Chapter 4 - The Awesome Adventures of Rainbow Dash #1: The Mysterious Mare-Do-Well
“Aargh! This doesn't make any sense!”
Rainbow Dash was nearly at her limit, gripping her hair so hard she threatened to tear it out entirely. She was sitting cross-legged on the barren roof of some building in downtown Canterlot; she didn't know which one and at the moment she didn't particularly care. Only minutes ago she had lost her quarry yet again, this time in a dead-end alleyway from which there should have been no escape.
“I'm like the fastest person ever,” she told herself, “and I'm a super-good flyer. Even with that teleportation trick she does, she shouldn't be getting away from me every time!” She threw her arms up in frustration, then groaned and flopped backward onto the warm, hard roof. “Daring Do wouldn't have this much trouble cornering a bad guy...”
She sighed and sat up, hand reaching into the messenger bag of essentials she was carrying – phone, binoculars, water bottle, snacks. She took out the bottle and squirted a bit into her mouth, then stowed it away again. “What would she do in this situation...” Rainbow wondered, staring out at the city. “Probably do a bunch of boring research,” she said glumly, “then come up with an awesome foolproof plan. How am I supposed to do any of that?”
She took a deep breath then stood up. “Okay,” she said as she began to pace, “maybe I should- no, that'll never work. But what if! No, I already tried that!” She growled in frustration, tugging at her hair again. “Ah, screw it! I can't think like this anyway!” She jumped into the air without a second thought, her crystalline wings humming with magic as she flew off like a shot.
Rainbow Dash had always felt her best while she was moving. Sitting still was just too distracting, too constricting, too boring. She couldn't concentrate unless she was doing something, whether it was running or playing soccer or rocking out on her guitar. And, recently, it had come to include flying as well. She didn't know if it was her pony magic or just how she was as a person, but it felt right in some way she didn't know how – or want – to describe. It had also been surprisingly challenging to get a hang of; her comic books never said she'd have to pay attention to the wind or where all the warm and cold air was. Or, for that matter, that it would be so tiring. Who knew that flexing muscles she only had thanks to magic would be such a workout?
But, eventually, she'd gotten the hang of it. And ever since she'd started looking for the Mare-Do-Well, she could swear she was getting a lot better at noticing stuff around her. Like the car she was flying over that had just run a red light. Or the people coming to their windows as she flew by. Or the group of people taking pictures of her. Sure, none of it was the Mare-Do-Well so she didn't pay that much attention to it, but she still felt proud that her eyes had gotten so sharp.
“Hmm...okay...” she murmured as she flew over the city streets. “Mare-Do-Well usually turns up a couple times a day, or more when there's a crime.” She turned left. “But she doesn't stop all of them, so that means she probably doesn't know about all of them...” She turned right. “She used to hang out on tall buildings but stopped doing that once I started tracking her down. But if she really does wanna fight crime, then she's gotta be able to find them somehow, right?”
Rainbow Dash stopped in mid-air, hovering above an intersection as she looked around the city. “So where's she staked out?” She crossed her arms and frowned. “Hmm...well, where do I go when I'm looking for a crime to stop?”
She came to a sudden stop in mid-air, the blush of an embarrassing realization creeping onto her face while the people following her below catching up to her and crowding the sidewalk as they vied for photos. “Okay,” she admitted, “I should probably start trying to do that if I'm really gonna be a superhero. But maybe if I figure out where I'd go, I can figure out where she goes...”
A few minutes later, Rainbow Dash was perched like a gargoyle on the roof of the tallest skyscraper in the city. She took a drink of water, then stowed the bottle. “Okay,” she said to herself, “this probably looks super cool from the right angle and all, but...” She looked down at the city streets below through her binoculars, adjusting the dials and frowning. “I can barely see anything from up here, much less hear! Maybe I need to get a little lower...”
Another few minutes passed before she was standing flush to the wall on a narrow ledge around the outside of the clocktower. “Pass,” she said, taking flight once more before the clock hand's struck 9:15.
“Better,” she said from the roof of the 40th precinct of the Canterlot Police Department. “But I can still barely see past the block!” She looked up and down the street again, but while she was able to see people okay – and see people seeing her okay as well – she couldn't actually see many buildings. She couldn't hear much, either, even with the light morning traffic whizzing past.
“Miss Dash!” The fact that she could actually make out the voice was enough to get Rainbow's attention, and after a moment of looking around she turned her gaze downward. There, standing just outside the precinct, was a woman with pale white skin and dark hair. She was wearing a suit, and had her hands cupped around her mouth.
“What?” Rainbow shouted back, trying to remember where she'd seen the woman before or at least why she knew her name.
“Please get down from there immediately!” the woman replied. “Unauthorized personnel are not allowed rooftop access!”
“What?” Rainbow repeated, more in confusion than anything else.
“You are not allowed up there!” the woman clarified, unfazed and emotionless.
Rainbow flinched. She knew she was on top of a police station, after all, and the last thing she wanted was to get in trouble with the law. “Sorry!” she called down to the woman. “I'll leave!”
She flew off immediately, leaving the woman to stare and her paparazzi to tiredly give chase.
“Okay, so, I think I can pretty much rule out tall buildings entirely,” Rainbow said to herself as she turned left over another street. “So that means I gotta figure out some other way to track down criminals.”
She spent the next couple minutes just looking around again, but when she caught sight of a parked cop car she stopped. “Hold on,” she said to herself, her expression brightening, “cops find criminals all the time! I can just follow one of them!” Excitedly, she landed on another rooftop and began to watch the car she'd spotted.
“Well, this is boring,” she said nearly half an hour later, her excitement having completely drained away. “All this guy's been doing is hand out pointless tickets, and even that he's doing so slowly I could do a lap around the city before he finishes each one!”
Rainbow Dash flopped backwards onto the roof she'd been sitting at the edge of, covered her eyes, and groaned in frustration. “So that means the cops are a bust too. At this point the only way I'm ever gonna be able to track down crimes is if I know where they're gonna happen before they happen!”
She went silent for a moment, then suddenly sat upright with a look of stunned realization on her face. “Hey, maybe that's how the Mare-Do-Well does it!” she said. “Either her magic lets her see into the future or something, or she's in league with the criminals already-” her eyes widened- “and they just tell her where they're gonna rob so she can go and stop them!” She inhaled sharply and bolted to her feet. “That devious little...!” She growled and rocketed back into the air, only coming to a sudden stop after she'd already flown a block.
“Crap,” she muttered, palming her face. “I still have no idea where to find her! All that thinking, and I'm right back where I started – flying around blindly hoping to see her.” Rainbow Dash let out a long and resigned sigh, then dove back down to fly closer to street-level.
It was time. She could sense it. She'd been tracking the group of would-be robbers for nearly two days now, had watched them plan their heist in what they thought had been the utmost secrecy. But little did they know that the shadows were her greatest ally...
That and luck, but she had long believed that the truly powerful made their own luck. And she herself was proof enough that the belief was well-founded.
She smiled behind her mask as she watched the three men pile into their ugly, nondescript getaway car. Soon, another game of cat and mouse would be over and won.
With a wave and a flourish she circled her cape around herself, and disappeared.
Rainbow Dash had done another complete fly-through of the city before she decided to stop for another rest. “Seriously,” she muttered after taking a swig of water, “there has to be a better way to do this. Something I'm missing. Why couldn't the girls have backed me up on this, I'm starting to think I can't do this alone. I mean,” she put the cap back on her bottle, “spending half my day standing around random rooftops talking to myself? How uncool is that!”
She paused and looked around as though expecting a response, and her face fell when she didn't even get a gust of wind.
“Freaking Mare-Do-Well, making me look bad,” she muttered as she took out her binoculars and started scanning the streets below. “I better get lucky...”
She did.
“Yes! Finally found ya!” Rainbow Dash cheered to herself, tracking her rival as she raced through what she knew to be a long alleyway behind a row of buildings. Quickly she shoved her binoculars back into her bag, and in a mere fraction of a second she was jetting through the air on what she was sure was the perfect course for interception.
She flew into the last side-alley before the end of the block and came out at the end of the main alley, Mare-Do-Well headed right for her. “Gotcha!” she said in triumph as she locked eyes with the rogue, who quickly scrambled into another side-alley on her left. Rainbow Dash flew after her, even when she suddenly leaped directly upward. The rogue leaped from ledge to sill to whatever other purchase she could find with an otherworldly quickness, and soon her efforts landed her on the roof of a small boarding house. She didn't rest for even a second before she took off at top speed along the rooftops, not sparing a glance behind her when Rainbow Dash shot up into the open air.
“HEY!” Dash shouted before swooping back downward to give chase, uncaring of the small commotion her cry had caused – and largely ignorant of the presence of the two friends she'd caused it to. Her heart pounded faster and faster and her grin grew wide as she began to close in on her rival, the Mare-Do-Well approaching the end of the block fast but not fast enough.
And then, to Rainbow's shock, she turned and jumped into the street. Or, rather, the air above the street – she never landed, instead pirouetting in mid-air and disappearing into her cape.
“AAGH! Darn it, not again!” Rainbow cried in frustration, pulling at her hair for a moment before shooting off in the direction the Mare-Do-Well had turned. “GET BACK HERE AND FACE ME!”
She crouched down in the shadow of a dumpster, willing herself to go unseen. She knew it would only be a few minutes before her pursuer would move on from the area, none the wiser that she hadn't gone far. Were it any other day she'd have no qualms with leading that hot-headed simpleton on another chase and have her fun tricking her, but right now she had more important things to do. And the last thing she wanted was that obnoxious flying brick barging into things, getting in her way and stealing some or all of the glory for herself.
She had come up with the plan, and she was going to reap its benefits. Nobody else. Only her.
Once she sensed the coast was clear, she crept silently out into the alley and started darting from one patch of darkness to the next. She made her way to a small alcove behind a drugstore that, she decided, had been created when a previous store had expanded into an adjacent building and had built a small corridor to connect the two. It afforded her a perfect vantage point of a small branch of the Republic Bank located just across the street.
She smiled to herself under her mask. All she had to do was wait for her prey to arrive and commence their robbery, then she would swoop in and stop them just as she'd planned. The only thing that could interfere was if that rainbow-colored pest showed up again, who might require more drastic measures to divert again.
But she wasn't worried. The truly powerful made their own luck, after all.
“Yup,” Rainbow Dash grumbled as she flew over a street three blocks away from where she'd last seen her rival, “shoulda known. No way I'd ever get a lucky break or anything. Guess it's back to the same old flyin' around...”
She sighed, and turned down a side street on impulse. As she looked to her left and right at all the dark alleys and gaps between buildings, an idea struck. “Come to think of it, she's been using the alleys a lot recently,” she thought aloud. “Maybe instead of looking at them from up here, I should be flying through them down there. I won't be able to see as much of the city,” she reasoned, putting a hand on her chin, “but I probably wasn't gonna see her for a little while anyway. So what the heck?” she finished with a shrug, banking to the left and swooping into an alley she had picked at random.
Not too long afterward, a motorcyclist in a black leather jacket pulled up in front of the alley, paused for a moment to look into it, then continued onward.
For a solid five minutes Rainbow Dash weaved her way through the back-alleys of downtown Canterlot, startling more than a few stray cats as well as one unfortunate busboy just trying to take out the trash. She only scraped the walls a mere seven times, a fact she was proud of. “Heheh, best flier ever,” she bragged before deftly turning a corner.
A bit of dark purple caught her eye, and she froze in mid-air.
The Mare-Do-Well looked at her, frozen in shock. She looked back. Seconds ticked on like ages as they simply stared at one another, dumbfounded, until all at once they made their moves.
Rainbow dashed forward. The Mare-Do-Well scampered out of the alcove. The two missed each other by less than an inch, Rainbow Dash halting herself on a dime and turning to swipe at her target – but it was too late. The Mare-Do-Well had made a break for the nearest exit, and Rainbow saw her turn out onto the street. She growled to herself in frustration and shot forward in chase, shooting out into the open with so much speed she couldn't turn sharply enough. By the time she'd brought herself around the Mare-Do-Well had just about disappeared down another alley, only the fluttering of her cape behind her giving her away.
“Not this time,” Rainbow said through gritted teeth, shooting towards the new alley. With her speed under control again she raced after every glimpse of the Mare-Do-Well she saw, her smile growing darker as she drew closer and closer.
The Mare-Do-Well darted left onto a side street mere seconds ahead of Rainbow Dash, who pumped a fist in triumph. She followed suit, turned as sharply as she could, and crashed into someone.
“H-hey! Watch where you're going, Rainbow Crash,” the girl said, on her butt and rubbing her head. Pale blue skin, bright white hair, and an air of general superiority about her even in such a humiliating position, Trixie Lulamoon gave Rainbow Dash a look of utter derision.
Rainbow just rolled her eyes and offered her classmate a hand up. “Sorry, Trixie,” she said, starting to look around impatiently. “Did you see where Mare-Do-Well went?”
For a fleeting moment Trixie seemed anxious and fearful, but then she crossed her arms and sniffed defiantly, turning her head to the side. “Hmph. Perhaps the Great and Powerful Trixie did see the Mysterious Mare-Do-Well pass through here just before she was rudely-” she turned a sharp look back at Dash- “run into by a certain wannabe hero. But Trixie does not see why she should tell you anything about our city's greatest protector.”
“Uggh...,” Rainbow groaned, palming her face. “Come on, Trixie, this is important! That Mare-Do-Well character could totally be up to something evil right now!” Now hovering a foot above the pavement, she thrust her hands into the air.
Once more fear flashed in Trixie's eyes, but it soon disappeared as a sly smile formed on her lips. “Oh, is that so? Well Trixie thinks that Mare-Do-Well is up to something heroic, like always. So Trixie would rather help her than let some obnoxious loudmouth like you interfere.” She shrugged in feigned helplessness. “Oh well. If it's any consolation, Rainbow Crash, Mare-Do-Well is probably miles away by now. I bet she teleported the moment you lost sight of her.”
Rainbow froze, stunned by the realization, then clenched her teeth in anger and flew off. Trixie let out a short laugh. “See you later!” she called out tauntingly, flipping her hair and walking off.
Half a minute later a motorcycle drove past her, its leather-clad rider and Trixie looking at one another for just a split-second before the biker sped off. Trixie scratched her head out of puzzlement, then shrugged and continued on.
Inside, she was laughing. Not once but twice had that armored idiot been misled into thinking she was somewhere else, when in reality she'd simply doubled back to her hiding spot again. Of course, she had made sure to secretly watch the girl fly off before doing so. She was simply brilliant in that way, minimizing the risk of another chance encounter like she had.
And, naturally, she'd gotten back into position with more than enough time to watch her targets pull up. There weren't any other cars parked in front of the bank or even much traffic, which she knew was a trend that had caused the would-be crooks to target this branch in the first place, so they'd at least pulled off their arrival without attracting any attention. They thought they would have a simple in-and-out job, no hassle, no delays, and no risks that desperate men like them were unwilling to take.
They were wrong, of course. Her hidden smile grew as she watched two of the men get out of the car with their masks already on, walk up to the big double-doors side by side, pull out their guns, and charge in.
She would enjoy the looks on their faces when they saw her waiting for them.
An alarm went off, and she took that as her cue to leap dramatically from her hiding spot and charge the getaway car. The driver didn't see her until she was right next to him.
“Great job, Dashie, you blew it again,” Rainbow Dash muttered to herself as she flew away from Trixie, quickly gaining altitude so she could better look out over the city. Once she was satisfied she stopped and hovered in place, taking a swig of water while she looked around. “Where to next?”
After a few seconds she just shrugged and flew off in the direction the wind was blowing just because it was easiest, and a couple minutes after that she landed on an office building to rest a little. She took a power bar from her bag and tore into it, shielding the sun from her eyes as she sat and watched for any sign of suspicious movement.
Then an alarm bell rang through the air, nearly startling her off the ledge she'd been sitting on. “What the?” She floated into the air a bit as she looked around for the source of the noise, her eyes soon going wide. “Hold on, doesn't that mean there's a robbery?” She grinned in triumph. “Well whaddaya know, I finally get a chance to be a hero!”
She flew off towards the source of the alarm, but quickly paused as she recalled her father's disapproval earlier in the week when she'd suggested she could fight crime. She frowned, but after a moment she clenched her fists and resumed her flight. “Sorry, dad,” she whispered. “But I gotta do the right thing...”
It took her only seconds to locate the source of the alarm. The first surprise she got as she swooped down to save the day was that it was a small bank right near where she'd last found the Mare-Do-Well.
Her second surprise was that the Mare-Do-Well was there too, pulling what – as far as Rainbow Dash could tell – looked like some innocent motorist out of a car parked out in front. She gasped in shock at the perceived heinous act, then narrowed her eyes and charged toward the pair without a word or cry.
And then, for the first time since she'd started her pursuit earlier that week, Rainbow Dash touch the Mysterious Mare-Do-Well. She slammed her shoulder right into the costumed woman's side and sent her flying, the dazed motorist pulled along with her. All three landed on the pavement in one big heap, and Dash was the first to her feet – pulling the Made-Do-Well up by her collar moments later.
“What's the big idea, huh?” she demanded angrily, the mysterywoman looking at her with wide, stunned eyes. “What, did you think you were gonna steal a car too, on top of robbing that bank?”
She motioned at the building behind her with one hand, and the Mare-Do-Well immediately used the opportunity to shove her to the side and cast a gloved hand out towards the motorist – who had gotten to his feet and was now scrambling back to his car.
“Oh no you don't!” Dash growled, zipping forward and grabbing the Mare-Do-Well's long cape, yanking her backwards just as a lasso shot out of her glove. The sudden jerk caused the magical rope to miss its target by an inch, and the motorist reached the broken driver's-side window and frantically stuck an arm through to grab the handle.
Meanwhile, the Mare-Do-Well had used the momentum of the pull to whip around and backhand Dash across the jaw. As Dash staggered back the magical lasso retracted into the Mare-Do-Well's glove, allowing her to throw a right hook that was easily ducked under. Rainbow Dash countered swiftly, darting forward and grabbing her foe's collar again and lifting her into the air, but the Mare-Do-Well swiftly grabbed her cape with her left hand and swung it around the both of them.
“What the-?” Dash yelped in surprise as the cape fell over her, cocooning both young women in darkness. It shrunk rapidly into nothingness despite Dash's struggling inside, and moments later they reappeared several feet away – Dash landing on her head, the Mare-Do-Well on her feet. She bolted back towards the getaway car and stopped the door before it was closed, then pulled the panicked driver from it once more.
“Please, no!” the driver pleaded before the Mare-Do-Well punched him in the gut, then let him fall to the ground. She stood over him imperiously, cast out her lasso, and with a flick of the wrist it tied itself around him.
By now a crowd had begun to form around the area, drawn by the sound of the alarm, and the sight of the two superheroines. The motorcyclist in the black leather jacket had shown up as well, but turned around and left after less than a minute.
“Urggh...” Rainbow Dash groaned as she propped herself up on one arm, immediately reaching back and feeling where she'd landed. No blood, but just touching it was enough to make her wince. “That was a dirty trick,” she growled as she forced herself back to her feet, then looked around for her attacker. She saw her perched atop the getaway car, its door still open and its unconscious driver tied up next to it. With a scowl she stumbled forward a step before regaining her stride, her focus entirely on the Mare-Do-Well.
Then she stopped.
Two men wearing ski masks had just run out of the bank with guns in their hands and sacks over their shoulders. They came to a quick stop on the bank's top step when they saw the Mare-Do-Well waiting for them, swore, and opened fire. The costumed woman wasted no time in leaping upward out of the way, however, and just as quickly vanished into her cape when the robbers turned their fire.
“Okay,” Dash said, wide-eyed and sitting flush against the front of the getaway car, “this is so not what I expected.” She hesitantly turned and looked over the hood of the car, but flinching when she heard another gunshot. “I guess I was wrong about what she was doing here,” she said nervously as she watched the Mare-Do-Well kick one of the men in the chest, then quickly dart away to the side when his partner caught him. That man quickly shot into her path, forcing her to quickly stop and change directions.
Rainbow Dash took a deep breath. “Okay,” she said to herself as she retreated behind the car again, “I can handle this. It's just two thugs with guns, and I'm super fast. No sweat.” She took another deep breath, then flew out of hiding in a long arcing backflip towards the bank. She rolled onto her belly and grinned as she easily swerved out of the way of a bullet, then circled around to launch her attack.
Distracted by the new heroine on the scene, the two bank robbers left themselves open to another pair of flying kicks to the back courtesy of the Mare-Do-Well. They stumbled towards Rainbow Dash, who stuck out her arms and clotheslined the pair as she flew between them. She swooped upward and gave the fallen men a cocky grin, only to scowl again when the Mare-Do-Well shoved her to the side.
“Hey!” she protested to no effect, her rival focused entirely on tying up the fallen men with two more magic lassos. Dash crossed her arms and huffed, not bothering to look at the Mare-Do-Well as she reluctantly said “Well...good work, I guess...”
The Mare-Do-Well gave her a sharp look, then crouched down and inspected the bags of loot that the two robbers had dropped. Rainbow Dash narrowed her eyes at that and started to fly closer, but the wail of distant sirens and the barking of nearby dogs made her pause. The Mare-Do-Well did as well, and all at once the two young women became fully aware of the crowd that had gathered around them.
A sudden yelp arose from one section of the crowd, and the source quickly became apparent as a large and scruffy-looking terrier suddenly darted out through their legs, dragging an unmanned leash behind it. The dog made a beeline for Rainbow Dash and the Mare-Do-Well, the latter recoiling slightly as it began to sniff the ground around her. It only stopped, and lifted its head and ears, when it heard a series of further yelps and cries of annoyance from the crowd. The source of that commotion was made apparent as well when the crowd was forced to part by a horde of eager, sniffing, barking dogs, their leashes all in the hands of a single tall old man.
“Pardon me, ladies,” the old man greeted with a tip of his battered top hat, a single eye glancing nervously around the scene as his dogs fanned out to investigate. “I'll just, ah, collect my little friend,” the man said with a sheepish point towards the terrier that was now sniffing the fallen bags of loot, “and be on my way.”
Both of the costumed young women glared at him, but it was Dash who reached down and picked up the loosed leash before the terrier could react. She handed it over to the old man just as quickly, earning an astonished look and a one-eyed blink. For a moment his astonishment faded into an unnervingly joyful smile, but that too was swept away quickly by the blare of sirens. The gray-skinned man paled, and with a quick whistle and an urgent tug he got his horde of dogs and started leading them back through the crowd – away from the police cars and ambulance that had just pulled up.
“It's about time,” Rainbow Dash sighed in annoyance, lowering herself back down to the ground for the first time since leaving her hiding spot. “Though I guess we did do pretty good today,” she added with a growing smile, puffing herself up proudly as several bystanders began to take pictures of her. “Sorry for being on your case so much,” she said with a half-second glance towards the Mare-Do-Well. “Maybe I mis-” she looked again and saw her costumed rival leaping away from the scene- “judged you...” Dash's face fell again, and she sighed in annoyance.
Police swarmed the scene moments later, taking statements from Rainbow Dash and those who had witnessed the showdown between her, the Mare-Do-Well, and the three would-be bank robbers. Eventually the men were arrested and the paramedics tended to a few people inside the bank who had been injured, and most of the crowd dispersed. Soon all that were left were Rainbow Dash, some of the paparazzi that had been following her around, and the last couple police officers making sure everything was in order.
“Can I go now?” Dash asked in an impatient whine, still ponied-up on the front steps of the bank. “I have stuff to do.”
“Not yet, Miss Dash, we still have a few more questions for you,” one of the officers said.
Rainbow Dash groaned and the officer rolled his eyes, though both looked over at the bank entrance when another man with pale orange skin and darker hair rushed out of it, obviously flustered. He quickly spotted another officer near the door, and hurried over to talk to her in frantic though hushed tones. “Stay right there, Miss Dash,” the officer Dash had been talking to said, walking over to join the conversation.
A few foot-tappingly bored minutes passed as Rainbow Dash watched the three converse, which ended shortly after looks of muted, thoughtful shock from the officers. The one who'd been speaking to Dash gave her a brief look of suspicion, and Dash's initial confusion turned to wariness when he walked over to her with a glower on her face.
“Excuse me, Miss,” he asked, his voice stern and serious, “you didn't happen to have handled either of the bags those robbers were carrying, did you?”
“Uhh, no, I never touched them,” Rainbow Dash replied, leaning away slightly on instinct. “Why?”
“Hmm,” the man said, his mouth drawn thin. “I see. Well, the bank's manager has reported a discrepancy between the amount stolen and the amount recovered, and as you are one of the few people who got close to the bags I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to come down to the station with me for more questioning.”
“But I told you, I never touched the things!” Dash protested. “Here, check my bag if you want to,” she said, thrusting her bag at him before motioning to what she was wearing. “And it's not like I have any pockets in this armor to hide stuff in.”
The officer raised a brow and looked her over, then accepted the bag and started rifling through it. “Well, this checks out,” he said after a few minutes of fruitless searching. He gave her back the bag, then asked “You didn't happen to see anyone else handle the bags, did you?”
Dash let out another annoyed sigh as she slung her bag back over her shoulder. “The only ones I saw get close to the loot were that weird guy's dog and-” She stopped suddenly, her eyes going wide with realization. “The Mare-Do-Well! Of course!” she exclaimed, pounding her fist into her open hand. “I knew she was up to no good...”
She shot into the air without warning or thought, eyes narrowed as they once again began to search the shadows and alleyways of the city around her. The officers and the bank manager were left to gape in shock on the steps of the bank, though their attention was soon drawn to a fourth man, brown-skinned and yellow-haired, running up to the two officers.
She wasn't entirely certain whether to call it a success or not. She had certainly foiled the robbery, true, but not before that rainbow-colored brute had somehow managed to interfere again. And between her and that strange man with the dogs distracting her, she'd ended up leaving the scene far too late. She wanted to tantalize her fans and cultivate an air of mystery, after all. Not stick around for an extended photo op.
There'd be time for those later, once everyone had come to adore her. Once she no longer had to worry about flying idiots barging in by fluke and stealing half her well-deserved glory.
But whether or not it was a success, she did know she'd at least gotten something out of it. As she raced through the shadows of Canterlot she allowed her hand to brush against one of her suit's hidden pockets and feel the weight she'd oh-so-recently added to it when nobody was looking. For a split-second it caused a well of guilt to spring out of some deep corner of her mind, but she suppressed it with ruthless and well-practiced efficiency.
After all, wasn't it only right that she be compensated for her efforts?
Jeez, I nearly forgot about the Author's Note... 
Well, not much to say about this at least. For those wondering about the reference Rainbow Dash made to her father's disapproval, see Yes I Can. Note, though, that that story was written before we had any real details about Dash's parents - Bow Hot Hoof's name and characterization have not yet been updated to reflect it.
Next chapter focuses on the Crusaders and Big McIntosh! It's a much funner little romp than this one, I think 
Stats
Page generated in 0.028 seconds
Total duration
1,015 users online
153,917 hits today, 2,054,621 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
This chapter was awesome!
Probably my favourite so far. Both the cat and mouse hunt and the fight at the end were both really entertaining, and damn, Mare-do-well is one sneaky bastard. The whole conflict is also pretty funny since neither one of them are really any kind of ideal hero: both of them are really arrogant, Dash focuses more on winning against her rival than actually helping people while Mare-Do-Well keeps taking bits for herself.
Now, I'm even more curious about who this masked woman's identity is. I'm looking forward to finding that out.
8376098
I was a little worried it might be a tad repetitive, but it seems that fear was at least partially unfounded. And yeah, as they are now neither Rainbow Dash nor the Mare-Do-Well are proper heroes, though Dash at least took a step in that direction this time I think.
I'm glad you loved it so much!
8379702
That so? Well, you'll just have to wait to find out if you're right or not
8379758
Haha, that was more intense than I was expecting... Well, obviously I don't wanna spoil any details, but I will say at least that I would never change a future twist just because someone guessed it in advance.
This was really cool. I love teen superhero stories, especially those with a mystery element, and so doing that with the EqG characters we know and love is awesome. The rooftop contemplation solo narrative reminded me a little bit of Worm, in a good way, though obviously far less dark which is also good for an EqG story!