I May Be Derpy, But I'm Not Useless.
How Town hall was destroyed
The night cast its shadow over the lonely park. With all the fillies and colts home with their families the park was left barren. However, one lone figure stood on a rock overlooking the pond. This mare looked down as drop after drop her tears disappeared into waters of the pond.
“I can’t do anything right,” the gray mare cried to herself. “All I wanted to do was bring a drink to the DJ. I didn’t mean to spill it.”
The mare remembered the names they called her. ‘Klutz’, ‘accident prone’, and worst of all the name which stood by her since her school days, ‘Derpy’. The name didn’t bother her as a nickname, but the way they yelled it out in anger hit her the hardest.
“Maybe they’re right,” she contemplated while looking down at her rippled reflection, “maybe I am just a mistake waiting to happen.”
As she rested her head between her forelegs, she couldn’t help but notice a loud clopping coming towards her.
“Ditzy!” the voice called to her. “Ditzy!”
“Doctor?” she sniveled. Even from afar the voice was familiar to her.
“Where are you?” He called again.
“By the pond,” she responded louder. Hearing his voice always cheered her up. However, there was something strange about how he was shouting. It sounded much more frantic.
“Ditzy,” he panted as he came to a full stop at her hooves. “Darling, are you alright?” He inspected her face. The soaked fur on her face showed her troubles. “Were you crying?”
Ditzy wiped the tears away and slapped on a feigned smile. “Oh, well it’s nothing,” she lied. “I just felt down. Nothing I can’t handle.”
“Ditzy…” The Doctor looked at her saddened by her obvious lie. “You shouldn’t let them get to you like this. What would Dinky think about this?”
Ditzy did not immediately respond. She continued to look at the ground, sinking deeper into her depression. “I told Carrot Top to keep her company while I’m gone.” She tilted her head down as more tears rolled out. “She could use a stable adult in her life.”
The Doctor was speechless. Not knowing anything else to do, he slowly pulled her head back up and looked into her eyes.
With Ditzy looking back with her good eye, the Doctor recited the words he would always tell her. “Nopony can tell you what you are. Only you can define yourself.”
Those words brought a smile to her face. The Doctor looked back at his accomplishment. After he cleared his mind, he remembered why he sprinted to find her.
“Oh, Ditzy,” he said abruptly. “I need your help.”
“What is it this time?” Ditzy waited for his offer. As she recalled, his last task was quite interesting. To her amazement the Doctor couldn’t keep eye contact with her.
His eyes fell to the floor as he tried to cough out the response. “We have a problem… with umm…” His nerves got ahold of him as he squeaked out the words. “with the rainclouds.” He knew asking a random pegasus to do cloud work without asking if they were qualified was insulting.
“Rainclouds?” Ditzy felt offended by his almost racist remark.
“Well you see, some Everfree Rainclouds, well,” he tried to explain the situation, “went rogue and are headed to Ponyville.”
“What?!” Ditzy yelled. “Why?”
“Well… my friend in Cloud Research and Development says they have turned rather aggressive towards quadrupeds…” He lowered his voice after noticing how ridiculous he must sound.
Ditzy was at a loss of words. Her mind was trying to comprehend why the clouds would attack Ponyville. She tried to form words, but all that came out was questionable sputters. The Doctor rubbed his head, taking in the reaction.
“Well, it can be hard to explain, but the clouds got sick with a rather scary rage virus.” he continued. He let out a light chuckle. “Magic stuff, you know. Not even I understand it.”
Ditzy shook her head, exiting her confused state. “But what does that mean?” she shouted, trying to comprehend the words shooting out of the Doctor’s mouth.
“It means they are sick and want to attack Ponyville.” The Doctor put it into lighter words. “The virus is contagious and has to be contained before they spread.”
“Why did you come to me?” She was dreadfully confused.
“Well, I need a Pegasus to gather the clouds in one place.”
“But… but…” she protested, “I’m not the best flier in Ponyville. I failed the weather team entrance exam twice. Why would you come to me?” The tears came trickling back.
“Ditzy, I needed a pony I could trust.” He placed his hoof on her shoulder. “Cloud Burst says this is an isolated incident. The fewer ponies know about, the better.”
“But…” she continued to protest.
“No ‘buts’, Ditzy,” Doctor Whooves ordered, “We haven’t much time. Can I trust you?” He looked deep into his wife’s eyes, hoping to get a full answer out of her.
Ditzy took a deep breath and with a serious face she gave the word. “I’ll do it.”
“Excellent,” the Doctor said in joy. “Now remember: not a word to anyone,” he reminded her. “It was an order from the higher-ups.”
“But Doctor?” Ditzy asked, “how will we able to stop them?”
“Cloud Burst received a serum from the Royal Armory that will do the trick.” He answered, “top secret though. Keep it on the hush-hush.”
Ditzy nodded her head in agreement. She ran her hoof across her mouth like a zipper, showing her compliance.
“Where are they?” She continued.
“They were coming in from the south, last I checked.” He looked up at the dark skies, hoping to see a sign. He was shocked to see that some had already entered Ponyville. “Bullocks,” he cursed in disappointment, “they're here.”
“What?” Ditzy was more confused. “Where are they?”
“There,” The Doctor pointed out flashes of lightning passing overhead, contrasting the night sky. “There were thirteen last I counted.”
“Th-that many?” Ditzy gulped as she remembered the dangers of the rough rain clouds. “Can’t you find somepony else?”
“We have no time,” He shouted as he galloped away. “Gather them in a high place. I have to find Cloud Burst.”
“Wait, but Doctor…” he was soon too far to hear her and out of her sight. Ditzy sat on the ground, taking in what the Doctor had told her. “But… but…”
She remembered all the names she was called. Her tears came back as she beat herself down, but one voice stood past the others.
‘Onlyyou can define yourself.’
With those words fresh in her head, she cleaned her face, gritted her teeth and shot out into the night sky.
She raced after the nearest cloud, chanting the words her husband had told her. “Only I can define me. Only I can define me.”
As she reached the cloud, she tried to remember the question on the weather team exam.
________
“Okay,” called out the instructor. “You have twenty minutes finish this exam. No looking around, no notes, no talking, no cheating whatsoever.” He sat at his desk and eyed the entire class as they took their exam.
A much younger Ditzy Do was sitting in the center of class reading over the test, desperately trying to get her mind straight. The questions were harder than she remembered. The one she had the most trouble on was the Raincloud question.
‘Oh, what do I do?’ she thought to herself. ‘I don’t know this,’
She read the question multiple times to herself.
- To relocate an overcharged raincloud safely, you must________________.
a. Push it from an uncharged location.
b. Use an ungrounded line to pull it.
c. Gather it’s attention and lead it.
d. None of the above.
She was confused, as all of them seemed to be valid options. Time passed as she tried to answer the question.
________
In her stressed moment the answer was hard to get ahold of. She tried and tried but the image escaped her every time. As she noticed how frantic she was she paused to clear her mind. The answer still did not appear.
Ditzy though hard on this question. ‘Okay, I got this question right one of the three times I took it.’ She thought to herself. ‘What was the answer?’
As she got closer, the cloud noticed her and let out bolt after bolt. After dodging them, she remembered one thing. ‘Touching that thing would be a bad idea.’ She eliminated that response, and she moved on to the next one. ‘A line seems safer.’ She recalled.
Dodging the bolts, she headed down to the streets to pull the closest line she could find. The banner lines over the streets were the first things. She pulled hard and ripped the rope from its groundings. With full speed she headed back up to the dangerous cloud.
Evading more bolts, she wrapped the rope around the cloud and pulled it towards the nearest hitch, the spire atop City Hall. She tied a knot and left for the next cloud. Along the way, her mind continued to erase the bad names she was called with the mantra the Doctor told her. ‘Nopony can tell you what you are. Only you can define yourself.’
Quickly she scanned the skies to find the light from the clouds. With banner rope as a lasso she lead the clouds to the spire atop City Hall. She often had to pull them up to avoid damage to the buildings. Still repeating her mantra to keep her calm, she found all the clouds before they hurt the houses.
“One more,” she told herself as she pulled the final cloud towards the center of town. As she made her triumphant return she noticed flashes coming from the top of Town Hall. A closer inspection showed that the captured clouds were trying to escape. With strike after strike of their lightning, the clouds broke the roof of the structure. By the look of it, the roof was on it’s last beams.
Ditzy was frantic. She could think of only one thing to do. She grabbed ahold of the ropes and pulled down as hard as she could. The clouds started doing more damage, trying to get loose. The bright flashes and the flying debris which surrounded her made her want to let go and save herself. However, her heart strived on to prove the ponies wrong. She needed to prove to them that she wasn’t an accident, a klutz, or even useless.
“I… Am… Ditzy Do!” she shouted to the clouds, “And I won’t let you turn me into a fool!”
“Ditzy!” A voice shouted from the ground, “we finally found you. Cloud Burst has the serum ready.”
“Hurry, I don’t know how longer I can hold on.” Ditzy exclaimed.
“Hold them down a little longer. Cloud here is ready to administer the serum.” The Doctor said as the blue Pegasus flew overhead with a spray bottle. The pegasus quickly misted a coating of the serum into the clouds. The clouds started to calm down and the bolts stopped crashing down.
Ditzy let got of the ropes as the clouds headed back to the Everfree Forest. She fell back onto the roof, resting after a tough job well done.
“Ditzy!” The Doctor called again. “Are you alright?”
“Y-yeah” She panted. “I’m fine.”
“Good, well, we have to head back to Canterlot as soon as we can.” He said. “Will you be alright?”
“Yeah.”
“Well good-bye,” he sounded off. “I’ll be back home in a few days.”
After an exhausting night, the gray mare laid herself down and fell asleep on the roof of city hall.
Morning came and she was awakened by a tap on her shoulder. A blue mare stood over her in the sunlight, her rainbow mane glistening in the morning sun.
“What the hay happened here?” The mare asked.
Ditzy looked around at the damage done by the clouds. It looked worse in the light of day. Remembering she couldn’t tell anypony about what had happened she went to the comical response she normally went to. “I just don’t know what went wrong.”
With her hoof in her face, the blue mare retorted, “Darn it Derpy, what are we going to do with you?”
________________________
A few days passed and, as part of an effort to renovate City Hall, Ditzy was put in place to help work on any renovation. As she stood idle waiting for Rainbow Dash’s order, she noticed a straggling rain cloud heading to the hall. She sneaked away and quickly intercepted it, jumping on it to break its spirit.
As she attacked it, a bolt of lightning struck Rainbow Dash’s tail.
“Careful, Derpy!” she said in annoyance as she gathered herself from the near miss, “you don’t want to do any more damage than you’ve already done.” She pointed at the damaged roof which, at that point, collapsed under its weight.
Having felt embarrassed about the damages to the building, what bothered her more was how she couldn’t tell them the truth. She wished she could tell them how she single-hoofedly saved Ponyville from great damage. But a promise was a promise, and she always said, ‘the Doctor knows best.’ To avoid the subject further, she repeated her fallback statement.
“I just don’t know what went wrong.” As she jumped up and down attacking the cloud, she struck herself by a bolt, leaving her disoriented.
At that moment she realized the word Derpy had no longer any bad meaning. She had defined herself as something better. She was now one of the saviors of Ponyville. Even though they didn’t know it, she has defined herself as such. In the end, that was all she cared about.