Rainbow Dash flew sideways across a platform, bounced off a building front, and skidded to a stop in the middle of a vacant market bazaar.

“Unnngh...” She winced, stirred, then got up to her hooves with a smirk.  “Well, that wasn't so bad.”

Two creatures dove down and whalloped her upside the head.

“Ow!”  Rainbow Dash seethed.  “Alright, ya melon fudges!  Have it your way!”  She jumped behind a stack of barrels, pivoted, and bucked them hard into the air.

As three more creatures came down to strike at Rainbow Dash, they were pummeled in midair by her improvised projectiles.  They fell onto the wooden platforms, twitching and thrashing, until a group of Wintergaters galloped over and opportunistically stabbed them to death with polearms.

“That's how you do it!”  Rainbow Dash shouted with a smile.  “You can all thank me for dinner later!”

“Rainbow!” Gold Petals shouted from a distance.

“What?”  Rainbow Dash turned around.  “It's you guys who like eating meat, not—WHOAH!”

A rather large monster was flying straight into her.  It plowed into her chest and shoved her through the lengths of Windthrow, whizzing past several ponies in a heated battle with the attacking swarm.  Rainbow Dash gnashed her teeth and wrestled with the thing's spidery legs.  Its thin slit of a mouth drooled and snapped at her, ultimately clamping onto the edge of her golden pendant.  Rainbow Dash let loose a pained growl as her eyes swam dizzily.  With a snarl, she headbutted the monster off her pendant, flung her neck to the side, and bit hard onto its wing.  The creature let out a banshee cry and spun from the weight of Rainbow Dash's jaws.  Soon, the two conjoined combatants smashed into the body of a wooden shed in the residential section of the village.

Dust and debris settled over the scene.  The distant shouts of various earth ponies echoed through the mists.  After several seconds of nothing...

The creature burst back out, then floundered on the ground.  Its wing was bleeding and it struggled in futility to stand upright.  One of its legs was missing.  Just as it lurched towards the edge of the town...

Rainbow Dash dove out of the shed with a dismembered leg in her grasp.  She swung the thick, branch-like thing across the abomination's skull several times before gripping the creature's body with her front hooves and stabbing down.  Rainbow shoved the spindle-like leg down the creature's throat like a hot pin through butter.  With a sickening sound of gurgling breath, the monster choked on its own limb and fell to the floor.

“Ptooie!”  Rainbow Dash spat and rubbed her lips.  “Tastes like a a deflated balloon.  I dunno how Fulltrot and the others do it.”  She paused, sniffing, making a face.  “The heck smells so bad?”

Just a few feet away from her, Ironhoof marched out of an apartment flat with a nightcap on.  “I'm telling you, honey,” he shouted into the house while trotting out.  “I've no idea what all the noise is!  And I think it's a really stupid excuse for us to have stopped—”  He paused, wide-eyed, upon seeing Rainbow Dash and the mutilated creature.  “Well then, there it goes.”

“Watch it!”  Rainbow Dash shoved him—grunting—to the floor as several more creatures dove down.  They knocked over a glowing crystal, spun back, and formed a circle around Rainbow Dash and Ironhoof.

The first of them made a lunge for the stallion, shrieking.  Ironhoof curled up into a ball and cried.  Rainbow Dash skidded in the way, absorbed the full dive of the creature, latched onto its wing with her teeth, spun all the way around, and flung the monster like a club into its partners.

The creatures flew everywhere like dying fish.  As soon as they started thrashing about, another thick group of monsters flew down to take their place.  Suddenly, a polearm was being thrust into the spine of one of them.  Gold Petals was rushing in, gripping the spear in her teeth and shoving it into the flesh of the invader.  No sooner was she impaling the thing when its siblings viciously knocked her aside with their wings.

“Unngh!”  Gold Petals flew back, only to be caught in Rainbow Dash's hooves.

“Welcome to the dance-off,” Rainbow Dash mused.

“Not sure I wanted an invite,” Gold Petals stood on four hooves, then sniffed.  “What smells so bad?”

“Destiny.”

“You're really full of it.”

“Hahahaha...”

Gold Petals gulped as she and Rainbow Dash and Ironhoof were being surrounded by winged cretins.  “We're... We're all gonna die, aren't we?”

“Yeah.  Isn't it cool?”  She looked over.  “Lemme borrow that.”  She grabbed Gold Petal's polearm.  With the use of her teeth and forelimb, she snapped the thing in half.  “Here...”  She tossed the barbed tip Gold's way.  “You get the easy one.”

“Jee, thanks.”

“If for some reason you live through this and I don't,” Rainbow Dash's eyes briefly flickered red-on-yellow as her pendant glowed a little dimly from within.  “Have somepony put my ashes into a bunch of fireworks.  I heard that a famous stallion once had that done for him.  Ever read Fillies and Loathing in Las Pegasus?”

“I've got bigger things to worry about than obscure books.”

“Obscure?  Do you know who you're talking to?  Even I know this book.”

The creatures produced a collective shriek as they closed in.

“Oh right.  These things.”  Rainbow Dash gripped her shattered half of the polearm and scraped her hooves against the ground.  “You ready to do this?”

“No.”

“Good.  Just stay behind me and try not to look more awesome.  By the way, I like your mane.”

Gold Petals blinked.  “What?”

“Raaaaugh!”  Rainbow Dash gave a warcry and leapt violently into the phalanx of leathery bodies.