//------------------------------// // Dolling Up Dash // Story: Innavedr // by Imploding Colon //------------------------------// Slowly, her tongue flicked out, licking the dry edges of a blue muzzle. "Mmmm... so... so awesome..." She rasped, her eyelids fluttering. "Just... one m-more mug." Her throat gulped as her neck twitched. "Best cider ever. I'm sorry f-for everything I said about the c-competition, AJ." Her lips curved, then almost immediately blanched. "Please... d-don't be mad at me. I'm sorry, Applejack. Sorry for... f-for everything." Her jaw clenched, and a spasm flew through her features. Right then, her ruby eyes flew open. The claustrophobic interior of a slender manaship loomed all around her. Rainbow Dash blinked. She looked to her left. Row upon row of metal weapons, crystal rods, armored plates swayed in the vessel's hold. Squinting, she next looked to her right. Teeth, tail bones, animal vertebrae, and countless other totems hung from a metal rack. Rainbow Dash's ears twitched alternatively. Her lips curled into an awkward grimace. She sat up on the slender metal bench that was her stool. "Uhhh..." A gulp ran down her throat. "Okay. Is it just me, or did I get buried inside a giant aluminum cigar?" The whole ship rocked, its entire contents rattling. "Yeah, screw this." Rainbow Dash jumped up and tried spreading her wings. A loud clanking noise emanated. "Huh?" Blinking, she looked down at her heavily armored body. "Whoah, what the frig?!" She tried rearing back, only to slam her exposed head into a ceiling crossbeam. "Augh! What the frig!" She stumbled forward, tripping over her collosal metal boots. "What the frig—What the frig?!" She fell and rolled over like a titanium pill bug, her body rattling from head to flank. "Careful!" a voice growled from the front, a voice even raspier than Rainbow's. "That's Grade-A Searonese Mana-Busting Shell Armor! And as righteous as that all sounds, it doesn't exactly fit you. I'd hate for there to be any damage from you stumbling around like a hydra with its eight balls cut off." "Unngh!" Rainbow Dash sat up, tossing her mane as she brandished a scathing frown. "You!" "Granted, I'm talking about preserving the armor," spoke a familiar figure, hunched over before a tiny cockpit with her ringlet'd mane draped over the seat's headrest. "You're damaged enough already." "After what I did for you?!" Rainbow Dash snarled and galloped murderously towards the seat. "Sparing your life and setting you—" Her blue muzzle flattened like a squished plunger as she slammed skull-first into a sparkling force-field. "—frig!" "I see your choice of words is as solid as your choice of tactics," Roarke muttered, her lensed eyes pistoning towards the array of glowing diodes before her. She pulled a lever and navigated around a billowing cluster of clouds from beyond the ship's speeding bow. "How you ever defeated me is a mystery only the Great Searo could solve." "Mmmmf... You wanna test your smelly fart of a god queen once more?!" Rainbow Dash snarled. "Lower your glowy fence thingy and come back here! We can have a round six!" "I doubt you can do much with the way you're hurting right now, girl." "Like hay, I can't!" Rainbow Dash stirred and writhed in her suffocating armor. "Everything's gone south! Crimson and Eagle Eye are screwed! The friggin' Ledomaritans have my friends! Shell's burning half the countryside and—owwwwwww..." She winced, a beam of agony shooting through her adorably cockeyed expression. "I'm really hurting right now." She flexed her left limbs. "What gives?" "You've suffered multiple fractures and lacerations to your left wing," Roarke grunted. "You're in no condition to kick any pony's butt. Besides..." She flung half-a-glance over her shoulder. "I'd just pummel you into a million rainbow pieces if we went at it again." "My wing..." Rainbow Dash hissed, rubbing her left side through the amor. "Is that why you got me wearing this ridiculous tin shell?" "No, saving your wing took some wicked tourinquet skills that I didn't even know I had. Heh..." Roarke's lips curved beneath her copper lenses. "It should keep your feathers from falling off." She tongued the inside of her brown cheeks. "Mostly..." "Huh?!" Rainbow Dash started to hyperventilate. "You... you patched me up?" She turned around. "H-how'd I even get in here? This whole time I was—" She did a double-take as her voice cracked. "My tail!" "Huh?" Rainbow Dash spun around, angrily wriggling her barren, armored flank. "What in the name of Celestia on a unicycle did you do to my friggin' tail?!" "Oh, right." Roarke droned. "I had to get rid of that." "You got rid of my tail?!" "Don't worry! It'll grow back!" Roarke turned more dials as she coasted along the crest of another cloud, blurring south. "Maybe it'll look even better this time!" "Yeah, but... but... but..." Rainbow Dash shook a hoof before pointing at herself. "My tail!" she squealed. "Look, it couldn't fit into the armor, and I had to patch you up quickly! I'm no Imre, after all." "Who... it... that... huh?!" Rainbow Dash did a double-take. "Who in the moldy fudge is Imre?!" "A pony who can do a job like that far better than I could, given the right payment," Roarke said. "Which is why we're going to go see her." Rainbow Dash squinted out the window from beyond the force field. "We're heading south..." She blinked, and her ears folded back angrily. "You're taking me to your home, aren't you?" "I really think you should sit your blue flank down about now." "You're just carting me across country like some hunted game!" Rainbow Dash's hoof slapped the bulkhead framing the force field. "The nerve!" "Nine hundred percent more attuned than the common mare or breeder," Roarke remarked. "Which is how I know that your heart race has increased and you're sweating profusely. Please don't—I hate it when my armor smells." "Enough of this crud! I am sooooo getting out of here!" Rainbow said, gazing all around the rattling hold. "I don't think so." "Screw you and this turd-ship you flew in on!" Rainbow Dash raspberried as she trotted across the chamber and started banging her hooves against the hull. "I've taken down timberwolves, dragons, and centipedes as big as your mom! I'm pretty sure I can rip open this lousy tin can from the inside!" She grunted and slammed the metal door from the inside. "Nnnngh! Doll me up like a blacksmith's wet dream—I've got friends to save!" "Unnngh..." Roarke made a bobbing motion with her head, as if she was rolling her eyes beneath her lenses. She flipped a brown switch to her left. "Nighty night." "Huh?!" Rainbow Dash frowned at the bounty hunter. "You kidding?! This is no time for sleep! I gotta—" Her nostrils flared as green mists seeped out of a vent and flew into her breathing passages. She smiled deliriously as her ruby eyes crossed. "Oooooooh—freckles!" She collapsed, her ruby pendant rattling around her limp throat. Roarke exhaled, then weathered a curve to her lips as she angled the vessel southeast, aiming towards a gray, hazy continent looming beyond the horizon. "Well, at least she's shut up." The cockpit roared from the thunderous sound of a lone pegasus' violent snoring. Roarke's ears drooped as she slumped in her seat. "Oh, Searo spare me..."