Today had not been a good day for Derpy. It had started simple enough. She ate the usual muffin for breakfast, then was off on her postage route. Lately the already hard working mare had been pulling extra shifts when ever she voulf . She was planning to adopt a filly, and needed the extra bits.
While taking a quick short-cut over town hall, the exhausted Derpy nodded off for a second, and had accidentally gotten her head stuck in a low flying cloud. Unable to see, she had careened out of control. Luckily for her, but not for the town, Rainbow Dash was nearby, transporting a load of storm clouds. The grey mare landed softly on the shipment, but the impact sent dozens of lightning bolts earthbound. Nopony was hurt but the town hall had been damaged fairly bad.
At the time everypony had seemed to understand it had been accidental, even if they had done so a bit grudgingly, but when Derpy had returned home that evening, a pile of letters waited for her. They called her things like retarded and insulting. Derpy was understandably saddened by the unproportional hate mail, and decided to take a walk, hoping that the cool night air would calm her burdened mind. That lead into her current predicament.
She was lost
Even the most well know streets became alien under the cover of darkness and Derpy soon was completely disoriented. Not even by flying upwards for a better view, could she recognise any landmarks. the streets were oddly deserted, so Derpy decided to cut her losses, and just find a nice tree to sleep in till morning. She turned down one last street before halting her quest. This street was different. It was filled with an ominous, and at the very end of it, was a small filly.
The filly sported a light purple coat and a straw yellow mane, fairly close in colour to Derpy's own. A small horn peeked out from the blonde locks.
"What are you doing out so late" Derpy asked, concerned. "do your parents know where you are?"
"You could say that they do" the filly replied sweetly.
"That's... good" Derpy said, a bit confused by the unicorns answer. "If you're lost, you could stay at my house for the night. Only problem is that i'm kinda lost too. But if you know where Drury lane is then we'll be fine!"
"That's really nice of you ma'am. I think it's this way!" The filly said and ran quickly into a side alley.
"Wait for me!" Derpy followed her as fast as she could, but when she rounded the corner, the filly was no where to be seen.
Instead a blood red mare with a mane of auburn stood before Derpy.
"Ah miss Derpy Hooves. I've been expecting you. My name is Marephisto and I ha-"
"What kind of name is that?" Derpy interrupted, cautious of the strange mare. "Do you have a brother named Coltphisto or something?"
The mare's eye twiched and she looked at the slate-coloured mare with a look of pure ire.
"It is my kind of name. Now as I was saying I have a proposition for you. It seems your lastest mishap has garnered you quite a bit of hate, has it not" Marephisto said.
"H-how did you know that?" Derpy asked, taking a step back from the ruby made.
"I have my ways." Marephisto replied " What if I said I could make all that hate go away, and even prevent it in the future?"
"That would be great" Derpy said, wistfully.
"All I want in return is your uniqueness" Marephisto said with a sly grin.
"My uniqueness? What do you mean?" Derpy asked with a frown.
"Oh it's nothing to worry about. All that matters is that you'd be happy." Marephisto answered
"I don't know..." Derpy said hesitantly, taking a step away for the mare.
"remember miss hooves, the tallest blade of grass is always the first one cut, so why stand out from the pack? I can promise that even your eyes would be fixed" The Red made said nonchalantly.
"M-my eyes?" Derpy said, raising a hoof to her cheek as she did. Her nonstandard pupils had been the bane of her existence for as long as her memory stretched back. They made in high impossible to read or fly in a straight line, and painted a target on her for all the cruel and destructive ponies in the world.
Derpy looked at the ground for a minute, considering the dilemma. Finally, she returned her gaze back to the mare in front of her.
"OK. I'll do it" she said with a determined look.
"Excellent!" Replied Marephisto, beeming.
There was blinding flash of light, and Derpy's world went black.
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The next morning Ditzy Doo awoke in her bed. What a strange dream she had been having. She went down stairs for her customary breakfast of plain toast. After that she left for her job on the weather patrol. Yesterday, a storm cloud she was moving had just shot lightning out of no where, damaging the town hall. She had no idea what had gone wrong. Lucky no one had blamed her so it was OK! Today she thought she might go pick flowers near the Everfree forest after work. Just before she left her house for the day, she stopped. She felt that was forgetting something. Something important. Oh well if she had forgotten it it probably wasn't that important.
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In Canter lot, Dinky, a young orphaned, unicorn filly awoke with a grin. Yesterday, the sisters had told them that a nice mare from Ponyville was coming to the orphanage to adopt somepony, and Dinky had a gut feeling that she might pick her. She asked another orphan if they were ready for the visit, but the foal had just looked at her in confusion. The nuns said they didn't remember anything about a pending visitor, when she asked them. In panic, Dinky decide to wait by the gate for the mare to arrive. She waited the whole day.
Nopony ever came.