Mark walked to the console inside the TARDIS. "Alright Doc, one step at a time, what was that thing?"
The Doctor followed him. "I'm not sure." He sat down and watched Mark pace around the controls.
Mark stopped and stared at him. "But you sound like you might have an idea?" he asked.
He sighed. "Maybe." he took a deep breath. "I told you only living things can generate magic?" he waited for Mark to nod. "Well, some life form doesn't. Keep in mind I never saw one before, I only know from stories. What I do know, is how the universe was formed." he looked at Mark, waiting.
"The big bang?" he asked back frowning.
"While somehow a crude idea, it is correct. But unlike what humans thought, it wasn't an explosion of energy." he explained. As he saw Mark didn’t understand what he meant, he continued. "Magic. The big bang was an explosion of magic. Back then, there was literally nothing, no time, no matter, no energy. But when you leave magic alone, it tends..."
"To transform toward the other stable states?" guessed Mark, remembering what the Doctor told him.
"Exact. It's almost a constant in the universe, if you have enough of a source of something, life always show up in some way. You would be surprise of the life form that exists on eating gravity in a black hole. Anyway, the first life form that showed up were quite simple, they ate magic... But at some point, magic became rare. I thought they all died." He took a deep breath. "This one looked pretty weak, it was dying."
"What?" Mark didn't understand how it could have been weak.
"Some stories are hundred millions years old, and they talked about a huge cloud covering a whole planet and draining its magic in matter of hours." the Doctor explained. "I'm not sure this one would have survived another travel toward another star."
Mark crossed his arm, angry. "So, just back luck his last meal was Earth?" He was working hard to keep his tears inside. He didn't know the ponies for that long, but he was growing fond of them. Twilight curiosity and the happiness of all of them were contagious. Aside, Earth was also his planet, even if mankind left it so long ago. How many more species and individuals Earth could have hosted? "How do we fix that?"
The Doctor stared at Mark. "Fix that? I doubt we can!"
"Twilight! She did it once." Mark said pointing at him. "She could do it again."
The Doctor looked skeptical and crossed his arm. "Blow up the planet again?"
Mark walked toward the TARDIS exit and pointed at what was left of the moon. "We get her up there, and we intercept that thing before it reaches Earth."
"She lost it! She went berserk. It would still destroy Earth." countered the Doctor.
Mark looked down at his feet. "She did because she saw her friends and her mentor die." He sighed. "If what you say is right, I think she killed it by drowning it in magic. Too much of anything is never a good idea, if you're right and it was that weak, she might be able to kill it without blowing up the moon!"
"Drowning it in magic?" The Doctor jumped on his feet. "Alright."
"What?"
"You convinced me. Let's try it." He looked annoyed. "It will take me months to clean the paradox we are about to create." He said shaking his head. He moved toward the controls.
Mark came beside him and put a hand on his shoulder. "Come on Doc, I will help you with that."
"You better."
Mark stepped out of the TARDIS once more. It was that day at the market, sun high in a cloudless sky. From the Doctor's numbers, the creature would cross the moon gravitational pit in a matter of hours. The Doctor took his time to explain to him that as soon as he would meet Twilight, it would create a new timeline. The old one would become parallel to the new one, and to help him smooth that transition he would need to activate some kind of temporal beacon at that moment.
He turned the beacon on his right hand. It wasn't even the size of a cell phone, but knowing how size didn't really matter with his ship, who knew how much components were in there. In his left hand rested a even smaller switch, a control for the perception filter. He looked around, from his past experiences two days ago; he knew roughly where Twilight should be.
He started to walk toward the market. After searching around the booths for a few minutes, he finally found the purple mare, she was buying some fruits. He would need to wait for her to be away from the crowd, as he would need to turn off the filter for her to recognize him.
After twenty minute of following her, she finally left the market. Mark waited in a nearby alley. "Hey Twilight."
She stopped and look toward him. For what she saw, a weird colt was calling her, but she never saw him before. "Do I know you?"
"Yeah, give me a second." He turned off the perception filter and activated the beacon at the same time. For Twilight, the air flickered and in matter of second the colt turned into Mark. He put in his pockets the two devices.
"Mark! What was that?" she asked surprised.
"It's nice to see you too." he said. Not even an hour ago she was dead. He was really happy that he was given a chance to save her, and all of them.
"Huh... Yeah, it's nice to see you too." she said laughing.
He crossed his arms and stared at her with a serious look on his face. "Do you trust me Twilight?" he simply asked.
She blinked a few time, unsure of the question. "I... I think I do."
"For the next minute, I want you to follow me without asking question. It is really important, understood?" he asked her.
"O... ok. Is it some kind of game?" she asked right away.
"Twilight! Please!"
She did a motion of zipping her mouth shut. Mark started to walk toward where he left the TARDIS. Looking at his right, he saw himself, standing in the middle of the market, staring in his direction. He shook his head; meeting himself a second time wasn't any easier than the first one. He dashed toward the alley and didn't look back; hoping Twilight followed his request and simply followed him.
The ship was standing in between two houses with its door wide open. Mark ran in it, followed by Twilight. He could feel the number of questions in her head quickly growing. He turned around once she was inside and closed the doors behind her.
"Let's go Doc! My other self is running after us."
The Doctor flipped a few switch, putting the ship in some kind of temporal stasis. It didn't move nor changed time, but simply wasn't visible from the outside.
Twilight stood in the middle of the room with eyes wider than Mark ever saw. "What's going on? Other self? What is this place?"
Something broke in Mark heart. He simply kneeled in front of her and hugged her while crying. She stopped talking and starred at him. "Mark? You're alright?"
After a few moments he let her go and dried his eyes. He sat down in front of her.
"That's crazy! I don't have that much magic! Vaporize the planet? That's insane!" she shouted after Mark had explained the whole story. "And what do you actually plan to do right now?"
Mark looked up to the Doctor who was leaning against the wall. "We... we go on the moon, and you stop that thing from reaching Earth." he said with a smile.
The Doctor coughed and said "You're directly linked to the time stream. If you were to truly use it, you could destroy a good part of the galaxy. I think it would be possible for you to kill it without blowing up the moon."
"Humans are crazy! You're both crazy!" she shouted. She was starting to freak out. Mark noticed she was shutting off from them.
"Twilight!" he screamed. She stopped moving and stared at him. "I'm human, he is not." he said pointing at the Doctor. "He is a timelord." He sighed. "Please Twilight, keep it together. This is really important. We are talking about the life of everypony on the planet." He looked up at the ceiling, then back at Twilight. "If... if you don't want to try to stop that thing... it's fine. We'll... I'll find another way."
Twilight was calmer. "How about we get the element of harmony? It should be powerful enough?"
The Doctor moved forward. "It's true they are powerful. But the elements are a scalpel, they aren't really destructive. Remember every time you used them, you never destroyed anything. Right now, we need a canon of raw magic."
She looked insulted. "You're saying I'm destructive?"
The Doctor looked angry. "When you lost control at your entrance exam, you broke my ship. It crashed near Canterlot and it took me almost two years to fix it."
"Huh... Hmm... Sorry?" she apologized, unsure of herself.
"Well, no harms done I guess. I actually enjoy the time I spend with ponies. Just to say, I don't think there's any other creature alive right now that could do it." said the Doctor shaking his head.
She looked at the floor a few moments. "Alright... Alright, let's try."
Mark looked at the Doctor as he moved toward the command panel and started flipping switches. This time he was ready for the flow of feeling linked with the TARDIS spatiotemporal transition. From the corner of his eyes, he noticed Twilight falling on her left flank. He dashed toward her and caught her before she hit her head on the floor. He sit on the floor and let her head rest on his leg. "Should have known Doc."
"Nice catch. My fault, sorry. Yeah, she reacted the same way as you did." He continued to flip, pull and push things. "There. We are on the moon, and in theory, on its path."
Twilight slowly opened her eyes. "What... What happened?"
Mark helped her to get back on her four shaky legs. He stayed close in case she would fall back. "The same thing occurred to me the first time."
"What... What's that voice talking in my head?"
The Doctor rolled his eyes. "Try to ignore it."
"I kinda like it... It says you're an idiot, Doctor." she said with a small smile.
"Yeah, just ignore it." he said as he focused back on the controls.
Mark whispered to Twilight. "It's his ship; it's alive in the time stream or something like that."
The Doctor clapped his hands and looked at them with a smile. "Alright! The TARDIS is generating a bubble of breathable atmosphere in a fifty meters radius. It's also controlling the temperature and shielding us from the radiation." He looked at Twilight. "And just in case, I raised a double field of protection around my ship."
Mark stepped out of the ship, trying hard to not squeal like a little girl. He turned around, a huge smile on his face, to watch Twilight and the Doctor come out on the dusty plain. "You have no idea how often I dreamed of this. Walking on the moon, wonder if Apollo 11 is still there."
Twilight looked at him confused. "What's an Apollo?"
"It's the space program that brought humans on the moon, before I was even born." said Mark with pride.
"So this is where Luna lived for a thousand years?" she asked looking around.
The Doctor was standing beside the blue box. "Technically, not really on the moon, there's nothing to breath here. She was locked inside the moon, on a quantum level." Seeing Twilight didn't understand. "Huh... In some way, she became the moon."
Mark was jumping around, in the same way astronauts used to do it when they first came on the moon. He was surprised how instinctive it was to hop around. The Doctor was laughing watching him bounce around. "Wow" said Twilight. They both turned around to see what surprised her. She was staring at Earth, slowly rising above the moon's horizon. They both walked beside her.
"It is quite a sight. It might be a bit simple saying I became astronaut for that view... but truth is, I did." explained Mark.
"In the entire universe, it is one of the prettiest planet." said the Doctor, staring at the blue planet. Sensing Mark eyes on him, he explained "I talk by experience."
"I'm a bit envious of both of you. Seeing this kind of beauty on a daily basis." Twilight said. Mark didn't try to explain that he worked really hard for years to get on a space station very close to Earth, and that human didn't come back to the moon in his time. On top, on his first mission he was brought in the future. They simply stood there watching the blue planet slowly move in the black sky.
Something produced a bipping noise similar to a cell phone in the Doctor's pocket. He took out his sonic screwdriver and looked at a display only he could see. "It's coming. It should be on top of us in a few minutes."
Twilight had a hard time to take her sight off her planet. She turned around and positioned herself at about thirty meters in front of the TARDIS' doors, legs firmly planted on the dusty ground. Mark came next to her while the Doctor retreated inside his ship. "Don't stand there Mark, it's gonna be dangerous." shouted the Doctor.
"I know." he replied. "It's silly, I know. But... I will stand here. If only for moral support." he explained.
The Doctor had a weird smile on his face. "I understand more than you can imagine."
Twilight looked at him and nodded. "Thanks."
They stood there watching the sky, trying to find where the black cloud would come from. "There!" shouted Mark as he pointed in what looked like an empty part of the sky. "Something is hiding stars as it moves."
Twilight stared where he pointed, and surely enough a star disappeared, hiding by a moving mass. "I see it!" Instantly she lowered her head and aimed her horn at the black cloud. She focuses, doing what she did thousand times before, channeling magic toward her horns, but this time she didn't try to model it to her will. The goal wasn't to shape it or bend it, but to release as much magic as possible. She kept channeling it to her horn, which started to glow brightly in a purple color similar to her coat. When she felt she had enough to support a viable beam, she let it go forward.
Mark watched impressed, he saw her perform magic dozen time already, but this time it was different. She was using her power in their full might, in a raw and unrefined form. The beam of bright purple magic shooting toward the sky took him by surprise. He looked up and saw the beam hitting right on spot in the middle of the cloud. The beam was bright enough to light up the creature and Mark could finally see its true size. It was slightly smaller than the cloud he saw above Sweet Apple Acres.
After a few moments, it became obvious it wasn't working as intended. The creature wasn't stopping and simply continued on its original path. It didn't appear affected at all by the mare's efforts. "It's not enough Twilight!" he shouted.
"I'm just warming up!" she shouted back without losing her concentration. She closed her eyes and tightened her lips. The beam of magic grew in size and in brightness, slowly turning toward a fully white color.
She wasn't really in pain, her body was used to channeling magic, but she was feeling close to her limits. She knew she couldn't allow herself any weakness right now, too much depended on her. She remembered her entrance exam, years ago. That day, she casted dozen spells unconsciously, most of which were of levels far beyond what she thought she could perform. Days later, when she tried to redo some of them, she found herself simply unable to, having not enough magic to cast a single one of them. She knew the sonic rainboom somehow awaken something inside her, something powerful and uncontrollable. She trained hard for years to never again lose control over her abilities.
She was at her limits, but she wasn't tapping in that source. She was still afraid of what could happen if she did. From what Mark told her, her planet was vaporized by that energy.
Everypony's lives depend on you! No time to be afraid!
She reached inside, at that place she sealed away years ago. She slowly opened it, finding the golden energy she knew was waiting inside. She tested it carefully, sending only small amount of it toward her horn. After a few tries, she found out she could keep control over it. She progressively increased the flow as much as she could. The beam of magic doubled in size and took a golden tint.
Her body started to hurt; she wasn't used to channeling that much magic for so long. She opened her eyes; she could see that the creature stopped moving. But it didn't matter, as it was still there, its size and shape not changing at all. She was sweating and her legs started to shake.
"It's... it's not enough!" she managed to shout.
Mark looked at her worried, her face displaying her pain. He knew she was at her limit, more and her body would take a toll, she could get seriously hurt. He knew she was doing it in full knowledge of what would happen if she failed. In front of his eyes, he saw the beam grow even more, she was obviously going beyond her limits. Sparks on her horn showed that it could ignite at any moment.
Mark looked down at his hands, deep in his mind. He wasn't thinking, he was only feeling. He took a deep breath and let it go slowly. Looking over his shoulder, he could see Earth could now be fully see in the Moon's black sky.
You're probably about to do the stupidest thing you ever did. But...
Without thinking more about it, he grabbed Twilight's horn with his right hand. She gasped at the unexpected contact, but she didn't lose focus. He instantly felt the magic beam numbing and burning his fingers, but he didn't let go, he tighten his grip. He remembered what the Doctor told him, humans can't do magic, they can't cast, channel, shape or bend it. But like almost every living being they can generate it. His hope was that with direct contact with her horn, he could send his own to her.
He closed his eyes and reached inside at that place he learned to ignore. The first time, he remembered, back in the hospital, he almost ended up cooked alive. Every time he would try to probe it, he received burns or other painful reminder that his species wasn't allowed to play with it. He could see what he pictured as a valve blocking a flow from a dam. He took hold of it with his mental hands and without giving it more thoughts opened it as wide as he could.
The pain almost took him by surprise, but after the hospital incident, he knew what to expect. He wanted to scream, but he shut his mouth close, his jaw shaking from the effort. He felt his inside burning from the magic flow. From his personal training in the desert, he knew how to move that flow around and he aimed it at his right arm. His arm sent him message of intense pain he simply ignored.
He opened his right eye to see that the beam almost doubled in size, but he quickly noticed his right hand and arm were literally on fire, surrounded by a golden glow that was flowing toward Twilight. He looked elsewhere, trying to forget that he was losing senses in his body, that he couldn't feel anything from his right arm anymore and that it was spreading, he was beyond pain. His brain tried to tell him he should give up, every ounce of self preservation screamed at him to stop and remove his hand. He could feel his body shutting down under the assault of the magic he was streaming across it. He looked up in the sky and saw the creature shrinking on itself. His heart jumped in his chest.
It's working! But... Not... not fast enough! We won't hold that long.
He was somewhat surprised his legs didn't let him go yet, the low gravity of the moon probably helping. He looked at Twilight, and surely enough her body was at the limit of what it could do. She was shaking and it was also surprising her legs didn't let go. "One last push!" he managed to say in a whisper. She slightly nodded back without opening her eyes. He looked inside himself, at the source of magic. It was wide open, he couldn't open it anymore than that. He looked around, trying to find any source of energy left.
It was small, hidden much deeper inside than he ever went. At first he didn't understand what he found, what was that small dark blue sphere? Probing it, he finally figured it out; it was his own pool of magic. Not the one generated from the time source, but his own, created by his living body. It was puny to say the least, but right now he needed every ounce of magic he could find. He carefully took it and threw it in the golden flow of magic.
Twilight was also searching deep inside her for any hidden resources. She felt it was only moments before her legs would fail her. "Friendship is a powerful magic." once said her mentor, she remembered. Right now, she deeply wished all her friends were here with her. At the memories of her friends, a spark lit up inside her. She knew it, she saw it before. It was her link to the element of magic. The Elements of Harmony, which in front of Nightmare Moon and Discord had united them as one.
She understood, for the elements, distance had no meaning. A true friendship stays strong no matter where you are. She could feel the other five mares; they were worried about her, as they could feel her pain sent over their connections with the elements. She couldn't talk to them, only send her emotions; her deepest wishes that she needed them. They replied without questions. She could feel them sending back all their supports, smiling back and sending their own magic and strength through their bonds.
She could see it inside her like never before, a rainbow of magic from her friends; orange of honesty, yellow of kindness, pink of laugh, blue of loyalty, indigo of generosity. She pushed all their magics toward the flow of golden magic. She knew it would be enough, that it would work, because there's nothing they couldn't do when united as one.
From the Doctor's point of view, the display of magic and time looked breath taking. Timelords were gift with the ability to see the time stream, but most of the time they wouldn't notice it. Only larger perturbation could really be seen. It allowed them to track paradox and other dents that other uninformed travelers could cause. In front of him, he could clearly see two vortex of time being sucked toward the man and the mare, similar to a bath being drained. As he watched, the two vortexes started to swirl around each other, like two tornados meeting in an open field.
The two finally merged, amplifying their forces, far more than the sum of them. He was happy to be there to witness this, as he knew any other creature would have missed the full beauty of the show. He was quite sure no timelord ever experienced something like that before. Living beings linked to the time flow were extremely rare occurrence, two meeting each other and using their abilities in unison was unheard of. He could feel the very fabric of space vibrating under their combined will. He didn't know how, but he felt five other wills join the fight.
He didn't think it to be possible but Twilight's horn glowed even brighter. At this point, her horn and the beam of magic were simply painful to watch. He closed his eyes, but he could still see the beam behind his eyelids. Even behind the double shields of the TARDIS, he could feel the magic stream released, like a warm summer sun. He feared they would lose control and destroy the moon, but their focus was greater than what he thought possible for their species.
Everything went black and silent. The Doctor opened his eyes but couldn't see anything as they were trying to adjust to the sudden darkness. The magic attack was over, he could barely see Mark and Twilight standing in the grey plains, but he could feel it inside, it worked.
Mark didn't know how he managed to open his eyes as he couldn't feel anything from his body. He looked up at the sky and only saw shining stars, no sight from the dark cloud. The sky started to rotate in front of him. He understood he was slowly falling on his back, the low gravity of the moon softly pulling him down. He saw what was left of his right arm in front of him, it was burned out, black like charcoal. The fall felt like an eternity, but he was happy. Once he hit the ground, he could see it high in the Moon's sky; Earth, glowing like a bright blue gem. He tried to smile, but his face didn't answer his wish.
Was worth it.