Now You're Thinking With Portals
Derpy Intentionally a Portal Gun
Admiral Biscuit
4-1-15
For Derpy, life had returned to normal. After Sparkler's daring Canterlot Crystal Caverns rescue, the four heroes had used their wingsuits (or in the case of Derpy, actual wings) and flown back to Ponyville, returning unnoticed under the cover of darkness. Noteworthy had eventually realized he wasn't going to get any, gotten bored of Canterlot, and returned home, too. And the Doctor did whatever it is he always did when he wasn’t off saving the world.
The next day, Derpy had given Chell a tour of the town. True, she didn’t exactly fit in—and the three-year-old ban on humans was still on Derpy’s mind—but Derpy knew that the best place to hide something was in plain sight. She claimed that Chell was a shaved Diamond Dog. Normally, such a statement would have been met with outright skepticism, but Derpy had taken to carrying her Glock wherever she went, so nopony pressed the issue.
Yes, everything had turned out all right.
Mostly.
Not really.
For every action, there are consequences, and the daring escape from Canterlot hadn't gone without its own special brand of consequences. The seething mass of half-starved humanity who had been imprisoned in Equestria had taken advantage of the ginormous hole in the side of the mountain, and used it to gain their freedom. From there, they began their spread to the four corners of Equestria. Luckily, they weren't particularly stealthy, but like all diseases, once they'd gotten a foothold, they were deceptively difficult to eradicate, especially since everypony knows that the Royal Guard is completely incompetent.
And so it was that Derpy found herself the target of some hostility around town. Over the course of time, humans had come through thin spots in reality, been chased out of the Everfree by a manticore, fallen through unmarked quantum tunnels, followed birdseed-eating unicorns, come through the CHS statue with woodchippers, been pushed there by dump trucks, and even beamed down from the Enterprise. And everypony called her the author of this misery, even when it wasn’t her fault at all. She knew that there was some puppetmaster behind the screen.
Before they began dealing with this problem, though, they needed dinner, because Miss Cheerilee always says you can’t fight evil on an empty stomach. She also says that you have to wait a half-hour after eating before you can start fighting, so that you don’t get cramps.
It was Sparkler’s turn to make dinner. Her first plan had failed due to the difficulty of opening jars with hooves, so she had to settle for vegetable galatine with a Bearnaise sauce, cheese souffles, and a baked Alaska flambe for dessert.
As the three mares and Chell sat around the dinner table, they recounted their day.
“I got a B on my math homework,” Dinky said proudly. “I would have done better, but Miss Cheerilee insisted I couldn’t use imaginary numbers to solve complex equations.”
“Unreal,” Derpy muttered. “How about you, Sparkler? I heard you came across a human in the park.”
“He was trying to seduce all the mares, calling each one his favorite,” she said. “At first, the mane-petting and ear-rubs were nice, but then he tried to grope me.”
“What did you do?”
“I had to beat him off with a rake.” Sparkler said, as she didn’t eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich because she had trouble opening jars.
“What did I tell you about always having a gun?” Ditzy asked.
“I did have my gun,” Sparkler said through gritted teeth. “I loaned it to Cherry Berry in exchange for her rake, because using a rake was more satisfying.”
“How did he get to the park, anyway? Isn't there a cordon around town?” Dinky asked.
“Apparently, Lyra sneaked him in.” Sparkler rolled her eyes. “That unicorn is weird. Anypony who’d marry a mare that’s obviously a changeling. . . .”
“We gotta do something,” Derpy concluded, looking at Chell. “There are simply too many humans in Equestria. It wasn't creative three years ago, it isn't better now.”
“What can we do?” Dinky asked. “They keep coming here because Earth girls aren’t easy.”
“We could hire a mercenary,” Sparkler suggested. “Belle with a minigun, maybe.”
“She's off with Chun-Li and Applejack, saving Equestria,” Derpy said. “It was in the paper.”
“Saving us from what?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t read it. I was gonna read it later, but I just haven’t had time.”
“If we could get my portal gun back. . . .”
Sparkler turned to Chell. “That’s up in Canterlot. Princess Celestia has it.”
“What about your Moofia connections?” Dinky asked.
Sparkler (Aka Amey the Hoof) chewed it over like the PB&J she wasn’t eating. “I could call in some favors, maybe. Angus McSteer owes me one. Even with his help, we’d still have to get back to Canterlot, and make a daring raid on the castle proper.”
“It’s just not possible,” Derpy explained. “The Royal Guard's too competent.”
“Oh.” Chell looked disappointed. Derpy and Sparkler exchanged a glance and burst out laughing.
“We could totally do it.” Sparkler wiped tears of mirth from her eyes. “But that’s boring—that’s what they’d expect us to do.”
“What if we built our own?” Dinky asked.
“Who, in this primitive backwater town, would have the knowledge to build a portal gun? It's the pinnacle of Aperture Science technology, created for use in public showers and the enrichment center.”
Derpy and Sparkler exchanged another look. “Pinkie Pie,” they both said together.
• • •
After a day of work, the sugar fueled monstrosity was ready to go, and in no time at all, Pinkie Pie had created a portal gun which also launched streamers. It was truly a marvel of marzipan, a feat of fondue, and a consummation of custard: overall, a tour-de-force of the confectionary arts.
Armed with their new weapon, the three ponies and Chell headed out east. A lot of the escapees had been slowly making their way from Canterlot to Ponyville. Luckily for the ponies, most of them dramatically overestimated their wilderness survival skills and got caught when they tried to raid farms or make out with the farm mare's daughters.
Derpy flew ahead of her ground-bound companions, efficiently scouting out the terrain. A part of her wished she could use her Barrett, but it wasn't friendly to leave corpses stinking up the landscape. Changelings were one thing—they just burned up in an odd green fire and respawned back at the hive. Humans didn't—they lay there, smelling fouler and fouler with each passing day. To a magical species that farted rainbows and shat skittles, this was intolerable.
As she flew, she kept one eye trained downward, and one looking ahead. It was a skill that had taken years of intensive head trauma to hone, but it was worth its weight in iron pyrite.
A slight flutter of movement caught her down-looking eye, and she circled back. Cupping her hooves around her mouth, she shouted: “Is there somehuman down there?”
“Derpy!” A shout came up from the forest. One of the humans—looking much the worse for the wear from his stay in the wilderness—staggered out into a clearing and looked up, waving his arms frantically.
Don’t humans ever take ‘how not to be seen’ lessons? she wondered. Heck, everypony in Ponyville had a catsuit, just in case. Not that she minded. It made her task that much easier. “Wait there—I'll be back!”
How quickly they forgot who blew up the crystal prison, she thought as she flew back to the group. Humans’ illogical belief that all ponies were sweet and gentle was kind of endearing. Perhaps they all assumed that a species who had tamed Equestria despite being one of the smallest sapient species on the planet would be a pushover.
Derpy circled once around their camp, making sure that everypony got a good look at her before landing. She didn’t want anypony with an itchy trigger-hoof to send her to Humanville accidentally.
Derpy flew back and explained the situation to her companions, leading them off to a clearing near where she’d spotted the human. Since it was the first one she’d seen, she decided to let Dinky do the honors.
“I’m going to flush him in your general direction,” Derpy explained. “You’ve got a good line of sight here—when you see me coming over the treetops, you’ll know he’s close. From that point on, you have to stay behind the bushes, unmoving, so make sure that you’re in a comfortable position.
“If he doesn’t get close enough, I want Sparkler to come out of the underbrush to lure him in—make him think that it’s safe. Obviously, Sparkler, you can’t get in Dinky’s line of fire.”
“I know, mom. I’m not five anymore.”
“Be careful,” Derpy concluded. “Hunting humans is the most dangerous game.”
Derpy flew back off after her brief motivational speech, while Dinky and Sparkler crouched down behind the bush.
“Aim for his feet,” Sparkler coached. “Right in front of him—on Mommy's signal. You’ll have to switch portal types really fast.”
Dinky nodded and stretched out in a comfortable position, like mommy had said. She held the gun out in front of her and practiced sighting on a distant tree. Sparkler watched her go through the motions of changing over the portal type a half-dozen times to make sure she had it right before she finally untensed, and let the gun droop towards the ground.
Her ears stayed alert, and her eyes focused on the sky. She’d thought she’d get bored waiting, but it seemed like no time at all had passed before she saw Derpy appear above the forest’s crown. Just beyond the trees on the opposite side of the clearing, she could see a vague bipedal shape shuffling towards her.
Dinky brought the portal gun up to bear. She stuck her tongue out in concentration as she drew a bead on the human.
“Now!” Sparkler’s whisper was louder than she’d planned, and her cheeks burned at the thought that she’d been the one to screw it up.
The human jumped up at the shout, just as Dinky fired. Before he could react, the adorable filly had shot the two overlapping portals, just as Derpy had accidentally done to bring Chell to Equestria. From her cloud concealment, Derpy dropped down and shoved the befuddled boy forward, since he wouldn’t cooperate and fall in on his own. He tumbled into the hole with barely a shout in protest.
Even before all the streamers had settled, Derpy landed next to the hole and looked down inside it. Dinky and Sparkler quickly joined her, followed by Chell.
“I wonder where he went?”
“I don’t know.”
“Maybe back to the enrichment center?” Chell peered down the hole. “GlaDOS will be happy to have a new test subject.”
“I never liked tests,” Dinky said, effectively ending the speculation.
• • •
Over the next couple of weeks, Derpy and her crew ventured through the wilderness of Equestria, hunting their quarry and then portalizing them with extreme prejudice. Most of them were pretty easy targets, especially once Derpy realized they could be lured out with food, or—if that failed—the false promise of making the beast with two backs.
Derpy had kept track of how many of them there had been in the Crystal Caves of Canterlot and carefully accounted for every one. Even though Chell said they needed human females in order to reproduce, Derpy was worried that in the magical land of Equestria, mundane rules of biology might not apply. Nopony wanted an influx of centaurs or satyrs.
Finally came the big day. The last one—the most elusive of their quarry—was finally located.
He was quick and he was clever. He was angsty and didn’t have any friends back on Earth but seamlessly blended into Equestrian society. His name was Kyle, and despite his young age, he knew ten kinds of martial arts. After days of tracking, it became apparent that he could easily outpace them on the ground, and he was wary enough to seek cover from above. In hand-to-hoof combat, he always emerged the victor, and Sparkler’s magic inexplicably failed whenever she tried to use it against him.
The only way they could beat him was to out-think him, and that was a challenge, because he was a chess grandmaster and electric guitar virtuoso in his spare time. Luckily, he hadn’t seen the portal gun yet, so Derpy still had one more proverbial ace in her proverbial hole. The trick was to get close enough to him that they could use it.
That night at camp, they threw out more ideas which might work. The peanut-butter and chocolate cake Sparkler had whipped up over their camp stove (after Chell had opened the jars for her) hadn’t been good enough bait, nor had he fallen for Chell dressed up in sexy silk pajamas that Sparkler just happened to have handy.
“I could gallop to Canter Creek and find Angus,” Sparkler suggested. “Maybe he won’t be expecting to fight a cow.”
“It would take too long.” Derpy picked up a stick of wood and began doodling in the dirt. “What if he’s a colt cuddler? Maybe we’re not using the right bait.”
I wonder what Noteworthy is up to? Sparkler thought, but kept her mouth shut.
“Maybe you should have saved one human, just in case.” Dinky looked at her mom.
“I should have.” Derpy dropped the stick. “Well, it’s too late now. It’s no use crying over every mistake.”
“We’ll just keep on trying,” Sparkler added.
“What if we change things up?” Chell suggested. “Instead of trying to lure him into a trap, let’s chase him into one.” She picked up the stick and began sketching.
When she was done, all three ponies nodded in agreement. The plan was foolproof.
• • •
They went to their positions at dawn. Dinky, Sparkler, and Chell were spread out in a wide arc, while Derpy had flown off with the portal gun. As the new day broke, the unicorns and Chell began working through the woods, making as much noise as they could without being obvious. They went slowly, and each of them was ready for trouble. Both Dinky and Sparkler were prepared to shoot red sparks into the sky if they ran into difficulty; Chell had been loaned—after much agonizing—Vera, Sparkler’s Callahan full-bore autolock. She could shoot it into the air or shoot it into the human; the ponies didn’t particularly care which she chose.
Derpy, meanwhile, was patrolling above. She’d dressed in her Hellblau ninja suit, which allowed her to blend into the daytime sky. She made slow, lazy circuits above the forest, waiting for some action.
For the longest time, there was nothing. Then she caught a flash of movement between two trees.
She kept her altitude, following from above and behind. If she closed in now, he’d probably spot her before she could get a good bead on him. It was better to wait. An opportunity would come, and there was no sense in squandering it.
Of course, she had to consider her friends’ endurance. Dinky and Sparkler couldn’t keep up their pace forever, after all. Should she wait too long, he’d go to ground and wait them out.
Luckily for her, from her vantage point she got a view of the terrain that he didn’t. She knew that up ahead was a fallow field, and he would have to cross it. Chell and Vera would make sure of that.
She began descending and readied the portal gun.
She saw him come out of a cluster of trees and into the fallow field they’d been flushing him to. His appearance caught Derpy by surprise, even though she was expecting him: his footfalls were unusually quiet, and only the slightest rustle marked his passage through the leaf litter. It was eerie—ponies clopped wherever they went.
When he turned to look behind him, her opportunity came. Derpy squinted an eye shut and squeezed the trigger. She switched portal colors before the gun’s minimal kick was over, and got the second shot off before he’d even turned around.
Some instinct must have warned him, because he almost avoided the hole, but he tried to both jump and turn at the same time, and it cost him everything. He stumbled in, crashed into the opposite wall, and instinctively grabbed at the crumbly soil around the border, digging in with his fingers.
He was still clutching onto the edge when she got to the flamey oblivion-hole. His eyes were just above the edge, and they were sparkling with a strange amusement. Or it could have been pain. It was hard to judge human expressions—their ears never moved.
“This is madness!” he yelled as she started pushing his fingers into the hole with a hoof.
Her eyes locked on his. “Go back to the shadow from whence you came.”
The End
Author's Note
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