//------------------------------// // Chapter 47 REVISED // Story: A Journey Unthought Of // by Hustlin Tom //------------------------------// "Grab that lever and hold it for seven seconds," the Doctor yelled to me, "Then spin that rotary to the right until you hit 'four', let it fall back to 'zero' and then spin to the left to 'eight', 'zero' and then left to 'eight' again." It was taking all of my concentration just to keep up with his instructions, as I flitted back and forth to one side of the console, then the other. "How're they doing," I asked breathlessly. Bringing the screen around the Doctor gave a small smile, "We're looking good so far! They've just got to keep it up for a little longer, then the Tardis can-" he paused and his face began to fall, "No, come on! They're losing power! They're fatiguing too quickly, and the Void's expanding in again!" The Princess yelled in frustration as she channeled more of her power into the black and white horizon. Every fiber of her being was coursing with her power. It burned, and burned so deeply she thought she might very well burst into flames of mage fire, turned into her own burning effigy. She was now the main source of energy in the giant circuit she and the other ponies were creating, and if she gave in, the space between dimension would run roughshod over everything, consuming this entire plane of existence. Why are you still trying, she heard Nightmare Moon yelling at her in panic, This isn't working! We can survive the collapse, but you have to stop now or we are doomed! What good's a kingdom or throne if you're not alive to enjoy it?! "NO," Luna yelled, "I will not give in! Even if I have to give every last year of my life!" She took a pained step forward, and pushed back against the event horizon with as much power as she had left. It's expansion faltered, if just for a moment. She took another step forward, tears flowing from her eyes to fall upward, silvery points of light escaping from wounds opening across every part of her body, only to be brought back towards her frame to try and seal the gaps. The hole continued expanding, now dangerously close to the town. She was almost face to face with the veil, staring headlong into the abyss screaming in rage and pain. Suddenly, like a bolt of lightning a large golden beam of light thrummed down from the clouds to strike the Void, and it cowered. All eyes turned upward as at long last Princess Celestia joined the fray, her horn bursting with light and her eyes burning like amethysts. Swooping down she was at once at her sister's side. "Let's finish this," she said said simply. "AYE, LET'S," Luna roared, and as one they pushed a surge of magic towards the hole. The Void began to quickly retreat, even as it began releasing dangerous levels of ozone. When all the ponies saw their nation's rulers working together, they all got a second wind, and with a cheer every single one of them returned to what they were doing with gusto, especially the Elements, who let forth a third and final burst of power from their iconic jewelry. With all their combined force the hole quickly began to give back the ground it'd taken, and they began to chase after it back into the forest, pushing it to the exact space it had come from. "Yes, Yes! Come on and do it," the Doctor yelled at his screen, and I was right there with him, "Come on guys, you can do it! Lyra, I know you can do it! Come Ooooon!" At long last, the hole had shrunk to the size of a house, then a car, then a dinner plate. "Containment time," the Doctor gave a raucous laugh, and threw two switches down on the Tardis console. The hole twisted and warped inside a strange, barely visible field of energy, before it sealed up with a flash, leaving behind only a tiny pin-sized scar in reality to show it had ever been there. "Yes," the Doctor yelled with another laugh, immediately followed by a shout of "Hot damn," from me. "They actually did it," he said with a big grin on his face, "and no one got hurt or killed doing it! Oh, yes! Everybody lives! I need more days like this in my life!" "Alright, now it's done," I said with a grin and a slap of the console, "Let's get back to Equestria and have a party! Hell, maybe at this point I might be able to walk around in public now like a normal human being and not the Hunchback of Notre Dame!" The Doctor's face immediately began to change from an expression of elation to tired disappointment. "We're not going back," he said flatly, avoiding looking me in the face, "Our time in that universe is done. It's time to go home." With a heavy hand he pulled a single breaker down, and the Tardis' engines thrummed to life. I looked at him in shock, and asked simply, 'What?" "It's not our place to remain there. We were the entire reason their reality was put at risk. The Tardis can jump back and forth between all parts of the omniverse, but there's always a risk with every jump that something can go wrong. You barely made it there at all in the first place I'd wager; no one survives a trip through the Void unprotected, and you've been directly exposed to it, contaminated with it. You need to reacclimatize to our universe." "There's literally nothing for me there," I said as I walked closer to him; not quite sure yet whether to cry or be furious, or whether to just do both at once, "I had nothing. I was nothing!" I pointed my thumb back behind me to the double doors, "I have friends back there; people who give a damn about me, whether I'm safe, whether I live or die." Finally I burst into a shout directly into his face, more exclamation then a question, "Why couldn't you leave me behind!" "If we had stayed there any fix we would have tried would have been temporary at best. It took them everything just to seal it up with my help from the outside! You all would have died if we didn't both go." "So everything you had me do was to make me think I was contributing," I roared, "I thought I was helping them, and it was all a lie just so you could make sure I went along with what you wanted? I could have said goodbye to everyone at least! I could have told Lyra that I loved her, that we could make things work! We could have had something, and you didn't even give me that much!" "If you had stayed you'd all be dead by now," the Doctor yelled back, "You wouldn't even have had time to make a bucket list." He calmed himself with a frustrated sigh and opening his closed fist, "Adam, I am truly sorry for what I've deprived you of, but we did the only thing we could to make sure everybody stayed alive, you included. If I had given you that goodbye you might have been seriously tempted to just stay at the risk of everyone and everything else." "Then you should have trusted me to make the right choice," I fired back, "Hell, you should have allowed me to choose at all. I'd have given Lyra up in a heartbeat to save her life, to save everyone's life!" I glared heavily at the Doctor; I didn't care what he'd done or who he'd stood down, he- There was a sound towards the doors of the Tardis; a piece of linen falling to the floor. We both whirled around as one to see what had changed. There, walking right up the ramp as casual as could be, was Lyra Heartstrings. "I've never been out there," she said simply, "and you can't go back, so I guess this is even more of a one-way trip then the Princess told me it'd be." "You-" I started as I completely turned and stepped closer to her, "-but Bon Bon, the house, everyone-" "I was never going to stay in Ponyville, not forever," she said with a sad smile, "I guess I just left a little earlier than I'd planned. It's fine though: I left a note." "Fine," I mouthed and looked to the left to the console in disbelief before I shook my head and spoke louder, "You left home. You left Equestria! Everyone and everything you've ever known is gone. No one is worth that! I'm not worth that! You should have stayed; it was a much better place than where I'm from." Lyra came to stand right in front of me, giving me a solemn but not unpleasant look. She then slowly leaned back, rearing onto her hind legs, supporting herself gently with her magic holding up her barrel. Unsure of what she was doing or when/if she'd suddenly drop herself, I lurched forward to catch her left hoof in my soft right hand, my left mechanical one bracing her right elbow. Her back hooves straightened out as she braced herself against me. Her face was closer to mine now than it had ever been, I could see the brown flecks in her golden eyes. She took a sharp breath, but gave me a quick smile with a small nod. "Sometimes," she said gently, "It's not about the darkness around you, or how much light you have nearby; it's about who you're with that gets you through the night." She gently tapped my chest with her right hoof with a quick look down, and then her eyes returned to mine, "Two hearts can beat any darkness, any sadness, any trouble the world can give, whichever one it is." She took another breath, her gaze calming me, "I made my choice, and that's to be with you, wherever we are going, whatever we do. Even if you can't see it in yourself, I think you're special, both to me and as a person, and I want to stay with you until the end of the line, wherever we end up." Before I could make any kind of reply, there was a sound of several latches undoing themselves to our left, followed by a slight release of air and pressure, and a bright teal light. We both looked toward the console of the Tardis, only to find that a section of it had lifted free of it's base, temporarily exposing some intricate mechanisms beneath before it was drowned in an orange and yellow light. I lurched to the left to look back at the Doctor, "What are you doing?" Even as I looked for a response from him I felt Lyra slip from my hands, and I turned to see she was being wrapped up into the embrace of the Tardis' power. I felt the Doctor grip me from behind and drag me back in a rush, "Get out of it's reach!" "What are you doing to her," I yelled as I tried to rip myself out of his grip. "It's not me; it's the Heart of the Tardis. Whatever it's doing it would never hurt anyone, not like this." I stubbornly began to take step after step towards the light that had swallowed Lyra; if I could not free myself, I'd take the Doctor with me to rescue her from whatever it was doing to her! Seeing what I was doing he leaned back and braced himself, strengthening his grip around me until it began to hurt. "The Tardis is telepathic," he said in frustration, "Whatever it's doing it's doing it with Lyra's consent! If you step into the process now it could hurt both of you!" I finally stopped struggling, which prompted the Doctor to loosen his grip somewhat, "What's it doing then?" "I don't know," he said as we looked up at the now spherical orb floating in midair, "but I've seen it do miracles; I'd guess whatever Lyra wants most." The light which had been obscuring our view of Lyra began to draw back like a veil so we could see within. Initially her form looked the same as it ever had, but with time we see that her silhouette was changing. Her hindlegs hung down beneath her, but their structure was changing, and radically so. Her knees flowed to the front of her legs, and those legs began to become streamlined to support her entire weight beneath her. Her hooves began to elongate and grow individual digits, five for each lower appendage. Similarly, her forehooves stretched outward, those hooves also growing their own small digits, one of which separated from the others to sit on its own portion of what was now unmistakably her hands. Her hips grew further apart than they had been before, and her horn and tail began to shrink and vanish from her form. The light obscured her once again, growing brighter as it did. We both had to shield our eyes because of its luminosity. At long last the panel from which the spectacular display had appeared closed and sealed itself shut. The light remained for a moment more, suspended in the air of its own power, but it began to gently float to the floor. As it reached the gantry the power faded slowly, revealing a still glowing orange and yellow human form crouched in fetal position. Small particles of light flowed from off of her hair, back and the clothes that now covered her; much like my own, though noticeably cleaner than my mud covered and bloodied shirt and jeans had become. Taking in a deep breath, the woman slowly unclasped her hands and straightened up, even while remaining crouched. Her white and mint colored hair obscured her face, but gently she brought her hands up directly in front of her eyes. Turning them over, she looked at her fingernails and gasped softly. She brought them back so that she was now staring at her olive toned palms, and hesitantly began to flex each individual finger one by one. She slowly began to rise up so that she stood at her full height. "Woah," she exclaimed unevenly as she caught herself from nearly stumbling forward on her new feet. She then looked up at me, and though her face was much different from what it had been before, her golden and brown flecked eyes were still the same. "Lyra," I asked, somehow still needing confirmation that what I was seeing was real, that this was actually happening right now. She took a step forward, then another. We stood in the exact same way as we had before, though now she stood on two legs without my help at all. She looked at me with a nervous smile, and then she said gently, "I told you, wherever we end up, I want to be right there. You can teach me, and I can teach you. We're in this together now, no matter what." The engines of the Tardis gave a loud and final thump, and we had landed. "Here we are," the Doctor said with a neutral tone, "Early 21st century America, Montana; just outside of civilization." He looked at us silently, hesitantly even for a moment before he spoke again, "This is where you can get off, but it doesn't have to be the last stop. Frankly I'd like you to stick around, and clearly the missus has taken a liking to you; there's all of time and space to explore after all!" I looked to Lyra and quietly murmured, "What do you want?" She looked at me, and I guess she got an idea of what I was really thinking just beneath the surface. She looked to the Doctor and twined her fingers around my hand, "Thanks for the offer, but maybe some other time? You can always stop by to check again later, but right now we've both been through a lot." "We need to stay in one place for a bit," I said pointedly, "we just need someplace to belong for a while." "Okay," he said quietly with a small nod, then repeated, "Okay." He then waved his hand, beckoning us to follow him. He led us away from the control room back into the Tardis interior, straight into an enormous wardrobe room with hundreds of outfits many stories tall. "You're both not meant for this part of the timeline in your current condition," he said, then pointed to me with a small smile, "Especially you, tin man. You need to keep your interesting bits covered, the both of you, especially with your wand Lyra; people may think it's a toy until they see it in action." "Wand," she asked in bewilderment, then looked down, "What wa-" Glancing down at her right side she now saw that she had a specially fit holster of some kind that held a handle covered in gold patterns and an oddly mint colored ivory like substance. Gently reaching for it, she drew it out of the holster to reveal that the rest of that ivory and gold transitioned seamlessly into what looked like a more pointed reproduction of her horn, even down to the same specific swirl and color. Looking at it I could see it was a few inches long, but definitely less than a foot. "If I had to guess it will still grow like normal even if it's a non-attached organ; take good care of both parts of you." He then looked back to me, "You're going to need some extra clothes. Invest in long sleeves and gloves when you start making a living; people asking questions about you will attract all the wrong kinds of attention, human or otherwise." He handed me a pair of each from his collection, which I quietly accepted. "I don't have much use for this myself," he said as we moved along to another room, one that looked like a bank vault, "but I occasionally run into situations where I do need actual currency, albeit rarely." He offered me a simple looking suitcase which I accepted with my now gloved hand. "There's a couple thousand US dollars in there; all a mix of the smaller denominations. It should be enough to cover you for a little while. You can't just sit on them though; those bills are near their end of life in public circulation, so you'll need to get them tucked away in a bank somewhere or spent in the next year or so. Before you start, don't thank me yet." He gave a small smile back to us as he walked to deeper into the vault, "There's still one last thing I can give you." Opening up a safety deposit box, he took out the contents to show us; it looked like a slab of clay with a small pointed chisel. "This is a tablet of Ran'kron, one of a pair. I was going to keep it as a memento of my time with Ditzy Doo, but I think you might have better use for it even than I could." "What does it do," I asked as Lyra accepted the gift from the Doctor. "The tablets are transdimensionally connected. Ran'kron was a natural hotbed of overlapping pocket dimensions, so the inhabitants made these as a way to provide warnings or give calls for help if they got stuck in one and needed to be located. With this you can always reach out to her, send messages to anyone you want through her; I know she'd be honored to pass along anything you'd want to send to your friends back in Equestria." He gave us a sad look, "Consider this all a leg up from me, and recompense for what needed to be done. You can't be with them, but you can still reach out to them; not a terrible consolation." "You know," I said with a half serious tone, "It's getting harder and harder to stay mad at you." "I guess all things considered I can take that as a 'thank you,'" he said with a small laugh. Finally we exited out of the Tardis onto long dry grass. The sun was bright overhead; I thought it must be sometime around ten in the morning for sure. Just to the right of us lay a paved road which led directly into a small one street town. Just down the way on the other side of the road sat a sign saying 'Welcome to Hollow Wood! Population: 582' "Nice, scenic, and out of the way," the Doctor said as he stood in the Tardis doorway, "There are certainly worse places to end up." "I could probably give you pointers on how to get to those places," I replied back without any mirth in my voice, and then turned back to look at him, Lyra glancing back at me over her shoulder before turning around to look at him with me, "Doctor, I do appreciate what you're doing, trying to soften the blow, but this..." I sighed and turned to look at Lyra who met my gaze. I took her hand this time and our fingers fit perfectly together. "It's more than I could have dreamed of, but I wish we could be back there." "I know," he said solemnly. He paused as he hesitated on what he meant to say next, but it seemed he chose to say it all the same, "I know what it's like to not be able to go home; I ran away from mine, but returned just long enough to lose it forever. That doesn't matter though, not when there's so much left to do out there. I think Lyra has it right," he said as he smiled to her, "it's the people you journey with that make life livable. Now make one together worth retelling. Forgive me, won't you?" "I'm not sure I can," I said matter-of-factly, "not yet anyway. I will think about what you've said though; be a good man made if not one born." He nodded again with that same smile, and then turned to Lyra, "I know you'll keep on him for sure: don't let him get away with anything, yeah?" "Never," she playfully said as she bumped her free knuckle to my arm, "Thank you for everything, Doctor, but try and keep to your own advice." The Doctor had been about to duck back into the Tardis when he understood what Lyra had said, and he quickly brought his head out with a quick, "What?" "Even if we can't come with, find some others who can keep you company. She really thinks you need them, and I'd bet she knows you best." The Tardis' engines gave a slight rev immediately after her speaking, which got the Doctor's attention. He silently mouthed the word 'okay' to her before he returned to addressing us both, "Well, I've got to get going. I need to meet with Queen Elizabeth I in 1567; apparently I'm due to become her sworn enemy, and I suppose I need to find out why." He gave us an up-curled smile even as he disappeared back into Tardis, "Safe travels, you two!" We both waved and said our goodbyes, even as the Tardis' engines powered up and the box slowly vanished from the spot, as if it had never been there. We both stood there a moment before I turned and looked at Lyra. "So," I said suddenly, "We're two young people with nothing to our names but the clothes on our backs, your saddlebags, a weird tablet, an invisibility cloak, and the suitcase of ones and fives here," I brought the suitcase up for emphasis, "Where do we want to start?" She looked at me with a smile, "You really wanna know?" "Yeah," I replied, curious as to why she'd worded it that way, "I really do." She took two steps forward to stand in the gravel ditch on the side of the road and sat down. Bringing her bags closer to her, she brought out her lyre and hesitantly began to pluck a chord. She then looked up to me and drummed her fingers in the air, "We've got all the time in the world; I want to break these in. Learning in a new way like this is going to be a fun challenge." I smiled, and with nothing further to say I joined her sitting down in the dirt. The rocks bit through my jeans a little, but being with Lyra, my Lyra, made it perfectly fine. She began a new song, one which I'd never heard her perform, one that seemed to embody a sense of curiosity, wonder, the trepidation of trying new things, but most of all hope. Hope in musical form was pouring out across the badlands, and it was from the chords of her lyre that it came. True, this was not what I'd have wanted if given the choice, but being by her I could live through anything, do anything, and together we'd face the challenge of living in a strange place together. For now though, I focused on her music, and its grand composure.