Daring Do and the Amulet of Memories, Chapter 6
The unicorn shook in her sequined dress, her trembles sending reflections scattering across the ballroom walls. “Daring, I can’t do this! I’m a museum curator, not a field operative!”
“You’re doing fine, Moonlight. Remember the plan: we waltz our way to the other side of the dance floor, you pop your magic to douse the lights, and I snatch the Amulet of Memories from the display case.” The grey-maned pegasus smiled, her hooves on the unicorn’s shoulders as they stood waiting for the music to begin. “What could possibly go wrong?”
“Everything! What if I don’t get all the lights? What if there’s security on the Amulet that we don’t know about? Daring, recovering that Amulet isn’t worth the risk! We - no, you can try again later, and I can go back to translating cuneiform and reassembling potsherds and – ”
“Shhh!” Daring Do put a hoof to the shaking mare’s lips and whispered, “The orchestra’s starting. We’ll never have another shot like this at the Amulet of Memories. After tonight, the Baron will put it back into storage. Now I believe in you, Moonlight, and I know you can do this. Let’s dance!”
Moonlight Glitter shook her head to disagree as she was swept off her hooves by the twirling tan mare. Daring led her across the floor, whirling, spinning, smiling, nudging their waltz ever closer to the sparkling Amulet. She looked out of place in her own slim dress, disguised almost entirely by glamorous evening wear nopony would ever expect to find her in.
She pulled the wide-eyed unicorn closer, her hooves finding warm purchase in the small of the curator’s back. Daring grinned, surprised to find her unwilling partner returning the smile. The unsure academic seemed to forget her trepidation and leaned in, panting breaths mingling as their muzzles weaved in and out with every step.
“Moon,” she whispered to the adventuress, “you can call me Moon. Only my mother calls me Moonlight.” Glancing over the hoof on her shoulder, she saw the Amulet just a tail’s length away. “Are you ready?”
Daring’s wings flared involuntarily, drawing disdainful stares from other couples. “As I’ll ever be… Moon.” She allowed herself a quiet chuckle as the unicorn lit her horn. With a flash every candle, lantern, and torch in the ballroom flared then died away, plunging the dancing crowd into screaming and chaotic darkness. Daring leapt for the…
~~~~~
“Okay, Twi, now you’re not even trying.”
“What do you mean, Dash? I thought you’d be excited to read this together! You don’t know what I had to do to get a pre-release copy of this. It won’t even be in stores for – well, who knows how long?”
“First, how long? Answer is never, egghead. You can’t fool the President of the Daring Do Fanclub about release dates. Second, I know exactly what you had to do to get this little ‘pre-release’ chapter. You agreed to help Fluttershy feed her animals for a month, and you even volunteered to escort her into the Everfree so she could check on that poor injured timberwolf she swears she heard howling last week.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Well, maybe just a little. And I only have to feed her animals for three weeks, not a whole month. So how’d you know?”
“Shy spilled the story over lunch. She writes great romance novels, and fanfics too, but she couldn’t write an action scene to save her wings. Trying to write the end of that ballroom scene sent her into hysterics and she needed to vent. That, and I can see where you pasted a fake cover over a copy of Daring Do and the River of Jade and tried to stick the new pages into the middle of the book between the chapter about the cannibal pygmy ponies and the illustration of Daring holding the jade coin in her teeth.”
“Rainbow, you – you can tell what chapter a book is turned to just from where the spine is creased? How – wait, no, never mind. So what did you think?”
“About Shy’s fake chapter? Not bad, though I wish she’d had more detail on the Amulet, the legends behind it, why the Baron wanted it, and – “
“Featherbrain!”
“Okay, okay, Twilight, keep your horn on. See if I have this straight: you were hoping that a fake Daring Do chapter about Daring and the hot unicorn museum curator going to a big fancy ball would inspire me to ask you to the Sadie Hoofkins dance this weekend?”
“That’s – that’s surprisingly perceptive, really.”
“Answer is no.”
“But Dash, this is probably the last dance I’ll have chance to go to, at least here in Ponyville! You know I expect Celestia to recall me to Canterlot to do some intensive research any time now.”
“Still no.”
“Oh, I get it. This is a Sadie Hoofkins dance – fillies ask colts to the dance, not the other way around, and you’re worried that if you ask me…”
“…Then everypony will think I’m the filly in this relationship. Or the mare. Whatever. Can’t happen. I’m already verging into seriously uncool territory just talking about this.”
“Okay then, Featherbrain. Dash, will you go to the Sadie Hoofkins dance with me this weekend?”
“Let me think, Egghead, let me think… So you were really willing to deface a book, even an old Daring Do novella, just to convince me that going to a dance could be cool?”
“For just anything, no. But for you, Dash… Yes. Yes I was. Once, so don’t push it.”
“Then you’d better see Rarity about a dress, Egghead, ‘cause mine’s completely awesome!”
“Wait, you already have a dress? You knew I’d ask you to the dance, didn’t you?”
“What, the amazing Rainbow Dash willing to wear a fancy dress to some dance? For just anypony, no. But for you, Twi… Yes. Yes I was. Once, so don’t push it.”