//------------------------------//
// Act I - Chapter 2 - Arrival and Combat 
// Story: The Alicorn Warrior 
// by iAmSiNnEr 
//------------------------------//


The Alicorn Warrior
Written by iAmSiNnEr
Edited by Skittlebug
Co-authored by computerneek
Chapter 2- Arrival and Combat






Wham!
Rainbow slammed into the lavender dome of energy over the arena mere moments after it appeared, and fairly bounced off of it, falling to the ground.  “Ow owowowow,” she complained, rubbing her forehead with one hoof while Rarity put her down with her magic, having caught her short of an even more painful landing.
“How many times do ya have to do that, Rainbow?” Applejack asked.  “At least this time, somepony stopped you from charging right in and involving yourself with the battle!”
“But Twilight’s in there,” Rainbow argued back.  “We have to help her!”
“But it might be Twilight in there,” Applejack corrected.  “And if she is, she’s been living out here for years, and can take care of herself for a few more minutes.”  She sighed, and turned to Starlight.  “On that topic, do you think you can get us through this barrier- to at least see what’s going on in there?”
Starlight rolled her eyes.  “If you want to see, just have Rainbow fly over the dome and look in.  But…”  Her horn glowed, and she nodded.  “Yep, this is Twilight’s magic, all right.  And if she’s locking us out, she both has a reason to do that…  and knows we’re here.”  She glanced up at Rainbow.  “She probably expected you to come charging into something dangerous, and acted to stop that.  Very possibly saved your life, Dash.”  She sighed, looking at the barrier.  “I’m going to make an opening for us, then we’re going to walk through to watch from afar, no matter what is going on in there.  Twilight can obviously take care of herself right now, and we won’t be of any use if we get ourselves killed.”  She angled her horn down, and fired a beam of energy into the barrier.
Rainbow scowled, looking at Starlight’s beam; it didn’t disappear, maintaining a continuous presence.  “Are you done yet?”
“Patience, Dash,” Starlight ordered.  “I think I can break through it, but the only way I’m getting in within the next hour or so is if she lowers the barrier.  So I’m not even trying to mask my spell from her.”
Then, there was a sudden pop of air, right in Starlight’s face.  Her spell shattered in moments, and she leaped backwards with a small scream of surprise.
“Whazzat?” Pinkie Pie asked, her mane mostly puffy once again- it’d been getting progressively puffier ever since Starlight had confirmed the origin of the barrier.
Starlight snatched the piece of parchment out of the air with her magic and, breathing deeply to calm herself down, examined it.  “She…  She wants us to wait.”
“Wait?” Rainbow demanded.  “What for?”
“Hay if I know,” Starlight barked back.  “But she’s obviously got a reason.  We’re going to wait for her.”  She glanced at the arena.  “Here, where she’ll know where to find us.”  She placed the parchment flat on the sand in front of her, where everypony could see it, and Rarity broke out her picnic basket.







“Get down here!”
“Can’t catch me!”  Twilight pranced back and forth in midair, taunting the massive dragon.  Now that he’d revealed his weakness, she needed to make him feel like he was winning- then, he’d get careless, and give her an opportunity.  And as usual with dragons, the first step was to get him to blow fire.  Once he did- she was well within the range of his fire breath- she could exhibit a little bit of panic, let him get full of himself, and take him down a peg.
That was what she did, and what gave her the charm, in the people’s eyes.  No matter who she was up against, she started by sparring close, with a fair fight.  Then, when she got bored, she’d push them to reveal a weakness she’d spotted to the entire audience, and exploit that weakness to infuriate them, get them to reveal a hidden strength.  Then she’d play victim, get them to overestimate themselves, and win.
That was, perhaps, the main reason they loved her so much.  That worked every time.  She knew there were dozens- even hundreds- of betting pools going around, about exactly how much it would take to stand up to the Sneaky Sparkle, as she’d come to be called.  And every one of her opponents, over the last year and a half or so, had been utterly convinced that they wouldn’t fall for her ploy.
She did a quick barrel roll, showing off her maneuverability while she rained little magical firebolts on the dragon.  “Can’t Catch MeeeeEEEeeeEEEeee,” she sang.
But that was why she fought normally for the first while:  That gave her more than enough time to read them.
The dragon roared in fury.  Gotcha! She told herself- then effortlessly tracked the edge of his following fireball with the very tip of her tail, while yipping in feigned terror.  The dragon snarled, grinning, and started blasting fire at her, bolt after bolt.
She let her attacks fall off completely as she wove her way through the air, dodging columns of fire.  A few times, she deliberately crashed into something, and waited to ‘recover’ until just barely in time.
“Ah-Hah!” the dragon announced, between gouts of fire.  “You’re toast!”
She sighed as she dodged the next couple fireballs, then used another couple as cover as she dove to the ground behind him.  He’d gotten careless, and was firing randomly into the air.  She looked around at the stands, made a quick pose for the crowd, and turned to start building a large, flashy magic ring in midair, facing the massive dragon.
The crowd went wild.  They knew she’d already won, and he just didn’t realize it yet.  There’d only been once when she’d had to resume fighting after reaching this point.
Her ring was standing, and she was yawning exaggeratedly to the crowd, for a whopping ten seconds before the dragon stopped blowing fire to taunt her again.  “Ha Ha,” he jeered.  “How was that?  You still alive up…”  He started looking around.  “Where’d you go?”
“This is boring,” she complained loudly.
He yipped like a terrified puppy as he spun in a circle, lashing out with one claw.  He knew as well as she did that the fight was over.
Before he got to her, though, she activated her ring.  She blew him clear across the arena, wrapped in thaumic lightning bolts.  Perhaps her favorite thing about her draconian opponents was that they could tolerate a lot more abuse than anything else.
When he landed and slid to a stop, he lay where he fell, completely unconscious, but still largely unharmed.  She posed for the crowd, and listened for the announcer.
It seemed to take them forever.  “And the Sneaky Sparkle has vanquished her challenger once again!”
The announcer went on to discuss some of the other attractions going on that day, but Twilight ignored it, instead heading for the door out of the arena at a casual trot.  She knew the crowd knew she was powerful enough to blow her opponents to dust with her opening move- but where was the fun in that?
And besides.  Starlight hadn’t drilled at her shield since she’d sent that note, though she had registered a few impacts from the air.  Probably Rainbow Dash, watching the fight and fearing for her.
She stepped out of the ring, underneath the stands, and turned down the empty passage.  Her work here wasn’t done yet- but while she’d been amusing herself with the dragon, she’d thought of a way, time, and place for her to meet her friends.
Well…  old friends.  She wasn’t sure if she could even still call them friends, after the years of silence.  She certainly missed them, and hoped that they hadn’t gotten themselves thrown out of Equestria as well.  Whether they had or not, this was all she had.  She couldn’t abandon it for them.
She made a quick glance up and down the passage- it was clear.  She summoned her writing tools and a fresh piece of parchment, wrote one word and a code- “Meet 3d”- and scrawled a quick map on it, and sent them back away before checking the passage again.  She never knew when someone would come looking for her- and out here, she never spoke to anyone that wasn’t very important.  That made the fights with her even more of an attraction, since that was all they ever saw of her- and her fans always wanted more.
As such, she was actually pretty rich, and wasn’t sure what to spend it on any more.  Even when she disguised herself and hit the town, she couldn’t spend anywhere near as much as they paid her.  She was, after all, the biggest attraction in this part of the Badlands…  and was starting to attract more fans from further away.  Two entire settlements had already sprung up nearby because of her.
She was sure she could force her way back into Equestria.  She’d examined the magic that was blocking her a few times- and had only stopped when she’d remembered that Celestia had thrown her out, and hadn’t let her back in.  She was clearly unwanted, and hadn’t wanted to start a war with her mentor.
A door next to her opened, and the stagemaster stepped out of it, yawning.  He paused.  “...  Twilight,” he muttered, surprised.  “You’re done early.”
“He was a pushover,” she shrugged.  “With one wing clipped, I couldn’t draw out the fight for very long.”  She sighed.  “I was thinking about taking a vacation in a few days, perhaps spend a couple weeks exploring the desert.  That going to be okay?”
“As if I could stop you,” he shrugged, then glanced back at his desk.  “I was going to ask you to do something like that soon anyways- the Arena has been at capacity for every one of your fights all month, and it’ll give us some much-needed time to expand the thing.”  He looked back up at her.  “Feel like stretching your vacation to a full month?  If so, we can probably account for future growth at the same time.”
She tilted her head contemplatively.  On the one hoof, she’d have more time to help her friends, if they happened to have been banished as well.  On the other hoof, she’d have no income for a whole month.
She grinned, silently berating herself.  At her current expense levels, she had more than enough to comfortably last her- she did some quick mental math- six years.  That wouldn’t be an issue at all.
“Yeah, why not?” she chuckled.  “So, I know I’ve already got a match for the day after tomorrow, but shall we call it after that?”
He nodded.  “Yeah, there’s nothing else on the docket right now.  Had another potential contestant in my office earlier, while you were winding that dragon up, but he wasn’t sure yet.”
“Really?” she asked.  “What was he?”
He shrugged.  “Weak little pegasus with an artificial wing and a major limp.  You could probably laugh him out of the ring.”  He tilted his head.  “As a matter of fact, he didn’t look much better than Quick Leash did when you were done with him.”
Twilight wrinkled her nose.  Quick Leash had been the master of this arena when she’d first been captured- and he’d forced her to kill a lot of times.  Now, though, there had been a change in management after she broke free of her metaphorical chains and dealt with Quick Leash.  Everyone thought it was Hard Line, her stagemaster- but no, it was actually she who was in charge, who had completely reinvented the battle concept and drawn in thousands more spectators than any other arena.  Most of the money they made went right back into the Arena, for the renovation and maintenance fund.
“Did he really think he’d stand a chance?”
Hard Line nodded.  “Yep.  I think I got him convinced, though- he said something about a friend being willing to fight for him.  Your reputation for drawing out the best and the worst in each of your opponents, and leaving them alive at the end, has gone far.”
She nodded.  “I’m glad.”