Creak. The door opened. Silverspoon slowly lifted her head. She saw a pair of white trainers step out of a square of blinding light. Her eyes traveled up and she saw him, dressed in a pinstripe suit and a trench coat. He stepped out of the his blue box, a confident smile on his face.
"Hello. I'm the Doctor." He grinned cheekily, hands on his hips. Sweetie Belle turned around, her recent tears still very evident. "Doctor? Doctor Who?"
"Just the Doctor, thanks. And can I just say, you are absolutely brilliant! Talking unicorns? I mean, that's the sort tale you hear about as a little kid! Well, not me. I had the Three Little Sontarans and Once Upon a Time War." The suckered monsters faced the Doctor, annoyance flitting across their leaders face.
"This conversation is irrelevant." it said.
"No, no it's not actually," said the doctor, walking up to it. "You see, everything's just stories in the end. There's one story commonly referred to as a dictionary. Well, kind of a story. Weeelll, if you look at it from the right angle. Well, really not a story, but it is a book. I'm pretty sure you haven't read it. Because you would have noticed something, and the Zygon fleet would never have dared set foot on this planet."
"What exactly could be of any use to us in a dictionary, Doctor?" the zygon said coldly.
"You were about to murder these two without a second thought. Don't bother denying it, because I know. Murder. Funny little section by that word in the dictionary. Right beside it there's a picture of me. And you know what it says under that picture, zygon?"
"No, Doctor. Would you be ever so kind as to inform me?"
"Over my dead body." He barely whispered the words, but no one had any trouble hearing him.
"That was the plan, Doctor." The zygon smiled grotesquely. It pulled out a small pad and pushed a button. The stone of the boutique started to crack, little by little.
"Doctor. Now might be a really good time to run." said Sweetie Belle.
"I second that." said Silverspoon.
"Run? I would be quite willing, if we were actually in any danger." said the doctor looking down at them.
"Are we?" said Silverspoon.
"Quite possibly."
"Aren't we going to run, then?"
"Oh, no! Not yet, anyways. You see, they might have prepared in advance for this, but I have a plan!"
"You do?" said Sweetie Belle, hope lighting in her eyes.
"No, but people seem to like it when I say that. Now, shhh! I want to see what happens next!" The Doctor smiled at the zygon. "Don't tell me. Trying to transmat us, but this stone is also providing a small telepathic web around this....Is this a dress shop for ponies? That's brilliant! Telepathic shield around a dress shop! Molto bene, Molto bene. More importantly though, the transmat signal is starting to decay the shield, which means we should-"
The zygons vanished in a flash of light.
"Alright, time to go. All ponies in the TARDIS!" He grabbed Silverspoon and Sweetie Belle by their hooves and dragged them towards that big blue box that was still sitting in the middle of the room. At the last second, Sweetie Belle pulled away, just a little bit.
"But Doctor, how will we all fit? It's too small!"
"You'll see!" The Doctor and Silverspoon jumped into the TARDIS. The Doctor turned around and offered his hand to Sweetie Belle.
"Are you sure?" she said. The Doctor grinned smugly again.
"Trust me. I'm the Doctor," he said. Sweetie Belle looked up and hesitantly started to step inside. She paused for a second, just a second, as she heard the stone wall crack behind her.
It was enough.
She vanished in a blaze of light. The Doctor stopped and didn't move for a second. Then he started pulling at his hair and pacing back and forth. Silverspoon looked at him and then at the door.
"Arghhhh!" he said.
"No! No, no, NO! Get her back, Doctor, whatever you are, GET HER BACK!" Silverspoon screamed her frustration. The Doctor leaned down and looked at her, right in the eye, and held her face as she started to cry.
"Now listen to me very carefully. I promise you that we will get her back. We will find her, we will save her, and NOBODY is going to get hurt. Do you understand? We won't walk away from this. I promise." Silverspoon just nodded her head and cried. She knew that the real world didn't always work like that. But right then, when she was dying inside at the loss of the one person she had ever really felt any friendship for, she didn't want to face the alternatives.
And she absolutely would not accept that Sweetie Belle might already be dead.