Many thanks to Whifi for giving permission to use his “Daring Do Love Face” as the cover art for this story!
http://whifi.deviantart.com/

Part One

Slowly, you place your front-right hoof on the first symbol on an obviously pressure-plated floor. The dusty, polished marble plates had been arranged in a six by six grid, with no route around them. Once satisfied that you had determined the correct sequence of six symbols, based on constellations visible in the nights sky, you continue to make your way across, slowly and carefully trying to avoid putting your hooves on any of the other plates.

Having passed the first challenge, you find yourself against the second - a large hole in the ground, with no visible bottom, flowing down into darkness. Taking a further look around, you notice that there is a very thick tree-root coming through the ceiling - probably thick enough to take your weight. You pull your whip from your saddlebag and flick it towards the root, the leather smooth on your tongue as you hold the whip in your mouth. Giving it a quick tug to check that the root will hold your weight, you leap, swinging on the creaking leather to the other side of the chasm below.

Grunting, you pull yourself up the crumbling stone ledge, your forehooves scrabbling desperately whilst you try with all of your might to pull on the creaking bullwhip clenched between your teeth. Slowly, you manage to get your hind legs onto solid ground, and sit, gasping for breath for a few moments.

The crumbling and ruined temple you were in was supposed to be linked to the lost city of Catlantis, which was built by an ancient feline race before ponies became the dominant species on the planet. The cats had been much larger than the common domestic pets found all over Equestria, closer to the size of gryphons, and had left decaying ruins in the most difficult to reach parts of the world, untouched by the progression of society. The architecture of the place was utterly amazing, massive pillars painstakingly sculpted into scratching posts, the scent of wild catnip on the slightly musty air, and you can hear the eerie crunch of finely crushed zeolite under your hooves.

When your friend Mulus Braydee had first told you that he’d managed to find a map to the place, you had been intrigued. When he told you that other archaeologists also knew about it, you knew that you had to reach the place first to make sure that any artifacts within didn’t end up in the wrong hooves.

You had already had to deal with the young dragon named Drake in Saddle-Paulo, and grin at the thought of the authorities finding him cuffed to a lamp-post. Your other main competitor was a twenty-something year old treasure hunter by the name of Clopft, but the pistol-wielding unicorn was probably too busy living up her celebrity status. There was of course, one more mare who could show up still - the one and only Daring Do.

Do worked for a rival university, and in fairness you had been pretty impressed by her work on the few occasions her academic papers made their way into the major journals of archeology. What concerned you though, was that her publications never mentioned what exactly happened to the items she recovered; which usually meant that the artifacts were sold on to private collectors rather than donated to museums, where they belong. You had met the adventurer herself a few times, but always in the race to track down whatever mystical artifact had been revealed through ancient texts re-discovered after being lost.

As you enter the next chamber, you stop to look for traps. You see that the roof of the room is covered in a rusty metal grille, and the tiled floor floor covered in small pockmarks. Squinting, you see hair-thin wires stretched across the corridor - always a bad sign. Gripping your whip between your teeth, you flick it at one of the wires, and see a rusty iron spike slide out of the holes in the grille in the ceiling, straight down into the floor. Cutting the wires would take too long, and the spaces between them and the floor, not to mention each other, are very slim.

Thinking, you try to work out how the ancient Catlanteans would have gotten through this particular trap. They would have known what to do, and would undoubtedly have some sort of cultural or physical advantage to help them overcome it, such as being able to leap the gap you had barely climbed to get into this damn place. As the gears slowly turn in your head, you notice that the gap between the grille and the trigger wires is probably large enough for you to fit through, and you realise the advantage that the Catlanteans would have had - their claws. Realising that the slightest movement would trigger the trap, you stow your fedora in your saddlebag, followed by the ripped brown shirt you had habitually worn on each adventure.

Obviously, you don’t have claws, so the expected route of climbing the ceiling was not one open to you.

“Wow, a wire-spike trap. I don’t think I’ve seen one of those since I beat you to the... well, I beat you to everywhere. I guess you’re getting old, Doctor Bones.”

“Hello, Do,” you sigh, turning to see the grayscale-maned pegasus flapping lazily behind you, “I saw your paper on the Sapphire Stone. I expect that’s in the hooves of some damn collector by now though?”

The mare shrugs, irritating you further.

“Girl’s gotta make a living. Any idea what you’re going for in this place?” she asks, giving you a brief look over, her eyes lingering on your chest for slightly longer than you expect.

“Nope. Mulus said it was valuable though, so it belongs in a museum.”

“Wait, wait, Mulus Braydee? Didn’t he get lost in his own museum?” Daring says, laughing, “Heck, Doctor McHay told me about the time he managed to get himself captured by a bunch of gryphons.”

“McHay? The hack from the Alicorn expedition?” you ask, half-concentrating on the conversation, trying to think of a way around the trap.

“McHay, the leading expert on Catlantis and the Catlanteans on the face of the planet.” Do replies, obviously getting irritated, hooves on her hips as she continued to maintain her position mid-air... you can’t help but notice her figure in that pose, her defined yet subtle hips stirring something primitive in your mind.

“Really?” you respond, the more modern parts of your brain forcing you to think about the first book you read on the subject several years ago, “I heard that was Oat’Meall, Cartier and Buckson. They were on the scene at least ten years before McHay even got his first PhD.”

Do snorts, slightly frustrated, and you grin at her with a wink. Looking at the agitated mare, you can’t help but notice her inner fire when she’s pissed off - she’s obviously a passionate pony, and absolutely sure that she’s right.

“So, what does McHay think?” you ask, still smirking, allowing your eyes to drift over her body for just a little too long, almost as if caught in a daydream.

“Well, the evidence suggests that this isn’t the lost city at all. Probably just an outpost.” Do says, landing with a slight crunch on the gravelly floor, just behind you. “Have you considered cutting the wires?”

“Why yes,” you reply sarcastically, rolling your eyes, “But usually, that’d set of a different trap.”

“Can you read Catlantean?” Do says, smiling sweetly at you, pointing at a series of scratched letters on a half-worn away plaque. Squinting at the sign, you can just about determine that the words ‘cut the wires’ are engraved, but not all of the tablet is there.

“Y’know, I’d put twenty bits on the rest of that tablet reading ‘Do not’, as in ‘Do not cut the wires’.”

“When you’re done, I’m going to cut them.” she replies, flipping the explorers’ hat off of her head and into her mouth.

“DAMNIT DO, WAIT!” you yell as she flings the hat into the mess of wires. Diving for the floor, you wrap your forelegs around your head to protect yourself as you hear the plink of a wire snapping.

You then hear a new sound, one like rope freely running through a pulley, and look up at Daring, who was looking down at you, laughing.

“Wow, Fedora Bones, you’re one hell of a pus-”

Before Do could finish, the ground opens up beneath you, revealing that you had been stood on a stone trap-door.

Naturally, you fall.

Rushing water.

Cold rushing water.

As your eyes acclimatise to the darkness, you can see somepony in the water in front of you, and realise that it must be Daring.

“Do! You alive?” you yell at her, trying to swim with the current to get closer to her.

Receiving no reply, you wrap a foreleg around her limp body and haul her face out of the water.

“Daring, C’mon, wake up...”

“Crap.” you say to nopony in particular. Looking around, you find yourself floating into what looks like a massive underground cavern, impressive stalactites and stalagmites visible in the gloom. Spying an island in the middle of the cave, you swim towards it, floating on your back and dragging the unconscious Do in one foreleg, taking care not to let her nose and mouth slip under the icy cold water. As you kick your hind legs to keep you moving, you feel the cold starting to numb your body, and are relieved when you can feel the sand underneath you.

As quickly as you can, you lay her out on the sand, coarse under your hooves but strangely not cold like the water had been. Putting your ear to her lips, you realise that she isn’t breathing and quickly take a deep breath. Sealing your mouth around hers, you watch her chest rise as you breathe into her, before beginning compressions on the motionless mare’s chest.

“Don’t you dare die on me...” you tell her, before giving a second breath.

Suddenly, Daring splutters and coughs up a few mouthfuls of water, finally able to breathe for herself. Sighing with relief, you sit down and allow her to regain her senses.

“Whu... what happened?” she asks, still partially dazed, staring upwards.

“You almost got both of us killed. That’s what happened.” you reply, scolding her.

Even sodden with water and having almost died, Daring leaps back to her hooves.

“What are you trying to say?” she says, aggressively.

“That you’re an amateur, sweetheart!” you yell back, “You should have been more careful!”

“Oh please! How many times have I beaten you? How many times have you escaped someone like, I don’t know, Ahuizotl?”

“Ahuizotl!?” you reply with a laugh,

“Yeah!”

“I’ve never had to escape from that jackass, sweetheart, because I shot him the first time he even tried to mess with me!” you scream, obviously shocking Daring.

“You shot him!?”

You had indeed. Ahuizotl himself had tried to block your exit from a small town just south of Mairo, using some fancy martial art and putting on something of a display. The gentlecolt in you would have gone hoof-to-hoof against such an opponent normally, but you had eaten something that disagreed with you the night before, and were suffering quite badly from “The Trots” - so, you shot him in the chest. The townsponies had applauded you briefly for such an action, and then ran you out of town.

“This isn’t a game, Kid.” you eventually tell Do, who had began chuckling to herself over the demise of her old foe, “You still made a school-filly mistake that could have killed us both. You’re a damn fool.”

“Yeah?” she asks, taking a step or two towards you, “Well maybe if you didn’t suck at disarming traps we wouldn’t be in this mess!”

“I. Was. Working. On. It.” you tell her, taking a step closer.

“You’re such a plothole, Fedora Bones.” she replies, her face inches from yours, still fuming with anger, “and what’s worse? You’re the kind of stallion who thinks he can just swan in, all rugged and brave and have anypony he wants!”

“Anypony I want!? PLEASE, Sweetheart! You’ve got skills, but you’re not that good. Maybe you should just stay in the damn library.” you reply, gazing into those deep fuschia eyes.

Daring slaps you, knocking you to the ground, before pouncing on you and locking her lips with yours...

Next Chapter: Chapter 2 Estimated time remaining: 20 Minutes