Rainbow Dash Around the World

by MagicS

One Down

Rainbow Dash dropped to the floor the moment she came out of the stairs with Godfrey right on her tail. He flew down at her and stabbed at her ribs with his sword. That attack was blocked and it turned into a slash at her throat that she backed away from. Godfrey then landed on the floor as well and took another step forward, thrusting his cutlass at her head to skewer her on it. Rainbow brought up the Trident and once more caught his blade between the prongs of it, twisting it to the side and keeping him from pulling it back. The two were now briefly locked in a battle of strength once more—though Rainbow knew she couldn’t really win it or keep it up forever.

While stuck like this, with one talon firmly grasped around the hilt of his sword, Godfrey took a look around the impressive chamber. “My, you were right, I really hadn’t seen anything yet.” He saw the impressive art on the floor, on the walls, the huge glass dome showing the ocean above. “I think when I get that Trident that maybe I’ll make this my throne room.”

“Throne room?” Rainbow raised an eyebrow as her legs twitched and flexed while she pushed back against his sword. “I don’t think that suits you. Thought you just wanted to go out on bigger adventures and be even more of a terror than you already are.”

“Everyone gets old. One day maybe I’ll get tired of the same old adventuring and terrorizing, I think it’d be kind of fun to lord over the Grand Ocean, making everyone bow to me, do what I want, or I sink their island in a huge tidal wave. You gotta admit it’d be pretty awesome to be king down here after conquering the ocean. Everyone would have to obey me—feed my ego—or die.”

“You and I have different definitions of awesome.”

“Eh. You get it, you just don’t like it. Either way, everyone would be in awe of my accomplishments. They’d know how great I was. That’s the fun part.

“Well you can forget about all that in the first place because it’s a dream that’s never coming true!”

“You’ll have to stop me if you want to stop it first,” Godfrey grinned. He then caught sight of Coral Sea’s body, still lying where it was from earlier. “Well, well, looks like you were already busy down here with those other ponies too. I suppose getting the Trident in the first place was tougher than I thought.”

“Shut up,” Rainbow glared at him.

Godfrey raised an eyebrow. “Did I touch a nerve? You know that pony?”

“She was like you—someone who wanted to use the Trident for her own selfish reasons. Someone who had done terrible things and wanted to do even worse. But unlike you, I never got the chance to help her or change her. She didn’t deserve what happened to her. You… you could’ve been different… but you threw it all back in my face at the Lost Isle.”

“Oh—I’m wounded! Gehahahaha!” Godfrey laughed.

“Tch!” Rainbow Dash growled and pulled the Trident away, jumping back from Godfrey. “Come on. Let’s finish this already.”

“Gladly,” Godfrey grinned maliciously. He jumped and spread his wings to fly at her with a quick overhand slash.

Rainbow Dash brought the Trident up to block the blade-

CLASH!

---

Heartless merrily skipped along through the halls of Merlantis. “Come out, come out, wherever you are! I can still feel you nearby, you can’t hide from me!” Her voice was singing with joy as she got closer to the lights that no wall could block out. “Running won’t help for long either~”

“In fact if you keep running I might even get bored and go look for that other friend of yours who ran off. There were a few more ponies with him—I can still feel them all, they’re not too far away,” Heartless said as she opened up a door. She walked on into a heavily decorative room with a golden chandelier over her head and paintings along all of the walls.

She didn’t care about any of it.

It was meaningless to her.

“I sure hope you haven’t tried to block anymore doors,” Heartless smiled and walked up to the next door she was sure she needed to go through. It was at least the one that had the most direct route to the lights. She didn’t know if there might be a dead end or something ahead, but she’d go as straight as she could for as long as she could. A straight path was always the quickest way to get anywhere! That’s how she’d been following Rainbow Dash all this time.

“Are you going to try and turn invisible again to hide?” Heartless spoke to empty air as she stuck her head into another room. It was a big room with multiple floors, stairs going up to other areas, and a fountain in the middle of it where several spouts of water were arcing out of carved fish. She looked around, her “eyes” focusing on the lights from Rainbow Dash’s friends. They hadn’t gone up to a different floor. They were on the same level as her.

And they were close enough where they should only be a few rooms away at most.

“I don’t get it, why bother running? If you’re not going to try and stop me or get out of here then what’s the point at all? It’s always the same. You scream and run, I get called a monster, everyone looks so scared, I really don’t understand it at all. It feels so good, it makes me so happy when I feel the light and warmth from another. What’s there to run from?” Heartless brought a hoof to her chin and thought for a second before giving up. “Oh well! I don’t mind! Find you soon!”

Heartless giggled as she walked past the fountain to the door on the other side of the room. “I feel like it’ll finally be different with Rainbow Dash. I’ll finally feel… fulfilled.”

She stopped and looked up as a sudden thought struck her. “Oh—you’ll all be dead by then though so it doesn’t really matter to you.” She shrugged. “You understand though. I already told you how special Rainbow Dash is. And I know you understand what I mean—even if you can’t put it into words. Even if it’s just a feeling in your chest.”

She reached up and felt her heartbeat. “Yep. Just like that.”

Heartless left the room and found herself at a three-way intersection of hallways. Two of those halls were utterly irrelevant to her. She turned left and started walking in the closest direction to the lights. It wasn’t a perfectly straight path but it was closer than going down the center hallway would have been. She could see that at least. Along the way she started humming to herself as she realized something—they had stopped moving. Whatever the reason was she didn’t care. It wasn’t as important as the fact that it had happened. Whether they had given up, hit a dead end, were resting, were making a trap, she didn’t care at all.

She was just happy she’d get to them sooner now.

“Heehee!” Heartless giggled and picked up her slow pace just a little bit. She preferred walking whenever she could, whenever she didn’t absolutely need to do something else, since she had all the time in the world, but right now she was just excited!

“I’ll see you soon, Rainbow Dash! I’ll see you so, so, soon!”

At the end of this hallway was another intersection, giving her the ability to turn either right or left once more. She turned right—which she was pretty sure was going north and further into the heart of this big building. The important part was just getting to those friends and this was the way for her to go to reach them.

Closer.

Closer.

They weren’t far away at all now.

Heartless felt her smile growing wider.

There was a door ahead of her. A white door, in the white hallway. She stopped in front of it and closed her eyes: four lights inside. Warm lights waiting for her. She giggled and opened her eyes again before pushing the door open and stepping into the room.

“Hello!”

What greeted her wasn’t entirely what she was expecting—but she didn’t really care. Like always, hardly anything bothered her enough for it to show on her face.

Still, all she saw with her eyes was the unicorn standing in the middle of the room. She was standing on top of some kind of metal grill over a pit in the floor. Heartless didn’t know or care why she was doing that. The unicorn was still just standing right there for her, and there was nowhere else to go in this room. She couldn’t escape. Neither could the others who were still here.

“Are your friends invisible again? I know they’re in the room,” Heartless said as she started walking towards Daylight Gleam.

“I want to make a deal with you,” Daylight said, she had a serious look on her face, and a bead of sweat was trailing down the side of her head.

“Deal?” Heartless tilted her head—still walking.

“Y-Yeah,” Daylight nodded. She gulped down her fear and continued. “I’ll let you have me. W-Whatever it is that you do to ponies, I won’t fight back or run. Just so long as you let my friends go. Please. Take me but don’t hurt them.”

“Why would I do that? I want them too,” Heartless said. She had almost made it to where Daylight was.

“B-Because! Because can’t you even do something nice?! You really can’t grant the wish of a mare who’s willing to die for her friends?”

Heartless shrugged. “Why? I don’t get it.”

“You really are just a monster, aren’t you?” Daylight sadly frowned.

“That’s what I’ve heard,” Heartless said and walked onto the grill with Daylight. “It was nice meeting you, your light is very bright and warm too. I think it’ll be fun to feel it right before Rainbow Dash. Goodbye.” She reached forward to tap Daylight on the chest.

Thunk

“Huh?” Heartless blinked as her hoof struck something cold and hard. She looked and saw that her hoof was just barely not touching the unicorn in front of her. She frowned and furrowed her brow—annoyed at the sudden denial of what she was expecting.

“Heh, sorry,” Daylight smirked and her horn flashed, immediately the invisible suit of armor that she had been wearing became visible—as well as Gilbert floating near the ceiling, carrying another empty suit of armor, and Senax and Breakwater near the back wall of the room, holding onto some sort of lever. “You know though? With everything you’ve said and done—I don’t feel bad about this at all. NOW!”

Daylight jumped off of the grill, at the same time using her magic to shed the armor and throw it onto Heartless. She tried to affix as much of the armor onto Heartless as she could while the pink pony stood there in confusion. It looked like Heartless was about to walk forward after her—when the suit of armor Gilbert dropped the moment Daylight shouted landed on her and knocked her down.

“Haha, got her!” Gilbert cheered.

Daylight safely landed on the floor off the grill and looked at the pony struggling to get up from all the heavy metal dropped on her. “Now it’s goodbye.” She looked over her shoulder at Senax and Breakwater and nodded.

Together they pulled down the lever and the grill swung open.

“No!” Heartless yelled, her eyes going wide as she fell into the raging water stream right below it, all the armor weighing her down, and getting almost instantly carried away.

Senax and Breakwater pushed the lever back up and the grill swung back into place. Daylight looked down at it, breathing heavily, sweating. Gilbert also dropped from the ceiling right beside her and stared with her. All four of them both intensely relieved but also still wondering if it was truly over or not. They just stood there in that room, not moving, not making a sound. Only the relatively subdued sound of the water in the trash chute was making any noise. Finally after a couple minutes of nothing, Daylight turned her head to the others.

“I think that’s it.”

“Will she drown?” Gilbert asked.

Daylight shook her head. “I somehow doubt it, but she should be trapped or shot far outside of Merlantis.”

“Let’s just hope we never see her again,” Senax said.

“Seriously,” Breakwater nodded.

“Now… I think we need to get moving again,” Daylight said as she looked around the room. “Um… to where though I have no idea.”

“I do,” Senax said, smiling she pointed to the Necklace of Ponyseidon she was wearing.

“Oh right,” Daylight blinked.

“Do you… do you think Rainbow Dash is alright? What if she’s still fighting my brother?” Gilbert said.

“Let’s just hope for the best...” Breakwater said.

---

SCHWING!

The Trident of Ponyseidon went flying through the air behind Rainbow Dash before falling to the floor and stabbing into the stone tile, embedding itself there and standing up straight.

Godfrey’s cutlass went flying through the air behind him before falling to the floor and stabbing into the stone tile, embedding itself there and standing up straight.

The two combatants locked eyes and glared at each other, fire burning in their veins. Hooves shot off the floor. Talons jumped to the air. Rainbow Dash pulled back a hoof in preparation to throw out a punch and Godfrey pulled back a fist to do the same.

“AAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!”

Comments

[Mini-Joe]

RAAAAAAAAAAUUUUGGGGHH

[redmar]

At least they got rid of Heartless for the time being. Now Rainbow has to beat Godfrey in a way that ensures he'll never be a threat again.

[RoboRed]

And there it is. Flushed with the rest of the trash.
Thank god Heartless isn't smart.

“I do,” Senax said, smiling she pointed to the Necklace of Ponyseidon she was wearing.

Hope there's something good that'll come from getting the Necklace and Trident close together.

Also, ayyyyyy finally caught up!