Artist’s description:  
I recently realised that I haven’t actually shown most of my characters practicing their special talents and in realising this I really, really wanted to draw Riposte in full gear, after that it just sort of continued.
 
Fencing ponies is quite the strange concept when you think about it (swords in general is a really weird idea for creatures who don’t actually have any hands and walks on all fours) but since I used to fence (foil and épée) and really do love the sport I couldn’t pass on making one of my characters a fencer. (riposte is even a fencing term)  
Riposte is a fantastic fencer but only practices two days a week. He doesn’t talk about it much other than bragging when winning a tournament but he truly loves the sport and would probably become a great teacher sometime in the future if he could only grew up a bit more.
 
Ive seen some concept of unicorns holding their weapons with their magic, but seeing as the goal of fencing is to try and stab your opponent, having the weapons floating a metre in front of the fencer felt a bit counter productive.  
I tried to make the gear fit as much as possible, with the mask covering the ears and horn (it fucking hurts to be hit by those tips) In my headcanon all species can practice fencing as it has nothing to do with magic. The masks are enchanted so to block all magic from the user. Pegasus have to keep their wings folded at all times, failure to do so will lead to a warning and then disqualification.  
All fencers have to train their ability to stand on two legs as more than two hooves touching the ground will also lead to disqualification.
 
Scarlet Heart’s special talent is roller skating and she is one hell of a roller derby player. She blocks and tackles a lot, something that suits her perfectly. Her teams name is “the Rocka-Fillies” (word play on Rockabilly)  
This is the uniform her whole team wears out on the track, courtesy of Rarity.
 
Marigold is a magician. She has a natural talent for picking up spells really quickly and is also really skilled at using them (unlike her dad) She tries to only train out of sight of Inkwell since she knows it makes him upset to see her cast spells together with their mom.  
Since her dad is Sunburst and her second mom’s best friends with Trixie she tends to get showered in capes and hats for her birthday. The yellow one is her favorite, however she rarely use it so to not make Inkwell jealous.
 
 
I will be getting back to story stuff eventually there is just so much stuff that I have planned that its hard to know where to start.  
Probably gonna jump back to Honeycrisp and Canterlot Castle next since I realised I kinda forgot about them for a bit.