//------------------------------// // Derpy // Story: Duskfall // by Celestial Swordsman //------------------------------// Chapter 5 It was hours till dawn when Dusk awoke. Overheated from her little protective cocoon, she pulled herself up and swiped at it until it had all dissipated or stuck to something else. She was annoyed with herself for letting Ditzy treat her like a foal. “Well, I guess I did want it at the time,” she sighed, and realized that’s what was really bugging her. She walked quietly—which it seemed to be impossible not to do, this cloud-for-floor stuff was a pretty good idea after all. She walked to the door and sat down. Why anypony would want a doorway, when you could walk through the walls was beyond her. Her full eyes scanned the sky-vista. To correct on the time, the sun was lurking somewhere under the horizon, just like yesterday, so it was still indefinably dusk-dawn. It was hours before it should have been dawn, if there was going to be a dawn. You know, astronomy, meteorology, politics and stuff. With the vista lit by a dim, unseasonable orange glow, she could see the other cloud homes floating in an uninspired grid. They were arranged in a few layers, with the Doo house inhabiting the bottom level. The factories below churned out columns of smoke that drifted indolently through the pegasi housing. Faint sounds of machinery rose off of the industrial floor and whispered a white noise to this side of Canterlot. Wartime production meant that the factories operated around the clock. The war had ended in stalemate, and the treaty looked good on TV, but the factories never stopped. Perhaps the smog was responsible for the persistent irritation in her eyes. Living in this industrial haze couldn’t be good for a pony’s health, but zoning laws meant that both the factories and the new pegasi refugees were consigned to the far side of the mountain from the main city. Celestia liked to see the open blue sky from her palace, so she insisted that smokestacks and floating houses be hidden from view. Some particulate from the furnaces below was somehow absorbed into the clouds, turning every dwelling gray like the smog. The houses, the air, the concrete buildings, and Dusk, were all gray. She turned from the drab scene to find color inside the home. There was a picture here and there on the wall, some fake flowers in a vase (with water in it, strange), but the other furnishings were white, unfortunately. Her eyes were naturally drawn to a splash of real color in the middle of the one-room apartment. Ditzy’s yellow mane flowed out onto the puff of cloud that served as her bed. The puff was dyed a playful blue, and as she lounged comfortably, she seemed to Dusk like icing on a cupcake. The strange guest noticed her mouth water and her pulse rise. She didn’t customarily go long between having some sort of fix. She blinked a few times and decided to find another one. Using her discovery that cloud travel was almost noiseless, she stole across the room to a cabinet. Gingerly opening it, she spied—no drugs or booze. If she wanted a sugar high, or to binge on soap, she could have made it happen. There was not even a skanky magazine, only the sweet little home of a simple and innocent pegasus. She looked back to her hostess, whose placidly snoozing form was still the most interesting thing in the apartment. Ditzy was… curvy. Dusk tracked each curve one at a time. Miss Doo surely wouldn’t reciprocate any of these feelings, Dusk reflected. “I must be pretty ugly,” she thought. “A pretty pony would probably just kick me out. This has been my time for being kicked out. She’s probably stronger than me; I couldn’t even fly here. Maybe she’s in a suggestible dream state, and I could whisper in her ear...” She stopped herself. With some surprise, she realized that she didn’t want to take advantage of this pony, much less overpower her. She remembered how afraid she had been when Onyx looked at her like this. She certainly didn’t want Ditzy Doo to feel that. She searched her mind to count all of the kind, innocent ponies she knew. The cross-eyed flyer was the only one, the one who had descended like an angel and picked her up from the gutter of despair. Was this how she thanked Derpy Hooves for taking her in without any cost or expectation? She feared that Derpy would never let her call her by that name if she found out what kind of a pony she had taken in. What happened to “I’M A MARE”, anyway? Had she actually gotten her hopes up for the colt at the bar? It could have been an interesting night with all that handsomeness, leather, and probably Vinyl Scratch playing in the background. She really wasn’t used to being the weak one though. It still intimidated her; she couldn’t bear the risk of feeling as helpless as she did with Onyx and… someone else. Thinking about what she’d done didn’t make her feel any better about it either. A smiling picture of a unicorn colt with blue hair hung on the opposite wall. “Good for her,” she thought. Perhaps she wasn’t as turned on as she was jealous. “Who gets mistaken for a colt in an interrogation? And who wouldn’t be jealous of those hindquarters?” “Why are you looking at my butt?” Ditzy asked, blinking but otherwise motionless. “I was, um, curious what your cutie mark was about?” Dusk lied clumsily. “Oh!” Ditzy piped up pleasantly, “What does it look like?” Dusk hoped for a more meaningful answer, but only managed, “Bubbles?” “Exactly!” She sat up grinning. “I’m good with bubbles.” Dusk thought incredulously, “Good with bubbles?! Who even thought that was a real ability? What could be more useless?” Ditzy asked, “What are you good at?” Dusk’s heart sank. She looked away ashamed, and mumbled, “I don’t think I’m good at anything.” “Aww,” Ditzy’s eyes rolled around halfway and then back to their starting place. “I’m sure you’ll find something.” Ditzy stretched and fluttered up to the ceiling. She blew into a little glass fixture until it glowed and brightened the room. She sank to the floor and trotted lightly to the mirror, where she started brushing out her mane. “No pony likes me anyway. Everypony thinks I’m ugly, and they even think I’m a colt sometimes.” “You poor thing,” she sympathized, “but that’s what happens when you don’t take care of yourself, silly!” She put a hoof around Dusk and pulled her in front of the mirror. Her whole coat was matted and disheveled. “Here, we’ll fix you up!” Those Derpy eyes went everywhere as the wonderful, bubbly pony messed up from every possible angle. She could brush herself effortlessly but apparently it was different on someone else. Dusk didn’t want to say anything to upset her. “Oh dear,” she said when she looked back at the mirror, “Maybe you should do it.” She passed Dusk the brush. Dusk dangled it awkwardly and explained, “I don’t usually do it with my hooves.” “Well, what do you do it with, your tail?” the misfit barber chuckled, “You’re silly!” “Never mind,” Dusk huffed, and she began to use her hooves. “Your mane is cut kinda short, maybe you should grow it out longer.” Her short hairs were sickly, dingy white on her anorexic body. “Here, this should help,” Ditzy said, taking the brush. She ran some water over it and applied a solitary drop from a tiny bottle. True enough, the new treatment had the mane clean, white, and glistening. Not bad. Dusk managed to arrange it in a few cute curls and was really feeling much better about the whole thing. “You should eat more,” Ditzy added. “Speaking of which, are you hungry?” Perhaps over-excited from the unusual positive contact, Dusk accidently let herself say, “Do you like bananas?” Oh no, I did not just say that. I wouldn’t wish something like that on her. “Oh, sure, I have a big bag of bananas right here,” Ditzy Doo smiled brightly as she pulled it out of some hiding place. “Holy shit!” Dusk exclaimed in horror. “Don’t talk like that,” Ditzy admonished, “if you want one, just ask.” She put a hoof into the bag and grabbed one. Dusk snapped. “Don’t touch it!” She swatted the banana from Ditzy’s hoof. “Why would you do this to me?!” she yelled hoarsely. Ditzy gasped, and looked hurt. “I—I was being nice to you! You can’t say dirty words and yell at me in this apartment!” “You can’t give me bananas!” she sobbed, “You can’t tell me what to do!” Recovering from her panic left Dusk standing awkwardly with a very upset Ditzy Doo. She couldn’t believe she had just blown it, and she couldn’t stand to see her bubbly companion now bristling defensively. She ran out the door. Derpy Hooves shook her head, saying disappointedly, “I just don’t know what went wrong.” After eating a good breakfast, she strapped on her saddlebag and stepped out into the near-night time of another new work day. She sighed. Judging by the continued astronomical disturbance, people would be sending a lot of mail. It would be extra important, and guess who was on the job. Ditzy hopped into the air and rolled towards the post office. From behind one of the corners of the house, Dusk watched her leave. Running out here was not an ideal solution after all because of her sketchy flight capability. She was stuck on the cloud for now. Well, not exactly stuck. She figured that she could probably glide down to the ground without getting hurt; it was gaining altitude that was the problem. She looked at the industrial complex below her. It glowered and brooded in haze and threatened with sharp edges, furnaces, and razor wire. A great chimney pointed at her like a smoking gun. Fleeing from the guilt on the ground, she considered other dimensions of travel. The spacing of the grid in this sky development was just wide enough that Dusk couldn’t jump to neighboring apartments. If she left she couldn’t come back, but she didn’t see any more inviting place. She was angry. No pony told her what to do; yet she was trapped here by fate and fear. Did she go back into that harsh world? She had not actually experienced that much of it, but in her mind it was all prisons and factories and bars that kick her out. There was nowhere she could be happy. “It’s all because of that stupid pegasus,” her clouded mind told her. “Who actually has a BAG of BANANAS? She was just waiting for me.” Dusk picked up her sooty hoof and drove it into the wall of Ditzy’s house. This would teach that Derpy pony. She dragged her hoof across it, leaving a deep impression in the semisolid cloud. She moved her hoof about in quick, vicious strokes until she had delivered her message. It read “RETARDED FAGGOT” in large letters. She thought she would be more satisfied for being such a clever rebel. Still afraid to leave, she turned around and leaned against the defaced wall. Dusk gave herself a brief scowl. She was no expert, but she was pretty sure you weren’t supposed to hang around after you tagged a house. It was kind of stupid. “I am kind of stupid,” she thought. She was too mentally unstable to handle a little fruit or kindness. She was probably really mad because Ditzy wasn’t a horny colt who would distract her from being so miserable in this miserable world. She hated to look at the city that had become so bitter. What a stupid world. Not able to find free air in the sky, the city seemed to choke on itself and its dreams of conquest. Dreams that were nightmares, nightmares dreamed by one sleeper but lived by all. She peered through breaks in the cityscape to get a glimpse of the open country. With the sun in hibernation, the crops would yield little. Without its light, the world, but for a few, would die. Far away, a chain of lights dragged across the atmosphere. She had once been proud of them. The huge airships boasted thick armor and powerful weapons, held aloft by a combination of magic and science. Dusk could see them clearer when she closed her eyes. Several decks hung under the buoyant gas cells and housed control stations, crew quarters, and massive turrets. These were protected by a seamless metal hull that hid the contours of the blimp, giving an appearance closer to an ocean-bound vessel. All of this unnatural weight was supported by the helium above and the engines underneath. The engines were not true machines but industrialized magic. A small number of unicorn “engineers” kept the propellers spinning with animation spells, and firefly dust was burned to add thrust. Faint blue or pink vapors from these operations trailed out of the shafts that sheltered the engines from attack, except for threats directly below. “Highness Glory class: 150 meters. Four six-inch guns, fifteen machine guns, 36,000 pounds of bombs. 33 knots. Crew: 130.” Her heart had once swelled with pride and joy to see the mightiest force in Equestria sail forth, emblazoned with the gleaming emblem of the sun. After Celestia’s shocking disappearance, the Solar Empire had only one place to throw all of its borrowed hate and fear. No doubt politicians and generals had jumped to conclude that it was Luna’s doing, and pushed for an immediate attack to save the world from eternal darkness. The Solar armada flew slowly above advancing columns of troops, all heading to fulfill their purpose: the destruction of the New Lunar Republic. Only it wasn’t Luna’s fault and war wouldn’t fix anything. Ponies would just kill each other as the world starved, fighting for lines on a map no one would remember. As Dusk watched the columns creeping away, all she saw was an ironic funeral procession. She wished they would stop, but it was out of her hooves now. She looked back at the defaced wall. “Am I being an asshole?” RETARDED FAGGOT. As long as she was standing by the words, they seemed to point to her. “It’s pretty accurate,” Dusk admitted. The world didn’t like her, and it shouldn’t. Maybe she should jump off the cloud and not use her wings. The jagged slabs below would eagerly give death if she asked for it. Did the world really need a guilty, ugly, asshole pony? At least she would die 20% cooler with her new manejob. That actually made her feel better. For a while, Ditzy Doo had made her feel like she belonged. She had given food, shelter and compassion without getting anything in return. That was worth sticking around for, maybe until the end of the world in a few days. She wiped the wall clean and went back inside.