Chapter Four
Both pegasi blinked at him in unified confusion.
“A telescope.” Rainbow finally asked. “You just fell off a roof and you want a telescope?” The degree of disbelief in her expression had increased throughout the evening and now her look suggested he was insane. He was, of course, so it wasn’t a problem.
Fluttershy peered anxiously at him. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
“Well, yes! I’m definitely, assuredly alright.” The Doctor jumped to his feet (no, hooves) and shook himself, sending little clumps of dirt flying from his coat. Then he winced a little; his body ached in various places. His fez lay on the ground a few feet away. He trotted over, picked it up and replaced it at a jaunty angle on his head, ignoring the stabbing pain of several bruises. “I mean, the things I’ve just discovered, I’ve got to get a closer look! And I’m perfectly chipper, just look at me. Still moving!”
“Um, well, I know where you can find one. A telescope, I mean” Fluttershy tilted her head. “Our friend Twilight Sparkle is sure to have one in the town library, but it’s getting rather late…” She looked off toward the setting sun.
“Well, that’s when people use telescopes, isn’t it? Looking at the stars and all that?” He didn’t want another delay. He wanted to charge directly into this investigation.
“You don’t know Twilight.” Dash snickered. “That egghead gets so into her experiments and books, she can stay up all night with ‘em.” Seriousness replaced jest. “Seriously, Doc, I’d leave her alone tonight. She told me today to stay away from the library tonight in case I, uh…crash into it.”
His face fell. “Oh, but I was so looking forward to meeting her!” He paused. “Did you say library? Does she live in a library? I’d love to live in a library.”
“Oh yes, she studies there and acts as the town librarian,” Fluttershy told him. “But she’s a very dedicated researcher there and sometimes she likes everypony to keep out of her way. Which is fine, of course. Tonight she said she’s conducting a very important experiment. She gets very upset when she’s interrupted, you know.”
Sighing a long, peevish sigh, he shrugged. Or tried to. It ended up being more of a strange jerking motion of his pony shoulders. “Ah well. I suppose it’ll have to wait until tomorrow, which is a bit of a shame but I suppose it’ll have to do.” In truth, he very much hated having to put off his search; for him, being stopped in the middle of something important was like tripping, faceplanting, and being injured from the fall. “I guess I ought to be getting on, then. Busy day, it’s got to end sometime. I’m afraid I have to leave your lovely little home now, Fluttershy.”
The pegasus in question smiled broadly and blushed a little. “Thank you so much, again, for everything you’ve done for me today. I mean, you’re new in town and you helped me like…like an old friend.” She dropped her head a little and used her mane as a shield.
In turn, the Doctor grinned widely. “Oh, it was no problem, no problem at all. Always glad to help someone!”
They exchanged goodbyes. Rainbow announced that if the Doctor was going back through town, she could fly alongside him as her home was in the same direction. Even though she clearly regarded him as some kind of crazy quack, she behaved affably enough toward him and didn’t seem to mind his presence. He affirmed that he was going that way and they set off. Fluttershy stood on the little hilltop in front of their door, waving goodbye as one flying pony and one grounded Doctor headed for Ponyville.
The sun at the pair’s backs was but a red slip over the edge of the horizon, still tingeing the sky with its crimson dye, and faint wisps of pink and orange still lingered among the clouds. Night was coming on. Rainbow Dash flew more or less at his side, but frequently she made a sudden ascent to the clouds, pulling a few tricks before drifting back down towards the ground again. He envied her moves. What rotten luck that he had turned out an Earth Pony! But he shouldn’t think that, he reminded himself. That was rude. Earth ponies were nice.
“So, Rainbow,” he asked conversationally, “have you noticed anything out of the ordinary lately in Ponyville?”
She braked in mid-air and looked down at him. “Other than a new pony with a fez and a bowtie?” She snorted, then looked slightly shamefaced. “Sorry. How d’you mean, out of the ordinary?”
“Anything! I’ve been talking to some of the lovely ponies in this place about it. Like I said before, I’m a sort of a general investigator. Looking for oddities. Not ones like me, but things that just aren’t right. I say I come from department about magical and atmospheric conditions but that sounds so stuffy. Fluttershy told me her animals were acting extraordinarily odd. Things like that.”
She rubbed a blue hoof under her chin. “Atmospheric, huh? Sounds like weather to me. And I’m glad someone’s finally asked, ‘cause boy has the weather been acting up lately!” Randomly, she shot off into a couple of seamless loop-de-loops, then she came back down again. “My weather team and I have got stray storms, random thunderclouds shooting lighting and damaging houses, freak rainstorms and windy, gusty days that were scheduled to be perfect. Even I can’t deal with all this on my hooves, Doc, and that’s saying something!”
“Isn’t the weather supposed to behave rather…you know, randomly? I mean, I know you can predict some things, but it’s never spot on.” He shook his head, muttering, “Weather forecasters…” Stars began showing their twinkling faces in the heavens above and he tilted his face back to get a good look at them.
She flew down and hovered just above him. He looked down from the sky to find her face, its features plastered with incredulity, less than a foot from his. “What kinda crazy town are you from?”
“What do you mean?” He took a step back.
“Everypony knows that the weather in Equestria is controlled by weather pegasi. It goes how we want it to! But lately it hasn’t been and nopony likes it when things get off schedule. I get blamed for everything!” She sighed. Bits of different-colored mane flew up out of her face. Then she fixed him with a penetrating stare. “I don’t get you. Why don’t you know that?”
“Oh, I come from far away. I told you. So ridiculously far away that the weather does what it wants. No one controls it.” His mind was reeling. Staggering. Drunkenly stumbling. So many new things to learn! But really? Weather ponies? That just sounded too wonderfully perfect to him. What was it like, he mused, to live permanently in such a structured world?
Her eyes opened very wide. “You gotta take me to see that sometime. Sounds…kind of awesome, actually. Although I bet nothing beats Ponyville,” she added smugly.
“Ponyville is lovely, certainly! I’m just so very new to it all. So tell me more about these anomalies you’ve been having, and remember I’m a new guy in town who knows nothing about weather ponies!” He wanted to know everything. All of the details, all of the—oh, dear, it seemed they were already walking through Ponyville. How had that happened? Soon he would be on the path leading to the hill that housed his blue box. If he couldn’t badger Twilight, he might as well get back to the Tardis for the night.
By now, the Doctor could tell that Rainbow Dash was always eager for an audience. Eagerly she launched into her story. “Well, the worst thing that happened was just this morning. Today was supposed to be a bright, sunny day, where the pegasi move all the clouds out of the sky for the day. But get this: there was a freak storm right after the sun came up! These big black clouds started gathering in the sky and it was the works; thunder, lightning, really bad rain and wind. We thought we were going to have to call in a backup team but it cleared itself up, right when I was about to charge into the center and tackle the storm clouds! Just like that, all by itself, it was gone. Crazy, huh? And that’s not all.” She went on to tell him about a few other incidents.
“Indeed, very crazy!” Her story struck him in such a way that he felt as though someone has hit his mind with a brick. Fluttershy’s worst incident with the animals had been that morning. Rainbow’s encounter with the runaway storm had been that morning. He had arrived that morning. He was about to shout something about revelations when he saw that they were through Ponyville and that Rainbow had stopped flying.
“This is where I leave ya, Doctor. My cloud house is just above here.”
“How did that happen? What a quick walk. Well, Rainbow, I must say it was a great pleasure meeting you! Good luck to you with your out-of-control weather. I’m staying, er, a little way out of town, so I’ll be on my way as well.”
“Nice meeting you, too. I always like to see a new face here in Ponyville. See you around!” With that, the prismatic Pegasus pony (try saying that three times fast—he almost attempted it) shot directly up into the sky towards a silhouette that vaguely resembled a house. Horses living in cloud houses. Who’d have thought? He chuckled to himself as he trotted up the hill to his beloved time machine.
Her voice stopped him and he turned around. “Hey, Doctor!” she yelled, zipping back towards earth.
“Yes?” he asked as she skidded to a mid-air halt.
“Doctor Who?” she asked curiously.
Not that question again. “I’ve told you. Just the Doctor.”
“Are you sure it’s not like, Doctor Whooves or something?” she replied, grinning.
“Yes, I am definitely sure.”
“….Okay, fine then. See you!” She turned and flew off again.
When he opened the door to his Tardis and went inside, he suddenly felt sad. Here he was, alone again. All of Ponyville was heading off to sleep and dream, while he was as restless as ever with no one to talk to. What could he do all night?
He glanced up. He had left the screen glowing with the information about Equestria, and three words caught his eye: My Little Pony.
He smiled lopsidedly. Why not? It might help him learn more about the wonderful world that was Equestria.
Intergalactic cable was certainly a nice luxury. He rarely indulged in television, though. Alien shows could be quite intriguing at times, but why not meet the aliens themselves? Now, it was the perfect thing to have. He searched for a remote. It took some time to find, what with the Tardis being rather colossal on the inside; eventually he located it and settled down to watch My Little Pony on his screen. Furtively he glanced about; then he smacked himself mentally. Who was there to see him watch a TV show that was probably made for little girls? No one. Besides, he was long past caring if people thought he was out of his mind and childish.
“Here we go. Season one, episode one!” He hit play. Well, it took several attempts, as hooves were not as dexterous as fingers, but he managed it.
A storybook setting with a storybook narrator opened the episode. “Once upon a time, in the magical land of Equestria, there were two regal sisters who ruled together and created harmony for all the land. To do this, the eldest used her unicorn powers to raise the sun at dawn.”
He blinked.
“The younger brought out the moon to begin the night.”
He flung out his hooves to express his disbelief. The remote flew from his hoof and clattered away on the floor. “What? No. Don’t be ridiculous, that’s hardly possible!” He got up, found the remote, rewound a bit and listened to the elegant voice of the narrator retell the beginning of the story. “Ponies control the weather, ponies control the sun and the moon,” he murmured to himself. “Hardly a very foolproof system. What kind of respectable sun lets a little old pony fiddle with it? Not that I haven’t heard of strange things, but--” He was talking to himself extensively again. He sighed and kept watching.
The family feud played out. Nightmare Moon came into being and was promptly locked away by her older sister with the help of the Elements of Harmony. “Harsh, very harsh!” he cried, pointing a hoof at the TV. That was hardly what he called a good solution to the problem. “Well, at least she tried to reason with her.”
“The elder sister took on responsibility for both sun and moon, and harmony has been maintained in Equestria for generations since.” The shot of the book zoomed out to show a purple unicorn speculating on the Elements of Harmony. The Doctor was scoffing. “You’ve got the foundations for a backstory yes, but details! Give me some details!” Nevertheless, he could not tear himself away.
The show cut to the opening theme song. “My little pony, my little pony, ahhh ahhh ahhh ahhhhhhh….” Oh dear. This was going to be quite girly, wasn’t it?
With shock, he saw that every mare besides the purple one in the opening sequence was one of the ponies he had met today. Big adventure, tons of fun, a beautiful heart, faithful and strong, sharing kindness. Well, that seemed to fit with the five unique mares of that day; evidently, he had become acquainted with important characters. The theme song, however girly, was oddly charming.
The lavender mare was introduced as Twilight Sparkle. He started and paid closer attention. This was the mare he was due to meet tomorrow, after all. He watched her run to the library, behave rather bossily towards poor little Spike, look for information on the Elements of Harmony and send a letter to the almighty Princess Celestia.
“Princess Celestia indeed! I’d like to meet this controller-of-the-very-sun-and-moon!” However, the ruler did not appear and sent Twilight to Ponyville. Via letter. How rude! Slowly but surely, she met each of the ponies he had encountered today. He was convinced that the show was greatly overblowing their characters to make them seem obnoxious and odd at the first viewing. Although, the meetings were not unlike the ones he had had that day. (Except for the bunnies, though. They wouldn’t put something like that in a kid’s show.) He shoved the memory of that away.
He nodded in understanding at Pinkie Pie’s odd form of gasp-and-run greeting, his head ached a little at Applejack’s high energy, he rolled his eyes as Rainbow crashed into Twilight. He shrank back a little from Rarity’s overbearing obsession with fashion and felt incredibly sorry for the scared little pegasus that was Fluttershy.
“All the ponies in this town are crazy!” Twilight shouted at one point.
“Well, yes, I agree with you there. But why are you so opposed to making friends? Friends are fantastic! They’re great things to have!” he yelled back, frustrated.
He shook his head when Princess Celestia failed to show up (“where is Miss High-and-Mighty sun princess, anyhow?”) and yelled that he knew it when Nightmare Moon appeared instead.
Then the episode ended. In the standard flashes of dramatic lightning amid a bout of evil laughter, of course.
The Doctor shot another guilty sort of glance around the room and went onto the next. “Onward!”
He found himself getting more and more interested in the story as the plot unfolded. Wandering into a dark, scary, unknown forest to find an old, ruined castle in order to locate ancient magic that might not exist to stop a possessed nightmare from shrouding Equestria in eternal night? He so wished he could have been there. Predictably, the ponies became better friends as they overcame various trials. He had expected as much; they had all been familiar with each other when he had met them, so they had to have become pals at some point. He yelled different bits of advice and encouragement at them as they went on.
When Twilight revealed that each of her new friends was an Element of Harmony, he facehoofed. “Duh! You couldn’t have figured that out before? The show even hinted at it! Several times! Argh!”
He cheered aloud when they vanquished the Nightmare and brought back Luna. “Predictable but lovely! Oh, yes!” He stopped and put a hoof to his mouth. A wide, toothy grin spread behind it. “Oh, well. I’ve got all night anyway.” Sure, there were some holes in the story of Equestria, but he had learned a thing or two. He needed to whittle away the hours somehow and he had to admit it; the show was enjoyable.
He pressed the “Play Next” button.