I felt like I was underwater: my brain was sloshing around inside my head without a care in the world. My friends were coming for me, that's all that mattered. The room felt kinda fuzzy, but it was more clear than it had been a few minutes prior. I guessed then that whatever that madpony had given me was starting to wear off.
I heard subdued voices outside my door; they weren't my friends.
"Nopony's checked-in. Whaddya think? Maybe there's some kind of stand-off going on?"
"Not sure, but at Level 4 our guys should be able to take on anything coming their way."
"Yeah."
Right as the other guard finished speaking there was a deafening shriek. It pierced through the fog I was stuck in and forced me to cover my ears. I fell on my side back onto my cot, trying my hardest to get as far from the sound as possible by pushing up against the wall, but it was everywhere, bouncing off everything. As suddenly as it happened it vanished, replaced by the most empty of silences. There was then a faint buzzing sound, and I saw as well as heard my cell door unlock. I wanted to believe it was the others arrived at last to take me away, but I couldn't be certain. I remained with my back up against the wall.
At last the door opened, and of all things possible a man's head appeared around the corner!
"Hello," he said in an English accent as he brought up a hand to wave his fingers in greeting, and he smiled at me. I was stunned beyond belief, which he seemed to take advantage of, "Lots of questions, I know, but there's a time and place for everything. I'll get you caught up later."
I remained where I was lying, stammering out a simple, "Who-"
"The Doctor will do," he replied as he came closer, waving some sort of metal wand at me, "Protein deficient, mild confusion, bruised puncture wound. You're peachy! Remember though? 'Time and place'? Not here."
"Adam, move your stupid rump before you get us all captured, again," I heard a more familiar voice yell at me, and a creme coated dual mane colored earth pony appeared in the doorway.
"Bon Bon," I blurted, and I scurried out of my cell to wrap her up in a big hug, "You have no idea how much I missed you."
"That's nice," she snapped, "but I don't think we want to be here any longer than we already have, right?"
"Where's Lyra," I asked, taking in each of my saviors' faces, overjoyed to see ponies I knew again.
"Present," Applejack exclaimed as she adjusted the sleeping mare lying across her back and shoulders, "Well, sort of: the 'nopony's home' kinda present. She's heavier than she looks too!"
I waved my hands back toward me as I approached her, "Let me."
"Dude, are you bleeding," Rainbow asked in alarm, "What did they do to you in there?"
"It's nothing," I replied as I pulled the unconscious musician into the crook of my arm, her head laying on my shoulder.
"Right then, all but one prisoner accounted for," the Doctor exclaimed, "Let's head back up to the Tardis. Ditzy's sure to meet us on the way."
The girls all ran ahead, each tailing after the Doctor, leaving me behind to wonder what in the world he was talking about. There was a groan near my feet, and I realized I was still standing in the presence of my now recovering guards like a total moron! "Hey, wait up," I yelled after them as I ran after in hot pursuit, Lyra's chin bouncing on my shoulder. Realizing that, I put my other hand to the back of her head, bracing it so she wouldn't accidentally hurt herself. "We'll make it out of this Lyra," I said in a murmur to her, "We're almost there: out of the dark."
Meanwhile, Ditzy Doo was up in the Materials facilities, putting together quite the stockpile of odds and ends. "Two ten meter coils of magically conductive metal," she said to herself as she placed them in a rolling bin, "Anode and cathode posts from a battery, check." She then gently set a cloth wrapped parcel into the cart, "One 108 millimeter lens, check. An iridium cylinder, check. A two gear rotary mechanism, i.e. a record player," here she struggled hoisting up a wooden phonogram with brass touches into the side closest to her, but her grip slipped and it fell into the cart, an audible cracking sound coming out of it. She winced, before saying in a worried, high pitched tone, "Sort of check! That should be it." She then put her shoulder against the cart and began pushing it towards the nearest exit, and grunted to herself, "Now let's...get this back...to...the Doctor!"
Because of the high shelves and close quarters of the room she did not see the pony rounding the corner of of the aisle until they had already stopped in front of the cart, and she yelped in surprise.
"Are you with the Elements," the voice asked.
Ditzy nervously rose off the ground as she waved her forehooves, "Wait, don't call the guards. We need these to save Equestria! The fate of the entire world is at stake! You have to let me go, please!"
There was a silent pause. Slowly a white unicorn with an untamed blue mane craned her neck around the cart. "You're sayin' et's the end of the world?"
"Basically," Ditzy replied with a worried smile that devolved quickly into a worried expression, "Wait, are you Vinyl Scratch?"
"Thank the stars and all the 'eavens," she exclaimed as her horn lit up and she began to push the cart forward, "I was beginnin' to wonder if you lot had forgotten about me! Come on then! Et's your cart and the end of the world! 'Elp me push, damn it!"
Having forgot herself for a moment, Ditzy frantically flew to her side to contribute her own muscle, "Right! Um, I'm Ditzy, by the way. Ditzy Doo."
"Pleasure," Vinyl replied curtly as a bead of sweat traveled down the side of her face, "Ere's to 'oping we make it out of 'ere in one piece!"
Magical sparks arced through the air, vaporizing as they came in contact with the floor. A unicorn soldier was burning through the thick material of the metal hatch leading out of the Floor, his vision protected and obscured by a welder's hood.
"Once that door is down head for the nearest PPE station for thick earmuffs," Bunsen Burner yelled a little louder than usual due to his and his troops partial deafness, "After that check on the status of our various detainees: the human, Mad Adder, everything." He then set about checking on the still incapacitated soldiers, providing a few rounds of First Aid himself as best he could with the other medically trained ponies. Once that was done he was drawn back to the human's transport, the blue box. His ever-present frown deepened as he looked it up and down, "No teleportation...and no weapons-fire."
"I'm starting to wish we hadn't been so zealous in our security measures," Lieutenant Swiftfeet said as he once again came to his superior's side.
"Too true," Bunsen replied, "The walls are lead meshed and concrete, too thick to be breached, and my office's glass windows are shatter-resistant. This is the sort of situation I would never have predicted. What do you make of our invader's 'carriage'?"
The Lieutenant looked over the box again and thought back through the last few minutes. "Some sort of shielding prevents harm to the passengers, probably within a limited field since they didn't leave their position until after we were dealt with. It materialized right through the wall to get here, so it's able to shift straight through solid matter, and unless this is the most dull colored clown car in the world it has to be bigger-"
"-On the inside, yes," Bunsen replied as he tapped his hoof to his chin, "And not with a trace of magic."
"I suppose that's somewhat significant," the pegasus said as he ruffled his wings, "but all the same not too surprising."
"Do you understand what this means though," he asked as he turned to his subordinate and pointed at the box, "This not only equals but surpasses our current thaumaturgical achievements! Shielding is doable, passing through material is beyond but the elite, and the rest? Princess Luna only just recently achieved bending space to be filled with larger objects when she reacquired her old powers. If only an alicorn is capable of dimensional phasing, what other secrets does this box hold: what terrors?"
"They did only use non-lethal weapons," the Lieutenant said slowly, "and it is the Elements with this 'Doctor'. Can we at least make certain that what they've said is false? Why don't we send out a bulletin to the weather teams in around the Everfree, have them do a sweep for any unusual activity?"
Bunsen Burner thought to himself quietly for a few moments, a grimace occasionally appearing on his face as he weighed what he meant to do versus what seemed feasible. "Send the message, but also send a tactical team back to Ponyville," he pronounced, then glanced at his subordinate, "I want you heading up this mission, so select our best. I'll remain here to try and put our defensive plans back on course. The way things are going I might have to make an Appeal to Heaven."
The Lieutenant's eyebrow arched, "You think it's that serious?"
"They took us all down with a little bit of noise," he said grimly, "We are hopelessly outmatched if we keep our most potent pieces off the board."
"Would they agree to it though? There hasn't been an alicorn on the battlefield in over six centuries."
"With this," Bunsen walked up to the blue box and gently tapped with his hoof, "We might convince them."
Hooves and shoes clattered up the stairs in unison as we made our way up to the last available floor.
"Alright," I said with a small gasp, slightly winded from the weight of carrying Lyra and running full tilt up four flights, "Where do we go from here?"
"Where's the room with the glass panels," the Doctor asked in turn as he looked to Twilight.
She pointed just down the hall, "It's not far: it's Bunsen Burner's office."
"Doctor," I heard a female voice call out from the floor below us, and I looked over the edge of the railing nearest me: a grey pegasus was trying to push a pretty big cart towards the flight up, and accompanying her was-
"Vinyl," I blurted out, and she looked up at me.
"E.T," she shouted back with a smile.
"What are you doing here," I asked.
She shrugged, then realized she was still wearing a labcoat, and promptly started ripping it off, buttons flying in all directions, "Oh, you know. Got mah business raided 'coza you; then they took all my stuff an' me to boot!" My eyes grew wide and my mouth hung open slightly. I was about to apologize, but she cut me off, "Nah, don't worry 'bout et! 'Anyone's to blame it's the head spook and his mooks!"
"What about your music? Your research?"
Twilight reached out with her magic and slowly lifted the cart up and over the railing beside us, while the two newest members of our company trotted up the stairs to meet us.
"Don't worry about et," she said as she came up to me, giving me a light sock on the thigh, "Let's focus on gettin' outta 'ere first, yeah?"
"Right," I said with a wince: she'd hit my bruised leg.
"Oh bollocks," she muttered, "Sorry!"
"Why do we need back into the Director's office," Fluttershy asked as we made our way there, "Is there something special that we need there?"
"Yeah," the Doctor said as he took control of the chart, pushing it forward, "Our escape route! Lovely choice in record player by the way, Ditzy." He reached into the cart and brought up the brass bell, which had detached from the player's base, "It is a pity though that it has to die for us."
"So what's the plan," I asked.
"We play the part of distraction," he said as he brought the cart to a stop just outside the Director's Office, "While Twilight secures our escape."
"Wait, excuse me," Twilight exclaimed, but the Doctor turned to her and put up his hands to explain, "The glass isn't shielded in this room. You can teleport down to the Tardis and bring her to us, all I've got to do is give you a quick how-to on controlling her."
Rainbow Dash audibly snorted, "Yeah."
"With what we saw Ah'm not sure if you're the right teacher fer flyin' lessons," Applejack said bluntly.
"Oi," he exclaimed in offense before he turned back to Twilight, "I just need to connect with you via a psychic link; easy, nothing to worry about!"
Twilight glanced around at the others and I before looking back at the Doctor, "We don't have any other options I guess: half a chance is better than none!"
The spiky haired man put his splayed fingers gently against her face, and her eyes nervously glanced at each hand before focusing back on him. "Hold tight," he murmured, before he closed his eyes.
Twilight's pupils dilated as compressed information was fed directly into her brain from his, the exact instructions beamed into her subconscious mind. "I-Incredible," she exclaimed in wonder as she looked deeper into each step, wanting more knowledge.
"Ahahah," he said as he drew his hands away, "I'd normally be all for higher learning but trying to understand multi-dimensional engineering is a little beyond you. Did you get all that?"
Twilight's eyes were still wide in amazement at what she had processed, but she slowly refocused on him and nodded, "Yeah."
"Good," he said quietly, and then he stood up, "Now, distraction time! Adam, front and center!"
My eyes grew wide, and I glanced around in surprise and panic, "Wait, what?"
"We've got activity up in the Director's Office," a soldier blurted out across the floor as he flapped his wings and rose up.
Bunsen Burner and Lieutenant Swiftfeet both whirled around and looked up. "What in the-" Bunsen blurted as he now saw that his detainee was slapping his open palms against the glass to get everypony's attention: it was working. All eyes were turning now to the spectacle above. After he seemed to have everypony's attention he then turned his back on them and began to rub his backend directly against the glass back and forth. He then turned to look at them with a smirk and yelled at them silently through the soundproof glass, "You like that?"
Quite a few ponies looked at the bizarre spectacle with confused expressions, some even with disgust. Bunsen was more in the confused category than anything. "Why is he even doing that," he asked more to himself than others, "Why would they suddenly want our attention, unless-" He froze, and it was in his silent moment that he saw the magical flash out of the corner of his eye and heard the the unique sound of a teleportation spell. "-it was to draw it away from something else! I'm a fool," he said loudly as he turned to see Twilight slip into the now unlocked box. He ran back to the box and began to bang his hoof on it thunderously. "Open the door, Ms. Sparkle," he said in a raised voice, but there was no response.
Suddenly the foglight atop the box began to flash and a distinctive roar filled the air, VroOOOm. VroOOOm. VroOOOm. This time, however, the box began to fade from the spot it had just been located in, vanishing into thin air. Furious, Bunsen Burner turned to look up to his office to find the human slapping his backend and jogging away from his line of sight.
"Get up there," he roared to everypony who could hear him, "Melt the glass! Blast it to atoms! Teleport in! Just keep them here!"
The unicorn welder had just finished cutting through the large metal door to get out, and he punched the cut-out portion of it clear with his magic, allowing earth pony soldiers to rumble through. Others were firing lasers up at a focused point in the glass, stepping clear of the now soupy material dripping down on them from the rapidly forming hole. A braver pegasus than most flew through the still tiny crack to find that the last of the invaders, the 'Doctor' fellow, was the last into the blue box, now situated in the middle of the office. The man gave him a sarcastic salute and a smile before stepping inside. The light atop the box once again strobed, and the box faded away, vanishing into the ether.
It was a few minutes later that the Director and his Lieutenant arrived in the room to survey the damage they had ordered be inflicted. A few points of magical scorching and mage's fire were burning in the ceiling, with molten glass dripping down both into and out of the office, some of which was now burning through the carpet. Sparks fell from the ceiling light above.
In a low, bitter voice Bunsen told his subordinate, "Get this cleaned up."
"Of course, sir," he said with a nod. Before the old stallion left the room he spoke up, "What do we do now sir?"
"Have the emergency status cleared and our researchers returned to their projects, then do the security sweep as we discussed." Bunsen's eyes narrowed, "This was a defeat, undoubtedly, but that will not stop us from protecting our own and safeguarding this nation." He then spoke over his shoulder as he left the room, "Have me notified when you leave for Ponyville; I'm seeing to our illustrious leaders being apprised of the newest developments."