“What do we do?” Maple asked.
The Doctor didn’t reply. He simply gazed blankly into the snow, which had lessened in its ferocity. “He was so young,” he whispered. “I’ve travelled with others, but…” he trailed off. “He didn’t want to come here. Why didn’t I listen?”
The mare placed a wing over him. “It wasn’t your fault,” she said. “You couldn’t have known!”
“No,” the Doctor said. “But I should’ve. This always happens! Rose? Stuck in an alternate dimension! Donna? Forgot about me forever! Leela? Burned along with Gallifrey! Adric? Dead with the dinosaurs!” He shook off Maple’s wing. “You don’t want to get too close,” he said bitterly. “Everything I touch dies.”
Maple breathed in and let it out slowly. Then, very calmly, she said, “Shut up.”
The Doctor turned in surprise. “Wha—”
“Shut up! Look. I’ve known you for, what, ten hours now? Probably about that. You know what those ten hours have been for me? Dangerous. Crazy. Almost fatal. The best time I’ve had in my life.”
The Doctor paused. “You don’t mean that.”
Maple held up a hoof. “Was it the ‘shut’ or the ‘up’ that you didn’t understand? Look. You obviously have seen a lot of dark stuff. You’ve lost friends, and you blame yourself for it. But do you ever stop to think about what they got out of it? I mean, I just found out that Yeti are real! And aliens, and flutterponies, and probably time travel too! I could die happy right now knowing that!”
The Doctor stared at her, mouth agape. She set down her hoof. “Now you can talk,” she said.
The Doctor still said nothing. He merely raised a hoof and pointed behind the mare. Frowning, she turned around. Dr. Climber stood there, his head tilted at an odd angle and his grin far too wide and feral. Behind him… well. The body-snatcher mystery had been solved. A small mob of corpses in various states of physical condition were gathered around the two travellers in a rough semicircle. Maple swallowed. “Ah. When I said that I could ‘die happy right now,’ I hope you realize it wasn’t meant literally.”
“What a pity,” Climber said. When Maple relaxed slightly, he continued, “I do hate to wait.” His grin widened as she snapped upright once more. “Now. If you’ll both come with me, I might be able to avoid getting… impatient.”
The pegasus and the Time Lord exchanged glances. Reluctantly, they trotted after the ex-doctor, flanked all around by zombies.
***
“Back to the fair?” the Doctor asked, eyebrows raised. “Really?”
The Intelligence glowered at him. “I have elected to keep you alive so that you may perish with the rest of your precious ponies, Doctor. It will be poetic. However, I am fully prepared to simply freeze your lungs and be done with it.”
The Doctor studied him, but said nothing more. Maple was more vociferous. “You won’t get far,” she said. “Climber was fired this morning.”
“I’ve no doubt,” the corpse replied. “I only recently stopped influencing the ringmaster’s mind. All of his anger would have caught up with him rather quickly.”
“You were… playing with Mr. de Raptor’s mind?” Maple asked, horrified.
“Yes.”
“That’s terrible!”
The corpse eyed her. “His mind is pitiful. Filled to the brim with nothing more than idle concerns and figures. Utterly mundane. Manipulating him was little more effort than knocking over a stack of cards. He put up no fight.”
“That doesn’t change anything!” Maple shouted. “He’s still a living being! You can’t just—”
“You would pose hardly any more of a challenge,” the Intelligence interrupted.
Maple lapsed into silence. The Intelligence smiled. It was not a nice smile. It was the smile of a marionette, merely painted on for show. When a string was pulled, it would dance, but nopony would say it was alive. The Intelligence tilted a control bar and Climber raised a hoof in a gesture. His mouth opened and closed as the wires were pulled. “Shall we go to the fair?” asked the puppetmaster.
***
The carnival was almost abandoned. Nopony wanted to be out on a night like this. It was too cold, too bitter, too sharp. It suited the Intelligence just fine. They walked through the ice-slick alleys under the cover of the night and the snow, past frost-coated ring toss games and cotton candy booths. Icicles covered the fronts of the stalls, giving the impression of a cage. There was no sound aside from the howling wind. At length, the Intelligence stopped in front of a familiar tent. “In,” he commanded, jabbing a hoof.
Reluctantly, the Doctor and Maple trotted into the sideshow of Dr. Climber. As they did so, several dozen dead blue eyes turned to face them. Maple took a step back. “What is this?” she demanded. “What are you going to do?”
The Doctor stared grimly at the creatures. “An army,” he said quietly. “All the things that ponies thought were fairy tales are going to spring on them tonight. Chupcabra… zombies… yeti… There’ll be mass chaos, hysteria.”
“And once I’ve done that,” the Intelligence said smoothly. “It will be as child’s play to set Equestria at war with the rest of the world. This planet will dissolve into anarchy, and I shall rise to power.”
“You’re a monster,” Maple whispered.
The corpse raised an eyebrow. “I should be more careful about that word were I in your position, Miss Leaf. You are, after all, surrounded by monsters, all very ready to take offense.”
“No,” Maple said, fire in her eyes. “There’s only one monster here, Intelligence, and that’s you. All of them? They’re beautiful, impossible, wonderful! They’re magical! And you, you want to take that and use it to destroy the world. You’re the monster.”
Rumble nodded. “Well said.”
“Thanks,” Maple replied, nodding back. Then she blinked at stared at the colt. “Rumble? What? How did you—”
The colt smirked. “I’d like you to meet my new friend,” he said with a gesture. A massive shaggy white figure rose from where it had been crouching behind a table. The Yeti grinned with far too many teeth. “Funny how far a little kindness can go,” he said nonchalantly.
The Intelligence growled. “Kill them all,” he said shortly.
The creatures burst forward from their displays, fangs bared and eyes a dead, dull blue. Rumble merely grinned. “You know something?” he asked. “I really don’t hate this time of year that much anymore. I’ve come to realize a few things today, and one of them is that you can’t just blame the world for the actions of a few ponies.”
“How lovely for you,” the Intelligence replied.
“Hold on, not done yet,” Rumble said, holding up a hoof. “There’s one thing I really love about this time of year, more than anything else.”
“Do tell,” said the corpse drily.
Rumble’s mind raced back to when he had been twelve.
***
He was on his last wings, barely staying aloft over the clouds. He could practically feel ice forming in his fur, in his mane, in his feathers. He could see the light on the horizon, a faint gleam of yellow. Gritting his teeth, he struggled to his hooves and trotted across the cloud. “HEY!” he yelled. “HELP!”
He waited a second. Then a few seconds more. Struggling to get airborne once more, he shouted, “HELP!” once more before puttering into a gentle glide. He landed with a grunt on another cloud. Glancing up, he could see a figure silhouetted in the yellow light of the house. “Help,” he called, weakly.
The figure took flight. As it drew closer, the colt could see its spiky white mane and lilac coat. “Rain-- sorry, Rumble?” it asked hesitantly. “Oh, sweet Celestia, Rumble!” Cloudchaser landed beside him. “What the Tartarus do you think you’re doing? Did you fly all the way here from your house? What were you thinking, it’s freezing out! You don’t even have a hat, you idiot!”
“Got kicked out,” Rumble said quietly.
Cloudchaser ground to a halt. “You what.”
“Mom and Dad kicked me out,” Rumble repeated, even more quietly than before.
Cloudchaser was silent. “Rumble. It is literally below freezing.”
“Is it?” he replied, too tired even to roll his eyes.
The older mare looked at him. “You’re soaking.”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. Okay. We’re getting you inside, now. Celestia. No more flying for you. Get on my back.”
“You sure you can carry me?” Rumble asked doubtfully.
“Kid. You weigh less than a sack of potatoes, and that’s when you’ve just gotten out of the shower. Yes, I can carry you, you dumb idiot. Now get on before you freeze to death.”
“K,” Rumble said, gratefully scrabbling up between the mare’s wings.
She took off, fluttering quickly back to her house. “Lane! Flitter! Get your flanks off the couch!” she shouted. Moments later, two figures could be seen in the doorway of the cloudhouse. Cloudchaser touched down in front of them.
Thunderlane gasped. “Rumble?”
The colt slid off of Cloudchaser’s back, collapsing to the ground in a heap. Almost instantly, Flitter scooped him up, hurrying him to the parlor. “Your coat is like ice!” she exclaimed. “What happened?”
“His idiot parents chased him out of the house in the middle of winter, that’s what happened,” Cloudchaser spat.
Thunderlane stared. “They what?” He spread his wings, but Cloudchaser blocked him.
“We deal with Rumble now, your parents later,” she said. “You get blankets, I’ll get some cocoa or something.”
Flitter sat on the couch, her wings wrapped around the grey colt. “It’s going to be okay,” she whispered. “It’s all going to be okay.”
***
Rumble smiled at the Intelligence. “My favorite part about winter is knowing what comes after all the cold and misery. What comes after the sharp ice, and the cold, wet snow that saps the marrow from your bones. No matter how cold you feel, inside or out, there’s always going to be a cup of cocoa and a roaring fire. Like so.” He nodded to another corner of the room, where the massive tear in the canvas blew aside to reveal a bulky griffon in top hat and tails. “Now!”
Ringmaster Gordon de Raptor, grinning, touched a torch to the canvas of the tent. Assorted other carnival workers did the same. From a dozen different points, the tent set alight.
The Intelligence stared in astonishment. Then, its face twisted into rage. “If we burn,” it snarled, “you’ll burn too. Destroy them!”