Chapter Three
“Not gonna happen,” she said flatly. “I don’t even know the meaning of the word ‘careful.’”
“Daring! For the tenth time, watch yourself! You can’t corner so sharply or you’ll spin out like that every time!”
I look up from the pile of books that fell on top of me when I hit the shelves, thankful that they were all paperbacks. I check a few of the books for damages, making sure I didn’t accidentally bend the spines or tear off the covers. A few titles catch my eye as I look over them: The Old Mare and the Bee, War and Pizza, Historically Accurate Archaeology...
None Daring Do; all irrelevant.
“Sorry, Twilight,” I say, hastily reshelving everything, “but if I’m going to get my time down any lower I can’t go all the way around the table. Under it would be faster.”
“I’m starting to think that maaaybe this obstacle course wasn’t the greatest idea,” says Twilight, wincing with every book I shove back in the shelf. “You’re banging up the—I mean, you’re getting pretty banged up.”
“I can do it!” I insist. No way am I going to let a little bit of pain slow me down. I’m getting used to it now. “I just need to carry more speed in the straightaway between the kitchen and that pile of cushions. Maybe if I took a rope and tied it around—”
“No,” says Twilight, clearly unamused.
“But I haven’t even said what I’d be—”
“No. No ropes, no creative uses of my curtains, no hanging things from the ceiling and swinging from them. And definitely no using a hat to knock over a target.”
I frown. “But Daring uses her hat like that in every single book.”
“Tell that to my lamp!”
“I told you, I didn’t know it was going to curve like that when I put some spin on it,” I tell her, blushing slightly. “...And it’s fixed now, isn’t it?”
“That isn’t the—” Twilight is interrupted by a loud thump from upstairs, one that sends vibrations through the entire room.
“Dang! I totally thought I had it that time,” says a new voice from out on her balcony. “Hey Twilight? You home?”
Twilight’s mane instantly stands on end, like Daring’s in a snakepit. “Oh no, oh no, oh bad, bad timing!” She spins to face me. “We have to hide you. It’s her, that’s Rainbow Dash! She absolutely positively cannot see you at all or it’ll ruin everything. You need to hide. Now.”
Rainbow Dash, Rainbow Dash… Right. I know her. She’s literally the pony I was made for. The reason I have to be Daring Do. I’m not afraid of meeting her—I’m not afraid of anything—but I know I can’t let her see me. Not yet. I still have a few days of training left, and I’m still not the best Daring Do I can be. She can’t meet me until I’m ready for her. A real, in-the-flesh Daring Do. Not a sad, half-formed Daring Do-it-over-again. I promised Twilight that much.
“Quick, in here!” Twilight opens the basement door up for me, motioning for me to get in. She slams it shut as soon as I’ve ducked inside... and I open it back up a crack as soon as I’m sure her back’s turned. It’s probably not good hiding practice—Daring’s been found out for trying it a few times—but I can’t help myself. I just want to see her, this Rainbow Dash I’ve heard so much about.
I keep my eye close to the door-crack, trying to catch as much of the action as I can. It’s tough to see much of anything through the little sliver of door I’ve got open, but I do notice one thing out of the ordinary: a blur of color, blue, red, and yellow, speeding around the library faster than my eye can follow. It’s… unusual, to say the least.
“Where is it, where is it, where is it, where is it?” cries a mare’s voice. Suddenly the color-blur comes to a screeching halt, and I gasp as I realize it’s not a blur after all. It’s a pegasus pony, with a bright light-blue coat and a seven-shaded rainbow mane.
I’ve never seen her before, but I know who she is. It’s obvious. Who else could she be? Rainbow Dash.
“Okay, Twi,” she says panting. “I give up. Where’re you hiding my birthday present? ”
“I… uh…” comes Twilight’s voice. “I have no idea what you’re, uh—oh, is it your birthday in three days, Rainbow? I had no idea! Sorry, I’ve been so busy lately it must have slipped my mind! And my calendar. And my comprehensively-detailed weekly schedule...”
“Yuh-huh.” Rainbow Dash raises an eyebrow. She doesn’t look convinced. To tell the truth, I probably wouldn’t have been fooled either. She gives the library a look-over and her eyes suddenly light up. “Hey, are those racing hoops you’ve got set up? Are you getting me an obstacle course?”
“Not… really… no?” Twilight stammers. “I mean, it’s for a friend of a friend, who wanted my advice on how to make a good obstacle course for a pegasus you probably don’t know.”
Rainbow Dash cocks her head. “So you built one in your library?”
Twilight gives a nervous high-pitched little chuckle. “Gotta experiment with different configurations to see what works, right?”
“Yeah, I’ll bet,” says Rainbow Dash. She doesn’t look especially convinced. “Who’s the pegasus? Maybe I can give a couple pointers. I did win the last Best Young Flyers’ Competition, after all.”
Best Young Flyers’ Competition… Why does that sound so familiar? Then it hits me. Page 43, Daring Do and the Griffon’s Goblet: Daring was named Best Young Flyer three years in a row, back when she flew for sport.
Not too bad for Rainbow Dash, then. I guess. Getting named Best Young Flyer once is kind of impressive, but she still has a couple more to go before she can match up to the Airborne Archaeologist.
“Well, that’s nice of you to offer, but... um...” I see Twilight pace past my field of vision, and then back in the other direction. “She’s a little embarrassed about needing the practice?”
Rainbow Dash shrugs. “Geez, Twilight, it’s not like Fluttershy’s not my friend too.”
“It’s not Fluttershy!”
Rainbow Dash shrugs. “Whatever, Twilight. Tell Fluttershy that if she ever wants to start training for the big leagues, I could find a few hours for her in my busy schedule.”
Twilight sighs. “...Sure, why not? Let’s go with that, then.” A brief silence. “So...” she says, “Completely unrelated to your birthday or my friend-of-a-friend, I heard you crash on my balcony. Do you need me to patch you up?”
Rainbow Dash turns to the side, and I nearly gasp aloud. Just under her wing is an ugly gash, oozing with blood. She lifts up her mane and reveals an ugly-looking bruise developing on her forehead. A mix of purple, black, and dark-blue, in almost as many shades as her mane. I can’t help but wince a bit thinking about that. If a little bump on the head hurts that much, she must be in agony. But she hardly even seems to care.
“It wasn’t a crash, Twilight,” she says defensively. “It was just... a really high-speed landing. Y’know, on my face.”
A high-speed landing. On her face. That one sounds familiar too. Page 268, Minotaur’s Labyrinth... Didn’t Daring use exactly the same line, there? Come to think of it, was it even page 268? Or was that page 269? I knock myself on the head a few times, trying to remember. C’mon, I read this! Why can’t I remember it now, of all times?
...
I give up. I’ll just have to read it over again.
“Riiiight,” says Twilight. Now it’s her turn to look skeptical. “Let me just fix you up, then. Your face-landings look like they could still use a little work.” Her horn glows and she casts the same spell she’s been using on me all morning. The bruise on Rainbow Dash’s forehead fades away almost instantly, and the gash on her wing starts to close up like... well, like magic.
“You’re the best, Twilight,” she says, grinning. “Hey, now that I’m in top form again, how ’bout I put your new obstacle course to the test? No sense in letting it go un-Dashed if your friend isn’t here, right?” Without even waiting for Twilight to answer, she stretches her wings, body coiling into take-off position. “Watch this!”
I blink and I miss it. She’s already in the air, even faster than before, circling through the hoops like they weren’t even there. I open the door just a hair further to track her movements better, but she’s just so fast that it’s easier to tell where she was than where she is. Five, six, seven laps through the hoops before she gets bored with them. She spins upward toward the ceiling, then dives straight for the table. I cringe slightly—I always screw up at the table—but Rainbow Dash swoops under it with ease. She slows just a bit for a mid-air somersault, but she sticks the landing perfectly, instead of crumpling against the floor like a tin can.
She closes with a bow; I have to hold my applause.
“Easy peasy, Twi,” she says, brushing a bit of her wild, uncontrolled mane from her eyes. “Not bad, though. B-plus, probably. It’ll give Fluttershy a pretty good workout anyway.”
“I keep telling you it’s not for Fluttershy!”
“Pfft, c’mon, Twilight. Everyone knows you’re the worst liar in Ponyville.”
“I am not,” Twilight huffs. “And not everyone knows that!”
“Oh yeah?” Rainbow Dash gives her an evil grin. “Then where’s my birthday present?”
“It, uh, well, you see,” Twilight’s eyes shift to the left, uncomfortably close to the basement, where I’m hiding. Rainbow Dash seems to catch on, turning her head slowly leftward until it stops in my direction. For a split second, even though I’m sure she can’t see anything through the tiny crack I’ve opened in the door, I swear she’s staring right at me.
“It’s definitely not at Sugarcube Corner!” Twilight blurts. She gasps and clasps her hooves to her mouth, like she’s let something slip. “Oh no! Did I just let that slip?”
“You did!” says Rainbow Dash, turning away. I breathe a sigh of relief. Thank Daring, she didn’t see me after all. She zips to the library’s front door and throws it open. “Ha! Wait ‘til Pinkie finds out I found out.”
“No, don’t!” calls Twilight, but it’s too late. Dash is out the door before Twilight can get another word in edgewise, taking off at speeds slightly faster than the average lightning bolt. It’s another blink-and-you-miss-it moment. From here to gone, in just under a second.
Twilight, for her part, just sighs and closes the door. She takes a quick peek through the windows to make sure Dash is really gone, then paces over toward the basement. “All right, you can come out now,” she says loudly. “Not like you aren’t listening anyway.”
Oops. Busted. I step out from the basement and put on my best sorry face. “Was it… really that obvious?”
“Oh, not particularly,” she says. “Just an educated guess. A little curiosity should be natural at this stage in your development. Starswirl actually goes into great detail about it in his writings... But that’s by the by.” She shrugs. She knows by now I don’t listen much when she talks about this sort of stuff. “What did you think of her?”
“Of, of Rainbow Dash?” I ask. That’s… a tough question. I’m not actually sure what to think of her. I’d heard so much about her before this, but seeing her in the flesh for the very first time was something else altogether. I don’t know what I was expecting her to be after all the stories Twilight’s told me about her, but it wasn’t that. “Well… I think she’s…”
“Yes?” says Twilight urging me on. “Keep going! This could be important for future golem research. She’s...?”
Deep breath. “She’s loud and cocky and arrogant and kind of sarcastic, and, and…” I stop. And familiar. I’ve never seen Rainbow Dash before, but I she reminds me of something. Or someone. Loud, cocky, arrogant, and sarcastic…
A perfect description of Daring Do.
“And I need to train more,” I finish. “I’ve only got three days left before I have to meet her, so I’ve got to be in top form.”
“Are you sure?” asks Twilight. “You don’t want to take a break first?” She grumbles something under her breath about a B-plus. “So we could, uh, make some minor improvements to the course?”
“I’m sure,” I say firmly. And I am. More than I’ve ever been. I know I’m not the best Daring Do I can be yet. Not even close. Rainbow Dash has taught me that much. If I’m going to impress her when we finally meet, I have to be better. Have to try harder. “No breaks. I’ll keep working with what we’ve got.”
I won’t let her be a better Daring than me.
“Well, if you say so,” says Twilight, sounding a little disappointed. “A B-plus, though. Honestly...” She grabs her timer off the table and sets it. “Let’s take it from the top, then. On your mark…”
I coil my body, just like Rainbow Dash did, stretching my wings out to prep them for flapping. I’m ready for this. No more mistakes.
“Get set…”
Eyes on the first hoop, just above me. I’m going to have to get the most out of my take-off I want to make that leap and keep going. That ought to shave a extra few seconds off my time. It won’t be much, but it’ll bring me that extra bit closer to Rainbow Dash’s performance.
That extra bit closer to being more Daring than her.
“Go!”
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We both missed the 'I' here, Obs.
and dash said twi wasn't a good liar
3260212
She is actually a really bad liar, but Rainbow doesn't know how to meta.
And wow, she really doesn't feel pain anymore ! Shouldn't she see a doctor ?
Goddamn. Daring Do is Rainbow Dash.
My face when it's because of the spell...
~Skeeter The Lurker
3260455
and Rainbow Dash is Daring Do.
Everyone's face when it's because of Cindy Morrow.
Okay, I may get some seriously deadpan faces for this, but at the very end, there's a space between the question mark and the quote mark.
Remove the 'I' just before 'she'.
A bit awkward wording, but that's not the point. You're missing 'if' after 'take-off'.
So, Daring Doll is doing all she can, but she's still got a long ways to...
*Sunglasses*
Go!
I don't know why or how, but I have a feeling that this isn't going to end well.
3283379 Daring Doll! I like it!
It reminds me of my own stuff, like "Everybrony".