A glowing sound stone bobbed across the surface of the bubbling sewage. “Put that in your horns and shake it, ya smelly rainsticks!” the shard broadcasted.
With his hooves thrust deep into the muck, Shell did a double-take towards the enchanted item. He squinted as his lips slurred. “Enforcer Josho...?”
Just then, the liquid glowed bright red from below.
Shell glanced down. He gasped and flew back against the brickwork as the sewage exploded before him.
Rising up on thrusting horseshoes, Rainbow Dash emerged from the depths, every inch of her armor covered in loose slime. Her pendant's shimmering lightning bolt reflected a vicious frown.
“You're going to have to try harder than that, jerksauce.”
Shell angled his horn forward. “Very well, then.” With a hiss of raw magic, he slid over two dozen loose bricks out from the walls of the chamber and formed them into a solid missile overhead.
Rainbow's eyes darted from the stallion to the projectile. She flinched—
Shell flung the chunk of wall at her figure.
With thrusters burning, Rainbow shot along the interior of the sewers, skirting under and over the support columns of looming, decrepit aqueducts. As Shell's telekinesis throttled after her, the bricks collected more and more debris until a veritable serpent of sludge and mortar was ravenously chasing after his target.
Rainbow Dash at last backflipped over a low hanging arch of stone. Shell's missile flew messily into it, sending shards of cracked brick flying everywhere. Going against the flow, Rainbow Dash soared in the opposite direction, flipping and twirling around every loose missile that crossed her path back to her opponent.
Shell increased the volume of his bombardment, flinging chunks of congealed plaster and petrified mud. Rainbow vaulted and kicked off them as if they were gymnastic podiums and flew at Shell with a vicious dropkick. “Yaaaaaugh!”
Calmly, Shell's horn flickered, and he caused the last chunk of debris to fly backwards into the pegasus' flank.
“Gaaah!” Rainbow flew towards him.
The stallion lifted his hoof, calmly caught her belly with a strong forelimb, and ruthlessly slammed her spine down with a full-on body press. He leered over her, raising his metal prosthetic to beat her skull in senseless.
She thrusted her head back, allowing his face to get a full view of her pendant as it strobed. The ruby light stabbed into his one eye.
“Aaaugh!” Shell stumbled back.
Rainbow Dash kipped up, somersaulted, and flew all four hooves violently towards him.
He caught sight of her and flashed his horn, gritting his teeth with the effort it took to halt her body in motion. She levitated motionlessly just inches from his face. As he reached physically for his taser, she ignited her horseshoe thrusters, erupting all four of them straight into his muzzle.
“Nnnngh!” Shell's mane caught fire. He stumbled around, gripping his singed face.
With his back to her, Rainbow Dash plowed into him, knocking the two of through like stones across a festering pond. He wrangled out of her grip in mid-air and tried to block her punches with a telekinetic shield. She thrusted a hoof through, wrapping it around his gray neck and throwing his balance off. As a result, the two spun into the drink, shot through the filth like a torpedo, and came bursting out the other side with a foul splash.
The two slammed onto a dry platform of dust-laden bricks. Grunting from the impact, they rolled apart, coming to a stop in separate heaps. Rainbow Dash stood up on quivering hooves. Shell stood, collapsed, and pulled himself by a flickering metal prosthetic.
Squaring off from several meters' distance, the two took the time to catch their breath and allow the pain of the moment to settle.
Naturally, Rainbow Dash shouted something first. “Where are they?!” She seethed and spat. “You know where my friends are! You must! Why else would you be here?!”
“I'm here to collect what was never yours to begin with,” Shell leered.
“Will you can it with the holier-than-thou garbage?!” Rainbow Dash hissed. “We both know how this ends! You lose! You always lose! It never ends up with you getting the upper hoof!”
“I am going to give you one last chance to cooperate or I'll be forced to enlist your skills beyond the sarcophagus,” Shell grumbled.
“Listen to you! You're like a broken record! And both sides is a lame cover of 'Candle in the Whinny!'” Rainbow Dash grinded her hooves and roared, “How can an idiot like you be so dead-set on the same thing after losing so many battles?!”
“I have my eye on the war itself. I count everything between me and my goal a victory,” Shell said. “All that's ever meant anything to you is miles away and irreplaceable.” His eye narrowed. “You're so-called friends are simply a distraction to the fact that there's nothing left for you to win.”
“Shut up!” Rainbow hissed and galloped towards him with a vicious hoof-swing.
Shell side-trotted it, spun around, and grabbed her from behind. “Until you accept the fact that you're a lost cause unto yourself, you won't be useful to anypony.” He aimed his horn at her, encasing her in a telekinetic bubble. “Stop being loyal to nothing and give in!”
“Nnnnnnghh-Raaaaaugh!” Rainbow flung her hooves forward and expelled her horseshoes' flame to the breaking point.
The two of them slid back, back, back, and exploded through a wall of brick, showering dust and stone all over a sloshing cavern beyond. Their bodies were lost to the filth, masked over by the thunderous sounds of a tumultuous gunfight escalating overhead.
I can just imagine how after this battle and the total cost estimation, the mayor of Blue Nova is going to have trying to be re-elected. Poor pony, they never asked for any of this.
For god's sake, Shell...just give it up...
Intense. Makes me wonder just how much damage they can take to get them down. Permanently.
Round Three!
Fight!
Oh, goodness. I just realized that Shell's going to have to meet all the ponies he thought were dead, and find out exactly how terrible he is at killing via throwing ponies off of high altitudes.
He'll probably blink once or twice every time.
"What to call this chapter. What... to call... this chapter. Oh, screw it. 'Rainbow Versus Shell' it is."
I kid, I kid.
Pretty nice fight sequence. Shell's one frustratingly tough sonuvabitch. It'll make his eventual and inevitable once-and-for-all defeat all the more satisfying, though you've set the bar kind of high in terms of how he'll have to be defeated. Can't just have Kera telekinetically lobbing a wrench at his head, knocking him unconscious so he falls to his doom or something. Or maybe something like that would be awesome...like Indiana Jones and the sword dude.
Also: Any time you're ready to show up, EE, will be fine with me.
Hmm, what was Shell talking about, "forced to use powers?"
Bronycon rocks. You keep coming up in conversation, ):(, usually followed by a very deep sigh. Thirty push-ups. Knock 'em out!
This is the best fic ever.
It's written in the Elder Scrolls.
This is cool, you are cool, the Big Lebowski is cool, we are all cool.
Shell is pretty badass...
2987443
Choose your destiny.
Time to end him, Rainbow. Finish this once and for all.
Man, Shell just won't die. He's like a friggin' Terminator or somecrap.
Wait. They're fighting in the sewers, and pretty much ripping the stonework up everywhere they go. Is the city going to collapse on them or is Rainbow going to pull a Luffy and punch Shell through the streets?
Hey. Can you do that? That would be awesome.
2988138 I second this motion, but we must remember, badass characters like Shell can only be defeated by something completely unexpected and totally idiotic. Something like 2987479's idea of Kera knocking him out with a wrench from out of nowhere.
2987495
I'm jealous. I wish I could have gone but too far away. Why the hell are there never any cobs in Chicago?
Shell has yet to realize that Loyalty is her heart and soul. She can't just stop being who she is.
I really like to think that Shell and Rainbow are very alike. Both are very persistent and have a place where their loyalties lie. It's quite the conundrum.
SHEEEEEEEEEELLLLLLLL!!!!!!!
Ok Shell, just DIE already. Once and for ALL just DIEEEEE!
2988191
Would Shell expect Belle to be in her current state of 'awesome'? Something tells me Shell and Belle (this rhyme is terrible) will have another conversation before he's out of the story.
Also they should fight
A nice fight scene but I cant help but feel that there wasn't enough collateral damage.
"Come now jerkchicken and let me show you how a real man fights"
That's twice you've fallen for the hoof thrusters trick, Shell! Suck it!
Honeytiger knew it! Rainbow Dash jumped up back out of the water!
I am still amazed by the amount of not getting it that Shell is throwing around on a day to day basis. I solemnly swear to write him an obituary once he's six feet under. Until then I'll just enjoy the pretty explosions some more.
MY PARENTS ARE DEAD!!
IIIIIt's Dashie's evaluation time!
You know who Shell reminds me of? Heath Ledger's Joker from The Dark Knight.
The Joker is a maniac. He is so insane that his world makes perfect sense to himself. Not only does he truly believe that he's right in everything he does, but his unbreakable character and manner of speech can fool and deceive almost anyone. Shell's the same way. He never breaks his stoic character and is so far gone into his own reality that he truly believes that it is correct. Ledomare isn't corrupt in his eyes. Rainbow Dash is still just a test subject to him. The reason he is able to be such a wall of stone, devoid of emotion, is because his universe can't have emotion to function. He doesn't know it, but he needs everything in his little world to be just so or he'll go insane. He should be insane by now, had he not "reasoned" his way back to a sort of semi-sanity by slipping even further down the drain. But maybe it just sounds confusing...please try to understand. With Shell, Imploding has created a great antagonist, with tons of potential as a villain.
Also, DEATH TO SHELL. JUST DIE ALREADY. These are my thoughts so far.
-MASH
So I really want this to be a movie. It would take like a zillion dollars to make, and be longer than all the movies I've ever watched put together, bit it would be a damn fine movie. Just in case anyone comes into a massive inheritance or wins the lottery or something and can't think of anything to do with their money. Any volunteers? No? Eh, I tried.
In other news, I have officially dedicated this song to Shell:
Rainbow can be Wanda and EE can be Mary Anne. Its the perfect plan!
Christ, Blue Nova's sewage workers are going to have a laugh once this is all over. RBD and Shell are being positively reckless!
...I would pay so much money to see one pony supplexing another. Goddamn!
Incredibly well written fight scene. Now, come on, EE!
-Spirit
Ah, Shell you forget. You can't kill Dash. She is wearing her Plot Armor....not that way you dirty bastards, get your head out the sewer.
Shell is pretty good at not dying.
Just like RD!
Uh, Shelly, baby, hate to break it to you, but you suck at your job.
You've killed about, uh... no one.
Twice he fell for this. Shell is a very slow learner
First his leg, now Dashie torches his face. Shell is like the Baxter Stockman of the series. Next he'll get de-pancreas'd, then decapitated and attached to a spider bot, and pretty soon he'll be a floating brain in a jar -- a...shell, if you will.
I'll stop now.
On the plus side, imagine the glowing reviews the Blue Nova Waste Treatment company is going to get when ponies find out there was a big fight in the middle of their cisterns yet nopony got dysentery.
Blue Nova Waste Treatment: poo so clean you can swim in it!
She has already done that, which is why you fail Shell.
5842973 except Zenith...
6230321 Who is a nobody... Damn turncoat.
6273199
*Turnturncoat. He betrayed his fellow deserters.
That's always a sign of thins to come
And this epic death battle of the ages is just going on in the background.
8514691
Turnturnturncoat. He got turned inside out at the end of it all.
I'm actually pretty impressed with Shell's fighting here. His telekinesis is such a pain in the ass that I'm scared for Rainbow even if I know she won't die here
8674045
One more and it full circle. 🔵