Something was really strange, and Rainbow Dash couldn’t quite seem to figure out what it was. Granted, there were plenty of things about this particular day that made it unusual—most notably, the pavilion in the middle of the Ponyville that housed the town hall was in shambles. That was, in a roundabout way, the reason she was here: Applejack was headed to the Equestria rodeo, and she’d already pledged her winnings to the building’s repair, which was why the blue pegasus was decorating what was left of the landmark in preparation for a rally in support of the palamino earth pony. Rainbow Dash finished hanging a banner featuring her friend’s likeness and hovered in the air for a few seconds to admire her hoofwork, when her concentration was broken by a stray lightning bolt that zipped past her, singeing the edge of her tail.
“Huh?” The pegasus briefly looked around to find the bolt’s source, which took less than a second to discern. “Now, careful, Derpy!” Rainbow Dash called out as she flew up to a small storm cloud. On that cloud was Derpy Hooves, one of Ponyville’s mailponies, renowned throughout town for her love of muffins and her daughter, and also for her general klutziness. “Don’t want to do any more damage than you’ve already done.” Right on cue, the pavilion’s third story collapsed into the building.
“I just don’t know what went wrong,” the grey pegasus replied, jumping up and down on the cloud and sending out several more bolts until one finally hit her and caused her to stay still for a few seconds.
“Yeah, it’s a mystery.” Despite the sarcastic tone of Rainbow Dash’s voice, what she was saying was true: nopony really knew how Derpy had managed to cause this much damage. All that was known was that the Mayor had found the building in its partially-demolished state early that morning, and the pegasus had immediately rushed over to her to claim responsibility. It was... well... a little weird, but then again, so was Derpy.
The mailmare recovered quickly and flew over to pay a compliment: “Nice work, Rainbow Dash.” Unfortunately, in doing so, she backed one of the still-standing columns, knocking it over and sending it towards the ground. The blue pegasus did her best to halt the descent of the renegade architectural feature, but was unable to keep the the beam from crashing through the porch, and taking her with it. This was getting ridiculous. Derpy had always been fairly, well, derpy, but today it almost seemed like she was trying to cause accidents.
“You okay, Rainbow Dash?” the grey pegasus called down into the hole. “Anything I can do to help?” For some reason, her voice sounded strange. Derpy Hooves normally sounded like she had a constant head cold, or perhaps like a mare attempting to replicate the voice of a young colt, but today... well, her voice was certainly derpy, but it wasn’t the same kind of derpiness Rainbow Dash had come to expect from the muffin connoisseur.
But no matter what the qualities of her voice, one thing was certain: the last thing Rainbow Dash needed was more help. “No! Nothing! In the name of Celestia, just sit there and do nothing!” she quickly responded, looking the mailmare in the eyes. Actually, that was another thing that was strange: looking the grey pegasus in the eyes was usually nigh-impossible, mostly because her eyes were normally looking in two directions at once. But today, it seemed like Derpy was focusing both her eyes in the same direction a lot more than she usually did. It was actually kind of disconcerting, but Rainbow Dash didn’t really have a chance to dwell on that, as the mare (who once again had crossed her eyes slightly) followed these orders to the letter, setting her hindquarters on the porch with enough force to create a second hole. In an effort to keep from falling, she grabbed hold of the blue pegasus, but all this accomplished was to take Rainbow Dash down into the hole with her.
“Oops. My bad.”
Rainbow Dash sighed as she pressed a hoof against her forehead in frustration. Since shouting didn’t seem like it would help very much, she didn’t bother voicing the response she desperately wanted to give: What is with you today, Derpy?
——————————
Ironically, what was with Derpy Hooves was not Rainbow Dash, because at that particular moment, Derpy Hooves was nowhere near the town square, at least as far as she knew. This had been the case since the previous evening, when a pegasus that looked exactly like her had suddenly trotted into her kitchen and clonked her over the head with a frying pan.
Now, Derpy was out cold, and she’d very quickly come to the conclusion that being unconscious was really, really boring. It was kind of like dreaming, except instead of dreaming about interesting things like muffins, paper bags, and the philosophy of ethics, this dream was about the color black, and absolutely nothing else. Black to the left, black to the right, black up, black down, black in front, and black behind her. And unlike sleeping, where the black part was occasionally interrupted by normal dreams, this time, the blackness had gone on for hours.
But it wasn’t just the boredom that bothered the usually plucky mailmare—there was also the matter of her daughter, Dinky Hooves. The thought of the adorable unicorn filly being placed at the mercy of that... impostor sent Derpy’s maternal instincts into a panic. She had to get out of here (wherever “here” was), if only to ensure her foal’s safety. The question was... how?
This stumped the pegasus for quite some time (though she wasn’t sure how much time, because unconsciousness didn’t come with useful things like a clock), until she suddenly had an epiphany: What would Daring do?
The first time her filly had brought home a Daring Do novel from the Books and Branches Library, Derpy had voiced some concerns about the violence that the fictional treasure hunter usually encountered during her exploits; it seemed that it might be too intense for a foal as young as Dinky Hooves. Rainbow Dash, however, had quickly leaped to her hero’s defense. “Derpy, the Daring Do novels aren’t just pulp fiction,” she’d contended.
“They aren’t?”
“Well, I guess they are, but they’re so much more than that! Looked at in the proper context, Daring Do is the greatest role model since they began modeling roles!”
“What do you mean?”
“Read these novels. Soak every page into your head. Then, whenever you’re dealing with a serious lack of awesomeness in your life, you can just ask yourself a simple question that will fix anything.”
“Really? What is it?”
“It’s this: ‘What would Daring do?’ Figure out what Daring would do, and do it, and I guarantee that the coolness levels in your life will skyrocket!”
Faced with such an airtight argument, Derpy Hooves couldn’t see any reason not to let the novels into her home, and they were indeed lots of fun—something she could share with her only foal as they read the exciting stories together before bedtime. However, it wasn’t until now that she’d bothered to seriously consider using Rainbow Dash’s advice to its full extent, mostly because her life to this point was actually pretty darn awesome and cool, when it wasn’t awesomely cool. Unconsciousness, however, wasn’t. Thus the question: What would Daring do?
Fortunately, Daring Do had been knocked unconscious several times over the course of her adventures, so answering that question was a fairly simple matter: whenever Daring Do was knocked out, she always woke up. Derpy opened her eyes. Wow! That was easy!
The pegasus attempted to get up and figure out what happened, only to find another obstacle in her way: the ropes that the fiend had apparently used to tie her up. This wouldn’t have been a problem, were it not for the fact that the knots around her hooves and wings were really, really tight, and her attempts to pull them loose with her teeth didn’t seem to be working very well. After thirty or so seconds of futility, Derpy decided to try asking herself the question again: What would Daring do?
Fortunately, the pegasus had just finished reading Daring Do and the Riddle of the Discordian Knot with Dinky the past week, so she knew exactly how to deal with a stubborn tangle that needed to go away really, really fast: cut it. Derpy looked around the room where she was being held, and quickly identified it as a basement (or possibly an attic, though the lack of any visible thatch-roofing made that unlikely). Since ponies often stored tools in basements, the mailmare scanned the shelves for something that could extract her from her predicament—an easier task than it would be for other ponies, who generally lacked the ability to look in two different directions at the same time.
Eventually, she spied a rusty-looking saw sitting in the corner of the floor. She slowly inched her way over to it, and after several tense minutes spent rubbing the ropes around her hooves against its jagged edge, four of her limbs were free, and without any nasty cuts in her skin, either! The rope that had tied her wings down soon followed suit, and Derpy was now free to move around the basement—which, she just now realized, was her own. Either the other Derpy wasn’t very creative, or she’d been in a rush, because the real Derpy was pretty sure Ahuitzotl would have taken the time to devise some sort of confoundingly scary deathtrap for Daring Do.
Still, despite the decided lack of scares and death, the pegasus did appear to be trapped, since the door was locked and the key nowhere to be found. Similarly, Derpy’s attempts to simply make an opening in the basement’s cloud wall met with failure when she remembered that she didn’t have a cloud house, because her filly was a unicorn, and the wall was therefore made of rocks. Once again, the mailmare found herself returning to the now-familiar mantra: What would Daring do?
Even though Daring rarely had to escape from a suburban basement in her novels, there were multiple times when the explorer had found the need to go through a locked door to which she did not have a key, but she had a standard, awesome solution for this problem: buck it down! Derpy stood on the stairs and slammed her rear hooves into the door as hard as she could, and sure enough, it broke at the hinges, allowing her access into her living room, and, by extension, the rest of the known universe.
She’d done it! Derpy had freed herself from the impostor’s impromptu prison, all thanks to the valuable life skills she’d learned from the Daring Do novels. This called for a celebration, and by “celebration,” Derpy meant “muffin.” The pegasus happily trotted towards her kitchen—or rather, she would have, were it not for the voice that called out behind her.
“And just what do you think you’re doing?”
Startled, Derpy turned around and saw a beige pegasus with a grey mane, a green shirt, and a pith helmet standing in her living room with a scowl on her face. Even though the mailmare had never met her, she was instantly recognizable. “Daring Do? What are you doing here? I thought you were just make-believe.”
“I am make-believe, Derpy.”
“But how’s that possible? Make-believe ponies aren’t real. Wait a minute... is this one of those fifth wall thingies Pinkie Pie tells me about?”
The other pegasus rolled her eyes. “No, Derpy, I’m not breaking the fourth wall, because I’m not actually Daring Do. I’m just a figment of your imagination that looks like her.”
Derpy, however, didn’t seem to hear this statement, because her questions continued in the same vein as before: “Why does your voice sound like Rainbow Dash?”
“Because she’s the pony Daring Do reminds you the most of, so you always hear her voice when you imagine Daring talking out loud, like you’re doing now.”
“So... you’re Rainbow Dash in a costume?”
“What? No! If I was Rainbow Dash, would you be able to see through me? I just said I was a figment of your imagination!”
“Um... okay, but I... uh... don’t really know what that means.”
The translucent explorer let out an exasperated sigh of defeat. “It means that I’m Daring Do.”
“Hurray! Wanna have a muffin with me?”
“No.”
“But they’re really good, and I don’t want you to be left out when I’m eating mine.”
“You aren’t having any muffins either.”
This surprised Derpy, who had been pretty sure that muffins were in her immediate future when she first exited the basement. “Why? Did the impostor steal them?”
“No—”
“Yay! Muffin time!”
“Derpy!” Daring shouted. “You don’t have time for muffins!”
“But there’s always time—”
“Stop trying to change the subject. Now, how did you get out of the basement?”
“Um, by bucking the door down?”
“Yes, but how did you get the idea to do that?”
“Uh... well...”
“Derpy, answer me.”
“By asking myself what you would do,” Derpy finally admitted.
“That’s correct. But as you know, there’s an impostor on the loose in Ponyville. Since this impostor attacked you in your own home, I think we can say with absolute certainty that we are talking about a ‘bad guy’ here. Now, what would I do if there I knew there was a bad guy somewhere doing bad things?”
“Uh... you’d... have a muffin to calm your nerves?”
“Try again.”
Derpy lowered her head forlornly. “You’d stop the bad guy.”
“That’s right. Now, if you really plan on doing what I would do, what should you be doing?”
“Saving the day.”
“Correct. Muffins can wait until later.”
“Fine,” Derpy groused as she slowly walked towards her front door and away from the scrumptious baked goods. She had almost reached it when she turned around to make one final plea: “Not even a mini muffin?”
“No!” the fictional explorer replied, raising a hoof and pointing towards the door to emphasize her point.
“But what if it’s a bran muffin? They’re healthy.”
“Derpy...”
“Oh, alright...”
The walleyed mailmare grumbled to herself as she opened the door and headed out into Ponyville so she could get her heroics over and done with.
——————————
It didn’t take long for Derpy to track down the fiend, thanks to her keen wit, her insight, and the fact that nopony seemed to find the question “Did you see me go somewhere earlier today?” to be particularly odd when she was the one asking it. Thus, the pegasus found herself hiking through the Everfree forest—the perfect place for a pernicious pony to plot pusillanimous plans, prioritize petty protocols, and do other nasty things that didn’t necessarily start with the letter “P,” as well.
Initially, it seemed that she was wandering around in circles, unable to find any trace of the impostor who stood between her and a well-deserved muffin break. Fortunately, what Derpy lacked in tracking skills was made up for with blind (or rather, cross-eyed) luck, because she eventually stumbled upon a clearing where she clearly saw a pegasus who looked just like her talking to... some sort of floating green ball. However, even though this pony looked just like her, its voice sounded like two identical twin stallions talking at the same time.
“Everything is proceeding according to plan,” the fake Derpy told the glowing orb. “The pegasus whose identity I’ve assumed apparently has a reputation for being off, so I’ve been able to get away with bungling around like a complete idiot. She seems to know some of the target’s friends, so it should be a simple matter to move into her inner circle when the operation reaches its final stages.”
“That is good to hear,” the green sphere replied. Like the impostor, it sounded like two ponies (mares, in this case) speaking the same thing at the same time. “In fact, you are well ahead of schedule; it will be quite some time before I’m in a position to fully assume the role of the bride-to-be. Can you hold off until then?”
“That will not pose any problems, my Queen. You see, this pony has a foal: a unicorn filly, so young that she hasn’t even received her cutie mark yet. The two apparently get along well, since it’s been a very long time since I tasted love as pure as what she has for her mother. I may not be able to draw magical power from her, but I’ll be able to feast on her devotion for months—perhaps years, if necessary.”
“I doubt it will come to that. You have done well, my servant. For the time being, continue your masquerade while you stake out your target. I shall expect regular updates on your progress.”
“Of course,” the impostor replied with a bow, as the green ball winked out of existence.
Perhaps Derpy Hooves might have once again made a theoretical inquiry into Daring Do’s potential response, but she didn’t need to. The impostor had talked about “feasting” on Dinky, her beloved filly. She didn’t know quite what that meant, but she was fairly certain it was very, very bad, and there was only one acceptable response a responsible mother could make to that.
The pegasus charged forward as fast as she could, letting loose the mightiest battle-cry she could muster as she flew headfirst into the impostor’s side, completely blindsiding it. She wasted no time as she began to pummel her adversary—after all, the safety of her foal was at stake. As Derpy’s hooves repeatedly pounded into her opponent’s body, they made all manner of satisfying noises: Biff! Pow! Zowie! Clack!
Hold on... Clack? The grey mare tried punching again: Clack! Clack-clack-clackity clack! This was odd; granted, Derpy had never actually been in a fight before, but she was fairly certain that punching a pony wasn’t supposed to make a “clack” noise.
“It’s called an exoskeleton,” came an annoyed voice from beneath the pegasus, who looked down and saw not her doppelgänger, but strange black thing that looked like a cross between a unicorn and a dragonfly, with holes in its limbs and wings.
Derpy got off of the creature as quickly as she could. “Oh, I’m sorry about that. Hey, have you seen a pony that looks just like me and sounds just like you around here? I think she... er... he... uh... it wants to hurt my filly.”
The creature stared back with its jaw agape for a few seconds before eventually responding: “Wow... and here I thought you were a just a spacey ditz—I never would have guessed that you were a complete moron.”
“Hey, that’s not nice.”
The creature responded with an irritated glare before attempting to show (rather than tell) the pegasus exactly what the current situation entailed. With a flash of green light, the creature suddenly transformed into the fake Derpy, then back to normal, then Derpy, then normal again.
It didn’t work quite as well as the shapeshifter had hoped. “Whoa! How’d you do that?”
“Why should I tell you?” the creature asked with a cruel smirk.
“What do you want with Dinky?”
“Huh? You mean that foal of yours? Nothing, really. She’s just going to keep me well-fed until I can make my move, that’s all.”
“Not if I have anything to say about it!”
“Hmm... well, in that respect, you’re right. If you manage to tell someone about me, the jig’s up.”
“Yeah! So, that means I win, right?”
“Well, perhaps you would... except we’re in the middle of a forest where ordinary ponies never travel, which means that if I dispose of you right now, you might never be found.”
“Oh... um, that’s bad, right?”
“For you? It’s very bad. For me? Not so much. Tell you what, I’ll be sporting and give you a ten-second head—”
Unfortunately for the creature, Derpy wasn’t in the mood to run, choosing instead to turn around and buck it square in the jaw, sending it reeling. She followed this up by jumping on its back, and spent the next minute grappling with the monstrosity in an effort to subdue it. The two tumbled out of the clearing and into the forest proper, rolling over bumpy roots and painful rocks as each tried to gain the upper hoof. When the creature abruptly yelped in pain after a particularly nasty landing on one of its fragile-looking wings, it almost seemed as though the walleyed mailmare would triumph, but this possibility was dashed after it punched Derpy on the muzzle, drawing blood—though not from a broken nose. Apparently, the edges of some of the holes in its limbs were sharp enough to cut through skin. It may have been a relatively mild laceration, but it was enough of a distraction to get the pegasus to lose her concentration, and she soon found herself staring up at her foe, who had pinned her wings down with its forelegs.
“Alright,” it said between heaving breaths. “I’m through playing around. You see these fangs?” it asked, apparently referring to the unusually large canines that protruded from its upper lip. “They’re a lot sharper than my hole-edges, and they way do more damage than that papercut on your snout. All I have to do now is poke them into a major artery, and you’ll bleed out in minutes. It’ll be painless—well, at least compared to what I could do to you, anyway. I just have to toss your body into one of the gorges around here, and that should be the last of my problems.”
Oh, no! Derpy thought to herself. This is bad. This is really, really bad. I’m never going to see Dinky again! What do I do? What do I do?!
“Oh, you have got to be kidding me!” exclaimed an exasperated voice from about the creature’s head. Derpy looked in the general direction of the voice and saw none other than Daring Do, hovering over her in all her translucent glory. “You’re really going to panic now?”
“But... I don’t have any idea what you’d do! You’ve never fought a unicorn-cockroach in any of your novels before!”
The aforementioned cockroach stared at its quarry with a puzzled look on its face. “Novels? What in Tartarus are you talking about?”
Daring, however, paid this no mind. “You’re thinking too hard about this, Derpy.”
“Really? Most ponies say I don’t think enough.”
“Are you talking to someone?” the creature asked, craning its neck to see the the other participant in the apparent conversation.
“Just ignore that,” the treasure hunter told Derpy, knowing that any attempts to answer the question would just result in more confusion. “Look, I may not have fought anything like this thing before, but I have been in plenty of situations where it’s looked like I had no chance of getting out alive. What do I do every time?”
“I’m not sure...”
“Huh? You’re not sure if you’re talking to someone?” Derpy’s assailant asked with more than a hint of irritation in its voice.
Daring continued, “I stay calm and I don’t give up.”
“Oh... okay, I think I can do that.”
The creature, meanwhile, had been getting more and more confused as the conversation had gone one. “You know what? I was wrong; you aren’t a moron, you’re just flat-out crazy!”
Derpy ignored this particular barb, as getting worked up over an insult flew in the face of the “stay calm” strategy. Okay, you can do this, she thought to herself. Daring’s never been pinned down by a creepy black bug-pony before... but she has been pinned down! This single jolt of inspiration, mixed with the adrenaline boost that naturally came from tangling with a creature who’d bluntly told her that it wanted to kill her, caused the metaphorical gears in the mailmare’s head to turn much, much faster than anypony would have thought possible. Suddenly, she remembered a pivotal scene from Daring Do and the Chariot of Tirek, when the treasure hunter had had her wings pinned beneath the claws of a cultist-turned-dragon. Despite the differences between this and her current predicament, the basic principle was still the same: in order to have any hope of surviving, Derpy need to get the bad guy off of her.
As the creature leaned over her, flashing its fangs towards her exposed neck, the pegasus pulled her rear legs inward, positioned them directly underneath her foe’s body, and bucked upwards as hard as she could. The shapeshifter catapulted over her head and ended up landing in a dark green bush, which bought Derpy enough time to get back on her hooves. Unfortunately, that was all the time it could afford, as the creature quickly recovered as well—and it was not happy with this development.
“Okay, you know what? Screw merciful deaths. I’m going to annihilate you, slowly, and you will know the meaning of pain!” The creature punctuated this declaration with a dramatic stomp of its hoof into the ground. However, its attempt to follow this up with an even more intimidating clarification was abruptly cut short by a shrill cry from the bushes. Apparently, the hoof-stomp had landed square on the tail of some now-annoyed beastie, which rose from the undergrowth, revealing an avian head on a reptilian body: a cockatrice.
The shapeshifter stared at the newcomer in stunned silence—apparently, it had never seen anything like this before. This, as it turned out, was a very grave mistake, since the irate cockatrice took it upon itself to mete out justice the only way it knew: petrification. By the time the bug-pony even knew that something was wrong, it was too late. Within seconds, the insectoid had transformed into a solid block of limestone.
The cockatrice now moved its attention to the pegasus who had been watching the whole scene with a mixture of confusion and awe. It attempted to repeat its actions, and strode up to the mailmare to look her square in the eyes, only to learn that looking Derpy Hooves square in the eyes was a virtual impossibility—indeed, one would be hard-pressed to look her trapezoid in the eyes. “Is there something on my face, Mr. Chicken-Snake?” the mare asked as the cockatrice repeatedly attempted to line up its pupils with hers. After several minutes, the monster sighed in disappointment, and wandered back into the undergrowth of Everfree.
Derpy looked over at the unicorn-cockroach-statue, which hadn’t moved at all since its petrification. She fluttered over to it and cautiously tapped it with her hoof. When nothing happened, she tried talking to it: “Hey, are you alright?” Still nothing.
“Um... did I just win?”
“It sure looks that way,” replied Daring Do, who was floating behind the pegasus with a huge grin on her face.
“Neat! So, um... what would you do now?”
“Well, that would probably depend on the plot of the individual novel, but if I were in your horseshoes, I’d probably go home, hug my daughter...”
“Yeah?” Derpy asked with a hopeful tone in her voice.
Daring smirked. “...and eat about a dozen muffins.”
“Woohoo! Muffin time!”
——————————
“And he hasn’t reported back for a month?”
“No, my Queen,” replied the Changeling who had drawn the short straw and been forced to deliver the bad news. “We believe that the scout was lost in a place the ponies call ‘Everfree forest,’ which is evidently home to all manner of ravenous beasts.”
Chrysalis expelled a burst of curses in a long-forgotten tongue. This was not how the plan was supposed to go. “How long have you known of this?”
“Er... well.. we thought he might have been blending in so well that he didn’t have time to report back...”
The Changeling Queen, however, would have none of this line of reasoning, as she stomped about the throne room of the Hive, ranting and raving about her new misfortunes. “This is a disaster! All of our planning is now in jeopardy!”
“Um... is it really that important to have one of us mimicking Celestia’s student?”
“That pony isn’t just Celestia’s student. Mi Amore Cadenza was her foalsitter. She’s one of the few ponies who might know her well enough be able to see through my disguise, and because she’s also Shining Armor’s sister, she’ll have to attend the wedding, or those ponies will get suspicious!”
“Well, the actual wedding isn’t for a while, right? I mean, Shining Armor hasn’t even proposed yet.”
“He’s already purchased the engagement ring. It’s just a matter of time.”
“But still, we can send in another scout.”
“Not likely. Not only will it take time to find another ideal pony to imitate, but the first pony could very well be paranoid about shapeshifters now. The only silver lining is the fact that the first scout chose a pony already known for strange behavior, so she’ll probably be ignored if she raises a warning, but we can’t count on that.” Chrysalis sighed; her intricate plan was on the verge of collapsing before it even had a chance to get off the ground.
The Changeling Queen walked back to her throne, sat down, and took a few deep breaths. Within a few seconds, inspiration struck: “Unless... unless...”
“Unless what, my Queen?” asked her minion, who was desperately hoping to avoid becoming a scapegoat.
“The plan is ruined, unless Twilight Sparkle is kept in the dark about the wedding. If I replace Cadenza soon after she accepts the proposal, we can leak the rumor about a threat to Canterlot earlier than planned. Between his duties and my interference, he’ll be far too busy to let his sister know what’s going on until it’s too late for her to do anything about it!” The Queen was smiling now as her plan suddenly reformed itself. “Yes... this can work. In fact, with more time to bring Shining Armor under my influence, it might even be more likely to work.” Chrysalis reared her head back and let out a long, satisfying cackle which lasted nearly a minute before she settled down with renewed confidence in her scheme.
“This is going to be... perfect.”