//------------------------------//
// Stormbreaker 
// Story: Fall of the Doctor 
// by Sixes_And_Sevens 
//------------------------------//

Ditzy didn’t even blink as the lightning flew by her, even as it grazed against her mane. She had walked away from far worse than that piddly shock. She focused on one thing only; catching her daughter. Rain streamed up her face as she plummeted after her little muffin.
Inside the TARDIS, everypony was in an uproar. Scootaloo was pushing against the altitude control with all her might as though that would make it go faster. Sweetie Belle and Rumble, who had just woken up extremely dazed, clung to each other for dear life. The Doctor was clinging to Apple Bloom’s hind hooves as she dangled out of the TARDIS, having nearly fallen out during Ditzy's dive. As for Button…
Button was all hooves, running from console to console, looking at the tracking monitor, boosting the shields against the lightning bolts that were hurled after them like spears, making adjustments to the course, and checking the readout of conditions. He worked like a colt possessed. If the golden glow from the console was any indication, he might well have been. Sparks flew from the ship, bolts of electricity arcing over the panels. Ditzy was nearing her daughter now, almost there, almost there… 
She was blasted away, a near lightning strike blowing feathers off her left wing. She corkscrewed wildly. “No!” the Doctor cried as the pegasus began to fall freely. Scootaloo tilted the TARDIS back for a moment, allowing the Time Lord and Apple Bloom to slide back into the room, then let it lean forwards a tad. Button swept forwards, scooping a bedraggled and slightly charred Ditzy up into the TARDIS. Immediately, the Doctor wrapped her in a hug. “I thought I’d lost you,” he whispered.
She pushed him away. “Not now,” she said. “Dinky’s still in danger!”
“Not for long,” Bloom assured her. “Look!”
Indeed, the TARDIS was rapidly nearing the filly, but both were also nearing the ground. "Same maneuver as last time!" Sweetie yelled, finally letting her adrenaline overwhelm her fear. 
Scootaloo kicked up the booster another couple of notches, and they flew past the falling unicorn, Button steered the TARDIS directly underneath her, and Scootaloo tilted it nearly onto its back to catch her. With a scream, the filly fell through the doors, her eyes closed tight, expecting the end to come at any moment. Instead, she suddenly felt the pull of gravity shift, sending her sprawling across the floor of the TARDIS. She skidded for a few seconds before smacking into the console. She didn't even have time to register that she was still alive before she felt her parents scooping her up and holding her tight. The room let out a collective sigh of relief. The Doctor quietly sobbed into his daughter’s mane. “I thought I’d lost you,” he whispered over and over.
Dinky looked around in astonishment. “How did-- Button? Scootaloo? What?”
Scootaloo grinned. “We learned how to fly a spaceship!” she crowed.
Rumble had recovered enough to grin up at Button. “Toldja you could do it,” he said.
The colt smiled, but then glanced up at the sky through the open doors. “I don’t think we’re done just yet,” he said.
The storm screamed, a shriek of outraged impotence and fury. Even as they watched, the storm began to twist, its clouds becoming swirling tentacles, lightning flashing like teeth in its cavernous maw. The corpses of the possessed creatures began to plummet to the ground as the Intelligence let them all go to divert all of its attention to controlling the storm.
“Oh,” said the Doctor. “Yes, I think it’s about time we dealt with that once and for all. Only question is, how do we destroy it? It can’t die, not really.”
“You know what it is?” Sweetie asked.
“Yes. It’s a sort of hive mind, the Great Intelligence.” He looked over at his wife. “It made the Yeti,” he explained.
Ditzy nodded. “So, you’ve stopped it before?” she asked. “How?”
He sucked in his breath. “Generally, there's nothing to be done but to, er, sort of disperse it. If it’s taken a host, like the blue-eyes, that’s easy enough, just get rid of the host. Unfortunately, it’s built itself a construct, that grey stallion you saw, and it made a bunch of back-up copies, likely all stored in the cloud.” He scratched behind his ear. “Hmm.”
“Disperse it?” Scootaloo repeated. “Disperse, like… break it up?”
“Yes, that is what the word means.”
The filly looked thoughtful. “Sort of like how Rainbow Dash disperses clouds, by kicking them?”
“Well,” the Doctor chuckled. “Basically, I suppose. Although, it would take rather more than just a kicking to break up that cloud.”
“More?” Button asked, glancing meaningfully at Scootaloo.
“Much more,” the Doctor agreed.
Scootaloo slid the booster halfway up and glanced over at Button. He gave a 'keep going' gesture with one hoof as he pushed the door switch down with the other. There was a faint whirring hum as they slid shut.
The Doctor continued, “Though, I suppose Rainbow Dash might be able to break it up with that… what was it?”
“A Sonic Rainboom?” Ditzy suggested.
“That’s the one. Heh. Rainboom. I love the names you ponies give things, they’re just brilliant.”
Scootaloo grinned like Discord themself and flipped up the altitude controller. The TARDIS shot through the air like a cork out of a champagne bottle. Everypony shrieked as the TARDIS flew up, up, up at the cloud, the box going faster and faster as it shot through the air toward the gaping maw.
Button let out a wild cry, steering the TARDIS straight toward the center of the roaring storm, which reached out with tendrils of cloud to envelop him and everypony else.
The ship flew past the point of no return. A fraction of a second later, there was an almighty boom as the TARDIS broke the sound barrier. The cloud didn’t stand a chance. It dissolved into water vapor, the few remaining constructs onboard plummeting to the ground. They disintegrated before they ever hit, though; there was no force left to hold them together.


***

There was a long moment of terrified silence inside the TARDIS. It was finally broken when Scootaloo, mane frazzled and eyes bulging, whispered, “That was the coolest thing I have ever done.”
Then, everypony broke into cheers of joy, embracing the pilots. “Good job!” “Well done, both of you!” “Woohoo!”
Sweetie gasped. “Button! You got your cutie mark!”
The colt twisted around, his jaw dropping. “I did? What is it?”
“Looks like a game controller,” Rumble said. “Can’t say I’m surprised, really.”
“What about me?” Scootaloo asked, anxiously checking her own flank. It was, regrettably, still blank. “Aw,” she groaned. “Come on! I just helped break the sound barrier! What more do I have to do?”
Apple Bloom hugged her. “It’s alright,” she said. “Ah reckon Rainbow’ll still be impressed either way.”
The pegasus gasped, her eyes widening. “How soon can we go home? I need to go tell Rainbow Dash all about this! She’s gonna freak!”
The Doctor looked over at his wife, worried. “Ah. Are we going to have angry family members suddenly turning up on our doorstep soon?”
Ditzy shrugged. “Eh. Ponyville generally sees worse stuff than this every few months. Love Tap might be worried about Button, and the others' respective guardians will definitely be popping round too, but I wouldn’t worry too much.”
“You sure?”
“If you’re that worried, why don’t we just-- um. Why don’t we just ‘vworp’ home?”
The Doctor nodded. “Good plan. I’m inclined to agree, except for one thing.”
Ditzy’s brow furrowed. “What’s that?”
“We never had lunch! Come on, I saw a great place. Let’s go eat.”
He went to push down the altitude control. Scootaloo’s eyes widened. “No!” she cried. The box plummeted several meters in the space of a second before stopping.
Very carefully, the Doctor set the booster switch back at zero. “You know, now that I think about it,” he said, looking vaguely green, “I don’t think I could eat a single bite. Maybe I’d better--urp--let my stomach settle a bit…”
The others giggled as the Doctor set the coordinates for Ponyville once more, dematerializing with a whoosh from the clear skies over Timbucktoo.