Rainbow Dash Around the World

by MagicS

Can't Lose

Rainbow Dash flew right and Daring Do flew left as an explosion erupted between them. Burning sand and embers of flame rained past the both of them as Supernova turned, following Rainbow Dash of course, and fired another explosion from her horn. It wasn’t aimed directly at Rainbow Dash though—Supernova knew she couldn’t hit her like that—it was aimed at the sand in front of her simply to create another large blast of smoke and sand that would distract and slow Rainbow momentarily. Because Supernova then had to instantly turn around and fire an explosion at Daring Do, who had been attempting to fly at her from the other direction.

Daring Do flew upwards to avoid the blast directly hitting her, and still got rocked by the shockwave and sent flying backwards. But it was still two fast pegasi against one unicorn, and Supernova couldn’t look two directions at once. Rainbow Dash was already flying at her from the cloud of smoke and Supernova barely had the time to put up her shield.

The blue hooves of Rainbow Dash crashed into it and the flying pegasus bounced off—but not before sending cracks throughout the entire shield and almost shattering it in one hit.

Supernova growled and lowered the shield to fire a quick blast at Rainbow Dash but Dash had enough time to recover and jetted away as the explosion instead erupted behind her. Supernova then backstepped to get some distance between herself and the two pegasi, trying to keep them both in front of her and not let them pincer her again.

“You both… you both!” The unicorn shouted and ground her teeth, horn furiously sparking.

“Cry about it!” Rainbow said as she corkscrewed through the air, winding back and forth and diving all around.

At the same time, Daring Do was flying around a bit off to Supernova’s left. She wasn’t as fast or agile as Rainbow Dash, but if Supernova mistakenly focused on her for too long and missed she was giving a big opening to Rainbow Dash. And her shields probably couldn’t withstand a hit from the other pegasus either. So Supernova did what she did best and wildly shot out a flurry of random explosions everywhere in front of her. The massive barrage caused both Rainbow and Daring Do to fly further away for safety as fireballs filled the air.

“I can’t lose! I can’t fail again!” Supernova yelled. “You’re both going to die here!”

Rainbow Dash and Daring weathered the storm, dodging and running from dozens of explosions, and looked for any possible opening they had to attack.

---

“I don’t know if you all knew what Shining Diamond’s plans were and frankly I don’t care. You had the misfortune of being in my way,” Miss Valentine said as the last engineer collapsed in a crumpled heap, the lot of them now unconscious and leaving her the last pony standing in the engine room.

They were all still alive though. Valentine sighed and shook her head, thinking that maybe Rainbow Dash’s influence was making her go soft.

“Whatever… no time to think about that,” the scarlet mare said and looked around.

The engine room was still a mess of noise and moving machinery, with time the lack of engineers would probably cause some problems on its own, but Valentine couldn’t just wait around for that. She needed to find something important that could cause some direct and immediate harm. Something that could make this darn oversized balloon fall from the sky right now. She didn’t have much knowledge of technical or mechanical systems, the camels and their desert domain in general were very low-tech, but she could tell what was a big deal in here and what wasn’t.

A certain panel with many levers and glass-concealed dials on it attached to several of the vats looked quite promising.

Miss Valentine grinned as she quickly trotted towards it and took a look at what it read on top of the panel:

MASTER FUEL DISTRIBUTION SYSTEM

“Oh no, I wonder what could possibly happen if I turned this off?” Valentine laughed and swiftly yanked down each lever.

Immediately the needles on the dials all flipped to zero and Valentine heard a sharp whine emerge from the panel and machinery around her. It took less than a second for the effects of Valentines sabotage to become apparent as the whole engine room shook and alarms buzzed on. Steam vented from pipes and clattering pistons and the turbines slowed and slowed down before eventually stopping. Valentine smiled at her hoofiwork and walked back towards the door.

“Almost done here.”

---

On the bridge, Shining Diamond and the rest of the crew were alerted of the problem when the Ziz suddenly lurched and slowed down slightly. A beeping noise came from one of the stations on the wall and Whitesheet hurried over towards it. Her jaw swiftly dropped and somehow she even paled upon seeing what the problem was.

“S-Sir! We’ve lost power to the propellers! Fuel levels are at zero!” She announced.

“What?! That’s impossible! What’s going on in engineering?!” Shining Diamond demanded. He angrily looked over at his other four minions. “You four! Go down to the engine room right now and get to the bottom of this! Do you hear me?!”

“Yes, sir!” Sand Flash replied and with a curt nod to the others he led the four of them out of the bridge. They all knew they were in big danger if the propellers weren’t working, and worse danger if they disobeyed Shining Diamond.

Shining Diamond grit his teeth as he held onto the wheel of the Ziz in an attempt to steer it as best he could with the minimal power remaining. “I will not have victory snatched from my hooves, not when my goal is right here before my eyes...”

Whitesheet nervously watched the stations and readouts as he worked, not liking one bit of what she was seeing.

---

Sand Flash took point as the party of four marched down the narrow corridor in the middle of the Ziz with Velvet Hooves, Astral Comet, and Popcorn all behind him. The primary emotions of the party were confusion and fear as something like this had never happened before to their great vessel. With every step they could feel it slowing down and the machinery around them grew quieter.

Because that was distracting them they practically walked right into Miss Valentine in the middle of the blimp.

Sand Flash’s eyebrows shot into his mane as he and the others came to a screeching halt. “The Red Hornet!”

“Supernova was supposed to stop you!” Velvet Hooves objected.

“Oh, more flunkies of Shining Diamond?” Valentine said. “Well let me tell you you made a big mistake trusting that mare.” She cracked her neck and took a step towards them. “But not nearly as big of a mistake as joining up with Shining Diamond in the first place.”

Astral Comet’s eyes narrowed and he fired a beam of magic at her, the first of the group to gather his wits and realize they needed to fight.

Valentine easily backflipped over the beam and it impacted harmlessly against the floor, barely leaving a burn mark. Astral just wasn’t much of a combat mage.

“So you want to be the first one who gets it, huh?” Valentine said to him. She tilted down her sunglasses and glared at him with her deep blue eyes.

Astral’s jaw clenched. “J-Just get her!"

Sand Flash and Velvet Hooves both ran at Valentine, there wasn’t enough room in this interior corridor for them to extend their wings and fly, with the stallion reaching her first and throwing out a high punch at her face. Valentine easily dodged under it and gave him an uppercut to the chin, making him stumble back while Velvet reached her and simply tried tackling Valentine to the ground. Valentine merely jumped up and slammed her hooves into Velvet’s back to make her collapse with a whumph. A second later she tilted her head to the side to avoid another beam of magic fired by Astral. Valentine mockingly raised an eyebrow at him this time.

“The four of you really aren’t fighters are you? Talk about uncoordinated,” she snorted.

“G-Get off of me!” Velvet shouted, struggling to toss the other mare off her back.

Meanwhile Popcorn was just frozen in fear and Sand was groaning in pain, grasping his jaw.

“Maybe you all should’ve taken some lessons in how to fight rather than hire some unreliable psycho to do the job for you,” Valentine said and stamped hard on Velvet’s back.

“Ngh!” The pegasus mare whined.

Valentine shrugged. “Well, it wouldn’t really help you anyways.”

In a flash she jumped off Velvet and got up close to Astral. He was too startled to react in time and a scarlet hoof roughly grasped his horn and yanked him around towards the wall of the corridor. Valentine smashed his face directly into the cold metal and released his horn, letting the unconscious unicorn slide to the floor. At the same time, Popcorn had finally found her courage (or perhaps only acted out of fear) and came behind Valentine with her hooves raised high above her head in attack.

A swift kick from Valentine into the stomach of the yellow mare knocked the wind out of her and made her double over. Where another hoof met the back of her skull and made her go nighty night.

Now it was only the three pegasi. Sand Flash and Velvet Hooves both got up again to face her, but neither were looking favorably at their chances.

“Well don’t keep me waiting,” Valentine said to them.

This time they came at her together—or at the very least as close to together as they could thanks to the confines of the corridor making it tough for that. But they did at least intend to attack her at the same time so she couldn’t dodge and retaliate to easily. Unfortunately for them the difference in skill was simply too great. They probably knew this, and were probably terrified of The Red Hornet, but to their credit they were still trying to complete their mission for their boss and they weren’t going to go down without a fight.

Sand Flash threw a hook at the left side of Valentine’s head while Velvet Hooves aimed lower, trying to sweep out her legs as she ran into the other mare. Like this, Valentine couldn’t simply jump over them. Of course there were things to do besides dodging. Valentine’s left hoof came up and before Sand’s punch connected she hit his leg right in the knee joint, bending his limb and almost breaking it and making his punch go off-course. On reflex he even screeched in pain and stepped back.

As Velvet tried to tackle into her, all Valentine did was swiftly tilt her head down and smash the crown of her head directly in-between Velvet’s eyes. The mare twitched and went limp, eyes rolling back into her head as she fell to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut.

Sand Flash didn’t even notice that though, it had happened too fast and his leg was in too much pain.

So he also didn’t notice the scarlet hoof until it knocked him into next week.

The last of her opponents now out and on the floor, Valentine took a moment to smile before looking at the way to the bridge. Only one thing left to do.

---

Rainbow Dash flew low to the ground at top speed, a huge trail of dust and sand being carried and knocked up by the wind behind her. She wasn’t flying directly at Supernova but instead a bit off to the side of her. Daring Do meanwhile flew directly above the unicorn and threw small stones gathered from the desert down at her, trying to nail the unicorn in the head or at the very least force her to stop sending explosions or get her to move around. The attack was working as Supernova found it difficult to concentrate enough to fire an explosion that would actually go anywhere near Daring Do.

“Stop it, stop it, stop it!” Supernova roared as her horn shot sparks everywhere while she dodged another rock. The second she tried to use a spell she had to break it off at the last moment to dodge again. Out of the corner of her eye she was forced to pay attention to the speeding form of Rainbow Dash too.

Another rock was thrown at Supernova but this time she swatted it out of the air with her hoof and managed to fire a powerful explosion at Daring Do. The khaki-colored pegasus avoided being hit directly but still got singed and was sent spiraling down and into the sands by the force of the explosion. Supernova didn’t have any time to celebrate this small brief win though. Rainbow Dash had just reached her. Supernova put up her shield to block a direct attack but that wasn’t what Rainbow Dash was up to in the first place.

The rainbow pony shot right past Supernova at supersonic speeds like a missile, all the sand and dust around her shot up like a fountain and created a huge cloud that engulfed the unicorn. The sheer air pressure from Rainbow’s pass practically almost knocked Supernova to the ground as well. Stuck in this cloud of sand she couldn’t use any explosions or see where her opponents were now.

“But you can’t see me either so just what are you planning? What do you think you stupid ponies can do!” Supernova yelled. She dropped her shield and kept her horn lit and ready to blow up anything that moved.

Suddenly two powerful gusts of wind came at her from the sides, blowing harshly against her and not letting up for a second. The sand and dust was blown away completely, revealing Rainbow Dash and Daring Do floating outside it and throwing all the wind they could at Supernova. The yellow unicorn’s mane and tail whipped about and she had to close her eyes thanks to the fierce wind, it was flinging sand everywhere and she was starting to struggle to even breathe.

With each flap, both Rainbow Dash and Daring Do got slightly closer, inching ever so slowly towards the dangerous unicorn so they could eventually get within striking distance of her.

“Haaaah!” Supernova shouted and detonated an explosion right on her hooves that sent the entire plan up in smoke. All three ponies were blown in different directions and landed on their backs in the sand.

Rainbow Dash grit her teeth and groaned as she sat up, looking around for where the other two were. “Come on! This is getting ridiculous!”

“I hear that!” Daring Do called from about a hundred feet away in front of her, waving a hoof around to get Dash’s attention.

Meanwhile a coughing Supernova walked around on wobbling hooves to Dash’s left and Daring Do’s right respectively. “S-Shut up… just stop talking. J-Just stop all of this.”

“Tell that to yourself,” Rainbow glared at her.

“Can’t lose...” Supernova shook her head, sweat dripping down her face. Her breath was ragged and she looked wretched and disheveled. “Can’t lose!” She shouted and raised her head, horn sparking, and looked directly at Rainbow Dash.

The explosive spark in Rainbow’s face came a second later, but she was already flying up and back into the sky. The column of flame that sprouted up in an attempt to consume her came up short. Supernova didn’t plan on letting up, already she was following Rainbow Dash and looking to blow her to pieces—when a rock hit her in the side of the head and knocked her to the sand.

“You’re losing it,” Daring Do said, juggling another rock. “Back in Two Hump Oasis you were way more aware. We couldn’t do anything to you when you were focused.”

“Ngh!” Supernova whined and swung her horn in Daring Do’s direction—but had to instantly switch to shielding herself as Rainbow Dash came down on top of her. The shield shattered completely but Rainbow Dash was still bounced away by its rupturing.

Rainbow fell and rolled over the sand while Supernova scrambled to her hooves and got ready to blow her up.

Only to be felled by another rock that hit her in the back of the head after Daring Do had flown behind her during the confusion.

“YOU!” Supernova screamed in rage, her horn sparking like crazy, and turned around to finish Daring Do off for good. As she did though, she realized her rage was about to be her downfall. Just before she could fully turn back around to defend herself, attempt to dodge, or try and blow Rainbow Dash out of the sky, a blue hoof collided with the side of her head. Her vision went black for a brief instant and the next thing she knew she was lying on the hot sand and her head was spinning. The sparks and magic from her horn had all gone out.

“That does it, you’re finished,” Rainbow Dash said, floating above her. A steely frown graced her face. “I don’t want to see you following me again, got that?”

Daring Do walked up to her and winced down at the out of commission Supernova. “Is that really good enough?”

“I’m not killing her,” Rainbow Dash shook her head. “There’s something wrong with her, even with whatever else she might have done in her life, I’m still not going to kill her when I’ve already beaten her. If she gets out of this desert alive or doesn’t… we’ll see what happens.”

“I won’t… you won’t get away,” Supernova sputtered, a spittle of blood coughed out of her mouth. “I can’t lose. I can’t lose.” Her eyes weren’t even focused on Rainbow Dash anymore—she was just blankly staring ahead at the sand.

Rainbow Dash sighed and looked up at the blimp still flying towards the Crystal Sea. “Let’s go help Valentine.”

A sudden wave of heat and magical power erupted out of Supernova and pushed Rainbow Dash and Daring Do away. The two slid across the sand and looked back at the unicorn to figure out what had just happened.

“Can’t lose… can’t lose….” Supernova repeated as heat and steam hissed from her Cutie Mark, the explosion on her flank glowing red at first before becoming a blinding white.

“What the hay is going on?!” Daring Do yelled.

“I-I dunno!” Rainbow Dash shook her head.

“Can’t lose… can’t lose… can’t lose… can’t lose...” Supernova’s eyes had gone white as well and red cracks started to spread all over her flank from her Cutie Mark, leaking violent energy into the air. Her horn sizzled and bolts of magical energy lanced out from it at random intervals. Magic gathered at its tip and continued to grow brighter until it was like a miniature sun. “Can’t lose… can’t lose… can’t lose… can’t lose… CAN’T LOSE!”

The miniature sun sparked and Rainbow Dash just barely had time to grab Daring Do and start to fly away before it exploded.

The blast was deafening—worse than anything Supernova had done before. Rainbow and Daring Do were both carried away by the powerful explosion as heat washed over them. They tumbled into the sand over a hundred feet away, burnt and with their skulls rattling. As they struggled to rise, the pair of pegasi looked at where Supernova had been standing and saw a huge fire with a column of smoke already rising high into the sky.

“She… I think she blew herself up,” Daring Do said. She gulped and wiped away the sweat on her brow. “I guess it’s over then.”

“No.”

Daring Do looked at Rainbow Dash and saw her friend staring deeply into the fire.

Rainbow Dash’s sharp eyes picked out a shadow in the middle of the flames, beginning to emerge from the inferno. “It’s not over yet.”

---

“We’re still not getting any power back, sir!” Whitesheet fearfully said to Shining Diamond as she looked over the control panels on the bridge. She was beginning to become a nervous wreck and sweat poured down her face.

“Blasted idiots!” Shining Diamond yelled as he used the wheel to keep the blimp as steady as possible even as it continued to descend. “Go find them and fix the darned problem yourself!”

“Y-Yes sir,” Whitesheet nodded and went over to the door.

“Incompetent buffoons all around me...” Shining Diamond grumbled.

Behind him he heard Whitesheet turn open the door-

Whack!

He turned around to see Whitesheet knocked to the floor by a grinning scarlet mare who walked onto the bridge. Whitesheet’s head hit the hard metal floor and she was out just like that. Shining Diamond narrowed his eyes and stepped away from the wheel, glaring at the intruder.

“The Red Hornet.”

“Shining Diamond,” Valentine said back to him.

“Well then,” Shining Diamond reached up to take off his hat and tossed it to the floor. “I suppose if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.”

---

What stepped through the flames was not Supernova.

The unicorn had transformed, she had grown taller and thinner than she already was. So ghastly thin she looked more like a skeleton with yellow skin stretched over it than a pony, her grotesque bones visible everywhere. Her mane and tail, formerly only reminiscent of flames, had become actual burning fire that embers fell from. On her flank, the Cutie Mark that used to be a violent explosion had warped into a black question mark with glowing red lines like veins radiating out from all over her flank and her upper back legs. Her horn had changed it’s shape, becoming more curved and changing color as well, from yellow at the base, to orange, to red, and then a bright white at the tip. While her face had become a warped, serpentine mockery of a pony’s, her jaw and muzzle both thinner and longer while her teeth inside her mouth had turned to needles. Saliva dripped from her mouth and onto the sand, where it burned and melted the grains it hit, sending up small puffs of smoke. Her forked tongue flickered out of her mouth and her eyes—her eyes. Her sclera had become roiling yellow flames, the irises a burning red, and the pupils a slitted black.

Those flaming eyes rolled about in her head before stopping and locking onto Rainbow Dash.

The monster hissed as an inferno of sparks shot from her horn.

Comments

[Cosmic Potato]

Interesting...

[redmar]

Clearly Supernova isn't a pony anymore if she even was before. I think that Shining Diamond won't go down easy but he can't win before the loss of power becomes too big a problem to fix.

[TheCommunistDog]

Well this is not gonna end well.

In today’s chapter: Valentine tries to take down the airship while Rainbow and Daring Do fights Supernova!

[RoboRed]

whatinthegoddamn