As Daring Do pulled her sister out of the exploding wagon, razor sharp shards of wooden debris sliced past both of their heads, lopping off strands of grey and yellow hair that drifted to the ground amidst the winds of chaos. Daring pulled her sister into a tight hug and bravely asked, "Are you all right?"
Ditzy nodded into Daring's mane. "Oh, but Daring!" she squeaked, not unlike a frightened mouse. "I'm so frightened!"
Daring pulled back and stared into her sister's shimmering golden eyes. "Fear not, dear sister, for you are in the capable hooves of the great Daring D--"
"Watch out!"
Daring gasped and pulled them both low to the ground as a... volley of tomatoes whizzed over their heads?
Ditzy stopped reading and looked up from the book. Daring sat barely two feet away, leaning forward with an eager grin spread over her face.
"Guh, don't stop there!" Daring said, rapping her hoof against the open pages. "Keep going!"
Ditzy blinked out of sync. "Are you... are you serious?"
"Keep going, it gets better!" Daring sat back and hugged herself, biting her lip happily.
Ditzy rolled one eye and refocused on the book. "Ahem...
"Watch out!" Ditzy exclaimed loudly right in Daring's ear. "The acid in those tomatoes are genetically engineered to be errodeously poisonous!"
"That's not a word, Daring," Ditzy said, her eyelids half closed.
"Ugh, just reeead!" Daring whined, dropped her limp hooves to the floor. "You're messing up the flow! This is supposed to be, like, a stream of consciousness kinda deal. Just keep going!"
"Stream of...? Hmph." Ditzy adjusted the book in front of her and read on.
Daring rolled the two of them out of the Mexicolt Armada's line of fire. Backflipping and cartwheeling, the two of them avoided every round and hid behind a rusting metal cart. Teeth grinding and jaws clenching and unclenching, they breathed deeply and caught their breaths, gasping for air while oxygen filled and emptied their lungs in a regular pattern that sustained them physically and allowed them to rid their bodies of excess carbon dioxide as well.
"Whew!" Daring sighed with her lungs. "That was a close one!"
Three tomatoes from the Armada's tomato-based weapons splattered against the other side of the rusty metal cart. Its acid ate through the material, prompting the sisters to resume their fast-paced escape through the crumbling metropolis that was once Manehattan. Flashing lights from the gargantuan UFOs overhead bathed the city in alternating swaths of blue and orange.
"Oh, Daring," Ditzy wheezed between lung-y gasps, "I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I don't think I can make it!"
"Shut up, Ditzy, and ruuun!" Daring bellowed heroically. Her lungs had recovered.
"Oh no!" Ditzy skidded to a stop with her wings outstretched and pointed ahead. "Old mares!"
Daring gasped and took to the skies, barely outflying a rampantly thrown and decidedly wrinkled hoof.
"Eeehhh!" moaned the attacker, waving her hoof up at the golden pegasus. "You cain't fly yerself ferever, Daring Do!"
"I can and I will!" Daring shouted down to the growing group of aggressive and angry old mares. "Come and get me, you basic--"
Ditzy blinked. "Umm..." She glanced up at her sister. "Did you... mean to write this in here?"
"Write what?" Daring leaned forward and read the passage upside down. She blanched. "Oh! Uh... I guess my stream of consciousness got away from me."
"This isn't 'stream of consciousness', Daring," Ditzy said. "This is... just random. Completely made up. None of this happened."
"But it's awesome, right?" Daring grabbed the book and used a nearby feather and ink to cross out the derogatory phrase, replacing it with something more friendly to her normal demographic. "There, edited. On the fly. Go on! You haven't gotten to the good part yet!"
Ditzy hesitantly took back the book. "Is it going to explain any of this?" she asked. "The Mexicolt Armada? The... flying saucers over the city?"
"Yeah, yeah, just keep reading!" Daring's enthusiasm was almost contagious.
Ditzy sighed and reread the edited sentence.
"Come and get me, ya old bags!" Daring Do flipped a victorious backflip over the elderly mares... until a group of them spread their aged wings and took to the skies. Daring stopped midflip and gulped. "Uh oh."
Her beloved sister, Ditzy, unwilling to watch her valiant sister die in such an embarrassing way, flew head-on into the swarm of rising pegasi mares. She held her own for a moment, but their decrepit, arthritic hooves soon overpowered her and she was repeatedly punched and bucked in sensitive joints.
"Daring!" Ditzy cried. "Daring, save me!"
Just then, a tremendous roar filled the air, literally shaking Ditzy loose. Daring swooped down and pulled her sister away from the violent old mares. As they flew away and banked around skyscraper after skyscraper, Ditzy looked up at her savior to ask, "Oh, Daring... was it you who made that awful roar?"
"It wasn't me, sis," Daring said, casting a thousand yard stare over her shoulder. "That sort of monstrous meow could only belong to one thing..."
Down below, half a dozen enormous feline creatures bounded in from the alleys of Manehattan and pounced on the villainous old mares, ripping them to fuzzy shreds with their oversized claws.
"Too bad they hadn't been... spayed," Daring said, pulling off a pair of sunglasses.
"What?" Ditzy cocked an eyebrow. "What does that mean?"
"Y'know, spayed." Daring beamed. "When a cat gets its claws removed?"
Ditzy cleared her throat. "Right. Yeah." She looked back at the book.
"Ha ha! Oh Daring, what a clever joke!" Ditzy tittered.
"Don't try so hard, sis," Daring said. "I'm happy we've reunited after all these years of needless separation, but I love you just the way you are, whether you praise my genius intellect or not."
JUST THEN, a giant tornado came, ripping through the industrial urbanscape like a twisting windy funnel of death.
"AHHHH!" Ditzy screamed.
"Not today!" Daring dove out of the way of the tornado, skirting along its blustery edge. The winds struggled to suck Ditzy out of her hooves, but Daring's strength was legendary. She beat her wings against the wild forces of nature and proved victorious, removing the sisters from the worst of what the weather had to offer.
"See, here we go," Ditzy said. "This actually happened."
"It did?"
"Yeah! Remember? You saved me from the magical tornado that destroyed Alula's palace."
"Oh yeah!" Daring polished her hoof on her dull green hoodie. "I did do that, huh?"
The world spun as Daring spun -- or actually the world stayed still as Daring spun, but the tornado was also spinning debris from the world nearby, and Ditzy nearly threw up from all the spinning. But she remembered how brave and resilient her big sister was and that gave her enough mettle to swallow her bile and resume screaming as Daring carried the two of them far beyond the impressive gale.
"I've avoided the storm," Daring shouted, "but we're headed straight for the Mexicolt Armada's central taco stand-slash-offensive base!"
"That's offensive!"
"Quite!"
Daring dropped the two of them directly into the fray, dodging whizzing tomatoes threatening to burn off their pony pony flesh. Twirling and swirling as swiftly as the tornado behind them, Daring and Ditzy managed to create a pegasus-flavored vortex of their own, casting the sordid tomatoes back at their attackers in a splashy display of sopping red juices.
"That's what you call a tomato tornado!" said Daring with a smirk.
"A tormado!" added Ditzy.
"Ha!" Ditzy tossed back her head. "That's actually pretty funny."
"Right?" Daring did little hops. "Keeping going! The best part is coming up!"
"Okay, okay..."
The Sisters Doo had a strong bond, the strongest of any adventuring siblings. And you can bet your bottom bit that these two sisters knew how to handle business. But as they were about to learn, even the most awesome of adventuresses can face insurmountable odds that seem out of their control--
A dramatic rumbling shook the air, a million billion times more intense than the recent roar of the cat monsters. Daring expertly landed on the roof of a building with her sister in tow as they tried to determine the source of the rumbling.
"What is that?" asked Ditzy, terrified out of her googly mind.
"I think... no... it can't be!" Daring looked straight up into the sky.
"What is it, sister dearest?" Ditzy asked, her gaze fixed on Daring's rad outfit. "What do you see?"
Daring pointed upward with wide eyes and shrunken pupils. "THE MOON! It's coming... crashing into earth!"
"Oh no!" Ditzy asked. "Now what do we do!?"
Ditzy turned the page... and the next page, and the next page. "Wait, that's it?" she asked, looking up at Daring.
"Pfft!" Daring rolled her eyes. "No, of course that's not it! It's just as much as I've written so far." She plopped onto her belly and swished her greyscale tail behind her. "So, whaddaya think? And be honest. This is a super early draft, obviously, and there's a lot of room for improvement. I went with a super different tactic here, so I wanna hear everything you have to say. Go ahead, gimme somethin'." She pushed up her cheeks adorably.
Ditzy closed the book and set it down on the living room floor between them. She stared at the cover for a moment. "It's just called 'Two Sisters'?"
"It's better than the working title. Trust me, was that a mouthful." Daring tossed her mane back and continued to stare with a dumb grin. "So? Feedback?"
"Well... umm..." Ditzy tucked some of her own mane behind her ear. "It's, uh... very interesting."
"Yes! It is!" Daring nodded, scooching forward. "And?"
"And... it's pretty clear that you were improvising it."
"Good. That's awesome. Exactly what I want to hear." She tilted her head to one side. "Aaaand?"
"And..." Ditzy shrugged. "Honestly, I think it could use some work. I don't really like my characterization in it, for starters."
"Ha! I knew it!" Daring leapt up as if to hover, but her wings -- hidden beneath the green hoodie -- were unavailable. She fell to her rump with a thud, but ignored the pain as she kept shouting. "You're mad that you're not the hero of the story!"
"Well, no." Ditzy opened the book. "I actually quite liked a lot of my lines. And I appreciate that the book is called 'Two Sisters' instead of, you know, 'Daring Do and the Other Doo'. It's just, couldn't Ditzy be less... worshipful of Daring? And more like her equal?"
Daring guffawed. "What, you mean just like in real life?" She winked. "Naahh. That's boring."
Ditzy giggled and traced the corners of the book with her hoof. "Well... it's a good start, all things considered. I've read your other books, Daring, and I know you're a talented writer. Just... maybe rein this in a bit and... think through a more coherent plotline."
When Ditzy looked up, Daring had tears in her eyes.
She gasped and got to her hooves. "Oh, Daring, I'm sorry! Did I say something mean?"
"It's just..." Daring sniffed, wiped a tear from the corner of her eyes, and smiled like there was no tomorrow. "This was all a big joke, Ditz. A big stupid joke. All I wanted was for you to say that I'm a good writer." Her next words came as a squeak: "And you did!"
Ditzy laughed and hugged her sister. "Of course you're a good writer, Daring! You're one of the most successful novelists in the world right now."
"But you always make fun of my books!"
"Because you totally left me out of them." She smacked the back of Daring's head. "But that's behind us now. Joke or no joke, I'm looking forward to more 'Two Sisters'."
Daring choked on a laugh and wiped more tears from her eyes as they parted. "Nah, improvising is hard. Took me forever to write that crap."
"Then use that literary brain of yours and come up with a good ending," Ditzy said. "How do the Sisters Doo stop the Moon from crashing into the earth?" With that, she trotted upstairs to check on Dinky.
Daring glanced down at the improvised novel. She picked it up and stroked her chin... then blew air through her lips and tossed the book into a trash can somewhere behind her. "Yeah right," she mumbled. "Way to ruin the fun of stupidity, Ditz."
Author's Note
You don't wanna know about it here, but I'll tell ya one thing...
Thanks, Justin Roiland.
