Do or Don't?

by Supersheep64

Chapter 1

Daring hit the ground hard, rolling end over end and leaving a significant trough in the alpine snow. She tasted blood in her mouth and her clothes were in tatters, an open invitation to the scything winds and hail dominating the mountaintop as lightning flashed overhead.

Daring-Do forced herself to her hooves, the fresh snow under her tread sliding and almost re-introducing her face to its chilling embrace. Instead she limped her way down the slope, trying to control her decent as much as was possible in the harsh conditions. Her raven locks flapped furiously in the gale, and would have been a blinding handicap if it were not for the blizzard already making it impossible for her to see even a meter in front of her face.

If only it was the wind or cold that was the worst thing hunting Daring at that moment. She desperately hoped the phantom flapping at the edge of her hearing was just her imagination in amongst the howling winds.

Her hoof met empty air and again she found herself falling, damaged wings flapping futilely to slow her decent. The snowdrift welcomed her back like an old friend, whispering tempting offers to reject the harsh fate circling above on midnight wings and sleep peacefully on an ivory pillow forever. But Daring could not accept that offer. She could not think only of herself when her comrades were in even worse suffering. She amassed the courage to face them.

A white mass separated itself from the winter ocean, magenta eyes squinting through the second skin, a single splash of colour in an unending miasma of greys, utterly alone. Then suddenly, not alone at all.

Yellow goggles pierced the maelstrom, emerging as if from the night itself- familiar faces behind unfamiliar colours, closing in from all sides as silent as the grave.

“You were unwise to run.”

Simple words spoken in a calm and flowing voice, yet tinged with malice so uncharacteristic of the speaker, normally laid-back enough to weather even the harshest storms under her unrelenting patience and fiery aerial manoeuvres. Yet whether the weather was weathered that night, it would only be in response to fear of the darkness pumping through her veins, as not a single flake of snow dared land upon her.

Spitfire stepped forward, and the darkness flowed with her. The snow lept off of Daring under a wave of shadows, as if re-considering it’s earlier attempt to draw her into it’s embrace and deciding to be anywhere else than at her side right then. As the wave crashed over her, Daring shivered at the obscene touch and almost wished for the shivering caused by the mere cold.

“You are one of us now.”

Her fault. Should have seen the markings on the crypt, should have known it was a trap. Soarin discovering his father’s journal, her agreeing to lead them to the treasure he was supposedly seeking before he died, all what they had wanted to happen.

Nightmare Moon’s last followers, tricking her into leading them here so the temple’s curse could claim them. Them- Equestria’s greatest flyers, now Shadowbolts.

And they only needed one more Pegasus.

The ring of purple and black closed tighter, the combined evil buffeting Daring with oppressive nausea. Instinctively she reached up to her signature hat, only to find it was gone, lost somewhere on her helpless flight. This loss hurt perhaps worst of all, as it had been her most loyal companion in every mess she had gotten herself into, and even helping her get out of them more than once, it’s abandonment now of all times almost shattered her fragile hopes.

Then they lay hooves on her, and her vision filled with darkness. Daring-Do opened her mouth to scream.

“RAINBOW DASH!!!”

Wait what?

*WHAM*

A streak of grey and yellow punched a hole through the luxurious cloud, dislodging the sole occupant equally effectively from the sky as it did from her imagination.

As Rainbow Dash gouged a swath out of the Ponyville school playground with her face, she began to feel more of a kinship than usual with her fictional hero, thanks to their now shared injuries.

A moment passed as Dash re-organised her hooves into a less spread-eagled position, only for the prized book to klonk her skull as she tried to rise.

“owowowow…”

Dash rubbed the back of her head with a hoof and squinted over to where her bumbling assailant had made an impression on the school’s sports shed, now a pile of wooden planks and varied types of foal-sized protective gear. The pile shifted and a grey posterior wriggled its way from underneath it, soon followed by the rest of that loveable disaster of a Pony, Derpy Hooves.

“Shorry Rainboh, I clipped a falcon wid mah wing.”

The Blonde mare spat out an object into her hoof.

“Gee, I should complain to Applejack- these things taste awful!”

“Derpy, that’s a cricket ball.”

“Oh.”

Derpy met Rainbow’s long-suffering glare with a sheepish grin and bashfully glanced around at the minor destruction.

“Are we gonna have to pay for this again?”

Dash rubbed her aching forehead to alleviate the stress and bruising.
‘It’s a dark day in Equestria when I’m considered the responsible one.’
Outwardly, she said
“No, I think Twilight could probably magic this back to normal pretty fast.
……well fast to anypony but me anyway.”

“I should probably still apologise to Cheerilee anyway- Hey what’s that you got there?”

Rainbow Dash had bent down to retrieve the book from the ground, but at Derpy’s question, adjusted her teeth’s grip to present her with the cover: ‘Daring–Do and the Wonderbolt Curse.’

“I didn’t know you were into reading.”

“Yeah it was a brief emotional problem ending in an important lesson. Y’know, like how I spend all my Saturdays.”

Derpy took the book in her hooves as Rainbow Dash went into full Fangirl mode.

“This is the most recent book in the series and so far it’s been So Awesome! I mean I had just finished ‘Daring–Do and the Chain of Nightmare’ and I saw the title of this one and it had the Wonderbolts in it! Can you imagine? I totally didn’t expect the baddies from the last book to still be alive in this one. Truth is, I’m just two chapters from the end and I have no idea how Daring is gonna get herself out of this one.”

As she stopped to breath, Rainbow Dash noticed that Derpy had not moved an inch since taking the story from her, and indeed even her ever drifting eyes were locked firmly on the front image, making her seem almost like a whole different pony to who Dash was accustomed to.

“Er… Derpy? You Ok there?”

Rainbow nudged the other Pegasus with the tip of a hoof, snapping her out of her trance.

“Oh! Err.. Sorry Rainbow Dash but I gotta go. See ya some other time!”

The flustered Pony took flight in haste, almost being more erratic than usual as she disappeared behind a grove of trees and houses, leaving a befuddled Rainbow Dash with only splintered hockey sticks and battered wickets for company.

‘Yeah, the next time you cause massive property damage most likely.’
Despite her thoughts, Dash just couldn’t bring herself to dislike the poor klutz and smiled a little as she turned and took off in the other direction, intending to inform Twilight of the little clean-up job before the bell rang tomorrow.

‘Then maybe I’ll find another nice cloud, curl up and find out what happened to-‘

Rainbow dash missed a wing beat and abruptly lost a few feet of altitude in shock.

“Did she just steal my book?!”

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In a swanky Manehatten penthouse, Daring-Do lay her rear hooves on the desk and smiled, glancing across to where her newly repaired ‘adventuring gear’ hung on the wall. The wall, of course was already adorned with various exotic souvenirs and relics from her travels she deemed too sentimental or dangerous to leave on public display.
But it wasn’t the trophies or memories that caused her to smile.
She smiled because tomorrow she set sail, tomorrow she was again free.

Recovering ancient artefacts was her passion, and anonymously donating them to museums was a noble cause that never ceased to make any hardship worth it. Daring would often discreetly visit the museums later, and from a dark corner would savour the awed faces of young foals gazing at the treasures she had strived so hard to obtain.*

Unfortunately, although this quest gave Daring no end of satisfaction, it had the noticeable drawback of not being at all profitable. It quickly became apparent that in order to cover the costs of her expeditions, Daring had to come up with an alternate source of income. So she became an author.

It kinda stung that she had to present her adventures as fiction, but after some news scandal about an Ursa Major or something a few months back, the media had become a lot less accepting of tall tales shown without any witnesses or proof.
‘Hmmph, It’s not like weirder stuff doesn’t happen right here in Equestria all the time...’

She honestly had not been expecting the books to become so popular, or do so that quickly. Very soon she had more money than she knew what to do with, and a whole slew of new problems to go with it.

She had obviously been clever enough to write under a pen name to keep up the whole ‘fiction’ charade and all her communications with the publisher were re-routed through three dragons located in cities all over Equestria, making them completely untraceable back to her,*2 however she soon found she needed to comprise another false identity altogether as her popularity spread.*3

Even showing her face in the street sometimes got her swarmed by fans and nerds wanting to know more juicy information about the series and its elusive author, just by her looking like the pony on the covers. Now all her free time spent at ‘home’ winds up with her cooped up in her apartment planning and waiting. Waiting for her next adventure, her next chance to escape the cage she constructed for herself, to actually be herself. To be Daring-Do once again.

A chance like tomorrow.

And so Daring-Do smiled.

Then the building shook.

Reflexes honed through the dodging of countless death-traps had her on her hooves and alert before her hat had time to fall off of its stand. She flicked the iconic ornamentation onto her head with a forehoof as she scanned with her ears for any sign of danger. It came with an echoing, ricocheting sound not unlike a giant pinball loose in a warehouse of saucepans.

‘Getting closer! Something in the air vents?’

Daring crossed the room in a series of dramatic*4 rolls and flips and in one fluid movement, yanked an enchanted Gryphonian war blade from its scabbard. The ‘Scimitar of Tempests’ blazed into life with a surge of perpetual lightning along the steel, and Daring turned it to point at the vent exit in a fighting stance taught to her by the late master Knife Edge at his temple in Neighpon.

As the infernal rattling drew closer, Daring prepared strategies to handle any adversary that came out of the duct.
‘Who could it be? Ahuitzotl? Shadowbolts? Luna Republicans? That total plot-hole who runs the newspaper stand across the street? How’d they find me here?’

As the noise drew closer, accompanied by some sort of atrocious wailing sound, Daring decided that whoever it was there was a simpler way to deal with this. So thinking, she harshly touched the edge of ‘Tempest’ against the vent cover, conducting the building’s entire ventilation system with its energy.

There was a loud bang as a smoking ball of hair and feathers was ejected from the vents in the corridor and rolled through Daring’s (admittedly unlocked) double doors and came to a violent stop amid the ruination of Daring’s desk.

Not missing a beat, Daring leapt the length of the room in a single flap before holding Tempest a hair’s breadth from the trachea of the intruding Pegasus.

“Who are you, and who do you work for?!”

Daring glared into the mis-aligned eyes of the other, searching for any trace of malice or hatred.

Instead, the grey mare’s face lit up like a box of puppies seeing the sun for the first time.

“I’m your Sister!”

*co-incidentally, this pastime had garnered undeserved attention from the royal guard on more than one occasion.
*2 Daring-Do rather preferred to have her adversaries NOT come find her where she lives, thank you very much.
*3 You try applying for house insurance under the name of a supposedly fictional character, see how that turns out.
*4 And perhaps unnecessary.

Comments

[Sebbaa]

Well, this looks intresting. This is tracked!

[DreadedCandiru2]

Oh, this should be good for some laughs.