//------------------------------// // 23 - TARDIS // Story: Limits of the Horizon // by Beware The Carpenter //------------------------------// Clastic Strain stared; uncertain of what he saw or if he should believe what he was seeing. He’d walked around the back of Dinky’s cottage to get here; it was just an empty lot, but the wardrobe opened into the courtyard of a castle. Benefair and Crackle Jack pressed against him to get a better look, but he wouldn’t, or couldn’t, move; “…How-” “My father’s an alien; this is his spaceship called the Time and Relative Dimension in Space; TARDIS for short. He stole it from a museum on his home world in another dimension and ran away to explore the universe; crashed into a solar storm, ended up here and met my mom. He was curious because she was in her twenties and didn’t have a cutie-mark, invited her to go time traveling with him and then got really curious when they found out that my mother’s special talent was wielding an alien technology that wouldn’t even be invented for another three hundred and twenty years. They also fucked. That's how I got here. Any questions?” “… You’re father’s an alien?” “Yes;” Snorted Dinky irritably, “Weren’t you listening to anything I just said, or do I have to repeat myself all over again?” Crackle Jack coughed like he was choking on the enormous grin taking over his face, “Alternate dimensions? You meant there really are an infinite number of parallel universes, like in Daring Do?” Dinky deadpanned, one eye twitching; like she was resisting the urge to stab him, “No. There’s only one universe, but when you move vertically through length the desktop of the universe changes. I’d explain it to you, but then your heads would blow up.” “Really?” “No.” That shut Crackle Jack up, but Benefair picked up the pace, “Where’s your father now?” “Unavailable.” “If your mother's cutie-mark is bubbles, how does that count as advanced alien technology?” asked Clastic Strain, “We have those already.” Dinky grew more solemn, her ears flattening to the sides of her head, “They’re not bubbles.” “What are they then?” “If I need to tell you, I will.” Dinky looked back and forth among the siblings, “Any more questions?” “You haven’t answered any of the questions we just asked.” “That’s because you asked the wrong ones.” Clastic Strain paused, Dinky was right; only one question really mattered here. “How is this going to help us rescue the prisoners?” Dinky smirked, “The TARDIS can teleport.” “How far?” “Anywhere in all of time and space.” “…So we can travel through time… to yesterday and warn the town before it’s attacked?” “Nope.” “…Why not?” “In the first place the TARDIS can’t cross her own time stream; in the second place, I don’t know how to drive it.” “What?” “I don’t know how to drive the TARDIS. If I did, do you really think I would have stayed in this backwater town for the last twenty years?” “Then how does this help!?” Dinky laughed, “I’m going to guess!” “…What?” “If I activated the time engines, we could end up at any point in eternity. Space travel is different; so long as I use the earth’s magnetic core as a homing beacon, I'm mostly sure that I can keep us on this planet.” That didn’t sound comforting, “Then how can you hit a group of a few hundred buffalo and ponies?” Dinky took a breath, “The unicorn in the palanquin didn’t really have an MQ of twelve forty-four; there were two magical signatures coming from it, but only one was a lifeform. I believe there was one unicorn with an MQ of about three hundred, and some kind of magic booster like a ring or an amulet that had about three times that. I didn’t know you could make a booster that powerful with the materials available on this world, but I’m willing to bet it’s unique, and I have its signature recorded in my screwdriver.” Dinky held up some kind of wand that would be useless for putting in screws. "I can program the TARDIS’ scanners to seek out that booster, and then should be able to get us within a few miles of it. Assuming that the booster, unicorn, buffalo and prisoners are still together, we can use the TARDIS’s weaponry to knock everyone out, free the hostages, do what we want with the buffalo, and I’m keeping the booster. Agreed?” “… If the TARDIS can do all that… why do you even need us?” “You need to have traveling companions whenever you go anywhere in the TARDIS” Dinky chirped, “It’s the rules.” “Since when have you cared about rules!?” Dinky opened her mouth to release a retort, but then slowed; “…This… could go wrong.” “How?” “…If I do the calculations wrong; or if the booster doesn't act as a beacon, we might veer off course and end up anywhere in the world, or, in a worst case scenario we could end up floating in space, with no way of ever getting home. If that happens… I don’t want to be alone.” “…How likely is that exactly?” “Clastic Strain” asked Dinky, “If you had a chance to rescue the hostages without me, but knew at going into battle, you had about a one in four chance of dying, would you do it?” “…Yes.” Dinky took a step closer, “I won’t force you to come with me, the door is right behind you if you want to leave; the TARDIS will erase your memory of being here; you’ll wander back to what’s left of the town not knowing where you’ve been for the last hour… but I’d like to think that living with me in a space ship that can create anything you want, is a bit more desirable to you than dying.” Clastic Strain took a deep breath; “I’m in.” He looked over his shoulder to Benefair and Crackle Jack, “You two should probably-” “Will our presence actually help get Winnow back?” asked Benefair. “Yes.” There was a strange conviction in Dinky’s voice that Clastic Strain had only heard a few times before, but sounded like true sincerity. “Then there’s no way you’re leaving us behind.” Asserted Crackle Jack. “Promise?” asked Dinky hopefully. “Yea,” confirmed Clastic Strain, “We promise.” Dinky nodded, her typical spark returning to her, “Thank you; you don’t know what it meant to me knowing that you’ll be with me if things go wrong. I mean now, even if we do get stranded for eternity, at least there would be enough of us for basic mating purposes.” Clastic Strain raised an eyebrow, Crackle Jack gave an audible ‘huh?’ and Benefair stepped back, raising one hoof while her face turned beat red; “There is no way that I am going to be sleeping with either of my brothers!” “I never suggested you should sugarcube.” Smiled Dinky, giving her a wink; “Now, onto our next matter of business then, time for bed.” She stepped forwards with a sly grin on her face, rubbing her hooves together as her eyes darting between Clastic Strain, Benefair and Crackle Jack, “How do you three want it?” The royal siblings exchanged brief, worried glances, and responded in near-unison, “…What?” “I won’t be able to safely lock onto the magic booster until the buffalo stop moving, which will probably be in about eleven hours when they stop at sunset. I strongly recommend that that time would be best utilized with the four of us in bed.” “…What?” Dinky stomped her hoof on the ground, “Do I really have to spell it out for you? It’s been a long, stressful night for all of us, and we could be dead this time tomorrow; we should all go to bed, and get some sleep, so were fresh for the rescue." Dinky flicked her horn for a moment and the clear sky over the courtyard turned to a star crested tapestry of night, "I’ve already removed mine and my mother’s rooms from the areas you can access, as you three have no business being there; but you three need your own rooms to sleep in. I can make any sort of room you want here, so what sort of architecture do you want your rooms to be; Canterlot, Saddle Arabian, Oatlantis, Griffon, Klingon?” After a long pause, Benefair sheepishly spoke up, “Can I just have a normal room.” Dinky snorted, “There’s no such thing as ‘normal’! I assume you’re asking for something like a guestroom in Celestia’s palace.” Benefair nodded, “Sure, I can do that.” Dinky closed her eyes as her horn glowed momentarily, and a door morphed out of the stone wall to their right. Benefair looked at it for a moment, then slowly opened the door, gave a nod of approval and went in. “You? Asked Dinky, turning to Crackle Jack. Crackle Jack hesitated a moment; glanced up to where the sky had turned from day to night in a moment and then smiled, “Surprise me.” “OK.” A trap door opened in the moon, directly above Crackle Jack who then proceeded to fall upwards into it, and greeted with a cascade of water when he entered the hole, as though the moon had transformed into an impromptu, reverse gravity water slide. “Second door to your right!” shouted Dinky as Crackle Jack disappeared from view. Clastic Strain froze for a moment and then instinctively jumped into the air after his brother to try and catch him, and was repulsed by an invisible force field about half way through the air. He fell back to the ground indignantly and Dinky calmly pulled him to his hooves, “He’s OK, but yea; I can pretty much make anything I want happen inside the TARDIS; ever since I learned to tap my magic into the TARDIS’s desktop mainframe. Even daddy could never do that.” She took a step closer, “Now what about you, what do you want?” “…Is it too late for me to go back to Ponyville and forget this ever happened.” “Yup!” Grinned Dinky, “You promised you’d come and now as a Canterlot Prince you’re bound by your oath. Now where do you want to sleep?” “Can-can I just want a room like my one in Canterlot… no weird stuff.” Dinky nodded and closed her eyes; at first nothing happened, then one of the walls began receding into a very long hallway, finally stopping about a hundred yards away with a door in perfect likeness to his own bedroom door. “Let’s take a walk?” asked Dinky slyly, already walking down the hallway, Clastic Strain had no choice but to follow, and then realized that the ‘floor’ was more of a conveyor belt, like the kind griffons put food animals on and that ended in a meat grinder. The conveyor belt stopped stopped briefly at a framed picture on the wall, taken in impossible clarity and color of a plateau on top of an, impossibly high, mountain snow-crested mountain. The plateau was surprisingly spacious, and packed with members of at least two dozen species; pony, griffon, dragon, minotaur, and deer being the only ones Clastic Strain could name, gathered around Dinky’s mom in a wedding dress, a brown earth pony in a bow tie and… Nightmare Moon, who appeared to be conducting the ceremony. “It’s my parent’s wedding,” smiled Dinky, “Three years before I was born.” Clastic Strain strained his eyes; the picture was obviously a selfie taken by a small lavender filly of about eight, face shrouded by her party mask and long blond mane blond mane; “But… Isn’t that you?” “Yea.” “Then how-” “Because time travel is awesome!” Declared Dinky, flicking her horn and causing the conveyer belt to progress to a painting of some kind of floating metal island built above a smooth sea that appeared golden yellow despite the sun being high in the background, “And this is the resort where my parents spent the first three months of their honey moon; it’s built on a moon in the Cotari system, actually made out of honey.” She grinned before adding, “Well, not actual honey. And it’s not actually moon; technically it’s alive and slightly carnivorous, but there are some lovely views.” Clastic Strain wasn’t sure how to process that, but before he had a chance to he was being dragged further down the hallway to a picture of a purple stallion playing a cello who Dinky identified as Clover the Clever, and then on to a mass formation of armored pegasi, led by a burly stallion in a bronze helmet, who Dinky called Commander Hurricane. “By the way” she added, “That scar that he supposedly got fighting winged hydras, actually happened when he tried to get fresh with my mom.” It went on like that, picture after picture with no room for thought and they never seemed to get any closer to the end of the hallway until it raced up on them all at once, with one final picture hung outside the doorframe. “And this is me and my family having dinner with my Uncle Discord.” The picture was… Discord flying through the air, carrying Dinky’s family on his back, their manes billowing in the wind as they charged after a herd of flying… cheeseburgers. Dinky’s father was sitting on the back of Discord’s neck, his right hoof poised to throw a hunting spear through one veggie patty, with his left hoof wrapped protectively around Dinky in front of him who was leaning far to the right as her spear plunged through the center of another burger. Further back, Derpy as standing upright between Discord’s wings, with her mouth open, clutching a butterfly net with both forehooves to catch a swarm of passing hayfries. “But… Discord is evil.” Dinky stamped her hooves on the ground shattering the picture, and every other in the hallway, like glass; whose shards disappeared before they hit the floor. “Evil? When? What gives you the right to have an opinion about him? What do you actually know about him that you haven’t heard from Twilight or Celestia that you think you could understand his motives? I knew him when he was young. I saw the civilization his people built that thrived for two and a half thousand years culture, art and science unequalled in this solar system before or since then. I’ve listened to ‘Discord’ sing a solo baritone in an a cappella choir of eight thousand draquoni, who could raise mountains with song. I visited him a thousand years later, and watched him come terrifyingly close to turning the oceans to blood; and I helped stop him.” She prodded him hard in the chest, pushing herself back more than him, “And I’ve walked in ages where alicorns are extinct, and have faded into myth and legend.” She stomped her hoof one more time for good measure, “Are you impressed yet?” “…Yes.” “Good, because I intend to have you flabbergasted by the time you leave here.” “After the last hour… I don’t think there’s much more you could do to mess with my head then you already have.” “Oh?” Dinky cried indignantly, as if she’d been insulted, “Really?” Clastic Strain blinked; the next thing he was aware of, his back was pressed flat against the door. Dinky was standing on the tips of her hind hooves, her arms wrapped around his neck and her lips were pressed against his, her tongue rubbing against his clenched teeth and gums until it gained access to his mouth. Clastic Strain blushed, as the blood raced to his face… and somewhere else. His hooves tensed in front of him, unwilling to move, but his wings swayed to their own accord, eagerly exploring her captivating curves. Dinky was now standing on her left leg only, her right twisting around Clastic Strain’s left as her tail flicked up between her legs, wrapping around his- “OK goodnight.” Dinky detached herself from him, at every point, in one fluid movement and began trotting casually back down the hallway as Clastic Strain came crashing back to the floor. “D-D-Dinky?” “Goodnight Clastic Strain.” she called sounding bored, not even bothering to look over her shoulder or slow down as he horn blinked and she disappeared. Clastic Strain stared down the empty hallway for some time after she had gone. What exactly did ‘flabbergasted’ mean to Dinky?