Daring was doing her best to keep to the corners and out of everypony’s way, which was harder than she would have liked thanks to a certain Pink party pony that was overly excitable and didn’t seem to take the hints Daring had been dropping for the past hour. What was even worse, at least in Daring’s opinion, was a certain white unicorn with a purple mane done in a stylized corkscrew wanted to know how Daring managed to look so fit and young. And to top things off, Daring was more interested in getting to her room and filling out the recommended report Twilight had suggested so she could hit the hay with very few things on her mind.

Thankfully, the dragon idol was safely tucked away in a place nopony would see it before Daring and Twilight were ready. Daring didn’t know where it was being stashed, she also had no intention of know that for the next few hours. As per usual, Rainbow Dash was having fangirl moment in proximity to her every few minutes, usually when she went to get another drink or snack. While Daring did find such things cute, that was only when she wasn’t on an adventure or waiting on experts that could assist her. Daring was waiting on experts, the only thing that had come close to lifting her mood was when Spike had informed her Dragonlord Ember would be arriving to inspect the idol by week’s end.

Looking around Daring spotted a number of celebrities, all of whom either made Ponyville their home or made claim to coming from the small town. Rainbow Dash was a Wonderbolt, and had made captain when Spitfire retired ten years ago. The Apple clan were always in the news the past few years, especially with Apple Bloom’s establishing of the Great Apple building inspection service, before then there had been no uniform construction standards and it was entirely up to the standards of each individual community or individual. Scootaloo was a safety instructor when not showing off why she was the latest hot daredevil. Sweetie Belle was the latest big music star, who also almost exclusively wore Rarity’s designs when on the stage. There was also a pony she had only heard about before, Marble Pie, married with foals to Pony called Big Macintosh and from the looks of her they were expecting another. Big Mac was also confirmed to have another wife, Sugar Belle, who didn’t seem to be present at the event. The Wonderbolt known as Soarin was married with foals to the pony known as Applejack, said orange mare looked like she might be carrying another foal as well.

Daring wondered what it was about earth ponies and big families, it was a tradition she didn’t fully understand. Daring herself had an older sibling, said sibling had disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Daring missed her older sister, Star Log, and had often dreamed at length with her about going on adventures all over the world together when they were fillies. It had actually been Star’s disappearance that had accelerated her adventuring plans, and her main reason for writing the Daring Do series the way she had.

The plan had been Star would chart the maps and write the stories while keeping an adventure log while Daring did the stuff like navigate and disarm the traps, they had been two sides of the same coin for most of their lives. Star was only two years older than Daring, and was the more cautious of the two. After all her years of adventuring, Daring still hadn’t found any concrete leads on where Star was, the best she had managed was finding circumstantial evidence on why she was probably taken. Daring hated admitting it, but her failure at learning the whereabouts of her sister was her greatest shame.

Daring avoided parties of this kind, when she could, because of the memories they evoked. Her sister may have been a bit of a bookworm but she was also eager to be part of the party, usually dragging Daring along for the ride. The fact that this was exactly the kind of party Star would be most happy in only served to further sour Daring’s mood, she had even gone record telling the Pink one parties made her feel dour. Said pink mare just laughed it off and gave a comment about her just not being to the right party. Daring had never mentioned her sister in any of the Daring Do books, formally. If you knew where and how to look you would find messages to her sister, many of which used nicknames from when they were fillies, but only if you used the cipher for the special code the two had created for hiding messages from their parents and bullies. She had hidden those letters to her sister in every book, hoping that at least one message would get a response.

It wasn’t until the party was winding down that the Pink one finally bothered to ask, “Why were you so glum? This was supposed to be your party.”

“Because someone very special to me loved these sorts of parties, she disappeared a long time ago and I haven’t been able to learn anything about her whereabouts. Being surrounded by parties like this just makes me think about how she would be here and then I just start missing her all over again. Her disappearance is the one mystery I haven’t been able to solve, no matter how hard I tried.”

“But you don’t let onto that in the books,” said Twilight, “at least it doesn’t look that way.”

Daring chuckled, “And won’t, to the casual eye. Every single one of my stories has letters and messages to her, but they’re all in a code that we made up back when we were still talking about going on adventures together,” she gave a smirk, “you’ll never find a cipher for it among my belongings, she and I kept it out of sight and only in our minds. The only ones who can read the secret messages are me and her, and that’s not going to change in the foreseeable future.”

“Okay, that’s both cool and depressing,” said Rainbow Dash. “Just who was she? What was her name? I’m sure Twilight and the other princesses could at least find something that you missed.”

Daring gave a heavy sigh, “Her name was Star Log, she’s...my big sister.”

Twilight and her friends all stared in surprise at Daring, Spike nearly dropped the overloaded plates he was balancing in each hand and on his tail. “You never mention any siblings in your stories or biography,” Twilight chose to broach diplomatically.

“It’s something I deliberately omitted in my works,” said Daring, “the only time I did mention her was in the unpublished sample work I submitted as a means for earning my publishing rights, the publishers said they enjoyed it but asked me to omit the part about looking for someone missing in my life.”

“Why?” Inquired Twilight, she felt that bit would have brought a bit more depth to why Daring was so prone to antisocial tendencies and a little cranky.

“Some nonsense about it being depressing, they wanted the stories to only have stuff that boarded on heavier stuff for high stakes scenes like escaping traps or fighting the villains. No room for a tragic motivation that explains why I have a preference for working alone.”

“Do they still have the unpublished manuscript?” Said Twilight and Rainbow simultaneously.

“If it hasn’t been used for kindling or thrown in a shredder to go out with the trash, chances are they keep it in a vault or have already auctioned it off,” said Daring, “probably worth a small fortune these days.”

“That’s an understatement,” said Twilight, “unpublished works from famous authors tend to be so rare that it’s rumored that they would put most Canterlot nobility in debt.”

“In fact,” Rainbow, catching Twilight a little off guard, “the more intense the celebrity status of the author the more the product’s base value can be, chances are they’re waiting for your final official work to be sold before they make a go at auctioning it off.”

“It’s not really illegal,” said Twilight, “a little ethically and morally gray, but not outright villainous. Although,” she started tapping her chin, “if an extremely high profile client were to make a generously tempting offer for it they might consider selling to them before their planned auction. I’ll bring everything we’ve discussed up with the other princesses, along with current events. At the very least you should get closure before going into retirement.”

“Yeah,” said Rainbow, “and you might want to omit the whole part about the statue restoring you to your prime thing, somepony might try to do something stupid in relation to it.”

“I suppose you’re right on that,” said Daring, “besides, after this adventure, I’m retiring from the adventurer game. I guess you could call this last story my Magnum Opus, it’s the final book in the series. Any stories after this will be strictly up to the fans and the next generation, I have no doubt the villains I trapped in that ancient prison will find a way out eventually.”

“We’ll all probably be too busy or old to take care of that when it happens,” said Twilight, “setting our sights on bringing in the new generation sounds like a good idea, some of us have already gotten a bit of a head start.”

Daring decided she might as well open up to Twilight, Spike, and their friends, she felt as if she really needed to get it all of her chest. Daring decided to start with her foalhood, a point her unpublished piece didn’t even come close to touching. Daring didn’t think she was all that good of a storyteller, Star Log was much better than her if you were to ask. The pretend adventures, the creation of their own special secret code, their talks about plans for the future, Daring told it all with an air of nostalgia mixed with reverence.

At this same time, all the foals of Twilight’s friends were fast asleep, it was way past their bedtimes and thankfully it was the weekend. Twilight was still dating someone, hopefully, they would be tying the knot in a few months, she felt like she was really missing out on parenting.

Author's Notes:

Yeah, I know I introduced the idea of Daring having a sister that disappeared under mysterious circumstances. I won't really get into the bits about about her in this story, might work on something that makes her more of a thematic character in the future. But for now, Star Log and the bit about the unpublished manuscript are more of something that Twilight and the gang will be working on in the background of the story while the focus of the story has to do with Daring and Spike and their relationship.

You'll noticed a few pairings, I'll clear up some confusion. One, I'm actually a pretty big Soarinjack fan; Two, while I'm much of a fan of the RarityxThunderlane route I do find it a fun little contrast that I felt it had to make an appearance in this story; Three, I'm a fan of the Marblemac and Sugarmac pairings, and I haven't really done a whole Mac and his herd dynamic just yet, so I decided to at least lay the groundwork for that. I'm actually playing with the idea of Mac having a herd of mares all as part of his married family life, but the one I'm working on is tied into a collab I'm doing with another author, so it might be a while before that story makes a showing.

As always, feel free to use resources I provided and if you're going to make any artwork based on what I've provided please remember to send me a copy or link for the work.