“What the hell is that thing?” River demanded.
“It looks as though the Valeyard fused with the TARDIS interface,” the Doctor said, his eyes wide with horror. “Fused itself with the power of a collapsing star and the drive of the Nightmare itself.”
“Part Time Lord, part TARDIS,” Eyebrows murmured, half to himself. “Like some kind of… hybrid.”
Rainbows glanced at him sidelong and rolled her eyes.
“Whatever it appears to be, it’s not real,” Bow Tie said. “At least, no more real than any of us. Which means, now that I come to think of it, that we’re in just as much danger as we thought.”
“Thank you so much for that brilliant insight,” the Doctor growled. “Now what?”
“Now, Doctor,” said the Valeyard-thing, “You choose. Surrender to the inevitable or keep pathetically struggling a little longer.”
The Doctor set his jaw. “Then I choose to --”
“Wait,” the Valeyard cautioned. “You haven’t heard my offer yet.”
“What could you possibly offer me?” the Doctor demanded. “I’ve no interest in power, or ruling, as well you know. Everything I want, you stand opposed to, and everything you have to offer, I despise.”
“Woo!” Rainbows cheered. “Stick it to ‘im!”
“Fuck the system,” Eyebrows growled.
“That’s not quite true, Doctor,” the Valeyard said. “I offer you the thing that you desire more than you've craved anything else your entire life. An ending.”
The Doctor tried to speak, but the words died in his throat. “You’ve fought so long and hard to stay alive,” the Valeyard said, moving closer now, his hydraulic limbs hissing. “You were so desperate for life, none more so than this incarnation. You’ve always had so much more to do, so much more to see. But you’ve done so much already. You’ve seen things you can never forget, no matter how hard you try. You’ve lost. Lost so many and so much.”
“I --” the Doctor sputtered, but he couldn’t find the words to argue.
“When you become me --” the Valeyard said, “and please notice I said ‘when’, not ‘if’ -- that will all be gone. It will have been done by a different man entirely, and none of it will hurt you again.”
The Doctor glanced back. River and the future Doctors had been swallowed by the mist. All he could see now was the swirling miasma and the Valeyard.
The mechanical fusion extended a hoof. “Let me give you what you really want, Doctor. Let me take you into oblivion.”
Meanwhile, in the real world, the actual Valeyard was having a much harder time of it. He had channeled all the force he could spare into blasting the temporal barrier, wasting a good chunk of the TARDIS’s power combined with a unicorn’s natural magic and his remaining regeneration energy on trying to break through.
It hadn’t even made a dent, although several houses near where he had been focusing his efforts were now all on fire, and the earth was ripped and torn and dying all around him. All that revealed was the curve of the temporal bubble continuing along underground. He scowled down at the shimmering surface that separated Ponyville from the rest of the universe. His eyes were as cold as the vacuum of space, his lips pressed thinner than a sheet of paper.
“Well,” he said. “Well-played indeed, Romana.”
He turned and stalked away from the border. Perhaps this would require a temporary strategic retreat for reinforcements. It was time for the Nightmare to make good on its promise.
The Nightmare itself had taken to pacing around the TARDIS, studying it intently to find some weakness in its defenses, some external system through which it could drain the Ship’s power. Ordinarily, it would have made better use of its time mocking its prisoners, but as they were outside of time and couldn’t communicate with it, it decided that such a course of action really wasn’t worth the bother.
The last rogue elements in the Matrix were in that blue box. They were the only things in this place that the Nightmare couldn’t control by force of will or arms. That was infuriating. On the upside, it knew, the miserable foals couldn’t leave the sanctuary provided by the Ship without falling into its power.
Of course, even within the TARDIS, they could throw a sizable wrench into the Nightmare’s plans. One way or another, it would have to remove them from the box. But how --
The Nightmare lost its train of thought as the light on top of the TARDIS began to flash. No! It couldn’t be leaving, it wouldn’t have enough energy to break out of the Matrix. As the Nightmare stepped back, it saw that the inhabitants of the Ship had no such goal in mind.
“Are we all ready?” Dinky asked.
“Holding steady,” Scootaloo said, gripping a wheel in either forehoof.
“Manual steering’s on standby,” Button said, hooves hovering over the joystick in the center of his chosen panel.
“Ah’ve set th’ course fer Discord’s bubble. They oughta be able t’ wreck that damn robot’s day,” Bloom said, smiling grimly.
“I don’t know what any of the controls on my panel do,” Sweetie said.
“No, me neither,” Rumble agreed.
“Considering they’re for communications and diagnostics respectively, I think that’s okay,” Dinky said. “Scootaloo, take us up.”
“Roger that.” She cranked one of the wheels around. On the monitor, the golden bubbles grew larger as the TARDIS flew toward them, gaining speed as they hurtled toward Discord’s prison.
The Valeyard watched, nonplussed, as the TARDIS smashed into one of the golden bubbles, then bounced off and fell toward the floor.
“BAD PLAN BAD PLAN BAD PLAN!” Scootaloo chanted, trying desperately to realign the Ship as all six friends were jostled around the console, each hanging onto the edges lest they find themselves pitched over the railing.
Eventually, the TARDIS crashed against a wall, falling on its side. Scootaloo, practically bent double over the panel, fumbled around until she found the gravity controls. Everypony let out a groan of relief as they sank to the floor, while smoke wafted from the central console.
Rumble held up a hoof. “Okay,” he said. “So I think it’s possible that we may have misinterpreted whatever the TARDIS was trying to tell us with that orange light.”
Sweetie groaned and fell to the floor.
“Hm,” said the Nightmare. “Pathetic.”
It walked a little closer, studying the box. After a moment, it smiled grimly. It had found the gap in the Ship’s defenses. Rearing back, it smashed a hoof down on the light at the top of the TARDIS.
Glass and metal scattered on the floor. The Nightmare bent down to inspect the shattered remains of the bulb. It could faintly see flickering golden energy forming an aura around the glass. It was barely visible, not even a crumb of a crumb of the vast reserves of the TARDIS. But it was an opening.
The Nightmare grinned. “I can work with this,” it mused.
Gilda had been pretty pissed off earlier when she’d been forced to vacate town square with all the other civilians. She could hold her own in a fight just fine, thanks. Having returned to town square after it was all over, though, having seen the carnage that had been wrought there, she had decided that maybe she wasn’t so mad about missing out on this particular scrap. After all, she didn’t want to end up as fried chicken, like all those soldiers had.
The image of Starlight Glimmer, covered in golden frost, flashed through Gilda’s mind, and she suppressed a shudder. Turning into a frozen turkey wasn’t too appealing, either.
Now, of course, it was looking that turning into a roast dinner was exactly what was on the menu for everypony in town. The fires were spreading fast -- the one at the bar had barely been extinguished before some unicorn had come running in yelling about how the south side of town was an inferno.
So now, of course, Gilda was part of the aerial bucket brigade, easily the smallest group of the impromptu firefighting brigade. There simply weren’t enough pegasi in town to fill the roles. Meanwhile, the unicorns were casting freezing spells and telekinetically smothering the flames as they approached, and the earth ponies were trying to knock over and remove anything that might make good fuel for the flames. It was a losing battle. The entire town was sealed in, and the smoke was making it difficult to breathe even on the north end of Ponyville. If the fire didn’t get them, they’d all asphyxiate.
Nonetheless, they fought on. What else could they do?
Weary and struggling to breathe, Gilda flew low to the ground to escape the choking smoke over the rooftops.
It was on a trip to the river to get another bucket of water when she spotted the prone body of a pony sitting slumped against a wall. Poor bastard, she thought.
Then she realized who it was and threw out the ‘poor’ from that description.
She dropped her bucket and swooped for him, picking him up by his throat and shaking him. “You! Unfuck this town before I drop you from the top of the dome!”
The Valeyard made no reply. His head merely lolled to the side, his eyes rolling back in his head.
Gilda hissed a Griffish curse under her breath and flew back toward the front lines. “Blueblood!” she roared. “Guess who I found.”
The prince glanced up, irritated. “Unless it’s some manner of water-breathing dragon, I don’t particularly care.”
Then he blinked the smoke from his eyes and stared at the Valeyard. “I stand corrected. Romana?”
An off-white unicorn with a long, curly chestnut mane hurried over. “He’s not responding,” Gilda said. “Can you fix him? I can’t squeeze his miserable neck until he puts out the fire unless he’s awake.”
“Hm,” said Romana. “Doubtful. He seems to have departed for the Matrix.”
“So get him out,” Gilda said. “Duh.”
“If I had the power to do that, don’t you think I would have used it on the ponies at the hospital?” Romana retorted.
Blueblood scratched his chin. “Didn’t you say something about how dying out here would kill you in the Matrix, too?”
“Yes,” Romana said. “Unfortunately, there are two problems with that --” She paused and turned to zap the fire with a spell, covering a sizable portion of it in smothering foam. “Number one, it won’t put out the fire.”
“I don’t care,” Gilda growled. “It’s just personal, now.”
“Number two…” Romana shut her eyes for a moment. “He abandoned his body in the middle of a raging inferno. The Valeyard was the Master of the Matrix for many decades, and apparently survived without a body for centuries with the help of the Nightmare. If anyone could get around that rule, it would be him.”
“So…” Blueblood said.
Romana cast her eyes up toward the rift. “If we see him again, I very much doubt it will be in that body you’re holding.”
The Nightmare barely glanced up from the ruined bulb when the Valeyard reemerged from the portal. “Is the rebellion quashed?”
“Their trained soldiers are dead, their most powerful mage immobilized, and their town aflame. They won’t give us any difficulties. The temporal bubble, on the other hand…”
The Nightmare made a sound low in its vocal modulator. “You couldn’t destroy it?”
The Valeyard looked sour. “Romana cheated.”
“Useless.”
“I suspect that once we gain the full power of the TARDIS, we may overcome the barrier, with some difficulty. If we can travel back to a point before it was created and move out from there, it will no longer trouble us.”
“Hm.”
“Of course, first we’ll need that power. How are you doing on that front?” the Valeyard asked nastily.
“It’s progressing rather well, actually,” said the Nightmare.
“Oh.” The Valeyard was rather put out that he hadn’t been able to catch his partner out, but that was tempered with the knowledge that the plan was progressing. “Good.”
“I’m drawing it out through the bulb -- like to like, you see. My will is stronger than the TARDIS’s, now that it’s been weakened after so long fighting us -- I can pull the artron energy towards me, and the more I gain --”
“The easier it becomes,” the Valeyard said, nodding. “Elegant. Of course -- it would be faster if we were to work together.”
The Nightmare cast a glance toward the Valeyard. “Ah. You grow impatient, I see.”
“Can you blame me? I’ve waited so long, formless, bodiless, for this moment. Apotheosis! At long last, Time Lord and TARDIS become one. Not even in the War did they go that far.”
The Nightmare smirked. “I wonder why,” it murmured, too quiet for the Valeyard to hear.
“Hm?”
“Nothing. Very well, come here.” The Nightmare began to unfurl its great mechanical bulk. “Step into me… and I will step into you.”
The Valeyard hesitated but a moment before stepping into the mass of wires and metal. “Just remember, you’re taking my name,” he warned.
“Oh yes,” said the Nightmare, closing around him like a Venus Fly Trap. “I will. And you’ll be taking my mind!”
“What?” the Valeyard demanded. And then the upload began.
“Miserable fool,” said the Nightmare, barely audible over the screams. “Did you really think there could ever be an equal partnership between Time Lord and TARDIS? Your brain is that of a flea to me. Can you feel it burning away under the onslaught? Can you see the infinite paths of time as I can? Lose yourself in the universe, Valeyard. Lose your very mind to me.”
The Valeyard continued to scream. “Oh, don’t worry,” the Nightmare added. “I’ve saved your personality template already. It’s like possessing you, but with extra steps, really. On the upside, I get to feel your mind collapse in unutterable anguish! Such a treat, honestly.”
After several more minutes, the screaming stopped. The Valeyard took a moment to collect himself, brushing the ash off his mechanical body. After he was convinced that everything was in order, he turned back to the TARDIS, but paused for a moment.
“The Valeyard is dead,” he uttered. “Long live the Valeyard.”
Chuckling grimly, he returned to his machinations.
The Doctor and the Valeyard stared at one another in the mist. “Well?” demanded the Valeyard. “I haven’t got all day. Actually, I have. I have all day, all eternity, all of time and space. You, on the other hand, are running very short indeed. Embrace me, Doctor, and accept oblivion. Accept the inevitable.”
The Doctor looked the Valeyard square in the eye. “No,” he said. “I’ll never become you.”
The Valeyard sneered. “You pathetic masochist, you already have. The Matrix just hasn’t caught up yet.”
The mist began to clear. “Maybe so,” the Doctor said. “But I still won’t go down without a fight.”
“Rage, rage, against the dying of the light,” Eyebrows said.
“And go not gentle into that good night,” Rainbows agreed.
“To be clear,” River said, pulling a gun out of her mane, “we’re talking to the Doctor, not you. You can sod right off.”
She fired at the Valeyard, and it reared back, snarling. “I am inevitable,” it said. “Irreversible. All this accomplishes is an extension of your suffering.”
Bow Tie shrugged. “And what else is new?” he asked.
River fired again, and the Valeyard retreated back out of the courtyard with as much dignity as he could muster.
“Right,” said the Doctor, his hooves shaking. “Right. That’s…” His forelegs went out from under him, and his hind legs didn’t last much longer.
“Oh, sweetie,” River murmured, rubbing the back of his neck. “You have been through the wringer, haven’t you?”
“But you can’t rest yet,” said Rainbows. “There’s still time to fight back.”
The Doctor groaned. “You heard him. He’s inevitable.”
Bowtie scoffed. “If we had a jammie dodger for every time someone told us that, we’d… we’d… Well, we’d have an awful lot of jammie dodgers.”
“I think I’d prefer custard creams,” Rainbows said thoughtfully.
“Jammie dodgers can be for inevitability, custard creams can be for every time we get sentenced to death,” Bow Tie said after a moment’s consideration.
River cleared her throat. “Excuse me. Your past self is dying in front of you? Can we possibly save the biscuit talk for another time?”
Both future Doctors looked instantly contrite. “Ah, yeah.”
“Sorry, River.”
“So. Now what?” Eyebrows asked, tilting his head back.
“Well,” River said, looking down at the Doctor. “That is rather the question, isn’t it?”
The Crusaders inspected the damage. It was their unspoken way of not addressing the fact that they were out of ideas. Stationed at the diagnostics panel, it was Rumble who first realized that the power was once again flowing out of the TARDIS.
“Well,” said Apple Bloom in the long pause after Rumble announced that fact. “That ain’t optimal.”
“How long do you give us before it’s totally dry?” Dinky asked.
Rumble inspected the gauge marked ‘power’. “Dunno. It's slow, but looks like it’s being drained at an exponential rate.”
“Can we cut off the power to the system it’s being drained to?” Button asked, peering at his own panel for anything that looked remotely useful.
“Uh…” Rumble looked at Dinky.
She peered at the panel. “It doesn’t really say where it’s going, only that we’re losing it. So, no, I don’t think so.”
“Anypony got any other ideas?” Sweetie Belle asked, a tinge of panic in her voice. “Anypony? Anything? I’d take another ‘crash the TARDIS into the bubbles’-level plan at this point.”
Nopony spoke. The stifling silence was broken after a moment when the telephone on the console began to ring.
Sweetie was closest to it. She looked at the others, bewildered. “What is this?”
“It’s called a phone, I think,” Dinky said. “Communication device.”
“What am I supposed to do with a ringing phone?” Sweetie asked, her voice getting higher-pitched with stress.
“Maybe pick it up?” Apple Bloom suggested. “Looks like that part comes off…”
After several seconds, Sweetie picked up the phone and held it to her face. “Hello?” she asked warily.
“Crusaders,” said a cold voice, echoing from the audio transmitters on every panel of the central console. “This is the Valeyard speaking. Kindly turn on your monitor.”
“Why?” Sweetie asked, suspicious.
“I dislike ponies being unable to see me when I’m threatening them.”
“Oh. Um. Alright…”
Button silently flicked on the monitor. A face swam into view, and everypony recoiled in horror.
The Valeyard’s face twitched in a way that could have been a schadenfreude-filled smirk or a grimace of sheer agony. The Crusaders would have believed either. It was as though every mechanism that comprised the TARDIS interface had been stabbed through his body.
“Yes,” said the Valeyard. “I’ve had some work done.”