• Published 25th Jun 2014
  • 638 Views, 5 Comments

By Day, By Night - SteelChords



My name is Young Gun. I live in Ponyville, but most ponies only know of me in one form or another. I was born with a strange illness that none of the doctors could explain. I'm a full grown stallion by day, and a colt by night.

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Chapter 2 - That One Night

I'd had a lot of fun hanging out around town with Dinky. It's a shame I had to go back home to my dad. I mean, it's usually not a problem living with him, but whenever I see him he's typically had more than his fair share to drink. The times that I see him that he's not completely wasted, he's on a major hangover or just out cold altogether, and I just have to avoid him as best I can when that happens. Fortunately for me, when I got home just before the sun went down, he was passed out on the couch.

I snuck past him trying to be as quiet as I could so I wouldn't wake him up. I made my way upstairs and to my room. As usual, I shut my door, opened my window's blinds and stared out the window to watch the sunset. As the sun began to creep below the horizon, I felt my legs begin to get shorter, and my body began to get smaller. After about 10 seconds, I was a filly again. My voice was back to it's high pitched nature, and my flank was, once again, blank.

After the nightly transformation was over I grabbed my hoodie and walked back into the living room to see if my dad had woken up out of his cider coma. Luckily, like usual, he was still passed out on the couch, snoring like a chainsaw. I took this as my chance to get out of the house for a few hours and snuck back to the front door. As the door creaked open, I heard him sputter a bit in his sleep, but he didn't wake up. I closed the door, and made my way towards the town square.

Typically there weren't many ponies out at night. Most of them spend their nights sleeping peacefully, so if I decided to go out at night, I would just find a table at a local restaurant, sit down and think about whatever would come to my mind. Tonight was no different. I went around the town square hoping to spot a restaurant that hadn't closed off it's outside tables. Soon enough I found one and sat down.

It wasn't long before I started staring out into space, and my mind started drifting into randomness. I looked up at the sky and thought, "Luna sure raised a beautiful moon tonight". As I kept looking at the sky, my mind slowly wandered into thinking, "Bad clouds. Shooo. Get out from infront of the moon. You're blocking it." It then transitioned from that to, "I miss those building blocks I used to play with when I was in the doctor's waiting rooms a few years ago." Gradually my mind wandered and wandered until I was on a subject that had no correlation at all to what I originally started thinking about. I think it had something to do with bleu cheese or something.

Anyway, eventually something did manage to distract me from my train of thought careening into oblivion. I was staring straight forward at the statue in the center of the town square, and a rather large shadow flew by overhead. Initially I thought it would just fly by and ignore me, like most everypony else does at night, but this shadow stopped for a few seconds.

I knew immediately that whoever it was was looking at me. For one, I was the only other pony in the general vicinity, and you can always feel when somepony is looking at you. You can just feel it.

I watched as the shadow got smaller and smaller as it's owner descended towards the ground. Soon enough I could see a mare approaching the ground. She was a gray-coated mare with a sort of lemon-yellow mane and tail. She had two saddlebags resting on either side of her back, and she wore a blue mail cap. From where I was facing, I could only see a profile of her face. She had a dark shade of golden eyes that matched her mane and tail almost perfectly. I was trying not to stare, but I usually didn't see anypony else at night, and if I did, they never stopped anywhere near me.

I pulled my hood up over my head hoping she wouldn't notice me. I didn't want anypony asking why a filly like me was out at this hour, taking me home to wake up my dad, and ruining my next few weeks. "Please don't let her see me. Please don't let her see me." I pleaded over and over silently.

"Hey, you over there!" she called happily. Well, I never said I was a master of camouflage. I looked back up at her. She was looking in my general direction. There was no hiding out now. I feared what would happen next. Multiple scenarios ran through my mind, most of them involving police sirens and my disgruntled father. As she got closer these scenarios became scarily vivid and almost felt like they were actually happening. "I'm dead... that's it, I'm dead..." was all my mind could put together.

"Please don't rat me out! My dad will literally kill me." I pleaded. This got her attention as she paused for a moment. Her friendly smile was replaced by a look of sorrow and concern. I almost felt sorry for her. The last thing I wanted to do was drag anypony else into my problems, but here I was, probably about to do just that.

"It's ok, I won't tell anypony. I promise" she said with a reassuring smile. "Is it alright if I sit here with you?" she asked.

I nodded and motioned to the other empty seat at the table. She sat down opposite me. This was the first time that I actually got the chance to get a good look at her face. It was normal for the most part, all except for her eyes. Just like Dinky's eyes, hers weren't exactly aligned. If anything, her's were more obviously misaligned than Dinky's eyes. It surprised me to see another mare in town with that same attribute. I quickly tried not to look like I was staring.

"So, what are you doing out here at this hour?" she asked me, breaking the momentary silence.

"Well, my dad's passed out on the couch at home, and I figured tonight was as good a night as any to get out of the house to think" I replied. "What about you, what are you doing out so late?"

She looked down at the table for a moment and looked back up at me. "Oh, it's just work stuff. You wouldn't be interested."

This frustrated me a little bit. At least for me, saying I wouldn't be interested in something automatically makes me interested. Just like how when somepony tells me not to worry about something, I begin to worry about it nonstop. "No, tell me. I don't mind" I reassured her.

She sighed softly. "Well, I work as a mailpony. I was heading back to the office to see if there were any packages that may have needed to be delivered. When I got there, there was one package left that needed to be delivered, and I just sort of jumped into trying to help get it delivered before I thought too much about it. The package was supposed to be delivered that morning, and it's destination was clear across Ponyville. As soon as I went to deliver the package, I realized that the sun was going down, and that I was going to be really late getting there, and even later getting back. But I had already said that I would deliver it, and I'm not a mare to go against her word. So I'm just getting back from delivering that package."

"Oh, that's nice" I replied with a grin. "You're pretty lucky. I'd love to be able to work as a mailpony. Always traveling around town and getting the chance to meet all new ponies. It sounds like the dream job."

She seemed to perk up at the mention of this. "Well, if you were a little older, I'd say that you could go ahead and apply for a job. We've been running a little short on employees lately, and my boss isn't getting many new applications" she replied.

"Oh, that's nice. I could probably work during the day sometimes, but I don't think my schedule would allow me to work at night" I said.

She giggled at this, as I'm sure the idea of a filly, like me, getting a job sounded rather far fetched. I'm sure from her perspective it was completely far fetched, so I didn't let it offend me.

"I'm sure you would be a great mailpony" she said. "Since you brought it up, why don't you put in an application. My boss is getting pretty desperate as far as who he can hire. He may even hire you on the spot." I tried not to take that the wrong way, and nodded in excitement.

She smiled warmly and we both started laughing. It felt good to just clear the air. It felt good to talk to another pony without having to worry about them judging me. She seemed to not care that I was rather different than most other fillies.

"My name's Young Gun, by the way. What's your name?"

"Oh, my name's Derpy Hooves, but most ponies just call me Derpy" she said with a smile.

"Oh, that's cool. So, if you don't mind me asking, do you usually work late, or do you have some friends that you typically hang out with around this time" I asked, hoping I wasn't getting into a personal subject.

She smiled and said, "Well, I have a couple of friends, but usually around this time I'm at home with my daughter. Speaking of which, she's probably wondering where I am right now." She prepped herself as if she was about to leave. "She's actually about your age I'd say. You two might get along pretty well."

"Oh, really? Is she in Cheerilee's class at school?" I asked hopefully. It would make going through school so much more bearable if I had another friend.

"Yes, she is. If you see her in class, you two might be really good friends. I know she's said she'd been wanting a friend to talk to and hang out with at school" she replied. "Well, I'm sorry to cut this short, but I really do need to get back to her. She's probably a bit worried that I've been gone for so long. I hope I'll get the chance to talk to you again. You're a pretty nice filly."

"Oh, thanks. I'm sure I'll see you again sometime, since you're always traveling delivering mail and such. It's been fun talking with you too" I replied. "So, I guess I'll see you later?"

"Sure" she said walking back out to the center of the square, spreading her wings to take off. "I'll see you around."

And with that, she took off into the sky and disappeared from sight. I walked back out to the center of the square to see if I could spot where she had flown off to, but even with the extra light from the moon, I couldn't make out where she'd gone. Wait a second... THE MOON!!

"Pony Feathers! The moon's in the center of the sky. I've been out for almost 2 and a half hours. If my dad's woken up, I'm gonna be dead!"

I raced back home as fast as my legs and developing wings could carry me. Although I was going as fast as I could, it almost felt like I was in slow motion. My heart was racing, and I was sweating buckets. My dad had to still be unconscious. If he had woken up and noticed that I was gone... I didn't even want to think about it.

I sprinted down my street until I was at my front door. I put the side of my head against the door to hear if there was any movement. There didn't seem to be any significant sounds coming through. "He must still be out cold." I thought hopefully.

I creaked open the door inch by inch, trying not to wake him up. It seemed to be working, until I heard movement from the part of the room that the couch was in.

"Huh? Who's there?" I heard a weak voice say, slurring it's words together. "If that's you, Young Gun, you better not be trying to sneak out. I'll have to teach you a lesson if I catch you sneaking out."

I closed the door as quietly as possible, snuck my way into the kitchen and called out, "I'm in here, Dad. I'm just getting a quick snack and some water."

I waited for a response... There was a bit of mumbling and some more slurred speech that I couldn't understand, and then I just heard the chainsaw snoring start up again. I breathed a sigh of relief. "Ok, that was a bit too close" I grabbed some water and trotted back up to my room to go to bed. I was gonna make a new friend tomorrow, so I needed to get some sleep.

Author's Note:

So now Young Gun's met Dinky's mother without realizing it, and both Dinky and Derpy have met Young Gun, but will they ever figure out that they've both become friends with the same pony, and will Young Gun figure out the relationship between Dinky and Derpy? You say your relationship on Facebook is complicated, this is confusing me, even.

Anyway, until the next chapter, leave a thumbs up if you liked this, comment if you feel compelled to, and follow if you want more random oddball craziness from me in the future. I'll see you guys later. Take care :)

Comments ( 3 )
Comment posted by SteelChords deleted Aug 7th, 2014

Full grown stallion, not colt. Otherwise, 'tis a most uncommon concept, and executed reasonably thus far.

4813185 Thank you, I knew there was another word that I was supposed to be using, but I couldn't think of it lol

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