Ok, So This Is How It Started...
Ok so I guess I'll begin at the beginning. It was about 6 months ago....
"Derpy! Delivery for you!" Said my boss, Ship Shape, as he slid a large box my way. "It needs to be in Baltimare by tonight! Get your flank in gear and go!"
I picked up the box in my hooves after several moments of struggling. I don't have the best eyesight and sometimes my vision goes a little buggy on me. I made sure I had a tight hold on the box and lifted up of the ground, my wings blowing around papers and send envelops flying around the small post office. "You've got it boss!"
I took off through the large hole in the roof that they had built just for me to fly out of. I thought it was one of the sweetest gestures that anypony has done for me since Celestia visited me in the hospital and gave me an extremely large muffin after I accidentally flew into her carriage one day. I swear it was an accident! It was so shinny I just had to fly to.....I'm getting off track here. I took off into the wide blue sky, the box held tight in my hooves. It was always a great feeling to fly during the early morning hours, just when the sun was coming over the horizon and the air was still cool from the damp night before. There was nothing but open sky and not a single cloud to ruin my flight.
I flew the normal route to Baltimare, making sure that I flew around the Everfree Forest. That is the craziest place in all of Equestria and I have seen some crazy things going on down there. I always made a point to fly the shortest distance around the Everfree, just enough to avoid the forested areas but close enough to keep me on schedule. Other than the detour around the forest, everything about the flight was just like a normal flight to Baltimare.
A little over six hours later, I landed by the large "WELCOME TO BALTIMARE!" sign that stood just outside the city. I'm not going into much detail about this because, well...nothing actually happened. Everything went smoothly.
Hard to believe huh?
Well I started to fly back using the usual route but, with my great luck, there was a weather team practicing their tornadoes over the path and had the airspace restricted. It wouldn't had been too bad, except I had to make a choice. Should I fly around and take an extra 3 hours, wait for them to get done whenever they were going to be done, or fly over the forest and get there in 20 minutes. Well, of course I went with the only option I really had....or well the only option that I could really think of at the time. I decided to fly over the forest. I would soon come to question whether that was the best decision.
Ok before I go on any further, I bet whoever is reading this is questioning why I can actually write better than I can speak. Just because my diction and annunciation isn't that good doesn't mean I can't write in as much detail and large words as I want. So to all you neigh-sayers that think I have a typewriting monkey sitting down and adding detail to my words...I say NEIGH!
So the first part of my flight over the forest wasn't too bad, it was actually pretty nice for being such a dangerous area. There was a nice breeze blowing and the forest was actually pretty clear below me. I saw a pack of manticores running through one of the clearings, I think I saw Fluttershy chasing them, but I may have been wrong. If so she seemed really pissed off.
It wasn't until about 20 minutes into my flight that things took a turn. There was this large storm cloud that had formed up in front of me and just kept growing. I had heard that weather in the Everfree Forest wasn't controlled by magic or by pegasi, so watching it just appear out of nowhere and grow into this gigantic storm was amazing. I didn't realize, however, that this storm was beginning to overtake me. It was really bearing down on me before I realized it, and then when I saw a clearing through the clouds and tried to take off through it, I got hit with a bolt of lightning.
Now you must understand one thing here. I may have some experience with getting struck by lightning, but there is a difference between Everfree lightning and manufactured lightning. Mainly that lightning produced in the Weather Factory is a lot less powerful and smaller than natural lightning, so in all theories it hurts a lot less. These theories were all proven by me, because this felt like I got stabbed in the back with Celestia's horn. I actually blacked out when the bolt first hit, so I didn't feel much of that. When I came too, however, I found myself in a flat spin falling right towards the thickest part of the forest.
I hit the ground with a crack, and I would be lying if I say I didn't scream and cry for a few long minutes. Who wouldn't scream bloody murder when their wing gets practuically snapped in half and was bleeding badly. If you can find somepony other than Rainbow Dash who will disagree with me, I'll slap you.
So there I was, sitting in the thickest part of the forest with a broken, bloody wing and still had a few miles to go before I was back in Ponyville. I started by looking for something to brace my wing with, eventually finding a few sticks and tearing some fabric from my saddlebags and tried my best to patch up my wing. It wasn't much, but I was lucky enough to getting the bleeding to slow. I slowly stood and looked around, trying to figure out which direction was the right way. It was so hard to tell when you can't see the sky above you and you have no sense of natural direction. Also not being able to fly screws things up.
I walked for what I believed was about 2 miles before I gave up and decided that I was going the wrong way. I had crossed two streams and a few large boulders that looked like giant turtles. It was about the fifth time I passed them that I knew something was wrong here. I quickly turned around to try and find my way back to the path when I came face to face with it.
It was something I had never seen before, something so strange I didn't even know if anypony in Equestria knew about it. It was about four feet tall and green. It reminded me of a cactus the way it was all covered head to foot in small needles. The thing that really struck me odd about it was the face and posture. It looked like it was running, it's two arms were in right angles, one pointing up and the other down, and his feet...stump....things were in a position that made me feel like it would run away at any moment. It's eyes were two hollow black holes that looked carved into it, it's mouth was the same way but with an elongated oval. To be honest with you, at first I thought he was a cactus that somepony had carved and left out here to scare somepony.
I jumped a little bit, but it just kept standing right there, not moving. It's expressionless face kept staring forward. It took about a full minute before my heart slowed down and I turned away from it. "Wow, that greenery scared me a bit."
I started to walk forward a few feet before I heard this strange hopping noise from behind me. I turned to face the noise and found the cactus standing a few inches from my face and a whole three feet forward from where it had been. I stared at it for the longest time, slowly stepping from left to right, watching it watch me and follow my every movement.
I took a step forward and watched it hop backwards. I took a step back, it jumped forward. I took two steps forward, it took two steps back. It was probably the craziest thing that I have ever seen, a living cactus that walked and had a face.
"H-hello. W-who are you." I said, wondering if it was able to talk and answer me back. It made some weird low sounding grunt noise and darted off behind a tree. I stood there for a few moments, watching it occasionally lean out from behind the tree and dart back once it saw me. Truly, I didn't think that I was that scary.
"Alright then, be that way." I said with an awkward smile before turning around. I would come to regret turning around. For the second time today I found myself face to face with something strange, this one a lot scarier than the living cactus. It was the menacing, horrid muzzle of a manticore.
I stood silently, watching with fear as it slowly opened it's menacing mouth. The smell of rotting meat and the sight of several large canine teeth were staring me down as the beast roared. Wasting no time, I turned around and took off like a train. It was hard to tell if my screams or the manticore's terrifying roar was louder, all I knew was that it was gaining on me. My screams momentarily subsided when my hoof was caught by a vine from a creep tree, a tree that grew in the direction of loud sounds. My hoof was stuck, I had no where to run, and all I could see was the manticore charging at me.
It was about 3 feet away from me before it stopped dead in it's tracks, a large pained whine coming from the beast as it began to flail around. It turned, letting me catch a glimpse of the hundreds of little black spines jutting from it's flesh, also giving it just enough room to avoid some of the other needles that seemed to be flying through the air. I stared in awe as the needles struck all over the manticore's body, blood dripping from every wound. Before I could even see where they were coming from, the beast fell over. Dead.
I was awed at what was going on, my mind racing with thoughts about what kind of creature could have killed the manticore. I looked towards the area where I thought the needles were fired from, noticing the large tree surrounded by brush. I walked over to the bushes slowly and stopped a few feet away.
"H-hello?" I said taking another step forward. The leaves rustled, and I watched with mild horror as a figure peered over the edge. Once I got a good look at the creature, I was shocked.
The walking cactus had saved my life.
I took another step forward and held out my hoof. "Um...thanks for.....saving my life."
It stepped out from behind the bush and moved a bit closer. I took a step forward, and was a little happy to see it step forward as well. The cactus slowly moved closer and closer to me, but when it was only a foot away, it started running in a circle around me. I didn't know how, but it seemed to be happy and for some odd reason...it made me happy too.
I waited for it to stop running around before sitting down and staring at it for a few moments. I tried thinking of what I should do. I contemplated turning around a leaving the forest, not caring if the cactus followed me or not, but I had this overwhelming feeling that I needed to figure out what in Celestia's name what it was. I thought for a moment longer.
"We have to get you to Twilight."
The walk to Ponyville was a lot shorter than I thought. Apparently I was only about 3 hoofball fields away from Fluttershy's cottage. I was happy to see that it was nighttime, making it a whole lot easier to lead the cactus creature through town towards the Library. It was a bit difficult to hide it from a few passing ponies on their way home from the bar, but most were either to tired or too drunk to care, and it was annoying that I had to stop every few feet just to get it to come out from behind the edge of a building or a bush.
It took nearly an hour to get from one edge of Ponyville to the other, but we now found ourselves standing outside the door to the library. I knocked as loud as I could and screamed. "Twilight! It's Derpy! Let me in please!"
There was a creaky sound, followed by a couple of loud crashes a few moments before Twilight opened the door. From the matting in her mane and the sunken look of her eyes said that I had woken her up from what appeared to be a very deep sleep. The sighed and looked up at me. "Derpy, I still haven't gotten that book on the history of muffins and it's three in the morning. Could you please come back later, maybe around 11?"
"Twilight this is important! I was flying back from Baltimare and I had to fly over the Everfree Forest. I got caught in a storm and fell down and broke my wing."
She sighed again. "Then go to the hospital if your hurt."
"It doesn't hurt that much anymore, but that is not why I'm here! I ran into this weird thing. It's like a walking cactus thing or something. Then I got attacked by a large manticore that was all like 'RAWR I'm gonna eat ya Derpy!', and I was just screaming. But, that cactus thing showed up again and killed it with these flying needle things!"
"That's a nice story in all, but there are no such things as walking cactus creatures. Now if you'll excuse me, I really want to go back to sleep." Twilight said before a flash of green darted past her, her eyes shooting open and her ears standing on end. "What the hay was that!?"
I looked behind her, watching a familiar face poke out from under her stairs. "Um, it's under your stairs."
Twilight turned to look. "There is nothing under my sta- WHAT IN CELESTIA'S NAME IS THAT THING!!!" She screamed in fear, causing the cactus to freak out and start running around like crazy, smashing into walls and bookshelves alike. By the time Twilight had stopped screaming, the creature had smashed into so many things that it had knocked itself out. Twilight, however, was more awake than she ever would be. She slammed the door and pulled me away from the tree. "DERPY! Why did you bring that monster into town!?"
"Monster? I'm not sure it's a monster." I said as I looked towards the tree house. "It saved my life, and it seems harmless enough."
"Harmless!? How do you know that thing is harmless!?!?!?" She screamed. I smiled.
".............. I don't."
