Missing In Equestria
By VoxelTron
Part 2: Sweet Dreams Doctor
The Doctor woke with a start.
Unsurprising, he thought to himself; he’d had one of those dreams again, the ones when he was with humans. The Doctor stared out of the rounded window next to his bed. He still couldn't trust whether the regeneration process had finshed yet, and after another one of those dreams he didn't feel like moving at all.
The dreams still haunted him even after the event. The dreams could be about anything or anyone he’d met, but always around the same time. The time before he regenerated, before the TARDIS crashed, and before he was stranded.
He hated that word; it lacked adventure, hope, freedom. All the things that the Doctor had done stood for nothing that day, all those faces waiting for him to return, all those promises he made to come back, all of them were for nothing, because he could never return to them again.
1 Week Ago...
The doctor frantically ran around the TARDIS console, pressing buttons and levers in a frantic hope that it would stop the intense fires, sparks of energy and, most importantly to him, the big red lights on the dashboard.
“Look I know navigating a temporal maelstrom is less than ideal” The madman proclaimed to the pulsating column in the centre of the room, “But if you could just bear with i-“
He didn’t get to finish his sentence, the resulting explosion blew him off his feet as he landed with a painful crunch on the grated floor.
“Be like that then!”
He then jumped up, apparently not hurt from the explosion, and flung himself at the screen that had decided to spin around the console like a merry-go-round. The old gallifreyan symbols flicked and flew across the screen, the Doctor still not understanding the reasons behind them.
“What? That’s impossible...”
And with that the TARDIS stopped, no explosions, no sparks, and no lighting whatsoever.
It took the Doctor three days to get the lights back on, well, a rudimentary lighting system anyway, not that it mattered to him; he just needed light to see what he was doing. And then for the next two weeks the Doctor tinkered and dabbled, trying to get even some of the basic flight protocols working, with each attempt more foolhardy and farfetched as the last. After completely exhausting his ideas and his only prize being the unsatisfactory smell of burnt jam, an impaled thumb, and regulator fluid all over his best bowtie, the Doctor decided to give up.
Sitting down on the tattered seats next to the console, The Doctor finally understood what the symbols meant two weeks ago: the temporal maelstrom the TARDIS collided with had caused a rip in the continuum. And his TARDIS fell straight through that. He wasn’t in the void, because otherwise the light would have never turned on. Because the TARDIS wasn’t dead, it was starved.
The TARDIS fuels itself on the Artron energy in the time stream, but here there was none, the place the TARDIS had fallen into lacked any sort of time energy at all. Which is why the Doctor was impressed when he’d managed to get the light on, because quite frankly: it was impossible, "Unless" He thought to himself. And then, it hit him. Timelords have a reserve of Artron energy that they use to regenerate, and with the Doctor only being in his 11th incarnation, he was sure he’d have enough to make a quick hop, back to his universe. In theory.
The Doctor jumped up and stood to face the central column
“Now girl you may not like this, but when I do it, I want you to get us out of here, understand?”
The flicker in the lights was all the input he needed. The Doctor closed his eyes and focused, until suddenly his arms burst open with a golden light, He tried to focus the energy at the console, but attempting to cheat regeneration is quite tricky, even in the Doctor’s standards. The golden spirals twirled and danced all over the TARDIS, until finally, the old machine jerked into life once more. The column pulsated immediately, and the raspy warping noise began again. “Hah! Brilliant, it worked!” but now came the tricky bit: stopping the regeneration process. The Doctor struggled against the pull of regeneration, but eventually got control as the glowing dimmed. Once the energy had completely receded, The Doctor looked up, straightened his bowtie and pulled his jacket back on.
“Well, that went according to plan”
Suddenly the TARDIS burst into flames, the console exploded, and the column shattered into a million pieces. Even for the Doctor that was too much of a brunt to take, as he was sent flying into the metal barricade around the console, and tumbled straight over it to the floor below, completely unconscious.
Elsewhere...
It was a normal, busy day in Ponyville market.
With everypony doing what they would normally do, walking here and there, buying anything and everything one would think you’d might need. From potatoes to books about Star Swirl the Bearded, you were sure that if you needed it, somepony was sure to have it on sale. However Twilight, being Twilight could help to notice that one stall wasn’t bustling with customers, heck it wasn’t even open. But what baffled her more was that this was the stall owned by the Apple family.
“Surely Applejack hasn’t been out all night and forgotten again?”
Twilight thought to herself. She sighed inwardly, and placed her book back into her saddlebag. Jumped up, and started across the market, towards Sweet Apple Acres.
“TWILIGHT!”
The voice jumped and tackled her to the ground, spraying dirt into the air, the mare coughed and spluttered, trying to get the dust out of her eyes, with the dust settling, Twilight could finally see the perpetrator of the assault.
“Wah? Pinkie?!?” “Hey Twilight, whatya up to? Can I join in? Pleasepleaseplease?!?” “Pinkie, how many times have I told you not to do that?”
Pinkie immediately got off the purple mare, and from nowhere got out her deerstalker and popped it on her head, Twilight just brushed past the fact that the hat came from nowhere, it was Pinkie after all.
“Well first there was that time when you’d just finished that test from Celestia, then the time after that when there was hundreds of me-s”
Twilight shuddered at the thought, and made a mental note to NEVER bring that up again.
” Then the time the other day when you were talking to Fluttershy” “Okay Pinkie, I get it, but what I mean to say is please don’t do it again” “Okie Dokie Lokie!”
And with that Pinkie Pie disappeared. Twilight drew a sigh of relief, it was fine that her friends were interested in what she was up to, but she’d rather get on with the task at hoof first, without any more pinkie distractions.
And with that, her trot became a gallop as she raced towards Sweet Apple Acres. Only to be overtaken by a stream of colours overhead.
“Hey Rainbow”
Twilight said, hoping to get a reaction from the cyan Pegasus.
“Hah Twi, you know you’re not gonna catch me like that don’t ya?” “Rainbow, if I was going to catch you, you’d have been caught by now”
Twilight quickly demonstrated this by teleporting up and grabbing Dash’s tail.
“Hey!”
Twilight chuckled and let go of the rainbow colour tail, causing her to drop a few feet to the ground.
“So what you doing out here anyway Twi?”
“Well I’m heading to Applejack’s; There was no one working their stall this morning, so I guess I’m a bit concerned”
“Huh, that exactly where I was heading, AJ sent me a letter saying its urgent”
“But nothing saying what it is?”
“Nope, but hey, if AJ’s saying its urgent then it definitely is something wrong, right?”
“Fair enough, we’d better get our tails to Sweet Apple Acres then, as quickly as possible”
“C’mon Twi, you’re talking to the fastest flier in Equestria, quickly as possible is my mid-“
“Sorry, you were saying something?”.
Twilight had already run ahead of the cyan Pegasus, not wanting to leave Applejack hanging by wasting more time. Rainbow Dash smirked and immediately launched herself into the sky at a sickening pace, and fired herself towards the apple orchard in the distance.
Applejack was pacing nervously in her room, nothing like this had ever happened before; it could mean the entirety of the farm could go up in smoke. Then what would happen to her family? Where would they go? How would the rest of Ponyville survive once the only major attraction is wiped of the face of the map? And more importantly, Where was anypony gonna get any cider from! At this moment a thud from below brought her back to her senses
“Yo, AJ you in here? I got your message!”
“Me too Applejack, is something wrong?”
“Ah’m in here fellas, glad you came as fast as ya did Dash”
The two ponies walked into Applejack’s room, to find her lying on the bed looking absolutely distraught
“Whoa, Applejack, I haven’t seen you this bad since that time you bucked the entire orchard yourself, what the hays the matter?”
“Well... It’s that time of year again, when we gotta get all the apples into tha barn ya see, but we went ta go put them in and tha barns gone”
“What?! What do you mean ‘gone’ AJ?”
“As in the great big dirty hole in tha roof means we ain’t ever gonna get it fixed in time for the snow, this year’s harvest is ruined”
Applejack buried her face in her hooves, Cleary this conversation was over. Rainbow turned round to Twilight
“What are we gonna do?”
“Well, first things first, we should have a look at the barn”
“Right! Um… actually Twi, I’ve gotta fly, I’m missing one of my weather shifts over at Sugar Cube Corner”
Twilight sighed “Fine I’ll take a look”
“Thanks Twi, keep me posted would ya?”
Another flash of light and Rainbow was gone.
Twilight stood outside the barn, the damages were obvious, there was a great big hole in the roof, and the left hand door was swinging on just one hinge. There was also the smell of burnt wood hanging in the air. Normally the barn would be lit, but not wanting to cause more chaos, by risking the lights, Twilight decided that her magic would be more than adequate.
“Say Big Mac? Could you keep an eye on this side for me, in case anypony or anything comes out behind me?”
“Eeyup”
And with that the unicorn entered the barn. The inside was dark and musty; with hale bales stacked up to the ceiling.in the very centre of the barn was a cone of light but due to hole in the roof that was hardly surprising. What was surprising was the continued destruction inside the barn, as if something large crashed into the roof, continued and eventually came to a stop with the help of the contents of the barn.
“I really hope it’s not another rogue Changeling, by Celestia the last one we had was a damn menace”
As she continued following the path of destruction deeper into the barn, the sound of steam pipes, and the dull ring of a bell were faintly heard. Mustering up her courage, Twilight clambered through the holes in the hay bales, until finally she came across the most unusual sight.
There was a blue box that was lying sideways among the barrels, every once and a while it would produce a jet of steam from nowhere, and then hum slightly. Twilight got closer to the box, and she was sure she could hear voices from the inside. Suddenly the top of the box burst open, to reveal a brown stallion climbing out, mumbling to himself about safety tips, regeneration energies, and a place called Gallopfrey? He turned around to Twilight
“Oh, hello I don’t suppose you know where I am? The long range scanner on the old girl got busted when she came through the orbit”
Twilight was lost for words, as the strange stallion began to examine the purple unicorn
“Hmm interesting… colourful horses… Not the most exotic form of life I’ve seen but hey-ho, life’s for the living and whatnot”
“Wha? We’re not horses, we’re ponies and what are you talking about?”
Twilight asked finally finding words again.
“Hmm! A talking pony, definitely one to chalk up on the strangest life form board, not that I chalk anything on that board often, In fact I don’t even remember getting a chalk board… odd”
“Would somepony mind telling me what in the hay is going on? How are you surprised by what a pony is?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well have you seen yourself recently?!?”
The strange colt looked down to see himself in a puddle of engine oil left by the blue box.
“Ah… well that explains, why I had a hard time climbing out of the old girl then”
The Earth pony then continued to look over himself.
“Hmm… might have to get used to 4 legs…And no hands… and why do I have a sand timer on my back?”
The stallion looked towards Twilight, who was in quite a state of shock but still managing to ask necessary questions.
“Who exactly are you?”
“Well, I’m The Doctor, but other than that, I have absolutely no idea”
He gave an enormous grin, then immediately passed out, leaving Twilight more confused than stunned.