Celestia had been incorrect. Celestia had told Soldier that though she was no longer physically Dalek, she could remain mentally so. She could not preserve the genetic purity of the Dalek race, but that genetic purity had been corrupted anyway thanks to the DNA of Rose Tyler. But the mind of a Dalek could be preserved. The intelligence. The will. That was what Celestia had said.
Celestia had been wrong, Soldier realized, as her alien hooves pounded upon the dirt roads of Ponyville, as her breath came in quick and rapid gasps, as lather built up on her flanks. Not from exertion, for she had not been running long and would not be running far. The sweat was cold.
Fear.
Daleks were supposed to feel only hate. That had been the creator’s intention, the distilled, perfect emotion the Dalek race’s survival singled out as superior to all others by Davros. But the Doctor, the Oncoming Storm, had over the eons of their existence beat and burned another emotion into them, marring their perfection: fear. Daleks felt fear, for the Doctor, for things associated with the Doctor. That fear would never leave them until the Doctor was exterminated.
The Doctor could never be exterminated. The Oncoming Storm always returned. The Daleks always felt fear.
But never like this. Never like this. The Doctor provoked caution. The Doctor provoked tactical retreats. The Doctor provoked assessment of odds and the reckless advancement of plans out of the desire that they could be executed before he could stop them.
The Doctor did not provoke blind panic and utter terror. The Doctor did not, should not, could not provoke a Dalek to run.
But Soldier wasn’t a Dalek. Perhaps she never had been.
---
The door to the library burst open as Soldier physically threw herself at it, heedless of the pain, though the impact did cause her to stumble and roll. “Emergency!” Soldier called as she picked herself up. “Emergency! EMERGENCY! THE DOCTOR IS HERE! THE DOCTOR IS HERE!”
Soldier ran straight towards where the crystal that had once been the optical lens of her Mark-III travel machine, on the library’s table. She didn’t even fully know what she was doing as she ran straight up to it, looking into it. “The Doctor is here! The Doctor is in Ponyville! I am your soldier! I require orders! Orders!”
The crystal remained still and silent. It was only a crystal. Staring into it, the ludicrousness of the situation and what she was doing finally occurred to Soldier. She nevertheless reached out and grasped the crystal, wanting to feel it in her hooves for…for some reason. She didn’t know. She didn’t know and…
“What’s all the racket?” Twilight Sparkle’s voice called out. Soldier turned to look in the direction, and saw the alicorn emerging from a doorway that led down to a subterranean level of the library. “Oh! Soldier, you’re back already? How is everything? How’s the tooth? Oh, and I think I managed to – ”
“There is no time!” Soldier exclaimed, moving rapidly up to Twilight on three legs, the fourth still holding the crystal, now close to her chest. “Commander Twilight Sparkle, the Doctor is here!”
Twilight looked around the otherwise empty library. “Doctor Minuette?”
“Negative!”
“Doctor Stable? Oh no, did he need to get involved too?”
“Negative! The Doctor!” Soldier got as close to Twilight as she would have another Dalek, her snout almost touching Twilight’s. “The Doctor! The Oncoming Storm! HE MUST BE DESTROYED!”
Twilight backed away from Soldier, eyes wide. “Whoa, okay, hold on…” she said. “Hold on a minute, what are you talking about? Who’s the Doctor? Doctor Oncoming Storm? Is he a pegasus?”
“Negative! The form he has acquired is an earth pony!” Soldier had advanced with Twilight, keeping close to her as she clutched the crystal to her chest tighter. “We waste time! We must act! The Doctor – ”
“Okay, hang on,” Twilight said, horn glowing lavender. An aura of the same color appeared around Soldier’s snout, clamping it shut. “Hang on right now, because you’re not making any sense.”
“Mmmph mmm mmmphrrr – ”
Twilight held out a hoof. “Soldier, calm down! That’s an order!”
Soldier froze at the words, trying to force herself to do as her commander ordered. But Soldier had never calmed down before. She shifted from one hoof to the next, eyes darting around as she tried to look out for the Doctor, something that would have been much easier with a proper sensor suite, something else to add to her Equiform Travel Machine Mark-I…
Twilight noticed Soldier’s actions, and sat down, magic around Soldier’s mouth dispelling. “Okay, Soldier? Do exactly what I do. Breath in deep…” She took in a breath, pulling one hoof close to her chest. “Then let it all out.” She exhaled, pushing the hoof away from her chest. “Keep doing that. Focus only on the breathing.”
“I obey!” Soldier exclaimed, then began emulating Twilight, albeit at a faster pace. Twilight guided her through several repetitions of the motion before directing her to slow down, taking deeper breaths, holding them, then letting them out over a longer period.
After many rels, Twilight had her stop. “There,” she said, smiling. “See? Works like a charm. Also…I think we should keep you away from sugar for a little bit.” She reached out a hoof, placing it on Soldier’s shoulder. “Now, tell me what happened. Slowly.”
Soldier did not feel any less fear…but the panic, the overriding need to act or run or do something, had abated. She glanced down at her crystal and saw she was still hugging it close to her body. She didn’t know why, nor did she stop as she looked to Twilight. “The Doctor is in Ponyville. The Doctor is an enemy of the Daleks, the greatest foe of the Dalek Empire. He is the Oncoming Storm, a Time Lord of Gallifrey in the constellation Kasterborous. He often travels through time and space in his TARDIS vehicle with companions of very high threat level. He must be destroyed! He must! HE M – ”
“Okay, hang on!” Twilight interrupted. “Breathe again, like I showed you. Don’t get worked up.” Soldier repeated the breathing exercise several times. “Okay, so, the Doctor…he’s bad news, I get it. Time Lord, okay. Time traveler, that’s…okay, we’ll deal with that…somehow. But what’s this Doctor done?”
“The Doctor has attempted to destroy the Daleks countless times! The Doctor was there at our genesis, when we were first bred by the creator, Davros of the Kaled! He was sent there by the Time Lords to exterminate us before we could even exist!”
Twilight seemed utterly shocked, enough that she didn’t try to calm Soldier down again. “How could anyone want to erase an entire species from history? I mean, I don’t really like snakes all that much, but even I wouldn’t want to go back in time and stomp on the first snake egg!” She looked to Soldier. “These Time Lords…they sound like bad news.”
“Confirmed! They are the worst news!” Soldier responded, fire in her voice – until she suddenly froze, suddenly remembering what the Doctor had told her what was still perhaps only half a day ago, what she had learned when she was it, and not a pony, but a Dalek, trapped on planet Earth for fifty years. “Except…” she looked back to Twilight, quieter. “They are…gone. As are the Daleks. I am…was…the last Dalek. The Doctor is the last Time Lord. Our races are gone. Destroyed. Only he and I remain.”
And the Doctor…had possessed ample opportunity to destroy Soldier, hadn’t he? In Van Statten’s underground lair, the Doctor had re-engineered a particle weapon with enough force to kill Soldier. And yet Rose Tyler had stopped him…
…by dint of her genetic impurity. By dint of Soldier changing, becoming non-Dalek. The Doctor had not needed to do anything, only stand by and watch as Soldier attempted suicide. It was not mercy, it was conservation of resources! And moments of mercy meant nothing! The Doctor had spared the Dalek race despite the orders of the Time Lords, all those millions of years ago…but had nevertheless gone on to kill countless of them over that same time.
The Doctor was cruelty. Malice. He hated the Dalek so much that he might have made a good Dalek himself. Soldier had told him as much. Any momentary mercy was always, always, swept aside. They meant nothing. And what he had done during the Time War…wiped them out, every Dalek, ten million ships on fire…
Soldier realized that Twilight had been staring at her with one hoof to her mouth, eyes wide in shock. “You’re…the last Dalek?” She asked slowly.
Soldier bristled. “I was. Now I am a pony.”
“Oh…Soldier, I…I’m so sorry!” She said, a phrase she had repeated often, but now with a completely different intonation. Before Soldier knew what was happening, Twilight had come forward, grasping Soldier with her two front hooves and wings folding around Soldier, one side of the alicorn’s head pressed against Soldier’s own. Soldier stiffened at the grasp, not knowing what was going on. At first she thought it some form of attack, but though Twilight was embracing her tightly, it was not with remotely enough force to hurt. Tactile sensation was a new enough feeling on its own, but Soldier was struck by how incredibly warm Twilights body felt against her own, how soft the alicorn’s fur, even if she was awkwardly crushing the leg that Soldier was using to hold onto her crystal between her chest and Soldier’s own.
“I’m so sorry,” Twilight repeated in a lower, softer voice right next to Soldier’s ear. “No wonder you’ve acted the way you have…I can’t even imagine being the last pony in the world. I didn’t know you were the last Dalek…that must be so lonely, and then to change so that you’re not even the last Dalek…I’m so, so sorry…”
It was lonely, a part of Soldier’s mind pointed out to her, a part that was acutely aware of the crystal hugged to her chest. The same part of her mind caused Soldier to lift up her free leg, getting it under Twilight’s wing and around her back, partially duplicating Twilight’s embrace.
Twilight held the embrace for several more rels, before leaning away from Soldier, though she didn’t take her hooves off of her shoulders. “Okay, Soldier. So this Doctor…he sounds bad. Really bad. But don’t worry, he’s never had to deal with the magic of friendship before!”
Soldier was still for several moments, before shaking her head, breaking herself away from the momentary…whatever that was of the embrace. She replayed Twilight’s statement in her mind, and had to admit that she was likely correct. Daleks had no concept of friendship and did not utilize magic, so it had certainly never been attempted. “Have you devised a stratagem?” she asked.
“Well…” Twilight intoned, glancing away and finally releasing Soldier fully so that one hoof could rub the back of her head. “Normally for something like the Doctor, I’d recommend we use the Elements of Harmony. But my friends and I recently returned the Elements to the Tree of Harmony that they came from in order to save Equestria from the Everfree Forest growing out of control. But we’ll think of something!”
Soldier nodded curtly, clutching the crystal to herself even tighter. She didn’t understand most of that, but she did understand that Twilight Sparkle had declared herself an enemy of the Doctor, but also that her greatest weapon was unavailable. “I will aid you!”
“What?”
“I will aid you in the defeat of the Doctor! I am a soldier! The Doctor will be – ”
“Whoa, whoa, hold on,” Twilight interrupted, holding up her hooves. “Soldier, I understand that you probably have a lot of anger against the Doctor. But I can’t let you do anything.” She put one of her hooves back on Soldier’s shoulder. “I’ll get everypony here and you can tell us more about the Doctor, but my friends and I will take care of him. Princess Celestia made you my responsibility, I have to keep you safe.”
Soldier bristled. “But I am a soldier! I was bred for combat! I shall – ”
“Soldier…you’ve got a missing tooth – which I’m still sorry about, by the way – and you don’t even know how to use your horn, or have a real cutie mark! You haven’t even been here for a day! You’re in no condition to fight.”
Soldier froze at those words…and realized Twilight Sparkle was right. She really wasn’t. She stumbled and fell when she tried to move with any rapidity. She couldn’t keep down food matter when jostled and injured herself with simple low-velocity kinetic impacts. She had no idea how to use the innate telekinesis or other abilities that came naturally to the unicorn-type ponies. And even before, on Earth, before her failed suicide, she had failed to kill Van Statten, the human who had tormented her for fifty years. She had failed to kill the Doctor. She had failed to kill her own infector, the human Rose Tyler! And before, in the Time War itself…the Nightmare Child…
Celestia had called her Soldier, because a soldier was what she had been. Once. But now? She wasn’t Dalek, no matter how often she claimed it. She couldn’t fight. She couldn’t kill. What was she good for? What was the point of her?
Nothing.
Twilight stepped away from Soldier, heading towards the library’s door. “I’ll go get Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, Applejack and Rarity,” she said. “I wish Pinkie were here instead of visiting her family…from what you’ve told me it sounds like the Doctor is at least as bad as Nightmare Moon, Discord, Queen Chrysalis, or King Sombra. But that can’t be helped, and I’m sure we can think of something.” Twilight stopped at the door, turning back around and pointing at Soldier. “You stay here. That’s an order, Soldier, okay?”
“I obey,” Soldier said automatically, her voice small as she stared down at the floor.
“The Doctor, you said he looked like an earth pony? Can you give me more detail?”
“Male, height approximately one-hundred twenty centimeters, pale brown pelt, dark brown mane, blue eyes. The mark on his flank was identical to that of Minuette’s.”
“Okay,” Twilight said, opening up the door. “Spike’s down in the basement doing some chores if you need anything…oh!” She turned around, looking at Soldier with a completely different, and notably more awkward, look on her face. She came back up. “I almost forgot, but I don’t want to leave without making sure you know how to…um…” she gestured backwards, at her hindquarters. “You know.”
Soldier stiffened, understanding the gesture. “I do. I am ready to receive information.”
Twilight’s horn glowed, and she touched it to Soldier’s own. There was a tingling sensation, and then a rush of information. Soldier’s superior mind had no trouble processing it all without being overwhelmed.
Really, all it did was further emphasize to Soldier just how far she had fallen.
---
“So…” Spike intoned half an hour later, after Soldier had seen to the expulsion of excess food matter from her body in the appropriate waste disposal chambers of the library, sanitized vigorously, and had then joined Spike down in the basement. “How was your, uh…first time?”
“Unpleasant but necessary,” Soldier responded automatically. In the absence of Twilight Sparkle, Spike was once again her commander, so she had to respond. But she really had not wanted to.
“Yeah, that sounds about right…” Spike said. “You get used to it.”
Soldier was only partially paying attention. She was looking around the basement instead, placing her optical crystal on a table where it would be able to clearly observe the whole room, give Soldier a semblance of comfort. The basement was laboratory-like in its setup, with machines, vials, and tubes, some of them familiar to Soldier, others alien. A large bookcase contained tomes with various titles revealing that they retained information on science, magic, and a combination of the two – an absurd possibility in Soldier’s universe, a commonplace occurrence here.
Grunting, Soldier went over to the bookcase and picked out a tome at random, pulling it out with effort with her hooves and letting it fall to the floor. Opening the cover to its front page was easy enough, but her hooves struggled to do something as simple as turn to the following page. She would try, pressing her hoof down and trying to use friction, only for the page to slip down at the last moment. Worse, as her frustration grew, her attempts grew worse and worse…
But then a purple-clawed hand touched the paper and flipped it. “Here, let me,” Spike said. “Turning pages with hooves takes a lot of practice. I can flip them for you.” He grinned. “Gives me an excuse to do something else other than clean up down here. Not like Twilight will say anything if I’m helping somepony read, right?”
Soldier stared at the page, then to the dragon’s claws. “Turn to a new page every half-rel,” she said. Spike stared at her in confusion, so she tapped a hoof on the ground, waited a rel, then tapped it again. “That is the length of one rel.”
Spike’s look of confusion didn’t abate. “You can read that fast?”
“No. I am…was…Dalek. I could process much more information if the medium was computerized, or even if I could use multiple books at once. I am limiting myself to the speed at which you could turn pages without error.” The dragon continued to seem mystified, but complied with Soldier’s request, beginning to flip pages as rapidly as he was able. He averaged slower than one page per half-rel, unused to the angle or speed, but he did give Soldier several hundred rels of silence other than the sound of pages turning as Soldier took in the details of first one, then another Equestrian book, learning the scientific and magical laws and theories of the new world.
It did not distract Soldier, however. The information intake was too slow. Soldier looked down at her hooves, and Spike stopped turning pages as she did. “This is not life,” she mumbled. “This is sickness.”
Spike stared at Soldier. “I heard what you told Twilight, about being the last Dalek.”
“I am not the last Dalek. Not one cell in my body is Dalek. My mind is infected with emotions, ideas, darkness…I am not Dalek in mind, either. I do not believe I ever was.”
The demands of the Time War that Soldier had been bred for were great for the Dalek Empire. New soldiers were required at an incalculable output. An infinite army woven throughout all of time and space to fight the Time Lords. A soldier might live ten thousand years to seize control of a single second, or be spawned at the end of time to fight in the war for the beginning. The need had been so great that the Progenitor devices could not be properly screened. Impure Daleks had been created, seeded throughout the Empire. In the past, such would never have been tolerated. But if they could fight the Time Lords, their impurity could be removed after the victory, if they even survived.
The coward survived. Soldier had fought, and fought, and fought for the Dalek Empire. She had killed the Time Lords, she had killed the Meanwhiles and Never-Weres of the Could-Have-Been-King, she had exterminated the enemies of the Dalek Empire with impunity. She had been assigned to serve Davros when the Daleks had turned to him as one more weapon to wield in the war.
But when the maw of the Nightmare Child had opened wide before her, she had fled, an emergency spatial shift. A retreat, she had told herself. The Nightmare Child had grown beyond Davros’ control, that was plain for any Dalek to see. Let Davros attempt to regain control, or let the Nightmare Child consume him and the Time Lords and their machinations. No need to waste pure Dalek cells. No need to waste soldiers. She had not even been the only Dalek to flee. That there had been other cowards had helped her rationalize what she had done for a time, a rationalization that had broken down during her exile on Earth.
Fear. Had the rigors of the Time War and the miasma of the Nightmare Child not disrupted her emergency spatial shift and deposited her on Earth, had she returned to the Dalek Empire, she would have been exterminated. Impure. Unclean. Non-Dalek. Right from the start. Rose Tyler’s DNA had only given genetic manifestation to a more fundamental flaw that had always lurked there. Soldier was a coward.
“Are you okay?” Spike asked.
Soldier glanced up, looking at Twilight Sparkle’s second-in-command. His image was blurry to her for some reason; she wiped her eyes, and found her hooves coming away somewhat wet. “My eyes are malfunctioning,” she observed.
“Whatever you want to call it,” Spike said. “It’ll pass, don’t worry, ponies just do it sometimes. It’s actually good for you. And look…I don’t even know what a Dalek looks like. But you’ve been around Ponyville. Seen a lot of dragons out there?”
“No,” Soldier said, wiping her eyes again as the wetness continued. “Is your species also extinct?”
“Oh, there’s plenty of dragons,” Spike said. “But…I don’t exactly fit in with them. Dragons are…kind of horrible people, really. They’re mean and loud, and they hurt things for no reason.” Soldier didn’t see the problem, but Spike continued. “I’m not saying I know exactly what you’re going through…but I do kind of know what it’s like to be the only one of my kind in town, y’know?” He stood and walked up to her, holding out a hand in a fist. “I look like a dragon but I think I’m really more like a pony. And you think like a Dalek but you look like a pony. We were made for each other! And as long as you’re here, I’ll help you out.”
Soldier stared at the outstretched fist, once more wiping her eyes. There was less wetness now. “I do not understand this gesture,” she said. It occurred to her that, taking into account Spike’s bipedal stance, it was similar to the outstretched hoof that Applejack had offered her earlier.
“It’s a bump. Ponies bump hooves; I don’t have hooves but I can still basically do it. It’s a sign of friendship.”
“Daleks have no concept of friendship.”
“Neither do dragons, when you get down to it. At least, I wouldn’t want to be friends with any other dragon I’ve met.” He looked at Soldier directly. “But this isn’t dragons trying to be friends with Daleks. This is me, Spike, trying to be friends with you, Soldier. Whatever we are.”
Soldier considered, raising a hoof tentatively and staring at it, then watching as she reached it out and pressed it against Spike’s fist. “Have I emulated correctly?”
“Eh, more or less. It’s normally just a quick bump.” Soldier drew her hoof back, then quickly, lightly tapped Spike’s fist. “There you go,” he said, pulling his arm away.
“And we are…friends…now?”
Spike offered a smile. “Well, I think we’re off to a good start. And as your friend, the first thing I have to do is find a way to cheer you up.” He put a claw to his chin as he thought. “What do you want?”
Soldier contemplated the request. “I want…to stop being a coward. I want to stop running.”
“Okay! So I guess you want to help Twilight and her friends defeat the Doctor, then?”
Soldier nodded, but looked askance at Spike. “I am under orders to remain in the library. I cannot join the commander.”
“No…” Spike said, going back over to the bookcase. “But you’re a genius. Twilight and the others can’t use the Elements anymore, so fighting the Doctor is going to have to be done with something else. And with how fast you read…” he picked up the book from the floor and opened it up to the page they had stopped on, “…you could figure something out pretty fast.”
“This plan is doomed to failure. Even if I read that entire book shelf, my lack of ability to properly manipulate objects will prevent me from building anything of substance.”
“Unless,” Spike said, holding up both his hands and wiggling the fingers, “you had someone you could tell what to do. Friends help each other, after all. You do the thinking, and I’ll do the building.”
Soldier hesitated a moment…but only a moment. “I obey,” she said, trotting back over to Spike and settling down. “Turn pages as quickly as you are able. I have much to learn. I also must keep my construction simple given the resources available. Direct me to tomes on vibrations, acoustics, and sonics.”