Supreme Steam: The newest sport that has swept the nation by storm. Ever since its inception, Rainbow Dash always wanted to participate, but she never had the ability. But now, with her friend Twilight, she's ready to take to the ring.
In a world where technology and magic have progressed to an equal level, a new sport has arisen for great minds to showcase the power and intricacies of their superior worksmanship. Supreme Steam, the newest sport made by and for young minds. Rainbow Dash has been following her favorite team from Cloudsdale Academy over the past few years of the sport, wanting to take it up herself, but not having the ability to create such mechanical masterpieces. But this year with her friend Twilight, maybe things will be different, and she'll take it all, the tournament, the glory, and the fame.
Looking back now, man this sure showed it was a first story I feel like I've improved so much since writing this! -6/30/2015
The clang of iron and steel resonated through the radio, the sound of two machines raging against each other, locked in combat. Sitting on the edge of her seat was Rainbow Dash, with her hands clenched into fists and her eyes closed, imagining the rush of being a pilot in one of the colossal machines. The concussive blows each machine dealt to the other caused the metal to dent and resonate in a way not unlike a bell, tolling for the oil of one poor robot. Each time the crowd cheered, Rainbow’s excitement only increased, tightening her fists harder and acting out the motions she heard from the announcers.
“Oooohhhhh! Another big hit for Cloudsdale!” said one of the announcers with a very excited tone. “It looks like the new kids on the block are giving our veteran a run for his money. Clearly anyone’s match.”
The roar of the crowd in the exhibition between the hotshot new champions from Cloudsdale Academy and one of the original fighters of the country’s newest sport from Ponyville High raged in the background, causing a muffled screech from the radio box.
“Yeah! Go get ‘em!” yelled Rainbow at the top of her lungs. She had been following the Cloudsdale team since she started following the new sport. Supreme Steam, they called it. It had big awesome machines, rough and tumble action, and fighting; what more could she ever want in a sport?
Rainbow Dash could hardly contain her excitement for the fight. Her hands began to lose color due to the intense pressure she put on them. She bounced in her chair repeatedly, awaiting more information. The announcer began his narration on the action once more.
“The Storm Seraph takes flight once again, spreading its wings. The Storm Seraph swoops in for a quick aerial assault—”
“Wham! And the Iron Horse swats the Seraph down with a wicked grappling technique!” the second announcer interjected over his companion. “Looks like all those years in wrestling are still relevant even now.”
“But wait!” shouted the first announcer, cutting back in as if it were his own competition. “What are all of those feathers for? These are mechs, not birds…”
Suddenly, the sound of an explosion like firecrackers sounded through the radio. Dash was at this point jittering uncontrollably in fangirl spirit. She brought her hands up to her mouth to cover a giggle. Ponyville’s fighter had fallen into a ploy that Rainbow knew only too well.
“Heeheehee! So awesome!” she quietly exclaimed to herself. “I bet he never saw it coming!” She quieted back down to listen to the coverage of the fight once more.
“Those feathers just erupted into little explosions! I can’t believe how good these Cloudsdale kids are! They’re only juniors, too,” said the first announcer.
“But you have to look at their record from last season,” the second replied. “Nearly undefeated, with minimal errors in performance among three pilots. Not a lot of other schools or teams in general can make that claim. That’s why they’re the champions.”
The harsh shriek of grinding metal blasted through the speaker. The verdict was nearly drowned out by cheering as the announcers narrated the final parts of the fight. Things were getting crazy over at Cloudsdale. The sounds from the stadium overwhelmed the frequencies and caused static on the radio.
“And with a jab to the heart, Cloudsdale Academy takes the win for this fight! The Iron Horse has shut down and stopped moving. The emergency barrier is in place. Game, set, and match!”
Rainbow imagined she was there as well, cheering for her favorite team’s victory. She collapsed back onto her chair, her clothes drenched and rainbow hair matted down with the nervous sweat she had accumulated from listening.
As the color returned to her knuckles, she decided to take a look at some of the school fliers for the new year. The summer just flew by in a rush of sports, sports camps, and hanging out with her friends. It almost seemed like the breaks between school years were getting smaller.
“Ugh… boring, boring, an angry letter from the counselor to do better this year…” Rainbow droned on lifelessly. Then she came upon something more interesting. A flier for the Supreme Steam club at Ponyville High was hosting a meet and greet to show off the current members and one of the founders of the sport: Big Macintosh. “Now, that, I can get behind!” Rainbow shouted to no one in particular.
She had many times imagined herself in the cockpit of one of the mechs, fighting for respect and glory in the ring, but when she had tried, she realized that the sport required a lot more planning than she was willing to commit to. It apparently took way more time to create a mech than it did to repair it after a fight, which was time that could have been better spent doing another sport like soccer or field hockey.
Rainbow let out a long, drawn out yawn as she looked at the time. The clock on the wall read 10:45pm. The first day of school, and more importantly, the Mechamania club’s meet was tomorrow. She had to get some sleep if she didn’t want to spend her first afternoon off in detention for falling asleep in class.
So Dash went up to her room, dressed for bed and went to one of the walls in her room. It was filled with sports posters, even ones of Mechamania teams, despite it being a very new sport. There were so many of them that there was hardly any visible paint on the wall, just posters. Dash struck a pose in front of the championship poster of the Cloudsdale Conquerors and hit the light.
The first day of classes dragged on terribly for Rainbow Dash, having caught herself from outright falling asleep in her history class twice. She didn’t fare much better in her final period, math class, though she had her friends keep her what company they could.
After classes finally let out, Rainbow Dash ran as fast as she could to the gymnasium, where the festivities for the Mechamania club were starting to take place, with current members giving demonstrations of how to build basic parts, showing off pictures of their mechs, and describing the science and magic behind the mechanisms. All the informational booths about the club were located at equidistant points around the gym, with a speaker at every one of them.
At the center of attention, on top of the stage at the back of the room stood Big Macintosh with the supervisor of the club: Iron Will. The two giants still only barely measured up to the knee of the machine that Mac piloted.
“Iron Will wants everyone’s attention now!” boomed Iron Will’s voice, with all the students defensively covering their ears. The boisterous noise reached all the way up into the high ceiling of the windows. Iron Will was actually keeping it down to avoid breaking another window. Once everyone quieted down, he began his speech.
“Thank you all for coming here, Iron Will hopes you had a good summer! But even more so… Iron Will hopes you were all listening or watching the exhibition of our very own Big Mac against Cloudsdale last night!” At this, there were several cheers from the cloud, with some applause and whistling at the mention of Big Mac. “Welcome to the start of a new year, and the new season of SUPREME STEAM!” he emphasized his last word in an overblown manner, flexing with an impressive display of his muscles.
“Our good old champ may have lost that game, but take a look at his record and be amazed!” he slowed his speech to emphasize once again. Not only was he the champion for the inaugural season and the third, but he was also a pioneer of the game, despite already being a founding fighter. “He built his mech and fought on his own, without a coach on the sidelines to tell him what to do, what a fighter!” As he finished, his voice crescendoed to prove his point while making more exaggerated motions with his arms.
It was true, most if not nearly all of the teams in the leagues right now were comprised of two parts, equally important: A pilot and a mechanic. The pilot did the fighting and drove the mech into battle, while the mechanic was in charge of building, maintaining, and giving tactical advice during fights over a radio. What distanced Big Mac from all the other teams was that he didn’t have a team, he did all of his fighting on his own. Though given his laconic disposition, Rainbow wondered if he just went on his own to not have to talk…
Big Macintosh was one of the founders of the sport, which hadn’t quite gotten to establishing a professional league yet, though Big Mac and the other founders were working on that in order to continue playing it themselves beyond high school, the only place they could at the time. Though further thought on Rainbow’s part was interrupted by Iron Will continuing again after the cheering had died down.
“Now you probably won’t measure up to this kid’s strength and skill, but Iron Will challenges all of you to follow in his footsteps and make Ponyville High proud!” Iron Will concluded with a bow. Rainbow flashed a smug grin toward the rowdy teacher. He was never known for being very eloquent, but he made his classes fun.
“Anything you’d like to add, Big Mac?” Iron Will asked the tall graduate.
“Nope,” he replied with a single word.
As the speech ended and Big Mac was led to an autograph table on the stage by Iron Will, a long line formed along the gym, stretching around the basketball court’s sidelines, and normalcy returned. In the space created by the departure of the mass of students, Rainbow saw her friend Twilight Sparkle, dressed in some rather preppy clothes, despite the event being ultra-casual. But what in the world was she doing here? This didn’t seem like her kind of thing…
Rainbow quickly walked over to where Twilight was standing off to the side, as if in a daze at the machinery on display. The Iron Horse had been set out for the exhibition, towering at about thirty feet tall, sporting gleaming metal and powerful limbs. With a devilish grin, Rainbow crept up behind her and shouted her loudest at the poor girl, flailing her arms to add to the effect.
“Waaaaugh!” Twilight screamed as her concentration was brutally snapped by Rainbow’s exclamation, with her hair going everywhere and her books falling to the floor. “You’re going to give me a heart attack if you keep doing that, Rainbow!” Rainbow just laughed.
“Bwahahahaha! You should have seen your face! It was priceless,” Rainbow snorted at her prank. “Aaaanyway, what are you doing here Twilight? Last I checked, sports didn’t interest you, and this isn’t a library.” Twilight gave Rainbow Dash a small frown as she turned back to Mac’s mech, which was on display.
“You know, I do more than study all the time,” Twilight retorted quietly while crossing her arms. “I came to learn about the magic used in these things, it’s actually pretty impressive.” Rainbow comically snored at Twilight’s short explanation.
“Yawn, boring. All I heard was ‘blah, blah, blah,’ and egghead stuff,” Rainbow responded, sticking her tongue out.
“Fine, fine, whatever,” Twilight responded as both laughed together.
“Seriously though Twi, I didn’t know you were into this stuff,” Rainbow pressed, twirling around innocently in her short skirt. Twilight turned back to Rainbow with a swish of her long, two toned hair, smoothing it back into its normal position.
“Really, I’m not. I just wanted to get a good look at the stuff that makes these things work. It’s actually pretty impressive stuff.”
“Well, alright Twilight. I’d say that sounds cool, but I’d be lying, I’m gonna go do something fun now,” Rainbow said with a wink and left to join the autograph line.
After seeing the length of the line, Rainbow regretted not joining the line first. It was at least fifty students long, and would take way longer than Rainbow would have liked. She got out her favorite poster of Big Macintosh and his mech from her bag. The poster showed Big Mac kneeling on top of his mech’s arm in a short sleeved red shirt and distressed blue jeans. The mech in the background, the Iron Horse, was one of the first mechs ever built for the sport. It was hefty and strong, with little mobility, though Mac made it work. Dash admired Big Macintosh’s grit, and was therefore one of his fans, though not to the extent of her idols from Cloudsdale.
Nearly twenty minutes later, it was finally Rainbow Dash’s turn to get an autograph. She stepped up to the table and placed her poster on the table, ready to be signed. Big Mac took up his pen and began to sign his signature on the poster when Rainbow spoke up.
“So Big Mac, what’s it like being a pilot in the Iron Horse? It’s probably the coolest, most awesome thing ever, isn’t it?” Rainbow giddily asked. She had imagined being in control for so long, she hoped it was everything she had ever dreamed in it.
“Eeyup,” came Big Macintosh’s one word reply as he began to hand back the poster to Dash, with his scribbled, nearly illegible name, when suddenly Iron Will came up with his own pen.
“Here, let Iron Will sign that too, as his supervisor, I deserve some of the credit too!” Iron Will said with a huge grin on his face. Rainbow looked mortified as she picked up her poster and booked it off of the stand and back towards the open area of the gym.
Despite being a teacher and a grownup, Iron Will went running after her, pen in hand with the intent of signing the poster. Rainbow Dash slid under an empty table whereas Iron Will simply ran right through it, knocking it to the side unceremoniously.
“Come back here! My signature will increase the value of that poster by double at least!” Iron Will shouted to Rainbow Dash while still brandishing the pen high above his head like a knife.
“NO! You’ll ruin it!” Rainbow exclaimed after running behind a table with a poor host between her and the overzealous teacher. As Iron Will came up to the booth, the host shrank down and cowered after seeing the demise of the last table to stand in the gym teacher’s way.
“Now come on, you’re one of Iron Will’s favorite students, now let me sign that poster,” he said in reply, faking his way around the table while Rainbow copied his movements to maintain the same distance around the table from him.
“Heh, heh, no way old man!” said Rainbow as she made a break for the crowd.
“O-old man!?” Iron Will stuttered out with a slackened jaw. “Iron Will is not old! Iron Will is in his prime!” he retorted as the chase continued around the gym. Rainbow knocked aside a few students still standing in line for Big Mac’s autograph. The displaced kids formed a small pile on the floor that Iron Will had to navigate past, thankfully not flattening them as well.
Rainbow Dash was having a great time continuing the chase with one of her favorite teachers in the entire school. Rainbow kept running to her heart’s content as she evaded her poster’s demise at the point of Iron Will’s blue ballpoint pen.
At the booth explaining the system of magic and technology, Twilight was taking some notes, some very detailed notes. As the host’s explanation of the magic went on, Twilight’s pen moved faster, gleaning every bit of information from the speaker, scrawling out text faster than the speaker could actually talk. Eventually, Twilight began ranting to herself while going over her notes.
“Oooooh, so the particle energy field from the generator reacts with the inertial magic created by the movement of the machine and the strength of our hearts and minds! The extreme energies of the superconductive magnets accelerate the bond breaking and forming of all the little elements to boost the raw power of the magic.” Twilight mumbled under her breath. “The magic in turn reverses those reactions, which would otherwise be impossible, creating an endless loop, providing a nearly limitless supply of energy. That’s brilliant! Although, it would be better if we added in a few microchips to channel the magic into a more controlled way, enhancing the output of the machine… If we added in something I’ve made, we should see a… 43.1 percent increase in functionality of the design!”
Upon hearing this, the speaker just stared at her with his mouth agape. Clearly, Twilight already had figured this stuff out and was already making everything at the table look obsolete anyway. Once she noticed the speaker staring at her in silence, she gave a small blush.
“Oh, oops… Sorry. I did it again didn’t I? She stammered out. “I’ll just… go over here now,” she said with a sheepish grin and left the vicinity, only to bump into some of the kids that Dash had said she had problems with as a little girl during summer camp.
“Hey, watch where you’re going, nerd!” one of the boys said. The others snickered at his remark. All three of the boys were clearly up to no good…
“Oops, sorry, sorry,” Twilight vigorously apologized, not really listening to the remarks the boys were making about her.
“Oh, hey, it’s Twilight Sparkle, teacher’s pet! What’s she doing here?” one of the others questioned. “The library is on the other end of the school. This place ain’t for dweebs!”
Once the boys’ jeers sank in, Twilight started to feel upset and bad for herself. She knew that she wasn’t a sportswoman, but she didn’t think she deserved the harassment she was getting. Over the past few years transferring to a new school was difficult for her, and had taken her a while to settle in with new friends. She had been lonely, but she wasn’t used to this kind of pain.
“What a dork! She even took notes! What a loser!” the last of the boys pointed out at the little notebook Twilight was holding in her arms. “See? She’s such a nerd!”
Twilight began to leave, starting to feel horrible because of the bullying she was receiving. As she turned, one of the boys blocked her path out. She turned once more, but another blocked her once again. She was surrounded by the heckling faces of the school bullies. Twilight began to shrink into herself to try and hide from the boys, looking down.
Just as she was on the verge of tears, a primal roar from the gym teacher resonated through the gym as he and Rainbow came running into the area. Rainbow was looking back at Iron Will blowing raspberries at him while running forward when she slipped on a stray piece of paper, fell, and collided with one of the bullies.
“Ow! Again!?” shouted the bully who was now on the ground. As Rainbow got up, she noticed Twilight. With a foot still on one of the boys’ legs, Rainbow gave a little wave to Twilight while checking to make sure her poster wasn’t damaged.
“Oh, hey Twi, what’s up?” she casually asked, not noticing the water in Twilight’s eyes, instead fawning over her awesome poster which had just been made cooler with a signature.
“I-I-I… I was just leaving,” she replied, choked up.
“Hmph… Dweeb’s friend came to her rescue. She’s so weak, she can’t even stand up for herself,” huffed one of the bullies. Rainbow heard it and immediately reacted, facing back toward the boy and letting him have it.
“Hey! Give her some space, she doesn’t need you all to pick on her just because she makes you look like idiots. But wait, you don’t need her help to prove that,” she retorted to the boys. Iron Will was catching up, pen still in hand with the same goofy grin he had been sporting for the past five minutes.
“Hey! Lemme sign that poster!” he continued with his playful attitude toward Rainbow. As soon as the bullies saw him coming, they immediately started to leave, opting not to be caught in the act by a faculty member.
“See ya, losers,” the leader said to the girls as they left, chuckling to themselves out through the door.
Iron Will finally caught up and saw Twilight’s state along with Rainbow’s angry huff toward the open doors of the gym. Knowing something was wrong, Iron Will decided to intervene.
“What’s wrong, Twilight?” he asked her. Rainbow spoke up for her instead.
“A couple of idiots were making Twilight feel bad about herself just because she’s not an athlete,” Rainbow said with an annoyed sigh.
“It’s fine, Rainbow,” said Twilight. “They’re right, I’m no athlete, and I’m too weak to stand up for myself sometimes. If it was for something else that I was skilled with, I would have stood up for myself, but they were right…”
“Nonsense!” interjected Iron Will. “You don’t have to be a ripped jock like this handsome piece of work to be an athlete, it takes brains too!” Iron Will blurted out as he flexed and then pointed to his head. “Why, take a look at this entire exhibition here! Do you think a bunch of idiots could have made these hulks of metal? No is the answer! You could make the best mechanic Iron Will has ever seen! Iron Will knows you’re one of our brightest students here.
Twilight rubbed her eyes and wiped the tears from them. She felt a bit better after her teacher’s brief pick-me-up speech.
“Heh, thanks…” Twilight sighed to the others. “I guess you’re right, I can do anything I put my mind to! And let’s face it, I’ve got a pretty good mind,” she said with a sheepish grin.
“That’s the spirit, Twilight!” boomed Iron Will. “Now, I’ve got me a great idea. Why don’t you and Rainbow here form your own team and join the club? You’d make a great addition to the family!”
Upon hearing this prospect, Rainbow’s ears perked up and she got up in Twilight’s face.
“C’mon! Please, please, please!” I promise I’ll be your best friend forever if you do this with me!” Rainbow exclaimed to Twilight.
“Well, if you’re that intent on doing this, I could use your help to show those guys a thing or two,” Twilight said.
“Sweet! This is gonna be awesome! Here’s to Team Rainboom!”
Rainbow Dash stuck out her fist, and Twilight shook it politely. Upon receiving the handshake, Rainbow gave Twilight a dumbstruck look. After glancing around the room to see if anyone was watching, Rainbow quietly whispered to Twilight.
“Uh, Twi, I’m trying to help make you cooler, this isn’t helping.”
“Oh, right…” Twilight grinned. She retracted her fist and gave Rainbow’s a weak bump.
Iron Will grinned at the newest acquisition to the club. With his hands on his hips, he gave himself a mental pat on the back. He had just netted two more initiates for his club family.
“Alright girls, I want to see you guys for club orientation in a week, we’ll show you the basics to constructing a mech to fight with,” he told them.
“Don’t worry Mr. Iron Will, I’ve already got the know-how to do this, leave the construction to me. I’ll make the best mech you’ve ever seen,” Twilight said with a wink.
“Alright then, see you all here in a week, I don’t expect you to have your mech built yet, but you could come and glean some ideas from some of the other teams here.”
“Thank you, sir, will do.”
“Then see you here next week!” Iron Will finished and walked off, satisfied with his work.
Twilight turned to Rainbow, who was grinning ear to ear. She gave Twilight a big hug.
“Now I can finally join the rest of us already in the club!” Rainbow cried excitedly to her friend.
“Yeah, this’ll be fun!” Twilight replied. “I’ll see how close to done I can get with the mech before next week. See you then.”
Twilight walked off, out of the gym and left Rainbow quietly screaming on the inside, fit to burst with glee. She was finally on her way to greatness, just like her idols, the Cloudsdale Conquerors. This was already shaping up to be an awesome year.
Despite having to be holed up in school for another full week, the days seemed to go by in a blur for Rainbow Dash. She had been talking some with Twilight about building their own fighter, and man, was it gonna be amazing!
On that Thursday, Rainbow Dash ran as fast as her legs could carry her to the gymnasium complex. She was prepared to help out make her fighter in whatever way she could. Naturally, she already had a few design motifs and basic ideas ready to go. Obviously, her mech would have only the coolest weapons, armor, and designs, only the best for the best student on campus. As she approached the entrance, she snickered to herself, thinking about all the awesome contained behind those doors.
After throwing open the doors in a grand display, (and getting a few funny looks from the crowd gathered) she noticed where Twilight was. More importantly though, she noticed the lack of something kind of important to her at that moment… there was no awesome, amazing, custom mech for Rainbow anywhere. Barely hiding her immediate disappointment, she went up to Twilight, ready to ask about it. But before she could formulate a question, Twilight noticed her and hailed her over to the small stack of papers she had ready to go.
“Hey, Rainbow! Twilight greeted Rainbow upon her arrival. “So, I decided that I’d go ahead and draw up a few concepts and ideas for the mech, since it’s not quite ready to go yet. I’ve put together the chassis, and after we plan a bit here, I’ll go ahead and head home to build the rest, hopefully in time for a fight next week here at the club,” Twilight finished and smiled to her friend.
Rainbow managed to hide her disappointment, but didn’t manage to conceal her distaste for having to plan the whole design. It seemed like it would take forever! There had to be at least three dozen papers, and they all looked super complicated.
“Great…” she replied with a slight sigh. This was going to be a long afternoon for her. “So where do we start?”
Ignoring her friend’s disinterest, Twilight pointed out some of the more vital parts of the design that she wanted to have Rainbow’s input on since she was going to be the pilot.
“I was thinking that we should figure out just what kind of weapons and gadgets we should use to improve your performance,” she began. “I’ve got a few ideas in mind for some of them, but I’d like your input. I also want to make sure you know that we’re only given a certain amount of money for a stipend, before you get too crazy,” she said as she shot Rainbow a sideways glance. Rainbow Dash looked away and whistled a few notes, knowing that Twilight had her pegged.
Rainbow decided to mull over a few ideas in her head. Top priority: it had to be fast, and it had to feel amazing to pilot. As for everything else… she didn’t have much of a clue for how to functionally improve the mech. She’d figure out how to make it work as long as it adhered to her basic style. Badassery.
“Well, to keep up with me, it’s gonna need to be wicked fast! Oh, and have a really cool weapon! Like maybe a hammer, or a huuuuuuge sword!” Rainbow Dash ranted. It was possible that some of these ideas were born of a few of her more epic dreams.
Twilight just groaned internally as she heard Dash’s input. She had expected that she wouldn’t have a lot in mind, but this… was very little to go on indeed.
“Rainbow…” she started with a huff. “Use the part of your head that isn’t stuck in a cloud for a second. How do you expect to move quickly if you’ve got something as heavy as a hulking hammer? Rainbow Dash just shrugged, thinking it wasn’t really her problem. She just gave the requirements, Twilight made it work. That was egghead stuff. Twilight pulled a few sheets out from the stack full of specs and designs to work with and handed them to Rainbow. “Here, see what you like and pick one out.”
Naturally, that would take a bit of time to look over, so Twilight returned to her previous work on the other aspects of the build. She’d have some time to work in peace. Rainbow hastily took a quick glance over the sheet Twilight had handed to her and in less than ten seconds, before she had any time to pick up her pen. She had circled an option and handed it back to her eggheaded friend. Twilight suddenly felt as if Rainbow wasn’t very interested in this stuff. For some reason…
“Rainbow, there were at least eight weapon choices on there with detailed explanation. There’s no way you could have chosen what you wanted that fast,” she complained to her good friend. “You do realized you ‘chose’ a pretty difficult weapon to use, right?” Twilight began to tap her foot on the ground in annoyance.
Rainbow only shrugged. They looked cool, so she chose them. She’d learn how to use them anyway, after all, she was the embodiment of awesome and cool. She sat back and reclined in one of the chairs that Twilight had set up near her little desk. Twilight took a glance at the red circle on the paper; she had circled the chakrams. Twilight let out a sigh, slapped her face, and groaned. Out of all the possible options available to her, she had to choose those.
“Whatever,” Twilight answered the silence. “So what do you think for anything else? Like gadgets or special functions?”
“Oh! I know! Rainbow perked up and shouted. She had been looking forward to shooting this idea for the whole week now. “I was thinking we could totally do something like the Cloudsdale Crusaders, with the wings and the boom feathers.” Rainbow’s mind immediately filled up with the images her mind produced from the fight she heard on the radio the week prior.
“Too expensive, Rainbow,” Twilight retorted. Dash’s dreams were abruptly cut short. “That’s some of the highest quality stuff. They’ve only got that because they got some prize money from tournaments they’ve won over the past few years.”
“Oh… yeah,” Rainbow sighed and flopped back into the chair. “I’d still really like some sort of flight incorporated into it.” She started to play with a pen she found, twirling it around her fingers in boredom. She knew that it wasn’t likely she’d get everything she wanted, but she was really hoping to get her wings.
Twilight noted the dejected tone of Rainbow’s voice and jotted down a few notes on how to improve her design. Nodding, she resolved to include some form of flight, or at least aerial maneuvers. Rainbow was a big fan of all things airborne, so she wanted to do her friend that one favor.
“Okay, I think I’ve got a few ideas down now,” Twilight stated. “Do you want to help me with the mechanism planning?” she asked, not expecting her to do so. Rainbow’s attention span had already been hopelessly stretched, but that’s what made her who she was.
“Nah, I’ll be alright. Although, I do have an idea for the mech’s name.”
“Really? I hadn’t actually thought about that one,” Twilight admitted sheepishly. She had been so focused, almost to an obsessive level, on the technical parts of the fighter that she completely forgot to think up names.
“Yeah, I wanna call it… The Rainbow Raider!” Rainbow stood up and struck a pose. Twilight felt… underwhelmed by the name, but didn’t really have any objections. She really wasn’t any better when it came to naming things, judging on her doll Smarty Pants… who she still slept with.
“Sounds good, I’ll go ahead and head home with this and start the build. I’ll probably have it ready next week,” she said to Rainbow as she packed up her papers and sketches. After stuffing her bag mercilessly full, she started to hobble towards the doors. She looked like she was gonna buckle under the weight. Rainbow let out a soft chuckle.
“Fair enough, I’ll probably hang around here for a little while longer,” Rainbow said, wanting to take a good look at some of the other mechs around.
Despite there being a few completed mechs standing around, there was to be no fighting until the next week, since this was a planning/tune up meeting.
Rainbow Dash began to walk around the gym at a relaxed pace, taking in the sights. Ponyville High had a pretty standard gym, with a few bleachers, a stage, and a very high ceiling. Though in the recent years, to accommodate the new sport she was in club for, the ceiling had to be raised even higher to allow for the display of the mechs. Fighting took place in domes specially built for the purpose of fighting mechs, which is why there was to be no fighting until the next week.
While pacing around and not really paying attention to what was in front of her, Rainbow collided with something in her path. As she looked down, she saw that she had not collided with something, but rather someone, who was now down on the ground.
“Fluttershy! Look out next time!” Rainbow chastised her friend before reaching out a hand to pull her up.
The pink haired, timid girl took the hand extended to her and lifted up off the ground and back to her feet. She stood taller than Dash, but tended to shrink in reality because of her timid nature. She straightened her skirt as she regained her footing.
“S-sorry, Rainbow,” she apologized while taking her hair and partially hiding behind it. She had no fault in what happened since she was actually standing still and Rainbow just bumped into her and knocked her down. “Oh, wait a minute! I didn’t know you were part of this club.”
“Yeah, I joined up last week with Twilight! She’s my new sidekick. She’s gonna build me an awesome mech and I’m gonna win it all this year!” Dash puffed out her chest and put her hands on her hips in triumph. She began to think a bit more on the presence of her friend in the gym. Fluttershy was more of a… delicate flower. It was surprising to see her here where there was so much roughness.
Fluttershy looked around nervously and started to mumble quietly. While Rainbow couldn’t hear her, she knew that she probably wasn’t actually part of the club. She did manage to notice a few decorations scattered along the hardwood floor of the gym near Fluttershy. It became fairly obvious what she was doing. She quickly stooped down to help gather all the things that Fluttershy had dropped. Streamers, posters, and various fliers. They looked like party decorations, this had Pinkie Pie written all over it.
Rainbow Dash recalled that while she wasn’t in the club, she did go to a few meets that her friends competed at and cheered along. Fluttershy didn’t play the sport, and nor did she want to, but she was always kindly there to help support her friends. Pinkie Pie wasn’t part of the club either… officially. Over time, she became the self-appointed announcer of Ponyville. Her bubbly personality and strange ways of putting things became a popular staple of the Ponyville club.
“Heh, sorry about that, Fluttershy,” Rainbow embarrassedly apologized to Fluttershy. She had been distracted by one of the mechs on display that bore the name “Mecha Mac.” She was distracted because she knew who piloted, and built this one. The large figure and powerful, beefed up limbs could only be the work of a few people she knew.
“Hey, y’all! What’s up?” came a familiar voice with a southern twang. Her worn jeans were stained with multiple oil stains and ripped full of new holes, and she was wearing her trademark hat. Applejack. That was her mech. She was one of the toughest competitors Ponyville had to offer, and Rainbow had a rivalry with her to boot. Ever since they had been young, they had always tried to one-up each other in everything they did. Sports, working out, sports… and yet they never competed for grades. This would be just another point on Dash’s side of the scoreboard. This season, Applejack would go down.
“I’m so happy you joined up, Dash. It’ll be a lot more interesting with another real fighter here,” she stated with a smug grin and tipped her Stetson up. It seemed she was itching for another competition between the two.
Rainbow Dash was glad to see her rough and tough buddy, but she was more focused on the amazingly sturdy hunk of machine that filled her vision. Applejack noticed what Rainbow had been distracted on and wasted no time on talking up her machine.
“This here’s my pride and joy! The Mecha Mac! I built it myself,” she began to narrate, showing obvious pride in her eyes. “My big brother taught me most of the stuff I know, and let me tell you, it’s all the right stuff. Good luck trying to beat me in a straight on fight here. My mech’s as sturdy as they come. He’ll take a beating and dish it right back out!” she finished and crossed her arms in a triumphant stance. She propped herself up on her desk, putting one foot on it, showing off her rough, country style boots.
The Mecha Mac was indeed a very large mech, made with some very tough metals and contained lots of punching power. She had seen enough of Applejack’s fights to know this. It cut a very imposing figure. Its armor was extremely tough, in fact, Dash had never seen anyone best it. This would be a tougher battle than she thought.
The mech had a less than stellar paint job, and didn’t really exude confidence based on the condition it seemed to be in, but despite the chipped and faded orange paint, the mech always punched a way through. When just using its bare fists, the mech was also equipped with a hammer that spelled certain doom for any mech it hit. It also contained some heavy duty cannon gauntlets that launched massive, albeit slow, projectiles at distant foes.
The armor of the mech was worn and full of dents and battle scars, but it was still some of the toughest stuff the club had on hand. Such strong armor hampered the mobility of the fighter, but that was Applejack’s preference. Slow and steady always won the races for her, unless it was an actual race, that is. To prevent more agile fighters from being too annoying, she also packed a dense force field projector to protect her from ranged weaponry.
Another thing that Applejack was known for, was her pride. She had continued the image that Big Macintosh had set forward by building, and piloting on her own. She had no coach or mechanic to help her. She felt she didn’t need one. It was perhaps a weakness, but she had seemed to do just as well with her fights anyway.
“Yeah, it’s pretty cool and all, but mine’s gonna blow it right out of the water!” boasted Rainbow Dash. Applejack just scoffed at the idea. She folded her arms and lowered her hat to cover her eyes as the corners of her mouth turned up into a smug grin.
“We’ll see about that, sugarcube. I’ll see ya later,” she said as she waved off to Dash and Fluttershy.
Dash and Fluttershy continued walking together and saw more of the mechs on display. There were still a few, but most of them looked pretty uninspiring, there was one in particular that she only remembered because it didn’t stand out at all, and therefore stood out like a sore thumb. It was weird seeing such a generic looking mech. Most people had more imagination.
Eventually, Dash caught a glimpse of a mech that stood out greatly. It shone like a white porcelain doll… of pain and destruction. The design was sleek and slender, with ladylike curves. It took all of three seconds for Dash to figure out who this one belonged to. Rarity. It had surprised Dash when Rarity was one of the first friends of hers to drop in on the action. That had seemed like the last thing she would do, being a “lady” and all. But she surprised Dash by bringing her own flair to the battlefield.
The mech sported a lot of Rarity’s fashion choices, having its armor in the form of a battle dress. The frills were all laced together to provide good covering to the internal systems. To further enhance the elegant motif of the project, the mech used a rapier as its primary weapon which landed very calculated and precise strikes to throw off an opponent’s reactions. It was pretty fast and well armored, but it suffered in its strength. It played a game of attrition, which bored Dash to tears, especially when the dance move dodging came out. Dash generally averted her eyes at that point to avoid puking. Finally, to further add to the annoying factor, the machine had two shoulder mounted guns housed inside of rounded shoulders, and while dodging, the canons would pepper enemies and it just drove Dash insane.
Over at one of the work stations that had been set up sat Rarity. She was hunched over a design paper, huffing at a lot of style choices. There had been several papers scattered along the floor, each sporting lots of different design motifs.
“Hey, Rarity, what’s happening?” Rainbow shouted over as she approached. Fluttershy decided to return to her work instead and left. Rarity’s long and fancy hair partially obstructed what she had been bent over. She was still wearing her stylish school clothes. She obviously didn’t have any intention of getting dirty. Dash managed to catch a glimpse of a purple rose design. Clearly for style only, and even more clearly, so Rarity.
“Hello, Rainbow Dash,” Rarity spoke up in a light and polite voice, maintaining her ladylike composure despite being yelled to. She was absorbed in her work, so she didn’t even look up. After nodding at her design, she finally gave Dash a proper greeting, hug included. Then another girl came out from the mech. Her red and yellow hair was damp from a bit of sweat from working on the systems of the mech, but she still looked great in her black jacket. It was Rarity’s partner, Sunset Shimmer.
She had once been the school bully, sabotaging other girls’ chances at popularly elected social events, blackmailing other students with embarrassing secrets, and being a jerk to everyone. But after a few run-ins with Dash’s friends, Sunset had apparently changed for the better, or at least the others trusted her implicitly now. Rainbow Dash hadn’t really been convinced that Sunset Shimmer had changed from being a bully. Back in those days, one of her favorite marks was Fluttershy, and despite being slightly annoyed by her wimpy nature, Dash stood up for her whenever she was able. Nobody disrespected Fluttershy. But, after hearing about the good things Sunset had been doing, she decided to give her the benefit of a doubt.
“Oh, Rainbow, darling, I want you to meet my partner in crime, Sunset Shimmer,” she motioned to the other girl. “She’s an absolute delight to have around, and she’s sooo smart. She helped me make this beauty of a mech and is a wonderful counterpart to my piloting finesse,” Rarity explained with a flourish of her pen. She obviously had a lot of pride in her skills as well. But no amount of bluster in the world could compare to Rainbow’s bravado.
“Well, she seemed to have done alright with this one,” Rainbow said. “But it’s still gonna wet it’s sprockets when it sees my mega-awesome mech!”
“Well, we’ll have to see about that, but I won’t be a pushover either. I’ll show you the elegance of the Femme Fatale. Girl power at its finest! You won’t stand a chance,” Rarity boasted right back. “And besides, anything I don’t catch, my partner will. After all, we’re going to be the one to take the club tournament this year.”
The club tournament happened only once a year, and was a coveted trophy for the winning team. It was a great addition to a room, but more importantly, it let the team move on to the interschool league play. Only the champions from each respective school got to compete there. And only the best of the best won the title. There had been only five titles so far, and Cloudsdale had just won the last one. Rainbow Dash was prepared to win this one in her rookie year.
“No way! That’s got my name on it! Er… that is, me and Twilight’s name on it,” Rainbow Dash retorted. Dash knew Twilight was important, but Dash didn’t need any help inside the ring. She was going to mop the floor with anyone who got in the way. Her pride wouldn’t let her have it any other way.
“I don’t think you’ve got a chance against me, but feel free to try. Anyway, I’ve got to get back to my designing,” Rarity said and leaned back over her design plans and promptly zoned out.
“Fine, fine, I’ll let you get back to decorating while I train,” Rainbow teased and began to walk away. No more than five steps out or so, someone she didn’t expect to talk to her hailed her down. Sunset Shimmer was behind her and had tapped her on the shoulder. Rainbow thought that she’d be the last one Sunset would want to talk to, given how coldly Dash had treated her recently in compensation for the torment that Fluttershy had received from her.
It was a more than an awkward situation for Dash, since she had little to no interaction with her since she had changed her ways from being a bully. She wasn’t too keen on having to talk to her either, she was on her way out.
“Hey, so Twilight Sparkle’s your partner, huh?” she asked. So this was why she’d decide to talk to someone like her. Rainbow Dash had figured that this would be why she wanted to talk. Despite becoming friends with Dash’s group, she was still competitive with Twilight. After having met her, the two formed a rivalry and eventually became friends as well, thought the competition persisted.
“Yeah, what’s it to you?” Rainbow asked with a dull tone of voice. She didn’t really want to hang around much longer and wanted to leave to go practice the techniques she’d use in her fights. Dash wanted to maintain her top form and bring the moves she used in martial arts to the battle domes.
“I just wanted to tell her that even though we’re cool and we’re friends now, she’s going to go down when we meet in the battle domes,” Sunset declared confidently. Bringing her arms into a fold and smirking. She flipped her hair back to complete the motion.
Rainbow Dash was now intrigued. If Sunset though she could beat Twilight, then that was by extension beating her. Now she had a stake in her game. No one beat Dash, not even by extension or technicality.
“No way that’s gonna happen, Twilight’s gonna build me the best mech ever, and we’ll steamroll you guys into submission!” Dash fired back with her competitive spirit. No one could beat her, she would be the best there could be in the game. She never settled for anything less.
“It doesn’t matter how tough you are, Rainbow, my designs are superior in every way imaginable. Twilight’s got nothing, and I know exactly how to beat you,” Sunset snickered at Rainbow.
“Yeah, right. I’ll see you later, and I’ll bring a can of whupass for anyone who thinks they can beat me!” Rainbow announced and started walking toward the door. She looked back at Sunset before leaving and flashed her a friendly grin. “Heh, guess you’re not too bad, Sunset. I’ll look forward to our fight, see you later.”
Dash continued her walk to the door. As she left, she couldn’t help but mentally prepare for next week. It would be a proving ground for her, and her skills. She couldn’t let anyone beat her, she was the best of all the sports teams, and she’d be the best of this one too. With a clear goal in mind, she strode on home for the day, ready for the fights in her near future.
Another week in school had passed and the day had finally arrived. Rainbow Dash raced from her last class and booked it out to the bike racks. After mounting up and barely managing to secure her sparse school items in her excitement, she sped on down to the Ponyville battle dome.
After biking for a few miles away from the school toward the center of town, she came upon it. The grand dome stood around six stories high. Part of this was because the mechs were each somewhere between twenty and thirty feet tall, but also because the sport had enjoyed an unprecedented surge in popularity since its inception. Tickets sold like crazy, and the audiences for each fight, no matter how impressive the competitors, were packed to the brim. It had also caused lots of smaller businesses around and inside the dome to sprout up, much like at professional sporting locales.
Once she had racked her bike and went into the dome, which was open to the public during daylight hours whether there was a fight going or not, she went down to the fighter area. She had never gone down, so she took a deep breath as she started her descent. Each step lower brought her excitement up further, and she elicited little squeals of anticipation and excitement. If anybody heard her, they’d be dead if they talked.
As she reached the competitor area, she found the Supreme Steam club of Ponyville congregating in the common area, with Iron Will ready to inaugurate the new season, again. Only it would finally be inaugurated with a fight!
“Thank you all for arriving promptly,” he began. “Iron Will is also pleased to announce that all the mechs have been prepped and are ready for battle!” The crowd of students cheered, ready to test their bots. The very first fight of the year had always been decided by lottery. If left to a discussion, then previous seasons had shown that the group would turn into a madhouse. “So, without any further ado, let’s see who’s fighting first!”
This was it. Rainbow waited with bated breath. It wasn’t likely that she would be called in the first bout, but it would be amazing if she was. There would be three fights today, and Dash sure as heck wanted to be part of one.
Iron Will put his hand into a toolbox filled with ballots on them. Fitting. He took out one of them.
“Applejack!” he called out to the crowd. Applejack stood up on her seat and hollered out her approval. She had been in suspense for this too, and she was thrilled to ring in the new season with what she assumed would be her first win. Not if Rainbow was called. She’d show her another one coming. Iron Will drew out another team’s paper slip.
“Aloe and Lotus Blossom!” he announced. The girls called let out a cheer. Rainbow was disappointed, but she decided not to let it get her down. She wanted to go first, but she’d be happy if she got to fight today at all. First, last, or somewhere in between.
Dash was about to go follow the crowd going to see the fight, but Twilight came out of the crowd and hailed her down before she got too far. Dash was slightly miffed at not being able to go see the fight. But she and Twilight had also agreed to meet if they didn’t get called to look at their mech and get a feel for it. Rainbow could get behind that.
The two girls arrived in their team garage, which had been prepared for them with their own tool rack and workbench, and other amenities that they’d need to modify and repair their mech. The mech itself was standing on top of a magical portal capacitor. They’d use these to teleport the mech to and from arenas and the garage.
The Rainbow Raider stood proudly on the deck. Painted in bands of color with a blue overtone, it came up to a height of about twenty feet or so. It was a slightly smaller mech than others, but it would certainly be fast.
The Raider came equipped with the chakrams she had ordered with her amazing split second decisions. Rainbow thought they looked super cool, but she then realized that she had little idea how to use them effectively. She also saw a sleek looking pack on the back of the machine. Twilight began to explain the design to her partner.
“This is the Rainbow Raider! I finished her last night. It’s a pretty great piece of technology,” she started. “It comes equipped with the… chakrams you ordered. In addition, it can also launch small energy shurikens that are meant to interrupt the opponent’s attacks with uneven electrical distributions. That backpack contains pressurized, dense air that has enough capacity to push a burst of air to immediately change your midair trajectory twice before it needs to refill. It’s as close to flight as I could come.”
Rainbow stared dumbfounded at the glorious machine. It was everything she had hoped, it was sleek, like her. It was gonna be fast, like her. It was awesome! Like her! She thanked Twilight and gave her a very rare hug, generally only reserved for a couple of people in her life. Twilight made a head motion to the machine. Understanding what she meant, Rainbow went up to the floating platform meant for the pilot and reached the cockpit. She wasted no time in diving into the cockpit.
Twilight hit a few buttons on a nearby stand, and a single button labeled ‘ignition’ lit up on the control panel inside the mech. Rainbow hit it, and the machine came to life. The soft, radiant glow of the panels came online and presented a wealth of options for her to choose. Basic mode, combat mode, teleportation options, a systems damage overview, a targeting system, and more. It also had a gauge for the charge capacity of the energy used to supply each subsystem.
“Like what you see?” Twilight’s voice came from a radio system. She had her arms crossed across her chest in triumph, satisfaction aglow in her eyes. She had outdone herself, at least in Rainbow’s opinion. This was the single most awesome thing she’d ever done. “Switch to combat mode and try it out on the test area.”
Rainbow put her hands on the controls and began to maneuver the mech using controllers that attached to her arms and legs and it caused the calm blue aura of the screens to turn to a sharp red and the magical screens changed from ‘Basic’ to ‘Combat.’ More mechanical whirs and buzzes came to life as the weapon and defense systems charged up. Twilight also saw the final touch come to life as well, a rainbow colored scarf made of magical flames flickered around the backside of the mech in two separate streams.
As the Rainbow Raider walked over to the test range, Dash noticed that the mech didn’t actually make a lot of sound, which conflicted what she thought when she imagined how fiercely the mechs fought. With the weapon systems primed, Rainbow took off at a run towards a magically rendered opposing mech. She struck out at it with the chakrams in a martial arts form and used the sharp edges as daggers, utilizing the rounded edge as a kind of curved blade. The dual sided nature of each chakram held some potential for some cool heat of the moment combat maneuvers.
As the magic image of the other mech disappeared, small targets materialized far away from her. She decided to try out the energy shurikens, promptly shooting out three very quick shots. The energy gauge on the display in the cockpit dropped to eighty percent. That meant that she could shoot up to fifteen shots before that system was totally drained! Granted, they weren’t very effective, but she could see how useful they could be.
“Alright, now try to jump and do some acrobatics,” Twilight’s voice came over the radio. Rainbow decided to start with a simple jump. She lifted off about ten feet into the air using the powerful hydraulic systems in the legs, and touched back down with little break in her momentum. Next, she tried to jump and activate her propulsion system as well. She jumped high into the air and activated the system. The resulting burst of air immediately shifted her over ten feet to the right, the direction she had been leaning in the cockpit.
“This is amazing!” Rainbow exclaimed to Twilight. “I can’t wait to try it out!”
“Well, there’s one more surprise for you, then,” Twilight replied and smiled. “Iron Will just decided who the last ones to fight today would be. We’re up!”
Rainbow let out a gasp, she had been waiting for this. She returned to the teleportation stand and left the mech there. Twilight activated the system to teleport it up to the arena. The pilots and mechanics entered the arena together, greeted the opponents and then got in their mechs to start the bout. Rainbow could hardly contain herself.
“So who are we fighting?” Rainbow questioned her partner.
“Uh… actually, I forgot.”
“Fine, it’ll be a surprise for when we get up there.”
As Twilight and Rainbow Dash entered into the arena, they saw only a few people in the crowd, in some of the best seats, which was understandable since this wasn’t an official match or anything in a tournament. However, as always, Fluttershy was there to lend her support. She waved to her friends walking to the hulking machines in the center of the ring.
The other team’s mech was the next thing that Rainbow noticed. It was weird… as if she had seen it before, but she could hardly remember it. It was so cliché and done before that Dash just had to roll her eyes. It was a fairly sleek design, with strong looking appendages, and flames painted all over them on the blue overcoat also adorned with lightning bolt decals. It also came equipped with bulky shoulder pads. The entire mech looked like it came out of a graphic novel or comic book. It was so overdone that it was almost laughable. At least it had pretty near flawless paint.
Soon enough, Dash was able to recognize the other team: Flash Sentry and Thunderlane. That explained some things. Flash and Thunderlane sure thought they were something, but they had some awful… pedestrian tastes when it came to the awesome. They were wannabe Rainbow Dashes.
The two teams met in the middle and stared each other down confidently.
“Alright, so we get to fight the newbies, huh?” Flash said. He looked like he meant business, but he was really about the same level as Rainbow and Twilight were.
Rainbow Dash huffed at him, seething in sudden anger at Flash for calling her a newbie. She may have been, but she was gonna make him eat those words.
“Look, Flash, you and that dull piece of junk are going down! My Rainbow Raider’s gonna smash you guys to pieces!” Rainbow fired back, ready to get to the beat down.
Thunderlane flinched back a bit at Rainbow’s comment. Being a part of the soccer team, he knew better than to argue with her. But he also knew how to get into Rainbow’s head a bit. He decided that he’d be better off telling his pilot what he needed to know rather than trash talk the competition. Twilight remained silent through the greeting, looking at the opposing mech. Flash put on his game face.
“The Noble Warrior’s gonna slash you to ribbons! You’ll taste the bitterness of defeat on the edge of my epic blade!” Flash exclaimed with an exaggerated swishing motion of his hand.
“It’s on!” Dash replied. Both teams went back to their mechs. The pilots made their way up to the cockpits while the mechanics got situated in their respective control boxes, high above the action where they could get a good view of everything in their fights. Twilight gave Rainbow the all-clear and allowed her to start the Raider up.
Rainbow pressed the ignition button and the machine roared to life, she switched it to combat mode, and the screen turned yellow, the mode had switched to ‘Combat,’ but the weapon systems and movement were locked until the countdown ended when both fighters were ready.
“Rainbow,” Twilight hailed her by radio. “I’m going to be up here walking you through how to fight your enemies. I’ll point out anything I see for their design, like weak points or things to look out for. So listen to me and I can help steer you to victory. You ready?” Rainbow Dash looked up to Twilight’s control tower. It was great that she was willing to help, but she’d done enough. Now it was Rainbow’s time to shine.
“Thanks, Twilight. But less talkie, more fightie. I can do this on my own, you just sit back, relax, and watch me own these guys,” Rainbow replied, much to Twilight’s dismay. Twilight knew that Rainbow was brash, but she still wanted to help. Before she could lodge a complaint in with her friend, the countdown to the battle started.
“Alright, Twi! Let’s get this started!” Rainbow shouted excitedly. The countdown on the display began to tick down the seconds to the fight from ten. Dash relaxed her muscles and focused on her goal. She’d win and prove how amazing she was, another notch on her totem pole of awesome.
Three…
Two…
One…
As the timer clocked out on her display ran out, the word ‘Fight’ appeared. The Noble Warrior took off with a vengeance, drawing its sword and readying a thrusting motion to land the first blow of the match. With adrenaline pumping in her veins, Rainbow maneuvered the Raider to jump back, deftly landing further back as Flash’s mech delivered a vicious slash.
As the Raider slid back, Dash received a message from her partner in her watchtower. Rainbow was already shaking and sweating in anticipation and excitement, already pushed into her zone.
“Rainbow,” Twilight called out. “How’s the mech running? Is everything working out well? Anyway, I’m pretty sure you’ve noticed by now, but that sword is actually fairly dangerous. It’s got way more reach than you, but there’s an easy way to—“
“Yeah, yeah, Twi, I think it’s pretty obvious. Now let me focus and whip this guy’s butt,” Rainbow cut her off. She wanted to focus, so she turned off her radio in order to not be ripped from her concentration. She shifted her gaze back to her opponent who was once again charging toward her, holding his blade in a strong two-handed grip. Twilight huffed, slammed her face into her command desk in the tower, and started hitting the top of her head with her fist in frustration. This was exactly what she had been afraid of when teaming with Rainbow.
As Flash neared Rainbow’s mech, sword drawn, Rainbow took a quick look at his legs. They were tensing up in preparation to jump. As he got ready to jump, Rainbow used her energy shurikens to target the knees of the Noble Warrior. Getting knocked in the leg caused him to stunt his jump, spectacularly landing on his front side, allowing the Raider to strike a strong blow to the Warrior’s back.
“Hehehe, that felt good…” Rainbow chuckled to herself, pleased by her quick reflexes and thinking. Her studies in martial arts had paid off, she knew the motions required for most maneuvers. She had just taken advantage of a weak point in a risky move.
Flash’s mech let off a few sparks as it suffered the blow, but Flash had some fighting experience from a year or two in the club. He lashed out with a windmill kick from on the ground, flooring the Raider and delivering a slash to its side, catching Rainbow off guard. He followed up by thrusting his blade down to Rainbow’s level, but she quickly executed a dodge roll backward and got to her feet again.
Flying after his quarry, he followed up with a side kick, launching the Raider back further once again. As she slid back on the field, Rainbow saw the sparks flying off of the Raider and looked to her status screens. Heavy damage to the left arm, spectacular. If she took too many more free hits, she’d be fighting with only her right, which would put her at a severe disadvantage. Flash gave her no time to strategize as he launched into another series of swipes and slashes at Rainbow, who ducked and jumped out of the way of each one, taking only scratches at best. She had somewhat overestimated how much abuse her mech could take and had to end this quickly. As the Noble Warrior jumped for an overhead cleave, Rainbow rolled under him and created some distance, preparing her own weapons for what would hopefully be the last confrontation.
As the two pilots locked eyes and broke into a charge against each other, chakram meeting sword in an epic struggle for the upper hand. The energy flow to the left arm of the Raider had been reduced due to damage from earlier, meaning she couldn’t keep up the clash for too much longer. The Raider had managed to compensate for its slightly weaker physical strength by meeting the blade before Flash was ready giving her an advantage of leverage. But despite Rainbow’s best effort, Flash began to overpower her. Thinking quickly, she decided to shift her mech, pull the blade forward, upsetting the Noble Warrior’s balance, and plant a kick into the torso of the machine, sending it reeling back.
Following up on the opening she had forced, Rainbow followed up with multiple quick strikes to Flash Sentry’s mech. One. Two. Three. Four. And with a stronger windup, she let off a powerful uppercut to finish her combo. The Noble Warrior slid along the ground until Flash maneuvered his machine into a handspring and drew his laser gun and let off a few shots, missing the majority, but landing a shot on each of the Rainbow Raider’s shoulders. Rainbow drew out her own launcher and launched her own shots to counter the next incoming volley. Each blast of energy collided in time and created small explosions where they met.
Each of the mech continued firing until the energy used to power their ranged weapon systems was completely drained. As they both attempted to fire again, the shots wouldn’t come out and the weapons clicked in denial. Rainbow switched her weapon system back to close combat mode while Flash merely tossed his gun away, clearly having proving he was a badass. Rainbow just laughed at how cocky Flash was. Dash was cocky, but she knew that she could back it up. Flash talked a big game, but he had nothing.
Ready for one final assault, she and Flash let out their battle cries and charged each other, weapons in hand. Finally in the zone, Rainbow let her instincts guide her to her target. As they approached, Rainbow jumped, and Flash followed suit, ready to intercept her with a slash. The moment the two met in midair, Rainbow activated her propulsion system and immediately shifted down, grabbing onto the Noble Warrior’s leg, slamming him into the ground. With one last determined strike, she drove the bladed edge of the chakram like a knife through the chest of the opposing mech, until she hit something unfathomably stern. The emergency barrier had been activated, shutting down the functions of the Noble Warrior and symbolizing Rainbow’s victory.
She had won her very first match!
“Awww, yeah!” she exclaimed with a fist pump within her cockpit as she relished her victory. She turned on her radio once more to talk about her awesome piloting, she was a natural. Nothing could hold her back from her dream now.
With a huge smile, Rainbow exited the cockpit and made her way to the ground. There, she met the defeated Flash Sentry. He was still getting up and out of his emergency barrier, the purple glow fading as it registered no more violence was happening in the arena. Flash got up and faced Rainbow with a huge smile plastered to his face.
“Wow! That was great! I didn’t think you’d do so well that fast!” Flash exclaimed. “Maybe next time I won’t hold back on you.”
Of course, Rainbow knew that for a blowhard like Flash, he had to save face somehow. Sad though it may have been, Rainbow took it for what it was worth.
“Yeah, that was a heck of a lot of fun, Flash,” Rainbow replied.
The two students were joined by their partners from the control towers. Twilight and Thunderlane came down to congratulate the winner and talk about the match as well. The next twenty minutes or so were passed with a manner of joviality and camaraderie, expressing the spirit of the game. Sure, there had been trash talking at the start, but that’s all it had been: talk. Eventually, the two teams were urged off of the floor so the next match could take place.
Flash Sentry and Thunderlane said their goodbyes and left with their machine. As Rainbow quit waving and turned back to her own, she saw Twilight with her arms crossed wearing a very miffed expression.
“You want to tell me why you turned off your radio during that fight, Rainbow?” Twilight asked in a rather huffy tone.
Rainbow had almost forgotten about that. It wasn’t like she meant it to be mean, but it just wasn’t something she wanted to deal with during the competition.
“Sorry, Twi, I just wanted to focus, being a match and all. That stuff’s all good for testing, but I need some alone time when I’m out beating on dorks who think they can beat me is all,” Rainbow replied nonchalantly, earning a hard stare from Twilight.
Twilight brought her hand to her head and pushed her index and thumb against it in pure frustration, looking like she was trying to drill a hole through her brain.
“Dash! This is a team sport! You need to listen to me!” Twilight shouted at her partner. “If you had, you could have had a much easier time beating them.”
“How’s that? I think I did pretty well, myself,” Rainbow replied, crossing her arms confidently and bringing out her trademark smirk.
“If you had listened to me instead of turning off the radio, I could have told you that you could have simply snapped off the blade using the chakrams. Then he wouldn’t have had anything to fight with…”
Rainbow’s smirk disappeared and was replaced with a look of surprise, which she quickly covered up. Her pride was one of those things that she knew was a problem, but didn’t really care enough about to fix. She had gotten through what she set out to do on her own. So what if there were a few bumps? She didn’t actually need the help.
As the two took the elevator down to their garage, not a word was exchanged. Twilight was stewing in her suppressed rage, while Rainbow merely played off her partner’s anger. This created a rather awkward tension in the room, which Dash wished to escape from as soon as was possible. After going down a few stories, the doors finally opened into the hallway to their garage. The girls walked down to their garage together to gather their things.
Once they got into their room, Rainbow rushed to pick up all of her items and returned to the door in less than thirty seconds.
“Uh… I gotta run! My parents need me for something… uh… something important,” she lied and hastily made her escape, leaving a disgruntled Twilight alone in the workshop.
Twilight folded her arms and reclined on the railing near where the mech stood once again, proudly gleaming as if the fight had never happened thanks to the magical repairs that had been automated. After a fight, the mechs were transported back to their respective garages via magic and were reverted to their state before the fight.
She looked over her shoulder, brushing her hair out of the way to view the mech. Twilight thought back to earlier when Rainbow had decided to shut her out, making Twilight feel like she was unwanted in the team. She’d show her partner her worth… she’d make sure she knew just how important she could be.
Twilight walked over to her tool bench, selecting a wrench and ratchet. She picked up what she felt was required and began moving toward the mech. She was going to give Rainbow a reason to talk to her and listen during the fights. Lecture or no, she was going to be listening this time. She drew out her first tool and began her night’s work.
Rainbow reclined on her seat in the cafeteria, snacking on her sandwich and rattling off her epic display of skill in the ring. Her ego was on full blast, much to the chagrin of her other more serious minded friends.
Victory. That was one of the words Rainbow Dash lived her life by. She was the best, and she made sure to show it. Ever since her first match and first victory in the mech coliseum, her ego had inflated even further.
Over the next couple of weeks, Rainbow had managed to garner the attention of the other members of the club, having run undefeated in her recreational matches. There was no trophy, but bragging rights were enough for her. And brag she did. Throughout those weeks, Twilight had showed Rainbow while in the club near complete silence. She did little beyond tell Dash what was happening next on their agenda and asking her for her opinion on design improvements, always hiding her annoyance behind a smile.
The mech Rainbow had come to love hadn’t been changed very much over the past few matches, favoring the original design. It probably still could have used some more tuning up and work on the weak points, specifically, the lack of power and strength in the limbs. The armor used in the mech was a bit too stiff to allow completely free movement. However, Twilight had yet to change this since it was seeing them through matches just fine.
As her fame grew in her newest sports conquest, a few of her admirers and fans came to watch, heading up a small cheer section. First among them was her honorary sister, Scootaloo. The younger girl followed Dash to all of her sports matches. Dash was her idol. She nearly worshipped the ground she walked on.
“Hey, Rainbow Dash!” Scootaloo yelled out to her big sister as she ran over to the table holding a scrolled up poster beneath her arm. “I saw you in that big mech, it was so cool! You gotta teach me how to do that someday.” Scootaloo’s smile looked like it might just wrap around the other side of her face, it was so big.
“Heya, squirt!” Rainbow replied enthusiastically, ready to regale her disciple with more stories of her awesomeness. “So, I was just getting to the best part! So I was fighting Flitter and Cloudchaser…”
Rainbow launched into another long story about how great she fought, totally neglecting any parts about Twilight or her opponent’s performance. Scootaloo just sat next to her with her eyes wide open, practically seeing the heavens around Dash. The other girls let out a collective groan.
“Oh, come on now, Dash,” Applejack complained. “You’ve already told us five times now!” The other girls all gave their responses in agreement. They were tired of hearing Rainbow yuck it up for her crowds, or at least for her biggest fan.
“Hey, what’s that?” Pinkie interjected, popping up behind Scootaloo as if she came out of a jack-in-the-box. She reached out for the poster the younger girl was holding, causing Scoots to jump in surprise.
Scootaloo brought up the poster and unrolled it for her older friends to see. The poster showed two mechs with interlocking fists, locked in battle. It was an advertisement by the Supreme Steam club, put up by Iron Will. Apparently, the club’s inner league tournament was next meeting. This was what Rainbow had been waiting for.
“Oh, right, I forgot. I was gonna show you all this poster, I found it about an hour ago before my math class,” Scootaloo explained to the crowd of now interested girls.
Rainbow did a fist pump and let out a cheer. She quickly ran off to tell her other friends so they could watch her win. The other girls formed a tighter circle to talk about their excitement. The tournament only came once a year, so all the girls in the club were ready to show off everything they had.
“I’ll have to kindly thank Mr. Iron Will later…” Rarity grumbled with a deadpanned look. “He never gives us any notice for these things.” She complimented her complaint with a flip of her long and voluminous hair.
“Heh, ain’t you right, he doesn’t give us a lot of time to plan. But it’s a good thing I’m always ready,” Applejack responded. “But there’s nobody who’s gonna stand in my way. This time, I’ll take the trophy and the league too!”
Applejack kicked back in her seat and tipped up her hat, confident in her abilities to defeat her opponents. It would be just like the last few tournaments she had won in the club. But this time, she’d go all the way.
“I don’t know, Applejack, darling. I and my fabulous new partner are going to really kick my mech up a notch. You’d better watch out, because you may have a new lady take the prize,” Rarity said, giving AJ a wink to match her own bluster. Sunset Shimmer had been listening to the conversation while she sat quietly, not sure how she should speak about all this.
As the discomfort emanating from Sunset became a bit more obvious, Fluttershy quickly recognized her newest friend’s problem. She put her hand on Sunset’s shoulder.
“What’s wrong, Sunset Shimmer? I’m sure you’ll do just fine,” she said with a smile. Sunset looked back at Fluttershy and returned her smile, albeit much weaker. She was still nervous about her own first tournament, and she didn’t want to let down her new friends, or worse…
“Sorry, Fluttershy,” Sunset replied. “It’s just that I’m not quite comfortable fighting with you guys, even if it is part of the club. I’m just a bit nervous, I don’t want to cause any divides.” Fluttershy let out a short sigh and reinforced her sincere smile.
“Don’t worry, they’ll all understand. It’s just a game after all. Besides, I’m cheering for all of you. Even if and when you have to fight each other, I’ll be cheering for both sides. You’re all my friends, and no rivalries are going to change that,” Fluttershy reassured her. Having been satisfied, Fluttershy turned back to face the others, who were exchanging witty banter and playful challenges.
Twilight just stared down at her notebook. The news had sunk in for her, but she was honestly quite worried. The mech was fine, but she wasn’t sure how she was going to improve her team’s performance, namely, Rainbow’s. Her recent trend of ignoring the other half of her team alarmed Twilight. It was alright for the practice fights, since it didn’t matter as much. But each time Dash switched off her communications, it annoyed Twilight, and try as she might, she couldn’t get her partner to listen to her. If she had, she’d be able to win faster and avoid some more damage.
Letting out a sigh, Twilight closed her notebook and put it back into her backpack. As she turned around, she came face to face with Pinkie Pie.
“Waugh!” Twilight nearly screamed and fell back in her seat in temporary panic. “What’s wrong with you, Pinkie!? Don’t do that!”
Pinkie retracted her head back and let out a fit of giggles. No matter how down someone felt, she was always there to bring their mood right back up. It was heartwarming. And it looked like she had noticed something up with Twilight. Oh, joy.
“What’s with the long face?” Pinkie asked as she stretched her cheeks with her hands. “Of course, I guess having a long face is better than a short face, since it means you can have a bigger mouth, so you can eat more ice cream!” Twilight rolled her eyes, but retained a gentle smile. As random and off-topic as Pinkie got, she was a laugh.
“It’s nothing much, just figuring out how to work better with my partner,” Twilight replied with a short sigh. “I’ll be alright.”
“Oh, you mean Dashie? I know just how to push her buttons!” Pinkie said with a mischievous grin. Twilight wanted to slap her face at that comment. Pinkie could push everyone’s buttons, whether she knew it or not. But that was the nature of their pink haired, candy munching, chatterbox friend. “What I usually do is when I want her to listen to me, I use a megaphone in her face!” Pinkie exclaimed, her eyes rattling around, like she had just gotten off of an amusement park ride. “I’ll even get to do that when the tournament happens!”
Pinkie was the self-appointed, and well-loved announcer of the club. Ever since she had started going around shouting out the action and commentating at the club’s road meets, other clubs had since picked up on the idea. Pinkie Pie suddenly started back up talking.
“Oh, oh, oh! I know! Let’s throw a party for before the tournament! And maybe one afterwards too. And maybe during…” Pinkie rambled on. Twilight felt she had to save herself from the verbal vacuum.
“That sounds great, Pinkie, but I think I need to go take care of something now,” Twilight excused herself. Pinkie didn’t seem to mind her leaving. She just sat there and asked herself questions about the streamers she’d use at the party. Twilight backed away slowly as she saw her other friend fall prey to the party machine.
She had to find Dash and make sure she knew what needed to happen for success. Twilight’s abilities had been called into question, and she was ready to deliver, but there was only so much she could do with such a recalcitrant partner.
Rainbow was psyched up and ready to rumble. She had everything she needed for success. She had a kick butt mech, some top notch skills, and her favorite fan to boot. While she wouldn’t admit it and damage her image, she was always grateful for her presence. Scootaloo was her beacon of hope for whenever she felt like she wasn’t doing enough.
Scootaloo had followed Rainbow on her quest around the lunchroom to tell her other sports friends about the tournament. She had promised Scootaloo a tour of her mech after school just to show off, especially for her little sister.
Now that they had finally arrived at the team’s garage where the Rainbow Raider was standing in its normal spot. Upon viewing the awe inspiring machine from up close, Scootaloo let out a gasp and subsequently stopped all of her chattering she had been doing on the walk up. Dash seized this opportunity to talk up her mech.
“This here is my new favorite toy, the Rainbow Raider!” Dash announced, striking a confident pose with her hands on her hips and her chest puffed out, facing the mech. She had always been ecstatic about her mech, but having her biggest fan here to brag to in person made it that much sweeter. “So far, she hasn’t let me down once! I’ve been through four fights so far, and this is the one that’s gonna take me all the way, I just know it.”
Scootaloo maintained her reverent silence, mentally noting everything Dash had said. No word went by unnoticed, and Scootaloo was beginning to get excited. Well, more so than before. She was trying to remain respectful, but she couldn’t mask her excitement very well. Her eye had been fixed on the cockpit of the mech for the past few minutes. Rainbow looked back at her amazed little friend and noticed her longing gaze.
“So… how’d you like to see what it’s like in a real mech?” Rainbow asked with a nonchalant and toothy grin. At first, Scootaloo’s poor awestruck mind couldn’t even comprehend the awesomeness of the question. After her brain registered the amazing opportunity, she immediately jumped on it, her excitement coming to a burst. She looked like she was about to jump out of her skin.
“Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh!” Scootaloo screamed out and did a little dance, forgetting her cool kid image while lost in her euphoria. The outburst and the statement itself seemed oddly familiar to Dash, like it reminded her of another young girl from a while back… but she never acted like that, right?
Once Scootaloo had settled down, Rainbow led her to the lift to the cockpit and went to the control panel to activate it to bring her friend up to the promised place. Having only very little experience from watching how Twilight did things, she took a minute, but managed to figure out how to work the lift.
As Scootaloo clambered into the seat, Rainbow went about clumsily activating the mech from the remote station. After a few tries with random buttons that didn’t seem to do anything, the mech finally kicked on. When she activated the radio between the control station and the mech, she was greeted with the return of the giddy younger girl.
“Woah, this is so cool Rainbow Dash! And you get to do this every week!? I wanna join now! I’ll make me a super cool mech and I’ll be just like you. Won’t that be cool?” she blurted out in a seemingly endless monologue. If Rainbow wasn’t sure that the mech cockpit was where Scootaloo wanted to be, she’d probably be crawling out of the receiver based on how happy she sounded.
Rainbow smirked to herself, making sure to tack on a few extra cool points to her mental scoreboard. Now that she was situated, she was ready to try out the real deal that the mech could provide. Dash reached for the release switch on the ‘Combat’ setting. The magical display inside the mech went from blue to red and Scootaloo released a little squeal of delight over the comm set.
“Alright champ, let’s try this stuff out. Just let me find the right button… this’ll only just take a second,” Dash called out over the radio as she looked for the marked buttons to bring up the magical mech images and targets in the training area. “Aha, there we go!”
As the buttons activated, the monochrome images of other mechs came into the training field area. Large panels in the walls flipped over after a release of steam to show targets lining the back wall. The controls on the station Rainbow was at were far more complicated than the ones inside the mech, making her feel somewhat inadequate as Scootaloo had a decent grasp on her own only after a few minutes of fumbling around.
Pretty soon, Scootaloo began to engage the make believe images of opponents. Using the chakrams and shuriken launcher, she felled her foes rather sloppily, but she got the job done. She showed some natural talent, which made Dash proud. As her honorary sister, she had to be awesome to keep up with her, this was a good start.
Scootaloo seemed to take a liking to the shuriken launcher, as she continually depleted its energy and had left countless back marks on the back wall of the field.
“Wow, big sis, this is amazing! I wish I could do this every day! I mean, look! I’m even tall!” Scootaloo spoke over the radio with a beaming smile. “I’m gonna try out the other things I’ve seen you use in your fights.”
Now this could be a bit of a laugh. Rainbow watched her little follower try to do some of her acrobatic maneuvers with little success, often ending in the metallic clank of the mechanical body hitting the ground. After watching her little sister continue to try and fail, she couldn’t help but let out a few laughs and even had to stop to catch her breath, much to the dismay of Scootaloo.
Feeling the necessity to regain her coolness from her previous blunders, Scootaloo decided she’d use the most amazing thing about the Rainbow Raider, at least in her opinion. The jet pack was ready and willing to help out.
“Yeah, yeah, Rainbow Dash, laugh it up. Now watch this!” Scootaloo determinedly answered Rainbow’s laughs. She was prepared to show some cool aerial stunts and moves using the jetpack. The plan and how she’d look doing it was all laid out in her head.
The Raider took a running start, jumped and twisted in midair. As she came close to one of the side walls, she activated the propulsion and pushed herself back up higher and launched a few shots at the back wall targets. Despite her floundering attempts with unaided acrobatics, Scootaloo was doing rather well with the pack, impressing Rainbow.
She repeated the process, activating the boost at the back wall and flipping towards Dash. While in the middle of the flip, Scootaloo activated the chakram system and readied for another flip to meet with a mech image standing approximately in the center of the field. However, she didn’t realize the energy drain of the jetpack system. It had dropped nearly to zero.
As Scootaloo hit the ignition on the propulsion system and the system only gave a half-hearted pulse, lifting her slightly into the air, but not doing enough to shift her horizontal trajectory. She was heading right for the control station! As Dash registered what was happening, she acted quickly, tucking and rolling off to the side as the Raider crashed into the control area, demolishing several large pieces of equipment. There was nothing on the radio in those short seconds save for Scootaloo’s panicked screams.
Thankfully, the safety precautions in the mech prevented any bodily harm to its pilot, but Scootaloo had become very shaken up, and while she would not admit it, so was Rainbow Dash. Dash ran straight up to the cockpit of the mech and pried it open, releasing Scootaloo from its confines. A very scared Scootaloo clung to Dash and apologized profusely for what she had done. Dash was just relieved that her sister was unharmed and everything was okay.
Well… not everything. The garage was a mess now. But thankfully Dash had just seen the worst of it. Then suddenly the elevator down to the garage began to whir, the steam powered platform descending down, holding what Rainbow could only expect to be one person.
“Oh crap…”
Twilight had started on her trip to the mech coliseum in order to administer some preparatory triple checks on the mechanisms and systems. She had been loaded down with blueprints and all other manner of papers depicting possible upgrades and diagrams full of complicated math.
She was still studying over her notes when she was on the elevator shaft down to her team’s garage when she heard something large crash. Ripped from her concentration, she told herself that the noise came from some other area, but she knew she was only lying to herself. She quickly furled her diagrams and made a quick prayer, shutting her eyes in futile hope.
The elevator doors opened up, greeting Twilight with her own brand of nightmare fuel. Everything was in shambles right of the center control panel, which had thankfully been left untouched. But as she turned and saw the wreckage, she saw the Rainbow Raider, lying atop a head of totaled electrical and magical equipment. Her mouth hung open as she viewed the carnage.
As she made her way around the impact zone, her disbelief began to fade and be replaced by anger. When she turned the corner around the limp arm of the Raider, she came into view of Rainbow Dash and the very frightened Scootaloo. Twilight quickly put together what had happened to a degree.
“Oh my god! What happened!? Are you okay, Scootaloo?” Twilight shouted out in alarm to the young girl in Dash’s arms. Scootaloo was still heaving in her breaths from the shock and adrenaline pumping through her veins after the harrowing event. “Come on, let’s get you up and out of here. We’ll call your parents to take you home. It’s going to be just fine. Nobody’s been hurt.”
“I’m sorry Twilight…” Scootaloo whimpered with tears in her eyes. “I didn’t mean to!” Twilight’s anger momentarily faded into a warm smile. In all honesty, she was just relieved beyond belief to see that her friends were unharmed and safe. There would be hell to pay later, but first, she had to get the younger girl home to her parents.
The two girls sitting on the ground got up, Scootaloo breaking off from Rainbow Dash and walking to Twilight to be escorted to the elevator. Once Scootaloo had passed her, Twilight shot Dash a look full of daggers and venom. Dash shrank back visibly and began thinking about how much she could fake her explanation to avoid the wrath of the bookworm.
Once inside the elevator, Twilight gave Scootaloo a quick embrace. After having steadied her and removed her from the area, she began to try to probe into what had happened.
“Scootaloo, I’m not angry, that’s the first thing I want you to know. But what exactly happened in there?” Twilight questioned. Scootaloo looked down dejectedly.
“I’m sorry… I was piloting the mech, and I guess I overdid it. I didn’t mean for any of that stuff to happen, I was just trying to impress big sis,” Scootaloo sighed and closed her eyes. She really looked regretful.
While she hid it in front of the younger girl, Twilight was pretty sure she felt something in her mind snap a little bit. Rainbow let Scootaloo pilot the mech!? She was way too young to be getting in the cockpit of a dangerous machine like that! She and Rainbow were definitely going to have a talk.
“Oh, there, there. What matters is that you’re okay,” Twilight stated. “You’re not in trouble. I think you should just tell your parents what happened and be more careful from now on, okay?”
Scootaloo sniffled and nodded her head. The elevator doors opened up to the entry level floor. Twilight walked Scootaloo to the payphones in the lobby and called up her parents. After giving her one more hug for good measure, Twilight headed back to the elevator, her smile completely thrown aside once she had turned from Scootaloo. There were a few other students in the hall that waved, but as soon as they saw her face, they got the idea very quickly and moved on their way.
Twilight took the elevator back down to the garage, stomping her foot on the metallic floor panel of the elevator and crossing her arms. A livid frown was plastered on her red flushed face. She wasn’t angry, she was ballistic. The tournament was just a few days away and Rainbow had managed to single-handedly set them back by at least two days given the amount of damage done to the lab.
The doors opened and Twilight stormed out of the elevator and to the area Dash was sitting in. As she approached, Dash tried to remain cool, but shrank in the fury that gripped her friend. Twilight looked fit to burst into flame.
“Heh, heh… Heeey, Twilight. Uh, how’s it going?” Rainbow sheepishly greeted. Dash instantly regretted opening her mouth as Twilight’s eyes dug into her skull.
“How’s it GOING!?” Twilight screamed into Rainbow’s face. “The tournament is in three days, the Raider is a mess, the test equipment is trashed, Scootaloo looks like she was just traumatized, and it’s all your fault!”
Each reason listed made Rainbow shrink back into herself a bit more. Rainbow Dash never admitted being afraid of anything, but at this moment, she was petrified in fear of what Twilight might do to her. They were friends, so she’d go easy on her, right? Dash didn’t think so though…
“I can’t believe you let someone so young pilot our mech! There is no justification! What purpose could that possibly served!?” Twilight continued to blurt out in her rage. “Why do you have to be like that? Scootaloo wasn’t hurt at least, but it’s entirely your fault that this garage is a disaster! If you would have just used the safety barrier, then this wouldn’t have been nearly as bad!”
Rainbow sat stunned. She hadn’t known about that! She totally would have used it if she had known.
“Well, how was I supposed to know how to do that? It’s not like there was a button on the control panel over there,” Rainbow replied to Twilight’s onslaught of outrage. Twilight’s face visibly reddened, her face flushing over with anger.
“KNOW!? I told you! If you had been listening then you’d know that the safety barrier is activated by a switch on one of those machines you got destroyed!” Twilight yelled out in frustration. “Why don’t you ever listen to a word I say? It’s all important stuff!”
Twilight brought her hands to the sides of her head and shook it out. She groaned out into the void of the garage, letting out her frustrations. After clearing her head, she turned back to Rainbow.
“Okay… look, I’m sorry for yelling at you, but this is a pretty serious amount of damage,” Twilight started. “It’s going to take at least two full days to fix, and there’s no way you can even think about practicing until I rebuild the safety barrier. But thankfully, I’m not going to be on my own.”
“How’s that?” Rainbow asked, already knowing the answer, but hoping to avoid it.
“You’re going to help me clean up your mess! And you’re going to figure out how to listen to me and not tune me out.”
“But I have no idea what to do with this stuff!”
“Then it’ll be a learning experience about how to follow directions,” Twilight huffed with her eye twitching and index finger shaking in an exasperated rage.
Dash internally moaned, not willing to do the real thing in front of Twilight. She really didn’t want to have to help with all of this, but she wasn’t going to be able to practice unless the barrier was reinstalled, so she had to help. Dash let out a sigh.
“Alright, I’ll help. I’m sorry, Twi.”
Twilight returned the sigh, bringing a hand to her head in thought.
“It’s alright, but we’re going to be spending a lot of time in here over the next few days. I hope you didn’t have any plans.”
In truth, Rainbow had a few fundraiser events for her soccer team, but she was willing to put that on the back burner for the greater good, meaning that she didn’t want to do that. She was very glad that there were no more practice sessions since the season wouldn’t start for another month or so.
“There’s also another thing…” Twilight began. “Because of this accident and your current attitude, I’ve decided you need a bit of help being a ‘team player.’ So the radio set is now going to be built straight into the mech, meaning you won’t be able to switch it off.”
Rainbow Dash was slightly upset at this remark, since that meant she wouldn’t be able to focus like she was used to. But she figured she deserved some sort of punishment, even beyond helping clean up. This was a rather big blunder.
“Fine, fine, fine. Whatever you need to happen, Twilight,” Dash relented. Twilight nodded and relished in her small victory.
“That’s right, I’m a part of this team just like you are, and I’m going to help you win whether you like it or not. I’m not just here for the build, I’m your eyes in the sky too,” Twilight lectured her partner.
With that misunderstanding and storm of aggression out of the way, the two girls spent the greater part of the evening at the garage, repairing what they could before going out to eat together. While Twilight still had every intention of putting Rainbow on probation, she had quickly forgiven the actual incident itself.
There were a few days left before the first real performance of their team, and the clock was ticking. It would be a very busy time for the both of them.
The following days seemed to pass at an astonishingly slow rate, much to Twilight’s pleasure, as it meant there was more time to fix any damage cause by the ‘accident’ from earlier. Though to Rainbow Dash, it meant that those few days felt more like a few months. Thankfully, the girls managed to finish their reparations with half a day left before the weekend’s club tournament. In order to recuperate, Rainbow spent most of that time in her bed, with her covers thrown over her head.
Finally, the day had come for the day of the tournament. Twilight had learned at an earlier date from Iron Will that since the club had grown considerably at this point, there would be two parts to the day’s competition: the preliminaries, and the knockout bracket.
In the preliminaries, each team would fight five other teams and try to deal the most damage they could while keeping their machine in the best condition it could throughout the fights, which would be assessed at the termination of each round. These matches lasted only three minutes, so it would greatly reward smart play.
The knockout bracket worked exactly like any other sport. After moving on from the preliminaries, the top four teams would move on to become the semi-finalists and then finalists. These matches would be full-fledged combat trials, with the winner being the last one standing.
As Rainbow and Twilight walked into their garage to prepare, the damage from Scootaloo’s crash had been repaired almost to be as good as new. The only telltale mark of the accident were some well-defined, ash colored skid and burn marks upon the metallic paneling that just wouldn’t come out. The two girls set about preparation for their fights while talking about their game plan.
“Okay, Rainbow,” Twilight began. “This isn’t going to be like the practice bouts we’ve had so far, it’s going to be much harder and the other students won’t be trying new things so much, so they’ll be on a much higher level than our previous encounters. I’d suggest we do the same and stick to what we know.”
“Wait, even Flash? But he sucked!” Rainbow quipped.
“Yes, even him. He’ll likely be a lot better and make fewer amateur mistakes,” Twilight replied.
Twilight began the diagnostic runs on the mech to check its systems post-accident. As each subsystem showed up on the magical display, the color changed from an indeterminate grey to a friendly green. The Rainbow Raider seemed about as ready to fight as it would ever be.
As Rainbow finished testing the protective barrier between the work area and testing range, Twilight gave her the all-clear signal for Rainbow to do a bit of warmup in the mech. Rainbow quickly gave another test of the field to ensure the safety of their workplace. She didn’t want a repeat of what had happened not a week ago ever again. To assist on this front, Twilight had been sure to give her extensive lessons on how the barrier worked and how to test, repair, and calibrate the device.
As Rainbow donned her piloting outfit, she made her way to the lift to the cockpit. Once she had gotten inside and fastened down the cover, she was hailed by Twilight.
“Rainbow, can you hear me?” Twilight asked. Rainbow quickly flashed a thumbs-up back down to her through the window. “Okay, that’s good,” Twilight confirmed. “Now then, we’ve only got a few minutes before we’ll be called up for the preliminaries. I want to make sure you know how this is going to go down this time.”
Rainbow internally sighed and groaned, as this was probably around the sixtieth time she was going to repeat ‘the plan.’ This was another thing that had been drilled into her during the time she had spent with her partner during the repair session.
“I know, I know, keep the radio on and listen to what you have to say. You’re just as big a part of this team as I am and something about sky eyes and yada-yada,” Rainbow droned on, repeating more or less word for word of what Twilight had told her.
“Then I’m glad you know where we stand,” Twilight remarked, satisfied with Rainbow’s understanding. “We’ll win this thing and prove we’re the best, together!” Twilight said, pumping her fist up at Rainbow.
Dash smirked from within the cockpit. She may be somewhat annoying sometimes and sort of cramp her style for how she wanted to fight, but she could definitely get behind her friend’s excitement.
A speaker within the garage blared to life, emitting a pre-recorded message that called for all the teams to muster at the main arena for the opening ceremonies. They were given instructions to send their mechs to one of the side arenas corresponding to their assigned preliminary arena.
After setting the Raider to the proper destination, the girls rode the elevator to the lower floors and made their way to the main arena for the opening ceremonies.
As the girls entered the main arena, they were greeted by the low roar of fans and enthusiasts in the stands circling the area. The arena was full of ornamentation and a large stage in the center of the field to ring in the tournament. Other club members were standing in a large crowd looking to the stage, which remained empty for the time being.
A quick scan of the area gave Rainbow a glimpse of her other friends in the club. Rarity and Sunset Shimmer were both waiting patiently with their arms crossed, awaiting the chance to show off their style and skill. Both were too focused on the stage to notice much else.
Next, Dash saw Applejack with her hat tipped down, covering up her smirk somewhat. She had seen Applejack in this pose in years prior while up in the stands, AJ was getting ready to throw down. As with the other two, Applejack was also lost in her own world, mentally preparing for the games.
Upon looking up to the stands, Rainbow saw her friend Fluttershy holding up a sign that was decidedly neutral in who she was rooting for, predictable for Fluttershy, but a sweet sentiment all the same. Though Rainbow was more surprised to see someone she thought would have skipped out on the event. Scootaloo was up in the stands next to Fluttershy as well, holding up a homemade sign herself, though this one was clearly rooting for Rainbow and Twilight’s team.
Though she couldn’t hear anything the two were saying due to the other fans in the crowd, Rainbow had to admire Scootaloo’s guts to come back to the arena so fast after what she thought would have been a scarring event to the young girl. But she was just as loyal and dependable as Rainbow was.
Rainbow smiled to herself and looked back to the stage with all the other students. The roar of the crowd died down as Iron Will showed himself and walked up to the stage and tested the microphone stand. An earsplitting shriek rent through the room, with students and fans alike throwing their hands over their ears. After delicately shaking the stand with a grip that would strangle a person, Iron Will let out a small, embarrassed chuckle.
“Heh, sorry about that everybody,” he opened up with a silly grin. “Anyway… Welcome to our annual Supreme Steam mech fighting competition! This year we’ve had a great turnout. Iron Will hopes you can all make the decision on who to watch during the preliminaries, we’ve got enough teams to put into two of the smaller arenas for the preliminary round. One will be on the east end of the stadium, and the other bracket is in the western side,” Iron Will explained out to the crowd.
At the mention of there being multiple preliminary brackets, Fluttershy looked visibly distressed. It was obvious she was worrying about who she would watch and when she should switch arenas. Her left eye was twitching while she was inwardly making her decisions.
“At the end of each preliminary round, the top two contenders from each preliminary bracket will meet back in here for a head-to-head knockout match to decide who gets the trophy in classic tournament style,” Iron Will briefly explained the workings of the tournament to the crowd.
A billboard display appeared in the air above the heads of the crowd listing the teams in each preliminary bracket. Rainbow and Twilight were in bracket A with only Flash and Thunderlane as other notable competitors. Rainbow was disappointed at first that she wouldn’t be able to face off with her other friends, but she brightened up imagining that they’d all move onto the finals and she’d be able to fight them on the grand stage that was the main arena.
“Here are your competitors and their brackets! Cheer them on with everything you’ve got, Iron Will knows he will,” Iron Will shouted out to the crowd. “And with that, let the tournament… begin!”
As Iron Will finished, the crowd erupted into cheers and chants for their teams. It was a popular event for certain. As the other students went to their respective waiting areas in their designated side arenas, the crowd filtered out leaving a distraught Fluttershy walking about a hundred feet in one direction only to switch her path and travel opposite to her previous path. This repeated about four times before Scootaloo finally dragged her to where bracket A was going on. Fluttershy was oddly relieved she was being dragged around by a girl several years younger than her.
Rainbow laughed at the sight and quickly caught up with Twilight who had been making her way toward their waiting area. As she caught up, she shot Twilight a confident glance and mentally prepared herself for the upcoming matches.
The first match of bracket A had the Rainbow Raider out in front, being an undisputable contender in their fights against the other club members. Dash felt unstoppable in the cockpit of the Raider. She did her best to try to listen to Twilight’s advice, but Rainbow ended up tuning her out unintentionally in the heat of battle.
Three more matches in and Team Rainboom had a very solid lead with three wins and one loss in the preliminary fights, one more win would secure a certain spot in the final bracket. Thankfully to Rainbow, their next fight was with Flash and Thunderlane once again.
As the two teams met out in the middle, they exchanged the customary trash talking and good luck wishes. Rainbow got in the cockpit and readied herself for the countdown. She shifted her mech’s mode to combat. The displays turned from blue to red as Twilight gave the okay and the weapon systems came online. It was time to get serious once more.
The countdown timer counted back from five. In each second, Rainbow gripped the controls in her fists tighter and tighter in anticipation for the battle to begin. Her knuckles turned white with the pressure she had been keeping on them.
Rainbow took a glance up and saw Scootaloo and Fluttershy cheering fiercely for their friends. Fluttershy looked exhausted from running from one arena to the next in order to do her best to cheer her friends on equally, so as not to show favoritism among her best friends. Scootaloo was really taking it to heart, standing up in her seat and jumping up and down while waving her sign, much to the dismay of the person behind her. Fluttershy had to do her best to quietly restrain her to avoid upsetting the other fans. With that bolster of confidence, Dash entered her focus zone as the timer hit zero.
Taking initiative, Rainbow rushed out to meet the Noble Warrior head on like their last bout. But unlike last time, the Warrior took a more defensive stance and waited for the approach. As Rainbow closed in, Flash dropped his stance and swept out one of the legs of the mech, catching the Raider in the foot and tripping it.
Rainbow sprung into an athletic role, her confidence shaken somewhat at the much more expert maneuver Flash just exhibited. As she regained her feet, she grimaced and rethought her strategy. Flash hailed her through their radio sets.
“Hahaha, don’t think I’ll take it easy on you this time!” Flash called out over the radio. “Last time you won because I was being cocky and wanted to show off. This time, I’ve brought a bit more to the table. It’s not gonna be so easy for you now, rookie!”
Rainbow switched from her chakram weapon to her shuriken launcher and fired three shots at the Noble Warrior.
“Then I guess I’ll have to wake up for this fight,” Rainbow shot back confidently. Flash grunted over the radio as he deflected the shots with the blade of his mech. Things would be much more interesting this time.
Flash took his blade into a two-handed stance, fostering more power and control over his weapon. As he charged Rainbow, he deflected each one of her shots. Finally reaching her, he reached for a thrust with his sword, forcing Rainbow to drop back into a roll while switching her weapons back to the chakrams.
Deciding to stick to her strengths like Twilight had advised, she decided to work to her advantage by using her speed to maintain her distance while going in for unsuccessful strikes against Flash, each time being blocked by his swordsmanship. It surprised her how much better he seemed to have gotten since the last fight.
Taking a glance at the condition scan of her mech, it registered some minor damage and slight fatigue on the system as a whole due to the large amount of dashing she had done. To allow the mech to cool down, she prepared to meet Flash hand to hand.
As he closed in, Rainbow readied her chakrams, looking for an opening. Flash led with a downward slash, which Rainbow parried with one of the chakrams while twisting around and striking flash with her free hand for a direct hit. Rainbow smiled to herself, as that was the first hit that she had scored all match. Not wanting to lose her cool in overconfidence again, Rainbow began her approach to the Noble Warrior cautiously.
“Rainbow!” Twilight cut in over the radio. “Remember what I told you the other day about fighting Flash?”
“Yeah, I remember, Twi,” Rainbow replied, slightly annoyed at her breaking her immersion. “I just haven’t gotten much chance to catch him off guard enough to break it.”
As she finished her sentence, she had gotten to the Noble Warrior, and it broke into a spinning motion like a top. Since she had been waiting for him to react, Rainbow managed to take the extra moment to jump over the spinning blade and kicked off the Noble Warrior’s head, while switching weapon systems once more and firing a round into its face.
Satisfied with that maneuver, Rainbow glanced at the timer being kept on the match. The countdown read a minute and a half. All she had to do was keep up this kind of play for another ninety seconds and she’d be moving onto the main event. But Flash wasn’t done yet.
As he got up from being knocked down, the Noble Warrior dropped into a roll. Expecting a rising blade attack, Rainbow positioned her chakrams to block an attack. Instead, Flash predicted this motion and switched to his gun, stopping his roll prematurely and firing into the chest of the Raider, taking Rainbow by surprise.
After reeling from the blow, and seeing the smoke clear out from the area directly in front of her line of sight, she saw Flash coming down from the air with a deadly slash. Acting quickly, she dropped back and caught the Warrior in the chest with her feet. The edge of the blade ended about a foot away from the body of the Raider.
“Now, Rainbow!” exclaimed Twilight over the radio.
“Hold your horses, I’ve got this!” Rainbow retorted.
Before Flash could reposition his blade to make a strike at the Rainbow Raider’s legs, she had caught his blade in her chakrams. She twisted each one in a different direction, snapping off the blade halfway from the hilt before kicking Flash off.
As he hit the ground, he gasped in surprise at what his weapon had been reduced to. Desperately trying to make up the ground he had lost from the ploy, he began to wildly swing with his broken blade at the Raider, which gracefully dodged his attacks.
As he was losing his steam, the buzzer ran out. Both mechs were still standing, as usual in these events, so a judge came out to inspect the damage on each mech. While the blade snapping had proved to absolutely cripple Flash’s offensive capabilities, Rainbow was still worried about the final standings of the match since it didn’t entail a true hit to his mech. Throughout the match, there had only been a few minor hits to either side.
After about five minutes of suspense and waiting, the judge extended his hand out to the Rainbow Raider. She had won again! She was two for two against Flash Sentry and the Noble Warrior. This meant that Team Rainboom would be moving onto the finals.
Both teams exited their respective stations, with the mechanics joining the pilots in the center of the field to meet for post-game greetings. Despite losing, Flash and Thunderlane showed no obvious signs of being disappointed, surprising Rainbow Dash quite a bit.
“Man, that was an awesome fight!” Flash spoke out first. “I didn’t make it nearly as easy for you as last time, but I guess I wasn’t quite ready for that last move. I’ll admit I panicked something fierce after that.” He gave out a sheepish grin afterwards, prompting a quip from his friend Thunderlane.
“Yeah, buddy. I told you not to do that, she was planning something. But you didn’t listen,” Thunderlane chuckled. Flash turned to him and gave him a playful punch on the shoulder.
“Shut up!”
Rainbow and Twilight laughed at the bond the two boys showed. If only their first few weeks in the club had gone so smoothly. But both girls were making progress toward this level of teamwork. Rainbow spoke up to compliment Flash, who she had thought would be just as big a pushover as last time.
“Dang, that was definitely a more awesome fight! I was totally taken by surprise at first, I thought you’d do your usual stupid stuff and be an easy win.”
“Err… thanks,” both the boys replied at once with deadpanned looks on their faces. Twilight cut in to try to save how blunt Rainbow had just put that.
“What she means…” Twilight began and trailed off, searching for a way to turn the statement around. “Is that you really wowed us with how much better you fought this time. I was really shocked at how much you held back against us last time.”
It took a few minutes for Twilight to bring her explanation to an end and restore the lighthearted banter between the two teams. Pretty soon, it was time for them to vacate the arena and wait for the roster for the finals to be announced.
The girls shook hands with the boys and wished each other luck in the final standings for who would be moving on and moved back to their waiting areas.
“Whew, that was a close one,” Twilight sighed as she sat down on one of the benches in their little corner. Rainbow just gave a huff.
“It wasn’t that close, and I would have been fine without you telling me things I already knew,” Rainbow replied while rolling her eyes.
Twilight glared back at Dash, already displeased at her tone during the match, but this was enough.
“Look, Rainbow. Like I said, I’m your partner, and you needed to know the best strategy I could give you to end the match without so much damage. If you had done it earlier, it would have been much less nerve-wracking to wait for the results,” Twilight explained.
Rainbow once again gave a disinterested huff as she gazed out into the arena where one of the last matches of the preliminaries was taking place. She couldn’t wait to be back out there fighting for the glory.
“Are you even listening to me?” Twilight asked. Rainbow glanced back and nodded unconvincingly. “Look, the next round is the finals, you need to have some better correspondence so we can win!”
“Alright Twilight, sorry. It’s just that it kinda broke my focus back there is all. If I hadn’t been so far in the zone, I might have taken a big hit when you were talking to me,” Rainbow replied.
Twilight mulled over what her friend had just said in her head and made a mental note of how Rainbow believed she best fought. Twilight decided to compromise on this.
“Sorry, Rainbow. I guess I just want to be useful. I’ll try my best to not talk too much, only when I see something important. No promises though, I get kind of carried away when all those things start to happen,” Twilight admitted.
“Thanks, Twi,” Rainbow said with a smile to her partner. “Then in that case, I think we’ve got this tournament in the bag.”
As the two girls consolidated their team dynamic, the last match had ended and the scoreboard came to life in the middle of the stadium. As several numbers spun around like roulettes around each of the team’s pictures, various teams’ pictures faded from view, signaling that they didn’t make it to the finals. At the end of this process, the two teams left from bracket A were Team Rainboom and Team Epic, Flash and Thunderlane’s team.
Then, the two team icons were moved to a new screen, which posted the pictures of the other two groups moving onto the finals. Applejack had made it along with the team of Rarity and Sunset Shimmer. The pictures all began to condense in the middle and made complicated motions like the shuffling of a deck of cards.
The four teams were then divided into two separate matches. Rainbow was psyched to find out who she’d be fighting in the first round of the finals.
One of the matchups was Thunderlane and Flash Sentry fighting Rarity and Sunset Shimmer, meaning that Rainbow and Twilight were paired up with Applejack. This had Rainbow fired up, but at the same time concerned.
Applejack had been present since the beginning of the sport, watching and learning from her big brother’s example. She had learned most of his tricks, as well as nailing out a fighting style of her own. And despite how it looked, the Mecha Mac, her own machine, was a tank. It wouldn’t go down easily. To make things even more difficult, the finals were decided by knockout, so it meant that Rainbow would have to find a weak point.
Once the minor theatrics for the deciding of the final bracket were finished. Iron Will’s voice came on over the speakerphones to direct the ones who were moving on to join the others in the main arena.
As the Rainbow and Twilight moved along with the shifting crowd to the main arena, they exchanged a few glances conveying the excitement, fear, and anticipation of their biggest fights yet. Twilight had her game face on, and Rainbow was ready to throw down as well.
They had to make sure that they worked together better during the finals than they had during the last part of the tournament if they wanted any chance of winning. Applejack was a veteran of mech fighting, with two years’ experience in her own mech, winning the tournament. This would be no walk in the park.
Upon the announcement of the matchups for the finals, it was determined that the first fight would be between Team Rainboom and Applejack. One of the most senior members of the club with years of experience against the new pair that showed brilliant potential. Twilight couldn’t help but wonder if the selection really was random since this kind of match was always a very popular trope in sporting programs.
Twilight and Rainbow Dash met up with the other teams in front of where Iron Will was standing to receive his instruction now that he had finished his speech to the roaring crowd above. With an athletic jump off of the stage, Iron Will landed with great form, putting his hands on his hips and beaming a huge smile at the turnout for the finals.
“Congratulations to all of you for making it this far!” Iron Will cheered to the group of students. “But Iron Will is afraid this is where things are gonna get more interesting. Unlike the preliminary rounds, you’ll have to win this one by knockout. There will be no time limit either, with no breaks! So be prepared when it’s your turn to fight!”
Each team looked to their partners, as if mentally asking if the other was ready for the upcoming match, all except for Applejack, who tipped up her hat and rolled up her sleeves. As the teams broke apart to head to either their mechs or the participant stands, Rainbow Dash pulled Twilight to the side in order to discuss an important point. After all, being a match against her rival Applejack, this was no ordinary fight for her.
“Alright, Twilight…” Rainbow began. “I want you to give me your very best, but if I look like I’m in the zone, don’t bother me!” Twilight’s face contorted in confusion.
“But Rainbow, how am I supposed to judge that? I mean, I can’t see you from all the way in the control tower!” Twilight answered back with a grimace. “I’ll do my best to help you, but you’ve got to make sure to keep a level head for this. We both know that Applejack is a fair fighter, but she’s going to taunt you, your job is to not lose your temper.”
Rainbow Dash stared Twilight straight in the face, to the point where Twilight could see the fire crackling in her eyes. She was going to give her all in this fight, and Twilight would do her best not to disappoint.
Without another word, Rainbow ran off to the loading area to mount up in the Rainbow Raider. Twilight followed suit by making her way to the control tower elevator. On the ride up, she calmed her nerves by reciting all of Neighton’s laws to herself.
As she entered the control tower, Twilight prepped the equipment, switching on the diagnostic equipment and radio. She began by running a quick scan over the Raider; all green. Good. Next, she tried to reach Rainbow by radio.
“Rainbow, are you there?” Twilight asked.
“I’m here, let’s do this, Twi!”
So that worked too. All systems were go. Twilight pulled the switch that lit up a green light on her tower, signifying that her team was prepared. She looked over to the Mecha Mac, standing on the opposite side of the field. It was moving toward the start position. Rainbow piloted her own mech to the center of the arena as well.
The countdown to the match started on the display above the arena, with the crowd counting down with it in a chant. As the number hit three, Applejack beckoned for Rainbow Dash to come at her. Twilight immediately reacted to the provoking gesture, radioing to Dash. One…
“Rainbow, don’t you—“
As the countdown ran out, Rainbow charged headlong at the Mecha Mac, chakrams drawn out for a slashing attack. Having provoked this, Applejack knew exactly how to counter it. She snatched one of the Raider’s arms during its motion and threw her opponent behind her, turning around as Rainbow hit the ground with a thud.
“Rainbow!” Twilight shouted over her feed. “What did I tell you about not losing your head!?”
“Twilight, she was asking for it! You should have heard the stuff she was saying over the radio just now!” Dash replied with an angry grunt.
As the Raider was regaining its feet, the Mecha Mac took a step forward and outstretched its arms to its sides, hammer extended up, as if appealing to the crowd while cocking its head from side to side. Another angry rumble of noise came in over the radio as Rainbow vented her anger out toward Twilight.
“Oh, ‘Well, what is it?’ I’ll show you what IT is!” she spoke in a quiet voice in a half-crazed manner.
Twilight was doing her best to try to calm Rainbow down. This behavior was getting their fight nowhere fast. A glance at the diagnostics screen already showed some damage to the arm that had been grabbed in the opening maneuver.
“Rainbow, you’ve got to calm down, she’s taunting you so you don’t think when you attack,” Twilight explained. “If you keep on falling for her taunts, you’ll pay the price every time. If you want to win, play smart!”
No sooner had Twilight finished her sentence had Rainbow once again charged for the Mecha Mac. This time, going for an aerial maneuver, Rainbow began a jump, using the propulsion system to add some unpredictability to her attack. As Rainbow circled around to her back, Applejack launched a cannonball from her mech’s mounted cannons straight up. Rainbow rushed in before AJ could turn around, but met with the head of the hammer, stopping her attack.
“Rainbow! Get out of there now!” she yelled into the radio.
Twilight had quickly recognized the immediate danger Rainbow was in, seeing gravity take its toll on the cannonball. As the ball fell back to the ground, Applejack took a step forward while twisting her mech’s body to spin the hammer back around. With the blocking force leaving, Rainbow lurched forward and dealt a weakened blow to the underarm of the Mecha Mac, where there was some opening in the large plating.
Applejack’s plan had come into full effect as the cannonball fell on top of where she had been standing, now occupied by the Rainbow Raider. The cannonball crashed down, sending sparks flying from the head of the Raider and disorienting its systems. Next came another punishing blow, this time from Mecha Mac’s hammer. The shock of the impact sent the Raider flying across the field.
As the blow had fallen, Twilight checked the scan of the Raider, it showed very heavy damage to the torso. It was clear that the Raider couldn’t take much more direct hits before its emergency barrier kicked in to save Rainbow. Once the Raider had managed to once again get up, there was a sizable dent in the front of the mech. The crowd roared their approval at the punishment dished out over the match already.
Twilight was formulating her strategy hurriedly in her mind. Things weren’t going their way right now. She had to find some way to get around those defenses. Running a scan had yielded results on the surface of the Mecha Mac, showing heavy armor covering most areas, the only place that lacked a great deal of armor was within the joints of each piece. But as Rainbow’s second attack had displayed, simply aiming for those wouldn’t be enough. AJ had a few tricks up her sleeves to make up for the lack of speed in her mech. Her experience showed.
“Rainbow, this isn’t working,” Twilight called out over the radio. “We’re taking too many hits. We need a better plan to hit the weak points of that mech. For now, just play safe while I think up something.”
While Rainbow would usually fight her back on this, it seemed that her recent beat down had humbled her somewhat.
“Yeah… I’ll do that for now,” Rainbow replied. “Twi, she’s really good. I need you to think up something awesome right now. I can’t let her win!”
It was nice to see that Rainbow still had her spunk even after being dealt such a blow, especially to her ego.
The Raider kept its distance from the Mecha Mac as Rainbow loosed a few aimed shots toward her opponent. The other mech took a defensive stance, minimizing the damage her shots dealt. Some still reached the exposed parts of the armor, but looked to have little effect on such a sturdy machine.
In retaliation, another cannonball came flying toward Rainbow, but she easily dodged it, having seen it coming straight at her. At least the agility the Raider had over the Mecha Mac would allow the team a fighting chance at buying time to come up with a real plan.
As these little exchanges went on, it became clear to Twilight that Applejack’s entire strategy revolved around knowing the attacks coming at her. That made sense, considering how great of blows she had dealt in the first few minutes of the match. Twilight realized she would have to formulate some more creative solutions to find a way around AJ’s prediction strategy.
“Hey… Rainbow…” Twilight began. As soon as she had finished her muttering, Rainbow immediately picked up on her voice.
“Tell me you’ve got something for me I’ll like,” Rainbow answered.
“Well, I think I’ve got an idea for how to get at least one hit in.”
“Yeah?”
“You know how AJ’s been predicting or reacting to where you’ve been during this fight?” Twilight asked.
“Uh huh… where are you going with this?” Rainbow returned the question.
“Well, it’s a dangerous thing to do without having a way to really keep sight on your back. So I was thinking… get her attention and then attempt to maneuver around to her back.”
Rainbow huffed at the idea. While not a master strategist, even she could see the problem with it.
“Twi, you just said that she’s been reacting to my position. She’ll just clobber me again if I try that!” she snarled back. Twilight giggled slightly over the feed.
“That’s why you change it up. Do something she won’t predict.”
“Alright… I’m trusting you here. If you make me look stupid, it’s on you!” Rainbow shouted determinedly back.
With their little strategy session out of the way Twilight saw as the Raider began to charge toward the Mecha Mac. As their opponent raised its hammer, Rainbow piloted the mech to dash to the side and slide around out of Applejack’s view. Predicting this, Applejack began to swing the hammer in a circular motion to contact Rainbow at the end of her dodge. As she slowly turned her field of vision around, Applejack noticed that the Raider was missing!
As she had rounded the side of the Mecha Mac, Rainbow jumped high above where the hammer would be swinging, following the plan Twilight had laid out for her. Twilight pumped up her fist in the control tower, cheering on her partner as she landed her first real hit on a bewildered Applejack. With one chakram, Rainbow successfully dislodged a heavy armor plating with a heavy strike, and with the other, she smashed a chakram blade into the arm. The oil blood of the Mecha Mac joined the sparks created by the clash of steel from the hit.
Before Applejack could recover, the Raider took swift action and used all of the power it was capable of to wrestle the hammer away from the Mecha Mac. However, the action came a bit too slowly.
As the hammer left the Mecha Mac’s hands, the arm that had lost its plating swung around to connect to the back of Rainbow’s mech. The Raider once again was sent sprawling to the ground. It landed on the hammer, snapping it in two and rendering it more or less unusable. Twilight’s eyes flew back to the screen showing the scan of her team’s mech. It only registered minor damage to the back. Twilight heaved a small sigh of relief as her ploy had paid off. They had removed one of the Mecha Mac’s threats!
But her celebration would have to wait. As she shifted her gaze back to the battlefield, Applejack had launched another cannonball at the prone form of the Raider. Twilight yelled over the radio for Rainbow to dodge the attack, and her request was narrowly granted with a well-timed roll. It seemed that Applejack was far from done.
The Mecha Mac took up a boxing stance and throwing out a few mock punches to her opponent. The people in the crowd let out a collective moan, recognizing the taunt. Rainbow had gotten up at this point and had redrawn her shuriken shooter, blasting AJ with several shots, though just like the first time, AJ put up a guard and blocked most of the damage, returning to her stance once the onslaught of shurikens had dissipated. Twilight figured that this was a way of Applejack calling Rainbow to a challenge. She took action with a warning to Rainbow.
“Okay Rainbow, good job. We got rid of her hammer. But she’s still ready to fight,” Twilight started. “You’ll still have to be careful. She’s been at this as long as Big Mac has. And she’s bound to know all of his moves. And according to what I’ve read on him, he was quite good at boxing and wrestling.”
Twilight glanced back to the Mecha Mac to see it start to charge at the Raider, having broken off another piece of its armor to regain symmetry and weight distribution. It was now moving faster. Executing a flip and using an air burst from her propulsion system, Rainbow quickly widened the gap to give Twilight more time to talk to her.
“You know martial arts, right?” Twilight asked.
“Yeah, don’t worry, I’ve got this!” Rainbow shot back confidently.
“You still need to watch out. If she grabs hold of you, she could do some serious damage.”
Switching back to the chakrams, the Rainbow Raider adopted a karate stance. Twilight let out a small laugh. Leave it to Rainbow to let her pride sort out how to fight. If she was gonna win, she was going to do it her way. But Twilight had full confidence in Rainbow this time.
As the two mechs closed the distance, the Raider threw the first punch. The Mecha Mac made a quick block, following up with a light jab to counter, catching the Raider in its already damaged torso area. The puncture left in the body of the mech deepened, bringing Team Rainboom one step closer to defeat. Some of the crowd was now on their feet waiting for the final blow.
Applejack now took the offensive and led with a quick combo of punches. Rainbow Dash bided her time, retreating a step at a time until she saw her opportunity. As one of AJ’s punches came rolling in, Rainbow caught it in her mech’s hand, resonating with a sound like a thunderclap. As she came into contact with her opponent’s arm, she spun around, pushed on the Mecha Mac, and sent it spiraling to the ground by using its own momentum. She followed up her throw with a heavy stab to the back, cracking the plating.
The crowd was now fully active, cheering fervently for their fighters, expecting the match to come to a decisive close soon. A beat of hands clapping and feet stomping pervaded the arena. Twilight could feel the energy, even way up in her little tower.
“Alright, great job, Rainbow!” Twilight cheered over the radio. “Now you just need to play smart and keep it up for a few more good hits like that, and we may just pull this one out of the water!”
Rainbow gave a confident laugh in return.
“See? Nothing’s good enough to beat the awesomeness I bring to the stadium!” she said back.
Retaking her stance, the Raider stood ready for the next clash as Applejack had regained her composure and formed her own stance. Both fighters watched and waited for the other to make a move, creating a tense atmosphere as they moved in a circle together. With little to no noise by the mechs, all the noise in the room was caused by the excitement of the crowd.
Suddenly, at the same moment, both mechs led with a single punch aimed straight for each other’s faces, with both connecting, sending them reeling back with the force. The crowd erupted into more cheers. As Twilight looked around, she caught a glimpse of Scootaloo waving her rainbow colored flag wildly while Fluttershy just had her head tucked between her knees, trying to plug her ears.
Both mechs sent out a flurry of attacks, each meeting fist or chakram in a struggle for dominance, wearing on both machines. The fatigue levels on the metals on the scan screen began to soar. Twilight hoped that Rainbow could pull it out soon, or else they’d be in real trouble.
Applejack led the next meet of deadly force with a punch, which Rainbow quickly caught. Though having learned from the last time, Applejack countered with her own spin, swinging another fist at Rainbow. Having predicted this action, Rainbow put the Raider into a sweeping motion with a leg, dodging the attack while attempting to lash out with her own strike.
The Mecha Mac jumped over the sweep and came in for a cleaving motion. With a warning from Twilight, Rainbow executed a roll, taking her out of danger. Capitalizing on the precious time won from dodging a haymaker move like that, Rainbow switched back to her ranged weapons and fired shots into the visor on the opposing mech, muddling its visual systems.
In a panic, Applejack began wildly lashing out with punches and kicks going everywhere, even firing a blind cannonball into the mix, but Rainbow was too fast for it. She closed the gap and prepared for one last strike. Switching back her chakrams, she sidestepped the cannonball, jumped over a sweeping kick, rolled past a punch, finishing the maneuver with a forceful stab to the back, piercing the back plating.
Suddenly, the Mecha Mac ceased to move. From her position in the tower, Twilight could see a faint purple glow emanating from the cockpit of the Mecha Mac. The emergency barrier had activated! They had won!
“Great job, Rainbow Dash! That was amazing!” Twilight congratulated over the airwaves to her partner.
“No problem! Just look at me kicking butt and taking names!” Rainbow replied. “Oh, and, uh, you actually helped me out pretty good that one time. So, thanks for that too.”
Twilight puffed out her chest, swelling with pride. She had finally been given a bit of recognition by her partner. She was helping too! Twilight ran back to the elevator and began her descent down into the battlefield to join her partner and exchange words with Applejack.
As Twilight exited the elevator of the tower, she ran out to the center of the field with a big smile plastered to her face. She saw Rainbow Dash running toward the center as well with a similar expression and her fists raised to the heavens celebrating her glorious victory. The two girls met and gave each other a big hug and congratulated each other.
Adding to their reunion was the cheer and roar of the crowd, all pleased with the outcome of the match. It had been a thrilling experience for them too.
“Nice job, Rainbow! I was really worried at the start there, but you sure brought it back!” Twilight exclaimed.
“Heh heh, yeah, it got a bit hairy there at first, but nothing can bring this girl down!” Rainbow shouted. “But seriously, thanks for the advice. I’m not sure I would have seen those things coming or those openings if it wasn’t for you. I guess it’s not so bad having a partner,” Rainbow admitted.
As the two girls continued to talk, Applejack climbed out of the Mecha Mac and readjusted her hat. Once she had gotten to the ground, she slowly sauntered out to the center of the field. She had lost and was somewhat frustrated at the outcome, but she took the defeat in stride and approached the victors with a graceful composure.
“Whoee! That was some fancy moves back there!” Applejack called out. “I guess I might have underestimated y’all a mite.”
“Thanks, Applejack,” Twilight responded happily. “I’m glad you didn’t take it easy on us just because we’re your friends. That was hard fought, and I’m glad that everyone’s still happy.”
Rainbow Dash and Applejack exchanged a fist bump and a chest bump before going on with their post-match banter.
“Hey, AJ, now the score’s eight to five!” Rainbow jeered.
“What!? No it ain’t! It’s more like four to eight in my favor!” Applejack retorted. “Ya got lucky this time! Well… not really, you’re really good. But you had help!”
Rainbow and Applejack just laughed together, continuing on with their chat. Twilight stopped and appreciated the trust Rainbow had placed in her and how it was well-placed. She had just gotten to proving things, she was useful, and she could be a big part of things.
The girls all walked back to the rest area together. As they left the arena, the scoreboard showed the picture of the Rainbow Raider move up into the final bracket for the championship while the Mecha Mac fell back down to the third place bracket. Next up would be the Noble Warrior versus the Femme Fatale.
As the girls of Team Rainboom reached their garage to prep for the next match, the Raider had been sent back as well. It was waiting for them in the test area as usual, as if it had never left. The only thing that stood out on it were its fresh battle scars. The chest plating was dented in horribly and the damage to the head was clearly visible.
Rainbow Dash spoke up at the carnage that lay before her with a grimace.
“Dang… so that’s how hard she was hitting me? How the heck are we going to be able to fix this thing for the next match!?” Rainbow exclaimed.
Twilight shook her head slightly. Despite all her drilling on the subject of mechs, it seemed that Dash had still managed to forget some of the points she had made. Twilight walked over to the command module in the center of the work area and hit a few buttons. A light screen appeared over the module showing the blueprints of the Raider prior to their last fight.
“The answer is easy, Dash. We just use magic, it’d take forever to use science to fix this,” Twilight explained.
As she hit one more button and threw a switch, the damaged pieces of the Raider popped off the body and hit the floor with a dull clang. Then, each piece of discarded armor was spirited away to a recycling chute. Twilight threw another switch and a conveyer belt in the workshop began to move, bringing in sheets of metal.
With the command of a new button, the sheets of metal were cut and bent into the shapes of the pieces of armor that had just been recycled. The shavings were sent to the recycling chute as well, while the newly created armor pieces were sent back to the mech. Each of the new pieces attached to the mech, looking like it had never been damaged, identical to the design that Twilight had pulled up.
Dash watched the entire process with her jaw unhinged. Twilight smirked back at her with a triumphant grin.
“This, Dash, is why it’s good to know what all of the buttons do.”
Dash could do nothing but nod her head slowly while her mouth continued to hang open. With the mech now fixed, Twilight beckoned her over to give it a test run on the safety mode. Rainbow obliged and went up to the cockpit and turned on the mech.
Twilight coached her in doing basic commands, and when they found a system that wasn’t working properly, Twilight took the time to fix it back up to perfect condition. Her mind floated back to Applejack, who piloted alone. How the heck did she fix battle damage all on her own? It would be an exhausting task to do with only one person.
Soon enough, the Rainbow Raider was as good as new, with full testing involving the weapon and propulsion systems. Satisfied with their work, the girls reconvened at the work area and took a break.
Before they could really relax, they heard the cheer of the crowd from above, even all the way in their garage. That most likely meant that the other match was over. It was time they returned to the tournament and saw their final competitors.
As the girls returned to the world above their prep garage, the roaring of the crowd grew louder. Upon entry to main arena, they saw Rarity and Sunset Shimmer exchange post-game greetings and congratulations with Flash Sentry and Thunderlane. In a shocking turn of events, the Noble Warrior was lying in a broken down heap of metal. No surprise there.
Soon, the two teams in the center broke apart and made their ways off to their respective garages as they had to fix their mechs. In the meantime, Iron Will made his way onto the field, microphone stand in hand.
“Another exceptional match! These kids mean business!” he blared into the microphone. The crowd sounded their agreement with a cheer. “With that stunning performance, Team Radiance and the Femme Fatale will move on to face Team Rainboom and the Rainbow Raider in the final match of the tournament in half an hour. See you all soon!”
After he had finished, Iron Will made his way back to his personal viewing area while the stands above emptied out.
Half an hour to wait… Rainbow heaved a heavy sigh. She had just come off of a string of victories and wanted to keep on going while her adrenaline was pumping. Having to wait like this meant that she’d have to psyche herself up again.
At least fighting Rarity sounded like it’d be a bit easier. She was no Applejack, and it wasn’t like beating Flash Sentry’s mech was any real astounding accomplishment. Rainbow was sure Rarity was a passable pilot, but could she measure up to her? The tougher part of the deal was Sunset Shimmer. From what she knew about Sunset, she was as smart as Twilight and also carried a rivalry against her. So perhaps it would serve to make the match higher stakes.
“Hey, Rainbow Dash!” an excited, voice called out. Dash turned to see Scootaloo running into their spectating area. Both ‘sisters’ embraced in a short lived hug with smiles on their faces.
“Scootaloo! What’s up?” Rainbow inquired.
It had been a few days since the little accident that Scootaloo had in their garage. While she had meant to check in on her, she didn’t have the time to since she was tied up with helping repair the workshop and mech.
“Nothing much…” Scootaloo answered. “Just watching the greatest up and coming pilot in the whole world!” Same old Scootaloo. Nothing could keep her down. Dash had to just take a moment to admire her spirit. She saw a lot of herself in the younger girl.
“Although… I do have something I need to tell you,” Scootaloo continued with a shifty gaze. Rainbow recoiled subtly at the sentence.
“I’m listening…”
“So you’re about to go fight Rarity’s mech, right? Well, me and Sweetie Belle have been watching the whole tournament. I have a little bet going with her. If you win, then I get a bowl of ice cream for free!”
“Okay, that sounds like a worthy cause,” Rainbow answered with a laugh. “Just out of curiosity, since it’ll never happen, what happens if I lose?”
“You have to wear Rarity’s newest fashion creations for a week,” Scootaloo answered calmly and with a huge smile plastered to her face.
“WHAT!?” Dash answered, flabbergasted and with her jaw dropped open. “I never agreed to that! There’s no way I’d ever wear such prissy princess clothes!”
“That’s what I said! Which is why I agreed to the bet!” Scootaloo cheerily replied, completely missing the gravity of what she had done.
Rainbow sighed and put her face in her hands. She loved Scootaloo to death, but she could be sort of brash and self-centered. Dash had no idea where she had picked that up from.
“Alright, well thanks for that. Anyway, I’d better have you leave so we can strategize so I can win you that bowl of ice cream,” Rainbow told Scootaloo with thinly veiled agitation.
“Sweet! Thanks a lot! I know you’re gonna win, so do your best!” Scootaloo yelled as she ran out of the room and back to her place at the stands.
Once Scootaloo had departed, Rainbow’s expression dropped into a deadpanned frown. If Scootaloo lost her bet, then she’d be the one to suffer? With that new reckoning on her mind, she had new incentive not to lose. She never had the intention of wearing those clothes even if she did lose, but then she’d hear it nonstop from Scootaloo for breaking her ‘promise.’ What a headache.
Now that Rainbow was free, Twilight felt it was important to start strategizing now that the time they had to prepare had been shortened.
“Dash, we need to get ready to fight Team Radiance,” Twilight stated. “I’ve been taking a look at some of the recorded footage and I think we may be in for a tough time.”
With her focus snapped back to the competition at hand, Dash listened intently. A tough time? Like she had to tell her, she wasn’t the one being held to a bet she didn’t make. But no matter how tough her friends were, they wouldn’t stop her from winning. It was her title and she’d do whatever it took to win it. Twilight continued on with her explanation.
“Unlike Applejack and Flash Sentry, Rarity will rely mostly on ranged attacks. What’s more worrying is that she’s going to be harder to catch due to the rollerblade like devices on the feet of the mech. She uses precise strikes in her fights, so you’ll have to make sure to guard your weak points.”
“Seems easy enough,” Rainbow Dash answered. “I’m counting on you to give me all the info on weak points you spot. Sunset Shimmer’s gonna be a tough competitor in this one too.”
“You’re right. She and I are very much alike, and knowing her, she’ll find your weaknesses before too long,” Twilight admitted. “So to keep her from gaining an advantage, you’ll have to make sure to keep a cool head and not do anything too brash.”
“Now since when have I ever done anything like that?” Rainbow defended herself. Twilight met her question with an eye roll.
“My apologies, I have no idea when you might have done anything like that,” she said sarcastically.
While the two were busy planning out their strategy, the noise in the stadium had gradually risen to a dull roar. Once the sound had registered to the girls, they turned back and took a look at the stands. They were nearly full once more. The clock on the wall read that they only had five minutes to be ready for the final matchup.
“Oh shoot!” Twilight interjected. “I forgot to set the Raider up to the teleportation field!” Rainbow and Twilight shared a collective grimace and raced to the garage.
Making a break for it down the halls, Rainbow and Twilight ran to their garage to make final preparations to the Rainbow Raider, setting it to the proper designation for transport. Then the girls made another sprint back to the field, arriving in the nick of time as Iron Will had just taken the center of the field to announce the main and final event.
Panting and out of breath, the girls made their way to their entry area, situated directly across from their opponents, to be called out in dramatic fashion by their charismatic teacher. With the microphone stand in hand once again, Iron Will began his dramatic introduction.
“Welcome back to the main event! Iron Will hopes you’ve all had fun up to this point. But now… prepare for the main event! The final match of this year’s Ponyville tournament!” he excitedly announced. As if to approve of his words, the crowd let out a cheer.
After letting the crowd settle and taking in the attention from the people in the stands, Iron Will gestured toward Team Rainboom’s side of the field, outstretching a hand.
“Now everyone, welcome our up and coming new team! Team Rainboom!” he shouted out to the audience. Rainbow and Twilight took this as their cue to walk out into the arena. As they entered the light of the arena, they were greeted with the admiration of the crowd above. “And… their spectacular mech, the Rainbow Raider!” Iron Will exclaimed. As he finished, a large hole opened in the field and the deafening sound of claxon started. After a few seconds, the head of the Rainbow Raider peeked out into the light.
More cheers erupted from the stands as the mech had become completely exposed to the light and stood in all of its glory, proud and ready.
Now Iron Will stood with his back to them now, directing everyone’s attention to the other side of the field. He began once again with his introduction.
“Now, please welcome a pair of our veterans, Sunset Shimmer and Rarity in Team Radiance!”
More cheers came from the crowd, matching the enthusiasm for Team Rainbow. And once again, as he announced the name of the mech Dash would be fighting as well.
“Now give it up for Team Radiance’s mech, the Femme Fatale!” he shouted out for the people in the stands. The fans all clapped for each combatant, ready to see the carnage of one last fight.
The opposing mech began to surface from another hole opened up in the arena. As the light cast by the skylight in the coliseum hit the Femme Fatale, a shining gleam shone off of it. The mech was a shining white with purple accent marks on it, a true Rarity design as far as aesthetics went. It sported a strip skirt meant to provide easy movement, large orb shaped pieces on the shoulders, and some wheels attached to the feet of the mech to act as roller blades. And were the foot design based off of Rarity’s… boots? She had really spared no expense on how it looked. The tricky part would be how it would fight. Rainbow only had a slight idea of how Rarity went about her “scuffles.”
After both mechs were brought up, the two teams took the field and met in the center to shake hands and wish each other luck. Sunset and Rarity approached Rainbow and Twilight, fires burning in the eyes of all, ready to take the competition in this last round.
“Well darlings, I wish you good luck, after all… you’re going to need it,” Rarity said. “I heard about how you defeated Applejack, and while I’m surprised and even the slightest bit impressed, you won’t find such flaws in our beauty of a machine!”
The gauntlet had been thrown, now Dash felt she had to answer to defend her pride.
“Ain’t no way you’re gonna beat me! I’ve never lost to girly-girls like you in sports before, and I’m not going to now!” Rainbow answered the challenge. “We beat Applejack, and we can sure beat you.”
While Rarity and Rainbow Dash were exchanging blusters, Sunset had kept her silence and had been gazing at the Raider. Twilight took notice and whispered into Dash’s ear.
“Rainbow… we’d better get ready to start quickly, I don’t like the way Sunset’s looking at our mech. It’s like she’s taking it apart in her mind. The sooner we start this, the better,” she confided to Rainbow.
Thanks to the not-so-subtle action Twilight had taken, Sunset dropped her gaze and returned her attention to the two girls across from her.
“What’s the matter, Sparkle? Whispering already? We haven’t even started. I guess I’m flattered you’re that scared already,” Sunset jeered. Twilight flinched at Sunset’s statement, was she an easy read? Twilight had thought she had a better poker face than that.
“N-no! I just already found what I needed to! Get ready, because you guys are in for it!” Twilight defended herself.
“Alright then, let’s get started, may the best team win,” Rarity announced in a refined voice, taking Sunset Shimmer back with her to her corner. Sunset wore a smirk all the way back to her elevator lift, directed at Twilight before the door closed and removed her from Twilight’s vision. Twilight was already sweating and the match hadn’t even officially started.
Rainbow Dash and Twilight made their way back to their own mech to share one last conversation in person before the match began.
“Alright, Twi, lay it on me, you just said you found out something. I could really use the information rather than flying in blind like last time,” Dash inquired. Twilight just stood in shock, not expecting to have to explain herself already. Dash was taken aback by the silence and quickly grew uncomfortable.
“Uh… Twi? You there? I’m gonna need you working properly for at least the next ten or fifteen minutes. It’s gonna be real hard without you, you know,” she said worriedly.
Twilight shook out her head and regained her focus. She flashed a nervous grin at her friend and let the truth out.
“I-I-I was just trying to boast like they were. I’ll tell you what I’ve found out when I’ve actually noticed something. I’m just really nervous right now, it’s like a test, only everyone’s watching me take it!” Twilight panicked.
“Okay, Twilight, just breath, relax, we’ll think up something, or at least we’d better,” Rainbow attempted to console Twilight. Dash gave her a fist bump before mounting up in the cockpit. Following suit, Twilight made her way back up to her tower.
After fastening her belt into the cockpit, Rainbow switched on the systems, each screen coming to life, displaying a large field of view, a diagnostic screen, and an energy meter for each system of the mech. Rainbow sent a signal to Twilight to indicate all was right with the Raider, even after its near destruction at the mechanical hands of the Mecha Mac. After receiving the signal, a green light flashed from the control tower. Sunset’s light came at nearly the same time.
Rainbow gripped the controls in her hands, ready to rumble, but for some reason, the countdown didn’t come up. Instead, in the corner of the vision screen, she saw a platform being raised with Iron Will on it, with a microphone once again. Ugh… another half-baked speech to interrupt her flow.
Iron Will raised his hands and beckoned to the crowd to incite their cheers one more time.
“This is what it all comes down to. The last battle. Who will take it all? Our new rookies or the veteran dream team? We’ll have the chance to see it in action, all the cold, hard details right here in the last match of the Ponyville Tournament of—“
“Supreeeeeeeme Steeeeeeeam!” a high-pitched and shrill voice rang out from everywhere at once. Iron Will tapped his microphone to discover that it had suddenly stopped working. Then, the spotlight on him went out and the lights in the stadium went dim.
Suddenly, a lone spotlight had been directed up to illuminate a lone figure in the rafters of the arena. It looked like a jet, with red, white, and blue detail on the wings, with a ridiculous out of place pink, poofy fluff where the cockpit would be. It was clearly a person based on the size. Then, without warning, the jet jumped off and started flying.
“Wheeeeeeeee, I can see the stars!” the jet screamed. “They’re about to take flight and fight, fight, fight! Go Team Rainboom, go Team Radiance! You can do it!” The jet took several laps around the arena using some sort of jetpack
The jet landed next to Iron Will and the safety glass of the cockpit slid down to reveal the face of the one, the only, Pinkie Pie. Once on the ground, she subsequently stole the microphone stand from Iron Will and it was suddenly working once again.
“Heeeeeeeey, everyone! I’m sorry I’m late, I hope you’ve had a good time without me!” Pinkie shouted out to the crowd. “I actually forgot about the competition today and slept in, so I had to fly this here. I guess you could say I have a screw loose!”
The collective voice of the spectators emitted laughs and groans at the same time. It had been a while since their ‘announcer’s’ last visit to the stadium. She was only there some of the times and when her friends had a big part in the events.
“I want to give a big hand to both of all of my friends competing and everyone else in the crowd! Thanks for being here everyone!” she continued. “Now, who’s ready to who’s got the meanest, leanest, steamest machine out there?” She was immediately met with a resounding applause and cheer.
Iron Will just stared flabbergasted at the whole affair. What took him so much enthusiasm and work to do, she just managed to do in just a few sentences. Dressed as a fighter jet, no less…
“Let’s start the final countdown!” Pinkie declared, pulling out a guitar from midair. She started to strum heavy chords on each count. The crowd’s countdown neared the end and the chords got louder and harsher.
“Three!”
“Two!”
“One!”
After the last count, the lights brightened somewhat, though still dark to provide a more dramatic finale. Once Pinkie had strummed her last chord, several pyrotechnics ignited around the edges of the stadium and the match began.
Momentarily blinded by the grandiose display of fireworks and awesomeness, Rainbow didn't see the first shot come out of the shoulder pads of the Femme Fatale, scoring a direct hit and knocking the Raider back a few feet. Twilight immediately came on over the radio system.
“On your feet Rainbow, snap out of it, you need to pay attention!”
Glad to hear she was in it. It irritated Dash that she had been an easy target, even though it really was her fault after all. Eager to make up for it, she started to make a break for her target, chakrams out, spinning in a menacing daze. The Femme Fatale rolled back on its roller blades, firing more projectiles from its shoulders. They moved slower than Rainbow, but had some homing ability, so she had to continually make small shifts in her path to avoid getting hit by another.
As she approached the opposing mech, Rainbow fired off a blast from the propulsion system on the back, propelling her forward even faster. However, Rarity was prepared and spun in a graceful pirouette, avoiding the strike and offsetting Rainbow’s balance.
As soon as Dash hit the ground, she was peppered by the energy blasts from Rarity’s mech once more. A quick scan over the diagnostic screen showed little to no damage, meaning either the blasts weren’t very strong, or the armor she had one was just stronger. Even so, this had been a ridiculous amount of shots fired against her in a short period of time.
“What’s with all the shots she’s launched at me? Is it even possible to have that much energy in a system? I thought it was illegal!” Rainbow huffed into her headset.
“If you’ve taken a look at the systems parameter screen, you’d notice that your systems have all been drained of their energy. They sap your mech’s strength. Getting hit by one of those will cripple your ability to fight!”
Realizing the gravity of her situation, Dash maneuvered her mech up to its feet and began to move at a somewhat sluggish pace.
Up in the stands, Pinkie Pie began to commentate on the fight with Iron Will at her side.
“Looks like our favorite Rainbow haired fighter just figured out the alternate effect of the Femme Fatale’s ranged system!” Iron Will narrated. “They emit low frequency energy blasts, they don’t take much energy, and therefore can be used a lot.”
“That’s right, Iron Will! It looks like they’ve figured it out! Knowing what to expect is good, after all… knowing is half the battle!” Pinkie made a big grin. “Let’s see what the rookie team can do about it. I bet you four marshmallows that they’re in for a shish-kabob! I wonder if I can get some s’mores from one of those mechs…” Pinkie said, trailing off in her own little world. Iron will just put his head in his hands and sighed.
Back in the action, Rarity had already taken advantage of the Rainbow Raider’s exposed situation. She was closing in with her rapier drawn. Dash took up a defensive stance, but the light blade allowed for superior movement against the impaired rainbow machine. Several punctures and rips opened after a quick flurry of attacks, making perforations in the outer metal plating.
After the aftershocks of all the direct hits, Rainbow checked out the state of her mech. Only minor damage to the frontal chasse of the mech. Thankfully, the energy drain from the shoulder mounted guns had worn off, allowing a much greater range of motion.
Now that she had the advantage of speed once again, Rainbow took off at a charge toward the Femme Fatale, leading the charge with her shuriken launcher. Cancelling all of the opposing shots made the approach a lot cleaner, and once in range, Rarity drew her rapier once more, taking a few free hits from Dash’s projectiles before she redrew her chakrams once more to meet in a clash.
As Rarity thrust out her blade, Dash caught it in one of the chakrams’ blades and twisted it out of the opposing mech’s hands. The blade flew across the arena and clattered to the ground. Taking advantage of the newly forced opening, Rainbow savagely struck the chest of the Femme Fatale, denting its beautiful armor.
Taking back control of the situation, Rarity grasped the exposed parts of the Raider’s hands and did a twirl one would see in a ballroom dance setting. With a parting blast from the shoulder guns, Rainbow lost her balance and stumbled forward several feet. By the time she had turned around, she only had a quick glance of an oncoming burst of energy headed toward her. She threw herself into a roll, avoiding the energy blasts and switching back to her own launcher.
A transmission from Rarity came in over the radio system.
“Look at what you did to my beautiful dress! It’s soiled!” Rarity screamed into the airwaves. “What do you have to say for yourself!?” Rainbow snickered to herself before composing herself for a reply. Fighting Rarity was a lot more fun than she’d thought it would be.
“The dress was gaudy and silly anyway, now it looks awesome with the battle damage! I even plan to give it some more cool battle scars,” Rainbow jeered at her friend. Rarity let out a decidedly unladylike grunt.
Thankfully for all involved, Sunset Shimmer came in over the radio.
“Don’t let her get to you, Rarity, I need you to focus. If you let her get the better of you, we lose the advantage. Now then, cut off the communications and refocus!” Rainbow could hear Sunset say over the radio. With one last message, Rarity cut off the feed.
“This means war, Rainbow Dash!”
“So, Iron Will,” Pinkie Pie began. “What’s your impression of our two teams? It’s like a delicious battle versus chocolate and vanilla! My two favorite flavors, aside from strawberry, lemon, mint, banana—”
Iron Will clapped his hand over her mouth, the vibrations from her voice tickling his hands. His expression was labored and his nerves were growing thin. She was such a delight to have in class, but only in small doses.
“Good question!” Iron Will quickly said. “Iron Will for one, thinks that our rookies are a force to be reckoned with, and they clearly possess the advantage in terms of speed and strength. But you can’t discount the defensive strategies of Team Radiance. They’ve pulled off many battles of attrition before with their strong armor and heavy ranged play.”
Pinkie managed to break free of Iron Will’s gagging by prying open his hand with a pair of pliers she had lying around. Not bothering to take her mouth away from Iron Will, she spoke through the hole between his fingers.
“That’s right!” she shouted, startling Iron Will. “The best parties are surprise parties after all!” With this piece of wisdom, a shower of confetti rained down on the announcer platform, coating both of them. Suddenly, all the confetti blew off of Pinkie as she blew a party blower. Iron Will however, was not so lucky, as he had confetti stuck all over him. He just sighed and blew confetti out of his mouth.
“Let’s just get back to the action…” he said in a slightly defeated tone.
With the declaration of war given, the violence recommenced. As Rainbow closed in for another attack after a successful dodging of blasts, she lead with her chakram, only for it to be gracefully parried by Rarity.
Not to be outdone, Rainbow quickly took out her shuriken launcher and fired off blasts at point blank range, though now that she had her war face on, Rarity was extremely alert, or otherwise warned by Sunset to avoid the attack. Despite its speed, the attack was seamlessly blocked, and as Dash landed, Rarity dished out several kicks, balancing superbly on one roller blade and pummeling the Raider’s face.
Capitalizing on Rainbow’s offset balance, Rarity took the opportunity to strike at an exposed area in the leg plating, catching one of Dash’s mech above the knee, stifling any attempt to regain momentum and falling over.
“Timber! I’m going down,” Rainbow called out over the radio.
“Rainbow! Now’s not the time to be making jokes! You need to get back up,” Twilight interjected back at her. “Anyway, I’ve noticed something about all of Rarity’s fighting style.”
Now Rainbow was interested. She beckoned for Twilight to continue.
“Well, each one of her movements is heavily reliant roller blades. They help her keep up the flow of her dance styled travel and maneuvers. If you can manage to destroy even one of those, then your odds will be increased by a huge margin.”
“Sounds like a plan, Twi,” Rainbow replied over the radio. The problem was she had no idea how to go about getting that done. She moved fast, but Rarity had such sophisticated movements. She was in full control and Rainbow was constantly trying to catch up, having only scored a few lucky hits.
Taking a more reserved stance, Rainbow carefully eyed Rarity as she launched a volley of blasts, dodging in a rotary motion, making a large circle. While easily avoiding each of the projectiles, Rainbow noticed that Rarity was rotating by using her roller blades, keeping her arms outstretched to keep her balance.
Quickly formulating a plan, Rainbow leapt to action, running closer and switching out her chakrams for her shuriken launcher. She fired off a charged round at one of Rarity’s arms. The resulting impact caused Rarity to spiral out of control, spinning in a rapid circle too fast to control.
Switching back to her chakrams, Rainbow closed the distance for a strike, but Rarity was too clever. By sticking her sword into the ground, she used that anchoring point to stabilize herself, and then flung herself back into safety.
“Shoot! She’s too fast!” Dash fired off over the radio in frustration. “I can’t catch her like this.”
“Keep trying!” came Twilight’s reply. “Don’t do anything drastic.
No sooner said than done, Dash had already made the decision to make a gamble. Putting away her chakrams, she used her mech’s bare fists to rip off some of the heavier portions of armor on her mech, stripping it of its protection. Twilight was going nuts over the radio, trying to convince Rainbow to stop what she was doing.
“Rainbow! Knock it off! That design is perfect! You don’t need to make any changes,” Twilight begged over the radio. All of her hard work was being torn to pieces. “There was no way to further optimize that mech! It’s as perfect as it gets!”
“Not for me it isn’t,” Rainbow calmly replied. “I’m too slow, I need more speed. The way this mech is right now isn’t gonna cut it.”
After tearing off the chest plating, Dash brandished it like a shield. As Rarity fired off even more energy blasts, Dash hunkered down and held out her makeshift shield, blocking each of the spheres. Now that she had a safer position, she began to think through how to next approach her problem.
The crowd gasped at the bold move the rookie pilot had just pulled off. By sacrificing her armor, Rainbow would now move faster, though it gave her much less chance for error.
“Wow… Iron Will has to admit he’s impressed. Those girls are much tougher than Iron Will would have thought,” Iron Will stated to no one in particular.
Missing the wonder and subtlety in his voice, Pinkie Pie took the opportunity to make a quick joke.
“I guess you could say that they've got some real bolts and nuts!” Pinkie exclaimed, holding out an outstretched hand to receive a high-five. Iron Will just planted his face into the railing of the platform they were casting from. Paying no heed to Iron Will’s reaction, she kept her hand held up, waiting for him.
Last time worked rather well for Dash as she had managed to tip Rarity off balance, and as such, she no longer strafed using only her roller blades anymore like last time. This way, it was much easier to manage the ranged prodding Rarity had over her. The ‘shield’ did well enough, taking plenty of hits, though Dash could feel it starting to wear. It wasn't meant to take this much punishment. She had to find a solution soon before she was stripped of her only protection remaining.
Using the power of the jetpack propulsion, Rainbow surged forward, holding the shield out first, covering her assault. Rarity spun out of the way using her roller blades. While she was busy using her hands to maintain balance, Rainbow took the advantage to once again shoot the outstretched arms to spin her wildly out of control.
Since previous attempts had shown her that she was still too slow lugging around all the metal, she knew she still couldn’t catch her like this, carrying the largest bulk of material on her mech around as a burden. In light of this information, Rainbow did the only thing she could: wing it.
While Rarity was still working to get under control, Rainbow leapt up into the air and wound up her mech’s arm. With a mighty swing, she threw the hunk of metal she had been holding onto and it fired straight into one of the roller blades, slicing it off entirely. The sudden imbalance combined with its momentum caused the Femme Fatale to fall.
Keeping her rhythm going, Rainbow followed up by striking one of the shoulder guns on Rarity’s mech. With one gun down, the danger was drastically reduced. But upon reentry for a follow-up assault, Rarity rolled to the side and landed a stop thrust on the lower abdomen of Rainbow’s mech, dangerously close to the central energy core.
“Well folks, Iron Will believes that we’re coming into the final leg of this fight. Both mechs have been severely damaged. Team Radiance has lost integral parts of their mech and Team Rainbow has taken near critical damage based on that last counterstrike!” Iron Will announced from above.
Pinkie Pie gasped in an exaggerated manner and brought out a paper bag, heaving in and out shallow breaths until the bag popped and spring-loaded snakes came out.
“Those two are closer than peanut butter and jelly!” Pinkie exclaimed.
“Er… right Pinkie…” Iron Will said, clearly not understanding Pinkie’s either labyrinthine or ultra-simplistic thought process. “Anyway, it’s clearly anyone’s game. Let’s see how this pans out.”
With both mechs on their last legs, Twilight made an urgent message out to Rainbow. She explained that despite the heavy damage on their mech, the Rainbow Raider was far better off on an operational level. It probably had enough strength left in it to keep on attacking without any problem so long as it didn’t get hit any more.
The armor plating on each mechs, or at least what was left of both, were in shambles. Cracks lined the pocks and scars of battle wounds, sparks cascaded off of the missing armor connections where various wirings were now exposed.
Rainbow prepared for one last confrontation, and Twilight came on over the radio once more.
“Dash, I think I know what they’re going to do next.”
“Lay it on me then, egghead, I could use whatever you've got,” Rainbow replied. Despite Twilight’s disapproval of the name she had been called, she went ahead with the idea.
“Now that you've snapped off one of the roller blades, the other isn’t going to be of any use. So it’s likely that they’ll attempt to take it off themselves to regain better movement. But the tricky part is that they may try to use it as a weapon, much like a sharpened disc.”
“That sounds… unpleasant,” Rainbow Dash replied. “Thanks for the warning. I’ll see if I can’t wrap this up now.”
“Good luck Rainbow Dash!” Twilight finished and signed off.
With that warning in mind, Dash once again took to a sprint, dodging oncoming fire deftly, which was much easier now that there were half the amount of energy balls coming her way. As she approached, Rarity swung into a kick, which Rainbow blocked easily, though on her turn, the Femme Fatale now had the wheel from her roller blade in its hand, releasing it to throw. Thanks to the warning, Rainbow had been expecting this ploy and ducked in the nick of time and the thrown disc lodged firmly in the wall of the arena. Thank you Twilight!
Now with an opening, Rainbow slung a chakram into the Femme Fatale’s chest. Thankfully for Rarity, she was fast enough to predict it and reacted with a swift parry, holding the chakram in place with her blade. On instinct, Rainbow replaced her knee to be centered in front of Rarity’s mech and hit the propulsion. The Raider flew upward and delivered a crushing blow to the skull of the opposing mech.
As she reached the height of her improvised jump, Dash activated the propulsion once again and slammed into the Femme Fatale, forcing it back. Then she threw her other chakram forcefully, lodging into the chest of the Femme Fatale. It recoiled back and dropped to its knees, a faint purple glow emanating from the cockpit.
Iron Will’s voice boomed over the crowd’s cheers with the verdict.
“The Femme Fatale has fallen! Our new—”
“A winner is Team Rainboom!” interrupted Pinkie Pie. Rainbow heaved a sigh of relief as she relaxed her grip on the controls. Her knuckles began to regain their normal color. She thought back to the immediate past in the last minute of the match. If she hadn’t managed to dodge that throw, that would have ended it right there. She knew she’d have to thank Twilight.
As Rainbow Dash exited the cockpit of the mech, she slid her way down the drop ladder and met the gaze of Twilight from the base of her tower. The two ran out to meet each other and met in an embrace, with tears of joy in their eyes. Despite the rocky beginning to their team, the two girls had come so far in so little time.
As Rarity crept out of the cockpit, the emergency shield lowered itself and Rarity turned to look at her mech. Once the shock of seeing it in disastrous condition wore off, she clapped a hand to her mouth to stifle a gasp. Sunset came running up behind her and caught her as Rarity fainted in a dramatic fashion.
The two teams met in the center of the arena and the three girls shook hands while Rarity slumped over almost unconscious on Sunset’s shoulder.
“You know, Twilight,” Sunset began. “I thought I had your number there. I was reading your mech so well. I knew exactly how you were going to try to take advantage of your design. We had such a good flow going.” Twilight smiled sheepishly.
“Well, to be honest, if it wasn’t for Rainbow taking a risk there, we probably would have lost over the time. She had the courage to try something new while I freaked out,” Twilight admitted. Not wanting to see her friend put herself down, Rainbow did her best to salvage the situation.
“Buuuut, thanks to you, I managed to dodge that last attack from Rarity. If you hadn’t warned me, I was sure I’d have been done right then and there!” Twilight made a slight blush and curled the end of a lock of her hair. Sunset scoffed at herself.
“Yeah, after that gamble by Rainbow, I kind of freaked out. I thought that improvising with the roller blade would have made a good surprise attack, but I guess great minds think alike, huh?” Sunset humbly admitted. “You definitely clinched it there at the end by avoiding that.”
“Thanks Sunset,” Twilight replied. “It was a really good match.”
The two teams separated while the mechs were being moved back down to their respective garages. As Sunset carried off Rarity, Rainbow was sure she heard mumblings about her greatest fashion being ruined or something to that effect.
Before Team Rainboom could reach the tunnel leading back to the competitor level, the screen in the center of the arena showed the team photo of Team Rainboom making its way past Team Radiance’s and up to the image of a trophy. Rainbow’s eyes glittered at the sight of it. Under the board, Iron Will stood with the tournament cup and beckoned the two to come forward.
Hand in hand, the girls made their way to the stage.
The approach to where Iron Will was standing with the prize seemed longer than it should have been. Perhaps that was because Rainbow was still seeing events in slow motion with all the adrenaline still pumping through her veins. The cold sweat still dripped down her face even as her smile grew larger with the weight of the victory sinking in.
Once the two partners had reached their instructor, he grasped both their hands, giving each girl a hearty handshake. After a good three seconds of head-jostling shaking, he lifted their shaking hands high above their heads in a symbol of victory. The crowd went wild with whoops, cheers, and hollers. Rainbow could see Scootaloo waving her sign vigorously and dancing around in the stands happily.
The other competitors came out into the arena and formed a messy semicircle, each person joining the applause, congratulating the new winners of their tournament.
As the clapping and noise faded out, Iron Will held out the trophy, handing it off to Team Rainboom. Then out of the cup came a friendly face: Pinkie Pie!
“YAAAAY!” she yelled right into her friends’ faces, blowing a party blower and tossing confetti over their heads as well. “Conglaturations, I mean, congradulations— You did it!” Pinkie stumbled over her words. Upon finishing her sentence, she slipped out of the cup and fell face-first on the ground, gracefully. Like a glob of jelly, she sprung back up, seeming to take no notice to falling and put her arms around her two friends.
“We’ll totally have a party for this! A ‘Team Rainboom just won the tournament’ party!” Pinkie droned at a voice with a glass-breaking pitch. “Or wait! Maybe a ‘Rainbow Raider wreckognition’ jamboree?”
Twilight and Rainbow reached around and left Pinkie musing to herself about how to celebrate. They put their hands on the trophy and lifted up, eliciting more fierce cheering from the crowd above. Rainbow turned to Twilight.
“So, you feel proud? Cause you should! This is all thanks to you,” Rainbow spoke at a yell to be heard over the crowd. “Thanks for dealing with me and working with me. It’s been a while since I wasn’t the lone star of the team.”
“It’s no problem. I’m just glad that you appreciate me now. I feel like I’ve finally proved myself as more than just an… ‘egghead,’ she giggled back to Rainbow. “Thanks for letting me be on a team with you, Dash.”
“Heh, well I’m glad you feel that way, cause I’m not letting you go anytime soon,” Rainbow said, sticking her tongue out.
Rainbow held out her hand, clasping it with Twilight’s own. Together, they held up their hands in a symbol of victory and solidarity. In that victorious pose, the two felt the crashing wake of the crowd’s cheers once more. Pyrotechnics lit up around them and amid all the chaos and jubilation, the two partners looked into each other’s eyes, both seeing the same thing: fire and the thrill of battle.
I feel like I've improved so much since writing this! 
-6/30/2015