//------------------------------//
// Ambush 
// Story: The Legion of Bronze 
// by Sixes_And_Sevens 
//------------------------------//

The Doctor’s breath was short and labored. The dumbwaiter was a claustrophobic proposition at the best of times, which these definitely weren’t. With a great deal of difficulty, he managed to contort himself into a position where he could grab the door with his teeth and, with a violent yank of his head, pull it shut behind him. As soon as he felt it click into place, he lashed out with his hind hooves, busting open the other door and leaving his tail end wiggling and bicycling frantically for purchase.
The last of the Time Lords, thousands of years old, the Ka Faraq Gati, fell flat on his tail, wheezing in pain. After a few moments, of quiet cursing in several languages, he managed to haul himself up to his hooves and glance around. It was just as he’d left it, all those years ago. He’d not come here too terribly often; the cricket dandy had been altogether too wrapped up in what was proper, and though the clownish one stood far less on such propriety, he was very mindful of Peri’s personal space.
Peri. A good and beautiful fairy from Persian mythology. Well, half-right, anyway. Good and beautiful. The smell of flowers still lingered in the air, though nothing had grown here for centuries. No dust had gathered. Everything was perfectly preserved like one of her own books of pressed flowers and leaves, a perfectly-rendered museum piece of something long dead. 
In many ways it was a museum all on its own. Pressed flowers in picture frames lined every wall, each one labeled with a notecard mentioning the year collected and city, country, planet, and star system of its origin. There were shelves full of live specimens. Still alive, even after their collector… had left them behind.
That was what bothered him, more than anything else. Adric had died in flames. Kameleon had sacrificed himself. Tegan had simply grown tired of it all. But at least he knew what had become of them. Peri was a mystery for the ages. Was she dead, still in that nefarious lab? Was she wed to King Yrcanos, saved from living death by a great brute of a husband-to-be? Or perhaps the Time Lords had done as they always had with a captured companion, wiping Peri’s memories and returning her to Earth, condemning her to a life of hazy, barely-remembered adventures and barely being able to fit in?
He wasn’t sure which one he feared most. He ran a gentle hoof along the side of a vase which contained a group of bright pink flowers whose provenance even he couldn’t recall. Wherever she’d been sent, he hoped that she had a garden.
“One morn a Peri at the gate/Of Eden stood disconsolate,” he said to nobody. The flowers and trees and books and posters said nothing.
Then he turned to face a sealed glass jar which contained within it a single candy-striped tree. “Forgive me, Perpugilliam Brown,” he murmured, taking the plant from its shelf and tucking it under his forehoof. “But I need an advantage.”
With that, he pushed open the door to the hallway, and left the empty room behind. As the door slammed shut, a single petal spiraled off of one of the flowers, browning with age as it fell. By the time it hit the ground, only dust remained, and soon even that had disappeared under the mindful ministrations of the TARDIS self-cleaning system.




Rumble squeezed his eyes shut, preparing for the searing pain that was to come. Instead, he felt the wind rush from his lungs as he was knocked to one side, and a heavy body half-cradling him. His eyes popped open, and a pair of red eyes smiled back at him. “Bulk Biceps?”
The ripped pegasus winked. “It takes more than just these good looks to make it into the Wonderbolts reserves,” he rumbled.  He leaned over the balcony. “YEAH! Hey! On your side! Don’t shoot us, okay?”
The next thing Rumble heard was a massive crash. That must’ve been the door, because the next thing he heard after that was, “Th’ cavalry has arrived, y’all. YEE-HAW!”
Bon Bon stared at Applejack’s flanks admiringly. “Dear sweet Luna I wish we’d recruited her for basic training back in the day,” she said.
Lyra nodded. “Yeah, I bet that kinda kick would’ve come in real handy.”
“Lyra. Stop trying to make ‘handy’ a thing. It’s not a thing, and it never will.”
“Uh-huh, sure. You know, the dragons use it, the minotaurs, the griffons— WAH! Bon Bon!”
The cream-colored mare rose from where she’d bodily tackled the mint unicorn to the ground. “Pay attention. You almost got hit by a sizable shard of crystal, and while my life would be much quieter without you, I’d much sooner not face that eventuality.”
“You love me really,” Lyra cooed, rolling over and rising to her hooves as well. She tossed her mane and created a pair of oversized golden hands from magic. They rubbed themselves together briskly, and flew out to snatch at the metal pegasus.
“You know, it’s saying things like that that makes ponies think we’re an item?” Bon Bon replied blandly before leaping into the fray.
“I— what— wait— is not!” Lyra shouted, but her friend was already lost in battle. She frowned. The hands briefly made a rude gesture, and then resumed their focus on catching the pegasus midflight. 
Meanwhile, Applejack, Cheerilee, and Berry were hastily gathering up any large chunks of crystal they could find to buck at the attacker. It seemed to be having roughly the same effect as Trixie’s fireworks, but the metal thing would be more distracted. Romana had her screwdriver directed at the robot, scanning it for… something, while Ruby maintained a shield around them both. Even Diamond and Silver had taken a tapestry off the wall and were trying to catch the hippodroid in that.
For all their efforts, though, nothing seemed to be working. The fireworks and projectiles were slowing it down, sure, but they were barely even denting the metal. Twilight and Sunset’s spells were still bouncing off, for the most part, though one of them had managed to hit one of its leg joints, which was now smoking. Lyra’s hands almost caught the thing time and again, but it slipped out like a bar of soap. Romana had her sonic in her mouth, shaking it frantically, and Ruby’s jaw was set with the effort of maintaining the shield around them.
Diamond and Silver could barely even lift the tapestry, let alone catch the robot in it. “Ugh!” Diamond growled, dropping her end. “Whose idea was it to make these things so heavy? It’s cloth. It’s supposed to be light.”
As for Bon Bon, she had leapt up nimbly on a pile of shattered pillars. With almost catlike skill, she jumped from her perch right onto the back of the robot, grasping it around the neck. It bucked and flapped, but the confectioner held on doggedly, even as the metal pegasus did a barrel roll. She gripped tight with her hind legs and began jabbing at the join in its neck with her forehooves. The metal creature screamed its disfavor and dove toward the wall. Bon Bon tensed, then leapt off as the robot careened into the crystal. “Lyra, tapestry!”
The mint unicorn blinked, and then she got it. “Yoink!” she said, her golden hands yanking the heavy cloth from Diamond and Silver and tossing it over the disoriented pegasus-bot. It continued to shift under the tapestry, but the hail of projectiles kept it from rising. Twilight let out a long, shuddering breath, then fired off one last spell. The air chilled, and the robot, tapestry, and everything around them were frozen in a block of ice. There was a long silence. “Exactly why didn’t you do that in the first place?” Berry demanded.
Twilight waved a hoof. “Magic-resistant coating,” she panted. “Spell bounced off. Needed something else to stick it on.”
Romana let out a shout of triumph. “Hah! Got the frequency to shut it down,” she said, smiling. Ruby Pinch dropped the force field, her breathing slightly labored.
“Nice one, space case,” Diamond shot back. “Got it just after the nick of time.”
There was a faint groaning creak from the ice. White fracture lines began to spread. The pink mare paled and clutched at Silver Spoon. “Never mind, I take it back,” she whimpered, hiding her face in the grey mare’s coat.
“Okay,” Romana said, staring intently at the ice. “As soon as it shatters, I can do it.”
“How is it still moving?” Sunset growled. “OP as heck, I’m telling you.”
“Come again?” Applejack said, frowning.
Sunset rolled her shoulders. “Okay. Romana, get ready to nerf this guy.” She glowed bright orange, and the ice began to steam. There was a mighty bang as the iceberg exploded, and a very angry robot ripped through the tapestry like tissue. The sonic was knocked from Romana’s grasp. “Oh. Rassilon’s rod.”
Slowly but surely, the robot stalked forwards. “YEAH!”
A moment later, Bulk had become a one-pony dogpile on the robot’s back, Rumble close behind. The robot struggled for a moment, then gave up. Romana snatched her screwdriver up in her teeth and fired at the robot. There was a whirring, clanking noise. It shuddered, and then its head slumped to the ground.
Trixie coughed and held up a blue candy-striped rocket. “May Trixie?”
Bulk nodded. “...Yeah,” he said, rising from the inanimate robot.
The blue unicorn took in a deep breath, then let it out as a scream of fury as she fired the last firework at the robot. There was one last mighty blast, and then everything lay still. The metal pegasus was virtually undamaged in a damp, charred circle of ruined cloth.
Twilight let out a long, shuddering sigh. “Okay. Okay! Bulk, Applejack, help me get this down to the lab. We’re going to find out what the hay makes this thing tick.”
She turned and trotted with quick jerky movements from the room, after the manner of one who is walking on a carpet of slime. After a time, one by one, the occupants of the room followed the princess down into her basement lab.




It had taken Ditzy a few moments to wrap her mind around the concept presented. “...Foalnapped?” she repeated, as though the word felt foreign on her tongue. She blinked, then shook her head. “Scootaloo, I don’t think that’s likely. All this noise, you can’t have just seen somepony in the crowd get taken…”
“They weren’t in the crowd,” Scootaloo corrected. “It was one of the charioteers, off of the green team. This purple mare was talking to him, and she put a wing up to his neck, and he just collapsed!”
The grey mare paused, staring straight ahead, though her left eye drifted as usual. “Oh,” she said. “Well, that does sound kind of… foalnapping-y…”
Scootaloo glared flatly at the older pegasus. “Ya think? Come on, we’ve got to do something!”
“I agree,” Ditzy said, holding up a hoof to halt the young mare. “But we need to stay here, work out a plan. We can’t just go to the authorities here, we don’t have any ID or papers or anything at all.”
“I wasn’t planning on going to the authorities,” Scootaloo returned, fluttering her wings at much  the same rate as a hummingbird.
“Scootaloo, we can’t go after them by ourselves, either,” Ditzy said, her voice turning sterner as she planted her tail back into the arena seating. “We aren’t police officers—”
“Police officers aren’t even really a thing right now,” Scootaloo protested. “Roan, Pegasopolis, and Skyzantium were all militarily run, with the emperor at the head.”
“Who would that be? Commander Hurricane?”
“No, not yet. I think we’re in the reign of Emperor Marcus Aurora Borealis.”
Ditzy furrowed her brow. “It’s been awhile since I took a history class… Was he the one that fiddled while Roan burned?”
“Look, this isn’t important,” Scootaloo said impatiently. “There’s a Tartarus-damn foalnapper on the loose, and she might be getting away with it as we speak! We’ve got to go after them!”
“We’ll get the Doctor,” Ditzy decided. “He’ll know what to do, or we can at least borrow his psychic paper to report this to the appropriate authorities.”
“But—”
“But nothing,” Ditzy said firmly. “We are going back to the TARDIS, we are not going to confront any potentially dangerous criminals, and you are going to return home in one piece, so help me Celestia. Dinky would never forgive me if I let you come to harm because of condition. Neither would Holiday and Lofty, and very likely I’d never be able to forgive myself.”
Scootaloo opened her mouth, then closed it with a sharp snap. Ditzy didn’t blink. “...not my mother…” the orange mare muttered.
“I may not be,” Ditzy said, a hint of anger in her voice now, “but if you think I won’t tell them about the way you’ve been acting…”
“You’d have to find her first,” Scootaloo bit out. She glared a moment longer, then turned and stormed toward the stairs. “Come on. You can go back to the TARDIS if you want. I'm going to get stuff done.”
Ditzy stared after her, mouth agape. “Scootaloo? Scootaloo, get back here! What are you talking about? Scootaloo!”




~We had been dating for some months now. It had gone beyond kissing, and I shall say no more than that. (Scootaloo wrinkled her muzzle in disgust. Nopony should have to hear this sort of stuff about their mother-figure.) In that time, I had learned surprisingly little about Heat Wave. I knew his opinions on a number of things, particularly literature and historical events, but I hardly knew anything about his past, his childhood, or even his family, if he had one. So, when I found one day that he had left behind his briefcase in my office, I took it upon myself to return it to his home personally. That was my first mistake.
(Second (Scootaloo thought) at minimum.)
He lived off-campus, in a suburban house on the ground. An unusual choice for a pegasus, but not unknown. It wasn’t exactly large by most standards, though it was bigger than most bachelor pads. It was better-kept as well. The walk was shoveled, and wind chimes hung on the porch. I knocked on the door. There was a brief pause, and then footsteps echoed down the hall. “Just a moment!” somepony called. A mare. I didn’t move. That was my second mistake, I believe.
(Third. (More than.))
The door swung open, and a yellow mare was standing there, staring at me, smiling mildly. “Yes?” she asked.
“I’m sorry, I think I have the wrong address. I’m looking for Professor Heat Wave.”
“You have the right address,” she assured me.
At this point, my stomach felt as though it were full of bubbling muck, painfully full and hot, almost molten. “But… you aren’t him.”
“No,” she confirmed. “I’m his wife.”
(... (...))
She smiled at me, eyes bright and shining. “Won’t you come in?”
And then I made possibly the biggest mistake of all. I entered her home.




“Scootaloo, get back here!” Ditzy shouted, racing down the stairwell after the smaller pegasus. “Scootaloo, we have to stick together!”
The little orange figure was already passing out the other end of the stairwell. Ditzy snorted in irritation, then dove down after her. Scootaloo was, out of all the Crusaders, simultaneously the most vulnerable and the most stubborn, a dangerous combination. She would go on fighting a battle long after she’d been stabbed in the barrel, and she’d finish a race after losing a leg if need be. It was nothing short of a miracle that she had survived her childhood, given her weak bones. Especially since she took hospital visits as less of a warning and more of a challenge.
The grey pegasus reached the end of the stairs and glanced around frantically. No sign of Scootaloo. Would she have gone left or right? Left would lead to the TARDIS. Right would lead… she glanced along the arched hallway. Merry throngs of pegasi crowded the space. Ditzy smacked a hoof into her face and rubbed at the bridge of her muzzle. Right it would be, then. She took off into the crowd. “Sorry!” “Excuse me!” “Coming through!” “Sorry, was that your wing?” “Oops!”
Quickly, the suddenly silent crowd pressed itself to the walls, all staring at the mare with shock and no little admiration. Quiet murmurs rose, but Ditzy had no time to stop and listen. She galloped along the circumference of the Hippodrome, ponies parting before her like a mane before a comb. And ahead of her, she saw a spiky, uncombed fuchsia tail slipping down a hall. The postmare grit her teeth and redoubled her speed, all but diving through the rainbow-curtained arch after the orange filly, leaving the quietly buzzing crowd behind her.
It took a moment for her eyes to readjust to the darkness, though she didn’t stop moving forwards until she slammed into a wall. “Ow,” she grumbled, pulling herself quickly to her hooves. Once again, she faced a dichotomy; two diverging paths. No sound, no motion came from either direction to suggest Scootaloo had gone in one direction or another. Well. There was, at least on a purely subconscious level, one solid way to choose, a method so basic and elementary that she and all other pegasi had learned it in grade school. She pointed down the left hall and recited, “Icky, sticky, who’s-a-gonna picky, snow white, sky blue, best one to choose is you!” Her hoof was now pointing down the righthoof corridor.
Right it would be, then, she thought, jogging off down the hallway. She dared not fly; her depth perception, poor even under the best circumstances, would be almost nonexistent in this level of darkness. She had to squint even to make out the walls, borders determined only by the flickering, rainbow-colored half-light filtered through the drapes. Soon enough, the first torches began to light the walls, the bright, electric, greenish luminescence of ball lightning lighting up every corner of the corridor. And yet, Scootaloo was nowhere to be seen. A prickle of unease ran down Ditzy’s spine as she hurried along the hallway, faster, faster, until she came out into an atrium. A locker room, perhaps; the line of rainclouds certainly seemed to indicate as much.
She wandered through, glancing this way and that. Nopony else was around, and the room contained four other doors aside from the one through which she had entered. She considered doing another counting rhyme, but then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw a flash of movement.
She spun, only to see a door swinging closed. “Scootaloo?” she called, stepping forward. “Scootaloo, is that you?”
No reply. “Scootaloo!” Ditzy, now rather nervous, flapped forwards and swung the door open. Nothing there. Slowly, she trotted into the hall, letting the door swing shut behind her. 
There was almost no warning, just the faintest disturbance in the air. The grey mare had no time to defend herself, or even to register what was happening, before a hoof knocked her to the floor. “You will not struggle,” a cold, monotone, female voice said. “You will not scream. You will come to no harm if you cooperate.”
A rush of adrenaline overcame the grey mare. She felt frozen, stuck between fight and flight. The hoof lifted from her back. “Rise,” said a different voice. Male, this time, though it was equally cold and emotionless. The postmare did as she was told, her brain working overtime on how best to escape her captors— a hard buck to the face to the one behind her, and then away, or perhaps smash one into the other. She was no martial artist, but she’d watched at least a few films and thought she had kind of worked out the basics. She could at least surprise her captors enough to leave them off-balance.
All schemes flew right out of her head, however, when she saw, draped over the back of one of the pegasi, a little orange figure.
“Alright,” Ditzy said quietly, watching the slow rise and fall of Scootaloo’s chest. “Let’s go.”




The boutique was locked. So was the back door. All the lights inside were off. “Dammit,” Dash growled, swooping back down to the ground after tapping on Rarity’s bedroom window.
“I suppose she must be out,” Holiday said, gazing up at the darkened windows.
Lofty raised a brow. “And Spike? And Sweetie Belle?”
Dash shrugged. “Date night, I guess, and Sweetie could be staying with her folks.”
“We could check Sweet Apple Acres," Holiday suggested.
“Nah, I just came from there,” Dash replied. Neither one met the other’s eyes. “Could she have gone to Rumble’s place? He came back with her.”
“No, she wouldn't have taken her scooter if she was going to fly,” Summer reasoned. “That leaves Ditzy and Care Giver, if we're checking all the Crusaders’ houses.”
Dash nodded. “We’ll split up. I’ll check on Doc and Ditzy, you take gamermom. Lofty?”
“I’ll fly with you, Dash. Either Holiday or I should be there, as her official guardians.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Holiday said levelly. “We can meet back at mine.”
“Fine.”
“We’ll talk.”
“Fine.” Dash was increasingly aware of how like a grouchy teenager she sounded. “We can all have a nice long chat about Scootaloo’s ruined future.”
A+ job not sounding like a sulky idiot, Rainbow, she thought, flapping off, Lofty close behind her.
Holiday watched them go, silent. The future was a concern, to be sure. But she was still stuck in the past.