//------------------------------// // The Adventure Begins // Story: Derpy's Protector // by Sneaky //------------------------------// Derpy's Protector: Chapter VI  Derpy sat in the main room of the Town Hall, spreading some butter on a piece of toast. Sweetie had left to go guard Celestia a few minutes ago, leaving her with nothing to do but wait.  As it was, simply eating the toast she made was getting boring. Instead, she decided to do some experiments, testing out a century-old adage.  "Ma'am, what are you doing with that slice of bread?"  Derpy looked up to see a unicorn stallion wearing a monocle. For some strange reason, he was scowling at her.  She gave him a smile. "I'm butterin' it, mister! And, for future reference, it's actually toast, not bread. Don't worry, I make that mistake too, sometimes," she assured him. She then returned to her work, her tongue sticking out and one eye pointing at the ceiling in concentration.  The uptight stallion raised an eyebrow, watching the knife go back and forth across the toast. After a moment of this, he shook his head. "No, no, no, you're doing it wrong!"  Derpy looked at him again, confused. "What?"  He took the knife from her using his magic. "See now," he demonstrated, gracefully bringing it back and forth along the toast, "You need to go up and down, not side to side or diagonally."  "Oh!" she exclaimed, plucking the toast off the plate once it was finished. "Thank you so much!"  "Pssh," he mumbled, "Common ponies."  She brought the buttered toast up to snout level. Then, she dropped it on the floor.  The stallion gasped. "Why did you do that? That was a perfectly buttered slice of toast!"  In response to this, she squealed, "Exactly! Now I know why it didn't work last time!"  "Huh?"  The unicorn walked around to her side of the table. He followed her working eye to the ground, where two pieces of buttered toast sat. One was buttered side up. The other, the one he made for her, was butter side down.  He snorted, turning his nose up in a posh manner, and trotted off.  Ditzy sighed. "That's the fourth pony today..." She looked at the doorway near the stage.  "I wonder what Sweetie's doing right now?" ----------  "Get... Down..."  "Hah! And why should I?"  Hunter looked down the sights of his pistol. The gun was aimed at none other than Nightmare Moon.  His eyes kept shifting to Celestia, who lay bound, gagged, and unconscious on the floor.  Do not underestimate this figure. She took down the Earth equivalent of an amazon. She's dangerous.  Hunter's hand tightened on the grip. "Trust me, you don't want to find out."  A blue aura surrounded the gun, and the magazine fell out.  Nightmare Moon smirked. "I know about your weapons, human. Your species was abundant in these lands long ago. Though I must say, it was a surprise to see you walk through that door." She regarded him, then darkly muttered, "It would be a shame, should something happen to you."  She took a step towards him. Hunter remained unmoving, finger on the trigger. Through gritted teeth, he muttered his final warning. "Stand down."  She laughed. "Ha! What are you going to do, shoot me?"  CRACK!  Nightmare Moon howled in pain. Red liquid seeped out of her hind leg, staining her dark blue coat.  Hunter slipped the gun back into its holster and pulled out his knife. "You must not know us as well as you thought, Nightmare Moon. I still had a bullet in the chamber."  Nightmare Moon's smug demeanor didn't change. "The monkey knows my name. So, Celestia briefed you on my arrival?"  Hunter nodded. "She told me to kill you only if I deem it necessary." He pointed the tip of his knife at her. "Don't make me deem it necessary."  The dark mare began to chuckle. That chuckle escalated into full-blown laughter, making Hunter uneasy.  "Oh, my foolish little human," she jeered, standing, "You should have put a bullet through my head while you had the chance."  Hunter lunged forward, swinging his knife in a motion that should have slit her throat. Instead, it passed right through her with no resistance at all.  "Huh-?" He stumbled right through and out the back of her.  She cackled. "I've spent a lot of time on that forsaken rock. Enough time to learn new powers."  Hunter whipped around, in time for two hooves to come crashing into his stomach. The force of the blow sent him tumbling across the ground, losing hold of his knife in the process.  "Unfortunately for you, Celestia couldn't have informed you of that."  Gasping for air, he watched helplessly as the Mare in the Moon walked towards him, victory painting her features. He turned his head, and saw the knife lying on the ground.  It was only a few feet from him!  The knife... Gotta get the knife...  He reached out for it. Slowly, painfully, he inched closer and closer, until he was mere centimeters from his weapon.  Come on, just a little closer...  A hoof slammed down on his wrist.  He looked up, and saw Nightmare Moon standing over him. Her horn glowed, and she was saying something, something he couldn't make out at first.  "...but I'll give you a chance to live, seeing as how you are a fine warrior, and a rather handsome one at that. In the future, though, stay out of my way, and I'll stay out of yours."  Before Hunter could respond, her horn glowed. The glow grew, until his vision filled with white.  Everything was white. ----------  Four troops sat in a Humvee, at the front of a convoy. 'Joey' was at the wheel, with Hunter beside him. Keller and John sat in the back.  "Ya'll ready back there?"  Keller scowled. "Don't do it-"  "Go!" Hunter yelled.  Joey put the pedal to the metal. The Humvee roared, racing past shacks and kicking up dirt everywhere.  After a few seconds of the soldiers being bolted to their seats, the vehicle slowed, eventually coming to a halt at the end of the dirt road.  Before Joey could even give a 'whoop', Keller was on him.  "What the hell, man!?"  Joey just laughed. "Come on, relax a bit. Ya been way too uptight ever since ya got here."  Keller had no intention of calming down. "We're not in the damned green zone anymore, James. We don't wanna piss off the locals any more than we have to."  'James' clicked his tongue. "The name's actually Billy-Jim if ya wanna be specific. But come on, man, we got a whole convoy behind us. Them ragheads ain't gonna attack."  As if the whole universe just wanted a laugh at him, there was a flash, and the ear-deafening sound of an RPG hitting a tank full of gas filled the air.  Hunter saw it first. The glint of a barrel in the sunlight.  "Get down!" he yelled, yanking Joey by the cuff of his collar. Gunfire erupted, bullets ricocheted off the dashboard and tore into the seats.  The rain of bullets seemed to go on forever. Hunter heard doors open and people shouting, but nobody in the car moved.  Finally, Joey's wide eyes caught his own. They stared at each other like that, until Joey yelled, "We ain't gettin' out a' this 'less we do sometin'!"  Hunter shook his head. "We can't do anything! We move, they riddle us with holes!"  Joey smirked. Hunter didn't like that.  "Wanna see somethin' so stupid it gets us out alive?"  "Not really!"  Joey went ahead anyway. He grabbed hold of the steering wheel, then floored the gas, all while too low to have any way to tell where they were going. The Humvee lurched forward, sending Hunter's head whipping around to face the back seat.  That's when he saw it. The image that would stay burned in his mind forever.  His friend, Greg Keller, sat upright in his seat, eyes wide open. His head hung forward, mouth dribbling what was either saliva or bile, mixed in with an unhealthy amount of blood. His face, if you could still call it that, held two bullet wounds; one through the cheek and the other right above the nose. Blood spread in a wide plume across his chest, almost covering his entire upper body.  Steve wanted to look away, but he couldn't. Those eyes. Those shocked eyes. He may not have even seen the bullets coming-  There was a wump, as if the vehicle had just run over something. Or someone. With a crashing sound, the Humvee abruptly stopped, sending Hunter to the front again. His helmet collided with the dashboard, and the lights went out. ----------  Whap!  Ugh... What the hell?  Whap-whap whap!  My face stings. Am I being... Slapped?  Whap, whap-whap!  Hunter's eyes, bleary from sleep, slowly focused on the face hanging over him.  "Derpy," he croaked, "What's happen-"  Whap!  His cheek stung, and his face flushed red. "Ow! What the hell?"  He felt a drop of liquid land on his cheek. He realized it wasn't saliva this time, but tears.  "Oh, Sweetie!" Ditzy cried, hugging his neck, "I thought you were dead!"  He peeled her off and set her beside him, suddenly a bit worried about the whole situation. She was smiling, and the evident trails of tears stained her cheeks.  "Why would you think I'm dead?" he asked, afraid of the answer.  Her lip quivered, and she nearly snapped his spine with a hug. "The princess was gone, Sweetie! And I thought that if somepony ponynapped her, then they had to have gone through you, right?"  It all came back to him then. He remembered finding Celestia knocked out on the floor. He recalled the fight, and how Nightmare Moon won in the end.  "That little bitch..."  Derpy looked up at him, surprised at his brash expression of anger.  Hunter stood up, placing her on the floor. He looked to where he had seen Celestia tied up earlier. Of course, she was gone.  He looked back to the little grey pegasus. "What all happened? Did you see Celestia?"  She looked confused, but willing to cooperate. "No. There was only that mean pony that said she was going to make nighttime! Forever!"  Uh-huh. Nothing new here, but at least I know I got my facts straight.  "Come on, Derpy," Hunter said, first picking up his gun then grabbing her by the hoof.  "Where are we going?" she asked, stumbling on three legs and a pregnant belly.  "We're gonna play detective." ----------  Hunter stepped out in front of the crowd. He waited for the murmuring to stop, as every head turned in curiosity towards the strange creature near the stage.  He cupped his hands to his mouth. "Alright, all you horses! Celestia's personal guard here! Clear out before I chop you all up and sell you to the glue factory!"  None of the ponies in the town hall's recreation room got the glue factory reference, but they did understand that a giant alien was threatening to chop them up.  A couple hundred equines flooded out through all exits, knocking over tables and the like but otherwise leaving the place deserted.  "Well, that wasn't very nice!" Derpy scolded, doing her best to look serious.  "If we're going to look for clues, we'll need the place to be clear. That means no ponies."  "Yeah, but now all the clues are messed up by the running ponies' hooves!"  Hunter looked at her, contemplating what she just said. She smiled at him, her left eye rolling upwards and her tongue sticking out.  "That's probably the smartest thing I've ever heard you say," he muttered under his breath.  But she was right.  "What about that note?" she asked, sitting on her rump and pointing somewhere with her hoof.  Hunter followed her hoof, until his eyes fell upon a pink sticky-note stuck on the wall. He walked up to it, Derpy right behind him after she managed to get back up.  Stevie. Meet me at the Golden Oaks Library.  -Pinkie Pie  "What's it say?" Derpy asked, trying to get around him to look at the note.  He pulled the sticky note off the wall, showing her in the hopes that she would know where this place is.  Her eyes lit up. "Oh! That's Twilight's house!"  Hunter's eyes showed hope as well. "Do you know how to get there?"  She quickly nodded. "Yeah! Follow me!"  She began to trot off, Hunter following close behind.  She's been very useful tonight.  Strange things are happening...