Once, long ago, far before the first primitive humans started walking on only their hind legs, before the Earth was even habitable, There was a single large planet, circling a lone star. On its surface, life formed, naming its home Gallifrey. Eventually, the people of Gallifrey evolved past their tiny huts and primitive farms, building giant metropolises as they came to understand their world more and more. Eventually, they unraveled the mysteries of time itself, claiming the title of Time Lords for their own.
As the Doctor’s eyes fluttered open, he dared to imagine himself back on that lone planet once more, the light of Gallifrey’s sun tinted by the dome and falling into his eyes as a dear memory; one from before the Fall.
Uncomfortably familiar with waking up on the ground in a place he most definitely wasn’t before, the Doctor got back on his feet and looked around. While the long avenue definitely looked like Gallifrey in its heyday, the street itself was unfamiliar, much like an alley one never noticed in their hometown.
“Well, not much of a point staying here, I suppose,” the Doctor said to himself as he started walking down the road.
It was strange, but despite the utter unfamiliarity of the particular road he felt as if he knew where he was going, nor did it surprise him as a shadowy image of a man started walking alongside of him.
“-doing here?” the apparition muttered, only barely loud enough to be heard as it kept in perfect stride with the Doctor, who suddenly noticed he felt like walking on his toes. “Thank you, It’s good keep-”
As the first shadow became too quiet to be understood, a second one took the Doctor’s other side. “-centrate on one thing! One thing!” the newcomer said, his volume climbing as he spoke, only to fade into silence as he started muttering “no no no” until his voice too faded to near silence, as the Doctor noticed how the steady beat of his feet had been replaced with a clip-clop of hooves.`
-must find my shoes!” the third faded in, shouting and rambling as the Doctor felt his heels climbing further up his legs, the sensation only stopping as the sounds of the stranger faded into barely heard mutterings, “While there is life, there-”
“-uman History,” the fourth said, eventually fading as he spoke, “It is the end, but the moment has-”
“Been prepared for,” the Doctor himself muttered, noting that his legs felt a lot warmer now.
“-come to help me find the Zero Room. Welcome Aboard” the next said, “I don’t know, feels different this time-” muttering on even as the Doctor’s legs shrunk to comically short proportions.
“-were expecting someone else?” as more of the Doctor changed, his hips shifting to accommodate a quadruped’s gait, forcing him to support his weight with his arms as well as his legs, the fifth ghostly image muttering about Carrot juice as his voice faded away.
“-no, Mel!” continued the next memory, as the Doctor felt the muscles in his legs strengthen, “I know... I’ve got to stop-”
“- am I? Who am I?” the seventh shadow wondered as brown fur started sprouting across the Doctor’s skin while his chest grew to accommodate his new internal makeup, “Now, where shall we-”
“Run,” the ninth addition to the Doctor’s group said in a hushed tone, as the Doctor’s hands lost feeling and grew together into solid hooves, “And you know what? so was-”
“-that’s right, Barcelona!” the next said, causing the Doctor to grin subconsciously as his eye sockets grew along with his eyes, “I don’t want to-”
“-Crashing! Geronimo!” what seemed to be the last said as the Doctor’s face stretched into the slightly angular muzzle of an Earth pony stallion, “I can’t! I can’t ever go back-”
Reaching the end of his trip down the long path, surrounded by his past, the Doctor found himself in front of a large wooden door, light shining from underneath the distinctly out-of-place portal.
Grinning to himself, the Doctor walked up to the doors, not even the least bit intimidated as they swung open before him.
It was not often that a situation would emotionally affect the Princess to the point where it would show, since being over a thousand years would often leave one with quite an impressive ability to conceal ones emotions. Still, even if it was subtle, anypony who knew the Princess well enough would be able to tell that there was something going on. Something that the Princess was taking personal. The fact that she decided to forego the usual Pegasus-drawn-chariot-plus-Guard-escort was an important clue.
Celestia landed heavily just outside the gates to the St. George Conversion bureau, the looks the group of HLF-members being kept under close guard near her landing spot gave her doing little to calm her.
Almost immediately, she was joined by her Captain of the Guard. “Status report,” the Princess sternly said to the unfortunate captain.
Shining Armor did his best to keep his voice level. “The attack resulted in three casualties, all of them human, as well as fifty-one injured total. A field hospital has been set up for the latter, ceremonies are being organized for the former. Structural damage to the bureau is limited, it will take a month at most to get the building safe enough for use again. None of the Ambassadors were harmed in the attack, though they all will need some time to recover from the shock.”
Princess Celestia nodded. “And the HLF?”
“Most of the members of the local faction are either arrested by local enforcers, or have warrants being sent out for them. One notable case however is their leader; Dave Hillside turned himself in earlier, while claiming he was not responsible for the attack.”
The Princess nodded again, urging Shining to continue as she surveyed the damage.
“Also, we recovered a man identified as Pastor Winchester, in apparently a deep state of shock. The arrested members of the HLF confirmed he was the mastermind behind the attack, though in his current state he can’t be reliably questioned. Finally, the blast detectors of the Conversion room were tripped when we inspected them, and the doors won’t budge. The room will be airlifted to the Central Bureau within the hour,” Shining concluded his report to the Princess.
“And Twilight Sparkle and her friends?” Celestia asked.
Shining sighed. “Physically, they are well. Still, the attack left them... shaken,” he concluded, his ears folding down a little.
The Princess nodded again, her face still a perfectly emotionless mask. “Very well, I will visit them soon. Currently however, I must attend to someone... no, somepony else.”
The room the Doctor found himself in was, in a word, massive. One would have difficulty seeing the other wall, standing in the doorway, and the many arrays of monitors and banks of controls of more kinds than most could imagine only made the space look larger by their sheer number. Still, the space didn’t feel threatening to the Doctor, as he made his way past the stations monitoring the entirety of time itself.
Still, despite the impressiveness of the room as a whole, there was one centerpiece that stood out. Far above the various stations, reaching up until it almost touched the ceiling, there was a single straight staircase, leading up to something the Doctor couldn’t quite make out from across the sheer distance. Despite how much the structure felt as if it didn’t belong in the room, the Doctor could not help himself and walk up to the strange construction.
As the Doctor set a hoof on the first step however, a voice suddenly thundered across the cavernous room. “Are you almost done taking the scenic route, Doctor?”
“W-who are you? What are you doing here?!” the Doctor stammered out as he looked up to the impressive appearance that had spoken.
The serpentine form chuckled from the raised throne, suddenly visible as if the staircase had shrunk down to only a dozen steps. “Really now? Asking for a reason from me? Surely you know better,” it finished as it suddenly disappeared in a flash of light.
“Still, it is terribly amusing to see you wallow in nostalgia, even if you never had any reason to like this place,” the voice spoke, seemingly coming from all sides at once.
The Doctor snorted angrily, turning on his hind legs as he tried to find the source of the voice. “Ok, different question then, who are you? You assume I know you, but I’m fairly certain I’ve never met you before,” he shouted into the cavernous room, only catching the barest of glimpses of strangely mismatched body parts in the corner of his view every time he looked elsewhere.
“Oh? Riiight! You haven’t... Well, you were rather adamant about avoiding spoilers last time we met, so I’ll humor you on that. Terrible waste of an opportunity for chaos, if you ask me though.”
The Doctor was starting to get a little light-headed from all the sudden turns he forced his body through, the dizziness only making him more angry. “Whoever you are, stop playing games! I’m in no mood, and you don’t-”
Suddenly, a face like a parody of all races of Equestria mixed together appeared on a screen right in front of him, cutting him off mid-sentence. “Yeah, yeah. ‘Wrath of a Time Lord’ this, ‘All of time and space’ that, we went over that last time. Seriously, try coming up with something more creative next time, my dear frenemy.”
The Doctor could only stare in confusion, not sure what would happen next.
“Well, Doctor? Gryphon got your tongue?” the mismatched face said, idly pulling one of the horns off of its head and using it to clean the underside of his claws. “Besides, I could ask you the same. Doctor... who? But, we both know neither of us will get an answer to that today, so I’ll keep things simple for you.”
Suddenly, the Doctor felt a weight on his withers. He leapt away, only to come face to face with the strange chimera from the screen. Except, this time the beast was not contained by any two-dimensional surface.
“You did me certain favors long ago, so let me repay at least some of that debt. Have some advice: fear the Princesses, they tend to imprison what they can’t appreciate,” it finished calmly, despite its eyes burning with a rage few mortals could have lived to witness.
The Doctor backed away further, the strange creature terrifying him beyond words as the lights of the room suddenly grew dim, blackness claiming him as the impossible room faded away.
“And one more thing, you still owe me a cup of coffee!” was the last thing he heard as the last of the light dimmed to darkness.
The room re-ignited into light and the doctor looked around. the Chimera was no where to be found so with a shrug The Doctor continued to climb
“Greetings to you, Doctor” a voice suddenly resounded from the top of the staircase, and the room was suddenly filled with light as a radiant form descended from the top of the stairs, the Doctor finding his hind legs suddenly folding as he stared in wonder.
“W-what are you doing here?!” the Doctor stammered out as he looked up to the impressive appearance that had spoken.
“I think you know the answer to that already, don’t you?” the blindingly bright Alicorn said as she walked down the steps of the raised throne, the Doctor finding himself almost unconsciously bowing down before the Princess.
Finishing her descent down the long stairway leading up to the throne, Princess Celestia lightly chuckled. “No need for such formalities now, My Little Pony. We have much to discuss and far too little time to do so,” she said as she serenely sat down in front of the Doctor.
It was not often that a Time Lord found himself at a loss for words, but now was definitely one of those moments. Sputtering for a moment as he tripped over his own words, the Doctor eventually managed to form a coherent response. “S-sorry, last time you weren’t quite so... impressive. I mean, err, I-” the Doctor struggled for words until a hoof over his mouth gently stopped him.
Celestia gave him a calm smile as she pulled her hoof back. “I understand, Doctor. I didn’t mean to intimidate you. ”
His mouth finally catching up with his thoughts, the Doctor finally managed stumble to his hooves despite his mounting embarrassment. “A-alright then, it is just... I didn’t expect today to be the day, and I’m still getting used to the new body. I mean, first time I’m walking on all fours most of the time,” he finished somewhat lamely as his embarrassed blush only grew deeper.
Celestia chuckled, and the Doctor couldn’t stop himself from looking up to her. “It is all right. I know what you mean, and rest assured. I have known about your adventures for long enough.” Celestia took a deep breath, her expression turning serious as she continued. “In due time, ‘you’ will tell me all about who and what you are and do, though I cannot tell you much more than that. Suffice to say, ‘you’ will tell me somewhere both before and after this day,” she said as she closed her eyes. “Beyond that, ‘you’ asked me to tell you not to tell me until you were ready. ‘You’ said you would know what that meant, and that any answer beyond that...” she trailed off as she silently levitated a tea set from some unseen location.
“...would be a Spoiler,” the Doctor finished her sentence as he almost instinctively sat down as well, taking a deep breath as the set landed between the two of them, the fragrance of the tea making him feel calmer than he had for many years.
“Still, I must ask you to leave as soon as you can,” the Princess solemnly said as she poured a pair of cups. “That was one more thing ‘you’ were adamant about. The Bureau will manage without you, but you won’t survive long if you stick around apparently. Now, though I wish I could give you a warmer welcome to Equestria, will you please have this tea with me?” she spoke as she levitated a cup within the Doctor’s reach.
Taking the cup between his fetlocks, the Doctor looked at the still rather intimidating form of the Princess of the Sun. “Won’t survive? What does that mean?” he said as he took a sip from the small cup, the pleasant taste making him feel even more relaxed, as if the world truly wasn’t at any risk whatsoever.
The Princess shook her head, the Doctor only barely noticing how the edges of his view started to darken. “I can’t tell you. Spoilers.”
Trying unsuccessfully to shake the sudden sleepiness that threatened to overtake him, the Doctor struggled to keep talking. “Then w...what can you tell m...me?”
The Princess only responded with a serene smile, the darkness at the edges slowly dimming her radiance as the Doctor felt himself drift off into a deep slumber.
The thing about darkness is, it only ever affects one sense. After all, even in the deepest darkness ones other senses don’t stop functioning, and one can still perceive the world through touch or sound. As such, it was more than a little disconcerting when the Doctor felt absolutely nothing for the briefest of moments, the silence of all senses being so overwhelming that even that split second felt like an hour.
Thankfully, a moment was all it took for the first sense to return, as the Doctor suddenly heard the softest of mutterings coming from somewhere above him.
There, there. You did what you knew was right, and in time even this will become but a memory.
Next were his senses of touch and balance, as he felt the pull of gravity along with something pressing against his side, his instincts telling him that he was probably laying down.
Besides, he will be a better person for it. You gave him a perspective he could never have found on his own, something more precious than all the gold in the world.
As his hearing kept improving, his senses of smell and taste were next to start recovering, a nasty aftertaste of extremely artificial grape making him wish he had enough control over his muscles to gag already.
Now, I need you to be strong. If not for me, then for him until he reaches me. Can you promise me that?
He could almost make out the words of the conversation apparently being held only a few feet from his head as his sight started to return, the absolute blackness making way for the darkness behind closed eyelids.
We don’t have much longer, he will wake up soon. Still, you can trust him as well as you can trust me. I promise.
The last thing to return as his hearing finally got to an acceptable level was the sense of his own muscles, accompanied by their use as he felt himself trying to reach out to the sources of the voices, his eyelids opening to a tiny crack before shutting themselves against the dazzlingly bright light.
“D-Doctor? He’s moving!”
‘That voice... Ditzy? Who is she talking to?
The next thing the Doctor knew, something tightly clasped around his neck, making him almost worry for his supply of air.
“Derpy, I don’t enjoy being strangled much, so would you please stop that?” a voice spoke from beside the Doctor, as his sight improved to the point where he could see some vague grey blur occupying most of his view.
Thankfully, at that point the stranglehold on his neck loosened as he managed to control his vocal chords enough to form a simple question.
“W-what am I doing here?”
He heard a soft chuckle from the same direction as before, looking in the direction of the sound as the blurs started to retreat and edges started to reveal themselves. “Well, a mathematician would say, ‘you are lying down,’ but I assume it would be more informative if I told you that you were recovering from a particularly traumatic emergency conversion.”
the Doctor tried to look in the direction of the voice, the strangely familiar brown blur slowly shrinking as his eyes started to adjust to the bright light in the room. “That... That sounds reasonable. S-sorry though, w-who are you?” he said, his tongue feeling alien to the point where he stumbled a little over his own words.
The blur chuckled as it slowly took on more well defined contours. “Me? I am Doctor Whooves. Or, perhaps you would say, I am you,” he said as the Doctor’s view finally recovered to the point where he could recognize the pony in front of him.
“S-so you survived,” the Doctor mumbled, still trying to get used to his new herbivorous mouth. “Well then, that must be good news for miss Hooves,” he smiled to his double as his vision restored itself to the point where he could recognize the tan-coated pony before him.
The form before him however gave an awkward chuckle before answering. “In a sense, I did. Still, I am not the pony you saved about fifteen minutes ago,” he said as he gestured with a hoof to his side.
Looking to the side, the Doctor saw another brownish blob. A blob the exact same color as the one still in the corner of his view.
“Who... are you then?”
The first blob gave another awkward chuckle. “Technically speaking, I am him, from the future.”
The Doctor’s vision finally finished restoring, he could finally identify the vague blobs surrounding him. The gray-and-yellow one was Ditzy, still looking rather shaken by recent events. The two brown ones however revealed themselves to be an identical pair of Pegasi, one of them lying on his side as if he were asleep, while the other one was standing near the doorway, looking a little concerned. “You... you altered an event you knew of!?”
The standing Pegasus raised a hoof in an apologetic gesture. “Not exactly, because I remembered seeing myself here. But I have much to explain and little time to do so, so let me give you the short version,” he said as he sat down. “I no longer remember what happened in the Dream, but I still remember feeling as if staying would be the worst choice. I also remember being explained why I didn’t regenerate, so let me give you that. While you did get rid of the damage the thaumic radiation caused, you didn’t lose the source of that radiation. Basically, you had a lot of Equestrian matter on you, be it from splinters when you broke through that grate or water you swallowed while you were in the Princess’ bath. Either way, the constant strain of having your body being torn apart by the radiation meant that in that short time since, you repaired enough damage to equal to all your regenerations minus one. All in all, you were lucky to have enough left for even a single regeneration,” He finished, before looking up in thought. “Also, yes. I do lose myself in exposition every now and then, Colgate never stops annoying me about that.”
The Doctor stumbled to his hooves (a small part of his mind being amused how he didn’t even think of them as feet anymore,) as he started to feel a little afraid to stay. “F-fine, thanks for the explanation. Still, w-would you know where my T-TARDIS is?”
The standing Pegasus stallion chuckled. “Just outside, you can’t miss it. Also, take Colgate- no, Idris along. Trust me on this, short of Derpy, you’ll never find a more reliable companion!” he said as he stepped to the side, revealing a rather depressed looking blue Unicorn mare.
Blinking, the Doctor looked at her for a few seconds before nodding. “Well then, it feels like it wouldn’t be a good idea to stay here much longer, so what do you say we go?”
The Unicorn nodded, turning and trotting out of the door as she followed the Doctor dashing out. “...Just remember to pull the door this time.”