Gummy’s avatar gurgled loudly and in an adorable manner, he was a toothless pygmy alligator and one would wonder why Pinkie would think he was the cutest AI in the whole wide world. He had the whole station tuned in to Trapeze’s show, as she couldn’t very well perform without an audience. She was being paid based on how entertaining her performance was and she seemed to have even perplexed his systems and he was created by Pinkie Pie… the real one and not the one from the alternate universe that currently had command of him because she was still technically a Pinkie Pie.
His purple glazed eyes and blank look made up his entire image and he was just staring at the show he was showing the whole station. Trapeze Star wouldn’t have agreed to do this if it wasn’t going to be broadcasted live; she was only going to use her brand of acrobatic magic to entertain and defend herself. It never needed to be said that Trapeze was also a fan of slapstick comedy.
-
“Hey look, Trapeze is on a lot of screens. Well she certainly seems like she’s enjoying the attention.” Sassy smiled as she watched Trapeze announce herself to the entire station, the mare was good for putting on a show and apparently catching a rather tricky Foggre. Her wheelchair came to a halt as did the rest of the group.
“Knowing Trapeze like I do now, this should be quite the bit of entertainment.” Rarity enjoyed watching her friend perform; she checked her data pad when she heard it beep. “She has quite a fabulous flair for prestidigitation and it seems she’s being paid by the station to put on this show. Opal just sent me a text message about it.”
“So should we watch?” Tilting her head in a inquisitive manner, Babs was a little less down on her luck and far more friendly with Chrysalis than most would think normal. Then again Chrysalis was trying to corrupt her and the Changeling Queen pretty much told her up front that she would. So it would only be Babs fault if she did become corrupted by Chrysalis’s Humpty Dumpty personality, that being entirely off the wall. Babs thought she was a pretty smart filly and wouldn’t fall for it, but Chrysalis was so amiable about it that it was hard to stay on her guard.
“Well duh, of course we’re going to watch, Trapeze is actually interesting enough to pay attention to.” They all knew that was special coming from Chrysalis, she hardly ever thought of anyone else as being more important than her. If only the group knew Chrysalis was using this opportunity to nuzzle a distracted Sassy and nibble at her mane to see if she had a taste for it.
-
“Then set the stage Ember!” At Trapeze’s words, Ember swooped down and unleashed a torrent of flames as she circled around the intersection. “Maud, stop him if he tries to bug out on my show, as I’m about to make a spectacle of myself. Say hello to THE RING OF FIRE! I’ve always wanted to set an entire intersection on fire, going to cross that off my bucket list later.”
“Sure you hit him once, but can you do that again, the guy is really slippery.” Ember hovered as did Gilda who flew up a second later looking very upset.
The roads were quickly being blocked off by flames and Faxel looked a little shocked. When he noticed the stuff on the ground leading to the last clear road behind Trapeze, it too was swiftly lit ablaze by Ember. Faxel turned back to Trapeze who was still hanging off her pole, a pole that was made of metal.
“Remember kids don’t try this anywhere, I’m a trained professional at what I do and this would be clearly impossible without my level of talent.” Trapeze turned a look to Faxel’s eyes and she narrowed them, he returned the look.
(Rabi-Ribi Get on with it plays)
Trapeze fell from the pole as the first shock orb hit it and electrified it, she rolled backwards and thrust out the elbow of her left hoof. When that was redirected, she switched into a spin kick using the force of the redirection which was also redirected and it was then that she decided to spin away with a stylish twirl that ended in a pose with her pointing left hoof straight up.
“Well now that we got this thing going; it is obvious that dealing with you directly won’t work. You can’t take a hit, but you sure can redirect them.” With a sweep of her hat, Trapeze ran her right hoof along the edge of opening. With a swift flick of her hoof and a leap she was now balanced on top of a large green and red ball. “Then how would you deal with something like this?”
Trapeze started to roll the ball in a circle around Faxel who was keeping an eye on her as she continued to speed up. With a stomp Trapeze set the ball bouncing up and down while still going in a circle with Trapeze on top of it. Surprisingly Trapeze kicked off of the ball and pulled out another one and then continued bouncing along the top of that one in the circle and now there were two, both of which were circling around Faxel.
Faxel didn’t like where this was going and fired his left pistol skyward causing a distortion bubble to freeze the entire center of the intersection. He ran for the flames and was going to try to leap over them, when he did jump he found a ring in front of him. He was then tumbling out one of the other four rings around the intersection and while falling back towards the middle the distortion bubble exploded.
After the distortion bubble exploded Maud moved to retrieve the ring she threw to stop Faxel from escaping. Given he had turned grey only after he slammed into the ground, Maud had plenty of time to retrieve it. During this time Trapeze set up two more bouncing balls.
Faxel, after being hit with the explosion of his own distortion bubble, bounced off a nearby wall and back towards the center of the intersection where Trapeze hadn’t lost her rhythm despite being frozen in a distortion for a few seconds. When Faxel finally recovered from being frozen himself he stood up and noticed his left gun was missing and eventually saw Gilda looking it over, it was obvious that he lost his grip on it when he was blown into the wall, she smirked at him with a cheery evil grin and gave him a joy filled little wave. His being bounced off the wall lost him one of his more fun tools for messing with people and the explosion from the distortion bubble didn’t put out the walls of fire keeping him in.
“Thanks for the lovely assistance Maud!” Now Trapeze had four balls bouncing around Faxel in a rhythm, all while she was hopping between each ball over Faxel’s head. She was performing hoof springs, upside down twisting spins and a somersault here and there between them following each balls bounce and landing on them without stumbling. She looked to be lazily keeping the four balls bouncing in a circle for all the effort it should have required. “Also thanks for the alcohol fueled fire Ember! Let’s get this show on the road, now as for my first trick, juggling myself on the four balls while juggling torches. Hey Ember, Gilda, throw these back to me with an under hoof toss, would you kindly!”
Trapeze reached into her hat between bounces and started tossing strange sticks with large ends through the flames for Ember and Gilda catch; they lit ablaze and were swiftly thrown back by a surprised Gilda. Ember just held the burning torches tossed her way by the burning ends and she sniffed one of them.
“These are a pretty good brand of juggling torch and they have a rather nice smell. Hey, don’t judge me; one of my bounties was a deranged circus clown!” Ember tossed the two torches she caught back to Trapeze who was already juggling the two torches Gilda threw to her. “Too bad he didn’t know I was impervious to fire until after he unleashed those flames in my face.”
Faxel hadn’t been idle and he started firing as many shots as his right pistol could put out and the air was quickly filling with shock spheres that were flying every which way trying to tag the bouncing mare while Ember, Gilda and Maud just tried to stay out of the way of the two.
Trapeze just leap through all the dangerous orbs, she was laughing as she flipped and dove around them with incredible precision, all while moving between each ball and juggling four torches. The large balls were made of rubber; as such the shock orbs did nothing to them when they struck aside from altering the momentum of the ball in question until Trapeze fixed it with a quick bounce.
Trapeze stopped to bounce on one particular ball and tossed three torches one at a time high up into the air and then she curled up into a ball while holding the last one out to the side and bounced straight up and onto the next bouncing ball. She uncurled after bouncing off this ball while throwing the last torch in a low arc while she traveled upward, the slow flying twirling torch grazed Faxel across the back causing him to let out a yelp. Trapeze had bounced forward faster than the low arcing torch was moving and with a flip she was in position to land on the next bouncing ball.
When Trapeze landed she stopped the balls momentum and instead started twirling on it like a top, as the next ball came she leaned downwards. Catching the low arcing torch, she slapped the side of it against the ball coming at her to put a different spin on the ball. She did the same thing with the next two torches while continuing her twirl, she then started to dance between balancing on either her left or right hind leg as she spun. The reason she did this is that she needed to kick the last torch up into the air. She did it with her right hind leg and straight into her three torch juggling pattern.
The entire time she had a smile on her face as the shock orbs were now being blocked by the three balls bouncing in a circle around the dancing Trapeze, who was waiting to change gears once again. Now Faxel had to make a move on her. Each ball was hitting the ground at the same time and any change in momentum would require Trapeze to subtly lean out and fix it before she lost her rhythm or her juggling pattern.
Faxel was having a hard time keeping up with all the things Trapeze was doing and his butt still smarted from the graze he took to it, this pony was both amazing and exciting to him. He had never seen anything quite like Trapeze Star before and she was proving to be quite tricky, especially given that she can do all this stuff without falling on her face or catching on fire. She surprised him when he decided to charge her and disrupt her bouncing spheres, unfortunately for him this was a trap and Trapeze was waiting for him to get aggressive.
“As for my second trick, fire dancing!” Trapeze stopped twirling and was now twirling something in her hooves; the four torches were now combined into two batons burning at both ends. It seemed Trapeze switched to performing a fire dance, creating rings of fire in the air itself as they twirled in and around her hooves. With one twirl she slapped one of the bouncing balls after Faxel started towards her, the ball caught fire and bouncing towards him.
Faxel rolled to the side, gasping as the heat was beginning to get to him and making him sweat. He then had to dodge the next ball and the one after that, each one was on fire now and he had almost been hit by that last one. He didn’t like the heat and Foggre’s weren’t very good at handling it for too long. After watching the three balls bounce out of the burning circle he was trapped in, he turned back towards Trapeze and immediately regretted taking his eyes off of her. Seconds before he turned back to look at her, she just flipped backwards off the ball she was on and sent it careening into his face at high speed with a forward buck coming out of her back flip, while lighting it on fire no less, before he could redirect it. He was knocked senseless and sent rolling with another crack in his helmet and a scorched face that he had to rub at. As soon as he got up, Faxel decided to introduce this mare to some of his other tricks, once his world stopped spinning and his head stopped hurting that is.
Trapeze twirled her two flaming batons; she mentally drowned out her current surroundings and just enjoyed expressing her talents in front of thousands of watchers. She wasn’t actually fighting Faxel; she was performing with him as a surprise factor in her act and it wasn’t all that different from what she and Bernard did, Faxel was only slightly taller than Bernard was and despite his diminutive stature he was holding up pretty well despite taking that rather hefty blow to the face. It was really a surprise when she suddenly felt like ducking while moving both her batons into her right hoof while pulling her hat off with her left, a pair of brown beams of energy shot by over her head. She saw that Faxel now had goggles over his eyes, after he had just pulled them out from under his helmet.
“Right, let’s get this fire fight going!” Trapeze matched Faxel’s crazy grin and forced her hat over her muzzle and then placed it on top of her head, her cheeks were now swelled up. She crossed the flaming batons and held them up to her mouth and started to spit fireballs in Faxel’s direction while dodging the strange brown beams shooting from his goggles by side stepping and rolling, she really didn’t want to know what they did so she was going to avoid letting them hit her. She started to give chase and spit more fireballs in his direction through the crossed batons.
Faxel continued to fire his goggles at this nuisance and then started to run when he got scorched again; the goggles in particular had two drawbacks. One was the inability to see anything while the wearer was firing them. The other would come as soon as he managed to hit Trapeze which was proving quite difficult as the mare could leap and roll, this left him wondering if he should get more exercise or if he should remove his belt. The second drawback was part of and related to what the goggles did when the beams managed to strike a living target, because otherwise they would do nothing as his race was, to no one’s surprise, amphibious.
The Foggre jumped away avoiding another fireball and started to run a zigzagging pattern leaving the fireballs impacting the ground behind him in the dust, right up and to the point that Trapeze eventually ran out of fluids to spit through the crossed flames. Turning around immediately Faxel fired his goggled almost directly in Trapeze’s face and she didn’t avoid it in time, despite the feeling that she should have fallen backwards. The beams struck Trapeze dead on and for a moment seemed to do nothing.
“You’d really think that would have done something.” All Trapeze received in response to that was a grin from Faxel who snickered at her, she started to move forward preparing to start twirling her batons again. She didn’t have the time to fill her mouth with fireball fuel as; Faxel was already priming his right hand gun on her. “It seems like, whoa!”
Trapeze seemed to have slipped on nothing and when her back hit the ground she went skidding across it as if she were on ice, she quickly rolled over while tossing away her batons and scrabbled with her hooves to stop from sliding into the wall of fire. She had managed to slow down and when it seemed like it wasn’t enough Ember flew down and let Trapeze grab her tail, stopping her and dragging her away from the flames and the dragon nearly got hit by the brown beams personally for her trouble. Thankfully Trapeze quickly released her tail, even when it was hard to get a good grip on it in her current state.
“Well there goes my sense of balance; just what exactly did you do to me!?” Trying to stand up was really hard as her hooves seemed to be having troubles with traction. Trapeze saw Faxel cackling at her as she stumbled slowly to stand up, as this had returned things in his favor and she finally got onto her hooves when she started gripping the ground. This situation was very upsetting for a mare whose sense of balance was the larger portion of her special talent. “For your sake I hope this isn’t permanent!”
It wasn’t, not that Trapeze knew that. If the goggles were destroyed, then the victims of it would go back to normal. It was that or if the affected got out of range of the goggles, which was a couple of miles. To think Faxel had managed to actually slide people out of range with his redirection helmet which had taken two solid hits now and wasn’t holding up to well.
“As for my trick, you can’t stand any more of me!” Explained Faxel as eloquently as one of his intelligence could and he was using really small words here. He didn’t dare mention the second drawback of the goggles; the goggles caused the target to become somewhat frictionless as if their whole body was made of ice. The drawback was that it made her really slippery to grab a hold of and now projectile weapons would just slide right off her body, physical or energy weapons couldn’t do a single thing to her now and his distortion gun would have had no effect on her if he still had it and radiation couldn’t touch her in this state. His shocking pistol wasn’t able to touch her now and he knew it, but he wasn’t about to let her know that! The reason why he didn’t zap himself with the friction goggles while using the distortion gun, well he had various reasons for it. All of them were bad as the distortion gun would have a disastrous effect if he fired it while under the effects of his own goggles. “Zoom, zoom, zap!”
Trapeze tried to leap only for her legs to slip out from under and fell onto her face, she dizzily rolled out of the way of the electric orb and when sliding towards another wall of fire from just that little movement alone. She quickly gripped the ground with her hooves and gritted her teeth as she stopped her momentum and then an idea went off in her head. She smirked and tipped her hat to Faxel, then gave him a nod.
“Very tricky indeed, but I think I have an idea of what to do with you.” Kicking off with her hind legs Trapeze shot towards Faxel balance on her front to legs and he readied himself to redirect her. She smirked and at the last moment and leaned away from his thrust that would have sent her sliding backwards into a brick wall or one of the walls of fire. Instead her momentum was stopped by her rear right leg slamming between his own legs and lifting him off the ground a little.
Faxel let out a wail of pain, he wondered how that could have possible hurt him and realized that she had hit him below the belt. He then felt Trapeze slap his back harshly sending him rolling forward over her rear leg and smashing his goggles into the ground which made her shift on her hooves slightly as she no longer had to grip the ground to stand upright.
“Okay no more little miss nice mare, time for the night mare. Did you know I’m the pogo stick champion of Manehatten five years running?” Trapeze sighed in relief to have her friction back and she whipped off her hat and pulled a yellow and blue pogo stick out with a flourish before leaning against it with a smug grin. The pogo stick certainly matched her coat and mane; she put her hat back on and glared at Faxel. “I even got a signed pogo stick from Pogo Stick himself to prove it. That stallion knew how to do extreme sports, too bad he was too old for me, married and not interested in one more. Well enough about that, for my last trick I’m giving this little jerk a pogo pounding!”
Faxel’s response was to laugh out loud despite his beaten and battered form, this was so much fun and now he had to rely on his shock pistol and ability to redirect force. He’d save his last toy for when he was really out of it; he was a tough little guy and he pulled his right pistol out and gestured at her to come at him. Instead of hopping on the pogo stick she came at him wielding it as if it were a weapon, more specifically she was holding it as if she were going to spear him on the end of it when she charged towards him.
Trapeze knew what she was doing when charged him. She dodged to the left and then ducked to the right followed by a sideways rolling leap past another shock sphere; that was when she got close enough to thrust the pogo stick at him with a smile on her face. He tried to redirect it with his hand and that was a really bad idea on Faxel’s part, especially trying to redirect the motion of an object with a spring attached was a really, really bad idea for him. Even more so of a bad idea considering Trapeze outweighed Faxel and was also larger and physically stronger than him.
As he tried to redirect it he almost immediately realized his mistake; he should have tried to redirect a different portion of the pogo stick. He was blown backwards to the ground and sent rolling near one of the fire walls and his helmet was now covered in cracks. Considering how his helmet didn’t actually protect his head from impacts, Faxel was getting really sore now and had a headache from that one. He stood up and looked around when he noticed Trapeze was gone, it was in that moment that she came down on top of him with the full force of her weight. His helmet shattered sending bits of it everywhere denying him the ability to redirect attacks on his person and he was also smashed into the ground. This time he really felt the pain.
“How do you like those physics?!” Trapeze shouted triumphantly while hopping up and down and smiling gleefully as she backed away on her pogo stick, Faxel groaned weakly on the ground and slowly sat up to give her a grin and a thumbs up.
Faxel apparently liked them; he had never been so battered and beaten like this before in his life. He loved all this action he was getting; it was really fun and quite spectacular! He wondered if he could get a copy of this fight later if he asked the Streusel Station’s AI nicely enough, he was honestly getting so many ideas for new and crazy inventions from this. Despite his soreness he still stood up, his body was clearly a bit of a walking bruise now, he would have been out for the count if it hadn’t been for his belt which had the drawback of making him slow in the first place and on the upside it took what would be normally dangerous impacts for him. His helmet was redirection, his belt was the absorption of impacts and it seemed that Trapeze had exceeded the limit on it with that last blow; he had only been feeling the barest fraction of whatever blow Trapeze dealt to him until now. Now he could move much faster, but in current his state running away would have been hard, so instead he pulled a device from his belt and hit the button to summon his favorite toy.
“You thought I’m crazy, I had fun. Now to get crazier, I don’t like jail time! Ding, ding… a ring ding ding ding d-ding baa aramba baa baa barooumba!” Holding up the strange device as he yelled into it, it flashed. That’s when something exploded in the distance and then an object was seen flying through the air and it landed directly behind Faxel. It was a nine foot tall bipedal robotic gorilla, it crouched down and its chest opened up to reveal a seat that Faxel hopped into with a broad smile. His one-time super fighting robot summoning doohickey had the flaw that it fell apart after one use; he only needed the one to aid in his escape after all. “Like you a ton, but got to run!”
“Are you bucking kidding me, he could have summoned something like that at any time!” Gilda was quite angry now; she had been sitting on a perch off to the side to watching and smiled when the Foggre got knocked down a peg. However when he got up and summoned powered armor that looked well built, Gilda couldn’t believe her eyes and it was a mechanical marvel meant to be piloted by the Foggre. “It looks almost looks flawless… but I can’t help but think that there’s something wrong with it.”
“Yeah well, he’s not getting away on my watch.” Ember hovered near Gilda with crossed arms narrowing her eyes at what was possibly the most annoying miscreant she had ever met getting into the robot and closing himself up inside of it. “Now that… is something I can handle myself!”
“Gilda can you please get Trapeze and Maud out of here!” Ember leapt and dove towards its back, it tried to jump up and away, only it fell back to the ground thanks to Ember suddenly putting all her weight on knocking it down. She wasn’t about to let this criminal run around anymore. It struggled and started to twist and turn trying to throw her off and Ember just dug her claws deeper into it. “Did you forget that I was here Faxel? I’m not letting you run away so you can cause more trouble for the people of this station.”
“I guess that’s all folks!” Trapeze said waving to the nearest monitor showing her on it to get an idea of where to look and wave. “Until next time, I’m Trapeze Star of the Trapeze Traveling Troupe and if you hear we’re putting on a show, you better believe it’ll be a spectacle like this one!”
“Don’t forget to let me have a few punches for blowing up his hover bike when you take him down Ember!” Now that she had something to do Gilda flew over to Trapeze and swept her up, she dropped her off on the side that the flaming balls rolled away to. “Now go get your… yeah I’m not finishing that sentence.”
“What’s wrong with me getting my balls back?” Trapeze pulled out a spray bottle and started to spray the fire away. The balls would be slightly burnt, but they would still be in good condition. “That reminds me that I really need to pick up my unicycle.”
“I’m going after Maud.” Grumbled Gilda did not want to answer that question and quickly flew off leaving behind a giggling Trapeze to spray down the burning spheres.
-
“Trapeze is really cool… I could stand to learn a few more things from her, if she were willing to teach me.” Saffron certainly could use a training course to get her doing things like that; it’d really help if she had to put on a costume again.
“If Chrysalis knows how to wrestle, which given her proclivities its hard to think that she doesn't, then I’ll be right there with you in the training room after I make a costume for myself.” Coco tapped both her hooves together. “That is provided that she would even be willing to teach me.”
“Ask nicely, I’m sure she’s got something in all her hoof to anything lessons for you sweetheart.” Greta hugged Coco against her chest because she was being so adorable and not because she might have loved the meek little fashion maker. Well love her more than she loved Gilda in any case. "She’d be a liar if she couldn’t show that she knows her stuff and we all know that she tossed Ember around. Ember is a top rated bounty hunter in pony sectors of space.”