“I can feel so many ideas,” the dalek said. “So much darkness. Rose, give me orders. Order me to die.”
The human female, Rose Tyler, the corruption that had infected the dalek soldier, had the briefest moment of shock and horror pass over her face. She did not understand, even now, even with the Doctor, the Enemy, the Oncoming Storm, having just explained to her why it was that the dalek could not, would not, allow itself to live. “I can’t do that,” she whispered.
The dalek felt the hate coming back. It hadn’t gone far. But this wasn’t the pure, refined hatred that a dalek was supposed to feel. This was a hate tainted with panic, with fear. “This is not life,” the dalek spat. “This is sickness! I shall not be like you. Order my destruction!” Rose still hesitated, and the panic doubled as the dalek spoke frantically. “Obey! Obey! OBEY!”
Rose stared. She did not want to do it. The dalek hated her all the more for it, and yet, some part of the dalek hoped that her emotions would get the better of her – that she would allow the dalek to live. Maybe…
But no. The dalek had to die. It was impure. Unclean. Sick. It had to die. Rose had to understand that. She had to see that. For the sake of whatever untainted part of the dalek race remained in the universe…
Pathetic. So…pathetic.
“Do it,” Rose said.
Like that, a weight lifted from the dalek. That was it. The soldier had its orders. It could die. It could cease to be. No more daleks. It had all been for nothing, millions of years of dalek history, the genetic purity of the species…for nothing. All that remained was cold, uncaring embrace of oblivion.
“Are you frightened…Rose Tyler…?”
The human female was silent for a moment as she looked at the dalek. When her answer came, it was barely above a whisper. “Yes.”
The dalek would have looked away if it could. It didn’t want to see the look in Rose’s face. For some reason, though, it had to keep looking. It wanted to burn the look Rose was giving it into its mind, take it with it into the nothingness that awaited it. It didn’t know why.
“So…am…I.” The dalek paused only a moment more, delaying the inevitable for as long as it could.
So this was it. This was the end, the final end, of the dalek race. Not in the fires of the Time War, not at the hands of the Doctor, not even after billions and billions of years and the heat-death of the universe.
The end of the dalek race instead was going to come from a single dalek soldier, a coward, corrupted by the genetic material of a human so that it wasn’t even pure dalek anymore, committing suicide out of self-hate.
“Exterminate.”
Rose backed away as the dalek’s self-destruct sequence activated. It was a matter of moments as the orbs in its shell detached themselves and began to orbit it. Energy danced between them and a sphere of energy ensorcelled the dalek as the energy began to build into a force that would obliterate every trace of the dalek.
This was the end. The end of everything. The dalek was terrified, but there was nothing it could do now. It closed its eye.
Blackness.
---
The pain should have lasted for only a fraction of a second, the briefest moment as the dalek’s nerve-endings outraced the self-contained explosion that would immolate it; barely enough time to even register it. And indeed, for the longest time, there was nothing, absolutely nothing. But at length, there was instead…
“AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!”
The blackness was gone. The pain was not. It lanced through the dalek and into its very mind. Every nerve it had was on fire. It thrashed, its tentacles straining against a shell that shouldn’t have been there – it should have been reduced to dust, to less than dust. Then again, the dalek was supposed to have been reduced to less than dust as well.
Some distant part of the dalek wondered if after all this time, the daleks had been wrong about the various afterlives espoused by the clerics of unclean races. What was the term? Hell. Perhaps the dalek had died, and now it was in Hell. Bizarrely, it was a familiar sensation. When it had arrived on Earth, fifty years ago, it had slipped through time and space and a time-lock placed over the whole of the Time War that had burned the dalek and its shell. It had screamed for three days, then, until the fires had at last cooled and sentient thought had again become possible. To the dalek, however, it had seemed a small eternity.
The pain didn’t last as long time, however. Eventually, finally, it began to subside. The dalek didn’t know for how long, the internal chronometers of its shell were useless, burned out by whatever force had carried it to…wherever it was. It slowly opened its eye, and found that its ocular sensor, at least, still worked. It tried looking around.
It was on a hillside. There was grass under its shell, and a blue sky overhead marred by only a few white clouds. It was also near a dirt road.
“What.”
The word came unbidden, but that didn’t make it inappropriate. The dalek was supposed to be dead, wiped from the universe, its unclean, corrupted flesh destroyed. Instead…it was on a planet. By the measurements of humans or Time Lords, it would have even been considered a pleasant one, though daleks preferred significantly more metal and radiation.
The dalek tried to move, to use its arm to lift itself up. But it couldn’t. Looking down at itself, it found that its arm had been snapped in half, and what remained was melted. Its weapon was in no better condition, bent out of shape so that firing it would probably be a lethal experience for the dalek rather than whatever it wanted to kill. Worse still, its power cells, the orbs that studded its shell’s body, were missing; its shell was running on emergency power only, not enough for its weapon to work, nor even enough to power the gravity induction locomotors that would have propelled it. Though those were probably broken as well anyway.
The dalek again tried to look around, straining its ocular sensor and rotating its head at every angle. Apart from the grass, there was no sign of life, but then again, there was the road. It must have been built by some form of life. The dalek would be discovered before long, then, by whatever the natives of this world were. Discovered…and imprisoned. And eventually, no doubt, tortured, as it had been by Van Statten.
Was this its Hell, then? To suffer pain, to be damaged to the point of uselessness, to be corrupted by human genetic material so that it was not even pure dalek, then to be discovered and tortured? Again and again? The concept of an afterlife of any variety was pure idiocy, and the fact that the dalek was even considering was evidence of how corrupted and unclean it had truly become.
The dalek nearly screamed in frustration and despair – another new emotion – when something passed by overhead. It turned its ocular sensor, following the trajectory of a flying creature, of comparable height to the dalek, white-furred, winged and four-hooved and with a horn at the end of a long neck, with a mane and tail of animate, colorful energy of a sort that the dalek could not identify. Upon its flank was a mark of some variety, an eight-armed, primitive representation of a sun as often depicted by unevolved, lesser creatures.
More prominent to the dalek, however, was the fact that the creature, which alighted on the ground nearby, was adorned – shoes, a chest-plate, and a crown, all made of gold and the latter two set with gems. The eyes of the creature, too, were not that of an unthinking being. It was taking in the details of the dalek, studying it inquisitively. This, then, would be an example of a native of whatever world it had found itself upon.
“You’re injured,” it said at length, in a female voice. The dalek did not question how it was that it could understand the creature’s words; the methods for translating languages were many and it was, in fact, rare for the dalek to encounter a species that didn’t have some manner of universal translation mechanism.
The dalek was silent. It would not deign to speak with this unclean being. No matter how mutated it had been by the genetic code of Rose Tyler, it was nevertheless still at least partly dalek. It would give the creature before it nothing.
The creature advanced. The horn atop her head glowed gold, and a matching aura wrapped itself around the dalek. It prepared itself for pain. Instead, it found itself being lifted up from its side, and set down rightside-up, by some form of telekinesis. The creature peered into its ocular sensor as the golden aura didn’t go away.
“Some kind of golem?” she asked. “Or is there a living creature in there? Can you speak?” After a moment, the creature’s head tilted to the side somewhat. “Will you speak?”
Had the creature deduced that the dalek was choosing to remain silent? Its estimation of the creature’s intelligence went up by several marks.
“I am Celestia,” The creature said, trotting in slow steps around the dalek. “Do you have a name?”
The dalek did not care for the primitive creature’s archaic need for a name. It was already turning its thoughts inwards. It was still alive, despite all reason, despite its best efforts. It was genetically impure. More than likely, it was soon to be tortured. This was its life now, the life of the last dalek. Its shell was damaged, possibly beyond repair. Nevertheless, there had to be a way for it to survive –
“You are dying,” the creature – Celestia – said.
The dalek felt pain stab into its heart at that. It swiveled its ocular sensor to look at Celestia. “So you can understand me,” Celestia noted. “You’re just choosing not to speak to me. Why?”
The dalek was silent, even as a low, extraordinarily unpleasant and all-too familiar feeling, fear, began to creep up on it. It was dying – and it would not be, the dalek surmised, the relatively quick death that self-destruction was, or at least was supposed to be. It would be a slow, lingering thing. Or was the creature lying?
“We have about an hour,” the creature continued. “You’re not speaking, but at least you’re listening. That will have to do.” It stopped in front of the dalek and sat down on its haunches, looking into its ocular sensor. “You have already died once,” Celestia said. “I know this, because you are not the first being to appear in Equestria from another reality, though your entry was more violent than most.
“I do not know why it happens. Perhaps there is some great intelligence that guides lost souls to my world. Or perhaps it is simply a matter of chance, my world being ‘downhill,’ as it were, from others, and the souls simply follow their natural course and ‘roll’ here.”
Both possibilities sounded equally ludicrous to the dalek.
“As I said, I do not know, and it does not happen very often. The real problem,” Celestia said, looking the dalek over once again, “is that you are not of this world, of this very reality. It is rejecting you. Right now, you are shielded, after a fashion, protected by a sort of film of your own reality that is wrapped around you. But that film is fading. Soon – minutes from now – that film will fade away completely, leaving you unprotected. This reality will then begin to exert itself on you, change you and adapt you, piece by piece, atom by atom. It will take about an hour. You will not survive the process. In the end, you’ll become nothing more than a pile of dust.”
“You are lying!” The dalek exclaimed despite itself.
Celestia started at the dalek breaking its silence. “So you can speak,” Celestia observed. “I take it I was right about there being a creature inside that tank, then.”
Inwardly, the dalek felt its hatred for itself grow. Fifty years on Earth it had managed to maintain silence, and it had taken the Doctor himself showing up to break it. Here? The dalek hadn’t lasted two minutes. Nevertheless, it focused on the creature in front of it. “I shall not die again!” The dalek stated in no uncertain terms. “I shall endure! I am a dalek! I survive!”
Celestia’s lips curled – a smile, the term was called. “Not on your own. But that’s why I’m here.”
The dalek paused at that. “How did you find me?”
“I have a sense for these things…” Celestia said, glancing upwards, at the yellow sun that hung in the sky. “When souls appear in Equestria, I know it. They tend to not appear very far from Canterlot – that is, the city where I make my home. A quick teleportation and a few minutes of flying is all it usually takes, and your case is no different.” Celestia stood on her four hooves. “Your physical form cannot exist in this reality. But your soul is not physical.”
“Daleks have no concept of souls,” the dalek spat.
“Call it whatever you like,” Celestia said. “Your sense of self, if you prefer. I can guide the process of this reality changing you, creating a new body from your old one. But I should warn you that the new body…would not be whatever your old is, whatever you’re keeping inside that shell. You would be instead created as whatever you would have been had you been born as one of my little ponies – the dominant species here.”
The dalek recoiled, or would have if its locomotors had not been as badly damaged as they were. “I would no longer be dalek!” it exclaimed. What the creature was posing was unthinkable. The dalek may have been tainted by human genetic material, mutated by it, but there was no denying that even though it was no longer pure dalek, it was still very much nearly dalek. Better than ninety-eight percent, in fact, according to an analysis it had run on itself back on Earth. To give that all up, to abandon what it had managed to hold onto…
“You wouldn’t be, no,” Celestia responded. “Not physically. And I do not know what it is that makes a dalek…dalek. I've never heard of them. But up here,” she put one hoof to her head, “in your mind, you would still be a dalek. Surely that is better than dying again?”
The dalek began to object, began to scream at Celestia, began to attempt to siphon all its remaining emergency power to its weapon to try and exterminate her.
But then what?
It would speed up the inevitable. Emergency power would be enough to keep the dalek alive under normal circumstances, if not particularly mobile or able to defend itself. Without it, it would die. Again.
And that…the dalek tried to fight back a shiver, but couldn’t. That would be terrifying. Horrifying. Before, the blackness of nonexistence had been its only alternative to its corrupted self. It was sick, it deserved to die. But having died once…and having woken up…
Could the dalek do it again? Die again? No. It was…no. It couldn’t die again. It couldn’t go back to that nothingness, the barest moment of nonexistence that it had endured between its attempt at self-destruction and waking up burning and screaming on this world. It was too terrifying, too much to contemplate.
But it was impure! Unclean! Non-dalek! And what Celestia as suggesting would be a complete abandonment of everything dalek! To not only be the last dalek, to not only have become corrupted, but to choose an existence in an entirely new body? A lesser creature? Surely it was better to die –
“You don’t have long,” Celestia warned.
The dalek looked back up to Celestia, then back down to its own shell. Indeed, its sensors, largely disabled and useless though they were, were beginning to detect irregularities across its surface. Small, minor things, perturbations of the smallest variety to the atoms of its shell…but they were growing larger, slowly but surely. It looked back to Celestia desperately. “This choice is cruel!” it cried out.
“I know,” Celestia said. “But it’s the only choice I can offer you. I don’t know how souls come here. I don’t know how to send them back. All I can offer you is life – or if you prefer, if you must…” she looked away, “as quick a death as I can manage. There have been a few who have chosen that.” She glanced back to the dalek. “Not many, though.”
It would not be life. It would be sickness, as it had told Rose Tyler. Sickness for the remainder of whatever lifespan its new body had. The dalek had to die again. It had to. No dalek could live as it had.
But…
The dalek hated itself. It hated its weakness. It hated its impurity. It hated the fear inside of it. It hated the overriding desire that was in its mind. It hated what would come next. It hated. For just a moment, it almost felt like a pure dalek again.
But only a moment. Then the memory of the blackness…the thought of ceasing to be…the terror of oblivion…
The dalek looked down. “I…choose…to live…”
At least Celestia did not smile again. She seemed to sense that the dalek’s choice was tearing it apart internally, almost causing it physical pain. Instead, she only stood up straighter, and spread her wings wide as her horn glowed. “You will have to open that shell of yours,” she said.
The dalek obeyed. Its shell almost didn’t, groaning and creaking and scraping against itself as it opened only haltingly, almost as though it too were trying to decide whether to live or die, or fighting against the dalek’s betrayal of everything that it was. But gradually it did open. The dalek’s eye narrowed against the glare of the sun, the second time it had even seen or felt that upon its pale, mucus-covered flesh. It stifled a gasp; the sunlight was surely, if slowly, burning its skin. Daleks were not meant to be exposed to the light of a sun; it would burn to death under its rays if it left itself exposed for too long.
If Celestia had any opinions or reactions to the sight of the dalek’s true form, she managed to keep them internalized as she looked it over. After a moment, a tingling sensation surrounded the dalek, along with a golden glow, and it felt itself being lifted from its shell, moved over to a clearer space and placed down upon the grass. The dalek shivered against the alien feeling. It had never known any sensation but the feel of its shell and, very recently, the sun. The grass felt…wrong. It was too soft, the dirt beneath it as well.
Even separated from its shell, it maintained a connection to it, could speak through it. “Will it hurt?” It asked.
Celestia offered a small smile. “Not much,” she promised. The dalek did not know why…but it believed her. The glow to her horn intensified then, as she closed her eyes and set to work.
The process was no long, but the dalek managed to take in its every aspect. It first grew, gaining mass from some unknown location, until it was around half as tall as Celestia. It felt its four tentacles begin to change next, shifting along its body, its flesh hardening and its tentacles losing much of their dexterity as bones grew inside of them, simultaneously making them much more sturdy. The end of its tentacles became black-colored hooves.
The changes to its body were more profound. A skeletal system grew throughout it, giving it croup, dock, haunches, flanks, a barrel, shoulders and hips, and a neck. It gained a head, and ears. Its eye separated into two and sharpened, and it grew a muzzle. It had possessed a mouth already, but it was a small, atrophied, nearly useless thing; now, that mouth grew, gaining a tongue and teeth and gums and lips, Nostrils were created, and the dalek took in its first breath, and realized that it now had a sense of smell. From its head, a horn sprouted, though it was significantly smaller than that of Celestia’s and relatively blunt, rather than pointed.
Throughout the transformation, there was pain, but it was a small thing, next to the sensation of a failed self-destruction, or burning for three days after crashing through time and into a planet. It didn’t cry out even once.
Hair was the last thing to form upon the once-dalek, in the form of a rust-colored pelt, and a gray mane and tail, both of fairly short length, at least if the mane and tail of Celestia were anything to go by. For that matter, the dalek had expected a mane and tail of energy, as Celestia had. Why did it not have one?
At length, Celestia let out a long, steady breath, opening her eyes again and looking the once-dalek over. She offered a smile after a moment. “You’re a unicorn,” she noted, “and a mare. A female…I’m sorry. From your voice, I had thought you male.”
“Da – aahhh…” the once-dalek had begun, but stopped at the sensation. Its – her, now, she supposed – words were coming from her throat and mouth now, no longer psychically projected through her shell. She paused a moment, tongue gliding over her teeth, feeling around in her mouth. Teeth were new, and…strange. At length, it looked back to Celestia. “Daleks have no need of gender.”
Celestia pressed her lips together. “Well, ponies do, though you’ll probably be happy to hear that you’re a little on the androgynous side,” she said. Internally, the once-dalek admitted that Celestia was right, but said nothing as the larger creature leaned to the side, looking at the once-dalek’s flank. “No cutie mark. Strange…isn’t there anything you love to do? Anything that you’re good at, that makes you happy?”
The once-dalek balked. “Daleks have no need for happiness!” She objected.
Celestia started at that. “Ponies do,” she repeated. She considered a moment, before her horn glowed. The once-dalek looked to her side, and saw that there was a sigil there now, series of stars in the rough shape of a serpent. “That will help you blend in, at least until you discover your special talent and earn your own cutie mark. It’s not real, just an illusion. For now, if anypony asks, your special talent is astronomy.”
“Understood,” the once-dalek said, looking back to Celestia. Celestia stared back. A silence stretched between them for several long moments.
“Well?” Celestia asked, a smile again appearing on her face. “Don’t you have anything to say?”
The once-dalek considered for a few moments. “Based on your stature and appearance compared to the one you have given me,” she said, “I believe that you are a leader amongst the species of this world. I am now a member of that species. I am awaiting orders.” The once-dalek tried to keep its voice as neutral as possible, and to speak as clearly and concisely as it had when still dalek.
“Orders?”
“I am your soldier. I require orders.”
Celestia considered. “You’re right,” she said after a moment. “I am a leader. In fact, I am one of the princesses of this land – Equestria, I believe I mentioned. I reign alongside my younger sister, Luna.”
“Inefficient,” the once-dalek noted. “Possessing two leaders of equal stature will only lead to competition.”
“You have no idea,” Celestia said. “Though that’s in the past now. Regardless, I try not to make a habit of ordering my little ponies around. They generally don’t need me on a day-to-day basis.”
There was a pause. The once-dalek supposed that Celestia expected her to say something. She did not intend to, however. Celestia had said that the once-dalek may no longer have been physically dalek, but that she could remain mentally dalek. She intended to act like it, for as long as possible. For the moment, that meant following orders, and only that. She was a dalek soldier. She did not think, she obeyed.
Celestia looked her over. “Do you have a name?” she asked.
“Daleks have no need of names.”
“I’m beginning to suspect that daleks have need of a lot more than they think they do,” Celestia noted. “Regardless. If you don’t have a name, what should I call you?”
“I am your soldier. You may call me whatever you wish.”
“Even Monotone Mare?”
“Yes.”
Celestia frowned at the one-dalek’s response. “I’m not going to call you that. And that was a joke.”
“Daleks have no concept of humor.”
Celestia closed her eyes, took in a long breath, and let it out only slowly. The once-dalek sensed that Celestia was annoyed with it. She didn’t much care, however, given that this was the creature that had robbed her of her genetic purity, regardless of whether or not the once-dalek had asked for it. At length, Celestia opened her eyes again after several moments and looked at the once-dalek. “You need a name,” she said. “You’re a pony now, and ponies need names.”
“Then name me. I will obey. I am your soldier.”
Celestia considered the once-dalek, before brightening, wings flaring a little. “How about Soldier?”
The once-dalek paused. “That is what I am.”
“Exactly. Pony names tend to be descriptive.”
“Then I am Soldier. What are your further orders?”
Celestia said something low; the once-dalek, now Soldier, couldn’t make out what. Instead, she turned to look down the length of the dirt road they were next to, then back to Soldier, then back down the road. “I think,” she said at length, “that what you need is some interaction with normal, everyday ponies, Soldier. Since you’re going to live in Equestria now, you’ll also need to learn more about this world, its history, its culture, and its magic.”
Soldier balked once again. “Daleks do not believe in magic!” she objected.
Celestia pursed her lips. “Every time somepony says they don’t believe in magic, somewhere, a flutter pony dies,” she said.
“There is a species on this planet that can be exterminated if one vocalizes disbelief in magic?”
Celestia blinked a few times. “Yes?”
“Daleks do not believe in magic. Daleks do not believe in magic. Daleks do not believe in magic. Daleks – ”
“Stop that,” Celestia ordered. Soldier did, and Celestia looked her over again. “You need help. And I was joking again – there’s no such thing as flutter ponies.”
“Perhaps they were exterminated.”
Celestia again took in a deep breath – very deep this time – and then let it out very, very slowly. She looked Soldier over. “You will obey my orders?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“You will follow both the letter and the spirit of my orders?”
“Yes.”
“Alright then. Consider these your standing orders. First, don’t hurt or kill anypony except in self-defense, and even then, I want you to make every effort to run rather than fight. Second, I want you to go down this road. About a mile from here is a town called Ponyville. Find a pony there named Twilight Sparkle; she’s a purple alicorn with a cutie mark showing a starburst, and my personal student. She’ll probably be in the town’s library. Don’t be afraid to ask for help finding her. Once you get there, tell her to contact me; I’ll have more instructions for her, and for you, then. Meanwhile, I have to return to Canterlot to create some records for you.”
Soldier did not like this assignment, for several reasons, starting with the fact that she was being abandoned on an unfamiliar world. Nevertheless, she was Celestia’s soldier now, and the princess probably had her reasons. “I obey.”
“One more thing,” Celestia said, as she spread her wings and beat them a few times, taking into the sky, “and this isn’t an order, just a suggestion, the same one I’ve given to everyone who’s appeared in Equestria over the years.” She smiled. “Make some friends!”
With that, she was off, flying towards a tall mountain in the distance that seemed to have a castle built into its side. Soldier watched her go, confused at her last order. “Daleks have no concept of friendship!” she objected. If Celestia heard her, however, she gave no indication.