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."