//------------------------------//
// Extremis 
// Story: Ruler of Everything 
// by Sixes_And_Sevens 
//------------------------------//

The Nightmare said little. That didn’t matter much. Unlike the Valeyard, it had no need to make idle threats or establish its dominance. Every one of the prisoners knew what the entity was capable of, even those who had never suffered its presence within their minds.
As soon as the Valeyard had gone, the Nightmare had lit its horn and ripped an archway open in the middle of the room, revealing Sombra and Sunset walking down a corridor. When they had seen their friends all staring at them in horror, Sunset had reeled back and tried to run, only for another archway to open at the other end of the hallway. Sombra had merely hung his head and slunk back into the sepulcher. Sunset accepted her defeat soon thereafter. 
The archway vanished as soon as Sunset stepped all the way through, making her shriek as the end of her flaming tail was abruptly cut off. Her mane and wings flickered nervously as the flames slowly regrew, and Trixie rushed to comfort her. 
Then the Nightmare spoke. “I have been requested to leave you unharmed. For now I will do so. I only need a reason to break my word. I can hardly wait until you give me one.”
After that statement, it had trotted up to Rassilon’s tomb and sat atop it, mechanical wings spread like ghoulish fan blades, facing away from them, daring them to misbehave behind its back.
None of them had been foolhardy enough to take that dare, not even Discord, who had retreated to a corner to coil around Fluttershy, not-so-subtly shielding her from any sudden moves on the part of the Nightmare. Others had taken up similar defensive positions, or were simply sitting surrounded by their friends.
Ditzy sat alone. So did the Doctor. He had let go of her abruptly and without a word to go and sit on the steps leading up to the sarcophagus. The imagery was suggestive -- the Lord of Time sitting at the foot of the structure, while the Nightmare took its place at the top, above the central pillar of Time Lord society.
Ditzy wanted to go to him, to comfort him, but it was as though he had cut her off completely -- he wouldn’t even look at her. What, she wondered, could she possibly have done to deserve this treatment? She hadn’t done anything, had she? Of course she hadn’t. The Doctor just… the Doctor was only…
She shut her eyes for a long moment. When she opened them again, she rose and trotted over to Celestia. The princess looked momentarily surprised at Ditzy’s approach, but that faded into sympathy when she saw the expression on the mare’s face. She lifted a wing invitingly, and without hesitation, Ditzy pressed herself into the Princess’s side, weeping. Celestia gently placed her wing back over the mare, then spared a glance at the Doctor.
He was staring at Ditzy, his expression agonized. When he noticed Celestia watching him, he dropped his gaze back to the ground.





All things considered, running the coma ward was relatively easy until Berry burst in. The patients’ vital signs were for the most part steady and regular, and apart from needing to regularly change bags on Twilight’s IV drip, there wasn’t much else to do. It was a good distraction from the gut-chilling despair eating away at all of them.
And then the sound of clattering hooves echoed down the halls, approaching at speed. Romana glanced up. “Cloudchaser, see who that is,” she said.
“Right.” The mare stuck her head out into the waiting room. “Sorry, I don’t think anypony else is gonna fit -- Berry?”
“Romana!”
Romana glanced up as her best friend and landlady shoved her way into the room. “Hey, watch the wings!” Cloudchaser said, fluffing up indignantly.
Berry ignored her, which was unusual -- under normal circumstances, the older mare would at the very least have spat a couple of curse words back. But right now, she had eyes only for Romana, and she grabbed at the Time Lady’s hoof. “Romana. There was somepony at the bar earlier, somepony who was looking for you.”
Romana frowned. “I see.” She glanced around the room. “Do you think this pony might be the one responsible for all this?”
“I don’t see how. He seemed more or less normal. Definitely a sketchy stallion, but…” she trailed off, uncertain.
“Still, it’s a possibility we can’t discard,” Romana said. “He might simply be going after all of the Doctor’s friends.”
“If that’s true, he’ll need to take down all of Ponyville,” Holiday said.
“Did he say anything else?” Romana asked, looking at Berry intently. “Describe him.”
“Er… white coat. Black skullcap and cloak, red eyes… I think his tail was brown? It was very short. He was pretty old -- not as old as Granny, but older than, er… Hondo, let’s say.”
Hondo Flanks frowned a little at that, but made no objection. Romana considered this. “Not ringing any bells so far,” she admitted.
Berry thought a little harder. Then her eyes went wide. “His name! He said it just as he was leaving. He said, ‘tell her that the Valeyard is looking for her,’ something like that.”
Romana’s eyes bulged. “And you just came here? We need to leave. Now.”
“What about the patients?” Tender Care asked. “I’m not abandoning my son.”
“We need to be out of the way before he turns up here,” Romana said, hurrying into the foyer. She drew up short when she saw the figure framed in the doorway leading to the hall beyond. “Oh… Berry,” she groaned.
Berry’s face was pale. “You… you followed me. I should have guessed --”
“Yes,” said the Valeyard. “You really should have.” He shut the door behind him.
The others all filed out of the coma ward to face the stallion. Romana looked at him, disgusted. “I’ll admit, Valeyard, I’m surprised that you’re still alive. In hindsight, though, it only makes sense. This had your slimy fingerprints all over it, from the way you’ve been emotionally destroying the Doctor to the ‘inexplicable’ TARDIS malfunctions.”
“You flatter me, my dear Romana,” the Valeyard said.
Thunderlane leaned in. “Uh… so who is this guy?”
“He's a potential future Doctor who becomes an evil lawyer,” Romana explained.
“There any other kind?” Granny Smith growled. “You! Are you responsible fer puttin’ mah grandbabies in th’ hospital?”
“Among other things, yes,” the Valeyard replied smoothly.
“Ah’ll see you pay fer that.”
“I sincerely hope you try. Hauling your old broken body into the Matrix will be a chore, but the looks on your family’s faces would make it all worth it. However, let us not make this meeting more unpleasant than it has to be. My business is with Romana alone.”
Romana stared at the Valeyard coldly. “What do you want from me, then?” Berry had never seen the Time Lady look so icy and distant.
“Only your key to the Doctor’s TARDIS,” the Valeyard said. “Give me that, and I’ll leave you all in peace. Do not deny me. If you make me take it from you by force…” He shook his head. “You will wish that I had simply killed you.”
Romana tilted her head thoughtfully. “Get him,” she said.
The waiting room sprung to life. While the pegasi swooped down to attack from above and the earth ponies struck out with their powerful hooves, the unicorns swung furniture to and fro. The Valeyard swore and took several steps back, although most of the attacks seemed to be bouncing off some kind of weak shield spell. His back to the door, he looked around the room in a fury.
Then everything went gold. The Ponyville residents faltered momentarily, but when no other effects were immediately apparent, they continued their attacks.
“Goodness!” Cookie Crumbles said, lifting up a table and smacking the Valeyard, force-bubble and all, into the wall. “I haven’t felt this strong in years!”
“Uh, guys?” Thunderlane said, stopping to look at his hooves. They were shrinking before his eyes, losing muscle mass. “I think we might have a pr~oblem!”
He put his hooves to his throat as his voice cracked. Already he was no older than fifteen, and regressing fast. Romana’s eyes went wide. “No!” she shouted, lighting her own horn to try and counter the effect. The corona on her horn, however, grew brighter and brighter, until she was consumed in golden fire. Thunderlane, Flitter, and Cloudchaser all landed, all of them too young to keep themselves in the air for a minute longer. Screams became the cries of babies, some of the voices fading out altogether as the figures faded out of existence.
After a minute had passed, the Valeyard let the golden light disappear. Five babies still remained -- Berry Punch, Lofty, Romane Holiday, Hondo Flanks, and Cookie Crumbles, all squalling on the floor. Romana lay slumped against the door, clearly dazed. She was no longer a unicorn, having regressed into her previous body.
The Valeyard carefully picked his way around the babies to stand over Romana. “Give me the key, now, or I’ll do the same thing to all your friends in the coma ward.”
Romana choked back a sob of terror. “You… you've erased them from existence.”
“I did indeed,” the Valeyard said. “The Oubliette of Eternity had much the same function. A pity that your alternate self banned its use on Gallifrey, although those of us with the right connections could always still make use of it. They are as ghosts now, doomed to wander the space between existence and nonexistence forever. Give up now, Romana. You’ve lost. All of your allies are useless to you now.”
“Count again, you sonnuvabitch.”
The Valeyard turned around just in time to see a wooden chair smash over his head. He went down like a ton of bricks.
Granny Smith, regressed to the prime of her life, let the kindling fall over the Valeyard’s chest. She sneered at him. “Damn fancy city slickin’ lawpony,” she grumbled. She glanced over at Romana. “You alright, girlie?”
Romana straightened up, blinking several times. “Ah. Er.” She looked herself over. “Well, it’s nostalgic, I’ll certainly say that much.”
The Time Lady had transformed into a pale pink pegasus, slender of frame with a flowing blonde mane. “Fascinating,” she murmured. “If I’ve regenerated in reverse, that means that the Valeyard was actually manipulating the flow of established time, rather than merely forcing our biological ages to run in reverse.”
Granny pulled her mane out of its bun, letting it spill down her back. “Run that past me again, willya? In plain Equuish, this time.”
Romana glanced up at the ceiling, thinking. “Instead of turning us into babies, he made time run in reverse, which is far and away the more effective method, but which also requires considerably more power -- perhaps as many as two orders of magnitude more.”
Granny stared at Romana, eyes lidded. “Plainer Equuish.”
“He’s slightly more powerful than Discord.”
“Ah.” Granny rubbed her chin. “Fuck."
"That seems like a decent summary," Romana agreed.
Granny studied the prone form. "Ah guess we can’t just tie him up, then?”
“No~oo,” Romana said, tilting her head. “Mind you, that isn’t to say that we can’t restrain him…”
She winced, thinking. “But first, I think we need to wake up Nurse Redheart.”





The stairs went on for so long that Rumble had eventually gotten bored of flying and decided to land on the staircase and walk with his friends. They had been climbing for almost twenty-five minutes when, at long last, they reached a landing, which was a relief. This was, admittedly, tempered by the fact that there was no door on the landing, nor any further stairs continuing up from there.
Dinky shut her eyes tight, sucked in a deep breath, and let it out slowly. “Will someone please tell me that we haven’t spent the better part of half an hour climbing these miserable stairs for this?”
“Don’t talk nonsense,” Apple Bloom said, with perhaps more confidence than she felt. “We’re in the tower, ain’t we? An’ this is th’ only way up, an’ all. Nopony would put all that effort into buildin’ stairs jus’ to delay folk, would they?”
“So… there has to be a hidden door,” Button mused. “Everypony, start checking for loose rocks.”
Sweetie tilted her head and studied the wall. “Let’s see,” she muttered. “I think I understand the science behind that scanner pretty well. Let’s try…”
She lit her horn, and waves of light and sound rippled off her corona, bouncing back. Scootaloo looked duly impressed. “Crude echolocation, nice,” she said. “See anything interesting?”
“Well…” Sweetie frowned. “There’s definitely empty space behind this wall. I think I’d need to practice with the spell a lot more before I could tell you more than that.”
Dinky stepped forward to study the wall. “Interesting. About how thick would you say the rock is?”
“Er… I dunno, maybe a quarter of a meter.”
Dinky nodded. “Okay. Everypony but Rumble needs to go back about twenty, thirty steps.”
“What? Why, what am I doing?” Rumble asked.
Dinky lit her horn. “You are going to hover out in the middle of the tower and catch me if the blowback is too powerful.” She stepped off the ledge and trotted down a few stairs. 
The others trotted past her. Bloom looked at her, concerned. “Uh… You sure this is a good idea?”
“Not really,” Dinky admitted. “But unless we want to spend another half-hour looking for a door that might not even be there, this is about the only way I can think of getting everypony through.”
“Uh, maybe teleportation?” Bloom suggested.
“Sure, but that would take both Sweetie and me to do safely, and we’d both be pretty drained by the end of it. We have to conserve our energy for whatever we’re going to find on the other side of that wall.”
“So yer just gonna blow it up, then.”
“Comparatively, it’s way less magical effort, focus, and energy expended. Now, will you get to the safe zone already?”
Apple Bloom frowned, but trotted down to where the others were waiting. Dinky grit her teeth and focused on the wall. If she could just focus…
But Bloom didn’t think she could do it. She thought -- all of them thought -- that Dinky was reckless. Volatile. She fought back the rise of indignation, shutting her eyes tight. She couldn’t let it out, not here, not now. But these were feelings that she had been holding for years, and they were finally rushing to the fore.
When the blast came, it was relatively small -- it blew out a hole in the wall easily large enough for a pony to walk through, sending rocks and sand tumbling down, down, down into the abyss. Dinky opened one eye and let out a long breath that she hadn’t known she’d been holding. She glanced back at the others a little smugly.
The grin fell from her face, however, as the tower began to shift and quake, only slightly at first, but growing ever more severe. Everypony bolted for the hole as the stairs began to shake. Sweetie Belle stumbled and pitched to the side, Rumble only barely managing to fly by to catch and right her before she tumbled off. Dinky picked up Scootaloo in her magic and levitated her through the hole, then did the same for Button. In a matter of moments, everypony was safely out of the staircase, most of them lying flat on the floor and panting for breath.
After a moment, the trembling subsided. Shakily, Rumble rose to his hooves. “What was that?” he demanded. “Dinky, I thought you said you had this under control!”
Dinky grit her teeth. “No,” she said. “I said I would try to control it. But, as you of all ponies should be aware, emotions don’t like being repressed all that much!”
Rumble’s frown softened slightly, but didn’t disappear.
It was a long time before anypony said a word. Dinky eventually broke the silence. “It’s… getting harder to keep in check,” she said quietly. “It’s like any little thing could set me off, and the farther along we go, the worse it gets.”
“Then you know what we have to do,” Rumble said quietly.
“No,” Dinky said.
“Yeah,” Rumble said, eyebrows arched. “We’ve got to talk about it.”
“Ugh.” Dinky flopped back down on the floor. “Can’t we do this when our lives aren’t in immediate danger?”
“Uh, considering that your emotional instability is directly correlated with that danger, I’m gonna say no,” Scootaloo said.
Dinky stared resolutely down at the floor. Sweetie Belle reached out a hoof slowly, and Dinky flinched away. “You know we aren’t going to think less of you, Dinky,” she said in a measured voice, her hoof still extended. “We’ll always be your friends, no matter what happens.”
“Will you?” Dinky said, her voice cold.
“Yes,” Apple Bloom said firmly. “We will.”
Dinky took in a long breath. “Then why,” she said, her voice breaking as she fought back tears, “Why are you all leaving me?”
There was a long, terrible silence. “I…” Button trailed off. “We grew up, Dinks. We moved on because we had to.”
“No, you didn’t. We could’ve all stayed in Ponyville.”
“We could have,” Sweetie allowed. “But we’ve got bigger dreams, now, and… and we couldn’t spend our lives there.” She considered. “Well… no. No. We have to move on.”
“Rumble,” Dinky said, looking at him beseechingly. “You just want to work on the weather patrol. You could do that in Ponyville, couldn’t you? And Sweetie, if you’re a singer, you have to move around all the time anyway. Why not just stay in Ponyville? None of us have to leave, not really.”
Apple Bloom had turned away and was scowling at the wall. “But we want to,” she said shortly. “We don’t wanna live in th’ same little backwater town fer th’ rest of our lives, Dinky! That’s all there is to it. We ain’t abandoning you. We’re just… movin’ out.”
“It’s not like we’ll never see each other again,” Scootaloo added quickly. “We can meet up whenever, right gang?”
There arose a general murmur of assent. “Right!” Scootaloo said, her confidence growing. “And we can go all over the place to visit one another, too. Manehattan, Appaloosa, Sandy Neighgo… doesn’t that sound fun?”
Dinky said nothing for a long minute, looking from hopeful grin to hopeful grin. Then she smiled, just a little too broad to be genuine. “Yeah. Yeah, that’ll be fun.” 
She hopped to her hooves and trotted down the hallway. “C’mon. We’ve got a day to save!”
The others hesitated. “None of that got through to her, did it?” Scootaloo asked.
“No,” Button said.
Scootaloo sighed. “Okay then. Let’s just… let’s just get to work and get out of here before she gets pissed off again.”
“Agreed,” Apple Bloom muttered, hurrying down the hall after their friend.
The others followed, all a little more slowly than usual. All of them had something on their minds all of a sudden.





As the Canterlot contingent walked through the hospital toward the coma ward, Blueblood noticed that Starlight’s expression was growing increasingly concerned. “Worried about your friends?” he murmured.
“Huh?”
“You looked to be a tad overwrought.”
“Oh. Yeah. I mean, yes, I’m obviously worried for everypony, but I’m sure they’ll be fine. They’ve been through worse than this, after all. It’s not so much that, really, more… it’s kind of just a bad feeling, I guess...” she trailed off, frowning. “Hold on,” she said, loud enough to make the others pause.
As they all turned to look at her, Starlight shut her eyes tight, her horn glowing. Fleur leaned over to Blueblood. “What in ze world --”
“I think she’s noticed something,” Blueblood muttered, taking a careful step back. “I think it would be inadvisable merely to ignore her.”
Starlight’s eyes popped open, glowing pure white in the pale yellow light of the hallway.
“Time magic,” she said, her eyes clearing. “Come on!”
She bolted ahead of the startled Gilda. After a moment of confusion, the others charged after her.
Starlight’s horn glowed an angry, bright blue and she nearly broke the door to the waiting room off its hinges. She was immediately met by loud infant wails.
A pink pegasus shut her eyes tight and grit her teeth. “We had just gotten them to sleep…” she groaned.
“Oh,” said Starlight. “Um, sorry.”
Then she remembered that this might very well be the perpetrator of an unspeakable breach of the temporal order (or as it was affectionately known to students of chronomancy, a ‘time crime’). “Who are you? What are you doing here? And what is with all these babies?”
“I might very well ask you the same question,” the pegasus said. “Or -- well, the first two, at the very least.”
“I believe you’ll find she asked you first,” said a calm male voice from behind Starlight.
The pegasus visibly relaxed. “Oh, hello Fancy, Fleur. GUIDE’s finally shown up to investigate, then?”
Fancy blinked. “I beg your pardon? Have we met?”
“Well, yes, don’t you -- oh. How foolish of me, you’ve never seen this face. I’m Romanadvoratrelundar, of House Heartshaven, inheritor of House Dvora, duly sidelected Lady President of Gallifrey and her Domains?” Seeing Fancy’s befuddlement, she tried again. “Romana? You remember, from the bar?”
The stallion’s expression cleared immediately. “Ah, of course. You’ve regenerated, I see?”
“Mm. In a manner of speaking,” Romana said, lifting up a baby to bounce him on her knee. “We were attacked by a powerful time-manipulating entity, who regressed us all. Granny Smith and I were old enough for this to be hardly a bother at all -- in fact, I believe she views it as something of a boon. These five were regressed to infancy. Some of the others…” she shut her eyes. “We’ll get them back somehow. I swear it.”
“Where is your attacker now?” Fleur asked, her voice clipped.
“Unconscious. Granny and I chained him to a spare bed with several magic-dampening devices surrounding him. You may care to interview him when he wakes up. In the meantime, will somecreature please help me put these children down for their naps before I lose my mind entirely?”