Dishonored: Derpy Hooves' Quest (to Change the Fate of an Empire)

by Arcane-Boomeus

Chapter Two: Day Two

"In any moment of decison, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing."
-Theodore Roosevelt

Chapter Two:
Day Two:
High Overseer Campbell

Twilight Sparkle had, after making it back to her home in the tree (which doubled as Ponyville's library) just after two o'clock in the morning, walked in circles. And cried. When the rays of the rising sun shined through her window, she had stopped walking, in order to focus all of her energy upon the task at hoof: bawling her eyes out (fortunately, she did not literally bawl her eyes out, though Nurse Redheart would diagnose her with severe dehydration later that day. She did, however, manage to create a three-inch-deep rut in the ground where she had paced, and flood that rut with tears).

Twilight was rather notorious around Ponyville, and especially amongst her close friends, for her tendency to overreact to things. She was particularly inclined to overreact to practically everything the Princess Celestia did. So, when Spike the dragon woke and saw her doing what was described above, he did what he had always done in such situations- he sent a letter to Celestia that told her something along the lines of 'Twilight's broken again', then went back to sleep.

What Twilight failed to notice in her stupor was that Princess Luna was doing the same thing as she was, only with around 100% less crying and approximately 96.38274827% more worrying about Derpy. The fact that Twilight was actually worrying about Derpy serves as a testament to her status as a good person, all things considered. Luna was more successful than Twilight in making a rut, however, due to both her larger size and that certain... diggability that dirt tends to have.

* * *

Pinkie Pie had just decided to murder, cannibalize, and make a dress out of (dress-ize?) one of her friends, and was actually trying to decide which one (she was trying to choose between Rarity and Fluttershy, if you must know) when Rainbow Dash burst through the door of the Cake's bakery, where Pinkie Pie worked (and, as it were, plotted murder, cannibalism, and the dressitization of her friends).

“Rainbow Dash!” Pinkie said excitedly, eager to get started with the murdering (she was never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, and Rainbow Dash qualified as... something... in Pinkie's books, which, although nonexistent, were a very important reference for Pinkie, encompassing only sixty-eight-and-a-half volumes). “Wanna help me make some Cupcakes?”

“No time,” Rainbow Dash replied hastily, inadvertently saving her own life in the process, “Twilight's broken again, but this time, Princess Luna's broken too!”

Pinkie snapped her fingers. “Aw, bucks.” Rainbow Dash, who had already turned and left, was fortunate not to have seen Pinkie's blatant disregard for her own physical limitations, which would have driven the cyan pegasus insane, had she witnessed it. All-in-all, Rainbow Dash was very lucky; as she normally was when she visited Pinkie- not only did she consistently avoid being driven completely insane on a regular basis, she avoided being murdered, eaten/cooked with (with here does not refer to cooking alongside; rather, it refers to being an ingredient), AND she avoided being skinned and made into a nice, blue leather jacket (Pinkie had, at some point during the conversation, decided that Rainbow Dash would make a better leather jacket than a dress, though it's impossible to determine when exactly this occurred to the pink cloudcuckoolander).

After singing a song about three dancing carrot-sticks and a pencil sharpener to you, Pinkie took off with a cry of “FOR GREAT JUSTICE!”

Needless to say, you were so traumatized by these events that you forgot them- which is really quite unfortunate, because the song was really very compelling, and overall well-written. Never before have you sympathized with a carrot-stick, and you (probably) will never do so again.

* * *

Derpy sat up. She held her left hand in front of her face, as if to prove to herself that what she had dreamed had actually happened. Judging by the Outsider's mark that was now emblazoned on the back of her hand, and the whalebone rune on her bedside table, it had. Further exploring her new 'ink', she did as she remembered having done in her dream.

In an instant, she appeared ten meters away from her bed, still in a sitting position. The strange tingling in her hand and the blue glow from using the magic the Outsider had granted to her, as well as the fact that she had just acquired nearly a dozen splinters in her left plot-cheek alone, lead to her saying to herself, “I'm gonna need tougher clothes.”

After going to Havelock in the pub and listening to him telling her what amounted to 'Murder the High Overseer Campbell and steal his journal, then rescue Overseer Martin, because he's a pretty smart guy', Derpy drank something called 'coffee', which revitalized her to the point where she was mostly aware of what was going on. She didn't really have trouble waking up, but actually functioning throughout the morning did seem to present a bit of a challenge for her. This wonderful new discovery, this miracle beverage, was like a slap in the face to Derpy.

After channeling her inner businessman and downing three mugs of coffee, Derpy decided to pay a visit to Rarity. “Oh, marvelous timing, darling! Simply marvelous!”

Derpy noticed Rarity's bloodshot eyes, and around seven empty mugs like those Derpy's coffee had been delivered in. 'Please tell me that coffee has no negative side-effects,' Derpy thought, suddenly becoming quite concerned.

“Sorry, darling,” Rarity said, “I think I've had a bit too much coffee.”
'Wonderful,' Derpy thought.

“Anyways,” Rarity continued, oblivious to Derpy's unamused thoughts, “I made some things for you! First off,” she said, tossing a rod of some sort to Derpy, “this is what I like to call 'the sleep stick'. One good swing'll clean a man's clock for a good while.” Derpy nodded thankfully. “I also took the liberty of making you this.”

She turned and whipped the canvas off of a mannequin that Derpy hadn't even noticed, revealing a uniform that Derpy recognized from the memories she shouldn't have had. It was navy blue, and came with a golden mask. The golden mask was remarkable because it looked so displeased that one could reasonably say that the mask hated its own life, despite the fact that, being a mask, it was not alive. It was the uniform of the Overseers, the religious zealots that, in some odd form of irony, despised the god of their world, who you should probably recall is the Outsider.

Derpy immediately appreciated Rarity's clever thinking. 'Wearing this, I can just walk right into their base of operations, get rid of Campbell, and walk out. Probably.'

Derpy was bothered by the question of how exactly she'd deal with Campbell, but she decided that she couldn't let that weigh on her mind too heavily.

“Um... excuse me, Ms. Derpy, but...” Derpy turned to see a woman that she recognized as being either Twilight Sparkle, or an emo time-traveler from the future. Due to the fact that she wasn't sure what the latter meant, she assumed that it was Twilight. This was a good thing to assume, because it was true.

“Spit it out, darling,” Rarity said, proving herself not entirely tactful, which surprised Derpy somewhat.

Twilight nodded. “Right.” She took a deep breath. “Myolderbrother,ShiningArmor,ismeeting withHighOverseerCampbelltoday.” She took another deep breath. “IthinkCampbellisgoingtokillhim!Please,ifyoucan,savemybrother.He'sagoodman,notlikeCampbellortheothers!”

Derpy nodded sagely. It would, in retrospect, be rather hard to look anything other than calm and collected after Twilight's rapid-fire word-machinegun attack, so Derpy was just doing what was normal- completely ignoring the urge to laugh hysterically at the nervous woman before her.

“I'll see what I can do, Twilight.”

* * *

Luna cringed as the door to her 'room' creaked open. 'Room' is, in this particular case, a term loosely used to describe the veritable prison cell Luna happened to be in- in fact, the only differences between her room and the cell Derpy had spent six months in is the fact that everything in Luna's room was wooden, and her bed had a mattress AND a pillow, as well as a wooden-swingyopen-door as opposed to a metal-bar-slideyopen-door. Other than those things, the rooms were pretty much the same- even the dimensions of the 'rooms' were similar.

“I'm sorry if I'm intruding... milady.”
Luna frowned. This voice didn't belong to the Madame of this fine establishment (Note: 'establishment' should be read as 'shithole of a plague-infested brothel'), nor was it one of the Pendleton brothers (who happened to be identical twin assholes). “That sets you apart from the standard fare, I suppose,” Luna said, pushing herself up off of the bed she couldn't entirely fit on and looking towards the voice as she rose to her full height, displaying her menacing amazonian stature.

The woman who'd entered her 'room' was a frail girl, pale and dressed like a prostitute. She was dressed like a prostitute because she was, believe it or not a prostitute (as is to be expected from a meek girl working in a brothel).

“Milady, I apologize for not realizin' it earlier. I just overheard two of the guards talking about holding a princess captive here, and me and the girls got to talkin', and we figured you was THE princess...”

“I'm sure that they kept it under wraps,” Luna said, attempting to comfort the nervous prostitute.
“... Would you like to escape?”

Luna nodded. “I'd love to, though I'm certain Derpy will be rescuing me within the week if I do not.”

“Well, me and the girls weren't so certain,” the prostitute explained, “so I managed to filch the master key... and this.”

The prostitute produced a pistol and a box of bullets, as well as a key. “The VIP entrance is almost completely abandoned these days, and the guard who watches it likes to take naps after lunch...”

Luna grinned. “Thank you... but, first... when will the Pendletons' next visit be?”
The prostitute's eyes widened. “You can't possibly mean to-”

“Oh yes,” Luna said, “I'm going to kill those identical pieces of shit while they're trying to enjoy themselves.” The princess laughed.

The young courtesan turned to leave, but Luna stopped her. “If you can, try to 'borrow' a sword for me.”

The girl nodded. “I think I can do that.”

She left without another word, and Luna sat down on her bed. 'Perhaps I'll dream of something interesting,' she thought. It was rather unwise of her to think that, primarily because it was a blatant temptation of fate, whom we all know is quite the cheeky bastard.

* * *

Celestia grimaced. She was grimacing because she was stumped. For whatever reason, Twilight Sparkle had 'broken', as Spike liked to put it, and Celestia was quite sure that she was at fault. 'Twilight was behaving a little strangely yesterday,' Celestia reasoned, 'but only after we'd been conversing for some time...' She could understand why Luna was broken- Celestia had allowed her 'secret' marefriend to be taken by the Outsider, who Luna despised for one reason or another.

Twilight... Twilight was a different story, though... a thought popped into Celestia's (rather large) head. 'Did she notice that I lied to her?' Celestia slapped a hoof into her face. 'Of course! Twilight, after noticing that I had lied to her, had one of her bizarre overreactions!'

A quick peek through her telescope told her that Twilight's friends had gathered around her home, and each seemed to be displaying a different level of confusion and bewilderment. Pinkie Pie had taken to leapfrogging back and forth over Luna as she walked her circular path, Rarity seemed to be attempting to distract Luna by modelling garish hats, Fluttershy was trying to coax information out of Owlicious, and Applejack and Rainbow Dash were trying to drag Twilight from her path, with no success.

'Now, the question is... what the buck am I supposed to do?! I can't go down there myself, for fear of causing an adverse reaction in Luna; but I'm probably going to have to talk to Twilight myself to fix her...'

* * *

Derpy had, after managing to calmly listen in on a conversation between two Overseers, learned that High Overseer Campbell was planning to poison Captain Curnow (who happened to be the older brother Twilight had told her about) in a large meeting chamber on the second floor of the surprisingly unassuming building. She had actually taken part in (meaning she stood quietly and hoped she wouldn't be caught) a reception of some sort (she'd been too busy being scared out of her wits to actually figure out what it was).

Now, having ascended the steep stone stairs to the second floor, she stood before the meeting chamber's imposing double-door, made of hardy wood and painted a pristine white. She peeked into the keyhole, saw that the room was empty, and entered. Just as the Overseers she'd listened to had described, there were two crystal glasses of alcohol on the table. One was poisoned, one was not. She walked over to the glasses, switched them, and turned to leave before noticing something familiar-looking on the wall.

She approached it and realized that it was one of the whalebone runes that the Outsider had told her about. Derpy gently removed it from the wall, which, in turn, caused the world to slow down and become monochrome as the Outsider himself appeared.

“Isn't it odd,” said the Outsider, “that an establishment dedicated to ridding this world of me and my ilk would so proudly display an artifact bearing my mark?”

Derpy nodded. It was quite strange.
“Oh, right,” said the Outsider after a few moments (which, considering that time wasn't flowing around them, were not actually moments, but some sort of nonexistent moment... don't think too hard about it, it's just an observation) of silence, “I think I'll give you a new power.”

The mark on Derpy's hand lit up, glowing a light blue that shone through both the leather glove and the monochrome filter that the cessation of time seemed to have applied to the world. “The ability to stop time for short periods of time should serve you well,” the Outsider said, sounding quite pleased with himself. To be fair, the ability to stop time as you please is pretty buckin' awesome, especially when the man you just poisoned and the man that the man you just poisoned was planning to poison are about to walk through the door, and you still need to steal the diary of the man you just poisoned.

As the Outsider disappeared, so did the rune.

As the doors to Derpy's right swung open, Derpy put her new power to use, sending time itself packing, with color scurrying off alongside it. She blinked under the table, then waited. Time resumed, and the two men walked to the table, talked about some issue that the City Watch had with the Overseers, walked around the table to the side with the drinks, toasted to a peaceful resolution of their problems, and after several moments, collapsed. Shining Armor collapsed because Derpy shot him in the stomach with a sleep dart from the crossbow she'd so frantically pulled from concealment, while Campbell collapsed due to the fact that his heart had stopped beating, which had been caused by the poison he'd expected Shining Armor to ingest.

Derpy snatched the journal off of Campbell's corpse, grabbed Shining Armor's unconscious body, and blinked out of the window. 'Next step,' she thought, 'Rescue Overseer Martin in the courtyard and get the hay out of here...'

* * *

Luna exhaled slowly, put her hands on her hips, and looked around curiously. “Alright, Luna,” she said, “this is no big deal.” She looked at the planet that she should have been sleeping on- by sheer coincidence, she looked exactly at Derpy's current location, where she and Overseer Martin were carefully placing the unconscious form of Captain Shining Armor Curnow into a dumpster, far enough away from the Office of the (now deceased) High Overseer to be safe. Of course, being on the moon, Luna had no way of knowing what she was looking at, nor did she have the ability to think about anything other than the fact that she was standing on the moon.

She handled it rather well, actually.

“Okay,” she muttered, “first order of business: HOW THE F#$@ DID I END UP ON THE MOON?!” Obviously, she didn't censor herself with symbols, but, for the sake of keeping the rating down, it was done through CGI. Isn't technology wonderful these days?

“That's an easy one,” said a voice, “we brought you here.”
Luna whipped around to look at the source of the voice, but all she saw was a particularly adorable moon rock. Another voice joined the first one in explaining some stuff about the elemental chaos preceding the Outsider's creation of stuff and some things, and the first commented that the Outsider was just a whale-god suffering from ADD, whatever that meant.

All the while, the moon rock kept being adorable. Her little moon rock heart was just now slowing down to a relatively normal rate, and, with a bit of concentration, the moon rock managed to calm down enough to listen to what the three voices were saying. The rock hadn't had an easy life, but you wouldn't guess that from the adorable exterior that she had managed to maintain. After a terrible mishap involving small gray horse with a map for a hat, the rock had been separated from her parents, left to fend for herself in the harsh lunar wastes.

Her death was swift and painless.
“So there are more spirits like you?” Luna asked.

“Oh, yes. More than you'd care to know. The Outsider just happens to be far more powerful than the rest of us, and therefore in control.”

“Enough with the history lessons,” said the second voice, “we brought you to the moon for a reason.”

“What reason could you possibly have for bringing me to the moon in my sleep?”
“In your dreams, technically, but that's not really important right now.”

“We think that a princess rescuing herself is quite the interesting little twist.”
“And we think you'd be glad to wield powers we bestowed upon you.”

Luna arched an eyebrow. “What kind of 'powers' are we talking about?”

The two voices shared a whispered conversation, leaving Luna unable to discern anything that they were saying for several moments. The exchange was rapid, and rather heated, if you asked Luna, but beyond that, nothing could be ascertained.

Eventually, the voices reached an agreement -or something along those lines- and spoke to Luna once more. “Powers not even approaching the limits of yours,” one said.

“We cannot truly give you any sort of power,” the other explained, “that is something that only the Outsider can do.”

“What we can do,” said the first voice, “is awaken powers you yourself already possess.”
“But not all of them~!” Interjected the second voice in a particularly sing-song manner that made Luna feel like she was being mocked.

“So you're going to allow me to utilize powers I already have...?” Luna asked aloud, not entirely certain what that was supposed to mean.

“Not you you, mind you,” said the first voice, in the most grating way possible, “but another you. You understand, don't you?”

“Certainly,” Luna lied.
“Excellent,” said one of the voices.

“SWAG!” Cried the other voice, before it began giggling like mad.
Luna groaned. 'What have I gotten myself into?' she lamented. She didn't even want to know what 'swag' meant.

* * *

Twilight sighed, rolling around restlessly on her bed in the tower at the Hound Pits. Derpy had returned about an hour ago, with Overseer Teague Martin and the news that she'd saved Shining Armor just in the nick of time. Twilight was glad that her brother was alive. He was a good man, and the only family she had left.

She knew that she should be glad- overjoyed, at the very least. Her problem was that she wasn't. She allowed her gaze to drift up and out of the window, where she laid her eyes on the moon, big and bright in the sky.

'It'll be a full moon tomorrow,' she thought. She wasn't sure why, but that somehow felt... significant. The feeling that something was significant was one she hadn't felt since the Empress had died. 'No,' Twilight corrected herself, 'calling her 'Empress' would be like calling Shining Armor 'male relative'...'

Laboriously, she tore her eyes from the almost-full moon, then gazed longingly at the pistol resting on her bedside table. She longed to put the business end of the weapon to her head and end it all, to join her beloved in eternity. But she couldn't; not yet, at least. Twilight had made a promise, and a promise to the one she loved was one she would go to the ends of the world to fulfill.

“If anything happens to me,” Celestia had said, “take care of my sister. Won't you, Twilight? Derpy can't handle it alone. Please... you're the only one. You know that, don't you, Twilight?”

Twilight forced back tears. Not only had her lover been killed, but the sister she'd sworn to protect had been kidnapped. She wished that she'd been there that day. She wished that she could have done something.

She wished that she knew who was responsible, so that she could kill the bastard like the hound it was. Not he or she- it. Whomever it was that had killed the Empress could not possibly be considered human.

Celestia wouldn't have approved of Twilight's desire for revenge. Twilight could recall several instances when Celestia had warned her about revenge, but two stuck in her mind more clearly than the rest.

“Revenge solves nothing,” Celestia had told her, “the desire for it is like a fire, consuming your entire being, and once you've had your revenge, your entire being is empty, and you become a husk- a shadow of the person you were before.” Celestia had smiled. “And, if I may say so myself, it would be a shame for there to be anything less than the real you in this world.”

The second one wasn't as long, but it seemed to carry even more weight than the first, for some reason.

“Never forget, Twilight,” Celestia had said gently, “an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind, and in the end, nobody can see the fairness it it.”

Twilight grimaced. She didn't meant to question Celestia's wisdom, but she felt nothing like a 'fire, consuming her entire being'. And, now that she thought about it, she didn't want fairness. She wanted justice, and she was more than willing to go blind for it...

* * *

Derpy felt like a monster.
She was pretty sure she was a monster.
Monster or not, though, she knew she was a killer.

She was abhorred by the way that she had been so nonchalant about it, when she had done it. She hadn't considered that she was ending a life.

Worst of all, though, was that she didn't care.

After spending a few hours lying in her bed, unable to sleep, someone came into her room, then left through the window that lead to the tower where Twilight slept. Derpy had moved silently to the window by the time that the unidentified person was halfway across the makeshift bridge connecting the tower to Derpy's window, and recognized that the person was Rarity. Derpy could tell that she was holding something, but the item- or items- was just too small for her to be able to make out what it was in the darkness.

Rarity wasted no time- she was in Twilight's room for no more than 30 seconds. Then she went back the way she came, even walking past Derpy without so much as a second look.

'Maybe she was sleep-walking?' Derpy wondered. Then she felt awful because she had possibly just allowed Rarity to walk across a relatively narrow walkway suspended high enough above the ground that a fall could easily injure Rarity, if it didn't kill her.

Rarity's odd behavior had a positive side-effect, though- it made Derpy forget about the blood that had now stained her hooves forever.

She visited the void in her dreams that night. The Outsider granted her the ability to heal more quickly when injured- though he didn't tell her how quickly, and she had no intention of finding out- then told her, “Things are getting very interesting, Derpy. How will it all play out, I wonder?”

* * *

It was around three in the morning that Luna and Twilight stopped walking in circles. Everypony except for Pinkie Pie (and, obviously, Twilight and Luna) had, by this point, passed out from exhaustion. Luna and Twilight looked at each other, and Pinkie Pie began to sing in a hushed voice (so as not to wake everypony up).

“Twilight Sparkle,” said Luna.

“Luna,” replied Twilight.
“Something's not right,” they said in unison. “... but what is it?” they finished.

“I feel as if... as if Nightmare Moon just... woke up. But, not here... somewhere far away,” Luna said shakily. Something told her that she'd been the cause of it, but she deigned to leave that bit out.

Twilight nodded, affirming that she'd experienced a similar sensation. “And I feel like... like I lost all faith Celestia. But it wasn't me, it was...”

Pinkie Pie, as if in response to what had just been said, stiffened. “The screams of those willing to trade vengeance for their true selves...” she giggled maddeningly, “they resonate within the souls of their parallels, letting them know that their lust for blood shall be sated at all costs...!”

As one would expect, Twilight and Luna gaped at the pink party pony, who looked quite confused. “What?”

Luna and Twilight turned their gapes upon each other, then back to Pinkie, and then to the sky, where the sun was moving in agitated little circles, due to Celestia's inability to stay up past her bedtime, especially when she was scheming (or attempting to do so).

Luna, upon realizing what was going on, and upon instinctively realizing that it was WAY past the sun's bedtime, whipped the moon into the proper position, slamming it into the sun in the process. The sun was, naturally, very offended by this, and made sure to let the moon know exactly how it felt. With curse words. This is particularly amazing because, as you should know, most places with suns and moons tend to have their sun so far away that using magic to raise and lower it becomes impossible, and any sun out of magic range is certainly out of cursing range (and cursing range has the longest range of all of the stellar methods of verbal communication).

Another interesting fact about the sun is that one stallion (a pegasus, obviously- earth ponies and unicorns have a distinct lack of the wings required to reach such altitudes, and flight spells are a particularly dangerous group of spells, primarily do to the unicorn's aforementioned lack of wings to catch themselves with after plummeting to their dooms) claimed to have flown up to it, landed on it, and proceeded to urinate upon the poor thing. In her famous speech on the topic, Celestia is known to have said, “That is utterly ridiculous. Everpony knows that a stallion cannot urinate upwards!” The truth of this statement caused the stallion, ashamed of his lies, to fly to the moon. Legend said that he met the infamous Nightmare Moon, and they had several fillies and colts before he died of the severe constipation that eating nothing but cheese (which the moon is constructed of) would most certainly bring about. Upon returning to Equestria and being restored to sanity, the Princess Luna confirmed that the stallion had indeed reached the moon, but, after spending nearly a thousand years eating nothing but cheese, she (as Nightmare Moon, mind you) killed and ate him. It was this action that, though indirectly, brought about the rumors that Princess Celestia was a psychotic nymphomaniac.
Isn't history interesting?

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End Chapter 2

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See that quote up at the top? Pretty cool, eh?

~~~~ Arcane-Boomeus ~~~~