My World Is Empty Without You

by McPoodle


Chapter 2C

It was a nondescript diner, far longer than it was wide, with powder blue walls and floor accents. The lights were, uncharacteristically, the color of sunlight.

Just like all the lighting has been, Rainbow thought.

The outer wall was missing, and nopony walked on the sidewalk outside it. Giving Director Fluttershy the perfect view of its contents from a safe distance away.

Rainbow decided to leave the bit about the torture out of her explanation, other than to show off her non-functioning wings.

“It’s like this,” Daring began. “There’s a magical artifact called the Staff of Sameness. It was designed to make crazy animals less crazy. I was hired to retrieve it for the Equestrian government. But too late I found out that it could be changed into something else: a way to remove the cutie marks from 99% of all ponies in Equestria with a single blast.”

Twilight was flabbergasted. “What would that even do? Would we even be ponies after something like that?”

“Oh, we’d be ponies, but we’d all be the same, dropped to the same level in everything. No earth pony would be stronger than the weakest earth pony before the Staff was used on them. No pegasus could fly faster or higher than the worst pegasus. And so on.”

“I was the pony in charge,” Mauve admitted. “The one who made the conversion. We built a magic-proof bunker, deep underground. A group of unicorns hoof-picked by Oars in Wells would go in there, while a dupe disguised as Oars would use the Staff. That group would then emerge as the absolute rulers of the planet.”

“What about the Princesses?” asked Pinkamena.

“The Staff would affect them as well.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Vinyl interjected. “What would happen to the sun, moon and stars? Wouldn’t that spell the end of the world right there?”

“No, because seven hundred years ago, Princess Celestia commissioned the creation of the Orrery,” Twilight explained. “It’s an artifact that can take over for Celestia and Luna’s roles if they were ever incapacitated. It does require a large amount of unicorn magic to operate.”

“Where did you hear that from?” Vinyl asked incredulously.

“Well it’s a state secret, but the Bearers…I mean, that is to say…I-seduced-Twilight-Sparkle.” Her cheeks turned bright red as she covered her mouth with her hooves.

Spike struck his forehead with a claw with a resounding ‘slap!’

Daring meanwhile let out a raucous laugh.

The others just stared incredulously at Twilight.

With a frown, Fluttershy got out her bottle of correcting fluid.

Leave it in! Leave it in!” Angel exclaimed between bursts of laughter.

With a roll of her eyes, Fluttershy replaced the bottle.

Applejack took the moment of everypony’s recovery to step forward and confront Mauve. “So, you’re admitting you’re the villain. Why should we believe a word you say? Why shouldn’t we tie you up right now?”

“You probably should!” Mauve exclaimed. “There’s this big…hole…in my head that keeps me from explaining myself! On one side, I’m this cold-blooded monster who wants to enslave every single pony, including the Princesses! And on the other, I’m…this! The only victim so far of the Staff of Sameness.”

Daring put a comforting hoof around Mauve’s shoulders. “I think she did it to herself,” she told the others. “I think, like me, she was given a goal so fascinating that she never stopped to see the consequences until it was too late. I think she fought back, tried to destroy the Staff, and that caused it to accidentally go off on her and only her. In any case, I think she genuinely wants to fix this. What do you think, Cricket?”

Applejack blinked when everypony suddenly looked her way. “Oh, right. Well, if things work the same way here as they do…back home…then I’d say she’s telling the truth.”

“Not necessarily,” added Vinyl, her voice distant.

Well I suppose it was inevitable that the author would eventually get around to feeding me with lines, Vinyl mused, inwardly seething.

“As a one-time member of the Equestrian Secret Service, I have access to some secrets of my own. Including the fact that the government was seriously considering carrying out a project confiscated from the griffons hundreds of years ago: Project Nightshade.”

“And so the air is shrouded by a pall, because that doesn’t sound good at all,” Pinkamena quipped.

“Project Nightshade is a combination of powerful drugs, hypnosis, and mind-altering spells, with the goal of creating in the victim a new personality. One that is absolutely loyal to the caster. Once this is done, the new personality is hidden away in the back of the victim’s mind, until they hear a pre-selected code phrase, which causes that fake personality to take over. The Secret Service proposed using it on our dragon prisoners, but Princess Celestia refused.”

Pinkamena’s jaw dropped. “That’s…that’s just pure evil!For a moment, she tried valiantly to resist the urge to rhyme, but then she gave in with the deliberately-worst line that fit the requirement: “E-e-e-evil!”

“And it doesn’t even apply here!” Twilight exclaimed, pointing at Mauve. “…I’m pointing at Mauve,” she added as she remembered that Vinyl couldn’t see her gesture.

“Sure, it does,” Vinyl replied. “You just flip the idea on its head: you take evil Mauve Shadow, and instead of giving her a fake evil personality, you give her a fake good personality. You tell her the code-word, and now she’s good and 100% believes what she’s saying. But you also set up a second code word to put her evil original personality back in control.”

Everyone looked suspiciously at Mauve, who responded by burying her head in her hooves.

“I…I don’t know!” she wailed into the table. “If you’re right, how would I know? I already have holes in my memory, so I couldn’t look for inconsistencies. You have no reason to trust me.”

Twilight reached over to comfort Mauve. “But we’ll do it anyway.”

Why?” Mauve wailed.

“Because it doesn’t only have to be you,” said Pinkamena. “In a war, anypony could come under ‘review’. Once they erase the memory, there’s no way to tell who is trustworthy.”

“So, we have no choice but to trust in each other,” Twilight concluded.

“I think that logic just broke my brain,” Spike added. “With that out of the way, what can we do about the Staff in the next eight hours?”

Daring and Mauve then told the others about the Cruciform.

The group paused at this point as the waitress gave them their bill, only to receive the precisely-calculated payment from Twilight Sparkle. She walked away with an incredulous shake of her head.

Vinyl waited until the waitress was far enough away to finally speak up. “So, is she gone yet?”

Applejack pointed at the waitress in confusion.

That pony watches us still,” Pinkamena snorted in disgust. “Despite the tedium before the bill!” A rumble erupted from her midsection, and she poked at it experimentally.

“But she wasn’t…?” Applejack tried to ask.

“In all our adventures, this is surely a first,” Pinkamena announced, getting up. “Plan without me; I must go before I burst.”

“Where are you going?” Twilight asked in disbelief, then watched as Pinkamena disappeared into the mare’s room. “Huh,” she remarked. “That is a first. OK, planning time. Vinyl, you first.”

Vinyl turned her ears away from the restroom doors. “What was that?” She caught on to the expectant silence. “OK, let’s get through the obvious: Daring, you were one of the toughest of all street fighters when you were just a foal.”

“I was? AWESO...I mean, that’s cool.”

“So, if any of us suddenly turn evil, feel free to knock us out.”

Twilight tried to stand up. “But Vinyl, that would mean whoever that is…”

“...Would be kicked off of the mission. And at worst, for a few minutes afterwards.”

By “mission”, of course, Vinyl was referring to the dream they were currently in.

Suddenly, the sound of Pinkamena’s voice burst out from inside the bathroom. “OH, COME ON!” she exclaimed. The following rhyme—almost certainly obscene—was too faint to hear.

The others waited as the bathroom’s sink was then used, followed by the paper towel dispenser.

Finally, Pinkamena emerged from the mare’s room with a loud bang of the opening door. She pointed back wordlessly at the restroom, engaging it in a minute-long staring contest.

Her friends shared looks of equal confusion, until Daring suddenly burst out laughing. “Don’t tell me, let me guess,” she said between chuckles. “She isn’t in there?”

“Yes, that is it! Which is to say, no, she isn’t.”

AJ looked around at the others for a few moments, pondering what she had just heard. “Oh, I get it!” she suddenly exclaimed. “Maybe we can have a makeover party in my family’s bath—”

“I doubt that’s going to work,” said Twilight. “And besides, Spike…”

“Not it!” exclaimed Spike. “I’m so not it.”

“Are we finished?” Vinyl asked calmly, waiting for Pinkamana to sit down. She then waited a few more seconds as a random customer in a trench coat walked by on the way to the exit. “I gave Daring permission to take out the traitor,” she recapped when she was sure nobody extra was listening in on them. “Non lethally. And really, we should have been expecting this. Up to now, our missions have had minimal casualties. It would make sense that this last one is turning up the heat."

"You're right," Daring Do said.

Her tone was off, much older and calmer than she'd been a second ago. When everypony looked at Daring now, they saw the world-weary adventurer in her mid-forties, stirring a cup of coffee.

"I mean… that thing about the last mission. I think you're right. I'm done after this one."

Fluttershy the author was very much present, and very much trying to make some sense out of the off-topic gibberish her typewriter was producing.

“What?!” Twilight exclaimed.

The trenchcoated stranger turned around at the outburst. She was an elderly unicorn mare, her coat a deep, dark gray in color. Her eyes fixed on those of Daring.

Oblivious to this turn, Twilight reached out to grasp Daring by the shoulders. “You can’t retire yet,” she told her. “This is only the twenty-third...mission you’ve been on. Are you sure you can’t hold out for twenty-five?”

I don’t believe in round numbers,” Daring and Vinyl said in unison. (Quoting a famous line of Daring’s from several of her previous novels.)

Daring flashed Vinyl an appreciative smile, before Daring was once again just Rainbow Dash with a makeover. She looked up at the elderly unicorn, then closed her eyes and pointed experimentally at her. “Professor Crow’s Foot of the University of Canterlot?”

“Professor Crow’s Foot?” Twilight echoed, twisting her head around. “You were Daring’s Equinology teacher in her senior year in college!”

The professor walked back to Daring’s table. “May I?” she asked, gesturing towards a portion of the bench. The others moved closer together to make room for her to sit. “How long has it been since your graduation?” she asked.

“Twelve years,” Daring said, without thinking. “Oh, wait! Mauve Shadow here said that the government is storing the Cruciform in the Canterlot University archives. Do you know where that is?”

“Sorry. I don’t know where that particular item is stored in the archives.”

“But you know where the archives are, right?”

Crow’s Foot looked at her strangely. “You visited them all the time as a student.”

“Could you refresh my memory?” Daring said with an embarrassed blush. “What’s the address?”

“There’s not just one address. You see, there are three buildings designated as the archives in Canterlot.”

“Could you tell us their locations?” Applejack asked. “It would be mighty helpful.”

After telling them of the three locations, Pr. Crow’s Foot took to reminiscing. “So much has changed in twelve years. Do you remember Dr. Bravera? You were always urging me to tell her my true feelings.” She blushed. “Well, it took nearly six years, but I finally did take your advice. We’ve been married for three years now.”

After being congratulated by the others at the table, she continued on. “It seems that you never took my advice, though. I told you that you would be happier pursuing archeology from behind a desk, but you were so insistent that anything other than a job in the field finding lost civilizations was a waste of a life.” She said this to Daring with a wry smile. “So, in the end, how successful were you relying on your own counsel? I don’t remember reading anything in the journals.”

“Hey, I found lots of lost stuff!” Daring insisted. She wanted to leave it at that, but something made her add, “Although, when it comes down to it—” She then clamped her lips together.

Is this going to take very long? Rainbow asked herself. Because if so, I really don’t want my mouth taken over every other line. She took to Twilight, the Daring Do expert, and gestured towards her mouth using a hoof hopefully out of sight of Fluttershy.

“Well, I suppose technically Daring hasn’t ‘found’ any civilizations,” Twilight said to the professor. “At least, none that could be studied by the scientific community. The Achoo were blown off the face of Equestria, the Yeti were buried under a mile of rubble, and as for the Seaponies…yeah, nopony’s ever going to see a trace of them again.”

Crow’s Foot cast an accusing glance at Daring.

“And none of it was her fault!” Twilight exclaimed, sticking her head between teacher and student. “They all had artifacts that could have changed the world in horrible ways, or destroy it altogether! If Daring hadn’t interfered, who knows what could have happened when they were discovered by some hapless innocent!”

“I’ll have to take your word, Miss…?”

“Brass Quill. I’ve been sponsoring Miss Do here for quite some time, and so have come to learn quite a bit about her.”

“Very well, Miss Quill,” the professor said, turning her attention. “I suppose I won’t hold such misfortunes against Miss Do here. Now since my former student doesn’t appear to be in a talkative mood tonight, perhaps you can answer a question I’ve long been meaning to ask. You see, Daring Do came from a most extraordinary class of students, any one of which could have gone on to either revolutionize a scientific field, or else to become a leader in whatever area they might choose. I have heard of the ‘famous Daring Do’ from the newspapers, but I have heard nothing of her classmates. Would you by any chance know anything of the current whereabouts of Focused Starlight?”

Twilight thought for a moment. “Yes, I remember her! She was Daring’s first sidekick. At the climax of the…the adventure, she was turned into a sparrow by the Wax Medallion. She got lost in a flock, and so Daring wasn’t able to reverse the transformation before the time limit expired!” She beamed like a schoolfilly, proud that she had managed to remember a bit of trivia that most readers failed to notice.

“That’s horrible!” Crow’s Foot exclaimed.

“What? Oh…oh, I suppose that is rather bad.”

“And what about Jack Maillard?”

“That was Daring’s second sidekick, and first love interest. You see, there was this giant barbeque, the Barbeque of the Gods. And Daring was trying to get the Spatula of Steel, and then Jack tripped and…”

Everyone at the table winced in unison.

“Did any of his classmates escape a gruesome fate?” Crow’s Foot asked acidly.

“Well there’s…no, she didn’t make it. And then there’s…no, all three of them had to be committed to an insane asylum. And we have no idea where that portal Desert Rose fell into led, so there’s a microscopic chance that she’s quite happy wherever she ended up!”

This time it was Applejack who raised the doubting eyebrow at her.

“Well, what about Tabula Rasa? She never got hurt, mostly because of her irrational hatred of Daring. She’d never fail to yell at her any time they met.”

“If I remember correctly,” the professor replied, “Tabula Rasa was the head of the reunion committee, and therefore the one member of the class most likely to be aware of the grisly fates of all of the others.”

“Oh!” Twilight exclaimed. “That fills a big plot hole. Oh, wait! There’s one more pony who technically is doing better than when he graduated.”

“And who is that?”

“Doctor Cabelleron. He’s Daring’s arch-rival now, always trying to sell his discoveries on the black market.”

“Discoveries that appear to be mostly weapons of mass destruction.”

“Yes.”

Crow’s Foot sighed. “And how did this happen? He was the most honest, idealistic student in my class when I knew him.”

“Well, he developed a drug and gambling problem soon after graduating. After using up his family inheritance, he turned to a life of crime to support himself.” Again, Twilight was initially proud of having remembered all of this without prodding from Fluttershy, but then she frowned on seeing the impact of her words on the professor.

“And did none of you see this coming?” the elderly unicorn demanded, standing up.

“I did,” Daring said, with words that seemed to be dragged out of her. “But I was more interested in getting my discoveries in before he could, so I did nothing.”

“No, I think you and your little band have done quite enough,” the professor said with disgust before excusing herself and walking out the door.

The others rose to try and stop her.

“No,” Daring said with authority. “Let her go. She has a right to her opinion. Let’s check out those three archives before it’s too late. Twi…Brass Lantern, do you think you could draw up a rough map of the city on the back of this place setting?”


Crow’s Foot stepped into the carriage being pulled by her pegasus wife with a sigh.

“Shall we head home?” Bravera asked.

“No, we need to go to the palace,” Crow’s Foot said heavily. “Those agents of Mr. Wells were right. Daring is a menace, and she needs to be…‘put down for the good of everypony’.”