The walk to the TARDIS was uncomfortably silent. The events of the battle left the entire group confused, and no one knew how to express these feelings. It was only when they were inside the TARDIS that somepony, Applejack, decided to finally speak up.
“What the hay happened back there?” There was another round of unsure silence.
“If I had to guess,” the Doctor said after a while, “perhaps we didn’t actually land at the precise moment of the final battle. Maybe we’re off by a day or two. Admittedly, driving with hooves is something I’m still getting used to, so I might have made a slight error. I could always check the spectrochrometer to see when exactly we are.”
“There’s still something wrong, Doctor,” Twilight said. “According to Princess Celestia, she and Princess Luna used the Elements of Harmony to defeat Discord the first time.”
“The Elements of Harmony?” the Doctor repeated. “You mean those necklaces and that tiara you all were wearing when we met back in Canterlot?”
“Uh, sort of,” Twilight said hesitantly. “They might look different now. But the point is, the princesses were supposed to use the Elements back there. And we just saw them try to trap him in a net!”
The Doctor paused in thought for a moment. Then he turned toward the console and fiddled with the instruments. When he stopped, he looked up at the computer screen. “We definitely landed on the right day,” he whispered. “Something’s very wrong here.”
“How wrong are we talking about?” Rainbow asked.
“If Twilight’s correct, and given her source, I have no reason to doubt her,” he explained, “the key to this event is these so-called Elements of Harmony. Tell me, what exactly do they do?”
“Um, well,” Twilight started, nervously at first, but she regained her composure and continued. “The Elements are Equestria’s greatest line of defense against chaos and evil. There are six Elements; five of them each represent a different aspect of harmony: Loyalty, Laughter, Generosity, Honesty, and Kindness. The sixth is the Element of Magic, and it allows the others to… do their thing.”
“Do their thing?” the Doctor repeated.
“I don’t know if I can describe it,” Twilight explained. “You see, the Elements can’t be used by just anypony. Their bearers have to embody the specific spirit of whatever Element they represent. Applejack, for instance, bears the Element of Honesty.” She pointed to Applejack, who tipped her Stetson in acknowledgement. “Rainbow Dash holds the Element of Loyalty.” Rainbow put her hoof to her chest proudly. “Pinkie, Rarity, and Fluttershy are Laughter, Generosity, and Kindness, respectively, leaving me with Magic.
“And when we use them, we feel… some sort of… overwhelming feelings of harmony and… our friendship… and… well…” Twilight stopped. “I realize this sounds incredibly ridiculous.”
“Yes it does,” the Doctor agreed. “But you said yourself you can’t describe the feeling all that well, so I’ll let it slide. But the main idea is that these Elements can get rid of dark forces. Am I correct?”
“You bet,” Applejack said.
“And the princesses, for whatever reason, don’t have them,” he continued. “It’s the only reason I can think of for not using such powerful artifacts by now.”
“Then what happened to them?” Rainbow asked.
“You’re asking the wrong pony, Miss Dash,” the Doctor admitted. “Equus has always been something of a mystery to many races, even the Time Lords. And the existence of these Elements of Harmony seems especially mysterious. If we want to know what’s keeping Celestia and Luna from using them, we have to first know where the Elements are.”
“And how in the hay do we do that?” Applejack asked.
“Erm, that is actually a good question.” The Doctor thought for a moment. “I bet if I can find something connected to these Elements, I might be able to pinpoint their location.” He smiled. “And luckily, I have three connections right here.” He looked at the three mares; they all looked back in confusion. “Twilight, you said you three ‘represent’ the Elements, or at least half of them. If I tune into the right frequency between you and them, I can bring the TARDIS to them.”
Twilight just stared at him. “And… how do you plan on doing that?” The Doctor pressed a button on the console. Three helmet-like objects were lowered by cords from the ceiling.
“These will scan your unique temporal energy signatures,” he explained. “Once the TARDIS has the three of you in the database, it’ll search for anything in this time connected to you. And once I narrow the search to involve all of you at once, the remaining matches will include whatever shares a mixture of those energy signatures.”
“With the Elements hopefully being among them,” Twilight finished excitedly.
“Ah din’t understand half a’ what you just said,” Applejack interjected. “But if it’ll find the Elements of Harmony, Ah say we go for it.” She took off her Stetson and put one of the helmets over her head. Twilight and Rainbow nodded at each other and followed her example.
As soon as they were all settled in, the Doctor pressed a button. Thin electrical currents traveled down the cords connecting the helmets to the ceiling to whatever in the TARDIS was powering them.
Twilight’s eyelids felt heavy. She closed them, but she started seeing things: her entire life seemed to play out, images of her favorite possessions passed by, and a figure resembling the Element of Magic came into full view. The image glowed until she saw only white. Her eyes immediately snapped open.
She looked around and saw that Rainbow and Applejack were as disoriented as she was, indicating they had experienced the same thing she did.
“That should do the trick,” the Doctor finally said. “You can take off the helmets now.” Twilight was the first to comply, and the other two followed her lead.
The Doctor took out his sonic screwdriver and held it up to the computer. (“Really need to get the hang of hooves,” he mumbled.) The screen flashed with a large wall of data, almost incoherent with the size of its text and the speed at which it flew. Finally, it stopped on what everyone could only assume was a map. The layout was completely unfamiliar to them, especially the three mares, but they chalked that up to the chaotic landscape. Everyone’s eye was drawn to a flickering spot.
“Is that it?” Applejack asked.
“If it’s not,” the Doctor replied, “then something very interesting is going on here. Aside from the obvious, I mean. Either way, only one thing to do now.” He pulled a lever and the TARDIS hummed to life. The others instinctively grabbed onto the nearest object as the room began to shake.
Suddenly, the shaking took a violent turn; it wasn’t the usual back-and-forth rocking the girls had come to associate with the TARDIS, but more similar to an earthquake. They clung tighter to their railings to avoid being thrown around the room. The Doctor leaned into the console, keeping himself close to the controls.
“Doctor!” Twilight yelled. “What’s happening?!”
“Well, either something is throwing us wildly off course,” he replied, “or the TARDIS is misbehaving. And to be honest, either one is quite viable. Still, if it is the former, it should be easy enough to fix.” He started pulling more levers and almost slammed his hooves on some of the buttons near him. Whatever he did, it must have worked, as the shaking soon stopped.
“Hoo-wee!” Applejack exclaimed. “What was that? And how’d it stop?”
“Some force is keeping us from reaching our intended destination,” the Doctor explained. “I had to make an emergency landing in the nearest safest place. And thankfully, that place wasn’t inside the TARDIS this time.”
“Huh?” Twilight breathed out.
“Long story. The point is, whatever we were heading towards, we can’t get there by TARDIS.”
“So now what?” Applejack asked.
The Doctor thought for a moment. “Well, since we’ve got no other ideas, let’s see where we’ve ended up.” Rainbow recovered from her daze and walked as steadily as she could toward the doors.
She opened them and looked around. “Coast is clear,” she called back. The others treaded carefully to the outside world. They were in some kind of forest, but the trees were a variety of objects (pinwheels, popsicle sticks, drinking glasses, etc.), so it was difficult to tell where exactly in Equestria they were.
Everyone spread out, thinking they might find something. Their search didn’t take too long, as Twilight called out, “Hey, check this out!” Everyone gathered around her.
On the ground before them lied a large, strange bulb of swirling energy. It was a variety of different colors, not unlike a rainbow, all shifting around each other.
“What is it?” Rainbow asked.
“Hard to say,” the Doctor admitted. He looked around the area and found a fair-sized rock. He picked it up and tossed it on the bulge. The rock disappeared into it, but immediately sprang back up, leaving a trail of rose petals behind it as it arced several meters behind them. “But I would suggest not touching it,” he concluded. The others nodded an uneasy confirmation.
The Doctor took out his screwdriver and, taking great care to stay far enough away from it, ran it over the bulb a few times. “Um, Doc,” Rainbow started, “what are you doing?”
“Running a quick scan,” he said. “If we know what this energy is, we’ll know how to counteract it.” Soon, he pulled the screwdriver away and stared at the green light. “This… this is impossible. The power of this energy is off the charts one second, then barely registers the next, and then goes to something in between. And there’s no pattern to it at all. It’s just… chaotic,” he finished quietly. He paused, his face blank.
“Doctor?” Twilight asked.
“This energy is pure chaos,” he finally said. “Out of all the chaos in this world, Discord chose to concentrate as much energy as he possibly could and focus it here. But why?”
“Cuz there’s somthin’ there that he don’t want us to find?” Applejack suggested.
“The Elements!” Twilight interjected. “If we really were heading toward the Elements, then that means this is supposed to keep us, and anypony else, out.”
“But this is practically just a plug,” Applejack argued. “How’d it cause the TARDIS to go all crazy like that?”
“Actually, the field of energy goes pretty far, if my scans are accurate,” the Doctor countered. “We may have gotten caught within the energy field; we’re lucky that all it did was just bang us around a bit.”
“Wait, you can tell all that by just looking at your screwdriver?” Rainbow challenged.
The Doctor paused, considering his answer, before he spoke. “You know, when you put it like that, it does sound weird. Let’s just say, ‘alien technology’ and move on. And by ‘move on,’ I mean ‘get this information to the TARDIS so we have a more accurate picture of what we’re dealing with.’” He turned back and went inside the ship, the mares following him.
The Doctor placed the top end of the screwdriver into a slot on the console. After a few seconds of beeping, the computer started to reveal an image. The overall form was shapeless, like a large blob with an arm branching off to the upper left. The most curious thing, however, was a fairly large hole within the main body.
“Um, what the hay is that?” Applejack asked.
“This is an image of the chaos energy,” the Doctor explained. “You see that long, skinny part right there? At the very end is the bulge we saw outside. In other words, Applejack, this is not just some plug in the ground; Discord really wanted to make sure nopony and nothing could get in there. The entire outline of this field is basically where the energy ends and the earth begins.”
“What about that hole right in the center?” Rainbow asked. Everyone focused on the dark patch within the image; it was perfectly circular.
“My best guess,” the Doctor said: “something that chaos energy can’t get through. An energy that is just as powerful, if not more so, than the chaos surrounding it.”
“Harmony,” Twilight said. “It has to be harmony. It’s the pure opposite of chaos.”
“Then the Elements really are here,” Applejack added.
“Doc,” Rainbow started, “think you can get us in that hole?” She pointed to the image, specifically at the dark spot indicating the lack of chaos energy.
“I’d like to,” the Doctor replied, “but after that shake-up, I wouldn’t try risking any more jumps for the time being, especially ones that require such precision. We land too far off our intended mark, we end up back in the chaos energy, and this time, we may not be as lucky as we were before.” This thought made the others pause.
Finally, Twilight spoke, “Is there a way to dispel the chaos energy from out here?”
“Only if we had another source of harmonic energy,” the Doctor replied. There was another round of uncomfortable silence.
Suddenly, Rainbow shouted, “I got it!” All eyes turned to her. “All right, so that big hole right there is the Elements of Harmony keeping the chaos away, right? Well, guess what we’ve got.”
“Rainbow, the Elements we use are back home,” Applejack pointed out. “Ah don’t think we can just waltz into the castle and ask if we can use ‘em jus’ so we can make sure history takes its rightful course. That, and we’d need Pinkie, Fluttershy, and Rarity to use ‘em, and Ah don’t think they’re ready for this quite yet.”
“We won’t need any of that,” Rainbow stated. After getting three confused looks, she continued, “We’ve got three Elements right here: Loyalty, Honesty, and Magic.” She indicated to herself, Applejack, and Twilight as she spoke.
There was another pause as the others considered what Rainbow said. “Actually,” Twilight said, “that might work.” Now all eyes were focused on her; even Rainbow was curious. “I know a spell that can simulate emotions and transmit them into something else. Maybe if we all work together, we can create an offshoot energy similar to the Elements.”
“What do you think, Doctor?” Applejack asked.
“Worth a shot, I’d say,” he said. “We don’t have anything else to go on at the moment.” The girls nodded.
With their plan in mind, they left the TARDIS and went to the bulge. They huddled around it, Twilight, Rainbow, and Applejack standing close to each other while the Doctor stood opposite them. Twilight looked to either side at her friends, who both nodded.
“Okay, girls,” she said. “I want you to recall strong memories of loyalty, honesty, and friendship. Try to replicate your emotions from those memories. Then, hold on to me.” The other two mares closed their eyes and concentrated. Twilight did the same. She thought back to every lesson on friendship she had learned and how, with her friends, anything seemed possible. Thinking of those times made her smile.
Then she felt a pair of hooves grab her from either side. Immediately, she reached into her magic and performed the spell. She felt the magic energies leave her body through her horn and flow toward the mass of chaos.
The Doctor ran the sonic over the chaos energy as Twilight’s magic flowed into it. But it seemed like no matter how much magic Twilight put out, nothing happened. He looked up and saw that Twilight was beginning to tire. “Twilight, stop,” he said at last. Twilight’s horn stopped glowing and the flow of energy ceased to exist.
The three opened their eyes. “Did it work?” Rainbow asked. Then she looked down. “Never mind.”
“I actually wouldn’t say that,” the Doctor assured. “The chaos energy was being affected by your spell.”
“Well, that’s good,” Applejack said. “Least we know we’re on the right track.”
“But the affectations were incredibly miniscule,” the Doctor continued. “I barely even noticed anything going on. I had to stop you before Twilight overdosed her magic again.” Everyone noticed that Twilight was breathing slightly heavily.
“So now what do we do?” she asked.
“We need to find a stronger source of harmony,” he replied.
“But that would mean getting all six Elements.” Twilight pointed out. "How do we pull that off?"
Before the Doctor could answer, however, a voice said, “Well, this is intriguing. And for me, that’s saying a lot.”