Button screamed and fell back into Rumble, who swore loudly. As both stallions struggled to right themselves, Sombra put his hoof back down calmly. Rumble gave him a filthy look. “I hope you’re pleased with yourself.”
“Then you hope in vain,” Sombra said quietly, looking away. Rumble wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that.
Button stumbled back to his hooves. “Um… How much of that did you hear?”
Sombra glanced away. “It was not my intention to eavesdrop,” he said.
“No,” Rumble said, staring at the king through half-closed eyes. “You just followed us, unseen, down the stairs and didn’t say a thing until we had reached the bottom.”
Sombra pursed his lips for a long moment. “It is unsafe to go into the lab,” he said at last.
“I literally just said that we wouldn’t die in there,” Button said.
“You also mentioned phrases including ‘lose all your magic’ and ‘unable to walk for weeks’. Even discounting all that, there are dozens of other projects sitting around which could be deadly if mishandled.”
Rumble glanced up at the ceiling, thinking. “How about a compromise?” he proposed.
Sombra raised an eyebrow. “I will not let you in.”
“Wasn’t proposing it. We’ll stay out here and just look from the stairwell, while you go in and poke around.”
Sombra blinked, momentarily caught off his rhythm. “Well, I don’t think--”
“Yeah! You know her lab better than either of us,” Button said. “I bet you’d be able to see anything off way before we did.”
Sombra shook his head. “I really don’t think--”
“Hey, Sombra?” Rumble said. “We’re the Cutie Mark Crusaders. I know you weren’t around for our heyday, but I’m willing to bet you’ve heard stories from your new neighbors.”
“If we want in that room, one way or another, we’re going to get into that room,” Button agreed. “And we do want in that room.”
“Right now, we’re offering you the way that’s probably going to result in the minimum possible property damage and grievous bodily harm,” Rumble continued. “Our next plan? It probably won’t be quite so considerate.”
Sombra considered all that. “Ten minutes, and you don’t try again.”
“Half an hour,” Rumble countered.
“Fifteen minutes.”
“Twenty,” Button said.
Sombra nodded. “Very well.” He held out a hoof and Rumble and Button both shook it in turn. He turned to the door and, with a sigh, pushed it open. “What exactly do you wish for me to look for?”
“Um…” Rumble turned to Button. “Thoughts?”
“I mean, I guess start with whatever stole Twilight’s magic.”
Sombra prodded the mare’s nest of cables on the floor. “I believe they’re quite inert.”
“Great. So can we see them?”
Sombra shrugged and picked up a broken coil in his teeth, hauling it over to the others. Button took it from him, turning it around so he could see the exposed end. “Huh,” he said.
“What’s the matter?” Rumble asked, peering over Button’s shoulder. “What, was it burned through?”
The cable was blackened and charred. The casing had melted around the copper wires inside, forming a mess of metal and insulation. “...Maybe,” Button said. “Sombra? Can we see the other end of this?”
The unicorn grunted and hauled over the other half of the cable. Button tapped it with a hoof. “This isn’t melted at all,” he said. “The damage to the other one must’ve come from channeling Twilight’s magic through it.”
“This one looks like it was cut,” Rumble said.
“Yeah,” Button agreed. “But look at the way the insulation’s bent.”
“Huh?”
“Here -- it’s spreading out from the cluster of wires, not pressed in toward it. And then all around the rest of the casing, those cuts are consistent with cutting from the side, not the top or bottom.”
“So…” Rumble took a minute to think about that. “Are you seriously trying to tell me that this cable was cut open from the inside?”
“I know. I don’t know what that means, either, but that’s how it looks.”
Rumble bit his lip. “Okay. That’s… we’ll leave the question of whether or not that could be forged until later. Sombra? What does the burnt cable lead to?”
“Er…” Sombra picked up the damaged end of the cable and started reeling it in, slowly trotting forward as he tracked it back through the mare’s nest of coils and wires. After a few minutes, he reached the source -- a large Tesla coil, topped with a misshapen chunk of crystal.
“Okay… Rumble said slowly. “What does that do?”
“It’s an electrical generator,” Sombra said. “Nothing more or less.”
“Fine. Does it look damaged in any way?”
Sombra looked up at the crystal, then back at Rumble flatly. “Well, this morning, that was a perfect sphere,” he said, picking up several shards of crystal from the floor. “Does that answer your… question…”
He trailed off, staring intently at the shards. “The energy traveled through this,” he said slowly. “The way that crystal stores energy... when it shattered, if there were any traces of it left…”
“There might still be some magic in there,” Button concluded, eyes wide.
“Could it steal your magic in the same way?” Rumble asked, wary.
“No. There isn’t enough of it to react that strongly, and even if there were, the crystal is effectively inert without a powerful charge of thaumic, electrical, or emotional energy. It can’t do anything,” Sombra said, shuffling around in the fragments. “Aha!”
He held aloft a shard. While most of the others were an opaque white, like frosted glass, this one was translucent, and in the light it almost glowed a dark amber hue.
“What is it?” Button asked. “Can you tell just from looking?”
Sombra held it up to let the light shine through. “...No,” he admitted. “Crystal coloration is more of an art than an exact science. We’ll need -- I’ll need to run some tests to work out exactly what this energy is comprised of.”
“Aw, come on,” Rumble complained. “Are you really gonna back out on us now?”
Sombra gave him a flat look. “Yes. I’ll be sure to tell you what it is when I figure it out.”
“Ugh. How long will that take?”
Sombra shrugged. “You have another fifteen minutes or so. Did you need to see anything else?”
“Do you see anything else in there that looks disturbed?” Button asked.
Sombra looked around doubtfully. The lab was organized, but if he was completely honest, he wasn’t quite sure in what way. “Well, there’s the canister of dragonfire and the fire extinguisher, but those were taken off the wall when we arrived. Apart from that…” he turned in place slowly. “I can’t see -- wait a moment.”
“What is it?” Rumble asked, leaning forward.
Sombra gestured to the wall. “That window isn’t meant to be open. We only have them here in case the lab needs to be vented. Come to think of it, that’s the window where the energy escaped. I’d assumed it had smashed through, or melted, or something, but if it was opened…”
“Could somepony have climbed through?” Button asked.
“Maybe,” Sombra said, cocking his head. “But unless they were a pegasus, they’d have broken their legs jumping through, and there’s no way they could have gotten out.”
“So maybe it was a pegasus,” Rumble said, shrugging.
Sombra shook his head. “No. Those windows are latched from the inside. A unicorn could undo them easily, but they don’t have wings.”
“So… an alicorn again,” Rumble muttered, rubbing his chin. “That’s what it always seems to come back to.”
“Or a changeling. That could be a unicorn and a pegasus as needed," Button mused. "Interesting. Sombra, do you see anything else in there that looks... uh, off?”
Sombra scanned the walls, the ceiling, the floor. “No,” he said at last. “Everything else appears fairly normal. Is that all, then?”
Rumble and Button exchanged glances. “I guess so,” Rumble said.
“Yeah. Thanks, Sombra. Will we see you at the party tonight? You can tell us what’s in the crystal, then.”
Sombra nodded. “Yes. I have been invited to some manner of intervention -- excuse me. That probably does remain on a need-to-know basis.”
“An intervention?” Rumble repeated. “At the party?”
Sombra looked pained. “If you could forget I mentioned any part of that…”
Button grinned. “Give us a sample of that crystal, and it might just slip our minds.”
Sombra scowled. “Extortionists.”
“We’re giving up ten minutes of your searching time, too,” Rumble pointed out. “C’mon, how much do you really need?”
“Urg.” Sombra scowled at them, then started scanning the floor again. “Here.” He picked something up, stomped over, and thrust it into Button’s hoof. “Much joy may it bring you.”
He stepped through the door and shut it firmly behind him. “Now, if you don’t mind terribly, I think you’d better be on your way, don’t you?”
The stallions knew better than to push their luck. Sombra might have sworn himself to the cause of peace after being freed from the Nightmare, but he still stood a head taller even than Rumble, and had a physique that could stun a minotaur. It was best not to irritate him too far. “Yeah, sure,” Rumble said. “See you at the party, man.”
“Thanks for all your help!” Button said brightly. “Good luck analyzing that crystal!”
Sombra grunted as the two turned and trotted up the steps.
“We should go find the others,” Rumble said. “See if they’ve found anything.”
“Yeah.” Button paused on the steps. “Wait. Did we ever come up with a place to meet up again?”
“...Dammit.”
Shining Armor and Cadance sat in their chariot in silence as the pegasus guards flew them to Ponyville. This was not normal behavior for them; usually, they could converse at length about any topic that happened to occur to either of them. Even if one of them didn’t understand a word of what the other was saying, each could listen to the other wax poetic about their favorite things for hours on end.
Today, however, they were occupied with their own private fears and anxieties. Shining’s first concern was for his sister, naturally. Cadance shared his worries -- Twilight was practically a sister to her, as well -- but the letter had stated that she was in a stable condition. Therefore, her concern for Twilight fell well behind her fear for the Doctor, for Ponyville, and for the world at large. If Luna’s suspicions were correct, then the world was in incredible danger. Cadance knew all too well that the Doctor was skilled in overthrowing regimes, destroying capitals, and turning worlds on their ear. Under the influence of the Nightmare, set free of the morals he had always tried so desperately to cleave to, who knew what he might be capable of?
So caught up was Cadance in her fears, she didn’t even realize that the chariot had landed until Shining tapped her on the withers. She turned around, alarmed, and sagged in relief when she realized it was only her husband.
Together, they stepped out of the chariot. “Put this away around the back,” Shining said gruffly. “Then come to the princess’ room and take up your positions on either side of the door.”
Both guards snapped sharp salutes and hurried off to do as they had been bidden.
Shining hurried up the steps of the castle, barging past a pair of stallions walking down. Cadance trotted after him, offering quick apologies to the duo, who looked more confused than injured. By the time she got through the double doors at the top of the stairs, Shining was already halfway across the foyer. With a sigh, Cadance spread her wings and took off, soaring across the room to catch up with her husband. “Shiny,” she said, calm but firm, “you need to slow down.”
He slowed his gallop to a canter, but didn’t look pleased about it. “Twilight could be dying,” he said.
“She isn’t,” Cadance said. “The letter said so, remember?”
“A lot could’ve happened since we got that letter.”
“If it did, we would have gotten another letter. Just… trot with me. Don’t burst into Twilight’s room like an axe murderer in a B-movie. Breathe in.”
Reluctantly, Shining slowed his gait still further and took in a deep breath. “Good. Now let it out…”
Shining exhaled.
“In… Out… In… Out… Very good.”
Shining still looked uptight and angry, but his posture had visibly relaxed. “Thanks,” he said quietly. He looked up at her. “Would you mind landing, now? It’s gonna be a literal pain in the neck, holding a conversation like this.”
Cadance laughed lightly and landed at Shining’s side. He looked down for a long moment. “You really think there’s nothing to worry about?” he asked at last.
“Oh, there’s definitely a lot of things to worry about,” Cadance said. “But getting frantic won’t help with any of that.”
Shining hummed. “I guess you’ve got a point,” he admitted. He hesitated a moment longer. “Is all this going to, I don’t know, interfere with the intervention?”
Cadance chewed the inside of her cheek. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I mean, if the Doctor was going to investigate, I’m sure the letter would have mentioned that. On the other hoof, I’ve never known him not to investigate something of an unexplained and possibly deadly nature.”
“He’s nosy?”
“That’s one way of putting it,” Cadance said, a tad drily. “Just… let me worry about the Doctor, hon’. Right now, we’re here for Twilight, and that’s all.”
Shining nodded. “Alright. If you’re sure.”
Cadance nodded. “Trust me.”
“To the end of the world,” Shining said, and pretended not to notice how Cadance’s face tightened when he did.
Up ahead of them, there came the sound of hooves echoing up from an adjoining stairwell. Both royals paused as the sound drew closer and closer. Peering into the darkness, neither could see anypony there, thought it sounded like whoever it was couldn’t have been more than a few meters away.
And then the shapes resolved out of the gloom, and Sombra, his head bowed, stepped into the light. Shining let out a shout of surprise, and Cadance took a step back. Sombra’s head whipped up in response, his eyes wide. He stared at them like a deer in headlights for a long moment. They did the same to him.
Cadance snapped out of it first. “Sombra! We weren’t expecting to run into you. How are you?”
Sombra flapped his jaw awkwardly for several moments before managing to say, “I am… keeping well, your highness. I was… not anticipating your presence, either. You must have had a long trip to get here.”
“We did,” Cadance agreed. “But thankfully, it was good weather for it.”
Sombra nodded, and for a moment, caught Shining’s eye. The two stared at each other for a long second before both quickly glanced away.
Cadance’s smile grew a little taut. “Well! This has been wonderful,” she lied. “We should probably get going to see Twilight, hadn’t we, Shining?”
“Oh,” said Sombra. “You… are on your way to see Twilight?”
“Why else would we be here?” Shining asked, a touch acerbically.
Sombra ducked his head. “Ah. Well, er. As it happens, I’m on my way to speak with her as well. So, er…” he faltered momentarily. “I suppose that I’ll accompany you to her chambers.”
Shining’s eyes bulged a little at that, but Cadance laid a wing across his back and he calmed himself. “Of course,” she said, starting to walk again. She didn’t take her wing off Shining’s back. “How is she?”
Sombra fell into step with her. “Recovering,” he said succinctly. “She claims to be well enough to start walking around again, although the medical professionals have their doubts.”
“As they should,” Shining said. “Up and walking again, right after nearly dying? I’ll have to have a talk with Twiley about that.”
“Alicorn, dear,” Cadance reminded him.
“Attacked by something that nearly killed an alicorn, yeah.”
Cadance grinned at him. “We’re tougher than we look.”
After a few minutes more, all three arrived at Twilight’s chambers. Shining frowned. “The guards aren’t here yet,” he muttered.
“To be fair, they had to park the chariot,” Cadance said lightly. “And this place is a maze, even if you’ve been here a few times before. I’m sure they’ll arrive any minute now.”
“Hmph,” said Shining. He pushed the door open.
“Look, I’m telling you, I feel much better now,” Twilight was saying to some tired-looking healer crossly. “No, not perfect, obviously. That’s not happening any time soon. But I can walk! Let me get out of bed, I’ll show you--”
“Twiley!”
Twilight glanced over, surprised. Her eyes went wide. “BBBFF! Cadance!”
“Hi, Twilight,” Cadance said, stepping into the room. “How are you feeling?”
This was not, evidently, the right thing to say. Twilight’s brow darkened. “I’m fine,” she ground out through grit teeth. “I’m perfectly capable of looking after myself and walking and going to the Doctor’s unveiling party tonight--”
“Ah…” Cadance said, nodding. “So that’s what this is about.”
Twilight pursed her lips and glanced away.
“Have you been giving the nurses a hard time, Twilight?” Shining asked, slipping over to the other side of her bed.
Twilight frowned a little. “No harder a time than they’ve been giving me,” she said stubbornly.
“Are you sure?”
Twilight looked away. “I… suppose I may have gone a little overboard,” she conceded. She looked up at Cadance imploringly. “I have to go to the intervention. You know that. I can’t not be there for a friend. Tell them I’m alright to get up and move around. You know I am.”
Cadance tilted her head, thinking. “I’ll make you a deal,” she said at last. “You stay in bed until six-thirty. Then, we’ll all drive off to meet the Doctor, together. Does that sound reasonable?”
Twilight flopped back on her pillows and nodded. “Yes,” she conceded.
The nurse from before frowned at Cadance. “Your highness, I really must protest --”
“Trust me. I know alicorns, and I know Twilight. She might not be at the top of her game, but I believe she can handle this.”
The nurse was still frowning. Cadance sighed. “Look. This is her brother. If she so much as feels dizzy, I guarantee he’ll pick her up and sprint to the emergency room. It’ll be fine.”
“Very well,” said the nurse. “You’ll need to fill out these release forms.”
“On it.”
Sombra sidled up to Twilight’s bedside as Cadance trotted away.
Twilight raised an eyebrow at his approach. “I thought I had you guarding the lab,” she said, a hint of disapproval in her voice.
Shining Armor couldn’t help but grin. Sombra bowed his head. “It’s… a long story. I was able to prevent the Cutie Mark Crusaders from gaining entry…”
Twilight tilted her head. “Very impressive,” she admitted.
Shining scowled, his schadenfreude evaporating like morning dew. “In the process,” Sombra continued, “I found this.” He pulled out a drawstring bag and shook it out onto Twilight’s bedside table. “A remnant of the energy that stole your magic, trapped in crystal.”
Twilight studied the shard of crystal. “Interesting,” she said. “Have you been able to decipher what kind of energy it is?”
“No,” Sombra replied. “I wished to bring it to your attention, first--”
“Give it here,” Shining said imperiously, trotting around Twilight’s bed. “I can work it out.”
“...Oh?” said Sombra.
“Really,” Twilight said, crossing her hooves.
“Yes! I, uh…” Shining glanced at Twilight, who was gazing at him flatly. He glanced at Cadance, still busily filling out release forms. He looked at the crystal. He held it up to the light. He tapped it with his horn. Finally, at his wit’s end, he licked it. “Ow! Sharp edge! Owowowowowow!”
Sombra stared at him in mild horror. Twilight put her head in her hooves. “Sometimes I honestly can’t believe we’re related,” She muttered.
Shining tasted shame. Also, blood. But mainly shame. One of the nurses handed him a cotton ball, and he placed it on the wound -- fortunately, it was neither a deep cut nor a long one.
“Oh, give it here,” Cadance took up the crystal. Her eyes unfocused for several seconds. “Hm. That’s an unusual one,” she said, turning it over thoughtfully in her mind. “But it’s one I recognize. This crystal contains artron energy -- the stuff that makes time travel possible.”
Twilight sat bolt upright. “It’s what?”
“Twilight… we agreed that you were going to stay in bed, remember?” Cadance warned.
Seven years of foalsitting Twilight paid dividends in that instant, evidenced by the fact that Twilight didn’t immediately leap from the bed, snatch the crystal, and bustle it off to the lab. “Oh… fine. I can ask the Doctor about it later, I suppose.”
“Artron… energy,” Sombra said slowly. A brief memory flashed in his mind -- a crystal sarcophagus, flashing with arcs of golden lightning. He got the feeling that wasn’t something he was meant to be able to remember. Sombra shuddered.
Cadance was still inspecting the crystal. “Artron energy,” she agreed quietly. “Yeah. Definitely something to ask the Doctor about.”
The Doctor himself was not in much of a position to answer any questions at that time. He had stopped whistling. His eyes were glazed and reddened. He was working tirelessly, connecting cables and plugs into the interface with an almost mechanical air. It had to be just right. Absolutely perfect. He was in the zone, a perfect groove of work that could not, should not, be interrupted.
There was a knock at the door. “Not now!” the Doctor called, not taking his eyes off his work.
There was another knock. He glanced up, annoyed. “I said, ‘not now’!”
“Doctor. I’m coming in.”
The Doctor looked up, squinting in the sudden light from outside. “Oh! Hello, Ditzy!”
Ditzy smiled at him, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes. “I thought you might be getting a little thirsty,” she said, proffering a mug of cider.
The Doctor cocked his head. “Yes. Yes, I suppose I am, a bit,” he admitted, touching his throat. “Funny how you can lose track of things like that.”
Ditzy’s smile fell a little. “Yeah. I guess it is.”
The Doctor took a long sip from the mug while Ditzy looked around. “So! Uh, show me what you’ve been working on,” she said.
The Doctor set down the mug and grinned. “Sure you don’t want to wait and see with everypony else?”
“Think of it like… a practice run,” Ditzy suggested. “So you can make sure to tell everypony about everything later.”
The Doctor considered that and nodded. “Fair point. Well, this is the Interface, of course. You know what that bit does --”
“Everypony else won’t.”
The Doctor’s face fell. “Oh, yes. Well, the Interface is designed to translate the TARDIS’s internal programming, her thoughts and feelings, into comprehensible language. Had to build a whole new set of translation circuits for that, based on ones I nicked off a T-140 TARDIS. Basically, this enables the TARDIS to directly engage and communicate with her passengers, accomplished by hooking the Interface to the telepathic circuits. Of course, that was nowhere near enough.”
“No?”
“Oh, no,” the Doctor said, shaking his head fervently. “Not nearly enough. You know, my companions always complain about my driving. It’s too rough, not accurate enough, I always leave the parking brake on…”
“Is… that what the vworps are?” Ditzy asked, tentatively.
“Oh, yeah. But I love the vworps, don’t you?”
She chewed her lower lip. “Is it… dangerous?”
The Doctor waved a hoof dismissively. “I’ve been doing it for almost two thousand years, and they’ve never failed yet. Honestly, I’m not sure why a TARDIS would have parking brakes.”
“Oh.” Ditzy relaxed a little. “That’s fine, then. I love the vworps, too.”
The Doctor beamed. “Brilliant! Anyway, to correct that problem, I hooked in all the navigational instruments and stabilizers, so the TARDIS has more direct control over all those systems. Plus, of course, the fault locator, Geiger counter, various internal and external sensors and suchlike, so she can warn us in case of an emergency.”
“Uh… huh…” Ditzy said, nodding.
“Now.” The Doctor looked at her square and and held up his hooves as though to hold back a tide of words. “I know what you’re thinking.”
“Oh!”
“And I agree, that’s a definite concern.”
“Oh, Doctor, you have no idea how glad--”
He spun back to face the console. “What if I’ve overlooked a sensor to hook up, and we land somewhere that has some hidden danger that isn’t obvious to the naked eye?”
“...Oh.”
“Well, that’s why I’ve hooked up the old Hostile Action Displacement System! Never walk out into the middle of a gunfight in San Francisco again!”
“A what? In where?”
He looked back over his shoulder. “Never go to San Francisco. At this point, I’m reasonably sure it’s cursed for time travelers.”
“...Alright. Um, what else did you hook up?”
The Doctor thought about that. “Well, there’s the linear calculator, the temporal gyros, emergency escape universe module, paradox stabilizer, tracking monitor, automatic log, gravity and attitude controls, shielding…”
“Let me put that another way. Is there anything that you didn’t hook up?”
“Well, I’ve still got to figure out a way to attach the chameleon circuit, and I haven’t gotten to the demat switch yet, or --”
“Doctor!” He broke off. Ditzy’s smile was thin and brittle. “Is there anything that you aren’t planning to attach to the Interface?”
He cocked his head. “Ditzy, are you implying something?”
She took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Doctor. Do you remember why you started building the Interface in the first place?”
The Doctor blinked a few times. “The TARDIS kept glitching.”
“Exactly," Ditzy said, her voice carefully kept calm. "Now. Keeping that in mind, do you think it’s a good idea or a bad idea to put all the control of the TARDIS in the hands of the TARDIS?”
The Doctor stared blankly at her for a long moment. She could practically see the gears grinding in his head. “Oh,” said the Doctor. He turned to the console. “Oh,” he repeated.
He turned back to Ditzy. “I’ve been a tremendous idiot, haven’t I?”
She considered that. “I wouldn’t go that far,” she said. “I think having a self-driving TARDIS sounds like a wonderful idea, once we can work out the source of all those glitches, and as long as you keep some manual backup controls just in case.”
The Doctor nodded and slumped against the console. “I’m sorry, Ditzy. I’ve been so distant lately. I got carried away. I think… I think I’ve hurt you. Is that right?”
Ditzy nodded. “A little, yes. I’ve been so worried about you, Doctor.”
The Doctor turned away. “I see.” He sucked the inside of his cheek.
After a moment, he straightened up and gave a firm nod. “I,” he said, “am going to disconnect all the bits of this that aren’t strictly required for the TARDIS to talk. I’m not going to hook them back up, except for the ones that are actually necessary for life support. And then, once all that’s done, we’re going out for a walk in the orchard, together. Maybe we’ll play hide and seek. Maybe we’ll climb a tree. Maybe we’ll fall asleep in the shade somewhere. Who knows? All that matters is, we’ll be doing it together. How does that sound?”
Ditzy nodded enthusiastically. “Wonderful,” she said. “Let’s get started.”
“Well… after I unhook some of these wires.”
“I know. That’s what I meant,” Ditzy said, picking up a wrench from the floor. “Just point at the ones you want disconnected.”
The Doctor beamed, and they set to work.