//------------------------------//
// Chapter Ten 
// Story: The Fantastic Adventures of Doctor Whooves: Hourglass 
// by The-Pony-Librarian 
//------------------------------//


	Chapter Ten
In which a highly deserving  lackey is roundly insulted, and the Doctor ponders rather belatedly whether the Shadow Proclaimation exists in the ponyverse

The Doctor scrambled to get the Sonic Screwdriver out of sight as heavy hoof steps neared their door, tucking it behind his ear where his mane would hide it, and thanking his lucky stars for the pony's plodding gait. It would do him no good to get his only tool confiscated. 
He listened carefully, ear twitching as he heard a lock disengage.....Then silence. He furrowed his brows, pausing. Maybe they weren't coming to their room after all-
"RISE AND SHINE!" there came the sound of a door slamming open, and Twilight's head nearly knocked against his as she jerked awake, rudely catapulted from her slumber.
The unicorn who had opened the door laughed, catching the door as it rebounded from the wall and smirking at them. He was flanked by a pair of two others, holding rifles "Sorry" he chuckled, without a trace of remorse, "did I startle you?"
Twilight blinked blearily at him, head still fuzzy from sleep. It took her a moment to get her bearings, as all the events from the past twenty two hours came rushing back.
"Doctor Bright would like to talk to you" the stallion in front said, before sniggering, a condescending grin on his face as he gestured to the door "So if you'd stop cuddling with your marefriend and step into the hall please"
Twilight just rolled her eyes,not even bothering to grace that with an answer, before pushing herself to her hooves. Beside her, the Doctor did the same, stretching out the fake mechanical wings attached to his back before getting up as well.
They walked towards the door, warily watching the two rifle muzzles trained on them as the unicorns holding them watched their every move. Though they weren't around in her time, the Doctor had informed Twilight on guns, and she knew what they could do to her if fired. The thought of a device invented for the sole purpose of killing other living things always made her uncomfortable. After all, you don't invent something without a reason, necessity being the mother of creation, and Twilight didn't want to think of what might have caused ponies to need something like that......
Her thoughts were interrupted as she ran into the blocking hoof of the front most stallion. She stepped back, confused.
"Bright Idea just wants the Doctor" the unicorn who had stopped her sneered.
"Well I'm coming too" Twilight said firmly, pulling herself taller and looking him straight in the eyes. As loathe as she was to see Bright Idea again, she was not going to let her friend face off with that nutcase all alone. She knew the Doctor could handle himself on his own, of course, that he was capable and ingenuitive and quick on his hooves, but she also knew that everypony needed someone at their side. She had learned that the moment she heard her friends coming to find her in that tower as she stood against Nightmare Moon.
"No you aren't" the stallion laughed, then leered at her smugly "And what pray tell are you going to do about it, sugarcube?"
He gave her a shove and she stumbled backwards, just managing to stay on her hooves. Her side gave a small throb, not as bad as before, but enough to make her wince slightly. Looking up, she saw the large unicorn chuckling, and the Doctor behind him, jaw tight.
She gave her friend a smile to reassure she was fine, before turning to Bright Idea's lackey, gaze withering. While she saw that there was no way for her to change the situation at the moment, she wasn't going to let the stallion leave with that ugly grin on his face, at the very least.  She smirked at him, raising her eyebrows "You know, while it was a noble cause, you probably should have waited until you were dead before donating your brain for scientific study and dissection"
The Doctor barely choked back a snort of laughter as the stallion's face contorted angrily, and he slammed the door shut, clicking the lock back into place before stomping away even louder than he had arrived.
Twilight's smile slowly faded from her face, and she looked around the room, trying to think. She had gotten a good look at the hallway outside the door, so, if she could summon up enough magic, it could be possible for her to teleport out. She counted to three minutes in her head, ear pressed against the door to catch any approaching hoof steps.When she was certain nopony was coming, she closed her eyes, concentrating as hard as she could.
Her horn lit, glowed brighter, brighter....then sputtered out like a candle in the rain. Twilight sighed, looking out the rest of the room and trying to come up with some sort of plan.
It was completely empty, with cinder-blocked walls, white tiled floor and a flickering fluorescent light on the ceiling. She hadn't stopped to to take a good look at until now, and now that she had, she gave a small shudder, eyes running over several gouging scratches on the walls. It looked like this wasn't the first time that this room had been used as a cage...and judging from the claw marks, it didn't look like for a pony either.
Sighing, Twilight slumped to the ground, staring at cinder-block. Reaching out with a hoof, she absently picked at the crumbling mortar at one of it's corners, trying to think. Then her eyes widened. She mustered her magic, biting her lip, this spell didn't take as much as a teleportation, but she still wasn't sure if she could do it. Taking careful aim, the squinted her eyes shut, and fired a rather weak blast at the loose mortar surrounding the bottom block. She shielded her face at the spray of debris with a hoof, then, brushing the stay shards out of the way, flopped to her belly, picking at the remains of the mortar and wiggling the cinder-block persistently, trying to loosen it further. Finally, she reached in with her magic, just barely managing to wrench it out. Bending down, she peered into the gap she had created hopefully...
Only to see another wall.
"Gah!" Twilight gave a cry of frustration. Picking up one of the broken bits of mortar and throwing it at the wall. Then she stopped, ears twitching. Somepony was unlocking the door.
She doubted they would be returning the Doctor so quickly...in fact, she doubted they planned on returning the Doctor at all. So that meant they were probably coming for her.
She went over to stand by the door, then, focusing hard, she slowly lifted the cinder-block she had dislodged from the wall into the air with her magic, giving a small pant of exertion as she hovered it over the door, in the perfect position to dole out a good concussion to whatever lackey they were sending to grab her. While they were wary of the Doctor, she doubted they would send more than one pony when it was just her.
She gritted her teeth, the block wobbling in the air as the doorknob continued to wriggle. She hadn't had this much trouble levitating something, even as heavy as the cinder-block, since she was a filly...but at the moment even the simplest of magic was taking it's toll. What was taking them so long?
Finally, the door clicked open, but instead of a large stallion, a small form darted in, before quickly slamming the door behind it, breathing hard. Twilight nearly dropped the stone block in surprise, but caught herself, and carefully lowered it to the ground beside her, unable to speak.
The filly turned at the sound of the cinder-block settling on the floor, and locked eyes with Twilight, eyes wide with fear as it began to slowly back away. It was young, the same age or even slightly younger than Applebloom and her friends, with no cutie mark too be seen, and looking up at Twilight with nervous uncertainty, like she was a dangerous animal that might strike at any moment.
Twilight opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again "....C-colgate?"

The Doctor took stock of the situation. Pros? there were no guns pointing at him, and he had his sonic screwdriver with him. Cons? He was hoofcuffed to a chair in a room with a psychopath. 
He'd been in worse.
After circulating a few methods of escape in his mind, he opted to stay and chat for the time being. Before, both when they first left the TARDIS, and in the rooms with the lackeys, they had been surrounded and any glib remarks he could have made would have most assuredly been taken out on Twilight. Here, however, the playing field was a bit more even. 
"Hello, Doctor" Bright purred, sounding like a self satisfied cat "You've been a...curiosity...of mine for a while now. I never suspected we would actually meet, but now, well, I would be ever so pleased if you could indulge me in my inquiries."
"Well, I guess I could say the same" the Doctor said "Not about the whole wishing to meet you part, but about the questions, because I have lots, actually. So how about you answer mine and I'll answer yours. No lies."
Bright Idea blinked calmly "I'll go first. Those wings you're wearing, they're fake, aren't they?"
"What makes you so curious?"
"We've been developing mechanical wings recently, and...well, it's always prudent to check out the competition, now isn't it?" He grabbed one of the wings and stretched it out, examining it and chuckling "Now would you look at that...this is model number four...we just developed this last week." he leaned in in the obvious expectation of an explanation.
The Doctor just raised his eyebrows "How odd."
Bright Idea snorted "No need to be coy, good Doctor. I'm trying to treat you fairly as a guest here."
"I wasn't aware it was common practice to cuff guests to chairs"
"you learn something new every day" a smirk formed on Bright's face "But I think I've gleaned enough...so... it's you turn. Ask away"
The Doctor thought for a moment, then settled on a question "Alright. You've made it clear that your goal is to find, or engineer a unicorn with the proper magical levels, but what are you planning to do then?"
"What exactly do you mean?"
"I mean, if said properly magical unicorn turned up, what would you do with it?"
Bright Idea chuckled "Why that's easy...I would eat it in order to gain it's power"
The Doctor's eyes widened. 
There was a long, long pause, then Bright burst into raucous laughter. Nearly crying he choked "Oh that was priceless! You should have seen the look on your face..." then, he took a few deep breaths, composed himself, and said "Did you really beleive I would do something that barbaric? No, if we could find a magically powerful unicorn, we would first observe it's powers, see how well it performs, then we would dissect it's horn"
The Doctor raised his eyebrows. Judging from Twilight's reaction to Colgate's threats earlier, he doubted most unicorns wouldn't jump at being eaten to avoid that.
"You see" Bright Idea continued "Magic flows in cycles through the environment, spreading through the ground and animals and plants. All ponies collect this, and refine it into a magic specific to their pony type. Unicorns are special, however, in the way they refine it. Instead having a more latent magic, powering flight, or a connection to the earth, unicorn's concentrate their magic and are able to control it consciously. In a healthy unicorn,  it would gathered from the environment and concentrated by the magic receptors in the pulp inside of the horn. However, in unicorns today, it's nearly useless. It's power can be intensified somewhat, like with mine, allowing me to do some extremely simple spells, but only marginally. Now do you see why we would want tissue from a working horn?"
The Doctor nodded "So you could gather magic receptors from it."
"Exactly! With a sample of the working cells, we could clone them over and over again, create a limitless supply. Imagine every unicorn, wielding the magic that is it's birthright!...and if it were a particularly strong unicorn, like the mages of old, there would be even more power than that. With experimenting and refining, there could be no limit on how much energy a single unicorn could wield." Bright Idea's eyes sparkled zealously.
The Doctor didn't particularly relish the idea of ponies like Bright running about with magic as strong as Twilight's. There would be no measuring the damage it could do in the wrong hands...er...hooves. He was about to open his mouth to ask another question, was quickly cut off.
"Ah, ah, ah. My turn." Bright Idea leaned close to him, smiling predatorially "Your little unicorn friend....Does she by any chance have magic?"
"No." the Doctor lied. He knew exactly what they would do to Twilight if they found out about what she could do.
"Oh, Doctor....I thought we agreed not to lie to each other"
"...And?"
Bright Idea smiled softly "And a little filly just recently told me all about how talented that feisty little mare of yours is" he paused "It took a surprisingly vexing amount of convincing to get her to part with that information. Your friend must have made an impression for her to be that...resistant."
The Doctor winced slightly, both because whatever Colgate had done to them, she certainly didn't deserve whatever "convincing" Bright Idea was hinting at, and because Twilight was not in more danger.
"Alright" he said softly, narrowing his eyes. A suspicion had been growing throughout their conversation, and now was the time to voice it "My turn. What do you really want the magic for?....because we agreed not to lie to each other.....and you and I both know it's not to restore the unicorn race."
Something unfamiliar flickered across Bright Idea's face, and he paused as if listening to something, before flinching slightly. 
"Ahh...." the Doctor said pushing his advantage in the verbal face off "Seems like it's not just you in that head of yours." he leaned forward "Tell me, what happened in that failed experiment of yours? The one that started all these problems....Because you, or should I say, it, didn't want me here to study me, did it? It wanted me here because I'm the only thing that might see it, the only threat to it's goals"
"Shut up!" Bright Idea screeched "SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP!"
"I demand parlay in ordinance with Convention 15 of the Shadow Proclamation! Designate species and show yourself!...The Shadow Proclamation exists in your universe, right? Right."
There was a pause, Bright Idea stopped screaming, slowly lowered his hooves from his head. Then he began to twitch, and shudder violently. A dark fog began seeping from around his eyes, until the whites and green irises were entirely engulfed in shadow. He spoke again then, differently, voice rasping "You cannot stop me this time, Doctor."
"This time?" The Doctor chuckled "Well, revealing the fact that I've already beaten you once isn't the best intimidation method" he narrowed his eyes at the thing in Bright Idea "So, what do you stand to gain from all this? Why go to all this trouble? You wouldn't go through all this just for grins, so why?"
No answer came.
"Alright" the Doctor said "Then you shouldn't mind if I make some inferences of my own, hmmm? You don't seem to have a form of your own, so I take it you're some sort of parasite...or more likely something similar to the great intelligence, right? Right. Question of the hour is, where does the magic come in? Energy source maybe?" He paused, scrutinizing Bright Idea's face "Ohh, it is, isn't it? But there's got to be more than that....Maybe....Maybe you're in a weakened state! Need that influx of magic to gain back your power, maybe even gain back a true form. That's it! That's what you're going to all this trouble for, right?"
"You know nothing!" the thing inside Bright spat "All your clever games will be for naught Doctor. You will be ended!"
The Doctor grinned "Maybe some other time, I'm a mite busy escaping right now" he shook his head, dislodging his sonic screwdriver hidden behind his ear and catching it in his mouth. With a whirring noise and a click, his hoofcuffs slipped off, and he bolted towards the door, calling behind him "Nice chatting with you! Tally ho!"