//------------------------------// // 8. Daleks Have No Concept of Reflection // Story: "Daleks Have No Concept of Friendship!" // by RainbowDoubleDash //------------------------------// One Week Later… Soldier stared at the book that lay closed before her this morning. It was thinner than most of the ones she had been consuming over the past week, due to it not being a scientific or magical textbook. She actually was not certain what the book was supposed to be informative of; the cover image depicted a gray-toned earth pony stallion wearing a long trench coat and wide-brimmed hat, silhouetted against a brick building. Ace of Clover in the Sign of the Wooden Hoof, it read. The book had been picked at random when she had come down stairs. Soldier had, in the week since her arrival, both discovered sleep (a tolerable experience) and that she was what was known as a ‘earlier riser’. Even after the events of her first day and the strain it had placed on her body, she had slept for only seven hours, and appeared to average six. Twilight Sparkle had informed her that eight hours was considered healthiest, but also at Soldier’s questioning admitted that there wasn’t too much that a pony could do to control it. She did, however, suggest that her short sleep cycle was result of her having too much sugar in her diet. At that memory, Soldier bent her head down to the plate before her and bit into the toasted waffles covered in syrup, without breaking eye contact with the book. Perhaps her sugar intake would have to be slowed down…but nopony had yet ordered her to do it, and time not spend sleeping was time she could spend learning. At the moment, that learning was bent towards her magic. She had, opened up next to her, a book on unicorn anatomy. She had read its text on the arrangement of the organs in the horn, the alveo, the cornumuscula, the thauma – the organs that controlled a unicorn’s ability to manipulate magic. She had also discovered a self-help book for young unicorn fillies and colts, and though the wording in the book was annoying simple, she had thought it might help. But instead, Ace of Clover in the Sign of the Wooden Hoof remained closed to her. And worse, there was a repeated itching at her flanks that wouldn’t go away. Soldier growled, a low vocalization of displeasure from the back of her throat. No matter how much she imagined the manipulation of her horn’s organs, no matter how much she ‘believed in herself’ as the foal’s guide put it, magic would not respond to her commands. She would, however, have been less frustrated had she not done it already, when she had saved Spike from the falling chandelier. The itch came back. Soldier scratched at it with one hoof, then looked up at her horn, the tip of which she could just barely see. “You will obey my commands!” She demanded. “Obey! Obey!” “You’re talking to yourself…” Spike’s voice ventured. Soldier jumped, startled, and turned around, nearly knocking over her waffles in the process. She found herself looking at the baby dragon as he came down the stairs, rubbing his eyes, while one hand clutched a blue wool blanket. Soldier felt heat flushing through her body, especially her face, though she didn’t know why. “I was not…talking to myself,” she objected. “I was vocalizing displeasure.” “Uh-huh,” Spike noted, yawning. Soldier shifted. “Did I wake you?” She asked. She had learned that it was considered wrong to wake ponies (or dragons) in the midst of sleep unless there was an emergency. “Nah, couldn’t sleep. I woke up realizing that it’s been a week since you got here…so that means that Pinkie’s going to be throwing you a ‘One Week in Ponyville Anniversary’ Party at some point today.” At Soldier’s stare, he yawned again, flopping down on the floor and wrapping himself in his blanket. “It was like that when me and Twilight came to town. Party the day we arrived, a week out, a month, then a year. Been annual since then.” Soldier scratched the itch on her flank again. It was right above her femur, where Celestia’s false cutie mark of a constellation still remained. It kept coming back, but she forced herself past it even as she reflected. The Pinkie Party had been…tolerable, in spite of the dread she had felt when it had first been mentioned to her. She had been re-introduced to Applejack, as well as formally introduced to Rarity, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, and Pinkie Pie herself, as well as to a number of Ponyville’s other residents. She had also been introduced to the concept of games. She had been awful at any game that required coordination or physical ability, such as Twister or pin-the-tail-on-the-pony, but conversely Soldier had found herself victorious more often than not when playing games centered on strategy and probability. She had in fact become the current Ponyville champion of a game called Quoridor, unseating Twilight Sparkle herself. And there had been food to try. Cake and ice cream and jelly and doughnuts, as well as ‘healthier’ food like carrots and broccoli and celery and zucchini. Soldier had been careful not to overeat, however, lest she once again induce vomiting. But all in all, the Pinkie Party had been a positive experience. It had even ended with the ponies presenting her with a gift, made by Rarity but from all of them, a necklace with an empty clasp. Her optical crystal fit into the clasp, and it was worn around her neck. She could now carry it anywhere while keeping her hooves free. Another group-hug had resulted upon her putting it on. She tolerated this one slightly more than the last. They were constricting…but not unpleasant. Pinkie Pie swore she saw Soldier smiling, but Soldier explained that Daleks had no concept of smiles. Soldier returned her attentions to Spike. “I will participate in this party,” she declared, then returned her attentions to Ace of Clover in the Sign of the Wooden Hoof. “But I wish to be able to move my own Quoridor pieces and not depend on Twilight to do so. I must master my telekinesis!” Spike had rolled onto his stomach and had his head in his hands. He glanced upward, at the repaired chandelier that had nearly been the end of both of them. “You used it before, on me.” “I am aware. It is…frustrating!” She scratched at her flank again, turning to look at the itch, but finding nothing other than a few bits of fur standing on end from her own scratching. “My body is that of an adult pony. I should have fully developed magical organs. Yet they will not respond to my commands!” “Well...stop trying to command them, then.” At Soldier’s confused look, Spike sat up a little straighter, though he kept his blanket wrapped around himself. “Look, when you saved me, we’re you thinking about organs and moving magic around and how precise everything had to be?” “No,” Soldier responded after a rel. “You…were in danger. I wanted you to not be in danger.” “Exactly,” Spike said, then yawned again. He once more flopped down onto the floor. “S’ like that. When I breath fire I don’t think about everything going on inside of me. I just do it.” He exhaled a small flicker of green flame by way of example. Soldier contemplated that as she bit into her waffles again, finishing off the plate, then proceeding to lick it clean of crumbs and syrup. She had to do likewise for the sticky front of her face...another consequence of her lack of telekinetic ability, though a somewhat less frustrating one. “A Dalek is aware of everything that happens in its body. That ponies, or dragons, are not is...a hinderance.” She looked back to the book, glaring at it and squinting, trying to achieve her aims by not thinking…but how was she supposed to think and not think at the same time...? The book remained unopened. She looked back up to her horn. “OBEY!” Spike watched in silence for approximately fifteen rels, before standing up. “Hang on, I got an idea,” he said, walking away. When he returned, he was holding a package of folded-up paper covered in writing. “Yesterday’s newspaper,” he said, as he began separating the sheets of paper and crumpling them into balls. Once he had several ready, he lifted one up...and threw it at Soldier. It impacted her muzzle. The force was not nearly enough to hurt, but it did make her sniffle. She rubbed where she’d been hit, frowning. “Explain.” “Well, you were in trouble, and I was in trouble, sooo...” He threw another paper ball, hitting her on the cheek. “This will not work.” The next ball hit her on the brow, which only caused her frown to deepen, but nothing else. “There is no danger.” “Hmm...good point. Hang on.” Spike wandered off again, upstairs and into Twilight’s kitchenette. Soldier heard the faucet turn on and water running, but Spike did not return for several minutes. So she turned once more to the book, demanding it obey her, trying to access the part of her mind that controlled her magic and make the book open before her even as she tried to ignore the itch…and it was then that a wisp of green flame traveled down the stairs and appeared directly over Soldier. She had just enough time to wonder at what Spike had sent her when the flame let out a snap-pop and realized itself into an inflated, red balloon of some variety, the sort she had seen at the Pinkie Party filled with helium so as to make them lighter than air. Only, this balloon was not filled with helium and was emphatically not lighter than air. It fell, touched the tip of her horn, stretched, and popped open, spilling its contents – water – all over Soldier’s face. ”I am under attack!” Soldier called out in shock, standing and backing away from where she was, running her hooves over her face. No sooner had she moved then another balloon appeared directly over her head. She was faster at reacting this time, jumping out of the way, but even after a week she was somewhat unsure on her hooves, and so tripped and fell over at roughly the same speed that the balloon dropped. As a result, when it broke apart on the floor, her face was still level with it. Water went straight into her wide eyes. Daleks had no concept of taste. Their senses of smell and touch were atrophied practically to the point of uselessness, and hearing was largely taken care of by their Mark-III travel machines. The principle way in which a Dalek tended to perceive the world was through sight. As a result, a Dalek with its – or in this case, her – vision impaired, tended to panic. “My vision is impaired! Emergency! Emergency!” Soldier called out as she scrabbled to a sitting position, rubbing desperately at her eyes. “My vision is imp – ” There was a snap-pop again. Soldier glanced up through water-logged eyes to see a green balloon this time. And she didn’t think, she just didn’t want the water in her face again…a thrum went up Soldier’s horn, and a cobalt blue effervescence grabbed the water balloon as it began to fall. A brand new sensation shot through Soldier’s skull, a feeling not unlike touch, and yet at the same time somehow completely different. The balloon’s descent had been stopped just a few centimeters from Soldier’s face. She stared at it for several rels, floating there in the air. Tentatively, Soldier reached up a hoot and gently prodded at the floating balloon, wincing as she did, but the balloon did not fall, nor did it burst. Still wincing, and leaning away from the balloon in case the worst should happen, she willed it to move away from her. It gradually did so, floating until it was hovering before her at eye level, but half a meter away. The Dalek in Soldier was poking and prodding at the new sensation within her mind. She was turning her intellect on it, trying to categorize what was happening, understand it, probe its limitations, what she could do. It tried to understand what was happening. But the pony part of her, instead, had her glance over at Ace of Clover in the Sign of the Wooden Hoof. She willed the balloon to float to and land on the floor, then moved the new sensation, the new feeling in her mind, over to the book. The blue glow around the balloon disappeared, and the book took it up instead. With a slight nod of her head, Soldier brought it over to her…and opened the book. Then she turned a page…and another…and another…it was a new enough experience that both Dalek and pony part of her were equally focused on her own ability, even able to ignore the still-itchy flank. Spike appeared, climbing to the bottom of the stairs. “Ha! Knew that would work!” He said. “See, you were right, you’re not a little filly still developing magic. Same reason why all your muscles work just like an adult pony’s! So you just needed something to jump-start – ” The balloon Soldier had set down once more glowed blue, and went flying straight at the dragon. He had just enough time to yelp in surprise when the balloon hit him and burst apart, soaking him thoroughly. “Hey!” he exclaimed. Soldier held the book closer to her muzzle, concealing her face. Daleks had no concept of smiles. And even if this particular Dalek had such a concept, the smile would have been wiped from her face when there was a lavender flash-pop and the appearance of a very annoyed, very tired-looking alicorn. “What are you two doing?!” Twilight demanded, wings spread wide. “Water balloons? In a library? At – oh, Soldier, you can use magic now, good, I’m happy for you – at six in the morning?!” Soldier dropped the book held in her glow and stood up straight. “I apologize! I am ready to receive punishment!” “Good! You and Spike clean up this mess!” “I obey!” “I’m going back to bed! Ughhh…” Twilight trotted off rather than teleporting, head low and muttering to herself. Soldier’s newfound magic at least made the task easier. --- Hours later, Soldier found herself out in Ponyville, for the second time in her life willingly approaching something that even a week earlier would have been unthinkable for any Dalek to venture near without orders, especially one who did not possess a functional weapon: the TARDIS of the Doctor. But then again, she had been invited. The Doctor – after a very long explanation about how his Ninth/Tenth regeneration (the odd terminology had required an explanation of its own) had been mistaken about the extinction of the Daleks – had invited Soldier to return to the TARDIS the following week. He had promised her safety. Soldier hadn’t particularly believed him, but Minuette had also promised her safety, and Soldier did believe her. The Doctor and Minuette did have an actual house in Ponyville, but it was mostly bare inside, the house serving only as a convenient camouflage. The home’s back yard was instead where Soldier went, where Soldier found the blue box, the TARDIS, standing tall, fitting in to its surroundings about as well as Soldier did. Which was to say, poorly, but nopony seemed to comment on it. The door to the TARDIS swung open as Soldier approached it, and Soldier couldn’t stop herself from freezing as the Doctor stuck his head out to look at her. If anything, his own reaction was the same. Soldier looked nothing like a Dalek, and the Doctor looked nothing like a Time Lord, but the two knew what each other were. Countless eons of instinct did not go away immediately for either of them, certainly not in a mere week. “Hello, D…Soldier,” the Doctor said at length. He glanced down at her legs. Soldier did likewise, and saw that she had one of them raised, as though she were considering running. If the spike of adrenaline in her body was any indication, she had been. The Dalek part of her, anyway. The pony part of her was, if anything, trying to work out if she could use her own telekinesis to push herself forward. Soldier shook her head, lowering her hoof and looking back to the Doctor. “You requested my presence,” she said. “I have come, Doctor.” The Doctor looked back up. “Requested your presence?” he echoed, stepping in to the TARDIS, but holding the door open, waving a hoof, indicating Soldier should enter. She did. “Very imperious sounding. I think I kind of like it, actually.” “Oh, no, now I’ll have this to deal with,” Minuette said. She had been standing at the TARDIS’ controls, but as Soldier entered she left them and came over, looking the Dalek-turned-pony over for several rels, then smiling. “You discovered magic! Good for you. Catch.” Her own telekinesis had grabbed something small off of the console and tossed it at Soldier. Soldier’s own telekinesis wasn’t quite fast enough to grab the object immediately; it hit her muzzle, though without much force to hurt. She did, however, react quickly, catching the object as it fell in her telekinetic grasp – the Dalek part of her fighting back the pony part of her for wanting to perform some kind of elated physical reaction to her ability to do so. Hefting it up, Soldier found herself looking at what strongly resembled a Dalek eye stalk, although much shorter, only fifteen centimeters in length, and with several small buttons across its surface. The ‘eye’ portion had a crystal embedded into it. In short, it looked remarkably like the sonic probe she had constructed. Soldier glanced down at her own neck, confirming that her own optical crystal was still in its necklace, then back to the sonic device. “Synthesized?” she asked, staring at the crystal, remembering that all the other crystals she had tried to use were flawed. “No, actually,” the Doctor said as he came up to Minuette. “Got it from a quick trip to the Crystal Empire. Gemstones and crystals form much easier in this reality overall, but getting high-quality ones is still about as hard. Still, the Crystal Empire has them, in case you ever need to replace that.” He pointed a hoof at the sonic probe. Soldier eyed the sonic, flicking a few buttons on it. To her surprise, a psychic interface came up – readouts and numbers that only the holder of the sonic could see or interpret. “It is more advanced than the one I constructed,” she noted, scrolling through the interface, exploring the sonic probe’s capabilities, or starting to. The itch on her flank that had been annoying her all day chose that moment to come back, and she had to spend a few rels scratching first. “Well, I had more time than you did. And I did break the one you made,” the Doctor said. “Seems fair – ” “You have included an embedded destruct code deep in the probe’s programming. Two embedded destruct codes. A psychic one delivered via touch and an audio one set off when a key phrase is stated in the proper inflection.” Soldier squinted slightly as she made some corrections. It wasn’t easy, but she was able to break past the Doctor’s firewalls after several minutes. “I have disabled them.” She looked up, and saw Minuette jabbing the Doctor repeatedly in the ribs, looking cross with him, while he fended her off. “Old habits!” He said in his defense. “I bet Soldier doesn’t even mind!” “I do not,” Soldier responded truthfully. Minuette stopped jabbing at the Doctor. “Oh, fine,” she intoned. She looked back to Soldier. “That’s a gift. The Doctor and I thought it might make adapting to everything just a little easier. Daleks are so used to relying on sensors and relayed information and the Dalek pathweb, after all.” “Doesn’t do magic very well,” the Doctor added. “Or actually at all. That one you’re still going to have to figure out on your own.” Soldier considered the sonic probe a few rels more, before deactivating its psychic interface. “I intend to do so,” she said. The pony part of her nudged her a little. “I…am finding the exploration of this world…a positive experience. It is…” “…Enjoyable?” The Doctor ventured after several rels of Soldier looking for the right word. “Daleks have no concept of joy,” she countered. “Right…” the Doctor looked away, back to the TARDIS’ command console, then to Soldier. “By the way, the sonic was more her idea than mine, even if I built it…but I do want to apologize for what happened last week, and I had a thought about that. Minuette’ll give us a lift…if you’re willing?” Soldier looked between the Doctor and Minuette, mind working fast. If Minuette was needed then that meant that the TARDIS’ Matrix would be used…which meant either journey through time…or a journey to another reality. Both the Dalek and the pony wanted to back up a step at that thought, and she did. “I do not care that the Dalek race survives,” she said, and she could hear the touch of panic in her voice. “I do not want to be a Dalek in my original reality. I want to be a Dalek in this one. I am the first Dalek. I want to define myself!” The itch on her flank had returned full force in her nervousness, but she resisted the urge to scratch it. Minuette advanced a step. “Soldier, we wouldn’t very well give you a shiny new sonic screwdriver if we were planning on turning you back over to the Daleks.” “Doctor’s word,” the Doctor said, putting a hoof to his chest. “We’re only going back to our reality for a few minutes. Won’t even need to change bodies, we won’t be there long enough to start breaking down. You can stay a pony. It’s just…” the Doctor considered, glancing over Soldier, then to Minuette, who nodded at him. “I want it to be a surprise…but I also want to, by way of apology, show you something that no Dalek has really ever seen before. Something that’s, in a way, new.” Two of Soldier’s hooves were raised, ready to back her up another step, but she hesitated at the Doctor’s words, considering what he was offering. “Very well,” she said at length. The itch returned; she glanced back at her flanks and used her telekinesis at rub at them, see if it would go away. It did not. She looked back to the Doctor. “I will accompany you.” The Doctor smiled. “You’ll like this. I know,” he added quickly with a raised hoof before Soldier could speak. “Daleks do not like anything. But I think you’ll make an exception for this.” --- Minuette nuzzled the Doctor for a few rels, then locked her lips with his own for several more rels before leaning up and whispering something into his ear. Then Minuette had abandoned her body – she lit up her horn and enveloped the TARDIS’ Matrix in golden light that seemed to flow out from her, eventually the light suffusing Minuette’s body entirely and breaking it apart into motes of energy that flowed into the command console, leaving nothing behind. But as soon as it was done, the Matrix lit up, the crystals within beginning to move up and down at a rate of two rels per cycle, while the sand in the hourglass overhead began to flow upwards. The Doctor began flipping switches and pulling levers, trotting around it rapidly – the Type-40 TARDIS was designed for a crew of six, after all. In spite of herself, Soldier came over to the command console, glancing it over. The Dalek in her recognized the layout instantly, and the pony part of her noticed the Doctor struggling to do everything by himself. Without waiting, she began helping him align the Matrix and angle the TARDIS’ spatial-temporal fields. The Doctor hesitated for a moment at the sight, before bursting out laughing and getting back to work. The long, high-pitched drone started as spatial-temporal phasing began. The entire TARDIS shook and twisted, its flight still unstable thanks to operating with only a third of the crew it needed – though the fact that the Doctor wouldn’t let her take the parking brake off didn’t help. She also paused at the chameleon circuit, examining it. “This is broken,” she noted. “No, it works just fine,” the Doctor countered. “In its current state it will scan where it is about to land within a fifty-mile radius, identify the most innocuous and fitting appearance for the time period and location, and then appear as a wooden police box with windows that are too small and a door that opens the wrong way.” “Yes, which is how we like it, leave it alone. Perception filter works if we need it, but I almost never do.” Soldier considered the many, many, many times that a functioning chameleon circuit or active perception filter would have been of aid to the Doctor. And that only covered up to his ninth regeneration. Still, it was his TARDIS, and this was the Doctor. As much as Soldier hated to think it, the Doctor knew what he was doing. After a particularly violent pitch in the TARDIS that overwhelmed its artificial gravity, nearly sending both the Doctor and Soldier flying towards one of the vehicle’s walls, the long whine at last quieted and settled down. The Doctor immediately retrieved his sonic probe from the command console and ran it over himself. Soldier grabbed her own and did likewise, the Dalek in her once more stopping the pony part of her from reacting with elation at the ability. “The film of the pony reality will protect our atoms for ten minutes,” Soldier announced as she read the psychic interface, then winced and scratched at her flank again. Neither Dalek nor pony part of her knew why she was feeling so itchy today, why it kept coming back. “And we’ve got about half an hour of useful time after that before the mutation of pony subatomic particles to local ones starts to seriously affect us,” the Doctor confirmed. “More than enough time. C’mon.” The Doctor proceeded over to the TARDIS’ doors, opening them. Coming up to the door and trotting out, Soldier found that the TARDIS had deposited on a plateau high up on the slopes of a red-rocked mountain covered with snow. The air was clear, however, offering an unimpeded glimpse of the landscape. Down the mountain’s slope the snow gave way to trees with blue and violet leaves, coniferous near the snow, before those as well gave way to a thick, misty jungle in the lowlands. The jungle was broken by the occasional outcropping of tall red rock and a wide, deep watered lake, while in the far west the jungle gradually gave way to a savannah of violet grass. To the north, meanwhile, the rivers of the jungle slowed and the forest transformed into vast marsh, neither fully pelagic nor fully terrestrial, covered in brightly colored grasses, trees, and flowers. It was bright, colorful world. Soldier’s eyes, however, found themselves drawn up to the pale blue sky. She saw the vague outline of two moons against one horizon, and it was the Dalek part of her that caused her to sharply inhale when she realized she recognized them. “Flidor,” she breathed, stepping up to the edge of the plateau, mouth hanging open. “Omega Mysterium…” Glancing to the other edge of the horizon, Soldier saw two bright, burning suns. She knew them too. She felt a presence beside her, and saw that the Doctor had come up alongside her. “Skaro,” she said. “This is my homeworld. You’ve brought me to Skaro…to Skaro’s past.” The Doctor nodded. “To a few minutes of it, anyway, looped them ‘round so that the Dalek Time Controller wouldn’t notice. Well…we’ll be gone before it notices.” A slight smile was on his face. “This is the continent of…you know, I don’t think anyone ever named it. Let’s call it Panskaro. We’re on the part that’ll eventually become Dalazar, when the Ocean of Ooze rises up and floods the midlands, separating it from Davius.” He pointed down at the jungle and the deep-water lake. “That will one day be called – ” “The Lake of Mutations,” Soldier said, staring down at it, desperately wishing the itch in her flank would go away. “But now it is Drammankin Lake. We are on the Drammankin mountains…” Her eyes widened, and she pointed to the shores of the lake. “Kaalann will be built there, the city of the Daleks. And before…Kaled civilization will become centered here.” “Already is,” the Doctor said, brushing aside some of the snow on the mountains before settling down on the rock beneath it. He shivered a little. “Should have brought my scarf…anyway, the Kaleds are down there, in the jungle, around the lake. They’ve mastered the wheel and the flame. Pottery is starting. Some of them are starting to notice that if you break apart and heat rocks the right way, you can separate out the metals inside.” He nodded towards the distant horizon, the northwest. “The Thals are evolving up in Davius, too. They’ve already built a few small cities, started working soft metals. The Kaleds will lag behind the Thals for awhile.” Soldier brushed aside snow as the Doctor had, settling down as well. The cold was unpleasant, but she couldn’t take her eyes from what she was looking at. Everywhere she looked, she saw something new, and yet somehow familiar. Like she was looking at an echo. The cold, at least, seemed to counteract the itch that still refused to leave. “Why?” The Doctor glanced at her, then looked back down. “If I brought a Dalek here,” he said, “a proper Dalek, that is, still in its tank…what would it do? Assuming it could not leave Skaro on its own.” Soldier at last looked to the Doctor. “It would…analyze. Determine the time period. Wait for night to measure the position of the stars for the most accurate judgment of time. Then it would go to the mountains behind us, burn a hole in the rocks, bury itself and enter hibernation. It would not wake until enough time had passed for the Dalek Empire to exist in an advanced enough state that we had discovered time travel. It could not risk damaging the Dalek timeline.” The Doctor nodded. “Exactly. One look to determine where it was, then off it goes.” He was silent, still watching Soldier even as Soldier looked at Skaro. “Now compare to what you’re doing.” Soldier paused a rel. “I am…” she ventured, but stopped. She looked back to Skaro. “I…you will not leave me here. So I have…time. To…to look.” “So would a Dalek. But it wouldn’t. But you would…you are.” He looked back to landscape. “You’re looking at Skaro in a way that no Dalek ever has or ever would. You’re seeing something that any Dalek would be blind to even though it’s right in front of it. There was – or I suppose at the moment, there will be – an Earth author and linguist. Built a whole world in his mind, languages, cultures, societies…then wrote it down for everyone else to read. And in his greatest work he said that ‘nothing is evil in the beginning.’ Skaro is dangerous, even now…but I have to admit, in this moment in time, and even knowing what’s going to happen here one day…” “It is…” Soldier felt her Dalek part turning to her pony one to aid. It was glad to provide the word, because it agreed with the Dalek on this, on the vista that it saw. “Beautiful. Skaro was beautiful once.” “It will be for a long time. We’re tens of thousands of years out from the Neutronic War.” Soldier nodded slowly. Neither the Doctor nor Soldier spoke for a time after that, as Soldier instead focused on taking everything in, burning it into her mind, on putting the eidetic memory of a Dalek to use in ensuring that she would never forget this image of Skaro that no other Dalek would ever truly see. --- They eventually had to leave, returning to the pony reality, and Minuette reconstituted herself from the Matrix. The second thing the TARDIS’ pony body did after doing so (the first being embracing the Doctor) was look Soldier over carefully, appropriating the Doctor’s own sonic probe to aid her. “Good,” she said, as Soldier examined herself as well, not sure as to the issue. Minuette smiled. “I do trust Celestia to know what she’s doing, but just wanted to make sure that everything is in one piece after a jaunt back to our native reality. And they are, your atoms are fine. No visit to our transmuter needed.” Soldier was pleased to hear that she was not at risk of dissolving at the subatomic level, a fact which her own new sonic provided. “That is good to hear,” she said. “Right,” Minuette said, leaning back and setting aside the Doctor’s sonic probe. “Now, if we timed things right, and I always do – ” “You most certainly do not,” the Doctor objected. “ – then there should be plenty of time before your one-week-in-Ponyville party.” She put a hoof to her mouth. “Or…well, ten minutes. Still, five minutes’ trot to the library from here, so no rush.” Soldier stiffened. The TARDIS had left her with very little time indeed, though she was right that she wasn’t in any serious danger of running late. “I must leave,” she said, turning and heading towards the TARDIS’ doors. She paused at them, however, and looked back to the Doctor and Minuette. “I…overheard your discussions seven days ago. You intend to once more explore time and space. The time and space of our reality.” The Doctor had returned to Minuette’s side. He had been about the nuzzle her, but froze. “Yes…” he ventured at length. “A bit. Easing ourselves back in. I made sure that it was protected when I left, so there’s no need to rush back. No crisis for a change. And we do plan on coming back here often.” “Why?” Minuette asked, though she was smiling broadly. She would already know the answer, of course. Soldier decided to delay it anyway. “Your transmuter. The device you used to adapt yourself between realities. What are its specifications? Its settings?” “If it were to be used on you, would you have to become a Dalek mutant again?” Minuette asked, the real question that Soldier had been driving towards. Soldier nodded, and Minuette shook her head. “Making you a Dalek again would be easiest. Slightly less easy, but by no means hard, would be turning you into a Kaled. The basic information is still in your genetic structure in our reality. Two arms, two legs, eyes, nose, mouth…same sort of range of experience that you have as a pony. Bit taller is all.” “Oh no,” the Doctor intoned. “Oh no, no, no, I see where this is going.” Minuette turned to look at the Doctor. “All those strays over the years you bring inside of me, I can’t pick up one?” She asked, then glanced back to Soldier. “If that’s what you’re asking.” Soldier glanced down. Was it? She was still getting used to being a pony…and very much wanted to continue to. There was an entire new world to experience already, so much to see and do and taste and learn…but at the same time, it would not be enough for the Dalek part of her. The Dalek was a genius that could absorb and process information so fast. And the pony part of her was noticing how the Dalek part of her felt about learning, growing, changing…an was encouraging it. Because it was making Soldier…something. Something the pony part of her liked. It wasn’t like Soldier wanted to leave Equestria, not on a permanent basis. Just…learn more about the reality she had left behind, was all, even as she also learned about the one she called home. “I am,” Soldier said. The itch at her flank would still not go away, but Soldier had resolved to ignore it as best she could. “Sometimes. Not for some time. But yes. I would become one of the Doctor’s companions.” Minuette giggled with glee, clapping her hooves together. The Doctor, meanwhile, only ran a hoof through his mane, eyes wide. “Oh, this will be a long conversation with Jenny…” Soldier did not know who either were. “I must leave now,” Soldier said. “Daleks are never late…” She opened the TARDIS’ door, and found herself looking at a darkening evening sky and felt a cool night breeze…and also found herself looking at a large, white pony with both long, broad wings and a tall horn, smiling at Soldier. Celestia. “Maybe this one time,” Minuette ventured.