4 of the 5 ponies paced nervously around Rarity's stylish boutique. Rarity herself was keeping herself busy to shake off the nerves. The stallion they had just saved was still unconscious, lying on one of Rarity's couches, and had been for hours. He seemed to be muttering things, about somepony called "Jammy" or about some dangerous creature called the "cypher mend." If nothing else, it confirmed that he was at least alive.
At some point, Applejack asked Fluttershy to check the stallions pulse, which Fluttershy did without a second thought. While she had a specialty in animals, in a tight situation Fluttershy could at least check for vital signs with most other living creatures. "Poor thing," she said, feeling the stallion's neck. "His pulse is going twice as fast as normal!" She decided to put her ear on his chest, to see if he had an irregular heartbeat or something of the sort. Anyone with a decent grasp of Time Lord biology, that is to say none of the mares present in the room, would know why Fluttershy had such a confused expression afterwards. Not believing her own ears, Fluttershy checked again. She had to be misinterpreting something. Then compared she both sides of his chest to one another, then compared her own. Wide-eyed, she realized she wasn't mistaken.
"Oh," she said aloud, drawing the attention of her 4 friends. Rainbow dash, who had been impatiently waiting for something to happen, was the one to respond. "'Oh'? What do you MEAN 'oh'???" In response, Fluttershy looked up and said the only thing that made sense to her at the moment.
"It feels like," she said nervously, "he has... Two hearts?"
A baffled silence fell over the room for a short while before Starlight worked up the courage to walk towards the strange stallion. "Let me check," she offered. Fluttershy moved aside as the reformed student of Twilight went in for a second opinion. Yep, there was no mistake to be had there. Two hearts, as steady as drum beats. Starlight simply looked over at the rest and confirmed it. "No way," said Dashie. "Let me have a try!" The other two did so, Dash listened, and had the same look of confusion as everypony else.
"Alright, y'all," AJ said, "now that ya'll've won the blue ribbon for invasion o' privacy, let's not crowd 'im. Ah mean, imagine if he woke up and saw a buncha mares feelin' at his chest. That would just be darned weird." With that, the two pegasi and the unicorn surrounding the stranger backed off slowly and awkwardly. "Ok," she continued, still acting as the unofficial leader, "I get that y'all are all dyin' ta know what the hay is goin' on. Truth is, mah brain is wrackin' with questions like nothin' else just like all o' y'all. But ah think we should wait on all those questions 'til our guest of honor over here is fully awake." Before she could say more, a groan emanated from the occupied couch, catching everypony else's attention. He was starting to move, much to everypony's relief. "Well," AJ chuckled, "speakin' of Tirek..." Fluttershy spoke up with the biggest question in the room. "Are you OK, mister?" The mystery of the two hearts would stay a mystery until that most essential of questions were asked. The strange stallion just barely lifted his eyes open. From his mouth came just one word, the clearest word he had said as of yet.
"...Shoes..."
"I beg your pardon, darling?" Rarity spoke for the first time she had since they made sure her incapacitated house guest was safe on a couch. Oh, o' course, thought Applejack, jokingly. O' course she starts talkin' the moment clothes are mentioned. She was previously more busy with those new mannequins that had been sent to her by some new company looking for free promotion, but she felt she knew the reason the stallion had said that. "Shoes," the stallion demanded. With some confusion still in the air, Rarity levitated two shoes towards him. Rarity took them off the stranger so he wouldn't stain her carpet with them. She thought it was odd how he only had shoes for his hind hooves, and not his front ones, and was considering designing a new outfit for the stranger once they had gotten acquainted. His current outfit was a fashion disaster, anyhow.
The strange unicorn barely opened his eyes to quint at what in front of him. As fast as lightning, he grabbed the shoes and held onto them like they were a plush dragon. He closed his eyes again and turned his back to the mares.
Rarity simply blinked in annoyance. "Excuse me," she huffed, "but I believe that a thank you or even an acknowledgement of our existence is in order." Applejack facehoofed, knowing agitating the stranger could only lead to trouble. Sure enough, the stallion turned over to face the purple-maned unicorn. "You're being quite rude yourself, young lady!" The stranger was clearly upset. "I have JUST been executed for the crime of giving a damn about you human lot, so excuse me if I'm not exactly in the mood to-" He stopped. He had just opened his eyes fully and now was beginning to comprehend what he was seeing. "What the Devil?!?" The stallion sat upright, unbelieving of what he saw. He sat in a strange, undoubtedly uncomfortable way that made him wobble quite a bit. His rear was placed firmly on the seat, and his hind legs were dangling whilst his front ones stayed to his side.
Everypony there had at least heard about humans, thanks to Twilights adventures in another reality. Was that what this stallion was? A human from another universe? But if that were true, why had he referred to humanity as if it were separate from him? How could he have been executed if he was laying right there, alive in front of them? There were so many questions, and there was so much confusion amongst the five friends. Even that phrase, "what the devil," was a new mystery to them. What even was a devil?
The Doctor was just as confused, likely more so. When he passed out, he had been facing the heartless monsters in the Time Lord high council. Now, there were technicolor horses staring at him, with not a bipedal creature in sight. And right now, he assumed, his regeneration was still working things out to the point where he couldn't even sit correctly...
Starlight was the first to go up to the stallion and verbalize concern. "Are you OK, sir? Your blue box crashed into our castle. We get that you're not really a pony-" "He has two hearts!" Starlight glared at Rainbow for her interruption, who recoiled in a twinge of fear. At least my past has SOMETHING going for it, thought Starlight with a mix of humor and shame. She continued. "We also get that you're also more used to humans, based on what you said. But don't worry! We're going to make sure you feel as comfortab-" Now the interruption came in the form of the strange stallion prying her mouth open and staring into her throat.
The Doctor checked the horse's vocal chords as soon as he realized he wasn't still hallucinating. He had, thus-far, managed to not realize he didn't have hands. The grogginess the regeneration energy gave him combined with all the strange things happening at once allowed him to avoid that little revelation for the moment. He was too busy turning the strange, talking horse's head so he could start examining the inside of her ears.
Starlight tried her best to ignore the utter contempt for the concept of "personal space" being displayed so she could continue to reassure the clearly confused... Creature that stood before them. The rest of the mares just stared at the whole affair, continuing the apparent new trend of befuddlement, as Rainbow slowly mouthed the words what the buck. "So uh," Starlight said nervously, "my name is Starlight Glimmer, and these are my friends!" The stallion, having moved to holding and examining Starlight's hooves, had stopped for a moment. "I'm sorry," he said, "did you say your name was 'Starlight Glimmer?' My translation circuit must be malfunctioning." With the new confusion now added atop the pre-existing confusion, she simply nodded as the stallion returned to his examination. "Yep, Starlight Glimmer. As in the light of the stars, and the way that they glimmer, in case your 'translation circus' or whatever thought I was saying 'Garbage... Boomerang' or something silly like that."
"Well that's uncommon for a species," the Doctor mused, half to himself. "A name being the literal words in the local language is not unheard of, but it's typically only for a civilization in its earliest of stages." He moved on to the pinkish-purple horse's multi-colored mane to confirm that the hair colors were natural and not dyed. "However, your species seems to have advanced to the point of having advanced sewing equipment, not to mention the wide variety of lovely outfits this place has shows that you have a wide variety of different cultural tastes." He noticed the white-coated horse seemed to beam at the mention of this. This is their shop then, he assumed, if any of this is real at all. However, he noticed 2 things as he was examining the mane of the first horse, "Starlight Glimmer." One was that there was a protrusion in the center of its forehead made of material akin to a narwhal's horn.
The other, and more pertinent, observation was his newfound lack of hands.
"WHAT IN THE BLAZES? WHERE ARE MY HANDS?!?" Starlight was taken aback by the shouting of the strange creature that stood before him. It did confirm, however, that whatever he was at least looked similar to a human, whatever those looked like. Twilight had described them as having hands, similar to a minotaur. It also showed that their world worked like how Twilight described what the human world did, in reverse. Whatever energies either universe had forced one species to match a sentient one native to the universe they resided in. But before she could say anything else, the creature leapt out of his chair and out the door.
The Doctor quickly improvised the ability to run. It was of the utmost importance to his line of work, after all, so he'd better be good at it. He attempted picking up a rock right outside of the building. Right, he thought, no hands. So he picked it up with his teeth, tossed it into the the air, turned around to set up a kick he calculated an equine body would be adept at, and delivered said rock a kick so powerful the stone disappeared into the sky. He listened for a sound, partially to check how good his hearing was. He heard a faint thud at the time he expected to hear one, which confirmed to him that the trajectory, velocity and mavity gravity in the area were almost exactly like it would be on Earth. Most importantly, there was no invisible wall that stopped the object, though all of that didn't disprove the idea that this was some sort of simulation. He did a few jumps simply to further confirm that gravity was at least Earth-like, as well as test his new legs further. The fact that his new form was equine in a world that had other apparent equines had to be a sign that this world was fake, so why hadn't any of his methods confirmed that?
The stranger turned around to see the mares he had just abandoned staring at him. All except Applejack, who just gave him a very impressed whistle. "That was some mighty fine buckin' for somepony who just learned he's a pony," she complimented. "Heck, that was mighty fine buckin' for anypony, especially a unicorn." The strange creature just repeated some of AJ's words back at her, though it didn't seem like he was processing their meanings. "'Bucking'..? 'Anypony'..? 'Unicorn?'" AJ decided to continue on. "You didn't give Starlight the chance to say our names, but mah name's Applejack. This here is Fluttershy-" Fluttershy gave a meek "hello"- "this is Rainbow Dash-" "sup," said the blue pegasus- "And this here is Rarity." Rarity smiled. "It is simply a delight to meet you," she said. "Thank you very much for complimenting my boutique! It means the world to me that somepony would call my humble little shop evidence for cultural advancement!" Rainbow scoffed at the mention of the word "humble," due to how it implied that Rarity had the ability to be humble when not at some fancy-shmancy party or in the presence of a princess other than Twilight. This resulted in a predictable blue-eyed glare coming in her direction, but she chose to ignore it.
The Doctor eyed them suspiciously. Were they part of the simulation? Or just people trapped in here like him, unaware of their past lives? Or were they just playing along? In any case, he needed to scan the area with his sonic screwdriver. He was happy to find that it was still in his jacket's inner pocket. This was good news, since a simulation or a dream wouldn't be able to replicate the readings the sonic would give, meaning that he could prove whether or not this world was fake and if he ever even had to consider the possibility of a "unicorn" existing again. So he grabbed the sonic and- Oh, right. No hands.
As the stallion fumbled in his jacket, Applejack rolled her eyes and reached in and grabbed what she guessed he was reaching for in his stead. It looked like a strange metal lollipop, with a metal handle with yellow stripes near the top and an odd looking round... Thing at the very top of it. The creature stared in amazement. "How did you do that? You don't have any appendages of any sort," the pseudo-pony said. AJ's eyes were really getting a workout today, what with all the obvious things that needed explaining. "Us ponies have this little clasp in the middle of our hooves, covered by all the fur. Y'all try." With that said, she placed it on the ground in front of him. The stallion hesitated, then gently placed his hoof on the strange object. Sure enough, he managed to pick it up, looking proud of himself.
The Doctor noted the "clasp" on his newfound hoof was surprisingly strong, but also somewhat uncomfortable to use. He stared at the apparent leader of the group, who went by the name Applejack. "Well, I am quite impressed at the strength of these 'clasps' you mentioned," he admitted. "However, this device is designed with fingers in mind, something akin to a human hand." He figured that would be helpful, since they seemed at least somewhat aware of what a human was. He figured that the ponies had a solution to such woes. After all, it's unlikely they could have built sewing machines with mere "clasps" and mouths alone. "Well," started "Starlight", whom the Doctor interpreted to be their diplomat, "I'm not sure if you know this, but you're a unicorn." He had heard the orange one say something similar, but the combination of the recent regeneration with the fantastical and unrealistic situation clouded his ability to comprehend it earlier. He felt his forehead, and sure enough a horn-like protrusion was right there in the middle of it. "Yes, all well and good," he said, "but I'm not sure what this horn could possibly do in this case. It feels as though it's designed for self-defense, and that it would lack the ability to operate such highly complex scientific instrument."
Starlight pondered for a moment. Twilight had said that humans weren't used to magic when they spoke about it, and that was certainly true here. She picked up the strange device using her own magic, and Starlight started to wonder if that look of stunned amazement was just his default expression. "OK," she began, "this is called magic. The spell I'm using is one most unicorns can learn how to do." An immediate look of skepticism from the stranger prompted Starlight to improvise another way of putting it. "Have you ever heard of telekinesis?" The creature's face softened at that. "Yes," he responded. "The ability to move objects with merely the power of the mind." Starlight felt lucky that humans, or whatever he was, also had the concept of psychic energy. Heck, maybe it was even their equivalent to magic! "It's a bit like that," Starlight continued, "but you can only use it if you have a horn like this!" She motioned the odd-looking stick towards her own horn. She placed it down in front of the semi-human's front hooves. "Now you try!"
The Doctor hesitated. He was never good at telekinesis, one of the few classes he wasn't able to pass at the academy. The only way he'd be able to do something like that was if he channeled the psychic energy of an entire species. "I'm sorry, my dear," he said to the diplomat. "This device is a sonic screwdriver. It's a highly complex scientific instrument used for a myriad of purposes, including scans that check the material and biological makeup of its surroundings, and I would rather not damage it by testing an ability I've never used." He hesitated again before saying his next idea, since he didn't entirely trust these equines, if that was indeed what they were. But the "unicorn" did place it down for him rather than run off with it, so they were at least attempting to gain his trust. If he wanted any form of answers, it was best he played along. "You seem more experienced in the matter of your... 'Magic.' What say you we work together? You would use your telekinetic abilities while I told you how to operate the sonic." The diplomat smiled somewhat nervously. "Oh, well, OK I guess," she said, "but what happens if I get something.. Wrong?" At the very least, the Doctor noted, the horse seemed genuinely concerned about the possibility of damaging the sonic. "I'm sure you'll do well, my dear. I'll walk you through it step by step, and then later on, you can teach me to be able to do it for myself."
Starlight decided to get some information about their potential new friend, first. A name is always a good place to start, and knowing what he was didn't hurt either. "Alright, but first, who are you? And, for that matter, what are you?" The stallion paused, then gave a grin. "My name is the Doctor, and I..." His smile softened, and his eyes turned away for a moment. "I am a Gallifreyan." Rarity piped in with a simple question. "Doctor who, Darling?" The "Doctor" just chuckled. "just the Doctor," he stated simply. Starlight felt like he got that question a lot. In any case, everypony could tell he wasn't telling them something, though why that was they hadn't the slightest idea. Applejack's intuition told her that it was an omission and not an outright lie, though she didn't have much in the way of reasoning for that. Whatever it was, it seemed personal. Instead of guessing, AJ asked "what in the hay is a Gallopfreyan?"
The Doctor tried his best to maintain composure. The nightmare he had just gone through which caused him to question if he could ever see his home planet again, the regeneration energy affecting his mental state to the point of near-inebriation, and the odd world that made him question what he thought was possible all compounded to make any sense of composure difficult to maintain. Still, he felt this new face he acquired had managed thus far to seem completely lucid, ignoring that just minutes earlier he had just shouted for a pair of shoes and held the mouth of one of his hosts open to get a good view of her throat. "It means I'm from the planet Gallifrey," he answered. "It also means that I'm very different from a human in all but appearance. Or, in this case, a horse." The leader seemed to take minor offense to that. "We ain't horses," the orange one stated coldly. "We're ponies. The horses died out before even Celestia was born." Before the Doctor could ask questions of his own, if that meant that horses were the equivalents to Earth's neanderthals, or who Celestia was and how old she was, the next question came from the annoying cyan one with wings, "Rainbow Dash." The question took the Doctor aback.
"What's a planet?"
The "Doctor" seemed shocked by this most of all, as if he was just asked what grass was. He frustratedly stuttered out "Wh-W- Is that drivel really your question? Not about how I'm here, or what Gallifrey is like, or even that there's life on another pla- You're a grown adult asking me 'what's a PLANET'?!? H- How is your kind advanced enough to be able to make complex machinery and somehow not know what a planet is?" Starlight sensed an annoyance from Rainbow at the Doctor's condescension, as well as a mutual feeling from the Doctor for Rainbow's ignorance, and she knew that astrology and wizardry wasn't really well known to ponies who didn't go to magic schools, so she decided to step in. "Rainbow, you know what Gaea is, right?" Rainbow responded with a confused "yeaaaaah? Where everypony lives, you mean?" "Well," Starlight continued, "imagine a planet is like another version of Gaea. The stars you see at night aren't just lights, they're also suns! And many of them have their own forms of Gaea! And it's theorized that most planets have their own equivalent to princesses that raise their sun and moon. Or really, any NUMBER of moons!"
"Princesses?" The Doctor was more and more confused the more these "ponies" spoke. "Actually, never mind. I'll ask after I get a reading on the sonic. Starlight, if you wouldn't mind?" The diplomat let out a sigh of what appeared to be relief. "Of course, Doctor." A glowing aqua-colored aura had once again surrounded the scientific instrument, and the Doctor began his instructions while the rest of the ponies there watched. As he instructed the unicorn, he couldn't help but observe how the strange energy interacted with his sonic. He was fascinated whenever Starlight used her power to press a button or change a setting. He was also impressed with Starlight herself, how she intentionally didn't cover the end of the sonic with her aura without his prompting, as not to interfere with whatever the sonic read from the environment. After a few readings on it, he felt it sufficiently debunked a rather large amount of his suspicions. This place... This Gaea... Whatever it was, it was most likely real. And that was the most confusing yet wonderous thing he could ever experience.
"Now then," the Doctor instructed, "feel free to try and detect your own aura. No change in setting this time." Starlight nodded and covered the end of the device with her magic, turning it so that the Doctor could look at the part he could apparently get his "readings" from. He seemed to frown a bit. "Completely unknown to the sonic," he said. "But," he continued with a small smile, "that just means there's something about this place I simply have to investigate now! Well, that and everything else." Starlight chuckled at that. She liked how curious the Doctor was about their new world. It reminded her of both herself and Twilight, always wanting to learn more. She had questions to ask the Doctor as well, about "Gallopfrey" and why he had two hearts, about what his wooden box was and why the outside of it didn't catch on fire from the inside, and, most importantly...
About why he seemed hurt by something, and what it was that did so.
It was at that point that all their cutie marks started to glow, including the Doctor's. The Doctor looked at his flank, confused. He had no idea why a spot in his pants was glowing, pulling it down somewhat to reveal the mark of an hourglass. Fluttershy decided to speak up for the first time in a while. "It's called a cutie mark, Mr. Doctor," she softly said, sensing his question before it was asked. "And no, it's not normal for them to glow like that aside from us. We can explain on the way to our castle. Your box is there, too." With that, everypony got up and headed back to the castle. The Doctor lagged behind, still unsure what to make of everything. He looked back at Rarity's boutique and into the window. He quickened his pace as he asked himself a question he didn't know would be important later.
Were those mannequins always in the window?
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"...And then the Doctor says 'that was the most important punch in history!'"
Twilight laughed. It was partially because the story Pinkie told was funny, but mostly she was glad Pinkie was being Pinkie again. Pinkie- and she had insisted on being called Pinkie, not Romana, Romanadvoratrelundar or "Fred"- had been quietly sad before, like when her many clones from the mirror pool had gotten out of control. She had been absolutely furious before, like when Applejack broke her Pinkie Promise. But Twilight had never seen her with a mix of the two like when this "Doctor" arrived. There was something about her eyes then that felt... Different. She couldn't quite place it, but it was like a quiet fury that Pinkie didn't seem old enough to possess. Now Twilight knew there was a reason for that. She sat there at Sugarcube corner with her plate of police-box-shaped cupcakes, listening to her friend being happy, which made her feel happy by proxy, despite her worries.
"But I still think the funniest part," Pinkie continued, "was when the Countess said that I couldn't solve that puzzle box. Now THAT was hilarious! Also when the Doctor said that 'I love that butler, he's so violent!' He always knew how to giggle at the ghosties, you know? Anyway, after Duggan punched the Count..."
As Pinkie kept telling the story about the Mona Lisa and time-splintered thief who nearly destroyed history itself, Twilight processed the whole situation. Strangely enough, she took the whole thing well. After all, she had experienced similar things to what Pinkie claimed her and the Doctor were. For one thing, both mares were personal friends with multiple immortals in the form of the princesses. For another, Twilight had gone to the human world and she traveled through time more than once, so a machine that could do both on a whim was amazing, but not impossible. The biggest curveball was her being from another planet. She didn't think there would be life on another world, but the most popular theory in the astrology community was that other princesses existed on other planets anyways, so it wasn't that far of a stretch to say that other ponies or pony equivalents existed there too. And knowing Pinkie, if Twilight had fully believed in aliens before now, then of course Pinkie would be an alien! She was actually more shocked that Pinkie STILL had no idea how she did half the things she did, including Pinkie Sense. Twilight gave up finding an answer for that a long time ago. But regardless of all that, there was one thing that troubled Twilight the most.
Was Pinkie... Really Pinkie?
Pinkie acted the most, well, Pinkie-like whenever she talked about her adventures with the Doctor or current life in Equestria, but everything after that and before she came to Equestria just seemed... Sad. Twilight noticed that the later she got into her life, the less details she would give. She theorized it was all as much as she could talk about while still being able to be "Pinkie-like." She had a lot, as in A LOT a lot, of stories about being with the Doctor, and how she hoped that the one that arrived at the castle remembered her, despite his initial appearance suggesting otherwise. Her time as president of her entire planet had a few stories, but there weren't even half as many as the ones describing her travels with the Doctor. Then she said she was head of a secret group for a while, which she said had the same initials as a human government group by some coincidence, and that had a couple tales, but there was hardly a fourth of the amount of tales of her as president. She talked about being "the war queen of the nine Gallifreys" in a general overview without much in the way of specifics, which was hardly enough to fill one story. Then she talked about The Last Great Time War...
"It was a war between the Time Lords and the Daleks," Pinkie said. "I don't think anypony other than me or maybe the Doctor survived."
She quickly changed the subject to when she and the Doctor met, and that was all she said on the matter.
But then she would talk about when she came to Equestria. She had lots of stories about her time there. Apparently, she entered the universe as a young dragon, of all things. She regenerated into her current form after her parents accidently hit her with a rock slide. She came back as a filly without a cutie mark, and she didn't remember if her current face was her 5th or her 6th face. Everything after that point was exactly what Pinkie had said before. Finding her cutie mark, leaving the farm, moving to Sugarcube Corner, all of that. Twilight noted that Pinkie had a lot of stories about Equestria. That was a good sign, she thought. Twilight wanted to ask a lot more questions, but each one gave her worry that she would be stepping through a field of poison joke. That Pinkie would go quiet again. That she would get sad again. That she would-
"Helloooooooo? Gaea to Twilight? Or Gallifrey, or where-ever. In any case, a planet wants your attention! Not that I'm a planet, but I'm sure there's some planet out there somewhere that can think, and I'm certain they'd like you!"
Twilight snapped out of her worry-induced trance. "Oh, um, sorry Pinkie. Got lost in thought is all. Glad the Doctor saved the world again. He seems important to you." Pinkie nodded. "Yepperoony!" Pinkie always knew how to turn a simple yes into lovable nonsense. "He inspires me to this day, honestly. Speaking of which, ya want a jelly baby?" She pulled a small paper bag out of her mane. Twilight shrugged. Why not? She took one, and it was a nice little candy. She didn't see what the hype was about, though, or why the Doctor liked them so much. "Oh! That reminds me," Pinkie exclaimed. Pinkie grabbed Twilight by the hoof and took her to Pinkie's room. She activated the secret mechanism that took them both to the party cave. She then proceeded to rummage through an old filing cabinet, that of course produced confetti upon opening. She then revealed an old, weathered looking cardboard box with the words "Pinkie's Ultimate Party Box!" scrawled upon its side in sharpie. All of this occurred within ten seconds. Pinkie showed the box to Twilight, who looked confused. "Alright, Pinkie, what's this? More jelly babies?"
"Well..." Pinkie looked so excited that she could burst. "You know how I said that we traveled in that box he crashed in? His time machine that can send you to anywhere anywhen and on a billion-trillion-ZILLION crazy adventures?!?" Twilight looked at her quizzically with a confused "yeaaaaaah?" Pinkie smiled and squealed out "well, this is mine!" Twilight darted her eyes back and forth between Pinkie and the "Party Box." Was Pinkie joking? She had to be. It was smaller than Pinkie was. "You're kidding," Twilight said.
Pinkie showed that she was, in fact, not kidding by opening the lid and jumping in with a "NOPE!" And just like that, she was gone, having disappeared into the box.
Twilight looked with astonishment. She felt at this point she shouldn't be surprised by anything Pinkie did, but this was something else. She assumed Time Lords could cram themselves into tight spaces, or maybe they could shrink in size, and that's how she and the Doctor fit in that blue box. But Pinkie just... Jumped in. Even Pinkie should have made some sort of adjustment to fit in. She picked up the box carefully, and saw that, no, there wasn't a false bottom or anything. Then she saw Pinkie's head emerge from the box, saying "come on in, Twilight! There's a pillow waiting for you! Oh, and don't look into the box when you do. That would spoil the surprise!" Then the head disappeared once again. Twilight placed the box down, and decided she would carefully step into the box, and hope she didn't accidently step on Pinkie's eye. She placed her hind hoof firmly in thin air, which caused her to fully fall in.
A few seconds later, Twilight flew back out of the the box. She picked it up, examined the floor of the cave, then the bottom of the box, the sides of the box, she spun it, put her head in it, looked at it from all angles, and did everything she could think of. Then she went back into the box, landing semi-gracefully on the aforementioned pillow, staring out at the box's interior. Pinkie spread her hooves out, as if presenting the most marvelous thing Twilight had ever seen, which was because that was what was happening. Then Twilight said a phrase, a phrase that was any rouge Time Lord's favorite phrase in all of time and space.
"It's bigger on the inside!"
Pinkie's TARDIS certainly was Pinkie's, to describe it in the simplest way possible. It was white, with uneven polka dots of various bright colors all over the walls and floor. The console was designed with a hoofed creature in mind, with large decorated buttons and levers that could be used with teeth. Places where dials would were seemingly replaced with things like pin wheels, party blowers, spinning tops, and various different kinds of noisemakers. There were hanged pictures on the wall of a stallion with a brown mane and coat with a ridiculously long scarf, standing with a mare with a white coat and a blonde mane wearing a red vest and a straw hat. "Yeah," Pinkie said "for some reason entering this universe changed all my pictures, but hey! They're still pictures of me with the Doctor! Come on come on come on!"
THAT'S the thing she wants me to see first?!? Twilight couldn't believe that she was standing in one of the grandest scientific and magical marvels the entirety of Gaea had ever seen, and its owner wanted to show Twilight some pictures on the wall. Then again, the owner in question was Pinkie. If anypony would have done it... Well, Twilight went up to the photo thanks to Pinkie's goading. She became glad she did, however, because she noticed something. The way the stallion in the photo's hair was done was unruly, floofy, and looked extremely soft. He had a large, cheesy grin and a twinkle in his eye. She then glanced at Pinkie, with a smug grin on her face. Pinkie seemed puzzled. "What?" Twilight gave a light giggle at that. "Nothing, Pinkie. I'm just amazed is all!" She gestured towards the impossible room, distractingly. "I mean, look at all this! It's so scientifically and magically amazing, like nothing anypony has ever seen before! And yet, somehow, you took this miracle of a machine and..." She suddenly had a dreamy look on her face. "Made it Pinkie's."
Pinkie just giggled. "If you think this is amazing, you should see all the other rooms! We've got a swimming pool, a pool table, a swim table, an ing table, a sandwich-making robot, a room exclusively made for silly string, a zoo"- Twilight started rolling her eyes with a grin. She was just happy to see that Pinkie was happy. "-A laboratory, a haunted house, a theme park, a Beanie Baby collection, a room with nothing but a single creepy clown doll in the center of it, a macaroons dispenser-" Out of nowhere she gasped, as if she made the most groundbreaking discovery in the history of marekind in the middle of her list. Then, she gave a sly grin. Twilight suddenly got worried.
Pinkie then said, in a singy-songy voice, "I think you'll enjoy the li-brary~!"
True to her name, Twilight's eyes started sparkling. "A library?" Twilight's eyes were full of wonder and excitement. It was a library owned by an alien in a location that was geometrically impossible by modern standards. How could she not be insanely hyped about this? But then Pinkie decided to add more fuel into the fire that was Twilight's joy. "Yep, a library! A library owned by an alien time traveler who has visited different planets! I have books about alien cultures from another universe! I have books from some of the first ever written to the very last! I have books about some of the most terrifying creatures that ever existed! I have books written by the most terrifying creatures that ever existed! Time Lord books, Human books, Silurian books, Jagaroth books, Gelth books, Volgan books, Kroton books, Monoid books... I have them all! There's even a few books written by some rebellious DALEKS of all things!"
Twilight had a grin wider than a dragon's wingspan. "Wherewherewherewherewherewhere WHERRRRRE?!?" At this moment in time, as she jumped excitedly about brand new reading material, she was one of the few creatures in history successful in out-Pinkie-ing Pinkie! The real Pinkie just smiled and said "down that hall, take a left at the wardrobe, take the right just past the trampoline room, go through the garden, and ta-da! Library should be next to the soda machine!" Twilight zoomed past Pinkie in a purple blur the moment the sentence was finished, shouting behind her "thankyouthankyouthankyouTHANKYOU!" Pinkie chased after her, laughing all the way. Twilight can learn about it later, Pinkie thought. I don't want her to think our world isn't real, because it is real, and magic is real, and all of this is real, but...
It's really easy to interpret it the wrong way.