To their credit, the museum security guards, despite having never been trained to handle a mass death, reacted quickly. A guard was dispatched to call an ambulance and the Trottingham City Guard, and the others blocked the doors, refusing to allow anypony to leave. Two tense minutes of dead silence later, there was the comforting sound of a approaching sirens and rattling carriage wheels from outside. A group of paramedics entered the room, white coats and black saddlebags ready to mark the casualties. Right on their tails came the Trottingham City Guard, stomping through the main doors in their polished silver armor with blue trim and white diamond chest insignia, only to halt in the hallway door, staring at the dozens of bodies scattered amongst the artifacts in silent horror.

The squad leader, a steely-eyed unicorn corporal with the silver bars of a Royal Investigator on his shoulders, was the first to recover from the shock. Proceeding to the center of the crowd, he spoke in a loud, clear voice. "Ladies and gentlecolts, my name is Corporal Iron Shield. The Trottingham City Guard will be investigating this crime, and rest assured, we will find those responsible. I just ask that everypony please remain calm and cooperate fully. Thank you."

Regaining control of themselves and remembering their duty, the other Guards spread out to take statements from the witnesses. Corporal Shield walked over to the three directors, who were gathered near the head of the room. Unnoticed by the crowd, Phillip and Daring sidled closer so they could listen in.

"Doctors, what happened here?" the corporal asked, his eyes darting between each of the three scientists.

"We don't know," Dr. Dry Bones said, staring at the body of a young mare on the floor next to him, a shattered glass lying a pool of punch next to her hoof. "One minute, everything was fine, and the next, ponies starting choking and...well, dying."

"Have there been any threats made against the museum or its staff recently?" the corporal pressed, levitating a notebook and pen out of his saddlebag.

"No, none," Dr. Bones replied, shaking his head. "We—"

"It's the curse," Dr. Scribe said, his face pale and drawn. "The Maorein priests warned us...we shouldn't have brought the diamond here. It's cursed all of us."

The corporal stopped writing and raised an eyebrow at him. "That diamond didn't get out of its case and kill these ponies, did it?"

"Of course it didn't," Dr. Exhibit replied, giving her colleague an exasperated glance even as her tail continued to tremble in shock. "It's far more probable that this was the result of some kind of poisoning in the buffet food. I'd recommend that you test samples of the buffet for poison and question the catering staff."

Corporal Shield stared at her for a moment, then slowly nodded. "Er, right. I was just going to do that."

At those words, Daring glanced at Phillip, then at the food. A chilling realization came to her: she'd been about to sample the buffet herself before she saw Phillip. What if she had taken some of the poison? What if this had been meant for her? As the thought crossed her mind, she felt Phillip shift slightly closer to her, enough that she could feel the static electricity of his suit tingling against her wing, and she realized that the same thought must have crossed his mind as well.

"In any case, we should probably close up for the night," Dr. Bones sighed, signaling to a security guard. The guard, trembling down to the tip of his tail, stepped forward, carrying a fairly large wooden box, carved with Maorein reliefs, with a velvet interior and a silver lock. Extracting a set of keys from his pocket, he unlocked the glass case and carefully pulled the blue diamond of its stand. Bizarrely, every head turned to watch as the jewel was placed in the box, which was shut and locked tightly, then quickly whisked out of the room and down to the museum's vaults in the basement. Even Phillip and Daring, unable to resist the inexplicable attraction that the cursed artifact held, kept their eyes upon the box until it had disappeared around the corner.

"Excuse me," a rookie Guard interrupted, approaching them along with his partner. "We need to ask you two some questions."

"Yes, sir," A.K. Yearling replied, her shaken facade not entirely an act.

The Guards gave them the usual formulaic list of questions: where had they been, what had they seen and heard. They replied that they had been outside and had only rushed back inside when they had heard somepony scream. No, they hadn't had anything from the buffet, nor had they seen any shady characters hanging around the hors d'oeuvres. The Guards took down their answers and told them to contact the Guard if they thought of something else. Dismissed, the two ponies left the crime scene.

"Now what?" Daring asked quietly as they exited the main doors and descended the stone steps.

"Well, we obviously can't just leave town after this," Phillip replied. "But we don't have much reason to hang around here, not with the mates running around. We'll let them do the work here, then the two of us can make the proper inquiries in the morning. Where are you staying?"

"The same hotel I stayed at last time," Daring answered. She paused at the bottom of the stairs, the question hovering on her lips for a moment before she forced it out in a whisper. "You don't think that we were the targets, were we?"

Phillip, unable to meet her gaze, answered quickly. A bit too quickly. "I don't know yet. There's no evidence to suggest that."

The truthful but non-committal answer did nothing to assure either of them. Daring swallowed quietly, then turned and walked away without another word. Phillip walked in the opposite direction, fighting to resist the urge to turn and watch her go, having to assure himself that she was capable of handling herself on her own.

While he trotted down the dark street, following the stalwart, silent line of streetlights, Phillip turned over the night's events in his mind. The face of the dying reporter hovered in front of his gaze, the horrified look in his eyes burning themselves into his memory. The curse of being able to remember everything was that...he remembered everything. Every wound, every bloodstain, every weeping victim, every mourning family, every corpse.

It felt like Death followed him, constantly hovering in his shadow like a plague, striking down ponies wherever he went while he could only watch and do nothing to save them. Everypony that came near him was put at risk: his mere presence brought the grim specter on his heels.

The same was true of Daring, he knew: her books were based on her adventures, but more often than not, she watered down the events to make them more "reader-friendly." But in real life, wherever she went, trouble and death were sure to follow. It was part of their lives, the disease that they were infected with because it was a necessity to their careers...

Stop that, the little voice in the back of his head snapped. He had noticed that the voice had recently started sounding like Twilight. You're not responsible for those deaths. You're not some kind of curse.

He threw off the feeling of unease, settling his emotions and allowing his rational mind to take the reins. He would let the competent stallions and mares of the City Guard examine the crime scene for evidence and beat the bushes for suspects. He and Daring would start fresh from there tomorrow. Right now, he needed some rest.

It took him about twenty minutes of wandering to get to the old, small hotel that Daring had been staying at under an alias during the case of the Mare Lisa. Slipping inside the hotel, he purchased a room from the sleepy clerk under a false name, collected his key and trotted down the hallway. But instead of entering the room that he had purchased, he paused at the door with the "Do Not Disturb" sign laying upside-down beneath the door: a prearranged signal from years ago. He knocked twice, then three times, then twice more. There was a pause, then two quick knocks from the other side and the door unlocked, opening just wide enough to allow him to enter the lamplit room. Daring Do had taken off her A.K. Yearling disguise, revealing her trademark green shirt and compass cutie mark, her true self.

"I picked up a couple of hayseed sandwiches on the way here," she said, gesturing to a couple of bags laying on the desk. "Didn't think you'd eaten yet."

"Thank you," he said, taking the wrapped sandwich out of the bag and tucking in, despite not feeling hungry. He barely noticed the taste, swallowing the mediocre meal as quickly as he could.

The two ate, then began to prepare for bed in silence: there was nothing to be said, nothing left to do but try to rest. Pulling his shirt up over his head and flinging it onto the ground, Phillip paused to look down at himself, pondering the blanket of scars that tattooed his torso. Turning, he looked at Daring as she removed her own shirt, revealing her own scarred body. Here, a red mark from a griffon's jezail bullet; there, scratch marks from one of Ahuizotl's pet cats; and there, the remnants of the stitches she'd gotten after pulling a tribal arrow from her shoulder. Souvenirs of past injuries and dangers, marking them as the exiled.

Wearily, Daring climbed into the bed, pulling the covers up over herself. Turning out the lamp, Phillip climbed into the bed with her, wrapping her tightly in his embrace. She pressed herself up against him, so that he could feel the gentle rise and fall of her breath. For a moment, the pair allowed themselves to relax, to think of nothing but the other and pretend that they actually deserved this.

The light of the moon through the window guided them both into the land of sleep, where unpleasant, unformed visions of death awaited them.

Morning rushed in far too quickly, and Daring was roused from semi-sleep by a beam of sunlight shining incessantly into her face. Cursing Celestia for her uncanny accuracy, she forced herself back into the waking world with a groan. Her eyes fell on the bedside table, upon which sat a combined clock-radio that displayed the time as 7:20, far later than she had intended. Time to get moving.

"Rise and shine, Phil," she said, trying to push his limbs off her.

He moaned and tightened his embrace on her slightly. "Five more minutes," he mumbled.

Rolling her eyes, Daring wriggled out of his grip and off the bed. "Come on, get up," she scolded, heading towards the bathroom. "We've still got a case."

Grumbling to himself, Phillip threw the covers off himself as though he had a grudge against them. "You owe me coffee for this," he called after her through a yawn.

Twenty minutes later, the pair of them, showered and clothed, descended to the streets of Trottingham in search of breakfast. "So what's the plan?" Daring asked, currently disguised in a blue high-collared coat and thick glasses.

"We visit the City Guard headquarters, find out where they are," Phillip replied. "If they lay out everything before us, we might be able to point them in the right direction."

Daring nodded in agreement, but suddenly stopped. They had just passed a newspaper stand, and the headline screaming at her from behind the clear plastic had seized her attention. Dropping a bit into the slot, she seized the paper and held it up for Phillip to see.

"DIAMOND MISSING FROM MUSEUM: Cursed relic disappears morning after multiple deaths."

"Breakfast is going to have to wait," she said wearily to Phillip, who only gave the paper a long look in response.

Author's Notes:

Took me a while, but I finally did manage to type this chapter out.

What do you guys think of this rebooted storyline? I honestly like it better than the first one: it gives me a chance to work on the dynamics of Phil and Daring's relationship.

Criticism and comments are always appreciated!