• Published 31st Mar 2018
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Airship Mauled - Darkonshadows



We crash landed on a goddess. Welcome to Airship Mauled, where everything could possibly be worse.

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

Author's Note:

(New Magical Alchemy Ingredient!)

37. Gunbai.

-Fizzle-

“Get into some poison joke!” Jade was rather angry and she let her displeasure for Top Snide be known.

I was right there with her in wishing him ill at the moment as I could see his smug face grinning at her words from here, at least Jade didn’t want him dead. She would probably do worse to him if we caught him though and poison joke was one of the things that could do that.

We still had no idea what Jade had bought from Traveler Neko, but it must have been something big. She had told us the main plan for securing the hostages and then dealing with Snide, but not what she’d actually do to him once we got him. I was a little worried about that.

“So I take the two ponies on the left and you have the two in the right.” I dragged a hoof against the ground while lowering myself, I glared at the four in our way of saving our mother and getting at Top Snide. I was prepared to charge them head on!

They were four quadruplets with a rare palomino color scheme, it’s rare because they all had the same golden fur, same white manes and also the same lines of fur on their faces leading up to their manes. They also had the same short hair and moderate length tails. The only thing that signified that they were jugglers were the caps they were wearing, two point jester hats without bells to be specific, in the checkered colors of red and black.

I could only tell them apart thanks to their cutie marks or the baskets loaded with their specific juggling equipment on their backs as they stood before us on their rear hooves. Knife, Club, Torch and Ball, surprisingly that last one sounded the least dangerous out of the four of them.

They started to reach into their baskets full of gear and each one of them pulled out three implements and started to juggle them in rhythmic manner, while looking towards us. Their eyes were bouncing between me and Jade as they spread out in a hemisphere formation in front of us.

Knives, bowling pins, unlit torches and what looked to be like rubber balls, about as much as I expected from a bunch of jugglers. Why were they Snide’s final act before we could reach him? Every other act looked more dangerous than these four ponies.

Knife Juggler tossed a knife high into the air and caught it behind his back to bring it forward and continue the juggling pattern. He looked ready to throw them at us.

Club Juggler twirled his two bowling pins at the thinnest part and started to bounce the third between them, batting it back and forth before returning to a standard juggling pattern.

Torch Juggler spun holding her two torches out wide and then caught the third with his right hind hoof while having twirled into crouch, he slowly stood up while flipping the third torch into his two torch juggling pattern.

Ball Juggler kicked his right rear leg high and bounced a ball under it to his other hoof, then when he threw that up high, he tossed a ball to that hoof and kicked up with his other leg to bounce that ball under it. The Third ball was on his nose and took a short hop into his free hoof while the other caught the second ball as it bounced up, then he was on the same basic pattern as the other three ponies.

“Fizzy… when you can get the chance or when I can give you a good opening… move forward.” What?! Didn’t you want to take on Top Snide yourself Jade! “We’re using minor plan B Fizzy, hope it works. You’ll be the lynchpin for the main plan!”

I looked at the sword at my hip, I hoped that idea worked too. I had been using the pirate sword as a crutch for a while to train my magic and it’s thanks to Jade that I’m faintly capable of doing magic on my own without it, I just needed to train on my control more. I would show Jade what I could do!

At least I got the hang of imbuing the sword with magic, which is why it acted like Zephyr’s Gunbai to Jade now. It was swamped with my magic and Jade couldn’t use magical alchemy sustain on it, she could still cast with it just fine and it had the properties of either fire or lightning at random when pulled from the sheathe.

Those two elements were what I was actually good at pulling up with my busted horn, they were also the hardest elemental spells to control. So it kind of made sense that I specifically steered towards those spell elements with the fireworks displays I liked to create.

“Should I use the sword?” I asked, Jade shook her head no.

“Save it for Snide, also while we’re still allowed some free actions because they seem quite patient with us.” Jade reached into her pack and tossed me the green cloak, I looked to her and nodded. The self-sustain could get me by these red eyed puppet ponies. When Jade got them to focus on her, I could sneak off.

As if signaled by some unforeseen force, Club Juggler charged us first and he swung for me while I was putting on the cloak. Jade intercepted with her knife and we both heard a clanging noise as she deflected the bowling pin, it was made of metal. To think it looked so normal.

As she deflected his club strike, he caught his second club in his right hoof and swung it outwards for her head. Jade ducked under it and the third pin almost came down on her head. Jade stepped backwards as the pin hit the ground and bounced up to be caught by the tip of Club Juggler’s left rear hoof and tossed back into his juggling pattern.

“I bet they’re all as equally skilled like that.” After that bit of insight from Jade, Knife Juggler charged us.

He stabbed at Jade who blocked the blade with her own knife, but as the knife was pulled back it was tossed into the air and she blocked the second stab from the knife in his other hoof.

He then surprised Jade by stepping out of the way and catching a bowling pin to add to his juggling formation as Club caught and threw the knife for me.

I dodged to the side and then a second later, Jade dodged a ball thrown at high speed from behind us. The other two Jugglers had circled around behind us while we were distracted.

Ball Juggler now had a knife and two balls. He twirled forward and tried to jam the knife in Jade’s throat, she was currently dodging Club swinging a knife and a club together in wide arcs while tossing a ball high up in the air. Club was aiming at hitting her side and face.

I lunged forward to hit Ball in the face with my right hoof, sending him stumbling back and away from Jade. Yet somehow he managed to keep his juggling going and tried to kick at me. Backing off with my back to Jade I kept my eyes on the other two jugglers.

Jade launched a kick to Club’s belly sending him rolling backwards. Knife had caught the ball and was now juggling four objects, one of the four objects was a torch. I saw something swing at me from the corner of my left eye and ducked.

I quickly bucked out at Torch Juggler who spun away while twirling her flameless torch batons.

I had a feeling I did not want to be around when Torch actually lit those things ablaze, though that would make them easier to see and feel coming. They wouldn’t be much of a threat with Jade here.

They had us boxed in, they were standing in a square around us and they were shifting their hips back and forth as they juggled and started to twirl in a circle while raising and crouching. They all balanced and danced on their hind legs pretty well, while staring at us creepily and each holding a simple juggling pattern.

Then they started tossing their stuff to each other, this was getting confusing pretty quickly as their weapons were changing hooves at a rapid pace until Jade saw something.

“Fizzy lean right!” I did so and heard Jade grunt in pain. I turned and saw a thin line of blood seeping out from Jade’s right shoulder as the knife passed by me. I was able to see the next throw because I was looking in her direction, as the knife was passed around to be thrown at her from the side.

“Jade move forward!” Jade did so and a knife passed through the space she just occupied. I ducked the next knife coming for me and she moved to the left avoiding it too without prompting.

Both knives were caught and added back into their juggling patterns, several weapons were swapped again. Then both ends of the three torches were quickly lit ablaze as they were scraped against the ground in two twirls by a crouching Ball, Club and Knife.

They gave them a twirl in one hoof creating a small ring of fire for a second, while juggling two other objects one hoofed.

Said twirling stopped and the three ponies inhaled, I looked to Torch Juggler who had a sadistic grin on her face as she moved closer with the two knives while bouncing a club on her head like it was a hacky sack.

The other three jugglers blew on the torches and three streams of fire blazed at us while moving forward slowly, for all of two seconds before Jade started twirling. After a second Jade then started to wildly spraying water from her ears everywhere putting a stop to their ability to herd us into the knife wielding Torch.

Torch Juggler backed off shaking the water off her face, she frowned at us while moving the club into her hooves that started juggling the two knives again.

I wiped the water from my face and squeezed out my slightly damp mane.

“No fire for you!” Jade, looking a bit dizzy, quickly pulled her canteen out and started guzzling the water in it. Once done, she asked what would be a silly question. “What are you going to do about it now?”

At Jade’s taunting, the torch holding ponies all twirled into a squat and forcibly struck both ends of their torches against the ground while juggling two object one hoofed. The torch parts came off revealing that the batons ended in sharp metal spikes on both ends, because of course they did!

They started to circle around us, then two on each side of us moved in opposite directions and swapped places.

“I think they were ready for that possibility Jade.” As soon as I finished saying that, all four of them charged us at once.

Things… then became frantic as me and Jade protected each other backs to avoid being caught off guard from behind.

I blocked a club blow to my side and kicked out knocking Knife away. I ducked under a knife swing and hoofed Club in the chest knocking him back. Dodged a thrown knife from Ball nearly taking it in my side and avoided taking a ball bouncing off the ground to the chin from Torch by lifting my head and leaning back.

Jade meanwhile avoided a double ended spear baton jab from Torch and knocked her back with a magic missile, where she was tossed a ball to come after me at the end of my defense. Jade turned and rammed her elbow into Ball, who would came after me next with a thrown knife. Jade leaned back and grabbed Club’s leg during a stabbing attempt with a knife and backhanded him in the jaw. Following that Jade blocked an incoming Knife with her arm, taking a club to her right forearm and then she shoulder checked him to the ground.

Knife still managed to keep his juggling going despite having been knocked down, as did the others we hit. They were incredible jugglers, of that I have no doubt now. It’s just sad to see them being forced to act as puppets for Snide like this.

“Ugh, it’s hard to think of their names and the implements they are using as weapons separately! All this weapon swapping is really getting obnoxious and is giving me a headache.” I was getting really confused about who had what now. All I knew was that I didn’t want them passing their weapons around like they are, as they all seemed somewhat equally skilled in the use of each other’s juggling tools.

“You won’t have to worry about that for long Fizzy, get ready to go after Snide!” Jade tapped at something on her necklace, the hydra scale?! If she used that for too long, she’d tire herself out quickly and any hit dealt to her clone could injure her fatally! She does realize that these four are trying to kill us right? “I have a plan to give you an opening.”

“I trust you to stay safe Jade, I’m getting tired of waiting at your bedside for you to get better from our adventures.” The response to my aggravated words was Jade sending me a sad smile. “I want my favorite fluffy feline to be in a good condition after this. I trust Maries to come out of this still standing, you’d better be alright too damn it!”

“I’ll do the best that I can Fizzy, promise.” That’s all I could really ask of Jade in this situation. I sighed and nodded to her and relented, I took a few calming breaths then focused on the four dancing around us while juggling.

The Jugglers were passing weapons between them and their eyes were darting between us and themselves as if asking who they’d go after next. They were rather surprisingly well coordinated with one another.

I prepared to make a break for it and Jade pulled out the replica gunbai from her pack and pocketed it in the right side of her shorts, mostly for ease of access to it. Did she know what its effects were? She had a little time to test it out this morning, hoped the magical alchemy sustain was a good one. She obviously wouldn’t know what the cast is without having destroyed it.

“Ready?” Jade whispered to me.

“As I’ll ever be Jade.” I looked towards Snide. I would be gunning for him and I would have to hold my own. Every injury Jade takes here will be one I preemptively replicate on him in our confrontation!

-Jade-

“Go!” At my word Fizzle charged for Ball and Knife, I followed behind her.

The two jugglers moved to intercept her, but then I activated my current sustains effects and in a flash of light that blinded them a bit as I split off into two Jades.

The clone Jade went for Knife and performed a sliding kick to his legs, I dropped the magical sustain immediately as Knife tried to ram his namesake into my clones chest as he flopped onto his face dropping all his juggling objects.

My actions were to grapple with Ball as he seemed primarily a distance attacker, I grabbed his hoof and twisted it forcing him to drop the knife he held. I then pulled him towards me and launched a swift kick for his privates, only to discover something I didn’t think I was supposed to ever know about.

All the Juggler brothers all looked the same, so it was a little surprising to find out that one of them was not like the others.

“Wait… one of you is a mare?” Still my kick knocked down Ball all the same, she groaned out in pain and her eyes quickly turned a natural bright blue.

“I’m a stallion born in a mare’s body!” Yeah, not touching that angry statement Ball Juggler just screamed in my face. Probably touched a nerve there that made her break free of Snide’s control.

“Look, do you think you can help me out with your brothers while…” I tried to ask, looking for any bit of help I could get in this situation.

“Now, now… we’ll be having none of that.” Snide’s voice chimed in and Ball clutched at her head. “Be a good little juggler and kill the sun priest!”

“Ngh… can’t… take…” Her eyes flickered red, she kicked up the knife from her position on the ground and tried to thrust it into my chest.

Dodging back to take a club strike to the left shoulder that made me grunt, I almost dropped my knife as I grabbed the hoof in front of me with my right hand and quickly stole the knife from it.

Taking it from Ball’s hoof had been way too easy, it’s almost like she just gave me the knife. I sustained my personal knife to boost my reflexes for the next incoming attack.

“Never mind then and thanks!” I turned and blocked the second club attack coming for my spine via Club Juggler, with the juggling knife. I also deflected the spear ended baton coming for my side by Torch Juggler trying to jam it in me.

I slashed out at Torch who danced back and away from me, then I pushed Club away from me making him stumble.

Quickly switching my magical alchemy sustain to my skirt, I twirled away from Knife who threw one at me.

I started to tap my right foot in a rhythm and quite frankly I was getting pretty tired of this whole monkey in the middle thing they had going on here.

Ball Juggler caught the thrown knife and all four jugglers quickly moved to keep me between the four of them, while Knife pulled another knife out of his equipment basket.

They were juggling again as they surrounded me, dancing and shifting left and right. I kept my eyes open and wary, looking left and right, waiting for the next movement towards me. They even started passing their weapons about again.

Knife, passed a knife to Torch, who passed it to Ball and she threw it at me. I dodged to the left turning trying to keep my eyes on all of them.

That was when they all came at me at once, I ducked under the thrust of Club’s club from behind.

I swung around and struck Torch in the eye with my tail making him stumble backwards. I deflected two balls thrown by Ball who caught a knife and followed up with an attempt to stab me.

I turned and blocked Ball with my knife and smashed her in the jaw with the handle of the juggler knife I held in my right hand. I turned completely around to deflect Knife’s incoming slash with mine and ran the juggling knife straight up his right leg lightly carving a painful looking cut into it.

He let out a hiss of pain while backing off and I swung my left leg around backwards along the ground to trip up Ball knocking her down, I tapped danced my way to left slightly and a large portion of my skirt took damage from Torch slashing through it.

I kicked Club with a can-can kick to the head knocking him down, I somersaulted backwards as Torch tried to bounce a ball off the ground and into the side of my neck, then he charged me to try and skewer me with two baton spears at the same time. I lifted both my arms and jumped forward to catch both his legs in my armpits and I started rapidly kicking him multiple times in the belly rhythmically.

Torch grunted with each blow, I could see Knife quickly approached to try and slash me with a knife that was just thrown to him.

I released Torch and half twirled away, only a half twirl because I heard a ripping noise and lost my magical sustain as Knife slashed apart the rest of my skirt badly enough that the object was technically destroyed. It looked it as the most of my skirt was on the ground now, there went my evasive dancing abilities.

I took high speed rubber balls to the kidney and right side of my face knocking me down into a kneeling position, jerking back I received a light slash across the left side of my face instead of my throat. I fell completely prone and rolled into Club’s legs bowling him over and, as I swiftly got back to my feet, I pocketed the juggling knife in my left pocket while acquiring one of his bowling pins from his equipment basket.

I quickly brought said bowling pin down on Club’s skull to keep him down a little longer and spun around to throw it at Torch who simply entered it into his juggling pattern. I pulled the gunbai from my right hip and aimed it at one of the knives Torch was Juggling. With a quick sustain, the knife suddenly rotated one hundred and eighty degrees as he was about to catch it.

“Agh!” Torch caught the knife blade first and it dug into his hoof. Pocketing the gunbai, I charged forward, caught the club I threw at him and then bashed him across the skull with it before releasing it.

I pulled out the juggler’s knife again and turned to Knife Juggler, these guys were taking some serious hits and yet they kept on coming. Snide didn’t mess around before that amulet drove him to idiocy.

I blocked Knife who came at me with his left leg swinging a knife at my forehead. While the juggler’s knife in my right hand held him at bay and I quickly jammed my knife into his left leg for a second forcing him to fall down screaming.

Now both the knives I held were covered in their blood. I leapt back, to left, then to the right and ducked as several balls were bounced by the other three jugglers at me. One almost hit me in the back of the head and one definitely smashed roughly into my elbow almost making me lose my grip on the juggler’s knife.

“I’m quite sure that this is as unpleasant for me as it is for you guys!” I stepped right, then threw a hip check to the left knocking Ball roughly to the ground. Turning I slapped my tail against a recovering Club’s face.

I had to hold both Torch and Knife’s knives at bay as I quickly backed away from Club and Ball and managed to get them all on one side of me. Like that would last for long.

I kicked Torch onto his back and upon deflecting Knife I punched him squarely in the jaw knocking him over.

I couldn’t keep hurting them badly like this, I felt really awful about it even if they were trying to kill me. Though these ponies were really quite tough, they just kept getting up despite how many hits I’ve landed on them.

I’m pretty sure that the increasingly obvious resilience to pain was a side effect of being controlled like they were.

While I had them all down for the moment I glanced off to the side to see how Fizzle was doing, she was facing Snide down and managed to get him off of his throne and away from mom.

Yes, my plan was about to be set in motion!

I just hoped the others got here in time before these four took me down. Hold on Fizzle, we’ll be there soon! You just keep him focused on you instead of what was going on around him.

Glancing to my other side I saw that all the other fights were going about as well as mine was. At least Fortitude noticed that it was time for him to get a move on and was running towards the entrance of the tent to send the signal.

Fortitude was kind of leaving Cheerilee and Dr. Bones, who currently looked to be operating on Jacky, defenseless to Cannonade, Acro Bat and a number of clowns. Generic, Flamberge and Ponyacci were barely holding all of them back and away from Jacky’s impromptu battlefield surgery.

That looked dire, but it would quickly change around soon enough once Fortitude got back from doing his job.

Velvet, Arizona and Maries were looking okay… for a definition of the word.

Arizona was currently struggling against Light Stepper’s trunk, currently wrapping around her neck and lifting her off the ground.

Velvet seemed alright and was freezing the manticore’s tail to the ground to start peppering it with various sized shards of ice, but she looked to be flagging slightly as her movements were less graceful than usual.

As for Maries they were having some problems with Whip Slash riding the two headed wolf monster, deflecting the whip with Maria’s horns or Mara’s big teeth. Not to mention Marie was busy trying to keep the clowns from piling on them without poisoning them, she was busy whipping her head around into them to knock them back.

I turned back to my fight and saw that all four of the jugglers were standing once more and they started towards me.

I put the juggling knife in my left pocket, sheathed my personal knife and just put up my fists while bouncing on my pawed feet. I sustained my knife sheath and focused on them, the knives wouldn’t be able to cut through my fur and skin nearly as well now.

Thing’s looked somewhat bad now, but we’d swing all this around soon enough. The three juggler brothers and one sister stared at me as they juggled their instruments swapping them between themselves at random.

“Bring it on.” I made a come at me gesture with my right paw and they swarmed straight for me for another round of trading blows.

Ball bounced two balls off the ground and brought a bowling pin around with two hooves to try and smash me, only she took a ball to her left eye when I bounced the first one back.

The second one I threw down bounced up into her swing knocking her off balance when it struck the pin as it came forward and went flying off into the distance.

I crouched low while stepping forward and spun counterclockwise into a rising upper cut, performing a perfect rendition of the Little Mach Righter as I whipped my fist into her chin. She spun with my blow and fell onto her face. She wasn’t limp, but it was going to take a bit to get up from that.

I dodged a thrown bowling pin by Knife, caught both his knife swings with my bare hands. Only a trickle of blood flowed from them, he looked thoroughly surprised when I jumped up and wrapped my legs tightly around his neck. I twisted my body and released Knife once I flipped him into the ground with a poorly executed flying scissor takedown.

Slamming my foot into Knife’s chest, I used it to leverage myself into a roll backwards avoiding the knife thrown by Club who tried to slam his two bowling pins down on me.

I got into a standing crouch to block them with my forearms.

Okay that really hurt, my arms were going to be quite bruised after this and my palms were in quite a bit of pain after grabbing those knives like I had.

With a twist of my wrists I grabbed his front legs before he could pull them back and pulled him forward into a vicious head smash that knocked him clean out. Finally, I had taken down one of the jugglers and now I had aching forehead. It was worth it though.

I was expecting Torch next, but what was I not expecting was for him to pull out a fresh pair of torches to start blowing fire at me. Switching sustains to my fish scales, I blasted a wall of water to counter the flames and put them out, charging forward while I did this I turned and rammed into him with my shoulder.

I kicked his head knocking him back, but Torch was still awake and groaning on the ground for a bit before he managed to get to his hooves.

Taking stock of the situation, three of the jugglers were still viable threats. I had a mildly bleeding shoulder, a headache, heavy bruising and slightly bleeding palms.

Overall I was doing pretty well and could make good on my promise to Fizzle to try and not be in traction by the end of this.

Ball, Torch and Knife slowly got up and were preparing to come at me again as they picked up their juggling tools and started up once more. I rested and gave myself time to breathe.

I was kind of tired, taking on four or more opponents wasn’t easy, but I could go another round or two as long as I could use what I bought from Traveler Neko on Snide at the end of all this.

I pulled out my gunbai and started to fan myself tired self with it a bit, for some reason it felt exceedingly refreshing. It had to be a self-sustaining effect and I just discovered it, wish I had discovered it sooner and I’d definitely remember to note it down later. It likely didn’t help with hunger or thirst though.

Once they were standing, I stowed the gunbai away and brought my fist up defensively and waited for them to come at me.

-Kuril-

That’s it my little kitten, don’t drop your guard just because you finally brought one of them down!

My poor little chick was badly injured and I wanted to be by her side to protect her.

At least my filly was putting on one hell of a show, but I didn’t think she could actually beat Snide by herself.

I continued to struggle against my bindings. I absolutely wanted to be out there with them to protect and care for them.

I continued to try my bindings even as they started chafing my wrists and feet, until I heard a familiar chittering noise. Was that? It was!

I looked down and saw Sugar crawling her way up the pillar to me using her claws, she looked determined to help me.

When Sugar reached me, she started to gnaw at my leg bindings.

“Coo…” I looked up and saw Snickers start biting into the ropes around my wrists.

I’m sure Jade has this all planned, but I had a few potions in my robe to help things along.

Don’t worry kids, mommies coming soon and she’s an angry witch!

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