Rainbow Dash's head shot up out of the water, gasping for breath. Her armor rattled soggily as she frantically glanced left and right across the cavernous hollow where she had suddenly found herself in.
In the distance, the sound of Tweak and Imre's firefight continued, stabbing at the pegasus' ears. She looked every which way, but couldn't find the exit... or a sign of her foe.
“Where in Celestia's name...?!” She looked everywhere with panting breath. Seething, she galloped forward, trying to find an exit or some other way back to the aqueducts that had stretched overhead before. All she found was a widely stretching wall of curved earth and stacked granite.
Rainbow Dash paused, squinting at the tall wall looming above her.
The pony's shadows were dancing wildly from some ethereal light source. Suddenly, her shadows shrank with wicked speed. She heard several splashes.
Rainbow Dash spun around.
Shell was charging her with a glowing horn. “Nnnnngh!” The air between them exploded with violent telekinesis.
“Aaagh!” Rainbow Dash flew back, slamming hard against the wall. Before she could fly away, Shell slid up to her, planting his hooves hard into the muck from the distance of six meters. He thrusted his horn forward, pummeling the mare with a wide, swirling vortex of vaporous magical energy.
Rainbow hissed for breath as she was planted hard against the granite behind her. The pony's limbs stretched out and her armor buckled from the steady, pressing punishment.
Shell hissed, covered in sweat and filth as he forced the telekinetic waves harder and harder against her. “I have spent fortunes... wasted ammunition... and lost the lives of countless stallions... all to put you back in your cage.” He spat through a snarling muzzle. “And all you can think about is two measly traitors to the Confederacy?!”
Rainbow struggled to whimper, “H-has anypony t-told you that you're ugly when y-you're angry?!” She was answered with a heavier press of the telekinesis. The wall behind her cracked while many similar fractures formed in her armor, causing her flesh and muscles to twitch in pain.
“There is nothing here that belongs to you!” Shell shouted. “You weren't born here! You never had a reason to sign off your fealty to the continent in blood! You're an alien, a splinter, a disease and a pest!” His horn glowed brighter as he stabbed a knife of telekinesis towards the middle of her pendant. “For once, I am going to drive out whatever equine spirit dwells inside of you. If all that remains of the experiment is a husk, at least it'll be one that obeys Ledo—!”
A lavender figure blurred in, stabbing hard into Shell's flank with a pair of sparkling tasers.
“Aaaaaugh!” Shell yelled to the ceiling. His horn flickered, and the telekinetic cloud between him and Rainbow Dash exploded. Water splashed a hundred feet high while chunks of granite flew left and right. Rainbow Dash slumped forward in the sloshing currents while Shell hobbled backwards, his uniform sizzling from head to hooves.
Eagle Eye, panting, twirled both tasers with a grunt and prepared to stab again. A veritable whip of telekinesis spun three times around his neck. His violet eyes widened, tearing, as he was lifted up in an angry grip.
Shell stared up at him, his one eye wider than a harvest moon. Blood dribbled coldly down the scar on the other side of his face. “I don't know who you think you are, but you've just cost yourself your skin.” He twirled one of the two tasers around and began a deep incision to the right of Eagle Eye's chest.
The stallion squealed in pain, thrashing his neck back.
Rainbow Dash's face flew up. With a single burst of thrusters, she gritted her teeth and shot across the arena, her hooves boiling the water underneath. She came up from beneath Shell with a rising uppercut.
The stallion flew back in a spray of water and blood. Eagle Eye slumped backwards from the exchange, but Rainbow Dash wasn't done. She jumped up, grabbed Shell's body in two hooves, spun six times, and flung the enforcer mercilessly into the wall, where an impression had been made where he was previously torturing her.
He slumped down, shuddering all over. A bright crack had formed in his mana-powered cast, and he winced from it as he tried to stand up—
“Haaaaaugh!” Rainbow Dash flew into him with a massive drop kick. The air vaporously exploded around them from the impact. Time slowed down, all the while Rainbow's lower hooves shoved Shell through the breaking brick like a hammer would drive a nail through a wall. His cast shattered completely, and as the structure behind him gave way, it exposed a body of water beyond. Soon, a gasping and sputtering Shell was shoved into the cavity of a water main behind him. A deluge exploded past his flailing limbs, rocketing into the cavern until it overtook Rainbow Dash herself.
Time resumed, slamming into her along with the monsoon of liquid. Rainbow Dash flailed, spinning several times over in her water-logged armor. She nevertheless found her balance and rocketed towards the top of the flood, which was rising rapidly with each passing second. Panting, she looked all around, her ruby eyes squinting into the depths. She saw a hint of lavender. Taking a deep, deep breath, she dove down into the depths.
Five seconds passed. Ten...
With a splash, Rainbow Dash lifted up out of the pool with a soaked stallion in her grasp. She hovered up and landed on a dry ledge, dangling the petite pony in her grasp.
“No freakin' way...!” She stammered. “Eagle Eye?! EE!”
“Unnngh...” He coughed and spat up water.
She shook him. “Say something! Talk to me!”
He looked up at her with a sad face. “I sm-smell horrible...”
“Ha! Kickflank! It totally is you!” She gave him a vicious side hug, ruffling his silken mane with the other hoof. “Way to drop in out of friggin' nowhere and save my skin, pal!”
“Ow ow ow ow ow...” He winced. “Your armor's poking me.”
“Seriously, though...” She planted him down in front of her. “How'd the hay did you get here?! I thought you were dead!”
“If 'dead' counts as 'being attached to the hip of a big, fat, slobbering oaf with a golden heart,' then sure.”
“Buh?”
“Never mind,” Eagle Eye muttered, wincing from the bloody laceration below his shoulder. “Ungh... it's a long story.” He gulped and looked up at her. “What was that ship I saw above the heights of Blue Nova earlier? Is Roarke here?”
“Yes, she's with Crimson, distracting the baddies while the rest of us—”
“Crimson?!” Eagle Eye's body leaned forward at a forty-five degree angle, weighted by a painfully grinning face. “He's alive?!” he gasped. His eyes instantly welled up with tears. “Oh blessed blessed blessed blessed Spark!” He sniffled and smiled deliriously. “That's so amazing and wonderful and spectacular and—Whoah!” His body slipped away from the rising waters lapping over the surface of the platform.
Rainbow Dash hovered up and grabbed him before the drink could sweep them away. “Erm... let's save the tears of joy for later. We gotta rendezvous with Tweak and Imre in the upper part of the sewer.”
“Uhm...” Eagle squirmed in her grasp as they flew around, looking for an exit. “Who and who, now?”
“You're not the only pony with a long story. Here!” Rainbow Dash shot them towards an exit before the rising waters could drown them inside. “This way!”
Eagle Eye cast a nervous glance back. “I don't suppose that creep is really dead, huh?”
Rainbow grumbled, “The world should be so lucky...”
And together, they were gone.