Airship Mauled

by Darkonshadows

Chapter thirty seven, Tundra Tourney Tussle: Stage two.

-Tundra Tourney Day one, match caller-

“Winner by grievous injury, Shocking Awe!” I watched as Lie Huo was carried away on a stretcher, he put up a good fight.

That pegasus was quite insane… quite literally given the creepy spine chilling laugh I was hearing.

-Tundra Tourney Day two, Clause-

“It seems my granddaughter is still in it, I think she’s at the top of her game.” As if I needed your opinion father. “The way you and Prancer are treating her just isn’t right.”

“I do not need the opinion of a reindeer as sentimental as you Santa.” I snorted loudly and turned away from the reindeer with the big bushy white beard and rotund appearance. “Besides it’s for the best.”

“I sometimes wonder where I went wrong with you, but I think you turned out alright even if you’re bogging yourself down in politics instead of enjoying the smaller things in life.” My father started chuckling. “Ho-ho-ho my granddaughter Velvet is at least turning out a lot better than you did, so I must have done something right even if you’ve become quite bitter with life. I used to remember a time when you were happy, when we used to frolic together. I don’t think I ever saw you frolic with your daughter even once, at least Prancer made the time to do it. It might not have been much, but it was something that she even did it once.”

“Quiet you old fool.” I sent a hailstone at him with a sweep of my hoof. He let it hit him without defending himself, it bounced off his flabby form.

“You won’t even put your full heart into it when it comes to attacking me?” Glaring at Santa, I turned my back on him. “I guess there’s still some of my son in you yet.”

“Matchup, Clause ‘Deep Freeze’ Deer versus Jovial ‘Igloo Barricade’ Prongs.” That was my next match, I’ll leave this old fool to do whatever he wishes.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about father.” As I left him behind, I could almost feel him smiling at my back.

“Who were you talking to?” A familiar reindeer asked of me, I quickly remembered that her name was Donner.

Donner was giving me a curious look. We used to be good friends, there was no lost love between us and at least we weren’t enemies.

I looked behind me and saw no tracks leading up to the hailstone sitting in the snow.

“No one.” I stated calmly as I moved forward.

-Donner-

I moved over to where Clause had been muttering and saw four hoof imprints in the snow that weren’t his, yet there were no tracks leading up to or away from them.

-Arizona-

“Well this is going to get heated.” It was an understatement given who my opponent was.

“I am ready.” A longma was my next opponent, apparently his name was Huojing and he had no title.

“Okay, dance!” The match caller shouted.

He started balancing on one leg while holding the other three aloft, but he didn’t ignite himself. He didn’t move forward at all or do anything for the next thirty seconds, I narrowed my eyes.

“Your entire fighting style consists of counters and throw doesn’t it?” At my innocuous question his eyes widened and he started sweating. “Let me guess, you don’t have the same fire that the others do either.”

“Well yes, quite perceptive! You are too strong for me to confront head on… so basically you are correct in your assumptions.” Huojing was a young longma, approaching him could be difficult. “My only hope to win is to redirect your monstrous strength, you won’t be able to approach me and I’m no good on the offensive. So we are at an impasse.”

I could always do it the easy way and take him out with the easy maneuver for dealing with annoying opponents.

“Do you want me to do this the fast and relatively painless way or the slow and moderately agonizing way?” My question made him blink curiously at me.

“Have you a method to beat me without me countering you?” Nodding to Huojing, I just stared at him looking for an answer. “I doubt you can make this quick, I’d like to see you try though. There’s no possible way you can approach me without grk…”

I pulled a lasso from under my bandana and tossed it around his neck choking his words off, I gave a solid hard yank on the rope causing him to launch towards me.

“Get over here!” I clotheslined him with my leg. While his body was swinging upwards on my leg, I fell forward and forced my hoof downwards towards the ground. “Rope a dope slam!”

A humongous cloud of dust and snow erupted into the air around us, once it cleared Huojing could be seen groaning weakly. I was standing over his body, having forced it into the ground.

“I had no chance of victory, I am sorry for not being of any challenge worthy of your stature oh mighty Earth Shaker…” His eyes closed and he was soon pried out of the hole and dragged off the field.

“Victory by knockout, Arizona ‘Earth Shaker’ Arid.” I was about to walk off and wait, only I was called over by the match caller.

“You’re done for the day miss, you automatically move onto the next round due to the number of competitors being drastically reduced from the previous day. You can watch others fight from any group or just go relax.” I nodded to the match caller and made my way to see how Velvet was doing, I didn’t have to worry about Paprika given she had garnered the title ‘The Demon’.

On my way to look into Velvet’s block to see how she was doing, I stopped and saw Prancer fighting her opponent. She threw up a wall of ice and her opponent’s ice attacks slammed into it, Prancer just slapped a hoof against the ice wall and sent the icicles flying back at her opponent at twice their size.

The reindeer, that was Prancer’s opponent, was peppered by several jagged pieces of ice and they took one in the leg knocking them down. They tried to stand on the leg with the ice chunk sticking out of it.

“Forfeit or injury, there is no shame in losing to one as graceful as me.” Prancer spoke in a detached manner.

“I can still…” The reindeer tried to stand only to be surrounded by several spikes of ice all pointed towards her body. She looked into Prancer’s cold ice blue eyes, they were far colder than Velvet’s ever were. “… I forfeit.”

“Winner by forfeit, Prancer ‘Flowering Cold’ Deer.” The match caller stated, I had wanted to know what her title was and now I knew. Prancer looked to be quite dangerous, but at least she didn’t seem like she would actually unnecessarily hurt someone without a good reason to.

I made my way over to Velvet’s group and came upon the sight of her finishing off an opponent.

Velvet crouched down and thrust her hoof upwards in an arc causing ice to rise from the ground into the shape of a buff, if feminine, reindeer that seemed to flex its elbow roughly into her opponents chest.

The sand colored alpaca staggered backwards from the blow and tried to gain his balance, only for Velvet to strike a standing pose thrusting her hoof into the air and a pillar of ice to pop the alpaca into the air.

Velvet leapt up angled her hoof to fire several shards of ice at the alpaca in a volley as he fell. The alpaca was pinned to the ground by his fluff and when he tried to free himself, Velvet landed on the ground with a stomp that threw up a wave of snow over him in a blast of air. She left head exposed as she started swiping her hooves at the air with her horns glowing.

The snow hardened quickly and turned into a compacted tiny igloo that completely pinned the alpaca down. The alpaca wilted and looked to the match caller.

Paprika would have been able to get out of that, but this wasn’t Paprika though. I wondered how you could tell a fluffmancer apart from a normal alpaca, how does one learn if they are capable of manipulating their fluff like Paprika does? I’ve never given it much thought, but it wasn’t as if it was very important though.

“Winner by incapacitation, Velvet ‘Frost Dancer’ Deer!” The caller shouted out.

Velvet stomped the ground and the igloo broke outwards launching the alpaca up and onto his feet, he blinked and smiled as Velvet held out her hoof. He took her hoof and shook it.

“Good match, you’re really quite strong to have made it this far.” Velvet smiled and he smiled back. “It was nice meeting you Turmeric.”

A crowd of reindeer and ice sprites cheered for Velvet, they really seemed to be fans and I was one too.

Velvet was about to walk back into the crowd when she spotted me. She immediately came over to me looking happy to see me as she sat down to rest after her previous match, she had a nasty bruise on her cheek and she didn’t seem to care about it.

“Arizona, did you get an early jump to the next round?” I nodded to her as she leaned against me. “Tell me, how do I look after that last match?”

Would she take honesty or a lie? Honesty, I don’t think I could lie to her.

“You have a large bruise on your face Fluff Butt and you still look good to me, not sure if you’re up to your own standards though.” The look I received was scathing, but the smile beneath it was warm. “You’re always going to be beautiful to me Velvet, you could be covered in thorns, sticky substances and all manner of injuries. At the end of the day I will still think you’re beautiful no matter how you look on the outside, when you’re always beautiful at heart on the inside.”

“Oh you… trying to be all charming for me. Still, thank you for the confidence boost Arizona.” Velvet cuddled up against my smaller form, her long slender legs encircling me. “That alpaca might not have had fluffmancer abilities, but he certainly knew martial arts and could jump fairly well. Surprised me with a few of his lunges and got a few good hits in on me in spite of my ice magic, I’d say he was fairly talented to make it through six opponents before me.”

“Sounds like it, so tomorrow there’s going to be down to less than thirty opponents and they’ll stop for the top ten remaining for the fourth day?” I had an idea as to why they did that.

“Yes, that’s correct, some of the fighter’s need some time to rest, so the third day is going to be a short one with some of the tougher fighters.” We stayed together in comfortable embrace for a bit and then we found ourselves squeezed into a wall of blonde fluff, Paprika apparently felt like she was missing out on something.

“You won your matches already?” Velvet seemed surprised, I however wasn’t when Paprika gave off a joyful sound and kissed us both on our cheeks. Paprika’s tail was waggling happily, only Paprika looked at it scrutinizing it closely. She made sure to slow down the wagging speed a bit so it wouldn’t catch fire, she actually learned how to not light her tail on fire with air friction. “What happened to get you through your matches so quickly?”

Paprika started making gestures and we eventually deciphered what she was telling us, they decided to just make her fight several times in a row. I think they were hoping to both tire her down and get her out of the competition or at least quickly out of the way so she’d stop terrorizing her opponents psychologically.

Velvet still had several matches to go through and we’d be here to actually watch her. We clumped together as a group again.

“Say Velvet, if weapons are allowed in these tourneys… why aren’t they more prominent?” In fact I didn’t seen anyone armed with anything more than their hooves or magic.

“Metal weapons are kind of useless here, any reindeer worth their salt can easily freeze such a weapon solid and easily shatter it.” Well that makes sense. “Wooden weapons would last slightly longer. At most you’d use weapons against opponents that aren’t reindeer, unless you planned to wield a crossbow or some other form of long range weapon. Even then, ranged weapons aren’t exactly great against reindeer who can block or even easily blow projectiles off course entirely.”

“I guess that’s why I’m allowed to use my rope then.” As we waited for Velvet’s next match we huddled together warmly, Paprika was very warm in this chilly weather.

-Clause-

The way those three snuggled together was… I turned to a nearby idle match caller.

“What would it take to get me in a fight with my daughter?” There were many things I could do to grease some hooves.

“Nothing, provided you and she win all your fights today, she’d be your first opponent tomorrow.” Excellent, I wouldn’t have to pay for anything.

“What about my wife Prancer, will she face that cow?” I still loved her and she still loved me, but we were adversarial when it came to fighting in a tourney.

“She’s slated to face the Earth Shaker as a second match tomorrow, that’ll be quite entertaining.” I nodded to him and started to walk away. “You could stand to care about your daughter more son.”

My eyes widened and I turned back to the match caller that was no longer there.

“Ho-ho-ho…” I snorted in anger, annoyed at the sound my father’s laughter.

-Shocking Awe-

I swooped about and dodged the various sharp bits of ice being fired wildly at me into the air. The reindeer had created a cold front, but that didn’t bother a pegasus of my caliber.

Clapping my hooves together as I dove for her, spiraling deftly through the sharp bits of ice she was trying to impale me with. I passed her and pulled a quick loop and came down on her with all four of my hooves.

The screaming reindeer doe under my hooves convulsed as lightning coursed over her body violently, with a grab and twist of my hoof I snapped their front right leg like a twig.

Were Reindeer actually supposed to have an advantage here? A bunch of nonsense that was.

“Call it.” I stated calmly as the reindeer beneath me continued screaming out in pain, I just kept my hoof pressed into their back.

“Winner by grievous injury, Shocking Awe!” Yeah, that’s what I liked to hear.

Mother didn’t raise no wimp. Speaking of, I smashed the reindeer's head and knocked her out to receive several dirty looks for it.

“What? She can no longer feel the pain she’s in, I did her a favor.” I walked away from the reindeer feeling quite proud of myself, I just taught them a valuable lesson about strength and knowing how to tell if someone has it. I certainly had it in spades.

Now to scope out the competition and see what else I’m up against. Not that I’m worried.

Comments

[Booster Spice]

I like that old reindeer.

Putting the I in sanity Clause.

As for Shocking Awe. I think for him, brutality wise Id hope for Halo Jones, given Daybreaker isnt available. Failing that, Paprika throws him a tea party. With ALL the fancy dresses.

The big problem Prancer has with Arizona, is that Arizona at full power, can go Asteroid Shotgun on her fluffbutt. Planetary Pinball even.

I dont Think Arizona can get to Clarke Cannon level as yet, but it will be something impressive to see.

[The Scarlett Mare]

“I do not need the opinion of a reindeer as sentimental as you Santa.” I snorted loudly and turned away from the reindeer with the big bushy white beard and rotund appearance. “Besides it’s for the best.”

Impossible not to see what you did there
Hohoho, his son in on the naughty list for life!