//------------------------------//
// The Invasion of Time 
// Story: Ruler of Everything 
// by Sixes_And_Sevens 
//------------------------------//

The Doctor-thing hadn’t spoken much since his comment about a new Gallifrey rising. Perhaps he’d realized that he’d let his mask slip. Perhaps he just wasn’t all that talkative, which was, frankly, just another piece of evidence that this was not the Doctor that Romana knew and loved. 
She hadn’t let him out of her sight since; not tailing him, exactly, nor sticking to his side like glue. She was just always careful to keep one eye on him at all times. He didn’t seem to be doing much. Mainly, he puttered around the barrier device, trying subtly to comprehend how it worked. How to deactivate it, like as not. She smiled grimly. She would be truly astonished if he was able to guess her little secret. She doubted he, egotistical as he seemed to be, thought her capable of doing what she had. Frankly, she had surprised herself, rather. She had to stifle a chuckle at the thought -- it was a horrible situation, after all, and she had to get her laughs where she could find them.
When the thing in the Doctor’s body wasn’t investigating her machine (read: when he realized she was watching him), he was studying the rift with his sonic, peering at it narrowly. He looked rather anxious. No, not anxious. Impatient.
The crowd of ponies around him, he disregarded utterly. That was rather convenient for the contingent of guards which seeped in through the crowd, slowly pushing the civilians to the outer edges of the square as they moved to surround the Time Lord.
Romana caught sight of Fancy Pants whispering frantically, furtively to Fleur de Lis. She saw the commander’s eyes go wide, then icy and narrow. Her elegant, angular jaw clenched tight and she nodded grimly. She met Romana’s gaze and arched a perfect eyebrow, inquisitive.
Romana hesitated a moment, then bowed her head and began to back out of the closing circle of guards. She almost screamed as she backed into somepony, spinning around to find a confused Starlight Glimmer. “Romana? What’s going on here?” she hissed.
“The Doctor’s been compromised,” Romana said shortly. She considered the other mare for a long moment. “If things go south -- and mark my words, they will -- can I depend on you to help get the citizens out of town square?”
“I…” Starlight’s face ran the gamut of emotions -- shock, fear, sorrow, anger -- before settling on resolute determination. “Yeah. Obviously. Er, your machine…”
“Don’t worry about that,” Romana said. “Even if they break it, the barrier won’t come down.”
“Oh. That’s good. Uh, might make it a little hard to take it down later, though.”
Romana was silent for a long moment. She forced a smile. “Don’t worry about the machine,” she reiterated. “Trust me. Breaking it won’t do anything.”
Starlight side-eyed her. “Y’know, I’ve got a lot of experience with ponies trying to hide behind half-truths.”
“Have you indeed? Good for you. Now, if you’ll excuse me…” Romana sidestepped the other mare and hurried out of the square. She didn’t look back.





Sweetie Belle had stopped singing a while ago. Her throat had started to get rather strained, and her mind was still fuzzy with faded adrenaline. But to try and keep herself awake, she’d started trying to compose in her head, tapping out a four-note rhythm on the ground. Tap-tap-t’tap, tap-tap-t’tap.
“Ooo weeee oooooooh,” she crooned. “Dah, dah, daaaa…”
“Sweetie Belle?”
Sweetie jerked back to consciousness with a snort and glanced around. Four of her friends were standing over her, concern and amusement present in equal measure on their faces.
“What’s that y’all were singin’?” Apple Bloom asked.
Sweetie blushed and hurriedly struggled to rise to her hooves. “Oh, it wasn’t much of anything,” she said with a wave of her hoof. “Just, y’know. A little ditty I was making up, that’s all.”
“I thought it sounded great,” Button said from his position on Apple Bloom’s back.
Sweetie beamed. “Aw! Thanks!” She paused for a moment. “Wait. What happened? Why are you on Bloom’s back? You didn’t get hurt, did you?”
“Er…” Button glanced down. “Define ‘hurt’.”
“He donated some of his bone stuff to help fix me up,” Scootaloo said succinctly. “So now we’re both… not good, but I’m way better than I was and he’s only a little worse. So, y’know, net positive?”
“Oh.” Sweetie took a moment to absorb that. “Wow. That was really good of you, Button.”
He shrugged, a little embarrassed. “It was nothing, honest. I know any of you would’ve done the same for me.”
Rumble rolled his eyes. “Yeah. Believe me, we tried, but Mr. Martyr over here wouldn’t let us.”
“I told you guys, you’ve got to conserve your strength,” Button said.
“I know, I know,” Rumble said with a shake of his head. “I’m just giving you a hard time, man. We’re all proud of you.”
Button reddened further.
“So!” Scootaloo said. “Uh, any progress with Dinky?”
Sweetie Belle bit her lip. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I can’t see into the Zero Room, and it doesn’t look like anything’s changed, but…” she trailed off. “I just don’t know,” she repeated after a few moments’ thought.
Apple Bloom rubbed at her chin, concern writ large on her face. “Should we… Ah dunno, should we go in an’ check on ‘er?”
Rumble scrunched up his muzzle at that. “I dunno,” he said. “The TARDIS was kinda insistent about Sweetie and me leaving.”
“Well…” Sweetie said. “I mean, that, or she was just looking at the future and saw that we left. That’s kinda the impression I got, anyway.”
Rumble thought about that and rubbed the back of his neck. “I mean… I guess? It’s hard to tell when you’re trying to talk to someone who doesn’t really understand linear time.”
There was a grumpy rumble that echoed down the halls. Rumble coughed. “By which I mean, someone whose understanding of the true nature of time is too far beyond that of mere mortals for us to comprehend?”
There was a more pleased humming sound in response.
Apple Bloom turned to the door. “Ah don’t reckon it’d hurt t’ check in on her, right?”
“I mean, it could,” Scootaloo said. “Arguably, it very much possibly could.”
But Apple Bloom had already set Button down next to Sweetie Belle and was opening the door.
Dinky was still suspended in midair, limbs hanging outstretched as some unknown will held back the effects of gravity on her. This was made slightly disturbing by the way her head hung limply, more disturbing by the way the room was lit up red, and most disturbing of all by the way Dinky didn’t seem to be breathing.
“Aw, shit,” said Apple Bloom. She grabbed for Dinky, checking for a pulse. After a moment, she felt it, faint but present. “Okay, she’s alive,” she said.
“What do we do?” Sweetie asked, her voice high with fear.
“Keep back!” Bloom said. “Uh, CPR, right? Ah know that, ya gotta give ‘em space.”
“Do you know anything else about CPR?” Rumble demanded.
“Yes! But not fer how t’ give it t’ somepony floatin’ in midair!”
“Try to push her down,” Scootaloo suggested.
Bloom nodded and put her hooves on Dinky’s chest. Much to her relief, the smaller mare sank to the ground as she pushed, and she stayed there. “Alright. Compressions,” Bloom muttered. “Forceful, but not so much Ah break her.”
She started pushing up and down on Dinky’s barrel, keeping time in her head as best she could, painfully aware that going too fast or slow might have terrible outcomes. Then she took a deep breath in, put her head down, and exhaled into Dinky’s lungs.
The unicorn’s eyes flew open, and she struggled to sit upright, bewildered. “Wha’ happened?” she demanded, her eyes not quite focused. “Where ‘m I?”
“Dinky? Are y’all alright?” Bloom demanded.
“Mmmph. Not sure yet.” Dinky shook her head as the red light of the room began to fade to its usual tranquil pinkish-white. “Bright side... m'brain doesn’t feel like it’s charcoaled anymore.”
“That does sound like a plus,” Button agreed.
“You weren’t breathin’,” Bloom said bluntly.
“Huh.” Dinky scrubbed at her eyes with both hooves and blinked to clear them. “Yeah. Okay, that explains a lot.” She coughed. “Uh, thank you. For saving my life.” She took a deep breath in and let it out slowly. “Words are... little hard right now. Think I might still be rebooting.”
“Understandable,” Bloom said, helping her to her hooves. “Can ya walk?”
Dinky took a few hesitant steps, then nodded.
“Good, ‘cause Ah think we’ve reached carryin’ capacity. But y’all can lean on me if ya need to.”
“Right. Good. Thanks.” Dinky paused. “Where are we going?”
“Back to the console room,” Scootaloo said. “If we’re gonna take down that thing, we have to know what we’re up against.”
In the console room itself, red lights like the ones that had illuminated the Zero Room were fading away, gone long before any of the Crusaders arrived to observe them…





The six pegasi flew along the dim corridors of the tower. The four who had received Wonderbolt training fell into a silent, diamond-shaped formation. This left Fluttershy and Ditzy fluttering desperately to keep up with the others as they wound their way up the tower, corridor by corridor in their search for the Crusaders. 
It was Fluttershy who heard the noise first, her ears sharpened from years of searching for lost ducklings, talking with mice, and listening for when Angel Bunny became suspiciously quiet. There was something moving in the shadows. She stopped, hovering in midair, and Ditzy crashed into her, sending the pair of them sprawling and falling to the ground. 
“Ow,” Ditzy said. “Um. Oops.”
“Shh,” Fluttershy said, eyes darting around. “I heard something. There’s something in here --”
A creepy cackle rose from the shadows, and all the ponies looked around. From the darkness, an old mare emerged. Then two more followed her. Time hadn’t been kind to them, and they seemed eager to repay that cruelty. “Look here, Sister Doomfinger,” one of the crones in the back croaked. “A pack of ponies out for a run.”
Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes. “Seriously? This is all the Nightmare’s got? Old mares? Uh, yeah, see you all never. Bye!”
She made to fly over their heads, but a wall of crackling light halted her. “Old mares, you say?” the leader asked. “Oh, yes. Old indeed, older than you can imagine. We Carrionites were old when the universe was young, and with age comes wisdom. For instance…”
The one who hadn’t spoken yet, Doomfinger, raised a hoof. “Imprison those who dare to fly, by oath I bind thee, pegasi.”
There was a pop and a flash of gold, and the four who had been in the air vanished without a trace. Ditzy and Fluttershy gaped. The three old mares turned their gazes to the duo.
“Okay,” Ditzy said evenly. “Now when I say run --”
Fluttershy was already nearly out of sight, and Ditzy quickly raced after her, the laughter of the Carrionites pursuing them.





Pinkie and Mac had become separated from the other two at some point, but at least they had managed to evade the giant spiders. This was something of a mixed blessing, because Mac had started to slowly shift into a ball of unraveling nerves, increasingly certain that her sister and one of her best friends had become spider food.
Pinkie didn’t think that was especially likely. Those spiders were big enough to face the full brunt of one of Applejack’s kicks and, well, spiderwebs were very flammable. But she didn’t think that Mac was in any kind of a mood to listen. The silence was deafening. She was like that -- even at the best of times, she wasn’t a big talker, and when she got flustered, she practically drained all the noise out of the room with how loudly she was thinking. Pinkie wasn’t quite sure how best to handle a mood like this. Her closest reference was her baby sister Marble, and Marble’s silences weren’t quite the same thing -- Marble wanted to fade into the background, while Mac couldn’t care less -- she was too absorbed to think about fading away or standing out or anything.
So, Pinkie merely walked right alongside the farmer, a silent companion for her to lean on.
Together, they wandered aimlessly through the corridors; Pinkie chose to look on the bright side of the thing; they were at least no more lost now than they had been before. And surely, if she hadn’t known where she was before, but she now knew that she wasn’t there anymore, then arguably she and Mac had become less lost, hadn’t they?
She was very pleased with this twist of logic, and she was about to share it with Mac when they both heard the voices echoing down the hall. “Maaac! Pinkie! Where are y’all?”
Mac inhaled sharply. “AJ?” she called. “Applejack! Can y’all hear me?”
There was a momentary silence. “Yep! Keep talkin’; we’ll find ya.”
Mac hurried toward the voice, Pinkie hot on her hooves. “Ah’m comin’, AJ! Where are ya?”
Down the hallway, a figure stepped into view. Mac ran faster, but Pinkie hesitated. She began to slowly back away as the Applejack-shaped figure expanded out into a big orange spongy thing dotted all over with pockmarks and suckers. Mac registered the deception too late, and with one touch from the creature, she fell to the ground, insensate, before vanishing in a golden flash. Pinkie turned to flee, but found a big, Spike-shaped presence blocking her way. In the fleeting moments before she lost consciousness, Pinkie learned what the Pinkie-sense for ‘My friend has been replaced with a Zygon duplicate’ was.





Fleur de Lis strode through the crowd, her face an icy mask. Fancy Pants walked at her right, Starlight Glimmer at her left. On the one hoof, Fleur didn’t approve of civilian involvement in military affairs. On the other hoof, this was a messy situation, everyone was trapped inside this temporal bubble, and Starlight Glimmer’s magic skills were nothing short of astounding. There were no better options; leave Glimmer to her own devices and her egotism and misguided heroism would mean she’d become a loose cannon. 
She pushed her reflections to the back of her mind as she approached the false Doctor. He was waiting in the middle of the square, his expression sour. “You know, I do feel like we could do without all these soldiers tramping around, Fleur.”
Her lips tightened. That line had sounded so like something the Doctor would say, but it sounded flat and emotionless coming from the horse’s mouth, as though he was just trying to deliver a line. “Kindly do not insult my intelligence further,” she said coldly. “You may drop the pretense.”
The Doctor’s face went slack with surprise for a moment as though he honestly hadn't expected them to have worked it out already. Then he sneered. “Very well. What gave me away? Was it the comment about the second rise of Gallifrey? Because I didn’t really mean that one. The Time Lords have long since outlived their usefulness. The Doctor was right about that much -- they were decadent, corrupt, and, might I add, so terribly limited in their ambitions, weakened and dulled by their complacency. We were gods. Once upon a time, planets rose and fell by our command, but then the miserable fools thought that because of the Monan uprising and subsequent self-immolation, it was time to stop interfering in the affairs of the universe. Theirs was a pantheon that deserved to fall.”
Fleur studied him with bored eyes. “Imagine my relief that you do not intend to turn Equestria into such a world,” she said. “However, I must still ask that you vacate that body at once.”
The thing laughed. “Or what? You’ll destroy me?”
Fleur didn’t blink. “Yes.”
He tilted his head. “Really. You’d kill the Doctor for that? The pony who helped free you from the life of an assassin? The pony who introduced you to your dear husband? The pony who helped talk you through your dysphoria, helped you through your transition?”
There was a long pause.
“It’s what the Doctor would want,” Fancy said firmly. “Far better that, than to let a brigand like you cause mayhem and destruction in his name.”
“By all means, then,” the thing said, almost lazily. “Shoot me down. I’m not leaving.”
The smile fell from his face abruptly as a crossbow bolt thudded into his shoulder, sending him sprawling to the ground.
“Ah,” he said, bleeding rather profusely.
“That was easy,” Starlight said.
Fleur’s nostrils flared in fury as she erected a hasty shield spell. “Idiot!” she snarled. “Whoever shot that, if we survive this, you’re on indefinite probation! That won't kill him!”
The Doctor’s body began to glow unnaturally bright. He was laughing, blood dribbling from his mouth. Then his body exploded in golden flame. More shield spells were hastily thrown up, some of them too late, and Fleur heard the screams as her soldiers burned in the inferno. The flames blasted out for almost half a minute before fading. A new figure rose on shaking white legs. A hoof reached up, gripping its necktie tightly for several seconds before ripping it off. Blood-red eyes scanned the remaining soldiers.
“You were wrong, Fancy,” said the Valeyard quietly. “I won’t be causing mayhem and destruction in any name but my own.”





The Doctor wasn’t quite sure what happened. One moment, he was walking along with Benny through the jungle where he’d nearly killed a caveman, and the next, he was undergoing the psychic equivalent of being hit with a half-brick in a sock.
When he regained his vision and his powers of speech, he found a familiar, worried face peering over him. “Doctor! Doctor, are you alright?”
Grey face. Golden eyes. “Dizzy,” he slurred.
“I bet you are,” Ditzy said, helping him rise to a sitting position. “That was pretty nasty…”
The Doctor blinked, glanced around. He was sitting on a park bench on a sunny day in Ponyville. He shook his head. Had everything that had happened been no more than a dream?
Ditzy scratched her head. “So, er… Welcome to the Present, I guess?” she said. “Do you want to go to Ponyville General? I mean, I’m not medically trained, but I guess I could be Martha again, or Harry Sullivan…”
“Ah,” said the Doctor. “Not a dream.”
“No.”
He pointed at her. “Not actually my wife.”
“Define ‘actually’, I guess?” she said, glancing away.
“Please… choose a different face,” he said. “Not someone I’m actually traveling with at the moment, please? It’s unpleasant to separate the two of you.”
Ditzy tilted her head, considering her options, and suddenly, it was Daring Do sitting before him. “Better?”
“...I suppose,” the Doctor conceded.
“Great, because we actually have a lot less time than we thought,” Daring said. “So. Good news or bad news?”
The Doctor winced. “Hit me with the good news first.”
“Technically speaking, you’re not dead yet.”
The Doctor took in a long breath. “I see.”
Daring glanced down. “The bad news is, uh…”
“It is a little self-evident from the good news, yes,” the Doctor said waspishly.
“Yeah. Your body regenerated into the Valeyard.”
The Doctor clutched at his forehead. “I… alright. But I’m not the Valeyard yet.”
“Apparently? The Valeyard took over your body while you were out, and it looks like there’s some kind of out-of-time barrier thing in place… I don’t know, you’re the expert in this stuff. All I can tell you for sure is that it wasn’t caused by any ancient Mesoequestrian or Tenochtitlan artifacts.”
“That’s very helpful, yeah,” the Doctor said.
She glared at him. “Look, I’m doing my best here, alright?”
He sighed. “Yes, quite. I’m sorry, that regeneration really rang my bell.” He massaged his forehead with a hoof. “And I’m trying to come to terms with the fact that I did just die, in some way or another.”
Daring moved to pat him on the shoulder, but hesitated. “Uh. Yeah, not really sure what the appropriate condolences are in this situation, and we don’t have time to make tea, so that’s basically all of my options ruled out. Can we just do whatever you need to do here? Because again, you’re alive right now, but I’m not sure how long that’s gonna last.”
The Doctor sighed, nodded. “Fine. What are we looking at?”
Daring shrugged. “Dunno. Your mind --”
“My rules, right…” the Doctor said, glancing around. “Alright. If this is the present… Show me what’s happening in Ponyville right now.”
The atmosphere changed. The sky darkened, then was covered up completely by a shimmering barrier. A golden rift in reality split the air overhead asunder, and the world was cast in flickering golden light and dark blue shadows. After a moment, the streets flickered and blurred, and suddenly the Doctor and Daring were in town square. At least, they were in what remained of it. The surrounding houses were on fire. Soldiers were swarmed everywhere, their ranks decimated by the force of the regenerative energy that had been unleashed. All of it was frozen, a single instant of crystallized time. The Doctor saw Fancy Pants and Fleur de Lis standing with a unicorn whom the Doctor hadn’t met, but recognized nonetheless from photographs and stories. In the middle of it all stood the Valeyard, terrible in his triumph, skin still glowing with fresh regeneration energy. “Well,” Daring said. “That’s bad.”
“You don’t say,” the Doctor retorted.
“But I don’t think that’s really what we’re here to see…” she mused.
“Hm?” was all the Doctor had time to say before she grabbed him around the barrel and flew up and through the rift. 
As they passed through, she released him, and the Doctor fell from her grasp and struck the hard stone floor. “Would you cut that out?” he demanded. “All this to-ing and fro-ing is making me giddy!”
“Uh-huh,” said Daring, not really listening. “Hey. You remember how I said it was bad down there?”
“... Yes,” the Doctor said warily, rising to his hooves.
“Fun fact, this is worse.”
The Doctor looked around and grimaced. “Yes. Yes, it is.”
Imprisoned ponies, beloved friends all, hung overhead in shining golden spheres, like horrible Christmas baubles. But there was something else, standing like a beacon of hope in the middle of the room.
“The TARDIS!” the Doctor cried, running toward his beloved box. 
He scrabbled at the door handle, but could find none. Assuming that he’d just stumbled onto the wrong side of the box, he raced around the outside, but the doors were simply gone.
“I don’t think she wants to let you in right now,” Daring observed.
“Once again, your powers of insight astound me,” the Doctor said flatly. He sighed and rested his forehead against the wooden door. “But you’re right. The old girl has enough to worry about right now.”
“Sure, sure. Anyway, I think there’s another box you should take a look at,” Daring said.
The Doctor glanced around. Daring was standing at the side of the sarcophagus in the center of the room. He groaned. “Archaeologists. What is it about death that so attracts you?”
She arched an eyebrow at him. “Why Dr. Pot, I don’t believe we’ve been introduced. The name’s Kettle.”
The Doctor grumbled at that, but walked up to join her. She gestured at the carving on the surface. “Look familiar?” she asked.
The Doctor felt an uncomfortable prickle run down his spine as he studied his own features, carved as they were into the stone. “This was where I was sitting when…” he trailed off.
“When you fell into your own personal Tartarus?” Daring asked.
“Yes. The Valeyard was always rather theatrical. This must have seemed to him appropriate symbolism,” the Doctor said. “Though I still can’t understand why we’re here. My subconscious may be guiding me, but my mind can’t seem to make heads nor tails of it all.”
“Can’t?” Daring asked. “Or won’t?”
The Doctor tilted his head at her. “I’m not sure what you’re trying to say.”
“It’s like Totter’s Yard all over again,” Daring said impatiently. “You got all the way to the gate, and then you froze up. Well, I’m not pushing through this one, Doctor. You have to do it yourself.”
He stared at the top of the sarcophagus for a long moment. “Will you… do it with me?” he asked hesitantly.
Daring’s eyes softened just a little bit. “Yeah. ‘Course.”
Together, they pushed the stone casket open, the lid falling and breaking into a dozen pieces as it clattered down the steps, and they peered inside. They couldn’t see the bottom.
“Allons-y?” Daring asked, elbowing him in the barrel.
The Doctor stood at the edge. “Allons-y,” he agreed. Together, they leapt into the pit.