Rainbow Dash's Unstoppable Ego

by MagicS


The Eternal Furnace VIII

Rainbow Dash had a lot to think about while she followed Cast Iron again through this maze of maintenance tunnels on their way all the way to the work area. While those pegasi who attacked her were still in the back of her mind what she was focusing on now was Nut. Frayed Wire may have said no funny business but if Nut made a better case than he did… well maybe she wouldn’t mind changing sides. That might have been her being a bit presumptuous though. From her experience so far with these gangs she doubted Nut was particularly good or anything either, probably just greedy for power like Frayed Wire and the other gang leaders were. And if Frayed Wire had more followers it probably would be for the best to convince Nut to join and submit to him. Especially since then everyone would be able to trust Rainbow and knew she kept her word about things.

She still didn’t know anything about Nut though. At least she had a pony to ask. “Hey, Cast Iron, what’s Nut like?”

The mare in front of her grunted as she led the way. “She’s a gray unicorn with an inky black mane that she keeps in twintails. And basically she decided she should be the new leader of the Wrenchers cause our first leader was her older brother.”

“Oh,” Dash winced, feeling bad for Nut since she knew what had happened to her brother.

“What happened is that Frayed Wire said he should be the new leader because he was the best fighter and the best mechanic in the gang. Nut fought him and lost but didn’t accept it, she and her followers ran off and the Wrenchers have been split ever since,” Cast Iron said.

“Okay, so what kind of pony is she?” Rainbow asked.

Cast Iron looked over her shoulder at Dash with a frown. “The same as any in here.”

Not reassuring. “Good to know.”

After that it took them a good while to make it to the work area just thanks to how far they were from it to begin with. But Cast Iron had said these little tunnels directly connected with it and Rainbow Dash remembered seeing Wrenchers going off into separate tunnels yesterday. She was willing to bet they were going pretty much right to those. And what kind of work would she have to do today? The Wrenchers took care of general maintenance mostly, she was pretty sure. So probably a bunch of cramped quarters and using screwdrivers and tightening loose bolts and all that jazz. If she had to talk to Nut she might as well just copy everything she was doing.

Since they had a little spare time, Dash was going to see if she could start a rapport with Cast Iron. “So what do you think about how your city’s become? You really okay with all of this?”

The other mare snorted. “No one’s okay with all of this. There’s just nothing else we can do about it now. And you can stop trying to get on my good side or whatever. I’m a Wrencher down to the bone, our gang exists to give us some kind of purpose and family down here, you’re not getting anything from me unless you’re working to help our gang.”

Rainbow Dash sighed in annoyance but didn’t bother the other mare anymore.

Can’t even carry a conversation. She thought.

That sense of “family” she talked about though kind of got to Rainbow Dash. The Diesel Kings definitely didn’t show it, especially with the way Soot Mane and Double Duty were. She wondered if Cast Iron was just deluding herself because she didn’t have anything else. The way everyone acted and what others had said made her seriously doubt either the Wrenchers or Thunderbirds being any better or more familial than the Diesel Kings.

And Nut… well at least what happened with her brother might give her some excuse for why she’s bad. Rainbow Dash would still reserve final judgment on her until she actually met her.

Now the sounds from the work area reached their ears, Rainbow Dash heard ponies barking orders to others (security ponies most likely) and the sound of heavy machinery and drills grinding away. They took a ramp up and stopped in a scorching hot walled off section with a bunch of round metal pillars arranged in a grid going from the floor to the ceiling. Besides the ramp that led down into the maintenance tunnels there looked to only be one door leading out into the general work area. As they rounded the first pillar, Rainbow Dash noticed they weren’t pillars at all but furnaces with raging fires barely concealed behind metal grills. That explained the heat.

“These furnaces power the heaters that the housing block uses. Obviously they need to be maintained and check up on daily,” Cast Iron said.

Rainbow Dash hadn’t asked but she nodded anyways. “Nut’s in here?”

“Should be somewhere,” Cast Iron said and the two of them went looking around the pillars.

While they did that, Rainbow Dash saw a lot of the ponies in here giving her and Cast Iron nasty looks. They must’ve been the Wrenchers that followed Nut and they definitely recognized her. Must’ve heard on the vine that Frayed Wire and the other gangs were trying to get her to join them. Besides shooting glares some of them were checking on the furnaces to make sure they were working right, ponies with ratchets were tightening any loose bolts, weak areas were spotted and braces were welded over them, and all manner of pipes on the floor and running up the walls had their valves and pressure checked.

“This is different from what I thought you Wrenchers did,” Rainbow Dash said as she watched them work.

“That’s cause Nuts’ group didn’t want to be forced to work in the same places as the rest of us. So she and her followers took over this spot,” Cast Iron said as she scanned up and down the rows. “They’re the only Wrenchers who work in the furnace room, the rest of us work down below.”

“Guess it makes sense, you wouldn’t want a fight to break out between you two in the middle of work,” Dash said.

“It’s already difficult enough to stop that between rival gangs,” Cast Iron nodded.

The Wrencher mare was being surprisingly agreeable at the moment. Probably cause what Dash was saying was innocent enough and it revolved around the livelihood of her gang. Any small talk that didn’t have to directly do with business would probably be shot down or outright ignored.

Cast Iron walked past another furnace and looked down the row, coming to a stop. “There she is.”

Rainbow Dash looked down the row of furnaces too and saw the profile of a mare with her mane done in black twintails standing in front of one of the furnaces and using some kind of hoof cranked screwdriver to tighten up the screws holding down a pipe on the floor that fed into the furnace. She was concentrating on that and hadn’t noticed Dash or Cast Iron, her face set in a deep frown. As was to be expected she was just as dirty looking as any mare in here, and if the lines and creases on her face were any indication she spent a lot of time frowning. As she and Cast Iron walked towards her Rainbow Dash was pretty sure she was about to meet another very angry pony.

“Hey, Nut,” Cast Iron said when they were halfway down the row.

Nut looked up with an even deeper frown, obviously recognizing the voice before seeing the speaker. Her face just got angrier when her eyes settled on both Cast Iron and Rainbow Dash. “What do you want?” She spoke with a nasally whine.

I want nothing. But this pony here wants to talk to you, so bye.” Cast Iron said and immediately turned and left, heading back to the ramp leading to the tunnels they came from.

“Thanks a lot,” Dash grumbled to her as she walked by but the bronze mare ignored her. She then looked over at Nut, who silently stared back at her. “So you know who I am, right?”

“Yeah, I do.” Nut said and suspiciously looked her up and down. “Couldn’t care less about where you’re from or anything like that. But since it was Cast Iron who brought you in here to me you must’ve already met with Frayed Wire too for real. He talk to you? What kind of dumb ideas does he have in his head now?”

“Well yeah, I met him and he wanted me to talk to you...” Dash said.

Just talk?” Nut narrowed her eyes dangerously and Rainbow Dash noticed a number of other ponies walk out from behind the furnaces around them. If she tried anything they were ready to attack.

I’m just here to talk. And that’s what’s important. You going to believe me or not?” Rainbow Dash defiantly narrowed her eyes right back at Nut.

Nut shrugged. “I’ll believe you, I’ve heard you’ve got some stupid ideas yourself about getting us all to stop fighting.”

“I really don’t see what’s stupid about that,” Rainbow Dash frowned.

“Naive? Ignorant? Does one of those sound better for you?”

“I don’t know, do you like having jerk or stubborn used to describe you?”

“Watch your mouth,” a Wrencher watching the two of them from behind a furnace warned Rainbow Dash.

“It doesn’t matter.” Nut said, although she had a fierce scowl settled on her face. “So why should I hear you out about anything? Just because I think you’re genuine doesn’t mean I care in the slightest about what you have to say.”

Rainbow Dash opened her mouth to respond when the doors leading into the furnace room were thrown open and two ponies walked in. The eyes of Rainbow Dash and the Wrenchers went to them, one was clearly a Thunderbird, being a pegasus with a lightning bolt tattoo on his check, while Rainbow Dash recognized the other as a Diesel King earth pony. Both were stallions and they were glaring at each other the whole time they strode into the furnace room.

“Oh great, two more idiots,” Nut shook her head as she watched them.

“What’s going on?” Rainbow Dash asked.

“Obviously you know by now that the security team doesn’t like ponies to fight when they should be working. But do you see any security ponies in here?” Nut waved a hoof around.

“Uh, no?”

“That’s right. Cause this room is secluded, whenever two idiots who have an argument or something in the middle of work feel like they just can’t wait to resolve it they come here,” Nut said. “Always gets in the way of our work.”

Neither of the newcomers paid any attention to the Wrenchers or Rainbow Dash, they walked to the middle of the room in-between some of the furnaces and faced off with each other. The Thunderbird held a screwdriver in his right wing while the Diesel King had a hammer and they started to circle around the middle of the room. There was no way this was going to end well for anybody.

The Thunderbird lunged forward with his screwdriver while the Diesel King jumped to the side and tried to swing his hammer at the Thunderbird’s head. But the pegasus flapped his wings and used them to assist in jumping over the attack. Because of the furnaces he couldn’t really effectively fly about but he could do little things like that. The pegasus tried kicking the earth pony’s head when he jumped over but the earth pony ducked down to avoid his legs. The earth pony then ran towards the pegasus as soon as he landed and wildly swung his hammer about to keep the pegasus on the defensive. The pegasus had to keep backing up since he didn’t really have the strength or kind of weapon of his own that could block the hammer. The best he could do was try and parry it slightly with his screwdriver.

Seeing as his weapon wasn’t giving him the desired effect right now the pegasus did something else with it. He threw it at the earth pony.

The screwdriver smacked into the Diesel King’s face at painful speed, causing the earth pony to cry out and shut his eyes. That gave the Thunderbird the opportunity to rush forward and knock the hammer out of his hoof and then tackle him to the ground. He got a few solid punches in before the Diesel King grabbed the neck of his jumpsuit and pulled him into a headbutt, launching the pegasus right off of him. The two of them both scrambled up after that with the pegasus diving for his previously discarded screwdriver.

Well his opponent wasn’t going to just let him get a weapon back so easily. The screwdriver was lying beside one of the furnaces and when the pegasus reached for it the earth pony lunged at him and pushed his extended hoof into the hot metal surface of the furnace.

“Aaaarrghhh!” The pegasus screamed and brought his right wing up to clock the earth pony in the side of the head. The earth pony fell over and released his hoof, allowing the pegasus to pull it back to his chest and cradle it.

The earth pony wasn’t going to allow him anymore respite though. He leaped on top of the pegasus—and was kicked away by the pegasus’ back hooves right into a furnace behind them.

“Hrk!” The earth pony grunted as he slammed back first into the furnace and then collapsed upside down onto the ground, the furnace briefly sizzling his jumpsuit.

Both of them were already hurt pretty bad but neither looked like they cared to stop. They had manic, primal, looks on their faces as they ran at each other. All semblance of thought and strategy and technique for a fight was thrown away and it became a vicious brawl. The first punch from the Thunderbird bruised the left eye of the Diesel King and forced it shut. The first punch from the Diesel King knocked a tooth out of the Thunderbird’s mouth. The Diesel King grabbed the Thunderbird and threw him into the nearest furnace where he bounced off the metal with a painful clang. The Thunderbird tripped the Diesel King and slammed his face into the same furnace, burning him.

They both pulled their hooves back to throw twin punches at each other—when suddenly a blue blur shot over to them and they found their hooves held in place.

“That’s enough out of you two,” Rainbow Dash said and then grabbed their heads, bonking them together and knocking the both of them out instantly. They fell to the metal floor with a thud and she just frowned at them in distaste. “At least now you can’t hurt each other worse.”

After that Rainbow Dash sighed and walked back over to Nut, leaving two Wrenchers to move the idiot brawlers out of the way. Soon work could return to normal in the furnace room.

Nut just shook her head at Rainbow Dash when she returned. “You ruined some perfectly good entertainment.”

“Sorry,” Rainbow Dash snorted. “But you guys are crazy.”

“So are you going to give up on us then? Cause that’d be fine with me. It’s already bad enough that you’re going to be sticking around and trying to get me to join back up with Frayed Wire,” Nut said.

“I’m not the type for giving up,” Rainbow Dash cracked her neck and grinned at Nut. “Just means I’ve got a bigger challenge to overcome. And a more impressive accomplishment to boast about later.”

Nut curled her lip at Rainbow Dash and clicked her teeth, looking away from the confident pegasus and getting back to work on a furnace. “Whatever.”

Rainbow Dash didn’t stop grinning. She walked up beside Nut and checked out the work she was doing so she could help out for the rest of the work day. And once things were done here the real conversation between the two of them could begin. It was the first step, Rainbow Dash could see it now, her way of getting to Resin and fixing things here was getting clearer.