//------------------------------// // Slightly Psychic // Story: The Iron Army // by Fedora //------------------------------// Derpy and Luna materialized on a streetcorner several blocks away from the Ironclad factory, wheezing and panting. Derpy lay down on her side, picking a rather painful shard of glass out from the base of her wing. She was covered in cuts and scrapes from head to hoof, and the sudden magic teleport had shaken her up. “I’m sorry for the rough ride,” Luna apologized, “I haven’t teleported another pony in decades. Good to know this old girl still has a few moves left in her.” Derpy spat another chunk of glass out onto the brightly lit sidewalk pad, and tried standing. She had gotten all of the shards out from under her hooves, but it still twinged with pain when she took a step. “Here,” Luna offered covering the pegasus with a shroud of blueish magic. It swirled around her like smoke before dissipating, leaving her free from cuts, scrapes, and shards. The pony exhaled sharply. “Thank you,” she said, “Princess.” “No problem. We need to find out what happened to the Doctor. If my memory’s correct, then the last time I saw him he travelled in a blue box of some kind. He said it was a spaceship or something.” “That’s the TARDIS,” Derpy replied. Luna noticed some of the ponies passing them by in the middle of the New Canterlot nightlife had begun to stare at her, so she replaced the hood covering most of her face. “Where was the TARDIS last time you saw it?” asked the Princess, walking down the street away from the noisy restaurant crowd. “Side street, not too far from here I think. Near a muffin shop.” The two ponies rounded a corner, the same corner the Doctor had made the mistake of looking in first. Luna stuck her head down and used her magic to illuminate the dark alley. In doing so, she found nothing but graffiti on the walls and a crumpled jacket lying on the ground. “This is his jacket,” Derpy said, swooping down and landing next to it. She picked the leather form up, shaking the dirt out and examining the cut. Wide collar flaps, a little worn in. It was the Doctor’s all right. “Why would he take the jacket off?” she wondered aloud, slipping it over herself. Her legs were a bit more slender than the Doctor’s, and inside the jacket sleeves they barely touched the sides. “Maybe he got vaporized,” Luna suggested with a grim look, “Just left his clothes behind.” “He was wearing more than just the jacket though,” Derpy recalled. She began to pace while still wearing the Doctor’s jacket trying hard to think of what he would do. “He deliberately took it off and left it here. This isn’t the same alley as the TARDIS, so it’s not like he took it off before going in.” “How do you know it’s not the same one?” Luna asked, “They all look the same to me.” “The one we parked the TARDIS in didn’t have graffiti. I think it’s around here somewhere... he didn’t find it the first time either,” Derpy said, “and he took his jacket off before being taken by those things. That’s it! They didn’t vaporize him, they took him prisoner. He left this jacket behind on purpose!” The pegasus dug around in the pockets of the jacket, withdrawing a key on a length of rope. “TARDIS key,” she remarked before digging around in the other ones. She produced the sonic screwdriver, psychic paper, and a banana from the other one. “That pocket’s not big enough for all of those to be crammed inside,” Luna commented, picking up the banana and taking a bite. It was still fresh. “Neither is the TARDIS,” said Derpy. She flipped open the wallet containing the psychic paper, expecting to find it blank. Instead, there was a single word written on the surface in black ink, as if it had been scrawled out by hoof with a fountain pen. DERPY Derpy cocked her head, looking at the paper sideways. Was she making it do that? The Doctor had said that since the paper was psychic it was supposed to display whatever the pony holding it wanted, but she hadn’t willed it to say “Derpy” at all. She looked back at the surface, and noticed that the text had changed. IT’S NOT YOU, IT’S ME. THE DOCTOR. GET TO THE TARDIS. MORE ARE COMING. Derpy’s jaw dropped. That was it! That was why the Doctor had left his jacket behind! “Princess, look at this!” Derpy exclaimed, shoving the psychic paper underneath her nose. “It says ‘stop wasting time and get to the TARDIS’,” Luna said with an arched eyebrow, “He left a note for you?” Derpy looked at it again, but the message wasn’t what the Princess had just read off. It had changed once again, this time in bolder and bigger text. NEXT ALLEY OVER. GET IN THE TARDIS “He wants us to get to the TARDIS,” Derpy explained hurriedly, “Next alley over. Go!” They turned to leave the alley, but came nose-to-steely nose with an entire squad of angry, glowing eyes. The droids had found them, too. Derpy slowly took a step back as the menacing robots advanced, speaking. “You will follow us, ponies!” the leader commanded. Derpy recoiled further, but found the wall at her back. She had nowhere else to go from here. Luna stepped past the pegasus and brought her horn down, conjuring a sphere of magic energy that she detonated in front of the robot squad, throwing them violently to the ground. Taking the momentary distraction, both ponies took flight up and over the alley before the droids could return to their hooves. “There’s the TARDIS!” Derpy shouted excitedly, landing in front of the blue box. Brilliant white light from the inside poured out through the squarish windows, illuminating the back alley. From not far away they could hear the sounds of the robots recovering and clanking toward them. Derpy placed the key into the door and unlocked it hurriedly, pushing her way into the TARDIS. Luna entered right behind, just as the droids appeared at the entrance to the alley. She closed the door swiftly as the robot fired, sending a shower of sparks into the air on the outside but leaving the interior unharmed. Derpy collapsed on the old chair the Doctor kept around inside the spacious interior, letting her head sink back as she rested for a moment. The Princess removed her hood from around her face and took in the features of the TARDIS’ interior. “It’s a bit dimmer than I remember. The console’s not made out of as much random junk. Then again, I think the last time I saw the Doctor he was on his eleventh incarnation. What’s this, his ninth? He remembered me from his ninth, I think.” Derpy shook her head. She had no idea what Luna was ranting about, and she didn’t much care. “What does the psychic paper say now?” the Princess asked. Derpy flipped the wallet open and held it at hoof’s length, studying the surface. It was blank. “I don’t see anything,” she said, “Do I have to want it to show me what the Doctor is trying to say?” As the words came out of her mouth, text began to appear on the psychic paper, scrawled out as they had been before. JUST WAIT. **** The Doctor stood in the center of a vast factory, though unlike the factory that he had seen in the Ironclad building, this was messy and active. Brilliant blue flames shot up from a machine, and smoke poured out from under a vent. The floor was greasy, grimy, and uneven. He kicked the ground with a hoof to test it out. Crystalline. The factory had been built down inside the crystal mines beneath Canterlot. “So, the Synax renegades use these old shafts in 1999 for crackpot experiments, and then they get sealed off, is that correct?” he began, pacing in front of the nameless mare, “Then you lot move in ages and ages later, making your little army while everypony else turns a blind eye?” “The Synax Consulars decried the experiments of the renegade group. After their destruction, they removed any and all traces of their race’s technology, leaving these mines as they were before,” she explained, “They remained that way until 2012, after which Celestia herself put a lock on the mines themselves. It’s taken centuries for that spell to decay, but twenty years ago the entrance was accessible to us.” A klaxon sounded above, triggering flashing lights that illuminated the factory through a cloud of dense smoke. All around the Doctor, red eyes switched on and droids raised their heads. It was then that he got a better scale of the operation: at one eye per robot, there had to be hundreds crowded into this small factory plant. This mare had created an entire army of intelligent, artificial life to be used as her private soldiers. It was then that the Doctor sensed a presence in his mind. It was a bit of an innocent curiosity, mixed with fatigue and subsiding terror. Derpy had found the psychic paper after all! He couldn’t help but grin. He had a way of communicating with them from down here. “So, all of these soldiers,” started the Doctor, “What are you going to do with them?” The mare opened her mouth, but the Doctor cut her off. “No, WAIT! Don’t tell me, you’ve built yourself a personal army of supersoldiers, capable of overthrowing all of Equestria! That’s it, isn’t it? How cliché.” “Not quite,” she retorted with a flick of her tail, “It’s not that dramatic, actually. I just want to take the capital city by force. That’s all it will take, just Canterlot. After that, the rest of Equestria will be on all four knees, with Celestia as my hostage. Then, I can bargain for whatever I want, even the re-establishment of my nation!” “At this very second, the robots have already taken to the streets. Soon, every stallion, every mare with her foals will quake in their beds as the battle begins in the streets. They will not be spared, of course.” “But that’s murder!” the Doctor growled, bringing his face up to stare into the eyes of the taller mare, “I don’t care how you look at it. Extermination, upgrading, cleansing, it all comes down to the destruction of an innocent soul and I won’t stand for it.” The mare snorted, and her eyes flashed a shade of deep green for a moment. It was only for a fraction of a second, but in that moment the Doctor’s expression changed completely. His angry visage melted into one of shock, one of surprise. “You have no power over me, Doctor!” she cackled, “And tonight, I will restore what is rightfully mine.” “You created a new race,” the Doctor said, “Those droids. If you weren’t controlling them, they would be independent and free-thinking intelligent life. Artificial life.” “Yes, and?” “You harnessed the power of electricity to do your bidding. After all these years, you have to create faithful subjects. Why is that? What happened to your population?” The mare leaned inwards, eye to eye with the Doctor. She squinted at him, not sure what to divulge and what to keep hidden. “You are wise, Doctor. I am the last of my kind, it is true. The very last of them.” “I know the feeling,” the Doctor responded, “What happened to them all?” “Disease killed some. Some left the hive, deciding to live their lives out as ponies, passing their nature on. The pure blood became mixed, tainted by ponykind until ponykind dominated. I am the last of the pure changelings, but I also possess the key to salvation.” The Doctor nodded. He was speaking to the Queen of the Changeling hive herself, albeit the only member of that hive as well. “Your name is....?” he asked, taking a step back. “Queen Surrogate, savior of the Changeling race. The last, yet the beginning.” The Doctor shook his head. He began to pace in front of the disguised queen, shaking his head madly and scowling. “No. No, you can’t do that. Not like this. You can’t force that kind of change on a population. It’s not right!” “Try to stop me then, Doctor!” The Doctor licked his lips, tightened his green jumper, and stood his ground in front of the changeling queen. “Listen to me, for this is important. There once was a race called the Daleks, a race bent on exterminating every form of life different from themselves. They had a name for me on their homeworld, steeped in Dalek legend and mythos. They called me the Oncoming Storm. The Daleks are dead now, every last one. You listen to me here, because I am about to give you a choice. You can either choose peace, and by doing so accept my aid in finding a way to rebuild your race peacefully. You can also choose to continue with violence and acts of war, but if you do you can guarantee that I am going to stop you.” The mare laughed, rolling her head back at the blue stallion trying to assert his nonexistent prisoner’s authority. She had had enough. In the blink of an eye, two robotic guards clasped him firmly by the legs and shoulders, and dragged him off in the direction of the jail cell. “A small amount of Synax technology remained behind. They had rather large containment cells, ones that were not used in many, many years. You will still be able to watch, Doctor. Enjoy the show.”