The Greatest Day of Her Life

by Mannulus

Chapter 1: Dragons and Parasprites and "Jaws" References, Oh My!

The Greatest Day of Her Life

A Misadventure of Derpy Hooves

By Mannulus

Chapter 1

Dragons and Parasprites and "Jaws" References, Oh My!

Derpy Hooves stood frozen in abject terror just inside the small, dingy office of her boorish foreman, Boxxy Brown. She had been late again, and Boxxy had given her the once-over, as usual. It was routine by now: "One more day like this, and you're gone, you get me!? I don't know why I keep thinking you'll shape up and quit wasting my time! Guess I'm just in a good mood today, or I'd give you a pink slip right here!" Derpy had heard some variation of this speech at least a hundred times by now, and she knew what came next: Boxxy was going to give her a job to do; an awful one, most likely.

“Just fly east over the Everfree Forest until you see a mountain with a house on top of it. There's a crotchety old unicorn what lives there by the name of Withers Deathray. This package is for him.”

“W-w-w-what!?” Derpy stuttered. "I don't want to meet anypony who has 'Deathray' actually in his name!"
Boxxy snorted out a laugh.

“Well, if I had my way,” he said, “I wouldn't have ever met anypony with “Derpy” in hers!”

He reached down behind his desk with his head, and lifted a small brown box up in his teeth.

“Now hrrr,' he grunted, his large, yellowed teeth filled with the package.

Derpy furtively craned her head towards the parcel, but the vile aroma of Boxxy's breath caused her to recoil away.

“Whrt!?” Boxxy lifted his right eyebrow in a mixture of annoyance and confusion as Derpy turned quickly to the side and opened up her delivery bag.

“Just drop it in.”

“PHTOOEY!”

Derpy cringed at the sound of the contaminated box flopping into the bottom of her saddlebag. “Well, I'll be on my way!”

As she made for the door, Boxxy cleared his throat, loudly.

“Did I say you could leave?”

“You said to deliver the pack...”

“Don't you tell me what I said!” Boxxy trotted quickly to place himself between Derpy and the door. Each heavy, thudding hoofbeat made Derpy's heart race a little faster.

“Listen, bubble head,” he growled, as he shoved his huge, brown face into her own, “You've got the worst delivery record of anypony here, and frankly, I'm tired of seeing all the complaints comin' in off your route. If I had anypony – and I mean ANYPONY else -- to trust with this package, I would, but everypony else was gone when it came in. Know why that is?"

Derpy shook her head, "no," despite knowing the answer. Like most of Boxxy's rhetoric, she'd heard it before.

"Because," said Boxxy, "they get to work on time.”

“I have to walk Dinky to school, every morning!" Derpy protested. "I told you that when you hired me!"

Boxxy scowled.

“You could fly her to school, and shave a few minutes," he said.

“I tried that. If I fly fast, she gets airsick, and if I fly slow, there's no difference.” Derpy's tone was pleading, and for a moment, Boxxy's expression softened.

“Why are we even having this discussion again?" he asked. "Your little ground-pounder isn't my problem. My problem is that package. It's supposed to be a rush delivery. Since you're all I got, -- and there's no way I'm leaving YOU to watch the office -- I'm giving you this one, simple little job to do today. You don't so much as have to set hoof in Everfree. Just stay above it the whole way there and back; you'll be fine. All you have to do is fly straight east out of town about two hours, get Deathray's signature, give him the package, and fly back here. And look at me when I'm talking to you!”

“I am looking at you! You're watching the wrong eye!” Derpy yelped.

“Whatever!” Boxxy huffed. “Do this right, and I'll let you go home early. And I MAY even forget about your lousy record for a day or two. Screw this up, and you'll be looking for somepony else dumb enough to hire a pony who's 'special talent' is being an idiot! Now GO!”

“Yessir!” Derpy's wings were beating before she even reached the exit. She took the knob in her teeth, flung open the door, and dove through.

CRASH! Broom closet.

“Would you get out of my office!?” shouted Boxxy.

“I'm going!” came Derpy's harried reply.

SMASH! Window.

“That's comin' outta your paycheck!”

Derpy didn't care. She could barely hear Boxxy's fading voice as she flew like a madmare for the Everfree Forest.

* * *

Oh, this is bad, Derpy thought. She was over the forest now, and Ponyville was beginning to fade out of sight. The only sounds in the sky were the shifting winds and the flapping of Derpy's own wings. Boxxy gets upset pretty easily, but he seemed serious, this time. If I lose my job, I won't be able to take care of Dinky! Ponyville Social Services might take her away from me!

Flapping.

Wait. I'm worrying too much about this. It's just a simple delivery. So what if it's for some old curmudgeon with a scary name...

Louder flapping.

...who happens to live in the middle of what might actually be the worst place in the world. All I've got to do is fly straight east. It's still morning, so that's straight into the sun...

Thunderous flapping.
I think...

Ear-shattering flapping.

What's the worst that could happen? And why are my wings so loud?

Derpy glanced back over her shoulder to determine the source of the noise.

It was a dragon, its mouth wide open.

“Sweet, Holy Celestia!” shrieked the pegasus.

Derpy snap rolled starboard, and a pair of cavernous green jaws slammed shut on thin air with an ear-splitting THOCK. The gust of their impact filled her wings and pushed her even further away from the scaly beast. It was only by sheer fortune that the added boost pushed her beyond the reach of the gargantuan green claw that swept past her face as she swung wide to starboard. She churned furiously at the air as the dragon banked to pursue her.

Well, if he wanted to roast me with his breath, he could have already done that. He must prefer his ponies raw. That's a relief.

A moment's further imagination led Derpy to determine that this was, in point of fact, no relief at all.

“WHAT AM I THINKING!?” she yelped.

The dragon banked towards her, and brought itself across Derpy’s hindquarters. As it passed it took another snap, coming even closer than before. Sweeping past, it propelled itself forward with a sudden, hard rearward thrust of its wings, and rolled over, angling its tail outward of its center of rotation in an effort to bat Derpy down. The terrible instrument swept so close behind the little pegasus that she was certain she felt it brush her tail. This assault failing, the dragon opened its wings and began to gain altitude. Three beats of its emerald wings had lifted it well above her in the sky.

What's he doing? Think, Derpers; think back to flight school...

An image entered Derpy's mind of her old flight instructor, Hotwings McPhee. He had been a fat, red pegasus with a gray, receding mane and a fried chicken wing for a cutie mark. He had always smelled like crayons and toothpaste.

The things you remember from school, thought Derpy.

The dragon was still gaining altitude.
Oh, what did he say to do!?

“Now, children,” Hotwings had said, “there's a small but very real chance that at some point in your life, something or somepony may attempt to physically harm you while you are in flight. Their most likely course of action will be to attempt to gain altitude, so that they can use the additional acceleration provided by a dive to gain the velocity necessary to overtake you. You should do everything you can to avoid allowing them to gain a superior position.”
Well, too late for that. C'mon, Derps, there had to be something else!

“If, for whatever reason, you cannot prevent the assailant from gaining altitude more quickly than you, then your only option is to dive. At this point, you're essentially playing chicken -- and that's where I come in.”
He had gestured at his cutie mark then.
"I'm the master of chicken," he had said. "Never been beaten at it once. That's because I know when to pull up; know right when I'd be too fast -- when my wings would snap from the strain if I waited a moment longer. Most ponies don't know that. Most learn in the worst possible way. But me? I'm the master; and I'm gonna teach you how to win at chicken. Every. Single. Time."
What had followed was a month long course that had brought her inches closer to the ground every day. She had thought the old pegasus insane. There couldn't possibly be any good reason a pony would need to know how to execute such a maneuver. It was useless, like algebra.

Until today.

Okay, old stallion, thought Derpy. Let's see if you really *were* the master.

Derpy looked down at the green expanse beneath her, then upwards at the green terror above her.

"I hate my job," she grunted under her breath.

Shutting her eyes for a moment, she closed her wings and let gravity go to work, angling herself into an all-out nosedive.

Seeing her maneuver, the Dragon realized its hand had been forced, and did likewise. Derpy checked its pursuit with a quick glance back, and felt her heart sink as she realized that she was now caught in a game of chicken with a hungry creature hundreds of times her size.

"I love you, Dinky."

At the thought of her daughter, Derpy's eyes corrected their bizarre misalignment, a rare occurrence of which Derpy herself was never aware. She clenched her wings and legs to her sides and gritted her teeth, She'd never had great depth perception, but she was certain she had lost about half her altitude, by now. What was worse: it had been maybe ten or twelve seconds since she'd sensed herself reaching terminal velocity.

"I'll be dead in ten seconds." she thought. "Maybe twelve."

She looked back once more, and her heart leapt! The dragon had opened its wings and was furiously trying to pull out of its dive. From its thrashing wings, and the expression on its face, it didn't seem to Derpy that it would be able to make it.

Whatever, she thought. But will I?

Derpy opened her wings slowly. Whether or not she was the smartest pony, she was a good flyer, if nothing else, and Hotwings had taught her well. She knew she had to resist the urge to fling her wings open all at once. At this speed, the sudden wind resistance could sprain or even break them. All her skill and all of Hotwing's careful instruction would be useless then; she'd be a goner for certain.

As she continued to open her wings and slowly pulled up, the dragon plummeted past her, leaving in its wake a massive wave of turbulence which ruffled her mane, fur, and feathers. She heard the roar, saw the great, green claw that swept past her in a furious attempt to bring her down with it, but she had no time to even consider either one. As her wings reached full extension, she finally brought her body level, but her inertia caused her to continue dropping, nonetheless. She flew forward, losing altitude more and more slowly, but still too quickly for comfort. The trees were close enough now that she could see individual branches. Somewhere behind her, there was a loud but dull thud: the dragon's impact. Only a second later, the trees were all around her. The forest floor reached up so close that she was certain she felt it brush her chin and belly. She thought those sensations must certainly be her last, that she had struck the earth, and that here her life was ended, but instinct and training drove her upward on the chaotic pumping of her wings. Now, with no time to consider the remarkable fact of her own continued existence, Derpy rolled and banked through the green, twisted tangle of the Everfree canopy, her altitude at last stable.

Maybe next year I'll do this for the Best Young Flyer Competition, she thought, as she desperately searched for the next pony-sized hole in the thick, green-brown wall that seemed never to end. She was beating her wings in retrograde now, trying her best to extinguish what remained of her momentum.
At least I'm not going so fast an impact would actually kill me anymore.

SNAP! spoke the forest in reply to the pegasus' hubris.

Derpy's hoof had clipped a branch the thickness of a pencil. At normal speeds it would hardly have been noticeable, but with this kind of propulsion behind her, it sent her tumbling, head over tail. The ground grabbed the pegasus by her bottom, and suddenly she was rolling. There came a steady beating at her body from every direction: thuds and thumps on every side at such a rate that their sources were indeterminate and seemingly everywhere. Derpy wasn't sure how far she had rolled when she finally came to rest, but there at last she was, upside-down, resting against a boulder, and cross-eyed as ever. She looked left, looked right, and then gently wiggled each wing and leg. Nothing broken.

“I'm alive?" she asked, her voice thick with amazement.

"I'm alive!” she shouted happily.

Derpy leaped to her hooves, and hopped up and down like a lunatic.

“I'm alive! I'm alive! I'm alive!”

Two minutes ago, this had been a routine delivery. For most ponies, this would be a time for reflection on the fragility of life. For Derpy Hooves?

“Time for a muffin.”

Derpy climbed up on top of the boulder she had come to rest against, flitting her wings to give herself an extra boost. Once she was on top of it, she sat down on her haunches, grabbed hold of her saddle bags by her teeth, then pulled them forward, and over her head. Before she could fully remove them, however, her left wing got caught under the belt. Several tugs and one very-near tumble later, she paused.

“Wait a second.”

Derpy wriggled about until the saddle bags slid back down to their original position about her midriff, then pressed them downward and off of her body with her forehooves.

“There we go! Muffin time!”

Derpy opened the saddle bag that usually rode on her left side. The right bag was occupied by the package and her clipboard, but this one served a very special purpose in the life of the gray pegasus. It was stocked with a variety of muffins, which were her favorite food, and something of a mild, long-time obsession. Derpy had one of every muffin Sugar Cube Corner made, and several she had baked at home.

There was cinnamon, chocolate chip, and various apple muffins. There was strawberry, blueberry, blackberry, raspberry, and cranberry – one of each with and without white and dark chocolate. There was a carrot muffin. There was a bran muffin. There was a corn muffin. There was a hay muffin. There were muffins flavored in four different varieties of citrus fruit. There were muffins with nuts – peanuts, walnuts, almonds, and cashews. There was a banana muffin. There was a Neapolitan muffin. There was a peanut butter muffin. There was a muffin muffin!

“Pinkie Pie sure does know how to pack a muffin bag! Now which one for a snack?”

For Derpy, choosing a muffin was just shy of impossible. She'd long ago given up trying to pick just one during her morning stop at Sugar Cube Corner. It was an errand of utter futility which tended to make Dinky late for school and Derpy even later for work. Pinkie Pie had learned to expect her, and now she simply stuffed the bag full, wordlessly but for a cheerful “Hello!” Mr. and Mrs. Cake were even kind enough to give Derpy a discount for being such a consistent customer. It was a good thing, too; not even Derpy's muffin budget could withstand this kind of wretched excess.

But her stomach could.

“Strawberry Cheesecake with vanilla glaze! Looks like we have a winner!”

Derpy gently bit down on the muffin, and removed it from its place in the bag. Then she bit off a generous hunk of its warm, soft top. She balanced the remainder of the muffin on her hoof as she chewed and swallowed, her face painted with an expression of pure ecstasy. As she finished her first bite of the muffin, she took a moment to observe her surroundings.

The boulder which had earlier halted her involuntary somersault, and upon which she now sat, occupied the center of a small clearing. It was a relatively pleasant place for the Everfree Forest, owing mostly to the fact that sunlight reached the forest floor, here, and allowed grass to grow. The trees at the clearing's edge even looked somewhat friendlier than they did elsewhere in the strange wood. They were still gnarled and twisted, but the sun shone down and painted them pretty browns and greens, as opposed to the cold grays and dull olive colors that seemed to dominate the dark undergrowth of the forest.

“If I had to hit any rock in the forest, I aimed pretty well.” She took another bite.

“Prpbt!”

Derpy swallowed. “What was that noise!?”

“Prrrpt, Prprbrpt!”

“Oh, sweet Celestia, NO!”

There was only one thing in the world that made that sound. Derpy took a deep breath, and turned her gaze away from her muffin.

Eyes. Eyes in the trees. First there were two, then four, then eight, then dozens, each pair affixed to a brightly-colored, winged ball of unbridled cuteness – and hunger. They were parasprites, the most adorable of all the horrors the earth had seen fit to suffer, and every one of them had its wicked, loveable gaze fixed on Derpy's saddlebags.

They're after my saddlebags... my muffins... the package!

The chirping, all at once heart-warming and terrifying, continued to intensify as more and more pairs of eyes appeared amidst the boughs. A swath of orange ripped across the clearing, and the muffin that had been atop Derpy's hoof simply ceased to be. Startled, she hopped to her hooves and let out a squeak of surprise. All the world seemed to slow to a crawl. Derpy craned her neck down and took the belt of her saddle bags in her mouth. From a dead start, she knew she could not gain altitude quickly enough to escape. She would have to make a run for it. Her legs and wings tensed as her addled, yellow eyes searched the field of iridescent adorability for any opening she might exploit. After some three or four seconds that seemed to stretch into as many hours, she saw just one path through the thickets and brambles that was not occupied by a parasprite.

There! She had no other thought. For a moment, she did not breathe.

The chirping grew quiet. They were preparing to strike. It was Derpy, however, who made the first move. She was a gray and yellow streak of pounding hooves and flapping wings, using everything at her disposal to propel herself towards her identified avenue of escape. The parasprites reacted just as suddenly, closing in on her in a buzzing, chirping cloud of ravening hunger and raving madness.

Too late! She was through the swarm and at full gallop, diving over logs and through vine tangles with a grace that defied her reputation for clumsiness, and yet her every maneuver was matched by the pursuing haze of darling insatiability.

Not my muffins! Not the package! Not my job! Not my Dinky!

Never in all her life had Derpy run so fast – not at the running of the leaves, not from the sight of Nightmare Moon, herself. She was ludicrous with fear and indignation! She was a lightning bolt born not of cloud, but of earth! She was a mare made of wind and fury!

And then the ground went away. Gorge.

“Srrrusly!?” Remarkably, she had the presence of mind not to drop the saddlebags, but as she burst from the trees and dropped into Ghastly Gorge, Derpy almost forgot she could fly. Unlike the previous incident with the dragon, there was no need to open her wings slowly – nor was there time. The ancient river which had cut the gorge was growing larger by the second. As she flung open her wings and leveled out, the heart-warming hoard of doom continued to give chase. Derpy dove low, and skimmed just above the surface of the water. It gained her a little distance, but it put her in the same unenviable position in which she had found herself earlier; she simply could not gain altitude quickly enough to escape.

She pressed on with all her might, scanning the trees to either side and the canyon walls beyond. Certainly, there had to be some way out of this predicament. It was then that she first caught sight of something she had not noticed before: A shadow loomed in the deep. It was right beneath her, tracking her every movement, and it was growing larger.

A great gray face crested the river's surface. It was a giant fish with jagged scales that glistened like blades in the sun. It rolled over on its side, displaying a mouth full of razors that was easily as large as the dragon's had been. And just above that vicious, toothy grin, it's right eye met Derpy's own – a horrible eye, black and devoid of emotion or compassion. The sight made Derpy feel as if an icicle had replaced her spine

It's like a doll’s eye!

The leviathan slipped under the water, and Derpy knew she could not remain at this altitude, lest she be snatched from the sky by its cruel teeth. She angled her body upward and pumped her wings vigorously, but as she did so, the Parasprites closed the gap. Halfway up the canyon walls, they overcame her.

She was surrounded. Parasprites swarmed this way and that, four of them tugging at the saddlebag and a dozen more pulling at her wings and mane. Derpy gritted her teeth against the belt, and rolled and twisted amidst the greedy chatter of the insectoid scourge. She felt her teeth slipping, and kicked her body forward, looping her left foreleg through the belt to gain extra leverage. Soon, the number of parasprites trying to wrench the bags free of her grip made it completely impossible for her to flap her wings. She was suspended in the sky only by their avaricious legs, and both she and the cloud of parasprites were losing altitude, moving downwards towards the thing in the river.

Derpy had finally had enough.

“Listen, you charming little pukes!” An insult both literal and figurative.

The chirping halted. The parasprites clinging to her body and gnawing at the muffin bag froze, and what seemed like thousands of eyes rolled towards her. There was no sound but the buzzing of the parasprites' wings.

“You want muffins? HERE!”

Derpy took the flap of the muffin bag in tooth, and ripped it open. A cascade of muffins poured from the open bag, and showered into the river. The parasprites dove immediately to follow it, and swarmed low over the water's surface. Derpy hovered in exasperation as the whole cloud and the muffins beneath it moved downstream with the river's flow. She heard the vile hacking of the otherwise captivating little creatures regurgitating their offspring into existence. Sickened by the whole affair, – and by the loss of so many delectable muffins -- she slowly climbed upward, one flap at a time.

Then, with a mighty SPLASH, the great fish exploded from the water's surface, its jaws agape, swallowing both parasprites and muffins in one, titanic gulp. The whole event took less than a second before a great, wet WHOOSH marked the fish's return to the depths.

Derpy hovered for a moment, staring at the place in the water where the fish had disappeared.

“I'm hungry,” she said quietly. She strapped her saddlebags around her waist, and made for the clouds.

Comments

[Inky Swirl]

I like it.

[Love_and_Tolerate]

I like it too!

[loliwillpwnnothing]

Me Gusta

[BenRG]

Okay, I mark that as a manoeuvre kill against the dragon and an 'assist' on the parasprites. I'll put that on Derpy's air combat record.

I'm just wondering how much of Derpy's troubles are self-induced. I mean, what's the chance that this Withers Deathray actually lives up to his name? Well, knowing Derpy's luck, it's probably 1:1. Okay, logic says that he's probably just an antisocial pony who lives with his twenty or so cats well away from the society and ponies that he despises with a passion. However there is also the small chance that he's a mad scientist. Once again, remember Derpy's luck.

[Inferno demon Dash]

Wow.....talk about talent, you have got lots and lots of it but remember to only add five lines to a paragraph then seprate it for another, and poor Derpy she can never get a break, this is going to be a very long jourany.

[Garbo]

this is one of the best portrayals of the everfree forest that i've ever seen. and i'm going to have to agree with 1433107. constant action.
I hope this gets featured. We need more good stories like this to get featured.

[Silver Flare]

Dang, this story is old. I wish I'd have found it years ago.

Maybe it's a little late for editing, but I prefer an extra line between each paragraph. It's easier on the eyes, and space on the internet is free!

That said, I'm reeeeeeeealy enjoying the ride so far.

“Yes sir!” Derpy's wings were beating before she even reached the exit. She took the knob in her teeth, flung open the door, and dove through.

CRASH! Broom closet.

Stuff like this is pure gold.