Rainbow Dash Around the World

by MagicS

Dead End

Dolph collapsed onto the cheap mattress held up by an even cheaper wooden frame in the “bedroom” of the safehouse he was living in. He didn’t even take the time to shed the disguise he wore after just getting back from the outside. The large coat and hat he wore worked as his blanket and source of warmth for now. It had been a long day and like all of his days recently he just wanted to sleep and forget about it.

“How did it come to this?” He cried into the pillow.

After a few minutes of sobbing and agonizing over the recent turn of events in his life, Dolph finally reached up to take his hat off and then reached under the pillow to withdraw something. A picture. A photograph of him and his wife, Eleanor, sitting together outside their favorite cafe in the Copper Section.

“It’s all for you… everything I do is for you and our kids,” Dolph sniffled and rubbed his eyes. “Eleanor, Dolph Jr., Grommit, Sturm. No matter what happens or what I have to do, I’ll protect you.”

He slid the picture back under his pillow and turned to stare at the wall. Suddenly he didn’t feel like sleeping anymore despite it being well past midnight.

Dolph sighed and rolled off his bed, taking a moment to look in his dirty bedside mirror and notice what the stress had done to his face. Lines that shouldn’t be there for a pony his age marked his features, bags under his eyes that would never go away existed, a redness to his eyes that wasn’t just from crying was visible, his hair had even started to fall out. He turned away before he could take in anything else and stepped out of the bedroom. There wasn’t even a door in the frame, after all no one but him used this place, there were only a few rusty hinges left in its stead. Most of the rest of the safehouse was barren, with a refrigerator being the newest and most well taken care of thing in the main room. Besides that a folding table and chair was his only real furniture. A sink with a single glass for water sitting on its rim was built in the wall opposite of the refrigerator but parts of it were rusty and grimy and just downright disgusting. On top of the folding table sat a simple deck of cards and a few newspapers, the only things he had to pass the time down here.

But there were two other things next to the cards and newspapers though that he both dreaded. The first was the radio. He was always afraid that that tell-tale buzz of static would suddenly come through it and he would contact him again with another job to do. Even though Dolph had just gotten back from doing something, he was still always afraid.

The second was a spare bomb he had been told to construct and keep with him for the next job. Whenever it came and whatever it was. It sat in a small box he could easily carry in his hooves, with a remote detonator lying next to it.

There was a door that led from the sewers into the main room, Dolph supposed he could call it the front door. It wasn’t the only way in our out of the safehouse but it did lead to one of the main sewer canals which made it easier to get out of the sewers and into anywhere else in the Copper Section. A heavy lock was placed on the wooden door, Dolph doubted anypony would ever come down here but he still locked it every time he left and came back out of sheer paranoia. The wooden planks that made up the door weren’t especially strong though, anypony with a hammer or axe would make short work of it if they really wanted to get in.

Everything was so dark and grungy looking in here. He only had one small light hanging above the table and another in the bedroom for illumination. The floor (if it could even be called that) was a black mess of tile and stone and the walls as well were nothing more than the stone and metal plating that made up the sewer system. It was constantly moist inside with moss and fungus growing everywhere and the sound of dripping water never ended.

A closed door next to the sink led to the storage room of this dingy looking safehouse. Inside, Dolph kept the stolen crate of TNT, now half-empty. He hoped he would never have to put another bomb together again after the ones he had just made earlier today. He was already eternally grateful that nopony had been hurt by the ones he had made, but if things kept escalating… who knew.

Nothing would ever be normal again. As much as he wished to go back to the old life he had, he knew that even if he somehow got off scot-free that he’d still be torn apart inside after everything he’s done and what he’s caused. How could he look his wife and children in the face? His wife would always know he was hiding something… his friends in the mine would know what he did.

It was hopeless for him. Dolph maybe always knew this. All he could do now was protect his wife and children.

He sighed and took a seat at the folding table. Dragging his hooves through his mane a few times and propping his elbows up on the table, he tried to calm down. It didn’t do him any good. At this point the only way he was going to fall asleep was pure exhaustion. He stood up from the table and accidentally knocked his chair over, pacing around the main room a few times with his heart beating anxiously. The room practically spun around him with the other small passages and doors leading out of the safehouse to other parts of the sewer. He didn’t want to take a walk though, mostly because he was too scared to leave this place whenever he didn’t absolutely have to.

Dolph instead walked over to the sink and turned the faucet’s knob. Out poured a steady stream of murky water, sediment and who knows what else dirtied it, he hated having to drink it but right now he wasn’t thirsty anyways. Dolph put his hooves under the stream and splashed some water on his face to try and relax. If he could get his heart to stop pounding then maybe he could get some sleep.

---

Rainbow Dash’s hooves splashed into the shallow water of the sewer after she jumped down from the pony hole. Barnaby did the smarter thing and used the ladder.

“Yuck!” Rainbow Dash grimaced and stuck out her tongue as the gross green water reached up past her fetlocks.

“I told you, it’s hardly flooded down here but there’s going to be water. It is the sewers after all,” Barnaby said as he stepped off the ladder, pointing his flashlight down the tunnel, not splattering water everywhere like Rainbow had just done.

“I’m not the cleanest pony or anything but this is just gross,” Rainbow’s nose curled. “Ugh! That smell...”

“Better get used to it, I’ve been in the sewers several times before this and it’s not going to get better. And let me take the lead, I know where we’re going,” Barnaby said and stepped in front of her. “We have to be careful too, these sewers are practically ancient.”

“You guys dug out so much earth and stuff under your city it’s a wonder it hasn’t all collapsed,” Rainbow said.

Barnaby grunted and nodded. “Hm. The sewers were built over a long period of time, they were part of laying the foundation for the entire Copper Section. A lot of hard work went into making them as safe and efficient as possible. They’re incredibly intricate and mostly self-sufficient and any further mining had to be done around them or in areas completely removed from the sewers.”

“Incredibly intricate, huh?” Rainbow raised an eyebrow at him.

“We’re… going to be walking around for a while.”

“Great,” Rainbow shook her head.

“Sorry, but there’s no other entrance closer to the safehouse the TNT was taken to. At least not any written down on any blueprints of the sewers,” Barnaby said.

Rainbow Dash looked down at the ugly water her hooves were drowned in. “And I can’t even fly through here right now...”

“It’s alright, just follow behind me and we’ll find this place eventually.”

“Shouldn’t there be a walkway on the side so we don’t have to walk through water?”

“In some places there will be but normally everypony who comes down here would be wearing boots and other clothes to deal with the mess. So unless there needs to be a part raised up where sewer water shouldn’t reach we’re just going to have to wade through it for now. Uhh… watch for rats.”

The sewer they were in now was a wide and long tunnel that seemed to stretch endlessly ahead, Barnaby’s flashlight only illuminated up to a few feet in front of them. Grates and pipes built into the walls leaked out more water into the “river” at the bottom of the sewer and it all flowed together in the direction they were walking. The walls of the sewer looked like they had been made of brick and cement that at one point may have been a different color but were now nearly pure black after years of muck and wear. Rainbow Dash’s soggy hooves walked over a layer of soft grime and mold that was just beneath the water—she was thankful that the water was so clouded that she couldn’t actually see what she was stepping on. And the smell. She knew not to expect flowers from a sewer but this was ridiculous.

At least Barnaby knew where they were going, every time they came to an intersection he knew exactly which way to take. Rainbow Dash kind of wondered where in the Copper Section they were now. What buildings were they under? How far away were any mining tunnels?

“Hey so what if there’s like a gate or something blocking off part of the sewer that we can’t get past? Is there anything like that down here?” Rainbow asked.

“There is, but not where we’re going. Which is probably why Lord Copper chose to put this supposed safehouse for his TNT down there,” Barnaby answered.

Rainbow Dash snorted. “I can’t believe none of these jerks so far have had the nerve to actually tell us outright that Lord Copper’s the one responsible for this...”

“A mixture of fear, money, and probably even a little bit of loyalty for some of them. Lord Copper is very influential and he can do practically anything or reach practically anywhere in Oreville. They probably think it’s far worse to implicate him for a variety of reasons than it is to get on my bad side. Even if it might save their skins,” Barnaby said.

Rainbow Dash bit her lip as they continued walking together. “What if… what if Dolph is at the safehouse?”

Barnaby looked back at her over his shoulder. “You think he is?”

“I dunno—maybe. Eleanor has no idea where he is, and we haven’t found any trace of him yet either. Nopony has seen him for sure since that day in the mines. It just makes sense to me that maybe he’s been hidden away in the same spot the TNT has,” Rainbow shrugged.

“That would make sense. Especially since then he’d be able to make bombs and take them to anywhere else in the Copper Section much easier,” Barnaby nodded. “Tch, I should’ve brought a pair of hoofcuffs with me.”

“No sweat, this Dolph guy isn’t a soldier or anything, I doubt he’d even put up a fight…” Rainbow winced at her own words. The miner wouldn’t be any sort of threat but he didn’t need to be—shouldn’t be—treated roughly or like some criminal. That’s what she believed. But even then she doubted this situation was going to be resolved in an easy way. She just hoped that if Dolph was down here he’d give them a chance to talk and help him.

They started to enter a part of the sewers that looked even less maintained than the rest if that was even possible, but it did come with one benefit: they didn’t have to walk through water anymore. Rainbow Dash and Barnaby both hopped onto a small ledge built into the side of the sewer. Rainbow was going to question what it was for but she soon saw it herself. The canal widened and deepened considerably just a few feet ahead as it was joined by the streams from several other sewer lines, creating a steady river that flowed into a closed off tunnel. The only way to directly follow the water would be to hold your breath and swim into that tunnel with it. Thankfully not something they had to do.

“I think this goes to the water reclamation plant,” Barnaby said as he shined his flashlight at the river of sewer water.

“I think I don’t really care to find out,” Rainbow said.

There was a little side passage now that led away from the main tunnel they were in. Some kind of maintenance access corridor according to Barnaby. There were pipes all over the ceiling and running up and down the walls inside it, Rainbow Dash saw rats scurrying between them, trying to avoid the light of Barnaby’s flashlight. The ground was still wet and a lot of the pipes were leaking to some degree but it was much better than wading through that water back there.

“Malthus said the safehouse was built out of an old, defunct pump station that had all its machinery torn out and placed somewhere else years ago, but the room it used to be in stayed open and wasn’t sealed up. I bet Lord Copper further refurbished it to some degree,” Barnaby said.

“If he did something like that I wonder if there’ll be some evidence left in the safehouse tying it to him,” Rainbow said.

“Possibly but I’d say fairly unlikely. He may be a terrible nervous liar when confronted directly but so far he’s done a good job of not having anything concretely traceable back to him,” Barnaby replied.

“How much farther is it now?” Rainbow asked.

Barnaby hummed and looked at some of the pipes along the walls. “I think we’re pretty close now. There should be a door to our right coming up, and that should be the safehouse.”

“I guess past the pipes,” Rainbow muttered as they kept walking on past, a droplet of water dripping down and hitting her on the head. It was bad enough that she couldn’t fly at all but being stuck in little underground tunnels like this made it so much worse. She didn’t have claustrophobia but she still hated it.

“We should be quiet for now, if Dolph or anypony else is there we don’t want them to hear us coming,” Barnaby said.

Rainbow Dash silently nodded and clammed up, just following behind him as he led the way with his flashlight. The sound of scurrying rats and dripping water now became even more noticeable to her. Her heart was surprisingly beating a bit harder than usual. Though she wasn’t scared for herself in the slightest.

It only took another minute before Barnaby came to a stop and motioned Rainbow Dash to come right up alongside him. She joined him as he faced a section of the wall that was devoid of pipes. Instead a simple, practically rotted, door stood in the middle of it. Barnaby’s flashlight showed a handle on it and he tellingly glanced at Rainbow Dash and lifted a hoof up to his mouth.

“Shh,” he whispered. “I’m going to open it.”

“What if it’s locked?” She whispered back.

“Then you can knock.”

---

Dolph was shaken out of his fugue when the sound of the rusty handle on the front door of the safehouse being turned reached his ears. He sat at the table with his mouth halfway open in shock. Who could that be? Nopony should be down here, nopony should even know about this place besides his “boss” and maybe a couple other ponies. Dolph’s eyes glanced up at the rattling padlock that kept the door closed, hoping that whoever it was that was trying to get in here didn’t know what was on the other side and would leave once they realized it was locked.

The handle was turned all the way but the door wouldn’t budge any further thanks to the padlock and shortly after whoever it was released the door handle. But Dolph didn’t move from his spot. He had no idea if the pony was still there. He didn’t even want to breathe right now.

Knock! Knock! Knock!

The sound of a hoof knocking on the door startled him and he nearly fell out of his seat. If they were knocking… was it somepony who was here on orders? Had more TNT been brought? Dolph may not have been totally thinking clearly right now buuut…

“W-Who is it?” He asked.

No answer.

He was about to ask again when the door exploded and a blue cannonball barreled into the room while the smashed splinters of the door flew all around it.

“Ahh!” Dolph screamed and fell backwards out of his chair.

“Ughhh...” Rainbow Dash dizzily wheezed as she sat up on the floor. “That was really stupid.”

“Rainbow, are you-” Barnaby said as he walked through the door but paused as soon as his eyes landed on Dolph.

Rainbow Dash’s eyes were still spinning but she too managed to steady her vision long enough to see the other pony in the room. “Oh—he is here.”

Everything was still in the safehouse for a moment. Dolph knew who these ponies were. They knew who he was. They knew what he had done. His family… if he was captured here they wouldn’t be safe anymore. His blackmailer would know he needed to be kept quiet, and the only way that could happen for sure was death. Either his own or his family’s.

Dolph’s eyes flickered to the bomb on the table.

Barnaby noticed and followed his look, gasping in surprise when he noticed just what was on the table. “Dolph, don’t-”

He couldn’t even finish his sentence as Dolph grabbed the bomb and detonator and ran out through one of the side passages.

“Rainbow! After him!” Barnaby yelled.

“I’m on it!” Rainbow shot to her hooves and started running after him—but in her haste accidentally tripped over a piece of wood from the door and fell flat on her face (out of habit she had attempted to fly before her body remembered). “Ow! Ugh, stupid bandages!” She could feel her injured wings trying to break out on reflex but that wasn’t happening right now. She was going to chase him on hoof and now he had a lead.

“Dolph! Stop, we just want to talk to you!” Rainbow Dash yelled down the dark and narrow passageway.

“We know you only did this because you didn’t have a choice!” Barnaby shouted as he followed Rainbow.

Rainbow skidded to a stop as she almost crashed into a wall and turned to go chasing Dolph through the twists of these maze-like sewer tunnels. If she had her darn wings right now this wouldn’t even be a chase. For Dolph’s part, he ran like a stallion possessed while carrying the bomb. Why did he grab it? It was reflex, or maybe a subconscious thought. He didn’t even know where he was going now, even if he could outrun them, it was over. His teeth clenched together as fresh tears started to spill from his eyes as he ran.

Over.

“Just stop already!” Rainbow Dash roared from behind him as she managed to keep a steady distance behind him despite having to navigate the tunnels for the first time. “I know your family is being threatened! We know Lord Copper is the one responsible for all of this!”

It just made Dolph run harder. His family…

“We met Eleanor! We saw your kids, they all just want to see you again!” Rainbow pleaded.

“Shut up!” Dolph finally yelled. “You don’t know anything… y-you don’t know… I can’t… I can’t ever see them again.”

“Yes you can! Just help us, I don’t want to have to punish you or anything, you’re a victim here too, Dolph. Nopony has been hurt, just help us out here and we can make it all better,” Rainbow said to him.

Dolph shook his head. “It’s already over for me.”

“If you feel that way then at least give yourself up!” Barnaby shouted. “Stop this chase and let us bring down Lord Copper!”

“You don’t understand… oh Eleanor, why?” Dolph cried.

Their hooves clattered along the wet stone ground as Dolph led them on a panicked chase. No other words were spoken anymore, the futility of them was obvious at this point. Now the only sounds were the echoing hoofsteps and the splashing sound of puddles being ran through. The dimmest of lights lit up the tunnels and Rainbow and Barnaby were worried Dolph would simply disappear into the shadows at some point. Dolph was in good shape thanks to his work consisting of so much manual labor, but he wasn’t built for endurance running. Rainbow was confident she and Barnaby would catch him before long if they just kept within sight of him.

Dolph’s haggard breaths started to become more noticeable to both himself and his pursuers. It wasn’t just from exhaustion that he was breathing hard, it was from his frenzied panic and fear.

He turned a corner and came out into a circular chamber that had numerous other paths branching out of it. In the center a drain was built that water was slowly flowing into, going deeper down into the sewers. Dolph turned around in circles, his mane falling about his face, his eyes searching around for the right way to go.

It was that indecision that allowed Rainbow and Barnaby to slide right into the circular room with him. Barnaby grabbed Rainbow Dash by the shoulder and held her back for now since Dolph still had the bomb and detonator. But the both of them were within spitting distance of him.

“Come on, Dolph. Put the bomb down and let’s all go home,” Barnaby said.

“There’s no need for this to not have a happy ending,” Rainbow said.

Dolph was panting heavily and his hooves were shaking around the bomb. Rainbow and Barnaby weren’t even sure how well he was registering their words. His pupils narrowed to pinpricks as his hoof grasped the detonator. “S-Stay back… I have to protect my family...”

“We’re bringing down Lord Copper. We can protect your family,” Barnaby told him, his jaw clenching. “Lord Copper wont be able to hurt you or your loved ones anymore.”

“Believe me, I never let the bad guy get away. Please, Dolph, help us help you,” Rainbow pleaded.

A whimpering cry came from Dolph’s throat as he shook his head back and forth. “I-I can’t fail him… I can’t. My family...”

Rainbow Dash bit her lip and Barnaby realized how badly Dolph was slipping as well. If she had her wings she bet she could burst forward and grab the detonator out of his hoof before he pressed it. But without them she just wasn’t sure of her speed on her legs. “Dolph, please-”

“I need to protect them,” Dolph said as he looked down at the bomb and detonator. “For my family...”

Barnaby grabbed Rainbow by the mane and yanked her back the moment Dolph pressed the button of the detonator. Without even thinking they ran back into the tunnel to try and get around the nearest corner as a blast loud enough to momentarily deafen them and a shockwave that rattled the teeth in their mouths overtook them. Flames and heat rushed out from the explosion, obliterating the sewer room they had been in and sending cracks through the ground above. On the street level right above them the asphalt warped and shattered apart in a fissure.

Rainbow Dash and Barnaby were thrown down the tunnel by the blast and momentarily knocked senseless. After a minute the two got up and Rainbow Dash’s vision came back into focus.

The tunnel was covered in flames.

Most of the sewer where the blast had occurred had collapsed entirely, and the flames continued to burn and flicker along the walls.

“No...” Rainbow Dash looked on in disbelief. “Why… why’d he do it?”

Barnaby grunted and stood up beside her. “I’m sorry, Rainbow. He—Dolph thought there was no way out. To him, this was the only way to protect his family.”

Rainbow Dash blinked a few times and slowly clenched her hooves, her eyes narrowing in anger and her teeth clenching together so hard she could nearly break them. “Copper. I don’t care if we don’t have anypony willing to talk, or any solid proof. We know he’s the one behind all this.” She looked up at Barnaby.

The Chief Constable returned her look with a hard frown of his own. “Yes. And we’re going to stop him now.”

Comments

[redmar]

That was not very surprising but still very tragic.

[TheCommunistDog]

11205996
oh no its much much worse

[TheCommunistDog]

R

In Today's chapter: Dolph commits suicide...

[RoboRed]

Clicked with me midway through with the chapter name to figure out how that one was gonna end.