Airship Mauled

by Darkonshadows


Chapter fifty three, Fiery Fights: Jacky Vs. a fruit.

-Some days later, The Volcano, Upper Tier, Coliseum, Jacky-

I took my seat in the stands, the stands we sat in were close to the stairs down into the arena itself. I take it these stands were made for the fighters and their friends, considering this area wasn’t very crowded I’d say that was a good bet.

I wondered who would be in the first fight.

“Calling our first fighter for the first match of the Fiery Fights, Vixen ‘Snow Wave’ Valentine!” At the longma announcer’s voice, a relatively nice looking reindeer trotted out looking ready for a fight.

“I’m ready to face anything, bring on my opponent!” That sounded like tempting fate to me.

“Ten bits says her opponent is Paprika.” What did Arizona know that I didn’t? She was fairly cozy with Velvet at the moment and was even holding her hoof.

“A sucker’s bet if I ever heard one.” Velvet stated as she snuggled Arizona back and had a broad smile on her face, she was even snickering a bit. “Vixen is not nearly lucky enough to avoid it and she did just tempt fate by saying ‘anything’ and Paprika would be one of ‘those’ opponents for her.”

“With a one in a however many fighters there are in this tournament as a chance for Paprika to be in on the first fight you mean? I think it’s a guarantee.” Arizona started to chuckle. “Yeah, she’s about to get snuggled. I almost feel sorry for your old friend fluff butt.”

There were a lot of fighters in the tournament, I didn’t see Paprika being in the first fight as the odds were a bit too long for that.

“Our second fighter is, Paprika ‘The Demon’ Paca La Perm!” They were right, how were they right?! That was at least a one in a hundred chance, if not a thousand.

Paprika jumped down and pranced out into the arena looking quite cheerful, she seemed happy to be fighting this Vixen Valentine. She smiled and waved at her opponent.

Vixen, upon seeing Paprika strike the ground from jumping down, went wide eyed and froze up completely.

I wondered what she was seeing that scared her so much, Paprika didn’t look that horrifying even if her hugs were dangerous.

-Vixen-

A fluffy monster with big red horns smiled with adorable looking fanged teeth as she came into my vision, her fluff was encompassing the entire arena blocking off all the exits. Her face was supposedly friendly, but I knew the truth… it was ‘The Demon’ in the form of an alpaca.

“You can’t escape me, you can’t escape me~!” The horrifying visage sang softly in a sing song tone, then she started whispering in my ears as if she were standing next to me. “You will soon be snuggled. Make your prayers now, for you will now be pulled back into the fluff dimension with me. We will be the best of friends once again Vixen. Come… enjoy the softness… belong to it... it won’t hurt you… all this fluff is safe, I promise… everything will be fine… come forward and let me hug you… you look like you really need one.”

A pair of large fluffy demonic wings grew out of the back of ‘The Demon’ as it came forward to embrace me.

The horror...

-Jacky-

“Are you ready to fight?” The referee asked and Paprika nodded excessively.

The referee turning to Vixen who was just standing still and her pupils were slowly shrinking their way down to two tiny dots.

The way her ears wilted seemed to be a bit concerning, that and her tail dove between her hind legs and disappeared out of sight so hard that I think someone was going to need the 'jaws of life' to get it back out.

“Well your opponent seems ready, get ready and… fight!” The longma took to the air on flaming wings and, within a fraction of a second of slamming his hoof into the ground, Paprika was already latched onto the reindeer who just looked catatonic.

The reindeer’s face was just unceremoniously rammed into Paprika’s fluffy chest and she didn’t do anything to avoid it. She just took the hug and didn’t even put up a fight, she wasn’t even struggling and the only movement I could see was that her mouth was now wide open in a silent scream.

“Wow, that’s so high pitched that I’m barely able to hear it, at least a diamond dog would probably have the ears for it.” What’s so high pitched Arizona?

“That’s actually a new record for Vixen, I didn’t think her pitch could reach such extreme heights like that.” Okay I think I’m missing some context here, but Valentine looked absolutely terrified as she was being held tightly by Paprika. “Actually… maybe that’s not her screaming, what we might be hearing is her soul crying itself into a corner. I think Paprika may have gotten her one too many times. Also, is it just me or does she looks like she’s stopped breathing?”

-Airship Mauled, CL hospital, Dr. Bones-

“What is making that racket?” I stuff a digit in my ear and checked it for ear wax. Nope, I’m clean and I’m going to stay that way. I was a professional and I ran a literal clean ship here.

Wherever that high pitched sound was coming from, it had better stop soon.

I still had patients from the militia with many bear related wounds to take care of, at least nothing was a permanent injury. Thank goodness for that and the fact that the town wasn’t expecting another ‘Puk’ invasion for a few weeks.

Unless someone’s tongue were to slip, then I’d put that person in the hospital myself! They would, of course, end up in the psychiatric ward to be checked for stupidity.

I was working on making stupidity a legal medical condition and Maries said it would be hard to do, but not entirely impossible. That sounded more promising than anything really.

In Equestria stupidity was a fairly common commodity, as was love, friendship and tolerance. Tolerance being a most needed commodity of them all, mostly since stupidity was never in short supply no matter how much I wished it could be.

-The Volcano Coliseum, Jacky-

“Next fight, Jacky ‘The Blackcap’ Chickadee La Perm!” Hearing the announcer, I got up and made my way down to the arena until I was standing in front of the referee. “Are you related?”

“I have a few in-laws in the tournament, quite a few of us were adopted by an Abyssinian witch and others are married into the family.” I answered as I waited for my opponent to arrive or be called.

Paprika’s fight, if it could be called that, didn’t last very long and it was very sad affair. It was sad because Vixen apparently suffered from a heart attack no too long after being grappled and Paprika gave her mouth to mouth resuscitation once she noticed the reindeer wasn’t breathing.

That led into a second heart attack when Vixen came to her senses and saw Paprika five inches from her face. Velvet assured me that Vixen would be fine, but I didn’t quite feel the same way.

Vixen was apparently highly traumatized by something, but I wouldn’t know what that was. Paprika didn’t seem to do much other than latch onto her like a leech, what scared me somewhat was how fast the alpaca did so.

I wonder what Paprika looked like in actual fight and not just hugging her opponent into submission, because I didn’t learn anything from watching that fight except that she’ll hug and snuggle me against my will.

I was still waiting for my opponent two minutes later when two longma brought an ostentatious looking palanquin into the arena. They set it down in front of me and one of the longma went to talk to the referee.

Was my opponent going to do the whole dramatic entrance thing? I waited while the two longma whispered to one another. The referee eventually nodded to him.

“At least you got her opponent here on time.” The referee said and nodded to the palanquin. The longma returned to the palanquin and I wondered what kind of gilded rich guy’s butt I would have to kick.

“You got this Jacky.” That’s about as loud as Gene could get, but it was still heartwarming.

“Introducing your opponent…” The referee pointed to the palanquin, the two longma pulled apart the curtains and reached into it to pull out a large spiky fruit that came up to my waist. They placed it on the ground and then picked up the palanquin and were off. “A durian!”

“Uh… what? You can’t be serious…” I’m supposed to fight a durian? “Please tell me you’re kidding!”

“Nope, this is no joke, I’m quite sorry that you have to face such a dangerous and worthy opponent the likes that have never graced this arena before.” The referee was stating that as if he were being serious. “May your battle be honorable and may you find victory today, for you face one of the mightiest fruit in existence.”

“What’s so dangerous about a durian?” I was supposed to fight a large round spike covered fruit that came up to my waist in size. It was probably one of the biggest durians I’ve ever seen, but it wasn’t dangerous at all. It was an inanimate freshly picked fruit that sat before me in all its… glory. Let’s call it glory instead of what I really think about this. “Also how does one, and I can’t believe I’m asking this, fight a fruit honorably?”

I didn’t think I would succeed at getting in an honorable fight to actually get further into the Temple of Dark Flames as needed, especially if my luck wasn’t going to let me have an actual opponent.

“To the best of your ability of course, also it is said that the stink of a durian can knock out their opponents with relative ease. I wouldn’t want to be the one that has to attack such a wily thing!” The referee cowered slightly at the fruit. It was just a fruit, one that might start stinking badly once I hit it. “Also it is covered in spikes so it has quite a lot of defensive strength to it too.”

I just gave the referee a flat, incredibly deadpan, look. In fact, the look I forced on my face was so deadpan, I expected the universe to rip itself in half from it.

“Would blowing it up with a cannon be too much?” I asked the referee, just for the sake of clarity of course. If I could bring my cannon and blast it, then that would get this out of the way quickly.

“If you can actually get a cannon on such short notice, then yes. It would be a bit much and quite unfair to your opponent, especially if it’s a preloaded cannon.” The referee told me in a no nonsense tone. “Do you have any more questions or can I start the fight?”

Wasn’t it already unfair to my opponent that I could move, had limbs, swords, the ability to think and wasn’t a plant? This was completely ridiculous, so of course I had a question or two about this.

“How did a durian even get signed up for this tournament in the first place?” That was the thing I was the most confused about.

“Apparently it was accidentally put into a cabbage cart that was hit with a bunch of fireworks a few days ago and the exploding cabbages launched it high in the sky all the way up to the sign up booth on the upper tier.” If it was the same incident that I was thinking of, then I was horrible confused about how a durian could be launched high enough to surpass the middle tier of the city. The Volcano wasn’t a small city and it was full of longma and a few varying species that were the minority that came to live here. “That’s where it accidentally spilled an inkwell that spelled out ‘durian’ multiple times on the entry form by accident, there was nothing in our rules against a fruit becoming a competitor in the Fiery Fights tournament. As such, we honor the durians will to participate.”

“You go fruit, you look all cool and spiny!” A young longma child was shouting positive things at my opponent, an opponent that was sitting there and would probably rot eventually if it wasn’t eaten.

“Yeah, durian, you’re awesome!” Another longma shouted.

“Can I at least cover my nose when I cut it open?” It took a moment for my question to be answered as the referee was taking it into deep consideration.

“Sure, that’s allowable, is that everything you wanted to ask?” The black and grey scaled referee asked me as he looked between us.

“Yeah, let’s get this over with... I’ll fight the fruit.” This was going to be one short fight.

Unless, you know, my luck interfered greatly. It had already made sure that my opponent would be this durian as it had set this up days ago. Oh… crap…

“Are you ready?” Nodding to the referee tentatively, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of nausea come over me.

I did throw up in the toilet a few hours back when I woke up this morning, I really hoped I wasn’t coming down with something.

“You’re other opponent looks ready.” How can you tell, it doesn’t have vocal chords, eyes or the ability of speech. It couldn’t communicate anything!

I seriously doubted this oversized durian was psychic and unless I had Nefer talk to it, then we’d never know for sure if in fact fruit could even talk. Anyone could talk to a tree, Nefer might be one of the few beings that might actually hear something like a verbal response from one.

“Ready, fight!” The stomp of a hoof signaled the beginning of a long arduous battle, a battle that started with the both of us doing nothing.

I just looked around at all the people in the stands and I heard someone cough.

“This is seriously silly, but in an effort to take this seriously I guess I’ll attack!” I pulled the saber from my hip and charged forward to slash the durian.

This was something I shouldn’t have done.

The durian shot away from me, bounced off the ground once, hit a pillar and ricocheted back into my face knocking me down in a painful display.

“You go durian woo!” A longma shouted and the crowd cheered… for the durian. Of course they did.

“Don’t let it psyche you out Captain Blackcap!” At least Nefer was cheering me on.

“If you lose to a fruit, it’ll be the biggest embarrassment we’ve ever faced as pirates Jacky!” Flotsam yelled from next to Nefer. “Though knowing your luck...”

Why am I not surprised by this? I sighed audibly, sat up and glared at the durian just lying there.

Standing up, I approached the fruit far more cautiously than I previously did.

I lunged forward to stab it with my sword and…

-Shower room, a few minutes later, Skelly-

That fight had made me realize the dangers of fighting a durian, it tasted pretty good and the thoroughly bruised and scratched up Jacky would be moving on to her next fight.

I was helping her clean the pulp out of her feathers.