“-And remember, you don’t have to stop them. If you just stall them long enough, I’ll deal with this as soon as I’m done with the airforce,” Rainbow Dash said. With that, she stopped hovering over the hilltop and darted into the open sky. Fluttershy said something too quietly for Dash to make out as she flew away, but time was of the essence, so the ace flyer continued onward and upward without missing a wing beat.
With one last look back, Rainbow gave a confident smile to the yellow pegasus-bot still on the hill below. Then she glanced ten hills away, to the advancing column of tanks and gauging their speed, Rainbow Dash figured she had about an hour before any of the really big guns could get line of sight on their new home.
Pointing herself to the northeast, Dash turned her attention inward for a second to open up her flight systems menu. “Time to see if they made me awesome enough,” she said as she activated her high-speed flight mode.
Small slots Dash’s sides opened up just below the base of her wings and each produced a small cylinder. Why would they put anything there? Rainbow Dash thought, as she adapted the way she was flapping her wings to accommodate the minor obstructions. Then the extra thrusters turned on and the sheer force of the execration made her stop flapping her wings all together. Ah, that’s why, she thought, as she shifted to using her wings only for control.
A smile crept its way onto her face as she watched the air speed indicator in her heads up display tick upward, rapidly approaching the speed of sound. As quickly as it came, the smile became a frown. Rainbow Dash had heard the shift in the roar of the wind around her, the air speed indicator confirmed she’d past the sound barrier and a quick glance behind her confirmed the lack of a prismatic shockwave and radiant flare of light.
With a disappointed sigh, Rainbow Dash turned her gaze to the building haze on the eastern horizon, knowing that the haze wasn’t made of water vapor, but a large group of enemy air units.
Even at supersonic speeds, it took a few minutes to intercept the enemy aerial armada. As she approached Dash found the small robots, flying along side the larger aircraft, to be a mix of large mechanized hawks and owls.
Once she reached the armada, Rainbow Dash announced her arrival by firing a fully charge blast from her ion cannon, cutting a gap through the leading formation. Rushing into the gap made by her beam of lightning, Dash flew into the middle of the lead group and activated her magic weapon system. For a split second the thrust from her hooves cut out, and even the blue crystal lenses that belong to her armor’s integrated shields glowed wildly as lightning shot out of the pegasus-bot in all directions, striking every enemy flyer within fifty yards.
Rainbow shook her head slightly as she saw one seventh of her weapons energy was gone, and yet she didn’t mind that her magic weapons system could only store had seven shots worth of energy. She knew from the get go that it was overkill to use it on small fry targets like these, but she didn’t have time to play nice.
Snatching a power cell falling among the debris, Dash drained the power from it and frowned. Her frown had nothing to do with the fact that the power cell didn’t have enough energy to replace what she’d used. Instead she couldn’t help but notice the fields of debris already on the ground below. Not that she needed it to know where she was, nor did she need to see the ruins of Canterlot or Ponyville in the distance. The rolling hills below were familiar enough by themselves for the ace flyer to know that Cloudsdale should be around her, but there was no trace in the sky of the cloud city that was once the pride of pegasus cites. And that thought did nothing to help Rainbow’s trigger discipline.
Reaching the first true aircraft Dash shut off her thrusters and galloped along the top of it. The shields of the craft crackled in her wake as she ducked and dodged her way across the craft, causing the enemy shots meant for her to hit it instead. She leapt off the back of the craft and it exploded as she opened her wings and once more took flight, having never fired a single shot at it.
Token victory as it was, it was enough to get the enemy robots to stop firing on the robo-pegasus the next time she ran across one of their aircraft. Although some did try swooping in low or even landing on the aircraft themselves, so they could shoot at Rainbow Dash without having their own craft as the backdrop if they missed. But those that got in Dash’s way quickly met their fate at the end of her ion cannon.
As Rainbow neared the middle of the armada, a large craft that she could only describe as a balloon-less airship dared to be in he way. (Not that it had changed course since she’s started shooting her way through the armada.) And as she drew near the airship a hatch near the front opened up, revealing two mechanized gorillas armed with bazooka-like beam cannons. The one on the right exploded as it discovered that Dash’s ion cannon was already fully charged. Not having time to charge her cannon a second time, Dash settled for a few quick shots that only made the remaining gorilla-bot’s armor crackle with electricity. Then she dodged the return fire and slammed into the gorilla hooves first, smashing through the unfortunate robot. Although the impact defeated her foe, it also cost Rainbow some of her shield’s energy too.
A brief glance over her shoulder tempted Rainbow Dash to turn around go back out, into the open sky, but she felt too in the zone. And the zone said forward was the only direction worth considering, so she continued down the corridor before her.
Fighting her way down the corridor, Rainbow Dash found it lined with spikes and filled with floating platforms, that were usually occupied with enemy robots all too eager to take a shot at her. Reaching the end of the corridor she found herself before an armored door, that oddly enough was unlocked and slid open for her the moment she pushed a glowing panel next to it.
Inside Dash found a plain room, though the ceiling and far wall had odd sets of tracks on them. A grove halfway up the far wall showed that it was built to open up. The most dominant feature of the far wall was the red crystal lens of a giant robotic eye built into the middle of the wall.
The eye looked at Rainbow Dash, then two lenses came out onto the tracks, one on the wall, one on the ceiling. The two new lenses, built unmistakably like beam-cannons, glowed brightly, and at the same time the walls and floor of the room shimmered with the light of shielding spells and armored eyelids closed over the wall’s eye.
With the memory of Pinkie’s awakening flashing in the back of her mind, Rainbow leapt out of the way as the beam cannons fired, dodging one shout outright. Yet, being skimmed by the other managed to drain a noticeable chunk of her shield reserves.
The armor opened and they eyes looked around. As the beam cannons repositioned, Rainbow Dash returned fire, causing the eye to close up and fire its cannons blind. The extra second allowed Rainbow to dodge both shots, while charging up her cannon. The second the wall’s eye opened to retarget, Dash let the beam of her ion-cannon flash, striking the eye and drawing the electric shimmer of shield damage.
Repeating the cycle of dodging and counterattacking a few more times finally got the shields on the eye to shatter and explode. The resulting chain of explosions destroyed the two beam-cannon lenses and even caused the lower half of the armored wall to fall into the floor, opening the path for Rainbow Dash.
In the next room, Rainbow grinned as she found shelves full of spare power cells. After quickly topping off her weapons and shields reserves, she opened the maintenance door she found at the back of that room. A quick trot down a catwalk and between two engines brought Dash to a hatch that opened up to the sky. After taking a second to blast one of the engines until it cut out, she leapt out and took to the sky, with her sights set on the largest of the balloon-less airships.
Flying in the gaps between airships found Rainbow Dash dodging and weaving her way through more energy bullets then she thought could fit in the sky. Yet a chain of rolls, spins, and loop-d-loops worthy of a stunt show got her to the airship she figured was the best candidate for the command ship relatively unscathed.
Landing hard, Rainbow rolled and rebounded immediately into a gallop across the deck of the command airship. Reaching the command airship cut off most of the incoming weapons fire, leaving Dash to contend only with some smaller turrets and the robotic hawks and owls as she ran toward the raised potion near the back of the airship, that looked like a control tower.
Shrapnel rained down on the hallway as Dash lowered her ion cannon from where the two guards just inside the base of the tower had been. Glancing to the left she spotted a set of arrows, pointing the way to various parts of the ship. Although the only one that she paid any attention to was the one pointing up the adjacent stairwell that said ‘Command Deck.’
The lock on the command deck door exploded in an electric fury and with a powerful buck, the door came flying open with a resounding clang, threatening to come off of its hinges. Raising a metallic talon to her equally metallic forehead, the robot griffin staring out the window said, “You know, it wasn’t locked.”
“I was told that when I take you down this whole armada will come crashing out of the sky. So forgive me if I don’t see the point in crying over a scraped lock,” Rainbow Dash responded.
“True, but that’s awfully presumptuous of you to assume you’re going to beat me.”
With the soft flap of her wings to help support her body, Rainbow stood up on her hind legs, showing the ion cannons in her front hooves. Before the griffin could react, every exposed shield, thruster and blaster lens flared to life as Dash fired her magic weapon system.
Lightning filled the room. Computer monitors, dials, lights and other gizmos started exploding randomly. However, the flashing electricity of damaged shields around the robotic griffin only seemed to anger her, as she lunged forward and harshly grabbed the robo-pegasus in her talons. “Stop breaking my stuff!” she shouted, as she flung Rainbow Dash out the nearest window.
Having neglected to open said window, it shattered as Dash plunged through it head first, now sharing the electric shimmer as her shields did their best to resist the impact. A second later the griffin leapt out of the new hole in the window, into the sky beyond. Both Dash and the griffin opened their wings and the battle truly began.
Just below the base of her wings, the griffin’s sides opened up and four lance-like objects came out, two on each side. The objects glowed for a moment before sending out four quick shots that looked like small rods of lightning, although the shots were at best supersonic, a snails pace by lightning’s standards.
Opening the compartment just below the base of her own wings, Rainbow Dash activated her flight boosters and took off like a rocket. Once she was up to speed she had little trouble dodging the griffin’s weapon-fire. As long as Dash kept her distance anyway.
With no good means of attack, Rainbow Dash settled for making use of her superior speed, and made jousting attacks at the robotic griffin, setting off her special weapon in the split second she was in range, as she flew by. Much to Rainbow’s dismay, she ran out of weapons energy and the griffin was still flying and fighting back.
With Fluttershy waiting for her and an entire battalion of tanks not waiting for her, Dash didn’t have time for a drawn out fight. Soaring high and away, she muttered to herself, “No. My friends and everypony are depending on me! I won’t leave them hanging!”
Far below the pegasus, but well above the armada, the robo-griffin muttered to herself as well. “You’re going awfully high this time… You’re not running away are you?”
“Oh, there we go. I wonder what way you are going to dodge this time,” she added as she saw the speck of a pegasus above her finally turn around and start diving back down. Readying her wings and charging her cannons, the griffin got ready to make her guess and try to put ion-cannon fire in the path of her foe.
High above, Rainbow Dash dove hard, using all of her thrusters except the two that doubled as ion cannons in her front legs to power even faster into the dive. Somewhere in the back of her mind, the computer part of her brain was screaming that this plan only had a 25% chance of success. Somewhere else in the back of her mind a calm voice whispered, without even the slightest hint of doubt, ‘This will work.’
Dash passed mach one, then mach two. Then, as she passed mach three, her confidence was rattled by what she first thought was a visual glitch in her systems. An unexpected flash blinded her for a millisecond, and for a moment she could have sworn she saw fur on her front legs stretched out before her. Then the moment ended.
Below, the griffin snarled as her rival gave no indication of what way she was going to dodge to avoid impact. Taking a blind guess the mechanized griffin turned her lightning guns to the left and fired. At that same moment the sky around her enemy erupted in light, a shockwave of prismatic light tore across the sky, framing the diving pegasus-bot perfectly, and the griffin muttered, “You wouldn’t!”
There was no dodge.
Slamming into the robo-griffin at more than three times the speed of sound Rainbow Dash noticed the prismatic shockwave’s reflection on her rival’s eyes/cameras. Tossing a quick glance over her shoulder Dash confirmed the sight was a sonic rainboom and grinned, thinking to herself, That’s more like it. And then, with the griffin pinned to her front hooves by sheer speed and air friction, the two smashed into the command airship, punching through the armored hull as if it were paper.
A fraction of a second later and the two robots came plummeting out of the bottom of the command ship, sending it falling to its doom.
With a glance at the rapidly approaching ground, the griffin’s eyes widened. “Your crazy! Hitting the ground at this speed would destroy us both!”
Despite the countless warnings flashing in her heads up display that agreed with the griffin’s assessment, Dash said, “No, just you.”
The moment of truth came less then a second latter, as the two slammed into the ground with the force of a small meteor, creating and explosion the size of a large building and sending a plum of dust and dirt over a hundred feet into the air.
As the dust cleared, Rainbow Dash stood alone in the center of a debris-strewn crater about the size of the average barn. Her robotic eyes were unfocused, oblivious to the armada high above that had suddenly taken to swan diving into the surrounding countryside.
In Rainbow’s field of view, her attention was on the mass of numbers and figures surrounding a wire-frame image of herself that had popped up as soon as she had landed. At the conclusion of the data flashing in front of her, Dash’s display flashed the words ‘Upgrade Invented.’ With that her weapons menu opened, and she saw a new magic weapon system called, ‘Meteor Strike’ listed.
The last item within her display that drew her attention were the readings coming from her energy bars. Namely that they were reporting her weapons and shields reserves were at 100% when neither should be true.
Pulling an image from her recent memory, Rainbow Dash looked down at her front legs and beheld the dirt stained metal armor that passed for her skin now. “I could have sworn I saw fur…” she muttered. “Must have been a glitch…” Then looking at the sonic rainboom racing across the sky above she added, “Or was it?”
Shaking the thoughts from her head, Rainbow opened her wings, fired up her thrusters and took to the sky. She could sort out data errors later, right now she was needed elsewhere.