18 Another raccoon geezer!
As Tongord walks onto the field, Celes notices the Meltheim brothers and gives them a sour look. Iris is also branded with devilish grin, which makes her back up a little more.
Tanja walks up to us and starts a conversation with Celes.
"Okay, The first hit counts! You are first Gabriel!", Tongord calls out, as soon as he reaches the centre of the field.
Gabriel walks very carefully up to Tongord. As he reaches a distance of about fifteen meters, he suddenly thrusts out his hands and a jet of flames shoots into Tongord's direction. But the teacher just jumps and evades, while closing the distance.
The student swings his flame-thrower into Tongord's direction, but the geezer just turns to mist, as he is about to be hit. Reforming above Gabriel, he falls down and flattens the smaller student under his weight.
"You depend too much on your ability. You should have countermeasures, in case someone is able to avoid your flame attacks. Next!"
Sarda walks up to the teacher, with sword in his hand. He is putting up a better fight, but looses in a similar way. His speed gave him the ability to avoid the same fate as Gabriel, but it didn't change the outcome in the long run.
After this Senda puts up an incredible fight, while using just his bare hands and feet. Just from watching, I can tell that he is much stronger and faster than Sarda! So why did his family send the weaker one of the brothers against me? I am confused!
In the end, the geezer calls an end without touching Senda. It seems he has seen enough.
Celes and Tanja have a nice chat about martial arts in the meantime. Tanja seems to be a martial arts maniac. She is all over the stuff, Celes has to tell her everything about inner mana manipulation.
Then Sandra Andros goes for it. As the teacher approaches her, she suddenly jumps up and casts an altered form of a blizzard spell, shredding the entire area, including Tongord, to pieces. Tongord's bloody body dissolves, to reappear above Sandra.
But while he is trying to hit her, Sandra does a somersault, and kicks the teachers head. Impressive leg strength! While Tongord's limb body falls to the ground, Sandra makes a perfect landing like a ballerina.
The teacher's body dissolves again and reforms before her, he congratulates her, calling it quits.
"Sucks! That geezer has the same ability as grandpa! In the first few fights, I had hoped he does the mist thing beforehand, to avoid injuries! But he seems to be immortal too.", I complain.
"The ability of those with the raccoon heritage is a very powerful one! It allows them to turn their body into mist and reform themselves in any form they like. So they are able to regenerate completely.
They may be weak in other aspects, but you have to kill them so many times, it is a given that they will get you sometime in turn. The only restriction is their mana reserve. If they run out, they are easy prey!", Tanja suddenly gives a nice explanation.
As expected of a house, famed for their intelligence network! But why are you talking of our teacher as prey!??
"I am next!", Tanja calls cheerfully and runs out to Tongord. But while she closes in, she suddenly falls into her own shadow? Tongord takes a defensive position and looks at the ground. Suddenly a knife stabs out at his ankle from his own shadow.
But he jumps up and with a short incantation, he releases a shock-wave against the ground. Landing again, the game starts anew.
Tanja seems to be some kind of fucking ninja! If she starts to pull out the shadow clones I will walk around on my hands for a day!
After five minutes and a few injuries on Tongord's side, he calls an end again.
Tanja comes back to us. "You did very well!", I conclude. "Hahaha, not really. Its true, that I had the upper hand, but that's only as long as I have mana. If we had played this game for another ten minutes, I would have lost, because teacher has much more mana than me.
The same would probably be true for Sandra. We can't kill Tongord often enough to drive him into a corner."
"So, how many times do I have to kill him?", Celes asks. "Huh? I don't know? I never got him to admit that his mana is low. He never shows any indication of that, even after dying dozens of times in a row.", Tanja answers.
What have you done to the guy!?
Iris is next. As the fight starts, she uses the same strategy, she had against Celes. Coating herself in mana to enforce her power, she gives Tongord a terrible beating. It lasts for about ten minutes, but then she apparently runs out of steam and gives up. The geezer is still standing, even though he should have died over ten times!
Then Sven is up against Tongord, with two knives. He moves so fast, there are just flashes to see. Tongord is holding his ground with defensive magic, like stone skin and shield. The teacher is not able to counter Sven's speed.
But as much as Sven has the upper hand on the offensive, he lacks the needed power to penetrate Tongord's defense. After a few minutes, Sven is completely exhausted and not able to go on.
I am impressed, I didn't think the little timid, shy boy had such potential.
"I will go!", Celes walks up to Tongord and starts the fight with a head on approach. Storming in, she gives Tongord a kick to the chest, which he evades by ducking under her kick.
Smiling, Celes turns in the air and thrusts an open hand to the ground. While she is being pushed up by the recoil, the ground dents in around Tongord, and he is flattened!
Oi! You watched too many eastern martial art movies on some earth-like planet! No sane martial artist would get such an idea by himself! That was the open palm of Buddha! What a copyright violation!
While Tongord dissolves, Celes starts to hammer out those attacks in quick succession, not giving Tongord time to reform. The stream of attacks holds her up in the air, while the crater with Tongord inside becomes deeper and deeper.
After about forty seconds of hammering blows, Celes lands again in front of us.
"Whew! I think that's my limit for now! I hope the geezer is a goner, I dislike zombies.", Celes has sweat on her forehead. In those few seconds, she hammered out about eighty of those attacks.
Suddenly something crawls out of the crater! "Cough, We need to have a talk about destroying the fighting grounds little miss!", Tongord is behind her with folded arms and a nasty look on his face.
"Hiiiiiii!?" Celes runs up to Tanja and hides behind her. It seems the time with Nicosar has left some kind of trauma inside her.
I understand it! I gives me the cold sweat when I think that I am next! Even though Tongord hasn't done anything evil to us!
…....yet. He hasn't done anything YET. Yes that's the correct way to think about it. You are right Celes! All raccoon geezer are some kind of monster cockroaches! You are never allowed to underestimate them.
So I walk up to Tongord next and put my hands into my pockets. I don't really have a good idea how to fight him either. How do you fight a guy like him, without a huge difference in strength? From our time with Nicosar, I know that you can blow them completely to pieces with an explosion.
For starters, I pick up a small stone with telekinesis and accelerate it, placing it directly between Tongord's eyes.
*Splash* a cloud of red goo exits the hole in the back of his head. Who ever said you need to throw big rocks at someone to kill him? But I know this won't work. I did that already a few times to Nicosar. It just made him angry.
Now that I have won some time, I need to put up some defences! "Shield!", "Stone Skin!", my preferred defence skills.
Tongord is already done with healing up, small wounds seem to be no problem, even if you hit a vital spot.
"Somehow it disturbs me, that you fight with your hands in your pockets! I was at your introduction party and I know your abilities are no joke. But it still disturbs me. I want to correct that manner!", Tongord complains to me.
"I am sorry, but it is my style to fight this way. There isn't much my hands can do, what my mind can not anyway.", I answer.
"Then I want to see, what happens when you use your hands!", a voice says behind me. I turn, but Tongord already struck at me, breaking my shield.
"What I wish is thunder!", I call out as Tongord grabs my collar. My mana channels and converts into electrical energy, running through Tongord and me.
Ever touched the wires of a commercial power supply? Yeah, not good, I know. We both light up like a Christmas tree and are blown apart. I fight to stay conscious. Thanks to that body of mine the lights didn't go dark completely. "Heal!", uh that feels good. Much better now.
This was a little bit risky, but electrical attacks are the only thing I didn't try yet on Nicosar. I sit up and see Tongord coming my way.
"This ability is just a cheap cheat!", I scream. "Then use your hands. If you don't I will find ways!", Tongord is almost over me!
"FINE!", I scream and hold out a hand to him in a gesture like I would grab him - "FORCE". Tongord suddenly stops and is lifted up like being grabbed by a gigantic hand.
Ugh. Not good this is tiring. That's the reason why I find this fighting style stupid. I strain myself again and smack him in an arc into the crater which Celes had created.
Upon hearing the nice sound of an impact I strain myself again and close my hands in front of me, which makes it easier to create the effect, I wish for. The earth around the crater starts to move and piles up to bury Tongord beneath it.
After a nice little mound is formed, I relax and go to my knees.
"Haaah, haaah, stupid... way.... to.... fight....", I am exhausted now. See? I told you, only stupid magicians do something like that.
"Yay! We won! The geezer is no more!", Celes runs up to me and picks me up, shaking me happily like a doll. Stupid strength monster! Tanja, Sven and Sandra run up to us too and cheer!
Suddenly a part of the thrown up earth moves and a hand thrusts outward! We all go silent. "Uuum, isn't the class about to end?", I ask.
All of them nod and make a run for it! "Don't leave me behind, I am out of power here!!!!", I scream.
Celes turns around to grabs me by the neck to pull me after her. Ow! Ow! On second thought! Just leave me with the monster!
