You angrily stomp down one of Ponyville's many streets, clenching your fists so hard it almost hurts.
It's bullshit, it's fucking bullshit.
You're the one who should have gotten the job, not that stupid unicorn that's not even qualified to stack boxes. At first glance you'd think that a land of magical, colorful ponies would be a great place to live but it really isn't when everyone is so prejudiced against humans that they'll hire a literal retard over someone who'd actually do the job well. You stop for a second and close your eyes, taking a deep breath to try and calm yourself down but you just can't get the face of that stupid unicorn out of your head.
When you reopen your eyes and start walking again your vision is suddenly filled with a gray mass of fur and feathers, preceding the impact to your head by a mere fraction of a second. You painfully fall onto your ass, eventually ending up on your back from the inertia.
You're a little groggy from the fall but you can feel something warm and heavy lying on top of you. With some effort you manage to metaphorically shake off the dizziness and notice that your vision is still filled with the same gray fur from before. One of Ponyville's pegasi must have flown into you.
You clench your fists and sit up, angrily pushing the pony off of you. It's surprisingly light, landing in the dirt next to you with a surprised yelp.
"Can't you watch where you're going, you fucking retard!?", you yell at the pony as you get to your feet and roughly pat the dirt off of your pants.
You really don't need this shit right now.
However, instead of responding to your accusations the pony that had caused you to fall down, a gray-coated mare with a blonde mane as you can now clearly see, keeps lying on the ground in front of you, covering her head with her forehooves.
"I'm sorry", she whimpers as she starts crying, breaking down into hysterical sobs in mere seconds.
You notice from the corner of your eye that ponies are beginning to gather around you, silently looking at you and the cowering pegasus with their big, judging eyes.
Fuck, not this again.
You anger almost immediately dissipates as the cold feeling of regret spreads throughout your body.
"H-Hey now, I'm really sorry for yelling at you, please don't cry", you say as soothingly as you possibly can, though the pony in front of you doesn't seem to react to it at all.
The surrounding ponies are starting to whisper and even though it's barely audible it feels almost deafening, causing trails of cold sweat to run down your back. In an attempt to salvage the situation you reach down and gently put your hand on the mare's shoulder, at which point she actually stops crying for a second and raises her head.
She looks up at you with big, golden eyes, slightly red from crying, though there's something else about them ten times more noticeable: Her eyes are completely misaligned, and while one of them is fixated onto you the other one seems to be aimlessly staring off into the distance.
"Are you alright?"
"No", the mare answers between sobs, "Mr. Hoofington is gone and I can't find him and I'm really hungry."
Okay?
"Well, then why don't we go into Sugarcube Corner?", you say as you point at the building next to you, "I'll get you something to eat and you can tell me all about Mr. Hoofton."
And more importantly it will get the two of you out of the open and just maybe your reputation won't be completely ruined after this.
You hold out a hand and force yourself to give the mare in front of you a warm smile, though you feel like it probably looks absolutely terrible to anyone looking. After hesitantly looking at your hand for a second though, the pony in front of you reaches out with her hoof, allowing you to pull her up.
"Follow me!", you say with no small amount of relief as you lead the mare out of the circle of onlookers and into Sugarcube Corner, where the two of you thankfully seem to be alone.
Currently, though it's sign reads 'OPEN', no one else seems to be at Sugarcube Corner, not even the counter where the various pastries are lined up seems to be manned, or rather, ponied. You walk up to the counter with the sniffling pony following closely behind you, but even under closer inspection no one seems to be there.
"Pinkie?", you call out, not getting a response other than your own echo.
Whatever, you'll just take what you want and leave the money here.
"What would you like?", you ask the pony next to you.
"A muffin", she answers weakly, the fact that she was crying just a few moments ago still apparent in her voice.
You fish two bits out of your pocket and put them onto the counter before taking out one of the desired pastries. Despite her intense strabismus the small horse's eyes seem to fixate on the muffin in your hand and you're just about to give it to her when you get a better idea:
If you were to just give her the muffin, she'll just eat it and leave, but if you get her to sit down with you she'll probably stay a little longer. You should probably try to keep the amount of ponies that see her crying to a minimum and more likely than not she'll calm down in a few minutes.
You sit down at one of the empty tables and put down the muffin on top of it. Your plan was to make her sit down this way, however, the moment you set down the muffin the pony leaps at it and snatches it up with her hooves like a bolt of gray lightning.
Instinctively you jerk your hand back and when you recover from the surprise you look at the pony to see that she's already stuffed the whole muffin into her mouth, swallowing it down only a few seconds later. Never before have you seen anyone eat that fast, and you've seen Pinkie Pie eat.
"You must have been pretty hungry, huh?"
The mare was busy picking clean the muffin liner with her mouth, but when she hears your voice she looks up at you with small crumbs stuck on her snout.
"Yes", she says, "I haven't eaten anything today or yesterday and it's been a really long time since I had a muffin."
Now that you get a better look at her you notice that her coat and mane are rather dirty, and not only from when she fell down earlier. Judging by her smell she didn't take a bath in at least a week either.
Is she homeless or something?
The pony's eyes meet yours and she quickly falters under your gaze, meekly looking away to the side with a slight tremble in her body.
Did you accidentally look at her angrily or something? Ponies always seem to think that you're in a bad mood even when you're not. Sure, you yelled at her earlier, but you're being nice to her, are you not?
You sigh and get up from the much too small pony chair.
Well, you wouldn't want to trouble her with your presence so you might as well go.
You start walking towards the exit when the pony speaks up from behind you:
"Wait!"
You turn back around to see that the pony is looking at you, or at least she is with one eye.
"Where are you going?", she asks with a strange sincerity in her voice.
"Home I guess", you reply.
Normally you'd expect that the words she chose would be used more aggressively, but she somehow made it sound like she just wanted to know where you're going. She still doesn't seem to overly like your answer though.
"But you said that you'll help me find Mr. Hoofington", she says with a troubled expression on her face and a tone of voice that almost makes it sound like she's feeling betrayed.
Is she trying to guilt trip you or something? You don't exactly appreciate it when people, or ponies for that matter, try to manipulate you like that.
Now that you think about it, however, while you didn't promise to help her you did say that you'd at least listen to her.
You walk back to the table and sit down again.
"Right, sorry."
Your time is pretty much worthless anyways, so you might as well keep your word.
You had expected the mare to sit down on the other side of the table but she instead walks up to you and extends one of her forehooves. After an awkward second where you just stare at her hoof in confusion you understand that she wants you to shake it. Realizing your mistake you quickly take hold of the hoof and promptly receive an overly enthusiastic and clumsy handshake.
"My name is Derpy", the pony states, "Mommy said that it's very important to properly greet ponies when you meet them and we didn't do that yet."
Her mommy? Isn't she an adult?
Also you're aware that pony names are a little weird but calling your daughter Derpy when her eyes are misaligned like that seems kind of cruel to you.
"I'm Anon", you reply dryly as you motion for the seat opposite of you.
Let's get this over with.
Derpy takes the hint and sits down on the other side of the table, where her smell thankfully doesn't hit you as strongly. For a few seconds she just sits there, looking at you silently and apparently awaiting further input.
"So", you prompt her, "You said you were looking for someone, right?"
"Yes, I'm looking for Mr. Hoofington", she answers as if you're supposed to know who that is.
"Well, could you tell me a little more about him?", you ask when it seems like she's not going to elaborate, "Like, what does he look like?"
"He has a gray coat like me, but with a brown mane and he always looks tired and sick", Derpy says thoughtfully, "And he often cries when he's alone in his room and sometimes I come in because I want to cheer him up but then he gets angry at me."
What the fuck?!
Not only did that have nothing to do with your question at all, it also sounds like the guy has some serious problems.
"How do you know Mr. Hoofington?", you ask cautiously.
"He's the pony that takes care of me and it's his job to make sure I have something to eat and to help me with all the complicated things that I don't understand."
You had already gotten the impression that she's not very bright, even for a pony, but apparently she has some sort of legitimate disability if she needs someone else to look after her. Though by the looks of it that someone hasn't been doing his job recently.
"When was the last time you saw Mr. Hoofington?", you ask her.
"Three days ago I went to bed and I said good night to Mr. Hoofington but he didn't answer because he drank alcohol and he was already asleep and then I went to bed and when I woke up I was all alone. And then I waited for him to come home but he didn't come home and I went to sleep again and I waited for him to come home again. But there was nothing to eat anymore and I got really hungry but I didn't want to leave the house because Mr. Hoofington said that I'm not allowed to leave the house by myself. And then I went to sleep again and when I woke up I was really hungry and I left the house and then I walked into you."
If you're being honest Derpy's story doesn't shed the most favorable light onto Mr Hoofington, after all it pretty much sounds like he's a piece of shit drunk who just decided to ditch her, but still for someone like Derpy it's probably pretty bad when her caretaker just disappears.
"I don't think I can help you find Mr. Hoofington", you say as you get up, "But I think I know someone who can."