//------------------------------// // Chapter 3: Beauty // Story: Conventional Approach // by Knox Locke //------------------------------// [Daring's Perspective] "Great seein' ya, Rainbows!" continued the stranger, apparently named Zeph. 'What a strange name,' she thought to herself. 'Sounds more like a nickname.' "You, too..." she said slowly, not wanting to seem rude but still a little on edge from this strange encounter. "And you know what rainbows?" Zeph said. Daring sighed. Apparently this "Zeph" would be calling her Rainbows indefinitely. 'There are way worse things to be called,' her brain decided to mention. Daring deemed this a fair point and tried not to let the unexpected nickname bother her. "What?" she finally said. "You're as beautiful as ever," he said. "W-what?" she nearly yelled. She felt a warmth spreading in her cheeks. Beautiful? Had somepony really just called her beautiful? As Daring Do, ponies usually described her as awesome, epic, adventurous, even insane. Meanwhile, words used to describe A.K. Yearling were usually along the lines of reclusive or mysterious. Daring couldn't even remember the last time anypony had called her beautiful. She could feel the redness in her cheeks as she quickly turned away from her uninvited "friend." 'No,' she thought to herself. 'Get a hold of yourself, Daring. Beautiful is just another word, like all the others.' "Rainbows?" asked Zeph. "You OK?" Daring turned back to face her self-proclaimed friend and scoffed. "And what makes me so beautiful?" she asked with a bit of venom in her voice. Looking down at herself, she saw she still had twigs and dirt from her recent adventures stuck to her outfit and in her coat. "Especially right now." she added. [Zephyr's Perspective] What kind of question was that? Rainbows should already know she's beautiful. He's only told her a hundred times! Why would she ask "why?" Despite his confusion, he once again looked over Rainbow, taking in the similarities and differences between her appearance right now and her usual appearance. The biggest difference was the colors of the mane. "Well, let's see here..." 'Wow,' he thought while looking closer at the mane. 'Rainbows did an amazing dye job.' The current color palette was beautiful in its own right. Much like her usual colors, the segmentation between the colors wasn't nearly as distinct as it looked from far away. When you focused on the space between two segments, you could see a gradient effect. A small section of the mane transitions from the shade of the first segment to another shade, than through several more shades before reaching the shade of the next segment. The effect keeps the mane's coloration from looking unnatural. Having given her current appearance one more once-over, he began to explain exactly what made the mare in front of him beautiful. [Daring's Perspective] "Well, let's see here..." Zeph said, glancing over Daring's appearance once more before continuing. "Your manestyle does a wonderful job displaying your personality. It has that tough girl, ready-for-action type look. Also, it works very well with the way you style your tail. Then, we've got colors. Right now, this gradient of grays has an elegant feel to it, with an almost calming effect, and there are so many shades in it! Sure, if you look at your mane, you can see distinct segments between the colors, but if you look closer you'll see that there are stands of several different shades mixing together to get that effect. Segmentation like that doesn't just occur without slight variation after all. There must be at least eight or nine shades hidden in between these segments of your mane's colors. Add in the fact that there's six distinct segments of color in your mane..." He paused for a long moment, apparently struggling with the math. "There must be... at least, like, fifty shades of gray in your mane!" Daring just stood there, listening to a stallion she didn't even know explain exactly why she was physically attractive. In all honesty, the stallion in front of her wasn't ugly, but she didn't find him very attractive either. His personality seemed somewhat grating as well, and he didn't seem all that bright, but... 'but he thinks you're beautiful,' her brain finished for her. 'He can even tell you exactly why.' Zeph had moved on to why Daring's golden coat melded so well with her mane when Daring felt a sharp pain in her back. She was quickly pinned to the ground. 'Dang it!' Daring's brain reprimanded her as Caballeron's goon tied her legs together. 'Why weren't you looking out for these guys?' 'Why weren't you looking out for them?' she thought back, so thrown off by the day's events that she didn't instantly realize she was retorting against herself. [Zephyr's Perspective] "Hey, what are you doing?" yelled Zephyr as he tried to remove a much larger stallion from Rainbow's back. The large thug struck him in the side, sending him flying about a foot into a wooden convention stall. When Zephyr recollected his thoughts, he frantically looked around, but Rainbow and her assailants had disappeared into the crowd.