//------------------------------// // Chapter forty-eight, Necessary Notification: Jyuu. // Story: Airship Mauled // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// -Destroyed street, two and a half hours later, Blade- Before me stood Dodgy Gruff the Mad Mutt of Canter Dojo. I could have sworn that Ryu had broken the bones in both his arms in three different places each, dislocated one of his legs and cut him up badly with a piece of sheet metal during their fight. Ryu even hit him with a sink and performed a back breaker wrestling move, and here he was ready to fight me not too long afterwards. Said sheet metal was reduced to shreds and I could see bits of metal spiking up from the ground down the street behind me, the shredded metal was next to a large mass of broken porcelain chunks. While Dodgy didn’t exactly win that fight, he didn’t lose it either. He did just as much damage to Ryu as Ryu had done to him and now… he was standing before me looking perfectly fine as if that fight hadn’t taken place and destroyed most of this street. I looked down the street behind Dodgy and saw pockmarks along the stone walls and holes in the ground, a bathroom that had been ripped open and gutted for whatever was in there that could be used as a weapon after Ryu was put through a wall. The least innocuous thing left of the fight was that there was an intact bicycle that was sticking halfway out of a wall. I had no idea how Dodgy managed to do this, but it was horrifying as it was intriguing that he managed to pierce a wall with a bicycle like it was a spear without damaging the bicycle at all. I had an idea of what to expect from Ryu in a fight, all longma had a tendency to lean towards some form of martial arts the involved using their ability to light themselves ablaze and even fly on wings made purely of fire. They weren’t dragons though, a longma’s scales were a lot easier to damage. I wasn’t facing a longma though. I remember seeing Dodgy hit Ryu with his baseball bat at least three solid times, once including a full heavy swing to the skull while Ryu was dazed. There was also the use of a toilet, a folding chair, a table covered in fine china, a machete and a ping pong paddle with requisite ball. No idea what Dodgy thought the paddle and ball would do aside from annoy Ryu greatly. Miraculously the fine china wasn’t broken in the scuffle, even if the heavy metal table was broken in half over Ryu’s spine and weighed, by my estimates, at least one hundred pounds or more. Dodgy was unpredictable maelstrom of destruction and looking to Ryu, who was mostly healed from their altercation, I could guess he could destroy all of Canter Dojo as a one stallion army by comparison. Ryu was sitting calmly off to the side with Silk tending to his vaguely battered body with her gentle hooves rubbing up and down his back in small circles. Ryu was giving me a grim look, Fortitude was frowning and Skelly seemed to have a blasé attitude about this coming fight. I had seen what the so called Mad Mutt was capable of, thankfully I was fighting him in a place that no longer had weapons to randomly pick up and use against me aside from his baseball bat which survived the confrontation without a scratch on it. Ryu didn’t look like any of those injuries had ever happened to him after a good meal and an hour or so to rest. The only reason I could think of that Ryu could consistently defeat Dodgy like he does is because he was stupidly resilient, he also healed incredibly fast from any injury after simply eating something. Dodgy apparently had the same ability to recover, heck it might be even better than Ryu’s recovery rate. The only thing that seemed permanent was an excessive amount of damage to a single spot, such as his eye for instance. I brought my attention back to Dodgy since he noisily cleared his throat, the wolf faced dog was smiling. “I want you to show me your resolve to carry out this cockamamie plan of yours to become a star and then I’ll let you and Ryu go do your thing.” Dodgy was being quite straightforward with me after that display he and Ryu just put on for my benefit to see what I was getting myself into. “You’re not leaving Canter Dojo otherwise, because Ryu is stirring up a hornets nest and they are going to soon act against him leaving. So let’s get to it then shall we?” I nodded as Dodgy took up a stance holding his curled up paws in front of him as he started to sway left and right. I flicked out the knife I hid away in my wing and took it up in my left hoof in a reversed grip and flared my wings. He had an exceedingly eccentric and eclectic fighting style and with my meager fighting abilities… I was about to be mauled. I’d rather be crushed by an airship like Sekhet than fight a guy who smashed a toilet against his friends flank while giggling like a school girl. I waited for him to attack me. “I’m a gentle dog, for the most part, ladies first.” He offered while holding out his right paw towards me and gesturing to himself. He wasn’t even wincing in pain from his prior fight or all his freshly earned scars. I charged forward with the kunai, the gardening tool turned ninja weapon, and then ducked back as he nearly hit me with hay maker coming from my right. I leapt for his face to swing my blade, only for his right paw to wrap tightly around my leg and twisted it to his left in an attempt to get me to let go of my weapon. I kicked off the ground and twisted with his paw and launched my rears hooves into his crotch and landed the blow solidly. Dodgy grunted and smirked at me, I stared at him wide eyed. “Yeah, I recently finished a bottle of whisky that Ryu bought me earlier today because I’m a special delicate flower.” Dodgy snorted out and tightened his grip on my left leg and the right side of my face was bludgeoned with his left paw, that one blow alone dazed me, bloodied my nose and my right eye started to swell up. I gritted my teeth and stayed conscious to spite him, my legs limply fell away from his body and he was holding me up by my left leg. He pulled back his left paw and thrust it into my forehead as he let go of my leg. The blow sent my world spinning and lost grip on the kunai, reality and my sense of orientation. I might have even bounced off the street once in my tumble. I came to a stop after skidding on my belly and got a nasty street burn. “Get up, we’re not done yet and I know for certain that you aren’t.” I struggled to my hooves rubbing at my chest and belly with my right hoof and I had claw marks in my left leg. How was he still this strong? He wasn’t exactly bulky and his wiry frame certainly didn’t show it, I’m still quite sure he had broken bones not too long ago. I looked around for the kunai as Dodgy started towards me with a lumbering gait right shoulder leading the way and picking up speed for a shoulder tackle. Spotting the knife I rolled towards it, grabbed it and then jump and kicked off the wall into a backflip with a flap of my wings. Dodgy busted the wall down and turned on a dime and pulled his bat out to swing it at me with his right paw. I narrowly twisted out of the path of that blunt instrument of destruction using a second flap of my wings, I felt a breeze coming off the bat as it passed by my face and fumbled a bit before landing on my hooves breathing heavily. I looked at the destroyed wall with wide eyes and then my gaze slowly slid to Dodgy as he quirked his eye at me. “I didn’t get this strong by being lazy or letting people walk all over me, that’s for other diamond dogs that aren’t alpha material.” Seeing Dodgy throw Ryu through a wall and him busting down a wall personally under his own power were two different things. “I never cared about being the alpha of a pack, being an elite member of the yakuza is much better. More fighting.” I dove forward as he took a step towards me and lazily swung his bat at me, his other paw went high as if he expected me to fly up. Instead I knocked his legs out from under him by sliding into him and then I was up and bucking him in the backside with both legs sending him rolling forward. He came to a stop on his feet and turned towards me. “So you do have some fight in you.” He chuckled before surging forward with incredible speed and swiped at me with his left paw. I rolled under it raising my knife to stab at his limb, only it got deflected by the bat. I backed off when he tried to grab me. I did something he wasn’t expecting. Leaping backwards, I flipped the knife back towards my right wing, this odd maneuver made him pause in confusion. My right wing snapped forward and I twisted my body counter clockwise, using the force of my spin I launched the knife from my wing right into his left hip. “Yeah, that’s going to sting a bit later, but death by kunai is unlikely.” Dodgy was not hobbled by a knife a quarter of the way into his hip, given his approach was quite fast. “It wasn’t even poisoned, I’m kind of disappointed about that. I give you a C plus for effort, you did surprise me somewhat with the fact that you can throw knives with your wings, but an injury like this doesn’t even register in my top one hundred most painful things to ever happen to me.” I crouched down and swept my wings back and curled them up oddly. Keeping my gaze planted on him as he approached quickly. Dodgy leapt forward raising his bat above his head to bring it down on me. I didn’t meet his leap I slung my wings forward and buffeted him with sharp bits of shredded metal. He just noted that I was good at throwing knives with my wings, shredded pointy bits of metal was a close approximation and I did it without hurting the membrane of my wings. He landed roughly and I got in close to rip the knife from his leg with my right hoof while he was still trying to regain his balance, I swiftly slashed him lightly across the chest and moved into his grab while tossing the knife at his right foot. His foot moved out the way and his grab missed me, I had scrunched down and contorted my body tightly in front of him. I unwound right into him like a spiraling spring with my wings slashing into his fur and ramming into his chest to knock him down. Having gotten on top of him I gripped his throat with my right hoof and started hammering his face with my left hoof. I was stopped when he caught one of my blows with his right paw, grabbed me by the throat with his left paw and then bodily lifted me off of him as he got onto his feet. He punched me in the gut and I coughed out in agony, I leaned my head to the side slightly avoiding a straight and he tightened his vice like grip on my throat. I kicked at his arm, with my rear hooves, that wasn’t working. My vision was beginning to fill with spots. I tried flapping my wings to pull out of his grip and throw him off balance. He just grabbed my left wing and jerked it out of its socket with a single pull, tears streamed through my eyes and yet I refused to make a sound. My scream was a devastating thing and I was trying to avoid hurting Fortitude, Ryu and Silk, I didn’t know if I could actually hurt Skelly’s hearing with my voice. It would also be a cheap way to attain victory against a diamond dog. I just bit the wrist of his paw and grappled onto it with my front legs. Using the leverage I now had to swing my rear half around, I bashed him in the side of the head harshly making him release my throat. I kicked off of him and got a good distance away before taking in several gulps of fresh air as I stared him down, he placed his bat across his shoulders and stared at me with a grin. “Almost good enough… almost…” Dodgy took a step forward, but then he stopped and hummed. “Ryu… when did you say you were going to leave? For your information I’m calling this a tie that was entirely in my favor Blade-san, I’m calling this fight due to inbound trouble.” I’ve seen what he could do and he wasn’t even going all out against me, he was warming up to it though and I really did not need to know what kind of breakdance moves he could use to rearrange my various body parts, there was also an obvious emphasis on the ‘break’ in breakdance. “This evening at the soonest, but right now might be more prudent.” Ryu’s serious gaze trailed the rooftops around us. “Tengu mafia and mercenary ninjas on the nearby roofs, hired thugs and other yakuza coming at us ground level.” “Oh Ryu-kun, you always bring me to the nicest parties… bet I can crack more heads than you can!” Dodgy looked excited for more fighting, was he always insatiable like this?! I pitied Ryu somewhat now. “So which way are you going and how quickly of a pace should we set? A running multi-faction fight with many opponents sounds just like old times.” “Breakneck, towards the river and if you see a red dragon on the way, he’s an ally.” Ryu turned to Fortitude. “Get ready to defend yourself while on the move.” Fortitude nodded seriously and Skelly took a hold of her axe as her eyes darted around. The yakuza and thugs coming at us in the street were coming from opposite directions. While I had the chance, I put the kunai in my mouth and bit down. Taking my left wing in both my hooves, I jerked it back into place with a sickening cracking noise. After a few seconds of white hot inferno pouring through my body, the pain began ebbing away slowly. Tengu were beings that are a cross between a griffon and a parrot, the winged flying parrots sometimes get confused with harpies by their general appearance alone. On the nearby rooftops these black feathered beings took to the air and then came flying down to us. The distant ninja ponies just sat there silently watching and were sending the incoming tengu, thugs and yakuza very curious looks.