Once in a Blue Moon

by Trouble-Shooter

Ch. 5: Lighter Than a Feather, Heavier Than a Mountain

Chapter Five: Lighter Than a Feather, Heavier Than a Mountain

In the TARDIS: Day ?, Year ? Of Celestia's Reign

Celestia looked at herself in the mirror in what the Doctor referred to as the TARDIS' “guest bathroom,” which in reality was as large as a decent-sized bedroom. Her white coat stained with dirt and grime from the crypt, her pink mane disheveled and limp. Her horn lit, starting the water on the bathtub as she gave herself a once-over, noting feathers out of place on her wings and a small chip in her horn from the shield spell detonation earlier. No wonder my head hurts as bad as it does. At least it'll heal.

She waited until the tub was mostly full then turned the water off, gingerly sinking into the warmth and trying to relax. He had been rather adamant about getting herself cleaned up and presentable...

* * *

“We've got some time, Celestia. Why don't you get cleaned up?” inquired the Doctor as he fiddled with the TARDIS controls, which were connected to some utterly incomprehensible contraption holding the Elements of Harmony. The princess started awake at his question; the column was still rising and falling rhythmically in the center of the room, and the low wheezing sound it made had lulled her into a light doze on a couch incongruously mounted against the central dais' railing. “We're safe for now,” he added, “But I can't keep the old girl out of phase like this for too long. It's rough on the engines, and we're going to need her in working order to pull this off.”

What “this” was, she still had no idea. She said as much to the Time Lord, then asked, “I'd rather not wait to rescue Luna if we don't have to, Doctor. Why don't we just go to the Moon, use the Elements of Harmony to free her, then take her home?”

Clucking his tongue against his teeth, the chestnut stallion took a moment to compose his answer. “Because it's too dangerous, Celestia,” he murmured quietly, “The danger I spoke of was not entirely from the empathivores, it was also from you.”

The princess just blinked at him. “Me?” she asked, gob-smacked, “What in the Pony Hell of Poorly-Shod Prancing On Hot Coals are you talking about?” At his perplexed, “Pony Hell of what now?”, she added quietly, “Ponies have a lot of hells.”

“Interesting spiritual outlook you have there. Look, it's like this.” He sat down next to her, gesturing with his forehooves. “You're distraught over your sister, you're horrified by the animated corpses of your family recently trying to devour you, and I'd wager that you're feeling rather guilty about all of it, like it's your fault somehow but no one will tell you. Am I right?”

For such a strange pony, he was alarmingly insightful. She nodded slowly, “There's more to it, but yes.”

“Then by no means should I bring you to your sister until you've got your royal head straightened out, Your Highness. These things feed on negative emotion, and survive as artron energy. You're short on one right now, having drained yourself during the scrap, but overflowing with the former. If you set so much as one hoof on the Moon while they're in control of your sister, you're going to look like a five-star all-you-can-eat buffet to them. And even if you weren't,” he continued, gesturing for her to follow as he walked over to the Elements, “These are another problem entirely.”

Celestia looked at the device he had placed the Elements into. She recognized various bits: a colander, several mismatched and oversized coffee mugs holding an element each spaced evenly around the rim, and what looked like an egg-beater. Other parts were less identifiable, with glowing crystals, strange bits of metal, and a socket where the Doctor's screwdriver currently resided. He reached over and flipped a switch on the TARDIS console, and the Elements began glowing, each with their own color which streamed into the now-whirling egg-beater, as if it were stirring a rainbow.

“These are meant to respond to certain empathic wavelengths,” the Time Lord said quietly, as if afraid to disturb the Elemental crystals, “On their own and in unused hands – pardon, hooves – they are still quite powerful, but terribly unpredictable. Much like a TARDIS, they're meant to be handled by six operators; no more, no less. More than that,” he added, “They have to be possessed of certain emotional and personality traits to properly synchronize with the crystals, otherwise it won't work at all, or it'll go wild.”

He toggled another switch. “I'm feeding them a wave that is inverse to what they are supposed to use. You might want to stand back a bit.” The colors emitted by the Elements turned darker, appearing like distorted versions of their true selves, looking almost toxic. A low, discordant hum started to build from the device, rising in pitch until the egg-beater in the center abruptly turned to stone, smoking and hissing for a moment before it exploded into pieces no bigger than a pebble.

Despite herself, the princess jumped back at the sight, staring wide-eyed at the Doctor. He looked at her sadly and remarked in a gentle tone, “If you were to try and use these on Luna in your current state, the best that would happen to her is that she would be killed. The worst... it would set up an unstable standing wave of negatively-charged artron energy that, when it finally collapsed, would shatter the Moon, snuff out the Sun, and split your planet open like a watermelon struck with a sledgehammer – and that's only funny to watch if it's done by one comedian in particular, and if you're wearing a mackintosh in the front row.”

Not quite sure what to make of the mental image that inspired, the alicorn mare blinked and looked at the earth pony. “So what do we do, then?”

“Incorrect question, Your Highness! I am going to go lay the groundwork for figuring out just what we are going to do, while you are in the guest bathroom, making yourself presentable for your subjects.”

“...What.”

“Listen to me, Celestia. Your people need you. Right now, we're out of phase, between the seconds, and no time has passed outside since we hopped into the TARDIS and threw the switch, but we can't stay here forever. Time still passes for you and I just like it always does, but the longer you stay in temporal stasis, the greater chance there is that something awful is going to befall your country and your world, and I'm going to need a man-- no... a woman – no, a mare on the inside (I have got to get used to these equine terms!) I'm going to need a mare on the inside to help prepare for what we need to do. In order to do that,” he said, standing up and pointing a hoof at one of the side doors in the TARDIS control room, “You're going to need to look like the princess you are, because you're going to have to get in among your people and try to find the ponies we're going to need to use these!” He pointed at the Elements, then back at the door. “Guest bathroom's in there. Now, with all due respect to your royal pony-ness, get in there and clean yourself up before we land.”

* * *

He had a point, mused the princess, I do feel better now. She shook herself out of her reverie and rose from the tub, levitating a towel over to dry herself off. Looking herself over in the mirror again, she could see that she even looked a bit better. In the distance down the hall, she could hear the TARDIS' engine crescendo with a slight vibration through the floor, then settle down with the quiet THOOM that indicated the timeship had landed.

Staring at herself in the mirror, she focused her magic through her horn, wincing as the chip in the tip disrupted its spell matrix ever so slightly. With a soft twang and several puffs of displaced air, golden decorations appeared out of her personal storage spell, landing on the bath mat. She stepped into the golden shoes, carefully levitated the yoke of authority over her neck, and finally settled her crown on her brow, shaking her head slightly to let her pink mane fall over one side of her face after the headgear had settled. Well, this is about as regal as I ever get. Time to see if I make a good impression. Although this... she snorted, puffing a lock of pink out of her eye, This needs something done to it.

Squinting against the headache that was starting to thump at her brain again, she focused her horn and carefully wove a glamour about her mane and tail, turning them from straight, limp, pink frizziness into a flowing tri-colored mass of hair that seemed to sparkle in the light. Another tweak to the spell made the pastel colors flow with the solar winds, and a final push sent the enchantment into the crown, locking it there. There. That will not only make me look like the goddess they think me to be, but I can take it off and still mingle anonymously, as long as I take care to disguise my wings and cutie mark. I wonder if I could enchant a set of socks to do that? Or maybe a sweater-vest of some kind?

Opening the door to the bathroom with her horn, she trotted back to the TARDIS' control chamber and paused for effect at the top of the stairs, offering the Doctor a small smile as he looked up, dumbstruck. “Well? What do you think?”

She hadn't meant it to sound coy, but it clearly came across that way to the stallion. His sonic screwdriver dropped from his mouth, clattering on the grating around the console and shaking him out of his trance. “Oh! Um. Ah. Yes. Yes, that will do very well, Princess. Very regal. Love the hair, the solar wind effect is brilliant, goes with the whole sun thing on your, ah, erm, side? Hip? Flank? Not that I'm studying that too closely, of course, because that's not what I do. I am the Doctor, I don't play Doctor, after all, and --” He gave her another of those smart aleck grins that always seemed to say more than his words did. “I'm babbling, aren't I?”

Smirking, the alicorn stepped down to join him on the main platform. “Yes, but that's quite alright. It's been awhile since I had anyone babble at me that wasn't a relative of mine or someone who wasn't intimidated by my position.” She looked at the now-quiet time rotor, and twitched an ear uncomfortably. “Doctor, I have a question.”

At his nod, she continued, “You're obviously a pony of knowledge and wisdom and incredible power. You have this time-travelling box of yours. Why can't we just go back into the past, and stop this empathivore infection before it even started?”

“Time,” he replied after a moment, “is a set of fixed points that have to happen in the proper order. Time itself does everything it can to correct for that. Everything else can get all wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey, but those fixed points have to happen or else everything changes.” That dark, haunted look from their first conversation had returned to his eyes, echoed in his voice as he continued, “I was reminded sharply of that not too long ago when I tried to be someone that I should never, ever be. You're right – I do have great power, and terrible capacity. If I had succeeded, it would have changed millions of years of history in the blink of an eye, and the shockwave from that change would have wiped half the universe clean of life, killed billions – trillions, before they were ever even born.

“Discord's infection has happened. It has always happened, and it always will happen. Once I step into a timeline, I can only affect things going forward from my own personal timeline – sometimes it gets a bit complicated – I got thrown back in time forty years by a statue, once, and only managed to get back on track thanks to a girl I had met forty years later objective time, but only the day before subjective time.” Sighing a little, he sat on his haunches and looked up and off into nothing. “Since my people went away, a lot of the Laws of Time have gotten a bit... relaxed, but one remains inviolate: No one should ever cross their own timeline and change things. Normal people, it would affect only themselves, maybe blow out their sun from the localized time-rip, but someone like you or I doing that, well... we're back to the watermelon with the sledgehammer again.”

“I see,” replied Celestia softly, more than a little shaken. Suddenly, sitting next to the Time Lord and seeing the distances he had traveled and losses he had endured reflected in his eyes, she felt very, very small. “Well then, Doctor. What do we do now?”

“You are going to do your royal duty, go out there, and rule your people, as justly and fairly as possible. You're going to foster peace and harmony where you can, and stand fast against those who don't want to let you do so. You're going to create the kind of nation that will generate the ponies we need to stop this once and for all” His faraway look vanished in another one of those expansive smiles. “And you're going to go out there and raise the Sun, for it's a brand new day in Canterlot.”

“Canterlot?”

“You like that? I just came up with it.”

Chuckling softly, she murmured, “Canterlot... it works. You'll have to tell me where you got that name sometime, Doctor.” Looking at the door, she murmured, “And what will you be doing?”

His smile faltering slightly, he glanced up toward where the Moon would be sitting in the sky. “I'm going to be a good Doctor and go make a house call. Listen, Celestia... I don't know when I will be back. Something about this planet is throwing off the TARDIS' guidance systems, and her steering's a bit... iffy.”

“'Iffy?'”

“I could be back tomorrow, could be next week, or it could be a few decades from now. You have one other task: Keep the Elements hidden and safe, and whatever you do, do not use them! Your life and the lives of all the ponies in the world depend on it.” Suddenly, his face went from serious back to grinning. “Now that's something I never thought I'd say!”

Shaking her head and smiling despite the serious conversation, Celestia laughed, “Doctor, you are so... random!”

Still grinning, he drawled, “I know. Great fun, innit?”

* * *

The village atop the mountain did not have a name, for the tribes of ponies who lived there merely thought of it as home. They were mostly unicorns and pegasi, with a scattering of hardier breeds of earth ponies who were able to survive the harsh winters that the higher elevation brought. Since the Long Night had fallen across Equestria two weeks ago, it had been harsher still. Without the sun to warm the stone or to light their way, survival had become a touch-and-go prospect.

Suddenly, a strange wind blew as a keening, groaning sound filled the air, followed by the sound of a rock dropping a long way to the bottom of a ravine. From between two columns of stone that had been worn by wind and water to form a rough circle at just above pony-height, an alabaster figure of graceful proportion, broad wing, and long slender horn appeared, her mane flowing in an unseen wind. Curious ponies gathered around, frightened by the apparition, but hopeful that this meant some kind of positive change.

Spreading her wings and rearing up, framed in the circle with the East at her back, Celestia lit her horn and announced, “My little ponies, I am Princess Celestia, ruler of Equestria. I have defeated Nightmare Moon and have come to live among you as I should have long ago. By the Powers and the Great Maker, I declare this to be a brand new day for all ponies...

“Let there be light!”

The sun rose, leaving the alicorn back-lit in the hollowed out stone columns.

The sound of the blue box departing was masked by the thunderous applause.

“HAIL CELESTIA!”

Canterlot, Equestria: Day 1, Year 0 of Celestia's Reign