I’m not sure many ponies can say that they wrote their autobiography on the only day of their life. Though, upon reflection, that claim to fame is more ironic than awe-inspiring, given the circumstances.
I’m not sure how I was at the start. I know that the first few minutes of my consciousness were really only that: consciousness. I had the mind of a newborn foal, though I was in the body of an adult mare. I remember whinnying slightly, shaking my head from left to right as I tried to adjust to my dank and dreary surroundings.
I suppose my first sensation was... him. Like the fog surrounding my personality, my memory, and my very existence could be summarized by his very being. He was like the first breeze after a blizzard--soft, but just as chilling as the storm that had preceded it.
With him, though, came epiphany after epiphany until I was finally me again, though to this day I’m not quite sure what I am, or if I ever was. With my memory came the reason for my existence, and I remembered how to speak.
“I... I don’t quite understand,” I told him. I was wheezing slightly; the effort of being brought into the world was making me short of breath. I opened my eyes, but all I saw was the dark gray space of the netherworld. I didn’t exist fully, not yet. “How do I do what you asked of me in so... so short a time? It’s impossible.”
He appeared in front of me, but my vision was too blurry to see him properly. A pair of spectacles floated to my eyes, and I put them on, but by the time my sight cleared, he was gone.
“Take these,” he said. “You’ll be blind as a bat without them.”
“...Bats aren’t blind, you know,” I said, coughing. “They just use echolocation instead of their eyes. They can sense anything in their general-”
“Oh, you and your silly repertoire of useless information will make this so much more complicated,” he sighed. I imagined he was rolling his eyes. “Let me fix that.”
There was a small pop on the inside of my skull, as if a lot of space was suddenly freed. I immediately forgot what I was talking about. “What did you do?” I asked, scowling.
“Oh, nothing. I just made you a lot more fun,” he stated jovially.
I gritted my teeth. A little color disappeared from my limbs, turning them a slightly darker gray than before. A few dirty blond strands of my mane fell in front of my eyes, and I flicked them aside irritably. “This isn’t a joke, you idiot. You’ve given me twenty-four measly hours to do the impossible. I don’t have the time to be fun.”
“Oh, I know that,” he cooed. I turned sharply to the left as something stroked my mane, but nopony was there. He continued: “All I did was put the finishing touches on your design. Now you have everything you need.”
“You have no idea what I need,” I growled.
“Oh, I think I have a fairly good idea,” he replied, chuckling.
A light appeared before me and I flinched away, yelping in pain. The light burned like hot coals, and smoke began to rise from my feathers.
“You... You say it’s a request,” I yelled over my pain. “What if I fail?”
“Then you will go back to where you belong,” he said simply. And with that, I was forced to start a journey that would no doubt end with my own demise.
When I came to, I found that I wasn’t dead, as I had originally suspected, but that I was lying on a sofa, wrapped in blankets. The room I was in was filled wall-to-wall with bookshelves, and I looked down to see a polished hardwood floor. Sunlight trickled in through the windows, and I absently noticed gray, bare tree limbs through them. It must have been the middle of winter.
I stretched, yawning, and noticed that my vision was slightly blurry. I found my spectacles on the end table. I had been farsighted as long as I could remember, and I loathed that almost as much as my migraines. What bothered me was that I had no choice but to wear them, due to my disability.
I heard somepony scurrying upstairs. No, not a pony; I didn’t hear any hooves galloping along on the wood. It was more like the scrape of claws, and for a moment I was worried, but thankfully it was only a baby dragon.
“Oh! You’re awake. Good, that means Twilight can stop pestering me to change your blankets every half-hour,” he grumbled. He was short, and a little stout, sporting purple scales and a slightly green underbelly. He was bipedal, as well, something that struck me as a little odd.
I stepped out of my makeshift bed, and my stomach lurched, but I stifled the discomfort. It was something I was going to have to get used to over the next day, so I figured I might as well adjust now. Instead, I coughed and said, “My, my. Do you eat all your vegetables, little dragon?”
He puffed up his chest in indignation. “Hey! I’m the one who found you out in the snow! Can’t I get a little credit?”
“Then I hereby deem you ‘Tiny Dragon First-Class,’” I said, a small smile on my face. “Now tell me, is there a mother dragon I should be worrying about? I don’t have time to be someone’s lunch.”
“Well... sorta. My name’s Spike, by the way,” the little dragon said. “I’ll go get her. Stay here, alright? You still look kinda sick.”
That’s a good approximation, I muttered to myself. I certainly felt sick.
He rushed back out of the room, probably to fetch the ‘Twilight’ he mentioned earlier. I deemed it unwise to disobey him and wander about, not because it was impolite to try and beeline to the nearest exit, but because I still had to do some research before embarking on mission impossible. I tried not to get my hopes up, though, knowing that my investigations could very well prove fruitless.
I was absently polishing my spectacles on my feathers when a purple pony stormed into the room. Spike had been following her blindly, and when she stopped, he slammed into her back legs. She had a very dark purple mane with highlights of violet and rose, and her cutie mark was of a six-tined star surrounded by tiny bursts of light. She looked annoyed upon entering the room, but that look abruptly shifted to concern upon her seeing me, which made me wonder if I really did look that bad.
“How do you feel?” she asked. She closely inspected me, as if I were somepony familiar.
“Fine,” I answered, though I was lying through my teeth. My head was still pounding slightly, and whenever I didn’t feel nauseous I was starving. I didn’t have time to worry about that, though. “So are you the mother dragon?”
She laughed. “That’s actually not so far off from the truth, as far as Spike’s concerned. You’ve met him, right?”
“The little one who claims to have saved my life? Certainly,” I replied. “Now, where exactly did you find me?”
Twilight bit her lip. “Near the woods, not too far from here. My name’s Twilight Sparkle, by the way. Spike and I were looking for Winterwort, an herb to cure colds and headaches, when we found you passed out in the snow. You didn’t look like you had crashed or anything, and you weren’t walking, either, because you would have left a trail of hoofprints behind yourself. I haven’t seen you in town before, so who are you? And what happened?”
“I’m... not a very good flyer,” I admitted. I glanced at Spike in such a way that Twilight would catch onto the subtext and evict him from the conversation.
Twilight took the bait and said, “Spike, can you double-check tomorrow’s list? I have a feeling I left something out around Item #73.”
“Fine, fine,” he grumbled, walking off with his odd dragon-gait.
I had always been good at manipulation through speech, though I didn’t think it was my special talent, for my cutie mark was a series of bubbles, not a silver tongue. “I must ask; when did he learn to walk?” I inquired.
“Oh, he’s been doing that ever since he was a few weeks old. He’s a messenger dragon, so he can use magic to send letters, and he can use his opposable talons for all sorts of things,” Twilight explained.
“Such as?” I asked.
“Well, writing letters, obviously, even though I could do that with my magic if I wanted to,” Twilight continued. “His fire breath can send letters anywhere in Equestria, though, and he’s an excellent digger. Everything else I’ve taught him, like acting and piano playing, and he’s also an excellent cook. When I’m watching, that is,” she added.
“Fascinating,” I said. “And you’ve raised him since he was born?”
“Well, hatched. I didn’t get him until he was a little older, but he’s been my assistant since the first time he could send a letter,” Twilight stated proudly.
The fact that a pony could raise a good-natured dragon in a functioning society intrigued me, since dragons were not only solitary, but dangerous. Twilight was either incredibly connected, incredibly talented, incredibly lucky, or some combination of the three. I adjusted my spectacles put on my best expression of admiration. “Your raising a baby dragon is no less than astonishing to me, and that’s not a word I throw around lightly. But by Celestia, he must be older than he looks to be so talented! Are you sure you’re feeding him properly?”
“I researched this myself, and I think that although dragons can subsist on normal pony food, they can only grow at a steady rate if they eat gems like rubies or emeralds. I try to get him some when I can, but you can only imagine how expensive that would be,” Twilight explained.
I nodded, and I decided I liked Twilight. She was intelligent without being overly technical and she appeared to be a very talented researcher. She also had that gullible air about her--she didn’t look like she would inquire the origins of any question I chose to bring up. She was perfect.
“Sooo... you never really answered my question,” Twilight began. “About how you ended up unconscious in the woods?”
“I’m not a good flyer in the cold,” I corrected. “I need finesse to fly, and in the cold my wings freeze up, literally, and I crash-land. And when I crash-land, well...” I paused, acting sheepish. “I really crash-land.”
“Oh. Well, I understand,” Twilight said. “In fact, just a few days ago I read a story about a pegasus that tried to cross all of Equestria in eighty days, and she hit a blizzard sometime late at night...”
I swallowed, stifling another wave of sickness as I nodded and pretended to enjoy Twilight’s ramblings. In my mind, the sooner I could achieve my goal, the sooner I could consider ponies other than myself.
Although her status among dragonkind was intriguing, I could have cared less about the random and meaningless facts Twilight blurted out about Spike’s dietary habits, and I certainly couldn’t concern myself with pegasi that had tragically frozen to death in the snow, leaving five orphaned foals behind. After a few minutes or so of her constant blathering, I completely tuned her out, instead only paying attention to the bookcases that lined her shelves.
Frankly, I was impressed that such a loudmouth would have the time to read all of the books she kept. Upon seeing some of the mammoth-sized and surprisingly well-worn textbooks that adorned her living room walls, I changed my initial judgment of her from ‘Gullible blabbermouth’ to ‘Lonely, gullible blabbermouth.’
Had I the time to listen, or any reason at all to care about what she was saying, I probably would have done so, but I needed to find somepony very specific. While Twilight continued on what seemed like a never-ending rant concerning her intimate knowledge of scaly reptilian species, I scoured her shelves and encyclopedias for something called a ‘draconequus.’
“...give him a ruby on his birthday every year. They’re his favorite gems, actually,” Twilight continued. “It used to be sapphires when he was little, but I think that changed after he fell into a pond in the fall while eating one of them. He also liked diamonds for a little while, but since they’re so rare, not to mention pricey-”
I had been trying to pretend that Spike’s favorite gems fascinated me in the least, but I eventually gave up and asked, “Twilight, have you ever heard of a draconequus?”
She didn’t seemed to be fazed by the abrupt change in topic. “Yes, in fact I defeated one once.”
“Oh, really?” I asked, looking up from the seventh dictionary I had checked so far. “Do tell.”
“Well, it wasn’t just me. I had the help of my friends, too,” she pointed out.
I absently wondered how Twilight acquired friends. “Go on.”
“He was a trickster and manipulator called Discord,” Twilight began. “He broke out of his stone prison and began to cause chaos all around Equestria. My five friends and I were sent to stop him, and we eventually did, but just barely. Discord has powerful magical abilities, and he used them to counter our most important characteristics as friends. The only reason we won is because we were able to fight off his spell.”
“And what happened to Discord?” I asked, nearly cringing at how suspicious that sounded.
Twilight didn’t seem to notice. “He was imprisoned in stone again, but with stronger bonds this time. They can only be broken in the presence of pure hatred, instead of just argument. To prevent him from escaping again, though, he was relocated to Everfree County Dungeon, a couple hours north of here as the crow flies.”
I tried to hide how shocked I was at receiving so much information at once. I wondered if Twilight was trying to fool me by feeding me false information, but when I glanced at her, she didn’t look like she was hiding anything. Astonishing. I may have found the most gullible pony in Equestria. To be fair, though, I hadn’t met many ponies yet.
“Ah. I see,” I said, nonchalantly pulling a book called ‘Equestrian Justice System Facilities’ from a nearby shelf and flipping to the index. “Are you certain he’s contained?”
Twilight nodded. “The first time he was released, it was only an accident. I doubt anypony would go as far as breaking into the county dungeon unless their life depended on it-”
I secretly winced.
“-but even then, there’re first-class security personnel assigned specifically to guard Discord. He’s not going anywhere anytime soon.” She paused, then asked the question I was dreading: “Why do you ask?”
I smiled slightly, though a knot was forming in my stomach, and another in my head. “Well, if he’s so close to home, I just want to be able to sleep at night without worrying some madpony’s going to sneak in there and free him. That would be disastrous, wouldn’t it?”
Twilight laughed. “I guess, a little. But I’m sure that my friends and I’d be able to handle him if he broke out again.”
I chuckled too. “I certainly hope so,” I said. I raised a hoof to my head for a moment, suddenly dizzy. My body had reached its breaking point, and I couldn’t dismiss my symptoms any longer. Worse, they all hit at the exact same time, forcing my mind to enter emergency shutdown mode. My knees buckled as I was pulled into the darkest regions of my subconscious once more.
I woke up on the same couch as before, in the same room, with the same dull, leafless tree branches hanging by the window. The difference this time was that Twilight was anxiously standing over me, pressing a cool cloth against my forehead.
“Are you awake?” she asked softly.
“Awake, yes,” I began, coughing. “Alright, no. Do you have the time?”
“You were out for a couple hours. It’s about noon now,” Twilight said. “How do you feel?”
“Sick,” I mumbled. My body ached with exhaustion; I probably shouldn’t have put it through so much so soon after I had arrived. An unnatural chill was also crawling its way up and down my body, and when I tried to move, my brain threatened to implode.
“You have a nasty cold,” Twilight stated. She cantered out of my field of view for a moment and returned carrying a pale white root with her magic. She levitated it an a glass of water from the end table to my mouth. “Here, eat this, and I’ll wash it down with some water.”
I obliged, highly doubting that Twilight would want to poison, enchant, or murder me at this point in our acquaintanceship. The root was sweet-tasting, but some of the residual dirt left a bitter and dry taste on my tongue after I chewed and swallowed. I was grateful for the water.
The effects were immediate. My head cleared just after the herb hit my stomach, and the pain in my throat shortly after. Energy flooded into my body for a moment before thinning out, allowing me to slide off of the couch and onto my hooves without collapsing. All in all, an improvement.
“I’m curious as to what I just ate,” I told Twilight.
She smiled. “I’m glad it worked. It was some of the Winterwort that Spike and I uprooted this morning when we found you. It works better when it’s picked within a day.”
“Why do you pick this herb? You don’t look very sickly.” I stated.
“I’m not very prone to colds, but Spike is, since his scales don’t retain heat very well. He usually wakes up in the morning sick, because he can’t warm himself up with fire when he’s sleeping,” Twilight explained. “I picked them from a grove nearby that Zecora, Ponyville’s local herbalist, showed me recently. Did you know...” She went on to blather about the proper times to pick the plant and the color of its flower, but since I knew she wouldn’t take offense, I began to stride out into the library. She stopped me, though.
“You should rest first before you go into town. I’m not sure how you managed to hide your symptoms the first time, but if you collapse out on the streets, or worse, in the woods, you might not wake up again,” Twilight cautioned, using magic to tug my tail backward.
I found it amusing that Twilight was afraid to say the word ‘die.’ “Mind over matter, Twilight, and I can take care of myself. I’m sorry to leave so suddenly, but there’s really somewhere I ought to be, and I only have so long to get there.”
She bit her lip, worried, before finally giving in. “Okay, I guess I don’t really have any right to keep you here against your will. I’ll show you the exit.” She led me through the library to her front door, beyond which there seemed to be a small town, but before she let me go, she told me to wait while she got some things.
“Leaving already?” Spike asked me. He was sweeping the floor, but he paused in his work to look up at me with his bright green dragon eyes.
“Unfortunately,” I affirmed. “I will come back to visit, though, if I’m able. You and Twilight have done me a great service.”
The little dragon’s chest puffed up with pride. “Naturally. Just don’t go pulling something like that again. The Spikester can only save one pony at a time.”
I smiled, adjusting my spectacles. After a brief pause, I added, “Kurbakra aglii. It means, ‘May your path be forever with the wind’ in Dragontongue. Loosely translated, of course.” A complete lie, but since I could count on one hoof the amount of ponies that probably still spoke the language, odds are he wouldn’t find out.
“Kurbakra aglii,” Spike parroted, grinning. “I like it!” He dropped his broom, rushed to a nearby shelf, and grabbed a quill, paper, and ink. “How do you spell that?”
I spelt it out to him as best I could just as Twilight entered the room. She was carrying a scarf and a small pouch. The scarf appeared to be hoof-knitted, and it had a couple holes in it, with stitches missing on one end. “This is a little knitting project I had started a couple years ago, when I still lived in Canterlot. I got bored with it after a while, but you can have it if you’d like. It’s better than nothing at all, and I don’t have any spare coats.”
I accepted the scarf and wrapped it around my neck. Although it looked like it was in fairly decent condition, the lack of fastening at one end meant it would fall apart in a day or two. It was composed of white and blue fabric in a striped pattern, and was made of soft, though slightly itchy wool. “Thank you. And the bag?”
“I included three doses of Winterwort in case you get sick again,” Twilight said, looping the drawstring over my neck to make sure I wouldn’t lose it. The pouch came to a rest at my chest.
“I can’t possibly thank you both enough for what you’ve given me,” I stated, though I managed to avoid adding, ‘knowingly or not.’
“It’s no trouble, really,” Twilight said, though her expression was still tinged with worry. “The clinic is in the center of town if you need to take a visit there. Just be careful, okay?”
“Don’t worry; it’s not as if I’m embarking on a life-changing journey fraught with peril. I prefer to leave those to the storybooks,” I joked, inciting a chuckle from Spike and a small smile from Twilight. I opened the door and took my leave, sighing at how ironic my last statement was.
Meanwhile, after I had left Twilight’s abode far behind me, she was sitting at the dinner table, daydreaming, when something finally occurred to her: “You know... I don’t think I ever caught her name.”
My name is Ditsica Esmeralda Doo. Always has been, always will be.
My mission now was to find somepony stupid enough to journey with me to Everfree County Dungeon. That would likely be the most difficult part of the task, though the other little tidbit I picked up at Twilight’s was that the pony with whom I began my journey would have to be somepony I couldn’t stand. Somepony who would irritate me to no end. Somepony I would hate.
I didn’t have high expectations upon my official entrance into Ponyville. Perhaps it would be mostly vacant, or perhaps there would be friars chanting in the streets about the end of the world of the week. Everything seemed to be relatively quiet, except for a large group of ponies all crowding around something in the center of town.
I approached the several dozen denizens of the village and glanced into the center of the crowd. As I suspected, it wasn’t anything worth my time; just a fallen package that apparently had been dumped unceremoniously onto a different citizen that was just now being helped out of the wreckage of what appeared to be an armchair. A large moving truck was hovering overhead, with several pegasi hovering around it, including one particularly ticked-off looking one.
My ears swiveled to the side as I heard a pony next to me mutter, “What a klutz.” Another mumbled, “Way to go, butterhooves. You could’ve broke Mrs. Cake’s neck.” Yet another remarked to herself, “I simply can’t believe they haven’t fired that poor mare and put her in a mental institution! She’s a hazard to society!”
My curiosity got the better of me. “Excuse me,” I began, pulling a white unicorn mare to the side, the one who had mentioned something about a ‘mental institution,’ “but what is all of this about?”
She shrugged off my hoof, and looked at me, slightly surprised. “Oh! I-... I’m sorry, darling, I didn’t see you there. Um... weren’t you the one that just dropped the chair on poor Mrs. Cake?”
“Pardon?” I asked, confused. “I just got here. I came from Twilight’s; do you know her?”
“Of course I know her, darling, she’s one of my closest friends! My name is Rarity, by the way, and this is my other friend, Rainbow Dash,” she said, motioning to the mare that had muttered something about a ‘klutz.’ “I’m sorry for mistaking you for Derpy Hooves; you two look almost identical.”
“A pleasure,” I said, faking courtesy when what I really wanted to do at the moment was demand answers from Rarity so that I could get on my merry way. The clock was ticking. “So who is this ‘Derpy Hooves,’ and what in Equestria could she have done to merit so much ire out of the two of you?”
Rarity clearly looked as if she had wanted to keep that last part secret. “Oh... you heard that, didn’t you?” She chuckled nervously. “Well... That’s not what I meant, of course, right, Rainbow Dash?”
“Yeah, she can be kind of a drama queen sometimes,” Dash added quickly, though it was clear they were both trying to cover up something. What that was, exactly, I wasn’t sure; perhaps they didn’t want to appear shallow.
“You still haven’t answered my question,” I said patiently, though my patience was running thin.
“Oh, well, Derpy is an... oddball, of sorts. She has a difficult time...” Rarity was straining for the politically correct words.
“Doing things,” Dash said simply.
“Well, yes, doing things, and functioning in a typical society. She also has the most peculiar eye disorder... But surely you know all this, darling, because you two look almost exactly alike,” she said, inspecting me with an unnerving amount of fascination. “Look! You even have the same cutie mark as her! Are you perfectly certain you aren’t sisters, or cousins, or something?”
I gritted my teeth. It was time to terminate this conversation and go directly to the source, because, frankly, I wasn’t all that comfortable sharing so many traits with a character as troubled as Derpy seemed to be. Perhaps if I met the mare, I would be able to form suitable conclusions of my own. “Thank you both for your help,” I began, pushing Rarity away from my flank, which she seemed to find intriguing, “but I have somewhere to be. I hope to see you again once I’m less... busy,” I finished, picking a word that didn’t imply I could spontaneously vanish in less than a day.
As they departed, I noticed that the crowd was already beginning to disperse, though I heard two other ponies anxiously chatting with each other, one of them being the ticked-off pegasus I had noticed before. He was a dirty brown color and had a very early-morning version of five o’clock shadow, and he was speaking with a light yellow earth pony with a carrot-colored mane. Discreetly, I swiveled my ears toward them and eavesdropped on their conversation.
“Look, Ms. Top, I understand that you two are trying your best, and I respect that, I really do,” the very masculine pegasus began, “but if she starts hurtin’ ponies, then I don’t really have much choice in the matter.”
“But I’ve been working with her on this and she’s made fantastic progress!” the other pony, Ms. Top, replied. “This is the first real job she’s had since I first started helping her and if you take that away, then what’ll she have?”
“You know I don’t wanna do this, Miss,” the burly pegasus said, scratching his scraggly chin, “but the accidents, well, they’re bad for business. This isn’t the first time, either. It doesn’t give me many options. My other employees are already complaining about having to work with her, and it places a lot of stress on my own shoulders, you know what I’m saying?”
Ms. Top had no rebuttal. She turned away dejectedly.
“Sorry, Miss, but it is what it is. I’ll give her a couple days pay in advance so that maybe you can help her find a new job; I just can’t risk her dropping cargo on ponies’ heads anymore. Sorry,” he said, turning and flying back up to his crew.
She began to sadly walk away, but as she passed me, she grabbed my hoof gently and urged me forward. “Come on now, Derpy. Time to go hunting again.”
“Excuse me,” I said, flinching away from her hoof. “My name isn’t Derpy.”
She looked up, surprised. “Oh, I’m sorry! But... you look a lot alike,” she said. Her brow furrowed. “How about that. Derpy never told me she had a long-lost sister.”
“If she does, I’m not her,” I said, gritting my teeth. “I think it’s about time I meet this ‘Derpy’ character and see why everypony’s been mistaking me for her.”
“Well, she’s just over there, I think. My name’s Carrot Top, by the way. Derpy?” she called to a pony nearby.
A light gray pegasus mare flew over, though her form was clumsy and she was barely able to stop before she ran into me. On the surface, I didn’t see anything all that similar besides our color scheme; her mane was light blond, as mine was, and her cutie mark was indeed a series of bubbles, akin to my own. However, I did a double take once I saw her eyes; they were completely and utterly crossed. She had a bright smile on her face nonetheless. “Uh-huh?” she asked Carrot Top.
“There’s a pony that would like to meet you,” Carrot Top said pleasantly. “What is your name, by the way?” she asked me.
“Ditsica Doo,” I said.
“Nice to meet you, Ditzy!” Derpy said automatically, offering her hoof for me to shake. She had on a scarf similar to mine, though it was completely stitched and had purple stripes rather than blue ones.
“A pleasure, but it’s Ditsica, not... Ditzy,” I corrected, shaking her hoof. She stared at me with an oddly fractured gaze, and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.
“Do you have any plans for lunch? I accidently bought more lettuce yesterday than I meant to, and I was hoping I could have somepony over for a daisy and pecan salad,” Carrot Top offered.
I considered declining, but something told me Derpy would be make an ideal partner for the journey, given that I had already started to dislike her doltish mannerisms. Considering the fact that I hadn’t eaten anything substantial yet that day, as well, it was too good an opportunity to pass up. “That sounds lovely. I’d be happy to join you two.”
“Three, actually; Dinky, Derpy’s daughter, should be getting home from kindergarten about now,” Carrot Top said. “There’ll be plenty for all of us, though. How does that sound, Derpy?”
Derpy didn’t seem to have been paying attention, and was instead sitting down and glancing oddly at passerby. “Huh?”
“We’re going to have Ditsica over for lunch, Derpy. Doesn’t that sound fun?” Carrot Top prompted.
“Is she nice?” Derpy asked Carrot Top.
She tried to pass it off as a joke. “Well, are you nice, Ditsica?” she asked, attempting wryness.
“I’d say so, but that’d be my ego talking,” I said simply, starting to get impatient.
“What’s ego?” Derpy asked.
“In this context, arrogance,” I replied, my frustration beginning to show.
“What’s arrogance?” Derpy asked, tilting her head slightly.
“Being full of yourself,” I said, stating the term in the simplest terms I knew of, though I was clearly exasperated by this point.
“What does that mean?” Derpy asked, scratching her temple.
“Oh, good grief,” I muttered, pushing my spectacles back up the bridge of my nose. “Forget I mentioned it.”
“Now, now; she was only asking a question,” Carrot Top told me. She turned to Derpy and said, “All of those mean that you think more of yourself than you really are, or that you think can do more than you can really do.”
“Oh. Why didn’t you just say so?” Derpy asked me.
I resisted the urge to wrinkle my nose, and put on my most impassive face of the day. “I did. Thrice. Now shall we be going?”
After Carrot Top properly defined the term ‘Thrice’ to Derpy, we were off on our way to the home the two of them shared. I was well on my way to officially declaring Derpy my partner in crime, for who would be better for me, a sophisticated and intelligent mare, to hate than Derpy, who doesn’t even know what the word ‘sophisticated’ means?
Prior to our arriving at Carrot Top’s household, she directed Derpy to the schoolhouse and asked her to walk Dinky home. I was unsure whether or not I pitied Dinky’s situation, though I supposed I would find out once I found out if she was anything at all like her mother.
Their home was quaint, and not quite as large as Twilight’s, although theirs didn’t have a library addition to it like Twilight’s did. I wiped my hooves on the doormat and draped my scarf on the coathanger before following Carrot Top into the kitchen, which was a fairly small room composed of a counter, a refrigerator, a stovetop and a couple cabinets. Carrot Top grabbed various ingredients out of her vegetable drawer while I leaned against the back wall and watched. As she began to prepare lunch, I began to inquire about her past with Derpy, since at the moment I had no better way to spend my time.
“How did you two meet?” I asked.
“Out of necessity,” Carrot Top replied as she diced some radishes. “Equestrian law requires that ‘all disabled single parents must be assisted by an able member of the community, with the amount of help proportional to the magnitude of the disability’ or something like that. After Derpy had Dinky, I, being a close friend of Derpy’s parents, chose to do my duty and help her raise the child.”
“You’re doing much more than just that,” I remarked. I paused for a moment before asking, “If it’s not too sensitive a topic... how did Dinky come about? I don’t mean to pry, I’m simply curious.”
“Not many ponies ask that question,” Carrot Top began, pausing in her work. She turned to face me. “You’ve got a lot of nerve.”
Uh-oh. I shifted nervously.
“I like that,” Carrot Top added simply, grinning slightly. She turned back to her cutting board and began to slice some cherry tomatoes. “Too many ponies in this community are spineless. They’re over-polite to Derpy and I just because of her disability. Everypony at school is nice to Dinky, and yet she hasn’t had one friend over to our house to date because they’re all afraid of her mom, even if they don’t say it aloud. Sometimes I wish that they’d all just treat Derpy, well, normal, because that’s what she is at heart.” I sensed a hint of anger in her tone.
“It’s difficult to understand your position without being in it first-hoof,” I said. “I think, personally, that their reaction is reasonable, given what they know. I would hope, though, that once they got to know Derpy, they would be much more comfortable around her.” I didn’t believe that last part, but although I didn’t like Derpy all that much, I did like Carrot Top to an extent, and I didn’t want to see her upset.
“One would think,” Carrot said. She turned back to me for a moment and added, “I’m sorry if this is all a bit ranty, Ditsica.”
“Not at all, but you still haven’t answered my question,” I said, more confidently now that I knew she wouldn’t be offended.
“Well... it’s a rough story, involving Derpy’s first job and her first boss. I’d really rather we don’t go into it,” Carrot Top said as she chopped up some lettuce leaves. “Anyway, where did you come from? I haven’t seen you in town before, and if you’re not Derpy’s long-lost cousin, then who are you?”
I was opening my mouth to weave some fanciful, tragic tale when the door crashed open, and in came Derpy and a young purple-colored filly with a slightly yellower mane than her mother’s.
These interruptions are getting more and more convenient, I muttered to myself.
“Hi,” Derpy said, shuffling to the kitchen. She was wearing the same fractured smile she had on earlier. “Is the salad ready yet?”
“In a few minutes, Derpy,” Carrot Top said. “How about you go set the table in the meantime?”
“Don’t I get to help make the food?” Derpy asked.
“It’s almost ready; all I have to do is toss it,” Carrot Top answered.
“But it looks so yummy; why would you toss it?” Derpy asked. “Can’t I have some first?”
“She means she’s going to combine the ingredients,” I said, though I bit my tongue as I realized the agonizing chain of dialogue that would soon follow.
“Um...” Derpy thought hard, scratching her chin. I looked up for a moment, seeing that she didn’t look like she wanted to ask what the words meant. “Oh... okay. I... I’ll set the table,” she said dejectedly before leaving for the dining room.
“She’s not as dull as you think, you know,” Carrot Top began.
“I never said anything like that,” I said defensively.
“But you and I both know that’s what you were thinking,” she replied, though she didn’t seem hostile or otherwise offended. “I know that she can appear a little slow at times, but she consistently proves me wrong. She caught on to the fact that you didn’t like to explain what words meant and didn’t bother asking.”
I remained unconvinced, but I didn’t have an appropriate rebuttal, so I simply nodded.
“I know you don’t think so yet,” she added as if she had read my mind, “but you will if you spend more time with her, trust me.”
“Mom can be really smart if she wants to,” Dinky said, making me jump slightly because I hadn’t realized she was listening in on our conversation. “She just doesn’t get much of a chance.”
“Shouldn’t you be helping Derpy set the table, Dinky?” Carrot Top asked as she tossed and distributed the salad into wooden bowls.
“I wanted to ask you something, Mrs. Top,” Dinky began. “Is it okay if Mom... doesn’t walk home with me anymore?”
“Dinky, we have a guest. I’m not going to talk about this now,” Carrot Top said forcefully.
Dinky stomped her hoof in protest. “But the other kids have been giving me really strange looks and-”
“Not another word or I’ll send you to your room,” Carrot Top finished. “Now go help your mother set the table.”
Dinky sighed, and she lowered her head as she slowly walked past Carrot Top and I into the dining room. “Sure, I’ll go help her. She’d probably break something without me anyway,” she muttered disappointedly.
After Dinky had left the room, Carrot Top exhaled and said, “You know how mean other ponies can be. I just don’t want Dinky to grow up being ashamed of Derpy, and treating her like she can’t do anything without help. She can. She just, well...”
“Can’t raise a foal,” I offered.
Carrot Top nodded sadly. “I try to have the two of them spend as much time as they can together, but she always ends up treating me as more of a ‘mom’ figure than Derpy. What’s worse, though, is that I usually end up following her lead.”
I didn’t have a way to continue the conversation after that, so I helped her carry the bowls of salad into the dining room. And for the remainder of my stay at Casa del Derp, I focused all of my mental ability on figuring out how to separate Derpy from her daughter and caretaker. That would be the easy part.
After that, though, I would have to find a way to convince Derpy that it would be a good idea to take a journey through frigid terrain with the grand goal of freeing Equestria’s most dangerous villain. And if she was really as bright as Carrot Top claimed, this would be no easy task.
Carrot Top proved to be an excellent cook, and I left the meal satisfied, though the overall mood of the luncheon was rather icy.
This could be due to the fact that Derpy was, on many occasions, trying to assist me with one thing or another while I ate. In total I had three sets of silverware set by me, two glasses of water, and about half a dozen napkins. Although I accepted them politely because I didn’t want to be rude in front of Carrot Top, I found it nigh impossible to make merry while my doppelganger was clowning around around my table setting. Dinky was still upset that Carrot Top had dismissed her and didn’t say a word, and Derpy was too distracted with me to talk with Carrot Top, so for the most part she made conversation on her lonesome, something that she seemed to have been practicing a lot lately.
Afterward, Dinky and Carrot Top cleared the table and took the dishes into the kitchen to wash. This seemed like the perfect opportunity for me to have a conversation with Derpy and to, indirectly or not, inform her of my plans and why I needed her help.
“Tell me, Derpy,” I began, leaning back in my chair. I forced myself to use vocabulary at her level of understanding. “Why do you want to earn my approval so much?”
“Uh, I dunno,” she said, tracing invisible circles on the table with her hooves. “You seem really nice. I don’t know why you don’t like me.”
I snorted, but hid my sneer. “Maybe because you’re trying too hard to be my friend.”
“I try hard to be everypony’s friend,” Derpy stated.
“Yes, but don’t you think that might make at least some of them uncomfortable?” I inquired, leaning in.
Derpy shrugged. “I think that, uh... if they didn’t want me around, they’d tell me. Some ponies do, and I stay away from them. But you would tell me if you wanted me gone, wouldn’t you?”
I folded my forelegs and leaned backward in thought. “Not if I wanted to be polite.”
“...I don’t think it’s polite to hide your feelings,” Derpy said, resting her head on the table. “I think it’s dumb. It makes everything more... um...”
“Complicated?” I offered.
“Yeah. That,” she said. “My eyes may be funny looking, but that doesn’t mean I can’t see. Or that I can’t hear. Which is why I don’t know why ponies don’t like me, because I don’t do anything to them, and they don’t tell me to stay away. So I try to make friends with them, ‘cause we just could have got off on the wrong hoof at the start, and then they like me even less. I don’t get it.”
“Most ponies fear those that are different. It’s in our nature,” I said. “We’re hardwired to avoid diseased ponies. I’m not saying you’re diseased in that way, of course, but it’s difficult to override biology.”
“...I don’t know what last part means, but I think you’re trying to say that ponies don’t like me right when they meet me? Without knowing it?” Derpy guessed.
“They know it all right. They just don’t know why they know it,” I corrected. I had to remember to keep my speech simple, or I’d never be able to communicate with her. “Basically, our brains funct-... work in such a way to make us not like ponies that app-... look different than us.”
“Oh,” Derpy said. She paused for a moment before saying, “Well... aren’t we taught as foals to like ponies that are different?”
“Most ponies don’t remember most of the facts they learn in elementary school, let alone the morals,” I muttered, taking another sip. “The situation you’re in, Derpy, is unpleasant. However, I respect how much effort you’re putting into overcoming this disadvantage.” A lie, but even if I didn’t have to like Derpy, she still had to like me.
“You’re cool. And you’re really smart, too,” Derpy said, smiling. “Carrot Top likes you, too. I don’t know if Dinky likes you yet, but I think she will, because she’s a little like me.”
“Hmph. I’m glad,” I said, starting to get impatient. Time was ticking, and this conversation need to go somewhere fast.
“Where are you going to go now?” Derpy asked.
Jackpot.
I took a deep breath. “Derpy, I am on a mission that I need you to keep secret.”
“Oh!” she exclaimed, instantly reaching and covering up her mouth. For a minute she was unsure how to communicate via closed lips, but eventually she moved one hoof slightly to the side and whispered loudly, “I can do that, don’t worry! So what is it?”
“I’m going to Everfree County Dungeon to meet up with some official Equestrian personnel. It’s a group that researches ponies that look exactly alike,” I lied. “Their work is very sensitive, which is why I haven’t let anypony else know about it yet.”
“Sooo... they do science?” Derpy asked.
“Yes, they... do science.” I managed to say that with a straight face somehow, though I think I lost a few IQ points in the process.
“Oh. That sounds neat,” Derpy said.
I paused for a moment, for dramatic effect. I needed to look as if I were pondering something. “Derpy,” I began, “would you like to join me? You and Carrot Top have been incredibly hospitable to me here, and I think that it’s only fair I take you somewhere, too.”
“Thanks! I’d love to! But I have to ask Carrot to watch Dinky for me first,” Derpy said, her face lighting up in a bright smile as she began to rush into the kitchen. She stopped in her tracks, though, and looked back at me for a moment, asking, “Hey... we’re not gonna do anything bad, are we?”
I laughed. “Of course not!”
She nodded and continued her canter into the kitchen. A few moments after she left the room, there was a yelp, a thud, and the clattering of broken glass.
I sighed, massaging my temples. A migraine was already forming, but I resisted the urge to preemptively reach into the pouch containing the Winterwort. I would need that for the incredibly long, painful, and laborious journey ahead.
Carrot Top, admittedly, wasn’t the easiest to convince.
“How did you find out about this, anyway?” she asked. Derpy had already told her about the trip, but, predictably, she wasn’t exactly on board with the idea at first.
“It was the reason I came through Ponyville in the first place; I’m going there to file data and take notes and such. Not the most exciting work in the world, which is why I’d rather be a part of the experiment by taking Derpy along?”
“Are you sure that it’s safe?” she inquired.
“It’s not even all that much of an experiment, really,” I said. “They’re just surveying look-alike ponies and taking a little bit of hair to test and make sure we aren’t actually related. The goal is to see if there is some bond greater than genetics that can make two ponies look nearly identical. Quite harmless, really.” This was, by far, the most complex lie I had created to date, and I needed to wrap it up before I tripped over my own make-believe facts.
“How long will you be gone?” Carrot Top asked.
I shrugged. “It depends on how many ponies show up. We could be back this evening, or we might have to stay overnight in a nearby town. At the latest, we’ll be back tomorrow morning.” I prayed that the last part would end up being true.
Carrot Top pursed her lips. “Are there any forms we need to sign, or anything?”
“The experiment, as I said, is very low-key and is being run by a few college colts and their professor. There’s nothing you need to worry about that I haven’t already taken care of,” I assured, though this lie was getting more and more difficult to weave. I needed to end the conversation quickly. “Derpy seems to want to go.”
“Uh-huh,” Derpy said, nodding. “So can you watch Dinky? Please?”
Carrot Top smiled, pulling Derpy into a quick hug. “Of course I can. You can count on me. Now you and Ditsica go have fun, and let me know how it went afterward.”
Derpy grinned happily and bounded out of the room exclaiming, “I’ll go get my scarf!”
Carrot Top then turned her attention to me. “You know, I hardly know you, Ditsica, but it already feels like you’re part of the family. I really appreciate your patience with Derpy.”
“Oh, it’s nothing,” I said automatically.
“No, really, I do. And I know that you two will get along well. But... you know how prone she is to accidents,” Carrot Top began softly, looking up into my eyes. “Promise me that you won’t let her get hurt, okay?”
“Hmm?” I asked.
“I know it’s silly when you’re only going to be gone for a little while, but trouble seems to find Derpy everywhere she goes. And even if she needs me, well, I need her, too. Just be careful and keep her safe, that’s all I ask,” she said, smiling slightly.
“For what it’s worth, I promise,” I said. I really meant it for a moment, but as I realized how foolish the sentiment was, my smile vanished. I adjusted some of the wayward threads on my scarf as I turned toward the door and said, “Farewell, Carrot Top.”
“Oh, don’t be like that. I’m sure I’ll see you again,” she chuckled.
For once, I longed to be as sure of that as she seemed to be. I suppose, if I had to choose which pony in Equestria I would miss most besides myself, it would probably have been Carrot Top.
Derpy bounded up besides me as I exited the house and stepped onto the road. The air was notably chillier, and a light snow was falling. It was about noon, and the clock was ticking. My underused wings tingled as I realized I would have to fly.
“I brought food,” Derpy said, pointing to a bag she had strapped to her side. “So where’re we going, anyway?”
“Everfree County Dungeon,” I muttered, my breath making mist in the air. My hide kept most of the cold out, but I still felt its sting on my snout and my lips. “A few hours due north.”
Derpy took to wing and began to soar, but stopped as she realized I hadn’t followed. “What’re you waiting for?” she asked, confused. “Are you going to walk?”
“No,” I mumbled, spreading my wings. I flapped them once, as a test, feeling the wind resistence beneath the feathers. I flapped them again, trying to get lift, but my hooves didn’t rise an inch off the ground. I exhaled in frustration.
“What’s wrong?” Derpy asked, concerned.
“Nothing, just give me a moment,” I growled, widening my stance. A few other pegasi chortled at me as they walked by, but I ignored them. I leapt up and flapped again, only to land on my hooves once more.
“Why aren’t you flying?” Derpy asked.
Why wasn’t I flying?
I have always tried to squirm out of uncomfortable questions with my silver tongue. But the situation was too dire, and Derpy too simple, for there to be a way to weasel myself out of this conundrum. I stood there in the cold breeze for a moment, scouring my mind for an answer to her question, but found nothing. No lie, excuse, or alibi would answer her question, save one, and it was the one that would lead directly to the painful truth I was trying so desperately to avoid. Personal growth was not included on my plans for this journey; I simply had to get from point A to point B while dragging somepony else along for the ride. Now, however, there was no way out, and I hated it.
“Because...” I folded my wings and brushed my mane back behind my ears before looking back up at Derpy indignantly. “I can’t.”
I despised not being able to do things. Arrogance aside, the very fact that I wasn’t able to do something so basic infuriated me to my very core. I didn’t understand why I was given wings if I was so much more comfortable on the ground; I simply didn’t! My entire personality was made for books and chess and intellectual activities, not prancing about in the air like the buffoons the other pegasi are!
“...Why not?” Derpy asked, landing beside me.
“I’m afraid of heights. I’m afraid of speed, I’m afraid of the wind blowing something into my eye and taking it out, I’m afraid of getting struck by lightning, I’m just afraid!” I sputtered. I lowered my voice and added, “The list goes on and on.”
I detested being so open with a near stranger. It was almost too much to bear; if only I was merely lying to earn Derpy’s trust! That was a foolish wish, though; I couldn’t fly, I could never fly, it was as if these wings were simply taped on like some foalish costume. Folded nicely, of course, but still a pathetic, useless costume. And I was afraid that, if I used them, they would fall apart as if they were made of tissue paper and cardboard.
“So... you’re afraid?” Derpy asked, though she looked more concerned than sarcastic. She thought for a moment. “Well... if you’re afraid of heights, we’ll just fly low, right? And, uh... if you’re afraid of speed, well, flying doesn’t have to be really fast. I’ve never had anything get in my eyes while flying, but I guess I’d just land if it did. And... most pegasi don’t fly in thunderstorms, or rest on thunderclouds. Uh, if they knew it was that kind of cloud, I mean,” she added sheepishly.
“It doesn’t matter if a fear is irrational or not, it can still inhibit you,” I mumbled, hanging my head. My spectacles slid off my nose, and I picked them up and put them in the pouch with the Winterwort. “How am I supposed to be able to fly?”
“You have wings,” Derpy pointed out. “If you wanted to fly, you could.”
“But I do want to fly,” I argued, though it was halfhearted. I would have gladly traded flying for a chariot ride, or perhaps a magician who could teleport us to our destination.
“I mean if you really, really wanted to,” she said. “Like, uh... if your will beats your fear. Right?”
“...I suppose,” I said, looking up.
“So how about you just try to fly, and if you get hurt, then we’ll walk. But you have to really, really try, otherwise it won’t count,” Derpy suggested. “Deal?”
She didn’t know about my deadline, but I supposed that didn’t matter all that much anyway. I was going to have to fly, one way or another, otherwise all my work thus far would have been in vain. “Alright.”
I steadied myself. The instincts were there. I had flown before; that much I knew, or at least, I thought I knew. I extended my wings once more and, with a little effort, pushed myself off the ground. But my form was clumsy and haphazard, and after a few seconds of airtime, I was forced back to the snowy ground, my cheeks burning with humiliation. I felt like a mare who was just now learning to walk for the first time.
“Try again,” Derpy prompted.
So I did. With more effort this time, I launched myself up into the air and desperately flapped my wings, vying to stay above ground level. And I did, for a little; I actually flew. In the end it was all for naught, though, because I slipped up, turned sideways, and fell to the ground with a yelp and a soft thump. I landed wrong on my ankle, though, and pain shot through it.
“Are you alright?” Derpy asked, rushing to my side.
“...No,” I mumbled, checking my ankle. It hurt slightly to move it, but I didn’t think it was sprained or broken. I shivered slightly; this was my second landing in the snow. I was humiliated and furious at myself for being so pathetic.
“Okay. Let’s just walk,” Derpy said, helping me up.
“No,” I growled, shrugging off her hoof and standing up on my own. “I am going to fly.”
“B-...But the deal,” Derpy said, confused. “Aren’t you still afraid?”
“Of course I’m afraid!” I snapped back. Cooling my temper, I stated softly, “Out of all those other fears, though, there is one that stands out: I am afraid of being afraid. I hate the fact that my fear could... could...” I strained for the right word. “Control me, somehow. So I am going to fly, like it or not.” And that was the truth.
“...Okay! I think,” Derpy said. “You can do it!”
I readied myself again and shot up into the air as Derpy cheered me on. The wind pushed me upwards, but with too much force for me to control, so I flipped and landed on my back. I snarled and shook the snow off before leaping toward the sky, pushing down on the air with all my might, and I gained a meter or two before my lift vanished and I was sent spiraling once more.
Derpy was looking increasingly concerned as she watched my numerous failures. Her brow furrowed as she realized something and she yelled, “Ditzy, wait!”
I didn’t listen to her; I was too furious at my own incompetence. I picked myself back up, took a running start, and jumped into the air, trying desperately to fly, only to faceplant inches from the frozen dirt road. Derpy grabbed me and tried to sit me down, but I flinched out of her grasp and tried again, launching myself high out of her reach. I was so angry, I couldn’t see straight.
“Ditzy!”
She caught me in midair and plowed me down into the snow. When I collected myself, I saw that wings were splayed out to my sides, and when I failed to get up I realized that Derpy was sitting right on top of me.
“...Are you okay?” she asked tentatively, not bothering to get off.
“Peachy,” I hissed, propping my head up on my hoof and looking up at her irritably.
“Oh. Okay,” she said, sitting up and smiling absently.
“Derpy, has it occurred to you in the slightest that your posterior is positioned in such a way to make my recovery from the crash you caused utterly inconceivable?” I snarled.
“Um...” Derpy thought for a moment. “What does ‘slightest’ mean?”
“Get--off!”
“Oh!” she exclaimed, sliding off of me and allowing me to stand up.
I shook myself off and adjusted my scarf, noticing a few strands had fallen out of it. “What is so direly important that you had to interrupt my progress?”
“Um... you were doing it wrong,” Derpy said simply.
“Oh? Do tell,” I hissed, my speech dripping with sarcasm.
“Uh, well, you don’t push down on the air when you fly. It’s more of like, uh... swimming. So you push the air behind you,” she explained as she demonstrated her method. She raised up her wings slowly, then moved them through the air in a more-or-less circular motion.
I thought for a moment, then flapped my wings, using the technique she showed me but with a bit more force. I was propelled forward, and I had to take a few steps to compensate for the unexpected momentum. “...Oh,” I said. I flapped a few more times, and before I knew it, I was sailing through the air as if it were water, instincts taking over as soon as I knew how to use them. I adjusted my direction and started to fly northward, an internal compass guiding my progress.
Derpy was right alongside me. “See?” she asked, smiling pleasantly.
I didn’t detect a hint of smugness in her expression. She seemed genuinely glad to help me. I turned a slight red, remembering my numerous failures, and replied, “Yes. I see.”
It was a shame I was going to have to end up hating Derpy, one way or another, at the very least temporarily. There was no way I knew of to fake hate, and I would need to hate somepony in order to accomplish my goal. Derpy was making herself increasingly difficult to dislike, however.
She paused for a moment, thinking. “Wait a minute,” she began, inspecting me. “We look the same! We even have the same cutie mark!” She giggled. “That’s weird.”
Then again, maybe not so much, I thought, rolling my eyes. This was going to be a long trip.
As I glided through the wintry sky, I thought over my situation. And as I thought, I realized that I was stuck. I was stuck in-between hating things and simply being annoyed.
It annoyed me that I took so long to get off the ground, of course. But I wasn’t given enough time to hate that fact. That was probably for the best, of course, because I never would have been able to accomplish my goal if I hadn’t taken those first few crucial flaps.
It annoyed me that I only had around twenty hours, now, to accomplish my goal. But since that was plenty of time to achieve it, I couldn’t really complain. If I failed, that would be my own fault and mine alone.
And Derpy annoyed me. It annoyed me that her vocabulary was so tiny and that she incessantly asked me for definitions; it was getting to the point where I was afraid to make conversation, though after she picked up on this during our flight she promptly shut her trap, something that also annoyed me because it victimized her, turning her into the innocent victim of one mare’s perfectly reasonable irritation. But she had helped me too much, and she was just too simple, for me to truly hate her, no matter how much I tried to convince myself of this fact.
Thusly, I was stuck. And I came to the conclusion that the only way for me to find the hate I was searching for was to find the darker side of Derpy--something wrong she had done, something that she was ashamed of, anything at all that I could latch onto and hate her for. And I knew exactly where to start.
Unfortunately, that required me to make conversation.
Derpy shivered in midair. “It’s cold. I think it’s gonna snow.”
“Looks more like a blizzard to me,” I said.
“Well... they’re kinda the same,” Derpy said. Before I could reply, she asked, “Hey, Ditzy? Um... what do you think about snow?”
“What do I think about it?” I asked incredulously. “It’s cold. It’s wet. It makes the sun reflect directly into your eyes. That’s what snow is.”
“Oh, uh, I meant snowflakes. ‘Cause, y’know, no two snowflakes are alike, ever. I was thinking, snowflakes are kinda like ponies. Because no two ponies are ever just the same.” She smiled slightly. “I like catching snowflakes on my tongue. I don’t think many ponies do that anymore. It’s like they don’t think they have time. Sometimes I get yelled at when I stop working to catch the snowflakes. Then I get yelled at again for asking them to join. I... I’ve never really got why,” she admitted.
“Hmph. On their own, flakes of snow are beautiful, yes,” I said. “But when they group together, when they clump and dirt and melt, then they’re as ugly as anything else in nature. I’ve never found them any more fascinating than my fetlocks, and I doubt I ever will.”
“Oh. I think that when all of the snow falls just right, then everything is a lot prettier,” Derpy said.
There was a long pause. I felt the chilly air filtering through my feathers, and as I sighed, a light mist formed on the side of my mouth. I needed to ask that one particular question. It was make or break time. This was the moment when I found out what Derpy was truly made of.
“Derpy,” I began, “I don’t mean to pry, but under what circumstances did you have Dinky? The question has been eating away at me for some time now.”
She thought for a moment. “Oh! You mean... um, how I met Dinky’s dad?”
“Yes, and why he isn’t living with you now,” I added.
She furrowed her brow. “I... I’m not sure. Carrot Top told me not to talk about it, ever. Not to other ponies, not to Dinky, not even to my best friend if I ever got one.”
Blast. Carrot Top’s meddling ruined me.
As I hastily tried to think of another question, though, Derpy spoke again. “But I want to talk about it. I’m tired of keeping it secret.” I glanced over at her, and her walleyed expression suddenly looked much more intense than usual. “She... Well, she thinks she always knows best, just because she doesn’t have what I do.”
I found myself suddenly uncomfortable, and I pondered whether or not to follow through. “She only wants what’s best for you, Derpy. I can tell that just by looking at her.”
“But it’s stupid to keep secrets like that,” Derpy muttered. “If you want to know, then you can know. Just... can you please promise not to just tell anypony?”
“I promise.” For Carrot Top’s sake as well as hers, though I didn’t say so aloud.
“My first job was a long time ago. I wasn’t too young, but I still wasn’t old enough to live on my own. I have kinda a hard time remembering, ‘cause I’m not all that good at remembering things sometimes. But anyway, I had a job, and I was doing good, and... and I asked my boss for a raise.” She didn’t continue for a few moments after that.
“Well?” I asked.
I noticed that she was trembling slightly, not just from the cold. “Th-That’s it. That’s how Dinky was made.”
“There’s obviously more to it than that. I can tell just from your expression,” I said. “Tell me this, did you know what you were doing?”
She looked like she was about to shake her head, but then she stopped midair. I slowed myself to a halt and slowly clambered over to her, still not used to the whole ‘turning’ aspect of flying.
“We have to land,” she said quietly. “If you want to hear my story, we have to land.”
I gritted my teeth. I knew that I would never likely get hate-worthy material from this sob story. In retrospect, I had to wonder why I even pursued the venture in the first place; ‘Disabled mare gets taken advantage of,’ doesn’t exactly villainize the mare.
Unfortunately that was when I realized my curiosity had overridden my desire to achieve my end game. “Okay,” I found myself saying. “I’ll land for a few moments so that you can tell your tale. But try to make it quick, because I can’t afford to be late for the experiment.”
She nodded, wiping her eyes, and began to descend. As I followed her, though, I had to wonder just what I was getting into.
She settled under an evergreen, and I followed her down beneath the pine and sat down, increasingly uncertain if I wanted to pursue this dialogue. Nevertheless, my lust for knowledge pushed me forward. “I understand if the subject is painful.”
“No. That’s not it,” Derpy said, though her usual, absent smile had vanished. “It’s stupid that I’ve had to keep this secret from everypony. I think Carrot thinks I would just go telling everypony about it. She just doesn’t understand.”
“What doesn’t she understand?” I asked.
“That I’m--not--dumb,” Derpy mumbled. “I know I knew what I was doing back then. And I know that I could’ve taken care of Dinky. But nopony gave me the chance. I went along with it ‘cause that’s what I thought I was supposed to do.”
I began to feel increasingly uncomfortable. Not because the conversation was awkward, of course; the discomfort was mainly because I was starting to genuinely feel bad for Derpy. My line of questioning had landed me the opposite of what I needed, and yet I felt compelled to further pry. “Did you want to have Dinky?”
“I dunno. M-Maybe,” Derpy sniffed. “He had already gotten in trouble before for stuff like this. S-Sometimes, when I was upset, I hid. Then one day some mares, the ones that didn’t like me, came in and started talking about him, what they had done with him. I wanted that, ‘cause maybe then I would be as good as them.” She sniffed, smiling sadly. “Maybe I was a little dumb then. But I’m not anymore. I learned. But nopony thinks I did.”
“So you’re the one that made the move, not your boss,” I interpreted, rubbing my chin, “Tell me, did Carrot Top ever ask your side of the story?”
Derpy rolled her eyes slightly, something that made both her pupils swivel in opposite directions. “Carrot Top didn’t let me say anything about it. She said my boss’s going to jail if it’s the last thing she did. She even got a pony in a suit to help her. I dunno why she didn’t let me help her. I woulda said something if I just had the chance.”
“Hmm. But still...” I found myself so far unsatisfied with this explanation. “Why would you resort to such... extremes?”
“Because I was mad. I was mad ‘cause nopony would be my friend no matter how hard I tried. I tried doing stuff they did before with them, but they always made me go away. I wanted to be their friend. And when I found I was going to have Dinky, I wasn’t mad... ‘cause maybe she would be my friend,” she mumbled. “But I was never right. ‘Cause of that, nopony thinks I can take care of myself anymore. That’s what’s dumb about it. Not me.”
I thought for a moment. “You know, when you think about it, everypony has a friend they think is a little thick at times. It seems to me that ponies dislike you simply due to your eye condition.”
She nodded. “And ‘cause I always mess stuff up, and ‘cause I talk funny...” She trailed off, resting her head in her hooves.
I turned my head slightly to the side. “Perhaps sunglasses would help?”
She shook her head. “That’s lying. And lying is bad. I don’t want ponies to like me unless they like me, the real me. I don’t want to hide. But... it’s hard, sometimes, not to want them. The sunglasses. ‘Cause I’ve tried everything else, and nothing works. Even when I try to help other ponies, I end up messing something up later and then everypony hates me again.” She paused, resting her head in her hooves and shaking slightly. “Why can’t I have friends?” she whimpered. “If I knew, maybe I could... maybe I could do something, to try and be better for everypony. But I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.”
I waited a few moments for her to continue, for I had nothing to say. After those few moments of sitting alone in the snowy wilderness, though, I realized that Derpy was crying.
I swore silently. Derpy had gotten me to pity her. My progress toward despising her was not only brought to a halt, it was sent flying in reverse. This wasn’t good. I grimaced, standing up. The migraine was coming on full-force, and the dizziness was setting in. I opened the pouch and pulled out a piece of root, crunching it between my teeth and absorbing the energy contained within.
Derpy hadn’t seemed to notice, and after I had washed the snack down with some snow I said, “Pull yourself together, Derpy. We have flying to do.”
She nodded, wiping her eyes. “I hate ponies,” she muttered. “You’re the only one who’s different, Ditsica. Even if you don’t like me, either, at least you understand. At least you listen.”
Without saying a word in reply, I took to wing and sailed into the sky.
Neither of us spoke for a while. The air was growing colder; we had been flying for about three hours, now, and it was nearing sunset. I approximated that it was about four in the evening, now, and I was running out of time fast.
Unfortunately, I had reached a dead-end.
Not in the literal sense, of course. I was still quickly making my way to Everfree County Dungeon with Derpy at my side. Theoretically, everything should have been going as planned. But I was missing one crucial part: hatred. I was finding it utterly impossible to dislike Derpy to the extent necessary--not sincerely.
Delving into more theories, there was a chance that hatred of a specific pony wasn’t required at all, let alone that the object of your hatred had to be present. Praying that this was true, I decided to once again open the pandora’s box that was Derpy’s past. “Derpy, do you have anypony in your life that you specifically dislike?”
She thought for a moment. “Ditzy, why do all your questions make me sad? Ask happy questions. I don’t want to answer sad questions.”
I gritted my teeth. Perhaps that was too direct an approach. “Alright, alright. How did you meet Carrot Top?”
She paused. “...Okay, I think I can answer that.”
I waited for her to continue, but she kept blankly staring toward our destination. “...Well?” I finally prodded.
“Oh!” she exclaimed. “Sorry. Uhm, let’s see, how did I meet her?” She thought for another moment or two, quickly running my patience dry. “I think that I met her when I was little. She was a really good friend of my parents. But she moved in with me a few months before I had Dinky.” I noted how she steered around the subject of her parents. “Then she started telling me what to do. I guess that helped, a little. I didn’t really know what was going on. I’m not good at keeping track of a lot of different things. She helped me take care of Dinky and she tries to help me get jobs. Ponyville paid her to live with us, and for a while everything was okay. But now I think she just tells me what to do a lot more than she actually helps me.”
I nodded. “Have you ever asked her about her someday moving out?”
“I don’t want to hurt her, though. She likes to think that she’s helping me. She’s really nice, too. I don’t want her to hate me because I ask her to leave. Just after we moved to Ponyville I took walks in Everfree Forest to try and think about asking her to go. Just before I could choose, though, Carrot Top yelled at me for going out in the woods without asking her. I got mad, but I didn’t show it. ‘Cause I know what happens if I get really mad,” Derpy said, though she hesitated slightly on the last part.
“Hmm?” I asked.
“...When I was little, I didn’t live in Ponyville. I lived in Fillydelphia. And when I got mad at ponies, I used to hit them. ‘Cause maybe then they would learn not to be mean anymore. Maybe then they wouldn’t call me names or make fun of me. But that just got me in trouble. It didn’t get them in trouble, though. Then they were even meaner. But I couldn’t hit them back anymore, so I didn’t know what to do. And... I still don’t really know what I should have done,” Derpy admitted. “Now I just try to smile through it. When I can, I guess. But I still hear what ponies say. And it still hurts.”
I think I may have found just the hatred I needed, locked deep inside this innocent fool. “I agree that there wasn’t much you could have done,” I said. My throat was tight, but I vowed that whatever liquid left my eyes would be merely crocodile tears. I couldn’t feel bad for Derpy any more than I already had. It was impossible. I am not that type of pony.
Then Derpy ventured into the territory I had been dreading. “What about you, Ditzy? Where are you from?”
I made up a quick lie. “From Vanhoover. I took the train to Ponyville and, well, I guess I’m flying to my destination.”
“Oh, okay.” She paused before saying, “I guess your life has been easier than mine. You don’t have my eyes.”
I snorted at the irony. “I suppose.”
“You seem a lot simpler than I do,” Derpy observed.
I should, I thought. I’ve only been around for a few hours, now. Not much to me in the way of life experiences. “Yes, my life has been rather easy. And boring, of course, partly the reason I’m participating in this experiment.”
“Oh yeah! Um, there’s actually something I wanted to ask you about that,” Derpy said. “You didn’t know about me before going to Ponyville, right? Then why were you going to this twin thing, anyway?”
I almost took a nosedive. Hopefully Derpy didn’t notice how clumsy my flying had suddenly become. “I took it mainly as an excuse to get out of Vanhoover. There was a billboard of different projects going on and I wanted to stay closer to home. Most of the projects happen in Canterlot or Fillydelphia and such,” I explained quickly.
Derpy nodded. “That makes sense.”
I sure hoped it did; if Derpy suddenly decided to turn around and head back then my entire plan was ruined, and I didn’t have the time to think up a new one. “So tell me, Derpy, why did you move from Fillydelphia to Ponyville?”
“Oh yeah. Uh... that was just after I had Dinky. And Carrot Top wanted to make the move to Ponyville because she didn’t want ponies to look at Dinky the same way they looked at me. She didn’t tell me that, but I know that’s why,” Derpy said. “Y-... You mentioned sunglasses earlier. Well...”
“I did,” I said. “Let me guess, Carrot Top made you wear them?”
Derpy nodded. “Uh-huh. She said that it would make it easier for me to make friends. And they did. I made a couple friends, and I had ponies over for lunch and stuff, and I went flying. It was nice. Ponies were nice to me.”
“Then why did you ever take them off?” I inquired.
“I didn’t want to hide behind... behind...” She struggled for the proper term. “Carrot Top had a word for it, but I forgot.”
“Façade?” I offered.
“Yeah, that. I didn’t like having to lie about me. Every day, every night, all the time, and I couldn’t stop, ever. And it made me mad. I started to hit things again. Not ponies, just things. I couldn’t get a job because all of the bosses didn’t let me wear my sunglasses, so I just left. And that made me even madder, because Carrot Top had to work harder to take care of me and Dinky and herself. I got so mad one day that I just took off the sunglasses and smashed them. And I haven’t worn them ever again,” she finished.
“What happened to your friends?” I asked.
“They went away once they saw my eyes. Everything went back to the way it was before. I wasn’t mad anymore, though. Just... just... I dunno,” she shrugged, frowning.
“Sad, perhaps. And a little disappointed, and unfulfilled, maybe,” I suggested.
Derpy nodded. “Maybe. I... I kinda want to say that I hate everypony, sometimes. ‘Cause everypony just seems to hate me so much. But really, I’m just so sad, ‘cause I don’t wanna just stop caring about everything I have. I have Carrot Top and Dinky, even if they make me mad sometimes. And I have a home, someplace where I can be warm and safe. So I’ll at least keep trying to be good for everypony. It’ll be hard, but I’m not ready to give up yet.” And beneath that shell of ignorance and frustration, I saw a glimmer of determination spark in Derpy’s eyes as she flew.
And, I suppose, that was all I really needed. It was time to visit the dungeon. It was time to save a life. And we were only an hour away.
“Hey, Ditzy? I have another question,” Derpy said.
“Hmm?” I asked.
“What are we going to do once we get to Everfree Dungeon?” she asked.
“Well, that’s simple. We walk inside and-” I froze. Everything seemed to move slower for a moment; I broke out into a cold sweat and my heart nearly stopped. I opened my mouth to try and say something, anything, but my throat was dry with panic. I had been found out.
And I realized that, perhaps, I hadn’t thought this all the way through.
Derpy looked over at me, her goofy, walleyed expression now much more cold and serious. “I think we need to land.”
I swallowed, and followed her. I had no words. Because I had never, in all my life, expected to be foiled by a dimwit. And, to be perfectly honest... I suppose I wasn’t.
Everfree County Dungeon was located in hilly terrain just north of Ponyville called the Unicorn Range. Derpy led me to the top of one of mounds of dirt, and we both took a seat.
“I guess you wanna know how I know,” Derpy mumbled. She looked cross, almost disappointed, which humiliated me.
“That would be a start, yes,” I replied, frantically trying to find a way to get myself out of this doozy.
“When I had the sunglasses on, I had to lie a lot. I didn’t like it. That doesn’t mean I didn’t get good at it. So now I know when other ponies lie to me. Like your, uh, expression and stuff. You’re not a bad liar. I’m just a little better,” Derpy said. “That’s why I lied about, um, following you out here. To Carrot Top, I mean.”
I suppose my ultimate downfall was that I underestimated Derpy’s intelligence. I simply nodded, prompting her to continue.
“I knew that no ponies were doing science up north of Canterlot. That wouldn’t make sense, ‘cause there’re no towns or cities up there. And the only thing for miles around is that dungeon where they keep really bad ponies. So that means you want to see one of those bad ponies--and you need my help to do that for some reason,” Derpy deduced.
“Yes,” I admitted. “Yes, I do.”
“I wanna know why,” Derpy said.
I thought long and hard about my decision, but in the end, there really was no way out. Derpy had utterly trapped me within my own lie, and in doing so proved a talented lie-weaver herself. So, my only option was to tell her the truth.
“My existence is more or less a literal take on the phrase ‘I wasn’t born yesterday.’ In my case, though, I was created just a few hours ago, even less than a day, by Discord the draconequus. And he has given me twenty-four hours to break the seal on his stone prison. I found out from Twilight that the seal could only be broken by hatred, and when I saw you...” I shook my head, amazed at how many fatal errors my hastily contrived plan had procured. “I assumed you would be the perfect guinea pig.”
“I thought something was fishy about what you were talking to me about,” Derpy said. “Nopony is... is that... I knew the word for it, but I forgot,” she said sheepishly.
“Desperate?” I mumbled.
“No, that’s not it...” Derpy thought for a few moments, then her eyes lit up. “Brave. That’s what it is. Brave.”
My ears perked up. “Does this mean you still intend to assist me?”
She thought for a moment, staring at the ground and refusing to meet my gaze. “...I dunno what assist means,” she began, “but I’m still going to help you no matter what.” She folded her forelegs as to make the statement final.
I won’t deny that I was slightly confused. “Huh? Derpy, you do realize what having Discord released means, don’t you? Discord?”
Derpy sighed. “Uh-huh. I do. But... I was thinking just now, if Discord made you...” She looked up at me with shining eyes. “Maybe he can make me like you. Not all the way, just enough so that ponies won’t think I’m stupid. O-Or dumb. Or... Or...” She seemed to struggle with the words. “Or retarded.”
“From my brief experiences with Discord, I slightly doubt that he’ll be willing to lend you a hoof,” I said incredulously.
“It doesn’t matter,” Derpy sniffed. “I hate ponies. I really do. So if there’s a chance that I don’t have to hate them, then maybe I can be happy again. And if I don’t get that, then I don’t really lose much.”
“But you’re risking Carrot Top and Dinky!” I exclaimed. “You’re risking your home!”
“They don’t love me,” Derpy mumbled.
I was shocked. “How blind are you, Derpy?!” I yelled. “Of course they love you! I could tell that simply from my short visit there!”
“But they don’t love the real me,” Derpy elaborated, wiping her eyes. “They... They don’t love the pony that I want to be. They just want me to be me, nopony else... and I just can’t be happy being that pony.”
I found myself having no counter, and as much as I wanted to convince Derpy that she was loved, that ponies did care about her wishes and her goals, I had no proof. No evidence. Not even a simple theory. I found that, for the first time, I had simply nothing to say.
So, I turned around, and spread my wings. “...We will free Discord.” I paused for a moment, then added, “After that... we’ll play it by ear.”
Derpy nodded, but before I took off, she put a hoof on my shoulder. Her voice barely above a pained whisper, she said, “Thank you.”
Everfree County Dungeon was built long before Luna became Nightmare Moon--thusly, it was incredibly old-fashioned, old-looking, and, in some areas, just plain old. The very fact that it was still standing baffled scientists still today, though a common explanation was that, since the Dungeon was to the north of the county, it was spared all of the magical disasters that seemed to be sucked down to a forest south of Ponyville.
It wasn’t even designed to be a dungeon. Originally, it was a castle; a circular wall and four stone keeps, with a courtyard in the middle. When Luna left, though, crime began to rise, and the need for prisons became more so than the need for decrepit old ruins. So, it was renovated and redesigned--a painstaking process, but a successful one, and since it has towered over the hills as Equestria’s oldest standing institute of law.
As I descended to the entrance of this ancient establishment, I saw very bored-looking pegasi adjusting the cloud cover to keep it at very precise levels--not cloudy enough for life-giving rain, but just enough cloud to keep any life-giving sunlight from reaching the rather dank and gloomy landscape below.
Each of the keeps were four stories high above the surface, though according to typical dungeon construction they extended a floor or two beneath the ground--close enough so that, when it did rain, moisture was sure to seep in through the ceiling and dampen any ne'er-do-wells resting below. The residences in the keeps were reserved for the staff, and the courtyard served as a, well, prison courtyard.
I glided down to the ground and skidded to a stop, with Derpy landing daintily beside me. “How’re we gonna get in?” she asked, concerned as she looked up at the two-story iron gate in front of us.
“Simple. We ask,” I said, pulling my spectacles out of the Winterwort pouch and clearing my vision. Glancing to my left, I saw that a hole had been fashioned out of the stone wall--a brownish-gray earth pony clerk sat in the window, chewing on an eraser tip and looking like he was about to fall asleep. I walked up to him and asked, “Excuse me, but my friend and I would-”
“HUH?” He snapped awake, falling backward in his chair. I heard papers flutter about and a lot of scuffling, and then a crack.
The gate shuddered, groaned, and then slowly rose as the ropes towed it upward. Derpy glanced at me, and I shrugged.
“Perhaps it was simpler than I thought,” I said, walking under the gate and motioning for Derpy to do the same.
We emerged into the courtyard, but fortunately for us a large chain-link fence separated us from the sparse amount of criminals present. Arrows on the ground pointed to the left, and that combined with the fact that the pathway right was blocked, I decided it smartest to go left. Derpy put me in-between her and the criminals, her tail dragging on the ground as she followed rather close to my side.
“What’s the matter?” I hissed quietly. I’d no clue where I was going, but the path along the link fence was linear so there weren’t many opportunities to get lost. I absently noticed that there were no pegasi in the courtyard, and all of the unicorns had odd-looking casts around their horns, likely an antimagic device.
“Bad ponies live here. Bad ponies do bad things. If they don’t see me, they’ll go after you first,” Derpy reasoned, keeping her head down.
I snorted. “How remarkably brave of you.” I noted, though, that the criminals were eyeing me, rather than her, as their next lunch scraps. There were predominantly stallions in the yard, as well, though a mare or two cast their steely gaze in my direction, and I responded in kind.
“You’d do the same for me,” she said quietly.
My ear twitched with annoyance at her remark, but I let it pass. We were coming up to what was probably the dungeon lobby, though it obviously wasn’t designed for visitors. Then something occurred to me: Where were the guards?
And for that matter, where were the criminals? I saw no more than a dozen ponies standing in the courtyard, and the only guard in sight was a slightly tubby stallion in a tight-fitting uniform all the way on the other side of the castle. After a few more paces, there was a slightly more operable wooden doorway into the castle walls. I pushed my way inside with Derpy following close behind me.
The inside of walls were very regal-looking--an old red carpet led along the ground, with several suits of armor guarding the hallways. Tapestries hung from the four-meter ceiling, and in front of us I saw what looked suspiciously like a reception center that had been carved out of the wall. A lone unicorn sat at the desk, absently playing with dice.
“Oh!” she exclaimed upon seeing us. “Have you been waiting long?” She was petite, with a light brown coat, freckles, and orange glasses. Probably an intern. She fussed with the mess on her desk. “Sorry about this, we don’t get many visitors. So what brings you to Equestria’s finest prison?”
I swore silently. I had focused so much attention on the oddities of the jail that I neglected to think through exactly why I was here, and the only explanation I had on hoof would lead to my own incarceration. So, I stood there, like an idiot, my mind pulling an utter blank. You could hear a pin drop.
The mare coughed. “I-Is something wrong, miss...?”
“Her name’s Ditsica. Mine’s Derpy,” Derpy said, pushing me aside and stepping in front of me. She was shaking slightly, probably not used to being the center of attention. “A-An’ we’re here to see Pencil Tip.”
“Okay then, let me check the ‘ol records here. Name’s Dust Bunny, but you can call me Ms. Dusty,” she said, checking the files behind her. “Pencil Tip, gotcha. He’s in Basement Two, one of our only prisoners down there. You’re in luck, visitor’s hours end in about an hour.”
“What time is it now?” I asked.
“Oh, um, a little before sixish, I think,” Dusty said. “Be back in a sec.” She disappeared from behind the counter and pushed through a door next to the station, locking it behind her and putting the keys back in her sweater pocket. Motioning to the right, she said, “If you’ll follow me.”
As I tried to keep up with Dusty’s rather brisk pace, I noticed two presences in my mind. One was that of the ever-present migraine that kept popping up at the worst times to ruin my day, and it was already beginning to tear down my thought process with its icy talons. The second, however, was that of... him. He was close, I could feel it, and I could feel his influence swaying my steps and pulling me toward him. I wonder if Derpy felt it, too.
“You know, it’s gotten pretty lonely around here lately, y’know?” Dusty asked after a moment or two without conversation. “I mean, they’ve been taking all the guards and sending ‘em away to different prisons.”
“Oh? And why is that?” I asked, stumbling slightly over my own hooves. Not now, I begged silently. Anytime but now. Derpy seemed to notice, and while the mare wasn’t looking, she allowed me to lean on her, a gesture I was too disoriented to refuse.
“Well ever since Luna returned to guard the night there’s been a lot less crime and stuff, y’know?” Dusty said. “I mean it’s good and all, but this’s one of the only ways I’ll ever get to become a Royal Guard, y’know? ‘Cause it’s a lot harder for mares to get into the Guard for some reason, y’know? Y’know?”
I sincerely hoped that she was simply butchering the use of the phrase ‘you know,’ otherwise my migraine was several times worse than it felt, and it felt like my brain was already going to shut down from the strain of its unwelcomed guest. I simply swallowed my pain and nodded while Dusty continued to ramble.
“Anyway, so did you hear that the entire dungeon is getting shut down the day after tomorrow?” the unclear voice of Dusty asked. I was squinting, but I could make out a stairway coming up on our left, and it probably led down deeper into the dungeon.
“Huh?” Derpy asked.
“Yeah, well, you can’t have a prison without prisoners, y’know? So Celestia’s coming ‘round and doing the official shut-down tomorrow an’ shipping off all thirty or so of the inmates still left. But that means I’ll be out of a job! Well, I guess I don’t technically work here since I’m just, y’know, an intern and stuff, but we have, like, twice as many guards as inmates now. So they’re going to have to go all over the place to work now, y’know?” Dusty replied.
Something about one of her statements seemed a bit odd to me, but my mental capacity was already halved and still plummeting, so I couldn’t quite piece together what was so odd about her statements. Thankfully, Derpy managed to do it for me: “Um, we heard Discord was being kept here in stone. Does that mean he’ll be sent away, too?”
“Oh yeah! About that, yeah, Discord’s stone statue thingy was only temporary, y’know? Like duct tape or a band-aid. Celestia and Luna only kept him there until they could find a way to permanently destroy him, y’know? Like the death penalty and stuff. So I guess she must have found a way or something. Too bad for Discord, y’know? But sometimes I guess that’s just the way it goes, y’know?” Dusty explained.
Derpy was looking increasingly concerned. I suppose, though, that I couldn’t necessarily ascertain that fact because my sight was too blurry to properly see her. She didn’t say anything, either, that would confirm this assumption. Perhaps, as I leaned on her for support, I simply felt her concern, as ridiculous as the notion was.
It was becoming difficult to walk despite her assistance, though. I desperately needed that Winterwort, otherwise I would collapse. My pace slowed to a stop, and I had to sit down. “I-I’m sorry,” I gasped. Every breath was torture, and spots danced in front of my vision. I groped for the pouch around my neck, but the agony from my mind was messing with my senses and I couldn’t find the strap.
“Are you, um, like, okay?” Dusty asked, turning around. “I mean, like, the clinic’s right near here if you need to stop. Something wrong?”
“I-I get headaches,” I said, though the effort was monumental. I heaved, almost vomiting, and clutched my head. I curled into a ball, and then everything went dark.
When I came to, I felt... odd. Insubstantial. Sluggish. This could either be attributed to the fact that I hadn’t eaten anything since lunch at Carrot Top’s or the ever-present knowledge that I was running out of time.
I adjusted my spectacles and glanced at my surroundings. I still had a headache, but it was less severe, and my eyesight had mostly returned. It was a small nurse’s office, minus the nurse, and I was lying on one of the sterile plastic mats that served as a bed. The walls were white, and there was a sink in the corner, though there were no windows present. On the counter there were various medical supplies along with an odd assortment of knicknacks that appeared to have been dumped there in a hurry.
First things first. I pulled the second root out of my pouch and crunched it between my molars, absorbing the direly needed pain reliever within. Once my head had fully cleared, I went to the sink, washed down my snack, and turned around to see Derpy patiently watching me. I noticed for what must have been the first time the bag of food she was carrying--she must have brought it with her from Carrot Top’s and I had failed to take due note of it.
“Are you okay?” Derpy asked softly.
I gritted my teeth. Derpy’s concern and, for that matter, very polite and submissive way of treating me ever since our conversation was un-Derpy enough to start getting on my nerves. “What has gotten into you, Derpy? Are you afraid that if you’re too audible you’ll blast my eardrums from their sockets?”
“I just don’t wanna make you mad. ‘Cause you’re one of the first friends I’ve ever had, an’ if I make you mad then I’ll lose you,” Derpy whimpered, wiping her eyes. “I just wanna help you.”
I rolled my eyes. “Hmph. Save your effort. Once we free Discord you won’t need me anymore.”
Derpy said nothing. She simply stared at the ground with one eye and to her left with the other, though both eyes expressed equal amounts of lamentation.
“Well?” I prompted. “Aren’t you going to ask me why?”
“I know why,” Derpy said. “‘Cause you think that if Discord makes me smart like you are then I’ll just have friends right away. Just ‘cause I want to have more friends doesn’t mean I don’t want you to be my friend, too, Ditsica.”
I grimaced, contemplating my response. “I suppose. But after I am done with this farce of an adventure, I am going to leave Ponyville as far behind me as I can muster. I have no interest in that tiny little thorp of a town.”
“Why?” Derpy asked.
“Because I--hate--ponies,” I hissed. There was a fire burning within me I hadn’t yet felt prior, though I suppose it was a mix of fury and frustration with all ponykind. “A pony is a pony is a pony. I have no interest in friends and I have no interest in others holding me back or pulling me forward. If I succeed I want it to be on my own terms and if I fail it’s just as well. My principle problem with this whole wild goose chase I’m chained to is that I’ve had to rely on circumstance and the draw of the card. For once in my meager eight-hour life, I would like, for just a moment, to actually control some facet of my destiny.” I took a breath, calming myself. “It would be nice not to have to worry about freeing an ancient evil from the depths of refurbished ruins, because, I suppose, in retrospect, that is all I’ve ever known.”
Derpy tilted her head to the side for a moment, then began to giggle. At first I was slightly miffed, but then once I realized how ridiculous my monologue had become, a faint smile crept its way onto my face.
“I dunno what most of that meant,” Derpy admitted, grinning wide, “but the way you said it was funny.”
I shrugged, the faint smile still lingering. After a moment of contemplation, I found myself saying, “Derpy, if you like... you may call me Ditzy. For the time being, at least.”
Her eyes lit up. “Th-Thanks," she managed.
She held out her forelegs, offering a hug, and my lighthearted smile vanished to be replaced with my usual expression, or rather lack thereof. “Let’s not get carried away.”
“Oh. Sorry, Ditzy,” Derpy said, momentarily disappointed, though she smiled again once she said the nickname she imposed on me when we first met. I noted that I hadn’t seen her smile quite this way before, slightly biting her tongue between her teeth as she grinned happily. However, after a moment of thought, it occurred to me that this may have been her first reason to be genuinely happy in a long time.
I fiddled with my scarf, my emotions clashing though I knew not what emotions nor why. Untangling the threads as well as my tongue, I asked, “Where did that bothersome Dusty go?”
“Oh, she was going to get the manager when you didn’t wake up for a while. But she didn’t come back yet. When we got you here she started looking for something called a walkie-talking and dumped out all her pockets. I guess she didn’t find it,” Derpy shrugged, pointing to the pile of doodads on the counter.
I sifted through it. Nothing seemed to be of use at first glance, though after a minute or two of poking around I uncovered not only Dusty’s set of keys, but also a map of the entire dungeon.
“Eh? What’s this?” I asked.
“Keys and a map,” Derpy said.
“Yes, but... why? No guardspony worth their salt would just toss these on a counter and leave for who-knows-where,” I muttered, trying to make sense of the situation. The presence stroked me again, urging me forward, and I realized, or, rather, hypothesized what had happened. Clearing my throat, I said, “Either Discord has influenced Dusty, or she has been in league with him from the beginning.”
“This seems like a pretty good time to do something like this, too. Not many ponies here, y’know?” She giggled. “I like saying that. ‘Y’know, y’know?’”
I glared at her. “Derpy, there are two types of dumb. One is your type of dumb, where ponies think you’re stupid when you’re only a bit slow. The other type of dumb is when you use phrases like that and actually are.” Seeing that she didn’t completely understand, I stated, simplified, “For the love of Celestia, do not incessantly use ‘y’know.’ It might give me another migraine.”
Derpy looked downcast. “Oh...” She paused, then asked, “Is that why you stopped before? Because of a migraine?”
I nodded. “Yes. A migraine is a very severe form of headache. It’s one of the most painful things in all Equestria.”
“Oh. So like a tummyache, but worse. And in your head instead of your belly,” Derpy said. As she finished her sentence, her stomach rumbled audibly, and she started fishing around in her bag for food.
Although my insides didn’t give the same obvious signal, I too felt the twisting pain of an empty stomach. “May I have one, as well?” I asked politely.
“Why’d you think I brung them, silly?” Derpy chuckled. “Let’s see, do you want banana nut, carrot, zucchini, cinnamon, blueberry, chocolate chip, or corn?”
“Blueberry, please,” I said. What I expected was more along the lines of a hoofful of blueberries, though what I received was a tiny box. Inside was a blueberry muffin.
It was delicious, praise I don’t throw around lightly. Wiping the crumbs from my lips, I asked, “Wherever did you get these?”
“When I’m mad, or when ponies hurt me... Carrot Top has me make these instead of hurting them back. I got good at it after a while,” Derpy said, finishing her carrot cake muffin in three bites. “It’s relaxing. To bake, I guess. Making something instead of breaking something.”
“I’d be lying if I said you didn’t have talent. May I have another?” I asked.
Derpy passed me another Blueberry-flavored pastry, beaming with happiness. “Sure! Thank you so much!”
As I chewed the flavored bread between my teeth, the peculiar bundle of emotions I had felt earlier rose to the surface again, though this time I could identify one of them: remorse. For bringing Derpy into this. Because, were we successful, she would end up like, well, me. And I’m not sure I was okay with that outcome. Not when I had just started to see the real Derpy, the cheerful mare buried under an abusive society. But that was selfish of me, and I knew it, so I dismissed the thought and asked, “Where do we go next?”
“I was just gonna follow you,” Derpy said, throwing the boxes into a nearby trash can and slinging the bag back over her shoulder. “Does the map say where Discord is?”
I spread the map out on the counter and studied it. Try as I might, there didn’t seem to be any specific cell that screamed ‘Discord!’ in bold lettering. “It’s no use. We’re going to have to search every cell by hoof if we want to find him.” I did note, though, that on the edge of the map there was an odd word, ‘Kinzy.’
“Lemee see,” Derpy said. I passed her the map, though I didn’t expect much. After about a minute or waiting, my patience ran out and I prodded her to get moving, but she instead pointed to some staircases on the floor plan. “These don’t make sense.”
“Hmm? Why not?” I asked. To me, they clearly were the staircases leading from the first basement of the castle to one below.
“‘Cause you see how this floor only has four stairs going down? Why does the next floor have eight?” Derpy asked. “It must’ve been really hard to dig through all that dirt. Why do more than you have to?”
I sensed she was on to something, and I pulled the map from her and stared intently at the stairways. Then I saw it--just a tiny sliver, less than a millimeter wide, but when I focused through my spectacles I saw that the stairway Derpy had pointed to was not entirely connected to the floor below. I was too nearsighted to see it the first time.
“...Good job, Derpy,” I hesitantly said. “I guess we know where to go now.”
“Well, what’re we waiting for?” Derpy asked. She ran to the exit, but slammed into the doorway and stumbled backward.
“It’s ‘pull,’ Derpy,” I said.
“Oh,” said Derpy, and she sheepishly pulled on the bar and exited with more caution. After checking to make sure no guards were watching the halls, I followed her lead deeper into the Dungeon.
When she wasn’t bumbling into the suits of armor or tripping over the carpet, she was making loud observations to me about how few guard ponies there were. Every single time, I scolded her and urged her to be quiet, and she was slightly more careful, but after a few minutes she would forget again and trip over her own four left hooves. Eventually I simply gave up, for what was the point?
There wasn’t a guard to be seen anywhere. It was as if they were all having a going-away party on the higher levels of the dungeon. I could practically hear it, though that was probably either my mind or Discord playing tricks on me. At any rate, we were rapidly making our way through the dungeon. After saving Derpy from her second near-tumble down the staircase, I consulted the map.
“It seems that the staircase we have to go to is just past this hall, down to the second basement, then take a right...” I mumbled. I found it difficult to concentrate for some reason, but I tried my best and eventually had the directions committed to memory.
“Something wrong, Ditzy?” Derpy asked.
I realized I had been scowling, though I didn’t quite know why. Perhaps it was the dingy state of the dungeon--the stone was black with mildew and the iron bars, though still strong, were layered in rust top to bottom. “I just want to make it through this place as quick as I possibly can,” I muttered.
But that wasn’t quite it. Perhaps it was one of the reasons I was so anxious, but I felt a tugging sensation in the back of my mind--perhaps my conscious?--urging me that this wasn’t the way forward. That the entire reason for us going on the journey was flawed. That I was being selfish, cruel. To Derpy. Because she already... because she had a chance at...
My mind was growing increasingly fuzzy. I couldn’t quite piece together the final thought, not with his presence. I knew that the thought, no, revelation that I would have had just then was too important to dismiss, yet I had no choice. I was on a mission I intended to see through to completion. It was the only way I would be able to survive.
Snapping back to reality, I observed that there were empty cells to the right and left of us, forming a path forward. I bravely ventured forward with Derpy at my side. I tightened my scarf around my neck, but the threads came apart and the entire thing fell to scraps at my hooves. The end of the journey was coming close, and the chill of it all was beginning to set in.
A few quick turns later, we were going down the staircases to the second basement--which, unsurprisingly, was even dingier than the first. Spiderwebs clung to the corners of the halls, the place was lit by dim candlelight, and the moss on the ground was so thick in some places you could hear an audible ‘squelch’ whenever you set hoof on it.
“No wonder this place is getting shut down. It’s putrid,” I growled. “There isn’t a lack of crime; Discord is making the place impossible to take care of.”
“How do you know?” Derpy asked.
“Simple. If he can force all the guards upstairs to party and an intern to give us the keys to his cell, he obviously can make a janitor suddenly think his chemicals are a soft drink,” I explained. “Celestia is shutting this place down tomorrow not because there’s no more crime, she’s shutting it down to fumigate the place while she puts an end to Discord.”
“So... she just wants to clean up?” Derpy asked, looking around. “Sometimes when I don’t clean up after myself, Carrot Top gets mad. I wonder what she’d say if she saw this.”
I stifled an eyeroll and pushed forward. The stairway was just around the next right, but when we turned the corner, nothing was there.
I gritted my teeth. “This map is probably outdated,” I grumbled. “It looks like we have some exploring to do.”
Derpy groaned in complaint. She went up to the wall and whined, “What’re we gonna do now-Woah, ow!” She made to rest her head on the wall, but tumbled through it as if it wasn’t even there. I heard her grunts echo from behind the stone, “Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow!” as she tumbled down an unseen stairwell.
Following her, but with slightly more prudence, I hovered through the stairway and glided down to her at the base of the stairs. “Are you alright?” I asked. She was rubbing her head, and I helped her up.
“Oww... yeah,” she mumbled. “I’ve hurt myself before lots of times. I’ll be okay.”
“Good to hear,” I said, nodding. I glanced around. “But... where in Equestria are we?”
The third basement of the dungeon seemed to have been dug out in a hurry. It was large and cylindrical, with a large iron cage occupying the majority of the room’s space. The floor wasn’t stone, only dirt, and slightly muddy dirt at that, but at least it wasn’t the squishy moss of the previous floor. The walls, too, were dirt held up by flimsy wooden supports in case of a cave-in. Water dripped from the ceiling above occasionally, and overall the atmosphere of the chamber was gloomy at best and frightening at worst.
Speaking of frightening, I realized the his presence was stronger here than it had been anywhere else. I soon realized why. In front of us, in the center of the cage, was a statue. It had a slightly gritty surface, and it appeared to have been sculpted of a strange creature, one that was a mish-mash of many other animals. Its face was frozen in shock and surprise, as if it hadn’t expected to be created in this fashion.
It was him.
I found that I was shaking slightly, trembling with apprehension. This was it. It was the moment of truth. Discord had laid out the task for me and I had succeeded. We were about to free him and unleash him into the world, leaving all we know at his mercy.
And in return, Derpy gets to be the pony she’s always dreamt of, a normal one... and I get to live.
Of course, we couldn’t do that yet. The cage was designed in such a way to make releasing Discord impossible--namely, the space between the statue and the iron bars was too great. How I knew this I didn’t quite understand. All I knew was that I had to get inside in order to do anything. However, I also suspected a trap.
“Let’s go!” Derpy exclaimed excitedly, but I yelped and pulled her back. “Huh?” she asked. “What’s wrong?”
I pointed in front of her. There was a tiny, almost invisible piece of twine stretched across the chamber at about chest height. Nearly invisible to the average pony, but I had seen it from the moment we had entered this chamber. Why I didn’t realize what it was, exactly, until nearly the last moment I wasn’t sure. Perhaps I had thought it was a stray spiderweb?
“I don’t see anything. Ditzy, are you sure you’re okay?” Derpy asked.
“There’s a tripwire,” I said. “If we so much as breathe wrong on it the entirety of the guard will be down here in a minute. I know that’s not all that much at the moment but I’m fairly certain we can’t handle twenty armed personnel on our own.”
Derpy squinted, then sighed in exasperation. “It’s no use. I can’t see it. But I trust you, Ditzy. So what do we do?”
“We crawl,” I said. Squatting down, I gripped the ground ahead of me and slid forward on the slick surface of the floor. “Follow my lead.”
It was a dirty process, but eventually we managed to get across without triggering the wire. My eyes peeled for any further traps, I walked up to the cage. The cage had four locks for some odd reason, but it looked like only one of them had to be opened in order to free Discord. There was also a stone on the ground in front of the cage. It was covered in mud, but it read, ‘Animal.’ Celestia, I thought, has one crude sense of humor.
Derpy followed behind me, scraping some of the muck off her chest. “It’s really cold down here,” she mumbled.
I felt no such chill, but it was probably just my excitement that kept my core temperature high. “I don’t understand,” I muttered. “Why have four locks?”
“I think that the keys were all supposed to be spread out. But Dusty got them all together on that key ring you’re holding,” Derpy guessed.
I glanced at the keys and, indeed, there were four hoof-sized keys that looked like they would fit the hoof-sized padlocks, and I tried each of them in turn. The third one worked, and the locked clicked open. But nothing happened. That was when I realized that the padlocks, though attached to the iron bars, held no hinges together. The cage was doorless, and the padlocks were a ruse.
Perhaps, I thought, if you wanted me to free you, Discord, you’d at least allow me to have a clear mind and observe these obvious details. I shook my head, trying to shake the presence from my mind. Discord was getting desperate, but I wasn’t sure why. Was he seeing things I wasn’t? After all, if he could observe the entirety of the dungeon... “Derpy, I think we might be running short on time.”
“Why?” she asked. “We only have three locks left.”
“Instinct,” I said, carefully walking toward the next lock. The tripwires formed a square around the cage, so there was no danger of running into them again. I tried the locks with the first of the large keys. It opened as well, but nothing happened. I found myself getting increasingly aggravated, but I didn’t quite know why. Surely everything was sailing smoothly. What did I have to be angry about?
I cycled over to the third of the locks. I tried both keys, and the second one worked. The padlock opened. My scowl returned, as did Derpy’s look of worry.
I opened the fourth lock.
Nothing happened.
I exhaled. Was it relief? Was it disappointment? I couldn’t tell. All I knew is that something had gone wrong, but I didn’t know what.
“What happened?” Derpy asked. “Why isn’t the cage opening?”
“Because it has far more complex security mechanisms than we anticipated,” I said. “There’s probably a magical charm on the locks that alerts security whenever somepony tries to open them. Celestia’s magic is powerful enough to bend the iron bars down; she wouldn’t need to open the cage.”
“But... B-But...” At first I thought Derpy was going to start crying at our failure, but she appeared to be thinking hard. “The map.”
My ears twitched in annoyance. “What about the map?”
“It had... It had a word on it. Uh... can I look at it? Pretty please?” she asked, motioning to the map I had set on the ground on the opposite side of the cage.
I blinked. “You can’t possibly be talking about that note on the side, can you? ‘Kinzy?’”
The ground started to shake. I yelped and almost backed into the tripwire, but luckily I pushed Derpy and myself to the ground and yelled at her to stay put. The iron bars were slowly, shakily receding into the ground. I heard a final boom and a squish as the bars finally vanished into the dirt.
“...Cool,” Derpy breathed, staring up at the statue.
I, however, had other things on my mind. I cantered over to the stone on the ground, the one that I could barely make out as ‘Animal,’ and began to scrape the mud and grime away, revealing more words. After I finished, the text was revealed as, “What is the name of Luna’s favorite stuffed animal?”
I almost said Kinzy again, but bit my tongue realizing that could trigger the bars. “Well, we know what that mystery is about,” I muttered. “Seems to me that Dusty is more in-the-know than we thought.”
“Or maybe him,” Derpy said, pointing up at Discord.
I nodded, then remembered I hadn’t a clue where to start. And, once again, my emotions seemed to catch and hold my tongue. “Derpy... I suppose now would be... Well, it would be a good time to start.”
“Why are you frowning?” Derpy asked, trotting up to me. “This is for you, remember? And for me. For us. So smile a little,” she said, grinning. “We’re almost there!”
Try as I might, I could not rid the scowl from my face. Something about this seemed to irritate me. Something about the way it was designed. Something about the way Derpy was involved. His presence made it hard to determine what, but I knew that something was amiss, that something here shouldn’t be.
Derpy slowly walked up to the statue. The grin had vanished from her face, and she was concentrating hard. I felt his presence start to amplify, to grow. Feeding off her power. Feeding off of her rage and her sorrow, her hatred of the way she was treated and her desire to be different.
And while he was distracted, I finally managed to realize what didn’t belong in this picture.
I had gone on this journey because I wanted to preserve my own life. But that was a ruse. Discord had likely made me as a one-time spell, promising to extend my life were I able to free him. That responsibility was mine and mine alone. But now, I was relying on Derpy, somepony who already had a chance at a happy life, somepony who still had a future. And Derpy was relying on the fact that Discord would, in return for his freedom, make her... like me. A conceited, arrogant, impatient brat who had no more depth of character than a gingerbread pony.
What didn’t belong in this picture... was me.
I turned around and ran through the tripwire. Smoke billowed through unseen holes in the wall. I heard Derpy yell something, but my senses were already decaying from the poison in the gas. I collapsed to the floor and lost consciousness.
Not one of the dank and dreary cells of the basement, though. It was roomy and light, with a single window opposite a door leading to the lavatory. I found myself on the bottom bed of a bunk, and when I groggily got up, I noted the the floor was smooth stone tile. The room was lit somewhat brightly by a series of candles bolted to the walls.
Derpy was sitting on the other side of the room, looking cross. No, not cross. Angry. Her expression, at least with one eye, gave me the peculiar feeling that I was looking in a mirror. “Well?” she asked. “You happy?”
I swallowed the foul taste the smoke had left in my mouth. At least my memory seemed to be intact. “I’m... honestly not sure. It... It didn’t feel right.”
Derpy was shaking with anger. “I thought,” she said with a strained voice, “I thought you... I thought that you were different. I thought that you would want me to be happy.”
I gritted my teeth and turned away, still fully trying to process the magnitude of my decision. “I do want you to be happy,” I said truthfully, “but this isn’t the right way. He was using us. I almost realized that too late.” I turned and looked her in the eye. “He wouldn’t have given you happiness. He’d have turned us into dandelions and then went on his merry way to destroy Equestria.”
“I’d rather be a flower than be me,” Derpy sobbed, holding her head in her hooves and rocking, “and Equestria is stupid!” she yelled, startling me with her intensity.
For a moment, I wondered which one of us wanted to free Discord more. And then it dawned on me.
I was going to die.
Not only that, but a slow death, one where I would slowly fade away to nothing. The magic that Discord used to sustain my existence was slowly going to wither away until I was but a memory. But according to Derpy... right now, she would gladly share my fate in exchange for just a peek of what life looked like through my eyes.
Was my decision selfish? I wasn’t sure. It depends whether or not Discord would have followed through. It depends whether or not Twilight and her friends would be able to contain him. It depends on whether or not my life could have been extended at all. No, I thought. There are too many variables for my decision to have been selfish. There are too many ‘what ifs’ for me not to be confident that my decision was the correct one.
But these thoughts meant nothing to me. Whether or not I had made the right decision, I was still going to perish. But at least it was on my own terms. At least I took my life by my own hooves, I thought. But as I turned to Derpy, I couldn’t help but wonder whether or not that meant anything if she was teetering on the edge of doing the same.
I wanted to explain this to her, to reach out to her. But I didn’t know where to begin. So, eventually, after a minute or two of silence save Derpy’s anguish, I said, “Derpy, you have no idea how much I sacrificed for you just now.”
“Yeah I do,” Derpy sniffed, turning to me and glaring though her eyes were puffy with tears. “Y-You got rid of the only chance for me to be m-me ‘stead of just some stupid pony who smiles and nods and does what she’s told while all Equestria la-laughs at how dumb she is!”
“...I never meant to hurt you,” I mumbled.
“Yeah, that’s ‘cause you always just think ‘bout yourself and nopony else,” Derpy hissed, tears rolling down her face. She tried to say more, but the words caught in her throat and she began to hiccup.
I began to get irritated, but I tried to suppress it. I knew that nothing good would become of Derpy and I both being emotionally excited right now, and I recognized that I had, in fact, hurt her even though her plan was as mediocre as my own. It annoyed me, though, that I had to be the one to comfort her when I wasn’t going to be around much longer.
At any rate, hopefully by asking some more mundane questions I could calm Derpy down enough to get some reason out of her. After she managed to calm herself, I asked, “How long was I out?”
“A couple hours. The sun set a while ago,” Derpy said.
“What did the guards say?” I inquired.
“They said that Celestia’s gonna talk to us about how we got to Discord and why,” Derpy mumbled. “But that’s... that’s not until tomorrow.”
I noted the odd pattern of speech in her last clause but couldn’t tell if it bore any significance, so I decided to press forward in trying to defend my actions. “Discord wasn’t the answer,” I said. “There were too many ‘what-ifs’ for me to put you in danger, so to speak. I... I just didn’t want him to hurt you.”
“No-Nopony thinks I can take care of myself wh-when I can,” Derpy cried. “If you were my fr-friend you’d understand th-that.”
I snorted. “Well, you won’t have to worry about me being your friend any-” I stopped myself.
Because I realized something critical.
This wasn’t about Derpy being upset because she missed out on a chance to be like everypony else, though that certainly played a part. This wasn’t about Derpy complaining about how I think of nopony but myself, though that played a part in her sorrow, as well. Nor was this Derpy complaining about how I didn’t let her take care of herself.
This was about me. And it was about how, throughout everything, she had tried so desperately to be my friend. And it was about how, just before we found Discord, she had managed to succeed, if only a tiny bit. That had made this entire journey worthwhile. But she was determined to see it through because, as much as she wanted to be normal herself, she would have been content to stay the same as long as I was at her side.
And I realized that my decision to trip the wire and stop the release of Discord was, to her, the most selfish decision I had ever made. Because we weren’t getting a second chance at that. There was no way to reverse the flow of paranoia and rush of reinforcements surging through Everfree County Dungeon. Discord would be sealed tighter than a vacuum.
The weight of this revelation hit me like a wrecking ball.
I couldn’t find words for what seemed like the longest time. But, eventually, they managed to escape: “Derpy, first and foremost... allow me to apologize. For everything.”
She looked up. She had probably seen my expression when I realized what I had done, and she was no longer angry. Her face, though, seemed to bear the weight of all her past woes. And I feared that, when she was thrown into this cell with me, cut off from what she viewed as her only chance of change, she had lost hope. But I couldn’t let that happen. Not while I could do something about it.
“...Yeah?” she sniffed.
“I want to... apologize. For giving you false hope about all of this. I never meant... Well, I never quite understood just how much this all had meant to you until just now. But, well... it’s hard to say this without sounding unsympathetic, but Derpy, you’re smart enough that you don’t need anything Discord has to offer. It took me so long to realize that, but it’s the truth. And it’s something you need to understand,” I said.
“But it doesn’t matter what I do understand and what I don’t understand to them. They treat me the same either way,” Derpy whimpered.
“Then perhaps you should stop caring about what they think,” I snarled.
Derpy shook her head sadly. “Ditzy, I’ve h-heard that before. And I’ve heard what you said before that before. I’ve heard everything. Carrot Top has done her best to try and help me. But n-nothing’s worked. Ditzy, do you think I would have come out all the way here, kn-knowing what you were trying to do, if I didn’t think it was the last thing that could work?”
“I see your point,” I said, nodding, “but trust me when I say there are more ponies like me out there.”
“But where?” she asked.
“Wherever you’re not looking,” I said.
“But that doesn’t change that you’re gonna be gone in a little while,” Derpy said quietly, curling up into a ball. “It doesn’t change the fact that when I wake up in the morning... you might not be there to help me. And I’ve never been alone.”
I felt a pang of sympathy. Throughout all of this, she had been the one following me when, if the circumstances allowed, I would have gladly left her in the dust and flew to greener pastures. But she never would have done the same to me. I walked over to her and sat down beside her, draping my wing over her in the process. “That doesn’t matter, Derpy.”
“Why not?” Derpy asked, leaning next to me.
“Because I’m here now,” I said, though my throat was tight, “and I’m just as scared about what’s going to happen tomorrow as you are.” I found myself wrapping my hooves around her in a tight hug as I let my emotions take control. “And I need you to be strong for me.”
I felt her nod, though she was still crying. And, despite everything, despite all that I was, I felt a pair of tears run down my cheeks, as well.
In the morning, I felt odd. When I got to my hooves, the solid tile under me felt... springy. As if I were walking on a mattress rather than stone. I inspected myself in the mirror, though, and aside from my odd gait I looked fine, if a little on the exhausted side. Judging by the fact that the sun wasn’t even up yet, it was an early winter morning. That meant I had four hours left, at best.
When I tried to shake Derpy awake, I found that my hooves phased through her slightly. Not only that, but I felt myself... pulled toward her, so much that I had to reel backward in order to resist the strange force. I paused, staring at my hooves, pondering the implications.
Luckily, I didn’t have to ponder them for long. “Rise and shine!” I heard a guard call from down the hall. He appeared to be an official Royal Guard, minus the armor; he had only a simple uniform with a toolbelt on. He, along with his more or less identical unicorn friend, allowed us both time to use the lavatory before escorting our tired bodies down the hall.
We weren’t permitted to talk, of course, though I noted that, as she began to wake up, Derpy seemed even more energetic today than she had prior. That struck me as odd, and I couldn’t quite find any explanation behind this peculiar excitement.
After a quick trip down the stairs, I found myself back in the long circular hallway that connected the castle walls to the basements floors and the courtyard. As we passed Dusty’s empty desk, a question occurred to me: “Excuse me, but-”
“No talking,” the guard to my left said.
I tried again. “But I only have a-”
I received the same results, though this time with a stern glare. “No. Talking.”
The other guard, though, the one to the right, seemed to disagree with this policy. “C’mon, they’re civs. Discord’s the one that got ‘em into this mess in the first place, or so says the Princess. They won’t try anything funny. Will you?”
“Nothing of the sort,” I said. “At any rate, I have a question.”
“Shoot,” Right said.
“Why were the basement floors vacant?” I inquired.
“As you probably already have figured out, the basement levels are in need of some... renovation,” Left explained. “The Princess plans to destroy Basement Three and then clean up the other two to make them more hospitable to prisoners.”
“In the meantime, the keeps on the side of the walls that normally house guards were fitted with bars and such to keep whatever inmates we couldn’t ship off to other jails. Make sense?” Right asked.
I nodded. Derpy was getting increasingly restless, and although Left seemed to notice, he didn’t inquire about it. I hoped that she wouldn’t try anything stupid, I really, really did.
We were nearing a stairwell and a set of double doors. Derpy had appeared to have calmed down somewhat, but she still worried me. I had no idea what was going on in her head.
Right pointed toward the double doors. “We’re right near the exit. The Princess’s right out-”
Just then, Derpy turned and slammed Left into the wall. While he was dazed, she bolted down the stairwell before Right could react. Without thinking and without hesitation, I raced after her, praying she wasn’t about to do what I thought she was.
I nearly lost her on the first basement, but by following the tracks she made in the dirt I shot toward her and tried to tackle her to the ground. I missed. I heard the rush of a squadron of guards above us.
Picking myself up, I yelled, “Just stop!”
“No!” she yelled. “I will never give up on this!”
Realizing she was serious, I shook myself off and picked up the pace, adrenaline rushing through my veins and enabling me to once again close the distance between us. I heard Right and Left catching up to us, but I also knew that Derpy would rather hurt herself than abandon what she believed was her only chance at a happy life. And she had already proven that she was willing to hurt others.
So, just as she was about to dive down to the second basement, I tackled her again. I felt a whirlwind of forces acting within me, bending, twisting, warping me. My world spiraled out of control before nosediving back down to reality.
And I realized that this time, I hadn’t missed.
But when I looked around, I was alone. And the only hoofsteps I could here were those of the half dozen or so guards galloping up to me. I tightened the purple striped scarf around my neck.
And yes, I did say the rest of the day. The entire day. All the way until the winter sun dipped below the afternoon horizon.
Where do I begin? I suppose with my meeting with Princess Celestia. She was... rather tall. And kind, and patient, given my state of shock. After a few minutes of conversation and my explanation of how and why I broke into Everfree County Dungeon, she sent a few letters and sent me to wait back in my cell for the time being, though she assured me it wouldn’t take more than an hour.
It took fifty-three minutes. I knew because I had nothing better to do than count seconds as my mind struggled to comprehend what had just happened.
First of all, I came to the conclusion that Derpy was gone. Not just gone, vanished, without a trace. To where she went I had no idea. But when I pounced on her what seemed like just moments ago, something within me had changed. The ground no longer felt unstable beneath my hooves. And, miraculously, the presence was no longer in my mind. I had a bit of a headache, of course, but what else is new?
After that brief period of waiting, the Princess took me out to the courtyard. All of the prisoners, it seems, had been either evacuated or taken to their chambers.
“I’m letting you go free,” the Princess began, “because after today there will be no reason for you to return here.”
I was unsure what she meant for a moment, but chose to disregard it. There were more pressing things on my mind. “What has become of Derpy?”
“That is what I have enlisted them to find out,” Celsetia said, pointing to a trio of pointy-capped mares standing in front of us. They looked rather average, if a bit aged, and eyed me like I was a rabbit they had caught eating their cabbages.
They poked and prodded in various places, examining me and probing me with their glowing instruments. And after a minute of irritation and soreness, they had procured an answer.
And they said I was Derpy.
After a rather dry explanation by the pointy-hatted scientists, Celestia boiled it down for me: “Apparently Discord made you as a mirror of Derpy by making a magical mold and reversing most, though not all, of her personality traits. And, as they said, opposites attract.”
“But what will happen to her?” I asked, begging for an answer. I couldn’t live with myself knowing that I, somehow, had cut my friend’s life short.
Celestia paused before answering. “Discord’s mirror--that is, well, you--wasn’t perfect.” After another quick briefing from the three wise mares, she continued in a language I could understand, “It appears as though you now contain Derpy’s essence. Over time, as your own soul decays, hers will take its place. So now... I suppose you’re one and the same.”
At first, I felt an incredible amount of relief. But then the reality of the situation set in. I was still going to die. Just in a different way. By slowly, steadily becoming what, just twenty-four hours ago, I considered to be the pony I would be able to hate the most.
Some would call that bitter irony. But I welcomed this transformation, with a bit of reluctance. Perhaps I wasn’t simply going to the void. Perhaps I was becoming something greater.
At least, that was what I wanted to believe. That is what I so desperately wanted to convince myself of as the gate to the Dungeon slammed shut behind me. That is what I desired to think as I flew back to Ponyville, back to my home. If it could even be called that. But, in the end, there was only one place in Equestria I could go after so miserably failing my mission.
I didn’t know what I would tell Carrot Top when I pushed open her door.
I landed in front of the house. I could still see the hoofprints I made in the snow when Derpy taught me how to fly. I felt slightly remorseful, because I knew I was never going to see her again.
I pushed open the door and soon heard the clatter of hoofsteps. “Back already?” Carrot Top asked, though her expression turned to concern upon her seeing my dour expression.
“I need to explain something to you,” I began quietly. “Nothing’s gone wrong, everything’s okay. But I need to explain this without interruption. You can ask questions when I’m done. Is that alright?”
She nodded, swallowing. “Sh-... Should we sit down?”
I nodded, and I led her to a well-worn green couch in the living room. She sat down next to me, worry apparent in her eyes. “What did Derpy do this time?” she asked.
For a moment, I was slightly taken aback. Carrot Top seemed more worried about me than Derpy. Though, come to think of it, Derpy has probably been through much worse than just a simple journey. To her, there was only one reason I would have this expression on my face. That Derpy had gotten herself or other ponies hurt.
So, I told her. I told her everything. From the moment I leapt into the air with Derpy at my side to the moment where I collapsed upon her, sealing both our fates. And, at the very end, I told her what was to become of us both.
Throughout the story, Carrot Top obediently said nothing, and at the end, she appeared to have only one question. “What will happen to you?” she asked, taking my hoof in her own.
I blinked. “Aren’t you... the least bit angry at me?”
She chuckled sadly. “I can hardly blame you for what you did. It would be a different story if you actually did intend for it to end up this way. Or if you truly hated her.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“The reason I trusted you to take care of Derpy... well, it’s because you two are a lot alike, whether you know it or not,” Carrot Top said, holding my gaze. “You’re both angry. You’re both vengeful, and you both hold a little spite for the world. But you’re also both caring, generous, and bright. And, even in the worst of times, I know deep down that Derpy would always do the right thing in the end. That’s why I know... that you would, too.”
Despite her kind words, I still felt empty. “I suppose I should feel touched.”
“No. You’re supposed to feel like you, Ditsica,” Carrot Top said.
“I don’t understand. When an ordinary pony loses a family member, the grieve. At the very least, the cry,” I argued, though I wasn’t certain what I was arguing about.
“You’re wrong on that, too,” she said, pushing part of my mane back behind my ear like I was a filly who had just gotten home from a rough day of play. “I know that, if what you say is true, then I’ll see Derpy again. But I won’t see you again. And that makes me sad, of course... but I know that you made the decision to go for Derpy’s sake. And I’ve accepted that, and so have you. So the only thing left for me to ask... is if there’s anything I can possibly do for you?”
“I need to know that my sacrifice wasn’t made in vain,” I murmured. “I need ponies... I need ponies to treat Derpy better. I want Derpy to have friends. Because, when I was chasing her down that hall, when I finally got her...” I paused, shaking my head. The words were nearly impossible to get out. “She was doing that for me. Because she didn’t think that anypony else would be her friend.”
“And I can’t possibly understand what you two went through. But I can try. I can try to make Derpy’s life better as best I can. But for now, this is your time, and you don’t have very much left,” Carrot Top warned, as if I didn’t know already.
I snorted. “I appreciate the support, Carrot Top. But there’s only one pony who can properly explain everything that I went through, and it’s me. And I can do it, but I can’t do it aloud. What I need is a typewriter.”
“I’ll go and rent one right now,” Carrot Top said, standing up.
“And there’s one other thing,” I said quickly before Carrot Top and her undying enthusiasm could waltz out the door.
“When night falls, and I begin to turn... before I go to sleep, I’d like to know that I’m not alone,” I said, my voice quivering as I spoke. “I’d like to have somepony by my side. If that’s alright with you.”
Carrot Top nodded, as if it were an everyday request. “Okay, now off to get the typewriter. I should be back in fifteen minutes, okay?”
I swallowed my apprehension, sitting down on the couch. “...Okay.”
For the rest of the day, I worked. The sun rose, the sun set. All the while, I was typing. Typing the words you see on the page now.
Should I summarize my adventure up to this point? Probably not. That would be painfully boring. Also repetitive. So I will end my tale by saying that, if you’re reading this, my journey wasn’t for naught. It means that some part of this fantastic adventure caught your eye, hooked you, and dragged you along for the ride. And what a ride it was.
By this point I’m likely in bed, hugging a pillow, as Carrot Top sings a lullaby to help calm my beating heart. Because I’m travelling into the void as I type. Just now I can feel my movements getting clumsier. As I walk, my limbs feel larger, my motions less precise. I’ve had to correct all of eighteen typos in this paragraph alone. My vocabulary, as well, is also shrinking.
At some point tonight, I could no longer see. The keys on the typewriter became blurry, and when I wiped my glasses and put them back on my nose, they only made my sight worse. So I took them off and went by my memory.
These are the last sentences of my tale. I hope you liked it, but I’m not good at endings. I’m scared of them. I’m scared of what they mean, and I’m afraid of what’s beyond the last page of my story. Because I’ll never get to see it. But... I suppose you will. Derpy.
If you read this, please let me know how you feel. About me. About Equestria. And most of all, about yourself. I want to know if my life was worth it. Even if I can’t, I want you to end this book with something I can’t: a beginning.
I see stars outside my window now. It’s bedtime and I have to go to sleep.
hi, ditzy. typing is really hard. i have no clue how you held down the shift key and typed at the same time. i mean these things were made for unicorns after all.
your probably never going to read this but i think you are the best pony i ever met. im sad that you had to go away but thats okay because i remember you and carrot top remembers you and dinky remembers you. and we always will, i promise.
but you said on the last page that you want to know how i feel and stuff. well im going to miss you alot but i guess theres nothing i can do about that haha. but i hope that wherever you are that your happy because you should be.
oh yeah you wanted to know how i feel. well..... i feel happy. i guess that answers your question? but im not going to stop being happy ever again. im going to take what we learned together and im going to try and make friends again because something i never got to tell you was that i kind of gave up just before we met. im not going to make that mistake again!
so yeah i really miss you and i hope that we will meet again someday. but not soon i guess because that would be bad.
anyway im not sure how to end this either. what do you mean by new beginning? that im supposed to write a new book? what would i call it? the adventures of daring derp haha?
but i guess i do have to say this: goodbye ditzy. and thanks for everything.
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