//------------------------------//
// The Mind Robber 
// Story: Ruler of Everything 
// by Sixes_And_Sevens 
//------------------------------//

Rumble glanced around the corridor. “This is the place, then?”
“Looks like,” Sweetie said. “There doesn't seem to be any other doors around here.”
Rumble shrugged and pushed the door open.
The room beyond was bathed in a very pale pink light, which shone out from large circular panels in the otherwise grey walls. It was completely empty.
“Huh,” said Sweetie. “Guess we know why they call it the ‘Zero Room’.”
Rumble scratched his head, stepping in. “I don’t get it. It’s literally an empty room. Why would we need to bring Dinky here?”
Dinky herself hadn't spoken a word since they had left the console room, instead burying her face in Rumble’s mane. Now, though, she lifted her head, her eyes flat and golden. 
“The Zero Room is cut off from the rest of the universe,” she said in a voice that wasn’t quite her own, and echoed strangely in her mouth. “Within these walls, electronic and radiological impulses are cut off -- even gravity can be negated with sufficient focus.”
To illustrate the point, Rumble felt her weight lift from his back. Dinky floated in the air like a rag doll, gradually drifting to the center of the room. “This room is designed for neurological healing. Dinky must rest here until she is recovered.”
“You’re not Dinky,” Sweetie Belle said carefully. “Are we addressing the TARDIS?”
Dinky's body nodded as it floated in the air like a marionette. “Well done.”
“Can you help us?” Rumble asked, stepping forward. “The Nightmare--”
“Yes. I know.” Dinky's face grew grim. “I helped you when the time was right. Am helping you. Would help you. Tenses are so difficult, you know.”
“Um,” said Sweetie Belle.
“For now… all I would have been able to do will be to have helped Dinky to have made a full recovery. Go. Join your other friends in the medbay.”
Sweetie and Rumble looked at one another. “I think we’d prefer to stay here with Dinky,” Sweetie said.
Dinky -- the TARDIS -- tilted her head. “You are not remaining for the healing process. You waited outside the door.”
“Sounds fine to me,” Rumble said. “We just want to be here for her when she wakes up.”
The TARDIS smiled at that. It wasn’t quite right, but the sentiment was clear enough. “You were good friends,” she said warmly. “Remember that. You will be good friends.”
Then the light faded from Dinky’s eyes as they fluttered shut, leaving the mare floating, unconscious, in the air. Rumble and Sweetie, sensing that they were being dismissed, quickly left the room and shut the door behind them.
“Well,” said Sweetie.
“That was weird, right?” Rumble asked.
“Extremely weird, yeah!” She sighed, taking a seat and leaning back against the wall. “One of us should probably go tell the others what’s going on with Dinky.”
Rumble nodded. “Alright. I should be able to find my way to the medbay. You’ll be fine here on your own?”
Sweetie Belle hesitated for a moment, then nodded back. “Try not to be too long.”
“I will.” With one last backward look and faint smile, Rumble trotted off down the corridor.
Sweetie Belle tilted her head back and let exhaustion wash over her. The adrenaline rush was finally wearing off, now that she was safe for the moment, and the many aches and pains she had accrued over the last several hours were beginning to catch up with her. She slid down the wall until her muzzle was resting on her barrel. Her mane, sweaty, dirty, and matted, served as a very basic pillow. She was tired, but happy. For the first time since she and all her friends had been thrown from the tower, it seemed like they might actually have a chance of defeating the Nightmare. A slim chance, mark you, but a chance nonetheless. They had hope.
Sweetie smiled a little and pushed herself off the wall so she could lie flat on the floor and avoid getting a crick in her neck.
Facing up toward the ceiling, she shut her eyes for a minute or two while she waited for Dinky to emerge from the Zero Room. Just to make sure she didn’t start to drift off, she started to sing again…





Meanwhile, in the Zero Room, Dinky’s brain still felt like it was burning. The TARDIS had drained most of the artron energy from her body, as she had said. Why she hadn’t removed it all, Dinky couldn’t guess. She couldn’t guess much of anything at the moment. She had seen countless timelines all at once, taken information from a thousand thousand versions of herself at once. It had been a shattering experience and now she needed to sort through the pieces, put herself back together.
She was floating in a void of infinite greyness. In front of her, the shape of a massive arched window frame appeared, apparently the only solid point in the world. Around her, jagged pieces of colorful glass swirled and spun, never staying still for long enough for her to register their true color or shape. It was dizzying and infuriating and Dinky found herself getting frustrated.
As soon as she realized that feeling and named it in her head, a piece of lilac-colored glass shot like an arrow from the maelstrom and clicked into place on the vast empty window.
Oh. This would be easier than she expected. She would just have to go back through her memories, one by one, and the picture should reform.
She thought about her time at college. She had gone to -- to --
A myriad of different schools poured through her brain, shining points and sharp edges sliding over her neurons. She was a thaumaturgy major, a mathematician, a historian, undecided, she belonged to a sorority, she lived alone, had a roommate, was on the buckball team, the writer’s guild, the pride club --
She shook her head to clear it. The burning sensation grew stronger. Alright. Focus. What happened today? How had she arrived here?
Some shards of glass clicked into place -- butter yellow, off-white, chocolatey brown, cloud grey, bright orange. It wasn’t much -- she doubted that she’d filled even a thousandth of the picture -- but it was a start.
She started thinking about ponies she knew -- her parents clicked into place easily enough, as did her close friends. The TARDIS came into view. So did Ponyville and Canterlot. But all of them were missing pieces -- which universe was she really from? Who of the Crusaders had gotten their mark first? Did Dinky have a sister or not? A brother? Was Bonbon a secret agent? Had Rarity and Spike gotten married? Broken up? Would they?
Her head was spinning again. She felt worse than useless. After she had come so far and fought so hard, she couldn’t even save herself. She was losing her mind in the maelstrom, self-doubt making the pieces spin faster, the crash of piece against piece a maddening tinkling chorus, each fractured piece breaking on the others as events ripped themselves into more and smaller potentials, turning into little bits of shrapnel that tore at her, sandblasted her. Shards of glass ripped loose once again from the window-frame, and with them went pieces of her mind -- memory, feeling, sanity.
And then the clatter of glass died down.
And Dinky heard singing.

Through shady trees and light green glades,
We sally forth, never afraid.
A merry company of friends,
A quest for joy that never ends.

The pieces began to slow, as the music that had brought peace to the beast in the tunnels, the voice that had given sweet dreams to an empire, did the same thing for Dinky’s tortured brain.
As the music flowed, the shattered glass began to move into position as Dinky felt, rather than consciously tried to force, her memories sliding back into place. Other pieces, those that were from universes alien to any Dinky might have experienced, flew off into the void and vanished into the infinite distance.
The tinker, the thinker, the rock, the lover, the adventurer, the entertainer. Apple Bloom, Dinky herself, Rumble, Button Mash, Scootaloo, Sweetie Belle. Six figures stood tall and proud in the center of the frame, and other pieces clicked onto them as her neurons began to cascade through the memories of their crusades.
When all was said and done, the last notes of the melody hanging in the void, about sixty percent of the window was full, and around thirty percent of all the variant chunks of glass that had originally swarmed around her had been banished to the aether. That still left some several thousand shards left to sort through. That was alright. She had come so far, done so much -- this was nothing in comparison.
The cuts that the glass had left on her skin began to heal over. Some faded as though they had never been. Others left faint white scars. A few left far nastier, more gnarled reminders. But all healed, in time.





The TARDIS closed off the audio channels to the Zero Room. Technically speaking, there should never have been any leakage into the chamber -- that was exactly the kind of thing it was designed to stop, after all. On the other hand, the TARDIS, like her Thief, had never been one for playing by the rules. She knew what her passengers needed, especially the mare who was as much a daughter of Time as she was of Time Lord.
In the console room, where nopony was around to see it, one panel of the central console lit up, bathing half the room in bright blue light. Then it faded, leaving no trace that it had ever occurred.





Redheart’s heart threatened to pound out of her chest until she and the other two had gotten out of sight of town square. When they did, she let out a sigh of relief.
Fancy blinked at her. “Something amiss, Miss Redheart?” he asked, tilting his head.
“...Yes? No. Maybe. You’ll think I’m being paranoid. Even I think I’m being paranoid.”
Blueblood snorted. “It’s hardly paranoia if they really are out to get you,” he said. “Go on.”
“...It’s… how much time have each of you spent with the Doctor since he woke up?”
“None,” Blueblood said.
“Hardly more than a few seconds,” Fancy said.
“Then there wouldn’t have been a chance for you to make your own observations,” Redheart said, her ears flattening against her head.
“Please, Miss Redheart,” Fancy said gently. “Tell us what you’re so alarmed by.”
“It’s the Doctor. Ever since he woke up, he’s been… cold. Distant. I mean, he's been that way for the last few months, but this feels...” she shook her head. "I don't know. He always cared about other ponies before. I didn't get that impression in the square."
“It could be the stress of the situation,” Fancy Pants mused. “He can always be counted upon to be serious when lives are on the line.”
“Serious, perhaps,” Blueblood said, tilting his head. “Uncaring is another thing entirely. Redheart, you know this version of the Doctor better than either of us. Would you say that this is out of character for him?”
“Well…” Redheart hesitated. “He has his moods, of course. And as I said, he’s been very distant recently. But… he feels wrong. I can’t explain any more than that.”
“Who else suspects?” Fancy asked.
“Romana,” Redheart said instantly. “She offered to keep him distracted while I shared my suspicions with the two of you.”
“You left her alone with him?” Blueblood asked.
“She’s in a crowd of her friends and neighbors. I also left the de-aged-out-of-existence shade of my marefriend with her to come alert us if something’s gone wrong --” She paused and facehoofed. “When did my life get even weirder than regular Ponyville levels?”
“A question I haven’t had the luxury of asking in a very long time,” Blueblood noted. “Very well. Fancy, I believe Redheart and I can handle three bodies between us if you would care to round up the guards.”
“Are you sure that there’s a need?” Fancy asked.
“If there’s a risk that the Doctor has been compromised?” Blueblood asked. “Oh, yes.”
Fancy pursed his lips. "Right," he said, levitating his charge to lie on the backs of the other two. "Hurry."
"You too. Good luck," Blueblood said with a short nod.
Fancy hurried off toward the castle, leaving Blueblood and Redheart to haul the three comatose pegasi to Ponyville General. High above the town, the moonlight refracted oddly through the temporal barrier, casting strange shadows on the ground.





Romana was desperately searching the crowd for the Doctor and trying, if anything, even more desperately not to look like it. She couldn’t say if she was being really paranoid or not -- her nerves were too rattled. The Doctor’s increased distraction and distance over the last few months had been a concern to her, of course, as a friend, a fellow renegade Time Lord, and as a fellow citizen of the universe. She was rather ashamed of herself for not suspecting that something was amiss sooner. But then, this incarnation of the Doctor had always been a tad neurotic. But that shouldn’t have stopped her --
“Romana,” Tender Care admonished her, gently. “Don’t let your regrets run away with you.”
Yes. Fair point. She shook her head. There was no time for self-recrimination now. Later, once all this had been sorted out, she and the Doctor could have a nice long talk about all this. She suspected she would be far from the only pony with whom the Doctor would be speaking.
“Indeed you won’t,” Tender said, a note of stone coming into her voice. “No, not by a long shot… Romana, look over there!”
“I don’t know where there is,” Romana muttered testily. “I can’t see you point --”
The image of an arrow flashed into her head, and without thinking, Romana looked round. Well. Speak of the devil. A tan shape was hunkered over her makeshift time-stopper, fiddling around where things were decidedly not meant to be fiddled with. “Doctor,” she said sharply.
He didn’t startle at that. Indeed, it took him a few moments even to register that he had been spoken to. He glanced over his shoulder. “Romana,” he replied.
“I thought you were taking a closer look at the rift?”
“I did,” he said simply. “Then I finished. Now I’m here. Is that a problem?”
“Yes,” Romana retorted. “I thought I asked you not to touch this.”
“No. You told me you’d explain how you locked Ponyville off from the universe later. I thought I’d try and figure it out for myself.”
Romana studied him for a moment. There was something off about him -- the way he was standing. She was sure of it. But what --
“He’s standing still,” Tender said.
Yes. Of course. She might have expected it from her own Doctor, whose bouts of energy were interspersed with hours of lethargy. This one, on the other hoof, practically never stopped fidgeting.
He arched an eyebrow at her. “Well?” he asked.
She did her best to recover. “Well, what did you think?” she asked impatiently, gesturing at the device.
He glanced at it. “Slapdash,” he said. “I suppose you were pressed for time, but it’s hardly professional. I could barely make heads nor tails of it.”
“Needs must when the devil drives,” Romana said.
He gave a small smile at that. It was decidedly unpleasant. “True enough.”
Romana suppressed a shudder. If there had been any doubt in her mind before that she hadn’t been speaking to the real Doctor, this exchange had eradicated it utterly. The Doctor knew better than to try and impugn her abilities -- he knew that she knew him well enough to call him out on two dozen half-baked plans for any one of hers he could name. “And the rift?” she asked, keeping her voice as level as she could. “What did you find out about the rift?”
He pressed his lips tight together and glanced up. “Little more than I could have guessed,” he said bitterly. “It’s an unstable Matrix access point. You managed to balance this portion of real space with it so that the time differentials would sync up. Remove the barrier you built, and the Matrix would suck this planet through that rift like a straw.”
“Which would probably turn it into a black hole.”
“Not quite,” the thing in the Doctor’s body said. “You’ve neglected to consider that the time differential would increase. It wouldn’t be able to compress correctly, not right away. No, what you’d really have is a brand-new Eye of Harmony. This world would become the second coming of the Caldera, ripe to become the site on which the Time Lords of this universe could be founded…”
His eyes caught the golden light of the rift and shone red.
Tender, Romana thought. Go find Redheart. Now!





The medbay was a well-lit room, its clinical aesthetic a sharp contrast to the rest of the TARDIS’ homey design. It was a fairly sizable room, too, stretching on for what looked to be about a hundred meters in length. “...So where can we put you down?” Button asked, glancing around the room.
Apparently in response, a panel in the wall hummed open and swung down like a Murphy bed. Two pairs of legs popped out of the bottom and clicked into slots on the floor, creating a little cot.
“...Huh,” said Apple Bloom. She bent down to inspect the bed. “Good quality construction,” she murmured. 
“Uh, hey? Bloom?” Scootaloo bopped her on the head gently. “You wanna wait on ogling the TARDIS’ furniture until after we fix my legs?”
“Oh. Heh, whoops.”
She rose, and with Button’s help, Scootaloo shifted off her friend’s back and onto the cot. It took a few more minutes for her to get into a truly comfortable position.
“Alright,” said Bloom. “Ah’m gonna start lookin’ fer a proper splint an’ bandages. Button, you start lookin’ for some miracle alien gizmo that fixes bones.”
“Right.” Button trotted over to the shelves of strange instruments that lined one wall of the large room. Fortunately, it had all been labeled. Unfortunately, the one who had labeled it all was the Doctor, so Button had to parse notes like, “HooLooVooian pigment repairer -- repurposed for red shades” and “Blood de-oxygenator -- not for use on animal-based species”. Some of the more abstruse notes were paragraphs in length and detailed the precise instructions for the device’s use without ever once explaining what it was to be used for. Others were covered with annotations and marginalia in several different scripts, from where the Doctor’s various incarnations had found a new use for their machinery, or had decided to try taking it apart and ‘improving’ its functionality.
While Button was desperately trying to make sense of what a “Titian Cardial Pump” was, Apple Bloom had had rather more luck finding fresh bandages. She studied Scootaloo’s legs. “Alright,” she said. “Let’s see.”
“Do you actually know how to do this?” Scootaloo asked suspiciously.
“Kinda?” Bloom hedged. “Ah’ve seen it done, anyhow.”
Scootaloo looked at her flatly. “Alright, alright, Ah’ll try an’ find a manual or somethin’,” Bloom said, throwing up her hooves.
The doors to the medbay slid open again and everypony looked round. “Hey, guys,” Rumble said. “Um. Need some help?”
Bloom waved him over to where Button was now sitting between two large piles of gadgets and one very small one. “He could use an extra pair of hooves most, Ah reckon.”
“Uh, I’m gonna argue that that would be me,” Scootaloo said, smirking.
Bloom rolled her eyes. “What happened to Dinky and Sweetie?” she asked.
Rumble gave them the rundown on the Zero Room as he helped Button sort the various medical instruments into the two large piles of ‘definitely not helpful’ and ‘unknown’, as well as the smaller pile of ‘maybe helpful????’.
When he finished the story, Scootaloo shook her head. “That sounds really rough.”
“Yeah. I can’t imagine what she’s going through right now,” Rumble said. “I wish I could be there for her.”
Apple Bloom sighed. “Yeah. So do Ah. Maybe we kin head over there after awhile an’ check up on her, but fer now…”
“We’ve got to take care of the problem we can actually help with,” Rumble said, nodding.
Button pulled a large tube off the shelf and squinted at the cramped writing on the barrel. His eyes went wide. “Oh, man. I think this might be what we’re looking for,” he said.
Rumble craned his neck to read the note. “Algolian Transference Needle: For bone regrowth,” he said. “Yeah, that sounds pretty straightforward.”
Apple Bloom frowned. “Uh, does it? Ah dunno about y’all, but Ah ain’t to clear on what’s bein’ transferred in this situation.”
“Or how,” Rumble noted.
Button pondered this for a moment, then flipped the note over. “Oh! Uh, there’s a diagram. So… the needle goes in near the fracture…”
“Bad start,” Scootaloo said.
“Uh, gets worse,” Button said. “Not for you, though. Somepony else has to stick a limb in the tube to facilitate the transfer of… stuff… from their bones to yours.”
“Cartilage, probably,” Rumble mused. “Maybe stem cells.”
“So you gotta give away some of that to help Scootaloo heal faster,” Bloom said. “What happens to you?”
Button scratched his head. “Uh, I’m not a doctor, but I’m guessing probably pain. Pain, probably some weariness, weakness… Probably not death? The Doctor wouldn’t keep it in here if it killed the donor. Beyond that, no clue.”
Scootaloo nodded. “Any volunteers?” she asked flatly.
Rather than responding, Button shoved his left forehoof into the machine and turned a knob, tightening it around the limb. He grimaced, but forced a chuckle. “Man, this fits like a glove. I’ll have to study it later, see if I can copy the design for my boots.”
Scootaloo’s jaw dropped. “I -- Button, I wasn’t being serious. You don’t have to do this.”
“Yeah, Ah could do it,” Bloom said. “Ah mean… there ain’t no way to say this politely that Ah can see, but seems to me Ah could probably handle that better than y’all.”
“Or me,” Rumble said. “We’re both fit, we could handle it.”
Button shook his head. “You’re both really strong, yeah. That’s strength we might need later. I can spare it without hurting the team.”
Scootaloo held up her hooves. “No, stop. Stop. I don’t want you -- any of you -- to hurt yourselves for me. You shouldn’t feel obligated --”
Button hobbled over to the cot as best he could with the tube fit over his hoof and looked her square in the eye. “I’m not doing this because I have to,” he said. “I’m doing this because you’re my friend, and I don’t want to see my friend in pain. If you really don’t want me to do this, I won’t. But this is a gift I’ll gladly give for you or any of the others.”
Scootaloo sniffled, her eyes starting to water. “You fuckin’ sap,” she muttered, wiping fiercely at her eyes. “Alright, fine.”
Apple Bloom loosened the left boot enough to pull it off without too much pain. Rumble helped her set a rough splint around the leg, tight enough to keep the bone straight while still leaving Button an opening to put the needle in. It was inflamed and swollen, unpleasant to look at.
Button lined up the needle as best he could, then held out his free hoof to Scootaloo. “This is gonna hurt a lot for both of us,” he said by way of explanation.
Wordlessly, she took the proffered hoof and gripped it tightly.
Apple Bloom stepped back as Rumble helped guide Button’s needle. It pierced Scootaloo’s flesh. She inhaled sharply but didn’t flinch. A green light illuminated the tube. There was a high pitched whining noise. Button began to scream.
His wails echoed through the corridors, and into the console room. One panel sparked and lit up, glowing violet. It fluctuated in time with the stallion’s cries, brightening and fading as his voice rose and fell, but on average getting steadily brighter. When the screams stopped, the violet light faded. For a few minutes, the room was dark. Then, back in the medbay, the needle was inserted into Scootaloo’s other leg and the room glowed a brighter shade of violet than ever, flickering and casting strange shadows on the walls and out into the hall until the screams became whimpers became silence.