Ordinary Nightmares

A Misadventure of Derpy Hooves

By Mannulus

She was falling. The ground was rushing at her, and every tiny tree, stream, road, and house grew larger and more detailed to her sight by the second. She wanted to flap her wings, of course. She wanted to find her equilibrium; to gain control of her momentum, and rescue herself from the otherwise inevitable impact.

It was impossible.

No matter how hard she strained, her wings would not so much as open from her sides. It was as if they were tied to her body. She looked down (Or was it up?) to figure out why it was that she could not flex her wings and ply them against the atmosphere. Why did it feel like they were tied?

Because they were buried.

She was buried up to her shoulders, and she threw her head back towards where the ground had been only a moment before. Now, however, the ground was the sky, and soil slowly poured in around her, filling the hole that would surely become her grave.

She opened her mouth to cry out for help, but the flood of cold, wet dirt became faster and more violent. It filled her mouth, choking off the sound. She gagged, retched, and spat. Then, she squirmed and writhed, trying to push herself upwards, but nothing would free her.

There came then, as the flood of earth continued, a face in the opening of the hole. It was essentially equine, but also horrifically unnatural, like a clown or a living doll. She had seen it many times before, but now, as in all those cases, she could not remember it.

“What's wrong, Ditzy?” asked the grinding, voice of the weird, clownish face. “Can't you fly, little filly? Can't you get yourself up into the sky? Can't you fly, you useless klutz?”

It was a mocking, ugly tone that grated on her ears like a knife's dull edge on a whetstone.

No, I can't, she thought, and she wanted to scream it, but the sour earth poured into her mouth each time she so much as cracked her lips, turning her words into a sputtering, gagging cough.

I can't fly! I can't move! Why can't I move!?

The face grinned so broadly that Derpy was amazed its mouth did not tear at the corners. Its eyes flickered pale yellow in the dark and began to spin independently of one another, like those of some demonic chameleon.

“You can do better than this, you little Ditz,” it growled, and then it gave a heave, vomiting an incredible torrent of thick, silty mud into the hole. This filled it even further, so that only Derpy's muzzle and eyes remained above the slow, encroaching flood.

“Come on and make Momma proud just like you always said you would!” the face screeched, its tone growing so shrill that it made Derpy's skin crawl beneath her fur and feathers, but what it had said still caused a sudden jolt of recognition in her.

Momma? She thought.

Around the face, the blue sky faded to black, but the silhouette of the grinning, hateful visage remained, its glowing eyes providing the only illumination in the slowly filling pit. She would be buried underneath the gaze of this vile, Tartarean circus clown; a parody of the pony she had once wanted to be.

She thrashed against the muddy earth, and pushed her head free of the flood.

“PLEASE, NO!” she screamed. “I don't wanna die like this! I wanted to be somepony...”

“No more chances," said the ugly thing above her. "You've wasted enough of them already."

Now, it crept down into the pit, the earth pouring ever faster around it.

“Not yet!” said Derpy, and as the thing drew nearer, she shut her eyes. “PLEASE, NOT...”

“Ditzy Doo,” said a voice. “Peace, my little pony.”

It came from close to her ear, this sound, and it was calm, quiet, and reassuring. She was astonished and relieved to find that what had moments ago been unyielding earth all around her was somehow the legs and hooves of somepony embracing her – somepony much larger and stronger than herself. She could feel the warmth of her – and she was sure from the voice that it had been a her – pressed against her back. She could breath again, and the filthy earth was gone from around her. She lay on her side gasping shallowly and shivering.

Meaning to find out whom had spoken to her, she rolled slowly in their embrace, and came face to face with nopony other than her boyfriend, Chill Breeze. She was in her own bed, safe and sound, and Chill Breeze was lost too deeply in his own sleep for the words to have been his, even had they been spoken in his voice.

She rolled back to face her window, and over the rooftop of the house that stood on the other side of the cramped little alley known as Tack Street, she saw the pale glint of an autumn moon.

“Why couldn't you have been around before, Princess?” she asked softly of the gleaming, silver disc. “Back when I had those dreams every night?”

Derpy stumbled into the Equestrian Parcel Service hub, still half asleep. She had opted for a coffee-flavored muffin that morning when she made her usual stop by Sugar Cube Corner, and had added to that a cup of muffin-flavored coffee. They had not yet taken effect, and she knew that when they did, the result would be little more than bolstered energy hampered by a drowsy haze. When that spurt of energy faded, she would feel worse than ever, and would have to find a way to coordinate her route so that she could make another stop for a second dose of the same – this one most likely larger than the first. She would repeat this cycle at least three times during the day, and by the time she got home, she would feel terribly exhausted in that peculiar way that only ever resulted from powering herself through a day on caffeine. Worst of all, in spite of her weariness, the latent effect of the caffeine in her system would cause her difficulty falling asleep that night. In short, she was keeping herself awake only at the risk of putting herself into a vicious cycle that would not break itself until the weekend.

It was Monday.

She found her way to the couch in the small lounge area outside her foreman's office, and slumped down onto it, groaning quietly.

“Don' wanna fly a route t'day,” she slurred out, rubbing at her eyes with a foreleg.

“Derpy, is that you?” came Boxxy's gravelly, bass voice from behind the door of his office, which stood slightly open.

“S'mee,” she groaned, laying back against the couch, and letting her head flop upwards to stare at the ceiling. “M'not late'm I?” she said, finding a way to mumble while still projecting her voice loudly enough for Boxxy to hear her.

She had been awake long before sunrise that morning, having never returned to sleep once wakened from her nightmare. Rather than continue fighting for sleep, she had finally opted to get out of bed early to give herself more time to make her coffee stop. Still, she was worried she had dawdled too long, and would now find herself outside Boxxy's good graces.

“What? No.” said Boxxy, giving her a sense of relief. “You're like half an hour early.”

“Oh, really?” asked Derpy, turning her eyes towards the clock, and squinting to try and bring it into focus.

“How early did I get out of bed?” she asked herself.

“Actually, this is a lucky break for both of us,” said Boxxy, and he opened the door of his office, a box clutched under his left wing.

“This got dropped off yesterday afternoon,” he said. “Goes to Canterlot; Princess Luna. Train leaves in about ten minutes.” He made his way to where she sat, and turned to the side, presenting the package. “Grab and go,” he said.

“Oh, now that's just great,” she grumbled. “If I hadn't had all that coffee, I could have slept on the train.”

She took the package, and stuffed it into her delivery bag, never rising from the couch.

“Come on,” said Boxxy. “Up.”

She gave a whining, nasally moan as she forced herself to stand.

“Wait a minute,” she said. “Princess Luna? Where's this even from?”

As if she had to ask.

“Carousel Boutique,” she groaned, observing the shipping label.

“It's not like it's a tough delivery,” said Boxxy. “Just drop it off with whoever takes Princess Luna's mail and messages. By the time you get there, she'll probably be asleep.”

“Lucky her,” said Derpy.

“Get going,” said Boxxy, tapping a hoof impatiently.

“Fine,” said Derpy, and she stumbled back out the way she had stumbled in.

The caffeine hit her right as she got aboard the train, and it lasted long enough to get her to Canterlot. The castle guards allowed her in, but unlike her two previous visits, she was not directed to the large, central hall of the castle. She was instead lead to an adjacent tower which connected to the the rest of the castle by a narrow, crenelated bridge. Except for this peculiar segregation, it was unremarkable compared to the rest of the castle.

The guard leading her stopped outside the oaken door of the tower, and knocked. The door opened to reveal a darkened chamber dominated by an ornate elevator of polished blue steel. Whether it had been a pony, a mechanism, or magic that had opened the door, Derpy could not identify it.

“Just ride the elevator,” said the unicorn stallion who had lead her here. “Give the box to her aide, and let her sign the papers. Then, get right back on the elevator. Quietly.”

“Easy enough,” said Derpy.

“I'll wait here until you return,” said the stallion, “oh, and just let me say it one more time; don't disturb the Princess. If anything wakes her up before about five pm, she kinda tends to throw things... at me... later... because I'm supposed to warn everypony who goes in here to be quiet... and she also just doesn't like me... long story.” He thought about if for a moment, then shrugged. “Actually, not a long story, at all: ghost pepper.”

Derpy blinked a few times.

“Are you serious?” she finally asked.

“Princess Celestia said it would be funny!” he said defensively, and then added, after a moment, “She was right.”

He snickered to himself for a second.

“Right,” mumbled Derpy, and she stepped towards the elevator, keeping her hooves light on the stone floor.

She was amazed at how dark the place was. She would have thought a tower like this would have a chandelier or at least gas lamps for illumination, but the only light came from a small candelabra in the elevator, which itself boasted only a meager three candles. The resultant pervasive gloom made it difficult for her to make out much about the tower's interior beyond the existence of the elevator, and a floor of some kind of polished, black stone.

As she stepped into the elevator, its door slid shut behind her. Remarkably, there came no metallic crash, but only a gentle, quiet rattling. Likewise, the elevator's movement was almost perfectly silent, producing only the faintest occasional rattle of steel. If the machine had any rails on which it rode or a chain or cable that held it aloft, she could not see them. She was not sure if this was because of the pervasive darkness, or because they simply were not there.

As the elevator moved, she noticed several times the faint silhouettes of armored bat ponies, suspended upside-down at what seemed to be fairly regular intervals. In the darkness of this chamber, the elevator's silent, unfelt motion gave the sense that it was not she who was moving, but them. They seemed to pass by her slowly, their eyes fixed upon her, their expressions stolid. Whatever it was they suspended themselves from, Derpy could not see it, and it made the passing figures seem all the more ghostly and surreal. The strangest thing about them, though, was that they were moving not downward, as if the elevator was ascending the tower, but upward, as if it had begun to descend some long shaft into the depths of the caverns below Canterlot.

It was unsettling to her, a pegasus, to realize that she must be underground in the pitch-black darkness. She belonged among the clouds and in the sun. Caves and darkness were the realm of the bat pony, a race of which most ponies had never even seen a single member up close, and about which little was known to earth ponies, unicorns, or pegasi. Even in the darkness, she could somehow almost feel them watching her with their eyes and their ears. Even with how little was known of this reclusive race, Derpy knew more than enough to know that every bat pony in this long, dark shaft could hear the elevator's faintest rattle, and probably even the sound of her breath.

Bat ponies, she thought, shaking her head. I'd rather not deal with them, at all.

After only a minute or so, the darkened faces of the bat ponies began to move not upward, but sidelong, as if the “elevator” had somehow begun to move horizontally. This continued for a while, and then the bat ponies ceased to appear to either side of the blued steel cage. For at least half a minute, Derpy was totally alone in a steel cage in darkness that was perfect but for the faint flicker of the three candles, and it gave her a cold sense of dread.

She would not have known the elevator had stopped if the door had not opened, but when it did, she stepped out onto a stone floor, and breathed a sigh of relief. She was glad to be out of the confines of the elevator, but the darkness still gave her pause.

Then came light, pale and silvery, emanating from just a step to Derpy's left. It was a soft glow, providing very little illumination, but in the pitch darkness of this pit, it drew the pegasus' attention, prompting her to step towards it. As she drew close to it, she saw that it came from no candle or gas lamp, but instead from the intricately-patterned wings of what she quickly identified as a moth as large as her hoof.

“Pretty,” she said, smiling, and as if responding to either the sound of her voice or the sensation of her breath stirring the air, the moth flicked its wings.

To its left, another pair of wings, patterned like its own with large spots that reminded Derpy of eyes, slowly faded into being.

Then, to its right, two more of the pale lights began to burn. Then, from all around, a half dozen more. Then two dozen, and then a hundred and a thousand, until Derpy saw that she stood in a short, arched corridor that terminated in an ebony door emblazoned with a crescent moon cast of what could be nothing other than pure platinum.

Not only was there a door, however, but also a desk -- and what a desk! Derpy thought that Boxxy's desk at the EPS hub must be the world champion of clutter, but this desk outshone it completely. It was huge; a full five paces long, and with a wraparound top, to boot. For all of that space, Derpy could not see the desk's own top surface anywhere. It was buried in papers and bulging file folders, and Derpy could only guess that the two tremendous piles of documents at its two foremost corners must conceal somewhere in their depths "in" and "out" boxes.

On top of the pile of papers, near the front edge of the desk, there rested a placard that read “Moondancer: Chief Aid to Princess Luna.” There was nopony there, however, and Derpy wondered briefly what to do, until, by some miracle, she managed to spot what sat beside it among the clutter: beneath a marble-based paperweight otherwise made of ebony carved Princess Luna's image, there rested a note that read “Taking dictation in Princess' chamber. Please step through door at left to tend to any pertinent business.”

“Oh,” said Derpy. “I guess Princess Luna's not asleep, after all,” she said. “Well, guess I better drop this off, and be on my way.”

She walked to the door, marveling at the exquisite beauty of its polished and oiled ebony surface. Finding no knob or handle, she decided that she would have to knock, and reached out to touch it.

It was an illusion. Her hoof passed through it like thin air. It did not ripple like water or flicker like a dying flame; it just let her hoof pass through it as though it did not exist. She was taken momentarily aback, but realizing she had no other choice, she stepped directly through it. There was no sensation associated with this act. Her stomach did not turn. Her fur did not stand on end. Her skin did not tingle. She simply passed through the image of the door as if it was thin air.

The room beyond it defied anything she might have expected. It was less a room, really, than a platform; a spire of stone with a top somehow grated flat, which jutted upward from what seemed an infinite depth of blackness far below. Perhaps it was because she could not see the pit's bottom, but something about the sight sent even her, a pegasus, dizzy with a sense of precipitous height.

She glanced back over her shoulder, and found that the door she had passed through was quite present. It stood free at the edge of the platform with no frame or hinges to hold it, but it was there.

Ahead of her there was a chamber, ringed in blued steel candelabras and filled entirely with exquisite furniture, all made of the blackest ebony, inlaid with mother-of-pearl in motifs of the moon and stars. The curtains around the enormous bed were deep, deep violet, and the pony that sat in their midst did not look at all, in that moment, like a Princess.

She wore no crown and no makeup. She wore no mantle. She wore nothing at all, in fact, except an expression of weariness. Her mane was tied back into a tight braid to keep it in order as she slept, and the violet sheets of the bed were pulled up around her shoulders.

A unicorn that Derpy could only assume must be Moondancer sat at the foot of the bed on an ebony stool, scribbling on a note pad which she levitated in front of her face. She was white with a very full mane of dark red – almost auburn -- having purple highlights. Her cutie mark was a crescent moon with a trio of stars beneath it. Derpy thought she would have been very pretty, except that her face bore an expression that somehow managed to mix sadness, desperation, and a weariness even more pervasive than that visible on the Princess' own. In truth, if there was anything that Derpy would always remember about Moondancer from this, the only time she would ever meet her, it was that she seemed like she was just about to cry, but never did, like a river restrained by a leaking dam that somehow still refused to give way.

Derpy caught a few words of Princess Luna's dictation as she stepped through the door, something to the effect that the wights in the Canterlot graveyard had been eliminated per the groundskeeper's request, before both the princess and her aide noticed her standing there.

The alicorn ceased speaking, and both she and Moondancer turned their eyes towards Derpy.

“Umm... Hello,” said Derpy, bowing quickly. “I have a package for Princess Luna from Carousel Boutique in Ponyville. There was a note on the desk, so...”

“''Tis no bother,” said the Princess. “Were thou in any respect a threat, the door would not have let thee pass.”

“Well,” said Derpy, flicking her wings and swishing her tail nervously, “I just have to drop this off and get a signature or forty, and I'll be on my way.”

“Moondancer,” said Luna. “Wouldst thou tend unto the bureaucratic particulars of this courier's mission?”

“Yes, your highness,” said the unicorn, and she rose from her stool, leaving her note pad and pen upon it. She walked to where Derpy stood, and extended a hoof, waving it towards herself as if to say, “come on and give it here.”

Derpy withdrew her clipboard from her bag, and held it out towards the white pony. As Moondancer took it, the pegasus whispered: “There are probably more like fifty or sixty signatures, and maybe a few awkward questions about Princess Luna's credit score and random stuff like that. You can probably just ignore those, since she's... you know... royalty, and such.”

“I do this every day,” sighed Moon Dancer, “and no, you can't ignore those questions. Gets weird when they start asking for former places of residence, criminal records, and so forth. When she first returned, I had to list the names, occupations, and marital statuses of all habitants of her current legal address just to get her a checking account opened. The bank wouldn't let it go at anything less than every single guard and servant who lives at the castle! It took me four days and three reams of paper to fill out that form! I thought my horn would...”

“Moondancer,” Princess Luna cut her off, “return to thy desk for the day; I've no more to dictate unto thee, and I would speak at this pony alone.”

“Certainly my lady!” said the unicorn.

She turned back to Derpy long enough to hiss through her teeth, “if they find me dead at my desk of horn implosion, it's your fault!” and with that, she walked quite literally through the door.

As the unicorn's tail finally disappeared through the weird, illusory door, Derpy turned to the alicorn. After staring at her for a few seconds, she decided that Princess Luna meant for her to have the first word. So, she began with a question.

“Is horn implosion... Does that actually happen, or was she exaggerating?”

“Mindest thou not my scribe,” said the Princess, “She doth what she doth quite well, but she findeth her duty unenviable at times, and thereby doth she occasionally forget herself.”

“Then why not get somepony else for the job?” asked Derpy.

“Upon my return,” said the Princess, “she didst request the post she now keepeth. She saith, given her name and heraldry, it must certainly be some duty of hers to serve me.

“Heraldry?” asked Derpy.

“Her... “cutie mark” is what I believe it is called in these times.”

“Oh,” said Derpy. “Well, I have this package for you.”

“I pray thou leavest it upon yonder dresser,” said Princess Luna.

“Don't you want to open it?” asked Derpy.

“I know already what it is,” said the alicorn, “and I am certain I shall find it satisfactory.”

“A dress,” said Derpy, “of course.”

“A dress, indeed,” said the night-purple horse. “A gown fit for a queen.”

“A queen?” asked Derpy. “Why not a Princess?”

“'Tis for Nightmare Night,” came The alicorn's reply; “the one night which I am permitted to be a queen.”

“Oh yeah,” that's tomorrow night, isn't it?” asked Derpy.

“For most ponies,” said Luna. “For you, 'twould seem to have come early.”

Derpy turned her eyes to the floor, and did not look up as she spoke.

“Yeah, sorry about the trouble.”

“Trouble?” asked the Princess, raising an eyebrow, and rising from her bed. “'Twas merely an ordinary evening.”

“For you, maybe,” said Derpy looking up to see Luna striding towards her, and noticing that her tail was, like her mane, tightly braided.

She must toss and turn a lot in her sleep, thought Derpy. Who would have guessed?

“For thee as well,” said the Princess. “For among all dreams, nightmares are by far the most ordinary.”

“What do you mean?” asked Derpy. “How is something like a nightmare ordinary?”

“I have gazed into the dreams of thousands of ponies,” said the alicorn, “and I have seen dreams of innumerable descriptions. They flow in strange ways, moving the dreamer through time and space in ways that defy reason. They are peculiar and bare of logic or sensible sequence, and they are all very different. All, that is, but nightmares.”

Princess Luna stood right in front of the little pegasus, now.

“Nightmares are rarely unique,” said Luna, “though some are more common to certain types of pony than others. Every soldier, for instance, hath nightmares wherein he findeth himself in battle, but hath forgotten his lance, or wherein he findeth, if he doth indeed have it, that it will not pierce some foe's hide, no matter how swift and strong his charge. Every mother hath her nightmares where she loseth a child, and every father also. Every unicorn hath dreams where her magic will not obey her will, so that it consumeth her or faileth to manifest in a moment upon which life and death are hinged. Every lover hath dreamt his love hath abandoned him. Every pegasus knoweth the dream where her wings disappear or simply and suddenly will not move as she soareth high above the earth, and in regards to the matter of thy own nightmare of this eve past, not a few ponies have dreams of being buried alive, or of bizarre, painted faces. Even dreams of one's own parents can become nightmarish, if those parents were wicked – or if they were good, and we feel we hath failed them.”

Derpy said nothing for a few moments, and finally shrugged.

“So, my nightmares aren't extra special,” she said plaintively. “Doesn't make them any less scary.”

“Indeed it does not,” said the alicorn. “It should at least offer thee some comfort, however, to know thou suffer nothing but that which is common to ponydom.”

“Even so," said Derpy, "I just wonder... Why now? I used to have this dream – or dreams kind of like it, with that face in them -- all the time when I was a filly. They started after my mother died... I don't really know why; she was always good to me. I wanted to be just like her."

“And art thou?” asked Princess Luna. “Hast thou succeeded in becoming like her?”

“No,” said Derpy, sadly. “Momma was a dancer. She was elegant and fluid and... perfect.”

Derpy growled a little in her throat, and chewed at her lip. She thought rarely of her past, and spoke of it almost never, but here she was allowing somepony who most definitely had better things to do -- most notably, sleeping -- to listen to her story like a psychologist.

I'm in it, now, she thought. Doubt she'd let me leave without hearing the rest, even if I didn't want to tell it.

“As for me?” she finally continued. “I carry the mail. I wanted to be a dancer, and Momma taught me everything she could before she got sick. Look at how I turned out, though; brown bags, goofy eyes, and muffins. Sometimes I'm glad Momma didn't live to see me like this.”

“And thy father?” asked the Princess. “How did he endure this loss?”

“Not well,” said Derpy. “He just kinda withdrew from everypony. I mean, he wasn't the most social pony before that, but afterwards... It was like he just put his heart up on a shelf, and left it there. For all the rest of the time I lived at home, he just worked, and never really left the house, otherwise. I did all the grocery shopping, and everything. I don't know how he's gotten by since I finished school and left home. I don't ever hear from him.”

“Sad,” said Princess Luna. “I would soothe his nightmares, had he any to be soothed, but I hath seen him not in my wanderings of the sleepers' realm.”

You probably never will, thought Derpy, but this she kept to herself.

"But as for thee, Ditzy Doo; thy nightmares didst fade in time?”

“They kind of went away as I grew up,” shrugged the pegasus, “and I never thought about them much after that. Now, when I finally have my life together, this old dream comes back to haunt me. It doesn't make any sense.”

“Perhaps thou hadst, until recently, too many cares of the here and of the now,” said the Princess; “too many fears of things more immediate and real, for thy mind to conjure fears so distant, forgotten, and unlikely to come to pass.”

“I don't know,” said Derpy. “If a thing hurts too much to think about, I usually just don't.”

“Then time has perhaps come for thee to give thought to the matters of thy past.”

“I'm tired of the matters of my past,” said Derpy. “And of everypony else's. Lately, I keep getting dragged into trouble by the past, and it isn't even my past that's causing the problem. When do I get to be boring, old Derpy Hooves, again?”

“Derpy Hooves?” asked the Princess. “I think those days are past for good. For when I find some nights this mare before me as she wanders the halls of her own slumbering heart, she does not call herself by that name.”

Derpy shrugged, and said nothing, but gnawed a little at her lower lip, her eyes and ears both drooping slightly.

“Give thee some thought to these matters on thy ride back to Ponyville,” said the Princess, “but for the moment, my parcel.”

Derpy realized suddenly that she had never followed Princess Luna's directive to leave it on her dresser. So, she lifted the box out of her saddlebag with her teeth, and was surprised when Princess Luna did not levitate it from her grasp, but instead took it in her own teeth and pulled it away, tucking it under a wing.

“''Twould be best for thee if thou left,” said the alicorn. “I shall have to try it on in order to be certain it shall require no alterations.”

“But I'd love to see it,” said Derpy. “Rarity's work is always amazing.”

“Indeed,” said Luna, “but this gown was not made to fit... Luna.”

Suddenly, Derpy understood. For the past three years, Princess Luna had, for a portion of the Nightmare Night festival, transformed herself in image, (though not in heart or mind) into Nightmare Moon. She typically gave some sort of a short speech or made some display of magic or other to provide a good-natured scare to all those assembled, and then she would leave.

“Thou hast seen enough of nightmares for a time,” said the Princess.

Derpy almost turned and trotted quite directly out the illusory door, but then a thought came to her.

“You said I should face my fears, right?”

Luna smiled.

“Very well, I should like to know how it fits round the haunches, anyway, and 'tis difficult to see such a thing beyond one's own wings.”

“Oh, I know,” said the pegasus, watching the Princess turn and head across the platform within this strange, black void. “My earth pony and unicorn friends all think it's weird when I ask them to check that... uh... area for me when we go shopping.”

She carried the box to her dresser, where she opened it by clipping the twine that bound it shut with a pair of scissors she levitated from the dresser's top drawer.

“That's why I would rather 'twere you, anyway,” said Luna. “Moondancer tends not to understand. She seems to think I mean something untoward when I request such an inspection, but I have to be sure that I am immaculate before I attend a ball or some such.”

“Oh, lovely,” said Luna, looking down into the newly-opened box “but for the moment, several sizes too large; Brace thyself, Ditzy Doo.”

“Braced,” said Derpy.

Princess Luna began to glow. She swelled in size and altered in shape, and when the light faded, there stood before Derpy a huge, black horse.

And Derpy laughed.

“What?” asked a voice an octave deeper than Princess Luna's. “Why do you laugh?”

Derpy had to stifle herself to respond.

“Your mane is still up,” she said, pointing a hoof at the mirror.

The thing that was still Princess Luna, though in countenance was Nightmare Moon, looked at the mirror, and gave a snicker, for it wore no makeup or helmet or mantle, and its mane was tied back as tightly as it had been before Luna had transformed herself into it.

“Well, am I not a sight?” asked the horse.

“You certainly are,” said Derpy.

“Well, in any case,” said the Nightmare Luna, “let us tend to the business at hand.”

She levitated the gown out of the box, and Derpy was stunned at the sight of it: black lace that still stood out against he black horse's body by virtue of what she could only assume was the dust of ground diamonds buried within it.

“It's beautiful,” said Derpy.

“Yes it is,” said the black mare. “Give me a moment.”

She slipped it on carefully, so as to avoid damaging the delicate weave of the wildly-patterned lace that flowed all over its surface.

It fit her curve for curve and line for line, and it made her look blacker, somehow, even as it made her shimmer like the night sky.

She stepped to her mirror, and looked herself up and down.

“Perfect,” she said turning her head towards Derpy. “Don't you think so?”

“Of course I do, Princess... er... Your Highness... or... whatever.”

“This is an only an image,” said the big, black mare. “You still may call me Luna.”

“Really?” asked Derpy. “Just 'Luna?' Is that really okay?”

“Why would it not be?” asked the big horse, her horn glowing and her mane and tale seeming to pull themselves free of the braid. “It's broad daylight down in Equestria, and your job is done here. This is not in any capacity an official meeting; this is you making sure my butt looks good in a new outfit.”

“Well,” said Derpy, chuckling at Luna's frank observation, “I guess Princess Twilight lets me just call...”

Her heart skipped a beat.

“Down... in Equestria?” stammered the pegasus. "But the elevator went underground, how could we be... above?"

She swiveled her head left and right, looking around the black void that surrounded the strange platform that comprised Luna's “chamber.”

Luna said nothing, but stroked through her loosened mane with a hoof, allowing it to flow freely.

“So this is where you...” Derpy began, but stopped herself.

“Yes,” said Luna. “My big sister sent me to my room for a thousand years.”

“Sorry to bring it up,” said Derpy.

“Do not trouble yourself over it,” said the black horse, turning from the mirror. “Though in truth I admit I have seen enough of this place. Soon I shall have a proper home on the Earth alongside those whom I guard on the darkened paths of night.”

Derpy found herself drawn towards the huge, black mare, and took a few steps in her direction.

“You know,” she said, "mane up or down, you're actually kinda pretty like this, when you aren't laughing like a maniac and wearing that helmet and all.”

“I know,” smiled Luna. “I created this form from my own memories. This is what my mother looked like.”

“Really?” asked Derpy.

“Yes,” said Luna “Her name was Selene. This is her form, except that she was perhaps not quite so tall. Celestia got that from father, and I was always jealous of it.”

She grinned, and Derpy saw in the dim glow of the candles the faint glint of silver-white fangs the color of moonlight. She doubted those fangs had been part of Selene's appearance, either.

“I suppose I am still jealous of it,” said Luna.

“Why your mother?” asked Derpy.

“You said it yourself,” said Luna, shaking her head. “She was... 'kinda pretty.'”

These last two words came out just above a whisper, and Luna's voice cracked at them, slightly.

“I'm sorry,” said Derpy. “I should go.”

She turned to head for the door, but Luna stopped her with a word.

“Wait.”

Derpy stopped, and looked up at the black horse.

The creature that was at once Nightmare Moon and Luna and Selene looked up into the blackness, and her horn gleamed. Stars faded into view, and then amidst them materialized the image of Earth, the sun glowing warmly far beyond it amidst the star-studded cloak of otherwise perfect blackness.

“This is where I watched from,” said Luna, “the literal Mare in the Moon for a thousand years, and for all those years, my own dreams were nightmares.”

Derpy was not certain why she had been asked to stay, but she planted her hooves, and looked up into the eyes of the huge horse, noticing that in this darkness, the slitted pupils of her eyes were dilated enough that they appeared almost normal and round, just as a cat's would, or even a bat pony's.

She looked down, and smiled.

“You and I share a nightmare, Ditzy Doo; that we have failed someone who is gone, and who cannot return to us to assure us otherwise.”

Derpy said nothing.

“I have no remedy for that fear,” said Princess Luna. “I will snatch you from it in the night as often as it should trouble you, but not even I can tell you how to make it go away.”

“That's okay,” said the pegasus. “It's not your job to make it go away.”

“Yes it is,” said Luna, walking back to her dresser. “and that is a small part of why I share it.”

Derpy watched as she carefully removed the dress, and hung it on an otherwise empty rack that stood nearby.

“Well,” Derpy finally said, quietly, scratching at one foreleg with the other's hoof. “I do need to go. There's somepony who will wonder where I am if I'm not home by six, and if I miss the train...”

“Go in peace of mind and heart,” said Luna, and she glowed briefly before returning to her true shape.

Her horn glimmered, and her mane and tail, both now flowing loosely, stretched themselves out, shimmering faintly under her telekinesis, and began to braid themselves up tightly, once more.

“As for this one,” said the Princess, resuming her archaic – and affected, Derpy decided – speech patterns,“'tis past her bedtime.”

Derpy stepped towards the strange illusory door that somehow acted as a portal between this black, empty chamber and the earth far beneath, and stopped, just as she reached it. She turned to find Princess Luna nestling herself once more into her bed.

“Princess,” she found herself saying.

“Yes, Ditzy Doo?” asked the alicorn.

“You're a lot different than everypony thinks,” said the pegasus, and then she realized that the statement could be perceived in ways she did not intend.

“I mean you're...”

“Ordinary?” asked Luna.

“Yeah,” said Derpy.

“We are all ordinary,” said the alicorn. “All our names are writ in water; never let this truth pass from thy mind.”

“Uh... I won't,” said Derpy. “I'll try to remember that.”

Having said that, she gave a quick bow, and she stepped quite literally through the door.

Moondancer sat with her head lain upon her desk amidst the stacks of papers and folders. The unicorn's eyes were glassy, distant, and hard, and her jaw was clenched so tightly that it twitched. Still, just as before, though it looked for all the world as if she would burst into tears at any moment, she did not lose her composure. She had lit a single candle which sat amidst the tremendous pile of papers, mounted on a short, ebony candlestick. Derpy wondered if that was really safe until she realized that everything around the desk was stone, and that Moondancer probably would not be terribly upset to see the desk and everything on it go up in flames.

“Why?” she huffed wearily, not lifting her head. “Why do they always need so much paperwork?”

Derpy saw that the clipboard sat at the edge of the desk, all of the appropriate fields filled out according to protocol.

“Umm... Sorry?” said Derpy, gritting her teeth and looking down at Moondancer pityingly. "You gonna make it?"

“I'll be okay,” said Moondancer, quietly, still never lifting her head from the desk. “I'm just... my horn hurts.”

“Eh... I don't...” Derpy said.

“I can fill out this kinda thing by reflex, now,” said Moondancer, “but it's like holding my breath or running a marathon or lifting something really heavy, understand?”

“I think so,” said Derpy, but she wasn't a unicorn, and she knew she could never fully understand. She thought for a moment that maybe what Moondancer was experiencing was something like a bad headache, but that couldn't be it, either, she decided. Headaches happened inside your head, and horns were on the outside.

“I hate my job,” said Moondancer.

“So do I,” said Derpy. “I mean I hate my job; not yours. Sorry.”

“What's so bad about delivering other ponies' mail?” asked the unicorn. “At least you get to go see different places. I'm always stuck here, underground, or in that empty, dark room.”

“Well, I guess I like seeing new places,” said Derpy, “but this isn't what I really wanted to do.”

“Me either,” said Moondancer. “I wanted to dance.”

“Well, why are you here, then?” asked Derpy.

“Are you kidding?” asked the unicorn, her eyes turning upward to meet Derpy's, though her face still rested on the desk. “Princess Luna returns, and here I am, running in the top ten percent of my class at Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns. I have a crescent moon in my cutie mark, and the word 'moon' in my name."

She shook her head without lifting it, grinding her cheek against the papers on top of her desk, and causing several of them to fall to the floor.

“Where else was I supposed to end up?” she asked, her eyes unlocking from Derpy's and finding a spot on the wall.

“You do have 'moon' in your name, but you have the word 'dancer,' too,” said Derpy. “That's what I wanted to be, but I didn't even have that much. You know what my name is – the one my parents gave me? Ditzy Doo. And look at my cutie mark; bubbles. I mean... bubbles? What does that even mean I'm supposed to be?”

“As long as you're a bubbly ditz,” said Moondancer, “I guess it means you can be whatever else you want.”

“I guess so,” said Derpy, genuinely surprised at the revelation.

“But as for me?” asked Moondancer. “I don't see a lot of options.”

“Well, maybe not,” said Derpy, tucking the clipboard into her saddlebag, “but if you were meant for this, don't you think it would make you happy?”

“Who says everypony is meant to be happy?” asked the unicorn, still not lifting her face. “You said your life wasn't what you wanted, either. Why haven't you changed it?”

“I really don't know,” said Derpy. “I guess I don't know how to get out of it, anymore.”

“Me either,” said Moondancer, and at last she sat up, and gave Derpy a weak smile. “That's just life, isn't it?”

“I hope not,” said Derpy.

"Me, too," sighed Moondancer.

The unicorn said nothing else as Derpy walked off down the hall and stepped onto the cage-like elevator.

“Dancer,” she mumbled to herself. “Ditzy Doo, the ditzy dancer. That might've been nice.”

The elevator began to move, and she sat down, resting her haunches on its floor.

But it's too late, now, she thought. I'm the delivery pony, now, and too clumsy to ever be a dancer.

Never mind that she could outfly most ponies she knew. Never mind that, at times, when she managed for a moment to just not care what anypony else thought, she could move with fluidity and grace that she herself did not fully believe. She was Derpy Hooves – self-conscious, goofy, and afraid. There was nothing else to her but a pair of brown bags, a naïve smile, and a pair of misaligned, yellow eyes.

A bat pony guard coughed as the elevator moved past him in the darkness, and it startled Derpy so much that she gave a brief, sharp shriek.

“Sorry, ma'am,” he said, his voice fading into the darkness behind her as he cleared his throat.

She let her heart settle, and simply shut all considerations of who she was and who she was meant to be out her mind as the elevator found its way back to the surface. She was tired now, the boost of energy from her coffee being depleted by the long ride here and the morning's strange events and considerations.

“I'll sleep on the train,” she said to herself as she stepped into the light of the sun. “Nightmares or not, this day has already been too much, and it isn't half over, yet.

Ditzy Doo Hooves had no idea how true that statement was.

Functionally Zombies

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On the train ride home, Derpy slept. As she had fully expected, she had another nightmare. This time it began with her drowning rather than falling. She was chained to the bottom of some deep lake or river where the only light was the distant sun seen as a glowing haze through the surface of the water. As tended to be the case with these dreams, however, this scenario did not last long. It morphed somehow, as if the water simply thinned away until she stood in a courtroom.

It was like no real courtroom, being stripped in her dreaming mind to its single most critical and salient element: a high judge's stand. What had been the sun a moment ago was now some intensely bright light that shone from behind the pony seated on it. Other than that, there was nothing except the same darkness that had pervaded the water and the chains which had held her there, still clasped around her legs.

None of those details really mattered, of course. They were, as Princess Luna had explained, merely the essential features of another type of nightmare that ponies commonly experienced. What mattered was the judge.

She was all that made this particular nightmare truly belong to Derpy Hooves, specifically. She was all that made it in any way unique from the similar nightmares experienced by ponies for as long as formal courts had existed. Without her, this was merely the manifestation of any given pony's fear of being judged.

Because of the painted abomination on the judge's stand, however, this nightmare was Derpy's, and hers alone.

She spouted her usual retinue of accusations, all to the effect of Derpy's own inadequacy.

“You had more potential than this,” she said. “You've squandered it on a meaningless existence in a meaningless profession.”

Derpy shrank under the very truth of it.

“You are a laughingstock; the object of ridicule for an entire town.”

Also true, for she was well-known as a klutz and the source of frequent disaster

“If you were somehow suddenly gone,” continued the clown-faced judge, “the lives of those around you would either be completely unaffected, or would immediately improve. If you were killed in flight by a lightning bolt, you would be forgotten before you hit the ground.”

These accusations were not news to the pegasus. She knew who and what she was better than anypony. That did not matter, however. In fact, it only added credence to the assault, and made her believe it more fully.

Because Princess Luna was asleep, there would be no rescue, this time. Derpy would have to withstand this misery until she awoke. She was, of course, in no way aware of this fact, for she had never been the sort of pony who could tell when she was dreaming. She only felt small and terrified in the face of these endless waves of abuse.

That is why she considered it fortunate when Conductor All Aboard shook her awake. It took her a moment to realize that it had been a dream, and a moment longer to realize she was still on the train.

“We've reached the station,” he said.

She had lain over on the seat to sleep, and the mutton-chopped stallion faded into focus standing over her. She lifted her head and shook it slightly to jog her mind awake.

“Please disembark,” he said once more, his voice oddly low, cold, and emotionless. “Be sure to gather all your belongings.”

“I don't have anything,” said Derpy, sitting upright, and stretching her hooves to the floor.

“That's for the best,” said Conductor All Aboard in that strange, empty tone. He stared down the car, never looking at Derpy, or even glancing left or right.

“What do you mean?” asked Derpy, and then she heard a sound.

It was the faint but very bright sound of a train's whistle, and it was not coming from this train.

“What's that sound?” she asked.

“The Three-Twenty-Four from Dodge Junction,” said the conductor. “It will be pulling into the station here in about a minute.”

The sound of the whistling continued. It was steady and growing in both pitch and volume.

“But there's only one track!” said Derpy frantically.

“Only one,” said Conductor All Aboard, and the cold resignation in his voice froze Derpy's heart for a moment.

Derpy threw open the window, and leaned her head out, looking down past the coal car and engine. From the opposite end of town, she could see the Three-Twenty-Four barreling down the rails directly towards her. Its engineer must have been trying to stop the tremendous machine because its wheels were screeching and throwing sparks, and its whistle still cried out its shrill, deathly warning of impending disaster.

She tried to dive straight out of the window of the car, but it was not wide enough to allow her wings to pass through. She jerked her head back inside.

“We gotta get outta here!” she all but yelled directly into the conductor's face.

“Yes,” said the conductor. “Please disembark.”

Derpy sat momentarily dumbfounded at his bizarre stoicism, and then pushed past him, heading for the car door. When she reached the door, she was stunned to realize that he had not followed her. She looked back down the aisle to find him, and balked at what she saw.

Conductor All Aboard was walking calmly forward down the aisle towards the engine, checking each seat to make sure no other sleeping ponies remained on the car.

“Come on!” she shouted. “Are you crazy?”

The conductor did not respond, but merely stepped forward to the next seat, checking it carefully.

The car door stood open, and she thrust her head out to see the other locomotive still roaring and screeching in her direction. The impact would happen in a matter of seconds. There was no time for her to help the either traumatized or insane conductor. She leapt outward, and flapped her wings, thinking her chances of avoiding the inevitable pileup of splintered wood and twisted steel were better in the air than on hoof.

The next few moments were a blur of reflexive actions and horrible sights and noises. The impact sounded like a crash of thunder from inside the thundercloud, itself, and she looked back as she shot skyward to see rail cars undulating and bucking upwards down the length of both trains. A gout of hot steam spewed from one locomotive's boiler, and would have scalded her – probably mortally – if she had not noticed it just in time to close her wings and let herself drop.

She fell several times her own body length to the earth. Her right foreleg met the ground first, and it twisted sharply underneath her as her other hooves found the earth. She barely noticed the pain, however, as her attention was at that moment fully devoted to the coal car of the incoming train. It had found its way free of the rails, and spun sideways until it jack-knifed into the locomotive in front of it. Its hitch shattered, allowing it to slide sidelong directly towards her. She had neither time to lift off nor remaining dexterity to dodge on hoof. So, she threw herself to the earth, and clenched her teeth, hoping that by some miracle her body would pass between the huge, iron machine's wheels. Freed of its rails, however, one of those wheels found a large stone, and the impact sent the whole car tipping directly towards her.

The sky above her went black with a wave of coal thrown from the car, and she covered her head with her hooves to shield herself from the rain of sooty, black fragments. All around her there was a terrible rattling of steel against earth, stone, wood, and other steel, and she felt the air being roughly moved above her; the distinct sensation of something enormous passing close over her back.

Then, at last, silence descended. She lifted her head, and looked around. She was huddled on the ground amidst a field of strewn coal, and far behind her, against a misaligned car of the train on which she had minutes before been a passenger, there rested overturned the coal car that had somehow managed to bounce over her amidst the conflagration.

She tried to stand, but when she placed her right forehoof against the ground, she yelped with a sudden jolt of pain. The impact had not only twisted her hoof, but had badly jarred her shoulder, as well. She was not sure, but she thought it might be dislocated.

She was no stranger to a rough landing, but in all such instances in her past, she had seen it coming long enough in advance to have been able to prepare for it in some respect. The whole train wreck had taken perhaps ten seconds, and her impact had been sudden, unexpected, and at an angle that could be described as suboptimal, at best.

But I'm alive, she thought. They'll be sending paramedics from the hospital soon. I'll just sit here and wait.

She planted her haunches amidst the filthy, sooty ground, but then she noticed that steam was rising all around her. Also, the earth around her rump felt damp and uncomfortably hot. Some water from one of the boilers must have spilled there. She had not noticed it in the rush of the wreck, and the ground and autumn cold had dispersed its heat enough to keep it from scalding her when she had lain in it for those few brief moments. Still, it was a stark reminder of what would have happened had the jet of steam from the ruptured boiler actually struck her.

She stood, favoring her twisted hoof, and limped away from the hot, filthy spot amidst the field of spilled coal. She was absolutely filthy with coal dust and dirt ground into her fur all over, and the cooling boiler water on her belly and haunches was giving her a chill. All in all, she was sure she must be a pitiful sight, but she decided everypony would forgive her, given what she'd just barely managed to survive.

That thought made her realize something strange: Ponyville was empty. The sky was gray and overcast with a coming autumn rain, and a thin mist of fog lay over the town. She had taken it for dissipating steam from the crashed locomotives at first, but she realized now that it lay in a gray haze over the entire town.

She could not see anypony. Nor could she hear anypony, and that seemed even stranger. There had been a serious accident involving two passenger trains.

At the very least, she thought with a shudder, somepony should be screaming.

Nopony was screaming. There was not even the sound of a bird or a barking dog. She looked around.

“Hello!?” she called out, “Can somepony help me? My leg is twisted up really badly.”

There came no response.

“There might still be ponies on the trains!” she shouted. “Can somepony come help!?”

The mix of adrenaline and pain were bad enough, but the silence and lack of any response to her shouted pleas was making her frantic.

“Anypony at ALL!?”

She stopped, and balanced herself on her three good hooves.

“I don't get it,” she said, her voice quiet, but still edged with fear.

The town was just empty. The street vendors' stalls were there, but they appeared dirty and decrepit. She even noticed Rose's flower stand, but curiously, the flowers – the last roses of the year, most likely – were not lively and well-pruned, as they should be. They were wilted and ugly, and their thorns were so large that Derpy could see them from where she stood, many paces away.

“Odd,” she mumbled. "Rose would never try to sell those to anypony."

Even the parks were devoid of all activity. Nopony sat at any of the fountains in the square. It was as if the whole town had been abandoned in the few hours of Derpy's absence.

“This is weird,” she said, and she stumbled towards Sugar Cube Corner. Surely Pinkie Pie or one of the Cakes would be there, and she could ask them to help her to the hospital to get her injury seen to. She found it abandoned, like the rest of town, which solidified in her mind that something was most definitely wrong. Sugar Cube Corner was a popular destination at this time of year, owing to a huge variety of pumpkin-flavored cakes, pies, and other baked goods that were only available for a few short weeks.

As she drew near the door, she thought for a moment that she saw something move amidst a small copse of trees between two of the nearby shops. She stopped and looked that way, but seeing nothing else, she dismissed it as a trick of the fog.

She nudged the door open with her nose to save her hoof the strain, and hobbled inside the lobby. She was immediately relieved to see Pinkie Pie standing behind the counter.

“Oh, thank goodness,” said Derpy. “Pinkie, there was a really, really bad accident. I'm sure you heard it. My leg got twisted up, and I know there was at least the conductor still on one of those trains. I think we need to get him help right away – and anypony that was on the other one, too.”

“Hmm?” was Pinkie Pie's only response. She looked nervous, obviously forcing a smile, and shifted her weight uneasily as Derpy approached.

“Can you go get help from the hospital?” asked Derpy stumbling forward. “I don't think I can walk there, and it's so foggy I'm a little reluctant to try flying.”

“Uh, actually,” said Pinkie Pie, “I'm kinda scared to do anything right now, Derpy.”

“Wha.. huh?” said Derpy, tilting her head to one side. “Why?”

“Well,” sighed Pinkie Pie, “There's the creepy fog, the empty town, the fact that you look a whole lot like the heroine of a horror story, right down to the stereotypical not-quite-totally-debilitating injury that will slow you down just enough to ratchet up the tension when something starts chasing you... Oh, and Nightmare Night is, like, tomorrow. It's pretty much the works.”

“Pinkie,” said Derpy, Shaking her head, which swam with the fading of her adrenaline rush and the associated intensification of the pain in her injured leg, “you're not making any sense.”

“Not to you, maybe,” said Pinkie Pie, “but I am absolutely positive the only good decision I can make is to stay right here and act like nothing's going on.”

“How is that going to help anypony!?” asked Derpy, incredulously.

“In ways you can't even imagine,” said Pinkie Pie, nervously. “I just... I have a really bad track record with this kinda situation.”

“Well, are the Cakes here?” asked the pegasus, dumbfounded, “in the kitchen, maybe?”

She tried to step around the counter, and Pinkie jumped in front of her, holding her back with forehooves pressed against Derpy's chest.

“Not the kitchen!” said Pinkie Pie, nervously. “There are knives in there!”

“Knives?” asked Derpy.

“Yeah!” said Pinkie Pie, her voice growing more frantic, “I could have done something awful!”

The earth mare's eyes widened, and she grew so pale that some of the pink seemed to fade from her very fur.

“Ovens,” she said, and she gulped. “Muffin tins... You can make cupcakes with muffin tins...”

“Well, you can do that, yes,” said Derpy, “but I usually make mu...”

“THAT'S NOT THE POINT!” shouted Pinkie Pie, panic tearing at the edges of her voice.

The outburst startled Derpy so much that she backpedaled suddenly, despite the ache in her leg.

"Sorry," said Pinkie Pie.

“Pinkie, you're acting crazy,” said Derpy. “I mean more than usual, and in a bad way.”

“THAT IS EXACTLY THE POINT!” shouted Pinkie.

She bit her lower lip, having startled the pegasus a second time.

“Sorry again,” she said. She cleared her throat.

“It's... okay?” said Derpy.

“You know what?” asked the earth pony. “I'm going upstairs to my room. I'm gonna cuddle up in my bed, and sleep this whole thing through.”

She hopped the counter, and headed up the stairs.

Still uncertain what was going on, Derpy followed her, stumbling at every other step as she made her way to the second floor.

“Pinkie,” she plead, “I really need your help.”

Pinkie Pie spun as she reached the door of her room.

“You need anypony's help but mine, Derpy,” she said, firmly. “Just go away, and promise me you won't go into the kitchen or especially the basement. I have no idea what I was doing ten minutes ago, so this whole thing must be written from your perspective. In other words, if you don't see it, it basically didn't happen, and the mature filter doesn't axe us off everyone's front page feed along with all the clop!”

Pinky made a noise something between a gasp and a squeak, and bit down on her hoof.

“Did I say 'axed'?” she asked. “I didn't say 'axed.' – nothing getting axed in here, unless it's a question, amiright? Nosiree; no axes, axing, or anypony getting axed in Sugar Cube Corner, today.”

“Pinkie, you're scaring me,” said Derpy, backing away.

“You have not seen anything like Scary Pinkie Pie,” said the pink mare, “and I don't want you to.”

She took a deep breath, and smiled.

“You have a wonderful, harrowing adventure, Derpy,” said the pony. “I'm gonna have a wonderful nap.”

With that, Pinkie Pie turned, opened the door to her room, stepped inside, and slammed it behind her.

Derpy stood, feeling forlorn and abandoned, listening to the sounds of Pinkie's hooves ascending the short flight of stairs beyond the door.

“But I... need...”

The sound of the hooves reversed, growing louder, and the door opened, once more.

“Well, that was a dumb idea,” said Pinkie, her face fixed in an exasperated scowl. “Gonna need three gallons of bleach, a bunch of paper towels, a roll of fifty-gallon garbage bags, and some power tools.”

Derpy just stared, blinking for several moments.

“For what?” she finally asked.

“You don't wanna know,” grumbled Pinkie. heading back down the stairs with Derpy in unsteady, hobbling tow.

“Shoulda stayed in the lobby,” sighed the earth pony.

“Pinkie I don't know what's going on,” said Derpy.

“At least they're all just pallet swaps,” said Pinkie, paying Derpy's protest no attention as she headed towards the kitchen. “I think, anyway,” she said, stopping suddenly, and looking back over her shoulder. “You know a unicorn mare that looks a lot like Amethyst Star or Minuette, but kinda teal-colored with a blonde mane?”

“I think I may have seen her around, but I don't really know her name,” said Derpy. “What's that got to do with...”

“Yeah, that's probably a pallet swap,” said Pinkie, opening the door to the kitchen.

“MERCIFUL CELESTIA!” the Pink mare literally screamed, and she turned around, her right eye and nose twitching.

“There aren't enough paper towels in Equestria,” she said, and she shook her head slowly, eyes wide, stunned at whatever had been beyond the door.

“Wait,” she said, “I'm Pinkie Pie... I could just... Never mind. There aren't even enough paper towels in hammerspace! I mean... it's like... How'd it get inside the light fixtures!?”

“I still just do not understand,” said Derpy, staring at Pinkie Pie, who seemed less frightened than before, though still stunned and exasperated.

“Good news, Derpy,” she said. “I'm going with you.”

Derpy's eyes brightened, and she felt a weight of loneliness lift off her shoulders.

“Thank you so much, Pinkie,” she said.

“Eh, don't mention it,” huffed Pinkie Pie. “From the looks of it, I'm a psychopath... again, and if I want to not be a psychopath, we better figure out some way to fix whatever turned Ponyville into Silent flippin' Hill.”

“Turned where into what?” asked Derpy.

“You know what?” said Pinkie. “Never mind. Let's get going.”

“Alright,” said Derpy. “I think.”

Pinkie Pie shrugged.

“So,” said Derpy. “Hospital?”

Pinkie gave a long, groaning sigh.

“Sure, why not?” she said sarcastically. “I'm sure that'll be safe.”

“This doesn't look safe, at all,” said Derpy. “This looks like the opposite of safe.”

The hospital was so rife with what seemed like decades of neglect and decrepitude that the very sight of it made Derpy feel physically ill. The windows on its front wall were all cracked and filthy, and though lights were on behind several of them, they flickered unevenly, as if on the verge of dying. Its face was stained with mold in some places, and elsewhere covered in moss. The sign was faded beyond legibility, except for a single piece of graffiti: the words “Get well soon,” hastily scrawled in red spray paint that had trickled down beneath them.

“I don't want to go in there, Pinkie,” said Derpy.

“Oh, come on,” said Pinkie. “We can just run in, get your leg fixed up, and get right back out. It won't be any trouble at all.”

“Are you sure?” asked Derpy.

“Absolutely positive,” said Pinkie Pie.

The pair stepped up to the doors of the hospital, and were surprised to find them locked -- not locked from the inside, as one would imagine, but chained and padlocked from the outside, as if somepony had been desperate to keep something inside the hospital, rather than out.

"I don't get this," said Derpy. "What's going on? Who would chain the doors of the hospital shut?"

"Somepony with a chain," said Pinkie Pie. "Somepony with scrap lumber would have probably boarded it shut."

"Pinkie Pie," Derpy huffed, "I meant why would they."

"Then why'd you ask 'who'?" asked Pinkie Pie.

"Never mind," sighed Derpy. "Just look for another way in."

"Why?" asked Pinkie Pie.

"Because, there's a cha..." Derpy turned her head toward the earth mare in the middle of her exasperated explanation, and was stopped mid-word.

Pinkie Pie was holding a pair of bolt cutters.

"I bought these after Twilight and I did a B&E, once."

"A what?" asked Derpy.

"Breaking and Entering," said Pinkie Pie, "only there wasn't much breaking, really. I was always disappointed by that; can I do some breaking this time?"

"Well, I guess you can cut the chain," said Derpy. "It's probably not safe to have the place chained up like this. What if there's a fire?"

"Yeah," said Pinkie Pie, grinning, "What if there's a fire?"

About half an hour later, Derpy hobbled from the burning hospital lobby as fast as her splinted leg would let her. The flames were licking at the ceiling, now, and support beams crashed down all around her. Just when it seemed she would reach the door in one piece, one of the beams fell directly across her wings, pinning her to the floor.

She could feel the heat of its burning mass, and strained to breath as its weight pressed down on her ribcage.

Was the thing that had once certainly been Nurse Red Heart still after her?

She looked back over her shoulder, and discovered, to her utmost disappointment, that it most certainly was. She had recognized the creature as having once been the nurse mostly by its cutie mark. Its face was right as well, but only in a sense far too academic for the pegasus to appreciate at that moment; Nurse Red Heart generally wore very little makeup, and this creature's face was covered in what looked like the unsupervised efforts of a child to make herself appear glamorous. There was also the fact that her pupils – not the entire iris, but just the pupils of her eyes – were white.

And she was coming slowly Derpy's way, her fur smoldering in several places, and an oversized scalpel clutched in her teeth.

Worst of all, she was only the vanguard in a mob of what had once been ponies, most of them clad in hospital gowns, and all of them emaciated and shivering, as if in the final stages of some terrible disease. Like Nurse Red Heart, all of their pupils were stark white, and all wore makeup. Unlike the nurse's, however, theirs was like some malign parody of what Derpy knew they must certainly be. It was the cheesy, too-darkly-sunken eyes and overdone highlight makeup of an old zombie movie. It would have seemed utterly ridiculous, like a badly done -- if elaborate -- practical joke, except that the ones that had followed Pinkie Pie into the incinerator earlier had soon crawled back out on fire.

They approached her still, not moaning as everything Derpy knew about zombies said they should, but crying -- weeping and wailing, some of them coughing and retching, but all of them intermittently crying out for help, shouting that they did not want to die.

“I don't wanna die, either!” rasped the pegasus, straining to lift the beam from her back.

She managed to move it ever so slightly, and for a moment, she felt it shift enough that she thought she might be able to wriggle her way free. Then, to her horror, the beam's end shifted on a loose piece of debris, and the whole thing came back down upon her more heavily than ever.

She was pinned tight.

Not like this, she thought, after everything else, not like this!

Suddenly, from the corner of her eye, she caught sight of something pink.

It was Pinkie Pie, and she was wedging herself beneath one end of the burning beam which held Derpy pinned.

“Pinkie!?” said Derpy, as the other mare heaved against the beam. “How did you get out of the incinerator!?”

“I was off-page,” said Pinkie Pie, finally managing to lift the beam enough to gain Derpy some freedom of movement. "Now, go!"

Derpy squirmed her way free, and headed for the door, followed quickly by Pinkie, who let the beam drop behind her. Almost immediately after they cleared the door, the remaining support beams of the lobby's ceiling gave way, sealing the door shut behind them. At last, they were safe on the hospital lawn, and both sprawled out beneath the wild, dancing glow of the burning building.

“Pinkie,” huffed Derpy, struggling for every breath against her own lungs, half-full of smoke from her escape from the inferno. She drew a breath, and spoke again, carefully.

“Pinkie, those were zombies,” she said.

“Well... I'd say they were physical manifestations of the despair and loathing we ultimately begin to feel toward the terminally ill when we realize that we're basically powerless in the face of death's indifference and inevitability,” said Pinkie Pie, stopping to take a deep breath. “But yeah, functionally zombies. Why do you think I burned the place down?”

“Not gonna lie,” said Derpy, still gulping for air, “it seemed like you kinda enjoyed that part of it, what with the way you were... laughing.”

“Yeah,” said Pinkie. “Really gotta figure out what's going on so I can fix that. Definitely shouldn't enjoy burning hospitals... But, hey! We got a splint on that leg of yours!”

“It's just a splint, though,” whined Derpy. “I need a doctor to really, you know... fix it!”

“Did you see the doctors in there?” asked Pinkie. “They weren't interested. 'Specially not that one guy with a photo-realistic rubber horse mask on his head. Wonder what that was about." She paused for a moment, and gave a puzzled look. "And why was it wearing rouge and eyeshadow?”

“No idea,” mumbled the pegasus, reaching back to rub at one of her wings with her good hoof. Like her right foreleg, both of them were now sprained from the impact of the falling beam.

Derpy gave a few more coughs, expelling the last of the fouled air from her lungs.

“Well, what do we do now?” she asked, sitting up.

Out in the trees she thought she noticed once more something like a dark gray shape moving – no, receding – into the shadows, but in this fog, there was no way to be certain that it was not a trick of her eyes.

“Well,” said Pinkie Pie, likewise bringing herself to her haunches, “if we want to find out what's going on, it might be good for us to go talk to somepony who knows a little something about basically everything, and that's Twilight.”

“Okay,” said Derpy, standing up fully. “Let's get to the castle.”

Like the rest of Ponyville, Twilight Sparkle's castle did not look like itself. Most notably, the crystal tree which wove around it and held it aloft was no longer crystal, but filthy-looking gray granite. Furthermore, the castle itself appeared cracked and crumbled with age, and was the color of dried blood rather than its characteristic bright yellows and purples. Lastly, it was circled and roosted upon by dozens of enormous ravens that gave scattered squawks and caws at the approach of the two mares.

Derpy stood in its shadow for several minutes, staring up at it in complete trepidation, unwilling to step forward.

“I wonder if she's home.” said Pinkie Pie, after the pair had managed to fully take in the sight.

“I hope not,” said Derpy.

“Well,” said Pinkie Pie. “One way to find out.”

Pinkie hopped merrily towards the door, and Derpy reached out a hoof to try and stop her, but in her state, she was simply not nimble enough to keep up with Pinkie Pie's ever-present, giddy alacrity. In a few moments, Pinkie Pie planted herself before the door, and knocked several times quickly.

It was Spike who opened the door, and he was dressed in a butler's uniform.

“Fair Pinkamena,” he said. “Have you brought tribute to she in whose sway all these lands are so mightily held?” he asked, indicating Ponyville with a claw which appeared oddly sharper than Derpy remembered, even at a distance of several paces.

“Uh, we were really just hoping we could talk to her,” said Pinkie Pie. “Isn't that right, Derpy?”

“Ah,” said the dragon, “The courier.”

“Why does everypony keep calling me 'courier,' today?” asked Derpy.

“The sovereign queen of Ponyville has need of your services, you of eyes so unhallowed. Wait here.”

Spike shut the door, leaving the two mares standing there, staring at each other in bewilderment.

“So, does this mean she's like an evil witch queen now, or something?” asked Derpy.

“You're catching on!” said Pinkie Pie, “but frankly the castle should have tipped you off earlier.”

“Oh, I had a hunch,” said Derpy.

There came a tremendous puff of purple smoke that seemed to fill all the air around her, and suddenly Derpy stood in the central chamber of the castle. Its décor was decidedly different than usual, with the circle of thrones replaced by a bubbling cauldron in the midst of a circle of braziers. Their torches burned with an unnatural light that seemed to shift through a spectrum of blues, pinks, and purples, and either they or the bubbling mixture in the cauldron gave off the scent of sulfur.

Behind the cauldron stood Twilight Sparkle, herself. She wore a black cloak and a pointed witch hat, but otherwise appeared not at all different.

“Welcome, Derpy Hooves,” said the Princess. “I have for you an unholy mission which is of utmost importance to the expansion of my dark domain.”

“Oh dear,” said Derpy, cringing through a smile. “And what would that be?”

Twilight stepped to a table in a far corner of the room, and indicated a box that say upon it.

“Deliver this box of canned maredrake screams to Applejack so she can use them to fertilize next year's apple crop. I'm trying to raise an undead army, and it's slow going.”

“Really?” asked Derpy, frankly. “Have you been by the hospital? They've got zombies a-plenty over there.”

“I know, but they're all unionized,” said Twilight. “They won't do anything horrific, cannibalistic, or even mildly spooky outside the hospital. Simply isn't allowed under the terms of the charter.”

“But you're the... you know... Dark Queen of Ponyville,” said Derpy.

“It's a very strong union,” said Twilight, bitterly.

“Sorry to hear that,” said Derpy.

“No matter,” said Twilight, waving Derpy off dismissively with a hoof, and levitating the box directly into Derpy's saddlebag.

“Just drop that off by Rotten Apple Acres some time this afternoon,” said the alicorn, “and if you'd like to volunteer for service in the TSUA, just take a bite out of any fresh, juicy apple in next year's first crop. Do me a favor and make sure there are as many ponies within earshot as possible when you do.”

“Well, I'd love to serve my... eh... dark queen as much as anypony,” said Derpy, giggling nervously, “but if I did that, who'd take care of your deliveries?”

“I appreciate your concern,” said Twilight Sparkle, “but it is a sacrifice I'm willing to make.”

“How noble,” said Derpy, trying to sound sincere.

Twilight raised an eyebrow at her disapprovingly.

“Darkly noble!” said Derpy suddenly, as if correcting herself.

“I do my best to bear the weight of my office with grace,” said Twilight Sparkle, giving a genuine tone of humility to the words.

“Also,” said the alicorn, “take this pack of warning labels I had printed, and make sure Applejack knows they are to be affixed to the barrels in which the maredrake apples are shipped.”

“Warning labels?” asked Derpy.

“The Equestrian Food Purity Administration requires that any enchanted or otherwise potentially hazardous food have an appropriate warning label explaining its potential adverse effects. The last thing the Apple Family or I need is a lawsuit on our hooves, after all.”

“I see,” said Derpy, flatly, as Twilight tucked the pack of labels into her bag next to the maredrake screams.

“Now, off with you,” said Twilight.

Twilight's horn flashed, and once again, in a puff of smoke, Derpy stood outside the castle, where Pinkie Pie was waiting patiently.

“So, is she an evil witch queen?” asked Pinkie, upon seeing the pegasus reappear.

“Yeah,” said Derpy, “but bless her heart; I don't think she's any good at it.”

“It's a no-go here, then," said Pinkie Pie. "Where to next?”

“I don't know,” said Derpy. “I'm not sure who else would know anything that could help us.”

“Well, there's Zecora, but to talk to her, we'll have to go into the Everfree Forest, and that would mean getting past that scary shadow thingy that keeps following us.”

“You've seen it, too?” asked Derpy,

“Yeah,” said Pinkie. “It's, like, right over there.”

She pointed a hoof, and Derpy's eyes follow its direction. Sure enough, a gray mass faded into darkness amidst the border of the Everfree Forest. This time, the pegasus got a better look at it, and she noticed that in form, it was vaguely like a pony.

“Pinkie, I'm scared,” said Derpy.

“Ah, don't panic, said the Earth Pony, “the reveal on something like that's never what you build it up to be in your mind.”

They wandered into and through the Everfree Forest, one hopping gingerly while the other stumbled, hobbled, and struggled to stay on her hooves.

“Pinkie, could you slow down?” asked Derpy.

“I could,” said Pinkie Pie, “but I really don't wanna slow down right now because there have been lots of creepy noises coming from the trees, and they've been getting closer and closer this whole time, almost like something's stalking us.”

“Something is stalking us, Pinkie,” said Derpy. “We discussed this.”

“I know,” said Pinkie, “but I'm trying to make things a little spookier.”

“WHY!?” shouted Derpy, and the sound echoed off of distant rocks and mountains.

Pinkie stopped, and turned to face her.

“Atmosphere?” she shrugged.

Derpy stared at her, blinking mindlessly for several seconds, and finally spoke.

“Why?” she asked. “Why does everypony think I'm the village idiot, when somepony like you exists?”

“Background shot in the pilot episode,” said Pinkie Pie.

“I...” Derpy began, and said nothing for a few moments after. “What?” ended up being all she could add.

“Oh, hi Fluttershy!” said the Pink mare suddenly, and Derpy's head snapped towards the direction Pinkie had been facing.

It was most assuredly Fluttershy. The color, the cutie mark, and the face were all absolutely right. Why, she even had wings. However, the usual compassion and timidity that characterized her visage were vanished – replaced by mad desire and hunger. Of course, the fact that her wings were furred and bat-like rather than feathered and bird-like also struck the gray pegasus, as did the tufts of hair on the tips of her ears, and the fangs. It was those burning, desirous, hungry eyes, however, that drew the bulk of Derpy's attention.

“Fluttershy,” She said shakily, still staring at those eyes, “are you what's been... hunting me?”

Fluttershy's answer was to pounce on her like a cat that had found a particularly juicy mouse, and after rolling a short distance, Derpy found herself pinned at her shoulders beneath a pair of yellow hooves possessed of a strength that the form of the mare behind them did not at all warrant.

“Oh yeah,” she heard Pinkie Pie mention from somewhere nearby, “Flutterbat (We call her Flutterbat when she gets like this.) is a vampire, now. Don't worry, though; she drinks juice; not blood.” There came a pause. “Usually,” Pinkie continued, “but with the way things have been today... Yeah; you should probably be worried.”

For the first time that day, Derpy completely ignored Pinkie Pie.

“Fluttershy,” she said, staring up into the wild, murderous eyes, “it's me, Derpy Hooves.”

Fluttershy responded only by opening her mouth, further exposing her glistening fangs, and hissing.

“Come on, Fluttershy,” she said. “We grew up together, back in Cloudsdale!”

Fluttershy's tongue worked its way slowly from one the tip of one fang to the other.

“When we were little we used to play in the snowbox at recess, all the time!”

“Wait, is that like a sandbox, but with snow!?” said Pinkie. “That is so not fair!”

Fluttershy, like Derpy, ignored Pinkie's outburst, but she did not seem to recall this particular memory. So, Derpy tried another.

“And then there was that time in junior high when that colt you liked poured soda in your mane in front of everypony!”

At this, the Flutterbat recoiled a bit, and snarled.

“All I had was a rock box, for cryin' out loud!” said Pinkie Pie.

Derpy did not pay her any mind, but searched for another memory of Fluttershy to try and call her back from her madness.

“And the time three years later when you still had a big crush on him, but he asked Cloudkicker to the prom, instead."

Derpy thought for a moment, then rolled her eyes at what she, herself, had just said.

“I'm not making this the least bit better, am I?” she asked.

“I'm gonna bite your neck now,” said the Flutterbat. “Um... if that's okay with you, I mean.”

Derpy blinked several times and said nothing.

“Well, since you're not saying 'no,'" said Flutterbat, quickly, and thrust her face downward to bite down on Derpy's neck.

The gray pegasus shrieked at the top of her lungs for about a second, then realized that there had been none of the expected pain of a pair of puncture wounds, or even the crushing of strong, vampiric jaws around her jugular. The sensation was, however, immediately familiar to her.

“Fluttershy,” she said flatly, “are... are you giving me a hickey?”

“Mmmhmm,” came Fluttershy's muffled voice.

“Well, hello, hello, hellellellellell-O!” said Pinkie Pie, punctuating the phrase with a flawlessly mimicked cat's growl.

“Uh... I'm not really... okay with this,” said Derpy, trying to keep her voice civil.

“I don't have to watch,” said Pinkie Pie, as the Flutterbat withdrew.

“That is not even CLOSE to the problem, Pinkie,” said Derpy, shuffling herself out from under the vampire pony, who had stood up, taking her weight off the pegasus' body.

"Um, well... This is awkward,” said Fluttershy, clearing her throat. “So where were you ladies headed?”

“Zecora's” said Pinkie Pie. “We were gonna see if she had some idea of what was going on with Ponyville.”

“Ponyville's fine,” said Fluttershy. “I just came from there.”

“We know,” said Derpy. “You've been following me all afternoon.”

“Well... really for more like ten, maybe twelve, years,” said Fluttershy, sheepishly.

“Let's not talk about that right now... or ever.” said Derpy. “But I mean I've seen you hiding in the trees a few times today.”

Fluttershy gave a puzzled look.

“I've been hiding on top of the buildings and in the attics and in the school belfry,” she said, this last location prompting a single, sharp “HA!” from Pinkie Pie. “I haven't been in the trees until the last few minutes when I followed you into the woods, here.”

Derpy saw, at that moment, closer now than ever, the gray shadow, looming behind where Pinkie Pie stood.

Seeing her expression, Pinkie Pie sat down and crossed her forelegs.

“Not gonna look,” she said. “Tell me when it's gone.”

It faded once again into the mist, and Derpy turned her eyes towards Pinkie Pie.

“How did you know it wouldn't grab you?” she asked.

“I'm funny,” said Pinkie Pie. “I won't get got until the very end, when it's all serious time, and stuff.”

“Fair enough,” said Derpy.

The Flutterbat gave an awkward “Um,” to get the other ponies' attention, and then spoke in earnest.

“Well, uh, I guess I'm gonna go find somepony else who's... you know... into me.”

Her tone was so pitiful that it prompted a sigh from Derpy.

“Fluttershy, it's not that you're not...”

“No, no, no, I understand,” sighed the vampire bat pony. “I really shouldn't have just assumed something like that, and I'm sorry if I made you uncomfortable. I'll just go, now.”

With that, Fluttershy took off silently, and flew away over the treetops.

“Okay,” said Derpy, once she was certain Fluttershy was out of earshot. “What was that all about? I'd rather she just drank my blood, like a normal vampire.”

“That was normal for a vampire,” said Pinkie Pie. “Read some vampire books; that's pretty much the main sort of thing they do, when you get right down to it – like, way, way more than they kill anyone. I think that's kind of all they're really used for, these days.”

“Really?” asked Derpy.

“Really,” said Pinkie Pie. “They aren't a very good monster, anymore.”

“Ugh,” grunted Derpy. “And of course, she had to be a bat pony, too. Can we just go find the zebra?”

“Sure,” said Pinkie Pie. “Follow meeeeeeee!”

One in a Billion

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A short while later they arrived at Zecora's hut. Pinkie Pie hopped right up to the door, and knocked on it vigorously, just as she had the door of Twilight's castle.

“I am coming, right away,” came a muffled voice from beyond the door, “Won't you come inside and stay?”

In a few seconds, the door opened to reveal Zecora, and Derpy groaned at the sight. The zebra's usual outfit of gold rings had been replaced with one made up of what appeared to be actual bones, one of which was prominently pierced through her nose.

“These mares before me, pink and gray,” she said, "must have traveled quite a way."

Derpy simply stared at the bone-clad zebra, amazed and slightly disturbed.

“Come on, now, and have some tea,” said Zecora. “I'm glad to have you come see me.”

The two ponies complied, and though Pinkie's expression changed not at all as they entered what quickly revealed itself to be a chamber of horrors, Derpy was immediately certain that she regretted the decision.

There were the expected shelves of potions and such, but the whole hut was also full of rusted tools, many of which did not match the description of any implement Derpy had ever seen. Some were fairly mundane, – knives, icepicks, various saws – and though all of those might still be used to unsavory purposes, it was the ones Derpy did not recognize that filled her with the most fear. They hung from lengths of cord, and were stacked on shelves. One large table in a corner was covered with dark stains that Derpy could not immediately identify, but she quickly decided not to continue trying once she noticed that it was also covered in more of the rusty, bladed instruments that seemed to fill this entire hut.

Still, however, even amidst this conglomeration of things sharp, pointy, and ominously cryptic in design, the zebra remained civil, beckoning them to sit at a dining table which appeared all at once incongruous and far too at home.

“What brings you here, my pony friends?” Zecora's smile turned into a wicked grin that revealed teeth filed to spikes. “Seek you means to some dark ends?”

“Uh... actually,” Derpy began, returning the sharp-toothed grin with one meant to maintain civility while concealing the gut-wrenching fear she was beginning to experience.

“We're trying to figure out why everything in Ponyville's turned into an evil version of itself,” said Pinkie Pie.

“More evil than it was before?” asked Zecora. “Then even I shall bar my door.”

“See,” said Derpy, “That's what we mean; if you knew the real Ponyville, you wouldn't say that.”

“That town's real self I know too well,” said Zecora. “Less terrible than only...”

“Look,” said Pinkie Pie, cutting her off, “for the moment, let's just assume that Ponyville was a really, really nice place that all of a sudden turned into what it's like now. What would you guess was wrong?”

“It would take magic strong and dark,” said the Zebra, “To kindle such an evil spark.” She paused and scratched at her chin. “An alicorn I might daresay, but not the one who rules the day; neither she who sits enthroned in Ponyville or Crystal home.”

“You think Princess Luna did this?” asked Derpy.

“Who else could turn the light to dark?” asked Zecora. “Is that not how she leaves her mark?”

“Well, I suppose so,” said Derpy, “but I don't think she'd do something like that... If only there was some way I could just ask her what's going on.”

“Well, it's dark now,” said Pinkie Pie. “If we had somepony who could go to sleep with the absolute guarantee of having a nightmare, she'd probably show up, but what are the odds of that happening?”

Derpy's eyes lit up.

“Zecora,” she asked. “Do you have a sleeping potion?”

“I have on hoof a few such things," she said, and then she lifted a rusty saw, and grinned once more, exposing the evil-looking filed teeth. “But it will cost one of your wings.”

Derpy gulped, and her muscles tensed as she prepared to make whatever excuse of a run for it she still could.

“Zecora,” said Pinkie Pie, something sly behind the word.

“Please wait your turn, Miss Pinkie Pie,” said Zecora, still staring at Derpy. “Now as for you, with crooked eye...”

“Zecora,” said Pinkie again, and the zebra lowered the saw.

“What?” asked Zecora, turning to face her, and after a metrically-appropriate pause, she added, “you nut?”

“This is gonna sound off-the-cuff,” said the earth mare.

Now Derpy also turned towards Pinkie, giving her a skeptical look.

“I mean even for me,” she said, twirling her hoof in the air in an impatient little circle.

“I will believe when this I see,” said Zecora. “Go ahead; surprise me.”

“Well,” said Pinkie, “I might... maybe... just possibly know where you can get a good half dozen severed pegasus wings... and a pretty good stock of other... uh... pony... parts.” She paused.

“If this is true,” said Zecora, and then she turned back towards Derpy, “It's good for you.”

Derpy did not reply, but simply held her breath, wings still tensed, and ready for a quick, airborne sprint at the nearest window.

“You might walk out with all your legs,” Zecora continued, “rather than on wooden pegs.”

The potion Zecora gave Derpy went to work fast, knocking her out cold. Predictably, she had another nightmare.

This one, however, was different than the others; a replay of a memory. Perhaps it was the nature of the zebra's potion, or perhaps it had only been a matter of time, but this dream took her back to the first of many days in her life she would rather not think about – perhaps the day upon which she'd first begun to teach herself how not to think about such days: the day of her Mother's funeral.

Her father stood beside her as she looked down into the coffin to say her goodbyes, a foreleg around her shoulders. Her eyes, straight and true, just as they had been in her fillyhood, welled up, and she burst into tears. She wept then as only a child can, overcome with a sense of fear and loneliness that defies the understanding of those grown accustomed to loss with the many abandonments and partings endemic to adulthood. No, an adult could not cry like this; it was an art lost to most and relearned by few – and never willingly.

These were bitter sobs, like broken glass rubbed across concrete underneath a plate of rusted iron. There was nothing graceful or elegant in them; there were hyperventilations, brief moments of the filly coughing as she choked on her own saliva and mucus, and the slow encroaching of a rasp that would never fully depart her voice. Only a life's first visitation of bereavement can elicit such poignant woe.

In this dream, to Ditzy Doo – for she had not yet, in this age of her life, ever been called “Derpy” – this was, as it had been that day, her first real goodbye. The ponies in the Cloudsdale chapel all turned their heads away from the sight and sound, their own hearts riven at it like stone before a jagged chisel, but this itself was strange because none of them had faces or even eyes.

So it had been on that day for little Ditzy, for in that tiny chapel of cloud, there had been no faces to her but the sad, broken, and unresponsive one of of her father, and the dead, unmoving one of her mother. She remembered that face now for the first time years. It had been covered in ugly makeup that the mortician had applied, trying so hard to make her look alive in death that he had succeeded only in making her look nothing like herself. Cruelly, this had become the face she saw whenever her mother entered into her memories – or her dreams.

She continued to wail and all but shriek, and as she retched and gagged with the exertion of her own grief and the interruption of anything vaguely resembling normal respiration, Ditzy saw a thing of pure horror: the dead mare in the coffin's eyes twitched, and then slitted themselves open. It happened slowly, beginning at their inner corners, then moving outward as the eyelids peeled apart the thin line of glue the mortician had applied to keep them shut. Out spilled the pair of plastic caps inserted behind them to make them appear round and healthy, revealing a pair of glassy, yellow irises that shown as little more than thin rings around dilated pupils gone cloudy and gray. Her lips likewise peeled open against their own barrier of glue to reveal the cotton that had been stuffed inside them to keep the mare's cheeks from slackening and appearing sickly and dead.

But they were dead, and as her mother sat up, extending dead hooves at the end of dead legs to take her, her father did not react. He stood stone still, as if nothing was happening, his own foreleg like a vise that would not let Ditzy escape its iron grasp, even as she pushed against it, trying to back away from those slow, reaching hooves. The open mouth spilled out the cotton, blackened with the chemicals it had absorbed, and the face around it morphed into something like that of a wicked, dead clown with running makeup that seemed to pour away, revealing a gray face gone grayer with death.

Then, the dead hooves took her, and the thing she had wanted so much moments before -- to feel once more her mother's arms around her -- became in that instant the greatest terror she could imagine, as the corpse leaned back into the coffin, and her father reached out to shut the coffin on the both of them.

“Come along, Ditzy,” said her mother's voice in the now-perfect blackness, but it was cold and ominous in its tone. “Come lie here with me. It's best for you like this; best you don't embarrass yourself.”

“I don't wanna lay here, Momma!” she screamed, surprised that it the words came out in the voice of a grown mare. “I've tried so hard... I don't want to be a failure! I don't want to disappoint you! I didn't mean for everything to turn out like this; you have to believe me!”

“I believe you, Ditzy Doo,” said a voice she recognized, and the darkness began to fade.

She found herself, of all places, in the bed of Princess Luna, clutched tight against the alicorn's warm body as she had been moments ago the cold one of her mother.

Oddly, the Princess' size made her roughly similar in proportion to adult Derpy as her mother had been to little Ditzy. Perhaps this was why Princess Luna always seemed to rescue Derpy from her nightmares in this way – that it simply reminded her of the safety that death's cruel indifference had stolen from her.

“I was just awakening,” said the Princess.

“Is this a dream still?” asked Derpy Hooves.

“Something like that,” said the Princess, rolling away from the pegasus, and standing up.

Derpy rolled over, and saw the Princess as she had left her; her mane and tail braided tightly, though now slightly disheveled and with a few stray hairs from her day's sleep.

"A terrible nightmare, that," said Princess Luna. "Terrible and surprisingly unique; a perversion of a memory, I should imagine."

"Uh-huh," said Derpy, not moving from where she lay.

"And thy father; that was he who shut thee into the coffin with thy mother?" asked the Princess, pulling her mane and tail loose from their braid. "Why?"

"Yeah," said Derpy, weakly. "I guess because he's a mortician."

"A common profession for a bat pony these days, I should imagine," said Princess Luna, stepping to her mirror. "They have tended the dead for thousands of years, you know."

"I know," said Derpy, sadly. "He did what he thought was a good job by Momma's body, I guess."

"But to thee," asked the Princess, now levitating a brush to her mane, "she did not look as she should have?"

"How could she?" asked Derpy.

"Only in thy memory," said Princess Luna, still grooming herself, "or perhaps in thy dreams."

"Not likely," said Derpy, holding back tears with gritted teeth.

"Perhaps more so than thou wouldst believe," said Luna.

“It doesn't matter,” said Derpy, crawling for the edge of the bed.

She dropped herself to the floor, finding the distance thereunto just a little further than would have been comfortable even for a tall pony.

“Something really awful is going on,” said Derpy, stepping towards the Princess. "Ponyville has changed into some kind of evil version of itself. Everypony's either gone insane or turned into a monster, and terrible things keep happening. It's like... like...”

“A nightmare,” said Princess Luna, and in those two words there was no question – only certainty.

“Well, yeah,” said Derpy. “It's like a bad nightmare that nopony can wake up from.”

“That is because nopony is asleep,” said Princess Luna. “The version of Ponyville that thou hast seen since thy return is, at this moment, the real Ponyville of the waking world, and all of reality hath altered concurrently. Everypony everywhere, my sister included, believeth – knoweth – that Ponyville is and hath always been this way. Only you and I are aware that anything hath been changed.”

“What about Pinkie Pie?” asked Derpy.

“Ignore the pink one,” said Luna. “She is mad.”

“Fine," said Derpy, "but I don't understand how this is possible. Even Zecora – like, crazy Zecora, but still Zecora – said that this would take a lot of really, really powerful black magic.”

“It did indeed,” said Princess Luna, “It took the shared nightmare of two souls utterly dissimilar in every respect but that both so desire to be like someone dear unto them, and yet, in their own estimation, have failed in every way to become anything like unto that individual. It took one of those souls being in form and spirit the Queen of Nightmares, herself – and that form having been born of her own sense of inadequacy. It took, finally, the other deeply and perfectly understanding that singular sense of agony and failure.”

Luna gave a bitter “Hmph.”

“All it took was for me to admit such a thing to thee,” she said, “and to do it in the form of Nightmare Moon; 'twas a one-in-a-billion chance.”

“Can you stop it?” asked Derpy. “Can you make the nightmare go away like you always do?”

“No,” said Princess Luna. “This is no longer a simple nightmare. This is reality now, Ditzy Doo.”

“Then what do we do!?” asked Derpy urgently, trying to run towards the princess, but quickly finding that in whatever reality they inhabited, her leg was still sprained.

“At least one of us must face her fear,” said Princess Luna, quietly, and she swallowed so loudly that Derpy heard it from many paces away. “She must find what stalks her in her dreams, and confront it,” she said. “We must cease to share our nightmare.”

“I can't do that,” said Derpy, her eyes glazing over and her head shaking slightly, “it has to be you.”

“Impossible, I am afraid,” said Princess Luna. “It must be you.”

“What?” asked Derpy. “Why? Aren't you... I dunno; in charge of all this sort of thing? Why does it have to be me?”

“Because thou art... older than me, Ditzy Doo Hooves,” said the alicorn. “By the measure of time, not at all, but by the measure of the time thou hast remaining unto thee, very much so. The questions of who thou art, who thou hast been, and who thou art meant and meanest to be are of more urgency for thee. They trouble thy heart more deeply than mine own, for thou hast less time in which to answer them.”

Princess Luna stared at the floor.

“I confess that when I pull thee from thy nightmares, I am always terrified. I see how deeply thy fears cut at thy heart, and I know that mine will one day cut as deep.” She gave a deep “Hmm,” and then looked at Derpy. “For now, however, I cannot envision my fears the way thou can thy own, and thus I cannot confront them.” She shook her head. “I am not ready.”

Derpy's mouth, having hung open with incredulity for the duration of the Princess' explanation, now found command of itself, and formed words.

“What makes you think I am!?” she almost shouted. “You're THE Princess of THE Night. If you can't deal with this, how can I!?”

“A spectacular question,” said Luna, looking towards her, eyes now welling, “and one day, long after thou art naught more than dust blown amidst the four winds, I shalt likely find myself asking in my own hour of struggle: “If a little, gray pegasus could overcome this burden, why is it that I, the Princess of the Night... cannot?”

She smiled, and a single tear, jostled from her eye by that simple upturning of the corner of her mouth, spilled its way down, and found the floor.

“Or so I hope,” said the Princess, "if thou take my intent."

Hearing this, Derpy came to a realization.

“You can't help me, can you?” she asked, but she already knew the answer.

“Not more than I have,” said Princess Luna.

Derpy groaned.

“I just... I don't think I can do this, Luna. It's just too much. Not even for all my friends in Ponyville. This scares me more than anything else I've ever even thought about. That face that I always see, like some kind of dead, evil circus clown, but it's my Momma... And all the things she says to me, Princess; it's worse than death. It's worse than being buried alive or drowning or even public speaking!”

“I know.” said Luna. “Remember that if nothing else, I at least know how frightening this will be for thee, Ditzy.”

“Then you know I can't do it,” said Derpy.

“Will you not even try?” asked Princess Luna. “Not even if it means that somewhere, right now, your daughter remembers growing up in this version of Ponyville?”

This, Derpy had not considered. Somewhere, at Celestia's school, Dinky was in her dormitory, studying, sleeping, or perhaps even playing with a friend, but if she had grown up in the Ponyville Derpy had seen today, was she even still Dinky? Was she the daughter Derpy remembered? Could she be, after having lived in a place like that?

“Or what about that stallion you love? What dost thou think that living in a place like that after the losses he suffered did to his heart? Art thou even certain that he will remain there when thou returnest, or does he now rest beside she whom he lost... and his hope that she bore within her?”

“I... hadn't considered...” said Derpy.

“What about thy friends?” asked Derpy. “I know what thou hast seen, for it was in my dreams. Thou hast seen the withered roses at the flower stand, Pinkie Pie's attempts to hide things that in her bizarre way she somehow knoweth are not her own doing, Twilight's fractured mind, Fluttershy's... eh... behavior.”

“Princess,” said Derpy, “I want to help them, but I don't know what to do or say to that gray creature in the mist. I know what it's going to look like. I know the things it's going to say to me, even. I just don't know what to say back.”

Princess Luna shrugged and shook her head, pursing her lips slightly.

“Nor do I.”

“Then just wake me up,” said Derpy, quietly, her voice and face resigned. “I'll make it up as I go.”

“Very well,” said Princess Luna, “but hear this one thing before thou go.”

“What?” asked Derpy.

“Rarely,” said Princess Luna, and she paused to clear her throat and wipe her eyes. “So very rarely is the thing we fear the thing we think it is.”

She walked to where Derpy, stood, and her horn glowed. Without a word, she tilted it down, and touched it to Derpy's forehead.

The pegasus awoke on the zebra's bed.

Just a Foggy Day

View Online

As the trio walked back into Ponyville, the zebra spoke first.

“I must go to fetch my pay,” she began, “I wish you both well on your way.” She grinned, showing the filed spikes of her teeth one more time, “But if you've ever need of me,” she said, “you know where to find my tree.”

“We'll stay in touch!” said Pinkie Pie, her voice cheerful as always, as the Zebra turned toward Sugar Cube Corner.

“Pinkie,” said Derpy solemenly, as the Zebra faded into the fog headed for Sugar Cube Corner. “You know how you said you'd probably... uh... 'get got' once serious time was here?”

“Oh, without a doubt,” said Pinkie Pie; “with all the hints I've dropped, I'm only just a shade off from a villain right now, really. I'm gonna go down, and it's gonna be bad, bad, bad, bad, BAD.”

“Well,” said Derpy, “I think serious time's here.”

“Oh,” said Pinkie, sadly, her ears drooping. “In that case, Carousel Boutique's covered in giant spider webs,” she said, gesturing towards the business that always seemed, of late, to somehow precipitate the greatest part of Derpy's misery. Their trek had carried them to within sight of it, and it was, indeed, covered in many huge, thick spider webs.

“I'm guessing Rarity's some kinda big, white, half-pony, half-spider freak with her cutie mark where a black widow's hourglass thingy would be.” The earth mare shrugged. “That sounds kinda cool. Probably better than any of the 'paddle faster; I hear banjo music' stuff I can imagine happening to me over at Rotten Apple Acres.”

“Why not go find Rainbow Dash, and stay with her until this all gets sorted out?” asked Derpy.

Pinkie Pie laughed nervously and grinned broadly.

“Rainbow Dash,” she said... “Yeah...” She sucked air through clenched teeth, and stared off towards Sugar Cube Corner. “Good, ol' Dashie...”

Derpy raised an eyebrow at Pinkie's behavior, which seemed unusual, even for her.

“Not enough paper towels in Equestria,” she heard the earth pony faintly mumbled to herself.

“Gonna go see the spider lady,” Pinkie finally said, and then she reached out and touched Derpy on the shoulder.

“I would have taken a sledgehammer to the fourth wall for you until the very end,” said the pink mare, her voice melodramatic but genuinely resolute, “but I see this is something you have to do on your own.”

“Uh, thanks, Pinkie” said Derpy, trying her best to be sincere.

“But.. you really can do it, right?” asked Pinkie Pie, swallowing a lump in her throat. “Like, whatever you have to do, you can do it? I don't like this version of Ponyville, either, Derpy. I wouldn't want to live here for the rest of my life. I'd rather sing “Smile, Smile, Smile” over and over again for all of eternity... which may just be my penance where I'm probably going after Rarity liquifies my guts and eats them.”

Pinkie gave Derpy a sincere look.

“My point is that we're all sort of counting on you,” said the pink pony.

“I'll give it the best I've got,” said Derpy, sighing, “but if it doesn't work out, I'll probably be along shortly to join you on that big choral part of the outtro.”

“Well, this version of you has had like four stories for character development,” said Pinkie Pie. “If that wasn't enough to make you unkillable, then this writer's just a sociopath, and nobody should read this garbage, anyway.”

“No... body?” asked Derpy, confused. "Writer? What?"

“Don't worry about it,” sighed Pinkie. “Good luck.”

With that, the earth pony plodded away towards Carousel Boutique, quietly singing the first few lines of “Smile, Smile, Smile.” When she reached the building, she hesitated for a moment before she opened the door, and stepped inside, turning only briefly to shut the door behind her.

Derpy heard the muffled sound of Pinkie saying “Hi, Rarity,” followed by a blood-curdling scream, and then silence.

The pegasus cringed at the sound, and then shook her head forlornly.

According to Princess Luna, this was the only version of Ponyville that now existed, and somehow, the only version that had ever existed. That thought alone was depressing, but in concert with what she knew she was soon to face, it was enough to tempt her to follow Pinkie through the door of the boutique to whatever horrendous fate might lay beyond it. What the pink pony had said, however, “we're all sort of counting on you,” gave her no room for such a consideration.

She hobbled her way toward the town square, passing a playground where the Cutie Mark Crusaders, all with black voids where their eyeballs should be, stood like statues near a rusted swing set that creaked in the breeze. They spoke the words, “Come play with us, Ms. Hooves,” as she passed, but Derpy, with some effort, ignored them. She walked onward towards her destination.

When she finally reached it, she sat down on the steps of the town hall, and looked around at the gray, ugly Ponyille that surrounded her. Everything that had ever been beautiful about it had been replaced by something similar, but ugly and unnatural. She wasn't sure why she had chosen to come here to wait for the thing in the mist, but she supposed it seemed right to face it in the very center of the place she was fighting for.

Ponyville had been her refuge. She had come here from Cloudsdale to escape the memories of a childhood that had quickly unraveled after her mother's death. Her father, always withdrawn, had become totally cold to both his daughter and the rest of the world after his wife had passed. Worse, Derpy herself had given up on her dreams because they had been so deeply rooted in somepony who was now gone. Finally, she had left. She took a job with the Ponyville Weather Patrol to escape her memories, and she rarely thought of Cloudsdale. She fell in love. She got married. She had a foal. Then tragedy struck again, and she had to take a job even further removed from who she felt she was.

Now, just when it seemed that she had managed to find the kind of life she had always wanted, she had let down her guard, and her own hidden but still long-abiding fears and doubts had returned. Worse than that, they had, on what Princess Luna had called a one-in-a-billion chance, found a way to infect the place that she had come to seeking refuge from them.

This version of Ponyville, this ugly place full of monsters and psychopaths and pale gray mist, was somehow all her fault, but to Derpy Hooves that only seemed natural.

“I just don't know what went wrong,” she mumbled to herself, smiling bitterly.

And she waited.

The gray shape appeared after awhile, standing in the shade of a single tree, just distant enough through the fog that she could not fully make out its shape. A pair of yellow orbs – eyes, the pegasus knew – glowed out from its face, and Derpy stared back at them, shivering under a cold sweat.

“Well, do you wanna talk, Momma?” she asked it, her voice quivering.

It did not respond.

“What?” she asked. “Have you run out of ways to tell me that I'm a waste of potential?”

It did not respond.

“Well, here's a new one for you,” she said. “I managed to ruin the life of everypony I care about.”

The thing stepped forward, and with it out of the shade, Derpy saw the grotesque makeup that was forever burned into her memory.

“And you know what else?” she asked. “I hate my job so much that every morning when the sun comes up, I curse Princess Celestia's name, even though she's only ever been nice to me.”

It stepped forward again at that, and began walking slowly towards her. The cloudy, fish-like eyes became apparent to her, now.

“Yeah, that's right,” said Derpy, sniffling once. “I actually know her. I have actually met every Princess that I even know exists, and every time I'm around them, I just feel like a disaster because I see these beautiful mares that by luck or hard work or whatever managed to become something that actually matters, and I just... didn't!'

Then, Derpy all but exploded.

“I feel like my life's a joke! I've saved everypony in this town from certain death before, but nopony knows it or will ever believe me! That was the greatest day of my life. It mattered more than anything I've ever done, and nopony knows or cares. I'm still just a cross-eyed delivery pony! I'm such a klutz that the captain of the weather patrol doesn't even call me up for auxiliary duty because if she does, I'll probably burn something down!”

The thing continued to approach, but it spoke not a word. It couldn't. Derpy would not let it get one in edgewise. Its makeup ran, flowing like tiny veins into the image of a hideous clown that haunted Derpy's dreams.

“The best thing that I have in my life is my daughter, and until I turned Ponyville into a disaster, she was actually better off than ever because I found a way to put her in a place where I can't even be near her! I might at least be a little bit proud of giving her a chance of having a better life than mine, but I had to betray a friend to do that! Every time I think about that, it makes me wish I had never done the best thing I ever did for my own foal, and that makes me feel like an awful mother!"

The horrid clown face was fully formed, now, and the head upon which it was painted rolled slowly left and right as one slow, wobbly step after another brought it closer to where Derpy stood, continuing her tirade.

“It doesn't stop there, either, Momma! I'm actually in love with somepony for the first time since before Dinky was even born, but I'm so damaged that I'm afraid all the time something's gonna happen to ruin it! I don't even feel like I can ever really be what he needs or wants! I have to struggle every day to let myself feel anything, and if it's gonna hurt, I just don't let myself feel it at all, even if it's what I need to feel! I'm so cold inside I actually understood when an outright MONSTER told me what it was like to be her, and I'm afraid I'm gonna end up so withdrawn and dead inside that I'll forget how to let myself feel at all, anymore!”

The thing still marched slowly forward, the intensity of the yellow glow in its eyes increasing steadily. Derpy paid it no mind beyond very nearly screaming at it everything that she feared it might say to her.

“And I watched an old stallion die in the desert; watched Princess Celestia have to kill someone that she'd risked more than I can even imagine trying to save in spite of herself! I couldn't do anything, or change what happened at all! I was just... there! Just there, the way I'm always just... just THERE!”

It stood before her now, almost nose to nose. Its yellow eyes glowed like lanterns, one far off-center from its line of sight. Derpy's however, were straight, true, and locked into those eyes as if both stared straight back at her.

Exhausted from her fit of shouting, she let her volume drop, and spoke directly to the pony-clown thing that always stalked her dreams.

“And the worst part is,” she said, her voice quiet and her breathing heavy, “I just keep on smiling and hiding behind my goofy nickname and my derped-up eyes because as long as everypony thinks that's all I am, they don't expect anything of me.”

The thing did not move or speak.

“That's all I've got,” said Derpy, and a tear rolled down her cheek. “I suck at life; what else do you want me to say?”

She swallowed a lump in her throat.

“I let you down, Ditzy Doo.”

She had realized it well before it reached her. She had realized that the creature approaching from the mist was not her mother, at all. No; her mother had been a gray pegasus, like herself, but her eyes had been blue. Those yellow eyes that glowed out from the darkness in her dreams and here in this weird, ugly ponyville were her own. The thing that had pursued her all her life had never been “Momma.”

It was Ditzy Doo – or perhaps it was Derpy Hooves. She was not certain anymore, herself, but she knew that whichever one she was at the moment, the thing that stood before her so silent and motionless was the other. Furthermore, she knew which one of them she had failed.

She had done a fantastic job of being Derpy, after all. Derpy was more than just a nickname and a pair of skewed eyes to her; Derpy was a character. Derpy was a bit part – Ponyville's running sight gag. Derpy was a clown.

Did that mean that the thing standing in front of her was Derpy, or did it mean that she had taken Ditzy Doo, and painted her up to be a clown? Which of those two names belonged to the unpainted of these two gray pegasi who stood here, face-to-face. She asked herself this question as she stared at the twisted eyes and foul face-paint of the thing that stood in front of her, doing nothing else but breathing, and the fact that she could not answer it made her sick.

Whichever one she was, she had let down Ditzy Doo; the little gray filly who had wanted to be a dancer, who had shown remarkable promise as a flyer, and who had believed she could do and be whatever she wanted.

It wouldn't change anything for her to apologize or to ask this weird, painted automaton to forgive her. She had failed herself completely, and she had nothing else to say about it.

So, rather than speak at all, she stepped around and past the thing. It still did not move, even as she passed so close that their shoulders touched. She shook her head slightly at the bubbles on its flank.

Keep 'em, she thought, continuing forward. Keep this whole town.

The creature could be Derpy or Ditzy or whoever for this version of Ponyville, but she would not.

Pinkie Pie, I'm sorry, she thought. Princess Luna, too.

“Didn't have it in me,” she mumbled aloud. “I can't let it go. I can't forgive myself. I guess that's what I'm supposed to do, but I can't.”

She limped along, favoring her injured leg and becoming increasingly aware of the pain and growing stiffness in it. After a few paces, she turned back to see if the thing was following her.

It was not. It had turned and seated itself on the steps of the town hall where she herself had waited for it to appear. It stared after her, its eyes empty of malice or even thought, but a slight cant of its head to one side, probably in an effort to align its eyes to watch her leave, gave it the look of a pet or foal watching somepony it loved leave home.

Derpy quietly and joylessly chuckled at the image, the corners of her mouth tightening, but not turning upward. She shook her head.

“Sorry, girl,” she said. “Not coming back for you. Not coming back for Ponyville, either – not this one, if this is really the only one there is. I guess you can stay here and be whatever this weird place expects you to be. I guess that makes you Dinky's momma, now, but if she grew up here, she's not my Dinky, anyway. Maybe Chill Breeze exists here, too, in which case I guess that means he's yours. He probably wouldn't even recognize me... He'd be looking for whoever or whatever you are.”

These thoughts stung her deeply, but she was too weary and numb to cry over it or to contemplate what it meant. All she wanted was to be away from this place.

She would go back to Cloudsdale. She would go see her father. Maybe the way that she fit into whatever reality this was would at least allow him to remember her. If not, she would at least see if he was still alive; she hadn't written him or been home to see him in years.

After that, she would go elsewhere and do otherwise.

She limped along, headed out of town, favoring her injured leg. The splint that Pinkie Pie had fastened to it back in the hospital full of painted zombie devils was beginning to come apart, and it made her cringe with pain to put any weight on it, at all. Furthermore, her wings were both still badly sprained, so that it hurt even to extend them. Lastly, on top of it all, her many scrapes and burns where the flaming beam had fallen on her stung at her hide, completing her general sense of misery.

Still, however, she walked onward, her heart and mind seeming perfectly empty for the first time in her entire life. It only seemed natural to her. To the world, twisted as it had been by whatever foul magic had been awakened in the nightmare that she and Princess Luna shared, she was an illusion. The ugly, mindless thing she had left on the steps of the town hall was the real version of her.

“And I made it,” she mumbled, “I created it, and I created this place. Maybe I wasn't supposed to forgive it... or myself... or whatever. Maybe I was supposed to kill it.”

Whatever the case, she was certain of one thing: She was no longer afraid of it. It had done the worst it could ever do: it had stolen her life.

“Nothing left to be afraid of,” she said. “Nothing left to lose; I'll make up my own name. I'll be whoever I want.”

She stopped, and looked around in the thick fog. It took her a few moments to realize where she was: Near the train station, where her trek through this bizarre but very real one-and-only Ponyville had begun, but something was amiss.

“Where are the trains?” she asked aloud. “All the coal... The coal car that almost killed me... Where is it all?”

“Derpy!” came a familiar shout from somewhere overhead.

The voice was so unexpected on such a variety of levels that it took her several seconds to process whose it was. Moreover, it was filled with urgency, and almost panicked.

“Celestia's mane! Are you okay!?”

Rainbow Dash dropped from the sky, landing heavily right in front of the gray pegasus.

She could not even begin to respond. All indications were that the pony standing in front of her could not possibly be who she appeared to be, but this was most certainly Rainbow Dash, and Derpy was almost positive that it was the Rainbow Dash she knew rather than some corrupt, evil version of her. She knew this in part from her appearance, but more than that from her expression. Not even Pinkie Pie, had shown anything the least bit like compassion or empathy in her eyes since she'd arrived in that cruel, fog-shrouded parody of Ponyville.

After several seconds, Derpy's silence and slack-jawed, empty-eyed stare provoked Rainbow Dash to further action.

“You stay right here!” said the blue pegasus, and she ran the short distance towards Sugar Cube Corner, leaving Derpy there to try and unravel what was going on. In a moment, she realized that the spike-toothed, cannibal Zecora might still be in the bakery. She turned, meaning to follow Rainbow Dash into the building to warn her, but her injured leg failed her, the splint having finally given way, and she buckled forward onto her belly.

She hadn't eaten since that morning, and she was both emotionally and physically exhausted. She was simply too confused, tired, and in every way broken to help Rainbow Dash or even herself. She lay there like that, not knowing what to do for what could have been a few seconds or a few minutes; her grasp on time was too loose for her to be certain. Finally, much to her surprise, Rainbow Dash emerged from the building, and following close behind was somepony that Derpy was even more certain could not possibly be here.

“Pinkie Pie,” huffed Rainbow Dash as the pair ground to a halt near the pegasus, “How can you have stockpiles of eyepatches, balls, and all this other crazy stuff all over Ponyville, but not even one first aid kit!?”

“It slipped my mind in the shuffle, okay!?” said Pinkie Pie defensively.

“Look,” said Rainbow Dash, kneeling beside Derpy, “just help me get her inside, and then I'll go get help.”

The two ponies helped one another lift the stricken mare from where she lay, and supported her by tucking themselves underneath her sprained wings as they walked her slowly towards the bakery.

“What happened,” asked Rainbow Dash. “Did you crash, Derpy?”

“Uh-uh,” was all Derpy could manage, then a “kinda.”

“And these burns,” said Rainbow Dash. “I don't get it...”

“I don't...” mumbled the gray mare, weakly, and she almost lost her train of though before adding a “me either.”

“This... isn't right,” she said. “Can't be... back home.”

“No, you can't go home,” said Rainbow Dash. “Hospital first.”

“Hospital was full of...” she began, but stopped.

“Am I crazy?" she said, "Why is the fog still here, if...”

“It's just a foggy day, Derpy,” said Rainbow Dash, obviously trying to sound soothing. “It was scheduled; fog to set the mood for Nightmare Night. I told them somepony or other would fly into something in this soup, but do you think they ever listen to me?”

In just a few more moments, they finally got Derpy inside and sat her down at one of the tables. She sat there, her head gently and almost involuntarily shaking as she tried to comprehend how everything going on around her could be happening.

Had it all been some bizarre and very detailed dream? Had she really just had some spectacular crash in the fog, causing her to hallucinate the whole ordeal? Was she perhaps still asleep? That would account for the strangeness of what was going on around her, but not for the clarity with which she sensed the aches and pains throughout her body. Nor would it account for the presence of a few very real burns here and there on her fur and skin. There was no lightning today to have caused them, and their locations coincided too perfectly with the places where the blazing beam had fallen across her as she and that evasive, unwillingly evil Pinkie Pie had fled the burning hospital.

“I'm gonna go get some paramedics to pull an ambulance over here,” said Rainbow Dash, apparently satisfied that the gray mare would be safe in the bakery. “Pinkie, I don't think she'll go into, like, real shock or anything, but keep an eye on her. And get her some water, at least.”

She ran out the door, took wing, and was gone.

Pinkie Pie did as Rainbow Dash had instructed, bringing Derpy a glass of water, and adding to that a single blueberry muffin. She sat them on the table in front of the pegasus, who only stared at both, and spoke.

“Pinkie,” she said. “Do you know anything about what's going on?”

“I know you look like you had an accident,” said Pinkie. “Drink that water, and have a little bite of that muffin. It might make you feel a little better.”

She sipped weakly at the water, and nibbled at the muffin for a minute, saying nothing. Then, she looked directly at Pinkie Pie.

“You really don't remember, do you?” she asked. “Not even you.”

“Remember what?” asked Pinkie Pie. “I've been working all day. Gotta make lots of Nightmare Night goodies, and get ready to decorate the shop.”

“Do you remember the crazy, evil version of Ponyville with Twilight the Witch Queen, Fluttershy the vampire, Spider Rarity, and cannibal Zecora, or not?” asked Derpy, plainly, her voice edged with irritation.

“Uh, no...” said Pinkie Pie, “but it sounds... cool? You musta hit your head; just drink that water.”

“You were there,” said Derpy. “You kept talking about it like it was a story, and saying things about how you were a psychopath, and I think you might have done something really, really awful to somepony... or some ponies, but I never saw.”

“Derpy,” said Pinkie, skeptically, “I'll admit I'm a little weird, but that doesn't sound like me, at all.” She paused, and smiled faintly. “At least not any version of me I'd like to be.”

“It was you,” said Derpy, quietly.

“They're all me,” said Pinkie, “but who are you?”

Derpy thought on this for a moment, and then shrugged very slightly.

“That's a good question."

Ever Having Been

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Her injuries were not serious. Their quantity far outweighed their quality. Even the numerous burns and scratches had required only a few bandages a little antiseptic. Only the sprains to her leg and wings were in the least bit severe, and the doctor had promised her that they would heal in only a few days, if she rested.

Under most circumstances, it would have been good enough for her to know that she would be able to walk and fly normally again soon, but in spite of that, her heart was troubled. She lay in her bed at Ponyville Urgent Care, and she stared at the wall silently until the door to her room opened.

“Hello, Miss Hooves,” said Nurse Red Heart, stepping into the room. “Feeling any better?”

Derpy stared at her for a moment before she responded. This was, without a doubt, the Nurse Red Heart she knew and had known for the better part of a decade.

“Hey,” mumbled the pegasus.

“You okay, Derpy?” asked the white Earth Pony. “You weren't hurt all that badly, but you look, well..."

Her voice trailed off into silence.

“Awful?” Derpy asked.

“Sad,” said the white earth mare.

“It just hurts a little,” said Derpy.

Nurse Red Heart pressed a button on a small panel mounted at the bedside.

“That should help,” she said.

At that moment, there came the sound of hooves in the hallway, and Chill Breeze stepped through the door.

He said nothing upon seeing her, but that did not surprise Derpy. He was not a garrulous pony, she had come to understand, but that did not mean he was unfeeling or uncaring. She saw his gray eyes soften and his shoulders go slack with the release of gathered tension. He exhaled, and shut his eyes for just a moment. For all that she could see it, Derpy knew he would not say he had been worried.

“Hi, Chill,” she said quietly.

She wanted to smile at him, but she could not make herself do it. He must have gotten the news from Rainbow Dash. She felt ashamed to have worried him.

He stepped past Nurse Red Heart, and to the bedside.

“Ditzy,” he said. “Rainbow Dash said you crashed.”

“Sort of,” she said.

He lay a foreleg over her and rested his chin on top of her head.

“I already hate Hearth's Warming,” he said. “Don't ruin Nightmare Night for me, too.”

That comment actually made her feel better. Chill Breeze hated Hearth's Warming because of somepony he'd lost at that time of year. If losing her today would have ruined Nightmare Night for him, then certainly she must mean something to him.

“I'm sorry,” she said, finally able to smile a little. “It was a really random thing; like a one-in-a-billion chance.”

“Always your luck, huh?” he said, squeezing her a little more tightly.

“Always my luck,” she said, and then she yawned. “I feel really sleepy.”

“That's the IV,” said Nurse Red Heart, busily fiddling with some of the machines near Derpy's bed. “If you feel sleepy, just go ahead and sleep. That's the best thing for you."

He hugged her tighter still.

"Just Go to sleep, Ditzy Doo,” said the stallion, releasing her from his embrace, and kissing her on the forehead. “I'll come walk you home tomorrow morning.”

“I like that,” she mumbled, beginning to fall asleep. "When you call me my real name, I mean."

She dreamed that night, but none of her dreams were nightmares. They were the strange sort of dreams that lilt between places and times; the sort of dreams that are neither particularly happy nor particularly sad. Then, in one of them, she saw her mother. Her eyes were blue, and she was simply explaining how to properly stretch one's wings to avoid a sprain.

It was an ordinary dream.

Princess Luna found Derpy at the Nightmare Night Festival. Despite a few bandages here and there, she was helping with the dunking booth this year, collecting bits from ponies in exchange for an opportunity to dunk local dignitaries in an enormous barrel of water. Of local dignitaries, there were precisely two: the mayor and Princess Twilight, both of whom stood nearby wrapped in towels and shivering. Both had been dunked several times, and it was not a warm night.

As Princess Luna approached, Twilight's eyes lit up momentarily with excitement, then widened with horror as she realized that Luna was stepping towards where Derpy sat at the ticket table.

“Well, this looks fun,” said Luna. “What are the rules?”

“Well,” said Derpy, you can pay five bits for a chance to dunk the mayor or ten for a chance to dunk Princess Twilight.

“A chance?” asked Luna.

“Yeah,” said Derpy. “You have to throw these balls at that target there. If you hit it, and hit it hard enough, it triggers the machine, and they fall in the water. You get three chances.”

“Crude,” said Luna. “I will play.”

“Well,” said Derpy... “I guess for you, it's free, on account of this is your festival... Who do you wanna dunk?”

Luna grinned broadly at Twilight Sparkle.

“I am so gonna tell Celestia on you,” growled the smaller alicorn.

“'Tis my understanding that everypony working in any capacity for this festival is a volunteer,” said Princess Luna.

“Hey, remember that time you were evil, and I saved your soul?” said Twilight, irritably.

“Can't recall,” said Luna. “Thou mayst recount the incident from yon dunking platform.”

“Well,” began Twilight, climbing the short flight of stairs to the small, wooden bench so precariously suspended over the barrel, “Once upon a time, in the magical land of Equestria, there were two regal sisters, and one of them was a JER...”

She did not manage to finish the word “jerk” before Luna's thrown ball struck the target, dropping her into the barrel of frigid water.

She came up coughing and sputtering.

“That's it!” she said, hanging her forelegs over the barrel's edge. “I gotta have a break. Mayor, please bring me my towel. Derpy, take five... or ten... or half an hour... or the rest of the night; I haven't decided!”

With that, the alicorn climbed out the barrel. She shook as much of the water from her fur as she could, and the mayor presented her with her towel. Then, both soggy ponies made their way to a small tent that had been placed nearby with a space heater for them to warm themselves during breaks.

“I was right,” said Luna. “This game is fun.”

Derpy smiled, then laughed a bit and shook her head gently.

“So, 'twould seem thou hast faced thy fear," said Luna. "Otherwise I imagine that this festival should have required far fewer costumes to have been true to theme.”

“I guess I did,” said Derpy, “but I'm so confused by it all.”

“Oh?” said Luna.

“The thing that was haunting me in my dreams...” she said, scratching at the dirt a bit with her hoof. “It came to me, right over there.”

She nodded towards the steps of town hall.

“It was me, Princess. It was Derpy Hooves or Ditzy Doo or... Maybe both of them; I don't know.”

“Well,” said the Princess, “whatever 'twas, 'twould seem thou hast placated or otherwise done away with it."

“No,” said the pegasus. “I couldn't find a way to deal with it. It's still there waiting for me in that other Ponyville, right where I left it sitting. Don't ask me how I know that, but I'm sure of it. I don't know what it wanted from me, but when I finally met it face-to-face, it didn't do anything to me. I couldn't make myself do anything to it, either. I just left it there, and walked away. I don't even know how I got back here, or how this place got back to normal.”

Princess Luna looked down at the little pegasus, and shook her head, her eyes moving over the little mare in what Derpy slowly deciphered as something between disbelief and admiration.

“What?” asked the pegasus, confused by the Princess' expression, even as she perceived it for what it was.

“Thou walketh away from that which doth embody all about thyself which thou hast come to despise, and yet thou wonder that thy world restored itself to wholeness? Thou art of uncommon character, and much it behooves thee that thou knowest this not of thyself. ”

“I don't understand,” said the pegasus.

Princess Luna stared into the sky, and Derpy did not have to follow her eyes to guess where they were fixed.

“Ditzy Doo,” she said, “much like you, I cannot forgive myself, nor can I kill the thing that haunts me. In those respects, we are the same, but in one way, certainly, thou art my better.”

She looked down at the pegasus.

“I am not ready to walk away from my nightmare,” she said, “and in truth, I doubt I ever will be.”

Derpy almost came back with a mindless platitude; a cheerful “You'll get there,” or a “Don't give up,” or some other platitude as oft-repeated and as essentially meaningless.

Instead, she opted for honesty.

“I don't think you will, either,” she said, prompting a very surprised look from the Princess.

“Oh?” said Luna, an eyebrow raised.

“I think you're proud of your nightmare,” said Derpy. “Why else would you be here? You're just gonna give nightmares to the children... and a few grown-ups too, probably. Then, you'll have to clean up the mess you made later. I mean... it has to be worth it to you. You like being Nightmare Moon.”

“I think you may be right,” said Luna, her voice assuming the more plainspoken speech patterns she tended to use when transformed into Nightmare Moon, though her shape remained her own. “But tell me this, little pony. Do you like being Derpy Hooves?”

“I like things about her,” said the pegasus.

“Enough to keep answering to that name?” asked the Princess.

“It's my name, isn't it?” replied the gray mare.

“One of them,” said Luna, smiling slyly and allowing her voice to darken a bit in its tone, "but if you will excuse me, I have something I need to go change into." With that, she turned and began to walk away.

“Princess Luna!” said Derpy, suddenly concerned by something she had only just noticed.

“Yes, Ditzy Doo?” asked the alicorn.

“Why isn't your... uh... 'scribe' with you?”

“Moondancer?” asked Luna.

Derpy nodded.

“She resigned rather suddenly this morning,” said the Princess. “I had never seen her so happy.”

The next morning, Derpy Hooves likewise resigned rather suddenly from her position with the Equestrian Parcel Service. She could not recall ever having been so happy.

finem

Author's Notes:

Sometimes, when I'm writing something, be it fanfic or original fiction or a song or a script for a play or some such, I have moments of epiphany about what I have been writing. It's not that I discover some new or amazing truth about the universe. It's more that I just come to understand why I've written something a certain way. It hit me as I was polishing up my final draft of this fic why I had chosen to do some of the things I had done.

In college, I had a friend who I realize only now that this version of Derpy Hooves' whole personality is essentially based off of. I did not even realize I was doing that when I wrote these stories. The woman in question has some distinct differences of circumstance from Derpy, but in terms of their behavior, they are almost one and the same.

What made me realize this -- or begin to have inklings of it -- was that one almost throwaway line from "Of Purple Dragons, Great and Small," where Derpy thinks "I think I wanted to be a dancer." It didn't hit me right then, but just now, as I have been doing my final edit and polish on this fic, it fell into place just whom I had inadvertently written as a pony. Suffice to say that if you like this version of Derpy, you'd like this friend of mine.

I hope you're doing well, J, wherever you are.

And I hope you're still dancing; you were always an awful klutz when you weren't.