//------------------------------//
// Five 
// Story: Collaborators 
// by Baal Bunny 
//------------------------------//


V


"So without any further ado," Dust Jacket said with a smile I recognized: instead of seeing the ponies crowding into the Barns & Kobold bookstore, he was seeing the bits in their saddlebags, "let me introduce the best-selling authors you've all come here to see this evening! Fillies and gentlecolts, A. K. Yearling and Ozzie Yodel!"

We'd been putting the final touches on Daring Do and Ahuizotl's Quest when I'd first suggested the pseudonym to him. Ahuizotl had stormed around the front room in outrage until I'd pointed out that if he laid claim to the identity of the character in the books, he would also lay claim to the crimes the character had committed. He'd settled down pretty quickly after that.

I glanced over at him now as the crowd began whistling and stomping. In his tweed coat and horn-rimmed glasses, he certainly didn't look like the megalomaniac who'd nearly killed me a dozen times in the past decade, and padding out onto the stage beside me, he almost seemed embarrassed, ducking his head and smiling shyly. The glint behind those glasses, though, told the Daring Do in me exactly how much he was eating this all up.

The whole party went off without a hitch, too. We unveiled the over-sized lithograph of the book cover that Random Horse was auctioning off for charity—my regular artist, Bristol Board, had done a terrific job on the Land Leviathan looming above the figures of Daring Do and Ahuizotl—and when the bookstore staff wheeled out the carts filled with special editions, the crowd practically stampeded to get their hooves on them.

After the auction, the signing went on for hours, but Ahuizotl didn't threaten to disembowel anypony at all. In fact, the big jerk was obviously basking in the admiration of the fans who lined up to get our signatures. He repeated the story that we'd come up with—Ozzie and Kay had known each other since their university days, but he'd never considered collaborating with her on a project until she'd asked him during one of their frequent get-togethers over lunch—and it flowed out of him with such sincerity that I once again found myself wondering just how much of what he said I could ever really trust. A written contract, of course, was a different matter, and the sales figures from the book so far made the Kay part of my brain allow that another collaboration might not be entirely out of the question under the right circumstances...

It wasn't until it was all over, the books sold and signed and the two of us strolling down the sidewalks of Manehattan toward the hotel, that he let his persona slip. His shoulders hunched forward under his coat, and that familiar aura of cold menace shimmered up around him. "Dust Jacket asked if I might be interested in writing a spin-off series focusing on Ahuizotl's attempts to take over the world. Something for the pre-adult market, he said, and he used the nonsensical phrase, 'Dark but light.'" He puffed a breath through his nostrils. "Nonetheless, I find it to be quite the tempting offer."

I nodded. "You'll need to hire a pony to work the typewriter for you. Another of your mercenaries, I guess."

He glared at me, but I wasn't worried. He'd come close to breaching my walls, closer even than Rainbow Dash and her friends had, but Daring and Kay were each more than tough enough to deal with him. I gave him a grin and went on: "Deadlines are tricky, though. Might be you'll find you won't have time for much else but working on stories."

His eyebrows bristled. "I will remind you, Daring Do, that I still mean to destroy you and everything you stand for."

The Daring Do part of me wanted to say something snappy like The feeling's more than mutual, pal. But the words dissolved before they could get even halfway up my throat, and I found myself murmuring instead, "Not one of your better lies, Ozzie."

Everything about his face went blank. Then his left eye twitched, and something that was either a laugh or a cough rattled from his mouth. "You know me so well. Although I imagine you're quite the expert in psychology with your three identities and all."

It took some effort not to leap away, but I managed to sound breezy and dismissive as I said, "Two identities are plenty for me, thank you very much."

Ahuizotl stopped, his gaze peering through those glasses and transfixing me like a spear to the chest. "We're exchanging lies, then?" he asked.

Four quiet little words, but they blew my shields away like the blast of a monsoon; I just stood there staring at him for what felt like five minutes before I barely squeaked, "I don't know what you mean."

He looked down at me, and the sweat that sprang up all over me made me feel like a piece of the deep and ancient Tenochticlan rain forest had suddenly sprung up in the middle of this Manehattan sidewalk. "I am quite familiar with the eyes of Daring Do glaring at me from that face," he said softly. "And over our contract negotiations and our discussions around your kitchen table, I've come to know the different shadings of A. K. Yearling's eyes." His tail hand snaked around to gently touch the end of my nose. "But these eyes that look out at me now, these eyes whose owner has changed my life over the last four months in ways I have yet to fully understand, these eyes are the eyes of a very different pony. A very different pony indeed."

My insides were shivering so violently, I almost thought it might show on my outsides. Still, I forced the same words out again: "I don't know what you mean."

"Ah." He shrugged. "Then I will say that I find you much more interesting than that busybody Daring Do or that status-seeking A. K. Yearling, and having said it, I will let the matter drop." Spinning away, he waved a big hand at the buildings all around us. "For the night is young, and I feel certain that with some concerted effort on our parts, we can find an establishment in this city that knows how to prepare a proper molé!" He looked back at me. "Are you up for an adventure, Daring Do?"

I couldn't move, afraid that the cyclone whirling through my brain would knock me sideways onto the sidewalk. There was no way he could know about me: no way, no way, no way!

Part of me as always wanted to run, but if I did, he'd catch me and kill me. Another part wanted to stay, but if I did, he'd look at me and kill me. And the vast majority of me screamed that he'd figured me out, that he would expose me to the world, that he was just toying with me now like those damnable cats of his!

Except they weren't his cats, he'd said. He had to hire them each time he had a job he wanted to pull, he'd said. To preserve his image, he'd said.

Could it possibly be true? Was he maybe not what I'd always known he was? Was the Ozzie Yodel I saw standing in front of me someone who really existed inside Ahuizotl the same way I existed inside Daring Do and A. K. Yearling?

Was I up for an adventure?

"Cricket." I pushed the word out before any other part of my brain could stop me. "My name's Cricket."

Everything froze, the quiet sounds of the late night city settling over me heavier than Kay's bonnet or Daring's pith helmet ever could.

He blinked. Then he smiled and bowed his head slightly. "A pleasure to meet you."