The Pegasus mare grunted slightly as she used more strength than she had needed to in a while to kick her assailant and send her smashing through the wooden wall, reducing it to scrap wood and kindling in a moment.
She was back to facing her already and trotted forward, quickly breaking into a run to pursue her foe who had gotten up and was now attempting to run down the hall to escape her.

(Some minutes earlier)

Daring Do walked slowly and silently up the dark path set of stairs, her sharp ears on high alert for any possible danger as a light rain fell.
More than once she needed to stop and listen carefully, and it was then that she really felt the danger she was in, being in this area this late at night and on this set of potentially creaky stairs. If she tried to fly, she’d run the risk of being too visible to hostile eyes. Her best option was to walk while being as careful as possible and hope that the falling rain would muffle any mistakes she might make.

This case was an infuriating and tragic one. She needed to find the unknown killer of a filly who had been shot at the playground at Filly’s Golden Tower Elementary School several days ago.
The poor little thing had received a small shuriken to her chest from Daring what had quickly deduced was a Military-grade Slingshot, and reportedly the unseen assailant had also already been in their getaway vehicle and sped off right after.

Two other foals were hit as well, but barely survived.

The golden Pegasus mare had been on this case for two days now and was a bit tired from lack of sleep, but she was getting closer and closer, and her current trail had lead her here to the first Ponyville train station, an old closed down industrial area that was used often for a tourist attraction and where local gangsters were known to gather whenever it was not in use.
This has been the sight of several other jobs Daring and Rainbow Dash had been involved in, and the results had always been bloody.

But it mattered not. The most recent clue, that being the sighting of her top suspect, a gray Earth Pony mare named Asphalt Run, had lead Daring to realize that she had been seen coming here repeatedly in the last few days, and the ponies Daring herself had interrogated who knew the killer had all individually agreed that Asphalt seemed to have been in a hurry in the last few days.

Another thing was the weapon in question.
According to one exceptionally dangerous and highly sought-out information dealer and crime boss named Ice Pick, Asphalt Run had come to him and purchased a recently used a 1899 Colt Slingshot Model about one week ago prior to the attack, and had even snuck by and secretly returned the weapon to one of his buildings just one day before Daring Do herself had shown up.

This had hammered the nail into the coffin for the bounty-hunting sleuth in regards as to who was the foal-killer, and with a tip from Ice Pick about how Asphalt Run was seen by a subordinate to have recently been seen going towards Ponyville’s old train station just a half hour ago, the outcome of this case was looking clearer by the second.
Especially when Daring took the opportunity to make a last-minute phone call to her unofficial client to meet her at the defunct train station, promising the Mare in question that she would soon have the chance to get her long-overdue revenge.

But anyway…

“This is the place. The old coal house…”
Daring whispered to herself.

This was the place where Asphalt was going to be. The filly-killer had been seen coming into this particular building by an old local stallion who worked here and had taken the night off to avoid being caught in any possible crossfire.
Of course, this information had cost a few bits to be given out, as nothing was free in this line of work.

Getting up in front of the door, Daring steadily placed one hoof on the handle and almost imperceptibly moved it.
Immediately, she could feel that it was locked and that it would require her to either seek another way inside or find a way to open it using her other skills… like lockpicking, which she set on doing.

Within a minute, the door was slowly opening and the mare quietly slipped inside.
The shadowy room was rather bare, with only a raggedy table and a few utensils with a chair in the center of the room and a few other small random items here and there.
It was clear that nopony was actually living here, just using it as a sort of hidey hole.

There was also an old stove model to the left side of the room, the smell of somewhat freshly baked potato and Lima beans was in the air, and the faint sound of hooves hitting the floor sounded off in her ears as she watched the door on the other side of the room opposite her position.
So she was still here and was soon to enter this room again, presumably to now truly escape the city that had placed a serious bounty on her head.

Daring would not allow that to happen, and she silently tip-hoofed across the room and to the right side of the door, which would put her on Asphalt’s left side.
She waited for the door to open and for the other mare to walk in, but just as she did so and Daring made her move, the Earth Pony immediately got a jolt born of pure survival adrenaline and stumbled to one side in an effort to avoid whatever attack she felt coming.

The result was that the initial punch missed her jaw by inches, but Daring simply regained her balance and swung her legs around to deliver a strong double leg kick, the exact move that country mare named Applejack had demonstrated the power of to a rare few others.
The result was Asphalt grunting painfully as both powerful back hooves smacked right against her left side and sent her crashing through the wall as easily if it were brittle ice from the power of the kick.

Scrambling to her hooves, the adrenaline-filled mare immediately fled down the hallway and turned the corner in seconds, trying to reach and escape through the door that lead out into the coal pits.
If she could get out there, where she had spent some time before and thus probably knew the area better than whoever her assailant must be, she would have the advantage in the darkness and familiar terrain.

Under many other circumstances, the Earth Pony would have been able to successfully pull it off… but not now when she was trying to outpace a PEGASUS, who could keep pace with the one and only Rainbow Dash for a period of time, in a desperate chase!
She cried out in pain and terror when two fast-moving hooves crashed into her shoulders from behind and sent her rolling across the hallway floor with enough force to crack the wall she slammed into and sent her bells ringing.

Derring Do stopped flying where she hit the Earth Pony and now walked towards her instead, a look of restrained rage on her normally calm face.

“You like it, don’t you?”
She asked venomously, waiting for the other mare to regain her bearings and get back up.

“You like hurting fillies and colts?”
She spat out.

Asphalt Run was by now fully aware of what Daring was saying, and slowly turned around it face her.

“I don’t know wh-“

Daring didn’t let her final that pitiful attempt at a false explanation.
“Don’t bother trying to lie. I saw you get out of that Ford Escort this morning in Big Mac’s Garage and walk out, I simply was waiting for you to return here so I can do what I wish without being seen!”

Asphalt shuddered just a bit at those words.
“H-how did you find me? How!?! There wasn’t anypony in that garage, I am sure of it!”

And here, Daring smirked and shrugged.
“You are right. I wasn’t in the garage to see you.”

“What?! Then you have NOTHING to pin on me! Unless… no, no you didn’t!”

“…yeah. I did.”
And now Daring reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a small recording device and held it out dangerously close to Asphalt as if mocking her… and the Earth Pony struck out with her right hoof as fast as she could and slapped out it away, sending crashing against the wall and breaking it into numerous pieces.

But just as she looked up at the Pegasus mare to either attack or insult her… she saw that the latter was still smiling mockingly.
The sight and the increasingly dangerous aura coming from her was alone more fear-inducing than the physical attack had been so far, and Asphalt backed up a step, her flank softly hitting the damaged wall.

“You didn’t really think that I needed a recorded confession, did you?”

Asphalt flinched at the cold tone that came out of the mouth of the young Pegasus mare, especially as the latter still wore her smile for a moment longer before it turned into a dark glare.

“I was only waiting for you to confirm what I already knew you are guilty of: that you killed an innocent foal in cold blood and attempted to do the same to two others. All for a few hundred bits.”

She now coldly took off and threw her pith helmet to the floor as she took a step forward, her voice and face no longer hiding her dark intentions at all.

“I didn’t need to scrape enough hard evidence to supposedly “have an excuse” to give you what you deserve. I simply wished to trick you into confessing to it yourself… and you did exactly that.”

At this point, Asphalt Run knew that there was no way out by running. She couldn’t evade this MURDEROUS Pegasus, and deep down she knew she couldn’t convince her to have mercy with either begging or bribery.
So, she did the only thing she could do: she threw the first punch, desperately and wildly, and the other pony simply leaned back and dodged it.

“Buck you!”
Asphalt snarled and now moved her body and threw a fierce kick, but Daring simply moved her own body just enough to one side so that the kicking leg just BARELY missed grazing her right shoulder.
And Asphalt herself felt a sudden blow strike her lower abdomen as Daring’s counter jab struck in perfect harmony with the flow of the fight.

Daring herself knew that she had pushed her enemy to desperation. The Earth Pony now was convinced that her life was lost unless she somehow managed to beat her pursuer in this fight.
And in the closed confines of this hallway, she had an increased combat advantage over a Pegasus.

Well, over MOST Pegasi.

The scuffle was brief and brutal, but Daring could easily read her foes increasingly erratic and aggressive attacks and she dodged just enough to avoid being struck while delivering her own devastating counter attacks on her foes weak spots.
She had learned these skills via reading certain books with Rainbow Dash’s book-smart friend Egg Hea-Twilight Sparkle, as well as practicing them in more than one deadly fight she’d been involved in.
Her keen eyes and highly trained senses had picked up on these moves, the art of striking nerves and vulnerable muscle points just right.

The liver was struck harshly.
Then the calf when that same leg was used to kick.
Then the FUNNY BONE, and that arm was worthless.
Then the throat.
And within a dozen or so seconds Asphalt was staggered and slowing down rapidly.

“I’m not going to kill you, you monster. That isn’t my privilege.”
Daring said with icy calm, and then whirled around and drew her legs back, preparing nearly all if her remaining strength in her legs for this final blow.
The other pony, already dizzy and struggling to see straight, could only gasp and widen her eyes in terror as both hind hooves shot toward her at breakneck speed, striking her with stupendous force in the chest with a bit of a crushing sound, making her obliterate the already damaged wall, fly through the next room, and coincidentally smash through and out the window of the final room, which meant her battered body was now outside the old coal building.

The assassin pony fell limply through the air and landed heavily on the cold hard ground with a loud and painful *THUD*, any remaining air at all completely knocked out of her lungs.
Her limbs either mostly numb or burning up in pain, her chest feeling like it had just been struck with a sledgehammer and struggling to take air, her head feeling light and dizzy and horribly frail right now… Asphalt Run had ever been so utterly HELPLESS!

And a number meters above her, despite being blurry a bit and having multiple versions all standing together in nauseating fuzziness, the Pegasus mare slowly flew out of the shattered window and hovered over her crumpled form.
Then the blurry figures moved to the side and out of her immediate sight, and for a few tormented seconds the battered and beaten Earth Pony had some form of peaceful suspense.

Meanwhile, Daring Do landed softly on the concrete ground and merely watched the shuddering form of the hired killer for several long seconds.
Indeed, she knew why Asphalt Run had shot those foals. It was because she’d been hired by another group of gangsters to intimidate the locals by targeting their offspring and get them to give in to the demands of said gang.
A despicable tactic, and a potentially suicidal one at that. Even in Ponyville’s darker organizations, targeting somepony’s foals was considered a near-absolute form of taboo crime everywhere, and Ice Pick was more than willing to help Daring find them for that reason alone.

Indeed, she didn’t even need to track down those idiots who had decided to do this. The local news spreading recent stories about Police brutality and even more brutal vigilante justice occurring was proof of that fact, and all she was doing was finding the hired shooter herself while leaving the gang to the non-existent mercy of the city.
And it wasn’t just for her own satisfaction that Daring had down this, as the other reason now came into view from the other side of the walkway and out of the shadows.

Daring Do waited for a few more moments before speaking.
“I said that I was not the one who would kill you, Asphalt Run.”

She could tell that the other pony’s vision was slowly clearing up a bit already and that she could see more clearly. She also didn’t reply immediately to the statement, and so Daring continued.

“That privilege… goes to another mare. A pony who you’ve hurt more deeply than most others.”

“W-w-what?”
The shaking voice was proof enough of the fear that was fast overcoming the killer. She had now managed to roll slowly onto one side, and was facing the other pony who had quickly picked up the pace and now stood in front of her.

The new pony was a mare, a light gray mare, and she had a shade of faded yellow hair as her mane and had on a sort of uniform.
A mailmare uniform.

She leaned down to Asphalt and Daring could see was holding a small picture in one hoof. The picture of a small filly.

“Do you recognize the filly in this picture, at all?”
She asked, her normally bubbly and cheery voice that Daring was familiar with from several meetings in the past replaced by a tone so utterly cold that it could send shivers down the spine of almost anypony.

Asphalt made a small guttural grunt and seemed to be trying to remember, but the new mare simply pushed the picture down into one of her hooves now.
“Look at it closer, just for a few moments. You will see it soon.”

“I-I, um… uh, ok…”
The wounded and increasingly fearful mare managed to reply, and she slowly raised her trembling hoof and tried focusing as best she could on the picture of this little filly.

The picture was of a light purple Unicorn filly with golden eyes and a happy expression on her adorable face as she looked up at the other pony in the picture with her.
And that other pony had a light gray coat and a yellow mane…

With a sudden grunting gasp, Asphalt Run finally remembered who the foal in the picture was.
She had seen this mare and this filly before, about a year ago.
A little one who had reportedly barely been killed in an “accident” that had resulted in the deaths of two ponies and the hospitalization of three others.

A terrorist attack that Asphalt Run and a few others had perpetrated at the behest of the Red Hoof String Organization, a criminal group that had terrorized Ponyville for several years and had just recently been shut down by a concentrated group effort from all branches of the Ponyville Police Department (PPD), which also saw the deployment of the newly reformed, retrained, and much deadlier paramilitary unit of law enforcement known as SWAT.

And now the hired killer knew exactly what was going on, and she then heard/saw a flash of something metallic before the blades suddenly sliced into her field of vision on either side of the picture... and straight into her throat.

Weaponized wings, the favorite form of weapon-based combat that Pegasi preferred to use.
The mare’s wing feathers were laced with a sharpened number of intricately interconnected blades that didn’t do anything to hinder a Pegasus from flying at all, and yet could be drawn or sheathed with but the simplest twinge of their wing muscles and the sacred magic that flows through their bodies from their very souls.

And those eyes… those seemingly stupid and helplessly derped-out eyes… Oh Celestia, those horrifyingly unfocused eyes!
They were looking not at her, but INTO her. That face was completely expressionless and seemingly empty of any sort of emotion or awareness, but those eyes… they were very much aware of everything.

Derring Do watched silently as the mailmare slowly lifted the gurgling and spasming body of her victim off the ground with the wing blades skillfully stabbed through the pony’s neck and throat.
She watched as, with blood flowing down her body, Asphalt Run eventually stopped moving except for some muscle twitches, and she both saw and heard as the wings were suddenly withdrawn in a flash with a high-pitched slicing *SHING!*, a number of blood drops flew in several directions from the speed of the movement, and the corpse fell to the ground in a pool of its own blood, spasming again upon hitting the ground.

She watched without a word as the gray mare looked down at body for several seconds, then raised her head and fixed Daring herself with the same loppy-eyed expression… and then a small simple smile came to her face.

“Thank you, really. I always knew that she was the one who killed my little filly, but I couldn’t prove it or gain my revenge without your help. I’ll never forget this, cross my heart.”
She said softly. Then she simply turned around and flapped her wings swiftly a few times, shedding a few more drops of blood off of them, and took off.
She had a job to get back to, and the grave of a certain little pony to visit, with good news this time.

Daring simply waited until the mailmare had disappeared, then she simply started walking out of the narrow area towards home.
The case was done, and it was now time to get back to her crumpy bed and take a well-earned rest.

But as she got out into the street, she sighed as she found herself surrounded swiftly by a small crowd of others, both Earth Ponies and Unicorns.

“And just what’s a pretty young Pegasus filly like yourself doing here at an hour like this?”
A stallion stepped forward and asked, although it was obvious by his tone of voice and facial expression what his intentions really were.

But Daring simply sighed and looked up, even as she felt a mystic force weighing down on her as the Unicorns immediately held her down with telekinetic energy.
“Cmon Dash, I can feel your eyes on me. Hurry up alrea-“

Before she could even finish her sentence, a blur of blue and streak of rainbow came speeding down with such force that the air itself seemed to explode in all directions as it zipped by, and the gangsters went flying in all directions as they were struck either by a pair of outstretched hooves or the force of the air blast.

Daring herself charged now and grabbed the nearest Unicorn and slammed his head into the ground, a loud crack being heard.
She leaped back and attacked the next pair she saw, an Earth Pony and a Unicorn, and her speedy hooves smashed against their noses and front leg joints with pinpoint accuracy and took them down.

She turned around, and saw that only one pony out of the gang was left standing, Dash herself holding one and doing the “stop hitting yourself!” thing she sometimes did with individual thugs when she had the chance.
Daring rolled her eyes, locked on to the now-fleeing pony trying to escape from the multicolored speedster, and put all her power into her wings and legs for this one attack.

Then she hurled herself forward and caught up to the unfortunate wretch in an instant, and let’s just say that he was sent rolling and bouncing along the ground for a pretty good distance.

(An hour later…)

Daring Do sighed as she and Rainbow Dash finally walked in through the door of her home, located on 123 Cookie Cutter Street.
And of course, she wasn’t surprised when she felt Dash gently grab her and give her a long overdue kiss, deep and meaningful, before leading her to the bedroom.

The two mares took off their clothes(and the pith helmet, since Daring had retrieved it from the coal building) and washed up briefly in the bathroom shower, Dash not trying anything on her at all in the shower and even combing Daring’s mane and then her own, surprisingly enough.

“You don’t need to do that, you know.”
Daring said quietly. But she knew that it was pointless to say that. It was just a habit at this point between them.

“I want to, though.”
Dash replied knowingly, and then picked up and CARRIED Daring to the bed and deposited her onto it before lying down next to her.
But she immediately sat up and looked down at the other mare.

“You ok, there?”

“Yeah, yeah sure. I’m just…”
She shifted a bit and looked up at Dash for a second, and Dash looked at her with both concerned eyes and patience, waiting for her to speak again when she was ready to.

Daring sighed again and resumed.
“I mean, I AM tired and all and I’ve earned my freedom to rest. But still… I just feel… I want to be comforted a bit. We haven’t fooled around for a while now, ok? And after these last few days, I think I could use some extra attention.”

She didn’t miss the smirk that lit up on the rainbow Pegasus face. Dash chuckled as she now crawled atop and stood over the other mare, staring down at her.
“Are you saying that you want to do what us two filly-foolers do best tonight, besides kicking flank and taking names?”

“No. I’m saying that I want YOU to do what you do best besides all the other fun stuff, while I just lay here and enjoy it all.”

Dash couldn’t help but laugh at that for a moment, and grinned from ear to ear when she looked down and saw Daring’s adorable little pout. She then leaned down and kissed her, straddling the other mare in a dominant, but still gentle way.

“Then don’t worry,” Dash whispered against the others muzzle before pushing her partner’s head up gently and starting to kiss her sensitive throat, leaving a trail of steamy kisses slowly leading down and then back up to the other mare’s face and lips while also sending a flow of heat throughout her body.
“You are right, you know. You’ve more than earned everything I can do for you, and then some. And after you’ve had your first reward, you’ll be able to sleep like a foal…”

Suddenly, as she gasped softly from Dash’s tender and wonderful ministrations, Daring felt absolutely certain now that she wouldn’t be getting any sleep AT ALL.

Author's Note

Whew! Longest one I’ve ever written so far!

So yeah, I initially wanted to try adding guns to this world, but ultimately… I just couldn’t find a way to make guns that ponies could shoot. I mean, unless they ALL use magic or some kind of complex mechanism that I can’t describe very well, then firearms simply can’t be used by their hooves.
So I decided instead on having an advanced magitek society that uses a combo of a little science and a lot of magic, and to use the cool fanon idea: Pegasi fight using their own weaponized wings along with their hooves!
Basically, they can use ALL SIX LIMBS instead of just four. In canon, the Pegasi were a warrior society, so I think that they’d invent and master the art of wing-to-wing combat in addition to hoof-to-hoof.

Plus, I love the idea of Badass Derpy, and it was so much fun writing her! Sorry for killing off Dinky though…

See y’all in the next update… whenever I have time to do it.