When Rainbow Dash returned, Fluttershy was unhappy. And she did well to show it. She never showed it.

Something was terribly wrong.

She stepped out of the Bat after landing it and removed her outfit, speaking with the pegasus as she did.

"You don't look very happy," she began.

"I don't imagine I would, after watching you show off your new toy to the entire Ponyville police force."

She ignored this quip, and tossed the butler the USB drive she'd taken.

"Got this off them."

Fluttershy caught it with her wing. "Congrats. A souvenir." She looked at it glumly. "Shouldn't the police be looking at this?"

"They haven't got the equipment for it."

Fluttershy glanced around the Batcave. "They would if you let them."

Dash strode over to the desk where her computers waited. "One mare's tool is another mare's weapon."

"And you seem to enjoy turning things into weapons, don't you?"

"Fluttershy, enough. Please."

"You can't just push the fact that you aren't who you were eight years ago aside and go romping around the city with new gadgets from Zecora!" Fluttershy was almost shouting now, something very odd for her. She tossed the USB away, onto the desk, and headed toward the elevator. Rainbow Dash saw the teardrops hitting the concrete as she trotted away.

The elevator took her out of the Batcave. When it came back down again, Dash took it up as well.

She met Fluttershy looking out a large window that overlooked the entire front yard of the Manor. She wasn't crying anymore, but there were marks where she had been.

"I'm sorry," she muttered when Dash approached.

"You shouldn't be," answered the billionaire. "You didn't do anything wrong.

"Oh yes I did," she replied, and Rainbow was shocked to her poison dripping from her words. "I never helped you, when you needed it," she continued. "All those years ago, I could have helped you move on, and I didn't. I just said you could." She turned to Dash. "And now, I think I'll have to handle the consequences. I'll help you with the flash drive, but after that..." Her lip quivered. "...I'm leaving."

Rainbow Dash didn't say anything. She had the USB in her hoof, but didn't offer it to her butler.

"You would leave," she said finally, "to get me to stop?"

"If that did it, yes."

"That would kill me, Fluttershy. There's nothing left for me but the Batmare."

"You used to talk about finishing. About life after the Batmare."

Dash sighed. "You know that isn't possible for me anymore. Spitfire was my life beyond the Batmare, and she died knowing we would have been together. I can't just move on. She couldn't." She turned to the yellow mare, hoping to talk reason with her.

"What if she had?"

Rainbow didn't speak. Fluttershy looked over at her, tears brimming at her eyes again.

"What if she chose a life without you, in the end?"

"She didn't," said Rainbow, not understanding the point in these speculations. "I can't change that."

Fluttershy was silent for a long time. Rainbow Dash could see she was determined to tell her something, but the yellow mare was at odds with her conscience when she finally spoke again.

"What if," she said, slowly, deliberately, "she'd written a letter? A letter that explained that she'd chosen Soarin' over you." She was choking up, and took a moment before speaking again. "And what if, to spare you the pain of it all, I-" She choked back a sob, wanting to finish giving her say first. "What if I burnt it?"

Rainbow Dash simply stared at the pegasus, first in confusion, then in realization, and finally, to Fluttershy's horror, in rage. Everything she'd believed, her entire world--all a lie. For eight years. Her cerise eyes shone with fiery, burning anger.

"Why would you say this?" she asked, clinging to the small bit of her that told her Fluttershy must have been joking.

"Because I care enough to tell you the truth. Because you are as precious to me as any child I would have ever had. Because I swore that I would protect you...and I haven't."

"You're lying," Dash spat.

"The only time I ever lied to you," said the butler, wiping at the tears streaming down her face, "was when I burnt that letter."

There was silence. Rainbow Dash thought of all the things that could happen in the next few seconds: images of Fluttershy's wing being snapped and her unconscious form being thrown out the great glass window in front of them filled her head, and she almost smiled madly. But, in the end, she knew that it would be pointless and stupid to do that. So, she decided to finish with her.

"Goodbye, Fluttershy," she said. There, she thought. Short and simple.

Fluttershy spoke through a bout of tears. "G-Goodbye...Rainbow Dash."

The rainbow-maned mare turned her back on her only caretaker for almost forty years and marched up the stairs.

The days passed quickly. Too quickly, even for Rainbow Dash.

The day after Fluttershy left, Zecora stopped by to tell her she was broke. Apparently, she'd doubled down in the stock market and lost. Something told her that the USB drive and the incident at the Exchange the other night had something to do with it. In a last ditch effort, they decided to try and get the board of directors at Rainbow Enterprises to let Rarity take hold of the company, so that Filthy Rich (who at the moment was Rainbow Dash's least favorite pony) would not get his hooves on it. Zecora it seemed, had prepared for this, and had scheduled a meeting to finally show the unicorn the project she'd spent five years investing in.

The result had been risky, but worth it. Rarity was given the knowledge that the machine did in fact work, though Rainbow was still worried that it could be changed into a nuclear bomb, that having been the reason the project had been mothballed in the first place. Rarity assured her that she had been aware of that danger, and had researched the one pony who had known how to change the reactor into a bomb. The scientist, a brown earth pony named Time Turner, had died in a plane crash six months earlier, ensuring that there was nopony in the world who knew how to turn the reactor into a bomb. Rainbow had had to go along with this info, as there was no other choice but to give the company over to Filthy Rich. Besides, if worse came to worse, the chamber was programmed to flood itself, destroying the project and all five years of work in a matter of seconds.

Rarity had been fine with this, and they shook. The next day, a board meeting was held between the board of directors was held, and, after Rainbow Dash was sent out of the meeting room (she had been snoozing in her chair), the board voted on who to let take control of Rainbow Enterprises. An hour later, Filthy Rich angrily excused himself while the other board members went over and shook Rarity's hoof in congratulations.

Filthy looked around the area he'd just exited from. The last surviving Rainbow family member was nowhere to be found.

She was, in fact, in a police cruiser.

Scootaloo had arrived on the scene just as Dash had come out of the building to go "handle an errand" just in time to watch her car being carted off. With her wings almost entirely defunct, she'd resigned herself to driving with the young cop to her destination.

They chatted about the return of the Batmare. Neither said it, but Dash was sure that Scootaloo knew exactly who was hiding behind the infamous cowl and cloak. Eventually, though, the topic turned from the Caped Crusader to her new enemy: Spike.

"Any idea where he's hiding?"

"Yeah, about five hundred pages of them." She gestured to the brick of a file wedged in between their seats. "I could use some help."

Rainbow Dash nodded, knowing what she meant. That was exactly why she was being dropped off in Old Town...

Filthy Rich stormed into his penthouse, slamming the door shut behind him. There were many words to describe the look on his face, but purple with anger was probably the best one.

"How the hell did that persnickety bitch Rarity get the inside track on the Rainbow Board?" he yelled at Flim. "Was she meeting with her? Hell, was she sleeping with her?"

Flim tried in vain to calm his boss down.

"Not that we know of-"

"Well, no shit! You clearly 'don't know of' anything around here!" He spun around, scanning the penthouse. "Where's Spike?"

"I told him it was urgent," Flim answered.

"Then where is that masked-"

"Speak of the devil..." A deep voice came rebounding from somewhere to his right. Filthy turned to see that the purple drake was standing in one of the doorways in his penthouse. He could hear air hissing from the mask.

"...and he shall appear."

Filthy was worried how Spike could have gotten in so easily, and wondered whether the first-class security bragged about at his penthouse was real or not. First Catmare, now this guy? It was too easy.

He tossed the concern aside, and decided he was taking control of the situation.

"What the hell is going on?" he demanded.

"The plan is proceeding as planned," replied the masked drake calmly.

Filthy chuckled sarcastically. "Do you see me running Rainbow Enterprises?" He strode over and put his face an inch or so away from the dragon's. "Your little game at the Exchange didn't do shit, my friend. And now, you think you're still going to be able to order my construction crews around? How exactly do you suppose that'll get my company to absorb Rainbow's?"

Spike looked over at the red-haired unicorn. "Leave us," he said, still calm.

Filthy turned to Flim. "Don't bucking move! I'm in charge here!"

Spike put a claw lightly on Filthy's shoulder. There was a hint of amusement in his eyes.

"Do you feel in charge?" he asked.

Filthy felt a chill run down his spine. He heard Flim trot out of the room, and suddenly felt as if he were falling.

"I paid you a small fortune-"

"And that gives you power over me?" Spike asked.

Rarity's words echoed in his head.

You understand only money, and the power you think you can but with it.

It almost seemed as though the mare had known this would happen.

"What is this?" he asked, feeling jittery and a little like shitting himself.

"This?" Spike nodded at his claw. "This is a coup. You're money and infrastructure is no longer needed."

Now Filthy saw what the mask was. It was not simply something that could be removed to kill him: it looked the way it did for a reason. He'd needed to make a name for himself, because there was one thing he had to bring with him where he went. It was fear. Spike worked for nopony but himself. He was no simple hired hand.

"Who are you?" he whispered, trying to know him beyond what he seemed.

"I am Ponyville's reckoning," Spike replied. "Here to end the borrowed time you've all been living on..."

Gently, oh so terrifyingly gently, Spike took Filthy Rich's head in his hands. He could not even feel the claws scratching at his skin. And yet still, in front of him stood the Destroyer, his Death, and he was more afraid of him than anything else. His final moment played out like a scene from a movie.

"You are true evil..." His final words.

"I am necessary evil," Spike corrected.

A sharp crack echoed through the penthouse. Two rooms away, Flim shivered, and felt himself gag.

Rainbow Dash was getting tired of a lot of things lately. She was tired of the fact that she was having to get up and answer her own door already, along with the other things she now had to do for herself. Added on top of that, her return as the Batmare was also tiring, though more so physically than mentally. She was also tired of the fact that ponies kept asking her for money, even though she was now broke.

"I told you," said the yellow unicorn blocking her path. "Money first." Her hoof was outstretched expectantly.

"I don't think so," she replied.

The unicorn opened her mouth to continue arguing when a voice called from the top of the stairs she was blocking.

"She's good," said Pinkie, stepping out so the two could see her. "Besides, she hasn't got a cent to her name, anyways."

The unicorn reluctantly let Dash by. When she entered what she assumed was Pinkie's apartment, she first noticed how nicely furnished it was for somepony living in the slums. She then noticed that Pinkie was very busy packing what she ould of this well-furnished place.

"Vacation?"

Pinkie giggled. "Nope. Let's just say I've got some nasty-wasty ponies breathing down my neck, and I just gotta outrun 'em."

Rainbow Dash looked her in the eye. "My friend hopes she can convince you not to."

"How's he gonna do that? Bribe me with cupcakes?"

"She says she'll give you what you were looking for the last time she saw you."

Pinkie thought back to when she'd ditched the Batmare on the roof. "It doesn't exist," she answered flatly.

"She says it does."

Pinkie stopped packing and turned to Rainbow Dash. In her mind, she wondered just how the Batmare could know about the Clean Slate. It took only a second to realize that she must have been eavesdropping on her conversation with Filthy Rich.

"Why?" she asked finally.

"She says you can help her find Spike," Rainbow answered.

Pinkie considered her options for a minute. She couldn't think straight, she realized, and said instead, "I'll think about it. Tell her I said that. And give her a kiss from me."

Rainbow nodded, and began to leave. She stopped when Pinkie spoke up again.

"I'm sorry they took your money, Rainbow Dash."

The pegasus turned to face the pink mare again. There was a hint of amusement in her eyes.

"No you're not," she responded, and stepped out of the apartment.

She arrived back at her home in time to see a certain white unicorn making her way down the steps, looking enraged at nothing and soaking wet. Rarity saw Rainbow coming up the driveway and stopped, looking less angry and more annoyed.

"Nopony answered," she said when Rainbow trotted over to her.

"Yeah," she said, looking over at the doors to the manor. "I'm on my own right now."

"Well, at least you have the keys."

"I never needed them..."

Now Rarity was looking enraged again.

"Let's find a window," suggested Dash, taking her hoof.

One surprisingly successful break-in later, Rainbow Dash and Rarity stood in one of the manors many great rooms, dripping water onto the carpet. Rarity seemed more concerned about this than Rainbow Dash, and she cast a spell that dried them both off considerably. It left Dash feeling almost impossibly warm. She turned on the lights as Rarity began to explain why she had come to the manor.

"Zecora was brilliant in the meeting today," she said, looking around the room at various cloth-covered items. "Mr. Rich is completely out of the picture."

She noticed the newspaper that Dash had been using to cover her head. The headline read:

The picture below the headline was of Rainbow Dash, smiling cockily at somepony out of the frame.

"I'll take care of your parents' legacy," she said, trotting over to Dash.

The pegasus laughed. "And here I thought you just wanted my money."

"Oh no," whispered the unicorn. She was now standing directly in front of Rainbow Dash. "I've always believed suffering builds character."

Then she leaned in and kissed her--passionately. Dash was surprised by her intensity, and pulled her closer, sliding her hooves down the length of the unicorns form. She couldn't help but compare Rarity's kiss with the one Pinkie had given her during the charity ball.

This wasn't a challenge, as Pinkie's had been: Rarity wanted this. And, Celestia help her, so did Rainbow Dash.

The lights went out suddenly. In the dark, the two parted lips and looked around, holding each other.

"What just happened?" asked Rarity.

"I think my power was just cut off."

Rainbow was glad they were in the dark now. She didn't want to be seen blushing.

Dash regrettably left Rarity in the final minutes before midnight, despite wanting to stay wrapped in her slumbering embrace at least little while longer. But there were other matters to attend to besides her own. She needed to get dressed for work.

Silently, she crept to where the entrance to the Batcave was.

Catmare was getting impatient. She wanted to be out of this crap city ASAP, and the Batmare wasn't helping by being late. Well, she wasn't late, but she wasn't early, and that wasn't beneficial to Pinkie at all.

She stopped pacing suddenly, and pulled the night-vision goggles that served as her "ears" when she wasn't using them up.

"Don't be shy," she purred playfully, hiding her impatience expertly.

The Dark Mare stepped out from the shadows of the subway tunnel they were in, hiding her annoyance at being seen in the dark equally as well.

"Dashie says that you can get me my 'Clean Slate'," she said plainly.

"That depends on what you intend to use it for," Batmare replied.

Catmare giggled. "Still don't trust me, hm? We'll have to change that somehow." She sounded sultry.

Batmare stepped forward. She was ready to go, and didn't want to stall anymore.

"Take me to Spike," she said.

Pinkie shrugged. "Okie dokie loki."

Then she turned, and they stepped into the dark of the subway.