//------------------------------//
// The Two Doctors 
// Story: Ruler of Everything 
// by Sixes_And_Sevens 
//------------------------------//

The misshapen, bullish creatures were closing in fast. Dinky looked around desperately. There had to be some way around them, some way out of this labyrinth. But their horns were glowing brighter than ever. Tendrils of light stretched out toward the six…
And struck a pale green barrier.
Sweetie Belle stood athwart the trio of minotaur-like beings, her horn glowing the color of jade. She had thrown up a shield between them. The three creatures stared at one another for a moment, then reached out with their glowing horns again. Where the orange light hit the shield, it began to eat away at the construct. Sweetie gasped, then redoubled her efforts.
“Sweetie,” Button said, his voice shaking, “they’re eating your magic.”
“Mm. Mm-hm!”
“The more energy you put into that shield, the more they’ll consume.”
“Yeah, I got that!”
“That’s going to kill you!”
“Well, think of something else, fast!”
“Uhh…”
Dinky lit her own horn, conjuring a series of fast-moving darts of light that stung at the creatures from all sides. Two of them turned to face this new threat. The third continued to focus on Sweetie’s shield, though his concentration kept breaking as the darts struck his neck, legs, and arms.
“Okay, that’s all I’ve got!” Dinky said. “Anypony else got some bright ideas?”
Scootaloo was staring at the map intently. “It’s got these guys mapped out, alright,” she muttered. “And the corridor length is exactly right, too. So why does it say there’s a turn here?”
She frowned at the wall to her left, then at the map. “Guys? I think this whole place might be an illusion.”
“Yes?” Dinky said. “We’re literally in the Matrix. None of it’s actually real, but it can still definitely kill us.”
“No, I mean like…” Scootaloo reached out a hoof toward the wall. It passed through as though there was nothing there.
Dinky stared, and the last of her magic darts slammed into the middle creature’s crotch. It doubled over in pain. “Okay,” she said levelly. “That’s… of course! That’s why it’s so bright in here, even though there aren’t any visible lights, the whole thing’s made of light! Let’s go!”
“Hold on,” Rumble said. “What about the bull guys? They’ll just chase us out.”
“I’ll hold them back,” Sweetie said. “Dinky? More darts?”
“Oh, I think I can do better than darts,” Dinky muttered. “When I give the word, drop the shield and run.”
“Got it!”
“Everypony else, move out!”
The five raced through the illusory wall and into the dark tunnel beyond. Dinky held up the map in front of her. “There’s a juncture… there! Sweetie Belle! Run for it!”
Sweetie stumbled as one of the minotaur-shaped things smashed her shield with its horns. With one last push, she expanded the boundaries of the spell, shoving the creatures back with a wave of pure force. Then she dropped the spell and ran like crazy, her long, elegant legs moving in a mad dash toward her friends. After a few moments, the creatures followed after her, lowing in fury.
Dinky lit her horn, and a trio of fireballs ignited behind the bull-things. All in a row, they slammed into the creatures’ backs, sending them sprawling as Sweetie ran on, unharmed. She joined her friends in the junction. “Are they… dead?” she asked.
A low moo was her reply. The creatures rose, one by one. The lead one reached out an arm. “You may have been clever enough to escape the Power Complex. But you cannot escape the Nimon!” it growled. “We are as gods, and you are but irritating mosquitoes. You will be consumed, and we will find a way to resume the great journey of life! Starting with that meddlesome hussy…”
They strode forward. All six stepped back, terrified. Suddenly, there was a cracking noise and everyone looked up. They ought to have looked down. A great slab of rock rose from the floor, sealing the Nimon off from the ponies. There was a long moment of silence.
Rumble picked up the sonar map and waved it at the wall. “That thing’s… about two meters thick,” he said quietly.
Scootaloo knocked on the wall. “I guess whatever caused that crack in the ground must’ve done this too, right?” she asked.
“I guess…” Dinky stepped forward and touched the wall. “At least this time it did more good than harm.”
“Ah don’t like this. It’s too unpredictable. Any minute, th’ ground might go out from under our hooves, or th’ walls are gonna close in on us.”
Rumble winced. “Could you please not mention the walls closing in?” he begged.
Apple Bloom covered her mouth quickly. “Sorry. Mah bad.”
Rumble shook his head. “It’s whatever. Let’s just get out of here before the beef boys back there figure another way out of their maze.”
Dinky turned the map around in her hooves and pointed down the hallway to her right. “That’s the way that’s closest to the tower,” she said.
Rumble was trotting away before she’d even finished her sentence.





The Doctor hadn’t returned to his normal perky self since leaving the sepulchre, but he had at least stopped constantly bemoaning his own flaws and was able to walk around of his own volition. This came as a relief to everypony present. They had all, consciously or not, elected to stick together as they explored the tower.
To be honest, there wasn’t much to see. Entire corridors of stone were utterly unadorned, with only a few occasional tapestries or statues to liven up the walls. Rarity squinted at each one and curled her lip. They were all quite ugly, but the Doctor seemed to know the history of each of them.
“Now, that chap there is Pandak the First,” the Doctor said, waving at a bust of a stallion with a tonsure and a very square face. “Contemporary of Rassilon, back in the old days, he founded the Scendeles chapter. He was one of the first presidents of Gallifrey before… well, before Rassilon usurped him and the entire High Council.”
“This Rassilon of yours doesn’t seem a particularly pleasant sort,”Cadance noted.
The Doctor winced. “Er, no. Very much not a pleasant fellow. Some of his incarnations were charming enough, but, well…” He shook his head quickly. “Come on. The main doors must be around here somewhere. Keep your eyes peeled for an enormous chessboard, that’s one of the major traps between the door and the sepulchre.”
They walked on. Rarity kept frowning at every tapestry they passed. However, Sunset couldn’t help but notice that her scowls were getting less rancorous and more and more confused. She leaned in. “Is something the matter?” she muttered.
“Possibly,” Rarity replied. “I can’t be quite sure, yet, but I think…” She trailed off, worrying at her lip.
After a few more corridors, Rarity stopped dead in her tracks. “There, that clinches it.”
Everypony else paused and looked at her. “Clinches what, exactly?” Trixie asked, looking around.
Rarity gestured imperiously at the nearest bust. “May I present Pandak I, founder of the… what did you call it? Scented candles?”
“Scendeles,” the Doctor muttered, stepping forward to get a better look at the statue. There it was -- the familiar tonsure, the remarkably square jaw and muzzle.
Rainbow Dash took to the air, folding her hooves. “You mean we’ve been going in circles?” she demanded.
“So it would seem,” Rarity said.
The Doctor shook his head. “Impossible. We went down a flight of stairs since the last time we saw this statue. It must just be a similar work.”
“Oh? And how likely is it that two busts have the same chip in their ear?”
Everypony peered closer. There was indeed a small chip at the tip of the left ear.
The Doctor sucked in his breath through his teeth. “Are you… sure it was on the last one?” he asked.
She looked at him flatly. ‘Yes, yes, I know, stupid question,” the Doctor said, waving a hoof vaguely. “Alright, we’ve been walking in circles.”
“But we can’t have,” Ditzy put in. “You said yourself, we passed this bust upstairs.”
The Doctor pulled down his muzzle with a hoof. “Yeah.”
“So what does that mean?” Shining Armor asked, tilting his head.
Ditzy looked at Mac. “Missing scenes?”
Mac nodded grimly. “Eeyup. Or summat like.”
Fluttershy glanced between the two of them, puzzled. “Um… am I missing something?”
Ditzy raised her eyebrows at Mac. The big farmer glanced away. “Uh… you tell it, Ditz. Y’all are better at talkin’ than me.”
“But it happened to you,” Ditzy pointed out gently. “It’s important that we get all the information.”
Mac hemmed and hawed for a moment. Then a graceful purple figure stepped forth hesitantly. “Mac? Something… happened to you? Are you alright?”
“Hm?” Her green eyes went wide. “Oh. Uh. Fine now. Eeyup. It was real scary at th’ time, though.”
Twilight reached out a hoof. “Would you tell us about it? Please? It might be really important, you know? And even if it isn’t… well, I don’t like when my friends get hurt.”
Mac stared into her eyes, and gently took Twilight’s hoof in hers. “Well, it happened as Ah was on mah way t’ Carousel Boutique,” she said.
As she recounted her strange encounter with more smooth and fluid eloquence than anypony outside the Apple family had ever heard out of her, Ditzy cantered around the crowd to take a closer look at the bust of Pandak. There was something very strange about its presence here, but she wasn’t quite sure what, yet. She resolved to share her suspicions only after Mac was done speaking -- she seemed to be growing more confident with each minute of holding Twilight’s hoof, and Ditzy didn’t dare interrupt that. Even in such a dark prison, she could take comfort in the joys of others.





The trek through the tunnels was quieter now, and swifter. It was painfully clear to all of the Crusaders that the Silurians and Nimons almost certainly weren’t the only creatures stalking these tunnels. They needed to escape and find the others before they ran into a creature that they couldn’t defeat.
Dinky lit the way alone now. Sweetie Belle’s shields had taken a lot out of her, and the pale unicorn hung back, leaning on Rumble for support. Button had taken control of the sonic map and was guiding the party along. Scootaloo trotted along in the middle of the herd, staring down at her hooves as she went. Apple Bloom took up the rear guard, ready to buck any sneaky creatures lurking in the shadows directly into next week.
They had been walking in silence for several minutes when Rumble spoke up. “So,” he said. “Dinky.”
“Yeah?”
“I wanted to ask you about something you said earlier. On the surface.”
“Oh.”
“Just before the Silurians showed up, you said this wasn’t how it was supposed to be.”
“Ah. That.”
“What did you mean? How was this ‘supposed to be’?”
Dinky was silent for a long minute. Scootaloo glanced up. “Did you know this was gonna happen?” she asked. She sounded tired.
“No! Of course not. I would’ve broken that stupid alicorn-bot ages ago it I’d known it would do all this.”
“Then what--” Rumble started.
Dinky turned and glared. “I meant our stupid reunion, okay?” she said. “We were supposed to get along and be happy! Nothing was supposed to have changed, and now this is the fourth argument I’ve had with one of you just today! We weren’t supposed to have moved on the way we have. Not from each other, not from Ponyville!”
The tunnel walls shook, and Rumble and Sweetie Belle clung to one another. Dinky took several heavy breaths, her hooves trembling. When she spoke again, her voice was quiet and shaking with the effort of holding back tears. “We were still meant to be friends.”
Nopony said anything for a long moment after that. Dinky sat down heavily on the floor, tears sliding over her cheeks. Then Button set down his bag and wrapped Dinky in a hug. “We are still friends,” he said. “I promise, we are. Yeah, we’ve been arguing more than usual today, but…” he coughed. “Well, today hasn’t exactly been a normal day for us, right?”
“I think ‘stressful’ covers it,” Sweetie said.
“Yeah. And, y’know, it has been awhile since we all saw each other, so we had to get used to that again. And…” he hesitated.
“And ponies do change,” Rumble said gently, stepping forward. “We all have. Even you, Dinks.”
“But that doesn’t mean we’ve stopped caring about you,” Sweetie Belle said. “Just like you haven’t stopped caring about us.”
Dinky nodded slowly. “I know,” she said. “It’s just… I dunno.”
“Yeah,” Scootaloo said. “We know. It’s been a long day for you, too. Let it all out, bud.” She stepped forward and joined the group hug.
“I know it seems like we’re all moving on from one another, but that’s not true,” Rumble said, walking closer. “We’ll always be friends, Dinky. We’ve been through way too much together to just let that slip away.”
“And we’ll always be there for one another, too,” Sweetie said firmly. “No matter how far apart we live from each other, we’ll always write, always visit each other when we have the chance…”
Scootaloo and Button both shuffled around slightly to let Sweetie and Rumble join in on the hug, which they did quickly and with delight. Dinky snuffled back her tears and gripped them all tightly. Scootaloo wriggled around to peer into the darkness. “Hey, AB! Come get in on the cuddlefest!”
There was no reply.
Rumble raised his head and squinted. “Bloom?” he called. His voice echoed back up and down the tunnel. The five Crusaders clung to one another a little more tightly. It felt very cold in the tunnel, all of a sudden.





“--An’ that’s when Miz Rarity let me take mah forty winks in her spare room,” Mac concluded.
Rarity looked like she’d taken a punch to the gut. “Macintosh, darling, I’m so terribly sorry. If I’d only known --”
“Eeyup. But Ah didn’t tell ya. Ain’t yer fault.”
Rarity pursed her lips. “The gall! Using my face to torment you. Ooh, if I ever get my hooves on that two-bit impersonator…”
“The gold light,” Twilight said slowly. “That tallies well with my observations in the time loop. And the energies that brought us here, they were gold as well.”
“Then… the Valeyard is at fault for all that?” Trixie said. “Huh. He sure gets around.”
“In a manner of speaking, yes,” the Doctor agreed. “The only thing I don’t understand is how he garnered the power to do this kind of thing. Even at his most powerful, he couldn’t manipulate time on this scale; he just interfered with the Matrix to make me look bad during my trial.”
“And that’s all he did?” Cadance asked.
The Doctor rubbed his chin. “Well, later on he manipulated real-world events to get his way. He stole an emotional manipulator from a werewolf colony, then used it to harvest negative emotions in Victorian London… then used that power to manipulate the Matrix, temporarily replacing me in real space. But I stopped him! Not only that, the powers of the Matrix were curtailed as a result of that misadventure. Thankfully, I had the ear of the Lady President. He shouldn’t have that kind of control now, and he should never have had the control to manipulate reality that way.”
“Never say never, Doctor,” the bust of Pandak said. Ditzy leapt back from it like a scalded cat, and everypony else spun around in shock.
The stone cracked and crumbled as the Valeyard stepped out from the wall itself.
“Are you just not able to walk into a room like a normal pony?” Rainbow Dash demanded. 
The Valeyard ignored her. “So. You finally figured out the secret escape from the room; the enormous unlocked doors in the best-lit part of the room. Congratulations.”
Sunset frowned. “You meant for us to escape, then?”
“Escape? You naive fool. You haven’t escaped anything. This tower, this entire planet is your prison, and I am your jailor.”
Twilight shrunk back from the ashen figure, and Mac put a protective hoof around her. The Valeyard gave both mares an evil look before tracking the faces of all the other ponies in the room. His eye lingered for a moment on Pinkie Pie. She returned the glare with interest, her eyes like cut sapphires. Then he moved on, his gaze falling on Fluttershy. Discord tensed.
The Valeyard gave a cruel smile and stepped forward, leaning forward as Fluttershy shrank away. “Now remind me,” he said. “Who are you, again?”
“I, I’m Fluttershy.”
“Oh, of course. The weak one. The coward.”
Discord raised a paw, but Fluttershy looked back and smiled at them reassuringly. “I’m not really weak, you know,” she said. “But sometimes I can look that way, I agree. All of my friends are so very strong, sometimes it’s easy for me to fade into the background.”
The Valeyard leaned in. “And that’s the way you like it. Hidden. Safe. Anonymous.”
Fluttershy cocked her head. “Well, yes.”
The Valeyard furrowed his brow a little. Discord chuckled drily. “Oh dear. You’ll have to try a lot harder than that to get to her. I found that out the hard way.”
“Oh? Perhaps I should take a page from your handbook, then.” The Valeyard swiftly brought a hoof around and bopped Fluttershy on the head. The color leached from her body. Discord screamed, grabbing their face in their claws.
Fluttershy cocked her head. “I… don’t feel any different,” she said. Her color slowly faded back to its full saturation.
The Valeyard sneered. “Obviously not. Your power was never my target. Your little crush, on the other hand…”
Discord’s head whipped around. “Her what?”
The Valeyard didn’t reply. “You remember what you did, Discord. What you did to her, to Equestria. To your former friends?”
Discord sneered. “I’m not about to listen to moralizing from the likes of you.”
“No? Is it because I’m no better than you? I can tell you that I’m not worse. You can’t even blame all your actions on a corrupting outside force, like poor little Luna, or tragic, desperate Sunset Shimmer.”
Discord’s eyes narrowed, but went wide as the Valeyard delivered their final shot. “You have more of your elder sibling in you than you like to admit…”
“Why you!” Discord snarled and snapped their fingers. What had probably started as a terrible curse of the first order resulted in little more than a spray of lemon juice. “You know nothing about Entropy! Nothing!”
The Doctor stepped forward. “Leave them alone, Valeyard. I’m the only one you’ve got it in for.”
The Valeyard turned to look at him, already ignoring Discord as Fluttershy hurried to calm and restrain them. “Yes,” the Valeyard mused. “Self-loathing has always been an issue for us, hasn’t it? I think you’d better talk it out, don’t you?”
The Doctor blinked. He hadn’t expected that. “Er… alright. Let’s talk,” he said.
The Valeyard grinned maliciously. “Oh. Did you think I meant with me? No. You’re getting a group session, Doctor.”
Before anypony could fully react to that statement, the world spun around them, sending them all toppling to the ground. When they rose... 
"It's the tomb room again!" Trixie said, glancing around. She squinted. "Funny. Trixie remembered it being brighter in here..."
Ditzy was concerned with a more pressing matter. "The Doctor! Where is he?" she demanded.




The Doctor grunted as he fell painfully on his side. Glancing at the ceiling, he could see that he was trapped in a room of mirrors. He rose unsteadily to his hooves and looked around. “Oh. Oh no.” In each mirror was a figure. None of them were the Doctor’s reflection, but all were undeniably the Doctor. He couldn’t even count how many there were, with the way all of them were reflecting onto one another, sending the myriad Doctors out into infinity. None of them looked pleased. Just as the implications of what the Valeyard had said sank in, they all began to speak at once. Through the clamor of voices, the Doctor could only make out a few sentences at a time.
“You push the blame for the Time War onto me,” said a rust-colored earth pony with a ragged grey goatee. “As though you could separate your actions, your thoughts into one incarnation. What I did, you did too!”
The army-green stallion with his short-cropped mane stepped forward, his eyes blazing. “You lost Rose,” he said, his voice shaking with fury. “You lost her.”
A short orange mare with a blonde mane shook her head at him. “Look at you,” she said. “You’re so afraid to die, but you don’t remember how to live! You’re so afraid to lose, you push away everything you’ve won. Friends, family, happiness -- you can’t accept any of it.”
The oldest face, a mint-green unicorn, shook his walking stick at him. “Is this my future?” he demanded. “Is this how I spend my days, hm?”
“Simply put, old boy, you’ve lost your shine,” said a red crystal pony in an Inverness cape and frills. “You’ve spent your time crying over the bones of Gallifrey? Venerating the memory of a bunch of genocidal old sticks?”
“Admit it,” said the purple unicorn in the green velvet jacket. “You wish you could be us. Any of us but you, wallowing in your own self-imposed exile.”
As more and more iterations and incarnations added to the litany of complaints, the Doctor did the only thing he could think to do. He put his hooves over his ears and howled.





“Where could she have gone?” Rumble demanded. The group had searched up and down the last thirty meters of the corridor time and time again. Each search brought no joy, no clues, and really, nothing apart from a massed collection of rocks.
“There was that little tremor in the tunnels a minute ago,” Sweetie said, tapping her hooves together nervously. “Do you think that could have had something to do with Apple Bloom vanishing?”
“It’s definitely something to keep in mind,” Scootaloo said.
Rumble swallowed hard. “You mean, like,,, she was just swallowed up by the rock?”
“I didn’t say that--”
“But you were thinking it!” Rumble’s eyes darted from one wall to the other as though they might start sliding together at any moment. “The ground could’ve split open, and she fell through and it closed again,” he speculated. “Crushed to death and buried alive all in the same final breath.”
“Rumble,” Scootaloo said carefully, fluffing up her feathers. “Take a breath.”
He shook his head violently. “I don’t think I can. I don’t think I should. There’s so little air down here --”
Dinky sighed. “And you were doing so well…”
Button took Rumble’s face in his hooves. “Man, just listen to me. Listen to the sound of my voice, okay? You’re alright. You’re safe. You’re with your friends.”
Rumble was still shaking, but it had subsided considerably. “Okay,” he said. “Okay. Thanks, Buh, Button. Thanks, guys.”
Scootaloo side-eyed Dinky. “He was ‘doing so well’?” she asked drily.
“Well, he was!” she protested. “I was quite proud of him for facing his fears for so long.”
Scootaloo intensified the side-eye. “I am proud,” Dinky corrected quickly. “I am. I’m proud of you, Rumble, You’re doing great.”
Rumble chuckled shakily. “Well. Took some coaxing, but you got there. Thanks.”
“Alright,” said Button, letting go of Rumble’s face. “You good?”
Rumble scrunched his muzzle and tilted his head from side to side. “For now, I guess.”
“Okay.” Button picked up the sonic map again. “Let me just zoom this thing out and check for life signs…”
“Why didn’t you just do that in the first place?” Scootaloo asked.
“It’s easier and faster just to look if she just got stuck somewhere in this corridor,” Button said, adjusting the dial on the box. “But since she isn’t…”
“Time to use a broader search method?”
“Exactly,” Button said. “On the subject of…” he squinted. “Alright. This should give us an accurate picture of life signs in the tunnels for three kilometers around once it loads.”
Scootaloo cocked her head. “How long does it take to load?”
“Uh…” Button checked a readout. “Ten minutes. No, fifteen minutes. Oh, seven sec -- nope, half an hour. Four minutes? Um…”
Suddenly, they all heard a not-so-distant shout followed by a brief stream of cussing that was quickly cut off. “Or,” Dinky said, “we could just follow that.”
“Yep!” Button said, tucking the map into his bag. “C’mon, I think it came down this tunnel!”