Dinky wakes up. She stretches and yawns then falls back into bed. She knows she was asked to visit the real Twilight Sparkle, and something about points of song. She turns and looks at her bedside clock. Its about three in the afternoon. Maybe she could ask around or see if anypony knows what that is. Daring Do did want to show her something though and she was also curious about the meteor impact. Maybe she found something else related to it? Also Diamond Tiara's parents are the worst! Dinky thought. She can't stop thinking about Luna as well, wondering if she is alright. She pulls the stone out from under her sheets and looks at it. Dinky notices it has the Princesses' cutiemark on it, and its glowing.
"Hello?"
No response. The filly shrugs. She gets up out of bed, grabbing some things to get started on her adventure. Dinky grabs her saddlebags, enjoys a muffin, draws in crayons a strategy should wild animals attack again, packs some bandaids, enjoys a muffin, packs the credit card and Lunastone, and finally packs some muffins. Mom is at work. But what to bring for self defense? What if another possessed pony shows up? And what was that thing Luna did to stop some of the animal's eyes turning red? Dinky thinks a bit to herself. What sort of weapon will she need? She packs a thick dictionary into an open part of the bag. She doesn't want to damage stuff her mom might need, and its the only thing really with enough oomph in her room.
Time for adventure! First stop, Daring Do's house. Almost as soon as she leaves her home a snake lunges out and Dinky catches it with her magic! It squirms about, because Dinky can't hold stuff away from herself very far yet she seems a little panic-y. She notices its eyes are red, then decides to place the thick dictionary on it so it cannot escape. Phew, glad that worked out!
Dinky tries to do different things with her magic to break the connection. She makes silly noises from concentrating and straining in different ways trying to learn how Luna did it to some before. Eventually she doesn't produce a flash, but can produce color with her telekinetic grip in the air, and some patterns. Dinky soon forgets about the snake and has fun making some colorful effects. If she can make it glow tho perhaps that's a method. She tries to project the color into the snake's eyes from the patterns, and, then snake falls asleep! Dinky shakes its head with her magic waking it up. Its eyes are still glowing red, but it does look groggy and a little confused.
Dinky gives it a good bonk on the head with the dictionary, then the light fades from its eyes and it dazedly wanders off towards the woods. Dinky doesn't suspect this ability will do much in a real battle unless she surprises them in advance, because it took too long to do and took a bit of effort. Anyway, time to visit Daring Do! Dinky happily trots on forward. Then gets a little apprehensive. What if most adult ponies besides mom is scary, like Diamond's mom? Dinky quickly shakes the thought away, if that were true it would've been evident already.
Dinky trots forward when suddenly she sees a glowing pink butterfly. Dinky approaches it wanting to see it up close, then it floats about n lands on her nuzzle. Dinky looks at it cross-eyed thinking she hears some sound coming from it but can't quite make it out. A pink glow surrounds it... Then Dinky, and the butterfly vanishes along with the pink magic. Dinky suddenly feels less tired and worried. She happily bounds forward.
A dog starts howling at Dinky from the side.
"Not today!" Dinky whaps it aside the head with the thicktionary until its eyes stop glowing, then quickly forgets about it, approaching Daring's cabin and knocks on it.
"Oh hi Dinky! Come on in!" Dinky enters.
"What is that?" Dinky notices a blackness covering the vast majority of Daring's cabin floor.
"Its a hole." Daring says plainly. Cup of coffee held by one of her wings
"Well, yeah, I can see that. What's it doing there?" Dinky asks confused.
"Well I woke up this morning," She sips her coffee. "And there was a hole!"
"What are you going to do about it?" Dinky doesn't think she can even see the bottom of the hole from here.
"Well I put a rug over it. And yeah, it fell in the hole." Daring says casually.
"Should we.. do something about it?" Awkward.
"Naw, its our turn to go in that hole!" Daring smiles unnaturally.
"Uhh, what are you talking about?" Yikes.
"What I want to show you is in the hole! Silly." Daring finishes her cuppajoe and sets it down. "And I am only showing you, nopony else!"
Dinky thinks maybe she could use an adult.
"Well, how am I supposed to go down there? I don't have any wings." Dinky says. Daring squints at Dinky. Yup. No wings.
"I should have a ladder in the back, one sec." Daring Do comes back in exactly one second. "I need you to help." Daring leaves the shack through the back again, and Dinky winces and scoots around the edge of the hole hoping the floor doesn't give out.
Dinky waltz out of the back of the cabin, looking around Daring's back yard. There's some exotic looking antiques, rope, and archaeologist tool kits. Daring motions over and Dinky sees her holding the back of the ladder, and helps it in with telekinesis, its quite a big ladder, thankfully Dinky doesn't need to help for too long, its end extends and slides all the way to the bottom, then the top bit locks into place from a mechanism on it. Daring flies down into the hole.
"Ok, you can come on down Dinky!" Daring echoes. Gulp. Dinky climbs down the ladder feeling with telekinesis on the way down to make sure its safe and when she feels the floor she jumps, turning around, and sees a spooky face lit up with some sparkling red standing out in the shadows!
"AHHH!"
With a lit flare!.. Its Daring Do.. Dinky got spooked. Daring turns on a lantern after.
"Scared you some? Heh. Well, c'mon! There's no time to time to waste!" Dinky follows from behind nervously, after Daring grips the lantern with her teeth.
They pass through what seems like fifty meters of tunnel, before Daring Do stops, placing her lantern down.
"So, Dinky, buddy. I found something awesome! Its treasure! And there might be a lot more where what I found comes from, come on, its right here!" Daring Pulls a sheet down from a tall object.
"AHH!" That's one freaky looking gold statue. It looks like a monster. A monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind. And it was faintly glowing in an odd pulsating way making it seem like it could almost come alive and start moving at any moment. In its right hand its holding a green pyramid, and in the other what looks like a squeaky toy of a weird chimera-like creature.
"Pretty cool right? AnD PrEttY pReTty!" Daring Do makes a creepy wide smile again. "But yeah, you should probably go I don't want you getting greedy thoughts. This is Daring Do's find, it'll make for an excellent book! Well, go on, shoo, I got some more work to do."
"Uhh okay." Dinky gratefully leaves, but is spooked whenever her back is turned to Daring Do, and gladly retreats.
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Dinky slams Daring's shack door as shut as it will close, and catches her breath. Well I guess I got some of what I set out to do accomplished. But that's clearly foreboding, and I don't know what I can do about it, the statue is too big for me to lift and Daring would probably assault me if I smashed it, if I could smash it. Best I can do now is look for Twilight.
Dinky trots at a respectable pace back to and then through her street the way the cops were blocking the other day to prevent, probably Photo Finish, from making a big deal of the meteor. The town might have good supplies anyway in the case I need to keep adventuring, and I should try to reach the library if I can.
Dinky walks through the wide dirt road sloping down past the side of the woods. She comes upon a clearing that leads into Ponyville, when she suddenly hears a lot of buzzing from behind her. Its half a dozen parasprites!
"Eep!" Dinky sprints ahead to avoid them gaining on her. Turning in place she whips out the dictionary and swats at them but its too heavy and misses them half the time! What makes it worse is if she moves it at certain angles it opens up and the pages make its maneuvering awkward and stilted. They swarm Dinky poking her in the eye or biting into her side. Dinky screws up her muzzle in agitation and starts flailing at them with her hooves to keep them away. Them keeping away long enough Dinky has better opportunity to swing her dictionary and without them being on top of her she can strike them more effectively. She works up a sweat, but they all go down! Dinky is proud of herself, if a little sore.
Deciding to rest Dinky lays in the shade of a tree just outside of Ponyville and opens her saddlebag pulling out some Muffins to snack on while she observes the town. Not much is going on, some ponies leaving the department store a ways away. Then there's a distant sound in another direction, almost like yelling. Dinky's ears perk up as she listens in. Its a little different from yelling, its more rhythmic and a controlled pitch. Its probably singing! Getting excited, Dinky gets up and shoves a half eaten muffin into her bag and trots toward the sound.
Moving beyond the road that leads to the department store, the song grows louder. This area is a continuation of the woods but at a different elevation. Dinky sticks to the road, but the sound goes off the road deeper into the forest. The sun is starting to go down. Perhaps now isn't the time to explore it? Dinky bops in place unsure of what to do, then decides to head into town to see if she can at least find a better weapon in the store. Kind of strange going to a store for a weapon though.
Then suddenly there's a mole with a mighty red and purple helmet standing in Dinky's way!
"Ahh!" Dinky swats at it with the dictionary and it dodges into the dirt.
"Whoa! slow down there, I'm just your average mole!" It popped back out in a new location.
"Moles don't talk!" Dinky gets ready to swing at it before noticing its eyes aren't red. Then she calms down some.
"Sure we do! We chat all the time. Norodent tends to ever speak much to a mole though. Anyway, name's Magneto, yours?" Dinky pauses confused at the use of the term norodent briefly before replying.
"My name is Dinky." Dinky slowly packs away the dictionary into her saddlebag keeping an eye on the strange mole.
"Good to meet you. Anyway, I couldn't help but notice you got ganged up on by a parade of parasprites." Dinky nods.
"Well, what if I told you there is a trick to dealing with that conundrum?" The mole's helmet is not put on right, its facing a bit to the left.
"Um, alright!" Dinky is half curious. It might prove useful.
"Well, when you face multiple opponents, what you want to do is deal with one at a time! This way none can pull your attention away and you will get harassed far less. Turning around mid fight also exposes your back." He fixes his helmet, sort of. Its rotated a little too much to the right now. Magneto continues speaking.
"Makes sense." Dinky nods.
"Think of it kind of like a numbers game. If you have a bunch of negative unipole magnets and one positive unipole magnet, that one magnet is going to have far less say on what's going on! If there's an even number of magnets it forms a line, like in movies when they say 'hold the line!'. Basically what you want to do, because you are bigger, is fight one at a time. Think of it like, even though you are one number, you are a larger number. But you can still get put into a pickle if your number is outnumbered by numbers!"
"Uhhhhh." Dinky is confused.
"Hmmm." He adjusts his helmet again. "I'll go find some better stuff to say. See you later, hopefully we'll meet again!" Then he vanishes into the ground.
"well, that happened." Dinky turns, heading to the department store. Its not that big of a department store but its usually got a decent variety of goods. She starts thinking of all the ways the stuff in the store could be useful, then remembers she doesn't know if her card has any bits on it yet. Oh well, she can still try. Dinky pushes a cart along one hoof on the floor, the other three on the cart wheeling it around like its a skateboarding or something. Not many ponies are in the store right now so no worries about hitting other's carts, but she does get some funny looks from one of the employees.
Fertilizer, nope. A small spade shovel, yup. A baseball bat, yup. A bicycle, nope. Toys... Okay just one though. 'Metal Meringue Mare', she kicks flank, and makes pie, and is all out of pie! Fishing pole, nope. 'Neigh! Bug Away Spray', yup. Batteries? Nope. Spices? Nope. A hat? Nope. Some snacks? Yup. 'Chewy Berry Blueys'. She finishes doing a small lap through the store and ends up in line and puts her stuff on the counter. The middle-aged cashier mare gives her a brief look then shrugs and rings up her items.
"That'll be 54 bits." Dinky grins awkwardly, and levitates her card over to the cashier.
"I'm sorry, there's only 47 bits, you're going to have to put something back." The middle-aged mare looks at her watch, its closing time soon. Dinky pulls out her dictionary and puts it on the counter.
"How much for this?" Dinky grins hopefully.
"Does this look like a pawn shop?" The mare doesn't seem to be impressed. Dinky grins sheepishly and quickly takes the most expensive item out, being the awesome toy. The lady tries the card again, the total coming to 33 bits. She produces a receipt, which Dinky grabs and Dinky fills her saddlebags with her goods.
"Have a nice day. I gotta close up shop soon, mind scootin' along?" Dinky quickly leaves the store, the mare right behind her, and locks and closes the door. Then Dinky notices something is awry.
"Oh um, my dictionary! I accidentally left it in the store!" Dinky turned to the mare.
"Sorry kid, come back tomorrow, my shift is up." She pulls out a cigarette and lights it. Its smelly and Dinky doesn't want second hand smoke or to bother the lady so doesn't press it further. The dictionary was unruly anyway but it may prove useful! Who knows. Reorganizing her bag, Dinky leaves the baseball bat and bug spray in easy to access spots, one on either side of her.
"Well now I'd best get home before it gets dark." Dinky mutters to herself. She doesn't want to get into an ambush like earlier, but the thing about ponies is they can gallop pretty fast. Dinky gallops all the way home, whilst pushing and feeling around with telekinesis to make sure nothing surprises her.
Panting, she makes it up the slope on the side of the woods, and back onto that familiar dirt street, and into her home.
"Muffin!" They smile, Derpy is in the kitchen with a pink and white apron on, turned from the noise of the door and saw Dinky. Dinky and her mother hug and nuzzle.
"Just put some muffins in the oven. Tonight its cinnamon banana muffins and butterscotch kiwi muffins." Derpy and her daughter sit on the couch.
"Mmm. You look tired. Have an adventurious day?" Derpy asks. Dinky thinks.
"Some excitement today and some shopping. It wasn't a full day though, because I got up late. But I don't want to fight at night. Its spooky and there was something already spooky about today." Derpy nods in response.
"You know. When there are things that are spooky, you should realize. You can be spooky too. You might not notice it. It might happen on accident. But spookies are usually not as scary as we think. But if it is scary as you think, then its best to wait until you are stronger. Which will be soon! Because you are a growing filly!" Derpy rubs her daughter's back and the back of her head to help her get sleepy. Dinky already looked tired, now she is practically falling asleep on the couch.
"I think I'll head to bed, goodnight." Dinky yawns and heads upstairs.
"Goodnight.. muffin." The smell of exotic muffins fills the air.