Airship Mauled

by Darkonshadows

Chapter thirty (x2), Circus Irks Us: Faithful Beasts.

Author's Note:

Yep, this is taking a lot out of me to do.

I will try all these chapters daily, but this is a bit much!

Hopefully it'll be appreciated by some people, can't please everyone!

If there's anything wrong with this chapter... I'll fix it later. I've been working on this one for a few hours!

-Jade-

We jumped back from the cracking whip and glared at the peach colored pony in the, not kidding, dominatrix outfit with a small black tiara currently pulling the whip taut between her hooves. Her wild short spiky black mane and tail, the red glowing eyes and crazy grin made her look just like the clown ponies. Minus the face paint and costumes of course.

“Hello, I’m Whip Slash!” Well at least this puppet pony could speak, she crack her whip to the left and the elephant standing on the large metal ball moved it forward slightly. Staying in formation with her were the large Manticore and the two headed grey wolf orthros, I think the orthros was the only other female in the group. “Do I spy a new beast to add to my collection?”

Even all the animals also had red glowing eyes, Snide has really been busy with that Alicorn Amulet. I really didn’t like the way that Whip was eyeing Maries.

“Who’s staying behind to deal with this? Just a reminder, you’ll have to possibly deal with clown attacks from behind and you’ll have to keep them safe while knocking them out until the first part of the plan sets off.” There was a valid concern here and I didn’t want anyone being hit with a pincer attack, I looked to Jacky who was currently sniping the clown ponies that were trying to come up behind us.

“I’ll do it, looks like a decent fight to me.” Arizona might actually be a good match up for this, she was still quite healthy. “Always wanted to fight an elephant!”

“Not without me you won’t!” We all knew Velvet could take a beating and she was doing alright as well, she’s taken some of Arizona’s hardest hits and keeps going. She hasn’t been too hurt, though she was going to tire herself out if she didn’t pace the use of her ice magic better.

“We’re helping them too.” Maries looked ready to take on Whip Lash. “If the animals lose the magic puppeteering them, they’ll still be dangerous! You three go on ahead, we can deal with this.”

I looked to Fizzle and Jacky, we nodded and then we all had to dive out the way as the giant metal ball the elephant was on nearly crushed us. The elephant could move that ball pretty fast, so Light Stepper was a pretty apt description for the elephant’s incredible sense of balance.

While I was getting up, I felt something snap around my neck to start choking me, I reached up with my hands and tried to pry the constricting whip off of me. My eyes started to water and everything was started to go dark as it constricted around my neck.

Reacting quickly Mara and Maria bit onto a portion of the whip further up and this allowed me to unwrap the whip from around my neck, I’m surprised that Whip Slash didn’t just tear apart the back of my neck or throat.

As soon as I was free, the whip was pulled from Maries’ mouths, they glared at Whip Slash in unison as she started coiling her whip once she pulled it back to her.

“Okay, that just got us angry!” Maria looked like she was seeing red, probably was if she was looking into the eyes of their opponents. Marie looked towards me. “Get moving Jade, we’ll get this pony under control! We’ll be a strong enough group to keep the clowns down and out danger as well.”

“Stop talking already and fight me!” I didn’t like this pony, she didn’t wait for us to initiate combat.

I quickly evaded another whip strike aimed for me by dancing backwards out of the way.

“Okay, try making an opening for Jacky, Fizzle and me to pass through!” At my suggestion, Arizona immediately charged towards the large metal ball the elephant was standing on, Velvet immediately charged the two head wolf beast and Maries went for the large manticore.

“You’re not getting by me that…” As whip spoke, I pulled Jacky and Fizzle close to me. Arizona collided head first with the ball doing no visible damage and then quickly moved out the way as Whip had the elephant roll the metal ball towards us. I quickly pulled out two vials and threw down one that exploded into a cloud of smoke, Whip would soon pass through the cloud and wouldn’t hit anything. “Easily?”

“How the…” She turned and finally noticed that we had gotten past her, she looked really flummoxed. Thank you for safely storing away the short range teleporting potions where I could find them mom!

“We got past you, have fun with that lasso!” After I said that with a teasing hint of humor she looked confused, then a rope wrapped around her body and pulled her from the elephant. The three of us turned and made our way forward.

“Well it seems the heroes have some tricks, but no matter, only three of them are moving onto the next act!” Fizzle, Jacky and I charged towards Snide’s throne and then another bright light shined down between us and him. There was an array of eight cannons on an open roofed carriage like vehicle with an organ or piano keys sitting below the cannons and two ponies in the spotlight. A punk clothed, black furred, red haired thestral stallion with a large spiked bat and a yellow furred, purple haired unicorn mare that looked like an armadillo in the black armor he was wearing. “Introducing Acro Bat and Cannonade with their vehicle the Cannon Cascade, this explosive duo can batter up and then blow you down! Why yes, this acrobatic act does have all the cannons lethally loaded for this performance, I’m ‘so~’ glad all of you to noticed. Please do try all this at home folks, heh I’m sure you’ll have a blast! I know I will watching the heroes squirm.”

“Okay, he’s getting really annoying with that commentary!” Right there with you Jacky, we watched Acro hefted his bat in our direction with a sickly grin and swung it a few times.

Cannonade moved over to the cannon loaded vehicle and sat down in preparation to start hitting the keys that were connected to the rest of the cannon ball firing vehicle.

Thankfully for us, I didn’t think it would have that much ammo. Maybe enough to fire at least three volleys from the twenty or so cannons on the vehicle.

-Arizona-

I tried to take Whip out the fight immediately as I pulled her off the elephant, but with a quick hasty swing of her whip, she slashed through the rope holding her with a sharp cracking noise.

That was followed up by the elephant, with surprising speed, catching her in his trunk to bring her back up to his head.

Whip cracked her whip loudly. Light Stepper let out a loud trumpeting noise and started rolling the large metal ball towards me and I quickly got out the way, I wasn’t nearly slow enough to be hit by it. Only the ball changed directions on a dime and then I really started attempting to put some distance between it and me.

I glanced over to see how Velvet was doing, she was on her back and had one of the wolf heads mouth locked up with a block of ice. She was currently holding back the other heads snapping jaws with her hooves.

She didn’t exactly have the muscle to… a large angled pillar of ice rose up, slamming into the two headed wolves belly knocking it away from her. Eh, she’s fine.

I turned back to the elephant and barely dodged the insanely fast whip strike, I looked down at my face as saw a slight red mark on it. That felt weaker than a love tap from Velvet, didn’t this mare work out? That felt pathetic!

“How in the, I know I hit you! No matter, Light Stepper crush her!” She slashed the whip back towards the elephant’s rear and Light Stepper responded immediately. Instead of running away I got closer to the ball and out of sight under its curvature.

Crouching down close to the ball as it nearly came close to crushing me, I started running in the opposite direction it was moving. The elephant looked back and started rolling it back my way.

I glanced in Maries’ direction and they were currently viciously fighting like wild animals. Turning back to the large metal ball coming towards me, I had to deal with that or else I would never be able to take out Whip Slash! Using rope wouldn’t help, but destroying the ball might.

I ran forward and, like Velvet tends to say, put my head to good use as I rammed my horns against the ball at the right moment and the elephant reared up slightly almost losing its balance. It managed to get its feet back down on the ball and tried to roll it on top of me.

Bracing myself against the floor I put both my hooves up against the metal and pushed, the elephant leaned forward trying to put more of the metal ball’s pressure on me.

“How are you doing that? How are you even still alive, you’re so small and tiny, you should be crushed under all this weight?!” Whip was talking about the fact that I was holding back the weight of an entire elephant and a large metal ball pushing down on me. Plus one pony, for however much of a difference that made.

“I’m not weak and if I have the gumption to keep fighting, then I will!” I gritted my teeth held all that weight at bay, my rear hooves started digging into the ground behind me compacting the dirt as the ball start to roll forward slightly.

I quickly readjusted my hooves higher and kept pushing until we hit a stalemate. Whip couldn’t crush me with the ball and I couldn’t do a thing to damage it.

She swung her whip around and cracked it into my side, it did nothing.

“What are you?!” Whip swung around her weapon twice and then launched it forward to strike me in the side again, I just took it easily enough. “Well if you can’t be crushed while braced for Light Stepper’s weight, then I better keep hitting you to make sure you can’t brace it anymore!”

“Ouch that stung a bit, it might have even tickled!” Even as I taunted her I was starting to sweat under the constant pressure and the next few, somewhat frantic, whip strikes weren’t helping me concentrate.

-Marie-

Covered in bleeding claw marks, we tackled the manticore and Mara bit into his shoulder with her teeth to start ripping a chunk of flesh out of him, that’s when we were rolled over and he tried to do the same to us.

Goliath was bigger and naturally had more physical strength, he tried to chomp down on Mara’s head only to get Maria’s horns in the way that held its sharp gnawing teeth at bay.

Mara tried to swipe our paws at him, but he arced its neck out of the way while pushing his claws into our chest and belly while continuing to try and bite through Maria’s tough horns.

Maria was holding the Manticore’s mouth at bay pretty well despite the pain of the claws digging into us.

I, Marie, was trying to poison it with my fangs by biting into one of its rear legs, it wasn’t quite working and I’ve bitten Goliath more than once already. He lashed his tail out at me and I quickly pulled away.

I’ve pushed just about every ounce of fluid out of my venom glands into him!

Are you sure you’re injecting him with venom Marie?

Yes Maria, the manticore is either too big or immune, did you know Manticores tend to accidentally stab themselves a lot with their scorpion tails while young? It must be immune to its own venom and resilient to mine on top of that! My fangs aren’t going to do much damage to it aside from being a minor annoyance.

Can you think of anything to do to get it off of us Marie? We’re losing blood here and I don’t like how it’s digging its claws deeper into us. We do not want these kinds of hard to heal flesh wounds, we need to be strong to aid Jade and Fizzy later!

No Mara, and Arizona’s in trouble! She’s holding the ball in place and getting whipped over there.

We can’t do anything for her while we’re stuck here under the manticore Marie.

Maria try to buck it off of us!

Ooh, good idea Marie!

We got our rear legs into position and kicked upwards, we didn’t hit it in the stomach… we did hit it somewhere else though with a harsh double buck.

Goliath let out a pained screeched that turned into a whimper as he fell over clutching his front paws between his legs, he was roaring angrily about the low blow we just dealt him.

That’s not what I thought you’d do Maria, Goliath is definitely going to be mad once he is able to stand again. Also I’m not even going to try and bite the elephant, its hide is too thick and I seriously doubt our claws will do enough damage to get it off of Arizona. We’d need your horns or Mara’s jaws.

Less thinking and more acting!

Mara got us standing and went to go for the elephant, only our back right leg was painfully grabbed by Goliath’s claws and he tried to bite into our flank.

Instead of going to aid Arizona, we turned and Maria used our other rear leg to pivot and kick off the ground to gain enough momentum to ram her bladed horns violently into his nose. That cut up his face and bloodied him badly!

Goliath released us and got up while roaring, we all roared back in challenge with Mara being the loudest as usual. We noticed that the red in Goliath’s eyes started to flicker a bit, he shook his head a bit and stumbled away from us a bit looking slightly frightened.

It seemed he was resisting Snide’s control slightly, his eyes quickly went back to glowing red and he charged right for us.

We’re sorry Arizona, but we had a big cat to deal with and we’d come as soon we could.

-Velvet-

Why wouldn’t this ‘Rip and Tear’ freeze over!? This two headed wolf was positively horrid.

I don’t like wolves, I’ve never liked wolves and I would like it if I never had to fight a wolf ever again!

Sure I was a defender for my village, mostly likely retired because I no longer wanted to live there, but wolves were always so annoying! Frost, timber, dire or otherwise, why were they always so annoying to fight?

Still it was the simplest animal here to deal with and I find myself evenly matched because my ice just couldn’t freeze it. Oh I could encase or surround them in ice, but that would only hold the two headed mutt for a short amount of time.

I dodged backwards and narrowly avoided having my floof end up in their teeth. I blasted them with my frosty breath while evading bites from either head at a moment’s notice as they continue to come at me.

Arizona was holding back a lot of weight and slowly being crushed, Maries was stuck in brutal combat and I was now slowly trying to whittle this orthros down with rapid hooves strikes to their noses, eyes and whatever else my quick hooves could strike as I avoided getting bit or clawed.

Rip and Tear thankfully hadn’t gotten a hold of me yet to do as their namesakes would suggest. I was going to have to delay them for a moment so I could give Arizona some much needed assistance.

Creating a foot thick wall of ice before me as they lunged forward, they hit the wall cracking it a bit.

Taking this opportunity while they were dazed I created three more walls of ice surrounding them, I combined the walls together and formed a dome above the two headed wolf monster.

Each of Rip and Tear’s movements was already breaking through the ice, I’d better hurry! What could I do though to help Arizona with her fight? The metal… of course!

I ran over to Arizona and pressed my hooves up against the sphere, while I was on my way I noticed that we had incoming clown ponies that were breaking away from the Vibrant Vikings and our one friendly clown in their lopsided melee.

“Are you so helpless that you need me to come save your hide Arizona?” A little harsh for sure, but I needed Arizona to get mad.

“What did you just imply Velvet!” Arizona, much to my surprise, managed to the push the sphere upwards in her bout of anger.

It also surprised Whip, almost even made her tumble off the elephant that was almost falling off the large metal ball.

‘Almost’, as Light Stepper managed to get his feet situated a second later. Only he could no longer push the sphere forward and down on Arizona.

I concentrated on centering my magic inside the metal sphere, hearing a crashing noise and I my turned to look at my ice prison to see one of the orthros’s heads just got free and was snapping at the ice containing them. It wouldn’t be long before they got free.

“Do you have a hearing problems as well?” I leaned towards Arizona and tried to say this in as smug a tone as I could manage. “You are a wimp without me Arizona, I’m so sorry that I have to be the one to carry our relationship!”

“What, If anything I’m the one carrying our relationship!” Arizona lifted one hoof off the sphere to point it at me angrily and notably the sphere didn’t budge or move to crush her. That… was stupidly impressive and my heart started beating a little quicker at the impossible show of strength. “I put a lot of effort into making a she devil like you smile and I actually love every second of it!”

When she slapped her hoof back down onto the metal, a large crack formed across the sphere. Perfect, now to keep egging her on a little more.

“I sometimes love making you miserable!” I yelled in her face. “Why are we even together!?”

“It’s because I like you for that you annoying woman!” That was when a critical juncture was hit, Arizona lifted both her hooves off of the sphere and then moved to slam her right hoof against it while glaring at me.

“I love you, and I’m a lady!” That was a first real confession of love, it felt good to get that off my chest in the middle of a life and death situation like this one.

I had just taken my hooves off of the sphere and smiled brightly at Arizona.

“Some lady you are, AND I LOVE YOU TOO!” When Arizona’s right hoof connected solidly, the results were even more spectacular then I could have imagined.

You see, metal becomes somewhat brittle when frozen… I froze most of the sphere’s insides and the weight of the elephant started damaging the now slightly more brittle metal.

Now imagine a large metal ball physically exploding, without the flaming death part of said explosion. Add in an upwards conical shaped blast of thousands upon millions of metal chunks going up and away from the impact zone of Arizona’s lone hoof.

It was a hit powered by love… and… I guess our mutual aggressive natures to consistently aggravate one another. Were we currently being passive aggressive or aggressively passive to one another? It was hard to tell.

Light Stepper landed on the ground wailing away in agony as he had a massive amount cold metal shrapnel lightly embedded in his skin.

“You’re really incredible Arizona.” I said breathlessly staring at all the shards from destroyed sphere before me, nobody was hurt or hit other than Light Stepper. Unfortunately, it meant Whip Slash managed to avoid the blast and was still a combatant to worry about.

“You’re some piece of work yourself Velvet.” She stated back in a deadpan tone, before she grunted and held her now limp right leg. “Ugh, I can’t feel my leg!”

“Here, let me quickly check it.” Another cracking noise and I saw that Rip and Tear had almost freed themselves. Turning back to my cow, it looks like Arizona dislocated it. Hopefully the damage to her musculature isn’t too bad. Well best to get this out the way and quickly while we still had a moment to ourselves. “Okay Arizona, your leg seems to be…”

Without warning, I quickly grabbed and jerked her right leg back into its socket and she let out a yell of agonized pain that almost broke my heart. Almost, because this was my Arizona we’re talking about here.

Arizona was a big girl and a little pain has never stopped her, or even me, before.

“What do you think you’re doing you crazy…!? Oh hey, look!” Arizona moved her right leg around realizing that I had helped her. It might have been worse if she clenched her muscles in anticipation, I’m no medic but I did have some ideas of how you fix a problem like this. “Still hurts like it’s on fire, also feels like pins and needles and I’ll need to get it checked out professionally by Dr. Bones after all this. Quite frankly Velvet, I think I’ll bring this one moment up in the future multiple times just to annoy you for not warning me about what you were going to do!”

“Wouldn’t have it any other aahhh!” I was almost pounced upon by the orthros, thankfully I tackled Arizona out of the way of their landing.

It wasn’t an accident and I most certainly wasn’t farting a large spray of icy fog out my posterior to propel myself away faster while gaining a little bit of flight. Anyone who says otherwise or makes fun of my medical condition will get a sharp icicle to where the sun doesn’t shine!

I idly noted the clown ponies were being intercepted by our friendly clown and he was slowing them down quite a bit. Hopefully he could keep that up for as long as we needed him to.

“What a way to toot your own…” Arizona, I swear if this fight doesn’t kill you, I just might! She stopped her sentence when she saw the elephant standing up and Whip Slash readying her whip.

It looked like Light Stepper was still capable of putting up a fight, but then again I’d expect any elephant to be tough like that. I remember the first time I saw an elephant, I didn’t know that elephants could be stealthy or incredibly talented in thievery. Thank goodness for Dr. Bones putting a stop to that nuisance!

We both saw Maries covered in bites and claw marks, they were giving better than they were getting at the very least. Still, they needed a change of venue to lick their wounds as it were, as that Manticore was really wearing them down.

“Why don’t you switch it up with Maries?” That has got to be the one of the most brilliant segues to avoid my building ire that I’ve ever heard, bravo on you Arizona!

Though I will remember what you were about to say about my relatively minor and not overly inconvenient condition.

“Right, I’ll do just that.” After I stated this, I was about to dart towards Maries’ fight when I heard something like a half cracked whip and came to a halt to see Arizona’s left hoof holding the end of a whip a scant inch from touching my floof.

“Nobody, messes up my girlfriends ‘floof’!” Aw, Arizona, I knew you loved my fluffiness and cared about my beautifully crafted appearance! “Because that’s my job!”

…

It sounded like we have much to discuss at a later date Arizona, said discussions were surely to be quite violent and somewhat enjoyable. For now, I moved around the whip and charged off towards Maries.

Looking behind me I see Arizona yanking Whip Slash from her perch, I sent several shards of ice towards the orthros that was coming up behind her and hoped it helped while I switched opponents with Maries.

-Top Snide-

“It looks like the heroes left another one behind and are moving onto my final act, well the final one before the most important magnificent one… me! Muahaha, say hello to four the juggling brothers!” The heroes were starting to flag with all the trouble they had to deal with, my victory was quite assured. “We have Torch, Club, Knife and Ball, all of them Jugglers in name and skill. They are ready to take down our hated heroes in a flurry of deadly thrown projectiles! Why don’t you let Knife Juggler throw a few of them into you Sun Priest?”

“Get into some poison joke!” Her caustic anger was music to my ears, I grinned madly and was enjoying my own show.

Sure the audience didn’t seem into it, but I was quite sure I would hear the applause of hooves hitting the ground soon enough. Also, destroy all glass!

-Mara-

The song of battle fills our blood with such thrill, we can feel the beat of it in our heart or is it hearts? We needed another checkup to be sure.

In any case our battle was glorious and we hoped our alpha of alphas, known as the goddess of war Sekhet, was watching over us as we fought this most dangerous opponent!

-Sekhet-

“You’re doing great, keep doing what you’re doing!” While I continue to read my Celestia related ‘adventure’ novel.

-Mara-

We dodged to the left, our body primarily under my direction at the moment as I sent us forward and had Maria slam her horns into the side of his head.

The damage we dealt would have been worse had he not had such a thick protective mane, truthfully we were having problems doing serious damage to Goliath at all. At least not without getting hurt ourselves, aside from my bites and Maria’s horns we weren’t having much luck.

Comparatively we were on the losing end of this fight and we all knew it. The tail reared back and came forward to strike at us, we jumped backwards out of range and growled at him. He growled right back trying to prove himself the better predator, then added the insult that we smelled domesticated.

Sometimes it would have been better if we didn’t understand some more animalistic languages. We were about to engage again when a hoof shaped block of ice slammed into hit face staggering him.

“Change of opponents, you’re getting the wolf orthros now. Arizona is still obviously insistent on wanting to fight ‘the elephant in the room’ herself.” Not even thinking to argue with Velvet, we turned and shot towards Arizona who was dealing with an orthros riding Whip Slash and an elephant the nearly stomped down on her. “By that, I meant our wonderful relationship!”

We came at them fast and tackled the orthros with two ice shards buried in its side violently, we sent Whip Slash tumbling off of them. The Orthros was more our size and speed right now.

We knew all about how to deal with multi-headed beings, we were one and we also knew how to work together better than this puppet beast!

-Arizona-

Maries’ sudden assist was quite welcome as Velvet left me between an Orthros and a hard skinned elephant. As I backed away from the elephant where was… oh you have got to be bucking kidding me!

I could see that Whip’s whip was wrapped around Light Stepper’s ear as she swung her way back into position on his head and she sent me an evil smile.

“If this is the best you’ve got, then you’re not going to take us down Snide!” I screamed as I charged the elephant, Maries could easily take the orthros.

The elephant lifted its right foot and tried to stomp it down on me, I caught it and heaved its leg upward in an impressive show of strength.

Light Stepper trumpeted and was staying balance on his three legs… at least until I charged forwards and rammed bodily into its right rear leg with my left shoulder and horns. I quickly rolled to the side as the elephant toppled while letting loose an angry noise of defiance as it tried to stay standing.

Having toppled the elephant I hopped up and climbed onto its back to go after Whip Slash. She wasn’t going to stay out the action where she could keep whipping at me from a distance, it was making me mad that she just kept hiding behind her animals!

I leapt at her and she slapped her whip around my waist and tried to sling my off of the elephant, unfortunately for her I grabbed onto the elephants ear and yanked at her whip. She held on to it this time.

With a tug she almost sent me falling off the elephant, only for the whip to unravel from my waist. I leapt from my position to smash her across the face and knock her off with my left hoof. My right leg was still way too sore to be doing any hard hitting.

This fight didn’t seem like it was going to end any time soon as Whip Slash got up and cracked her neck while flicking the kinks out of her whip.

We glared at one another to the point that I forgot my position and was knocked off the elephant by a swipe of its trunk.

Multiple dancing clown ponies showed up and started to move to cover Whip Slash. This was just getting ridiculous, was she always in retreat? Some beast tamer she was!

Couldn’t even handle the beast that was Arizona, child of Minnesota Maggie, with anything approaching competence!

-Ponyacci-

“Well that isn’t good.” I bounced in place, some clowns had gotten by me and were aiding that beast tamer pony. I was still trying to deal with the fake clowns in front of me, there were just so many of them! I waved my rubbery sword in the air as I bounced forward. “For humor, for giggling, for laughter and for my new friends I have yet to learn about!”

I reared back on my balloon unicorn and bounced high to swipe a clown off their hopper with my balloon sword. I landed on another to kick them in the head before my steed bounced upwards and away from the crowd of clowns I was trying to keep contained.

Comments

[Booster Spice]

The sort of detail to beat em ups you wish could be far more common in super mega expensive movies. Then again, If Poniacci called in favours from The Monty Python Crew, the Idle one could call in some favours himself.

Everything must Go, Go, Go.

And then theres The Goodies. Then again, could Equestria handle the Three Jackies?

Arizona vs The Elephant? What does that make her? Level 10 Monk?

[MadHadder]

“Stop talking already and fight me!” I didn’t like this pony, she didn’t wait for us to initiate combat.

Fond memories of Magick the gathering