the head when I got too close to the barbed wire at the top. I really couldn't say chin-ups were this hard in grade school.
Alright, let's see, I thought, I can't go too high to avoid the saws, and I can't get too low to avoid the wire, and stopping is absolutely out of the question, unless I could manage to do a sharp dive to the left...I might crash into the General, though that prospect is starting to look more and more appealing compared to this...
The saws were attached to mechanical arms and that only meant they could reach; as the seconds progressed, they climbed higher. I could practically feel them tearing at the bottom of my trainers. I guess to off-set that, the barbed wire was getting higher as well; however, it required more effort on my part to pull myself higher and higher. My arms were getting tired but the sweat I'd broken out in was more out of panic than true exhaustion. Or maybe it was both, I didn't know at this point.
I'd been pulling myself up for what felt like eons before my biceps started quivering and my stomach started clenching. I couldn't stop, but my body was threatening to.
Come on, I compelled myself, I gotta' keep going! Can't let this machine turn my legs into shredded beef!
As if to implore him to grant me mercy I glanced at General Zair. He wasn't even looking at me, he was writing something down on his clipboard. I called out to him, I think I said 'hey', and he looked up. There was a spark of amusement in his features but it only lasted half a second before he turned to the panel of switches and mashed a couple of buttons.
In an instant the barbed wire receded back into the corners of the bar and the saws stopped rotating. They, too, lowered back into the platform where they came, and it was only after the lid slid shut that I allowed my grip on the rusty bar to lax and dropped to my feet. I climbed clumsily down from the platform and leaned on the rope partition between me and the General. He walked away from me and I let my head drop as I tried to catch my breath.
This is crazy, I frowned, what kind of training is this? I see why all the soldiers look like they've got a stick up their behinds, it would totally take all the joy out of serving in the military if I had to do this all the time...
"Here."
I glanced up and saw the General handing me a metal canister. I raised up off the rope and let my arms drop to my sides.
"You got a switch for that thing, too?" I asked.
"No," General Zair smirked, "This is just water."
Reluctantly I took the canister from him and found it cool to the touch. I unscrewed the top and sniffed, then took a sip. It tasted fresh and clean, so I downed the rest of it in a few gulps.
"Thank you," I told him.
Yeah, thanks for nearly costing me a couple body parts, I added in my head. I stretched my tired arms out and walked ahead towards the next exercise. I could have just turned and walked away, but I was already here and I figured I might as well see this through.
Though it looks like each exercise is worse than the last, I noted with a grimace.
True to that sentiment, the giant rock wall looked a bit imposing. But, by previous logic, if things look easy they're hard so if this looks hard, it might be easy.
Or it might be the death of me, I doubted.
At any rate, I had to decide now if I was going to do this. I turned to the General and saw him watching me. I couldn't make out every word, but I saw his clipboard had my name on it several times. I wondered then what he thought of me.
Then again, I'd rather not know.
I instead faced the rock wall and saw that it was color-coded. The first few feet had rocks inlaid in a black gradient, then the next few feet had reddish hues, and the next few feet had the same black color as the first few feet.
Let's do this, I encouraged myself.
I put the empty container down near my feet and was glad to see that there was no platform here, just the wall. After wiping my hands on my pants, I stepped up to the earthy-smelling obstacle and gripped a rock in each hand, then pulled my weight up and found my footing. Then I climbed.
This is easy
That was my clue right there that things were about to get bad. I was climbing and climbing without any hitches or problems, so clearly something had to go wrong. I glanced over my shoulder at the general and saw him watching me with bridled amusement. He had his previously-lit cigarette behind his left ear and his pencil in his fingers; he was holding his clipboard but his eyes were on me, watching me as I got higher and higher.
I reached the next level, the one with the reddish background, and almost immediately found trouble. The rock I grabbed for felt like it was covered in a layer of grease; again, this hangup threw off my rhythm and I started falling. I knocked my knee on the way down but I was able to grab onto some rocks on the lower, dryer level before I got to the ground again.
Alright, I thought, let's try that again.
This time, when I got to the slippery level, I anticipated the handicap and compensated for it by digging my nails into the stony surfaces as best I could. I felt myself slipping.
Okay, that's not working, I noted.
I steadied my feet on the glistening rocks and was glad for the small amount of traction my black trainers provided. When I had my footing secure, I hooked my arms over the greasy rocks and tried to hang on. My feet started to slip so I hurriedly kicked them flat against grainy backdrop and nearly worked my nails down to nothing in my haste to hold on to those rocks.
This is notworking, I frowned.
My only choice at this point would be to leap down because I had an idea, but I couldn't execute it from this level. I hopped to the ground and tore off my shirt. A glance at the general told me Zair was now highly intrigued. He was watching me as I gripped the shirt in my mouth and scaled the wall for the second time. I got to the slippery level and took my time getting my footing, then using my shirt as a grip as I moved from rock to rock.
Success!
I was moving now, but I still had my footing to worry about. That was nothing. Soon I was almost near the top. To my relief, the rocks on the level that had the black background weren't slippery at all. That meant I could take a moment to stop and put my shirt back on.
"What the-!"
Before I knew what had happened, my leg swept an empty hole from where the rock I'd been standing on had disappeared. I grimaced because in the confusion, I'd knocked my knee in the same place and it ached a little longer this time.
So these disappear?
I was shaking in anticipation as I climbed hesitantly, waiting for another rock to vanish. But to my abject horror, all but one of the rocks I was balancing on got sucked back into the wall. Luckily, the one that didn't was under my left hand, so all I had to do was quickly reach for a rock with my right.
Wait a minute, I noticed, the rocks aren't just disappearing...they're rearranging!
If there was anything I knew about machines of any sort, it was that there were always patterns with them. This machine wasn't any different. After a few seconds of watching it, I could see that there was but one pattern, and that was during one shift, the rocks would all suck out and move to the left, and then they'd move back to the right again, then they'd move to the right, and then back to the middle. I just had to take my time and I could get past this.
Only...
"You're kidding, right?" I called to General Zair, but I doubt he heard me over the sound of the flames.
They'd sprung out from the lower levels and were crackling and whooshing loudly. It looked like somebody had just lit a match under the first level, and that fire was spreading fast. I didn't have time to wait for the pattern, I had to haul ass and get over the wall before I got burned to a crisp.
This is hellish, I grimaced, who in their right mind would declare this a fitness aptitude test?
It wasn't fitness that was propelling me to scratch and scramble clumsily up the wall, it was nothing short of a strong sense of self-preservation and maybe adrenaline because I really didn't wanna' die today.
I felt the flames lick at my shoes not a second before I reached the top, and once there I didn't hang around; I flung myself over the edge and landed sloppily on the other side. It was a wonder I didn't twist my ankle or break one of my legs, because I was at least a couple stories high in the air.
At least I didn't think once about my fear of heights, I realized with no amount of true feeling. I was just glad to be on the ground again.
General Zair came over to me, writing on his clipboard, and I collected myself. He picked up my water canister and walked away, and I glanced over myself and took stock of my injuries. Other than my aching knee and ragged hands, they were minimal. I fixed my shirt and dusted my red hands on my pants. I could feel the soreness start to creep into my body now that the fight-or-flight rush was leaving my system.
"Very interesting," The General remarked when he handed me the cool metal canister.
I drank rapidly and was sorry to see the bottom of the container. I held it by my side and regarded the pale, tall general. He was writing again and still didn't come off as particularly mean-spirited, but that faint smirk had me thinking he had some kind of sadistic streak in him.
"Do you have something against me?" I asked him candidly.
He told me, "...Quite the opposite, actually."
And what does that mean, I wondered.
I held up the canister and asked, "Is there any more water?"
"A whole lot more," Zair spoke, bemused. "Come."
He started walking off and I followed him with my empty canister in hand over to the left of the obstacle course. He took me through a door, into a big room and towards a large space with a giant metal rectangle in the center. There was a wooden thing on the ground to the side of it that looked like a pushable switch. I saw General Zair go over and step on it, which made the metal rectangle on the floor start to recede like the platforms had.
Awesome, more of this shit, I thought.
I really wished I'd slept in this morning.
I watched the metal give way to an equally metal pool built into the ground. The material was dark and so it made the water look black in the dim-lit room. There were only four honeycomb light fixtures in here so it was kinda hard to see. I stepped over to the pool and grimaced.
General Zair half-asked, half-assumed, "You do know how to swim?"
"I'd be screwed if I didn't." I replied without thinking.
That made the General flash a brief smile.
He told me, "Ten laps, back and forth."
"Cool." I remarked in a sigh.
"You'll have to hurry," The General added. "The cover closes on its own."
Of course it does.
"So how long do I have?" I asked.
"It would be best to go as quickly as you can," was General Zair's answer.
I couldn't help but ask, "Who designed this thing?"
"The pool?"
"The whole underground place," I clarified.
"I did." General Zair spoke, in the same way a child would who had just put tacks under the teacher's chair and was proud of it.
I couldn't say that confession surprised me; he certainly seemed to be enjoying himself through all this.
Glad he's getting his jollies out of my misfortune, I thought wryly.
I saw that the cover was almost all the way backwards, so I figured I'd better get moving. I didn't want to know what happened if I ran out of time. I went over to the still-covered edge and took off my shoes, socks, and shirt, then sucked in a huge breath and jumped in.
Naturally the water temperature was glacial, because why the hell not.
It was alright because I wasn't trying to get cozy in this pool. I swam as fast as I could, back and forth, from one end of the rectangle to the other. I kept count but it was hard to concentrate because the longer I swam, the colder it felt like the water was getting.
I wonder if there's a switch for that, I frowned.
I was only on my eight lap of twenty when I heard a noise like car tires on gravel. Suddenly, things were getting darker so I glanced back and saw that the cover was closing, just like Zair said it would.
How am I supposed to finish if it's moving so fast?
I came to the realization that this was an impossible task. There was no way I'd finish before the cover closed. With that in mind, I abandoned my lap and started swimming towards the opposite end, where the light was. That light was growing thinner and thinner as the cover closed.
Please tell me this isn't happening
I felt my head knock up against the top of the cover and struggled to breathe. There was no gap between the cover and the water. I was already trapped in darkness, the dwindling opening was my only source of light.
Come on, I am not dying in this frozen, watery grave!
I forced my arms and legs to propel me forward and struggled like a crazy person towards the opening. It was thrashes, not strokes, I was using to jet me closer to the edge of the pool, the edge of freedom. I could feel my stomach and how hot it was against the frigid waters it was submerged in. That was panic and fear in my blood, pumping straight from my heart to the rest of my body parts and spurring them to keep moving even though I was getting weary. So close was I to losing or at least having the bones crushed in my two feet when I clambered out of the water and onto the dirty floor of the room. I immediately doubled over and coughed and shook from both nerves and the cold as the air stung at my chilled flesh.
That was something I don't ever want to repeat...
Back onto my elbows I leaned and just breathed, breathed in deeply and exhaled and breathed in again and then coughed for all my zeal. The air smelled a bit rank when I first got in this room but now it may as well have been as fresh as the air around the Alps. I crossed my legs and that was kind of hard to do when my pants were sopping wet but I managed. With my head bowed, I tried to get my heart to stop racing. The blood was still rushing in my ears and my head felt light, like I'd been on a merry-go-round. I saw two boots come into my line of vision and frowned.
"Here you are."
The General was handing me a towel from somewhere, I didn't know or care at this point. I took it from him and wiped my face and arms and chest, then wrapped it round my back and shoulders. I watched the General take the white cigarette from behind his ear and use his thumb and index finger to strike up a blue flame to light it. He took a drag, tucked it between his index and middle fingers, and started writing on his clipboard again.
"So would you still be willing to accept a position as commander?" He challenged.
No.
"Yes."
Damn my pride.
General Zair finally put away his pencil and gazed at me eye to eye, his own black ones gleaming with unadulterated pleasure and excitement.
"Good," he said, "because I'm really starting to like you."
A/N: I added to more this, as you can see. Hope you enjoyed.
Until next time!
~DymondGold~