Starlight's Story Chapter 7

She blinks a few times, adjusting her eyes when she steps out from the portal. NiGHTS still holds her hand and leads her out of the portal he made from his parloop. Starlight gasps when her eyes finally adjusts.

There are several colorful balls spread along the grass covered ground. Several bags are stringed to branches by rope. There are even a few dummies made of wood, straw, and different objects that are hard for her to tell what they are, but the dummies look like rather familiar forms. The area looks like it is part of Pure Valley, but there are no nightopians or any sign of them. After seeing this Starlight rubs her eyes to make sure she isn't seeing things.

"NiGHTS, what is this place?" The bewild lime green maren asks, looking over all the different objects again.

"This is where I trained after I left Wizeman or more specifically where I let my anger go when I'm really ticked off." NiGHTS says. Starlight nods and notices all of the dummies look like the nightmarens NiGHTS has told her about or she seen for herself.

"I thought Wizeman trained you while you were still on his side and you were the best in Nightmare." Starlight says noticing a beaten up dummy that looks a lot like Reala.

"He did. That's why I use this place whenever I'm really mad." NiGHTS says turning around to point it out to her, "But I plan on using this place to help you defend yourself."

Starlight agrees with the plan. NiGHTS isn't gonna be around her all the time and she needs to learn to protect herself or at least defend herself 'til NiGHTS comes to help her.

"Alright then let's start with..." The purple nightmaren looks about and eyes one of the colorful balls, "Parloops." He says cheerfully and gathers a few balls in hand.

"Parloops?" Starlight has seen NiGHTS and Reala do parloops before, but never tries herself.

"You don't want to do the parloop?" NiGHTS asks, wondering if he might have made a bad choice.

"No. It's just I've never done a parloop." Starlight explains herself.

NiGHTS just smiles cheeky, "It's not that hard." NiGHTS flys up into the air above the trees, "Watch." He tosses the balls he held into the sky. He circles around the balls with sonic speed, all the while letting sparkled gold dust slip from his hands and form a black portal sucking the balls in. Starlight stands and watches this from the ground.

"Now you try." NiGHTS says, landing on the ground and tosses her a few balls.

Starlight gulps, but nods and flys up to process to do what NiGHTS did. But the balls fall a little fast for her and she only gets one ball while the others fall to the ground.

"That's good for your first time." He says still on the ground, "Let's try drill dashing." NiGHTS flys over to the trees. Starlight follows. "Watch me." NiGHTS dashes forward and spins around like a top. He puts his hands forward and dashes right into a dummy that looks like Donbalon and sends it flying. Starlight applauds him. "Thanks, now you give it a go." NiGHTS steps aside to let her have a go at the dummy.

Starlight takes a deep breath and quickly drill dash the dummy Donbalon, sending it a few meters away.

"Great! That was better than your parloop." NiGHTS claps for her swift dash.

Starlight smiles brightly at this.

The rest of the day NiGHTS teaches her how to fight and defend herself. Basically parloops and drill dashes but also a few close range attacks and how to sense things around yourself and use them against your opponent.

"NiGHTS, is it alright if I try something on my own?" She asks, making circles with the tip of her shoe. NiGHTS is confused by this but agrees to let her try.

Starlight closes her eyes and sparkled gold dust slip from her hands. She scrunches her face while more dust slip from her hands. She pictures an image in her head of a bird. NiGHTS stands in amazement as the dust forms a big bird. It looks a bit like a phoenix. As the dust finish forming the bird Starlight opens one eye slightly suspecting it to be a total fail, but is pleasantly surprised.

"H-h-how did you do that?" NiGHTS asks dumbfounded, staring at the bird.

"I'm not sure. It's like" Starlight pauses trying to give NiGHTS a reasonable answer, "whenever I get an image in my head or think about something hard. My dust forms it." The bird flutters it's wings and moves about. "Can't you or Reala or anyone else do this?"

"No. So far as I know no one can do this." NiGHTS is quite puzzled, "Maybe it's just a special ability you have." It is true every nightmaren has something special about them that makes them scary and tricky to beat. Suddenly NiGHTS comes up with an idea. "Hey can you make your dust into anything?"

"Pretty much." Starlight demists by turning her bird into NiGHTS. The violet jester ponders and soon smiles confidently.

"I believe we can use this to our advantage." NiGHTS grabs a dummy of Puffy. "Try to make a wall."

Starlight is confused by this, but does what NiGHTS ask. The wall is thick and seems solid. NiGHTS throws the dummy as hard as possible, but the dummy brakes to bits upon impact. Then he drill dash the wall but can't brake through. Starlight is surprised but NiGHTS just smiles.

"I was right." NiGHTS says, "It looks like your dust can't be broken once the form has taken shape. This can definitely help keep the Visitors safe from the nightmaren army."

Starlight smiles happily at NiGHTS' childish smile and that she can be of more help with her special ability.

The rest of the day the two practice on this new ability and the basics that NiGHTS knows; parloops, drill dashes, and dodging attacks, 'til they grow tired and Starlight falls asleep in the middle of a parloop. NiGHTS takes her home and lies her on her nice soft bed.

NiGHTS looks down and hesitatingly kisses her on the forehead and wishes her good night in a soft voice to not wake her up and leaves.