Rainbow gripped her blade anxiously as she stared down Lightning. “What the hell are you doing with these chumps? You do know that they sold out Talon Company just for a fucking distraction, right?”

“Fuck Talon Company,” Lightning spat. “All that matters is that I’ve finally got the chance to fuck you up.”

“You say that, but I’ve chased you off with your tail between your legs twice already,” Rainbow shot.

“You don’t have the drop on me this time!” Lightning snarled, sparks flaring from her gauntlets. “I’m gonna take you down right here, right now, face to face, and prove to the world who’s the strongest in the wasteland!”

Rainbow just glared at her. There was no doubt in her mind that she could take down the upstart speedster, but she wasn’t so sure that the others would be able to deal with Zap and his cronies alone, and she was not about to let another friend get hurt because of a Super Mutant trap.

“Don’t worry, Dashie, we can handle these idiots,” Pinkie put in as if she could read Rainbow’s thoughts.

“Are you sure?” Rainbow asked, not taking her eyes off of Lightning.

“Sure enough to end this stupid stand-off.” Before anyone could react, Pinkie fired her Party Cannon at the burliest Super Mutant in the room.

Lightning moved the instant that Pinkie pulled the trigger, launching herself at Rainbow at top speed. Blazing steel and crackling iron clashed just as a pink explosion lit up the rotunda.

Rainbow parried another punch and took a step back to counter-attack properly. Lightning blocked it and tried to press the attack, but Rainbow let loose with a series of blisteringly rapid strikes to hold her off. Lasers and pink explosions lit up the rotunda as the battle broke out in earnest around them.

Sparks flew as the women dueled. Lightning’s gauntlets somehow held up against Flashburn’s edge, but the sheer heat of its flames soon had the metal glowing hot. Lightning snarled as she realized her predicament. Desperate, she parried a slash aimed at her throat and threw herself backwards. The split-second she bought herself was enough for her to rocket back up towards the hole in the dome.

“Not this time!” Rainbow crouched and launched herself into the air after her, determined not to let the coward escape.

The frigid air outside made her gasp as she shot out into it. Something flashed in the corner of her eye, and Rainbow instinctively swung Flashburn just in time to swat aside a knife thrown at her face. “Nice try.”

Lightning was hovering over the Capitol Building’s Mall entrance. Steam billowed from her gauntlets in the icy air. Her mouth moved as she spoke, clearly reciting some dramatic speech, but Rainbow’s hearing aids were so full of static that she couldn’t make it out. “Listen, Dumbass McDick-munch, you couldn’t beat me down there with all those Super Mutants backing you up, so there’s no way in hell you’ll manage it out here all by yourself,” Rainbow said bluntly, hovering above the hole in the roof. “Do the smart thing for once and just give up already.”

Whatever Lightning shouted back was completely inaudible, but it clearly wasn’t a surrender. Rainbow tensed as her enemy rocketed at her once again. She waited until the very last second before letting herself drop slightly and thrusting Flashburn out at Lightning’s face. The woman barely managed to twist aside and divert the blade with a gauntlet, but the tip still gouged a deep furrow in her armor as she shot past.

Sparks stung Rainbow’s face, but she ignored them as she landed on the roof and spun around, Flashburn at the ready. Sadly, instead of splattering herself across the building’s dome, Lightning was hovering over it, throwing a hateful glare at the Rainboom.

Rainbow just grinned at her. She hadn’t fought many other flyers, but she had plenty of experience of fighting while flying in general. She wasn’t about to lose to some rank amateur with a chip on her shoulder. “Is that seriously the best you’ve got? Man, at least try and make it a challenge for me.”

The taunt clearly hit a nerve, as Lightning snarled and tried the same dumb flying tackle again. Rainbow waited until the last second then dove to the side, rolling to her feet and lashing out with Flashburn. The blade sheared through Lightning’s hamstring with ease. Rainbow felt a moment of savage glee as she watched her opponent careen out of control.

Snapping her wings out to slow herself, Lightning threw a glare full of pain and rage over her shoulder, then dove away from the Capitol Building at top speed. Rainbow followed her down and into the maze of trenches that filled the Mall. It took all of her concentration not to crash into anything as the path twisted and turned, made all the more treacherous by patches of ice and snow-covered piles of debris dotted around. Just as Rainbow was catching up to Lightning, the dark speedster took a sharp turn and disappeared into an old bunker, slamming the door behind her. Rainbow kicked the door open and paused on the threshold.

The interior of the bunker was pitch-black. Flashburn cast flickering blue light over the walls, but even that only illuminated a few feet of the narrow corridor ahead. Rainbow flicked on her Pip-Boy light and edged forward, keeping her blade up and ready for the inevitable ambush. Her hearing aids were still full of static, so she kept her eyes peeled as she advanced.

A faint glint on the floor ahead made Rainbow tense up. She crept forward, her skin crawling as she prepared for an attack, but the glint turned out to be coming from an empty syringe of Med-X painkiller. A yard or so beyond it was a discarded bottle of Buffout, a powerful and fast-acting steroid that some of the Knights took when training. “Aw, nuts.”

As if on cue, electricity flared in the darkness ahead. Rainbow instinctively threw herself backwards just in time to avoid a gauntleted fist aimed at her face. She backpedaled as quickly as she could, desperately fending off a flurry of crackling punches, but the corridor was too narrow for her to use Flashburn properly. Pressing the attack, Lightning managed to get in a solid punch to Rainbow’s chest and the whole world flared white.

Everything seemed to spin end over end. Rainbow let out a pained grunt as her back hit the ground, knocking Flashburn out of her hands, but thick slush cushioned the impact as she slid along the floor. Blinking rapidly to clear her eyes, it took her a second to realize that she was back outside in the trenches. Brightly glowing lines spread out across her crystalline armor from where it had borne the brunt of the gauntlets’ magic.

A flicker of movement caught Rainbow’s eye, and she rolled to the side a split-second before Lightning’s boots slammed into the ground where her head had been. Rainbow scrambled to her feet while her enemy regained her footing. Thinking fast, she turned and flew away down the trench, searching for the right finisher.

There was no way for Rainbow to tell if she was being followed, but she doubted that anyone so focused on beating her would give up so easily. Swooping around a corner, she grinned at the sight of a frozen pool of filthy water laying at the bottom of a bombed-out section of trench.

Rainbow landed on the ice and skidded to a halt right in the center of it. She whipped around, hands raised in a defensive stance that Harkness had taught her, but Lightning wasn’t there. Acting on instinct, Rainbow dove into a roll and launched herself back into the air. Lightning missed by inches as she hurtled down from above, her gauntlets crackling as she slammed a fist through the ice and into the brackish water beneath.

The effect was as swift as it was devastating. Bolts of electricity tore through the rest of the ice, shattering it into a million tiny pieces, while more of it arced through the air and earthed itself in every nearby surface like an overpowered plasma ball. Rainbow shuddered as she felt the air becoming charged even twenty feet above the pool, making her hair stand on end and her hearing aids go completely haywire. It was impossible to make out Lightning’s form in the midst of the miniature thunderstorm.

“I guess you’re finally living up to your name,” Rainbow spat. She turned to look for Flashburn, but a shift in the charged air dragged her attention back to the pool. Her heart jumped into her throat as she saw a dark figure rise to its feet in the middle of the tempest.

Lightning’s body was rigid, electricity tracing blinding patterns across her body while sparks cascaded from her skin, and her eyes shone with power. The air itself seemed to shift as she took a step towards the edge of the pool. Her movements were jerky and slow, but Rainbow had no doubt that that would change as soon as she was out of the water.

“Fucking radioactive water.” Rainbow pulled a grenade from her belt and tossed it down to the pool, but a bolt of raw power arced out and disintegrated it before it could get anywhere near Lightning. She clenched her fists tightly as she realized that she might actually be outmatched. If Rainbow fell here, then Lightning was absolutely going to hunt down the rest of the Rainbooms next, but she didn’t know how she was going to win this.

Rainbow rose up higher into the air as she desperately looked around for Flashburn, hoping to even the odds a little, when her gaze fell on the Washington Monument. Lying just beyond it was a rectangular artificial lake of some kind, contaminated by debris and wrecked cars.

A daring plan took shape in Rainbow’s head. It was dangerous and desperate, but she was certain that she was better than Lightning in the air.

One shot.

Death or glory.

Rainbow made her decision and looked back down just as Lightning stepped out of the pool. The storm stopped instantly, but electricity still crackled around Lightning’s gauntlets and through her hair as she glared up at the Rainboom.

“Let’s do this.” Rainbow turned and launched herself at the peak of the Washington Monument. As she reached the top, she threw a couple of grenades at the lake before pulling up and soaring straight up into the sky. A quick glance revealed that Lightning was following. “Alright, the race is on. Catch me if you can.”

Rainbow faced forward and focused on keeping ahead of Lightning, aiming for the skies above. The temperature slowly dropped the higher they climbed, but Rainbow didn’t dare to slow down. It wasn’t long before thin wispy clouds were whizzing past. Rainbow gasped as she plowed through one, splitting it apart and ending up soaked, but she pressed on towards the dark nimbostratus clouds that covered the sky. She idly hoped that her magic wings wouldn’t fail thanks to the thinner air, but all thoughts were blasted out of her mind as she finally plunged into the base of the great snow clouds.

The cold was unimaginable. Flecks of ice tore at Rainbow’s face and forced her to squint, a thin layer of it spread across her skin and clothes even as she watched, and every breath felt like shards of glass were scraping down her throat and stabbing into her lungs.

After only a few seconds of the torture Rainbow gave up and drifted to a halt. The ice in the air was more bearable now that she wasn’t barreling through it at top speed, but the danger wasn’t over. Rainbow steadied herself and looked down. Despite the gloom of the cloud’s interior, she could clearly see the glow of Lightning’s gauntlets rapidly approaching, while her own armor was muted thanks to the lack of light. Gritting her teeth, Rainbow hid herself in the darkness and waited, then snapped her hands out at just the right moment.

Lightning yelled in pain as one of her wings was caught in a vice grip. The woman’s momentum dragged Rainbow along and almost yanked her arm out of its socket, but she ignored the flash of pain and slammed her Pip-Boy into the back of Lightning’s skull. Not wasting a moment, Rainbow pulled her rival into a tight embrace, pinning Lightning’s arms to her sides and squashing her wings between them, then rolled over in the air and dove straight down.

The two burst out of the cloud in no time at all, picking up speed at an appalling rate. Lightning struggled to break free, sparks flying as she tried to escape, but Rainbow ignored the pain and put everything into her speed. The air seemed to thicken as the pair picked up speed, to the point where it felt like a physical barrier trying to hold them back. Rainbow pushed on regardless, her eyes glued to the Washington Monument and the choppy waters of the lake next to it.

All of a sudden, the air barrier shattered like glass, and Rainbow felt rather than saw a wave of color blast out from around her. At the last second before she hit the Monument she shoved Lightning away and pulled up sharply, trying to swoop over the lake. Rainbow knew in an instant that she wouldn’t make it, so she aimed for a patch that looked clear of debris and curled up into a ball before she crashed into the water.

The impact drove all of the air from Rainbow’s lungs. Thankfully, the grenades she had thrown had broken the surface tension of the water, so she sank into it instead of getting splattered. As she pushed to the surface and sucked in a breath, Rainbow noticed that the water was strangely warm, which meant that it was either heavily radioactive, or her trip through the cloud had left her much colder than it. Either way, she needed to get out of it fast.

A nearby pile of debris provided a decent ramp to get out of the water. As soon as she was back on dry land, Rainbow realized that she was shivering violently, and her breath wasn’t misting anywhere near as much as it should have been. She needed heat. The Washington Monument was probably the best bet, so she turned and slowly put one foot in front of the other. As Rainbow trudged through the snow towards the Monument, intending to hug the waiting Vertibird’s engine if she could, she found herself fervently wishing that she still had Flashburn on her so she could light it up for warmth.

Almost as soon as the thought crossed her mind, Rainbow felt a weird tingle in her hands. Acting on some instinct that she didn’t understand, she held her hand out, only for a blue blur to streak through the air and settle in her grasp. Flashburn ignited the instant it touched her, the heat spreading through her armor and making her shudder in delight.

“When the hell did you learn how to do that?” The blade didn’t answer, but Rainbow suddenly noticed that a kaleidoscope of colors was reflecting off of all of the snow around her. Looking up, she gasped as she saw a rainbow-colored circle of magical energy expanding over the wastes. “Shit, I thought I imagined that. That’s awesome.” Seeing the aftermath of her battle reminded Rainbow that there was one last thing to attend to. “Alright, Flashburn, let’s go and make sure that that bitch is dead.”

Rainbow flapped her wings to shake off the worst of the water before she took to the air again. The Knights at the Washington Monument waved to her as she passed, but she only gave them a cursory nod as she looked for her enemy.

It didn’t take long to find a broken wall splattered with blood near the trenches. A splotchy trail of blood marked the debris-studded snow beyond it for a worrying distance, until it came to the end at the base of another old wall. Rainbow couldn’t hold back a grimace when she saw it.

Lightning was sprawled on her back, one arm reduced to a stump, and the rest of her limbs bent and twisted in entirely unnatural shapes. Half of her head was covered in blood, and more dripped from the gaping hole in the side of her skull. Amazingly, and terrifyingly, Lightning was still alive, her mouth opening and closing as her unfocused eyes drifted around, unseeing.

Rainbow landed next to her and dropped to one knee. Lightning didn’t make any sign that she noticed.

“I don’t know what happened to turn you into the person you were, but it’s over now.” Rainbow reached out and grasped the Geode hanging around Lightning’s neck. The chain undid itself as she pulled, a few small sparks falling from it as it welcomed its new owner, but she put it in her pocket for the moment. Rainbow flipped Flashburn upside down and held it over Lightning’s heart in a two-handed grip. Armor and bone parted like butter as the sword was thrust down, and Lightning let out a soft sigh as she finally went still. “Rest in peace.”

Next Chapter: Chapter 184 - Get Wrecked Estimated time remaining: 4 Hours, 53 Minutes