-Arizona-
Paprika slowly pulled away from Velvet’s kiss.
I watched as the bottom of the hearts in Paprika’s purple pupils started changing color. No… they were filling up with the color pink.
Once they were fully pink, her heart shaped pupils grew to twice their normal size and Paprika’s right eye twitched once.
She then turned to slowly walk out of the tent with a calm smile on her face.
-Tundra tourney, final bout, Paprika-
My heart was going a million miles a second, I feel lighter than air. Is this how mom feels with daddy all the time? Was this feeling why I had so many brothers and sisters? Was it… is this… Velvet’s love for me?
“Fight.” At the match caller’s words I focused my attention on Clause as he came at me, he was a very sad reindeer.
I should show him some love, even if he was about to slowly lodge that ice lance in my chest.
Was the world slowing down or was it just me speeding up? My heart was pounding in my chest really fast, so I was probably just slightly faster.
-Clause-
I jabbed at her with my right leg sending ice lance through her. She just vanished and, without a scratch, appeared slightly to the left of my lance looking at it in confusion.
I thrust my left leg forward and she just seemed to sway around it, while glancing to it as well.
With a blink she was suddenly in front of me with a warm smile, she grabbed me and planted a kiss on my nose.
“What the… how the heck did you…” I stumbled backwards in shock dropping my ice lances, I created new ones that were shorter and started to attack her.
I started to rapidly jab the ice lances at her with both hooves and she started to seemingly dance in place to some unknown beat. It was as if she were taunting me with the way she closed her eyes and still had that cheerful smile on her face.
She was shifting her head and body to the left and right as she trotted in place. I tried to hit her and yet each movement she did made her avoid my stabs with such unbelievable ease.
I swapped the lances into blades and started to swing rapidly at her. I swung both high and low, as fast as I could move my legs. She opened her eyes and just ducked my first swing, cartwheeled over my next attack and then she even had the gall to start giggling merrily.
She started hopping over and rolling under my swings… sometimes multiple times in a blur for each swing, was she leaving after images? Sometimes she seemed to even physically go both under and over a swing at the same time.
I even tried an overhead swing and she seemed to split off in two directions, before becoming one cohesive being on the right. I tried to swing for her again.
She suddenly lunged at me mid swing and… gave me a hug?
I grunted and unleashed a point blank small blast of frosty air that sent her flipping backwards away from me.
She landed on her hooves skidding backwards slightly and she continued to smile at me brightly… since when were her eyes pink? I thought they were purple! Also she wasn’t covered in any frost and she didn’t look to be even the slightest bit cold from that point blank attack.
With a sweep of my hoof, I started firing a massive amount of ice shards at her and she expanded her fluff to catch them all in front of her. Stopping to look at her for a moment, I just stared at all those ice shards collected by the wall of fluff.
Her fluff seemed to flex and with that one action, she just sent all the ice shards lodged in the fluff flying back at me all at once at insane speeds.
I closed my eyes while forming a wall of ice in front of me expecting some hits to get through given the speed they were moving at. When I didn’t hear anything except a series of soft thudding noises, I opened my eyes and blinked in confusion after I lowered the wall. Looking down and around me, I was a little surprised.
I moved slightly over the shards that had impacted the ground in front of me and turned around. I stared at the heart shaped pattern the shards of ice had made. I glared at her and she gave me a bright and eager looking toothy grin.
The shards would have had to swerve around my wall and body midflight to even create that pattern. Otherwise there’s no other way she could have possibly created that pattern without the ice shards actually going through the ice wall or me. It had to have been a fluke that they even took the shape of a heart!
I glared at her and inhaled, I blasted a furious gust of icy breath in an attempt to at least blind her so I could prepare another attack. Freezing a fluffmancer solid was hard to do unless you put enough power behind it and I wasn’t about to waste my energy trying that.
Suddenly, in my eyes, she seemed to take on the appearance of Velvet by standing on her hind legs holding her hooves above her head. Before the icy fog could reach her, she started to twirl elegantly and rapidly.
The icy air reached her and then started to swirl around her and it built up into a tornado. When she stopped, she threw her hooves out in jubilation towards me while jumping into the air. That last enthusiastic gesture caused the large tornado of snow she just created to start to coming at me.
I had to block that attack. I swung my antlers to the left harshly and created a tornado of snow to counter it. When my tornado hit hers, they exploded into a shower of pink colored heart shaped snowflakes that eventually turned into colorless ice upon contact with the ground.
“What is going on?!” All I got was a friendly smile as an answer from her.
I lowered my antlers in preparation for a charge, only I didn’t get a chance to start charging forward as she launched a rope like wad of fluff forward from her left hoof.
It wrapped around my neck and she tugged me towards her with a solid yank. How strong was this alpaca that she could lift me off my hooves like that with one pull?!
She held out her left hoof as if she were going to clothesline me, why did I get the sudden impression of that cow standing right in her place? When I reached her she wrapped me tightly in both her hooves and pressed me to the ground and yet there was no pain… only the warmth of her fluff pinning me into the cold snow.
Why did the snow actually feel cold compared to her warmth? I was an ice shaping reindeer, I shouldn’t even feel cold! I got my hind legs under her and kicked her off me and swiftly got back into a standing position.
The alpaca bounced once, did a hoof spring and then landed on all her hooves. With the barest of movement upon landing, she shot towards me as an indistinct blur. I couldn’t even react before she was already pressing her head up under my chest with impressive force.
I was launched up into the air in the direction she was running and she passed by me for a short distance. She slid to a stop and then leapt at me, to grapple onto my back with all four hooves changing my momentum immediately.
She nuzzled my neck as we fell softly against the ground and slid a few feet. She was underneath me and holding onto me tightly. I was having problems breaking this hold and struggled to break free of her grip.
“So… it wasn’t my imagination, you mimicked them!” Yet she wasn’t doing those moves right, she wasn’t even using them to hurt me. I roared at her in anger as I tried to forcefully break her grasp. “This is supposed to be a fight, not one of your alpaca feel good festivals!”
I spiked ice outwards beneath me from my back and disconnected the spikes as I rolled away to look at the alpaca. I blinked when I just saw a pile of fluff shaped like her without a face and it silently pulled away from the impaling ice to stand up on its own.
Feeling something tap me on my shoulder, I turned my face right into an ambush.
“Mwah!” She smiled cheerfully at me after giving me a kiss on the cheek.
I stumbled and started backing away from the alpaca rapidly.
I watched as her fur jumped forward once, then leapt onto her and seamlessly combined with her body as she walked towards me with a happy smile.
Something in me snapped once she got close, I started to thrust my hooves at her rapidly. She simply sat down and started to hit my hooves with the exact amount of force I was going to hit her with them.
The alpaca simply blocked each hit and she clapped her hooves between some of my attempted strikes. Was she… she was! She’s playing patty cake with me!
I slammed my left hoof to the ground creating a large wave of snow and slush to push her away and blinked when I saw an impossibly persistent alpaca shaped hole in the wave of snow going beyond where the alpaca had been.
I looked a little closer to me to see she was sitting next to me with that ever patient smile on her face. I looked back to watch the snow wave end and the same alpaca shaped indent was still there where the snow wave stopped.
Her fur hadn’t even gotten wet. Was she one of those alpaca that learned how to generate hydrofuge hairs? The water focus element of ice magic wasn’t going to work at all against her.
I leapt back and slashed my hoof, sending a flying crescent blade of sharp ice at her. It struck her fur, just stopped right there and fell to the ground. I created that ice so thin and sharp that it should have just cut straight through her, the very least it should have done was injure her somewhat!
I kicked at the ground causing a line of icy spikes to rise up in her direction, the alpaca simply hopped up at the ice that spiked up at her body. She landed on the spike with all four of her hooves gathered on the fine point of that spike of ice.
She hopped across the tips of the ice spikes and then leapt at me with her legs held wide open.
I threw up a massive wall of ice and after she struck it, I tried to topple it right onto her. She rolled backwards and her fur just fluffed up into a spherical shape.
The falling ice wall basically rotated into a standing position behind the alpaca after having pivoted it over herself to leave it standing practically upside down.
“What… what are you, does anything work against you?!” My words made her look confused and she tilted her head at me innocently, as if she didn’t understand why I was now suddenly scared of her.
Wait… I was scared of her? I’m strong, I’m powerful and I’m… being hugged again!
“Stop that, let me go!” I managed to get out of her grip before she could tighten it and I backed away from her quickly wide eyed, I didn’t stop backing away from those gentle eyes.
I started launching acutely angled blunt pillars of ice at her, she leapt on top of them to start skating for me by hopping between them and was getting closer to me by the second.
I clapped my hooves together and two blunt pillars of ice slammed together on both sides of her. I think I finally… wait… there’s no blood between the pillars… and there wasn’t an alpaca there either.
I felt something gently wrap me in a hug and I felt her nose pressing softly into the right side of my neck. How did she… when did she? I tried to move, I tried to shake her off and she just held me tighter. She squeezed me without hurting me and just cooed at me softly.
Could I use a Black Blizzard? No that wouldn’t stop her fluffmancer abilities and it would just weaken me further. Could I hit her with my horns? Her fluff would make my horns do negligible damage.
I tried to fight it, I felt so tired, I wanted to win, but… something in me just…
I collapsed in her hooves and she just held me. I sat there for a long minute doing nothing with an alpaca pressing herself against me.
“I forfeit!” I almost didn’t believe I was actually saying those words as they left my mouth, even though I had clearly shouted them loudly.
The alpaca just continued to hold me tenderly.
“Winner of the tournament by forfeit, Paprika ‘The Demon’ Paca!” The match caller stated. “She’s certainly lives up to her title folks, as per outsider’s rules she’s won herself a top rank prize for placing first. Now let us all just pray for our lives if she comes for us next!”
-Three minutes later, medical tent, Arizona-
Upon her return, I noticed that Paprika’s eyes had returned back to being their normal purple color. Yet they flickered slightly pink as she looked to me and Velvet.
Some beings say that the eyes are the windows to the soul, Paprika’s eyes were just more obvious and quite expressive about it than most. All alpacas seemed to mostly talk with their eyes and body gestures anyway.
It looked like Paprika had had quite a battle on her hooves. She had come back to the tent looking completely fine, if terribly exhausted. She still had a loving smile on her face meant just for us.
Paprika went over to peck Velvet on the cheek sweetly and came to do the same to me. She then dragged my bed next to Velvet’s and after pushing them together, she crawled up onto our combined beds between us and laid her head down to rest.
-A new day-
“What are you doing here?” I asked of Clause, I wished I could move right now so I could put my hoof to his face.
I was unfortunately still paralyzed from the neck down. Velvet and I were still going to be bedridden for quite a while.
Paprika sat up and looked at him curiously, but she wasn’t angry and hadn’t been since Velvet kissed her.
“I just came here to deliver the prize you all sought after, nothing more.” Clause slowly walked up to Velvet’s bedside and pushed something into her hoof. The object started glowing slightly. “You should protect everything you have with your best effort.”
With that, Clause turned and left silently without another word. He didn’t look back.
I looked over to see Velvet holding up the key, the end of it looked to be like reindeer antlers. Like Paprika’s key looked like it ended in alpaca fluff.