//------------------------------// // Two On One // Story: Rainbow Dash Around the World // by MagicS //------------------------------// “Before we do this, I wanted to ask you something. If you’re in the mood to answer a question this time,” Rainbow Dash said to Supernova. Supernova raised an eyebrow at her. “What?” “What do you think?” Rainbow Dash snorted. “Why are you trying to kill me?” Supernova’s lip twitched and she seemed to be thinking about what to say, if she should even give any sort of answer at all. “I was told to.” “You were told to? Not paid?” Rainbow asked in confusion. “I thought Valentine said you were a mercenary who killed ponies for money.” “It doesn’t concern you,” Supernova bit out, her attitude worsening and her patience wearing thin. “Doesn’t concern me? It One-Billion percent concerns me! You’re trying to kill me and you won’t even tell me why!” Rainbow Dash shouted. “Well all you need to know is that someone wants you dead, that’s it!” Supernova yelled back. Rainbow glared at her. “And you have no problem with that, do you? You don’t even know why you’re doing this but you’re still going to try killing me.” That set Supernova off. “Yes I do.” She ground her teeth and furiously scowled at Rainbow Dash. “I know why I’m doing this!” Her Cutie Mark glowed red. “To survive!” She aimed her sparking horn at Rainbow Dash and fired. Daring Do and Miss Valentine both heard the explosion but neither of them turned back to look. Daring still continued to carry Valentine towards the blimp, aiming for that still open hatch that Supernova had come out of. The both of them couldn’t afford to think of Dash right now. They needed to take down this blimp even if it meant popping a big hole in it. Thankfully it didn’t seem like anyone noticed their approach, they were probably far too focused on the Crystal Sea, the blimp was still flying right to it without a pause. “This thing is huge, how many ponies do you think are in there?” Daring Do asked. “Not enough to stop me. Shining Diamond is about to get what’s coming to him,” Valentine said. “How do we take it down in the first place?” Daring asked as they reached the steps leading into the aircraft. Because the vessel was moving, the wind was whipping at them and Valentine had to brace herself when she got off Daring Do and stood before the open hatch. “You okay?” “I’m fine, honey,” Valentine nodded. Daring Do went to land on the stairs as well but Valentine held up a hoof to stop her. “What are you doing?” Valentine asked with a wide grin on her face. “Don’t you have someone else to help?” Daring Do’s mouth opened in surprise and she looked down, seeing a series of explosions and smoking craters already dotting the sands. “B-But you both said...” “I just needed to get up here, honey. Rainbow Dash is going to need your help a lot more than I will. So go and help her, let me deal with this,” Miss Valentine tilted down her sunglasses and winked. “T-Thank you, and good luck!” Daring said before darting around and shooting back towards the ground, right where Rainbow Dash and Supernova were fighting. “Like I’ll need it,” Valentine chuckled to herself as she walked into the blimp. A quick look showed a button next to the door that she pressed, closing the hatch back up. “Now… where to next?” She looked left towards what was certainly the “bow” and bridge of the great blimp, seeing a narrow walkway between walls of pipes, gears, and other metalworks. Looking right towards the stern she saw mostly the same. She had seen the great propeller on the back of the blimp that was responsible for moving this thing, the engines for powering it and the other propellers had to be at the back, right? Valentine nodded with a grin and ran to the right, towards the back of the blimp. “If you care so much about why I’m trying to kill you, you can just mull it over when you’re already dead! Now stand still!” Supernova yelled as she fired an explosion into the sky at the quick and evasive Rainbow Dash. Rainbow Dash saw it coming and immediately banked out of the way of the explosion, avoiding it completely and not even really being affected by the shockwave either. “Missed me!” She blew a raspberry at Supernova and kept flying around erratically with no pattern to her movements, just to make it harder for Supernova to track her and keep up. “After seeing you fight before and how your magic works, I’ve got the hang of you. Unless you’ve got something else up your sleeve you’re never going to hit me! Blow up the sky all you want, cause I’ve got this and I’ve got you pegged!” “Arrrghh!” Supernova screamed and fired manic explosion after manic explosion at Rainbow Dash. She was taking that “blow up the sky” part literally it seemed. Small explosions burst out everywhere all across the blue sky as the unicorn tried to take down the pegasus. Rainbow Dash wasn’t scared by it at all this time. “You know-” Boom! “-we can still-” Boom! “-talk this out!” Boom! “We don’t have to fight like this!” Rainbow Dash tried saying over the cacophony of the multiple explosions. “I can tell how terrified you are of whoever, or whatever, made you come after me! You don’t really want to do this! Remember, you’re a pony just like me, and you shouldn’t be going around killing others! Just turn that horn off or whatever and let’s talk things out. Peacefully!” “Shut up! Even if I wasn’t being forced to do this I’d want to kill you anyways now just because of how blasted annoying you are!” Supernova yelled and shot an explosion at Rainbow Dash that blossomed into a dozen other smaller explosions. Rainbow grit her teeth as she was rocked by the blasts, doing her best to avoid them all. It was pretty much the only kind of attack Supernova could use that came close to hitting Rainbow Dash: sheer overwhelming quantity. “Well now I’m thinking that maybe Valentine was right about you!” Rainbow yelled down at her. “I want to give everyone a chance you know, but maybe you are just a bad pony! Or maybe you do have some sad story and reason you’re doing this, and you’re just as much of a victim as anyone, but I’ll never know that if you don’t say anything! So tell me, Supernova! Let me help you!” The unicorn bit her lip hard enough to draw blood, dangerous energy crackling around her horn. “I don’t-” Her sentence was cut off as her Cutie Mark pulsed red and she unleashed a fresh wave of explosions at Rainbow Dash. The sky was blanketed in row after row of contiguous balls of fire. Supernova was frantically shaking her head back and forth as a painful sensation came from her flank. “I don’t have anything to say to you! Just die, die, die!” Any other thoughts were burned out of her mind and she quickly zeroed in on Rainbow Dash again. Her horn sparked and another, massive, explosion erupted in the sky. It was bigger than any of the others Rainbow had seen from her, bigger than Rainbow thought she could make, and she was only barely able to escape the blast radius because of that. Even then she could feel the intense heat wash over her, much hotter than the desert sun, and the wind trying to smack her out of the sky. It sent her into a tailspin but Rainbow Dash was able to recover from it in time, pulling up at the last second and gliding over the sand while Supernova tried to blast her again and again, only succeeding in making smoking craters in the sand. “Okay, I think talking might be off the table for good,” Rainbow Dash grimaced as she flew on. Luckily for her, the landscape wasn’t totally flat and even, there were large sand dunes and even a scant few boulders to hide behind. Supernova could probably easily blow them up, but it would still provide Rainbow a brief reprieve. Which she might need considering that unicorn never seemed to run out of juice. Rainbow knew what she needed to do; she had to go on offense. A single punch would lay Supernova out. Just trying to dodge and evade wouldn’t work forever, she had to get in close. The problem was she was being kept at bay far too well. Supernova also knew her own weaknesses and the steady stream of explosions so far made it impossible for Rainbow Dash to get directly at her. So with a new idea in mind, Rainbow Dash flew behind a nearby sand dune. Naturally Supernova blew it up immediately, but Rainbow Dash didn’t fly out from behind the smoke and fire. Instead she flapped her wings hard against the smoke and sand, sending a gust of wind in Supernova’s direction along with the smoke and a cloud of sand and dust with it. Not just to obscure her vision but to block her from sending any explosions. If she tried firing through that cloud it would just blow up inside it. Supernova knew this and instead of turning away and closing her eyes she immediately created a yellow shield around herself again. The smoke and sand harmlessly passed by her and when it was gone—Rainbow Dash wasn’t there flying directly at her. Supernova blinked. She was sure that the pegasus was using that as a cover to attack her directly. But instead her opponent had disappeared completely. “Where did you go?!” She yelled at the desert, dropping the shield and keeping the horn lit up to blast Rainbow Dash as soon as she appeared again. She heard something coming from above her just in the nick of time. Supernova looked up at the sky—and squinted as she was temporarily blinded by the sunlight. That’s what Rainbow Dash had done. She had flown up high into the sky, directly at the sun, until the light completely obscured her. Now she was coming back down right on top of Supernova. The unicorn raised a hoof and blinked as she tried to remove the spots from her vision. At practically the last second she was able to see again and the flying form of Rainbow Dash filled her vision. “Die!” Supernova unleashed an explosion at her. “Gotcha!” Rainbow said and flung her hooves out—a large bucket’s worth of sand that she had been carrying went right into Supernova’s face. “Agh!” Supernova squeezed her eyes shut as the sand got into them and the explosion backfired, erupting right at the tip of her horn. Both pegasus and unicorn were blown away by the fiery explosion and Rainbow Dash thumped and skidded to a stop in the sand a fair distance away. She slowly got up on shaking hooves and coughed, sand falling from her mane and wings. “Okay… that’s not how that was supposed to go,” Rainbow muttered. “I would imagine not,” Supernova said as she walked around the freshly burning crater in the sand. Slightly singed in places but really looking no worse for wear. Her horn still arced and sparkled with violent energy and she tilted it directly at Rainbow Dash. “Now die and let me be free.” A harsh red glow came from her Cutie Mark- And right before she could fire an explosion, a rope came from the sky and lassoed around her horn, tugging it to the right and making her accidentally miss completely. The explosion blasted apart the sand next to Rainbow Dash and she confusedly looked up to see Daring Do on the other end of the rope, pulling it and throwing Supernova to the sand. “You—argh!” Supernova cried out as she fell, using her magic to burn the rope around her horn and scramble back to her hooves. As soon as Daring Do saw the rope break she dropped it and flew down to Rainbow Dash. “Guess I got back here just in time.” “What are you doing?” Rainbow Dash frowned at her. “You should be helping Valentine.” Daring Do grinned. “The both of us agreed that you needed more help than she did. So now you are just going to have to deal with my decision.” She looked over at Supernova and saw the mare angrily getting ready to attack the both of them. “Well?” Rainbow Dash barked out a small laugh and squared off against Supernova. “Alright, alright. We’ll do this together.” “Burn!” Supernova yelled an unleashed a powerful explosion at them. Miss Valentine reached a heavy door at the back of the large blimp, a large metal wheel set in the middle of it for turning and opening it up. She smirked in front of it, this had to lead to the engines. She didn’t know exactly how this blimp worked but there had to be something sensitive in there for her to break or turn off. And that would lead to her bringing down Shining Diamond for good. She turned the wheel and opened up the heavy metal door—immediately hearing a lot of noise on the other side as steam blew, pistons and gears moved back and forth, containers boiled, and electronics buzzed. Stepping inside and closing the door back, she saw a large but cramped engine room that was the same mess of metal pipes and devices as the rest of the blimp, but with two large turbines at the back and a few even larger vats lined alongside them. And she wasn’t alone. Several grease and grime covered ponies in overalls were moving between the machines and making sure everything ran smoothly and properly. Once she closed the door, they all noticed her arrival and turned to look at the intruder. One of them, with a heavy wrench in hoof, came walking up to her. “Who are you? I don’t recognize you, are you a new hire by the boss cause you shouldn’t be in here. What do you think you’re doing?” Valentine punched him hard across the face and knocked him out cold. As he fell to the metal floor she glared at the other engineers. “That is what I’m doing.”