Livewriting: The Five Derpies (Patreon)

I eventually decided to start "The Five Derpies" and see how that came out.

Tomorrow night's livewriting begins at 7 PM:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LLwfG7t_f1afA1MX3ARmBUm7SSANV3yVZXDPLgRnE_o/edit?ts=5c08bfe9

In the meantime, remember: 9 PM Wednesdays is KWLP is On the Air, live-streaming on dementiaradio.org !

Ditzy Doo landed on the streets of Ponyville without mishap. This happened a lot more often than other ponies would give credit, and Ditzy wished they’d recognize that. Yes, things just happened to break a lot a round her, but not constantly, not every single minute. Why, she could go whole hours without an accident, even when she wasn’t sleeping!

Smiling at her accomplishment of not breaking anything, Ditzy reached under the brim of her uniform cap and took out a piece of paper. Pick up package for delivery, 76 Trotter’s Lane, Ponyville. Well, this was the head of Trotter’s lane, where it met the street that eventually became the road out to the White Tail Woods west of town. But Ditzy had delivered things in Ponyville for quite some time, and so far as she could recall Trotter’s Lane only had three doors, not seventy-six. It was a short little alley leading to Four Ponies Salvage, the town junkyard. 

And as she entered the small alleyway, just barely wide enough for the Four Ponies junk wagon, she counted the doors facing onto the street. One, two, three, four, and the gate.

Wait a moment. 

One, two, three, four.

I thought there were three.

Well, I guess I miscounted! Ditzy shrugged off the error and looked more closely at the doors. There was one door on the west side of the alley, on her left, the mailing address for the used appliances store. There were three doors on the right, on the east side of the alley: the Charcoal family’s door, the business office for Four Ponies… and a little door between them, marked with a bold number 76 on the front.

Well! That must be it, then! But Ditzy made a mental note: the pony at that door needed to register with the post office. You couldn’t just go making up your own door number! That would make everypony confused if ponies did that! This one should be… well, since #2 and #3 were on either side, maybe it could be 2.5 Trotter’s Lane…

She trotted over and knocked on the door.

No answer.

She knocked again, a bit louded. “Hello?” she asked. “I’m supposed to pick up a package for delivery?” She waited a few seconds, then added, “You’ll have to schedule another pickup if you don’t answer.”

The door opened, creaking slowly until it stood wide open. 

Ditzy stepped in, looking around for the pony who had opened the door. “Hello? I’m here about the package? Could you show me where it is?” She stepped farther inside, craning her head back and forth. “Wow, you wouldn’t think this place was so big from how it looks on the street.”

The door creaked slowly shut behind her, closing not with a slam but with a quiet but final little click.

A few moments later a loud wheezing and grinding noise echoed through Trotter’s Lane, and with a flickering of light and a brief gust of wind, the door and several feet of brick wall vanished, leaving the narrow little walkway that separated the cottage at #2 and the two-story brick office at #3.

Ditzy Do was nowhere to be seen.

DOCTOR WHOOVES

The Five Derpies

By Kris Overstreet

Doctor Who developed by Sidney Newman and Verity Lambert

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic developed by Lauren Faust

Chapter One

In terms of distance from the alleyway, the clock shop lay only a few blocks away, plus a few inches in a direction ponies could not directly perceive. In terms of travel time, however… well, that depended, because most normal ponies would never get from one to the other no matter how they tried. 

Put another way: in the Ponyville that held Trotter’s Lane, there was no clock shop of any kind. And in the Ponyville which held this clock shop, there was no such street or alley as Trotter’s Lane. 

When the same place is in fact two places, getting from one point to another requires rather a bit more aid than a map.

It was early morning, and Time Turner, the owner of the clock shop, had just finished breakfast. Putting the dishes in the sink to wash later, he brushed his mane, straightened his tie and collar, and went downstairs from his over-the-street apartment into the shop below, trotted up to the door, and flipped the sign from Closed to Open. This done, he unlocked the door and stepped aside for the normal morning rush.

A massive herd of nopony at all rushed in, as usual. Time Turner didn’t mind; he sold and repaired enough clocks, even at his slow rate of business, to keep himself afloat. Instead he took a feather duster in his teeth and began dusting off the display cases of pocket watches. Around him various clocks of different kinds ticked in unison; the swinging-cat-tail clock, the Germane cuckoo clock, the tile-flipping alarm clock from Manehattan, the backwards clock (the hands moved to the left instead of the right), the schedule clock (a duplicate of the one in the royal palace in Canterlot, which rotated through a three hundred sixty-five day scroll of the scheduled times for sunrise/moonset and sunset/moonrise)...

… and his second most prized possession, the Grand Orrery, which swung the sun, the moon, and the major stars and planets around a little model globe in perfect time, as if they moved on their own instead of by the power of alicorn magic. It tended to run a little slow, and it required daily rewinding (which Time Turner set down the duster to do, turning the key in his teeth while pausing to duck the model of Whinny’s Comet). But he loved it, because he, Time Turner, had built it himself, every cog and spring of it. It was his masterwork, the project that had earned him his doctorate of Clockology.

His most prized possession was technically not his; it was given to him for safekeeping, and he didn’t keep it on the showroom floor. Down here everything was for sale, even the Grand Orrery (though he’d put a fabulously high price on it). But that one thing was not his to sell, or even to show off, though he’d take it out of its drawer every now and again and marvel at its exquisite metalwork.

The jangling of the bell over the shop door brought him out of his reverie. “Good morn- oh, hello, Muffins!” he said, recognizing the grey cross-eyed pegasus trotting in the door.

“Hi, Doc!” Muffins had a basket in her teeth, filled (as usual) with the fresh baked goods she regarded as the perfect food. “I’m about to head out to work! Want a muffin? Baked fresh this morning!”

Muffins, though a sweet pony, was prone to forget or overlook little things, and her strabismus had turned an otherwise elite athlete into an accident-prone flyer. But you couldn’t find a more conscientious pony… and she never messed up on baking muffins, no matter what. “Just one, maybe,” Time Turner said at last. “I’ll save it for lunch.” He picked a particularly fluffy one from the top layer of the basket; it was still warm.

“Thanks!” Muffins said. “Are we still on for lunch at Sugarcube Corner?”

“Of course we are!” Time Turner said. He and Muffins lunched together most days. Turner enjoyed the company, and their little lunch dates were the best way he’d thought of to get the blone-maned pegasus to eat something that wasn’t a muffin. 

“All righty then!” Muffins smiled around the handle of her basket. “I’ll see you at twelve-thirty, sharp!”

“Oh, come now,” Time Turner said smiling. “Have you ever known me- me??- to be late?”

“Hm... “ Muffins stared up into the air, thinking hard about something. “There was that time… no, no, that was me… but there was that other time- no, no, me again… and then-”

“Rhetorical question, dear,” Time Turner said. “I meant yes, I’ll be there-”

The shop door jangled open again, and Amethyst Star stepped through. Her eyes widened as they locked onto Muffins. “You’re here!” she said. “Good! Really good! Don’t move! Don’t do anything!”

Muffins cocked her head sideways, almost spilling a couple of muffins from the basket. “Excuse me, but I-”

Amethyst’s forehooves gripped Muffins’ head and rotated it back to its level position. “Do NOT move!” she insisted, backing out the door far enough to shout, “DINKY! I FOUND MOM! GO GET DAD!”

“Excuse me,” Time Turner said, stepping past a now frozen Muffins to face the violet unicorn standing in the doorway. “Amethyst, would you mind explaining-”

“It’s complicated,” Amethyst said sharply. “I’m going to let Dad explain. But I’m not the Amethyst you know, okay? Look at me closely.”

Time Turner did so. Well… yes, come to think of it, this Amethyst was a few years younger than the one he knew, a little smaller, horn slightly less developed. And Amethyst Star’s father lived in Fillydelphia, last he knew, so it hardly made sense that he’d be-

A little off-white unicorn filly barged into the door, setting the bell ringing again. “Ow!” Dinky Doo walked around the door, rubbing her snout with one hoof. “I pulled a Mom there… oh, hey!” Dinky trotted up to Muffins, who was beginning to sweat and tremble with the effort of staying perfectly still. “You were right! Glad we got here in time, this time! I’d hate to lose another mommy!”

“Excuse me??” Time Turner looked at Muffins. “Did you want to tell me something, dear?”

Muffins finally dropped the basket from her mouth so she could shake her head. “How old do I look??” she asked, her face a mixture of confusion and hurt feelings. 

“Old enough,” Amethyst said bluntly, then squinted a little at Muffins. “Okay, maybe a little younger than Mom. But still old enough if you were really stupid right around your cute-cenaera.”

Muffins’ jaw dropped, and she pointed a trembling hoof at Amethyst. 

“For Dinky, I mean,” Amethyst sighed. “You adopted me. I mean, the other you. My you.” She looked down at Dinky. “When is Dad getting here?”

“He said he had to park someplace safe,” Dinky said. 

Amethyst put a hoof to her head and groaned. “Oh, boy.”

Muffins’ lip trembled, as water built up in her eyes. 

“I have had quite enough of this,” Time Turner said sternly. “Young ladies, I demand a proper explanation for your conduct, you most shameful conduct, as regards my close friend, who I assure you is not your mother or anyone else’s.”

The two juvenile unicorns looked at each other, but before they could decide what to say, a bizarre grinding and moaning sound saved them. The shop shelves rattled and shook. The Great Orrery wobbled slightly in its mechanical dance. 

And then, fading in and out like a piece of reality couldn’t quite decide whether or not it wanted to exist, there appeared a large blue box with a flashing light on the top and frosted windows all round the upper part of the panels. It finally solidified with a final THUNK, taking on permanence and weight, virtually looming in the cozy little shop. 

It totally blocked the door to the stairwell. 

In unison, Amethyst and Muffins put a hoof to their face. “Daddy…” Dinky groaned. 

“At least he didn’t park it on the roof,” Amethyst said. 

One side of the blue box opened inwards, and a pony head popped out. “There you go!” it said cheerfully. “Couldn’t ask for a sweeter job of parking if I say so myself! Not a thing out of place!” The owner of the voice stepped out, adjusting its tie and collar, grinning a smile well north of friendly and just south of barking insane. 

Time Turner’s jaw dropped even farther than Muffins’ did. He stared not at the blue box, which he wrote off as some magical artifact- not his first encounter with such things. No, his astonishment focused entirely on the pony who had come out of the box- which was a little too small, on first glance, to allow even one pony to stand inside on all four hooves. 

Because this newcomer wore his face. 

Because the newcomer spoke with his voice. 

Because the newcomer shared his hour-glass cutie mark. 

Because this newcomer, somehow, some way, looked exactly like him, from the spiky mussed mane down to the trim of his tail.