Daring Do and the Amulet of Memories, Chapter 6
The unicorn shook in her sequined dress, her trembles sending reflections scattering across the ballroom walls. “Daring, I can’t do this! I’m a museum curator, not a field operative!”
“You’re doing fine, Moonlight. Remember the plan: we waltz our way to the other side of the dance floor, you pop your magic to douse the lights, and I snatch the Amulet of Memories from the display case.” The grey-maned pegasus smiled, her hooves on the unicorn’s shoulders as they stood waiting for the music to begin. “What could possibly go wrong?”
“Everything! What if I don’t get all the lights? What if there’s security on the Amulet that we don’t know about? Daring, recovering that Amulet isn’t worth the risk! We - no, you can try again later, and I can go back to translating cuneiform and reassembling potsherds and – ”
“Shhh!” Daring Do put a hoof to the shaking mare’s lips and whispered, “The orchestra’s starting. We’ll never have another shot like this at the Amulet of Memories. After tonight, the Baron will put it back into storage. Now I believe in you, Moonlight, and I know you can do this. Let’s dance!”
Moonlight Glitter shook her head to disagree as she was swept off her hooves by the twirling tan mare. Daring led her across the floor, whirling, spinning, smiling, nudging their waltz ever closer to the sparkling Amulet. She looked out of place in her own slim dress, disguised almost entirely by glamorous evening wear nopony would ever expect to find her in.
She pulled the wide-eyed unicorn closer, her hooves finding warm purchase in the small of the curator’s back. Daring grinned, surprised to find her unwilling partner returning the smile. The unsure academic seemed to forget her trepidation and leaned in, panting breaths mingling as their muzzles weaved in and out with every step.
“Moon,” she whispered to the adventuress, “you can call me Moon. Only my mother calls me Moonlight.” Glancing over the hoof on her shoulder, she saw the Amulet just a tail’s length away. “Are you ready?”
Daring’s wings flared involuntarily, drawing disdainful stares from other couples. “As I’ll ever be… Moon.” She allowed herself a quiet chuckle as the unicorn lit her horn. With a flash every candle, lantern, and torch in the ballroom flared then died away, plunging the dancing crowd into screaming and chaotic darkness. Daring leapt for the…
~~~~~
“Okay, Twi, now you’re not even trying.”
“What do you mean, Dash? I thought you’d be excited to read this together! You don’t know what I had to do to get a pre-release copy of this. It won’t even be in stores for – well, who knows how long?”
“First, how long? Answer is never, egghead. You can’t fool the President of the Daring Do Fanclub about release dates. Second, I know exactly what you had to do to get this little ‘pre-release’ chapter. You agreed to help Fluttershy feed her animals for a month, and you even volunteered to escort her into the Everfree so she could check on that poor injured timberwolf she swears she heard howling last week.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Well, maybe just a little. And I only have to feed her animals for three weeks, not a whole month. So how’d you know?”
“Shy spilled the story over lunch. She writes great romance novels, and fanfics too, but she couldn’t write an action scene to save her wings. Trying to write the end of that ballroom scene sent her into hysterics and she needed to vent. That, and I can see where you pasted a fake cover over a copy of Daring Do and the River of Jade and tried to stick the new pages into the middle of the book between the chapter about the cannibal pygmy ponies and the illustration of Daring holding the jade coin in her teeth.”
“Rainbow, you – you can tell what chapter a book is turned to just from where the spine is creased? How – wait, no, never mind. So what did you think?”
“About Shy’s fake chapter? Not bad, though I wish she’d had more detail on the Amulet, the legends behind it, why the Baron wanted it, and – “
“Featherbrain!”
“Okay, okay, Twilight, keep your horn on. See if I have this straight: you were hoping that a fake Daring Do chapter about Daring and the hot unicorn museum curator going to a big fancy ball would inspire me to ask you to the Sadie Hoofkins dance this weekend?”
“That’s – that’s surprisingly perceptive, really.”
“Answer is no.”
“But Dash, this is probably the last dance I’ll have chance to go to, at least here in Ponyville! You know I expect Celestia to recall me to Canterlot to do some intensive research any time now.”
“Still no.”
“Oh, I get it. This is a Sadie Hoofkins dance – fillies ask colts to the dance, not the other way around, and you’re worried that if you ask me…”
“…Then everypony will think I’m the filly in this relationship. Or the mare. Whatever. Can’t happen. I’m already verging into seriously uncool territory just talking about this.”
“Okay then, Featherbrain. Dash, will you go to the Sadie Hoofkins dance with me this weekend?”
“Let me think, Egghead, let me think… So you were really willing to deface a book, even an old Daring Do novella, just to convince me that going to a dance could be cool?”
“For just anything, no. But for you, Dash… Yes. Yes I was. Once, so don’t push it.”
“Then you’d better see Rarity about a dress, Egghead, ‘cause mine’s completely awesome!”
“Wait, you already have a dress? You knew I’d ask you to the dance, didn’t you?”
“What, the amazing Rainbow Dash willing to wear a fancy dress to some dance? For just anypony, no. But for you, Twi… Yes. Yes I was. Once, so don’t push it.”
Now kiss!
Nice chapter.
Oh, the d'awwws.
My day: *GASP* new happy Twidash chapter! I'm completely out of happy Twidash, I've read ALL OF IT.
*reads*
DAMMIT, I'M OUT AGAIN.
Well played, Rainbow Dash, well played. Now put the wedding ring in her punch!
Yep, you are definitely trying to kill me before the year ends with so many updates lately to your stories...
Keep them coming. What better way to start the year than with a severe case of diabetes?
That end line; so perf.
potsherds Might you mean potshards?
1877520>>1877292>>1877187>>1877170>>1865261>>1849580
Many thanks, all!
1878003
Either is correct, I think.
1877198
Oh, when Dash asks her, it'll be a doozy - and guaranteed not to be like anything Twi would expect.
One thing I've noticed about all your stories is that you always have great ending lines. And three updates in one day? Its not my birthday.
1878112
Thanks! I try. Part of that is the 30-minute time limit on writing for TMP, combined with writing all of these as separate, unconnected chapters. Whether it's a laughtrack zinger or a d'aaaawww-inducing heartwrencher, each one has to have closure of some kind. If I'm doing it right, I credit TMP for training me.
1878094
English is a stupid language at times, isn't it?
Ya' know, Ah would read a Darin' Do peice dun' by ya, if'n ya' ask me.
I had fairly low expectations going into this story. The chapters are mostly less than 1000 words and the description made it seem like they were different stories that were independent from eachother.
But holy shit, your writing blew me away. You write better in 900 words than some authors do in 9000 words. I'll definitely be following this so I can read the next chapter.
I love this story! Get Dash to write the action scenes and submit the resulting fan-fiction to the publishers of Daring Do. Fluttershy and Rainbow wouldn't be the first fanfic writers to ascend to being official or even canon!
Very nice that was a cute chapter lol. I want to hear Fluttershy's action part lol though Well done looking forward to the next chapter hopefully soon
1879510
One day, good sir, perhaps Ah shall try mah hand at such a grand endeavah.
1879961>>1881032
Glad you enjoyed it!
1880531
They might make a good writing team, but would that make Twilight jealous that Dash turned to somepony else for her writing needs? Oooh, chapter idea!
1880133
Thank you very much, glad I could surprise you! I do try to keep each chapter separate and readable on its own, but at the same time I'm always working to keep them in continuity with each other to form a larger story, piece by piece. You'll see future chapters fill in backstory, side stories, and more, as I write them. As always, check out TMP for potential sneak peeks, and for a great writing prompt community in general.
YAY
1881135
Twilight's a researcher, not a creative writer. Indeed, the sort of skills you need to be a researcher (precision and fact-checking) sort of work against the skills you need to write creatively. Writing scientific papers? Yes. Writing fiction? No. However, I think that Twilight would make an excellent beta-reader.
This sure is cute. I love those lines they had for each other at the end. Most adorable, keep it up!
1877187
How´s that possible? I still got around 200 Twidash fics to read and that´s not counting the old ones i haven´t found yet! D8
1882449
I did specifically say happy Twidash; I'm still working my way through the sad and/or grimdark Twidash that I need to be in the right mood for (that said, I have read a hell of a lot of those and have fewer than ten fics left, even if some are 100k+ words). I probably haven't read all the happy Twidash, but at this point when I look around the internet all I find are broken links to fics that have been taken down, so in practice, I'm out.
I have to agree with Allington in that I would definitely like to read a full fic about Daring Do and "The Curator".
The ammount of d'awwwwww. IS TOO DAMN HIGH.
Shit this story is cute as fuck. Continue author, you have my thumbs!
DAMMIT DARING I'M A MUSEUM CURATOR NOT A FIELD OPERATIVE.