Daring Do and the Call of the Changelings
Author's Note
Tags: [Slice of Life]
Description: The bubble breaks, and Professor Daring Do's grading session is interrupted by an invading force of unknown creatures. How annoying.
This story was originally a collaboration with the awesome Feather Book and the awesome ShutterGuy that was to be a grand adventure for Daring Do. However, we didn't have the story very well thought through, and our momentum died quickly. This is all that we wrote of the story we planned to tell, and after having it sit for a year, I, with the others' permission, have gone ahead and put it here. Fortunately, what was written makes its own smaller-scale story well enough.
Characters: [Daring Do] [Changelings]
Daring Do and the Call of the Changelings
“How many do you think there are?” Daring Do heard the weak voice of a mare in an adjacent room ask through her office wall.
“A lot,” answered a colt in the same room as the mare, his voice filled with concern. Daring Do paid them no attention as she skimmed through and graded her history class’s most recent research papers, which were haphazardly strewn about her desk. To anypony but her, it was a disorganized mess.
The rays of Celestia’s midday sun peeked through her office’s open window and bathed the shelves of old relics gathered over years of exploring in a warm light. Like most days in Canterlot, everything seemed so peaceful and safe.
A loud rumbling jolted her from her work. It was quickly followed by the thunderous roar of what seemed like a massive pane of shattering glass. She leapt from her desk and sped to the window. The sky had been pink for days due to a protective spell that had been cast around the city in the form of a pink bubble. Strangely, the bubble was no longer standing. Shards of it could be seen falling towards the ground and slowly dissipating. Daring looked to the sky to see what had become of the barrier and found her answer.
A black cloud of pony-like creatures could be seen descending upon the now defenseless city. Confusion was the initial response from the ponies in the streets below, but it was quickly replaced by screams of fear and panic as the creatures got close and pounced on them. In no time at all, the cloud had dispersed and the creatures were scattered about the fortress-like city.
She watched for what seemed like minutes until the sound of shattering glass echoing in the hall outside her office broke her from her stupor. The two voices from earlier screamed. Thundering hooves and the buzz of wings joined in the commotion, then faded away as their alien producers flew past Daring’s office window, carrying the frantically screaming ponies off into the distance with them.
Daring edged towards the door of her office and opened it slightly, peering into the hallway. With the coast clear, she cautiously advanced to the room where the abduction had just occurred. She glanced at the distorted shapes on the other side of the door’s frosted window. No movement could be seen, and no sound came from within. The hallway she was occupying was silent as well, and it was likely that nopony was within earshot. The distant sounds of screaming ponies seemed almost surreal, even to the hardened adventurer.
Returning to her office, she grabbed her signature hat and set it on her head before going back to the other room. She unhooked the latch and eased the door ajar, peeking in. Discarded paper littered the room, and sharp shards of glass lay by the destroyed window. Forgotten assignment pieces were being scattered in the breeze that now blew in along with distant screams and buzzing. They must have been dragged through the window, she concluded.
With nothing that could be done, she left the room and stepped back out and onto the polished wooden floor of the hall. She crept through the hall away from her office, checking each room she passed for any intruders. There was a bang several rooms down to her left, echoing around the white walls towards her. It was immediately followed by a unsettling scream. Not wasting a precious second, the pegasus hurriedly galloped towards the commotion. From the room she could hear shouts, the screeching sound of tables being dragged along wooden floors, and bangs of items being thrown.
And then there was a bloodcurdling hiss. It was hard for the pony to not shudder at the wretched sound. It was like the roar of a furious manticore mixed with a rattlesnake’s hiss and rattle, and its ferocity was like that of water bursting forth from a collapsing dam. She had never heard anything like it, nor did she want to again.
The sounds were coming from the room right next to her, and she peeked through the door’s window to confirm that it was the right one. Sure enough, she could see the distorted outline of three figures.
Giving no thought to the well being of the building, she spun, reared, and kicked the door off its hinges. The attention of the room’s three occupants went straight to her. In one corner of the room, two ponies, a stallion in an aggressive stance and a mare cowering behind him, were barricaded behind a table, while standing in front of the nearby shattered window was one of the invaders.
Daring locked eyes with the creature. It was significantly smaller than her and had holes riddling its legs and scaly insectoid wings. The thing’s blue eyes had no discernible pupils, and they were furrowed in anger at her. It bared its fangs intimidatingly at Daring, and its short crooked horn was glowing a dark green, preparing a spell.
Daring gave it no chance to cast its spell. She took to the air and barreled for the thing, tackling it and pulling it out the window. It struggled to escape her grip, its rough exterior scraping against Daring’s skin, leaving a few tiny cuts.
Once they were outside, Daring dive-bombed towards the cobblestone street below. Seconds before impacting, Daring flared her wings and dropped the creature. She gracefully landed while the thing fell the remaining few feet of the drop, landing hard against the stonework. Surprisingly, it stood up, albeit somewhat shakily.
“What are you?” she asked, not really expecting a reply. One came in the form of a hiss, though it was much more controlled than the one she had heard earlier. The creature darted towards her, opening its mouth so as to bite her.
Daring raised one of her front hooves and swung at the creature as it came in range. With a surprising amount of agility, the small creature ducked, then brought its head up into her exposed underside. Its horn failed to impale her, instead scraping along her side, leaving a thin, long gash.
She yelped in pain. The creature, sensing it advantage, continued to push into her, forcing her into the wall of the university. Having rammed her into the wall, the creature jumped back, contorted its face a bit, then spat out a large wad of some green goo-like substance. It struck one of Daring’s front hooves and pinned it to the wall. She tried to pry her hoof off the wall, but every time she pulled her hoof away from the wall, the elastic goo would yank her back.
Content that Daring had been immobilized, the creature smiled wickedly. Then, it lowered its head, pointing its horn at her, and scraped at the ground with its hoof. It was going to charge her.
As soon as the creature made a move, Daring flew straight up, using all of the strength her wings could muster to overcome the opposing force of the goo. She managed to get just high enough for the creature to miss her completely with its charge, instead running itself into the wall where she had just been.
The dazed creature stepped back a step, trying to reorient itself, and simultaneously falling into Daring’s trap. It feels good being the one setting the traps for once. She stopped flapping her wings, and immediately the goo shot her back down to the ground. Or rather, right on top of the dazed creature.
When she hit, she hit hard. The creature’s legs instantly gave out upon impact, and its head violently slammed to the stony ground beneath them. A loud and painful sounding crack came from somewhere.
Satisfied that the creature was done fighting, Daring stood up and shoved the creature away with one of her back legs. She noticed that one of its fangs was laying on the ground where the creature had just been. After picking it up and putting it into one of her shirt pockets, she resumed trying to get her hoof out of the goo, or at least get the goo off the wall.
Movement behind her caught her attention, and she turned her head to see that the creature had begun to rise again. This was unexpected, but she could tell that it wanted to fight no longer. Its stance was wobbly and it was clutching the site of its missing fang, pain being the only readable thing on its face. Slowly and unsteadily, it backed away.
Its gaze suddenly went to the sky. Curious to see what it was looking at, Daring attempted to get a vantage point, but the sticky goo on her prevented that. The creature turned and began to flee, tripping over itself only a couple of steps into its retreat. A wall of pink magic suddenly phased through the wall and through Daring, cleansing her of the goo. She turned just as the magical wall hit the creature. It didn’t phase through it as it had her, though, instead launching it into the sky, where she could see that several of the creature’s brethren had had the same thing happen to them.
She stood there, watching the display, until the wall finally dissipated off in the far distance. The day had certainly not gone as she had expected at all, but had also caused her curiosity to pique. Slowly, she fetched the creature’s fang from her pocket. Gazing at it, she wondered aloud, “What are you?”
