“Doctor?”
Dr. Horrible fiddled with the old train engine, his gloved hands turning and tearing, reducing the hunk of metal into its barest components. He didn’t so much as turn towards Twilight Sparkle’s voice.
“Doctor?” she asked again.
“It won’t work,” said Applejack from a corner of the laboratory, “he’s been like that since we got back here. Hasn’t hardly took a step away from that engine.”
Twilight shook her head, marching directly towards the human. “Doctor, we have to talk.”
A sheet of metal fell to the floor with an echoing clang.
“Doctor!”
“Horrible,” muttered Dr. Horrible.
A pause, slightly out of confusion and slightly out of disbelief that the human had actually spoken.
“What?”
“Not Doctor. Just Horrible.” His hands darted forward again, yanking out an regular chunk of dark metal.
Twilight blinked, then shook her head. “Doctor, I’m not going to do that. I don’t go around calling ponies horrible, but I just need you to listen to me!”
Dr. Horrible put down his screwdriver in favor of a monkey wrench. He banged on a bolt a few times to loosen it up, then clamped the wrench’s teeth firmly onto it.
Twilight sighed. “Doctor… Horrible.”
The human gave one last twist, pulling the bolt from its socket before turning towards the unicorn. “What?”
“Doc--Horrible. The other human, the one at the hospital. You know him, don’t you?”
Dr. Horrible froze, his eyes going slightly out of focus before snapping back onto Twilight’s eyes. “Not important,” he muttered.
“But you do know him?”
Dr. Horrible stayed silent. Then he shook his head. “No. No idea who he is.”
Twilight looked towards Applejack. The Element of Honesty shook her head. “I don’t believe it, not for a second. He’s lyin’.”
The unicorn turned back with an accusing glare. “Doctor, why would you lie about this?!”
Dr. Horrible turned back towards the engine, taking up his screwdriver again. “I’m not.”
“Still lyin’,” said Applejack helpfully. “If Pinkie hadn’t had to go off to Sugarcube Corner, she’d have ya swear a Pinkie Promise, Doctor.”
“Not Doctor,” insisted the human, “Dr. Horrible.”
AJ rolled her eyes.
“Dr. Horrible,” said Twilight, “who is he?”
Another bit of the engine came off. Dr. Horrible turned this one over in his hands before tossing it aside. “A hero,” he spat, the customary sneer he normally gave the word colored by hate.
“And you’re supposed to be a villain, right?” asked Twilight.
“I am a villain.” Clang, went a piece of the engine. “And Captain Hammer is the big damn hero.”
Twilight placed a hoof on his chin. “But why is he here?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t care. I just wanna get out of here.”
Twilight Sparkle cast an eye over her laboratory. It was a mess, bits and pieces of engine and the dissected carcasses of monitors standing on the floor and cluttering her desks. But that’s all there was. Only bits and pieces and messes.
Nothing that could get Dr. Horrible home.
***
Nurse Redheart rounded the human’s hospital bed, a clipboard carried in one hoof, a pencil set in her mouth and an inquisitive look on her face. Heart rate was steady, a bit more color had returned to the patient’s skin, though his natural color seemed to be a sickly pale.
She scribbled a note.
Still missing an arm, but magic could only fix so much. Therapy would be necessary. Not that she or any doctor currently in residence knew what kind of therapy would be necessary. It would be best to transfer the patient to Fluttershy sometime soon. She should have more knowledge on the matter. Of course, that would have to wait until the patient was at least consci--
The human’s eyes snapped open, revealing bright blue eyes as he let out a rasping gasp.
Nurse Redheart rushed to the doorway. “Doctor!” she called before dashing back to the human’s side. His face was frantic, eyes opened wide and almost fearful.
“Hi,” said the nurse in a comforting tone. “I’m Nurse Redheart, and this is probably a bit of a shock but I need you to relax and not panic. You’re in a hospital and--”
The human’s eyes fogged over, bright blue now tinged into a cloudy grey. His gaze turned blank.
“I don’t think that’s nor--”
A fist lashed out, catching Nurse Redheart in the chest, sending her crashing into the wall on the other side of the rather small room. Her head whipped back with a sickening crack. She slid to the floor and lay there, motionless. The human, thin and emaciated as he was, still had all of his strength.
Captain Hammer climbed slowly to his feet, the stump where his arm formerly sat wiggling slightly. He glanced down, noticing the missing appendage for the first time and, as he could not remove the various wires with that arm, he used his teeth to rip out the tubing. The screen monitoring his heart rate showed a straight line and let out a high-pitched whine.
A doctor, upon hearing the high-pitched whine ran into Captain Hammer’s room, his stethoscope flying behind him and his magic already flaring in preparation for a healing spell. He was met by a flying monitor, scarcely able to put up a weak shield before it knocked him out of the room and left him unconscious.
The human walked calmly towards Nurse Redheart’s body, fishing out a small black box that just barely poked out of one of her uniform’s pockets.
“Dr. Horrible,” muttered Captain Hammer. He glanced around the room, his eyes eventually setting on a window through which sat a small hamlet of a town. Captain Hammer strode forward, knocking out the windows with two swings of his fist. He climbed through, making his way towards the town proper at a striding pace.
***
Dr. Horrible lifted his goggles to his forehead, massaging his face with one gloved hand. “There,” he said, “finished.”
Twilight’s head shot up. She quickly cantered over to the desk, craning her neck to see the small metal tube that Dr. Horrible held in his hands. “What is it?”
“It’s something. It’s not what I need, but it’s something.”
“Well, that narrows it down.”
Dr. Horrible pocketed the tube and turned back towards his materials. The engine had yielded a few useful parts. A bit bulkier than Dr. Horrible would have liked, but certainly not terribly useless. He could build things now. Not what he needed to build. Not even close to what he needed to build. But he could still build things, keep his hands busy, until he thought of a way out.
If you can, said a dark voice in the back of his head. You were only able to build your first transporter after years and years of research. How old were you when you started the calculations? Ten? Twelve?
It only took me months to build, rebutted Billy.
Ah yes. Months of sleepless nights and haunting nightmares. You didn’t do anything else for those months, hardly even left your laboratory. And now look at you, working in a glorified stable.
I can still do this.
You don’t even think that’s true.
“I can still do this!”
Twilight Sparkle flinched at the outburst. Off in the corner, Applejack let out a snort, startling herself out of her slumber.
Dr. Horrible glanced at both of them. “I can still do this,” he repeated at a more suitable level.
“Doctor,” said Twilight, “are you okay?”
“Fine,” replied the human automatically. “Fine.”
Silence fell on the laboratory. Dr. Horrible turned back to his various working implements. He picked up one piece, and then another, then another, pressing them up against each other, allowing his hands to build while his mind wandered.
The voices. They had been bothering him for quite some time. Two of them, always two, never more. Not insane, he couldn’t be insane, certainly not. Because the voices were steady, one dark, one light. One hate and one hope. One that made him think of the days before that day and one that dragged him right back down to the present.
Dr. Horrible and Billy.
They were both him, though he felt certain that he was now more Dr. Horrible than Billy. Dr. Horrible was terrible. A villain who would brandish his death ray at anything. One of the very few villains who could say that they had defeated their heroes. Yes, he was Dr. Horrible. Not Billy.
Poor Billy. Romantic, failure, his mind filled with thoughts of a girl who he could never speak to, never approach, only stare at. From across the laundromat.
Poor Billy. Who had dipped his clothes in mud just to have an excuse to be there with her, just to be there with her. Not to talk. Just to be near her.
Poor Billy. His love dead. He had killed her. Or Dr. Horrible had killed her. It was hard to tell sometimes. Penny for his thoughts. Not for his life, only for his thoughts. That was funny.
Poor Billy.
“Doctor,” began Twilight, “what’s that?”
Dr. Horrible glanced down at his hands. He held a crude metal man, thin wires for his arms and legs, small rectangles of metal for feet and hands, a metal tube for a body with a bolt acting as the head. He turned it over a few times.
“A tin man,” decided Dr. Horrible. “Probably looking for his heart.”
Twilight cocked her head slightly. “Like from The Alicorn of Oz?”
A pause. “Alicorn?”
“Like the Princesses. They’re alicorns. Well, accept that this one wasn’t really an alicorn. He was a unicorn who was using a projection spell to display himself as an alicorn.”
“Ah. How… interesting, I guess.”
“And how is it in your world?”
Dr. Horrible thought for a moment. Oz, the Great and Powerful. A simple man trying to be more than he was, hiding his true nature from the view of others. Because he had to.
The human pocketed the mechanical man. “Not that different.”
A rainbow blur streaked into the laboratory, sliding to a stop right before crashing into Dr. Horrible.
“Twilight!” shouted Rainbow Dash. “That other human’s tearing through Ponyville!”
“What?!” Twilight jumped through her hooves.
Rainbow nodded a few times. “He’s tossing over stalls and throwing ponies around and… And he says that he’s looking for Dr. Horrible.”
All eyes in the room turned towards the human. Dr. Horrible’s face was grim, his left hand twitching instinctively towards his forearm, flicking a switch that currently sat somewhere in Canterlot. His finger twitched again. And again.
“Dr. Horrible,” said Twilight Sparkle, allowing the name to hang in the air.
The human was silent, his finger absentmindedly switching his weapon between Death and Destruction.
Not our problem, said Dr. Horrible resolutely. What do we care if Captain Hammer rampages through the town?
Death! shouted Billy. Kill him! For Penny! For everything!
Dr. Horrible sat there, fiddling with a weapon that he did not have.
***
Captain Hammer walked through Ponyville, turning over anything that stood in his way, meticulously scouring the streets for any sign of Dr. Horrible. His stump of an arm was wrapped in bloodied bandages, the relatively fresh wound having long since torn open.
]He muttered the entire time that he walked, like some sort of chant. “Dr. Horrible must return to the Evil League of Evil.”
The ponies of Ponyville scattered before him as he tromped through every street and alley, into houses and restaurants, but every once in a while one would not move fast enough, and Captain Hammer would toss them aside with a swing of his good arm.
Captain Hammer stomped out of an alley, overturning a dumpster and nearly crushing a mare with it. He rounded the corner, trekking back up one of the main streets, hardly noticing when a voice from somewhere above his head shouted, “There!”
Three figures, two of them running on hooves and the last on legs, ran down the road. Another pony dived down from the sky to join them.
Dr. Horrible felt his blood boil at the sight of Captain Hammer. The villain’s gloved hands clenched and his teeth were set on edge.
Die! insisted Billy.
Captain Hammer caught sight of the human, letting out one last chant of “Dr. Horrible must return to the Evil League of Evil” before striding down the street to meet them.
“Stop!” shouted Twilight. Captain Hammer showed no signs of doing so.
“Fine,” said Rainbow Dash, “then we’ll do this the hard way!” She flew up again, then came diving down her hoof extended, building speed as she barrelled towards Captain Hammer.
The hero lashed out, catching Rainbow Dash’s wing and sending her careening into the turned over dumpster.
]Applejack ran down the street, pulling her lasso from her hat and cleanly looping the rope around Captain Hammer. The human planted himself firmly grabbing the lasso, the rope pulling taut as the two strained against each other.
“Come… on… now,” forced out AJ, sweat forming on her brow. “Ain’t… gonna… let myself… lose... now!”
Captain Hammer let out a shout and gave one last massive pull, sending Applejack to the floor, the rope falling from her teeth and the hero stepping out of the loop.
A purple aura sprouted around Captain Hammer’s legs, freezing them into place. The hero bent, almost falling as his stride was disturbed, but managing to keep his footing. His face turned red as he fought against his restraints.
Twilight struggled too, her entire body shaking and her eyes squeezed shut as her magic strained against Captain Hammer’s strength. “Doctor! If you’re gonna do something, do it now!”
Dr. Horrible walked towards the trapped hero. A heat began at his neck, growing upwards with each passing step. He trembled, his knees locking, making every single movement awkward and the few yards to Captain Hammer seem like an eternity.
The villain stood before the hero, staring up into dark grey eyes. Captain Hammer no longer strained against Twilight’s magic.
“What are you doing here?” whispered Dr. Horrible. “How… How in the world did you end up HERE?!” His fist lashed out, catching Captain Hammer’s jaw. “Why the hell are you here?!” His other fist came out now, striking the hero. “STAY AWAY FROM ME!” Dr. Horrible brought his fist back, about to drive it forward. A purple aura sprouted around it. A lasso tightened around his arm. Two light blue hooves grasped his hand.
“Stop it!” cried the three mares.
Captain Hammer stared down blankly at the villain, his lip torn and a stream of blood dripping down his left nostril. The bandages around his side had come loose at some point, the barest hint of raw flesh peaking out from the white strips of cloth as drops of blood steadily fell to the streets.
The hero knelt, bowing his head towards the villain and holding up a small black box.
“Dr. Horrible must return to the Evil League of Evil.”