Prologue

“I just don't know what went wrong!”

Twilight facehoofed. That had been her opposites excuse for pretty much everything, ever since she accidentally nearly fried Rainbow Dash with a lightning bolt a few moons ago.

Again, the purple unicorn's eyes examined the mare sitting on the library couch: A blond mane grew over a light gray coat, ending just centimeters above the somewhat distorted golden eyes. A cutie mark made up from several bubbles that looked like some kind of soda advertisement stood out on the flanks just below the spread-out pegasus wings. One of those two was now wrapped in bandages and, by the looks of it, would need a few days to heal. Three of four, Twilight guessed. At maximum a week. Probably. She wasn't quite an expert on medicine. After all, the studies on the magic of friendship given to her by the princess never had included anything like it. And thus, Twilight hadn't actually bothered to learn about it. Yet, she did recognize a bruised wing when she saw one. She had also put up with this before, when treating Rainbow's wings the same way not so long ago. Her friend had tried to pull off that insane flight maneuver – what was it called again? - right above town earlier, almost blowing them all straight to hell.

It had been a much more extreme case back then, but still her treatment had worked out perfectly fine. All Derpy Hooves did was cranking her left wing just moments ago, while delivering the morning mail. Or actually, that already had happened twenty minutes ago. Twilight had still been upstairs, getting ready for her day off, when she heard an ear-piercing shattering sound coming from the hall. Hurrying down the stairs, Princess Celestia's most faithful student soon realized it was too late to preserve anything from chaos. What she encountered were books piled up randomly, spread across the floor in chaos, joined by pieces of demolished glass. Right in the middle, there was Derpy. The cyan pegasus looked up at her involuntary host with a sense of guilt in her crooked pupils, stuttering how she could explain.

Knowing Derpy, Twilight didn't even bother to ask any further questions before quickly fixing the mess (nothing a little unicorn magic couldn't handle) and taken care of that wing afterwards. Now, still sitting on the couch, Derpy slowly examined the wrapped up wing or hers. Probably, that was, since she stared at it with some strange face expression Twilight couldn't quite make out. Meanwhile, the purple unicorn gave an attempt to break the awkward silence that had risen up between them just then and pulled out a box she'd gotten from Sugarcube Corner the other day. “He-he...care for a cupcake?” she finally asked.

After Derpy turned her head towards the box, her face clearly changed to a joyful smile. “Mmmh, muffins...” she replied, as she shoved one into her mouth immediately.

Simultaneously, Twilight rolled her eyes and mumbled to herself: “Or muffins, whatever...” What was the difference between those two words, anyways? She needed to look that up. Or at least put it on her checklist for things to research.

Somewhat later, while Derpy devoured her third muffin already, Twilight decided to briefly look through the mail to see whether it had actually been worth all the trouble. She got disappointed, when it turned out to be nothing out of the ordinary. There wasn't anything but the Ponyville Express daily edition, a short brochure on some upcoming book sales in Canterlot. Hidden in between, she discovered a short note advertising another one of DJ Pon-3's legally questionable late night raves. Reviled by most decent town citizens, they usually took place every Friday in the old barn located on the outskirts of Sweet Apple Acres, right next to the Everfree Forest. Twilight had always kind of wondered, whether the Apple family actually approved of those, but the past few days didn't turn out to be a good time to ask. They all were still furious since the last time, when the Cutie Mark Crusaders tried to sneak out of their beds and into one of those events. The day after that, Twilight had briefly overheard a conversation in town. AJ and Rarity had been raging over their little sisters' irresponsible behavior. Finally having some topic they could agree on didn't seem to ease the tension, however. From what she understood, the whole thing had mostly been planned by Scootaloo, but it was Sweetie Belle, who got caught on her way back home. And it had been her and Apple Bloom, who had most of the explaining to do.

Apparently, Rarity had also tried convincing Rainbow Dash to have a serious talk to the orange pegasus filly about her unreliability. Despite her best efforts however, Rainbow had simply started enthusing about the coolness of that midnight trip. She also exclaimed that Scootaloo really did keep up the good work to stay second most awesome pony in Ponyville – after herself, obviously.

“It sure feels better that way. I bet you are some sort of doctor.”

The sentence cut short on Twilight's thoughts. “Excuse me?” she asked, while looking up in surprise. Derpy was now looking right at her, face dead-serious. “It sure feels better that way. I bet you are some sort of doctor.”

She repeated the sentence with the exact same expression and in the exact same intonation. By now, Twilight was more than only surprised, even a little shocked. After all, she wouldn't have ever expected a sentence that complex from somepony like Derpy. She never even experienced her putting together more than 'just not knowing what went wrong'. Nor had anypony she knew.

“W-well...” Twilight finally started stumbling “I'm not actually...”

“I still remember the first time I met a doctor.”

Silence. After being cut short like that, the unicorn didn't know anything to respond whatsoever. Especially since she had always thought this mare wasn't even able to put three simple words in order correctly. But now something rather deep and touching seemed to be going on in Derpy Hooves head.

The next few seconds would seem like an eternity to Twilight, who – being caught up between surprise and curiosity – still had nothing to say, though desperately looking for some kind of answer. Meanwhile Derpy just sat there, her eyes gazing off in the distance. Or actually, only one of them did. The other was probably staring at the table in front of her, though nopony could tell for sure. Finally, the blue-grayish pegasus broke the silence, still not changing her expressions: “He wasn't the same kind of doctor, you know. Mother once took me to him many moons ago, I don't even remember how long exactly...”