• Published 16th Feb 2012
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What Would Daring Do? - CommissarAJ



There are two types of ponies; those that read love stories and those who write their own...

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Ch. 16 - The Good, the Bad, and the Daring

Chapter Sixteen: The Good, the Bad, and the Daring

"Hey Daring, pass me the wire cutters will ya?"

"You sure you're okay handling explosives, doc?" Daring replied as she fetched the desired tool from her belt. The archaeologist and town doctor were still hard at work setting up the bundles of TNT that Daring had procured from the general store. Tenderhoof was high above the ground in the scaffolding of the town's water tower while Daring had been serving as the go-between for tools and supplies. Normally Daring would have handled the laying of high explosives herself but with so many ambush points needing to be set, she had to keep over-watch of her small army of volunteers.

Thanks to said volunteers and Daring’s experience with controlled explosives, they were able to wire up a substantial portion of the town in relatively short order.

"Trust me, Miss Do, when you can pluck porcupine quills from the backside of a quaking filly, wiring up explosives is a stroll down easy street." The jovial laugh that followed helped to put Daring's mind at ease, at least with regards to the bombs. They were wiring up the water tower as a precaution as Daring figured that the large volume of water stored within could be used as a screen should they need to make a hasty retreat. It was a last resort, however, since she didn't want to leave the town without access to fresh water. "You mind if I ask you a quick question about you and yer friend?"

"Uh...s-sure, what did you want to ask?" If anything, Daring wanted him to ask nothing. It wasn't a topic she felt was appropriate given the situation and she didn't want to afford the distraction. However, with everything that Tenderhoof had done for her, it would have been rude to turn him away. She didn't even want to guess how much of her and Blondie's...intimacy had made it through the walls. Now Daring was no prude but Tenderhoof was old enough to be her father so sex was not a subject she wanted to approach.

"Well I couldn't help but notice that you and Lucky, er...I mean Blondie, had gotten quite...close." That was a nice way to put it and one that Daring was grateful for. It sounded far more polite than 'riding the midnight bronco' or 'doing the horizontal hoe-down.'

"Is this the part where I get a 'watch yourself, she's a lone wolf and liable to break your heart'?"

"I reckon you got plenty of that from your pa," Tenderhoof chuckled in response. He was half-right; she did have a wild streak in her younger years, and bad ponies did have their allure, but even her father knew that danger was the last thing that could scare Daring away. "In truth, I was hoping you'd stick with her even if she tries to buck you off. I think it would do her some good."

"What do you mean?" Daring got the impression that the 'good' that Tenderhoof was referring to did not involve bedroom antics or an extra set of hooves in a fight. Blondie seemed like the type to get what she wanted from something or someone and then head on her way, which Daring was more than willing to go along with. Despite an overwhelming physical attraction, she got the feeling that a gunslinger like Blondie would just get bored hanging around a posh Canterlot university library, and Daring just about had her fill of sand-coated saloons where 'bath' was just a four-letter word. They were from two different worlds and while their union would keep her warm for years to come, she had trouble seeing anything long-term resulting from it.

"In case you hadn't noticed, life out here ain't exactly easy," Tenderhoof explained. The pegasus refrained from any sarcastic rebuttals despite the temptation. “Everypony comes out west for a reason, but they eventually find something out here worth struggling for. Be it a job or a patch of land or money...or somepony.”

“And what about Blondie?” she inquired with a growing sense of where the conversation was going.

“Well that’s the thing...she ain’t got nothing. She’s been wandering around these parts for the past several years. Sure she comes through here every so often. Heck, some of the townsfolks even look forward to it. But she never stays put and she never really goes in any one direction for very long.” The doctor paused for a moment as he fixed the last few hours into place. Once he was finished, Daring helped carry him back down to earth where he was grateful to have his hooves on the soil again. “She’s a good pony...knows right from wrong and she’s got the courage to do fix something when she sees it broken.”

“What exactly does this have to do with me?”

“She needs direction - something or someone worth fighting for,” Tenderhoof explained as he patted the pegasus upon the shoulder. “Now I don’t know what exactly it is about you, but you’ve probably gotten closer to her than anypony else. There’s a lotta anger and hate in her...it’d do a lot of good if someone helped chase those demons away.”

“Every thought of just hiring her a shrink?” Daring’s joke was met with a cold stare. She quickly backpedaled her remark, “What do you think I should do exactly?”

Her question got only an uncertain shrug. Figured the one part where she could’ve used an answer was the only part he had none to give. “That’s up to you. All I’m saying is she might be the one with all the guns, but she’s the one that needs saving the most.”

*****************************

Everything was set; the sticks of TNT were strewn through the town and the streets; the spotters were in their hideaways with detonators read; and everypony that had some kind of firearm had taken up their positions on the rooftops. Despite their willingness to help, Blondie and Daring wanted the townsfolk to stay out of the immediate firing lanes and only offer support when it was safe to do so. The only things missing from the showdown now were the star players.

“Blondie? You in here?” Daring called out as she poked her head into the local watering hole. She had searched most of the other likely locations for their infamous gunslinger and had thus far come up empty-hoofed.

“Over here,” a familiar voice echoed back. It sounded heavy and sluggish, however, which worried the archaeologist.

It took a moment after stepping inside for her eyes to adjust to the sudden drop in brightness, but once things refocused she spotted her cohort half-slumped over the bar surrounded by several bottles. “Oh, for the love of-!” Daring zipped over to the half-conscious pony and pulled her face off the countertop. Her eyes were bloodshot and unfocused, eyelids were drooped, and even a small waft of her breath was enough to give Daring a small hangover. The gunslinger smelt of cheap whiskey and despair, neither of which were a good aroma for her given the situation. “What in the hay is wrong with you?” she exclaimed.

“It ain’t my ears to start with,” Blondie snapped back as she shoved the pegasus away. “And can’t a pony have one last drink without somepony getting all sanctimonious!”

“Not when there’s an inbred goat with a borderline obsession of killing you.”

“Pah!” Blondie scoffed as she grabbed the nearest bottle and poured herself another glass. “S’always somepony trying to kill me. Way Ah figured it, if this gonna be mah last day...best enjoy it while Ah can. At least that way when Billy’s done with me, he’ll leave the rest of the town alone.”

Daring wasn’t sure what she was hearing was genuine self-pity or just one too many glasses of whiskey. Either way, she wasn’t buying it for one second. This was the same gun-slinging, minotaur-lighting, explosive-lobbing madpony that chased her and a goat across the desert. Self-sacrifice, while noble in itself, was better off as a last resort, and any hope of both ponies reaching the end of the day alive was slowly being drowned in a shot glass. As the gunslinger brought the glass to her lips, Daring decided to take action and slapped the drink out of her cohort’s hoof.

The echo of the shattering glass was the only sounded that preceded, followed by an overpowering silence.

“Now why’d you have to go and do that?” muttered a surly Blondie.

“I’m not letting you throw your life away.” Somehow, this was comical to the nameless mare. Daring was willing to chalk to the laughter up to more alcohol-fueled antics but it was no less disconcerting.

“You really think what happens here today will make any difference?” she said as she grabbed the nearby whiskey bottle. “Say I make it outta here today...maybe even off Billy while Ah’m at it. Then all the ponies Ah hurt in the process are gonna get all their friends and they’ll get their friends and we’ll start the game all over again.” As she spoke, her voice weary yet almost lyrical at the same time, the gunslinger used the bottle to knock over some of the empty bottles and glasses scattered across the countertop. “Every day it’s just more and more ponies getting pissed at me...wanting to put me in a shallow grave. It’ll eventually catch to me...so what’s the point in running from it anymore?”

Were it not important that Blondie be up and ready to fight, Daring would’ve taken the pony outside and knocked sense into her until she sobered up. The best she could do right now was try to talk sense into the other pony. Sadly, talking sense into a drunken pony had about as much success as trying to hammer nails with your face. Sure, you might eventually succeed, but your face is going to be a mess afterwards.

“Then why not just leave this place? Your enemies aren’t going to chase you around forever!”

“No...but reputations have a way of following you. They cling to you like a bad stink,” Blondie explained as she tried to get back to her feet. She only managed a few steps before needing to put one hoof on the countertop and the other on Daring to keep her balance. After letting out a quiet sigh, the nameless regained her stability and proceeded to take a swig from her bottle. “Besides, what would you have me do, hm? Go back east wit’ you? Be some...nancy no-name pony...always hanging around in the background...barely seen and never heard? Pah! It might not be your hoity-toity university, but at least out here Ah’m somebody important...Ah matter.”

“You’ll be a dead somebody at this rate.” It was some of the flimsiest logic that Daring had come across, but that stubborn mare was making it hard for her to get through.

“Being forgotten is worse than being dead,” the nameless mare remarked grimly. “It’s like you never existed.”

Daring didn’t have time for more self-destructive pitying. She needed to get Blondie out of this apparent rut and back in the game. Getting too aggressive was out of the question since she didn’t want to wear the pony out before Billy arrived. Her best option then was to kill her with kindness. As the nameless mare eyed her whiskey bottle for another round, Daring pulled her head the other direction and trapped her with a tender, loving kiss. There a momentary struggle. Her lips refused to budge at first and she tried to pull away, but the inviting warmth soon compelled the pony to stay. The bottle gradually slipped from the mare’s grip, shattering along with all remaining resistance in the earth pony. Thanks to all the liquor, Daring had no trouble pinning her partner against the bar counter. She could taste the whiskey on the other mare’s breath.

But before she could succumb to carnal temptations, Daring broke the embrace. “You’ll always matter to me,” she whispered. “And the ponies here won’t ever forget what you’ve done for them.”

“And what if Ah’m more trouble than Ah’m worth?”

Daring flashed the nameless pony a coy little smirk. “It’s just a mob of murderous goons...it’s nothing we haven’t had to deal with before.”

Her glib remark had the desired effect and the gunslinging pony was soon caught up whiskey-laced chuckle. Once the laughter died down, the two shared a simple moment of silence gazing into each other’s eyes. Or at least Daring was gazing; the same could not be said of her colleague, however, who had trouble keeping the world from slowly spinning about. Daring wanted to make one last, poignant comment to uplift the other pony’s spirits but a gunshot rang out in the distance, signalling the end of their relative tranquility.

“Welp, time t’face the music,” Blondie said as she pushed her cohort aside. She straightened up her coat and then let out a monstrous, whiskey-tinted belch. “You go get in position whilst I go play the polite host.”

Despite a slight swagger in her steps, the nameless mare made her way out of the saloon and into the dusty town streets. The bright, midday sun played havoc with her eyes, which were already having enough trouble keeping focused. The gunslinger adjusted her stetson to keep shaded as she trotted down the main road. Standing at the far aside were more than a dozen ponies and goats, and at the forefront was none other than Billy the Kid, looking as smug and self-assured as a conquering general.

“Look who decided to crawl her flea-ridden butt out of hiding,” Billy taunted, followed by a chorus of laughs from his gang. “What’s the matter? No bottle you could crawl into and cry for mommy?”

“Ha...booze joke, that’s funny,” Blondie joined in on the laughter. “Gotta say, Ah’m mighty impressed you managed to wrangle up so many new recruits after what Ah did to the last bunch. Hope you paid them up front.”

“Didn’t need to pay ‘em...just had to tell them that you were gimped and cowering in a corner like a little filly.”

Chances were he offered them a considerable sum after she was dead and banked on the odds that she would take out most of them before the day was done. Anypony left over would probably be too tired to put up any fight when Billy short-changed them and ran off. If she just allowed them to gun her down now, the backlash from an angry mob expecting payment would ensure that he was put into a shallow grave right next to her. However, with Daring having talked her out of that plan, she was only left with the one they had originally gambled on.

“Y’all forgot to mention ‘drunk off her saddle.’ Now ah’ll be honest in saying that Ah wasn’t expecting quite so many of you,” Blondie said as her eyes began to pan across the width of the street. “If Ah had known, Ah would’ve brought out a bottle of whiskey to share.” Her expectant, cocksure grin puzzled the numerically superior gang. They were expecting something more from her but she seemed to just be standing and staring. After a moment, the grin faded from her expression and was replaced with veiled concern and darting eyes. “Ah said, ‘Ah would’ve brought out a bottle of whiskey!’” Again, she was met with silence and confused looks. “You got cotton in yer ears or something? Ah said whiskey, dangit!”

Hidden somewhere along the rooftops, a pony was scrambling back to his hooves after momentarily forgetting that ‘whiskey’ was the codeword to start the fireworks. He scurried to the nearby detonator and slammed down the plunger.

The resultant series of explosions occurred about halfway between Blondie and the posse assembled against her. The gunslinger would have preferred if Billy had been standing on top of where the explosives had been buried but in her inebriated state she had misjudged their position. Nonetheless, the cloud of sand made for a brilliant smokescreen. The nameless mare didn’t hang around to see Billy’s reaction. A sharp whistle summoned her air support with Daring swooping in from up high. The pegasus scooped up her partner and carried her off just as a barrage of gunfire tore through the smokescreen.

In a nearby building, a small filly popped open a window and tossed a bundle of lit firecrackers onto the street. While not threatening on its own, the rapid series of loud pops and bangs, combined with the confusion created by the earlier blast and smokescreen, caused further panic in Billy’s ranks. Several of his minions dove or scrambled for cover, and it wasn’t until the smoke settled that they all reasoned that they hadn’t been under any form of fire whatsoever. In fact, not only were there no assailants, there was no sign of Blondie either.

“After her!” Billy screamed in his fury. The explosions had startled several of his goons, but the irate bandit was able to rally them back into action. The gang of goats and ponies surged down the street but paused at the crossroad beneath the water tower.

“There she is!” one of the ponies shouted as he pointed further down to the road to the sight of a duster-wearing pony ducking down an alley.

“No, she’s over there!” another pony insisted, pointing to a similar sight down the opposite street.

“Then who’s that?” a third sounded when he saw another duster-draped pony galloping across the rooftops.

“Get her! Get her! Get her!” Billy continued bellowing as he started shoving and kicking his ponies towards the supposed Blondie sightings. Rage and impatience were a bad combination when leading others, but he wanted Blondie and he didn’t care how many ponies and goats he had to throw at her in order to accomplish this. His cabal of misfits scattered in multiple directions, all of which was under Daring’s watchful eye as she observed from her new position atop the water tower.

Armed with Blondie’s lever-action rifle, the archaeologist had her apprehensions towards killing these ponies, many of whom she figured were idiotic and headstrong (which was not too unlike Blondie herself). They were getting dragged into a fight that was not their business and death was too extreme a punishment in her opinion. It was a good thing, then, that she had been in charge of organizing the town’s defence. Spotting a small cluster of ponies heading down the northbound street, Daring took aim and fired a precision volley at them.

The first few shots landed just ahead of them, causing them all to screech to an abrupt halt. They were caught out in front of a house that offered no cover. When they tried to turn about to double-back, a few more shots dissuaded them from that direction. A couple more bullets striking the ground at their hooves prompted the entire group to bail into the building for refuge. However, rather than refuge they found a group of townsfolk with shovels and crowbars who were none too happy to see their home invaded. Daring found it hard to refrain from laughing out loud when she saw each and every one of the gang members get tossed back onto the street in an unconscious, battered heap.

“Four down...lots more to go,” Daring chuckled to herself before she loaded what few bullets she had remaining.

Elsewhere, another group of Billy’s posse continued in their chase after what they hoped to be the nameless mare.

“Which way did she go?” one of them grumbled as they galloped down the street. A bullet rattling off a hanging lantern just a few inches from his head answered that question. The shot came from the direction of the general store, where a closing door confirmed that someone had just taken refuge inside. Embolden by their advantage in numbers, they charged after their target.

They barged through the door full of thunder and fury, shouting obscenities as they unloaded their weapons at their stetson-wearing prey. But if they thought they were giving the nameless mare a lead breakfast, they were to be disappointed. Instead of a bullet-riddled pony, they found a bunch of a burlap sacks with a coat and hat draped over them. Furthermore, their flurry of gunfire had kicked up a small cloud of white powder that had been stored inside the sacks. As the fine particulates drifted through the air into their eyes and nostrils, they discovered, in the worst way possible, that the bags had been filled with ground up chili pods. A collective scream echoed from the general store as red, teary-faced ponies burst onto the streets. Chasing gunslingers soon became the last thing on their minds as they raced for the nearest source of water to put out the proverbial fires in their throats.

Another gang of goats had chased their target down the narrow back alleys and managed to keep a few steps behind the leather coattails. After a lengthy chase that left the goats a bit winded, they finally ‘cornered’ their quarry when a wooden fence blocked the alleyway. However, upon catching up to the pony, the goats found someone else entirely.

“You folks look a little lost,” Tenderhoof quipped as he adjusted his duster.

Despite the increasingly angry glares he was getting, the doctor remained steadfast and calm. That might have been because he had been threatened by far more intimidating individuals. Perhaps it was due to his sense of loyalty to Blondie and a willingness to sacrifice whatever it took to save the gunslinger. Or perhaps it was because he knew that the aforementioned gunslinger was standing on the rooftop right above with an empty barrel in hoof.

“Geronimo!” she shouted with unrepentant delight as she descended upon the unlucky goat at the rear.

The barrel almost engulfed the entire goat with a muffled thud. As a bunch of the goats turned about face to see what the commotion was, they were met by the barrel, with goat still inside, being kicked straight into them. All but one of the goats was bowled over by the surprise attack, but the last one standing was unable to act as he was staring down the barrel of Tenderhoof’s shotgun.

“Bit of medical advice, son,” the doctor said with a playful little smirk, “you might want to drop your piece and get out of town.”

“What is wrong with you morons?” Billy screamed upon witnessing several of his underlings running off like scared fillies. “It’s just a couple of wounded ponies and some dirt-poor miners!”

Unfortunately for Billy, it seemed that his words fell upon deaf ears. It would be, however, more accurate to say that they fell upon ears that were too busy cowering as gunfire began to ring out through the town. Another chain of explosions heralded the full-blown retreat of his underlings. They might have been a town of poor miners, but they were now a town armed to the teeth with the weapons dropped by Billy’s erstwhile comrades. It wasn’t long until the entire posse was being chased out of town by shotgun and pistol-wielding townsfolk.

“This...this is impossible! How can this be happening?”

“You know Billy, you always were a scrawny weasel thinking he was a soarin’ eagle,” a smug nameless mare said as she trotted out to the crossroad. “Shame you decided to go with quantity rather than quality.”

“Or maybe they were just the fodder,” the goat outlaw replied as he turned to Blondie.

Blondie, however, noticed something peculiar about the situation almost immediately. She had her revolver drawn on Billy and her friends had run his entire posse out of the town. He should be sweating bullets or pleading for his life at this point. Anger and disbelief was to be expected, but she knew Billy to be a coward. He should’ve been terrified of her, not calm and composed as he was now. He said that they had just been fodder. Did he send that entire posse just to flush Blondie and whatever defences she may have prepared? Billy couldn’t have been that clever, could he?

“And just what exactly do you think you could pull out of your hindquarter that could scare me?” Blondie said. He had to be bluffing perhaps in an attempt to make her pause so he could draw on her. But when the gunslinger saw her opponent’s eyes flick a glance to the distance, she wound up following it to what had been inspiring such confidence in him.

“Brought a friend of yours,” Billy said.

The friend happened to be a certain seven-foot tall minotaur with notable burn scars across his face.Yet, it was more than just the minotaur plodding into the center of the street that unnerved Blondie. A giant, angry minotaur she could handle; she had taken him down twice before without much difficulty. Those past victories, however, counted for nothing except as fuel powering the muscular engine of hate and fury. What unnerved the gunslinger the most was what the minotaur was carrying - a massive, crank-operated, six-barreled gun that was typically carted around on a wagon rather than slung from one’s shoulders. Suffice to say, the minotaur was carrying more firepower than most of the town put together and Blondie could say with absolute certainty that this would be a first for her.

“Well...somebody’s overcompensating.” Jokes aside, Blondie knew a big problem when she saw it, and she was staring down at a least a two tonnes’ worth of problems. Her best chance was to stomp the fire out before it spread. With that in mind, Blondie swung her revolver towards the minotaur and fanned the hammer.

But the minotaur saw the assault coming and hefted his gun up so that the body of the weapon shielded him. Blondie’s barrage made for a nice display of sparks and left behind a few dents but was otherwise totally ineffective. And while Blondie only had six rounds in her revolver, the minotaur had several times as many in his gun, which he leveled in the nameless mare’s direction.

“Ah’m going to need a bigger gun...”

*****************************

“Rainbow! Come on, Rainbow! I’m not leaving until you say something.”

Despite Dash’s best attempts to ignore her librarian friend’s beckoning, when little pebbles started getting tossed up at her cloud she knew that this problem was not going to go away. With a sigh of resignation, the pegasus closed her book and poked her head over the edge of her cloud.

“Do you mind? I’m trying to read here!” Rainbow exclaimed as she waved her book for her friend to see. If anypony was going to understand the importance of attending to a good book, it would be Twilight, or so she hoped. Despite having wanted to get as far away from Manehattan, and all the bad memories it now entailed, her haste in departing the hospital had left Rainbow tired and drained. Still, she had wanted to avoid being found by her friends but it appeared that camping in a cloud above the city library had not been as foolproof as she had hoped. Another spectacular failure for Rainbow Dash. She was beginning to think she couldn’t plan her way out of a paper bag.

“Could you please just come down?” Twilight pleaded once more. Though she valued reading far more than any other pony she knew, even Twilight could recognize when someone was using a book for a shield rather than entertainment. She also knew that she had to tread carefully with the pegasus. Rainbow Dash was her friend and as much as she wanted to confront her friend over this issue, being too assertive could scare Rainbow away. Poor condition or not, the pegasus could still disappear into the clouds if things got too emotional. “Applejack told me what happened at the hospital. I was wondering if you wanted to talk about it”

“I don’t...” Rainbow began but cut herself off. Twilight was trying to be a good friend and she couldn’t fault her for that. Twilight didn’t deserve to be on the receiving end of any ire. “There’s nothing to talk about. I almost ruined my best friend’s relationship, betrayed my best friend, nearly got my idol killed, and ruined my chances to ever get on the Wonderbolts! What more is there to talk about? I...I just want to be alone right now.”

Twilight felt a pang of dejection as she watched her friend disappear behind her cloud cover once more. She had expected her friend’s side of the story to be a bit more dramatic but this was worse than she had feared. Rainbow’s pain couldn’t have been more obvious if she had hung a sign off the cloud, but the one pony that could soothe the wounded pegasus was still at the arena.

“Rainbow, please...I’m your friend. You can talk to me,” Twilight continued even though she was uncertain of how much her friend would listen to.

“I said I want to be alone,” Rainbow snapped back but did not dignify the answer with a visual presence. She opened her book back up and tried to ignore Twilight’s continued pleas.

After several more attempts, all met with absolute silence, Twilight finally gave up on her attempts to talk Rainbow down. More drastic measures were going to be needed but she wasn’t ready to bust out the magic just yet. Again, she didn’t want to come off as being too assertive and force Rainbow to retreat. It had taken Twilight most of the night to track the pegasus down and she was not going to go through that again. At the very least, she could keep an eye on her friend until somebody more persuasive showed up.

And while somepony else did show up, it wasn’t who Twilight expected. A pegasus in the trademark cerulean flightsuit landed on the rooftop nearby. When the pegasus came close enough for her to see who it was, Twilight wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or even more worried.

“Oh, um...hello Ms. Spitfire,” Twilight greeted with a polite nod. “Aren’t you supposed to be at the airshow?”

“Show’s over for the night,” Spitfire answered. “It’s Twilight Sparkle, correct?” Though she hadn’t met the librarian before, Applejack had told her of the other ponies that were out looking for Rainbow. Since it was unusual for a unicorn to be hanging around on a rooftop talking to a cloud, it was a safe assumption that their wayward pegasus was nearby. Spitfire glanced up to the low-hanging cloud with a raised eyebrow. She had expected Rainbow Dash to have flown further off but if this pegasus was as loyal a friend as Applejack made her out to be then it was understandable why Rainbow chose to stay close. “Is she up there?”

“Yeah...and she won’t come down,” Twilight reported. “Did Applejack send you?”

“I’ve got the whole team combing the city from the air,” Spitfire confirmed.

“Does this mean Applejack is looking too?”

The faint murmurs of a conversation in the distance piqued Rainbow Dash’s curiosity. She wondered who Twilight was talking to and when she heard Applejack’s name, she thought for a second that her friend had arrived on the scene. Conflicted between wanting to see her best friend and wanting to fly to safety, Rainbow willed herself to peek over the edge of her cloud to confirm her fears.

“You!” Rainbow exclaimed when she saw who it really was. Of course it had to be the one pony she didn’t want to see. She thought she had already hit rock bottom but it appeared that life wanted to rub salt in her wounds. “What do you want? You’ve already taken my best friend and my dreams! What more could you possibly take from me?”

“Is she usually this melodramatic?” Spitfire whispered to the librarian. The two ponies turned to face away from the cloudborne pegasus in order to keep her from eavesdropping.

“Not to this extreme. I’m really worried about her.”

“All I’ve got left is this book!” Rainbow proclaimed as she held the Daring Do title aloft. “Do you want this as well? Fine! Just take it and go!” She did the unexpected by hurling the book at Spitfire.

Thankfully, quick reflexes and quicker magic on the librarian’s behalf intercepted the lobbed literature. While heated passions were no excuse for mistreating a book, Twilight decided to save that lecture for another day.

“We should get Applejack here quickly,” Twilight continued as she set the Daring Do book aside. “Do you know where she is?”

“She said she was going to check the hotel Rainbow was going to stay at,” Spitfire answered. “I’ll go get her and bring her here.”

“No,” Twilight insisted as she raised a hoof to stop the pegasus from departing. “You stay here and keep an eye on Rainbow Dash. If she tries to leave, I might not be able to stop her. You can at least keep track of her if she does.”

“I...don’t think that’s a very good idea,” Spitfire said with palpable reluctance. There were a dozen different reasons why staying was a bad idea, most of which involved a confrontation that she did not want to have with the fellow pegasus. Rainbow Dash deserved to hear what transpired at the arena from Applejack. If she tried to tell Rainbow, there was a good chance that she might not believe her. Even Spitfire was still having trouble believing what happened just a few short hours ago. Despite her misgivings, however, Twilight did present a valid point and Spitfire didn’t want to be responsible for this search lasting a minute longer than it needed to. “Just hurry up, okay?”

“I’ll be back as soon as I find her,” Twilight acknowledged. Focusing her magic, the unicorn vanished in a violet flash, leaving Spitfire with her unfortunate task to watch over the one pegasus that hated her more than anypony else.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” Spitfire mentally sighed. She reassured herself that all she needed to do was keep an eye on Rainbow Dash for a few minutes until Applejack returned and then everything would be fixed. Resigning herself to her new duty, the Wonderbolt turned about to begin her watch...only to find herself standing face-to-face with Rainbow Dash. The two just stared at each other in tense silence; one wrathful gaze meeting a worried. She knew she needed to say something - something poignant and disarming to ease the tensions. Maybe a half-hearted joke or a sarcastic observation. Then the obvious answer dawned upon her. She hadn’t yet apologized to her rescuer for hitting back in the hospital. It had been a rude way to thank the pony who dragged her unconscious flank out of the fire. Saying sorry felt fleeting but it was a start.

Sadly, Spitfire wouldn’t get a chance to apologize as the moment she opened her mouth, she was met with a hoof to the face.