Rainbow wanted to be mad that her little carnival, fair or whatever date with Fluttershy was being bungled up by some rando griffon throwing lightning at ponies every which way, but to be honest she was more excited to throw hooves than anything.

“Didn’t you learn your lesson earlier, idiot?” Rainbow scoffed as she flew toward the griffon, taunting her with a dashing grin and ready to draw blood.

“Ha! It’s you again!” the griffon let out a single wheezy laugh. “I won’t go easy on you this time, dweeb!”

“That is such a cliché,” Rainbow scoffed and rolled her eyes. “Yeah I’m sure you went super easy on me when you were coughing up blood earlier!”

Rainbow buffeted her wings in the griffon’s direction, sending a blade of wind flying at her, but the griffon jumped into the pitch black night sky to avoid the attack, Rainbow almost losing sight of her as she hid in the pillars of smoke that rose from nearby shattered machinery.

The griffon had a bloodthirsty grin on her face, which fittingly mirrored Rainbow’s own. Her taunts aside, Rainbow could tell right away this wasn’t gonna be like the curb-stomp in the alley, this was gonna be a proper fight. And she was here for it!

“If this is gonna be a real match-“ the griffon lunged at Rainbow, sweeping her hand in an arc in front of her with an electrical current following behind it, and her attack would’ve taken Rainbow’s head off if she hadn’t lurched out of the way just in time “-we should at least know each other’s names. Mine’s Gilda.”

“Rainbow Dash,” Rainbow smirked and landed on the ground, scraping a hoof across the concrete.

Gilda nodded and smiled confidently as she touched the ground, scratching her talons across it as they crackled with electricity. Rainbow could tell Gilda was just starting to get warmed up, but that was fine by her. She could take the griffon down before she even had a chance to get serious.

Rainbow bolted forward, hooves leaving the ground and letting her wings carry her as she aimed to hit Gilda in the neck head-on, but Gilda swung her hand upward and a bolt of lightning followed her movement, appearing right where Rainbow’s face was about to be.

Luckily Rainbow was able to stop herself by leaning back and throwing wind ahead of her, pushing her just barely out of the arc of the attack, but that left her way off balance as she hit the ground, which she had a sinking suspicion was about to be very bad news for her.

Gilda jumped at Rainbow and swung her arm in a horizontal arc, aiming for Rainbow’s head, but Rainbow ducked under the electrical current. Gilda swung her other arm in a vertical arc, still looking to hit Rainbow’s face, but Rainbow threw herself backward with her wind to avoid the attack.

Still a little disoriented from the sudden change in momentum, Rainbow didn’t see Gilda’s next attack coming until it was right in her face, but she managed to throw herself into the air to narrowly avoid getting her muzzle seared by another current of lightning.

Gilda was standing directly underneath Rainbow now though, and she was still off-balance.

Playing defense like this was gonna get her killed. She needed to get her head in the game if she wanted to beat Gilda without getting her face fried off first.

Rainbow flapped her wings hard at Gilda, sending a strong gust of air that buffeted her just enough to distract her, as she was forced to throw her arms in front of her face and close her eyes, which gave Rainbow the opening she needed.

She jolted down and landed on the ground directly in front of Gilda, landing a right cross directly between the griffon’s eyes and a left hook against her cheek, Gilda’s pained grunts music to Rainbow’s ears.

The griffon’s red blood clashed beautifully against the blue fur on Rainbow’s forelegs as the force of her hooves hitting Gilda’s face, still a little busted from their encounter in the alley earlier, left bloody gashes in their wake.

Rainbow danced around to Gilda’s side and slammed her hard in the ribs with her hind legs, using her wind power to magnify the blow and sending Gilda flying into an abandoned food stand.

Gilda jumped back to her feet and scratched her electrified talons across the ground with a low growl. Her taunt was cute, but she was way too slow, and with her now on defense there was no way she could keep up with Rainbow.

Rainbow closed the distance and kicked Gilda’s arm out from under her, knocking her way off balance and sending her on a collision course with the concrete.

While Gilda was distracted ever so briefly, Rainbow quickly looked around to check for civilians. She needed to make sure Gilda’s attacks didn’t accidentally hit anypony who was too stupid to bail once things got ugly. You know there’s always that one idiot who stands around gawking during a fight instead of getting to safety, and just because they were an idiot didn’t mean they deserved to die.

Coast was clear though, so Rainbow felt confident she could focus squarely on Gilda, and on the electrified talon about to scratch off her face.

Rainbow thought that the momentum of Gilda’s arm being kicked out from under her would throw her more off balance than it did, but to Rainbow’s surprise, in the fraction of a second that she let her attention waver from her opponent, Gilda took the time to swipe her other claw right at Rainbow’s face, her talons crackling with electricity like they do.

Rainbow’s thoughts were racing a mile a minute trying to consider her options. Her wrongheaded assumption on how dazed Gilda would be from her last attack, plus her momentary distraction to check for passerby, left her way open.

She could throw herself backward or into the air to dodge this attack, but Gilda was obviously way faster than Rainbow would’ve liked, and there was no way Gilda didn’t immediately close the distance if Rainbow dodged this attack, and if Gilda’s follow-up attack didn’t just gut Rainbow outright, it’d still put her in a really tight spot.

Time was up and Rainbow had to do something, but all she could hope was that she could tank the attack and weather the consequences…

But the attack never came.

Rainbow was almost as shocked as Gilda when her electricity fizzled harmlessly around her fingertips, a little yellow hoof pushed gently against her wrist. Rainbow could not believe her eyes when she saw that hoof belonged to Fluttershy of all ponies. Rainbow don’t know how she managed to stop Gilda’s attack, but she turned the tide of this battle in a major way.

Rainbow slammed her hind legs against the ground and spread her wings, jumping into the air above Gilda and winding up a foreleg, landing a massive haymaker against Gilda’s cheek that, backed up with Rainbow’s wind power, sent Gilda flying across the battlefield and careening hard with the concrete floor a few feet away.

Rainbow needed to close the distance fast though; if she’d learned anything about Gilda during this fight it was that giving her an inch could be a fatal mistake. Rainbow briefly looked to make sure Fluttershy was alright and saw her staring determinedly at Gilda, spreading her own wings and getting ready to fly.

With a smile on her face and a heart welling with pride, Rainbow flew toward Gilda. She was just getting back to her feet when Rainbow hit her with a mach-speed flying punch right to the head, sending her crashing back to the ground and faceplanting onto the concrete.

In the heat of the moment Rainbow worried she might have accidentally killed her but was relieved to see Gilda struggling to her feet. Rainbow waited a second to see if she would surrender, now that everyone could see how badly outmatched she was. Big mistake.

Instead of surrendering, Gilda clasped her claws together and pointed a single claw at Rainbow, electrical energy flowing all around her and through her talons and culminating in that fingertip. Since Rainbow stupidly let her guard down, she was too far away now to interrupt the attack, and too close to effectively dodge it.

So Fluttershy’s intervention was timed perfectly.

With Gilda so totally focused on Rainbow, she didn’t even notice Fluttershy until her front hooves gently collided with Gilda’s ribs, completely knocking the griffon’s flow of magic out of whack and dissipating her attack.

Rainbow moved in quickly, throwing herself between Gilda and Fluttershy. Their opponent wouldn’t be stupid enough to ignore Fluttershy’s presence again, and Rainbow wasn’t about to let Flutters get hurt.

Rainbow buffeted her wings at Gilda, the griffon’s legs buckling and bringing her to the ground at Rainbow’s hooves under the gale force assault.

Rainbow looked down into Gilda’s eyes with a stone-cold glare. “This fight is over.”

Rainbow couldn’t help but think that she must’ve looked SO COOL!

“This ain’t worth the time,” Gilda clicked her tongue and grumbled before adeptly flying out from underneath Rainbow and catapulting into the air at alarming speed.

In the blink of an eye, she disappeared into the black night sky, and Rainbow had a pretty good feeling she wasn’t coming back anytime soon.

Rainbow heard Fluttershy breathe a deep sigh of relief behind her and she gave the brave pegasus a gleaming smile as she turned around to face Fluttershy, grabbing her shoulders and lifting her an inch off the ground.

“Fluttershy, you’re amazing!”

Author's Note

the first proper fight scene also brings what will probably be the first of many, many naruto references

Please feel free to alert me to any typos or errors.
Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed!