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// Not A Fool To Be Pitied 
// Story: Ditzy Do(o) and the Temple of Tlaloc 
// by DmitriTheWriter 
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The sweltering humid heat of the Tenochtitlan Basin beat down on Ditzy Doo as she sailed down the river on a boat made of paper clips. Luckily, Ditzy always carried her towel with her, and so wiped her forehead dry. She wasn't going to give up the quest to find her sister that easily. 

After a whopping five minutes of sailing, Ditzy sailed to a dock on the bank of the river and hopped out of the boat. Her boat proceeded to flow farther downstream without her, not that she even noticed or cared. The dark jungle was thick with foliage, and the smell of rot and decay hung heavy in the air. Ditzy caught a glimpse of something glittering deep within the gloom.

"Ooh, shiny!"

And with that, the world's most easily-distracted adventurer trekked deeper into the jungle.





According to her map of the Basin and her own sense of direction, Ditzy was going the right way to find her sister. According to objective reality, she was not. The jungle only seemed to grow darker and even thicker with foliage than before. There were no roads, and the canopy was far too thick to allow navigation via the sun or the stars. According to objective reality, Ditzy was completely lost. According to Ditzy, she was minutes away from completing her quest. They tended not to agree very often.

Suddenly, a roar rang out from deeper into the jungle, and Ditzy soon came face to face with a full-grown tiger. The tiger circled the intrepid explorer, muscles loaded like springs as it prepared to pounce at any moment.

"Kitty!" Ditzy walked over to the snarling 300-pound kitty and began to stroke its head affectionately. The massive tiger decided that hey, this wasn't that bad, and flopped over onto its stomach. Ditzy then gave him all of the belly rubs he could ever want. "Good kitty."

A panther was stalking the ground right behind Ditzy Doo ready to strike when he saw his coworker the tiger getting pets and belly rubs and generally having the time of his life. He decided that he would like some of those too and rolled onto his back. Ditto for the bobcat, the jaguar, and the tiny house cat that were creeping up right behind the panther on either side. And Ditzy Doo gave them all the love and affection they could ever dream of. Objective reality threw up its hands, decided that it wasn't really worth the trouble anymore, and went to lunch.





Ditzy Doo left five very happy felines behind her and emerged from the jungle to find a great temple in the shape of a pyramid before her. The temple was made of limestone, with elaborate designs on the sides marked with blue paint. It was rather like the Temple of Tlaloc where her sister Daring Do was delivering letters to when she went missing. The only thing left to do was to go inside and find her.

Ditzy entered the grand temple and walked serenely through the ornately decorated halls. She did not notice the spikes that emerged from the ground behind her, or the swinging axes that sprang out of the walls and narrowly avoided slicing her tail off, or the poisoned daggers that shot out from the walls nearly stabbing into her abdomen, or the blocks of stone that continually smashed together and nearly reduced the world's luckiest adventurer to a pancake on the wall. She did notice the venomous vipers and spiders the size of her face that dropped down from the ceiling, but she thought that they were just weird-looking dogs and treated them accordingly.

"Puppies!" Ditzy stopped to pet every single spider and every single viper along the hall, and suffered precisely zero negative consequences for doing so. They seemed to enjoy it, and the world's friendliest adventurer continued on her merry way.





Ahuizotl lounged on his throne, confident that today was going to be a good day. He had the ritual stone he needed to bring about his evil scheme, his pony sacrifice was all prepared, and none of his animal minions had been killed, maimed, or sued by any of his other animal minions. On top of that, the entrances to the temple were impossible to get past on account of being lined with an excessive amount of death traps. There was no one in the entire Tenochtitlan Basin, nay, the whole world that could stop him now!

So logically, Ahuizotl was very confused when a gray-coated cross-eyed pegasus waltzed right into the middle of his sacrificial room without so much as a hair out of place.

"Excuse me, mister, have you seen my sister?" she asked.

Ahuizotl blinked. "What?!"

"Her name is Daring Do? She has a bag of mails?" she continued to ask.

"How did you get in here?! The temple's halls are lined with death traps! No one should be able to survive that!"

Ditzy tilted her head in confusion. "What's a death trap?"

It was at this moment that Ahuizotl realized this mare wasn't going to be a threat to him. "Ah, no matter! It is already too late to stop me!" Ahuizotl pulled out a small, polished rounded gemstone, glittering a brilliant deep blue and placed it upon the center of the altar. "With this stone, I shall bring forth devastation and cause unceasing rain for eight hundred years! None shall stand before me as I destroy my enemies in a deluge of wrath and reign eternally over the entire world!" Ahuizotl tried to burst out into some proper evil laughter, but only managed to get into a coughing fit.

The world's greatest adventurer wasn't listening to anything Ahuizotl had to say. No, it was the blue gemstone that caught her attention. "Muffin!" Ditzy suddenly sprang into the air with the force of a cannonball, seizing the stone from the altar without even giving Ahuizotl a chance to strike back. Ditzy bit into the stone, or at least tried to, much to her dismay. "Agh! This muffin is made of ow!"

Dust shook to the ground as the temple began to shake to its very foundations. Chunks of limestone fell from the ceiling and shattered against the ground.  Ahuizotl's animal minions tried in vain to find cover from the hail of rock coming down. "You fool!" Ahuizotl shouted. "You disrupted the ritual! Now we are all doomed!"

The temple roof was torn whole from the building and was carried off by the winds. The storm clouds that rumbled above the temple were almost as black as night, and the rain came down in sheets. Ahuizotl's animal minions fled the temple in a panic, and Ahuizotl himself narrowly avoided being struck by lightning. 

Ditzy, meanwhile, discarded the blue gemstone and wandered off in search of her captured sister once again.





Behind Ahuizotl's throne and the great stone altar, Ditzy Doo found a door. She opened it, and within the room beyond she saw another pegasus mare, bound and gagged and surrounded by a postmare's hat, a satchel, and numerous envelopes made out to different ponies. 

"Daring!" The world's most fearless adventurer took the gag out of her sister's mouth and undid the knot keeping her bound. It wasn't very well-knotted, and so took a whopping five seconds to undo.

"Ditzy?!" Daring stood up with the help of her sister. "How on Earth did you find me out here?! I thought I was done for!"

Ditzy stroked her sister's mane affectionately. "I love you!"

Daring Do decided that was about as good an answer as she was going to get, and grabbed her postmare's hat and her satchel full of letters from the floor. "Come on, let's get out of here!" Daring went out through the ruined temple's emergency exit, with Ditzy Doo following close behind.

And so, with the Temple of Tlaloc destroyed and Ahuizotl thoroughly humiliated, the world was safe once again thanks to Ditzy Doo.