They weren’t starting IN the mall, they were starting ON TOP of the mall!
Rainbow Dash smirks, picking up all the confidence Flu had just lost. She immediately flutters up into the air as Flu begins to reach frantically for his blaster. As soon as he drew the blaster though, a rainbow streak comes slamming into him, knocking the pistol out of his hands. Flu desperately scrambles to try and reclaim it, but Rainbow Dash comes by again for a second streak, moving so quickly that Flu can’t even predict her coming. Flu is knocked about the roof for a bit, unable to effectively counter the speedy pony on the flat rooftop.
Flu realizes he has no hope if he sticks to the rooftop. After being kicked around a few more times, Flu tumbles off the roof, sweeping up his blaster as he goes careening off the side of the building. Rainbow Dash crashes into the rooftop as she tries to catch him rolling off, breaking through the ceiling of the building.
Flu’s fall isn’t very clean. He lands on his side and groans at the sudden sting he felt from the impact. He spends a moment trying to recover from the fall, but soon the doors of the movie rental store swing open. Rainbow Dash was a bit dusty from crashing through the roof, but she was fine otherwise. She does need a moment to rub the dust out of her eyes, which gives the Rodian the time he needs to get back up and back into the fite. He runs towards the packed parking lot and took cover behind a large SUV, using the vehicles mirrors to check to see what Rainbow Dash was up to. The pony did a quick twist, flinging most of the remaining dust from her rainbow mane.
The filly flies into the air once more, surveying the parking lot in search of Flu. Flu quickly rolls under the SUV to avoid detection and begins to aim a shot at the pony. A single well-aimed shot would take her down, but Rainbow Dash was not taking her time in her search. She could sweep the entire lot in one second and then alter her search pattern, meaning Flu couldn’t even see her except for a few glimpses. The search was boring the pegasus though, so she lands in a huff and begins to think of a way to flush Flu out.
Flu realizes the pony had ceased her search and begins crawling from car to car to try and find her. The front of his clothes are streaked with oil and grime from his slow journey, but he eventually finds where the pony had landed. He cautiously lines up his shot, aiming right for the pony’s face, but it turns out laser fire is not as fast as the speed of an idea. Rainbow Dash takes off almost as soon as the Rodian fires, and although her leg is hit, she appears to be fine. Her leg grows numb as she hovers in the sky above Flu, but despite the injury, she decides to go through with the plan she had cooked up.
Rainbow Dash begins to fly in a circle, kicking up one of her famous tornadoes. The cyclone begins to lift the cars off the ground, clearing the parking lot of cover for the cautious alien. Flu quickly ditches his hiding place as it begins to be sucked into the vehicular vortex, and now Rainbow Dash can clearly see her foe. Abandoning her whirlwind to spin around in the parking lot on its own, Rainbow Dash dashes towards Flu, slamming her three good hooves into his back and pushing him into the wall of the strip mall.
The slower speed of the injured pegasus means she lands on the ground with an injured muzzle instead of crashing through the door. Rainbow Dash tries the handle, but Flu has already placed a shelf against the door. This doesn’t prevent her from opening it since it opens outwards, but it does mean a giant shelf lands on her once she has opened it. The shelf was full of hair care products, and they spill out onto the poor pony. Besides the sting of mixing chemicals, Rainbow Dash also finds herself with a much more dire situation. Her multicolored mane was now an ugly brown, not a brunette dye job so much as a dirty look that you usually only find on people who have never heard of shampoo. She pushes herself out from under the shelf, but when one of the hair salon’s mirrors reveals her situation, she lets out a long and prolonged “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”
She tries a Rainblow Dry on herself, but the chemicals had done what seemed like irreparable hair damage. Brunette Dash begins to seethe, her face turning red with anger. She would find Flu and make him pay for dimming the rainbow of Rainbow Dash.
Flu was hiding in the back of the hair salon, his pistol trained on the door to the office. A store with more shelves would have suited him better, but he’d make do with where he was now. He had heard the pony’s scream of anger and positioned a desk between him and the door, knowing now that she probably won’t be coming into the office at a reasonable speed. His hand shook from both tiredness and fear, but time kept ticking on and the pony still hadn’t entered the office.
Outside of Flu’s hiding spot Rainbow Dash was angry, but a convenient black trail of oil showed her exactly where her opponent had gone to hide. She had almost charged straight into the office without thinking, but the pain in her wings gave her pause. Rather than go in injured, Rainbow Dash left the salon and went down the mall to a new age herb shop. She perused the many dubious mixtures and herbs until she found a bunch that claimed to cure pain. She grabbed the pill bottles and went to the cashier, but after waiting for a few seconds she remembered there were no clerks so she just took the remedies right there. They weren’t the kind Zacora would whip up, but after a brief wait the pain in her wings cleared up. Her leg was still numb from the stun blast, but her wings were back to tip-top shape. She went back into the parking lot, ignoring the still-spinning vehicular vortex, and went back into the salon. The bell on the door jingled a bit, cluing Flu in that the pony had been about.
Even more on guard than before, Flu had moved a few more things onto the desk to serve as barriers for when the pony rushed in. He had quite a little setup going, with a filling cabinet lying on its side atop the desk with a fake potted plant serving as the peak of his junk pile. If the pony rushed in, she would hit quite a bit of clutter before hitting the hiding alien.
The door of the office swung open. Flu quickly fired a few shots, but they failed to make contact with anything but the salon’s many mirrors. Suddenly, a huge flash of light filled the salon as Rainbow Dash let loose a Buccaneer Blitz. Flu was blinded, and he began firing wildly about the salon office, but Rainbow Dash pressed herself against the ground and slunk about knowing he wouldn’t be aiming low. Before his vision could clear up, Rainbow Dash got behind Flu and gave a heavy kick with her front legs to push the Rodian through his junk fort. Flu quickly stumbles out from under the junk and tries to go for his vibroblade…
Only to find it isn’t there.
There is a one weapon limit, remember? Thanks to our teleportation service we were able to disarm the Rodian of his secondary weapon before he arrived at the arena.
This wasn’t a good time to be finding that out though. Flu looked more afraid than ever of the pony. Rainbow Dash flew backwards just as the Rodian’s vision was returning to him, but by the time he could see the pony she was flying directly into his chest. She pushed Flu through the wall of the salon, through many souvenir and dollar shops until they reached the unoccupied movie store. There, she came to an abrupt stop, but the momentum kept Flu going until he crashed into the shelves containing scratched up DVDs of family comedies.
The Rodian was covered with debris and the products of the many different shops. He was barely able to keep himself from fainting, and at some point he had lost his blaster again. Rainbow Dash laughed, realizing her opponent was weary and unarmed, but a sudden toss of a statuette cleared up that misconception. Flu was now armed with a body covered with cheap plastic knickknacks that had got caught in his jacket or stuck to the oil. He began to chuck the hunks of plastic at Rainbow Dash, who had no problem dodging them now that she was aware of their presence. She flies in close to try and delivers another rough kick to the Rodian, but using a plastic stethoscope from a child’s play doctor set, Flu was able to rein the pegasus and pull her to the ground. He hopped on her back and prepares to clobber the pony with a cell phone charger when she takes off.
Suddenly, a car comes slamming through the store’s wall, hitting the pony and her rider out of the sky. The hole in the wall allowed them to see that the vortex outside was dying, and now the many cars it had captured were being flung free, many in their direction. Their battle ceased for the moment as both began to dodge the incoming cars as best they could. Rainbow Dash relied heavily on her speed to dodge them, but as soon as she’d dash away from one, another would come sailing towards her. Flu, on the other hand, watched the cars carefully. An expert in escaping dangerous situations, he mapped out a perfect escape route and was able to make it safely out of the store. The front wall was almost completely decimated by the time he had exited, and Rainbow Dash was still stuck inside.
Flu was naturally compelled to keep running, but it was obvious the video rental store would not hold up much longer. A conspicuous crack was appearing in the ceiling from being improperly supported from crumbling walls, and Flu came up with a scheme that might just be desperate enough to work. He grabbed a nearby handicapped parking sign and began to pry it loose, but it took much longer than he expected. Rainbow Dash had just flown out of the store when he pried it loose, and the sudden appearance of the pony surprised him enough to kick up an instinctual attack. He slapped the pony back into the store with the sign, and after taking a second to realize what he had just done, he began to pull back the sign.
In a throw that would have made a javelin thrower jealous, Flu hurled the sign up and towards the crack in the ceiling. The sign fell short, but the SUV he had hid under earlier came sailing through the air and knocked the sign up a bit more. The sign clunked up against the crack in the ceiling, but it didn’t do any damage. Rainbow Dash had just recovered from the sign slap though, and she was ready to charge back out… only for the sign to come down and hit her on the head. The SUV also came down on her as well.
Rainbow Dash wasn’t crushed, but she was pinned to the ground. The handicap sign had fallen under the SUV’s wheel, and the pegasus’s wing was under that sign at the moment. She desperately tried to pull her wing from it as Flu scurried off from the video store’s entrance. He began to search the salon for his blaster, eventually finding it and quickly scurrying back to the crumbling strip mall’s largest store.
Rainbow Dash finally managed to pull her wing from under the sign, losing a few feathers but not really worse for the wear. She saw Flu at the exit though, and he was now aiming his blaster up at the crack in the ceiling. In the ultimate test of blaster speed versus pony speed, Rainbow Dash flew towards Flu as he fired his shot.
The crack in the ceiling was blasted open and the building came tumbling down. Rainbow Dash’s front two legs kick Flu out into the parking lot, but even though she had reached the exit, her entire body hadn’t left the store. The crumbling rental shop collapsed onto her back legs.
No need to worry though, she may be flattened, but she is still alive! She’s just lost again is all. Today may not have been this pony’s lucky day, but Flu has emerged victorious due to his craftiness and cunning!
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