Daring Do and the Stigma of Fear
Chapter 6:
The Aftershock And The Damage

Three figures met in the dim dining room of a grand restaurant. One wore a still-ironed out suit; the others were loose-fitting casuals.

"We've lost 'er again." The second figure grumbled. "...But we won't lose 'er for long. We found this at 'er table."

The third figure tossed a key ring on the table. Only one key was on the ring, the numbers 323 printed on it.

Twilight had fallen asleep easily. Perhaps more easily than the two pegasi sleeping on the floor below her. The couch was awkward on her back and neck, but cushioned her quite nicely. She was dreaming an odd dream, where she sat in front of a cafe enjoying a hay sandwich with a pony that looked suspiciously like Spike in a unicorn form being waited on by Sylvester Stallion, when she suddenly woke up.

It was 2:59 AM when she awoke, as indicated by the glowing green clock next to her face. Shaking the grogginess off of her, she stared into the darkness of the apartment, darkness amplified by a sudden crash of lightning and thunder and a muffled patter of hard rain. Twilight, minding her steps around a sleeping Rainbow and Spitfire, decided it would be a good idea to check on Daring.

As she peeked inside the pony's room, she realized it was just as quiet as the rest of the dark apartment. Not wanted to relive bouts of paranoia, she moved to close the door and stopped when she heard her name.

"Twilight?" Said pony looked over to the window in the room. Lit up by glowing signs in the far distance twisted by the morphed window covered in rain, Daring stood with her back to Twilight.

Shaking her head, she slowly walked to the still figure until she stood beside her, staring out into the bright lights of the dark city. If Daring heard her, she made no reaction.

"Think about it, Daring!" Twilight's voice rose beyond a whisper, actually tapping a pitch ripe with cracked patience.

Daring, to no surprise of Twilight, was caught off-guard by the unicorn's outburst. Disbelief filled her, followed by confusion.

"Yes-- No! I mean, nothing to that extreme. I mean, how you're feeling right now. My friends and I, we were forced to feel just like you were feeling... against our will!" Daring responded with a blank stare.

"How... exactly does something like that happen?" Twilight did not speak for some time, instead choosing to stare out the window into the neon-lit night. Daring eventually gave up expecting Twilight to say something until the pony next to her finally dared to utter.

Lightning struck again, lighting the room for an instant. Thunder quickly followed.

"Rainbow? Rainbow, wake up. Wake up, damn it!" Spitfire's continuous rocking of Rainbow's prone form finally stirred the pony awake. She groaned as she sat up and shook her head of all slumber. She looked at the Wonderbolt and her idol next to her.

"You know, I had a dream like this once." Rainbow snarked. Spitfire stared at Rainbow, trying to pick the correct words that wouldn't encourage this. Spitfire was quite the heartbreaker in school, something a pony as nice as Rainbow shouldn't have to learn the hard way.

"Not the type I'm thinking of I hope." Rainbow chuckled as she sat up in her sleeping bag.

"Oh, no. Not that type of dream. You were still in costume, though. And you had a lot of make-up on, too."

"Oh... Well, I'm flattered." Spitfire trailed off before she regained her thoughts.

"Somepony to talk to would be nice." Spitfire bashfully admitted, eyes gazing at Rainbow's sleeping bag. One of a few Daring had let the ponies sleeping in her living room use after she shoved them out of her own room.

"I don't know how to start." A pregnant pause emerged as Rainbow let Spitfire choose her words. When it became apparent Spitfire was using her ill-preparedness to avoid talking, Rainbow took matters into her own hooves.

"You know what Daring did..." Spitfire looked at her, then looked back to Rainbow's sleeping bag. "Don't ya?"

"More than that. Way more than that." Rainbow moved over close, draping a blue wing over Spitfire's gold ones.. "I-- I had a dream tonight. I was sitting on a tall mountain with the rest of the Wonderbolts, having the time of my life. When I dropped a cup of wine it rolled to the edge. I grabbed it and I peeked over the edge, and there was Daring. She was clinging for life to a root, crying and screaming for help. She gave her hoof to me, begging me to take it. I... ignored it and went back to the party. She fell back into the darkness below, screaming my name. It was horrible." Spitfire wiped a rogue tear from her eye.

"I know! I know it was, but... I feel so guilty." She looked at Rainbow, who looked back with remorse. "Three years. Three years it's been since I read about it, and this is the first time I've seen her in the past nine years! While I was living the high life and being some big-shot celebrity, she was wasting away in her apartment because she so shook up about being accused of murdering some ponies she was too afraid to leave!" Spitfire's tone rose significantly, cracking under pressure.

"I should've been helping her through it!" Spitfire choked back a sob, but couldn't hold back the flood of tears. "I-I know we haven't talked in a bit, but I still should've helped! What kind of pony am I?! I'm her friend, and she's mine! Friends are supposed to be loyal to each other!" Rainbow wrapped Spitfire in an embracing hug, where the gold pony sobbed into her shoulder.

"Believe me, you're preaching to the choir. Don't let it get to you. You're just one pony."

"Spitfire, don't do that to yourself! I can't tell you how many times I've felt just like you are now. I know what it's like: The feeling of thinking you abandoned your friends, it's awful. It's like... you and your friend get stabbed in the back and feeling the knife get twisted, while watching the pain on your friend's face as their knife gets twisted. Loyalty can only go so far. We're both just one pony each, but the fact that we feel bad we couldn't be there to help get over being manipulated--" Rainbow caught herself. "...By the trauma of some horrible event? That's good enough for friends. That's what my friends taught me."

"I suppose." Rainbow stroked Spitfire's lush mane in silence once she calmed herself, until the rainbow pony heard the fire pony whimper. "Rainbow... I don't feel so good."

"No, it's not that. My stomach is churning. I'm seeing black." Spitfire broke free of Rainbow's grasp, holding her forehead and making pain visible on her face. "My head is... spinning so fast. Oh, goddess it hurts." When she ceased her struggling and relaxed, Rainbow turned on a light of a nearby lamp. Her eyes nearly fell out of her head at the sight.

The once vibrant and proud gold pony was now a sulking darker shade of yellow. Her lush mane drooped dramatically, and her wings went limp. .

"Spitfire?" Rainbow spoke, as if she was treading on this ice. The dulled pegasus didn't respond. "Are you... feelin' okay?"

"By the sun and moon, this all happened while I was locked in my apartment?" Daring couldn't believe her ears at this whole enticing tale of a powerful mythological representation of chaos invading Equestria, and Daring had missed all of it! Not that she was disappointed of the fact. Among other things, Twilight had told Daring a brief summarization about the unicorn herself. Daring's reaction to finding out about her recent friend being the apprentice of the immortal sun princess herself was... underwhelming to Twilight. Perhaps this was a time where there could be no surprises for the winged pony.

"You're lucky you didn't have to go through it. His reach must've spread past Ponyville. I'm surprised you haven't heard about it."

"You don't pay attention to much when you don't bother going out. What happened to you must've been dreadful. How'd you endure that without going insane?"

"Who says I didn't? I remember just feeling an agonizing depression after watching my friends lose their own minds." Twilight bitterly recalled the tale, feeling slight embarrassment telling the likewise bitter pony about her personal feelings. "I remember not being able to stand being near them, just wanting to pack up and leave them to wallow in their own misery. I almost did actually. Were it not for Celestia and the reports I sent her, Equestria might be very different now. That's beside the point, though. What I felt like... what I intended to do, It felt like insanity. Maybe not at the time, but afterwards... I'm still kicking myself for even considering it."

"Wanting to run away from fear isn't insanity. It's nature." Daring tried the best soothing voice she could, but it sounded more like cold logic than Daring intended.

"But wanting to abandon your friends in their time of need? In your time of need? That's insanity. It's not normal."

"Well, from what you tell me about this Discord character, there's nothing about him you would consider 'normal.'"

"Boy, you said it." The two shared a laugh, before Daring broke into a serious coughing fit. Twilight helped her new friend through the effort by patting her back (minding the wings) and finally soothing her post the event. "Are you all right?"

"No! I mean, yes. It's probably just the alcohol, I drank too much at the party."

"I've never seen alcohol throw you into a fit of coughing... or, for that matter, make you hallucinate and run out of a party scared to death!" Daring didn't respond. Twilight was ready to attempt a more convincing argument when she paused. Next time she spoke was in a lower tone of voice. "Come to think of it... that sounds remarkably similar to something a drug would do. Perhaps a drug I read about in a medical guide a couple of years ago. Snaproot, a drug often used medicinally for symptoms of Alzheimer's. Side effects were cold sweat, nausea, headache, blurred vision, thrombosis... and hallucinations." Daring stared, slack-jawed.

"How could you possibly remember all that from a couple years ago?" Twilight smiled confidently, tapping her temple.

"Photographic memory." The smile disappeared. "Anyway, I think Snaproot or at least some type of drug must be in play. Alcohol by itself couldn't do anything like what happened to you tonight. Last night, I mean. There must have been some kind of chemical reaction between the two."

"Are you saying... somepony drugged me?" Twilight shrugged, not wanting to give a blunt answer. Daring retreated into a defensive form. "Goddess, I don't even want to think about that. I have enough problems already."

A loud knock broke the silence. Rainbow burst in with a hectic look on her face and a silhouetted pony behind her that Twilight figured to be Spitfire.

"What?" Rainbow motioned for somepony to move into the darkened room, which they did slowly and robotically. Twilight used her magic to flick the light switch on. As Daring and Rainbow flinched from the sudden burst of light, Twilight and Daring gasped at the sight. There stood Spitfire; gray, downcast and positively devoid of life (so to speak).

"Spitfire?" Daring was the first to utter her name. She trotted over to the stoic Wonderbolt -or considering the conditions, ex-Wonderbolt- and tried looking her in the eyes. When the yellow pegasus refused to look back, Daring looked back to the remaining ponies. "What the hell's a matter with her?!"

Twilight did not speak for some time, preferring to study the yellow pegasus in her depressed state. It reminded her of Trixie when she first saw her and helped her with her... issues. The answer was a dead giveaway, filling Twilight with only one answer. She didn't want to give this answer until she had clear evidence. Tragic as it is, a couple of mind screwed ponies could not mean the release of a certain omniscient creature. When she finally spoke, it was in a grim tone.

"She has exactly what you have, Daring." Daring stared, dumbstruck. "Or more literally, she's feeling exactly how you feel."

"She was just fine a minute ago!" Rainbow shouted. "She was feeling really lousy when she told me how horrible she felt for Daring, but I didn't think it would be enough to turn her into this!" That answered Twilight's theory, or more specifically rejected it. Nevertheless, she kept it stored away in the back of her mind until it does indeed come into play. The last thing she wants is to be the pony that cried timberwolf.

"She feels bad for me?" Daring spoke remorsefully. Rainbow nodded. Daring looked to her gray friend, brushing the limp mane out of her gray eyes.. "Did I have anything to do with this?" asked Daring. "I know it's far-fetched, but could that disorder we talked about earlier spread to her? You know, CMDD?"

"There are a lot factors pointing to that, but I don't want to jump to any conclusions." Twilight looked Spitfire over, then turned to Daring. The look on her face got progressively sour each driving second. She let out a heavy sigh. "This isn't working."

"Whaddya mean, Twi?" Rainbow asked as innocently as possible, having a vague feeling what Twilight was talking about.

"Rainbow, we've only been here a day trying to help Daring, but so far all we've succeeded in is deepen the hole she's in and now we've let Spitfire fall in! This isn't like helping somepony overcome a fear or helping them make friends, this is legitimate psychological trauma that we're just not cut out to handle." She gestured to Spitfire. "We didn't even mean for her to be involved and now look at her! Never mind the fact that she's a big-time celebrity and we could get in serious trouble, we're obviously not meant to deal with things like this!" Twilight turned to Daring. "I'm sorry, Daring. We've tried helping and we've only made things worse for you and her. Maybe we should just find you two a professional and leave them to deal with it."

"No, Twilight!" Rainbow grabbed Twilight by the shoulder and forced her into eye-contact. Twilight didn't seem to respond to the sudden jerk, instead turning her head away from her rosy-eyed friend in guilt. Why wouldn't she feel guilty? She just turned both of her friend's heroes into perpetual mopes. "You've helped her more than you know! Yes, tonight was a... noticeable setback and perhaps she's worse than she was no less than twenty-four hours ago and now you've dragged her friend and, as you said, big-time celebrity into this mess."

"Sorry, but what I said is true. Even if it's just a tiny bit, we've helped Daring. So far... well, we've gotten her outside for the first time in years. We told Daring we weren't leaving until she was back to normal. Wouldn't that apply to Spitfire, too? I'm sure if she was feeling anything other than a wallop of agonizing self-pity right now, Spitfire would agree and say she'd want our help. Right, Daring?" Daring in truth wasn't paying attention. Instead she was looking over her friend in misery. She looked to the two when she heard her name sound.

"See? She agrees." Twilight was mildly convinced. "This is just a setback Twi. How are we going to deal with this?"

When Twilight did speak, it was after a long and thoughtful pause to collect her thoughts.

"We should head back to Ponyville. I gotta have something about this in the library; something about the disorder in my catalogues. If not, well... I'm sure a change of scenery would be slightly helpful." She turned to Daring once more, a look much less distressed and more determined on her face. "Daring, I know you not want this, but I think it would be--"

"Don't bother, Twilight. I'm all for it. I'm so sick of Canterlot now. I just wanna get out of this hellhole ASAP."

"That's good to hear. Well, not 'good' but... you get the picture. I'll help you pack. Rainbow, please go call the train station find out when they're boarding. The sooner we get there the better."

Later that day...

Heavy hoof steps filled the gloomy stairways as a makeshift team of hired thugs trampled their way to the third floor of the apartment. Nopony would open their doors to find the source of the noise, as they were used to the sounds of armed ponies causing a stir when arresting some unfortunate pony who thinks she can break laws.

I want nopony injured. If you must, you are permitted to use tranquilizers. Ms. Do should pose no threat, but be weary of her friends Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash. If what I read in the news is true, they are quite capable of defending themselves.

Those words were relayed to them as they cleared out. They half-heartily paid it heed.

"We can handle a couple 'a dames." One thug replied to the laughter of the rest of them.

They crowded around the door of apartment number 323, leaning against the vermin-infested wall. Two ponies were on the left readying themselves while two ponies on the right knocked over a flower pot. On the count of three, they rammed the door down and charged in.

"Did you hear something, dearie?" Asked Mrs. White, wife of local dentist Pearl White, as she continued her knitting.

"Eh, it must be those crazy fillies next door again." Mumbled Mr. White as he turned the page of his newspaper, The Canterlot Times.

The apartment was empty. Most of the apartment remained the same since it was last used, the only bedroom in the apartment showing any signs of missing anything was the only bedroom in the block. There was no sign of anypony anywhere. Their only lead was gone.

The sun was just peeking over the mountainous horizon as the train starting rolling down the track, chugging mechanically. Daring felt herself nervous at the sudden jumping of the train car she and her old and new friends would reside in for the next couple of hours, not to mention the ear-piercing whistle that sounded over her. Spitfire sat next to her, continuing her effort of not speaking a word to any of them since this morning, and the second duo of best friends sat across from them. Rainbow was asleep on Twilight's shoulder as the unicorn read The Cider Diaries by Hunter S. Clopson, a book Daring had packed for no odd reason, using the rising sun as her light.

Daring heard her sulking friend softly snore, now just as asleep as Rainbow. Twilight levitated a blanket over to the pair.

"Why don't you get some sleep, Daring? It's gonna be a long ride." Daring felt at ease at the sound of Twilight's soothing voice. She wrapped the blanket around her friend.

"Okay, but at least try to relax." Twilight smiled and went back to her reading. Daring sighed and turned to her snoring friend.

"I'm sorry, Spitfire." She whispered, just below Twilight's range of hearing. "I never wanted you to get wrapped up in this. Don't worry. We'll help you. I'll help you." The sudden fall of darkness came from the train entering a tunnel (complete with Twilight emitting an annoyed groan). The deafening mechanized reverberating and the strobe lights tok over the train carr.

A voice came from the flickering darkness, the ponies across from hr payng t no mind. Daring turn to her fiend.

A wicked grinn would reveal itself with evvery flash of light trying to get in the tunnel.

The train left the oppressive tunnel and continued its course towards the quaint little town of Ponyville.

Now we come down
Down there to the realm of blood
Diving in seas of
Putrefied bodies

Charge yourself during scenes of dying
You will buy again
Cause boredom creates hunger...

Daring Do and the Stigma of Fear

by Witchfinder General

The Aftershock And The Damage