My Exploding Cat

Just stories and drawings really, no actual fissile felines.

Chapter 47

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

We ended up in Thee Armore Shoppe, a place that had survived the ages – literally. I was looking forward to upgrading my stick wand to something larger, thicker and perhaps a little bit magically reinforced. I didn’t know how strong I was, so I didn’t know how my magic would take to the change. Somehow, I knew Angel was stronger than any of us thought, but it wasn’t showing for some reason. I didn’t know why.
Anyway, I did get something larger and thicker, and I reinforced it myself with Earth magic. It was a twelve inch maple rod, which would help the change because my stick had also been made of maple wood. It was maybe an inch thick, and heavy enough to block a hit with a wooden club or some PVC pipe, but not too much else. I admired Daniel’s move, stopping us to get something like this. It had been something we’d ignored.
I knew that Daniel and Sophie’s weapons were decent, but I coaxed them into buying something else to keep as well. Daniel bought a sword, a heavy one. Sophie declined the heavy stuff and went for a lightweight rapier that curved nicely for defense. I told her she had good taste and went to see how Angel was doing. She’d picked out a thin bronze rod. I reminded her that she’d have to get used to the new weapon. She said it would be fine. Seeing my expression, she also noted that if she were being attacked, she’d just fly away. I decided that she knew herself better than I did.
Looking back, I realized that Sophie had disappeared. I shrugged it off; she knew what she was doing. I went to see that Molly had found herself a sword, lighter than Daniel’s by far, but still heavier than Sophie’s and sturdier, bulkier. She said she could handle it.
Keith had found an iron sword to replace the PVC pipe and a shield. It reminded me that I needed defense as well as my new attack. I went and found some chain mail that fit all right, but it was incredibly heavy. I searched the store a little better and found myself a shortsword made of magically reinforced aluminum. It seemed all right, so I was satisfied with my attack. I decided that I was good on that front and went to look for a shield.
I found lots of wooden ones, including some that hadn’t been sold since the shop started out (which was a feat) but searched further back to find the shields that the owners didn’t really want anyone to find because they were waiting for the day they could afford their own merchandise.
I found a shield that would send any attacks with a sword to the side, putting the owner in a vulnerable position. It ran along the style of Roman soldiers’ shields, and if I’d had a katrillion more people, we could have done the same thing the Romans did – the “invincible box” method. As it was, I was pretty well set. I ended up dragging the others to the same area. There weren’t any real shields anywhere else in the store.
Later, I found out that Sophie had disappeared into the back of the store for a quick karate lesson. She’d found that she picked it up fast and was going to keep doing it. Daniel decided that we ought to let her do that for a while before attacking, and said that we needed to train in something as well. Cat went to the class with Sophie, but I heard that she kept mixing up the karate moves with her own fighting style, and she dropped out after a week or two. Sophie kept going. Molly wanted to be skilled with the new sword she’d gotten, but she hadn’t replaced her staff since she already had a sword. She spent all her time dueling with Keith.
Cat found a staff, a really thick oak one. It had a handle that enabled her to control it even in her more catlike states. She said she couldn’t control when she went cat very well, so she needed to be ready for it. But during the month or two that we were training, she seemed to learn to control it better. In the middle of one of Molly’s duels, Cat dropped out of a tree, completely catlike, on Keith’s head and Molly cracked up.
Angel had no trouble switching weapons. She could do magic easily with both of them. One time I pulled her out of her magic lessons to tell her something.
“You know…” I said.. “I’ve been thinking. Since Cat is half cat, she looks a lot like a cat, right? She’s part cat, so her appearance is too.”
“Uh huh,” Angel said, not sure where I was going with this.
“Do you think you might be half faerie?”
Angel sucked in a breath. “You know, you might be right. It fits.” She frowned. “Yeah. That’s about right.”
“I just wondered,” I said, and went back to my own practice.
I found out that I was horrible with my short sword. I couldn’t block that well, and I had to be very close to my enemy to kill them. By then, I would be dead myself. So I went back to the shop. I started questioning the store owner about what kind of weapon I might do well with. He had no clue. Molly had shown up to find some lunch at a restaurant with Sophie. Once you’ve gone through the duty of catching, killing and gutting everyone else’s dinner, you have next to no desire to eat it yourself. I described my dilemma, and surprisingly, she knew what I needed, and was actually willing to help. I think she’s getting nicer to everyone for some reason. But she’s calmed down a lot, and I can’t quite explain it. Not when we have a huge battle right ahead of us. Maybe she just likes to fight, and she knows that she can get her revenge on these idiots. Maybe she’s just on firmer ground since she knows where the fight is and it’s not going to surprise her. I don’t know.
But anyway, she helped me, and I ended up with a bow, which I shot very well. It just sort of seemed more in my element. Literally. The shortsword hadn’t been nearly as earthen as this was, and I didn’t dread practicing shooting it like I’d dreaded using the sword. I ended up having to get stronger arrows.
And yet, I wasn’t sure why Daniel had made us get better hand-to-hand weapons. Everything we’d come up against so far could be beaten by magic.
Maybe that was why.

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