Chapter One: Derpy Mail
“Look out down theeerreee!” shouted Derpy from above my head.
I looked up and saw a wooden crate falling towards me from about fifty feet up. I managed to move out of the way in time, but the crate smashed into the ground, sending flying pieces of hoof-carved figurines in all directions.
I looked up and shouted, “Dangit, Derpy! We were gonna get fifty bits for delivering that!”
She shrugged with an apologetic grin and brought the sky cart down to the ground.
“Sorry, Thunderlane, I just don’t know what went wrong… again,” she said
I started picking up the little wooden figures, which were actually mostly intact.
“It’s alright, the stuff doesn’t look too damaged,” I said while inspecting one of the 6 inch tall wooden things. It was a medieval-looking pony in armor. Apparently this package was full of them.
“I’ll get another box!” Derpy said, eagerly jumping into the cart and pulling out an empty box.
“Make sure you use plenty of bubble wrap, okay? Well, I guess I don’t need to tell you that…” It’s true. She may be clumsy sometimes, but she could line a box with bubble wrap like she’d done it for as long as Celestia’s raised the sun. I don’t know if that’s why her cutie mark is bubbles, but it made up for her dropping stuff all the time, because, like in this example, the bubble wrap saved the day.
Before I could even pick up twenty of the figurines, Derpy already had the other eighty in bubble wrapped and safely tucked away in the wrap-lined box. She was surprisingly a pretty good courier, which is why I went into business with her.
See, she used to work for a moving company, but after an incident where she dropped quite a bit of precious cargo on the bearer of the Element of Magic, she was out of a job pretty quick. She saw me delivering mail one day and asked if I wanted to go into business as couriers delivering packages, so I joined up with her newly christened “Derpy Mail.”
Anyway, within the hour we had the package good as new and delivered. We split the bits and decided to go to Sugarcube Corner for a little Friday afternoon fun to kick off the weekend.
Lyra Heartstrings and Bon Bon were sitting at their usual table outside. As usual, I could hear Lyra going on about “humans” again, with Bon Bon looking less than eager to listen.
Predictably, Pinkie Pie exploded with excitement when two customers walked through the door.
“Derpy! Thunderlane! Where the hay have you two been? I’ve been waiting all week!” she said happily, bouncing about the room.
“We always come in on Friday… don’t we?” Derpy replied.
“Yes yes yes, you do! But I’ve been so excited because I have a super-duper surprise for you both!”
Derpy and I looked at each other, puzzled. I didn’t know Pinkie that well, but she did throw the best parties in Ponyville, and although she could be a bit, well, random at times, she knew how to have a good time. We both smiled.
“Okay Pinkie Pie,” Derpy said, “what’cha got?”
She just about exploded when Derpy said that.
“Oh, you’re gonna love it!” Pinkie said as she darted to the kitchen.
Yes! She’s gonna bring us some free sweets!
After a few seconds, she came out of the kitchen with the biggest tray of muffins I ever saw. Derpy’s crossed eyes lit up like a Hearth’s Warming tree!
“I know how much you loooove muffins, Derpy! And since Derpy mail does such a good job, I decided to make to the two bestest delivery ponies in Ponyville the bestest zap-apple muffins in the whole wide world!”
“For free?” I asked. Derpy was already stuffing her face in zap-apple muffins, not that I could blame her. Those things were good!
Pinkie Pie knocked me on the head, “Of course, silly-filly! Why would I make you pay for a surprise present!?” She replied.
Not being able to argue with that logic, I took a bite out of a muffin. I can’t really describe the flavor in full, but it’s like a regular muffin with rich, gooey zap-apples inside. It had a slight electrically charged taste to it, which brought out the sweetness. There’s nothing quite like it, and Pinkie’s confectionary skills are second to none.
Derpy’s mouth was stretched to about three times its normal size. It was like she was inhaling the muffins! I took three muffins off the tray for me lest my muffin-vacuum of a friend (more on how/why I consider her a friend in a minute) eat them all.
Then…
She started choking.
That’s right, choking. She probably had ten muffins she was trying to stuff down her gullet, and they were lodged up.
She started coughing and trying to speak up. “Ah’m thoking!” She tried to say, spitting out muffin everywhere. Realizing what was happening, I leaped out of my chair and tried doing like they show in those First Aid instructions, you know, wrapping your hooves around a pony’s stomach and squeezing, trying to dislodge the offending muffin.
Pinkie burst out of the kitchen doors. “NOPONY PANIC!” she yelled, “I CAN HANDLE THIS!”
My unsuccessful attempts at dislodging the muffin were proving futile, so Pinkie bucked me out of the way. Thanks Pinkie.
She was wearing one of those miner’s helmets with the big light on the front (why did she even have that?) and literally jumped into Derpy’s mouth. Derpy, of course, was freaking out, now that she was choking on not only a muffin but also a full-grown mare. I could hear Pinkie saying something (sounded like “there you are!”) but it was muffled.
After a few seconds, she dislodged herself from poor Derpy’s oral cavity, holding a half eaten zap apple muffin.
“Pinkie Pie saves the day again!” she said triumphantly. I went up to Derpy and helped her back on her hooves. She had muffin all over her face, but she was okay.
After a few seconds of coughing, Derpy spoke up. “Wow, thanks Pinkie! You… you saved my life!” She said. She embraced Pinkie in a bear hug.
“No problem, Derps!”
Why am I telling you this? Because it happens almost every week. Derpy and I go to Sugarcube Corner and she has a near death experience choking on a muffin (Derpy refused to buy anything but muffins).
Her house was just a short walk from Sugarcube Corner, and I always walked her home. Don’t get any ideas, we were only friends, but hey, I still have to be a gentlecolt, right?
I like Derpy. A lot. We were very good friends, and these days I pretty much considered her like my little sister. I actually knew her before we went into business together. We met at the library, shortly after the whole Nightmare Moon thing and the Summer Sun Celebration. That was almost two years ago now, if I remember correctly. Anyway, I went in looking for a book on advanced Pegasus flight maneuvers. Twilight Sparkle, the newly christened Element of Magic, helped me find the book I was looking for. Her friend Rainbow Dash was in there. I had actually known Rainbow Dash from our school days back in Cloudsdale (that’s where I’m originally from), but that’s beside the point. Twilight helped me find the book, but Dash got all excited when she heard me ask for a book on advanced flight maneuvers. Before I knew it, we were outside and she was giving me a lesson (but refused to go by the book) on doing a 90-degree turn.
Now, I’m a pretty good flier, I learned from Snow Heart, one of the best fliers in Equestria, but I never did master the 90-degree turn (for those of you who can’t visualize it, it’s an “L” shaped turn). It takes some skill and practice, because you’re basically turning on a point.
So Rainbow Dash and I worked on that for about an hour and I eventually got the hang of it. The trick was finding just the right time to spread your wings during the dive.
We went back into the library and lo-and-behold, a gray coated, blonde maned Pegasus with yellow, crisscrossed eyes was sitting there, next to a fallen pile of books, apologizing to Twilight for knocking over the stack of alphebitized books that Twilight was about to shelve. Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes.
“Who’s that?” I asked Rainbow Dash.
“That’s Derpy. She helps me with the weather sometimes… Kiiiind of clumsy, but she’s all right,” Rainbow Dash said with a whip of her tail.
“I can tell about the clumsy part.”
Twilight was convincing her that it wasn’t a big deal, and eventually Derpy headed to the door.
“Hey, Rainbow Dash,” she said.
“Sup, Derpy?” Rainbow Dash replied.
Derpy looked at me (I think) and blinked. “Who’re you?” she asked.
“I’m Thunderlane. Nice to meet you.” I said, extending a hoof. She returned the hoof shake.
“Nice to meet you too! I’m Derpy! I came here to get a book to teach me how to cook muffins,” she said excitedly, holding up a cookbook.
“Muffins, huh?” I said.
“Yup! Hey, you three want to help me make some?!?” she asked.
“Oh, look at the time,” Rainbow Dash said, “I’ve got some clouds to buck!” Dash quickly darted out of the window. Derpy looked at Twilight.
Twilight, caught off guard, looked around the room. Spike had just come down stairs and started sweeping the floor. Twilight reached a hoof across the room and swiped Spike up, and used her magic to summon a thermometer, jamming it in Spike’s mouth.
“Oh, I’d love to, Derpy! But Spike’s come down with the Dragon Flu! I have to take care of him today,” she said with a sheepish grin.
Spike popped the thermometer out of his mouth. “But Twilight, I feel fi-“ Twilight shoved the thermometer back in his mouth.
“Now, now, Spike, you have to keep it under your tongue for four full minutes or else it won’t give an accurate reading!” Twilight said nervously. Catching on to what Twilight was doing, Spike obeyed, going over and sitting against the wall with his arms crossed.
“Oh, ok” Derpy said sadly. She looked at me with pleading eyes. Why would she want some pony she just met to help her make muffins? I considered for a moment. I had the day off from my mail job, and I had nothing better to do. Since I moved to Ponyville from Canterlot (that’s right, I’m from Cloudsdale and moved to Canterlot, then Ponyville), I hadn’t made any friends.
“What the hay, sure!” I said. Derpy smiled ecstatically.
“Great! Let’s go to Sugarcube Corner! Pinkie always lets me cook there!”
And that’s when Derpy and me first hung out. Why Pinkie lets Derpy cook there, I have no idea, because she always nearly catches the place on fire. I’m not gonna go into that though, I could probably go on for days.
So back to the present.
It was late afternoon now, and Ponyville shuts down after dark, so like I said, I walked Derpy home.
“Hey, Thunderlane?” she asked.
“Yup?”
“How’d you get your cutie mark? You never told me,” she said.
I smirked. “How did you get your cutie mark, Derpy? You never told me!” I said teasingly.
“No fair! I asked first!” she came back with a playful smile, bumping me slightly as we walked.
“Alright, quit yer whinin’, I’ll tell you. It’s not very interesting, though,” I said. I looked back at my cutie mark. The yellow thunderbolt coming out of the cloud contrasted starkly against my charcoal colored coat.
“It was back in Cloudsdale, I was seven years old, before my brother Rumble was even born. Happened right after my birthday, in fact. My parents had given me a brand new saddle bag.”
“Saddle bag?” Derpy interrupted, “that’s not much of a present,” she said.
I shrugged with my wings. “It may not seem like it now, but that’s actually what I wanted more than anything. I was just starting to be able to fly a few feet above the floor. I was going everywhere! I’d be all over Cloudsdale after school, practicing flying around, always trying to lift myself a little higher every day. I’d make my rounds every day in the afternoon, going to the race track, then the cloud factory, then the store and all sorts of other places around town.”
“Then how did we never meet in Cloudsdale? I grew up there too, you know!” Derpy pointed out.
“Good point,” I pondered, “I don’t know why we never met,” I said, shrugging again.
“Oh well, keep going,” Derpy said.
“Well, anyway, after a few months of that, shopkeepers and such started asking me to bring something to someone at the race track, or weather factory, or another store or house. I would always accept. After a while, they started paying me tips for doing it!”
“Not bad, a little colt and already making money,” she said.
“Yup. I really enjoyed it too. I loved flying and zipping around town, and now I actually had a purpose to do it. They said when I really got up to speed, it sounded like thunder shooting past them! It felt good too, ponies trusting you with their possessions and messages to deliver safely to others. I was really proud of myself.”
“You should have been!” Derpy interjected.
“So when my birthday came up, my parents asked what I wanted. With more and more ponies asking me to deliver stuff after school, I really wanted something that looked official to put things in, so my parents gave me a brown saddlebag with ‘T.L.’ stitched into it. That was one of the proudest days of my life. I put it on and made my rounds around town. When I got back, I took off the saddlebag, and this appeared there,” I said, patting my cutie mark with my hoof.
I was going to go more into it, like how my cutie mark caused me to be apprenticed to a Royal Guard named Snow Heart, who pretty much raised me after I turned seven and got my cutie mark, but we were already at Derpy’s house.
Derpy turned to me and gave me a hug. “Thanks for helping me out earlier, Thunderlane,” she said.
“Aw, don’t mention it. Pinkie’s the one who saved you this time!” I replied, returning the hug.
After our goodbyes, I flew home, which was a few houses down from the newly crowned Princess Twilight Sparkle’s library. It was also next door to Vinyl “DJ Pon3” Scratch and Octavia’s house, where I could hear the faint sound of dub step “wubs.”
The next day proved to be very interesting, and kicked off the start of a mission across Equestria.
Author's Note
This is the start of Thunderlane's story. I guess you could say my past for him is absolutely head cannon.
Leave comments, tell me how to improve.
