• Published 5th Jun 2012
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The Story of My Life - Mindblower



Ditsica Doo has 24 hours to find somepony stupid enough to help her with her desperate scheme.

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Ditsica Meets Twilight

The Story of My Life

Part One

I’m not sure many ponies can say that they wrote their autobiography on the only day of their life. Though, upon reflection, that claim to fame is more ironic than awe-inspiring, given the circumstances.

I’m not sure how I was at the start. I know that the first few minutes of my consciousness were really only that: consciousness. I had the mind of a newborn foal, though I was in the body of an adult mare. I remember whinnying slightly, shaking my head from left to right as I tried to adjust to my dank and dreary surroundings.

I suppose my first sensation was... him. Like the fog surrounding my personality, my memory, and my very existence could be summarized by his very being. He was like the first breeze after a blizzard--soft, but just as chilling as the storm that had preceded it.

With him, though, came epiphany after epiphany until I was finally me again, though to this day I’m not quite sure what I am, or if I ever was. With my memory came the reason for my existence, and I remembered how to speak.

“I... I don’t quite understand,” I told him. I was wheezing slightly; the effort of being brought into the world was making me short of breath. I opened my eyes, but all I saw was the dark gray space of the netherworld. I didn’t exist fully, not yet. “How do I do what you asked of me in so... so short a time? It’s impossible.”

He appeared in front of me, but my vision was too blurry to see him properly. A pair of spectacles floated to my eyes, and I put them on, but by the time my sight cleared, he was gone.

“Take these,” he said. “You’ll be blind as a bat without them.”

“...Bats aren’t blind, you know,” I said, coughing. “They just use echolocation instead of their eyes. They can sense anything in their general-”

“Oh, you and your silly repertoire of useless information will make this so much more complicated,” he sighed. I imagined he was rolling his eyes. “Let me fix that.”

There was a small pop on the inside of my skull, as if a lot of space was suddenly freed. I immediately forgot what I was talking about. “What did you do?” I asked, scowling.

“Oh, nothing. I just made you a lot more fun,” he stated jovially.

I gritted my teeth. A little color disappeared from my limbs, turning them a slightly darker gray than before. A few dirty blond strands of my mane fell in front of my eyes, and I flicked them aside irritably. “This isn’t a joke, you idiot. You’ve given me twenty-four measly hours to do the impossible. I don’t have the time to be fun.”

“Oh, I know that,” he cooed. I turned sharply to the left as something stroked my mane, but nopony was there. He continued: “All I did was put the finishing touches on your design. Now you have everything you need.”

“You have no idea what I need,” I growled.

“Oh, I think I have a fairly good idea,” he replied, chuckling.

A light appeared before me and I flinched away, yelping in pain. The light burned like hot coals, and smoke began to rise from my feathers.

“You... You say it’s a request,” I yelled over my pain. “What if I fail?”

“Then you will go back to where you belong,” he said simply. And with that, I was forced to start a journey that would no doubt end with my own demise.

=====================================================================

When I came to, I found that I wasn’t dead, as I had originally suspected, but that I was lying on a sofa, wrapped in blankets. The room I was in was filled wall-to-wall with bookshelves, and I looked down to see a polished hardwood floor. Sunlight trickled in through the windows, and I absently noticed gray, bare tree limbs through them. It must have been the middle of winter.

I stretched, yawning, and noticed that my vision was slightly blurry. I found my spectacles on the end table. I had been farsighted as long as I could remember, and I loathed that almost as much as my migraines. What bothered me was that I had no choice but to wear them, due to my disability.

I heard somepony scurrying upstairs. No, not a pony; I didn’t hear any hooves galloping along on the wood. It was more like the scrape of claws, and for a moment I was worried, but thankfully it was only a baby dragon.

“Oh! You’re awake. Good, that means Twilight can stop pestering me to change your blankets every half-hour,” he grumbled. He was short, and a little stout, sporting purple scales and a slightly green underbelly. He was bipedal, as well, something that struck me as a little odd.

I stepped out of my makeshift bed, and my stomach lurched, but I stifled the discomfort. It was something I was going to have to get used to over the next day, so I figured I might as well adjust now. Instead, I coughed and said, “My, my. Do you eat all your vegetables, little dragon?”

He puffed up his chest in indignation. “Hey! I’m the one who found you out in the snow! Can’t I get a little credit?”

“Then I hereby deem you ‘Tiny Dragon First-Class,’” I said, a small smile on my face. “Now tell me, is there a mother dragon I should be worrying about? I don’t have time to be someone’s lunch.”

“Well... sorta. My name’s Spike, by the way,” the little dragon said. “I’ll go get her. Stay here, alright? You still look kinda sick.”

That’s a good approximation, I muttered to myself. I certainly felt sick.

He rushed back out of the room, probably to fetch the ‘Twilight’ he mentioned earlier. I deemed it unwise to disobey him and wander about, not because it was impolite to try and beeline to the nearest exit, but because I still had to do some research before embarking on mission impossible. I tried not to get my hopes up, though, knowing that my investigations could very well prove fruitless.

I was absently polishing my spectacles on my feathers when a purple pony stormed into the room. Spike had been following her blindly, and when she stopped, he slammed into her back legs. She had a very dark purple mane with highlights of violet and rose, and her cutie mark was of a six-tined star surrounded by tiny bursts of light. She looked annoyed upon entering the room, but that look abruptly shifted to concern upon her seeing me, which made me wonder if I really did look that bad.

“How do you feel?” she asked. She closely inspected me, as if I were somepony familiar.

“Fine,” I answered, though I was lying through my teeth. My head was still pounding slightly, and whenever I didn’t feel nauseous I was starving. I didn’t have time to worry about that, though. “So are you the mother dragon?”

She laughed. “That’s actually not so far off from the truth, as far as Spike’s concerned. You’ve met him, right?”

“The little one who claims to have saved my life? Certainly,” I replied. “Now, where exactly did you find me?”

Twilight bit her lip. “Near the woods, not too far from here. My name’s Twilight Sparkle, by the way. Spike and I were looking for Winterwort, an herb to cure colds and headaches, when we found you passed out in the snow. You didn’t look like you had crashed or anything, and you weren’t walking, either, because you would have left a trail of hoofprints behind yourself. I haven’t seen you in town before, so who are you? And what happened?”

“I’m... not a very good flyer,” I admitted. I glanced at Spike in such a way that Twilight would catch onto the subtext and evict him from the conversation.

Twilight took the bait and said, “Spike, can you double-check tomorrow’s list? I have a feeling I left something out around Item #73.”

“Fine, fine,” he grumbled, walking off with his odd dragon-gait.

I had always been good at manipulation through speech, though I didn’t think it was my special talent, for my cutie mark was a series of bubbles, not a silver tongue. “I must ask; when did he learn to walk?” I inquired.

“Oh, he’s been doing that ever since he was a few weeks old. He’s a messenger dragon, so he can use magic to send letters, and he can use his opposable talons for all sorts of things,” Twilight explained.

“Such as?” I asked.

“Well, writing letters, obviously, even though I could do that with my magic if I wanted to,” Twilight continued. “His fire breath can send letters anywhere in Equestria, though, and he’s an excellent digger. Everything else I’ve taught him, like acting and piano playing, and he’s also an excellent cook. When I’m watching, that is,” she added.

“Fascinating,” I said. “And you’ve raised him since he was born?”

“Well, hatched. I didn’t get him until he was a little older, but he’s been my assistant since the first time he could send a letter,” Twilight stated proudly.

The fact that a pony could raise a good-natured dragon in a functioning society intrigued me, since dragons were not only solitary, but dangerous. Twilight was either incredibly connected, incredibly talented, incredibly lucky, or some combination of the three. I adjusted my spectacles put on my best expression of admiration. “Your raising a baby dragon is no less than astonishing to me, and that’s not a word I throw around lightly. But by Celestia, he must be older than he looks to be so talented! Are you sure you’re feeding him properly?”

“I researched this myself, and I think that although dragons can subsist on normal pony food, they can only grow at a steady rate if they eat gems like rubies or emeralds. I try to get him some when I can, but you can only imagine how expensive that would be,” Twilight explained.

I nodded, and I decided I liked Twilight. She was intelligent without being overly technical and she appeared to be a very talented researcher. She also had that gullible air about her--she didn’t look like she would inquire the origins of any question I chose to bring up. She was perfect.

“Sooo... you never really answered my question,” Twilight began. “About how you ended up unconscious in the woods?”

“I’m not a good flyer in the cold,” I corrected. “I need finesse to fly, and in the cold my wings freeze up, literally, and I crash-land. And when I crash-land, well...” I paused, acting sheepish. “I really crash-land.”

“Oh. Well, I understand,” Twilight said. “In fact, just a few days ago I read a story about a pegasus that tried to cross all of Equestria in eighty days, and she hit a blizzard sometime late at night...”

I swallowed, stifling another wave of sickness as I nodded and pretended to enjoy Twilight’s ramblings. In my mind, the sooner I could achieve my goal, the sooner I could consider ponies other than myself.

=====================================================================

I may have laid on my ‘interest’ a bit too thick.

Although her status among dragonkind was intriguing, I could have cared less about the random and meaningless facts Twilight blurted out about Spike’s dietary habits, and I certainly couldn’t concern myself with pegasi that had tragically frozen to death in the snow, leaving five orphaned foals behind. After a few minutes or so of her constant blathering, I completely tuned her out, instead only paying attention to the bookcases that lined her shelves.

Frankly, I was impressed that such a loudmouth would have the time to read all of the books she kept. Upon seeing some of the mammoth-sized and surprisingly well-worn textbooks that adorned her living room walls, I changed my initial judgment of her from ‘Gullible blabbermouth’ to ‘Lonely, gullible blabbermouth.’

Had I the time to listen, or any reason at all to care about what she was saying, I probably would have done so, but I needed to find somepony very specific. While Twilight continued on what seemed like a never-ending rant concerning her intimate knowledge of scaly reptilian species, I scoured her shelves and encyclopedias for something called a ‘draconequus.’

“...give him a ruby on his birthday every year. They’re his favorite gems, actually,” Twilight continued. “It used to be sapphires when he was little, but I think that changed after he fell into a pond in the fall while eating one of them. He also liked diamonds for a little while, but since they’re so rare, not to mention pricey-”

I had been trying to pretend that Spike’s favorite gems fascinated me in the least, but I eventually gave up and asked, “Twilight, have you ever heard of a draconequus?”

She didn’t seemed to be fazed by the abrupt change in topic. “Yes, in fact I defeated one once.”

“Oh, really?” I asked, looking up from the seventh dictionary I had checked so far. “Do tell.”

“Well, it wasn’t just me. I had the help of my friends, too,” she pointed out.

I absently wondered how Twilight acquired friends. “Go on.”

“He was a trickster and manipulator called Discord,” Twilight began. “He broke out of his stone prison and began to cause chaos all around Equestria. My five friends and I were sent to stop him, and we eventually did, but just barely. Discord has powerful magical abilities, and he used them to counter our most important characteristics as friends. The only reason we won is because we were able to fight off his spell.”

“And what happened to Discord?” I asked, nearly cringing at how suspicious that sounded.

Twilight didn’t seem to notice. “He was imprisoned in stone again, but with stronger bonds this time. They can only be broken in the presence of pure hatred, instead of just argument. To prevent him from escaping again, though, he was relocated to Everfree County Dungeon, a couple hours north of here as the crow flies.”

I tried to hide how shocked I was at receiving so much information at once. I wondered if Twilight was trying to fool me by feeding me false information, but when I glanced at her, she didn’t look like she was hiding anything. Astonishing. I may have found the most gullible pony in Equestria. To be fair, though, I hadn’t met many ponies yet.

“Ah. I see,” I said, nonchalantly pulling a book called ‘Equestrian Justice System Facilities’ from a nearby shelf and flipping to the index. “Are you certain he’s contained?”

Twilight nodded. “The first time he was released, it was only an accident. I doubt anypony would go as far as breaking into the county dungeon unless their life depended on it-”

I secretly winced.

“-but even then, there’re first-class security personnel assigned specifically to guard Discord. He’s not going anywhere anytime soon.” She paused, then asked the question I was dreading: “Why do you ask?”

I smiled slightly, though a knot was forming in my stomach, and another in my head. “Well, if he’s so close to home, I just want to be able to sleep at night without worrying some madpony’s going to sneak in there and free him. That would be disastrous, wouldn’t it?”

Twilight laughed. “I guess, a little. But I’m sure that my friends and I’d be able to handle him if he broke out again.”

I chuckled too. “I certainly hope so,” I said. I raised a hoof to my head for a moment, suddenly dizzy. My body had reached its breaking point, and I couldn’t dismiss my symptoms any longer. Worse, they all hit at the exact same time, forcing my mind to enter emergency shutdown mode. My knees buckled as I was pulled into the darkest regions of my subconscious once more.

=====================================================================

I woke up on the same couch as before, in the same room, with the same dull, leafless tree branches hanging by the window. The difference this time was that Twilight was anxiously standing over me, pressing a cool cloth against my forehead.

“Are you awake?” she asked softly.

“Awake, yes,” I began, coughing. “Alright, no. Do you have the time?”

“You were out for a couple hours. It’s about noon now,” Twilight said. “How do you feel?”

“Sick,” I mumbled. My body ached with exhaustion; I probably shouldn’t have put it through so much so soon after I had arrived. An unnatural chill was also crawling its way up and down my body, and when I tried to move, my brain threatened to implode.

“You have a nasty cold,” Twilight stated. She cantered out of my field of view for a moment and returned carrying a pale white root with her magic. She levitated it an a glass of water from the end table to my mouth. “Here, eat this, and I’ll wash it down with some water.”

I obliged, highly doubting that Twilight would want to poison, enchant, or murder me at this point in our acquaintanceship. The root was sweet-tasting, but some of the residual dirt left a bitter and dry taste on my tongue after I chewed and swallowed. I was grateful for the water.

The effects were immediate. My head cleared just after the herb hit my stomach, and the pain in my throat shortly after. Energy flooded into my body for a moment before thinning out, allowing me to slide off of the couch and onto my hooves without collapsing. All in all, an improvement.

“I’m curious as to what I just ate,” I told Twilight.

She smiled. “I’m glad it worked. It was some of the Winterwort that Spike and I uprooted this morning when we found you. It works better when it’s picked within a day.”

“Why do you pick this herb? You don’t look very sickly.” I stated.

“I’m not very prone to colds, but Spike is, since his scales don’t retain heat very well. He usually wakes up in the morning sick, because he can’t warm himself up with fire when he’s sleeping,” Twilight explained. “I picked them from a grove nearby that Zecora, Ponyville’s local herbalist, showed me recently. Did you know...” She went on to blather about the proper times to pick the plant and the color of its flower, but since I knew she wouldn’t take offense, I began to stride out into the library. She stopped me, though.

“You should rest first before you go into town. I’m not sure how you managed to hide your symptoms the first time, but if you collapse out on the streets, or worse, in the woods, you might not wake up again,” Twilight cautioned, using magic to tug my tail backward.

I found it amusing that Twilight was afraid to say the word ‘die.’ “Mind over matter, Twilight, and I can take care of myself. I’m sorry to leave so suddenly, but there’s really somewhere I ought to be, and I only have so long to get there.”

She bit her lip, worried, before finally giving in. “Okay, I guess I don’t really have any right to keep you here against your will. I’ll show you the exit.” She led me through the library to her front door, beyond which there seemed to be a small town, but before she let me go, she told me to wait while she got some things.

“Leaving already?” Spike asked me. He was sweeping the floor, but he paused in his work to look up at me with his bright green dragon eyes.

“Unfortunately,” I affirmed. “I will come back to visit, though, if I’m able. You and Twilight have done me a great service.”

The little dragon’s chest puffed up with pride. “Naturally. Just don’t go pulling something like that again. The Spikester can only save one pony at a time.”

I smiled, adjusting my spectacles. After a brief pause, I added, “Kurbakra aglii. It means, ‘May your path be forever with the wind’ in Dragontongue. Loosely translated, of course.” A complete lie, but since I could count on one hoof the amount of ponies that probably still spoke the language, odds are he wouldn’t find out.

Kurbakra aglii,” Spike parroted, grinning. “I like it!” He dropped his broom, rushed to a nearby shelf, and grabbed a quill, paper, and ink. “How do you spell that?”

I spelt it out to him as best I could just as Twilight entered the room. She was carrying a scarf and a small pouch. The scarf appeared to be hoof-knitted, and it had a couple holes in it, with stitches missing on one end. “This is a little knitting project I had started a couple years ago, when I still lived in Canterlot. I got bored with it after a while, but you can have it if you’d like. It’s better than nothing at all, and I don’t have any spare coats.”

I accepted the scarf and wrapped it around my neck. Although it looked like it was in fairly decent condition, the lack of fastening at one end meant it would fall apart in a day or two. It was composed of white and blue fabric in a striped pattern, and was made of soft, though slightly itchy wool. “Thank you. And the bag?”

“I included three doses of Winterwort in case you get sick again,” Twilight said, looping the drawstring over my neck to make sure I wouldn’t lose it. The pouch came to a rest at my chest.

“I can’t possibly thank you both enough for what you’ve given me,” I stated, though I managed to avoid adding, ‘knowingly or not.’

“It’s no trouble, really,” Twilight said, though her expression was still tinged with worry. “The clinic is in the center of town if you need to take a visit there. Just be careful, okay?”

“Don’t worry; it’s not as if I’m embarking on a life-changing journey fraught with peril. I prefer to leave those to the storybooks,” I joked, inciting a chuckle from Spike and a small smile from Twilight. I opened the door and took my leave, sighing at how ironic my last statement was.

Meanwhile, after I had left Twilight’s abode far behind me, she was sitting at the dinner table, daydreaming, when something finally occurred to her: “You know... I don’t think I ever caught her name.”

=====================================================================

My name is Ditsica Esmeralda Doo. Always has been, always will be.

My mission now was to find somepony stupid enough to journey with me to Everfree County Dungeon. That would likely be the most difficult part of the task, though the other little tidbit I picked up at Twilight’s was that the pony with whom I began my journey would have to be somepony I couldn’t stand. Somepony who would irritate me to no end. Somepony I would hate.

That is to say, anypony.

=====================================================================

Next Part: Ditsica meets Derpy!