91: Derpy with a Chance of Rain
Because ponies didn’t dress normally, and because when they did it was for fun occasions rather than formal, Karyn didn’t know how to convey to the ponies that she was in Equestria on serious business. Wearing her interview suit wouldn’t cut it. She had to settle for adopting a dour glance as ponies came by.
She had set up outside Derpy’s house and had her laptop out and open. Though it did not have internet, and would only last as long as the single battery would take it, it gave her the freedom to take notes without pen and paper.
She and Derpy were taking a list of who wanted to come to Earth.
It was a mixed bag. Some ponies had to be made to understand that it was really a change of universe and that no, there weren’t other ponies there waiting. Others seemed fine, but didn’t necessarily want to go with Derpy, who they still regarded as somewhat unreliable. But that was fine with Karyn, since anyone who didn’t trust Derpy wasn’t welcome on her list anyway.
They had started to put the list in some semblance of order, when out of nowhere came the sound of wind and the smell of singed grass. The mass of movement came to a halt in front of them.
“Hold it! Nopony’s going to be the first one to Earth other than the bravest, coolest, most awesomest pony around!”
“Oh, hi, Rainbow Dash,” said Derpy. “I’m glad you think I’m that cool.”
“I meant me!”
“Ah, that makes more sense.”
Karyn laughed. “I think you confused her, Rainbow, because Derpy was the first pony to go to Earth.”
“Well, I want to be the first one under the new policy. So how about it?”
Karyn and Derpy looked at each other. “I have no objection if you don’t,” said Karyn.
Derpy reached under the table and brought out a saddlebag. “Now, let’s go over how to use the spells. Have you ever used one?”
“No.”
“All right, well, you put in your hoof like this…”
Karyn watched Derpy teach Rainbow Dash, and liked how naturally she spoke. It was a shame that she had never had the kind of self-confidence she could have. Derpy might have been a great teacher.
She had moved on to the next spell. “…this one is important, because it lets you be invisible once you get to Earth.”
“Invisible?”
“Yeah, you have to stay hidden all the time you’re there.”
Rainbow’s face fell. “You mean I’m getting to go to a whole different world where no one’s seen me fly and no one’s going to see me fly?”
“I’m afraid so. We might introduce you to one or two people, but for right now, this is more of a chance to see a new world than it is to show off.”
“Well, that bites!”
Karyn stood up. “It would freak people out. That’s why, if we do introduce you, we want to show you off as a pony first, before we explain the whole stunt flying thing. People on Earth only know ponies as animals who can’t even talk.”
“All right. If that’s the way it’s got to be, then I’ll have to live with that.”
Now Derpy got up. “Do you want to carry Karyn, Rainbow, or should I?”
“Why don’t you? No offense, but I’ve never liked letting other creatures on my back.”
“None taken,” said Karyn, as she mounted up on Derpy. “Are you ready?”
“I’m always ready!”
Derpy flapped her wings. “Then let’s take off. We have to get some height so that we’re at ground level when we reach Earth.”
They reached the sky, and Derpy gave a cue to activate their spells. A moment later they were safely invisible and on Earth.
“Whoa!” said Rainbow. “This is Earth? I thought it would be bigger.”
Karyn and Derpy had a good laugh. “We’re indoors. This is my apartment,” Karyn said.
Rainbow spun around, then turned toward Derpy. “I thought you said that you always had to fly to meet Karyn.”
“That was after she moved away from the college dormitory. The spell used to take me right there, but it was inconvenient to have to come all this way, so when Twilight was making another spell for other ponies to use, I had her recalibrate it to put us here.”
“To re-what now?”
“Change.”
“Got it.” Rainbow spread out her wings and hovered. With two ponies in a space built for humans, Karyn’s apartment was a little crowded, and it didn’t help that Rainbow liked to move around. “And hey, Derpy, I just want to say, thanks for letting me come here. Heh, it’s still only pegasi that have been to Earth now. You’re part of the sisterhood, you know?”
“I didn’t intend that. If an Earth pony or unicorn wants to come, they will.”
Karyn interjected. “Hey, I just thought of something. You always go for height, like you just did, because Equestria is lower down. What are we going to do when somepony else who doesn’t have wings wants to come?”
“Ooh, good point. I can’t very well carry another pony on my back, let alone you.”
“I thought about carrying another pony,” said Rainbow Dash, “for a flying routine once, but I never followed through.”
“We’ll just have to find a high enough place.” Derpy looked up as if picturing Ponyville in her mind. “I think the top floor of town hall might be enough. We’ll have to check.”
“Well, anyway, that’s for later. I’m here, show me your world!”
“All right,” said Karyn. “Refresh your invisibility and let’s head outside.”
Rainbow did, but had to hold, stunned, while Karyn put on her coat. Once they were out, Rainbow Dash witnessed a dreary and overcast sky. Though they could not see her, Karyn and Derpy could hear the disappointment in her voice.
“I don’t expect you to change for me,” she said, “but why didn’t we schedule this for another day?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Well,” Rainbow Dash said, but then trailed off.
“You can’t gesture for speech,” Derpy interjected. “You’ve got to learn how to convey everything you want with just words and tone of voice. It takes a little getting used to.”
“Oh, right. I just meant with the coat and all.”
“You don’t like it? I think Karyn looks quite fetching.”
“Arrgh!” Rainbow still hadn’t gotten it down yet. “I mean because it’s such a crappy day! I’d like to see the Earth when it’s nice out. I mean, yes, it’s winter, but does that mean that we can’t have a brisk cold day in the sun?”
“Sorry,” said Karyn. “This is what we have.”
They walked around a few blocks, and Karyn realized that she didn’t have as much to show off in her town as the ponies did. Since Earth had so many people and was so densely populated, there was much more infrastructure and less attractions. She thought that Rainbow might like seeing the local train station , so they headed that way.
Even that wasn’t as impressive as she’d hoped. While nicer than the concrete platforms they’d passed in Equestria, it didn’t have the impressive façade that the Ponyville station had. It was built for function and, Karyn thought, needed a good cleaning.
Rainbow apparently had something on her mind, as she asked, “When was the last time you had a good storm?”
“Two weeks ago,” said Derpy, “I had to fight my way through a blizzard.”
“I mean a rainstorm.”
“Karyn?”
“Not since autumn,” Karyn said. “A few bouts of freezing rain here and there, but not what you would call a good storm.”
“Well, that’s just ridiculous!” Rainbow shouted, and Karyn had to pull her to the side. Even with her Bluetooth in, Rainbow could give them away just with her volume. “You’ve got to pace your snows with rain. That helps melt the snow and do the work that all the snow is supposed to. I should have a good long talk with whoever runs the weather here.”
Derpy sucked her tongue. “No, I’ve told you, they have no weather control here.”
“I’ll say!”
“I mean it. There’s literally no way for the humans to break that cloud layer, or to bring other ones and make it rain. They have to just take the weather that comes and deal with it the best they can.”
There was no response, and Derpy was about to remind Rainbow to use her words again, but Karyn interrupted. “I think you broke Rainbow Dash with that one. She can’t picture a world with no weather control. Well, you wanted to show how brave of a pony you were, here’s your chance. That overcast sky is what it is, and it’s staying there.”
Still there was no response. Derpy hadn’t felt any shift in the air, so she believed that Rainbow Dash hadn’t moved. But she was more sympathetic than Karyn. “Rainbow Dash? Are you all righ—?”
“Well, there’s weather control on Earth now!” she said with purpose in her voice. “It’s time these clouds learned who’s boss around here. Time to kick some cumulus!”
“No! You can’t do—“ But again Derpy was interrupted as Rainbow Dash took off. She could not be seen, of course, but her pattern could be as she tore through the clouds. “Karyn! We’ve got to stop her!”
“How? There’s no way that we can catch up to her and make her stop. We don’t even know where she’s going next.”
Indeed, in the sky Rainbow was tearing through the clouds to produce patches of blue. It was like skywriting in reverse. Seeing that gave Derpy an idea.
“No, but we can go where she’s been already, and try to zip up the clouds. Hopefully, once she sees that she’s not getting anywhere, she’ll stop and we can convince her not to mess with the weather. Get on!”
Karyn was about to say that there was no reason for her to be mounted on Derpy when she went up to fix Rainbow Dash’s efforts, but she decided that it would take longer to explain than they would lose in pursuit. It was already getting to the point where one would no longer say it was overcast, only mostly cloudy.
Derpy was, of course, not a weather pony, and even if she were, she couldn’t form clouds out of nothing at all. She reached the first breach in the clouds and grabbed all around, trying to form a pocket of cloud. She got it, but it was slow going as every few feet she had to start all over again.
“It’s like trying to thread a needle when I’m the thread!” she cried out.
“You’re getting it, Derpy! Keep it up!” Karyn tried to picture how it would look from the ground, and she hoped it would be more like a swirling wind moving the clouds than two streaks, one removing and one re-adding clouds.
A few times, they tried to call out to Rainbow Dash to stop and talk, so they could explain why she had to stop, but she wasn’t listening. Finally, she pulled to a stop and cried, “Oh, you Earth clouds think you’re so tough? I guess you want to get cleared all at once!” She pointed her nose down and went into a dive.
“Karyn! She’s going to do a sonic rainboom!”
“There’s no way to hide that, and everyone will identify it for sure! We’ve got to stop her.”
“But how?!”
Karyn balled her fists with Derpy’s mane in them, pulling at the roots at two points. “You’re going to have to get in the way.”
Derpy clenched her teeth and dove. She was already below Rainbow Dash, which was necessary as not even on her best day could Derpy keep up in a race. But she figured the angle at which to intercept her and the time she would need.
But she flew too fast and cut in front of Rainbow right as she would have broken the sound barrier. With Derpy’s wake causing a low-pressure zone, Rainbow’s wings had nothing to push against, and she lost a lot of speed. That gave Derpy a second chance, which she used to swing around and tackle Rainbow to the ground. Two ponies and a human fell into a pile of invisible mess, landing behind a building in an alley.
When they finally disentangled themselves, Rainbow was furious. “Derpy, that was Not Cool. You never cut across another pegasus’s flight path; that’s the first thing they teach you in flight school.”
Derpy canceled out the invisibility spell for all three of them. Rainbow Dash had never seen the angry look on Derpy’s face before, and she had trouble stopping herself from breaking out in laughter. Karyn, however, had seen it once before, a couple of years back, at a time when she really had shown herself to a human. Now Derpy tore into Rainbow Dash the way she had once torn into Karyn’s ex-boyfriend Mike.
“No, what isn’t cool is when we specifically tell you that you don’t understand the world you’re in, that weather is different here, and that you’re not supposed to mess with it…and then you go and do it anyway! Listen, Rainbow Dash, you may be the pegasus of all pegasi back in Equestria, but here you’re nothing but a newbie!”
“A what?”
“That’s exactly what I’m talking about! You don’t even know the words that they use here. And you certainly don’t understand about weather. Karyn had to explain it to me, that when you change the weather one time, it has effects and consequences that are unpredictable. So unless you plan to manage all the weather over the entire Earth, you can’t change anything.
“Furthermore, whether or not you knew that, we told you, and you needed to listen to us. That’s what I mean that all your bravery and fast flying here doesn’t mean as much. Yes, you’ve shown bravery, but what we need you to show is humility. Right, Karyn?”
Derpy’s tone had started off angry, but she calmed down as she was ranting, still cowed by Rainbow’s reputation. Now she turned to Karyn to continue the rage, but Karyn didn’t seem to have the energy.
“Rainbow Dash, you scared me up there. I said that we weren’t trying to reveal ponies to everyone, but that’s exactly what would have happened if you had gone all the way and cleared that storm. You don’t know about things like satellites and cameras and Doppler radar that would have shown that to be real magic.”
Rainbow had held her tongue for Derpy’s rant, but now discovered her courage once again. “So what?! If you can’t control the weather maybe a pegasus shaking things up is exactly what you need.”
“Maybe, but it’s not what we’re going to get. All you’re going to do is get people angry at you. And now we have to think twice about letting anypony else come to Earth. And it would mean that I would never see Derpy again, and that Derpy would never see me again. That’s the cost of clearing the storm. You tell me, is it worth it?”
At last, something seemed to strike beyond Rainbow Dash’s armor. She tried to say something, but Karyn had already turned around and was walking out of the alley. Derpy Hooves went invisible again and followed her. Rainbow just held back.
A block down the road, Derpy said, “Are you sure we should have left her alone?”
“I’m hoping that this will work, and she’ll feel the ‘I just royally messed up’ remorse we intend instead of arguing back. It’s one of the meanest tricks in an argument, just to walk away and not let the other person have their say, but in this case we desperately need her to understand.”
They kept walking, keeping their steps slow. Though Derpy couldn’t tell, Karyn had figured out where they were and in fact was walking around a block that would lead them to the same alley they had left. When they returned, they heard Rainbow’s hoofbeats as she went to catch up, but then saw they were still there.
“Listen, guys…I’m sorry. I know I was wrong, and if you want to kick me out and stop me from ever coming back here again, I can understand that, but don’t take it out on everpony else. They shouldn’t have to suffer for my stubbornness.”
Karyn and Derpy looked at each other. “I’m fine with just letting this go,” said Derpy, “but it’s Karyn’s world, so it’s really her decision.”
“It’s not my world. I just live here,” Karyn said, but she could hear the contrition in Rainbow’s voice. “What I want to know is what you were thinking. I don’t mean that in an angry way. I genuinely want to know so that when somepony else does come here, we can stop this from happening again.”
“Let me be honest with you,” Rainbow said. “Every so often, I need somepony to give me a kick in the flank. I’ve got a big ego; I admit it. But a lot of the time I can back it up as well. Once in a while, though, it runs away from me, and I don’t listen to anypony. When that happens, the only thing that will get my attention is doing something better than I can.
“Nice flying, Derpy.”
Derpy was stunned that Rainbow had complimented her flying. With a smirk on her face, she said, “So that means you’ll be taking my shift at the post office this week, right?”
“Only if you’re doing weather and pulling off sonic rainbooms.”
“You didn’t see her at the last tornado,” said Karyn. “Come to think of it, where were you for that?”
“The last tornado? I don’t even remember that. Why, what happened?”
“You would have remembered if you had been there. But never mind. Let’s go back to my place.”
They made their way back, and Karyn wished that she had her car for the trip. She and Derpy had had enough of a workout for that day, but there was nothing else for it.
Whether because of the pegasi’s influence or by the natural course of things, the clouds dissipated by the time they reached Karyn’s apartment again. Though the better part of the day was over, Rainbow Dash still got a chance to see the sun. Derpy chose to believe the latter explanation.
“You see, Rainbow, you should have just let it be.”
“I guess.”
“And now you can see a rainbow too!” said Karyn, as she turned away from the sun.
Derpy looked the same way, and saw that indeed, if she raised her head to exactly the right angle, she could see the split colors. The pony named for the phenomenon, however, was not so awed.
“Wow, that’s different,” Dash said. “It’s not bold colors like we have in Equestria at all. It looks like a pale rainbow, like if a pegasus made it while she was sick. But of course, you don’t have pegasi here.”
“Other than you and me,” said Derpy.
Karyn had to pull herself away from it. “So you don’t like our rainbows, Rainbow?”
“They’re…cute. As opposed to cool.”
“All right, I’ll give you that.”
“But again, I live my life at top speed. There’s no reason that a rainbow I make shouldn’t be bright and vivid. Maybe here on Earth they move a little slower, at least when it comes to weather. But that’s fine. Not everyone has to be as fast as me.”
She looked over at Derpy and said, “Not even every pegasus.”
“Aww, you’re sweet.”
“All right, enough of the sappy stuff. Let’s head inside so that at least we can see each other.”
They followed her advice and shuffled into the apartment, where Karyn took off her coat and the ponies took off their invisibility spells. Derpy showed Rainbow how to carefully file away the spells in the saddlebag, but Rainbow just dumped it in anyway.
The rest of the day was spent in quiet discussion, as quiet as it could be with Rainbow Dash, and Karyn reflected that even if the ponies didn’t get to see vast swaths of land on Earth, or experience all of human life, just having one here and getting her to think about Earth as a real place was a step in the right direction.
When the sun went down and it was time to leave, Rainbow Dash put on her spell. “You ready, Derpy?”
“You go on ahead. Just be careful, as you’ll be in the air when you get there.”
“That won’t be a problem for me. See ya around.” Dash vanished.
“I’m sure that everypony won’t be that difficult.”
Karyn smiled. “She was quite a big one to start off with. But to look at it another way, if we’ve handled her, how much trouble can anypony else be?”
“Ooh, don’t tempt fate like that.”
“Good point. And thanks for staying back a moment. Even if other ponies are coming, I’m glad to have a moment with you.”
“Me too.” Derpy gave Karyn a hug, and then she followed Rainbow Dash back to Equestria.
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This chapter...
I leik it.
Lol,you should honestly have had Karyn tell R.D the derpboom story, and have her just stand there in disbelief xD
thanks for the update, this is my favorite Derpy story
Oh that Rainbow... I'm sure that even with the invisibility spells their presence would be noted, maybe a bird watcher? Wouldn't that be ironic?
Darn those infuriating no-context previews! I can't help but believe Rarity is the next visitor, that or Chrysalis (don't know why her though, we haven't seen or heard from her in several weeks, and she doesn't seem to be the type to... Wait, no, that would make sense (scribbles nonsense on the theory board)).
Keep going! ;)
I'd like to see a background pony's view of Earth, have Derpy bring over one of the flower mares like Roseluck or Cherrilee. Also, those two might want to plan out what to show the visiting ponies rather than, er... wing it. Heh. If I was Karyn, I'd also see about getting a portable generator, flatscreen, blueray player, and one of those Discovery Channel movies like Planet Earth. Something that'll give ponies the BIG picture of Earth rather than Kayrn's little apartment. You know, I bet Twilight could rig up a crystal to 'record' the movie so it could be shown elsewhere in Equestria without dragging around all that human-tech. I'm certain the Princesses and all the academic ponies would want to see that.
Still waiting for Karyn to blow away Derpy and other ponies with a trip to a favorite form of human entertainment... the movies, in IMAX. 15,000watts of gut-thumping audio, 80 foot screen... not sure how 3-D would work since the glasses would have to be reworked for a pony's face.
Have them watch a Pixar or Disney flick.
3975609 Why not The Lego Movie?
3978510 Or Equestria Girls. That would get really weird.
3979811 I give a big heartfelt NO to Equestria Girls. I might be complaining about a movie I've never seen, but I don't like the idea of showing it. It might strike a bit close to home for the ponies, and that would not help relations much, if at all. There's also the apparent quality issues it had, and who wants to share a bad movie?
How does Pacific Rim sound?
Hadn't Rainbow been to Earth before? To visit the waterpark?