“I’m ready to go…”
His voice was gruff, deep and old sounding as he stood over the console of the ship he loved so dearly. They had been travelling together a thousand years to this very day during which time he had changed many times, and so had she. He always called the ship a she, for indeed she was surely female. He had always known that, and it had been confirmed a number of times during their adventures.
The face he saw reflected in the console was an old face, one marked with decades, centuries even, of experience. The deep sullen eyes had been witness to countless battles, innumerable tragedies, dozens of loves. His hair, grayed and started to fall out, had been observed by millions of important dignitaries of thousands of planets. His coat, which had once been brown, was permanently stained and grimy from all the places he’d been. All of these facts had solidified the decision that he was making for they all repeated that one word.
Doctor, that was his name, and it was etched into every fiber of his being, a being that he hadn’t had forever, but had come to define him and had been defined by him. He was decades overdue for a regeneration, which one would this be now? He had lost count long ago. Not that it mattered anymore anyways; it was time for a new start.
The Doctor’s tired old hands began to work at the console for the last time, forming out a pattern he had found too long ago to remember, but had never used. It was the pattern that led this ship to a very special place. As he turned the last cog to activate it, a panel slid open, moving aside a mess of buttons to reveal one single switch. He eyed this switch carefully; he knew exactly what it did. It was something only one time lord had ever done, and was strictly forbidden since then. He smiled wryly, remembering the vaguely the dark consequences of going Colgate…
“TARDIS old girl,” he said in a raspy voice that he had long since grown tired of using “This is going to be our last journey.” A single tear dripped down his ancient face “When I go, your soul is free. You can go find a real body where you can live…” He cursed under his breath as the tears started to flow freely. Hundreds of companions and an equal number of goodbyes, yet he was still so very unprepared for this day.
“Damn it all…” he spoke aloud, slamming his hand down next to the master switch “I don’t have the energy to do this…” he looked around the dashboard again, eyes alighting on another control, one he was somewhat more familiar with. It only took him a moment to activate it. He smiled, remembering the last words he had spoken on the one other occasion he had made use of this control.
“Don’t let me eat pears…” he said with a reminiscent smile “I hate pears…” A wisp of golden dust floated off his hand as he clenched it into a fist. It was time wasn’t it? It was time to go…Allons-y.
The Doctor grasped the master switch firmly, taking a slow breath. “Goodbye old girl…” he said with a forced smile “Maybe I’ll see you again… that would be…wonderful…” He pushed on the switch, closing his eyes hard.
He proceeded to promptly stick in place. He glared hard at the little lever as some more gold smoke floated off his body. “Well there goes my big moment…” he muttered, fiddling with the switch, which seemed to have rusted in place.
He glared at it, contemplating just shutting the hatch and moving on. Surely this universe had something more to explore, didn’t it? He pressed hard on the stuck switch again, suddenly noticing that one of the wheels had turned on its own. He observed this curiously, it wouldn’t be the first time the TARDIS had moved of its own accord.
The dial had turned to point toward one of the large screens on the wall, as the Doctor was quick to observe. To his amazement, a series of words began appearing on the screen. “Goodbye Doctor, I will miss you to…” The Doctor read aloud, face lighting up in amazement. This was the first time in an eon the TARDIS had talked to him directly “I just want you to know before we go...”
No further words appeared, and the Doctor stared hard at the screen, waiting for more. There was a sudden creaking from behind, and the Doctor turned sharply to see the master switch sliding forward on its own. He turned back to the screen in astonishment; it read in golden letters “I love you.”
There was a sudden burst of prismatic light as the console’s controls fell away, revealing the spectacular effects shining from within. The Doctor felt the familiar burst of regeneration energy as his body was engulfed in bright golden light that was utterly dwarfed by the rainbow effect poured out of the heart of the TARDIS.
The Doctor felt his knees suddenly buckle as he fell forward onto his hands. He more felt than heard the pop as his knee joints shifted into reverse, the fingers on his hands retracting backwards and disappearing into his palms. What was going on? Was this what entering the mythical perfect universe entailed? He was suddenly filled with doubt as a burst of multi-colored light exploded around the TARDIS, still visible on the inside.
As it would happen, around this time a green unicorn filly was sitting on her porch, plucking idly at the strings to a little golden harp. She glared carefully at the strings, her horn sparking with magic as she occasionally had to strum more than two at once.
“Lyra!” the voice of the filly’s father called from inside the house “Are you ready to play for us yet?”
“Not yet daddy!” Lyra called back. She was on the brink of frustration but wasn’t quite there yet. She had been out here on the porch for several hours now, just trying to piece together her composition. There had to be something, something to play for her parents that was truly worth playing…
The lyre tipped over as its owner groaned in frustration. Prodigy they had called her, what a laugh. This little pony couldn’t even tease a pleasing melody from the harp-strings without the music in front of her. Until she had really composed her first piece of music calling her an artist was a joke.
Lyra looked up at the afternoon sky, blue and clear, obviously well tended to by the weather ponies all day with a meticulous hoof. She loved to look at the sky, it seemed so full of inspiration, ready to be soaked up and released through the artwork that was her brilliant music.
Her head hit the railing, there she went again. She had to stop complimenting her own ability; she would never succeed that way. Her parents had always coddled her, told her what a star she was, she could never succeed that way. The only way to get anything in life was through hard work and dedication, and Celestia be damned if she didn’t have that.
But what she really needed right now was some inspiration. A pony could have all the practice and talent in the world and it would be worth nothing if there wasn’t a lick of creativity to go along with it. She continued to stare up at the bright blue sky, wondering if that was ever something she would have.
A sudden burst of color suddenly appeared in the sky, accompanied by the sound of a distant explosion. She gasped as she saw the prismatic blend extent circularly outward from that one point in the sky, decorating the blue with hues of red, gold, and green.
The lyre on the floor uttered a small noise from the sound-box, a C sharp Lyra was quick to identify. She turned to the instrument, somehow not at all surprised at her ability to draw her attention away from the spectrum high overhead. She needed to capture those colors somehow, and she had a feeling that she knew just how to go about doing it. Her parents were so good to her that whatever music she played wouldn’t be good enough, she knew that.
Just this once though… just this once…
At the same time, only a few blocks away from the house of the green unicorn, was a little cream colored earth pony “working diligently” at the Sugarcube Corner. Her mane, an unnatural looking shade of pink and blue, bobbed to the sound of the music she was listening to on her MP3. She was feeling a little idle today, nothing of particular interest having happened in well over a week, and she was looking out the window with a clear expression of boredom.
The Cakes, a young couple who had opened the shop fresh out of high school, were in the kitchen working on some confection or another, as evidenced by the sugary smell wafting from within. Bonbon, for Bonbon was the name of this little filly, sighed. She had just about had her fill of sugar, which was nigh impossible. She had been living with the cakes for several weeks now, and sugar had become a part of her primary diet as the Cakes had her tasting everything they made. She honestly felt ready to puke at the smell of more.
Bonbon sighed, remembering how her parents had sent her to apprentice under the Cakes. “Candy making is in your blood!” her mother had told her “But no pony should have to learn candy the same way their parents did.” Yeah, sure, it was in her blood, that’s why the Cakes had never let her go near the kitchen, ever.
Seemingly at the very thought of them, the Cakes walked out of the kitchen carrying a huge cake between them. “Bonbon, dearie,” said Mrs. Cake in her infuriatingly coddling tone “We’re going to go deliver this, we’ll only be gone for a minute, behave yourself!” They walked out before Bonbon could voice a response, not that she wanted to. If there was anything obvious about the Cakes it was that they did not have much of a knack with children.
Bonbon just continued to stare out at the clear blue sky. It really was a day just like all the others she’d had, and most likely the same as they would ever be. Was this really the life of a confectioner? Mind numbing boredom the lifeblood of her work? If that was the case, she wanted to go home.
A sudden flash of vivid colors erupted high in the sky overhead. Bonbon’s eyes widened, fixed on the explosion of light. She rolled over and stood up so she could get a better look at the magnificent rainbow pattern streaking across the sky. What in the world was that? It was so beautiful and yet… it couldn’t be natural. It was somehow inspiring, stirring something deep inside her that simply screamed for her to create.
But what would she create? She was only a little pony after all. What in the whole wide universe could she possibly do to match the dazzling display shining in front of her eyes? She forced her gaze away from the colors to look in the direction of the kitchen. She was expressly, no exceptions, not allowed to go into the kitchen under any circumstances.
Just this once though…just this once…
A fair distance away from the Sugarcube Corner was the rich district of Ponyville. Filthy Rich himself owned most of the real estate in the area but that isn’t to say Ponyville didn’t have any other elites. As a matter of fact there were a good half dozen very wealthy families who lived in Ponyville for the peace and quiet afforded to the quaint little town.
Prominent among these nobles were the Clefs. The Clef family owned one of the largest manufacturing companies of musical instruments in all Equestria. It was a common thing for a violinist, a tuba player, even a drummer to brag about their Clef instruments as a height of luxury.
The young heiress to the Clef industry went by the name of Octavia. She was a refined young pony with a coat of soft gray. Her mane, washed twice daily with the finest shampoos, was a silky brown. She was also, in accordance with family tradition, a musician. A cellist to be precise and a very good one at that.
On this particular day young Octavia was practicing on her cello, as she almost always was. The bright afternoon sunlight sparkled down into the room from a single square window, illuminating the tidy room without so much as a speck of dust in sight. The maid really did to a thorough job with the place.
Idle thoughts trickled through Octavia’s mind as her hooves gracefully controlled the large string instrument. She had practiced this piece so many times she could play it automatically, letting her mind wander idly away from the strings and away through her imagination. She found a certain refuge in her music; it occupied her mind without concentration. While she was on her cello she was neither tired nor bored. It was, in her intrepid opinion, the highest point of living to be producing music. Even higher, perhaps, was the writing of music, which she did rather frequently.
Octavia was often called a prodigy by those who knew her, but she knew that was nothing special. Every pony had their own spectacular talent so long as they would just open their eyes to see it. Even the rather annoying unicorns which she assumed the explosion outside her window had just come from, had some purpose to fulfill.
She cast a bored glance out the window to make absolute certain the explosive sound was nothing of imminent threat to her. She saw the magnificent burst of rainbow color erupting somewhere in the distance but thought nothing of it. It was beautiful, of course, but she had grown up (to this point at least) around many beautiful things. To her it was just another fireworks display, probably brought about by some young colts with far too much time and money.
Although that pattern, the rainbow, it reminded her of something. She turned her composition book to a page labeled Prismatic Trance. It was a piece she had written a long time ago with no realistic intent on even being able to play it. After all, it was so ridiculously advanced that even her cello tutor had said he wouldn’t be able to play it.
Just this once though… just this once…
Providing a stark contrast to the incredibly rich district of Ponyville, there was of course a very poor district. Here many of the houses were small and shabby, sometimes two homes to a single brick building. Looking around this district a pony would notice an overwhelming sense of unity between the inhabitants, all of whom banded together for mutual survival.
That isn’t to say they were animalistic, as a matter of fact many of them were very happy ponies. It was very typical for the ponies of the poor district to be much more satisfied with life than the snobbish elite. When life decided to give you no easy breaks, you no longer had to follow its social rules.
Vinyl Scratch, a young unicorn filly, was a perfect example of it. She had bright red eyes and pale fur, an albino pony actually, though she had dyed her mane blue as to look more natural. Though of course as far as “natural” went she had picked a rather strange color. She lived in one of the coed buildings along with her parents and some family on the top floor she didn’t know very well.
Vinyl’s father was a musician and her mother grew flowers. Together they made ends meet a little better than some of the other ponies in the area. They had at some point collected enough bits to buy a modest computer. Crimson, her father, occasionally used this system to perfect his compositions. Vinyl was expressly forbidden from using it, but she was home alone quite a lot.
On a particularly fateful day, when Vinyl was just a little filly, she had obstinately broken the rules to play one of her favorite online games. It wasn’t particularly interesting, and she was finding more and more that by the time she reached as high a level as she was at it started to get redundant. At one point she had been sure her cutie mark would be in computer gaming, but so far no luck.
She closed the game with a sigh, looking out one of the small windows her house was lucky enough to have. The sky was still big and blue meaning it would be a long time yet before her parents returned home. It was with a weary resignation that she turned back to the computer in the vain hope of finding something else to occupy the next few long hours.
One of the icons on the screen suddenly lit up in a wave of prismatic color. Vinyl watched in curiosity as a circular rainbow extended out around one of the shortcuts on the desktop menu. Had she looked out the window again she might have seen the burst of rainbow color that the computer screen was reflecting. As such, all she saw was her father’s composition program beaming out rays of light.
“Gosh…” Vinyl muttered, glad to at least have reason to vocalize at some point today, she felt that if there were any more obvious temptation to use the music making program it would probably be mind control. The music maker was something she never touched during her bootleg computer time; she actually had the potential to mess up if she did that.
Just this once though… just this once…
And as these four young ponies were connected by the strands of fate, one small brown colt was just starting to come to. By the time he opened his eyes the rainbow explosion had almost entirely faded away. He grunted and hauled himself to his hooves, looking around at his modest surroundings.
“Let’s see…” he said “Grassy, I’m in a field. There’s a forest right there so wherever I’ve ended up it’s nice… but where was I before?” He suddenly came to the realization he didn’t remember where he was before this. Was he anywhere before this? Maybe he had just started to exist right here in this very spot.
“Hello!” came a voice from behind him that made him jump “What brings you out here?”
The brown colt turned to see a pegasus, about his height, gray with a blonde mane. He was immediately drawn to her eyes, which were staring in two different directions so he couldn’t tell whether or not she was actually looking at him.
“Um…I don’t know?” he said, hoping he didn’t come off as too strange to this pony.
“Oh, that’s okay,” said the pegasus “Sometimes I zone out and get lost too. Actually I do that a lot…” her eyes rotated a bit, her face taking on a bit of an awkward expression, even more so than it had been before “My name’s Derpy Hooves… what’s yours?”
“Doctor!” said the colt reflexively; glad he could at the very least remember that “I’m The Doctor!”
“Doctor Who?” Derpy asked incredulously.
“Just The Doctor,” said The Doctor with a grin “Sorry, I guess that’s not really normal, but it is my name.”
Derpy frowned “You’re kind of a strange pony…” she said “Did you hit your head out here somewhere?”
“Nope!” said The Doctor “I am completely unharmed as you can plainly see!”
“Well…Okay!” said Derpy, breaking into a wide smile “Strange is always good! Hey, you want to come with me? I was gonna go get some muffins but then I zoned out and ended up here!”
The Doctor shrugged, figuring he didn’t remember anything else he needed to be doing “That sounds delicious,” he said “I would love to!”
As they started walking Derpy looked toward The Doctor’s rear “Your cutie mark is an hourglass?” she asked “What does that mean?”
The Doctor looked back, observing the mark himself “Oh my,” he said “I have no idea!”
“Well I don’t know what my bubbles mean either,” said Derpy “I guess you and I have a lot in common Doctor!”
“Well, I guess we do.” Said the Doctor, returning the smile as they walked on toward Ponyville.