Iron Mare

"Careful," she said. "Careful, this is our only shot at this..."

Rainbow Dash watched as Zecora carefully carried the miniature cauldron with the tongs in her mouth, holding her breath in anticipation. She ran over to the table that she had designated as her "workshop" and placed a clay brick on the wooden surface. Earlier, she had cut the clay in half and carved a diamond-shaped mold in the center of both pieces.  She had then put them back together to create a hollow point in the center of the brick. After that, she drilled a funnel-shaped hole from the top side of the brick that led all the way down into the cavity inside.

Zecora walked up to the table and held the small cauldron over the brick. Rainbow Dash brought her face up to the space that separated the bottom of the pot from the hole in the clay.

"Okay" she said between breaths "Do it..."

She watched while Zecora slowly tipped the cauldron over and poured its red hot contents into the funnel. There was a soft hissing noise as the liquefied gems settled into place inside the clay brick. As soon as the final droplets fell out of the cauldron and into the hole, Rainbow Dash quickly put a small piece of clay over the opening, sealing the gems inside.

"Okay," she sighed. "That's done..."

The zebra set the tongs and cauldron down next to her and trotted next to Rainbow Dash, who was staring at the wall weighing her options and assessing her situation.  There was a large whiteboard behind her and a green marker in her mouth. Little notes and hastily drawn sketches that Rainbow had thrown together littered the otherwise clean surface.

"Okay, so here's what we know," she said while looking over the board. "We know that they check in on us every hour or so. We know that the mine entrance is smack in the middle of a pair of mountains right here," she said, pointing to a small black dot between two crudely drawn mountains on the board. "And we know that they only open the tiny little hatch on the door when they're giving us food and water. So as far as we know, they're not watching us directly most of the time, meaning that as long as we stay subtle, we can get out of here."

Zecora sat in front of her friend, watching as the cyan pegasus paced back and forth, still looking at what she had drawn out on the board.

"All of this, we have already been through, but what do you propose that we might do?" she asked, a hint of fatigue in her voice.

Rainbow Dash suddenly stopped in her tracks. She turned to look at the zebra with widened eyes.

"Zecora... say that again..." whispered Rainbow, almost distantly.

"All of this we have been through…"

"No, no, after that!"

"What do you propose that we do?"

"Do... Do... Do... That's it! That's it!!!" Rainbow cried out in excitement.

While she certainly seemed to be overjoyed, Zecora was at a loss as to what might have caused such a reaction from her. "Pray tell, Rainbow Dash, what exactly is 'it'? Or should I be worried that your mind has finally split?"

"Daring Do! That's it!"

Rainbow ran over to the duffel bag she had brought with her from Las Pegasus. It was in the carriage during the attack and the dog-things had dumped it in here with her, but not after emptying it of anything they thought she would be able to use in an attempt to escape.

She set it down on the bed and pulled open the zipper using her mouth, shuffling through its contents one item at a time. There was a toothbrush, a small tube of toothpaste, a brush for her mane, a tiny bottle of shampoo, and... There it was!

She pulled a thick, hardcover book out from the bag and laid it out in front of her on the bed.  She opened it and flipped through the pages as quickly as she could. She kept this up until she found what she was searching for and stopped. She sat there, staring at the page she had opened to. Zecora trotted up behind her and peeked over her shoulder to catch a glimpse of what it was that she had found.

At the top of the page were two words that signaled the end of one chapter and the start of a new one. In large print and underlined were the words "My Escape," stylized to look as if they had been written in ink. Zecora turned to Rainbow Dash, whose face was quickly forming into a broad smile.

"This is it, Zecora," she whispered, a sense of eagerness in her voice. "This is how we're gonna get out of here..."

Rainbow tapped the middle of the page opposite the one announcing the new chapter. "In this part, Daring Do escaped from the Timberwolves by taking four pieces of hard wood and shaping them to fit her body. Then she just marched her way out of the woods. When the wolves tried to bite her, their wooden teeth almost fell out of their mouths. It was just like... a suit of armor..." her voice trailed off.

Rainbow Dash ran off to the area where the stripped Dazzlers lay on the ground in a pile, leaving the book behind on the bed. She picked one up with a hoof and examined it closely, staring at its metallic surface. She looked back over at the various tools around the room before returning her eyes to the Dazzler. Her smile grew even broader than before...

For several hours, Zecora had been napping on cot next to Rainbow's. After Rainbow had her brainstorm, she had galloped to the other side of the cave with a pencil and pad, leaving her to sleep for the first time in hours. The clock on the wall had read one in the morning when she first put her head on the pillow and-

"Zecora! Zecora! Wake up!" Rainbow Dash's unmistakable shouts pulled her back from the depths of slumber.

With a groan, she managed to pull open one eye and was faced with what she could barely manage to identify as a sheet of paper. Upon opening both of her eyes, she found that a heavily detailed... thing had been drawn on its surface and that Rainbow held at least six more papers in her hooves. What struck her as strange was that whatever her pegasus friend had drawn covered only a small portion of the entire sheet. Zecora pulled her head up and blinked before taking another look at the sheet, trying to register what she was seeing. She looked up to Rainbow with a confused and sleepy look.

"What is this strange machine you have drawn," she yawned, "and why can it not wait until dawn?"

"Because this, Zecora, is how we're going to get out of this hole!"

Zecora rubbed her eye with a hoof, yawning again and struggling to comprehend the drawing before her.

She watched as Rainbow pulled a small lamp up to the side of the bed. "Here, this should help." Rainbow flicked the light on, causing Zecora to squint her eyes immediately in protest. After a bit, her eyes adjusted to the brightness and she could fully open them once more. What she saw caused her jaw to drop in awe.

With the powerful light bleeding through the papers, she could see that there was a detailed drawing of a different machine on each of them. When Rainbow had turned on the light, they all came together to make up what may just have been the most incredible drawing Zecora had ever laid her eyes upon. It was a massive suit of armor, made up entirely of scrap metal from the Dazzler Fireworks. There was a box-shaped apparatus on the back of the armor that seemed to connect to the legs. Under the wings was what appeared to be an engine of sorts.

As if hearing the question before Zecora even had a chance to ask it, Rainbow Dash explained what it was for.  "This thing it going to weigh a ton, right? And it’s going to have to move fast so we can get out and away right? That thing in the back is like a motor; it'll make it a million times easier to move around. But that's not what we need to focus on now..." Rainbow pulled the drawings away and tucked them under her wing.

After making sure that the design was as safely hidden as possible, she trotted over to her "workshop table" and picked up a mallet with a hoof. Rainbow pulled the clay brick up to her and with one swift motion, she brought the heavy mallet down on the brick, smashing the top to smithereens. She pulled the mallet up into the air again and hit the cube once more. Bits and pieces of hardened clay flew everywhere as Rainbow Dash hacked away at the brick. With a final swing of the mallet, a brilliant white light began to stem from inside. The light became bigger and brighter as she continued to chip more and more away.

Zecora walked up next to her and stared in amazement at what she was seeing. The zebra put her front hooves on the table, remaining entranced by the white diamond embedded in the clay like a filly gazing into a snow globe on Hearth's Warming Eve.

"Never before have I beheld such a sight," she whispered, "but what is this gem that glows so bright?"

Rainbow Dash stood up straight and wiped her brow with a hoof before dropping the hammer to the ground, where it landed with a soft "thump" in the sand.

"It’s called a Crystal Charger. It takes any kind of energy and amplifies it ten times over before sustaining it permanently. My dad built the first one back home after the Crystal War, but he scrapped the idea shortly after. Mostly because it used up a lot of gems and was big and impractical. But this is a smaller version... And you said that potion of yours can generate energy, right? Well, this should make it so that we won't need this anymore," Rainbow Dash glanced over at the black box next to her. "Think you might be able to pull it off?"

Zecora was unable to stop gawking at the Crystal even as she answered, "Give me about an hour or two, I may have a potion that will do..."

It had been a good ninety minutes by the time Zecora had finished brewing her potion. During that time, Rainbow Dash continued to look over her design for the suit of armor that she hoped would get them out of the mine.

Zecora busied herself with the potion, dropping in the occasional ingredient and even sticking her nose up to the bubbling liquid and inhaling its fumes. The larger cauldron from earlier rested neatly over the crackling flames as she continued to add more things into the potion. When she felt satisfied with the final product, she picked up a ladle and dipped it into the green bubbly concoction, filling it up to its maximum capacity

"Now that the potion had been brewed, what do you wish for me to do?" asked the zebra, the ladle making her voice sound a bit odd.

"Pour it on the Crystal," Rainbow said as she stood up from the bed.

Zecora paused for a moment, a look of confusion on her face.

"You want me to pour this onto your gem? Wh-"

"Believe me, I know what I'm doing. Just pour it onto that bad boy and the Crystal will do the rest."

Hesitantly, Zecora approached the Crystal on the table and held the utensil over it. It took her a moment before she was able to pull her attention from the glowing, white diamond and to the task at hoof. Carefully, she began to pour the ladle's contents out and onto the Crystal's shining surface; the potion immediately began to sizzle upon making contact. As the sizzling continued, it almost seemed like the Crystal was absorbing the liquid directly into its core. Even after it had swallowed Zecora’s brew, the sizzling continued for a brief moment until at last it began to subside and stop entirely.

Rainbow Dash walked up to the table.  With her bare hoof, she reached over and pulled the diamond right out of the clay brick. The light in the room seemed to shift itself in unison with the Crystal.

"There we go," she whispered.  "It’s done.  All we need to do now is get it inside me."

Rainbow turned to her friend. "What do you say, Stripes? Think you can pull it off?"

Zecora scratched the back of her head with a hoof. "To put in this device is no simple task, so I want you to be sure that this is what you ask. But if you are confident that this will succeed, I suppose that it may just be safe to proceed. Though I do have to warn you, Rainbow Dash, a procedure like this may go wrong in a flash..."

"I don't think anything can go more wrong than it already has, Zecora. This is my only chance... This is my only chance to get back into the world... My only chance to make things right....  Will you help me?"

There was dead silence in the air as Rainbow Dash waited for her response.

"Yes... yes I will."

The dog and its two companions silently made their way through the caves, their paws sinking into the muddy floor underneath. Upon their arrival at the metal door blocking the room where Rainbow Dash was held, the lead dog raised its paw to the air, signaling for its subordinates to stop where they were. Both of them sat on their haunches and stopped moving.

The lead dog slowly approached the door and used its paw to flip up the small metal flap, much like a mail slot one would find on a house door, and take a peek inside. It scanned the room with its eyes, searching for the pegasus and zebra. At the other end of the cave, it could barely make out the zebra standing over a table with what almost looked like a pony-shaped mass in front of her.  That was odd…

As far as it knew, only the zebra and Rainbow Dash were in there.  As the dog glanced again, though, it realized that the pony-shaped thing WAS Rainbow Dash. The dog peeked back in through the slot where it saw the pony shape move before pulling itself up into a sitting position. The dog almost had to squint its eyes as she did this, as its eyes were met by a bright light coming from Rainbow’s chest.  Rainbow Dash looked down at her chest and tapped the light before looking to the zebra thing and shaking her hoof.

Whatever it was, it didn't seem to be that big of a deal. The dog rolled its eyes and let go of the metal flap, causing it to drop back down to the door with a small "clank."

As it walked away, it dropped to its behind and licked the area between its legs, searching for any mine-bugs that might have crawled up its leg. Surely if that disgusting, mangy, striped zebra had anything to do with it, it couldn't possibly be important. It pulled its tongue away from its legs and shook its head, allowing droplets of spittle and dirt to fly off in different directions. Ponies are such disgusting creatures, the dog thought to itself...

Rainbow Dash carefully held the two metallic plates near one another and brought the bright blue flame of the welder up to them with her mouth, using her hooves to keep them in place. She held the welding tool like a pencil and carefully guided the flaming tip down between the metal slabs, slowly bonding them together into a singular sheet of thick metal. As soon as she was sure that they weren't going to fall apart, Rainbow used a hoof to turn off the welder, wiping her brow with the other. Over on the bed, Zecora was busy tinkering with a Dragon Breather tank and hooking up its nozzle to a rubber tube.

All day long she had been hard at work, piecing together what could very well be her one and only chance to escape back home to find who was responsible for these monsters getting her creations. Grass Marks' statement about reaping treasures from death had left a huge impression. If her idea somehow worked and she got out, then she was ready to do anything and everything to fix her past sins and turn herself around. And if her machine broke down ten seconds after turning it on, well... at least no one could say she didn't try. All she could do was hope that she didn't screw anything up.

Rainbow Dash shook her head to pull her mind back to the present. “No,” she told herself, turning the welder back on.  “You won't screw up. You never have and you sure as hay won't start now.”

Just then, there was a loud pounding from the metal door on the opposite side of the cave. Rainbow jumped and quickly cut off the flame. She turned to Zecora, who was staring wide-eyed at the door. Within seconds, they both heard the sound of dozens of locks being undone. The pair quickly sprang into action and hid anything that would draw suspicion before the door swung open, revealing a group of the dog things on the other side. Again, Rainbow glanced at Zecora, who had taken a bowing position. She quickly dismissed the notion of following suit and stood tall as the dogs filed in one by one. She was not about to bow down to these mutts, even if they DID have her life in their paws. Out from the crowd walked a single dog with a strange glowing red ruby hanging by a gold chain from its neck. It walked right up to Rainbow and looked her in the eyes as it stood in front of her while the rest kept their place at the door.

"Welcome," it said in a guttural voice."I am Rover..."

Rainbow Dash was almost shocked that this strange dog creature could actually speak to her on its own. Until now, she didn't think they could even understand what she was saying, let alone talk to her. The dog approached her and stared at the Crystal Charger in her chest before it continued to talk in its growling voice.

"Many centuries ago, the most powerful weapon a soldier could wish for was the common spear. The weapon won battles that would change the course of history; it was the weapon that caused the rise and fall of entire empires. Time has passed and things have changed. Ideals have changed, war has changed... and weapons have changed. The spear has been replaced by your famous saddle guns. Where the bow and arrow struck fear into the hearts of soldiers marching through the forests, your mini bomb rubies now wipe out entire armies and the woods they hide in. Your legacy has changed the planet, Rainbow Dash; your inventions have put Equestria on the top of the world. Now, whoever has the latest Dash Co weapons at their disposal quickly comes to rule these desert lands. I cannot describe how overjoyed I was when I learned you had agreed to help us in our cause.  When your Rainboomer is complete, the time will come for the Diamond Dogs to rise to power... and it will all be thanks to your contribution."

Rainbow could hear the sadism and malevolence dripping from its voice. Just the thought of what they could (and would) do with a Rainboomer sent a chill down her spine. The dog's eyes scanned the room around them before they settled on the papers behind her. It pushed her out of the way and walked up to them, picking one up and looking at it.

"A bit more complex than one would expect for a catapult, yes?"

"A lot more goes into it than you would think, especially with the dump you want me to work in…" Rainbow retorted, darting her eyes to Zecora, who was biting her lip.

She heard the dog let out a growling noise. It took a moment for her to realize that it was speaking. Zecora let out a very awkward-sounding growling noise of her own. The two were obviously talking to one another, that much was clear, but it bothered Rainbow that she wasn't able to understand what either of them were saying. From the tone of their voices, they seemed to be arguing over something or at least disagreeing. The dog's voice grew more intense, angry and even a bit threatening as Zecora's grew fearful.

Suddenly, the dog grabbed Zecora and threw her to the ground. Rainbow's eyes widened at the sight of her friend lying motionless on the floor. The dog walked over and used its paw to flip Zecora onto her back, stepping on her throat. The zebra began to gasp for breath as her windpipe was suddenly closed by its paw. It began to bark at her, snarling while she continued to struggle for even a gasp of air. Zecora could barely cough out what vaguely sounded like a response as her face began to turn red from lack of oxygen.

By this point, Rainbow had had enough. With a furious look on her face, Rainbow Dash stepped forward, ready to do whatever it took to save her friend. As soon as she moved, all the dogs standing in the doorway suddenly jumped into action and pointed their guns at her. Rainbow grit her teeth in frustration. If anything happened to her, not only would Zecora die right then and there but she would never be able to get home to find out how these... animals got ahold of her own inventions. Growling, Rainbow stepped down, watching as the dog lifted its paw from Zecora's throat; as soon as her windpipe was free, the zebra coughed and gasped for air on the floor. Rainbow Dash looked up to see the dog walking back toward the metal door.

"You two have twenty four hours," she heard it hiss, "to finish the Rainboomer. And if you don't…"

The dog turned around to look at her.

"Then Celestia help you both."

The group of dogs turned around in synch with their leader as it walked out, slamming the metal door behind them.

Rainbow Dash trotted up to her friend and put a hoof on her back. "You alright?" she asked.

The zebra looked up at her and continued to cough, simply nodding in response. Rainbow reached down and helped her to her hooves.

"Good. Now let’s get going. We only have twenty four hours to bust out of here."

Rainbow slammed the heavy mallet down onto the sheet of metal in front of her with her hoof.

Wham! Wham! Wham!

The sound of the hammer colliding with hard metal echoed throughout the cave. Sweat dripped down from her forehead to the floor below. Her legs ached and her hoof begged her to stop. With each impact from the mallet, the metal slowly but surely took a more defined shape until at last Rainbow felt it was just right and picked it up with a pair of tongs. She carried the metal over to a cauldron filled with the coolest water they had and dunked it into the water, causing a cloud of steam to rise up from the edges.

Zecora sat in front of a table, tinkering with a Dragon Breather and carefully attaching it to a steel half pipe. She jumped a little bit when the table shook from the impact of a heavy object on the other side. She looked up and came face to face with a heavy steel mask with eye holes and a mouthpiece that presumably allowed access to air. It had a very menacing look to it. Rainbow Dash looked back at her with a wide grin and wiped her hooves with a piece of cloth.

At long last, they were ready.