//------------------------------// // 34. Temple Crashers // Story: Spider in Equestria // by DarkSpider //------------------------------// “Gotta say, this looks nice,” Screwball said, examining my hotel room as I nodded. We just arrived at the hotel we were going to spend the night in for the Daring Do convention. After talking to the receptionist, we each got ourselves separate rooms, with Rainbow currently changing in hers and Screwball checking out mine. I placed my bag on the bed and opened it, to which I was immediately hugged by Brianna jumping out of the bag. After patting her head, I moved her so she was hanging on my back. “So what are we gonna do?” Screwball asked. I sighed. “Honestly? Rather stick to baseline.” Screwball frowned. “What do you mean?” “I don't want to change anything. At least...not yet.” “Then why did you agree to come here?” I shrugged. “It's preferable over going to Griffonstone.” Screwball sighed. “Can't argue with that. But don't you think Rainbow will be hurt that you won't spend any time with her today?” “She'll be too busy having fun with Quibble to notice that. Then that thing with Daring.” Before she could respond, the door knocked. When I gave the knocker permission to come in, it was revealed to be Rainbow, who was wearing a short lime green jacket with a pocket on the right breast area with the collar and the wrists of the jacket being a darker shade of green, a pair of light brown shorts, and a beige explorer's hat resting on her head, the entire outfit fitting her form really well. When I realized that, I felt that strange feeling in my chest again as well as my face warming up. A moment later, I heard a yip and Bri immediately hugged Rainbow with a large smile on her face, to which Rainbow returned with a smile. “Hey Rainbow,” Screwball greeted. “Nice outfit. I'm almost tempted to change your colors to actually look like Daring.” Rainbow shook her head. “Nah, I'm good. So what do you think Dark?” After clearing my throat to calm my chest, I said, “You look pretty good Dash.” Rainbow gave me a soft smile to that and I noticed her wings ruffled a bit behind her. “So, you guys ready?” I nodded before looking at our pink companion. “You?” She nodded. Before I can do anything else, I heard a snap and in a flash of light, we were in a completely different room. Looking around, I noticed it was a large room with with a bunch of vendors and merchandise of Daring Do everywhere. “Screwball?” I said, slightly annoyed about the surprise teleport. “I figured I'd save us some time.” I sighed and shook my head before grabbing Bri from Rainbow and placing her back on my shoulders. “Well let's go,” I said, happy that I kept my cover on while in my room. Rainbow nodded and began walking, with the rest of us not far behind. After a few moments, Rainbow completely stopped. Stepping forward to look at her, I saw a smile on her face that could actually give Pinkie a run for her bits. She then put her hands on her face and whispered, “So excited…” before looking around her at the various activities like a kid at a candy store. “I feel like she had this exact same face in some WonderBolt shows in the past,” Screwball whispered to me. I simply chuckled and continued following Rainbow, looking around the convention myself. A few more moments later, we were approached by a stallion offering us an “adventu-cation” to live the Daring Do experience. Rainbow gently pushed him aside and said, “No thanks, did that already.” “And trust me when I say dude, I've had enough excitement in my life that I'm pretty sure I'd be bored by your little adventure,” I told him, to which he rose his eyebrow in confusion before shrugging and moving on. Looking back at Rainbow, I saw that she was standing a few feet away in front of a replica to a temple trap from the books, with a brown slightly pudgy earth pony stallion standing next to her, wearing an almost exact replica of her outfit with cardboard wings on his back. After they noticed each other, they appeared to hit it off rather well, even taking off their hats to talk about the accuracy of their costumes. 'And so it begins,’ I thought with a sigh before approaching the pair. “I see you made a friend.” Rainbow turned to me. “Oh, Dark. This is Quibble Pants. He's a fan of Daring Do too!” “I'd never have guess,” I sarcastically comment before offering my hand to him. “Name's Dark. The filly here is my friend Screwball.” Screwball waved to him in response. “Pleasure to meet you,” Quibble said, shaking my hand. “Though, what's with your outfit? I don't know any character dressed like that.” I blinked before shaking my head. “Oh no no no. This isn't some costume. This is my normal outfit. I'm...not comfortable showing my face when in public.” Quibble shrugged. “Fair enough.” He then looked at Screwball and widened his eyes. “Um...are you okay?” Screwball frowned in response. “It's the eyes, isn't it.” “Kinda, yeah.” Screwball rolled her eyes before snapping her fingers and suddenly she was wearing a pair of sunglasses that resemble Vinyl's, but pink instead of purple. Quibble just stared at her and said, “H-how did you do that?” “Tell you what, I'll tell you at the end of the day before we return to our hotel rooms,” Screwball said with a shrug. “Okay…?” “If you want to take your mind off it, then I'd suggest you guys just continue enjoying the convention.” “Yeah,” I said, before getting an idea. “Say, how about we split up?” “Why?” Quibble asked. “So we don't slow each other down. How about you and Rainbow go off and explore everything and Screwball and I can just browse and we meet at the food court later.” “You sure Dark?” Rainbow asked, looking unsure. I nodded. “Yeah. The two of us aren't nearly as big as fans as you guys and you clearly wanna see everything so we'd slow you down.” After some hesitation, she sighed. “Okay. Come on Quibble.” With that, the 2 of them going off to explore the convention. When they were out of earshot, Screwball said, “Not a bad plan, for something you literally just came up with.” I sighed. “I thought of it when I remembered the other convention. It's why Cece and I weren't with our mom at the time.” “Oh. Right…” I patted her shoulder. “Come on. It'll be a little while til they have their fight. Might as well check out a few things while we wait for that.” “Sure.” The three of us wandered around the convention for the better part of two hours. Overall it was decent, but I just couldn't stop thinking about the event that brought me to Equestria. Doesn't help that that was my only experience in a convention before. 'Guess this is why Cece declined,’ I thought to myself as the two of us headed to the food court. “I still can't believe those pillows are a thing…” Screwball muttered with a small blush as she took a blindfold off of Bri. “Seriously, there are foals here.” “Yeah, I got no answer to that,” I replied. A few moments later, I saw Rainbow heading to the exit not too far from us and no longer wearing her hat before taking off at top speed to the lobby. “Huh. Looks like we missed the fight.” I nodded as we headed to the lobby to follow Rainbow. When we reached her, she was standing in front of the front desk, rather annoyed. “Hey Tito?” Screwball said. “You notice something off about Rainbow?” “What do you mean?” “Shouldn't her arms be steaming if she's mad?” I blinked as I looked at Rainbow and noticed that her arms weren't steaming at all, despite the fact that I know she's rather mad at the moment. “You have a point…” I muttered before I noticed a figure walking cautiously towards Rainbow. The mysterious pony’s entire form was hidden behind a rather large purple poncho, with a grey hat covering her head, a white ribbon was tied onto said hat, and wearing glasses. It was pretty easy to figure out just who the “mysterious” pony. Deciding to make my presence known, I walked up towards the front desk, and as I got closer, I started to hear their conversation. “I gotta talk to you! It’s an emergency!” Rainbow said, clasping her hands together, her eyes were wide as she bent closer to the other pony. The pale brown pony stepped back a bit before narrowing in thought at Rainbow Dash’s words. Deciding to look around a bit, the pony turned her head towards the right and immediately spotted me and Screwball walking towards them, her eyes narrowed when she spotted us and immediately tensed up, as if waiting for us to make a move. Screwball decided to take over. “Hiya,” she said with a wave. The cloaked pony looked back and forth for a second before turning her attention back towards us. Giving us a small smile, she greeted us. “Hello there. Not to sound rude or anything, but is there something I can help you with?” She was polite, but it was clear to me that she was still tense, and ready to bolt at a moments notice. “A.K, these are my friends Dark and Screwball,” Rainbow said, gesturing to the two of us. “And I believe you two know who this is.” I nodded. “A. K. Yearling. Author of Daring Do. Yes, fairly aware.” She relaxed a bit when Rainbow introduced us, but when she noticed Bri, she tilted her head in confusion. “Um… I hope you don’t mind me asking, but… what is that on your shoulder? It's just I’ve never seen anything like it.” Before I could answer, Rainbow said, “Oh, that's Dark's daughter Brianna.” “Daughter?” Yearling looked a bit more confused, turning back to look a Bri again. Smiling softly, she waved at the small pokemon, “I guess you decided to adopt then… though I hope you don’t mind me asking, what species is she? She looks a bit like a jackal.” “Pretty much,” I said as Bri happily waved back. “But much more special and much stronger than any jackal you'd seen.” Screwball cleared her throat. “I'm sorry to interrupt, but weren't you two talking about something before we came?” Yearling’s eyes widen a bit at the reminder, “Right! Um… thank you!” She looked back at Rainbow and tried to whisper to her, “Um hey, didn’t you say there was some kind of emergency that you need to talk to me about?” She said, trying her best to not be heard. “Oh yeah!” Dash replied. “Great you remember, we should go now!” She grabbed Rainbow’s arm, and quickly turned towards us. “It was nice meeting you, but we gotta go now, I’ll be sure to leave your autographs with Rainbow Dash!” She declared before speeding off towards the hotel rooms, pulling Rainbow behind her. I blinked in confusion for a moment. “Huh. That went well.” I looked at Screwball. “So what do you wanna do now?” She rubbed her chin in thought for a few seconds. “I think I'll just be in my room for a bit, catch up on some reading,” she said, pulling out a book before teleporting away in a puff of pink smoke. I sighed. “Guess it's just you and me, huh Bri?” I asked, to which I got a simple yip as a reply. With a shrug, I went to the food court and sat down before placing Bri on my lap. Reaching into my pocket, I pulled out a chocolate chip cookie and gave it to Bri, who grabbed it and began eating it with a large smile on her face. “Nice pet,” I heard someone say. Turning around, I saw Quibble standing there without those wings. “She's not my pet,” I said simply, petting her nonetheless. “So how are you?” He sighed as he sat across from me. “Pretty annoyed. Had a fight with Rainbow earlier.” “About?” “She didn't like that I hate all the books after the original trilogy.” “And why do you?” “They're ridiculous! I mean, so many things in them are just so unrealistic.” “Unrealistic? You do know where you are, right?” “Um, yeah. A Daring Do convention.” “Not that. You're in Equestria. A country that has crazy stuff happen on a regular basis. Like a godlike being who can rewrite reality with a thought, or a centaur that can steal the magic of everypony. So I don't see how you can find something “unrealistic”. You want unrealistic, try an alien from another dimension showing up out of nowhere because it bought something at a convention.” He chuckled at that. “Yeah, that's insane.” He then blinked. “You know, you're surprisingly calm about this. More so than Rainbow at least. She got completely hostile when she learned that. Even more than that spider stuff.” That caught my attention, as well as Bri if her ears perking up was any indication. “Spider stuff?” “Yeah. During our time together, she talked about some story she heard about a stallion who has spider powers and fought some demon.” I blinked in confusion. “I'm sorry, what?” “I know! How insane is that? And she got so touchy when I talked about how unbelievable that is. I mean, how will you react if somepony told you something that sounds like the plot of a comic book as if it really happened?” I looked at Bri for a moment before saying, “Depends. But yeah, that sounds crazy.” “Yeah.” After a moment, he sighed. “Sorry about that. Just...that is so stupid.” “Guessing you don't live in Manehatten.” He shook his head. “Fillydelphia. Why?” “No reason.” He shrugged and got up. “Well, I'm gonna check out if there's anything else to buy before A. K. Yearling comes and I can ask her about that. Nice talking with you.” With that, he left. I chuckled to myself. “I wonder what is so crazy in the later books that he finds those events unrealistic compared to anything else in this world.” I stayed there for a few minutes with Bri until I was sure Rainbow and Quibble was taken. After that, I picked her up and looked for the exit they went to. It was after finding the exit that I felt my spider-sense start going off. I immediately turned to grab Bri, but I felt a somepony slam onto me. Their arms wrapped themselves around me to make sure I couldn’t move. Four other ponies ran into view, all of them earth pony stallions and wearing dark uniforms similar to the riot police gear on Earth, with their faces covered behind white masks and a baton in their hands. One of the four saw Bri and immediately grabbed her. “Wow,” one of them said before approaching me. “Can't believe it was that easy. Considering what we heard about you, “Spider”, I thought you'd put up more of a fight. No idea why the boss thinks you're a threat but hey, we get to get rid of some mutant ape and his little pet so I'm not complaining.” I didn't know what was going on, but I understood one thing. These guys knew who and what I was, and were planning to kill me and Brianna. That gave me all the reason I needed to let loose. I shoved my elbow into the guy who was holding me before pulling my head back to hit him in the face. After that I grabbed him from the chest and threw him at most of his buddies. A moment later I heard a yell. Turning to my right, I saw Bri biting on the arm of the guy who had her, with him trying to shake her off and his baton on the floor. After a few swings, she was sent flying, but I caught her with a web and pulled her towards myself before putting her down and crossing my arms, glaring at the group from behind my hood. “So you guys know who I am,” I said. “Then you really should've known that attacking me was a big mistake.” I then lifted a hand and grabbed at Link's token. A moment later, I was standing there, glaring and growling at them in my wolf form with them backing up in fear. Before any of them can snap out of it, I immediately jumped at the one who spoke and tackled him and sank my teeth in his arm. A few seconds later, one of his friends knocked me off. After standing back up, I grabbed at the stone again and jumped at him, kicking him in the face as soon as I turned back into a human, knocking him out. I looked to the reminding three guys still standing. “So who's next?” Clenching their batons, they all ran at me at once, which was probably the smartest thing they did since they attacked me. I jumped back and dodged their swings before webbing up the hands of two of and web pulling their feet, causing them to fall. Before I can deal with the third one however, Bri was suddenly covered in a white aura and in a sudden burst of speed, slammed her entire body onto the third pony’s stomach, causing him to fall backwards, clutching his stomach in pain. I blinked in surprise before shaking my head and picking up Bri. Once I was done putting her back on my shoulders, I looked back to where the guy I bit was but saw that he was no longer there. Just a trail of blood. 'Must've booked it while I was busy with his friends.’ “What are you?” I heard a voice said. When I looked towards the source, I saw Daring Do without her Yearling disguise standing there with wide eyes. “Oh,” I said, not expecting to see her. “Hi Daring. Um, these guys attacked me and I fought back.” “I saw. I was going to help out, but you looked like you had everything under control. But that leads back to my question. What are you?” I sighed. “Long story short, I'm a guy with spider powers, and a rock that lets me turn into a wolf. That's all you need to know. Now, shouldn't you be helping Rainbow? I believe she and some stallion was kidnapped by Caballeron.” “What?!” Daring shouting before flying off. After she was out of sight sight, I turned to head to back to the convention when I almost ran into Screwball. “Not bad,” she commented with a smile as she saw the bodies, no longer wearing those sunglasses from earlier. “Thanks. So what are you doing here?” “Well, I was thinking we change one small thing with the baseline. Something you won't mind.” “And what's that?” “Beat up the good doctor and his goons. Maybe show Quibble some of the skill the “spider guy” has.” I won't lie, the idea was tempting. But there was a small issue. “I don't know how to get to that temple.” Screwball smirked. “No, but you can find it with this.” She then pulled out a beige feather. “Took this from Daring when she was watching your fight.” “And what am I supposed to do with that?” “You follow her scent of course.” I opened my mouth for a moment before closing it again. After a moment of silence, I said, “I forgot I had that ability.” “Well now you remember. Now you might wanna be quick because I called for the cops during the fight and they'd be here any moment.” I sighed before grabbing the stone and transforming again with Bri still on my back. She held up the feather to my nose and I sniffed it. Once I was familiar with the smell, I started seeing a misty trail matching the feather's color. “Got it?” I nodded before tilting my head to my back. She got the message and got on me. When she was done, I immediately ran off, following the trail. After a few minutes, we made to a temple, with the trail leading straight to a wall. ‘Must've been a door that closed when Daring came through.’ After Screwball got off me, I changed back to my human form. And it was only then that I realized something. “Wait, couldn't you just teleport us here?” “Yeah. But I figured this will be more fun.” The very next moment she immediately tensed up, her eyes becoming glassy and unfocused. Worried, I walked up to her slowly and placed a hand on her shoulder. She jerked away from the contact, as if startled by it, raising her hands up to her face, she started rubbing her eyes. “Sorry. It's just that something feels...off about this place. Makes me feel weird. I don't know how to describe it better. And neither do any of the other two…” “Maybe you should head back to the hotel.” She shook her head. “No. There's something around here, and I'll find it. And hopefully stop this feeling. At the latest, I'll be back when you're done with those guys.” I nodded. “Can you take Bri with you?” “You sure?” She asked, confused. “Yeah. Just in case any of those guys get smart, I don't want her to get hurt from them.” She shrugged. “Okay. Come on Bri.” Bri gave me a quick hug before letting go of me and walking towards Screwball as they went off into the jungle. With a deep breath, I looked at the temple and jumped at the wall and climbed up it before I waited for those guys to show up. (Third Person POV) Screwball eyed the jungle trees in front of her as she could feel the source of the energy being deeper inside the jungle. The strange energy kept calling out to her, repeatedly telling her to come closer. Whenever she tried to get a glimpse of what exactly was calling her, she would get a splitting headache, and she couldn’t just skip ahead and see what it is. No, she had to physically reach out to it. Screwball sighed and started making her way inside the jungle, holding onto Bri’s paw to make sure they wouldn’t get seperated. Fortunately while she couldn’t exactly use her magic on the strange source, she still had access to her chaos magic and it was useful to scare away all the predators that were eyeing her and Bri. Screwball stopped suddenly, feeling the strange signature beating softly. Quickly scanning the area for the source, she frowned when couldn’t exactly pinpoint anything. She sighed and shook her head. Deciding to continue straight ahead, she continued walking with Bri closely following behind. Glancing at the small pokemon at her side, she smiled slightly as she reached over and picked her up. Bri tensed up at the sudden action, but soon relaxed when she was placed on top of Screwball’s shoulders. “There!” The pink filly exclaimed, “With you up there we can find this thing much easier now.” The Riolu smiled, her tail wagging happily as she pumped her small fist in the air. She felt the energy signature pulsating again. It felt like a heartbeat, and she felt herself becoming much calmer at the feeling of it. She stopped when she felt Bri’s small paw tap her head, looking up, she saw the Riolu point excitedly at one of the trees to the left of them. Following the direction of the paw, she gasped when she saw a brightly glowing light emitting from the knothole of an old withering tree. Walking up to the old tree, she felt the energy beating faster as did her heart. Taking a deep breath, she plunged her hand into the knothole, grabbed the strange energy source, and immediately pulled her arm out. Looking down at her glowing hand, she gasped when she saw what it was. The object emitting the energy source was a large emerald colored diamond, the gem was bigger than her whole hand. Rotating the gem around, she saw that the strange gem was a perfect cut diamond, however just calling it a diamond didn’t feel right to her. Shaking her head to clear her thoughts, she mentally reached out to the odd gem, trying to find out why it was calling to her and how it could block her magic. “It… feels like… dad..?” She whispered to herself, confused. Frowning, she tried to read the energy again. “No… not dad… its different… a bit weaker, but it could be stronger.” She glared at the object, trying to make sense of the diamond. “But how could it get stronger?” The gem was no longer glowing, and was no longer sending messages to her head. She sighed when she didn’t receive some sort of instruction or answer from the strange object, but did expect it.   Sighing, Screwball snapped her fingers, the gem her hand disappearing into her pocket dimension. “Well at least my magic affects it now.” Reaching over to pat the pokemon’s head, she smiled softly, “Come on Bri, we wasted enough time here.” Bri yipped happily, holding onto the filly’s beanie as they made their way out. (Dark's POV) I was perched on the wall of the temple, looking around at the jungle when I heard a male voice below me. “Come on! They couldn't have gotten far.” Looking down towards the voice, I saw an ashen furred earth pony stallion with a smooth black mane combed back, with grey streaks on his mane. He wore a plain white shirt and a pair of pale brown jeans, tied around his neck is a red and white polka dot handkerchief. With him was two other earth pony stallions, one with dark gray fur and an orange mane with sideburns, the other was a more pale gray and had a black mane with matching sunglasses. “Well, guess that's my cue,” I muttered before placing my hands on the wall and launching myself a few yards away and landing behind a few trees, my landing causing a few plants to rustle. “Wait, I heard something,” the stallion said. I stepped out of my spot and looked around, pretending to be lost. When I saw the trio, I said, “Oh, hi. Nice Dr Caballeron costume. Hey, I'm looking for a pegasus, maybe you seen her? She has red eyes, wearing a green jacket, some light brown shorts? Can't miss her.” Caballeron widened his eyes for a moment before smirking. “So, you're another friend of Daring Do? Guess we can just take you in order to convince her to hand over the treasure. Get him.” The one with the orange mane came at me lunged at me, to which I simply jumped over. “Wait, are you the real Caballeron?” I ask in false shock. “Wow. You're quite a disappointment.” “Well at least you aren't as thick headed as that other stalli-” he started before shaking his head and glaring at me. “Disappointment?!” I stepped to the side as the big guy tried to tackle me from behind, hitting the one with the glasses instead. With a shrug I said, “Well compared to a guy who can make demons and projectile swords and another guy who wore a magic proof suit that allowed him to shoot energy blasts, you're kind of a joke.” He growled at me. “Why you little-!” With that he lunged at me himself and was gonna punch me, but I simply caught his fist. I smiled from behind my scarf. This and the fight with Shocker just shows how much fun it is to get someone so mad that they stop thinking. I squeezed his fist, causing him to drop to one knee. With a bit of fear in his eyes, he said, “W-who are you?” I shrugged. “A demon to some, a hero to others. But if you must know, I'm the DarkSpider.” I then pulled back my free hand, loosened my grip on his fist, and punched him so hard that he was knocked back several yards and crashed into a tree, knocking out. After dusting off my gloves, I turned to his goons. “So you guys wanna have a go?” They looked at me with fear before running around me, grabbing the unconscious Caballeron, and ran as fast as they could away from me. I waited for a few moments before turning towards some bushes and saying, “Hope you guys enjoyed that.” A moment later, Daring, Rainbow, and Quibble stepped out, with the pegasi looking impressed and Quibble rather shocked. “Wha...why...how did you do that?” Quibble asked. “Nopony is that strong.” Deciding to simply tell him, I said, “Yeah, you know that spider guy Rainbow mentioned? That's me. Super strength is one of the powers I have. And before you ask, no I didn't fight an actual demon. Just a guy who can make fake ones.” “But you said that it was crazy that someone like that would exist.” I nodded. “I did. And it is. Never said it wasn't true though.” He opened his mouth before pausing, realizing I was right. Daring chuckled. “Well whatever you guys are talking about, that was pretty impressive kid. Now, I gotta make sure this little puppy gets to a museum,” she said, pulling out a small item. She then looked at us. “There's some stairs on the other side of the temple that lead out of the ravine. Once you take them, head west and you'll make it back to the hotel.” With that said, she then took off. I then turned to the other two. “So Quibble, now that you experienced a real life Daring Do adventure, or at least the climax of it, still wanna talk to Yearling about her books being unrealistic?” Quibble stood silent for a moment until his eyes widened. “Wait, you knew that Daring Do is real?” I shrugged. “Yeah. I knew long before I met Rainbow. Though today was my first day actually meeting her. But today went better than I expected, minor issues aside.” At that, Rainbow suddenly frowned. But before I can asked what was wrong, Screwball suddenly appeared with Bri on her shoulders. “We're back,” the filly proclaimed as Bri immediately hugged Rainbow. After looking around, Screwball frowned as she stomped the ground. “Dang it, I did missed the fight.” I chuckled. “Not really much of a fight Screwy. But glad to know you're okay. You find what you were looking for?” Screwball nodded. “Yeah. Some weird diamond or something. It's very familiar but I just can't remember where I seen it before.” I shrugged. “Give it time, I'm sure you'll be able to figure it out.” She nodded again before looking at all of us. “So guess we're heading back to the hotel?” “Yeah.” As Screwball was about to snap her fingers, Rainbow stopped her. “Wait.” When we looked at her in confusion, she said, “Screwball, can you and Quibble go right now? Without teleporting I mean. We'll catch up with you.” Screwball shrugged. “Okay then. Come on Quibble. Guess I can explain how I can do what I do while we walk.” “That will be appreciated,” Quibble muttered before going over to follow her. Once they were gone I looked at Rainbow, who was frowning at me with her arms crossed. “So...what do you-” “We need to talk,” she said. I blinked for a moment. With a shrug, I took off my hood and lowered my scarf. “About what?” “You knew all of this was gonna happen, didn't you? From that show of yours?” After some thinking, I decided to just tell her the truth. “Yes, I did. All the important stuff from you going to the convention, to meeting Quibble, all the way to now.” “And you didn't do anything?” “I don't wanna mess up the timeline.” She paused for a moment. After taking a deep breath, she asked, “Do I have powers there?” “What?” “In that show. Am I a Conduit in it?” “No…” “Does Screwball exist in it?” “Not exactly.” “Do you exist in it?” “No. Of course not.” “Then isn't the timeline already changed? You just being here already shows that things are different now.” I blinked in surprise. “You...got a point there…” “And if you didn't wanna change anything, why did you even accept my invitation to come?” “Honestly? It's nicer than Griffonstone. That and I figured it be nice spending at least some time with you.” After taking another deep breath, Rainbow looked at me. “I want you to promise me something.” “What?” “I want you to promise that you'd stop worrying about this whole nonsense about not changing the timeline.” “Rainbow-” “Please?” After some hesitation, I sighed. “Fine. I promise, I would stop focusing on keeping everything the same as the show.” She seemed to relax with that. “Sorry. It's just that that's kinda stupid at this point.” “True…” I then realized a small detail. “Wait, speaking of changes, why didn't you use your powers to deal with those guys?” She looked away in embarrassment. “I'm out of fuel.” “Wait, seriously?” “Yeah yeah, I know. Stupid that I can be out of fuel when I just need water, but I've been so excited about today that I completely forgot to refuel. What with the convention, seeing Daring again, hanging out with you...” After that, we both stood silent for what felt like hours, but was likely just a few minutes. When I was about to suggest that we leave, I felt a tug at my leg. Looking down, I saw Bri looking at me, the whole talk with Rainbow causing me to not even realize she was still here. When I was about to pick her up however, she put a paw into one of my pockets and pulled out a small box. “Oh, right. Forgot I had this…” I said as I grabbed the box. “What's that?” Rainbow asked. “A late birthday present I got for you. Ordered it a little while ago and it was finally finished yesterday. I planned to give it to you today actually.” With a shrug, I walked up to her and gave her the box. “I know this is overdue, but happy birthday Rainbow Dash.” She took the box and looked at it for a few moments before opening it. Inside it was a silver necklace with a pendant in the same shape and colors as her cutie mark. I shrugged and said, “I know it isn't very original, but I couldn't think of anything better and wanted to get you something. I'd understand if you didn't-” The next thing I knew, she immediately hugged me and even nuzzled me, immediately shutting me up. For some reason, that action caused my chest to feel like it exploded. “I love it,” she said simply. After I snapped out of my shock, both of the hug and the feeling in my chest, I returned the hug. A few moments later, we separated and looked at each other in the eye. But after a few seconds of that, Rainbow quickly looked away with her cheeks turning a soft shade of pink as she quickly backs away. “Um, s-sorry about that,” she said. “B-but yeah, I love the present. Thanks Tito.” I immediately did a double take when I heard that last word. “What did you call me?” “Tito. Why?” “Just… just surprised you called me that.” “Well it's your name. And I figured it's about time I start using it.” After that, she took the necklace out of the box and putting it on. “How does it look?” I smiled. “You look great,” I told her, feeling my face heat up as I say that. She smiled back. “So...should we go after the others?” “Um...you go, and take Bri. I...need to think about something. I'll catch up.” “Okay. Come on squirt,” she said as she picked up Brianna and flew off. When they were out of sight, I sighed to myself. “What is wrong with me?” I asked as I began to pace near the temple. I was getting annoyed about all the strange feelings I've been having the last few weeks. “I can't stop thinking about Rainbow, just having her smile at me has me feel extremely happy, that hug had me feel crazy for some reason despite being hugged multiple times before, and with her gone I'm starting to feel empty. Seriously, saying this out loud makes all this sound...like…” I widened my eyes as I realized what has been going on before I buried my face into both of my hands. “I'm in love with Rainbow Dash,” I muttered, my voice muffled by my hands. After lifting my face up, I took a deep breath. “I'm in love with my best friend. Wow, how stupid am I to not even figure that out sooner.” I said as I clenched my fist and ended up punching the temple in frustration, my fist going right through the wall. The next thing I knew, a large part of the wall crumbled to pieces and I ended up staring face to face with a large reptilian creature that gave me a hungry grin. Before it can attack however, I immediately jumped over it and just crawled up the temple, not bothering to deal with that thing at the moment since I had no actual reason to fight this time. Once I was sure it couldn't get me, I stood up and started pacing on the wall as I went back to my previous thoughts. “I'm in love with Rainbow,” I muttered, facepalming. “I am never gonna hear the end of it if Delsin or Aurora find out. Now what?” I asked myself. After a few moments of thinking in silence I shrugged. “Nothing. She's still the same Dash I know and things aren't any different between us. I just now know why I've been feeling funny. No point in messing with something that's not broken.” With that decided, I put on my cover, took a deep breath, then started running to the stairs Daring mentioned, jumping off the temple when I reached the end. After landing, I continued running to catch up with the others, deciding to keep my realisation to myself.