FALL 1: KnightFall

"Beyond this point, Spike's goons patrol the area constantly," said Catmare, gesturing down the thinner, unused subway tunnel. She turned back to the Batmare. "These guys aren't regular drunken street brawlers."

"Neither am I," responded the Dark Knight, and pushed ahead. Catmare followed, rolling her eyes.

The tunnels hey had been traversing for the past half-hour became different, in ways that were so subtle that the Batmare almost didn't notice. She had mere seconds to look about the tunnel when the sound of footsteps echoed up ahead. Catmare heard them too, and swung up onto a pipeline and out of sight. Batmare followed, dissolving into the darkness just as three guards made themselves visible. Their get-up, which suggested they were expecting the entire police force to drop in on them, included military-grade automatic weapons, bullet-proof vests, and what looked like several detonators attached to their fatigues. They passed through the tunnel, armed but clearly not expecting anypony to show up.

Catmare dropped down behind them.

"She's behind you," the mare warned.

The three spun around and raised their weapons. The leader saw that it was somepony their boss wanted to see, and lowered his weapon slowly.

"Who?" he asked.

A darkness fell over them. They turned in time to see a cowl-covered visage drop down and stare into their souls, upside down, like the creature the cowl's owner was named for.

"Me," said the creature, and swallowed them into the dark.

The rest of Spike's minions were not as easy as the first three. Many came all at once, and Catmare found herself having to help out the Caped Crusader more than expected. She heard the mare panting by the time they reached their intended destination.

Retirement must have been a bitch, she thought, and stopped before a metal catwalk leading between twin waterfalls of what appeared to be sewage water but smelled too clean to be that. She gestured to it.

"Almost there," she said, grinning again. "Just past here."

The Batmare walked through the doorway onto the catwalk. She had taken one step along it before realizing that since their first fight, Catmare had not once stayed behind her. She turned in time to watch a steel grate fall shut between them. Looking down, she saw that below, where the waterfalls ended, a sort of headquarters lay. She looked back up at Catmare, who no longer wore a grin on her face.

"Sorry," she said softly, this time seeming to mean it. "I just wanted them off my back."

It was a trap. It had always been a trap. Batmare was disappointed in Pinkie.

"You've made a serious mistake," she growled.

"Not as serious as yours, I'm afraid."

The voice that had spoken was deep, menacing, and sounded slightly amplified. There was no other creature in the world that sounded like that. Slowly, Batmare turned to face the purple drake awaiting her on the other side of the catwalk. She hadn't even felt his footsteps. The figure was exactly as Fluttershy had descried him. Muscles rippled from his chest, covered only by a strange vest that looked connected to the elaborate mask on his face.

"Spike," she said.

The masked dragon approached her, slowly, his hands on his vest.

"Let's not stand on ceremony her, Ms. Dash."

Batmare didn't flinch at the sound of her true identity. Catmare, however, could be heard gasping over the sound of the waterfalls. Spike notice a look of regret develop on her face, and he felt like laughing. The fool actually having second thoughts about doing this! How laughable.

Without warning, Batmare launched herself at Spike, ready to defeat the mercenary one and for all, and become the hero that Gotham needed once m-

Spike caught her balled hoof easily in one claw. He squeezed it, and Dash felt something grind together in her foreleg. She grunted, and used her other hoof to try and reach Spike's gut. The drake easly blocked it.

Oh yeah, she thought. Trained by the League of Shadows. Right.

"Peace has cost you your strength," Spike stated. "Victory has defeated you."

Spike slammed the Batmare into the side of the catwalk with such ferocity that she almost yelled in surprise. A roundhouse kick swept her hind legs out from under her, and she fell backwards off the catwalk towards the raging waters below. She extended her cape and glided over to where she could properly stand again. She could already feel bruises developing under her armor.

Ii can't be... This wasn't supposed to happen. It wasn't supposed to be so hard for her. Not even the Joker, who, in the end, had won in his fight against her, hadn't been so hard to fight (or defeat, though only physically). No, Spike was something different, something new, something she didn't want to have to fight agai-

Spike was something that enjoyed interrupting her thoughts with his punches. While she had glided down and taken a knee, the mercenary had dropped down to where she was and punched her again. She staggered back, and pulled several mini-flash-bangs from her Utility Belt, tossing them up so that they would go off and distract Spike.

The dragon didn't flinch.

"Theatricality and deception are powerful agents," he said, quoting a line from the lips of Ra's al Ghul. "To the uninitiated."

Buck, thought Rainbow Dash, sidling off slowly. Fluttershy was right. I need to give everything I've got to beat this guy--if I can.

She hadn't ever doubted her own abilities before. That worried her.

She changed tactics, attempting to put Spike on the defensive. She charged again, striking out at Spike with her hooves and being countered effortlessly in response. Spike reflected the movements of Ra's al Ghul almost exactly, and Batmare tried desperately to remember how she'd beaten him before. She knew Spike was not Ra's, though, being much younger, stronger, and, most importantly, a dragon, not a unicorn. He targeted the weak points in her body armor, while somehow having no weakness of his own.

She was tired of this. The two broke apart, facing each other beneath the flowing channels. Spike looked like he had just had a good warm-up.

"But we are initiated, aren't we, Rainbow? The League." He glared at her over the mask. Poisonous scorn dripped from his voice. Batmare could hear air hissing softly from his mask. "And you betrayed us..."

"You were excommunicated," Batmare tried to clarify, "from that gang of psychopaths."

"And now, thanks to you I am the League of Shadows," he retorted, "here to fulfill Ra's al Ghul's destiny..."

Batmare knew what Ra's al Ghul's "destiny" had been: destroy Ponyville. No, she thought. Too many good people here. Too many worth saving. Too many people had spent their lives trying to make Ponyville a better place to have it all taken away for a reason such as destiny.

She hurled herself back at Spike with immense ferocity, knocking him back into one of the rushing falls. She pounded down on his mask again and again. Any normal foe would have been out cold long ago, but Spike seemed to simply take the pain, waiting for her to slow down to catch her breath. Which, eventually, she did.

She let up, for only a moment, and Spike shot his arms out and knocked her away. She felt battered, despite being hit only fraction of the times that Spike had.

"You fight like a younger mare," he said, his voice showing no hint of the beating he'd taken. "Nothing held back. Nothing reserved." His muscled bulged as her flexed, approaching the disoriented mare as she tried to get back up. "An admirable trait, but a mistaken one all the same."

It was at this time that Batmare realized how hard she was breathing. It had been very tiring, in fact, and what was worse, it wasn't already over. She wasn't the amazing warrior everypony had seen back when Ra's al Ghul was her enemy.

She needed a better strategy. She flipped a switch on her Belt, and the lights went out. The sound of several of Spike's goons panicking was quickly hushed by the others. The night-vision lenses in her cowl activated, and she looked through the dark at her adversary, who, to her shock, was unmoved by the sudden blackness. She decided to make her move quickly, and went to work.

Spike, meanwhile, turned slowly through the dark, completely calm and almost bored with their fight. He addressed the darkness, his voice just as calm and menacing as it had been when he'd welcomed the Batmare to his lair.

"You think the darkness is your ally?" he asked, sounding comical. "You merely adopted the dark. I was born in it. Molded by it..."

His calm was terrifying. Batmare circled, looking for some sign of weakness. She knew better, knew that Spike had not shown any form of weakness before and would not show any now just because it was dark, but she to try anyway. There was no other choice. Last shot, she thought, and moved in for the kill.

"I didn't see light until I was already a man," Spike continued. "And by then it was nothing to me but blinding."

He lunged into the dark and caught Batmare's throat in his claws. Her reinforced neckpiece was the only thing keeping her windpipe from being crushed in his powerful grip.

"The shadows betray you, because they belong to me..."

Spike slammed Batmare into the concrete floor with ferocity enough to smash any other pony's brains out. His fists pounded against her cowl over and over, each blow delivering force like a jackhammer. Batmare found herself unable to stop him, and lay there, taking the blows, hoping for something to stall him long enough for her to throw him off her, though she was unsure if she was physically capable of doing this at all. Then, after taking punch after punch, the graphite shell that made up the Batmare's cowl could take no more. Impossibly, incredibly, the cowl cracked open.

No, thought Batmare.That isn't possible.

She was broken. Spike could see it, could feel it in her bones as they bruised under his fists. He rose up, towering over his beaten foe. He pointed upward, at the ceiling that rose high above the twin waterfalls they'd fought through. Staring up at it, Batmare could see that there was a series of holes drilled into it, each containing an explosive charges.

"I will show you," said Spike, sounding not even out of breath, "where I've made my home while preparing to bring justice to Ponyville. Then...I will break you." He beckoned, and a dragon standing near them tossed him what could only have been a detonator. The other minions stood back, seeking shelter. Catmare, who, this whole time, had stood behind the grate at the catwalk far above and watched anxiously as the two had fought, covered her ears.

Spike pressed the button.

A large explosion rocked the world around Batmare. Chunks of debris rained down from the ceiling, falling into the waters below. Waves splashed against her body, and she sputtered as the chilled water ran through the crack in her cowl onto her face. Her eyes widened as artificial light poured down from above, revealing the lower levels of Applied Sciences.

We were under Rainbow Enterprises this whole time, she thought in horror.

One of the tumblers fell into the sewers as the rubble-fall ceased, landing atop a pile of such debris and resting there. Papers and ash floated down through the gap in the ceiling.

"No..." Batmare mumbled weakly.

"Your dearest armory," Spike confirmed. "Gratefully accepted as a donation from the Rainbow Foundation." He gazed contently at the stolen goods. "We will need it."

Spike's men, meanwhile, were clambering (and flying, in some cases) into the violated weaponry. They ransacked it like children moving in towards a pinata broken open, taking as much as they could, even as sirens and alarms blared uselessly. Buckets of weapons came down into the sewer system, and the other tumblers followed their brothers.

I can't let this happen, thought Batmare. I can't... She staggered to her hooves, on all fours now, and swaying unsteadily. She taste blood in her mouth, her head was swimming, and the world around her was spinning, but she stayed standing as best as she could. She realized she was concussed, and wondered how badly.

Nevertheless, she drew herself up on her hind legs once more, and raised her hooves.

Spike turned back to her, having heard her scrambling back up. He looked entertained.

"I was wondering what would break first," he said, goading her forward. "Your spirit..."

Batmare threw a punch, and he didn't even have to dodge it to avoid being hit. He lunged forward and grabbed her, and with a growl lifted her up above his head. She squirmed, but it was like being held in a vice.

"...or your body," Spike concluded, and brought her down on his knee.

CRACK.

The sound of the Dark Knight's back breaking echoed through the sewer. Even some of Spike's minions flinched at the sound. Catmare certainly did. She gasped, and backed away from the grate, too horrified to watch any more.

Spike dumped the Batmare onto the ground, where she lay uselessly in the puddles. He crouched down and tugged the broken mask off his victim, revealing the battered and mangled face of Rainbow Dash. Her hair, normally carrying the seven shade of the visible spectrum, was now almost entirely colored red with her blood. He beckoned to his henchmen, and they picked her limp, unresisting body and carried it off into a tunnel.

Spike examined the cowl, gazing into the hollow, empty eyes of the Dark Knight's mask. He began to walk back to where his new arsenal of weaponry waited. As he went, he lowered the cowl, and after a moment tossed it aside, where it clattered to floor. He paid it no mind. It was meaningless now.

Catmare had seen enough. Forgotten for the moment, she stepped back into the shadows, and was gone before anyone could notice.