Chapter 4 - Instincts and cave-ins
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Okay. Okay, alright.
Just when Dash thought she had gotten the hang of the situation, things had taken a turn for the weird. Again.
Well, this settled it. She definitely was inside a “Daring Do”-book. And she somehow had managed to peak ahead in the story. Rainbow Dash sighed. The situation had reached critical “Pinkie Pie”-levels of insanity, and it was time to just shrug and accept reality without question. This reality, anyway... Aarg!
Okay. She could do that. After all, she had managed to get over that one time when her pink earth-pony friend – somehow – managed to out-compete her while Dash had tried literally everything just to get away from her. Out-competed her! The fastest pegasus in all of Equestria!
A cold drop of water hitting her muzzle brought Dash back from her thoughts.
Dash had not paid much attention to where Daring Do was leading them. The larger room had given way to a series of narrow corridors snaking their way through the earth, it's walls once again fading from brick-architecture into barren stone. Soon, only a number of reinforcing pillars and the occasional torch, hanging useless on walls glittering with water, served as a reminder that this route led deeper into the temple. The ground was a muddy mess that would have given Rarity a fit.
Their own shadows were wavering, dancing across the walls in the uneven light provided by the flickering flames of her torch and Daring's oil-lamp. It gave Dash an eery feeling she could not explain. Even the shining water-droplets seeping in from cracks all around the cave-walls conjured up the mental image of a hundred tiny pairs of eyes scrutinizing their every move.
A cold shiver ran up her spine. The entire area just gave her this strong sense of foreboding...
Wait! Did that mean...?!
Dash instinctively looked up, only for ... a drop of water to hit her spot-on in her left eye. Other than that, there was nothing up there. Blinking the water out of her eye, Dash anxiously examined her surroundings.
Still nothing. A false alarm? Not like she had any idea how this new “sixth sense” of hers actually worked, or if she could trust it blindly. But she just could not shake the feeling she had come to associate with some rather unpleasant occurrence in her immediate future – and the feeling was only getting stronger with every passing second! The strange sensation of seeing danger coming, but not knowing what it was or where it would be coming from was... unsettling. Unconsciously, the cerulean pegasus' wings unfurled, and she took a defensive stance against an unknown threat.
As her eyes kept glancing over the area, she caught a glimpse of Daring Do staring at her.
“Uh, Rainbow Dash, is everything okay?”
Apparently, her sudden change of behavior had not gone unnoticed by the other pegasus. What should she tell her? “Daring! Look out ...for, err, something!” Yeah, sure.
Dash gave a frustrated sigh. She knew something was up, but there were no words to explain the feeling to somepony else without sounding like a complete lunatic!
Eventually, she bit her lower lip and forced out a weak “I'm fine! It's just that I –”
*CLICK.*
Both Rainbow Dash and Daring Do instantly froze.
Dash looked up – but contrary to her expectations, neither did she see falling rocks, a descending wall, shattered debris, hungry crocodiles nor a cave-in coming her way. Then she looked down. Reflecting the light of her torch, there was something peaking out from under the floor's dirt-cover, right under one of her front-hooves. Without taking her hoof from the ground, careful swipes with her other fore-hoof revealed a floor-tile with the depiction of a crocodile on it.
Oh. Crocodile. Funny, only a second ago she had expected a crocodile to fall on her head... err.
Further effort revealed that, in fact, the entire floor ahead was covered in animal-themed tiles. Leopards, griffons, crocodiles and so on, but also birds, mice and other small forest critters. They just had not seen them below the accumulated smudge of several millennia. And the worst part about it was, that the pattern was mind-numbingly simple to decipher. Predator, predator, predator – prey, predator, prey. It was just like the puzzle in “Daring Do and the Quest for the Sapphire Stone”... Except this one was so simple in it's design that even a school-filly could've figured it out.
But nooo, of course she had to step on the crocodile.
The main question was why it hadn't triggered any traps yet. That was... surprisingly very considerate of whoever had built this place. Death-traps that could kill you instantly everywhere, but this one would give you time to think about what you'd done. Great.
Daring Do seemed to be wondering the same thing, as she kneeled down to examine the image-covered floor-tiles.
“Okay, I've seen something like this before, but... hmm. I guess we're supposed to step on the tiles with the predators?” she pondered out loud. “Seeing that it's the only thing all these have in common, and that nothing happened when you stepped on this one.”
What?!
Wait... That... made sense. Why did the idea of simply not having triggered the trap not occur to her earlier?
Reluctantly, the cyan pegasus lifted her right fore-hoof from the floor. The very moment her hoof was up, Dash already knew that it had been a mistake. The next minute or two became a haze, as several events occurred in rapid succession.
First, a rumbling noise from above announced a rapidly descending ceiling. The next thing Dash knew, she was already up and dodging falling rocks and debris from the trap-mechanism that apparently had not stood the test of time and was now fulfilling it's duty of killing them in a slightly different manner as it had been intended – namely by spilling it's spiky, razor-sharp mechanical guts everywhere at bullet-speeds, and destabilizing the underground tunnel they were currently trying to escape from.
The patterned floor-panels forgotten, both pegasi bolted through the near-darkness of the collapsing corridor – Dash's torch having been extinguished somewhere along the way, and Daring's oil-lamp flickering hectically as she ran making it extremely difficult to see anything.
Rock. Dash dodged to the left.
All Dash could discern were shapes flying all around her, yet she found herself barely scraped by any of them. “Guess it's my lucky day,” Dash dodged to the left, avoiding a large chunk of rock impacting right next to her.
The cerulean pegasus ducked. Gear wheel. Cut off a few strands of her rainbow mane.
Dash heard a whirring noise coming up from behind, and the cerulean pegasus ducked just in time to avoid an out-of-control gear wheel zipping right over her head – That was close! Dash could've sworn the gear even had cut off a few strands of her rainbow mane!
...Déjà vu? No time for that.
Halt. ...cutting off her path. Left. ...boulder toppling over.
Dash came to a screeching halt, as a large boulder came down right in front of her, cutting off her path. Her ears perking up to some unheard noise, she almost instantly regained her momentum as she darted to the left – just barely avoiding getting squashed by the boulder toppling over to where she had stood merely a second ago.
Slide. Metal piece soaring right past... Jump. Finding her balance... on only two legs. Hay.
Impossibly, she crouched down and slid right beneath another out-of-control metal piece soaring right past her face. The image of two huge magenta eyes staring down at her with a mixture of shocked disbelief and confusion burned itself into her mind. It had been her reflection.
Dash didn't have any time to really think about what was happening, she was purely acting on instinct now. Muscles tensing, she prepared to jump straight from her crouched position. She landed, hind-legs first, on a slab of rock. For a moment, she had trouble finding her balance – it felt as if the rock was shifting beneath her hooves – but she managed to steady herself on only two legs. The familiar feeling of winds blowing in her face, the sensation of speed was a welcome change, comforting in this otherwise utterly confusing situation.
“Wait, what the...?”
The wide chunk of rock she had landed on was, for whatever reason, shooting sideways through the tunnel, covering a good distance before embedding itself in a wall. Dash's only thoughts in that moment were “What the hay?!” and “What the hay what the hay WHAT THE HAY?!!!”
Despite lacking a light source of her own, Dash practically – for lack of a better term – danced through the rain of stone and metal debris clattering from the ceiling. A sharp turn here, a jump purely on instinct there – she barely received so much as a scratch! For the most part, all she felt were gusts of wind as she passed through the mostly dark, and undoubtably hazardous obstacle course.
Concerns for her life soon turned into an adrenaline-fueled euphoria. In defiance of danger, Dash couldn't help but grin. This was crazy awesome!
Daring Do.
With a start, Dash remembered that she wasn't alone in the collapsing tunnel. She turned, only to see Daring Do having fallen far behind. The other mare was doing her best to work her way around the deadly debris, but it was obvious she lacked Dash's inexplicable “sixth sense” and uncanny brand of supernatural luck. She was making due with the regular five senses quite well, mostly dodging whatever came her way.
Mostly.
Daring Do's oil-lamp gave her a clear indication, where Daring was going. And she was heading right for disaster. She had to help her! But as Dash looked back the way she had come, against the flickering light shining into her general direction, she could see the actual scope of the situation. “Rain of stone and metal debris” wasn't entirely appropriate to describe the sight that lay before her. “Storm” would have been more befitting. Sharp pieces of rubble were flying everywhere, and not just from the ceiling, a significant number of shards – some of them as large as a pony – were bouncing off the walls and ground as well!
“How in the world did I make it through there?” Dash stared at the spectacle in morbid fascination, with Daring Do caught in the middle of it all. She shook her head, and made up her mind. Galloping back into the inferno, she yelled:
“Daring Do! Look out for the –”
...And then the floor gave way beneath her hooves.
Daring Do was in hell.
Well, that's what it felt like.
She generally hated it when ancient catacombs decided that her visit happened to be the best time to come crumbling down, but this was one of the trickier ones. She could barely see anything, and despite years of training and experience with similar situations – although training-sessions on escaping from a collapsing temple had only been the occasional oddity on her schedule – she found herself in quite the sticky situation.
Everything was flying, all around her. And in every direction.
Except for her, she wasn't flying. Her left wing still hurt, it had been hit by some of the flying debris. She couldn't discern the severity of the injury right now, but the pain was bearable as long as she didn't stress the appendage.
Darting to the left side of the tunnel, the adventurer evaded a gaping hole in the ground that just so happened to open up right in front of her – only to nearly get squashed by the wall itself crumbling to the ground, obscuring her path with more wreckage.
Forced to reduce her speed as she carefully made her way over the unstable pile of rubble right next to what might easily have been a fifty meter drop, Daring caught a glimpse of a rainbow blur shooting by over-head.
“Huh? Was that Rainbow Da-AAARGH!!” Daring held back a yelp of agony behind clenched teeth, as she took yet another blow to her back.
The path ahead was dangerous enough on it's own, and while Daring certainly enjoyed a good challenge, she sadly lacked the second pair of eyes on the back of her head that would obviously be required to evade the ricocheting shards and metal bits striking her from behind. She would have to tend to her wounds later, for now, all she could do was to canter onwa- “...aaand there goes my balance.” Daring groaned inwardly as the slab of stone she was currently standing on began sliding away from under her hooves. She just barely managed to jump off to the side, before the stone-plate rushed down the slope and fell into the pit to her right.
Once she was back on stable ground, she picked up her pace back to a quick gallop.
Only moments thereafter, something hit Daring from behind, this time in her right hind-leg. Luckily, it hadn't struck too hard, merely causing the adventurous mare to stumble momentarily, before quickly regaining her balance and resuming her gallop.
Daring had no illusions about her situation. As much as she hated to admit it, she couldn't hold this up for much longer. There was simply too much going on all around her, and she could not dodge these things forever. The light blow to her leg had just put more emphasis on this fact. The moment she injured her leg, got struck down, or maybe even just tripped – the instant she stopped, she'd be as good as dead.
Somewhere up ahead, Daring could make out a pathway that split off from the main tunnel. It had not yet succumbed to the destructive chain-reaction, and she made a dash for it.
A deformed piece of metal scrap that at one point might have been a cog-wheel shot down in front of Daring Do. She dodged, just as another part of the wall to her right burst to bits succeeding the impact of a large boulder. Zigzagging through the resulting chaos over to the other side of the tunnel, she encountered an incredibly fast-spinning metal plate rebounding between both walls near ground-level. This warranted a raised eyebrow from the adventurer, as the odds for a setup like this to fall into place completely by chance seemed somewhat small. Regardless, there was no time to waste, and Daring did not hesitate to risk a jump that could easily end with getting cut clean in half if timed improperly.
Upon landing, a small explosion right overhead caused a shower of rocks to come down right above Daring's position. She managed to evade the larger chunks of stone, but the majority of them were to small to make out in the dim light, and the pelting rubble too widespread to dodge. Daring took the blows to her back, merely protected by her trademark jacket and pith-helmet – the latter of which served her well in preventing any serious head-injuries – and galloped on.
She was almost there!
The sudden outcry of “Daring Do! Look out for the...” took her off-guard.
Daring's ears shot up straight, her pupils shrinking into tiny pinpricks at the realization – amidst all the chaos, she had completely forgotten about Rainbow Dash! Jerking her head to the source of the exclamation, she briefly lost track of where she was going – and her brisk gallop came to an abrupt end as her face reconciled with the dirt on the floor. As fate would have it, this misfortune wouldn't cost, but instead save her life.
There was no forewarning, other than a hissing noise easily lost amidst the cacophony of a cave-in. Specs of mud splattered all over her face, as a large object soared right over her head and then dug its way into solid rock only inches away from her muzzle. Opening her eyes again, the adventurer stared at a wall of metal, a razor-sharp blade sticking out of the ground at an odd angle indicating it had come shooting down from behind where she could not possibly have seen it coming.
Out of reflex, Daring raised a hoof to check on her trusted pith-helmet, but quickly reasserted her priorities as she noticed a stone-pillar hurdling towards her general direction. Swiftly rolling to her side, the bruised pegasus tensed as her body-weight pushed down on her injured wing. Ignoring the unpleasant sensation, she quickly got to her legs and resumed her escape at a brisk pace.
Finally having reached safe territory, Daring Do gave an audible sigh. “Phew, now that was some exercise!” She wiped her left front-leg against her forehead, which didn't really do much to alleviate her sweat-soaked coat from countless stains of mud. Back in the main tunnel, the noise was already dying down, and the endless stream of rubble falling from the ceiling was coming to an end.
“That last one was a close call.” she chuckled to herself, examining her helmet for damage. Relieved to see that it had not sustained anything major beyond a few new scrapes – a surprising feat considering the condition its owner was in – she put her headgear back on with a satisfied smirk.
But really, that was close! If Dash hadn't shouted at her at that very moment, she... might... not...
Daring Do smacked her left hoof across her own face as hard as she could, ignoring the sharp pain and a bleeding nose that followed.
One stupid little brush with death, and she forgot about her companion?! What in Tartarus was wrong with her?!?
But just as Daring was about to come charging back into the tunnel, there was a loud, almost comical “CRACK”-sound, as – oh, now that was just great timing – the entrance through which she had come was sealed shut by the last few chunks of rock that the cave-in had shaken loose coming down right in front of her. No matter how hard the athletic mare pushed, shoved, or slammed the whole weight of her body into the boulders blocking her path at full force, they did not budge.
“Dash! Rainbow Dash!” Daring shouted, her hooves pounding wildly against unmoving rock. “Are you okay in there?!”
There was no response.
“Celestia-darnit, Rainbow Dash! Say something, anything!”
“Just gimme five more minutes...” Dash moaned, stirring in her sleep.
The feeling of something sharp poking her in the back however kept the pegasus from returning to her peaceful slumber. Daring Do was safe. So why couldn't she just keep dozing for a couple more minutes?
However, sweet unconsciousness proved elusive, slipping away ever so slowly. Her blanket turned into a pile of rubble and dirt, and her fluffy cloud-bed felt hard and uncomfortable. Add to that the horrible taste in her mouth, and she just couldn't get back to sleep anymore. Dash slowly opened her eyes, but the darkness didn't budge. “Stupid darkness, go away,” Dash slurred, and tried to find the light-switch on her bed-lamp. As her hooves struck metal, she remembered that her bed-lamp wasn't made of that material, and was inclined to reconsider her surroundings as not being her comfy cloud-home in Ponyville.
Then, the memories of the previous day came back to her. Meeting Daring Do, being chased through the Mareican jungle by predators, discovering an underground cave-system / ancient temple, a cave-in... and the ground suddenly disappearing.
Dash frowned at that last bit. The ground hadn't just been gone, it had dragged her with it. How else would a skilled pegasus like herself be unable to keep level, even with the ground beneath her hooves gone so suddenly? Was it an air-current that had pulled her through the hole in the floor?
That particular detail was missing from her memories. Still, with everything that had happened, this only added to the pegasus' confusion. Especially considering her newfound... abilities, which had decided to stop working in that crucial moment. Granted, all the other moments before it had been crucial too, probably even more so. It was still a miracle she didn't find herself buried below a heap of dirt and rock, and she certainly was glad for –
...What the hay was that taste in her mouth?
Dash realized with a start that she was lying face-down in a clod of dirt. And some of that dirt was also now in her mouth. Jumping to all four hooves, she spat profusely, and then futilely tried scrubbing her tongue with both of her front-hooves. As they, too, were caked in a layer of dirt, her attempts to rid herself of the vile flavor were in vain.
The pegasus' wings flared in agitation, only for a sharp pain in her right wing to instantly distract her from the bitter taste in her mouth. Dash turned her head to examine her injured wing... only to remember that she couldn't see a darn thing in the utter and complete darkness she had found herself in. Exclamations of “Buck!” and “To the moon with this!” were interspersed with Dash wincing in pain, as she folded her wing back into a more comfortable position.
“Great. Just great. My wing hurts, I can't see anything, I have dirt on my tongue and I'm probably stuck down here forever. Great! Just great!” Rainbow Dash grunted in frustration.
As Dash flailed her hooves in a gesture expressing her general dissatisfaction with the current circumstances, she once again heard a quiet “clank”, and then the clattering noise of metal against metal. Apparently, she had toppled some of the metal debris to fall onto another metal surface. The interesting thing however was a tiny red dot that had burned itself on the back of her eyelids. It had been a spark. All she needed were a couple sparks to light up her torch.
Dash had most definitely never been to the filly scouts, and asides from some things she had picked up from Fluttershy's extensive knowledge of animal care-taking, her expertise concerning nature for the most part stopped before reaching ground-level. However, she had learned a useful trick or two from reading... well, heh, a “Daring Do”-book. Who'd have thought she'd ever get hooves-on-experience in that very field?
She placed the torch on the ground, and began banging the two metal pieces together atop it. It turned out to be more difficult than she had anticipated, the first signs of a fire not going past a mere glimmer before dying down again in a matter of seconds. The cerulean pegasus certainly wasn't one to start fires – if anything, as a weather-mare, she had to extinguish them in the rare case there ever was one. Realizing she was missing something, Dash paused. What could help her starting a fire? She didn't have any dry grass or tree-branches. Nor did she have a lightening cloud. Nor a stove. And those were just about the only things she could think of at the moment to start a fire.
Well – how did she extinguish them? Maybe she could... err, do the exact opposite of that? Although, the opposite of a rain cloud... well, that'd be a clear sky. Okay, so that particular train of thought wasn't going anywhere.
...Wait, why a stove? Dry grass, tree-branches, lightening clouds, yes – but why was one of her first ideas to start a fire through natural means to use a stove? Yeah, sure, but...
Oh yeah, that one time Derpy set her kitchen on fire. Something about “muffins with hot sauce” and an exploding stove. And it had been a particularly sunny day, so there hadn't been too many rain clouds to pump for water. Of course there was the well, but that was on the other side of town. Sure, she could've flown there and back in ten seconds flat, but there had been an even faster way. Dashing in at top-speed, and robbing the fire of the air it needed to spread. “Oh yeeaaah, that!” Dash smacked her hoof against her forehead.
Having found the missing key-component to her cunning plan of starting a fire, Dash's next attempt was a success. After finding the torch and the two metal plates again in the dark, Dash carefully blew on the tiny glowing spot, which soon grew into a healthy fire. Dash smiled at her – admittedly relatively minor – accomplishment, and picked up the lower end of the torch with her mouth ... only to spit it back out right afterwards with a startled yelp.
“Yuck! Pew! Ugh, gross!” Dash spat and tried to rid herself of the foul taste of centuries-old wood. “And I thought the dirt 'round here tasted bad, urgh!”
Picking up the torch with a front-hoof, Dash started examining her surroundings, but stopped after only two steps.
...How had she been holding the torch before? When she was up there with Daring Do, she obviously had had other things on her mind. And now, she... she couldn't remember. It was such a minor detail, she hadn't given it any thought at the time.
She most definitely hadn't been using her mouth to hold it. She'd remember that. Hay, she could even recall using one of her fore-hooves to uncover the alligator-themed floor-tile and firmly holding it down with the other – while she had still been holding the burning torch! If it hadn't been for the torch, she might not even have seen the floor-tile!
...
Wait, where did the torch even come from?! She certainly didn't remember holding it anymore when everything around her had gone haywire. Though she couldn't remember dropping it either. It just ... she just hadn't thought of it anymore up till right now, and now she was holding it in her left front-hoof.
Dash just blinked a couple of times at the jarring inconsistency.
Again, even though she had already dismissed the idea twice, this was like a dream. The moment when you realized “Wait, why does Twilight's pet-owl suddenly have the head of Applejack's pet-dog?” or “Wait, hold on, why would the famous Spitfire be a clown on my birthday party?” was usually the moment when you woke up.
Except she didn't wake up, things were just making less and less sense by the minute.
Dash moaned in resignation, and flopped onto the ground, ears drooping. She had thought she could deal with this kind of stuff. She had dealt with Pinkie's antics for years, even before they had become close friends. Pretty much everypony in Ponyville had dealt with Pinkie Pie breaking the established laws of physics at one point or another. But Pinkie Pie had always been... well, “the exception to the rule”. It would have been so much easier to accept this entire scenario and all it's oddities if Pinkie had been there. Then... well, then she could just dismiss the whole thing as “Pinkie Pie being Pinkie Pie” and be done with it. She had come to terms with Pinkie being random, the very rare relapse taken aside... But seriously! How did Pinkie manage to stay ahead when she had tried to –
“Okay, okay, chill down Dash, you're over that now.” She took a deep, calming breath.
Now that she thought back to her episode of “crazy insane awesome luck” back in the collapsing tunnel, the idea of “Pinkie Sense” seemed even more appropriate.
Or, in her case, “Rainbow Sense”.
“No, no, no!” Dash shuddered and vigorously shook her head to dispel the thought. There was just something fundamentally ... wrong about the mere concept! She couldn't put her hoof on what it was, but she vehemently refused to believe that “Pinkie Sense” and what she had experienced were anything alike, regardless of any similarities that presented itself.
Now that she recalled the event, a wild jumble of words and sentence-fragments came floating up to the top of her head, but seemingly without any context or structure.
The flustered mare massaged her temples to counter the beginnings of an oncoming headache.
“Urg, now I know how Twilight felt when she tried to make sense of Pinkie Sense,” she mumbled out loud, before burying her face in her free front-hoof, still consciously keeping a firm grasp of the torch she was holding in the other – even if just to make sure it wouldn't spontaneously disappear.
However, the thought of her studious friend sparked a recent memory. The wedding of Twilight's brother, Shining Armor – and all the havoc that had gone down during the wedding-ceremony.
What if the “Daring Do” she had met was actually a disguised changeling?
Dash snorted, and then burst out laughing. Just a few hours ago, this would have made sense. Heavens, it would have made so much sense. Much more sense than any other explanation she had come up with so far could have made.
The Mare in the Moon? An elaborate trick. The Mareican jungle? Another elaborate scheme, being dragged away from pony-civilization after having fallen unconscious, whatever the reasons for doing so may have been. Granted, Daring Do would have been the nicest, and most awesome-est changeling she had ever met, but still, even that would have made sense.
It would have, in fact, definitely been the most reasonable and simple explanation, the perfectly logical conclusion, for everything. But now? By this point, the idea was so far removed from reality that Dash just couldn't help but roll on the ground in a barely controlled fit of laughter.
After Dash had more or less composed herself, she stood back up. She really had needed a good laugh after all of this.
“Okay, Dash... let's figure out where you are first, and solve all the mysteries of the universe later.” She wiped away a few tears of mirth.
Holding her torch high in her left fore-hoof, Dash took a closer look at her surroundings.
In contrast to previous narrow corridors and tunnels, she found herself standing in the center of a wide and open space. Her torch's light reflected off from irregular, yet smooth stone-walls in the distance, sprinkled with the occasional gemstone here and there. The rough terrain gave a clear indication that this part of the cave had grown naturally, and didn't seem to be part of the temple's structure. Small pools of water were scattered all about, and now that she was paying attention to it, she could hear water flowing somewhere in the area, and the faint “pling”-noises of waterdrops falling.
Looking up to see where she had fallen from, Dash was surprised that she couldn't see the ceiling. The cave went up so high that the light of the torch didn't reach far enough to illuminate it. Her body's instinctive reaction to move its wings only served as a painful reminder that she didn't have the option of flying back up the way she had come from.
Without any prominent direction to take, Dash followed the sounds of water splashing. She soon came across a small underground river, stretching into the darkness in both directions. With a shrug, Dash wandered off in the direction of the water-current.
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Thanks to BethanyBubbles for last-minute help with editing. 
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Finished in six minutes.
I think I managed to finish it in 10 seconds flat.
It looks like the further Dash is from Daring Do, the more readily she perceives the inconsistencies in the narrative, and the less strictly bound she is by the story. Interesting. And the idea of Pinkie Sense as metatextual precognition is very intriguing...
But I babble. An excellent chapter. Looking forward to more.
Seven minutes. Good chapter.
Nice touch with the torch being inconsistent. If rainbow points out that the story breaks logic, physics, and motivation ( I had to look up TV Tropes for that) then the story might collapse harder than those rocks!
" I tried my best to make it sound a little more varied then “Daring Do dodged a rock. And then she dodged another rock. And then she was hit by a rock” and “debris was falling from the ceiling, and Daring evaded the debris but got struck by a chunk of debris”. "
Tried? TRIED?! YOU DID GREAT!!!
This is something I can't understand how it is done even if I read it ten times.
Awwweeee~! D: I wanted to make a 10 seconds flat joke, but somepony in the comments took away that opportunity! Gwahhhh...
BUT STILL!!! You're truly amazing. My new favorite story. And it's written so well, also.
Thank you so much for the opportunity to read this :3
Hoofs down, one of the best!! I Pinkie Promise. 
890769
Oh my, 10 seconds?
I take it went somewhat like this, then. 
;-)
916817 Yep.
893605
You know, the irony of this is that I originally started advertising the length of the audio book to encourage my watchers on deviantArt - most of which likely aren't into MLP-fanfics - to give it a shot anyway, because it would "only" take <insert amount of time here> minutes to "read" it.
...
Yeah, guess I didn't think about how little sense that notion made in the context of using the same "advertisement-strategy" over on this site.
895586 Wellllllllll... no, I guess. Aarg, you silly intelligent readers make it hard to reply without giving away spoilers.
But it is a valid assumption, and I can see Dash coming to the same conclusion by the end of the story, which is gonna be the "metaphysical crisis" mentioned by somepony in the comments.
Though if anypony can manage to handle the realization their entire world including themselves is a work of fiction, it's the element of laughter.
937460
No, I understood you the first time around. By your postulated logic, we're currently sitting in "Universe Z" and writing about "Universe B" (with some of us writing about "Universe C" as well), but skipping "Universe A" entirely.
And that's likely the conclusion Dash herself is gonna draw from the facts when all is said and done ... except for the "Universe Z" part.
)
(Especially since she doesn't have reason to assume that the 4th wall's upper layer doesn't contain more ponies and another alternate Equestria. ...yeah, the classic "OMG, I've been turned into a pony"-shtick from most HiE stories doesn't apply when you're already a pony to begin with.
Doesn't mean it's gonna be the truth, though.
Though I do withhold my final stance on that idea, since it's probably still a long ways till I get around to the end, and as such, my current concept for the ending may not match the actual one. If I end up coming up with a way to make THAT the killer ending with a way to expand upon it, I might take it. Though for now, I'd rather assume Pinkie and Dash originated from the same universe.
I'm always open for suggestions, though.
891469 "It looks like the further Dash is from Daring Do, the more readily she perceives the inconsistencies in the narrative, and the less strictly bound she is by the story."
That isn't exactly what I'm going for, although the isolation and lack of sensory input in a dark, mostly silent cave might have helped Dash to become more ... receptive. I'm thinking more of it as... well, I don't wanna spoil. Let's just say, there's a tiny little detail that Dash keeps overlooking but has already been noticed by somepony else.
"the idea of Pinkie Sense as metatextual precognition is very intriguing"
I remember having to laugh hard at that scene in "MMMystery on the Friendship Express" right after the other bakers had introduced themselves and went off to their quarters.
Yes. Yes, it is.
Pinkie Pie INSTANTLY jumped ahead to the conclusion that they were going to steal the cake, with no logical build-up or reasoning or anything in-between. It was like she had already seen an episode preview, or read part of the script that didn't give away the ending, but gave the general outline of the episode's setup. It was hilarious. XD
Similarly, I have Dash react to the events of chapter 4 right away from the start. It's like she's subconsciously read the chapter title.
This has some great (and possibly powerfull) potential.
894019 ... and I'm pretty sure that would be bad.
894110 "This is something I can't understand how it is done even if I read it ten times."
What part of "obsessive compulsive perfectionist" did you not understand...?
Kidding, just kidding!
Well, considering what some of the earlier drafts of Daring's action scene looked like, and the amount of time it took me until I figured out how to actually write it properly, I am very pleased to hear that it worked out!
"This is something I can't understand how it is done"
Actually, I can break it down for ya!
Daring's action scene was actually the last part of the chapter I wrote, and what had me in a writers block for a while. (I just skipped the scene and continued writing the part about the "torch", and some Chapter 5 stuff
)
First and foremost, you have to keep in mind that I didn't write this up in one early evening, it took me considerably longer to finish it up. Even despite current "circumstances" in my personal life I do not intend to delve into any further - I've always been somewhat ... thorough with my projects, be they animations, videos, comics, or, in this case, fanfiction.
So yeargh, the whole "obsessive compulsive perfectionist" part probably is somewhat true, I suppose.
Originally, I wasn't even planning on writing Daring's action scene, only the one from Dash's perspective.
However, it soon became apparent that I had to counter-balance RD's "uncanny brand of super-natural luck" by showing that the situation was actually legitimately dangerous.
And basically, with no antagonist and no escape-plans for Daring to come up with, all I'm doing in the action scene practically boils down to "throwing rocks" at Daring Do.
I tried to visualize the scene, and asked myself a bunch of questions such as "what's in the cave? what kind of stuff can fall on Daring's head, other than rocks? How can I diversify?"
Then, I made up a list of obstacles:
- hole in the ground
- gear wheel crashes in front of her
- wall blows into bits (hah, metaphor for breaking the fourth wall, lol)
- pillar falls over
- shower of small rocks
- pile of rubble in her path
- metal piece rebounding between walls
- rocks shooting in from behind
I focussed on three or four of those, and thought about how Daring would handle / dodge these obstacles, again, visually... I probably overthought it in some instances, too.
I wrote a paragraph for each of those individually, and only afterwards began glueing them together into a single picture of "hasty retreat from completely insanely chaotic cave-in".
(For the "glue" mostly just being the merging of the last sentence of one paragraph and the begining of the next one, I think that worked out pretty well.)
Plus, since I needed to show that the scene was dangerous, I had to give Daring Do a few scrapes here and there, although I also had to give a legit reason as to why she couldn't dodge those things, despite being a very skilled adventurer.
...the excuse being that there's simply too much happening at the same time.
What bothered me in the end were repetitions of certain key-words, like "rock", "debris", "rubble" and "cave". For some of those, it was rather difficult to find proper synonyms, and in some cases, there simply were no other words to use. Thus, some repetition was unavoidable, although it seems I managed a good job to tone down the repetition to an acceptable level.
SO. I hope that answered some of your questions?
952681
First. You did! Some of them...
Second. Hm, I can imagine any scene with any things happening, but then I try to write it and then it gets all those "and then" and then I get very frustrated at results. Then I usually stop thinking about it.
Third. Now that I know a bit more on how you think, I might get a better hacking tools to copycat some of your style.
Fourth. Wall was broken.
Fifth. Great many thanks!
Running away to think and try to write.
666428 Uh, silly question, but... which operating system do you use?
'cause getting a decent text-to-speech software is much easier on Vista / XP then on Windows 7.
EDIT: Forget what I just said about Windows 7, I finally got my old Text to speech program to work on my new Windows 7.
...though I'll still have to figure out what steps are really necessary to get it working and which are not. But I'm getting there.
EDIT #2: Sent a note, waiting for feedback if it works...
674866
"I like how you had Rainbow's actual action be exactly the same as the one she foresaw herself doing, only earlier. Like Rainbow Dash can't actually change what's going to happen at all, but can change when it happens."
I have a kinda funny idea in regards to that. Not sure how to properly drop the "exposition bomb" on how it works, but one thing I can say ...
Rainbow Dash is stuck inside a book - a book of which a physical copy exists back in her own world, as it is part of the official Daring Do series ... so somepony must have written the book.
1132401 That's one way to put it - though I was more thinking something along the lines of this: 636714
898315 "I love your writing. It's so fluid and engaging. "
^^; 
I'm flattered to hear that!
Glad to hear it's working out well.
Sorry for responding so late, I guess that was a Derp on my part.
"Must study your writing MOAR~!!!"
I hope this will be of help: 952681
I wanted to make a 10 seconds flat joke, but somepony in the comments took away that opportunity!
Don't worry, I took care of that. 
916817
Took away your opportunity?! LE GASP!
"My new favorite story."
Let me assure you, that despite the lengthy period of time it may have taken since the last chapter was released, that I am still up and running with full enthusiasm on this project. 
Glad to hear that.
After all, I've already managed to finish a 30-minute flash animation project once - all it took was 1 year, 8 days, and a couple of hours.
That is to say... I may be slow, but I can be persistent.
(...also a tad of a perfectionist)
627833 Mindbender, eh? 636714
628318 Be assured that there's certainly some backstory there, it's not exactly your typical 08/15 ancient civilization that randomly builds a temple for Daring to run through and grab an artifact and that's it.
And HAH! "Pony in a box productions" did the "anyhoof"-thing too, in "Cell Mates"
...btw, still working on the story - I'm not on hiatus, I'm just that slow.
629975 I guess it's fair to answer the question if she "read" Daring's thoughts - the answer, in this case at least, would be "no".
Dash "reading" the story happens on a subconscious level, though it might be possible for her to pick up a stray thought, perhaps a word, a sentence fragment at most unless under extraordinary circumstances, such as in chapter 4.
A good story thus far. I've read through most of the comments pertaining to the whole "universe" thing, and how RD perceives it, and that at this point she believes she is in the book, but somehow using her own reality to guide herself and Daring. However, all this has me thinking more toward the end of the story. How will this end for Daring? If this is just a book story, will she simply end when the story is over? Will she even realize that she is a fictional work? This wouldn't bug me but for the fact that you have us inside Daring's head; clearly she can think beyond, and has existed beyond the confines of what the books have revealed (the snippet about her cutie mark). Regardless, you've set up Daring as a character, that I the reader equate to on the same level I do RD. Unless something drastically changes, I'm predicting a bittersweet ending, with RD leaving what is soul filled and complete Daring Do pony, and Daring possibly left with the staggering realization that despite her depiction as completely real, she is in fact not. Not sure if this was even a factor at all in your story, but it was bugging me since I'd hate to see RD and Daring put in a situation like that at the end. Nevertheless, an engaging story, and one plan to continue as you update.
1523214 I am very pleased to hear that! Thank you for the fav & watch, as well.
Arrgghh, this is, once more, one of the times where I wish I could just blatently give away spoilers to engage in conversation about the subject, but alas ... that'd be spoilers.
The whole "fictional character" thing is going to be a subject, yes.
It does raise a number of questions, not all of which I have entirely decided how to answer just yet. ^^;
As for the "what happens after the story ends?" Welll.... spoilers, again. Sort-of. At least it'd spoil the concept I have for how Daring's world "works".
And as for the "bitter-sweet ending" ... I'm more a fan of the "less bitter" stuff, so don't worry. ;-)
952681
.
That method sounds a lot better than what I'm doing at the moment. Just started on a Lylat Wars/MLP crossover and, well, there are only so many things you can throw at an Arwing deep within the bowels of Venom. Given that I've written it by my default progressive way, it's very "suddenly, a collapsing wall! Fox did a barrel roll; crisis averted!" at the moment, might go back and re-write it.
Although, I'd appreciate having some judgement on it beforehoof?
Also, the crossover part is not Twilight's fault. She's not even involved (at least, not with the SUDDENLY ARWINGS part). I... kinda pride myself on not resorting to a teleportation/summoning-magic-misfire with crossovers, just as a little favour to her
And in case you're wondering my LW record is exactly 1400 kills to date.
Haven't caught up yet.... but I wonder if Rainbow will realize that if her Rainbow Sense IS like Pinkie Sense, and her Rainbow Sense works by reading ahead of her own reality due to her being in a book.... then what does that mean for her own reality? That'd be interesting to see. XD But, not caught up yet, so I'll just have to wait and see.
3112684
That implies that Pinkie is not actually from the reality we see on the show, but from an entirely different reality all together, perhaps even one in which the rest of the Mane Six are all fictional characters.
Dontcha just love plot holes?