There's no use crying over every mistake
Derpy Hooves Accidentially a Portal Gun
Admiral Biscuit
4-1-13
The addled grey mailmare sat with her head down in Celestia’s antechambers, morosely examining the floor. Well, with one eye, anyway. The other had drifted towards a stained glass window.
It wasn’t my fault. Not really. Well, it mostly wasn’t my fault. I mean, I didn’t know what would happen. She sighed. The guards had grabbed her and dragged her here so quickly, she hadn’t even had time to grab her little blue pillbox hat.
It was midday, and she was happily flying along towards Canterlot. Mr. Post had given her a very important package, which had to go to the castle. Being the diligent mailmare that she was, Derpy had already finished her route—she had even managed to only have three muffin breaks before lunch. So, since her saddlebags were empty—and since she was obviously the best mailmare in all of Ponyville, even if she did crash into things a lot—she got the package.
She gave it a cursory glance—mail carriers were supposed to make sure that the package had a proper address and proper postage. It was from Aperture Science, which she had never heard of. It sounded like the kind of thing that was done at Canterlot University.
The box was a perfectly ordinary cardboard box. It looked as if it had been mishandled and abused—the corners were crumpled and the tape was peeling off. Derpy carefully stuffed it into her saddlebags. It stuck out the top, and the cover of her saddlebag didn’t quite latch, so she would have to be careful.
She flew off towards the center of town. She stopped in the market long enough to tell Sparkler to pick Dinky up from school, in case she wasn’t back yet, then took to the air with powerful wingbeats.
Her course took her over the Apple’s farm, and she waved at Big Mac. He was trying to fit a wheel on a wagon. Applejack appeared to be arguing about which way it should go, if her hoof gestures were any indication. They stopped long enough to wave, before AJ continued her inaudible vituperations.
A few minutes later, she was at her optimal cruising altitude. It was just far enough above the puffy white clouds to give her a good clear view of anything that might be along her flight path. Once, she’d been surprised by Cherry Berry bursting through a patch of clouds in her balloon, and she’d dropped a whole bag of muffins. A whole bag.
She flew on, eyes half-closed, letting the sun warm her back, when she suddenly hit a patch of clear air turbulence. She’d been coasting off a thermal, when her left wing jerked up abruptly. She instinctively changed the angle of her wings, banking back level, when she hit the downdraft and flipped on her back.
Except for the Wonderbolts and Rainbow Dash, pegasi didn’t like inverted flight, especially when it was unplanned. She dropped her nose towards the ground, intending to do a half-loop out of it. It would preserve her airspeed for a turn back to her original course.
It also gave her the opportunity to spot the package which had fallen from her unlatched saddlebags.
So far, Derpy had managed a perfect record of undamaged deliveries. She’d dropped some mail before, but it was mostly letters, and she’d had no trouble grabbing them before they hit the ground. She’d had less luck as a mover—but honestly, what kind of pegasus kept a piano, anyways? She’d probably done her a favor, dropping it. And Twilight Sparkle should have known better than to be under a cloudhouse on moving day—everypony else did. Even Raindrops said so.
Thankful that she’d preserved her momentum, Derpy dove towards the package, grabbing it by her front hooves as it fell. Unfortunately, that proved to be a little too much for the shoddy packing tape, and the bottom of the package fell open, scattering Styrofoam peanuts like a strange summer snowstorm.
She shouted something unprintable, and dropped the box, diving towards the falling—well, whatever it was. She kind of got her forelegs around it, but it was made out of some sort of slippery white material, and she fumbled it around a bit before finally grabbing it in her mouth.
Derpy triumphantly pulled out of her dive, muttering praises to Celestia when her tongue came into contact with a raised button. She felt it move, and there was a strange noise from the object, and a weird dark hole with a flaming blue border appeared on the ground.
Wandering eyes or no, Derpy wasn’t a fool. It was plain that this thing—whatever it was—had made that hole, and she was sure the Princesses wouldn’t be too happy about her poking holes in the ground. Especially holes surrounded by flames.
She landed right next to it. The curious blue flames didn’t get any bigger—they hardly came up past the keratin of her hooves—and they didn’t appear to be damaging the grass in any way.
She poked at the hole experimentally with a stick. It seemed unharmed, so she stuck her head in. There was nothing there. It was like looking down a well, but there wasn’t a wet smell. There wasn’t any smell, in fact. Maybe a tiny hint of a chocolate cake, but she could have been imagining that.
She stepped back, considering. This was the kind of thing that she would have to report to somepony. Since she was going to Canterlot, she’d have to report it to the Royal Guard, and they’d ask all sorts of questions. They’d probably blame her for making the hole, even though it obviously wasn’t her fault. Clearly, the best solution was to make it go away.
Derpy kicked dirt in the hole for a while, but it accomplished nothing that she could see. The hole was just as big, and the little blue flamey border stayed exactly the same.
She looked at the object more closely. It had a smooth white shell, and an opening that looked like it would fit over a leg. There were some odd metal parts under the shell—they looked almost insectile—but she couldn’t tell what their function might be. Most importantly, there were two buttons on the side. Two buttons usually meant on and off. Off was what she wanted.
One of the buttons was blue, while the other was orange. Clearly, the blue button had made the blue hole. Therefore, the orange button would remove the hole. It was so simple, a foal could figure it out.
She slipped it over a hoof, aimed it at the hole—there was a convenient sight provided for that purpose, exactly like the Barrett M82 she had at home. For protection against changelings, of course. A mare has to keep herself safe. Then she pushed the orange button.
The resultant explosion tossed her back a few yards. It was hard to follow—even with independently controlled eyes—but the hole appeared to have kind of folded around itself. It was pulsing a strange blue-orange-purple kind of color, and it looked angry. Derpy got to her hooves and backed up farther.
She stuffed the weird white hole-making gun into her saddlebag, vowing to never touch it again. This was something she would probably have to report to Princess Celestia herself, and she’d have to admit that she accidentally fired the gun once, and on purpose the second time.
Mr. Post would probably give her a week off work without pay. It wasn’t the worst possible thing—and it would give her lots of time with her foals—but it would be embarrassing. Nopony would trust her with packages again, not for a while. Not until the grizzled old mailstallion got reamed out by Fluttershy again. They should have put him out to pasture years ago.
While she was thinking, a strange creature came out of the portal. It was as tall as a Diamond Dog, although it smelled much nicer, and it wasn’t covered in mangy fur.
“Where am I?” The creature looked around for a moment, before it locked eyes on Derpy. “What are you?”
“I’m Derpy Hooves,” she said proudly, fluffing her wings. It might have looked impressive, except her left eye took the opportunity to contemplate her bangs.
“Great,” the creature muttered. “I get out of the Enrichment Center, and now I’m stuck here—wherever here is—with a wall-eyed talking pony. Could this day get any weirder?”
Derpy narrowed her eyes. It helped her focus—at least, it made it less obvious when she wasn’t. “So you aren’t from around here? Like, not from around Ponyville?”
The creature snorted. “Ponyville? Really? As weird as GLaDos is, that’s . . . well, actually, I’m not surprised.” She crouched down, to look Derpy in the eye. “Answer me honestly, do I look like I’m from around here?”
Derpy looked at her very carefully. She knew it was a her, because she sounded like a her. And she smelled nice, too, even though she was kind of sweaty, like she’d been running.
She was wearing orange pants and a white shirt. Her mane was a tangled mess, and her face was covered in soot and dirt. Her furless skin was covered with cuts and scrapes, and more of the same soot and dirt. She had heavy boots on. She wasn’t a manticore, river serpent, hydra, three-headed dog, diamond dog, equine of any type, or buffalo. A general lack of feathers or fur or scales pretty much ruled out everything except rock or tree, and those didn’t move or talk.
“You don’t look like you’re from around here,” Derpy concluded, to sarcastic applause from the creature. “What are you?”
“I’m a human, little pony. Name’s Chell.”
“Ooh, I’m Derpy Hooves.” She held out a hoof, forgetting that she’d already said her name.
“That’s your name?”
“Yup.”
“Aren’t you kind of . . . insulted by it?”
Derpy looked confused. Her face scrunched up in concentration. She had hooves—hoofsies, as Pinkie Pie would say. So that wasn’t an insult. Everypony had hooves. Except Spike, but he wasn’t a pony, so that was ok.
Everypony in school had called her Derpy, and they always seemed excited when they did. It was usually after she broke something. At first it had been kind of insulting, until she’d taken exception to a colt who called her that, and bucked him in the face. After that, she started calling herself by that name, and nopony had used it insultingly since.
“Not since I broke Hoops’ muzzle,” she concluded. “Do you find it offensive?”
“No, no, not at all.” Chell backed up, holding her hands out in front of her.
“I guess I should take you to the Princess, too,” Derpy muttered. “Too bad you won’t fit in my saddlebag.”
“I—wait, what?”
Before she could properly react, Derpy jumped into the air. In her defense, while Chell had seen the wings, she hadn’t really made the connection between them and flight. She watched with a mixture of awe and alarm as the grey pegasus twisted over her and grabbed the back of her shirt.
Chell yanked at her collar, trying to dislodge the teeth, before looking down and realizing she was already fifty feet in the air and rising quickly.
“Put me down!”
“I have to take you to the Princess,” Derpy muttered around a mouthful of fabric. “Sorry.”
“How can you even carry me?” The ground was rushing by hundreds of feet below now, and Chell found herself wondering just how strong the Aperture Labs issue tank tops were.
“Rainbow Dash says pegasuses are very strong,” Derpy muttered. “But she’s wrong.”
“How so?”
“The plural of pegasus is pegasi.”
Well, that certainly cleared things up. Chell resigned herself to trying to hold her shirt down. This would accomplish two objectives—it would keep her from flashing anyone who happened to pass by, and, more importantly, it would keep her from falling to her death.
Before too long, it became evident that they were heading to the strange onion-domed fairy-tale castle perched illogically on the side of a cliff. It looked like a strong gust of wind would bring the whole thing crashing down, and they clearly didn’t have earthquakes in mind when they wrote their building codes. As they got close, Chell was depressed but unsurprised to see that the entire town was populated with these odd miniature equines.
She was dropped into the center of a ring of serious-looking white furred ponies wearing Romanesque armor and brush helmets. She momentarily considered running—especially since logic said it would be impossible to actually stab her with one of the spears that they were holding in their gold-shod hooves. The sky-blue eyes of the one facing her seemed to be begging her to try, and she wisely elected to remain still.
“It’s a human named Chell,” Derpy said. “I found her between here and Ponyville. She came out of a weird hole in the ground.”
“You’d better come with me.” The senior guard looked at Derpy critically. “You, too, human Chell.”
Derpy looked up from the floor. Chell was sitting on a bench next to her—guarded by a whole platoon—and she appeared to be resting her head on her forelegs. It looked comfortable, so Derpy tried it, and promptly measured her length on the cold stone floor. She blushed furiously as the guards just stared open-mouthed.
A moment later, the large doors opened, and it was all flanks and fetlocks as everypony in the room snapped to attention. Celestia glided through the door majestically, her mane flowing out around her. Derpy bowed low, muzzle touching the marble. She tried to stop her legs from trembling, but they had other ideas, and kept it up.
“Human named Chell, step forward please.”
The guards scrambled aside as Chell stepped forward. Celestia moved behind a desk, gently lowering her regal plot into an oversized swiveling chair. The two of them stood staring at each other for what seemed like an eternity, but was probably no more than a few seconds.
“What brings you to Equestria, human Chell?”
“I . . . I didn’t mean to come here, your majesty.” Chell bowed slightly. “I was in the Enrichment Center, and suddenly a portal opened up in my chambers. I thought it was a test, so I stepped through.”
Celestia nodded wisely.
“I could try to go back through the portal again, I guess. If I could find it. That Derpy pony knows where it is.”
“No.” Celestia motioned with her hoof. “Come a little closer, if you please.”
Chell took a step forward.
Celestia mashed her hoof down on as ornate button on her desk. The floor suddenly dropped from below Chell’s feet, and she vanished from the room, leaving behind only a fading scream and a few meaty thuds against the wall of the shaft.
The guards looked around uncomfortably. Celesia’s mien was as placid as ever. “Ms. Derpy Hooves, if you would step forward, please?”
“I’d rather stay here, if it pleases your highness.”
“Pit traps don’t work on pegasi,” Celestia said comfortingly. “Haven’t you read Daring Do?”
“Oh.” She took a few tentative steps towards the desk, carefully avoiding the pit trap.
“I am sick of humans in Equestria,” Celestia muttered. “At first, it was ok. They were kind of original. Not any more. I never ever want to see another one. Ever.” She looked at the cowering pegasus. “Derpy Hooves, you are banned forthwith from Equestria for the crime of bringing a human into Equestria.”
“It wasn’t my fault,” Derpy wailed, tears flowing from her eyes. “It wasn’t boxed right!”
“Explain.”
“Somepony sent this to Canterlot,” she sniffled, pulling the portal gun out of her saddlebag. “It fell out of the box, and I grabbed it in my mouth, like this.” Her heart sank as she heard a click when she put the gun in her mouth. The scrambling of hooves in the room told her all that she needed to know.
The room was deathly quiet, and she finally looked up. On the ceiling almost above Celestia’s desk, a blue portal glowed.
“Give me that!” One of the guards lunged for her. She took a step back, accidentally firing the gun again. This time, an orange portal appeared in the wall next to her. Derpy looked at the guards rapidly—but cautiously—approaching, and decided her best option was to flee. Hopefully, by the time the Princess got done fixing the holes—whatever they were—she wouldn’t be mad anymore.
Unfortunately, while she was formulating her plan of action, the guards had gotten extremely close. One of them was coming right at her, and she threw the gun at him. She turned her head, spotting another who was flanking her. She took a quick sidestep—
Right through the orange portal.
A nanosecond later, she was falling out of the blue one. Celestia, with reflexes born of centuries of rule, instantly realized that she was going to fall right on the trapdoor, and pressed the button again.
“You said pit traps don’t work on pegasi,” Derpy’s fading voice echoed accusingly.
“Not unless they’re lined with anti-magic bricks,” Celestia yelled back. She closed the door and addressed her guards. “Thank you for bringing this to my immediate attention. Please continue to bring any humans—and the ponies who summoned them—to me or Luna.”
As one, the guards saluted, and marched out of her chambers, studiously avoiding the portal in the wall.
Chell leaned up against the wall in the room at the bottom of the pit. Although the fall had been uncomfortable, at least there had been a stack of mattresses at the bottom, so the landing wasn’t terribly unpleasant. Now all she had to do was wait until GLaDos dreamed up some other weirdness.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a loud thud on the mattress pile. A second later, the gray pegasus that had brought her here tumbled into view.
“I just don’t know what went wrong,” she muttered, pulling a squished muffin from her saddlebags.