Once More With Feeling

Heated Situations

"You need to concentrate, Maya!"

Gaster threw his arms in the air, the purple glow in his eye sockets vanishing, and glared at her.

Maya glared back from her place on the floor, gasping for air.

"I AM concentrating! But this shit is hard!", she countered, sorting her limbs out and pushed herself up on shaky knees.

Gaster huffed and crossed his arms in front of his chest.

"Are you still wearing striped shirts?", he asked, annoyance clearly visible on his skull.. somehow.

Maya looked down at her (Grillbys) dark green shirt and back at Gaster with a raised eyebrow.

'Am I still- what?'

Wasn't she the one that just hit her head?

Why was Gaster saying weird things then?

"No?", Maya replied after nearly a solid minute of confused staring at the skeleton.

"Then stop acting like a child!"

Of course.

Really, Maya should've seen that one coming.

She crossed her arms and pouted, deciding that if Gaster thought she was childish, then she might as well act childish.

"Maybe I would learn faster if my teacher was better!"

He sighed and one hand flew up to rub at his skull.

"Stars give me strength.. Let's just try it again, alright?"

.

"That's it, punk!", Undyne laughed and clapped Mayas shoulder triumphantly, while Papyrus cheered from somewhere behind her.

The girl grinned, gasping for air, and wiped the sweat out of her eyes with the back of hand.

They had been going at it for the last two hours, Undyne mercilessly hacking and punching, forcing Maya to her knees more than two dozen times.

The whole area around them was covered in spears and bones and Maya had more than one new scratch on her body.

"MAYA, THAT WAS GREAT!" Papyrus came over and picked her up, crushing her in one of his hugs. "I KNEW YOU COULD DO IT!"

Her grin stretched wider, until he let go of her again and Maya promptly fell down on her butt, exhaustion eating her up.

"Fuhuhu! Looks like someone could really use a break, huh?", Undyne laughed and with a flick of her wrist, the spears vanished, and she plopped down next to Maya.

Papyrus did the same with his bones, before slipping out of his gloves and sending a little bit of green magic to the girl.

And finally, Maya could breathe again.

The girl propped herself up on her ellbows, pride grin still in place.

"This is so much easier than the whole magic thing.", she huffed out, before falling back down with a laugh, Papyrus and Undyne joining a second later.

"NYE HEH HEH! DAD REALLY LIKES TO PUSH PEOPLE. HE SAYS IT'S THE ONLY WAY TO LEARN."

'Oh I noticed that much.'

The training sessions with Gaster were pure hell.

Maya just couldn't concentrate for long enough, her mind always slipping away after a few minutes.

And no matter what they tried, she just wasn't able to fuse her powers with Gaster again- or slip into his head like she did a few days ago.

Maya learned pretty quickly that Gaster wasn't a very patient skeleton- and that was a huge understatement.