“We’re here! We’re here!” Derpy shouted in excitement as she came in for a landing.

’Thank Celestia, we’re finally here.’ Daring Do thought to herself as she landed behind Derpy.

From the scuffs, bruises, and rips in her clothes, anypony would have thought that Daring Do had just finished raiding a dangerous temple and barely escaped with her life. And to be quite honest, Daring would have preferred to go through all of that than repeat the mess she had just experienced. Never in her life had she had so much trouble simply getting to the site of a temple to explore, and if it weren’t for the massive payment Derpy had made she would have called off the expedition hours ago.

Looking at the already setting sun, Daring sighed and put down her pack. “Let’s set up camp here for the night and we’ll scout out the area in the morning.” she said. Normally Daring would scout out the area around the temple to determine the safest place to make camp, but after her strenuous day all she wanted to do was go to sleep and rest.

Derpy ears drooped down. “Aww, we can’t start looking for the thing now?” she asked.

Daring huffed again. “Not with darkness falling. Besides, I think we’ve been through enough already. Being attacked by quarry eels, a pack of timberwolves, falling into a swamp filled with cragadiles, and then fleeing from a dragon is more than enough for one day.”

“I said I was sorry. I didn’t mean to cause all of that.” Derpy said, looking even more depressed.

Daring took a deep sigh. It hadn’t taken her long to figure out the kind of pony Derpy was; the bubbly gray mare meant well and genuinely wanted to help, but whether by her poor eye-hoof coordination or just plain bad luck, she always managed to make things worse. “It’s okay, really. Things from here should be much easier.” Daring Do said, patting her back. “By this time tomorrow we’ll be back in Ponyville celebrating a successful exploration.”

Daring’s words seemed to cheer Derpy back up a little bit. “Oh, okay.” she said with a small smile.

Daring returned the smile. “Hey, toss me the canteen. I need a drink.” she said, busying herself with starting a campfire.

“Okay!” Derpy said, rummaging through her pack. “Where is… here it is! Oh…”

Bringing out the canteen, Derpy saw that the cap had been knocked off and the water had spilled out. “Oopsie.” she said.

Daring Do saw that Derpy was starting to become teary-eyed from yet another mistake. “Don’t worry, it’s not a big deal. I saw a small stream nearby before we landed. Give me the other canteens, I’ll go refill them while you finish setting up camp.”

“Okay.” Derpy said, retrieving the other empty canteens for Daring. Having started the fire already, Daring told Derpy not to touch the fire until she got back and headed off to locate water.

It took Daring only a few minutes to locate the stream she had seen from the air. However, she didn’t see the pond it fed into but the pool of water was a very welcome sight. It only took a few moments to refill their water supplies, but as Daring capped the last canteen she took a look at her clothes and body. The harrowing trip today took its toll and had coated her with dirt, dust, mud, and sludge, and an opportunity to clean herself off was too good to pass up.

Tossing the canteens and her pith helmet aside for now, Daring started to unbutton her top before she remembered that it too needed to be washed, so why not kill two birds with one stone? She finished unbuttoning her shirt and then jumped in the water with it still on, letting her entire body submerge into the cool refreshing water before coming back up for air.

“Phwaah! Oh Celestia, that feels good!” she shouted as she resurfaced. Feeling much more refreshed, Daring dipped her head back under the water and emerged slower this time to keep her mane out of her face. Already she felt much cleaner, and her vest looked almost like its normal color as well. With only a few spots left on it, Daring began to scrub out the remaining dirt marks on it.

It didn’t take long before she was satisfied with her cleaning job. “There, all done.” she said satisfied. “Though how in Tartarus did Derpy not get a single speck of dirt on her?!”

With no other choice but to explain Derpy remaining completely unscathed to pure luck, Daring stripped off her vest and hung it on a nearby tree branch before returning to the water to clean up her body. Daring did her best to clean out the dirt and much embedded in her coat, and thankfully nothing seemed too embedded for her to be unable to remove with a bit of thorough scrubbing. However, as she worked on some of the tougher spots in her coat her hoof ran over one of her erect nipples, causing her to jump slightly as electricity seemed to hit her body.

“Hnng! What the…” she wondered. Though the water was a bit chilly and had caused her nipples to harden considerably, the feeling that she had just felt was much too strong to be only because of the water and her touch. Thinking hard, her face reddened as she remembered a very, very crucial fact that she had forgotten until now.

“Aw crap, I’m starting to go into heat!”

Daring dunked her head back underwater momentarily, face-hoofing herself once she returned up for air. “Stupid stupid stupid!” she said to herself with each hit. “Why did you have to get so excited about all those bits?”

One of her very first expeditions caused her to adopt the policy to never go on any explorations while in heat. Overconfident and inexperienced, she had gone out on an expedition with a few other well-known archeologists to explore a freshly unearthed tomb in the Saddle Arabian Desert. She started to go into heat the day before everypony was due to leave, but she naively joined the group anyways.

As luck would have it, she single hoofedly discovered a hidden side passage that lead to one of the greatest artifacts that was up until then thought to be only a legend, but there was a problem; the leader of the group, a griffon named Professor Blackbeak, wanted to take sole credit for her find. Having put her hoof down and refusing all his offers of bits, fame, and a job as his assistant, she fell for his advances as he tried wooing her instead, and thanks to her desire to mate she not only lost the artifact and the credit for finding it, but she lost her virginity quite painfully and humiliatingly as well.

Disgusted with her lack of common sense, Daring trudged back to dry ground and shook herself as dry as she could. Thinking back, she remembered the whole reason she was in Ponyville in the first place; she was going to surprise Rainbow Dash the next day and spend some time with her number one fan, as well as maybe learn a few of those aerial tricks the new Wonderbolt was so good at. However, the offer of three thousand bits was too good to pass up, especially since she had been hospitalized with yet another wing injury during her last exploration adventure. Her excitement had clouded her judgment and caused her to forget all about her upcoming heat, and by her current feeling it would hit her by tomorrow afternoon or evening.

“Okay Daring, calm down. This is a relatively easy temple to explore.” she said to herself as she redressed herself. “The ancient zebras in this area were peaceful, so there shouldn’t be many traps if any at all. I’ll have to skip out on scouting out the area in the morning, but if I get right to work at sun up we can head for home by tomorrow afternoon. In and out, nice and easy.”

Splashing one last bit of water on her face, Daring stared at her reflection in the water. “Maybe I’m worrying about this all too much. I’ve become a lot tougher and stronger since then. Besides, it’s only me and another mare. She seems nice enough, and I’m sure I could easily beat her if I had to. But her reaction earlier tonight, I don’t think Derpy would betray me.”

Smiling, she took a sip of water before she spit out the contents of her mouth and bolted upright in horror. “Oh Luna’s flank, I left Derpy at the camp. With fire!” she remembered. Quickly tossing her helmet on her head and grabbing the canteens, Daring ran full speed back to camp.

Author's Note

Hmm... did I hint somewhere in this chapter what other story this one may be connected to? Is it connected to any other story at all? Or am I just messing with your heads?