Rainbow Dash awoke after about ten hours of sleep. Her recent schedule had been a bit unusual for her, what with her spending most nights out terrorizing Ponyville. Sometimes she had to do things during the day, though, and she'd often end up sleeping whenever she had nothing to do for a few hours. Of course, she often did that anyway.
She lazily slid out of bed and checked the clock. It was just a little after ten-thirty PM. Yawning, she trotted downstairs to find Spike asleep on her sofa with a box of cookies in his lap. She prodded him with a hoof, asking, "Hey, you finish with my costume yet?"
"Huh?" Spike sat up a little, rubbing at his eyes. "Oh, uh, no."
"Why not?" She said, looking down at him with disapproval.
"Well, there really aren't any tools or anything here."
"Oh, right, that." She put a hoof to her chin, thinking about where she might be able to get some equipment. It wasn't like she was a construction worker or anything, so she didn't exactly know where one might find a hardware store in Ponyville. It didn't take long for an idea to hit her, though, and she smirked as it fermented in her mind. "Hang on, Spike, I'll go get us some tools." The dragon shrugged and reclined on the sofa again as Dash got back into her costume and went for the door.
A few minutes later, a quartet of costumed hooves landed softly on a wooden balcony. Dark Spectrum stepped forward, pushing aside a few leaves and reaching out toward the wide window built into the side of the old tree. She gave a gentle tug, checking to see if the window was locked before pulling it open wide and slipping silently into the Golden Oaks Library.
Apparently, she wasn't infamous enough to warrant the locking of windows just yet, and she felt a little disappointed as she scanned the interior, momentarily lifting her goggles to get a better view in the darkness. Aside from the soft light of the moon and stars drifting in from the windows, the room was without illumination. She leaned forward a bit, straining to hear any sounds, but none reached her. She was about to hop up and glide down the stairs, the library's basement laboratory in mind, when a thought popped into her head.
I'm right here in her house, and Twilight's fast asleep. She turned away from the staircase, her gaze drifting up toward the little loft that held the purple unicorn's bed. She was right there, completely unaware and vulnerable. What better time to take her revenge than now?
Spectrum hovered up to the loft as doubt clouded her mind. Attacking somepony in their sleep wasn't exactly fair, but neither was what those five did to her. Besides, since when did Dash ever care about the rules? She was a mare who made her own way and ignored anypony who told her otherwise. Although, she thought as she flapped her wings, holding steady next to the bed, it wouldn't make much of a statement to the townsponies if Twilight just went missing one night. Maybe I should wait....
Rainbow reached a hoof out, carefully peeling back a little bit of the sheet. To her surprise, however, the bed was empty. There were only a trio of pillows under the sheets.
"Huh?" she whispered, staring at the cushions. "Why would Twilight put pillows under...."
Rainbow whipped around, hooves up and ready to strike. She waited there, eyes narrowed and staring around at the silent walls of books, but nothing happened. No beams of magic came shooting out, no net fell down on her, no trap activated to ensnare her. After a few minutes, she finally shrugged and took off, headed to the library's main floor. Twilight always was a little weird. Maybe she was keeping pillows in her bed as an experiment or something. Dash didn't know, and didn't care so long as it wasn't a trap.
She made her way into the basement without any fuss, finding the rest of the building to be devoid of life as well. Pulling several sacks from her saddlebags, she swept a foreleg across a table, collecting most of the equipment present. She didn't really know what Spike would need, so she just filled her sacks with nearly everything in sight. She purposely avoided a few of the things there, like the bottles with skulls on them any anything labeled "volatile," but she took all of the tools she could find.
It didn't take too long to gather everything, since she had decided that being quiet wasn't an issue anymore. She was confronted with a different problem, though, when she realized that the five bags of miscellaneous tools and junk were pretty heavy. She could probably haul them all, sure, but it wouldn't be easy. Hauling her floating house had taken a long time, and she wasn't keen on repeating such an experience. She found herself pacing back and forth across the library's main floor, reminding herself of the house's occupant as she racked her brain for an idea.
After what felt like (and was approximately) five minutes, she came to a stop in the middle of the floor. Maybe she wasn't coming up with anything because she was pacing in the wrong pattern. Maybe she should be pacing in a circle instead of back and forth. She trotted to the edge of the room and started making her rounds, but she didn't get far before her hoof slid out from under her.
Lifting her aching chin from the floor, Dash reached out to see just what she'd stepped on. It was a letter, still sealed in a white envelope with a little stamp of wax. In fact, there was a sizable stack of such unread letters in one corner of the room. Rainbow tossed the letter aside, pulling her goggles back over her eyes and heading for the door. She had an idea.
It only took her about an hour of cloud hopping, staring down at buildings, and lamenting the fact that she didn't know anypony who delivered the mail before she figured out where the Ponyville Post Office was. It was the row of delivery carts that gave it away, which was precisely what she'd been looking for. Snatching one was a cake walk, since they weren't even secured to anything. All she had to do was slip into the harness, secure it around her body, and lift off. The enchanted mail cart lifted up behind her as though weightless, and she made a swift return to the library to load it with her loot bags.
Five bag-loadings later and she was off again, following the nearby river's secondary path through Everfree. She didn't see anyone, but she hoped that going through the dark forest would scare off anypony who might be following her. Of course, it didn't scare her.
After a few turns along the winding river and saying hello to that flamboyant river serpent, Ghastly Gorge came into view. Her cloudy home remained out of sight until she'd gone about halfway to the end of the gorge, and even then it hovered so low to the ground that one had to be right at the edge or flying above the gorge to see the house.
She couldn't fit the cart through her front door, but the front porch was made with a solid floor, so she just dumped the contents there. She stuck the stolen cart into the woods near the edge of the gorge before dragging the bags inside.
"There ya go, Spike," she said, tossing the sacks up and onto the dining table.
Spike slid off the couch like a dried-out slug and walked over to the table. His tired eyes took in the sight of the tools, and he blinked slowly. He stared at them, tilting his head and furrowing his brow for a few seconds. Then he just shrugged and turned to face Rainbow as she stared at him expectantly.
"This good enough?" she asked. Spike nodded, and she grinned. "Then let's get started."
Spike shrugged again and sat down in the chair she brought over for him, yawning as he did. Rainbow joined him after a few minutes spent in her kitchen, settling down on a floor pillow with a bowl of hard candies. To her surprise, Spike was already stripping away the handles from her kitchen knives. "Uh, shouldn't you be more careful with those?"
"Nah, I'll be fine," was his reply as he gripped the knives by their blades. "Dragon scales are pretty tough."
"Oh, cool. Sooooo, what're you gonna do?"
Spike took a moment to yawn before answering. "Well, you said you wanted them to be retractable, right? I think I can do that if I cut slots into the knives so that they can travel along a set of tracks that keep them straight. Then we'll need a way to keep them in place." He reached his claws into the bowl of candies. "Why exactly do you need these?"
"To cut my way out of nets and stuff. I need to be able to do it fast, too, so don't make them too hard to get out." She pulled her costume over, holding it up and pointing. "Also, I want them to be hidden inside the sleeves so nopony knows I have them. Can you do that?"
"Uh, I think so. I help Twilight in her lab all the time, so I think I can do it."
"Great!" Dash patted Spike on the head with a grin. "I think you're going to make an awesome little sidekick, Spike."
It took a lot of filing, drilling, and fiddling, but after an hour, Rainbow stepped away from the table with a metallic contraption lashed to her foreleg by fabric straps. It didn't look very cool, but most of it wasn't going to be seen anyway. The blade slid out into the open as she flicked her hoof, stopping with a click. She held it up, looking over the shiny steel blade before swinging it around a few times. She smirked, unlatching the little rubber nub that served as blade's lock and letting gravity slide it back into its base. When she put her hoof back to the floor, however, it slid right back out against the floor with a thunk.
Spike had a claw to his chin as Rainbow gave the contraption a dirty look. "Hmm.... I guess we need two locks, then," he commented.
Rainbow nodded in agreement. In their present state, they were likely to accidentally stab somepony. "Yeah, but don't make it too hard to get out. I need to be able to get 'em out fast, remember." Spike nodded and helped her remove the device strapped to her foreleg with his dexterous little claws.
The day dragged on as two continued working and testing their ever-improving invention, developing a retention system to keep it in as well as out. Rainbow quickly found herself getting bored, however, and trotted off to find something more fun to do. She would have liked to go out and cause more trouble around Ponyville, but she wouldn't feel very safe until she had an anti-net system in place on her suit. Plus, she figured she deserved a little break. She'd been pretty awesome for the last few days, after all.
Rainbow spent the next few hours napping, doing laps around the outside of her house, and practicing her evil laugh in front of her bathroom mirror, coming in to check on Spike's progress every once in a while. Finally, after asking seven times, Spike had something to say that wasn't a simple "nope."
"Finished!" Spike announced, holding up his creations with pride. They looked pretty far from cool, especially since they weren't totally identical.
Rainbow regarded them with a slightly-suspicious look. "Do they work?"
"See for yourself." Spike jogged over to Rainbow, fastening the devices to Rainbow's forelegs, just behind her fetlocks. He stepped back, and Rainbow stared down at her own hooves. She reached a foreleg up and waved it around, but nothing happened. She opened her mouth, but Spike cut her off. "There's a secondary latch that holds them in for safety. Do you see that little rubber thingy at the back? Push that up."
Rainbow reached across herself with each hoof, doing as Spike instructed. She could feel something disengage, and she reared up onto her hind hooves. She swung both forelegs through the air, blades sliding out and clicking into place. She glanced from one to the other, holding them up in front of her face with a wide grin. "Radical," she remarked. She unlocked the blades with her muzzle and retracted them using the little rubber nubs. "Awesome work, Spike. Now we just need to put them into my suit."
"Aww, it was nothing. And putting them in your suit will be easy." Spike yawned a little, leaning against the work table and propping his head up on one hand. "So, now what're you gonna do?"
Rainbow turned her eyes to a window. The sun was just starting to come up. "I'm gonna take a nap, actually. I do my work at night, after all."
Spike nodded. "Yeah, like Batmare."
"Yeah." Dash held a hoof to her chin for a moment, eyes moving to the ceiling. "Sorta. Anyway, I'm gonna hit the hay for the day. Try to get my suit done by sundown, okay?"
"You got it," Spike replied, giving her a salute.
Rainbow trotted for her bedroom, but stopped at the foot of the staircase. She turned back around. "And thanks, Spike."
"No problem, Rainbow."
Dash smiled and headed on upstairs, sliding into her bed for the day.
Rainbow slept throughout the day, only waking for a few minutes and then going back to sleep after checking the clock. She finally got up a few hours before the sun set, stretching herself out against her sheets and popping her spine a few times. With a yawn, she trotted back downstairs, finding Spike passed out on the sofa again and her suit laid on their work table.
She plucked up the suit, excitement clear in her eyes, and slid her body into it. The fit still wasn't perfect, and it felt weird having a lump pressing against each of her forelegs, but it wasn't bad. She stood in her dining room for a few minutes, extending and retracting her new blades with a smile. She reached back toward her flanks, wincing as she poked at the sensitive spot where her wings met her body, and practiced the motions for cutting herself free from a net. It probably would have been better with an actual net, though.
Rainbow flew outside briefly, cutting loose and retrieving the rope she'd forgotten she'd left attached to her house. She landed back in her dining room and went about the difficult process of tying up her own wings. The thought of asking Spike to tie her up entered her mind, but she decided against it. He was still asleep, after all.
Once she got her own wings tied up nicely, she popped out a knife. With a practiced reach backward, she slid the blade under the ropes and slashed herself free with ease. She didn't even cut herself this time, either.
Proud of her idea and her new skills, she ate breakfast with gusto and trotted for the front door a few minutes after darkness fell over Ponyville. She stopped before she could get there, however, turning as she heard her name being called. "Yeah, Spike?"
The dragon was peeking out from the living room, his eyes bright. "Can I come with you?" he asked.
Rainbow paused, thinking to herself. Her occupation was getting more dangerous, by the look of things, and she worried that he might get hurt if he came along. She also worried he might get in her way.
Rainbow was shaking her head and starting to speak when Spike cut her off. "Oh! Duh!" he said, slapping a clawed hand to his face. "I can't go out until my costume is finished! Well, be careful out there!" He waved her off as she sighed in relief and flew off toward Everfree.
* * * *
Rainbow pushed her hooves against the air compressing in front of her as she smashed through the sound barrier, giving Ponyville its fourth sonic boom of the night. Lights went on in the houses below, and she occasionally caught fragments of complaining ponies as she blasted past them, but there still hadn't been any attempt to stop her that night. She reached the south end of the city, slowing to a hover, and huffed in annoyance. Maybe she was being too subtle.
She backflipped into a dive and pulled up just a few feet from the ground. She aligned herself with 4th Street as she approached the city once again, this time much closer to the ground. She rocketed down the residential road, screams of panic and shattered glass in her wake as the shock wave rocked the houses on either side of her.
She turned, slowing down and sliding over the ground past the last few houses. She hovered there for a few minutes, waiting and listening. No sign of Mare Do Well or the police. She finally let out a groan and flapped her wings a bit harder, heading back into the sky. She thought for sure that the cops would—
"There she is!" Lights shone up from the ground at Spectrum, who picked up her pace as a grin found its way onto her face. About time. Alright, let's get—
The snare hit her before she could finish the thought, and soon she was headed for the street again. The police ponies were a bit faster this time around, it seemed. Spectrum rolled in the air, made a few quick slashes, shed the now-destroyed ropes around her, and recovered before she hit the ground. She didn't give the police ponies a chance to get a good look at her new gear before she took off again.
She rolled over, dropping down to swoop through an alley with a wicked smile. Her new equipment was working perfectly. Now the police had nothing they could stop her with.
She was corrected by Thunderlane diving down and tackling her to the ground. She growled as she kicked him off and against a wall. Perhaps she wasn't quite unstoppable. Yet.
Thunderlane lunged at her, and she instinctively struck out with a hoof. The stallion shouted out in pain and jumped back, blood seeping out of the hole in his shoulder. Rainbow glanced from the stallion to the blade still sticking out of her sleeve, and her blood turned to ice as she realized what she'd just done.
"Oh, crap, I didn't mean to... I forgot that—" Thunderlane cut off her sputtering with a sweeping kick to the ribs that sent Spectrum cartwheeling out of the alley.
Gotta remember to put these away after I use 'em, she thought as she quickly toggled the locks on her weapons. She punched her forehooves into the ground as she stood up, pushing the blades back in and locking them into place. Thunderlane was hovering out of the alley, one hoof pressed to his shoulder, and three more police pegasi were coming in over the rooftops.
Spectrum turned and took flight. She knew her new gear worked, so why stick around?
Wait, no, this wasn't about being a sinister supervillain with cool stuff, it was about drawing Mare Do Well out. What better way to do that than to best the police ponies and show the town that they really did need a hero to save them?
She stopped and turned back around, only to be blasted in the side with a stunbolt. She hadn't even seen the unicorn down there. She found her body assaulted with straw as she fell through a rooftop, found her ears assaulted with screaming as she landed in somepony's bed, and found her face assaulted with a pillow as the resident defended her bedroom from the invader. Spectrum tried to avoid the fluffy attacks, but her tinted goggles were making it difficult to see much in the unlit room.
A few seconds later, Spectrum shot up out of the hole she'd made in the thatched roof, spitting out pillow feathers. She barely had time to look around before she had to duck as another stunbolt shot past her. Three unicorns were galloping down a street, all of them sending bolts of yellow and blue magic her way. Light fell on her from above as the police pegasi closed in.
Spectrum dropped back into the bedroom below, hovering quietly above the wooden floor. The resident had run off after her brief pillow assault, and Spectrum flew out the bedroom door, trying to be as quiet as she could. She hovered through the dark house until she found her way to the back door. She braced herself momentarily, then sprang through the door to make a high speed escape. It had worked last time, so why not this time?
Spectrum slammed right into two police ponies, knocking all three of them down onto the well-trimmed backyard. She stood up and flared her wings, but another stunbolt sent her rolling back across the grass. She shook it off quickly, having gotten used to spinning out and crashing back in flight school, but the two Earth ponies piled on top of her. Spectrum grunted, standing up with both ponies clinging to her, and managed to buck one off before two pegasi joined the pile.
Spectrum was struggling to move as a police unicorn approached with a set of shackles. He was saying something to her, but she wasn't paying attention. If she could just get her wings free...
Dark Spectrum crouched low and then reared up, climbing up the unicorn with her forelegs until the pile of ponies tipped over and started to crumble. As soon as her wings were uncovered, she shot up into the sky. The city got one last sonic boom as she made her escape.
* * * *
Spectrum skipped the door and flew straight through a window to her bed. She pulled off her goggles and mask before lying down to take a rest. She was fairly certain she had collected a few bruises that night during her less-than-great field test of her blades, and she was ready for a little break.
This really wasn't working. Mare Do Well would never come out to stop her if the police could handle things. The cops were pushing her, so she would just have to push back harder. She was awesome, no doubt, but she needed something to overcome the numbers advantage the police had. A pair of knives wasn't going to do the trick, apparently.
She glanced down at her left hoof, flipping the lock off and sliding the blade out of her sleeve. There was still a bit of red stuck on the shiny metal, and Rainbow grimaced at the sight of it. She'd have to be a lot more careful with those things in the future.
At that moment of reflection, Spike came walking up the stairs. "Hey, Rainbow. How'd it go tonight?"
Dash quickly wiped the blood off her knife and onto her bed. She shook her head as she put the blade away, responding, "Not that great, really. I need to upgrade my suit some more, I think." She pulled her goggles from her neck and over her head. "Can you make my goggles better? Like, so I can see better?"
Spike hopped up onto the bed and picked up the red-tinted eye wear. "Ooh, you mean like night vision?"
"Uh, I meant they cut into my, uhh, peripheral vision and it's hard to see. But night vision would be awesome, too. Yeah, do that."
"Per... perifuh..."
Rainbow rolled her eyes, clarifying, "I can't see to the sides very well."
"Oh, right. Yeah, I'll see what I can do." Spike slid off the purple sheets and headed for the bedroom door. Rainbow followed after a moment.
Ten minutes later, Spike presented Rainbow with his new design for her suit. She responded with disgust, pointing a hoof at the bug-like goggles he'd drawn. "What the heck is that?"
"That's my new design for your goggles. They're bigger so you can see more," Spike explained cheerily.
"But they make me look like a bug monster!"
"Well," Spike said slowly, twiddling his claws, "the goggles have to be bigger if you want to see more."
Rainbow groaned, "Forget it. Just do the night vision thing so I can see in the dark and stuff."
Spike continued to twiddle his claws. "Um, I actually can't do that. I'll have to get Twilight to enchant them for you. I should probably be getting back home, actually. Twilight's probably wondering where I am right now. She usually re-shelves the books about this time of the month, and she'll want my help."
Rainbow was about to make a remark about where Twilight could shove her precious books, but she was suddenly struck with an idea. "Yes. Yes, go home to Twilight. Go home and help her with her books. Then, when you're done, you can come back here and work on my suit."
Rainbow pulled her mask back on. "I'm gonna have to drop you off just outside of Ponyville, though, okay?"
Spike nodded with a shrug. "Yeah, sure, I know the way home."
An hour later and Rainbow was back home. She elected not to have Spike ask Twilight to enchant her goggles. Twilight might recognize who the goggles belonged to and curse them or something. Rainbow felt it was best not to chance it.
She pulled a bit of dark fluff from one of the clouds she'd grabbed on the way back, stuffing the cloud matter into a little glass bottle. Even with her extensive knowledge of weather and clouds, it had taken her a little while to get the cloud's consistency just right. She had to struggle a bit to cork the bottle, but then she secured it in the shoddy little pouch she'd sewn to her suit and was out the door.
She stood at the bottom of the gorge she'd come to call her home, ready to test her invention. She was rather proud of the idea, though she still needed to make sure it worked properly. With a kick of her rear leg, she popped the bottle out of its pouch and caught in on a forehoof. She jumped back onto her hind legs, holding the bottle up. She took in a breath before announcing, "Today's forecast: a one-hundred percent chance of fog!" She threw the glass container down against the rocky ground, shattering it.
The heavily-compressed cloud matter spewed out, surrounding her with a dense fog. She held up her hoof, waving it right in front of her face, but she couldn't see more than a few inches. Rainbow trotted in the cloud for a little while, testing to make sure she'd mixed it well-enough for her to move freely enough. She smiled, pleased at how well her deployable concealment worked, and started gathering up the fog and compressing it once again.
The rest of her day was spent sewing some fabric padding into the body of her suit. Her costume was cool, but it didn't really provide any protection. Maybe she should ask Spike to see if he could armor it when he got back. Hopefully, he'd also have information about what Twilight and the others were doing in her absence.
She paused a moment, thinking about Spike and how quickly he had agreed to help her. He never struck her as being the type who would want to be a supervillain's sidekick. He had always been so nice.
He was a dragon, though, and she hadn't ever heard that dragons were very nice. Maybe there was a monster buried inside Spike, just waiting to come out. Maybe one day he'd snap and wreak havoc on Ponyville.
Nah, that probably wasn't gonna happen.