//------------------------------// // Part Three: The Importance of Companions Present and Future. // Story: Dr Whooves and the Missing Companion // by Paganbrony //------------------------------// Part Three: The Importance of Companions Present and Future. The Doctor finished staring and decided to get on with the matter at hoof, addressing the stallion sat still grinning in front of him he kept it simple. “I don’t have time for this.” “Ooh somewhere more important is there? Hark at you mister ‘I don’t have time…’ Well you’re stuck here and I need your help.” “Can’t it wait; I’ve just left a young mare passed out in the snow all alone and possibly badly injured!” “Ah… Some pony we know?” “Octavia?” “Come again?” “Young grey mare black mane, I… We! Just rescued her from a Timberwolf…?” It took a moment but a flicker of recognition passed across the stallions face. “Ah yes now I remember, blimey that was a while ago… Yes I remember now, the musical one with a terrible right hook…” The pair rubbed their chins at the shared memory and upon noticing each others response both laughed before the Doctor got back on track. “Anyway I have to get to her, she’s out of her time and hurt, and it’s entirely my fault, our fault.” “I know but you can go straight back after you help me rescue some ponies… I lost, don’t worry she’ll be fine... I think…” “Sorry did you just say I think?” “Can’t remember… I sure she’ll be fine… Once we’re done here.” “How old are you? (The Doctor ignored the others vague dismissal and pushed on) Look never mind that, how did you lose the ponies in the first place?” “Well… I was trying to get them home… (Both Doctors shifted uncomfortably as they reflected on how often that had gone wrong in the past) And then we landed on this planet… …And well… They got sucked into a micro-verse.” The Doctor ignored the obvious comparison in their predicaments and briefly studied his environment for the first time; the Tardis computer had refused to give him readouts before he’d stepped forth. Fortunately studying the environment didn’t take long since the landscape was pretty much sand dust and large rocks and boulders, the Doctor unimpressed looked up at the large jagged rocks that formed a neat circle surrounding them, the center part housing what looked like a pedestal with a large shiny box on top. And next to that the other Tardis which he noted was at an odd angle in what appeared to be a small crater, trying not to comment he returned his gaze to the young stallion in front of it as he yet again adjusted his bow tie still grinning like a Gallophreyian schoolchild. “Don’t you ever stop grinning…” “Only when I’m angry,” the other Doctor looking him up and down rubbed his hooves together as he continued. “Right Ho! So I need you to go into the micro-verse, and then you find the ponies while I stay here and wait for your signal to bring you and them back.” “Why do I have to be the one to go in, they are ‘your’ companions after all?” The younger looking Doctor pulled nervously at his bow-tie his grin looking a little strained as he shrugged. “Haven’t got all day, spit it out…” The Doctor narrowed his eyes as he imagined what would come next based on previous experience, nothing nice was a good bet. “Ah well you see… I invited this mare to join me on a quick jaunt… And well there were a trio of these noisy little beasts who somehow followed us into the Tardis, they completely ignored me and were climbing all over the console…” Turning around as he spoke he ran a hoof through his mane and looked about. “And…?” “OK long story short we landed… Well more sort of Crashed really… I took my eyes off them for a second and they’d disappeared, actually more accurately they tripped an ancient trap no doubt set to catch any tomb robbers.” The Doctor looked about once more before he turned back to his other self. “I don’t see any tombs.” The younger Doctor looked around for a second before slightly annoyed he replied. “Well I did say ancient… The whole planets reverted to dust sand and rocks…” The Doctor shrugged as he rocked back an forth on his hooves for a moment before he approached the pedestal whipped out his sonic screwdriver with his teeth and scanned all around it before scanning the large ornate box on top. “Done that…” “Well now I’m doing it.” “I already know what it will say.” “But I don’t…” The Doctor stopped as he noticed the younger stallion was observing him intently and walking back and forth looking at him from different angles with a curious expression. “What?” “Well it’s just I’ve never seen it from the outside before… That’s skinny that is, I mean proper skinny like a match stick pony…” “Oi stop it you and help me figure out how we’re going to do this…” “All right… All right, but you have to admit…” “What?” “That is proper skinny.” BACK IN CANTERLOT It had been a week since Octavia’s arrival around two hundred years into her future and it had been eye opening in ways she doubted even the most crazed fantasist of her time could imagine. Although for the most part things seemed very familiar, when Vinyl produced a map of Equestria for her to see she was stunned as to how far her civilization had spread and all of the new townships and cities that had been built since her time. But it was the seemingly small things that her rescuer Vinyl had shown her that made her goggle in amazement. Things that Vinyl considered normal like her butchering of common language and it’s meanings in what she called slang baffled Octavia, but nothing made her head hurt like Vinyl’s idea of what constituted music in the modern age. To Octavia the synthesized sounds and electronic noises were barely audible over what Vinyl referred to as bass, but when she dismissed classical as being that dusty old stuff only old codgers listen to nowadays, that was when Octavia despite her rising temper gave Vinyl her somewhat old fashioned sounding opinion (to Vinyl at least) of the modern alternative. It took the pair nearly a whole day to speak to one another after the resulting argument, but eventually Vinyl agreed not to play her music whilst Octavia was recovering for the time being. Food was another problem since her arrival as Vinyl seemed to live almost entirely on what she called fast food; Octavia had remarked that if it had indeed been at any point fast, that time was long gone as it had the appearance and smell of being well and truly dead both in flavor and goodness. Octavia soon learned pot noodle and pizza although filling lacked the cultured and refined tastes of the cuisine she was used to, however the loud rumbling of her stomach of which she was most embarrassed convinced her that crisps cakes pizza and noodles which Vinyl also called junk food (something Octavia agreed was a good analogy) were a small price to pay in adapting to what Vinyl called the modern way. During the first few days of her stay she learned many things but as she grew stronger and her head wound healed Octavia began to contemplate her future. After all that had happened she still believed the Doctor would return, but in the mean time she was at the mercy of Vinyl who according to her was looking after her parents bookstore and their rooms above while they were away in Manehatten. Octavia had been astounded when Vinyl had told her about the metropolis Manehatten had become, in Octavia’s time it had only just been established as a township! But as it quickly became clear Vinyl hadn’t told her parents she had lost her flat due to overdue rent and would be hopefully staying after they returned, not to mention of course explaining the grey mare that had been left on their doorstep. That grey mare sat looking out over Canterlot through the living room window as Vinyl busied herself cleaning the mess she’d caused throughout the place since her parents had left, cleaning at the insistence of Octavia who at first had tried to ignore it but in the end had to mention it due to her total aversion to the piles of what Vinyl called pizza boxes and a sea of soda pop bottles and other rubbish including all of Vinyl’s ‘musical equipment’… The silence was broken only by Vinyl’s cursing at the piece of forgotten pizza she stood on as she tugged a large and mostly filled rubbish bag across the floor in front of the green sofa sat with a small coffee table in front of it in the middle of the small living room. Octavia briefly took her eyes off the city to look at the large gash slowly healing on her forehead in her reflection before turning to Vinyl her decision made. “I wish to go for a walk!” Vinyl still trying to scrape the pizza off her hoof as she sat on the sofa looked up puzzled. “Where would you like to go?” “I want to go see the Opera House site and then to Canterlot library, if I am ever going to get home then I must have lived my life, I want to see my future! From the past’s point of view!” “Cool” “That means good right?” “Yes” “Right… Well then, shall we? I mean if you want would you accompany me?” Vinyl nodded as the pair readied to leave, she still didn’t wholly believe the grey mare’s story but Vinyl was a curious mare and was well known for getting into all kinds of trouble since she was a filly unlike her prim and proper new friend who she followed out the door down the stairs and onto the street. Behind them freshly stuck in the window of the bookstore was a speedily drawn and colored blue box on a sheet of paper with a grey coloured mare next to it and the words, ask inside written at the bottom.