The Awesome Spider-Dash: Origins

by Flufux

5) Face the Nightmare, Part 2 (real one!)

Episode 5
Face the Nightmare, Part 2
A Clash of Spiders and Goblins!

"No!"

That was all she said.

A simple, short, two-letter declaration of decline. A word uttered so often that you barely even think about it when you use it. That one simple word was all Rainbow Dash had to say to the Nightmare Goblin's face when the masked villain made her ultimatum.

In spite of the fact that the Goblin literally held Sunset Shimmer's life in her gloved hand, and could drop the innocent girl to her imminent demise at a moment's notice...the Spider-Girl was not giving in to her demands.

Not now, not ever.

A more pragmatic or careful hero, who used their mind to strategically think through every possible outcome of such a scenario, would probably not have made such a decision, and would far more likely accept that there was nothing they could do and give up.

...But that did not apply to Rainbow Dash.

Unlike Twilight (or even Celestia at times), Rainbow's decisions were never made from cold hard logic. As a woman of swift immediate action rather than thinking things through, Dash always let her feelings have the final say on the matter...and complying to a crazy terrorist's demands at a time like this, it, to put it simply...just didn't feel right.

While she had no evidence to base it on, she knew she could save Sunset's life...and she knew that she could do it without giving in. Despite everything saying otherwise, she just knew it.

...And the reason she knew it was simply because she really didn't have any other choice.

There just had to be a way...and as long as she knew that that was the case, the more likely she would actually find it.

In hindsight, Rainbow probably also knew that she was acting recklessly by gambling with an innocent person's life, but the alternative was not something she could ever, would ever, choose, not even if her own life depended on it...which, in this case, it might as well be.

At the very least her decision did leave everyone around her, especially the Nightmare Goblin, very confused...and now they were all staring at her, hoping for the masked hero to give some semblance of reason to her madness.

"What did you just say?!" the Goblin questioned, sounding somewhat insulted over the fact that this obnoxious girl had the sheer audacity to say no to her face.

Celestia gave her a sideways glance, herself looking very lost over what the younger superhero was doing...and probably debating with herself internally on whether she should trust the Spider-Girl's judgement on this or not.

Twilight Sparkle on the other hand stared at her as if she'd suddenly grown a second head. "What are you doing!?" she asked somewhat hysterically.

Rainbow held up a hand to silence her, but kept her eyes firmly on the Goblin.

"I said no," Spider-Girl repeated, still sounding as uncompromising and defiant as the last time she said it.

Thoroughly baffled, Nightmare paused for a second...then she reiterated, "I don't know if I made myself clear...if you don't comply, I will kill this girl. She will die a horrible, gruesome death...she will be nothing but a gory mess of blood and broken bones on the sidewalk, she will never live to see her nineteenth birthday...and it will be all...your...fault," she explained as menacingly as she could manage, hoping that the message would come across this time.

However...to everyone's continued surprise, Rainbow Dash instead just casually crossed her arms and replied with, "Then what're you waiting for?"

The Goblin's eye twitched, "...what?"

Taking a few calm steps across the extended crane arm to get closer to her, Spider-Girl simply remarked, "Threats are only good if you go through with them, right? So go ahead, do it. At least then we know you're serious."

"Um, excuse me. This is my life we're talking about here!" Sunset reminded, feeling very disturbed over what this so-called-superhero was deciding for her. "...And I really don't want to die, thank you very much!"

"Err...Spider-Girl, was it? I don't think she's bluffing," Celestia quietly cautioned.

The Goblin was quick to reinforce that point by adding, "Oh, I'm definitively not bluffing. I'll toss this little daisy down to her death in a heartbeat!"

"Could've fooled me," Rainbow chipperly noted in a tone that gave everyone the impression that she was hiding a massive smirk under her mask. "I mean, it's pretty clear you haven't got any balls to begin with, what with this whole half-assed hostage plan you're trying to pull instead of, oh I dunno...literally anything else! Seriously, what're ya gonna do next? Stroke a cat, twirl a stupid-looking moustache and then lower her into a pool of piranhas?!"

"Oh you're one to talk!" she spat back, giving the Spider-Girl a very peeved glare. "You call that blue spandex fashion disaster a costume?! I disguise myself with the face of the nightmares of old to inspire irrational fear in my enemies. You? You look like a Teletubby on diet pills with bug eyes! How could that possibly inspire trust or intimidation? All you're telegraphing is that you're exactly the kind of lost child with a hopeless hero complex I took you for!"

"Ooooooh, what an insult," Rainbow noted sarcastically while briefly putting her hands on her cheeks to slightly emulate the famous 'scream' painting by Edvard Munch, still leaving everyone else completely blindsided by her petulant attitude in such a dire situation. "Let me know when you got something creative to call me, troll-face."

"That wasn't even remotely creative!" Nightmare shot back.

"Still more creative than your evil plan!"

Now practically seething with rage, the Nightmare Goblin drew her blade from its scabbard and snapped, "ALRIGHT, LAST CHANCE! Take off that ridiculous thing you call a mask or I will kill Sunset and you! In fact, I think I will blow up the whole roof if you refuse this time!"

"Spider-Girl..." Celestia warned in a low tone, not really liking where this was going.

Twilight, despite still being stuck in a cocoon, managed to angle herself to sit slightly more upright to better see what was going on, and from that position give Rainbow a concerned look as she pleaded, "Please, Spider-Girl...think about what you're doing. She's my friend. I can't bear to lose her, not like this."

Sunset herself was staring at the Spider-Girl with her teeth clenched and her eyes locked and unblinking. At this point, she knew her life depended on what this costumed stranger would do or say next, and given what she had said and done already...she had every reason in the world to be worried.

Rainbow did indeed most certainly hear their pleas, and she well understood the risks she were undertaking right at this moment...but at the same time, she knew, she just knew...that she could pull this off.

Internally, she told herself, 'Okay, Spider-Dash...you got this, you got this,'...but externally...she instead simply uttered...

"Bring it on...bitch!"

That one simple line of continued defiance was just enough to pass the final threshold on what little remained of the Nightmare Goblin's patience and sanity.

Sure, Luna could be clever and charismatic when she was in her Goblin persona...but at its core, that whole personality was still just an unstable mess of her repressed urges and dark thoughts, and, as such, couldn't even attempt to remain rational and levelheaded when faced with such an infuriating annoyance as the Spider-Girl.

However, when that murderous rage finally did hit its peak and took complete control of her actions...it did not manifest in a screaming exclamation of aggression...but was instead cold, understated and left with nothing even resembling empathy or mercy in the Goblin's inhuman eyes.

"Fine...have it your way," she said while taking a firm grip on her sword and activated its electrical properties.

Then...she reached the hand holding onto Sunset Shimmer's cocoon as far outwards as she could...and then let go of it, sending the teenager plummeting to the streets below.

Unfortunately for the villain, that was just what Spider-Girl had been waiting for. Provoking her was just a way to make her mad enough to take the bait.

In a remarkable show of speed, Rainbow instantly leapt up like a coiled spring straight up into the air in the Goblin's direction, not giving her opponent even a second to react before she was right up in her face.

On instinct, Nightmare defensively slashed her sword in a wide arc when she came too close. Though in her haste, she lacked the precision she would need to score a killing blow, and, as such, only managed to chop off the tip of one of Spider-Girl's red bolt-looking things around her eyes (the one around her left eye to be specific).

However, since the material those were made of wasn't all that conductive, plus the fact that she only touched it for less than a second, Rainbow barely felt the ensuing bolt that connecting with that sword would normally give her.

Though once the Spider-Girl had actually managed to get past the her enemy's defences and was in a prime position to deal a crippling blow with a well aimed punch or kick to the Goblin's exposed side...she instead reached out for something on her right wrist and flew straight past her as soon as she grabbed it.

Confused by the seemingly faint attack, Nightmare quickly looked down at her lower arm to see what her foe was after...and immediately noticed that one of the web-shooters she had nicked from the hero was now missing.

And as Dash had leapt straight out into the open air to reach the flying villain as quickly as she possibly could and made no attempt to latch on to either her or her glider, Rainbow soon found herself once again falling straight down to her inevitable doom just like Sunset was currently doing...or at least she would have if she hadn't just reclaimed one of her nifty little web-shooting devices in the split second she was close enough to the Goblin to do so.

Strapping the object to her right wrist as quickly as she could, she started looking for the falling Sunset Shimmer and soon enough spotted her just a bit below her own position...now having lost all her cool and was screaming in terror as she spun around wildly in the wind.

After her eyes set firmly on the falling person, Rainbow straightened out her body as much as she could and bent herself at such an angle that she was flying straight towards her and at a much greater speed than Sunset herself was descending at.

It was a technique skydivers often used to build momentum while high up in the air. Good thing that Rainbow Dash just so happened to have a vested interest in skydiving and was raised by a former fighter pilot. Responsibility wasn't the only thing Firefly taught her.

And when she finally reached Sunset's tumbling cocoon, Dash immediately put her left arm around her and held the panicking woman as tight as she could, then aimed her right arm (specifically the one that now had a web-shooter strapped to it) towards the wall of the nearby CelestiaCorp Tower and anchored herself to it with a sling of webbing, stopping both of their descents with a single move.

The stretchy elastic nature of the silk Spider-Girl was using in her web-shooters also made the sudden stop relatively smooth and pleasant given how fast they were falling, kinda like how a bungee line works...and as such, saved them from any kind of sudden whiplash that would otherwise be just as deadly as hitting the ground.

However...that did not save Rainbow from the sudden painful impact of slamming her shoulder into a window when her saving throw pulled her towards the side of the building, drawing a quick "Ouch!" out of her when that happened. Luckily, Sunset was facing the other way, so she was perfectly fine...at least physically.

Mentally on the other hand...she was, to put it simply...a complete mess right now, as you could probably tell by the wide-eyed panicked expression she displayed on her now remarkably pale face. She was also sweating, breathing heavily, trembled a bit...and she may also have to change her underwear when this was done.

At the very least she'd stopped screaming.

Keeping her left arm tightly around Sunset's abdomen with all the strength she could muster while the other held onto the web-line that was keeping them hanging, Rainbow Dash looked around a bit to see where they had ended up, then let out a breath she didn't realise she'd been holding and allowed herself to smile under her mask for a moment as she realised that her admittedly reckless plan actually worked.

"See? Hehe, knew I could catch you in time," Spider-Girl cockily boasted, sounding rather proud of herself...or maybe that was just the adrenaline talking.

Sunset slowly and dramatically turned her head around to look her costumed 'saviour' in the eye with an expression that made it look as if she was literally about to commit murder. "Are...you...fucking KIDDING ME!?" she shouted with enough rage in her voice to turn her face from pale as a sheet to beet red in an instant. "WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING?!"

Taken aback a bit by that rather...'emotional' response...Dash stuttered nervously a bit before she eventually replied with, "Uhh...well...it worked, didn't it?"

Sunset responded to that not with words...but instead with a simple twitch of her right eye.

---

Up above, Celestia ran forth and leaned over the edge of the roof to see what was going on down there, then let out a relieved sigh as soon as she saw that Sunset and the Spider-Girl had actually survived.

Though when the Nightmare Goblin too leaned over the side of her glider to see what was happening, her reaction was anything but relief. With a growl, she cursed, "Oh, for goodness sake!"

Turning her head back up to look at her sister, she soon found herself at a disadvantage when said sister stood up straight, clenched her hands into fists and began to glow with the power of the nearly indestructible Captain Jupiter.

"Don't try it," Celestia warned in a dangerous tone, as if her pose and obvious display of power wasn't convincing enough that picking a fight with her now without any leverage would be a very bad idea.

Of course, the Goblin could always regain that leverage if she was just stubborn enough to get it back...though now it was clear that doing so would require killing a certain petulant spider first.

With a defiant look on her demonic-looking plastic face, she pointed her finger at Celestia and promised, "This isn't over, Tia!" before she then proceeded to descend from the roof with all speed.

Celestia had a strange reaction once again though when she heard her say that, and furrowed her brow in thought.

There was something about this mysterious costumed lunatic that sounded unnervingly familiar to her. She had felt it all night, but now...hearing that voice say that one specific word...and in a way that only one person she knew said it...it made the cogs in her head turn ever so slightly.

"No...it can't be..." she whispered to herself in dread.

She prayed on all that was good in the world that her suspicion wasn't true, that she had simply misjudged the clues she had been given, and that she was seeing things that just wasn't there...but deep inside, Celestia knew who's face was under that monster's mask...even if she didn't want to believe it.

The sound of Spike and Twilight struggling against the webbing that bound them brought her thoughts back to the present though. "Ughh...some help here, please?" Spike demanded in a distressed voice.

Getting her focus back on the task at hand, Celestia turned her attention to the two of them and proceeded to use her impressive physical strength get them out of their silky cocoons...and then probably get away from this roof as soon as possible after she was done with that.

---

Down below, Spider-Girl and Sunset were still hanging by the side of the tower on a single thread of webbing attached to a point just a bit further up the same building, but now Rainbow had taken a new better grip on Shimmer's cocooned form and planted both of her feet on the window she'd just crashed into.

The only problem now was how on earth she was supposed to get them both down to the ground safely...

"Okay, Sunset, hold on tight and I'll climb down slowly," Rainbow assured as she began to descend as carefully as she could, step by step, using the webbing like a safety line to keep them from falling. There was still a long way down and it was really awkward to hold onto Sunset's cocoon with her left arm while doing it.

Still, she had all the time in the...wait, screw that, she actually had no time for that at all, as a rapidly approaching object she noticed on her spider-sense was quick to remind her of.

"...Or we could get the hell out of here as soon as humanly possible!" she decided instead.

Thinking quickly, Dash took a firm grip on the girl in her arms and suddenly used her legs to push herself away from the wall as fast as she could just as a beeping metallic pumpkin flew straight into it at high speed and detonated upon impact, blowing a huge hole in the wall where she and Sunset were just at in the process.

The two teenagers only survived the blast with seconds to spare, and they were both lucky that no stray piece of glass or shrapnel managed to hit them.

Still, that didn't mean they were out of the woods by a long shot...as the Nightmare Goblin was now rapidly descending towards them with intent to kill.

However, since Dash hadn't let go of the web-line yet, instead having used it keep herself aloft while pushing herself out of the way...she soon found herself being dragged back towards the building by the resulting momentum...though instead of a solid glass wall to slam into this time, there was a big gaping hole there now.

'Thanks for the way out, Goblin,' she noted to herself with a touch of irony.

Yanking on the line to increase her speed and preparing herself accordingly, Spider-Girl swung down straight into the new opening and launched herself off at just the right time so that she and the woman in her arm could get inside the building safely...or safely enough, at least. No one could rationally say that anything they were doing right now was even remotely safe.

They both tumbled to the floor as soon as they touched down, so it was hardly a perfect landing, but hey, at least they were inside the building now.

The place they ended up in seemed to be what remained of someone's office...which was thankfully empty at the time of the explosion. Whoever owned the office though would probably be a bit shocked to find out what happened to it in the morning.

Still, that was definitively not one of Rainbow's current concerns, as her botched landing made her end up with her back on the floor while letting out a groan caused by of a mix of pain and exhaustion...and Sunset had ended up right next to her with her face planted onto the hard surface.

All things considered, it didn't take Dash all that long to shake the impact off, leap up on her feet, then lean down and gently flip Sunset around so she didn't have to stay in that uncomfortable position any longer.

Once Sunset's face was revealed to her though, Rainbow noticed two things. One: Sunset now had a nosebleed. Two: she somehow looked even more pissed off than she looked before.

"You're the Worst. Superhero. Ever." the battered girl noted in a cold tone, and one that was masking a lot of anger and frustration hidden behind it.

While she grabbed hold of the thick webbing keeping Sunset restrained, Spider-Girl defended, "Hey, I'm just starting out, okay! Would you mind cutting me some slack?"

Then with a distinct 'RIPP!' sound, the young superhuman pulled apart Shimmer's cocoon with the strength of her arms alone, proving herself to be more than a match for even the incredible tensile strength of a spider's cobweb...while also finally giving Sunset Shimmer a chance to move her arms and legs freely again and even sit up straight for the first time since Chrysalis caught and restrained her.

While she could of course have been grateful for that, and promptly thanked the brave hero who just risked her life to save hers, she instead bitterly pointed out, "I would have...if you didn't just gamble with my life just to show off!"

Taken aback a bit by that statement, Rainbow tried to plead, "I wasn't trying to-"

But was immediately interrupted when Sunset angrily asked, "I mean how hard would it be to just take off that stupid mask!? The only reason we survived that reckless stunt was because of pure luck, and you know it!"

Then, after pointing an accusatory finger in the Spider-Girl's masked face, she finished her tirade off with, "I don't know who you are, but from what I've seen of you...you're definitively no hero."

Hearing Sunset say that about her left Rainbow Dash stunned. She didn't know how to respond to it. What she just did seemed so right at the time, but now, after hearing Sunset Shimmer, the girl she just saved, lay it out like this with such a desperate anger in her voice...it made her doubt herself a little more than she would admit.

However, that little moment of weakness also made her momentarily forget to pay attention to her spider-sense when suddenly a sling of webbing attached itself to her back and pulled her straight out of the broken window she had come in through...leaving a dazed and infuriated Sunset Shimmer alone in the ruins of wherever inside the building she had ended up in.

Spider-Girl for her part wasn't exactly in any better predicament though, as she soon found herself dangling wildly through the air as the Nightmare Goblin dragged her by the sling through several loops around the building...all while making sure the hero slammed into as many walls as possible when she did so.

'Dammit!' thought Dash as she slammed her back into another window, 'Forgot she-' next her left arm knocked into a piece of the concrete, '...still had that other...' then Nightmare took hold of the sling and swung her around in a wide arc, '...web-shooter!' and threw her straight into a window, leaving Rainbow with only a second to brace herself before she smashed right through it.

The glass ripped open several noticeable gashes all over her suit and skin, and left her sprawled out on the floor of another office space surrounded by broken glass.

Needless to say, it was probably not the most comfortable landing she'd ever done. In fact, this time she was even drawing blood at several parts of her body...though fortunately, they were only flesh wounds at worst.

"Hmmhehahahahahaha...so much for all that bravado, Spider-Girl," the Goblin taunted as she slowly descended towards the broken window she just tossed Rainbow through. "Tell me, how long do expect to-"

Her villainous monologue was cut short though when the Spider-Girl unexpectedly turned her whole torso around in a split second and webbed the Goblin's eyes shut before she had a chance to react...all while shouting, "Peekaboo!"

Temporarily blinded, Nightmare let out an alarmed gasp and then tried to use her gloved hands to pull the webbing off her mask, only to find the stuff a bit tougher to get off than she anticipated.

However, with her foe temporarily distracted, Rainbow pulled herself back up on her feet as fast as she could manage. Once up, her eyes then locked on her second web-shooter, still strapped around one of the Goblin's wrists, and aimed the shooter she actually had on her person at it.

"Hey, Gobby!" she called out as she attached a sling of web to the Goblin's left arm. "I believe this is mine," she reminded before she yanked her stolen shooter off the villain's wrist and back into her own hands. After that, it barely took her a second to get it attached back to the arm it belonged to.

"Nicely played, Spider," Nightmare complimented, still struggling to get the webbing out of her eyes. "But you're not the only one with a trick up her sleeve!"

Reaching into her purple cloak, the Goblin pulled out another small metal pumpkin and pressed a button on it, letting a pair of metallic bat wing-shaped knives fold out at its sides. Then, in one fluid motion, she used the new weapon to slice right through the sticky substance blinding her, and in turn giving herself her sight back.

However, the first thing she ended up seeing once her eyes were freed was the Spider-Girl leaping straight towards her at blinding speed, her fist pulled back and prepared to deliver a wicked right hook as soon as she got within range.

This time though, the Nightmare Goblin's quick reflexes gave her the advantage, and she immediately twisted her whole body around to make Spider-Girl overshoot her completely and give the Goblin a chance to wrap her arm around the superhero's neck, locking her in place.

(if you're wondering why Spider-Girl's suit isn't as damaged as I described, it's because I drew this picture before writing this chapter, and these stories have a way of writing themselves)

Spider-Girl tried to pull the arm pressing down on her neck off of her, but soon found herself at a disadvantage in this position and couldn't properly muster the strength to do so.

Smiling at this new favourable position for her, Nightmare spun her glider around and flew it away from the building into the open air while she moved her other arm, which was the one still holding onto the pumpkin boomerang-knife-thing, into a position where she'd be able to use it to stab the Spider-Girl in the chest.

Before she had a chance do that though, Rainbow reached out her free arm and attached a web-line to the side of the CelestiaCorp Tower, then pulled down on it to give her the strength required to slink herself right out of the Goblin's tight grip...and then spin around and deliver a powerful spinning kick straight into the villain's masked face.

Saliva flew out of the Goblin's mouth as her elastic mask was briefly deformed beyond recognition, and even though the costume came with a protective helmet strapped to her skull, the impact it made with Rainbow's red shoe hitting it at superhuman level left a fairly impressive black eye on Luna's face underneath. It also made her lose her grip on the bat-boomerang, sending it falling towards the ground below...though thankfully, it didn't hit someone in the head on the way down.

Another consequence of the kick was that it sent the Goblin tumbling around in the air for a moment while the Spider-Girl instead swung over and landed on the side of the building she had attached her line to.

It took the Nightmare Goblin but a moment to get her glider stabilised, and then a moment more to drag her mask back to a position where the eye-holes actually were lined up with her eyes properly. And when she did, she set those eyes squarely on the Spider-Girl, who was staring back at her from the tower's wall with those big blank eyes, a clear contrast to her own far more expressive and creepy ones.

And as they sized each other up, the Spider-Girl was filled with confidence and determination as she waited for her enemy to make the next move...while the Goblin had nothing but scorn and anger in her face as she prepared to make that move.

"Oh, It. Is. ON!" the Goblin declared while she squared her hips and prepared her glider for a full-frontal assault.

A bit cocky, Dash called back "Bring it!" while removing one of her hands from the wall to make a 'come at me' move towards her.

...And then...the fight was on!

The Nightmare Goblin opened up by unleashing two heat-seeking missiles out of the mouth of the gargoyle-head mounted at the front of her vehicle, which were both locked on to Rainbow's specific heat signature.

Spider-Girl responded by leaping off the wall and ensnaring one of the missiles with a sling of her webbing, pulled it out of its trajectory, spun it around in a wide arc...and then finally threw it right back in the path of its twin, making them both explode harmlessly in the empty air between her and the Goblin.

Dash smirked at the fact that she had managed to pull that off in the split second she stayed in the air before gravity started to take over. 'Wow, I did not think I would be able to pull that off.' she silently noted to herself. 'I really am awesome, aren't I?'

Her tune changed rather drastically though when, through the heated air, smoke, and lingering sparks of fire left in the explosion's wake, the Nightmare Goblin suddenly appeared, flying straight towards her with a devilish smirk on her face.

Even though her spider-sense could warn her about these kinds of threats in time for her to do something about them, this time, given that she was stuck in the air without anything solid to grab onto or push herself off of...nor enough time to web herself to anything, there really wasn't much she could do except to brace herself for what was to come...

...which in this case turned out to be a very hard and very painful punch to the chest, amplified not only by the Goblin's strength-enhancing suit, but also by the shear velocity she was travelling at when she hit her.

The punch sent Rainbow flying straight back into the wall of the building she had just leapt away from, knocking the wind right out of her lungs as she slammed her back into it.

Though before she could fall down for any length of distance, she managed to secure herself to the surface by quickly sticking her hand to it. Once secured, she then took a moment to wince as the pain lingered in her ribs and her spine. 'That's...gonna leave a mark.'

"Fun fact about spiders," the Nightmare Goblin called out as she flew down and positioned her glider at Dash's level. "Whenever the male peacock spider sees a female of his own kind, he's forced to perform his elaborate mating dance for her...or else she will kill and devour him."

Confused over what brought this on, Rainbow turned her head up to look at her with an unsure, "Ooookay..."

With a wicked smile, the Goblin pointed a pair of finger guns at her and asked, "Are you ready to dance for me, little spider?"

Now a bit weirded out, Dash awkwardly asked, "...Are you coming onto me?"

...only to then immediately get her answer when the Goblin started to blast directed beams of super-heated plasma out of her fingers in Rainbow's direction.

Though with her spider-sense on high-alert, the Spider-Girl managed to relatively easily dodge the first beam sent her way by quickly jumping to the side, letting it hit and leave a noticeable burn in the wall instead.

Of course, that was far from the end of it, as the Nightmare Goblin immediately followed that up with an entire barrage of plasma shots coming out of her gloved finger guns, making it progressively harder and harder for the hero to dodge them effectively...and the Goblin did it all while cackling like a maniac.

It was close, and at least one of the beams managed to burn a small part of her suit off, but with her incredible speed, dexterity and lightning-fast reflexes, Rainbow managed to just barely avoid them all and come out of it very much alive...even though she was quite winded and kept her body very tense as she stared at the Goblin, awaiting her next move.

Smoke and the smell of burnt rubber emanated from the tips of Nightmare's overheated fingers as she slowly moved one of them to her lips so she could blow it out like a Cowboy with his smoking revolver. Having used them to their limit, she'd now need to avoid using her plasma for the time being and let the machinery in her gloves cool down unless she'd prefer to have her fingers burned off.

"Well, well, well..." she said, sounding mildly impressed. "I suppose you really can dance, little spider."

"You wanna dance, bitch?" Spider-Girl challenged, preparing her next move. "...then prepare for a tango!"

She started by shooting a web-sling at the Goblin that attached to her chest, then, before the villain could do anything about it, Rainbow leapt off the wall, pulled down on the thread as hard as she could, and slammed both of her feet down on her enemy's armoured torso.

The impact knocked the Goblin straight off of her glider and sent them both tumbling down towards the ground below, now with a thread keeping them close together on the way down. Unsurprisingly, as they fell, the two of them took every opportunity they could to punch, kick, grab or grapple with each other on the way down, their mutual hatred for each other making it easy for them both to not even care about the height from which they were falling from.

Though, after sensing that its pilot had been unintentionally separated from her glider, the aerial vehicle responded by having its blue Tron-like lights flash red while making a loud beeping sound, then it immediately locked down on the homing signal embedded in the Nightmare Goblin's suit and automatically began to fly down after her, its incredible speed making it fairly easy for it to catch up to them.

Once it'd gotten close enough, the Goblin took note of its presence, then grabbed hold of the Spider-Girl's shoulders and pushed her away from her...giving her the opening she needed to allow the glider to position itself directly below her so she could plant her boots down on it and soar away.

...Only, as the line between the two of them was still very much intact (and Rainbow was still keeping a tight grip on her end of it), the rookie superhero soon found herself being dragged around through the air in the glider's wake as her adversary was trying to boost away from her.

Noticing the increased weight almost instantly, the Goblin looked over her shoulder to see the Spider-Girl start to climb up the thread she was attached to, bringing her closer and closer by the second.

"Why can't you leave me alone, you little pest?!" she wondered out loud in anger. Then she shook her head and pulled out a pumpkin bomb from her cloak. "Very well then, if you want to stay, then HAVE SOME CANDY!" she shouted as she primed it and threw the object at her unwanted passenger.

Rainbow's eyes widened for a second as her spider-sense noticed the increased danger of the ticking time tomb flying at her, and she responded as quick as she could when she used her free arm to slap it out of her way just in time for the object to be lodged far enough away that the resulting explosion didn't hit her...even if the shockwave caused by it sent her into a wild spin and had her dangling around wildly on the thread so fast and chaotically that it was making her feel a bit nauseous.

"Sorry, no...candy for...me!" she still managed to quip out in spite of her awkward position. "I'm...on...a...diet!"

A bit amused by that statement in spite of her boiling rage, Nightmare put her hand on her elongated chin and noted, "Yes, you do seem to be a bit heavy. Why don't we..." then she pulled out her sword, "...trim you down a peg?!" and turned her glider around so she could slice the line off with a swift swing of the weapon.

Quickly stopping her fall by connecting another silky lifeline to the nearby building, Rainbow then swung low enough to build momentum, and after that used that momentum to launch herself straight up into the air, now even managing to fly a full three metres above the Goblin's head.

And then, with her opportunity in sight, she attached two threads to each of the Goblin's shoulders and pulled herself down upon her, planting both of her feet on the villain's back hard enough to make her curse out in pain. Then, with a quick remark of "Light's out!" she reached over and pulled Nightmare's hood down over her face and held it there.

"GET OFF ME, YOU LEECH!" the Goblin screamed as she tried to shake the Spider-Girl off of her with more and more erratic movements, even making a full barrel roll to make her lose her grip...but all to no avail as Spider-Girl's grip was just that tight (and remember, spider-powers).

However, making all those wild movement while blindfolded was perhaps not the smartest thing in the world to do when you're flying around in a crazy death machine this high up...as the Goblin was soon about to learn the hard way.

Rainbow's spider-sense alerted her as soon as it became clear that the Goblin's glider was headed straight for the nearby building, and immediately jumped off her back to avoid the incoming impact.

Though with Spider-Girl no longer holding Nightmare's hood down, she quickly pulled it up to see what was going on...except the only thing she really had time to spot was a window coming closer and closer until she crashed right into it at full speed.

The window shattered on impact, and the Goblin was hit with a couple dozen shards of glass that tore at her suit in multiple locations at once...and after that, she flew through several office cubicles in a row, trashing them one by one until a hit with a pillar knocked her off her glider while the machine flew straight through a nearby wall, creating a large hole in it in the process.

Though her armour protected her from any life-threatening damage she would receive after crashing as hard as she did, it still hurt like all hell and left her panting and groaning while being curled up on the floor.

Suffice to say, tonight hadn't gone quite as well as she hoped it would.

The Spider-Girl soon swung into the room through the hole the glider left in its wake, and it didn't take her long to find the Nightmare Goblin lying down rather unflatteringly in the middle of the room.

"Alright, Gobby, playtime's over!" Spider-Girl called out, beginning to make her way over to her. "Now, if you know what's best for you, you'll stay down and I'll find a nice cosy jail cell to put you in."

Nightmare pushed herself up on her elbow to look at the hero and drily comment, "You know, Spider...you're really starting to piss me off."

"It's a gift," Dash quipped back without skipping a beat, confidently approaching her nemesis with a fearless and unwavering attitude evident in her body language. "...And the feeling's mutual by the way."

Managing to crack a smile despite her constant state of rage at the Spider-Girl's interference, the Goblin replied, "Then let's do something about that, shall we?"

She suddenly reached into her cloak and pulled out another pumpkin bomb (though a variation she hadn't used thus far), then activated it and slammed it straight into the floor.

Rainbow flinched, but this bomb didn't explode into a ball of fire like many of the others the mad bomber had tossed around like candy earlier. Instead, it unleashed a rapidly-growing cloud of dark blue smoke that very quickly began to smother the room and make it way harder for her to see what was in front of her.

Not letting that stop her though, Dash ran through the fog to where the Goblin had just been...and found nothing.

"Hahahahahah...welcome to the darkness I call home...'hero'!" Nightmare's voice called out to her from somewhere nearby, the thick smoke (as well as the slightly echoing nature of the room they were in) making it hard for her to tell where it came from.

"Seriously, Gobby...aren't you a bit too old for hide and seek?!" Rainbow asked, trying her best to avoid sounding too 'on edge' as she was looking around frantically to find where the Goblin was hiding. "And here I thought I was the childish one."

"Children are cruel, Spider-Girl," the voice from the fog replied, now suddenly sounding like it was coming from the other side of the room, making Dash a bit more jumpy and uneasy than she was before. "Things like morality, empathy or conscience...those are just things children learn as they grow older. At heart, they're pure, pristine little monsters who never think twice about what they're doing, as long as they get what they want...and I? I am very much in touch with my inner child!"

Rainbow's spider-sense went off, prompting her to immediately drop down to her knees and avoid three bat-shaped boomerang-looking objects that came flying through the smog and probably would have hit her in the face or throat area if she hadn't ducked down in time.

Having survived that surprise attack only with the help of her lightning fast reflexes, Spider-Girl popped up a second later and shot a sling of webbing in the direction the weapons had been thrown away from...and hit nothing.

"Okay, now you're the one pissing me off!" she remarked with a groan.

Another ring from her spider-sense made her quickly turn around to see the Nightmare Goblin emerge from the blue smoke with her sword drawn and a crazed expression on her masked face, now charging straight at her with reckless abandon and murder in her eyes.

Dash turned her whole body to the side to avoid a wide swing from the Goblin's blade that would have more than likely cleaved the girl's head clean off if she hadn't been quick enough to avoid it.

Though before the Goblin could get the opportunity to try again, Spider-Girl proved to be just as quick in retaliating as she was in dodging, and delivered a swift punch to the villain's plastic face, stunning her for a second, then followed that up with a powerful kick to her armoured chest, knocking Nightmare off her feet and making her lose her balance completely and by mere chance managing to trip and fall straight through the large opening in the wall where her glider tore through as it crashed earlier.

The Goblin ended up dropping her lighting sabre on the floor before she fell down there though...where Spider-Girl immediately after dragged it up with a quick pull of a short web-line so that she could take a firm grip on the weapon herself.

With a proud smirk hidden under her mask, Dash followed her opponent through the hole, where she soon had to drop down a level since the room on the other side was a fair bit bigger on a vertical level than the office space they were fighting in previously.

From what she could tell as entered it though, this appeared to be a lab of some kind.

Machines like computers and consoles littered the room, along with wires, coils, mechanical tools. Basically, everything you'd expect to find in an engineering laboratory. However, if there was one thing that really caught her eye in the brief second she used to scan the room's layout, it was a huge very complex-looking machine sitting in the middle of the room that seemed to be generating bright pulses of electricity through its large glass containers...and in the process being the only source of light in an otherwise darkened room.

Then she noticed the Nightmare Goblin's discarded glider, now engulfed in smoke after it flew right into a rather big computer console of some kind...and after that, she spotted the Goblin herself, now lying down on her back as she was recovering from falling from the height of half-a-floor and landing on her spine.

In order to make sure she couldn't get back up, Dash put her foot down on Nightmare's torso and pushed down on it to keep her pinned, then pointed the tip of the blade at her throat and said, "Yield!" in the same manner a merciful medieval knight would do to his fallen opponent after a heated tournament.

The Goblin looked up at her apparent conqueror with a wide-eyed slightly surprised expression, her slit pupils fixed on the sharp electrified tip pointing her straight in the face. Surprised as she was, she could only respond to that with a short comment.

"Well played," she said, sounding somewhat impressed by her opponent's quick thinking.

Feeling confident in herself, Rainbow pressed down her foot a bit harder and bent down to look the Goblin in the eye. "Yeah, well, I guess I am pretty spectacular."

Nightmare smiled and let out a small amused chuckle...then she reached over and grabbed the Spider-Girl by the wrist of the arm holding the blade and pushed the broad side of the weapon into Dash's chest, sending a couple hundred volts flowing through her small teenage body for a second or two.

While her superhuman durability made her able to take it a lot better than Twilight did, it was still painful enough to make her freeze up and cry out in agony. The Goblin herself was protected by her thick protective body-suit and didn't feel a thing...which also gave her the opportunity to turn the tables around even more.

And now for probably the most sadistic and devious move she had ever pulled off, even by her standards...the Nightmare Goblin repositioned her legs a bit and then brought her armoured knee straight up and hit Spider-Girl right in the groin.

Ever since Rainbow first decided to go fight crime on this surprisingly eventful night, she had been nearly choked to death by a giant lizard-tail, she'd been tossed around like a rag doll, taken a flashbang grenade to the face, been thrown through a window, punched, kicked and just now electrocuted...but none of that, not one of those things came even close to the intense searing pain she felt right now.

Under her mask, her face had turned red out of pure agonising pain and her mouth was wide opened as she released a silent scream. She even fell over on her shoulder and held both of her hands over her wounded private region as she tried to recover from that nasty hit.

"FUCK! SON OF A-" she cursed, the situation calling for the vulgar language now more than ever.

Now don't let Hollywood fool you, getting hit in the crotch can be just as painful for a woman as it would be for a man. You just need slightly better aim.

Though with her enemy temporarily distracted by her vicious tactic, the Goblin rolled away and got back up on her feet in no time. She then took a quick look at the Spider-Girl, now rolling around on the floor and moaning in pain while holding her own privates...and used this window of opportunity to go for the kill.

Moving quickly, she dropped down and pinned the Spider-Girl to the floor under her own weight, placing herself right on top of the smaller girl's chest, using her legs to lock down her opponent's arms while also making sure to keep herself so far ahead that the spider wouldn't be able to pull the same dirty trick she herself just did.

And with her prey stuck in this helpless state, the Goblin looked her straight in the eye and taunted, "Bye, bye, Spider..." with a sadistic sense of finality. She knew the Spider-Girl couldn't get out of this...not on her own.

Rainbow Dash tried to move, she tried to push the crazed lunatic off of her with her stubborn and erratic movements, she tried to summon all the strength she had to overpower her foe...but it was no use. The Goblin's strength-enhancing armour wouldn't relent, and Dash was growing tired...and in her current state of intense pain, she couldn't muster all of her potential strength if she tried.

Realising this, she really could do nothing but look into Nightmare's demonic eyes as the demon herself slowly moved her gloved hands closer and closer to her exposed neck.

Utterly consumed by anger and what could only be described as pure evil, the Nightmare Goblin began to laugh uncontrollably when she took a firm grip on the teenager's throat and started to squeeze...the would-be-hero's desperate gasps for air being music to her ears.

Rainbow wasn't thinking, she wasn't analysing, she didn't know what to do, she didn't even know if there was anything to do. Despite how much she played herself up to be anything else, at the end of the day...she was still only human...and humans were fragile.

'Must...do...something!' her desperate mind pleaded as she felt her wind pipe being crushed under the Goblin's titanium grip.

It was hopeless. She had lost. There was nothing she could do.

She was about to die...for real this time...

...or at least so she thought at the time.

All of a sudden...she felt something on her spider-sense...something that wasn't the Nightmare Goblin, but it was big, it was fast, and it was coming straight towards them.

Just as the Goblin thought she had finally won, and Dash was on the verge of passing out, something reached out and grabbed the villain by the back of her neck.

It wasn't a human hand...nor anything else that would be easy to explain. It was made of...metal, and the grip from the three finger-like prongs that enclosed over her back and shoulders was so strong that it actually buckled the armour she was wearing...and it then had no difficulties when it physically dragged her off the Spider-Girl and slammed her straight into a wall and held her there.

Rainbow Dash herself was a bit too busy trying to regain her breath to pay much attention to what was going on, but when she had managed to push herself up on her knees...whatever interrupted and restrained the Goblin soon came for her next, and although she sensed the approaching object coming with her spider-sense, there was still nothing she could do to stop a long metallic coil from slithering around her and wrapping tightly around her torso like a boa constrictor...or more accurately, like the grasping tentacles of an octopus catching its prey.

Next thing she knew, she was lifted off the floor and held up in mid-air by whatever it was that had grabbed her, and she found, much to her dismay, that she was just as immobile right now as she was when the Goblin was pinning her down.

'At least I'm not being strangled this time,' she noted to herself though, trying to find the silver lining in this situation.

It was then she saw exactly what it was that had saved (then restrained) her just as the Goblin had been ready to kill her for good...or rather who it was...and the answer surprised her quite a big deal.

It turned out to be a rather unassuming young woman with a short stature who was just a bit more chubby than average, with neatly combed bangs of purple hair with light blue stripes in them...and she was wearing a white lab coat and had a pair of round blackened glasses covering her eyes. Still, none of that was anywhere near as noticeable as the four long robotic grasping tentacle-arms coming out of her back, one of which was keeping the Nightmare Goblin pinned to the wall, another coiled around Rainbow's body and lifting her into the air, a third was anchored to the floor in order to bear the weight of lifting them both, as the pressure on her legs would be too great for her bones to handle otherwise, and the fourth and last of them...was holding onto a cup of coffee that the woman in the middle of it all gently took a sip from.

"Well...isn't this quite the surprise?" the woman noted in a pleasant tone...that sounded somewhat forced and insincere. "Now I have questions, and number one is this: What are you two doing in my lab!?"

Author's Note:

Well, this chapter took way longer to finish than I liked...

Now, from here, there's really only two or three chapters left until I can mark this story as complete and perhaps move on to the sequel...provided I don't want to take a break from this story instead and focus on other projects like that Storm King story I started...or perhaps an idea I had for an alternative version of season 9 I wanted to write where the villain team up looked more like this...

Speaking of small side projects, I actually put together a couple of Youtube videos since the last time I posted something, one of which being a video where I take a lot of clips from the show completely out of context and see how weird/funny they would be that way.

Another video I made was a complitation of every single evil laugh there was in the series.

Comments

[zachary12]

nice work

[Hungry Hero]

Great, out of the fryer and Into the frying pan.
Now, we’ve gone from one Major S-G badguy to Two!