41: Take Me Out to the Derp Game
“So what do you think?” asked Karyn.
Derpy looked at the small paper objects held out to her. “I don’t know. Didn’t we already do this ball game of yours?”
“That was a completely different game, with a completely different ball. And more importantly, we’re not going to play, we’re just going to sit and watch.”
“Well, I like the sitting-and-watching part, but—hey! Did you spend money on those tickets? You know you’re supposed to be budgeting.”
Karyn went over to her computer. “I have been. Don’t worry. These were given to the college by the team trying to promote it and get people to come to the game.”
“That sounds a little shady.”
“They figure that if people come for free, that they’ll buy food and drinks and souvenirs. I won’t do that, so I won’t lose any money.”
Derpy was still a little skeptical. “Tell me about the game.”
“Well, this one you can use your hands for, and you kind of have to. One side throws a ball, the other tries to hit it with a stick. It gets complicated from there, but that’s the basic idea. This game is just training, so we won’t see any of the big stars, but it’ll be fun anyway.”
“All right, we’ll go check it out.”
They had to take the light rail, but it was not crowded and Derpy was able to ride without getting in anyone’s way. The ballpark was of the “retro-modern” architectural school, scaled down for the minor leagues. There was a picnic area and an old-fashioned press box, but the seats were padded and enlarged for the growing waistlines of the population. Karyn’s tickets led them down the third-base line and Karyn was pleased to see that they had end seats.
“You take the one by the aisle and just keep your wings folded in. Watch for passersby in the aisle and don’t bump anyone and we’ll be fine.”
Other fans filed into the park, but an unwelcome guest arrived as well. The sky, already patched with clouds, grew ominous and heavy. The wind blew cold against Karyn’s cheek. She held out hope, but soon enough drops were stinging her and the ground crew was rolling a tarp onto the infield.
“This sucks,” she said, taking out her phone and connecting to the internet. “I didn’t check the forecast. Now it says that this will be around for four hours or so. They’ll delay the game, and maybe wind up canceling it.”
Derpy said nothing.
“And it always takes longer. Even if the rain slows down to a drizzle, they’ll wait until it’s all gone away, then taking the tarp off and letting the players warm back up takes forever too.”
Derpy continued to say nothing.
“Oh, no! Don’t give me that look. I can feel your look. Just forget about it. You have to let storms happen when they happen. It could mess up the whole ecosystem.”
Derpy remained silent.
“It’s not that I like getting washed out, but everyone’s going to notice if the clouds get pushed out of the way.”
Derpy, very deliberately, sat back in her seat.
“All right,” said Karyn.
“You mean it?”
“But don’t be too obvious. Try to just thin them out a little.” It was too late. Derpy was out of her chair and into the air before Karyn could finish her sentence. She leaned back and watched the sky. No one else saw any deliberate action, but it was certainly unusual for weather. The still clouds started churning and rolling, but seemed to brighten as the sun peeked through.
It was closer to ten minutes than ten seconds, but a break let through the sun. With the newfound brightness Karyn thought she saw a flash of reflection from across the field.
“Who brings binoculars to a minor-league park? You can see just fine anywhere in the field.” But she put it out of her mind as she felt Derpy return to her seat.
“Whew,” said Derpy. “I hope this counts as my exercise for the day.”
“Well, I think technically you’re supposed to work out above and beyond what you would normally do. Like, if you have to go to the market to buy food, you’d walk around there, but you’d do that even when you weren’t trying to lose weight, so you need to do it again.”
“You’ve got to be kidding!”
Karyn smirked. “But since Sunday’s supposed to be a day of rest after all. We’ll call it even.”
“Hooray!”
“Actually, they used to enforce the ‘day of rest’ thing so much that they didn’t even play ball then.”
“So what did they do?” asked Derpy. “Just sit home and drink?”
“No, you couldn’t drink either. Humans were very restricted once upon a time. Some think it was better back then.”
“What do you think?”
Karyn pointed out to the ball field. “Here you’ve got families gathered, people laughing together on a sunny day—and we have you to thank for that—in a setting that could be right out of the olden days. We can preserve the good of the past as a subculture, rather than letting it fetter us. That’s just an opinion though.”
She went and bought drinks, making sure to get a diet soda for Derpy. She was back in her seat as the announcer started his pitch.
“Oh, dear.”
“What is it?” asked Derpy.
“I just realized. The local team has a mascot.”
“So?”
“Well, they’re called the broncos.”
Derpy watched as what was clearly, to her eyes, a human in a bad costume of something a little like an earth pony came out of a tunnel and began throwing T-shirts at the crowd. “I think I’m a little offended at that,” she said.
“You’re not the only one offended at sports mascots. Sometimes they change them, if they’re offensive to aboriginals for example. But you’ll have tough luck getting them to change that one.”
They settled back and watched the game. Derpy enjoyed the play even though it was frequently interrupted for more contests and presentations by the insulting pseudo-pony. They headed back to the light rail station chatting about the game. Karyn was deep in the reverie of conversation when she heard a voice behind her.
“Fancy seeing you here.”
The voice had a familiar greasy edge to it, and as she turned around she saw a familiar greasy face.
“Albert, was it?”
“That’s right. Funny weather we’re having too. We’re lucky that that storm passed by. Well, I shouldn’t say passed by. Disappeared is more like it.”
“Yes, lucky.” Karyn kept her answers short, not wanting to give anything away.
“And another strange thing. Most people covered their heads when those clouds rolled in. Only one was actually looking at the sky as if she expected it to clear.”
“Now how could you read expectations on my face from across the field?”
He puffed his cheeks out in a smile. “First, because I have an excellent pair of binoculars. Second, because I’m a detective, and it’s my job to see what the average person misses. And third, because you basically just confirmed that it was you.”
Karyn grimaced and returned to her policy of silence.
“I want to know how you knew that the weather would clear,” he continued. “Or did you cause it to clear? Because I think everyone would be very interested in acquiring that skill and putting it to good use.”
Karyn rolled over in her mind how best to respond. She thought about laughing at him and asking if he thought she was some sort of witch. She also considered just denying everything and telling him that he was making everything up. But, still wary of how he twisted words, she said “I have nothing to say.”
“What’s a ‘Derpy’?”
She tried to force her face to show no expression. He was clearly trying to psych her out, and she was not going to let him. But she would have to respond to that one. “I’m sorry, what was that word?”
“When you talk in public, people are allowed to listen. I’ve heard you talk about something called ‘Derpy.’ I want to know what it is.”
With the stress of the situation, Karyn’s mind took that moment to give her a clever play on words. “You must have heard ‘therapy,’ which is what you need.”
Albert laughed. “I know what I heard. I’m going to figure you out, Karyn.”
She didn’t like how he used her name, and walked off. Both she and Derpy held their tongues on the trip home in case Albert was following them. Once they reached the dorm and Derpy turned off her invisibility spell, they were able to show their fear and annoyance.
“I know I’m not supposed to disparage another species,” said Derpy, “but I do not like that guy.”
“Yeah, I wonder if you hate him or Mike more.”
Derpy pulled up at that. “It’s different. You have feelings for Mike, and you’re a friend, so I have to care a little. But this one, I don’t even know if he has any friends, and I have no sympathy for him.”
Karyn was about to respond when she saw a flash of light from outside the window. “What was that?”
A minute later, what it was became clear as Karyn’s e-mail popped up indicating a new message. It was a picture, zoomed in and grainy, but clearly showed Derpy, wings akimbo, in all her pegasus-ness. The text part of the message read, “Let’s talk. –A.”
“Oh, this is not good,” said Derpy. “Do you want me to come with you?”
“Do I have a choice?” Karyn put her coat on and went back outside. On the way out they discussed new strategy.
It didn’t take him long to find them. His grin was wide and annoying.
“Don’t you know that stalking and taking pictures of other people’s homes is illegal?” Karyn said.
“Nominally. But a detective, in enforcing the law, sometimes has to skirt it himself. All right, what is that?”
“What does it look like?”
“I’m assuming that it’s the reason for all your strange behavior. Is it intelligent? Does it speak?”
They were out of hearing range for anyone else, so Derpy got close to Albert’s ear. “She speaks quite well.”
The combination of the unexpectedness of the sound and the initial sibilance caused Albert to pull away and flop like an oversized fish. “What is that?”
“Oh, but I thought you knew everything,” said Karyn.
Derpy slapped him lightly with a wing, making him freak out more. “How are you, or it, or she, whatever, doing that? How can you make something invisible?”
“Magic.”
“There’s no such thing.”
“Oh?” Karyn smirked. “Derpy, he doesn’t think that magic is real. Why don’t we show him?”
A second later, Derpy was using her spot cancellation spell to remove Karyn from frozen time. They looked at Albert’s unmoving body. “What should we do with him?” asked Karyn.
“Let’s start by drawing on his face. No one likes that.”
“Good idea. I’ll get a Sharpie.”
One was found, and she clumsily drew a mustache and glasses on his face. “You have a lot of canvas to work with there,” said Derpy.
Karyn laughed at that. “What next?”
“Well, do we want to unfreeze him and let him notice that first?”
“We can do that. Let me take out my compact mirror.”
They set up and Derpy restarted time. Albert could feel the change to his face, and from his perspective saw Karyn jump from one position to another, holding up the small mirror and showing the humiliating defacing.
“Or how about this?” said Karyn. Derpy used the spell again and they talked strategy.
“Turn his clothes inside out!”
“OK, but only his shirt. I’m not taking off his pants.”
“Fair enough,” said Derpy. Albert was wearing a collared shirt with buttons, so Karyn switched it to not only inside-out but backwards as well. She then got a more devious idea and buttoned one cuff to the other and tied his shoelaces together as well.
“Go ahead.” Derpy again started time, and Albert, suddenly straight-jacketed, flailed around until he tripped. “Whoops!” said Karyn, but Derpy was already on it, stopping time before he hit the ground.
“We don’t really want to hurt him.”
“You’re right.” Karyn picked him up and propped him against the wall of the nearest building, then untied the shoelaces. “Let him go.”
When he started moving again, Albert had the vertigo of having his perspective changed. What was down was now sideways, and his momentum was gone.
“Had enough?” said Karyn.
“Yes! But I still want to know how you did it.”
“Ugh, you are really relentless.” She watched for his reaction, and saw none. Derpy turned visible. “Why’d you stop time again?”
“Because as fun as this is, it’s not solving our problem. We have to face it. Another human knows too much about me. And that means that rather than trying to stop it, we have to adjust to the situation.”
“You think so?”
“Yeah,” said Derpy. “Part of the problem is that he doesn’t know what I am. He’s never heard of Equestria. I’m going to explain things to Twilight Sparkle. She’ll know what to do. In the meantime, I suggest you tell him about ponies.”
“You’re going to leave me alone? What if he tries something? And what if Twilight says that the only thing to do is to cut Earth off from Equestria?”
“I’ll leave you the time-stop spell. That’ll give you a means of self-defense, and an incentive for Twilight to let me come back.”
Karyn grinned. “You are really devious sometimes. All right, we’ll follow your plan. Wait, won’t you be able to go and come back without time having passed here?”
“Hmm, you’re right. Actually, this will be a good chance to test how well we can control that. If I consider that I’m going home, and not just popping back to grab something, time should flow. We’ll see how that works.”
Karyn agreed to Derpy’s experiment, and let her go. She then restarted time.
“All right,” she said, “I’m going to try to explain this to you. Let’s go somewhere.”
Karyn found a coffee shop where they could be given privacy without being out of the public eye. After making Albert buy her a coffee and pastry, she went to a booth and had him take out his tablet computer.
“What are you doing?”
“You need to watch this show. A couple of episodes at least.”
Spending a few minutes to think of the selections, Karyn called up videos that showed ponies using magic in Equestria.
When it was over, Albert said, “It’s not bad. What’s the point?”
Karyn reflected on the fact that he wasn’t such a lost cause that he didn’t like the show. “Equestria exists. It’s real. All the ponies from this show actually live and breathe in an alternate dimension.”
“Come on.”
“Do you want me to show you some more spells?”
“No, that’s all right!” he said quickly. He looked at the tablet. Karyn had a moment of sympathy for him. His entire outlook on life had to adjust. The world was no longer a place where everything could be explained by simple logic. “But how did they get here?”
“It’s because they have magic, so they can break the rules of the universe. We can’t do that.”
“So your friend is one of these unicorns?”
“Well, no,” said Karyn. “She’s a pegasus pony.”
“You mean she has both wings and magic? I’m not sure that’s fair.”
“Hey, you just found out about this. You can’t tell about the rules.”
Albert shrugged. Karyn explained the backstory of how Lyra developed the world-crossing spell and how Derpy modified unicorn magic so that everypony could use it. Albert raised his eyebrows at that.
“Wait, every pony? Really? They say that?”
“Yes. Don’t let’s get into language. There’s a whole thing about that. But anyway, now you know.”
Albert poured more cream into his coffee. “I’m still not sure I believe you.”
Karyn sighed. Right at that moment, though, Derpy came back and tapped her on the shoulder. “Let’s go back. I’ll show you the pony.”
They left the coffee shop and returned to the secluded area. Derpy turned off her invisibility. Even though he was coming to appreciate the truth, it was still nothing compared to seeing Derpy in the flesh. His eyes popped and he reeled.
“Nice to meet you,” said Derpy, but her heart wasn’t in it.
“I explained everything. Albert, Derpy went back to Equestria to talk to Twilight Sparkle about you. Did you come up with anything?”
“Yes.” Derpy reached into her bag. “We agreed that you know too much and that the only solution is to turn you into a pony as well and keep you prisoner in Equestria. Hold still.” She pointed a spell at him.
“What?! No!” Albert panicked and tried to run, and even Karyn was a little surprised.
Derpy burst out laughing. “Gotcha.”
Karyn joined her in the laugh. “All right, that was funny.”
“You wouldn’t think so if it were you,” said Albert.
“Well, now you know what it’s like to be scared,” said Derpy. “But I do have another one that I am going to use. Don’t bother trying to run. It’s already been tuned to you.”
He cringed and backed away anyway, and Derpy’s spell emerged as a sphere of light that kept expanding until it was out of sight.
“What did that do?” asked Karyn.
“Yes, what?” asked Albert.
Derpy stared at him. “Since you don’t respect anyone else’s right to privacy, you just gave up that right yourself. From now on, everything you do or say will be available to be known by everypony in Equestria. There’ll always be somepony watching you, wherever you go, so if you try to tell anyone, we’ll know, and we’ll stop you.”
“But why shouldn’t everyone know?”
“If Princess Celestia and Princess Luna decide to reveal Equestria to the human world, that’s fine. But it’s their decision, not yours.”
He swallowed. “May I go now?”
“Fine. But we’ll be watching.”
Shaking his head, he waddled off.
Karyn and Derpy went back to her dorm. “Well, today was certainly exciting, wasn’t it?” said Karyn.
“Yeah. The baseball game was fun. I might go to another.”
“That really wasn’t what I meant.”
“I know,” said Derpy. “But I want to spy on Albert and make sure he’s not doing anything he shouldn’t be.”
“You were serious about that?”
“You didn’t think I was?”
Karyn was shocked. “I thought you might have been bluffing. When he first got suspicious I asked you to erase his memory and you were so reluctant to do that.”
“That’s different. Messing with another person’s mind is wrong. Albert can still do anything he used to. He just can’t hide or lie about it. No, it’s not completely fair, but he shouldn’t have meddled with things that he couldn’t comprehend.”
Derpy found another spell in her bag and turned it on. It was reminiscent of the flashback spell that Trixie had used, except that there was sound as well. Albert was walking down some street, constantly looking over his shoulder. He was clearly nervous.
“I’m still not sure I feel right about this,” said Karyn.
“Really? I was thinking of getting some popcorn. But you’re probably right. Enough ponies will have the voyeuristic urge that somepony will be keeping an eye on him, and even if not, he won’t try anything, which is the point.”
“So let’s just watch a regular movie.”
Derpy acceded, and moments later they were relaxing on Karyn’s bed.
“Hey, Derpy?”
“Yes.”
“Did you mean what you said before?”
Derpy raised her head. “I said a lot of stuff before.”
“About Celestia and Luna maybe opening up Equestria to Earth.”
“Oh, that. Well, I mean, it’s true that it’s nopony’s decision but theirs. But I’m not sure they ever would. Maybe.”
Karyn leaned back. “I don’t know how I’d feel about it if they did. It would be nice to not have to hide and use spells like that one we had to today. But then again, I kind of like being special.”
“Aw. Don’t worry about that. No matter what happens, even if Equestria and Earth become the same place and everypony and every human learns to live together, or even if there’s a big fight between the worlds, I’ll still be here with you, every week.”
“Is that a promise, or a threat?”
Derpy rolled over and hugged her. “It’s a fact.”
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Eeh, it still seems like it's an overly-disproportionate punishment.
Huh. Does that spell have a "mature" filter on it? Or are the Cutie Mark Crusader Human Watchers (YAY!) going to have some awkward questions to ask later?
Rough 'em up, Derpy!
Really? Getting ponies watching reality t.v.? media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mcoj18Vmo61qmsrb7.gif
2160461 as facepalm-worthy as it may be, it's still far more entertaining because it's REAL reality TV, he's not being paid to act like an ass... he just is.
2153569
What? I thought you cover up plot holes with underwear, like they did in the show Bragon Ball, when Emperor Pilaf summoned the dragon to make a wish, then the Oolong interrupts and wishes for the world most comfortable panties, thereby preventing disaster by using up the wish and preventing Pilaf from wishing for world domination.
Death to the NSA!
2154128
It is exactly proportionate punishment, actually. That is, the punishment is exactly the same as the crime. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and a stalker for a stalker.