Zero Room

by FiveyWhooves

Suspicious

Fluttershy was fast asleep on her couch.

Drat, the Doctor(5) thought to himself. He would have to wait until the golden pegasus rose from her slumber in order to ask her to contribute to the most prominent feature on his lapel. Yet the question was much too simple and slightly ridiculous for even the Doctor to wake her up for. The stallion turned a 180 and tip toed up the stairs, which was surprisingly hard to do with hooves on solid wooden flooring. Looks like the Timepony would have to deal with Tegan when he would request a stick of celery the next day.

Sounding in the night was a vague groaning that had no place in a usual nighttime ambiance. The Doctor paused on the middle stair and pricked his ears when he heard it. The sound was hundreds of years old and much too familiar. The TARDIS?!

* * *

"How do you even know where you've ended up?" Amethyst asked from her chair in the Master's TARDIS's main console room. She held the frying pan haphazardly in her hooves and scuffed the handle of it with her toe. "What if we're on the moon? What if we're on the moon and you step outside and. . .well obviously you would know what would come next."

"The TARDIS is more advanced than you think," the Master stated as he turned to a panel when the TARDIS came to a stop. "The shields on the outside protect it and everything from things such as lack of air. And as for accuracy. . ." He flicked a switch. One of a few screens in the top back corner of the room lit up, showing the outside. Amethyst looked up.

"Oh." She felt a little less intelligent after that point and decided it best to keep her big and questioning mouth shut. The young mare looked back up at the screen. "Hey isn't this. . .the middle of nowhere?"

"Apparently. . ." the Master pondered as he scratched his chin. He immediately pulled his hoof down. Scratching with a hoof was a little too odd. "But if this is where the Doctor imposter is and his so-called 'companions'. . .then so be it." He flicked a switch and picked up his weapon he had been carrying with him from the beginning and put it in the front of his coat.

"What is that thing, anyway?" Amethyst asked as she shuffled her legs forward and hopped off of the chair. "I can't imagine you'd get anywhere it you just hit people with that." The Master turned around and flicked the device out in front of him again, the item suspended in his jade magic.

"Watch," he simply stated. Amethyst stepped out of the way, grabbing the frying pan in her teeth and keeping back from the radius of the Master. Now the Master had not yet figured out how exactly to use his device with magic and not hands, but when imagining that the two were like one in the same, it was basically the same thing. The end of the device opened and glowed while being aimed straight at the chair that Amethyst was previously reclining on. A stream of light shot from the device, and in less than a second the chair seemed to have vanished. With a quick motion the Timepony shut off the device and fit it back into his coat.

"Tissue Compression Eliminator," he then added. Amethyst put down the pan and trotted over to where the chair used to be, feeling the floor to make sure that whatever he did wasn't some sort of trick. That's when she felt the tiniest flea-sized object. Her eyes narrowed and she lowered her face to the floor. It was the chair!

"So it just. . .makes things. . .tiny. . ." Amethyst said.

The Master felt a laugh rising in his depths at the pony's putrid innocence. But he kept his composure.

"Exactly," he replied.

"That's pretty cool I guess," the mare said as she stood up straight again. "We're going to use it on the imposter pony?" She lifted her frying pan in her magic once more.

"I am going to be taking care of him," the Master specified. "You will stay here. This imposter is much more dangerous than you can imagine."

"Fine," Amethyst sighed as she dropped the pan on the floor. The Master smirked and turned for the open door. Curiously the young mare went the opposite direction and looked at the door that led to the rest of the TARDIS. She then rejected the idea and sat back on the floor, remembering the times when the Doctor that she knew always mentioned that the TARDIS was "infinate" and "one could get lost in it for centuries". She didn't want to take the chance of this TARDIS being the same.

The Master exited the TARDIS and closed the door. He stood out in the silence of the night, staring at the openness of the nature around him, and let his eyes space out of focus. It wasn't the calm that made him so pleased as to bring a crooked smile to his chin.

It was the gullible mare in his TARDIS waiting to do any task he asked of her!

* * *

The house of Fluttershy was undoubtedly the hardest place to sneak around in, with or without hooves. The Doctor found that because her house was so peaceful and lacking of sound from anything regular that the slightest disturbance could wake the pony. . .or any of her animal friends that were also snoozing in the main room of her home. It was an understatement to say that the Doctor found it a great victory to finally make it to the door.

The door.

With it's. . .door knob.

Round door knob.

WHY DID IT HAVE TO BE HOOVES?! the Doctor complained in his mind. It could have been TENTACLES or even EXTRA ARMS but no. . .HOOVES! HOW DID PONIES EVEN OPEN THEIR DOORS WITH HOOVES?!

So it took a very long time to get to the door, and it sure took quite a bit of jimmying and fiddling and slipping and silent cursing before the Doctor managed to turn the door knob enough to release the door from it's locked position. The Timepony gratefully pushed open the door slowly and slid out.

Outside, the night was just as quiet as the inside of Fluttershy's house, only the faint sound of crickets, cicadas, and bullfrogs playing their midnight symphony quietly in the background. A chilly wind blew through the Doctor's mane, and the pony instantly put a hoof up to his head. Quickly he nuzzled his nose into his coat pocket, grabbed the brim of his hat with his teeth and flicked it out before tossing it up into the breeze and jumping into the cap. It wasn't only his style sense, but it just felt natural to walk outdoors with something covering his head.

As the Doctor stepped carefully along the path that ran down from Fluttershy's cottage, he kept his eyes wide in the faint moonlight, losing some of its credibility due to the incoming clouds. Where in the world could that TARDIS engine sound have come from? It was most certainly outside and not in his imagination. . .

There were a couple minutes that passed by, and the Timepony only made it down to the end of the bridge, yet he still kept his ears open. Funny thing about pony ears, the Doctor found; pony ears had the capability of turning, flattening, scanning the area, much more useful than humanoid ears. Nothing else sounded through the silence, however, that would allow the Doctor to actually use these new ears of his. . .

Stopping at the edge of Fluttershy's yard and coming near a thin forest, the Doctor decided to give up. Perhaps it was something from his mind, or perhaps he was just hoping too hard to get his own TARDIS back. He shrugged, which was a weird experience as an equine, and slowly turned around. He turned again to the forest. Okay, now he was just hoping for too much. The Doctor decisively turned back for the comfort of the cottage.

There was a rustle in the bushes by the forest.

Nope, the Doctor said in his mind. That is only a fantastical idea of mine that something--

The rustle.

That is definitely something! The now excited Doctor hopped back with his nose toward the trees. Was there really someone? Was it his TARDIS? was it possibly the other face of his that he had so foolishly missed earlier?

The forest was still and dark, showing no inclination of anything hiding in its depths. . .except there was certainly something there. The Doctor could faintly hear a deep breathing brushing through the air.

"Hello there?" the Doctor dared to whisper into the trees. "Is someone there?"

There was no response. Not a verbal one, at least. There was just a chuckle, blending into the darkness around it, madness and unhealthy glee tangled into it's tones. The Doctor and his new "pony ears" could recognize it instantly, the vocals coming from a voice that always made his heart rev up in slight disturbance and that sent a shiver down his spine, and he took a couple of steps back, knowing that this truly had to be impossible, yet the possibility of it existing twisting all of the reality of his mind. His breathing stopped as his question was responded.

"Only your greatest adversary, my dear Doctor."