//------------------------------// // Good Luck Out There // Story: Rainbow Dash Around the World // by MagicS //------------------------------// “Wha-What is she?” Daring Do looked on in horror at the monster that used to be Supernova. The deranged, mutated unicorn screeched like a banshee when she saw Rainbow Dash. The sparks from her horn raged with far greater intensity than they had before and even lit random fires in the air around her. She dug her thin, nearly knife-like, hooves into the sand and lowered her horn at Rainbow Dash. The flames making up her mane and tail grew twice as big and a massive stream of fire billowed from her horn towards Rainbow Dash, the flames being ushered forth were so hot that the sand they traveled over was reduced to bubbling, melted glass. “Dangerous,” Rainbow Dash gulped. Miss Valentine was slammed into the floor by Shining Diamond’s telekinetic magic. He raised her up to slam her down again but although he was decently powerful and skilled with magic he still wasn’t a heavyweight, Valentine struggled and fought his control and shortly popped the aura of magic around her. She gracefully dropped to the floor and started running at him, no worse for wear after the single slam. “Tch,” Shining Diamond clicked his tongue and ran to meet her. He wasn’t a coward. Valentine moved very fast though and as soon as she was in striking distance a hoof was already coming up to his face before he could move one of his to block or attack her too. She went right for his chin—but it was blocked not by his hoof, but the tiniest possible shield of magic. Valentine’s eyebrows shot up in surprise and Shining Diamond punched her in the gut, making her slide away. She glared at his glowing horn and rubbed the spot he hit her. “So you’re pretty decent with that horn of yours, huh?” She said. “Oh, I manage with it,” he chuckled. “But every unicorn has a limit to what they can do before they get tired,” Valentine said. “So let’s see how well you can keep up.” Like a cat she jumped forward and started darting from right to left, feinting to one side and then the other. If he wanted to try and shield himself from her blows she’d make it as difficult as possible for him to predict where she was going to hit. Once she got up close and personal with him she threw a barrage of punches at his body, not single powerful strikes like the one earlier, but a flurry of smaller blows just to try and overwhelm him with numbers. Her scarlet hooves were like a storm, four, eight, ten of them flying at Shining Diamond at once. He constantly backed up away from her and dodge and weaved between her blows as much as he could, smartly reserving his magic for when he absolutely needed it. A shield here, a shield there, as much as Valentine attacked him his defense stayed solid. Right up until he noticed a small smirk on Valentine’s face and he backed into the bridge’s wheel. He suddenly had less room to maneuver and was momentarily surprised by accidentally hitting it, a scarlet hoof came up at his chin that he blocked with a shield—only for it to be instantly withdrawn as another hoof came at his left shoulder and punched him hard. Shining Diamond grunted in pain and stumbled away from the wheel, but Valentine followed and came after him for another round of attacks. Shining Diamond shot a beam of magic at her head that she ducked under and ended up destroying a panel on the wall behind her. Can’t let that hit me by the sound of it. Valentine frowned and ran at Shining Diamond, again criss-crossing as she ran so he didn’t have a straight shot at her. He got off two more beams at her that she both hopped around before she got close enough to hit him again. His horn flared with powerful magic to make as many shields as he could but to his surprise, Valentine didn’t strike at him directly. She pivoted on her hooves and slid across the slick metal floor, making a semi-circle around him to get behind him while he was still confused by her movement. Valentine then went low and kicked out his back legs, making him fall to the floor with a startled yelp. “Ack!” He propped himself up on his front hooves and turned his head to aim his horn at her. Instead of a pinpoint attack that could potentially take her out permanently, he went for the low-risk, low-reward option instead. A single large wave of magic lashed out from his horn and slammed into Valentine, knocking her back and into the wall behind her. “Mrph!” Valentine grunted as her back slammed into the cold metal and she fell to her hooves, she took in a deep breath and glared at her opponent. “Oh come on, is that seriously the best you can do?” “No!” Shining Diamond answered and fired a concentrated laser at Valentine. It wasn’t just a one-shot beam that hit something and stopped, the laser continued burning across the floor right towards Valentine. Knowing it would probably slice right through her flesh if it touched her, Valentine dove to the side to dodge it. The laser bisected a chair behind her and Shining Diamond turned his head and horn to follow Valentine, aiming to dice her to pieces. He was carving a red line through the bridge and leaving melted metal behind in his chase. The swift laser soon reached Valentine and she barely jumped over it in time, the ends of her tail being cut off. Valentine frowned as she landed and reached inside the canvas she had wrapped around her body while Shining Diamond brought his deadly laser back towards her. She ran straight at him and Shining Diamond grinned, seeing an easy target. Valentine pulled her hoof from the canvas and threw something at him. Something so small and narrow that Shining Diamond didn’t even properly see it until it hit him right in the eye. “Ow!” The crystal pony yipped and automatically canceled his magic, the laser disappearing, and brought his hoof up to cover his now watering eye. That was all the opportunity Valentine needed to close the distance and wallop him in the face. Once to make him stagger, and then a second time to spin him around and send him to the floor out cold. Valentine huffed and took a second to calm down and get her heartbeat back to normal. She looked at the floor and saw the tiny red feather she had plucked from one of her wings, thrown quill first right into Shining Diamond’s eye. “Dumb wings...” Valentine muttered and glanced at the unconscious Shining Diamond before looking out the window. The blimp was still going down. Valentine stood by the blimp’s wheel and grinned, reaching up into her beret and retrieving her switchblade. She flipped it open and held it up before the crumpled Shining Diamond… then turned around and stabbed it into the groove of the wheel, popping it off and making it clatter to the floor. “Heh. Time to get out of here.” She started walking to the door- “Help...” Valentine’s ears perked up and she looked at the ceiling to see a chained dragon inside of a cage. He looked burnt and beaten up and barely conscious. She raised an eyebrow at him. “Well it looks like Shining Diamond did a real number on you, honey.” “Please, help me...” the dragon repeated, staring imploringly into her sunglasses. Valentine frowned, she looked down at the unconscious Whitesheet and then back up at the dragon. “I’ll help you get out of there, but you’re going to have to help me with something too.” The desert below had become a nightmare land of fire and melting sand that bubbled like lava. No longer restrained to just making explosions, the monster of Supernova set fire to everything around her in her pursuit of Rainbow Dash. Each fireball and tornado of flames that was summoned chased the blue pegasus relentlessly. Daring Do could hardly get in or do anything, the heat itself and the multitude of fires keeping her at bay. As Rainbow Dash flew to avoid another column of flames, an explosion erupted right in front of her that she had to fly to the side to avoid completely. Burn and scorch marks dotted her coat, wings, and tail, and she was feeling the effects of the intense heat. “What do we do?!” Daring Do shouted to her flying companion on the outskirts of the fire. “I don’t know!” Rainbow Dash answered. “I don’t think we can fight her or get close anymore—we have to wait her out somehow.” Daring Do looked at “Supernova” and realized that for better or worse, Rainbow was right. The air shimmered and wavered around the monster and wherever she stepped the sand left behind caught fire and melted. They couldn’t touch her. Not directly at least. Her body had become a fiery explosion, an unparalleled inferno, in pony form. The one thing Daring Do had to her advantage was that the monster was paying even less attention to her than Supernova had originally, and she used that to try thinking of some kind of plan for them while Rainbow Dash flew for her life. She wracked that author and archaeologist brain of hers and watched, examining their enemy for anything they could use. The monster was very thin and weak looking physically, a rock to the head might be all they needed. But Daring Do wasn’t sure if that could be risked or if she could get close enough to throw it with enough force to do the job. What else? The Cutie Mark. That might’ve been the strangest thing about all of this. It used to be a big explosion but now it had turned into a question mark. How? That went against everything everypony in the whole world knew about Cutie Marks. And why? Daring Do looked harder at it. She might not have had eyes as sharp as Rainbow Dash, but she could still make out that black question mark. Each time Supernova cast a spell, whether it was summoning more flames or creating an explosion, the cracks around the Cutie Mark glowed red and the Cutie Mark itself pulsed before going back to normal. But if her eyes weren’t playing tricks on her, she was certain that the cracks had grown wider and more numerous. Just ever so slightly. “R-Rainbow!” Daring Do shouted to get her attention. “I think you’re right! We can outlast her! I don’t think her body can handle all that magical power, her Cutie Mark’s getting all weird!” “Good! How long do you think it’ll take before she stops?” Rainbow asked. “Umm… I have no idea!” “Awesome!” Rainbow said and dodged another explosion while twin twisters of fire closed in on her from the sides. She rolled out from between them as they smashed into each other and created a larger twister that exploded outwards and reached far enough to light Rainbow’s tail on fire. “Oh great!” Rainbow yelled as she tried smacking the fire out. Daring bit her lip. This was getting really hairy for Rainbow Dash. She had to do something more direct now rather than just hoping they could keep avoiding the monster’s attacks until they broke down, or ran out, or whatever might happen. Her original idea of a rock was unfortunately the best thing she could come up with. Daring Do flew down to the sands to look for one, most everything around them was on fire or melted away though. She had to look for a boulder that had been blown up earlier in the fight before Supernova’s meltdown. She ended up flying to between two fires still burning in the sands, a pile of rocks lying by them. The rocks were burning hot and she juggled the one she picked up between her hooves a few times before flying in closer to where the monster unicorn was. The monster still wasn’t paying any attention to her at all, even as Daring Do flew well within vision of her. Daring for her part struggled with the intense heat of the flames around her, it was like being roasted over a camp fire or inside an oven. Despite the sweat coming off her in buckets and the worry that her clothes were about to ignite she still managed to get within decent range of the monster. “Take this!” Daring yelled and chucked the rock as hard as she could at the monster’s head. As soon as it got within two feet, a pinpoint explosion shot from its horn and blew the rock to pieces. Without the monster even looking at it. Even so, the cracks around the Cutie Mark got worse and even the question mark itself looked like it was becoming cracked. Not about to let up, Daring Do went for a different approach and flapped her wings hard in the direction of the monster, kicking up a huge cloud of sand to try and give Rainbow a moment where she wasn’t being attacked. The sand cloud rushed towards the monster—and melted and burned away into nothingness. Particles and shards of glass at best were all that was left over. The question mark Cutie Mark pulsed again but this time there was another effect. The monster howled in pain and grasped her head while jets of flame and steam shot from the Cutie Mark. “R-Rainbow Dash!” Daring Do shouted up to her. “I think we just need a little more, her magic is going completely out of her control, she’s starting to get overloaded!” “I’ll try and do something about that!” Rainbow Dash said as she was still busy avoiding fires. The monster recovered from her pain and—with flames still leaking out from her—snarled up at Rainbow Dash. Her horn sparked with enough energy to set the air on fire again and a volley of flaming missiles were shot up into the sky. As soon as they reached around where Rainbow Dash was flying they were joined by a series of brand new explosions. The sky was blanketed in fire and balls of death streaming through it to try and take down the rainbow pegasus. It was impossible for Rainbow Dash to avoid this completely and she was rocked around by explosions, doing her best to avoid the deadly fireballs from hitting her directly, but she still ended up clipped in the wing by one. Only a few outer feathers were burnt and scraped off but it was enough to momentarily send her down. “No!” Daring Do yelled. She looked at the monster and saw blinding white light shooting out from its flank, the question mark Cutie Mark had almost completely melted away by the look of things. And still the monster pressed forward. The sparks flying from its horn became a permanent shower and bits of its curved horn were peeling and crumbling off. The monster fired out a stream of fire but it went off to the side and fizzled out in the air while Rainbow Dash fell straight to the sand, unable to right herself in time. “Not good, not good...” she panicked and covered her face with her hooves, crashing down and leaving a gash in the hot sand. “Rainbow, I’m coming!” Daring Do flew over to try and help her. “You have to get away right now!” Rainbow Dash groaned and stood up, shaking the sand off of her and coughing. “Where’s—oh.” The incredible heat washing over her told her everything and Rainbow Dash glacially turned her head to see the fire monster slowly walking towards her. Ten feet away. Nine feet away. Eight feet away. Fire and bolts of magic shot from her horn in every direction, out of the monster’s control, and her flank burned a bright white while red cracks had grown to cover her entire body. Somewhat ironically, Rainbow Dash found herself frozen in place. The inferno eyes of what was once Supernova looked deep into her own and the monster’s mouth of needlesharp teeth hung open. It was pure instinct and animalistic hunger that was driving the monster forth. “Rainbow Dash!” Daring Do yelled to try and get her to move. The other pegasus was still too far away and not fast enough to get to her. Five feet away and burning saliva dripped from the monster’s mouth to set fire to the sand under her. Rainbow Dash stood up and opened her wings- And the monster’s hoof paused in midstep. The glowing white light faded from its flanks completely. Rainbow Dash blinked and Daring Do came to a stop a few feet away from the monster. The question mark had vanished and the growing red cracks had spread and widened even further. While the two pegasi looked on, what was left of the monster’s horn caught fire, and other flames erupted from its legs, body, head and neck, all crawling over and consuming it. A viscous lava dripped down onto the sand and melted it away, turning it into a bubbling pit while the flames reduced the figure of the monster to less than a skeleton and finally just a raging bonfire. Rainbow Dash and Daring Do silently stood and watched the fire, breathing heavily and sweating. Eventually the flames burned themselves out, far quicker than they normally would, and all that was left behind was a hole of glass and ash. “Nghh, my head...” Shining Diamond said as he woke up on the cold floor. He rubbed his temples and reached a hoof up towards the wheel station, pulling himself up and trying to get a grasp on the situation. His eyes were still closed with a dull throbbing pain like a headache right behind the shut lids. “Whitesheet? Anyone? Why does everything feel so… slanted?” There was no answer and he awkwardly fumbled at the wheel next to him, only to find nothing but air. “Huh?” He finally managed to open his eyes and saw that the wheel had been snapped off. And that the bridge was tilting downwards. Because the Ziz was tilting downwards. Shining Diamond blinked and looked at the large viewport at the front of the bridge. A massive sea of crystals filled the screen and he could see the nose of his great blimp about to impact them. “Oh dear.” Another massive explosion tore through the desert but this wasn’t the product of Supernova or any magic. Rainbow Dash and Daring Do were shocked by the blast and looked behind them at the Crystal Sea, where a larger fireball than any was already billowing up into the sky. The damage to the crystals was spectacular and it seemed most of the Sea would soon be consumed by fire and debris. “Welp, kind of wasn’t paying attention to that but I think the blimp just crashed,” Rainbow Dash said. Daring Do hissed as her heart stopped. “Valentine, did she-” “Hey! Hey you two!” Rainbow Dash and Daring Do looked up to see a parachuting Miss Valentine coming down towards them—along with a dragon carrying something, or a bunch of somethings, in his arms. “What the?” Rainbow Dash raised an eyebrow. Miss Valentine and the dragon landed right beside them and the two pegasi saw that the dragon was carrying almost a dozen other ponies, who he unceremoniously dropped onto the sands. Most of them were unconscious but a few groaned in discomfort. “Who are they?” Daring Do asked. “Shining Diamond’s lackeys,” Valentine grinned. “And our dragon friend here was a prisoner of his.” “You rescued them from the blimp before it crashed?” Rainbow sounded surprised. Valentine’s grin widened. “The whole lot of them. Aside from Shining Diamond himself. Figured that was an acceptable loss.” Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes. “It’s better than nothing I guess...” “Can I go now?” The dragon asked. He looked tired and pretty unhappy that he had to essentially rescue his tormentors. “My job’s done.” “Thanks for the help, honey,” Valentine said. “But first I’ll need you to carry them back to Camelback too. Where are you going to go after that?” “Anywhere but here,” the dragon sighed and sat down, resting until it was time to go again. Valentine looked at Rainbow and Daring Do. “So you took care of Supernova?” “In a manner of speaking...” Daring Do rubbed the back of her neck. “It’s over with her. That’s what’s important,” Rainbow said. She took a deep breath and looked back at the burning and devastated Crystal Sea. “Uhhh… is this what we wanted? I don’t know what you two really wanted to do with the Crystal Sea, but was this it?” “As long as Shining Diamond didn’t get to do as he pleased with it, that was the important part,” Valentine said. She looked up at the sky, the column of smoke from the blimp’s explosion was reaching miles up. “I don’t think this place is going to stay hidden forever now either. Whether it’s camels, or anybody else in the desert who gets here first, I think there are going to be some changes here.” She smiled and lowered her sunglasses to look directly at Rainbow Dash. “And I think I’ve become optimistic enough to believe they’ll be good ones.” Rainbow Dash chuckled slightly in amusement before sitting down and closing her eyes. She took a deep breath and felt a wave of exhaustion, but also relief, roll over her. “Something wrong?” Daring Do asked her. Rainbow blinked and looked up at her longtime friend. “No, it’s just… it feels really good to win.” She exhaled and looked between Daring and Valentine. “Well what are you two going to do now?” “I think it’s back to Camelback for a day or two and then-” Daring Do smiled at Valentine. Valentine nodded. “And then it’s off to find those two idiots who betrayed us… but before that I need a new vest.” Daring Do snorted and looked at Rainbow. “What about you, Rainbow? You’re welcome to come with us.” “Oh is she now?” Valentine said, all in good humor. Rainbow Dash laughed and stood up, dusting herself off. “Thanks but no thanks. I bet it would be a lot of fun, but I’m flying south still. I’ve got my own goal after all.” She grinned at Daring Do. “Next time you see me I’ll be known as the only pony who’s flown around the entire world.” “Good luck out there,” Daring Do said and hugged her. “Thanks, good luck to you too,” Rainbow said. “Good luck,” Valentine said to her. “No hug from me though, honey.” “Figured,” Rainbow shrugged.