//------------------------------// // Chapter thirty seven, Tundra Tourney Tussle: Act four. // Story: Airship Mauled // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// -Tundra Tourney day four, medical tent, Velvet- “Mm…” I opened my… eye. I couldn’t move, but I was still breathing at the least. I heard a squeak and Tinsel popped into my sight with a worried look on his face. I looked to him and he hugged up against the right side of my muzzle. “Water.” I spoke softly, but Tinsel immediately set off squeaking loudly. Looking to my right after him, I saw Paprika snoozing with her head on the bed and the rest of her fur fluffed up to ridiculous levels to match the height of my bed. She hadn’t slept uncomfortably because of me, but she had still slept at my side. Eventually Tinsel came back with Arizona carrying a glass of water, Arizona came over to the bed and looked at me. “You look like a hot mess Velvet.” How charming Arizona, love you too. She lifted the glass of water and I opened my mouth to carefully sip from the glass until I was done with it. “You’ve been out… eh cold… since yesterday and the semi-final matches are starting soon.” “Certainly feel like one right now.” I felt something gently press up against my face. I could see Paprika’s fluff had crunched back down to normal levels and she had just nuzzled me tenderly. “Tinsel be a dear and keep tending to me to the best of your abilities.” Tinsel made a noise that sounded like a promise. “How did Clause take you down so easily?” Saw that question coming from a mile away Arizona, I even had a good answer for it. “I’ve seen how you fight, you could take on just about any reindeer and then some. Yet the way the match caller tells it, you mostly used physical attacks against him.” “Clause used a special form of ice magic at the start of the fight called ‘Black Blizzard’, he can take down most reindeer using it thanks to the side effects of casting it. It halves a reindeer’s full magic capacity every time it’s used for thirty six hours, I can’t do it personally so he knew I couldn’t have possibly countered it. That’s the main downside, plus the halving of magic can be cumulative per use.” I had been well aware of what I had been doing that fight. Stalling for two minutes so I could call that forfeit to his face was wonderful as he wasted a lot of his magic and effort on me. “The positives are that it creates a blizzard that lets the user use ice magic at half the effort while it’s ongoing, but if another reindeer were in the same blizzard... the cost of using ice magic effectively triples due to the pressure of the ‘Black Blizzard’ user’s magic flooding the entire area. Unless you can use that spell at the same time or before your opponent does, then it becomes quite hard for any other reindeer to do anything. Using the spell at the same time basically neutralizes the effects and only those with a mastery in ice magic can do it.” That last hit on me had felt devastating and apparently it’s marred my beautiful face. Thankfully, Arizona likely liked scars and Paprika wasn’t one to stop loving me over something as small as my appearance being tarnished. “So you could barely do anything to him… aside from getting in a few good hits from what I saw.” Arizona smiled a little as she took my good hoof into her larger hooves. “That reindeer buck may be tough, but you still gave him quite a few bruises and there’s a large black and blue knot on his back that is easily visible through his fur.” “At least it was something, it’s like a black eye for him. He’s called ‘Deep Freeze’ for a reason, they don’t hoof those titles out without putting some thought into them. Aside from the fact that I openly dropped someone your title Arizona.” I said quietly, Paprika nuzzled me again and I smiled at her. “Thank you, for staying by me Paprika.” Paprika looked almost insulted, as if she would ever think of doing anything else than be by our sides! She looked contemplative for a moment, as if thinking about the exception of being on a hugging spree. Our alpaca shook her head and focused on me with a warm smile. No, even then she’d stay by us if we were hurting or needed her. “That Clause guy is really going to get it from one of us, all we have to do is last long enough to face him!” Arizona was serious, but then again she had a resilience on par with Paprika and they didn’t use ice magic. If they faced Clause early today, then he’d be working at half his magical strength for most of today. -Approximately ten minutes later, Arizona- “Matchup, Arizona ‘Earth Shaker’ Arid versus Shocking ‘Vicious Volts’ Awe.” The match caller looked between the two of us to see if we had any banter. “You look tough, this is going to be a good one!” Shocking Awe looked like one of those types who got off on fights, I could relate. I like a good fight, but he seemed too much like a loose cannon to me. “Say, how about after I kick your ass you join in the organization I’m part of, it’s called GODLESS and they could use a cow with your kind of muscle.” I wasn’t about to talk about the key in front of him, it wasn’t hard to guess why he was in the competition. He shouldn’t be able to toss around recruitment pitches so easily like that, unless he was strong enough to back up his words. “No thanks, that organization sent assassins after my friend and now they are somewhere between being tentatively alive and very much dead at the moment.” I lowered my head and glared at him while dragging a hoof against the ground. “So you can say that I don’t appreciate anyone from GODLESS in the slightest.” “Oh… too bad you feel that way.” Shocking had a sickly sweet grin. “How about I make you join that friend of yours in being close to death to even things up, what do you say gal pal?” “Start the match.” Shying away from the coldness of my words the match caller gave me a look, but eventually he smirked a bit and winked at me. I gave him glance and he tilted his head to my opponent and then lightly clapped his hooves together, I nodded. I’m quite sure a few other reindeer saw this, but they didn’t look like they were going to say anything about it. Shocking had been mauling a lot of reindeer in this tournament, must have hurt this match caller’s family for the guy to set Shocking up like this. “Oh you’re going to be…” Shocking Awe started to say, but the match caller seemed to have something of a grievance against him. “Match start.” The match caller said quickly, in as unassuming a plain tone as he could possibly keep with that grin on his face. It only took the momentary confusion Shocking Awe had as he was interrupted mid-sentence, I rammed my hoof into his face as hard as I could. I watched as he sailed away from me with a dislocated jaw and bodily went through a small tree. The match caller backed up while silently grinning at me and gave me a nod of appreciation, I gave him a nod and a friendly smirk. I saw movement beyond the toppled tree. Shocking, that tough winged pony, stood up and pushed his dislocated jaw back into place with both hooves and he did not look happy. He tilted his head to the left and to the right with a sharp crack for each movement. With a sudden flaring of his wings, arcs of lightning began to dance between his feathers. “Bring it on porcupine head!” I taunted him. “Gladly!” He shot toward me while clapping his hooves together, they didn’t spark up. I ducked his swing and rammed my horns up into his belly launching him upwards. He spread his wings and caught himself and shot back towards me. He threw his right hoof at me and I blocked it, like I blocked his next few hooks with my front legs and the blows he was landing actually stung quite a bit. This guy could actually hit hard and fast. He’s certainly more of what I would expect a flunky of GODLESS to be. Unlike that weirdo Snow Bank, this guy was a literal lighting bruiser! I waited until his next blow landed before I struck upward at him with a nasty right hoof catching him in the chin, he flipped backwards and his rear hooves slammed me in my chin. I grunted and staggered a bit, but I kept my balance on my hind legs and waited for him to come at me again. I wasn’t going to win this by fighting offensively. He narrowed his eyes and dove for me while clapping his hooves together, I saw them sparking this time and his body seemed to be glowing with flowing lightning that left a trail of energy in his wake. I went to block and then instead ducked his left hoof swing, I threw up a quick rope to wrap around his rear left hoof as he passed and then yanked him roughly out of the air and down into the ground. With a quick tug, my rope was back under the bandana around my neck. Slamming against the ground had dissipated the lightning charge crawling over his body explosively, bouncing him back up from the release and he was coming at me again. I blocked his right hook weaved around his left straight and then threw a right hook into his temple knocking him back, but I didn’t chase him and held my defensive boxer’s stance. I was only taking hits when I knew I could handle them, I did not want to be hit while he was lit up with lightning. He came at me and rapidly attacked me with his hooves, my legs were taking a beating and I could feel the bruises beginning to form as I traded blows with him. I hit him in the barrel and hind legs several times and once in the cheek. I took several hits to the face, body and my front legs, but I weathered his numerous blows until he tried for a kick. I caught his kick, spun and slammed him face first to the ground and swung him around to launch him at a tree back first in a well-executed hammer throw. He grunted as his wings took some damage, but he still got back up and flew out of range of the lasso I threw at him in an attempt to ‘rope a dope’ him. “Well this melee offensive isn’t working… guess I better start using my special moves. Shocking… lightning…” Having seen this before, Shocking was about to launch a blast of lightning at me and was gathering a large amount of lightning between his hooves. “Spear thrust-hahhhh!” I rolled to the right and the beam of lightning passed by me like… well lightning. It’s what he did next that surprised me. “Hahhhh!” He screamed again and I barely avoided the second beam of energy ripping through the space my body used to occupy. I did not know that he could pulse out a second blast of lightning from that attack. “Hahhhh!” Oh cud! The third beam clipped my left hind leg and it became numb making me almost fall to the ground, I stomped it against the ground several times to get the feeling back into it and to rebalance myself. I saw the remaining tiny orb of energy Shocking was holding become crushed between his hooves and lit them up with sparks again. He came at me with a swipe I didn’t block him this time, I moved to leap to the right and then rolled to the left. He was in the middle of attacking to left from my feint, when I rammed him out of the air putting my horns into his gut and sending him sprawling. He quickly was up and high in the air before I could snag him with my rope. Against a flying opponent with long range attacks, I was clearly at a disadvantage. “Okay that’s it, I’ve had enough of playing around with you! Lightning… orb… building… charging… building… charging~!” I saw Shocking hovering high in the air out of what he thought was the range of my rope, as long as I had the strength to throw the rope he wasn’t ever out of range as long as I could see him. He held his hooves above his head and a large orb of raw energy was forming above them, it was getting bigger by the second. “Super… lightning orb… wave bomb!” I threw my rope high up there and managed to catch his right rear leg this time, I pulled as hard as I could while the massive orb of lightning came down at me slowly with a downward swing of Shocking's hooves. Slowly for a mass of lightning that is. The energy in that thing was going to smart if I wasn’t prepared for it by the time it hits me. I ignored Shocking slamming roughly into the ground and prepared for the attack, I didn’t think I could outrun this. I quickly forced each of my legs, one at a time, into the ground and that’s when the orb landed on me. I thankfully had my eyes close as the explosion of lightning was so bright and powerful that I could see the light through my eyelids and a lot of that energy was currently ramming into my body. -Shocking Awe- The cow managed to get in one last rope around my leg, how long was that freaking thing? There’s no way she could be carrying that much rope on her small form! I turned to the match caller looking away from the area that I had devastated with pure awesome that vaporized or scorched everything within fifty feet of the impact zone. “Okay my opponent couldn’t have possibly survived that, so…” I rock slammed into the side of my face cutting it open and I glared at the jerk who the gall to… she was still alive! “You think I’m... that easy to... take down?” The cow was alive after all that?! It didn’t look like she could move very well though. “Actually yeah, I was kind of expecting my opponent to meet that friend she talked about and got to say hello to Death's doorstep.” I clapped my hooves together and they lit up again, she didn’t look very mobile at the moment and I was definitely abusing the buck out of that! I moved forward and rapidly struck her multiple times. She blocked my attacks only to throw a straight left into my nose breaking it in a fountain of blood and then… she just froze up. The match caller came over to look her over, I sat back grinning at the glare she was giving me. I couldn’t break her bones, but I still won this fight. “Winner by incapacitation, Shocking ‘Vicious Volts’ Awe!” The caller stated clearly. I paralyzed that scorched cow's muscles with plenty of energy.