//------------------------------// // CHAPTER FOUR: Time and Magical Unicorns in Space // Story: The What and Whatiful Who // by cosby7 //------------------------------// “What’s a ‘Pony Box?’” “It’s a . . . you know, I’m not actually sure. You don’t really have any police here, do you?” It had been a brief, but hectic journey back to Ponyville. The influence of whatever it was that was ravaging the world’s timeline had definitely begun to reach beyond the confines of the small town. Besides the odd panicked pony, Trixie and the Doctor had managed to come across an explosion in reverse, a team of metal equines that quickly corroded into dust, and what appeared to be some ancient ancestor to the manticore; twice the size, twice the teeth, and, oddly, twice the number of tails. What worried Doctor Hooves most was that all these phenomena, out of time and place, were persisting far longer before disappearing than they had been earlier. He hoped that Twilight and her friends were succeeding in keeping their fellow citizens safe and everything else stable. However, the panic did make for a nice cover. Under normal circumstances, he would have worried about revealing the tall, especially to a pony, blue box that he had been hiding among the leaves and hay, just outside Sweet Apple Acres. “I guess it’s a box. For ponies. To call . . . other ponies?” Doctor Hooves was really not prepared for this question. Chameleon circuits could be so obtuse at times. “To call them what?” “Just forget it,” he said, defeated. “Well, Trixie appreciates you showing her your, um, ‘Pony Box,’ it’s really a lovely shade of blue, but Trixie is not quite sure what we are doing here.” Doctor Hooves smiled. He had been waiting for this moment for an eternity. CLACK. CLACK. CLACK. “ . . . hooves don’t have fingers to snap, do they?” Trixie was awfully confused, but, no, she did not think so. “Alright, not off to the best start.” He groaned, before pulling a key out of seemingly nowhere, almost like some sort of cartoon character or something. Held firmly between his teeth, the Doctor fit the key into the lock of the blue box’s door. With one final sigh, he turned it and the door swung open. “How quaint.” “Yes, it is, wait, what?” “Trixie finds it quite charming.” “But . . . you’re supposed to say that it’s bigger on the inside.” This really was not getting off to the best start. “Oh, was Trixie meant to be impressed? It is not a spell she has not witness¾performed. A spell Trixie has performed dozens of times.” She didn’t even blink. Actually, she seemed quite disinterested. The Doctor couldn’t tell if she was legitimately unimpressed of if she thought she was succeeding at some esoteric test. “I used to be so much better at this.” The brown horse felt tired. “Whatever, just, come in already.” He entered the tall blue box and Trixie fell in close behind him, allowing the door to swing shut after them. It was dark inside, but not quite the pitch of night. There were no lights or lamps of any sort, but it was almost as if the room they stood in now emanated its own low lighting to remind its occupants it could. It certainly was a bigger box on the inside. The walls leading out from the entranceway spread out in all directions, revealing a ceiling that stretched high above, a floor that dipped far below their present level, and walls reached out wide before twisting away to parts unseen with untold of passages and rooms. Trixie really hadn’t been lying when she said she had seen and even performed, or, at least, attempted on one disastrous occasion, spatial spells of similar effect before. None had ever been as impressive as this though. Not only was the space contained inside the box absolutely massive, but she had never seen anything more foreign, not even among the oddities currently invading Ponyville. Clearly the place was some elaborate creation of technology and science, but there was something unmistakably organic about it. Not strictly in the decor so much, walls, both angular and curvy, of a reddish-brown hue and covered in circles of various size, but in the presence of it. Wires crisscrossed and weaved throughout the room like a circulatory system. There was a barely audible hum that sounded almost like quiet breathing, like that of a pony asleep. Bits of metal framework ran through the floor like a skeleton. Trixie could feel this place and, if she didn’t know any better, she’d have thought it felt alive. If the place truly was alive, then there, dominating the entire room, in the center upon a raised section of floor, stood what must have been the heart. An enormous tube stood vertically in the center, rising from the floor up to the ceiling. At its base, the tube was surrounded by a console of buttons, leavers, knobs, telephones, what looked like some sort of toy, switches, and all other sort of baffling miscellanei. Trixie had never seen anything like it. She had not felt such awe since earlier that morning when she happened to glimpse herself in a mirror. “This is quite the spectacle, Doctor,” Trixie allowed herself to admit. Only when he did not immediately answer, did she realize that the stallion was no longer at her side. She almost worried, before finding him on the same console that encased the heart of the box-room. Doctor Hooves was literally lying atop the shelf of the thing, his back legs supporting him while his front legs were splayed outwardly. He was giving the thing a hug. “Ahem!” He jumped straight up before whirling around with a sheepish look. If Trixie were not the Great and Powerful Trixie, she might have thought he had forgotten she was even there. “Sorry, it’s,” cough, “it’s been a little while since we last saw each other.” “Well,” the offended mare began with a haughty twist of her head, “do not allow the Great and Powerful Trixie to interrupt. She was only asked here, specifically, by you, so that you might take advantage of her incredible magic talents. She most certainly did not come to watch a grown stallion fawn over his ‘Pony Box.’” That wasn’t quite how the Doctor remembered it going, but he thought better of arguing with her. For whatever reason, he seemed to have chosen this difficult young pony as his companion and he could not abandon her nor her world. “Actually,” he began, reluctantly leaving the console behind and stepping down to join the mare, “she’s called a TARDIS. And she needs your help.” “A Tardis?” Trixie asked, perplexed. “She?” “Stands for Time And Relative Dimensions In Space.” “I,” she stammered, “Trixie is not quite sure she understands. Is this some new shelter created in Canterlot? Do you mean to hide?” “No,” Doctor Hooves shook his head somberly, “no this is not from Canterlot. And no, I do not mean to hide. I mean to do what I’ve always done.” “Which is?” “What I can, to set things right.” “Doctor Hooves, Trixie is very confused. Why have you brought her here?” A heavy sigh for heavy business. “Trixie, I have a confession to make: I’m not from around here.” “So, you are from Canterlot?” “No, not Ponyville. I mean, I’m not from around Equestria. Trixie, I’m not from your world.” “Oh, that clears things up,” she replied with a roll of her eyes. “Trixie thought you were from out of town, but it turns out you’re just out of your mind. Do you truly expect Trixie to believe you come from the stars? Where were you before coming here? Visiting with Princess Luna on the moon?” “Look around,” the colt said mildly, softly. “See this place. Does it really look like it could be anything from your world? Look at everything that’s been happening today. You can’t think that everything you’ve seen today could have come from your time and place.” He did not raise his voice. He did not harshen his tone. Every word was level and even and soothing. “I . . . Trixie doesn’t . . . the scientists in Canterlot are always working on new . . . .” “The truth is, I am from the stars. I’m from another planet. I came here in the TARDIS, my spaceship and time machine, some while ago. It was not completely my decision to come here, and my ship here has not been running since then. I have been spending my time here researching what you call magic and how it can be used with time and machinery. The truth is, I still haven’t finished my research, but the events of today have forced me to act. If I am going to save your world, I need my ship. That’s why I went looking for the Flim Flam Brothers and that is why I brought you here. I need you to use your abilities to restore the TARDIS. Will you help me?” This was admittedly not the explanation Trixie had expected to hear. In fairness, she did not really know quite what she had expected, but it was not that. Sure, she was no stranger to magic of all kinds. There was all manner of strange things in Equestria, but nothing like the things she had seen today. Even so, all of that did little to convince her. But then she looked at the stallion asking for her help. This pony who did not act like a pony. Whose eyes looked older and deeper than any she had ever seen. The same eyes she had seen all those years ago on that fateful day. Trixie was not easily trusting by nature, but, for some reason, she could trust those eyes. “Doctor Hooves, before you say another word, I feel I must remind you of something. Something you must never forget.” He waited expectantly. “You are speaking to the Great and Powerful Trixie!” Her eyes narrowed. “Let’s do this thing.” The Doctor’s serious look evaporated into a cocky grin. “Brilliant!” With that, he whirled into a blur of motion. Hooves attacked the console with surprising dexterity. Switches were flipped, buttons were hammered, squeaky toys were honked, twirlers were spun. Trixie had no idea what the colt thought he was doing, but there was no denying he did it with gusto. “Okay, she’s ready to receive.” He turned back to Trixie once more and began waving her over with his head. “Come on, up here, there you go.” Trixie reluctantly made her way to his side. “There we are. Good. Now, tell me, how much experience do you have with time spells?” Time spells were extremely difficult. Trixie would never admit it to another pony, let alone herself, but most of them were too hard for her current level of ability. She had done her best to train for at least the basics in every school of magic, but this still only meant that the most she had ever achieved was to speed up or slow down the passage of time around her for half a second. In her various practice sessions, she had only ever made the shift last long enough to confirm a hooffull of times. “Moderate to high experience.” The Doctor tilted his head and began to move his mouth, like he could not quite grasp hold of a word. It took a moment before he gave up and simply pursed his lips. “That’ll have to do then, won’t it?” He shifted around behind her so that there was nothing between Trixie and the center of the TARDIS. His head flicked upward, motioning for her to focus on the central column. “I need you to focus your concentration on the center, there. Think of it as the heart of the TARDIS. We need to shock it back to life, just like a defibrillator.” Trixie nodded. “Heart of the TARDIS. Got it.” “Well,” the Doctor began rambling, “it’s not really the heart of the TARDIS. We wouldn’t be able to get at that and it would be enormously dangerous if we did. But as far as our purposes now, that is as close as we can get to the actual heart—” He stopped short as his eyes finally caught the annoyed glare being cast his way. “Right, anyway, heart of the TARDIS.” Trixie resumed her focus on the console’s center, her expression still one of mild annoyance. If this pony wanted her to concentrate, then he was going to have to lay off the lectures. “Think about what you learned from the Flim Flams. The way they focus their unicorn abilities on the core of their machine. Those emissions power it, flow through it like its lifeblood.” Trixie nodded. She remembered the notes she had, by completely random happenstance, happened to read. “Once you have that focus, just keep pouring energy into the core with the most powerful time spell you know. We need a massive reaction to jump start the heart of the TARDIS, so do not hold back.” His emphasis on the last four words was made dramatically clear. Carefully, Trixie positioned her legs in a wide and stable stance. She bowed her head, concentrating, as she had a million times before, on her horn. Trixie had never been friends with another unicorn long enough to ask how it felt when they cast a spell, but, for her, it had always been a moment of confidence and clarity. Channeling her magic gave her a rush. Simply put, she felt powerful. It was her special talent. In a sudden burst of motion, she raised her head and a purple glow erupted from her horn. It flew straight and true towards her aim and held there, collecting and pulsing in the TARDIS’s heart. She thought about the notes and blueprints she had found, littered around the Flim Flam hideout. It was a matter of not just channeling the magic into the machine to power it, but imbuing the otherwise inanimate device with a magical essence of its own. The idea was not to use magic to ignite a machine to action, but to literally use magic to alter the reality of a machine to one in which it works and lives. As Trixie concentrated on these principles, she desperately hoped the mechanics at work behind the Doctor’s TARDIS were not a great deal more complicated than those of a Super Speedy Cider Squeezy. It was not long before Trixie’s focused thoughts had a marked reaction. The sparkling stream of purple energy pulsed outward as it rushed into the heart. Where once floated a glob of concentrated magic energy, there came to be a smoothing and stretching, until purple sparkles surged through the heart of the TARDIS like blood through a vein. Now for the finishing touch. Whilst simultaneously pushing all of the magic she could muster into the TARDIS, Trixie began casting her spell. Focusing on the stream of time where her magic flowed, she began the complicated mental gymnastics required to speed an object’s passage through time. To anyone else it would have been indiscernible, but Trixie could tell: Of the hooffull of times she had made the spell work, this was a hooffull and one. Not to be out done by her own success, she worked on casting the spell to slow time half a second. And then another. And another. Faster. Slower. Faster. Slower. Her eyes clenched tight and her teeth grit against one another. Had she been in a state of mind to notice, Trixie might have realized that she was somehow channeling more magic than she ever had in her life. Maintaining enough magical skill to be an effective stage magician was one thing, but this was very much another. Something about this place she was in, or perhaps the company she kept, was pushing Trixie beyond her limits and further than she ever thought she could have gone. For the first time in her life, the Great and Powerful Trixie was truly living up to her name. That’s when she heard it. VWOOOOORP! VWOOOOOORP! Even through the pounding of her temple and the equations in her head, even through the sound of every ounce of magical power in her body racing through the beating heart of a millenia old time machine, Trixie could hear that incredible sound. It was a sound both mysterious and timeless. It spoke of other worlds and fantastic journeys. It was a sound of utter loneliness and absolute freedom. The more she listened, the less the magic flowed from her. Slowly but surely, the raging torrent of pure purple light that had charged forth from Trixie’s horn diminished to a rapid, to a thread, to a strand, to nothing. Amidst the pounding of her head, Trixie could distantly hear the whoops and hollers of an excited Doctor Hooves. She smiled, happy with the performance she had given to her audience. Even so, it was not the voice of her companion that kept her bleary eyes open and her feeble legs straight, but that same strange sound, like nothing else in all of Equestria. Before finally succumbing to fatigue, her mind mustered two solitary words: So familiar.