“WHERE ARE YOU?!” Supernova roared as she fired explosions at every tent and building in the vicinity. And sometimes at some random piles of sand. Smoke choked the air and she had to charge over craters and through walls of it just to see, she had no idea where her quarry had gotten off to. It didn’t matter though. She’d obliterate all of Two Hump Oasis if she had to.
She couldn’t fail.
She couldn’t fail.
She couldn’t fail.
“Arrrrghhhhh!” Supernova yelled and blew up another building, sending burning chunks of wood all over. “Show yourself!”
Meanwhile, the party of five were hiding in a small ditch between a few tents. Every now and then they heard and felt another explosion rock the oasis. Rainbow Dash had a very annoyed look on her face… in fact, all of them did. Nobody was happy about the current situation.
“Rainbow Dash, I really understand that you want to help and stop that mare from hurting anybody—I do too—but I’m not sure that’s a smart idea. She’s dangerous, and she’s trying to kill you,” Daring Do said.
“Not the first time I’ve had a pony try and do that to me,” Rainbow said. “Just let me go out there and deal with her right now.”
“You mean let you go out there and get blown out of the sky again?” Valentine raised an eyebrow.
“I can go faster,” Rainbow narrowed her eyes at the scarlet mare. “I can outrun her explosions and stay ahead of her, now that I’ve seen what she can do.”
“We should really just run and get to a sand ship...” Birdseed said.
“I’m not leaving this place to just get blown up by some crazy mare cause she’s looking for me!” Rainbow yelled at him.
“Why do you even care about these creatures?” Birdseed asked.
This isn’t your city, Rainbow Dash. The words of Barnaby flashed through her mind again and Rainbow Dash had to shake her head. “B-Because it’s the right thing to do. I know that maybe you don’t get that, but it’s the truth.”
“Oh please,” Birdseed angrily scoffed. “This whole dump of a town is made of nothing but thieves and criminals! The desert might even be better off with what that nutjob is doing.”
“No,” Rainbow Dash shook her head. “I-I know that most of the creatures here probably aren’t that nice, and they probably wouldn’t do the same for me, but I refuse to believe that. I refuse to be that cynical. And being a good pony means doing something even if you won’t get paid back for it. So what if they’re bad? So what if they wouldn’t stick their necks out for me? They don’t deserve to die because of me either.”
All of them could see the resolve in her eyes and hear it in her voice. This matter was settled one way or the other.
Another explosion went off and all of them covered their heads as sand and dirt fell into the ditch.
Valentine sighed deeply. “So you’re going to fight her?”
Rainbow nodded. “That’s right.”
“Then we’re doing this thing right,” Valentine took a deep breath and looked at Daring Do. “We can’t afford to waste anymore time with Shining Diamond still out there. I want you, Birdseed, and Coin Flip to take our money and go to a sand ship. Get on the way to Camelback as fast as possible. Supernova wont bother chasing you if she’s so fixated on Rainbow Dash. With luck she wont even see the three of you.” She turned to Rainbow Dash and smiled. “Since the two of us are going to be distracting her.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Rainbow Dash waved her hooves in front of her. “This is my fight, you don’t need to stay here with me.”
“If you’re so dead set on doing this then at the very least I’m not going to let you do it alone. We’re a group, a team, and Supernova is dangerous. If you’re going to fight her then I’m giving you a hoof to do it, honey,” Valentine said.
Birdseed and Coin Flip shared a look.
“I think I’m fine with that plan,” Birdseed said.
Valentine rolled her eyes. “I bet.”
“I don’t like splitting up like this...” Daring Do said.
“It’ll be alright, the two of us will manage,” Valentine said and smiled at Daring Do. “You just need to get safely to Camelback.”
“And once I clobber this crazy mare we’ll meet back up with you,” Rainbow Dash grinned.
Daring Do sighed. “I know. I trust you, I just want the both of you to be careful.”
“We will. It would be too dangerous for all of us to go out there with how wild she’s being and try to fight her, and Rainbow Dash and I are the quickest. We’ll take her out somehow,” Valentine said.
“Usually I do that by punching,” Rainbow winked.
“Yes, this is definitely the time for jokes,” Valentine scowled. Rainbow Dash snorted but Valentine just ignored her. “Either way, the two of us will go out first. Give us a moment to engage her and then you all run for the sand ships.”
Daring Do nodded. “Good luck.”
Rainbow Dash raised a hoof. “Don’t worry, I’m awesome.”
Daring Do grinned and bumped her hoof. “I know.”
“Alright, let’s go,” Valentine said and jumped out of the ditch.
Rainbow saluted to Daring Do (and Birdseed and Coin Flip to a lesser degree) and flew out after her. The ponies left behind waited, taking a few deep breaths—and then a new series of explosions erupted that rocked Two Hump Oasis. That was their cue. The other three ran out the other side of the ditch and sprinted together as fast as they could towards the east end of Two Hump Oasis. All of them were really, really hoping that a sand ship was still there and they hadn’t all fled when the explosions started going off.
Meanwhile, a hooded pony watched Rainbow Dash and Miss Valentine start round two with Supernova. And a second hooded pony discreetly followed the other three.
“There you are!” Supernova yelled and blasted at the swiftly flying Rainbow Dash.
But Rainbow Dash was like a hummingbird now, a small, ever juking, target that flittered through the sky and had so far proven impossible to hit for Supernova. The sky was full of flak and fireballs generated by her powerful explosion magic, practically creating a canopy over Two Hump Oasis that now could be seen for miles away. Dozens of fires and craters still burned around her, the seedy den of criminals had turned into a living Tartarus.
The chaos was hardly going to end anytime soon if Supernova had anything to say about it either. The deranged mare was laser-focused on taking out Rainbow Dash for reasons the blue pegasus could only imagine. While that battle of explosions and dodging went on, Miss Valentine tried to sneak through the fiery sands and get behind their adversary.
“Raaarrrgh!” Supernova roared like an animal and sent out her most powerful explosion so far into the sky. It wasn’t even directly aimed at Rainbow Dash, she just blasted the middle of the sky to clear it and maybe hit her target out of chance.
A positively massive fireball that dwarfed the others appeared in the center of all the havoc, the shockwave from it blowing away all the other smoke and fires in the air. The pressure buffeted Rainbow Dash but this time at least she managed to keep control of herself and not crash into anything. Instead she got to watch as the flames from the explosion fell and turned the ground below into a sea of death. It was only for the briefest of moments that she allowed herself to stop and take her eyes off Supernova, but she saw creatures running for their lives as the fires consumed everything else.
Rainbow Dash’s face twisted in rage as she flew at Supernova. “You monster!”
Supernova fired at her but a strong flap of Rainbow Dash’s wings gave her the last bit of acceleration she needed to dodge to the side completely. Now she was in fairly close range and still barreling right towards the unicorn. Supernova grit her teeth and forced more power into her horn, while a shower of sparks came out of it she flung her head in an arc and created a series of small explosions in the sky in-between her and Rainbow Dash. It was like a protective wall of fireballs that Rainbow had to fly away from lest she burn herself.
“Ugh, come on!” Rainbow yelled in frustration as she flew up to get some more distance between herself and the unicorn again.
“Stop flying around! Just let me blow you up so I can end this!” Supernova shouted at her.
Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes. “Oh yeah, like I’m totally going to do that! Seriously, lady, why do you want to kill me anyways?”
“Shut up! I-I can’t… I just can’t!” Supernova’s Cutie Mark pulsed red. She shook her head as another expression of terror gripped her features and she started throwing more explosions at Rainbow Dash.
Rainbow Dash weaved in between them, the heat and shockwaves making it a pain to fly. “Does she just never run out of magic? This is crazy!”
Supernova’s jaw was clenched so tightly her gums were almost starting to bleed. Behind her, a throwing knife came whizzing through the air right at the back of her head. It harmlessly bounced off a sudden shell of yellow magic that protected Supernova. The unicorn then looked over her shoulder at a sweating Valentine and glared.
“I knew at least one of you would try something again,” her horn sparked. “Die, Hornet.”
Valentine jumped to the side at the last second, hiding behind a column of smoke coming from a previous explosion right as Supernova tried to blow her up. The new explosion erupted and tossed her across the sand like a rag doll, where she groaned in pain.
Supernova would’ve finished the job if Rainbow Dash wasn’t attempting to dive-bomb her from directly above right at that moment. She ignited an explosion directly above her head to dissuade Rainbow Dash and knock her away. She didn’t expect Rainbow Dash to anticipate that and recover so quickly. But the pegasus flipped over in the air and landed safely on all fours behind Supernova, then shot at her with a quick burst of speed.
Supernova’s eyes widened in surprise as she turned to face Rainbow Dash. The pegasus was too close for her to get an explosion off so her horn lit up and she erected another magical barrier around herself. Rainbow Dash’s hooves impacted it and sent cracks throughout the entire barrier.
Rainbow grinned. “So your defense aint as good as your offense?”
“Tch,” Supernova’s horn sparked, her shield about to fail didn’t matter, it bought her enough time for another explosion. She dropped the shield completely and put as much power as she could into the tip of her horn.
But right as she was going to set it off in both of their faces, Rainbow Dash flapped her wings and sent a gust of wind and a kicked up cloud of sand at her. Supernova squeezed her eyes shut and reflexively dropped her head—the explosion erupted inside the sand and both ponies went flying backwards. Immune to her own magic and fire she might have been, it still hurt Supernova to be tossed around and roughly roll over the hot sand. Rainbow Dash was worse off, crashing into a pile of sand and ending up half-buried with light burns and black marks all over her coat and wings. She coughed out a lung full of smoke and struggled to get out of the sand.
“Hnnn...” Supernova groaned as she stood up and looked for her prey, but a huge smoking crater in front of her obscured Rainbow Dash’s location.
A knife came at her out of the smoke and she jumped away from it, randomly throwing a series of small explosions in the direction it came from. The landscape was so smoky and warped now though she couldn’t tell if she had actually hit anything or not. Supernova stayed on her hooves and concentrated, ready to light up anything that moved.
“Where are you, Hornet? I wasn’t going to bother with you after I killed Rainbow Dash but if you really want to die then so be it,” Supernova called out to the unseen attacker.
“I don’t plan on dying anytime soon,” a voice said from Supernova’s left.
She immediately wheeled towards the sound of the voice and fired an explosion at a preexisting column of smoke.
“Missed me, honey,” The Hornet’s voice came from the right now. There were too many smoking craters to hide behind.
“Why are you willing to die for her?! You don’t understand! You don’t understand what’s on the line for me if I fail!” Supernova screamed and blasted at the voice again.
Burning sand rained all around and Supernova huffed and puffed, eyes darting back and forth. Just waiting for that voice to come again.
“I can’t let you kill a comrade of mine. It’s just how I am. I’ll put myself on the line for her,” Miss Valentine said once more from the smoke to Supernova’s right.
Supernova turned with her horn already sparking and saw a shadow flying through the smoke at her. She grinned and created another explosion right on the shadow, intending to blow The Red Hornet into smoldering pieces. The smoke was consumed by a new conflagration and from out of it came the tattered and destroyed remnants of a black vest, flames burning the last few pieces of it.
Just a vest? Supernova panicked.
Miss Valentine—now with only her black beret and sunglasses—shot from out of the fiery smoke low to the ground and to Supernova’s left. She ran at her and threw a scarlet hoof towards her jaw in a powerful hook. It was just inches away from impacting the slim chin of Supernova… when a yellow barrier stopped it short. Valentine’s hoof cracked the magical shield but didn’t get through it.
From inside, Supernova grinned and her horn sparked.
Valentine grinned right back at her.
A high-speed blue pegasus slammed into the already damaged shield and shattered it to pieces, Rainbow Dash’s left hoof impacted Supernova’s face with tremendous force and shot her to the sand where she slid along for a dozen feet before finally coming to a stop. Both pegasi watched for any sign of movement, but there was none. Rainbow Dash tentatively flew forward and checked the unicorn out. Her eyes were half-shut and her chest slightly rose and fell at slow intervals.
“She’s out,” Rainbow Dash said, grinning back at Valentine and dropping to her hooves.
“At least that’s one problem taken care of then,” Valentine sighed in relief and started to walk over. “If you can carry me I think we can catch up with the others before they get to Camelback.”
“Uhh… about that,” Rainbow Dash flexed her somewhat burnt wings and winced. “My wings, really, really, hurt right now. I was kind of running on adrenaline for that last hit.”
“So you can’t fly right now?” Valentine raised an eyebrow and frowned.
“I can still fly, just not very well. And I don’t think I could carry you. Half a day of rest at most, then I’ll be a-okay,” Rainbow said.
“Well we can’t rest for that long… we’re already behind. We’ll just have to get our own sand ship,” Valentine said.
“Uh, we gave them all the money,” Rainbow said.
Valentine grimaced. “That’s right...”
“And they were carrying all our supplies.”
“I can call in a few favors around here… or threaten some ponies for money,” Valentine said. “I don’t think we can get enough for travel on a sand ship but if we can get a day of food and water and a small tent we can at least start traveling through the desert on our own until your wing gets better.”
“Alright,” Rainbow nodded. “Guess we’ll be seeing Daring Do and those other two a little later.”
“Yeah, gotta finish something here first though before we get ready to leave,” Valentine said and walked up to Supernova.
“Huh?” Rainbow said as she watched Valentine approach the unconscious unicorn. Her eyes went wide as the mare took a switchblade out from under her beret and flicked the blade open. She flipped it around and got ready to stab it down into Supernova’s unconscious chest. Rainbow felt her heart skip a beat and she ran over to grab Valentine’s hoof just in time before the knife plunged into Supernova. “Stop!”
Valentine looked at her like she had lost her mind. “Have you lost your mind?! Why are you stopping me?!”
“You can’t kill her!”
“What?”
“She’s out cold, she’s not a danger anymore.”
“So what? She tried to kill us, look at what she did to this place, and when she wakes up she’s probably going to come after us—after you, again.”
“That doesn’t matter. She’s totally defenseless and helpless right now. I told you this before that it isn’t right, a-and it’s just wrong to kill, okay?”
Valentine grabbed her sunglasses and threw them on the sand to glare at Rainbow Dash with her blue eyes. “Again with this nonsense? At least Zargoz didn’t just try to kill you like this one did! Are you saying in all that adventuring and journeying you’ve done, you’ve really never killed anyone? Not even anyone who was trying to kill you?”
Rainbow took a steadying breath and slowly blinked. “I… I don’t know. There are some times when I’ve been just that angry—and I’ve wanted to, maybe. And there are some ponies and other creatures I’ve fought and beaten so hard that maybe they did die. Or I was at least so pumped up that I wasn’t even thinking that I might kill them in the heat of the moment. And… there was one monster where yeah, I was trying to kill her so she couldn’t hurt anyone anymore. But.” Rainbow pointed at Supernova. “She’s still a pony. She’s not some mindless, evil, monster. And we’re not in danger anymore. So let me repeat this. You’re. Not. Killing. Her.”
“You’re insane,” Valentine growled, tearing her hoof out of Rainbow’s grip and putting the knife away.
“It’s not the kind of thing we do.”
“We?” Valentine looked at her with a questioning gaze.
“Good ponies.”
Valentine laughed. “Since when am I a-”
“It’s what you’re trying to be. Deep down.”
Valentine paused, staring back at Rainbow’s calm eyes. “You’re… whatever.” She clicked her tongue and started walking away after picking her sunglasses back up. “Forget this. Let’s just get on the way to Camelback.” She glanced down at her wing stubs. “I need some tent canvas or something to cover up...”
“You don’t need to...” Rainbow sighed and trotted after her.
“What I don’t need is for anyone looking down on me or spreading rumors about me being a weak cripple. Not in my profession,” Valentine said, putting her sunglasses back on.
Rainbow Dash silently trotted up alongside her, no more words were shared between them as they looked to leave Two Hump Oasis.
A panting hooded mare came sprinting to her partner who just finished watching the explosive fight end from behind a rock that he had hoped would prove safe during the fight. He was luckily right. The mare pulled back her hood to reveal a pearly white grin on a purple face with a short, feathery black mane. The stallion pulled back his hood, revealing a tan face and a dirt brown mane.
“You learn anything important?” He asked her.
“Very,” she replied. “The three others went off to Camelback by sand ship. And they definitely have a big clue to the Crystal Sea’s location.”
“Then we need to contact Shining Diamond as quickly as possible,” the stallion said and looked over at the still unconscious Supernova. “We might have another ally we can add to our ranks as well. The Red Hornet and that blue pegasus are clearly dangerous adversaries, someone just as dangerous might be useful.”
The mare shrugged. “Might as well introduce her to the boss. Should I break the locator crystal now?”
“Yes,” the stallion nodded.
She grinned and pulled a yellow spherical crystal out of her robes. It was small, the size of a marble, and perfectly smooth. It looked strangely translucent or hollow for a crystal. The mare brought it between her hooves and with only a slight amount of force, crushed it. The little bits and shards of it fell like dust down to the sand.
The stallion looked up at the sky to the south of Two Hump Oasis. “Won’t be long now.”