Airship Mauled

by Darkonshadows

Chapter Nine, Exercises In Utility: Fizzlepop Berrytwist.

-???, One year since Airship Mauled was founded.-

Flames flickered and danced, making the shadows sway as the pony known as Fizzlepop faced down her opponent in the coming moonlight. Said opponent was a dangerous growling chimera, the fierce and powerful creature started stalking towards her.

Fizzlepop spread her hooves out and took a horse stance to show she wasn’t afraid of the chimera.

It probably wasn’t the best idea to challenge a chimera like this, but she had her reasons to stand up to this dangerous creature. She wanted to show everyone she was strong and just what exactly it was a unicorn with a broken horn can do, to prove that she was quite capable of taking care of herself.

The chimera lunged forward.

Fizzlepop rolled onto her back, braced her front two legs against the ground and brought her rear legs together. She bucked upwards catching the surprised chimera in the chest and barely avoided the paw swiping at her face.

Not only did Fizzlepop buck the chimera in the chest, she acted swiftly to get in another blow. Which required her to move with the chimera’s momentum and not let it press its weight down on her.

The world seemed to slow down. She twisted her front legs to press the bottoms of her hooves against the ground, she also pulled her rear legs inwards.

Fizzlepop’s current position was a scrunched up hoof stand, with a grunt of effort she pushed with her front and rear hooves and sent the chimera flying as she came back to a standing position from her backwards somersault.

She had used the chimera’s momentum against them twice, first when she bucked upwards into their chest and again when she bucked them away.

Fizzlepop didn’t look behind her, but the crashing noise and the resulting pained roar had her smiling calmly. She closed her eyes and waited, she wasn’t going to run. What she was doing was waiting for her opponent to come back at her, she could hear the chimera roll and get to its feet growling while also gasping in pain.

The pony slowly turned around and stared down the chimera and waited patiently as the chimera stalked towards her and started to circle her.

The shining cat eyes were seen in the dimly lit area, the reptilian eyes near it were glowing and the beady serpentine eyes behind them all was watching and waiting for the moment to join in.

The first hit went to Fizzlepop, she was going to play the slow game. She had to use hit and run tactics to tire the chimera out and avoid the tail to the best of her ability. It wasn’t the most dangerous thing about this chimera, but it was up there.

Fizzlepop was trying to analyze this chimera to see what she had to avoid and she was trying to remember what kind of biology she knew about their constituent parts. It was the same thing Jaded La Perm did when she first met Maries.

She leapt backwards and saw the barest flicker of a spark, she heard the sound of a cracking noise of something moving blindingly fast.

The pony narrowed her eyes and leapt to the left avoiding the whip like tongue striking where she had been within a quarter of a second. The tongue pulled back to the head that launched it and they seemed to smile tauntingly at the unicorn.

It was quite apparent that Fizzlepop was wary of the chimera as she shifted her legs and made a slow approach for the combination creature, it was quite a bit more dangerous than she had accounted for.

There was the barest hint of movement, Fizzlepop ducked under the tongue as it cracked like a whip barely missing her head. She moved in and quickly stopped to pull her head back from the snapping jaws of the other head while the tongue was still being reeled back in.

The pony did a rolling jump to her left over the chimera’s right paw swipe coming for her and then she tackled the chimera's side knocking them over.

While the chimera was knocked onto their side, the tail showed its true colors and sent a bolt of energy roaring towards Fizzlepop’s face in an attempt to get her to back off.

The pony ignited her horn and a majority of the incoming energy splashed off of her quickly summoned unstable magic. Some of that energy got through and made Fizzlepop grit her teeth in pain as she leapt onto the chimera's back as it was trying to stand up.

The aggressive equine bucked out her right rear leg and clocked the tail hard across the face when it tried to bite her. Having dazed the head she shot out her other leg smacking it under the chin and then reached out with both of her rear legs to wrap them around the tail’s head and squeezed tightly. She made that head entirely incapable of opening its mouth.

The chimera let out a growl of pain as Fizzlepop threatened to crush their rearguard head between her hind legs and thighs. Stretching the front half of her body, Fizzlepop wrapped her front hooves around the tongue shooting heads neck and squeezed it.

The energy spitting head couldn’t do anything if it couldn’t get its mouth open and the tongue spitting head couldn’t do anything while it was being choked.

-Fizzle-

“Yield or I’ll knock them out and continue on to you.” I stated firmly and squeezed the gagging lizard head between my front two hooves. The eel head stuck between my hind legs couldn’t do anything as it thrashed in an attempt to dislodge itself from me.

After a moment the thrashing ceased and the remaining head turned her eyes to me.

“You have proven yourself capable and the capability of your clan is recognized, without my two sisters being able to act I am at a disadvantage. You may release me now, I will not act against you.” I gave the remaining head a look, then I slowly released both the electric eel head and the lizard head. The panther head had a comment for when I eventually got off of them. “Our daughter is in good company. Just know that I went easy on you as you are one of my daughter’s beloved clan mates and your clan has its own rules of which I have to respect.”

It was Bloody Maries mothers, Bloody Traces. Tracer the panther head, with partner head in the front Tracia the lizard head and finally Tracy the electric eel tail head, they were the full package that was Bloody Traces.

Traces was quite scary to look at and thanks to her eel headed tail she was amphibious. Tracy had the ability to spit blasts of lightning and Tracia had what amounted to a whip for a tongue that can cleave flesh from bone with a single debilitating strike. The panther head Tracer meant they were all capable of tracking and seeing in the dark. Thanks to the strong panther front legs and the lizard style hind legs ending in webbed rounded toes, they could switch to bipedal form of locomotion like an Abyssinian and could climb walls or trees easily.

Compared to her larger daughter Maries, Traces was a bit small for a chimera. It was confirmed that Maries father Bloody Flames was much bigger.

“Do you respect our clan’s customs because an alpha of alphas is here mother?” At this point Maries knew we weren’t exactly a real clan. Like Jacky, she went with what she knew best. She knew quite a bit about how other civilizations worked now thanks to Cheerilee.

Civilization wasn’t exactly Maries cup of tea. They lived with it as long as they could continue learning how to fight from Sekhet, be around Jade in an annoying manner and had full stomachs when the day was out.

“No, I respect your clan for what it is. Something different and unusual to me and mine, but your choice is not entirely undesirable.” Traces three heads all spoke as one like Maries tended to do at times. “I even approve, they’ve got strong spirits among them even without the alpha among alphas watching over them and teaching them strength.”

“Well now that that’s over with, how about some dinner?” Yep, Kuril’s words caused a ripple throughout the crowd. I felt kind of sorry for Traces, she’d never taste anything quite like this again unless she kept visiting.

Also I utilized my horn for more than just imbuing, I managed to stave off a large portion of Tracy’s electric blast with it. That’s the win in my book.

-The next day-

Airship Mauled had a few families living here now, like Grace and Arizona the cows. They lived at the inn and were even running it for us. Grace was the overly friendly inn keeper that was also a milk maiden, she's slightly dim though.

The other cow, Arizona, was a young rough and tumble cow that started participating in our school and had a slight rivalry going with Mara specifically. She was also the inn’s protector and looked out for Grace, she didn’t have much to do in that respect as we only tended to get people that were passing through for a stop at The Witch’s Fare.

We had two earth stallions and one mare who lived at the farm built nearby and were helping our face dug field of crops grow quicker, the strawberries were certainly coming in quickly and constantly thanks to their magic. They were Mr. Mango L. Refreshment, Mr. Potassium Permanganate and Ms. Wary Berry.

Mango liked making fruit juices and growing said fruits, yellow coat and orange hair. Simple if friendly guy that knew how to grow various fruits, his favorite of course was his namesake.

Potassium was a fur and skin care doctor, dabbled as a scientist and fruit growing was a third passion of his. He had a blonde hair and dark brown fur.

As for Wary… she wasn’t actually a fan of fruit and was the quality control for our crops, she was here because it was hard for her to find a place where they’d accept her annoying habit of being overly judgmental of fruit. Said annoying trait was entirely related to her special talent and Jade certainly didn’t like her.

“So Airship Mauled has been around for a year, it’s hard to believe.” Jade spoke quietly staring at the clouds in the early morning sky, she turned back to her work of carving a large curved stick with her knife. “You did pretty well against Traces last night, imagine if they had been going full blast though…”

“Yeah, Maries mothers are not to be taken lightly because of their size.” Our little town was still cozy and if not for the minor strange occurrences or attacks that happened around here, then we’d be bored to tears. “It just goes to show that we're being trained well. I guess Sekhet really is the goddess of exercise and really loves being our physical education instructor. Also mom's rather lazy secretary.”

Weird things happened around here all the time, like the various Highland Pukwudgie attacks whenever someone says the words ‘Highland Pukwudgies’ out loud around here. We thought it was a fluke the first three times it happened over the last few months.

The first time had been when we were explaining to Arizona why Jacky had so much pirate paraphernalia and how Jade even met our lovable parrot friend, now we knew better than to invoke those troublesome well-armed mutant hedgehogs.

“Doing anything special today Fizzy?” Turning to Jade I raised a questioning eye. “I mean this town has been around for a year and we haven’t been crushed under all the highland… you know… those guys that attack whenever we say those specific words.”

I sighed with relief as Jade realized what she was about to say, she hadn’t invoked them and hopefully she never would again. I still didn’t understand why they were ‘highland’ pukwudgies specifically, but they could really hold a grudge for that battle at Sugar Cube Corner apparently. I personally think it was because we had the leader’s one eyed cockatrice detained.

“No, why do you ask?” If she had an idea, then I was quite willing to hear it.

“Well…” Jade started off only to be cut off by a familiar screaming friend running around with her tail feathers on fire.

Immediately Jade spat a blast of water in Jacky’s direction and the parrot was knocked to the ground by the water.

“Thanks Captain… I probably shouldn’t do things around the kitchen for a while.” At least Jacky never ran out of incidents to amuse or endanger us with, though I’m wondering how she managed to set herself on fire this time.

“Are you okay Jacky, how did that even happen?” A beautiful voice spoke as she came in for a landing near us, Fluttershy was a common sight around here when she chose to visit. She regularly popped in on the weekends to say hello to us and to in general talk to us about how the critters around here are doing.

She was getting in a lot of training for her dream job in Ponyville and would always talk to this one really weird white rabbit that was more aggressive than the rest of his entire species. At least the rabbit got along with Snickers the turtle dove.

“I was trying to make banana oatmeal, I just poured the milk into a bowl full of grain and oats. Apparently the moderate water and fat content of the milk combusted because I poured it wrong.” If it were coming from anyone else Jacky, I probably wouldn’t believe it like I do. Wait... how did she only set her tail of fire if it exploded in her face? “The potassium in the bananas might have been the main reason it ignited.”

“That’ll be interesting to look into, can you please write me a paper on why you think that happened later this evening Ms. Chickadee?” Cheerilee was on her way to talk to Grace, the two were good friends. “Also speak to Mr. Permanganate about it, he might know something.”

“Oatmeal are you crazy! That’s insane, oatmeal shouldn’t be able to catch fire like that… wait that sounds like a good setup to a joke.” Incoming Pinkie alert. Whenever Fluttershy visited, so too did everyone’s favorite peppy baker in Ponyville. “Oh I’m going to tell my best friends what I just came up with when I meet them… so did you hear the joke about the oatmeal?”

We were her best friends and she was already here, though she certainly had a lot of acquaintances in Ponyville. She was even becoming friends with two ponies named Applejack and Rarity.

“Maybe you should just ask Kuril for breakfast this morning Jacky, you’re not good at domestic things.” I knew she wasn’t, she really wasn’t. I turned to Pinkie. “Not too busy today?”

“Nope, I felt the need for a party and came running.” Pinkie looked really eager to start partying. She really needed to curb her enthusiasm a little, she sometimes did things that upset Fluttershy. “What’s the celebration?”

“Airship Mauled has officially been a town for a year.” After I said that, the pony known as Pinkie disappeared in a pink flash. “She’s going to get her party supplies isn’t she?”

Author's Note:

Last time for the magical alchemy list before it get's it's own chapter.

Magical Alchemy list.

1. Fish Bones (simple).

Cast: Water breathing (Temporary passive water terrain survival buff). Breathing water as if you had gills, permanence can be achieved with repeated casts.

Sustain: Swimming efficiency and deep water survivability increases.

Self-Sustaining: Luminescence. Once used as a sustain effect, bones glow softly on their own.

2. Fish Scales (simple).

Cast: Fish Scale Skin (Temporary defense buff). Possible permanence with multiple casts, more effective underwater. Can be used to water proof objects.

Sustain: Water Projection (Continuous offensive ability). Able to spit or project volatile volumes of water, drains fluids from body with excessive use. You can actively control the volumes of water you project and how focused that projection is.

Sustain 2: Blood Projection (Dangerous offensive ability). Capable of performing a powerful projection, but only from open wounds. As one would imagine blood projection is exceedingly painful, taxing on the body and ultimately dangerous to the user. The intimidation factor might be worth the agony in the right situations, but it will always be a detriment to one’s health.

Self-Sustaining: None.

3. Raven Feather.

Cast: Survive a fall, fall on something safely or possibly target launches and falls on something by user’s choice or at random (One time air terrain survival buff, possible offensive spell). Target tends to end up freezing twenty feet above something living.

Sustain: Projecting thoughts. Not able to receive thoughts, but you can project them to others. Can project mental images.

Self-sustaining: none.

4. Sunlight.

Cast: Solar Flare. Creates a blinding light. Can only be used during the day time while standing in sunlight.

Sustain: Smoke signaling. Causes smoke to appear as if something was burning.

Self-sustaining: Warms the planet.

5. Knife.

Cast: ???.

Sustain: Rogue Enhancements (Continuous passive buff). Heightened dexterity, agility and environmental awareness. Strengthens all mobility based buffs.

Sustain side effect: Inability to sleep or relax.

Self-sustaining: Trains muscles and exercises body for similar maneuvers used while wielding the sustain effect.

6. Knife Sheath

Cast: Traps one target temporarily (One use support spell). Time limit for stopping a target is the same every time for sheaths of similar design. Sheaths for different or larger weapons ‘probably’ improves time limit.

Sustain: Increased protection against knives, arrows and other small bladed weapons (Continuous passive buff). Warning: Does not protect against anything larger, or anything else for that matter.

Self-sustaining: None.

7. Alicorn Feather (Celestia).

Cast: Wings of sunlight (Limited air terrain mobility buff). Target is given wings of pure sunlight. Darkness, shade or shadows can weaken the flying power the wings generate, at night they'd be far less effective. The power of the wings can be combined with a knife's or similar sustain effects for improved flying ability. The wings might be extinguished by water and could be useless while it’s raining. Does not protect the user from gravitational or high speed stress and lack of oxygen at high altitudes like a pegasus would be by their magic.

Sustain: Redirect sunlight (Defensive support buff). Is only useful during the day and allows for blinding opponents or aggressors with light.

Self-sustaining: Minor protection from darkness (Automatic defensive buff while feather is on person). Needs to be charged with sunlight and to have been used as a magical alchemy sustain at least once to work.

8. Phoenix Feather.

Cast: Cleansing Flames (Support healing spell). Finds and stops negative foreign bodily ailment or ailments that are magical or mundane, does not heal damage. Can possibly stop positive ailments.

Sustain: Protection from the cold (Continuous defensive buff). Immunity to cold, increased defensive ability against ice and relative elemental based magic.

Self-Sustaining: None.

9. Jade’s Cloak, Cloaks in general.

Cast: ???.

Sustain: ???. (Effect seems to do nothing, need more information.)

Self-Sustain: Makes sneaking easier (Moderate stealth buff).

10. Cupcake (Banned by Kuril).

Cast: You don’t want to know.

Sustain: Likely none.

Self-Sustain: Delicious.

11. Frog Mucus (Banned by Kuril).
Cast: Magical wide area sticky substance bomb (Hard to get out of clothing).
Sustain: ???.
Self-sustain: ???.

12. Griffon Feather.

Cast: Feather Falling (Limited air terrain support buff). Lowers gravity’s effect on an individual for a minute.

Sustain: Double Jump (Continuous Mobility buff). Can jump off the air one extra time after leaving a solid surface and only one time.

Self-sustain: None.

13. Fish Oil.

Cast: Ignition (Multipurpose offensive and support spell). Ignites itself and anything around it except the user.

Sustain: None.

Self-Sustain: None.

14. Candle Wax.

Cast: Stiffness. Slow down a target, can have a wide area of effect for reduced effectiveness.

Sustain: Heat resistance (Limited continuous defensive buff). Does not stop heat damage entirely and candle takes heat damage in place of the user.

Self-Sustain: None.

15. Pepper.

Cast: Sneezing cloud (Limited continuous Defensive spell). Wide range spell that doesn’t affect the user, causes continuous sneezing on contact and doesn’t necessarily need to be breathed in to take effect.

Sustain: None.

Self-Sustain: None.

16. Tricorne.

Cast: Charisma boost (Limited status buff). Gives one the ability to walk around with confidence.

Side-effect: May instill need for showboating in user.

Sustain: ???.

Self-Sustain: ???.

17. Wood.

Cast: Bark skin (Temporary defensive buff). Make skin and fur tough like tree bark, like most casts can become permanent with multiple consecutive uses. Increases durability of objects when targeted. Causes mildly uncomfortable chafing on a living target.

Sustain: Hair growth in sunlight (Limited utility effect). Only works in direct sunlight.

Self-sustain: Magically enhanced building material.

18. Waffle Mallet.

Cast: ???.

Sustain: Random confusion effect chance (Weapon specific offensive buff). While sustained, the hammer has a low chance to cause confusion and or dizziness upon any impact. Said chance goes up significantly when hitting the head of a target. The strength of the impact doesn't matter, effect can still happen with the barest of taps.

Self-sustain: none.

19. The Knuckler (A Shield).

Cast: ???.

Sustain: Battle Barrier (Armor reliant ability). Creates a malleable and limited field of barrier energy that is very protective against low impact energy, ranged or weak area of effect based attacks.

Point blank the barrier energy can only operate within the radius of a foot from the direction the shield is pointing, at the maximum of ten feet away it can operate within a five foot radius. Field can be used for offensive purposes by generating weapons.

Can grab and move small objects with barrier energy depending on how much weight the arm using the sustain can support.

The weight of the shield itself is a problem. It cannot be used to move the wielder around with the grappling effect. Cannot be used to fly. Can be used for assisted jumping and gliding.

Any sufficient weight or force exerted on the barrier field is sent straight to the user, the chances for arm based injuries is increased by a factor of two while sustain is in effect.

Self-Sustain: None.

20. Chain Link.

Cast: ???.

Sustain: ???. (Effect seems to do nothing, need more information.)

Self-Sustain: Linked strength (Passive instant buff). While physically touching someone else that is close to the wielder, both wielder and ‘friendly’ target gain a ten percent boost to all stats. Clothing interferes in effect.

Combination 1: Candle Wax + Oil (any) + Pepper = Chaos Candle. Candle hollowed out and filled with the other two ingredients mixed together equals devastating results.

Cast: Sneezing flash bomb (Offensive one use spell). Blinding, sinus wrecking and volatile magical cast.

Sustain Cast: Weak jet propulsion device (Limited air terrain support buff), Flamethrower (Limited offensive spell). Doing this will slowly destroy the candle and chemicals used in it. Exhaust fumes has a lesser effect of casting with pepper.

Sustain: None.

Self-Sustain: None.

Combination 2: Feather + stick + arrowhead (material any) = Arrow. Arrow + poison = special status ailment added to casting effect based on poison used. Pukwudgie Poison (Paralysis for a few hours).

Cast: Arcing Arrow Beam (Offensive spell). Fires a beam that is effected by gravity as if it were an arrow, it can only damage one target and that’s the first thing it touches. If it grazes a wall and then hits you, it will do nothing to you.

Sustain Cast: Spray of multiple weaker beam shots.

Sustain: None.

Self-Sustain: None.

Combination 3: Sustained Fish Scales + ambient ice magic = Ice projection.

Combination requires outside source of ice or freezing magic to wield. This combination has no cast or sustain capability. The wielder of the fish scales can alter projectile size and shape until the ice magic runs out or a sufficient amount of water from the fish scale wielders body is lost.

Comments

[Darkonshadows]

8944675

Jade likely doesn't want the extra weight. Sure it could be useful for thief maneuvers, but it hampers mobility a bit.

[Redstargazer]

8944804
What about a buckler? Much smaller and light weight but still clearly serving the same purpose and likely demonstrating the same alchemic ability.

Nice to see the town coming along with new insane additions to the community. Still hoping to see a raid on Blueblood's ship and its promised 'delivery' to/on sekhet. Fingers crossed!

[madSQUIRELL]

People on fire and little well-armed bastards attacks - me like
Now we just need some crazy elephants... (still waiting for THAT one to happen )

[Velvet-Fresh]

are we going to expect a deer with ice powers name Velvet coming into town and becoming friends with Arizona after them trading blows?

[Darkonshadows]

8944839

You mean a smaller buckler than 'The Knuckler' that Jade procured legally, because who can pin a crime on her for stealing from a town of crime, bandits and thugs? Could work, but if it's smaller then the cone of range it works in is smaller too and a buckler is still cumbersome.

Unless you want to go with Goofy's ridiculously tiny Kingdom Hearts styled fist shield.

Oh the 'high' way robbery will happen, eventually. I'm slowly working around to it and I just need one character to show up for that plot to kick off.

8945232

Well we have the goblin stand-ins already, the slapdash home, violent injuries in battle and the cats.

At least the cats don't breed explosively in this story, that'd be quite horrific.

8945627

*Whistling Dixie*

Wait, wait, wait... should it be more like...

*Whistling Innocently*

[jimerjam]

is the railroad built yet?