//------------------------------// // Chapter 2: The Web pt.1 // Story: Luna and the Doctor // by SubCinemaProductions //------------------------------// “No.” “But I-“ “No.” “But you-“ “No, Doctor! I said no! We are not going back to Weeb-Am-Nah Four!” Luna and the Doctor were arguing for a while as to where to land the TARDIS. Luna was not at all happy with his choices, though she secretly loved bickering with him. It made her remember the times when she was young. “Buuuut it has an amazing sunset!” the Doctor whined. “We nearly died!” Luna retorted, flabbergasted (flab-er-gast-ed). “But do you remember the sunset?” Luna growled. “Of course I do!” she screamed. She remembered the way the green sky was lit by the deep blue sun, and the beautiful stars that followed; but what she had forgotten was the way she felt about it. Well, at least until she yelled at him. She thought back to the event, and how her emotions melded with her eyes in order to process the beauty that she was seeing. Luna had drifted from the conversation. The Doctor knew that she was going to need some work before she was ready to go back to Equestria. This was not the first mission that he had been sent on, but he preferred to travel freely, which is why he wanted to waste no time in getting Luna back to her former self. He wanted to travel with her again, the true Luna. “Well…?” he asked. Luna shot back to reality and glared at him in the eyes. “No, Doctor,” she said calmly, “I want to see something new.” He smiled. “That’s all you had to say.” There was a calm moment between them before he shot to the console and began to hit buttons and flip levers at random. Luna came to the areas where he had already been and fixed the mistakes he made as he went; he made quite a few. They were plotting a random course without thinking when a violent quake erupted from the center of the console. Bothe Luna and the Doctor noticed that this sudden shake was not the usual flying-through-time shake that they normally experienced. They gave each other quizzical looks when a bright, with lite emitted from the central pillar, blinding the two pilots and simultaneously knocking them to the floor. When they got back up, the lite had subsided. They looked about the room, trying to figure out what had happened. Everything seemed the same, except for the sphere that occupied one side of the room. It was a plain silver and about the size of a balloon. Before either of them could react to the new addition to the TARDIS interior, a voice seemed to emanate from it: “LET THE TRIAL OF STRENGTH BEGIN!” Another white flash filled the room, this one coming from the sphere itself, though not nearly as bright. When the light died away, the Doctor, with a stern look on his face, walked up to the sphere and began to argue at it. “What do you think you’re doing in my TARDIS? You’re making flashes of light, shaking everything and making a booming voice that has given me a headache! Well? What do you have to say for yourself?” The metal intruder just floated there. “You’re ignoring me eh? Well that’s not going to work! It never works! I usually annoy those who ignore me!... and those who don’t for that matter.” No response. “HELLO! Are you even listening to me?” With that, the Doctor reached out a hoof at the sphere and poked at it. This was a bad idea, both ponies realized, for the Doctor, after poking the intruder, was thrown back against the console in a cone of electricity. Luna was flooded with panic when she ran to the Doctor’s side as his mane sizzled. She put her hooves on his shoulders and shook him, in an attempt to wake him. “Doctor!” He sat up abruptly, his eyes wide and his mane frazzled. The suddenness made Luna pull back from him. “Well,” he breathed, “Now we know something about it: don’t poke. They should really put that in big, red letters on it.” He shakily pulled himself up to the console and pulled the screen into his view. Luna put her hoof on him. He shook her off. “I’m fine. I just need to see what our visitor what talking about when he said the thing about the ‘strength trail’, or what have you.” Luna saw that her friend was unwell. He was obviously injured from the blast. She decided to do something that she knew the Doctor wouldn’t like, and she was determined to fulfill her decision. “No,” she spoke firmly, “I am taking you to the medical quarters.” He gave her a confused look. “There’s a med bay?” he asked. Luna nodded. “Hrmf. Well, I’m not going, and nothing you say can change tha- PUT ME DOWN!” Luna had expected him to be unreasonable, so she cast a levitation spell to cease any sort of resistance that he might give. He did not like her methods. As he continued yelling at her to put him down, she made a beeline to the door leading into the inner depths of the TARDIS, making sure to avoid the silver sphere that had injured her friend. ~ She set her struggling friend down on a bed after making her way through the twists and turns of the confusing TARDIS interior. Though she had put down the Doctor, she did not release her magic; he was still trying to break her hold, but to no avail. She sighed as she looked at him. One who didn’t know him might have taken him for being stupid and childish. She decided to give him more of a hint than just her looks and her sighs. She spoke frankly. “Look,” she began, “I’m not releasing you until you settle down and stay put until I can fix you up. Understood?” He eyed her, in a childish anger, and then relaxed. She took this as a sign of his compliance. She released her friend from the dark blue aura that surrounded him. He laid there, hooves crossed and making a pout. She rolled her eyes as she inspected him. There were definitely burns at the points where the electricity hit him. She began to work some magic on his maladies. After patching up the Doctor, she noticed him looking about the room. He seemed to have never been in here before. Knowing his stubbornness, she was not surprised. She stepped back from him, signifying to him that she was done. He took notice of this and looked at her. He gave a thankful smile at her. She smiled back. His gaze shifted to behind her and his eyes got big. Luna shot him a quizzical look and turned to see what he was looking at. There, in front of her, were four metal spiders, roughly the size of a large dog. They clicked at her menacingly, almost as if they were challenging her. She around the room for an escape when she noticed a crucial detail: they were in front of the door; the only door. ~ After a short scuffle involving Luna levitating the bed onto three of the spiders and the fourth being deactivated by the Doctor wielding the sonic screwdriver, the two ponies made their way through the twists and turns of the TARDIS interior, trying to make their way to the console room. They came across the door leading to their destination being blocked by two more of the mechanical arachnids. The two equines were ready for the attack created by their foes. Luna, after dodging the spiders that leapt at her, blasted one with a dark blue energy from her horn. The second spider took to chasing the Doctor around the hallway. They were surprisingly quick for their size. He eventually led it into the console room where he was able to disable it by running around the console and waiting for it to make the turn to face him with the sonic in hand. One press of the button was all it took for the spider to fall to the floor lifelessly. Once Luna had entered the console room and the Doctor caught his breath, they took time to study their disabled foe. The Doctor began to sonic the spider from all angles. “Well,” he stated while stopping his scanning, defeated, “I’ve never quite seen anything like it. It has no real origin. It is, quite literally, without any sort of aging at all. Something that cannot age can only be made in the TARDIS, but that’s impossible. I don’t build spiders in my free time.” Luna gave a sideward glance to the sphere, which was still in the same spot as they had left it. “Do you think that those… things, came from the sphere?” she asked him nervously. He shrugged and craned his head towards it. “It’s entirely within the scope of reason. It came here, and not ten minutes later, there they are.” He chuckled. “That sphere reminds me of a Void-Ship, but it does exist here, so I guess it must be able to move somehow.” He pointed the sonic at it and pressed the button. This caused the sphere to lower noticeably, causing both ponies’ eyes to go wide. The Doctor ran over to the view-screen and began typing something on the console. Luna, exited to see what her friends had discovered, hurried to the screen as well. “Aha!” the Doctor proclaimed, in a state of having an epiphany, “Why didn’t I see it before?” He turned to Luna, his excitement growing. “That… for the sake of identity let’s call it the Intruder, is broadcasting a signal to the spiders on a frequency that the sonic can disable! The Intruder also functions on that same signal! We can knock it out with the sonic!” “That’s great!” Luna agreed, feeling pumped. Finally, things were going to be simple, she thought. “There’s just one problem though,” he said, his face dropping. Never mind. “The sonic” he began, waving it in front of her face, “isn’t powerful enough to disable it alone. We need something that will focus its energy onto the Intruder. Normally, I could focus it right here using the console but…” He trailed off. “But… what?” He sighed. “The only place that has the kind of tech that we need is run by a pony whom I’ve had a quarrel with.” Luna rolled her eyes. “What did you do?” she asked like a mother would a foal. “I…” he began, rubbing the back of his head, “May have killed his dog and set his money on fire.” “WHAT?” Luna asked, surprisingly surprised, which surprised herself. “Hey! It was a necessary accident!” he defended. Luna shook her head while holding the bridge of her nose in her hoof. “Just… just go,” she said, annoyed. The Doctor hung his head low as he reached for the lever. He put his hoof on it and gave a pathetic, big-eyed face to Luna, like a foal who didn’t want to eat their vegetables. She narrowed her eyes at him. “Now,” she said flatly. He hung his head low and pulled the lever… … and nothing happened. The Doctor gave a worried look at the console and continuously flipped the lever back and forth. Luna took this as stalling. “Look at it this way: the sooner you start, the sooner you finish.” The Doctor shot her a peeved look. “What? You think I’m doing this intentional-“ “Yes,” she said plainly. He was taken aback in surprise. “Well… I’m not. There’s something preventing the TARDIS from moving. It’s like something’s is anchoring us here.” He walked about pressing buttons. “Maybe I can decrease the area of time that the TARDIS is taking to shake it.” Luna followed him and, confused, asked, “Decrease the area of time?” “Yes,” said he, focused in his work. “Imagine if you were holding a ring with a two-inch diameter along a ruler. You would occupy more than just one point, right? Well, the Timelords who built this model TARDIS used the same Idea to get to locations more quickly. The ring is the area of time and the ruler is time itself. If the area was to shrink and the anchor was to be outside of it, it might release us.” He pressed a few last buttons and returned to the lever. He looked at Luna, determined. “Okay,” he said in a breath, “here we go.” He flipped the lever. All hell broke loose. ~ Luna awoke on the floor of the console room with a headache. She looked around. The room was dark and the central column was glowing blue. All around there were bits of machine and electronics scattered about. Luna found herself resting on some of the railing. She gathered her strength and tried to stand, but found that the room was tilted. She had to catch herself on the same rail that she had awoken upon. Her weakened state in addition to the new angle of the room had left Luna disoriented and dizzy. Her mind was reeling. She tried to remember what had happened; only it was as if a haze had dropped over her mind. She could only think of one thing to do. “Find the Doctor,” she said, dazed. Luna looked about the messy room. She slowly started to move while holding her balance on whatever she could get her hooves on. There were ropes of wires hanging from the ceiling and bits of metal were scattered about the floor. Her eyes scanned, unfocused, around the console. Something was wrong. Her vision was blurry, so she couldn’t quite make out what it was. On the console there were some devices that had come loose, or off, but that was nothing out of the ordinary. She starred hard and tried to make her eyes focus. Her sight began to clear and she realized what was wrong: The Doctor was cut in half. All she could see were his hind legs waving about in the air. His front half had disappeared into the floor. Luna’s eyes went wide as she suddenly found enough strength to run a triathlon. She ran over to him, and as she did she slowly regained her senses. The primary thing she noticed as this happened, was a noise. It was not just any noise, but, rather, it belonged to the Doctor in pain. His wasn’t a particularly clear voice; in fact, it was rather muffled. It wasn’t on the fault of Luna’s hearing, for she could hear the groaning TARDIS and some sparks shooting off just fine. It was because, as she realized when she arrived at his side, the Doctor’s front half was stuck into the floor. He was shouting, not just in pain, but in annoyance as well. Luna approached the situation cautiously, making sure no to harm herself or make herself a victim as well. “Lna! Lna! Get mh ou of ere!” she hear him yelling. He apparently was thrown through a grate on the top of the staircase. Looking over him quickly, Luna began her attempts to free him. She tried to levitate him out, but the grates would scrape him too deep for her liking. When she stopped, she heard him say, “Dmph pl mho u!” From what she could tell, he had said: ‘Pull me out!’ So, as much as she didn’t want to, she began to tug harder and harder with her magic, all the while he was shouting. She figured that he was shouting words of encouragement to her. It looked as if he wasn’t going to come free. She thought about giving up. “No!” she said aloud. She prepared for one final pull, and yelled, “For the Doctor!” With that, she pulled as hard as she could. He started to slowly come out, the metal sinking into his skin and drawing blood at many points. It was slow progress until, suddenly, he popped free. He was levitating in Luna’s aura and gave a loud scream. He glared at her seriously. “OW!!!” Luna, taken aback, slowly lowered him to the ground. It took him a second to balance himself; he extended a hoof to some nearby railing. He looked at the ground, panting. After a few seconds, he slowly raised his head and wearily said, “I said ‘Don’t just pull me out.’” He locked with her sorry eyes, until he cringed with pain. “You need to go back to the Med Bay.” “No,” he said, hurriedly. He walked slowly to the console. “That can wait. We need to get out of here and someplace safe. Then, we might worry about my injuries.” Luna began to protest, but he silenced her with a hoof. “Don’t argue with me.” Luna never liked seeing this side of him. She looked at his deep wounds. They were still bleeding slightly. She bit her lip. She dare not trifle with him when he’s in this state. She slowly made her way next to him. The Doctor was typing on the typewriter that was attached and brought the view screen over. “Well?” Luna asked. “Well,” he began, focused. “We seem to have shaken the anchor, for the most part. But there is still something preventing us from going anywhere. Hmmmm…” He starred into the screen. Luna looked at it from behind him, but she barely got a glimpse before he threw his hooves into the air. “I’ve got it!” He turned to her. “Remember those spiders? Well it appears that they have made a nest.” Luna was confused. “A nest? But they’re robots.” The Doctor just rolled his eyes. “My goodness, Luna. Don’t be a species-ist. Just because they are mechanical in nature doesn’t mean that they can’t build a home. It just means that we have to destroy it.” To be continued...