“Tomorrow’s gonna be so great!” Dash exclaimed, opening up the door to her hotel room. “I don’t even know how they’re gonna top last year’s Daring Do convention, cause that one was absolutely awesome!”
“Yeah, it only seems like yesterday when I nearly got eaten by a giant Cipactli.” Quibble said dryly, entering behind her. “Still, finding out that my favorite book series is technically non-fiction was pretty cool.”
“Maybe if we’re lucky, Daring Do can come by and give us another adventu-cation experience,” Dash teased, elbowing Quibble in the ribs.
“Yeah no thanks. One afternoon being in mortal peril is more than enough for me.”
“Aw c’mon, live a little, it’d be fun!” Rainbow said, tossing her suitcase onto her bed, the case springing open, her stuff scattered on the fresh sheets.
“I’d rather live a lot.” Quibble walked over and placed his suitcase on his own bed, unpacking the proper way.
As Quibble organized his clothes, he noticed a book fell off Rainbow’s bed. “What’s this?”
“Hey, don’t touch my stuff!”
Before Rainbow could intervene, Quibble picked it up. “Daring Do and Jungle of Joy, huh? You brought your own fanfiction here? What, did you want A. K. to autograph this?”
Rainbow felt her heart stop upon hearing the title. “Wait! Don’t read it!”
“Oh, come on. I’ve read plenty of Daring Do fanfics before. I’m sure yours isn’t that bad,” Quibble rolled his eyes, flipping to a random page.
The overgrown vines and moss were a sure sign this was one of Dr. Wisteria’s hideouts, but Daring Do had yet to see a single sign of her or any of her underlings. The only sound keeping her company was her slow and steady breathing as she snuck through.
Still, it was no reason to be careless, she had no reason to drop her guard, for the village’s ancient vase could still be hidden somewhere around here...
“W-whoa!”
While rounding one of the corners, the floor crumbled, sending Daring Do plummeting down, landing on the dirt below. A little sore, but otherwise unharmed.
“Heh, usually the pits I fall into are filled with spikes or spiders, it’s a nice change of pace to just fall into a pit of dirt.” Daring said to herself, chuckling at her stroke of luck.
Daring Do looked around as she got her bearings.
The walls that surrounded the pit were riddled with holes. Upon closer inspection, they were too big to be arrow holes. But she didn’t have the time to figure out what made them. Looking up, she saw that she didn’t fall too far. It should be a quick flight back out. She flapped her wings and started flying herself out of the pit.
“Well, it could use some refinement here and there, but this isn’t that bad so far...” Quibble said, nodding in approval. “I’d have to go back and see the story from the beginning, but this Dr. Wisteria character seems appropriately named enough.”
“Fantastic, I’ll keep that in mind for next time, now give it back!“ Dash said as fast as she could, reaching for the book.
“Hold on, I wanna see where this goes.”
Daring Do was about to reach the edge of the pit she fell in, but found herself in a constant state of almost being able to escape.
Something was trying to pull her back down.
Daring looked down, a magenta vine had wrapped around the ankle of her left boot, keeping her in place. Her eyes followed the vine all the way to the hole-ridden wall.
She flapped her wings faster to get out. In response, the vine started to pull on her leg harder, slowly dragging her back down. She kicked her leg to try and shake the vine off, but the vine held tight onto her boot. She reached for the edge of the pit, but it was just out of her reach, and it was getting further away with each passing moment.
Daring had no other choice but to ditch her boot. With help from her other shoe, she slipped out of her boot, and she instantly felt an upward boost of freedom.
But as soon as her boot dropped, another vine emerged from the wall and grabbed onto her right leg, pulling her back down. Daring Do could only watch as her exit to freedom got further and further away from her.
As she got dragged back down to the bottom, Daring grabbed onto the vine, trying to pry it off her leg. In response, another vine sprung out from one of the holes in the wall to slither around her left wrist.
Daring’s focus immediately shifted to her arm, as she fought, the vine moved down her leg to start tugging her remaining boot off.
The first vine she sacrificed her boot to had returned to grab onto her ankle once more. By the time that she wrestled her arm free, her other boot had been removed, with both legs ensnared by vines.
These had to be Dr. Wisteria’s creations, but was she still here?
One more vine appeared through the wall, and working with the other one, they wrapped around Daring Do’s arms. The vines lifted her legs up in the air, keeping her suspended.
As Daring Do struggled to free her arms from the vines, more and more emerged from the walls. They started to surround her, pointing their tips, as if they were ready to strike.
One of the vines began approaching her, it gave her a curious poke to her abs, before slithering on her midriff.
Daring Do squirmed, trying to shake the vine off. She sucked in her stomach, but it made no difference. The vine continued, poking at various spots on Daring’s stomach. Daring twitched at each poke, the corners of her lips turning Into the faintest smile.
As it was responding to her reactions, the vine started wiggling its tip against her stomach.
Daring Do’s breath began to get shaky, the unwilling smile on her face starting to grow as she saw more of the vines surrounding her closing in.
As the tip of the vine began making circles around her navel, another vine slithered into her sock, crawling up her foot.
Daring furiously kicked her leg in a panic, but all it did was make the vine move faster, up her sole to the ball of her foot.
“...Wait, this is...you actually…” Quibble looked back and forth between the pages and Rainbow Dash with an ever-growing grin of bewilderment and realization on his face. “Is this Daring Do fetish smut?!”
“This was before I even knew she was real, ok?!” Dash quickly blurted out in defense, still trying to pry the book out of Quibble’s fingers.
“Uh-huh. And the other books?” Quibble asked, pointing to the other similar books sprawled out on her bed.
Rainbow Dash opened her mouth to retort, then quickly shut up, her cheeks getting red with shame.
“I mean, I know this is an inescapable part of a fandom, but you of all ponies...”
“Fine, I wrote a few books about Daring Do being tickled, alright!?” Rainbow yelled, her face almost entirely red with embarrassment and anger.
Quibble started going through the books Dash had packed. “I mean, you also went through the trouble of giving them covers and all, aaaaand it looks like you’ve got copies! You were gonna sell these at the vendor hall after hours, weren’t you?”
“Y-yeah…” Dash admitted. “...Why, do you think they won’t sell?”
Quibble let out a quick chuckle. “Well, I’m sure there’s definitely a market. Though, since it’s probably your first time as a vendor, you might not draw as big a crowd as you’re expecting, though that also depends on how much you’re going to charge for these. Now, what I’ve read is decent so far, but…”
As Quibble Pants went on, Rainbow Dash eyed something peeking out of Quibble’s luggage, something that looked just like a book cover. She pushed his clothes aside to confirm her suspicions. “This is-”
“Hey, wait!-”
Dash practically shoved the book into Quibble’s face. “You HYPOCRITE! YOU WROTE YOUR OWN DARING DO SMUT, TOO!”
Quibble quickly tried to silence her. “Shhhhh! Don’t announce it to the entire floor! Besides, you don’t know if it’s smut!”
“Oh yeah, the bondage collar on the cover totally means it’s intended for all audiences,” she said, pointing at the cover. “Daring Do Never Gives Into Desire sure sounds nice and clean to me.”
“Well, unlike you, I didn’t know she was real until last year, so-”
“Yeah? Then why does this say this was written ten months ago?” Dash asked, flipping to the book’s published date.
Quibble found that he also lacked a suitable defense. “Alright, so maybe I also forayed in a little bit of adult work, but-”
“A little?” Dash showed off the spine of Quibble’s book. “This thing’s nearly the size of an actual Daring Do book!” Dash grabbed the extra copies of his story. “Oh and ALSO, you were planning on selling these, too!”
“Ok, fine!” Quibble said, his cheeks starting to match Rainbow’s shade of red. ”Neither of us are innocent fans. So how about this, you can read my fanfic, and I get to read yours, deal?”
“...Can we keep each other’s book?”
“...Yeah, sure.”
Dash flipped open to a page in Quibble’s fanfic and started reading, curious to see what he came up with.
Enough time had passed for the tranquilizer to wear off, and Daring Do finally regained consciousness. Her head was pounding in pain, presumably from the fall to the ground after she got shot. Though her eyes were open, her vision was still fuzzy, only able to make out a few pony-shaped figures in front of her. She struggled to wake herself up faster, rapidly blinking and groaning.
“Well, well, well, it seems you’re finally awake, good.”
The explorer could recognize that accent anywhere. The memories came flooding back as her vision came into focus. The temple, the hidden passage through the floor, the treasure, the ambush…
She found herself face to face with Caballeron and his five loyal lackeys. “You must be off your game, Daring Do. Capturing you was almost...too easy. Nevertheless, I’ve got you right where I want you.”
“If this is how you get all your dates, I think you need to start changing your pick-up lines…” she muttered, assessing her situation. She was still in the temple, possibly deeper in, she had been shackled to a stone table, wings and tail included, and she had been stripped down to her underwear. Upon noticing the last part, her cheeks started to flush red without her realizing it. Usually Caballeron just settled with strapping her down, why go so far to take her clothes as well?
“You can crack all the jokes you wish, but you aren’t getting out of my sight until I get what want. We know you have the Golden Feather. It was this temple’s prized treasure after all. And seeing as you didn’t have it on you when we captured you…” He gestures towards her exposed body, prompting her face to get red in disgust rather than embarrassment. “You must have hidden it somewhere. So I suggest you start talking.”
Daring Do rolled her eyes, already calculating in her mind how much finesse it would take to slip herself out of the stone shackles. “Hm, must’ve left them in my other pants.”
“I’m not interested in your sarcasm, Daring Do. Only answers. Tell us where it is, and I promise I’ll release you after we retrieve it.” Caballeron snarled, tenting his fingers as he approached the table.
“Yes, you’ve proven yourself to be so trustworthy before…” she scoffed, twisting her wrists to try and slip her hands out. The shackles operated similar to a monkey wrench, and they were tightened just enough to secure her wrists in place. “Thanks, but I’m going to have to decline.”
“Well, if you aren’t willing to be cooperative, perhaps you need a bit of persuasion…” Cabelleron snapped his fingers, and two of his minions walked forward.
Daring Do could feel her heart rate rise, unsure what Caballeron’s plans were, but she kept a cool head, not intimidated by the two stallions. “Yeah, having your lackeys make the same argument isn’t going to help you,” she said, cocking her head to the side.
“Oh, they won’t be saying anything. The only talking necessary will be from you, Daring Do.” Caballeron said with a sinister chuckle.
As the two approached her, Daring’s body instinctively tried to back itself away. They each stood at a different side of her. Daring Do’s focus shifted from one henchman to the other, waiting for whatever it was they were planning with a focused glare.
The lackeys got to work, placing their hands on Daring Do’s body, one at her hips, the other in the hollows of her armpits.
Daring Do flinched in surprise when they made contact with her body, her stern expression now one of worry.
The two slowly started tapping their fingers against her body, picking up speed with each second, having no patience for starting out light.
Rainbow Dash blinked, looking up at Quibble in disbelief at what she was reading. “...Really? Your stories are also about Daring Do getting tickled?”
“Yeah...it’s...kinda my thing too.” Quibble said with a nervous laugh. “Who would’ve thought this was another thing we had in common?”
“This is...a really weird bonding moment we’re having right now.”
“Uh-huh…”
Not wanting to hold any longer on the awkward conversation, they both returned back to their books.
Daring Do immediately cracked a smile, her focus quickly divided between the two stallions skittering their fingers against her body. A few snickers slipped through as her body twisted against the table.
“A shame that you have chosen to do this the hard way, Daring Do,” Caballeron said, watching as his minions did all the work. “However, I’m not so cruel as to keep you there forever. You can end this whenever you want, provided that you give us the location of the Golden Feather.”
“F-Fat chance of that happening…” Daring said through clenched teeth, her hands balled into fists.
“Suit yourself.” With a quick glance at his lackeys, the two of them moved faster, their fingers dug into the hollows of her armpits, the other hand moving from her hips, up her sides, and to her ribs.
Daring shut her eyes, unwilling to see the look of smug satisfaction of either Caballeron or his henchmen as they made her squirm.
The two lackeys had stopped working in tandem to give her symmetrical sensations. The one on her left moved his hands back down her body, deciding to target her sides and hips with quick finger digs. The one on her right kept to her upperbody, keeping one hand in her exposed armpit, with his other hand ruffling the feathers of her bound up wing.
Daring Do started to sweat, her breathing became heavy as the slow teasings on her armpit and wings contrasted with the digging into her sides.
“I must admit, your stubbornness has done well to last this long, but I know that you will break eventually. And then you’ll be begging to tell us everything.”
It became increasingly harder for her to keep her concentration. She didn’t have the focus or energy to spare a biting remark towards Caballeron, especially when she was on the verge of laughter.
“Unfortunately, my patience and generosity will only last so long, and it only gets worse from here.” With another snap of his fingers, Caballeron sent two more of his lackeys forth, each of them bringing tools for extra assistance.
With the other two still tickling, Daring had no respite as the two crouched down to get closer to her feet.
Daring Do resumed her attempts to free herself from the shackles, now trying to get her ankles free as well, as they turned to try and get away from the oncoming peril. Unfortunately, the bonds around her ankles were just as tight as the ones around her wrists. Though she was allowed the freedom to twist her arms and legs to some degree, it wasn’t enough for her to slip her feet through. She could hear the two at her feet give a small chuckle at her struggle.
They used their fingers to first test her ticklishness, their nimble digits skittering up her feet, making sure to follow whenever Daring’s foot twitched or tried to turn away. Their motions followed the basic pattern: Start at the heel, then work up the sole until they reached right underneath her toes, then make their way back down and start the process all over again. Since Daring Do had refused to break yet, and with the interference of the other two henchmen at her upperbody, monitoring how violently her feet jerked was their best way of telling which spots were the best targets.
They had discovered that her arches were the best spot to target. To confirm their theory, they got to work, raking their fingers up and down, containing their strokes above her heel, but below the ball of her foot.
“I highly suggest that you start talking now, Daring Do, while you still have the ability to talk,” Caballeron growled, impatiently tapping his foot against the temple’s stony floor.
“N-Ne...ver!” Daring Do managed to get out without breaking out in laughter, though saying that one word alone took most of her concentration and willpower. The sweat from her forehead started to drip down the rest of her body, her tinted cheeks got redder from exhaustion.
Caballeron’s nostrils flared. “Suit yourself. You only prolong the inevitable.”
His minions continued, the two at her feet utilizing the tools at their disposal: a blue feather, and a hairbrush.
The hairbrush got to work immediately, scrubbing back and forth across her arch, making sure each of the bristles hit her foot.
The feather, however, went for a different approach. The henchman grabbed onto her big toe. Despite all the other distractions, Daring reflexively curled her toes. The henchmen responded by gently tuggin, forcibly spreading her toes out so the feather could easily slide through.
“Gggkk! N-No…!” Daring shook and writhed, the tools were by far the worst part of her torture. Even the fingers scribbling in her armpits couldn’t compare. The sweat continued to drip from her forehead and down her body.
“Yeesh, this is lengthy…” Dash muttered to herself. “So, when does the ‘Never Gives Into Desire’ part of the story kick in? Cause this could easily just be called ‘Daring Do and the Golden Feather’.”
“Oh, that’s gonna happen in a future chapter. Trust me, the title makes a lot more sense later on.”
“Riiight…”
Daring Do could feel the vine slither around in her sock, the tip flicking against her foot. She tried kicking her foot back, aiming to hit the wall to squish it, but the vines around her ankles kept her foot raised up.
As the vine got to her big toe, she finally cracked, letting a few quick chuckles escape her lips.
She clenched her teeth, trying to prevent more from coming out, but as she was holding it together, another vine approached, joining the other one in her sock, dragging the tip up her sole.
“D-Damnit! Get...away!” She growled at the vines, still trying to shake them off.
Eventually, the vines slipped her sock off entirely, exposing her bare foot. With much more freedom, the two vines began to stroke up and down her sole.
“Hehehaaa! N-no! Nohohoho!” Daring couldn’t hold it in any longer, as helpless giggles spilled from her lips.
The vines only continued their teasing, with two sliding their tips against her foot, while the other one poked into her navel, wiggling around her shaking belly.
Though she had lost control over her own laughter, she continued to fight, thrashing against the grip the vines had on her.
The vines, however, continued their assault, keeping Daring’s limbs restrained as they teased her sole and navel, with even more closing in on her, as if they were picking the perfect spot to strike.
Daring Do tried her best to contain her laughter, but once she had started, she couldn’t regain enough control over herself to stop. More and more laughs were being forced out of her, and judging by the amount of idle vines, it was only going to get worse.
The advancing vines made a strike on her armpits next, with one on each side, they poked at her underarms first, each time making Daring Do jolt among her constant struggles.
“Aaaiiee! N-Nahahahat there, nahahat there!” she protested, fighting even harder to break free of the vines, if only to protect her pits.
As Daring still tried in vain to fight the vines, she heard another pony’s laughter from above her. Another set of vines was lowering them down into the pit. Daring Do quickly recognized it was none other than Dr. Wisteria herself. “Well, well, Daring Do. It seems you’ve found my precious little guard plants. Aren’t they cute?”
“G-Gahaha! G-Get! Gettem ohohohoff!”
“Don’t worry, they aren’t going to hurt you, they only wish to play! And it seems they’ve taken quite a liking to you…” Dr. Wisteria noted, leaning in closer to pet one of the vines at her armpits.
Daring wanted to throw a swing at Wisteria, but the vines kept her fists firmly above her head.
“Well, I still have a few more preparations to make before I’m done. I’d love to stay and play with your myself, but I’ll make sure you’re plenty entertained in the meantime.” With a sinister chuckle and a snap of her fingers, the vines lifted Wisteria back out of the pit, leaving Daring Do stuck in the pit with her plant pets.
“C-Come bahahahahack heeheeheeheeheeheere!” Daring yelled, watching helplessly as Wisteria disappeared from her sight.
It seemed that the snapping did more than lift Wisteria out, all the vines that were previously hovering around her moved in.
A few of the vines slipped into the helmet, boots, and sock that had fallen off, wiggling around in front of her, as if to taunt her by wearing her clothes as their own.
Two more vines joined the ones at her armpits, all four tendrils sliding up and down in alternating strokes against the hollows of her pits.
Her right foot was surprisingly kept safe, even her sock was still on. None of the vines seemed to be tickling it yet. Her left foot was not as fortunate. At least three vines had wrapped around her ankle for extra security, each of them poking or wiggling against her foot to make her squeal.
“AAAHAHAHAHAHAAAA! STAHAHAHAHAHAHAP! HEHEHEHEHEHELP!” Daring cried out, her laughter echoing in the pit.
“Alright, you’re making Daring Do way too ticklish!” Quibble said, pointing out the section he was reading to Rainbow Dash. “There’s no way that she’d be a laughing mess that quickly.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you went up to A. K. and asked how ticklish she was. Excuse me for making it so unrealistic,” Rainbow Dash fired back sarcastically, rolling her eyes.
“That’s not what I mean and you know it. I’m just saying that Daring Do should be a lot tougher than that!”
“Well maybe it’s more enjoyable when you get to the good part of tickling, unlike your story!”
Quibble’s jaw dropped. “Excuse me!?”
“You heard me!”
As the discussion started to heat up, the door to their room swung open a little bit wider.
“Huh, thought I heard some familiar voices.” Unaware that she was currently the topic of a kink-filled conversation, Daring Do popped her head into their hotel room, still in her A. K. Yearling persona. “Hey guys? Your door was left open. Just checking in to make sure you guys aren't getting kidnapped or anything.”
“I mean, look at your story! She’s got her armpits and feet targeted, and she’s not even giggling! You honestly think that someone in that situation wouldn’t be laughing? I mean, she wouldn’t tell them a thing, but at the very least she wouldn’t be able to hold it!”
The more she heard of this conversation, the more confused Daring got. “Uh...guys?” Daring waved, trying to get their attention, but the two continued a conversation that she didn’t feel she could join at the moment.
“Hello? It’s me?” Daring said, locking the door behind her before taking off her disguise. As she walked closer to her two fans, something on the bed caught her attention.
“Daring Do and the Tickle Pit?”
Ordinarily, she wouldn’t read her fans’ creations, lest it subconsciously influence her own writing, yet with such a blatant title, curiosity got the better of her.
Once the two fuzzy ropes snaked around all of her toes, they started to move in tandem. The handles at each end were tugged back and forth, dragging the fuzzy surface of the rope as they went, effectively tickling between and underneath her toes at the same time.
“BWAHAHAHAHA!” Daring Do struggled against the ropes around her wrists. Any wiggling or curling she did with her toes only made the tickling worse.
“Aww, but we just started! You better get comfortable, cause you’re going to be stuck here for a long while. Next we’ll play with those pretty wings of yours…”
“NOOOOHOHOHOHO! M-MAKE IT STAHAHAHAHAP!” Daring Do pleaded, trying to free her toes, each little movement forcing a hysterical squeal out of her.
After only reading an excerpt, Daring Do held the book in front of her to try and process everything. She had seen plenty of cryptic puzzles, ancient riddles, and prophecies written in dead languages, and yet this was among one of the most confusing things she had ever read.
“I...What? Why?” Her cheeks started to redden, she was so perplexed by the paragraphs she hadn’t noticed her wings had flared up.
The vine in her navel finally slipped out of her writhing belly, but only to move to its next target: right behind her knee.
“AAAIEEEHAHAHA!?” Daring Do’s wings popped out in surprise. She wasn’t even aware she could be ticklish there. She tried to bend her knee to prevent the vine from doing more tickling, but with three vines simultaneously tickling her foot and holding it up, her chance of success was unlikely.
At her foot, the trio of vines split off to tickle her in three different ways. One wrapped around her big toe, gently pulling it to spread the rest of her toes out, the tip slowly flicking against the toe. The other snaked around her last two toes, going back and forth to tickle in between. That left one vine with the rest of her foot to work with, stroking up and down her scrunching sole.
Tears and sweat started dripping down Daring’s cheeks. Just one of the vines at her foot was bad enough, having all three at once sent her into a panic. “ST-STAHAHAHAHAHAHAP! OHOHOHO SWEET CELESTIAHAHAHAHA!”
The vines at Daring Do’s armpits gave her a small break as they suddenly stopped their relentless assault. But her moment of relief didn’t last long. As all four of them slipped through her sleeves, tickling her armpits directly, rather than through her shirt.
The vines entering her sleeves didn’t incite a particularly stronger reaction from Daring Do, she had other things to be preoccupied with. What caught her attention was the fact that two of the vines slithered past her armpits, and started teasing her breasts.
Daring’s pupils shrank. The laughter had stopped entirely as the shock started to set in. And just as quickly as it stopped, it came back. “AAAAHAHAHA! NAHAHAHAHAHAHA! GET OUT OF THEHEHEHEHERE!”
Though she hadn’t noticed yet, one vine started tugging at her belt, undoing the buckle and sliding it off her shorts. The vine had enough dexterity to undo the button, slide her zipper down, and start removing her belt entirely. Though the current position of her legs meant her shorts wouldn’t slide off, they were loose enough to reveal her panties...
“I can’t believe you were planning on selling these things…” Quibble chuckled.
“You can’t berate me for the exact same thing you’re doing,” Dash said, raising her eyebrow in annoyance.
“Also, being tickled by vines? How original!” Quibble said with a sarcastic grin.
“Like your setup isn’t just as cliched.”
Cabelleron’s ears perked up upon hearing Daring Do’s whimpering. “Oh? What was that? Perhaps you are ready to talk now, hm?”
Daring tried to twist her grin into a scowl, but couldn’t manage to get her anger across. She didn’t dare try to talk back this time. The moment she broke was when Caballeron won.
“What’s wrong, Daring Do? Nothing left to say? No witty retort for me this time?” he taunted, trying to goad her into talking so she can slip into a frenzy of laughter.
Daring Do reluctantly shook her head, refusing to give Caballeron the satisfaction of hearing her struggle to say what was on her mind.
Caballeron smirked, though the irritation on his face was clear as day. She was close to breaking, but she just had to be so stubborn.
The last of Caballeron’s henchmen was finally allowed to join in, also brandishing a blue feather.
The feather that was already sawing between her toes made it especially hard for Daring Do to see where the next feather was going, though she could definitely feel it once it made contact. The feather started just above her navel, swirling around her belly button, getting closer to dipping in with each pass around.
Meanwhile, the henchman at her right foot switched tactics, going straight for the arch that he meticulously tested before, sawing the feather back and forth.
The two that started the torture kept their focus to her armpits, ribs, and wings, constantly switching between the three locations. Whether it was skittering against the spaces between her ribs, digging into her wingpits, or sliding a single finger back and forth in the hollows of her armpits, they made sure to not let up for a single moment.
Daring Do could feel the tears form and drip down her cheeks. The urge to cry out laughing was strong, but she managed to swallow it down, keeping her resistance strong for just a little while longer.
Caballeron growled. All this effort and she hadn’t even let out a single giggle. “That is it!” he yelled in anger as he finally joined in on his enemy’s torment personally.
“Tell us the location of the Golden Feather!” Caballeron yelled, squeezing her hips, making sure to dig his fingers in deep.
Daring Do vigorously shook her head. She could feel the laughter building up in her chest, the burning blush in her cheeks and ears, the sweat dripping down from her toes.
The hands at her armpits and hips, the feather stroking her stomach, the other feather sweeping against her arch, and the brush swiping against her soles all started to blend together into one overall ticklish sensation that wracked her entire body and chipped away at her willpower.
“Yeah, tickling interrogations have never been done before. Congratulations on breaking new ground with your ideas.”
“Oh, please, I’ve seen way more stories of vines tickling Daring Do than her being interrogated.”
“At least my setup adds an original character to the story. Yours is just reusing Caballeron.”
“It’s for familiarity,” Quibble Pants insisted. “Adding in OCs makes fanworks less popular unless they’re universally accepted by the fandom, that’s a fact.”
Daring Do slowly and quietly closed the book, and put it back where she found it, shaking her head as she tried desperately to forget what she just read.
She looked back at her two arguing fans, the added context making things a lot more awkward for her. She wanted to confront them about what she had just read, but also wished she had never walked in the room in the first place.
Even if no one was watching her, the feeling of slowly getting exposed made Daring Do’s cheeks burn red.
As her shorts continued dropping down her legs, the vine began wrapping itself around the waistband of her panties, not doing any tickling yet.
Daring Do bucked her hips in a panic, realizing what was going to be targeted next. She managed to get a grip on one of the vines around her wrists. If she could wrestle one of her arms free, she’d have a chance to escape and confront Dr. Wisteria. But the other vines weren’t going to make things easy for her, especially the ones in her shirt...
“Wow, how many of these stories do you have? Are they all like this?”
“Why? Are you gonna spend the whole night criticizing me?” Dash asked defensively.
“No no, it’s not like that. Sure, the setup’s not exactly original, but I think with a little feedback, you could do something new! Like, add a twist to it or something to really make it stand out from other fanfics!”
“Uhuh…” Dash said suspiciously. “Not that I don’t appreciate the offer, but it’s kinda too late for me to make any changes on what I’ve written.”
“Pfft. Well, yeah, obviously... But there’s no reason not to improve for next year’s con! Besides, it’s not like Daring Do’s gonna read any of this, right?”
“...Really?”
Rainbow and Quibble looked up in confusion, then quickly realized who had been in the room, listening to their conversation the whole time. They felt their hearts briefly stop as they came face-to-face with Daring Do glaring at them. Working off pure, panicked instinct, they quickly tossed their books away, having them bang against the hotel wall, as if it was going to instantly hide them from Daring Do’s view.
“Ohhh, hey! Aheh...h-how long have you been standing there?” Quibble laughed nervously.
Daring held up a copy of the books written by her fans, raising an eyebrow, silently awaiting an explanation.
“Ok, so long enough! So, uh, funny thing about those…Uh...”
The two writers looked between each other and Daring Do as they tried their best to come up with some sort of explanation, constantly stuttering as they quickly realized there was no out from this.
Daring let out an exasperated sigh. “Ok. So...I’m just going to leave now, and we’re going to pretend that this never happened, and we will never speak of this ever again, got it?” Daring said, the blush on her cheeks still lingering.
The two of them quickly nodded, silently praying for Celestia to strike them down now to save them further embarrassment.
“Good. See you tomorrow.” Daring said, putting her disguise back on before leaving their hotel room.
The door slammed shut, leaving Quibble Pants and Rainbow Dash in an ever-lingering, awkward silence.
“...So...Did you...notice that her wings were-”
“Yep.”
Once they were sure that Daring Do was gone. The two of them started to crack up at the sheer absurdity of their situation. The awkward chuckles transitioned to more relieved laughs as they lightened up.
“So...what now?” Quibble asked, looking towards Dash.
“I mean, the convention starts tomorrow, we should probably get to sleep…” Dash said, going back to her bed to reorganize her books.
“Yeah, but...I kinda have an idea for a new story now.”
“Seriously? After we just got chewed out by Daring herself?”
“I know, I know, but hear me out! Neither of our setups were exactly original, right? Well, I think I’ve got an idea that hasn’t been done yet, and I think we can make something that’ll be ready for next year!”
“...We?” Dash stopped packing, turning around to face him.
“Yeah! I mean, if you want to. Cause your writing is pretty good, all things considered. If we worked together on this, then the story we’d make could be our best work yet!”
Rainbow Dash spent a moment to ponder this new opportunity, then quickly joined Quibble’s side. “Alright, I’ll bite, what’d you have in mind?”
