//------------------------------// // Heroes and Villains // Story: Retired to Equestria // by Yet Another Mask //------------------------------// Damien blinked in surprise as the sound of a slamming door reverberated through the house, almost making him miss catching the pancake he had flipped into the air. Snapping his fingers and barking a quick word he moved away from the oven, taking the flame with him. “What’s got you so angry?” he asked when he saw a fuming Gilda hang her mailbags on a post on the wall. “Dash,” she replied shortly. “More than one word in a sentence if you please.” Gilda shot him a venomous look that was somewhat spoiled by the sudden rumbling of her stomach. “I’ll bribe you with paaaaancaaaaaakes~,” he sang teasingly. “In the kitchen though, this baby is almost done.” Gilda glared after him but eventually snorted and followed him into the kitchen. “Dash has been getting a really big head lately,” she started off as soon as a plate of piping hot pancakes was placed in front of her. “I see. Did you know that Twilight enjoys reading and Pinkie Pie loves parties? True story,” Damien responded conspiratorially. “I mean bigger than usual,” Gilda growled. Damien’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “I wasn’t sure that was even possible.” “Yeah, well, it is. Dash grabbed some earth pony that fell of a ladder and he called her a hero. Then that one filly, the orange pegasus…” She looked at Damien expectantly. “Scootaloo,” he supplied. “Scootaloo started up some Rainbow Dash fan club. Got like ten members or something all talking about how great she is,” the griffoness grumped sourly. “And you want a slice of the fame too?” “What? No! Buck that, I just want to hang out with Dash without her little fan club following us around or having her tell the story about how she saved that earth pony again.” She lifted a pancake and stared at it despondently. “She’s even flying around town looking for trouble so she can be all heroic again.” She took a big bite out of the pancake and chewed slowly. “Heroes,” Damien scoffed. “Bunch of self-righteous psychopaths.” Gilda rolled her eyes at him but continued working on the pancakes in front of her. Studiously ignoring Damien as he took a spot at the table and started in on his own breakfast. “So are you afraid of losing her again or not?” he suddenly asked her as he poured syrup over his stack of pancakes. She jumped slightly at his question and shot him a sharp glare before nodding slowly. “Then I think it’s Twilight that you want. She’s the go to mare for friendship stuff. Sometimes she even gives good advice!” he replied with a laugh. “You two might cause some problems but they always seem to work out for her. I don’t suppose I have to tell you that I am not the one you want helping you with this sort of thing,” he added with a dismissive wave. “I already knew that,” Gilda grumbled. “You’re the one that wanted to hear about this. I just wanted the pancakes.” “Yes, yes. I suppose I did bribe you into telling me all this,” Damien laughed. “Yes. You did,” Gilda replied bluntly as she started taking care of her dishes. “And I suppose you’re going to go to Twilight right now about how to get Dash to calm down a bit?” She glared at him but nodded curtly. “Excellent! I just so happen to have a number of books that need to be returned to the library!” he jubilated as he pulled half a dozen thick books from his satchel and presented them to the grimacing griffon. “I’m not your errand runner,” she growled. “Please?” Gilda blinked in surprise. “What? I can be polite and ask for things nicely!” Damien exclaimed indignantly. “And I can be humble and nice,” Gilda deadpanned. “And you can,” Damien replied with a grin. “It’s just not something that you do in very many situations.” He rolled his eyes with a sigh. “I guess I’ll just have to head over to the library sometime today so I can take care of my books myself. Probably’ll end up sticking around for a while too, pick up some more books, maybe read a few while I’m there, the usual,” he rambled with a level of absentmindedness that is only possible when you really want people to pay attention to what you’re saying. As expected Gilda froze as Damien’s words struck home. “And you’ll end up being there at the same time as me won’t you?” she forced out. “What a wonderful idea!” he exclaimed as though he had just thought of it. “When shall we leave?” Gilda’s eye twitched dangerously as she picked up the books Damien had laid on the table and glared at him. “You can use one of my extra bags over by the door to make things easier to carry if you want,” he called after her as she stormed from the kitchen. He smiled as he heard her close the door forcefully, not enough to call it a slam but still rather hard, and turned his attention back to his pancakes. Rainbow Dash a hero? And Scootaloo starting a fan club for her? That was bound to be interesting. Sure Dash and the other Element Bearers were already heroes of a sort it was more of an every so often thing for them from what he could tell. Full time heroism was sure to be interesting to watch. Just so long as no heroes started coming after him of course. That would not end well for anyone involved, he was certain of that much. He could always go and learn more about what was going on from Scootaloo or Dash, there was no way Dash didn’t know about her fan club after all. But asking Dash would more likely than not end up with her regaling her with tales of her awesomeness and he was certain that Scootaloo’s parents would be less than pleased if he came within a hundred yards of that filly. He still wasn’t sure why they were so upset though, he did have the cutie pox cure at hand and ready after all. He shook his head ruefully. No regard for the advancement of arcane knowledge there, or with the parents of the other crusaders. It was still… a month or so until the ultimatum they had delivered to him ran out if he remembered correctly. With a shake of his head he stood up to take care of his dishes. Probably best not to get involved with anything related to heroes, far too close to his old profession and very likely to end badly. As long as he stayed away from the situation it should all work out in the end, just like all those other things that seemed to happen with Twilight and her friends. He paused momentarily as that last thought echoed throughout his mind. “Damn it,” he muttered. “I am getting really out of practice.” With a tired sigh he headed into the living room to prepare for the worst, just barely catching himself before digging himself deeper with further thoughts about how simply thinking things like that didn’t mean that it would make things happen. Sometimes he really hated whatever petty and vindictive forces ran the universe. <=[XXXXX]=> Several days passed before Damien’s morose prediction came true, long enough for him to almost think he was in the clear. “Please, please, please, let this just be Gilda throwing a tantrum,” he muttered as he heard one of his windows shatter, quickly followed the dull thud of a body impacting the floor in one of the side rooms. His prayers went unanswered as a rainbow maned pegasus shot into the living room, nearly knocking over a delicate crystalline construct he had been slowly manipulating over the past hour. “Damien! You gotta help me!”’ she declared. Damien rose a tired eyebrow and looked back at the crystalline structure in front of him. A faint whisper of power ran down his talon as he slowly bent one of the delicate spires towards its intended destination. “Gilda is with Twilight. If you need magical help or someone to practice flying with I suggest you go to the library,” he replied as he carefully turned the crystal so he could get at the next section that needed work. “What? No! I need your help!” Dash said quickly. “You were like some sort of big bad villain a long time ago right?” Damien blinked and turned his attention towards the hovering pegasus. “I did follow that vocation for a while. Why?” he asked with narrowed eyes. “So you know a lot about super heroes right?” Damien felt a shudder run down his spine. “Super heroes? As in more dangerous and competent than regular ones?” he asked, his beak twisting in disgust. “Yeah, heroes with super-powers or fancy gadgets and stuff. Like Bat Mare and Spider Pony,” Dash explained. “The ones you see in comics and stuff.” Damien breathed a sigh of relief at this. So these super heroes were storybook characters. That meant that they either simply didn’t exist, here anyway, or that they were a long dead breed whose stories lived on to this day. “I suppose my experiences with regular heroes might apply,” he said cautiously. “Cool! ‘Cause I need you to figure out who Mare-Do-Well is.” Damien stared at the pegasus blankly. “As in ne’er do well?” “I guess. That isn’t really the important part though,” Dash said dismissively. “Why would anyone want to name themselves with a play on the phrase ne’er do well?” Damien wondered aloud in confusion. “Not important. I need you to figure out who she is so I can stop her from upstaging me all the time. You know how to be a villain and villains always fight super-heroes and try to figure out their secret identities and stuff.” She looked at him appraisingly. “You were a good villain right?” Damien scowled at this and puffed out his chest. “I was the best!” he proclaimed indignantly. “Cool, now come on! We need to unmask Mare-Do-Well and show everypony who the better hero is,” she said as she pounded her hooves together. “Wouldn’t teaming up with a villain automatically make-” Damien started before Dash shot out of the room shouting for him to follow her. With a sigh he spread his wings and took to the air, might as well see what all the fuss was about after all. <=[XXXXX]=> “So how exactly am I supposed to figure out this Mare Do Well’s identity?” Damien asked when he finally caught up with Dash. Of course the mare hadn’t slowed down and he’d had to rely on her signature rainbow trail to figure out where to go. “That’s your job,” Dash replied dismissively as her eyes scanned the ground below us, presumably looking for either Mare-Do-Well or some chance for her to show of her heroic nature. Of course the fact that showing off like that is directly contradictory to a true hero’s nature didn’t seem to occur to her. But to be fair it didn’t seem to occur to too many other heroes either. “Why isn’t anything happening right now?” she growled as she flared her wings and stood up on the cloud. “Oh Pit, you’re not going to-” Damien started saying as Dash leapt from the cloud and shot off. “Right,” he grumbled as he spread his wings and prepared to take off after her. Things were quickly moving to a point where he was seriously considering simply abandoning the pegasus and working things out on his own. As he spread his wings a flash of movement high in the sky caught his eye. A quick glance at the dissipating rainbow trail showed him that Dash was flying towards a nearby construction site. He snorted and shook his head irritably; best to ignore whatever he had seen for now. He leapt off the cloud to follow after Rainbow, relying on her rainbow trail and his assumptions on her destination to find her once more. A faint tingle of magic distracted him as he neared the construction site just as a wrenching crunch split the air. Damien’s eyes snapped towards the construction site he had idly surveyed before. His eyes widened slightly as the entire half finished building started to shake and crumble. The entire structure seemed to shatter and rain down on to the hapless workers below. As expected Rainbow Dash swooped down into the fray in an attempt to rescue one of the workers. She quickly scooped him up and began running along the ground, dodging the falling debris in her rush to remove him from the construction site. Damien’s eyes grew curious as another mare rushed into the fray, dodging every piece of debris as though she could see where it would land before it fell. Her face was obscured by an all concealing mask and a large, wide brimmed hat covered any hint of a horn or trace of her mane. Her coat and cutie mark, as well as any hints at wings, were covered by her voluminous cloak and tight-skinned body-suit. A ghost of a smile flitted across his face as he watched her deftly maneuver through the avalanche and save all but the single worker Dash was still trying to rescue. Damien’s smile grew as he once more felt a tingle of energy in the air and quickly identified it as being a sort of a short range communication spell bound to an object for easy communication in battlefields or other areas where members of a group were usually unable to communicate verbally. He followed the tingle with his mind and chuckled as it wound from Mare-Do-Well up to a lone cloud high above the ground, a cloud with a lion’s tail hanging off the edge. He was still chuckling when Dash flew up, her face inches from his own. “Why didn’t you do anything?!” she demanded as she jabbed him in the chest with a hoof. “You and our masked friend seemed to have the situation under control,” Damien replied delicately as he shifted her hoof away from himself. “Not with that! With unmasking Mare-Do-Well!” Damien sighed and rubbed his head tiredly. “Because I am not going to stop someone from helping others. That would be a quick way to earn the enmity of the entire town, especially after she saved those workers. Even if you unmask your nemesis you need to do it in a way that…” Damien trailed off as he watched Dash shoot off in the direction Mare Do Well had disappeared in. “That girl is worse than Gilda,” he muttered. <=[XXXXX]=> Every day for the next week Dash came by to recruit Damien in her quest to unmask Mare-Do-Well and each day ended in failure. Not due to any level of incompetence on the parts of Dash or Damien but because catastrophes on the level needed to draw out the mysterious mare weren’t exactly common. “Why are you wasting time reading books when we should be looking for Mare-Do-Well?” Dash grumbled for the fifth time in the past half hour. “Because anything big enough to draw her out will be noticed easily enough as is,” he replied as he turned to the next page. “Did you know that Buffalo regularly commune with the spirits of the land itself?” Dash glared at him but didn’t respond. Instead choosing to spread her wings and fly away and burn off some of her annoyed energy. Nearly a quarter hour passed before Damien felt the tingle of magic he had been looking for. His head snapped towards the thread of power, carefully tracing both ends of the spell. One end flowed into the sky ending at a surprisingly stationary cloud. The other end coming to a stop… Damien smiled as he saw a familiar purple clad form running towards the dam. A bemused expression crossed his face as he saw Dash holding her hoof against the dam while water trickled around it. There was a deep rumbling as the trickle became a torrent as the dam burst, loosing a geyser of water that swept the unfortunate pegasus away. Before Damien could act a familiar purple aura enveloped the rubble and froze it in place. He watched in astonishment as the shattered dam flew back together and quickly reformed, stronger than ever. His gaze quickly snapped to Mare Do Well just in time to see her swing her hat over a unicorn’s horn before disappearing in her usual fashion. There was only one unicorn in town capable of casting a spell like the one he had just seen, yet there was no way she would have been able to dodge the falling debris a week ago. Gates, she would have just been able to stop all the falling debris with her magic, not dodge it. Damien’s reverie was interrupted by Dash’s angry shouts as Mare-Do-Well, clearly possessing pegasus wings, shot through the sky and vanished amongst the buildings of the town. His eyes narrowed in sudden inspiration as all the pieces came together. “So that’s it…” he muttered admiringly. “Damien!” Dash cried out. “You let her get away again!” she shouted angrily. “Sorry, sorry,” he apologized with a smile. “She was too fast for me. You know I’m not exactly the best flier,” he explained with a shrug. “Grrr… You’re no use!” she declared as she darted off. Damien chuckled softly and headed home. The mystery was solved and he doubted that Dash would be relying on his help in the future given his abysmal performance just now. At least this way he wouldn't have to go out of his way to keep Mare-Do-Well's identity, or identities as it were, secret. <=[XXXXX]=> “You look happy,” Damien observed over a cup of tea several days later as Gilda entered the house with a small smile on her face. “Yeah, Dash is finally starting to calm down a bit. It looks like all that stuff with Mare-Do-Well forced a little humility on her,” Gilda replied happily. “I don’t suppose we’ll be seeing Mare-Do-Well again will we?” he asked nonchalantly as he took a sip of tea and looked over at her. Gilda jumped at this but kept her face as neutral as possible. “Dunno. Maybe, maybe not.” “I suppose it is for the best then,” he sighed. She looked at hit curiously. “That’s it?” she asked. “That’s it.” “No badgering me about everything that went on over the last couple weeks?” “That’s right.” “Even though you wasted a week with Dash trying to figure it out?” “Don’t worry. I won’t ask if you were the spotter for Mare Do Well, keeping an eye on the town and alerting her when she was needed. I won’t ask if Twilight played the part of Mare Do Well at times. I won’t ask which of your pegasus friends you got to play the flying parts of Mare Do Well’s routines. I won’t ask how many of your other friends took part in this wonderful little deception. Lastly I won’t ask if it was Rarity that designed those intriguing costumes. I will wish you a nice day though,” he said with a chuckle as he took another sip from his cup. Gilda shot him an exasperated glare before turning away to head upstairs, a soft chuckle following her as she left.