Hey guys, sorry I haven't posted any new chapters in two weeks! I've been on a trip to California and Utah, and it was really fun! I'll try to post as many chapters as possible this week!
Chapter 35: An Unlikely Apprenticeship
Characters (in order of first appearance):
Jiraiya / Hercules
"No, Gelato! Try again!" Gamberetto yelled, watching as Gelato fell into the clear pond in the green hills a few miles outside the city.
Shortly after, Gelato resurfaced and crawled onto the bank shivering. He was mad at himself for screwing up, and the fact that he got jibbed. Shortly after Spauracchio had left the two of them alone, Gelato expressed his reluctance due to the assumption that Gamberetto was a pervert because his nose bled when Gelato attacked him with his Mafia Harem spell. Ironically, Gamberetto didn't seem phased, and offered to let the whole affair go by taking Gelato to a special place where the city women went to bathe when the plumbing in their apartments didn't work.
"You said there would be women here!" Gelato yelled, crossing his arms over his bare chest. "That was a lie, wasn't it?"
"Of course! How else could I have gotten a vulgar troublemaker such as yourself to train with me otherwise?" Gamberetto replied, calmly sitting down on a log by the beach. "You've got the basic idea down, but you're not letting the necessary amount of nature energy to flow into your feet and allow you to walk on the water's surface."
"But I'm trying to, and I can't seem to get enough in there!"
"Or maybe you're putting too much energy into your feet, thus causing you to sink like a stone."
"Will you just shut up on the metaphors and tell me what I have to do?!"
Just then, a few girlish giggles came from the trees on the other side of the pond. Gelato turned around to see a group of young women emerged and stopped at the beach. They didn't see Gelato and Gamberetto, and so they proceeded to take their clothes off while chatting with each other. Gelato wanted to watch, but Gamberetto hastily turned him back to face him.
"You can look at the girls later, but for now, you need to train," Gamberetto said, clasping Gelato's shoulders.
"Okay, fine." Gelato said reluctantly.
He turned to face the pond, and closed his eyes. While he attempted to send the nature energy to his feet, he heard the laughter of the women on the other side, and therefore had a harder time concentrating than before. To keep his mind off of the women, he thought about Voluta, and how much he wanted to beat that guy. But then a man's cry made Gelato open his eyes and see Gamberetto running diagonally across the pond to large tree. Further up the tree, within its branches, sat a man sitting on top of a large winged creature. He was barely visible, but Gelato saw his head move as he noticed Gamberetto running towards him.
"Hey, you!" Gamberetto shouted, walking up to the base of the tree. "Get down from there, you pervert!"
"Keep it down," the man said calmly. "You'll ruin the show."
This made Gamberetto's cheeks turn red, as he ran up the tree to face the man in person. But to his surprise, he was met by a large bird foot, and gripped his shirt in its talons. He struggled against it, but its grip was stronger. Then he pulled out his gun and shot at the talons, but the bullets bounced right off.
"Aquila's Love Grip (Whip of Love) can't be broken." The man said. "Now you're starting to annoy me."
The winged creature then flapped its wings, and took off. Gelato was amazed to see that it was a giant eagle that was as big as a taxi, carrying a middle-aged man with long jagged white hair and red streaks coming down from his dark brown eyes. He wore a greed shirt with a long red short-sleeved coat over it, matching green pants, and worn-out boots meant for long travel. Once the eagle was hovering directly over the pond, the man nodded, and the bird dropped Gamberetto. An enormous splash followed, which caught the attention of the women, who ran away when they saw the bird and the man, carrying their clothes with them.
"Darn," the man said.
He commanded the eagle to turn, and it flew towards the beach Gelato stood on. Still struck, Gelato lost his pent-up nature energy completely as the eagle and the man landed a few feet next to him. The man then got off the eagle, which evaporated into smoke, and walked away. Ignoring his own discarded suit and shoes, Gelato went after the man, trying to get his attention.
"Excuse me," Gelato said.
The man didn't seem to hear him.
"EXCUSE ME!"
At that, the man turned to face Gelato. He was much taller when he was on the eagle, and stared down at Gelato with annoyance. Gelato glared back, recognizing that look from so many others who disapproved of him.
"What's a kid like you doing out in the middle of the woods?" the man asked. "Shouldn't you be in school?"
"I don't go to school! I'm a Soldier of the Foglia family!" Gelato proclaimed, and showed his hand with the scar of the pentagram. "And here's proof that I passed the initiation test!"
"So it is." The man acknowledged, but he wasn't impressed. "But aren't you a little too young to be a Soldier? Has the Godfather gotten so desperate that he's hiring children to do his dirty work? What a poor old man! He never changes."
"I don't know what your beef is with the Godfather, mister, but if you insult the Godfather like that, then you must be an enemy!" Gelato then pulled a gun from the inside of his boxers and pointed it at the man, who held his hands up as if in surrender.
"Whoa, whoa, take it easy!" the man said. "I'm not an enemy! I happen to know the old man personally! He was my Capo when I was your age."
"You mean you're…" Gelato couldn't believe he pulled a gun on this man.
"Yes, I'm one of the three Great Mobsters of the Foglia family. My name is Hercules, the Eagle Tamer (Sage). What business do you have with me?"
"Well, first of all, you knocked out my teacher."
"That guy I threw into the pond was your teacher?" Hercules chuckled. "What could you learn from a straight-laced loser like him?"
"He was trying to teach me how to walk on water in order to show me how to conserve my nature energy. Said something about me using too much energy, and wasting it pretty quickly. But the funny thing is…I've never had this problem until an encounter I had in the Dead Man's Sewers with a weird snake guy."
"Weird snake guy?" Hercules frowned, as if he was remembering something bad. Then he smiled. "What's your name, kid?"
"It's Gelato. Gelato Vortice. I plan to be the greatest Godfather of the Foglia family, and to do that, I need to win the Gladiator Games! So because you disposed of my current teacher, will you teach me in his place?"
"Forget it." Then Hercules turned around and walked from Gelato.
"Aw, come on!" Gelato cried, following Hercules at his heels. "It's your fault that my teacher ended up in the pond, so you should make up for it by teaching me!"
"My fault?" Hercules said, picking his pace up. "He went out of his way from training you to stop me from peeping, so it's ultimately his fault for getting into the situation he's in."
"So you really were staring at those women?"
"Yes, and I'm not ashamed of it."
"All right then, if you're not going to teach me…" Gelato ran in front of Hercules, blocking his path. Then he made a quick hand-sign and said, "Transfiguration: Mafia P***y!"
A bright light followed, and Hercules was met by Gelato's feminine form. His eyes widened, his face went red, and a little drool came down the side of his gaping mouth. Gelato looked at Hercules and winked, making Hercules shake with excitement.
"Hot dog!" he said, taking a step closer. "Where did you come from? Are you an angel, or a nymph of these fair woods?"
"I'm as real as you want me to be," Gelato said in his female voice. "Please, teach me, sir."
"Oh, I'll teach you all right," Hercules said with a breaking voice as he fumbled with his pants. "I'll show you the ways of love and pro-creation."
"Eww, gross!" Gelato said, quickly changing back into his normal self. "That's not what I want to learn, you pervert!"
When Hercules realized he had been tricked, he let his pants fall and tried to choke Gelato. But he tripped over his fallen pants, and landed at Gelato's feet. He glared up at Gelato, but he was met by an equally strong glare. Then he quickly pulled his pants up, buttoned them, and stood above Gelato.
"How clever you are," Hercules said with a twitching eyebrow. "To fool a full-grown man with a female form that is very pleasing to the eye, is not something that can easily be accomplished. So here's the deal: I'll be your teacher, but only for the Gladiator Games."
When they got back to the pond, they found Gamberetto passed out on the beach. Gelato quickly dragged him to a small tree a little ways from the pond, and propped him up so he would rest. Meanwhile, Hercules sat down on the beach, and took out a small notebook from his coat-pocket. He was in deep concentration when Gelato came back, so Gelato had to shake him awake.
"So what're you going to teach me first, Pimp?" Gelato asked.
"I'm not a pimp, I'm a Tamer!" Hercules snapped. Then he looked at the pond, and then at an intricate Alchemic circle on Gelato's naval area. "Which tattoo parlor did you have to go to get something like that?"
Gelato looked down at the Alchemic circle and blushed. "It's not a tattoo. I don't know what it is, but I've had it ever since I was born."
Hercules stared at the circle for a long time, as if trying to decipher its meaning. This made Gelato feel uncomfortable, but before he could turn away, Hercules suddenly held his left hand up. A pentagram like the one Typhonragazzo used appeared, but it was silver, and not gold. Then before Gelato could comment, Hercules thrust this hand into his chest, throwing him backwards into the water.
"What did you do that for?!" Gelato shouted after resurfacing.
"You had a God's Mark seal on your chest," Hercules responded casually. "That's what was causing you to use up so much nature energy. You weren't wasting it, but using less than you actually could, and that seal was blocking most of it. So I removed the seal with a God's Absence (Five Elements Unseal), now try to walk on water."
Gelato growled, and raised his arms to swim. But to his surprise, he found that the surface of the water had now turned solid, causing his hands to sit on top. Instead of wavering, he concentrated his nature energy further into his body as he pulled himself up, and stood on the surface of the water. Feeling excited, he took a step with his nature energy going to his feet, and it stayed. After a few more steps, Gelato broke into a run across the pond, and reached the other side just as the sun was getting lower. In response, he whooped and hollered to Hercules, who gave him a small nod and went back to writing in his mysterious notebook.
"Hey, Gelato," Spauracchio said, meeting Gelato by the pasta restaurant Delfino used to take him to. "You look pretty happy. Did you have a good training session with Gamberetto?"
"Gamberetto?" Gelato said, and scuffed. "I ditched him for a guy who happened to be in the same place we were. His name's Hercules, and is way better than Gamberetto!"
"Hercules?" Spauracchio's took a long drag on his cigarette. "That's quite a coincidence. I heard he was coming back to Foglia territory, but if I had known sooner, I would've recommended him instead of Gamberetto."
"Do you know him?" Gelato asked.
"He was my Capo, and a good teacher," Spauracchio responded. "But he is a pervert, and tends to get easily carried away."
"Yeah, Gamberetto caught him peeping at some girls, and wound up getting knocked down by an eagle Hercules was riding."
"That sounds like something Hercules would do."
"But do you think what he has to teach me will be enough to beat Voluta?"
Spauracchio didn't answer, and then he patted Gelato's shoulder. "As a former member of his Squad, I can say that his teaching will be more than enough to allow you to beat Voluta, depending on what he teaches you."
End of Chapter 35