The Adventures of Doctor Whooves: Series 1

by Time Pony Victorious

The Fury of a Time Lord

The TARDIS landed. It materialized back on the hill, as if it never left, with its customary lyrical whooshing and dull, metallic thud. It looked practically untouched, saved for its BAD WOLF message which had been dutifully erased and replaced by its original text.

The doors opened and out stepped the enigmatic pony. They regarded the volcano with a mild interest, smoke plumed and blossomed over the top and the ground rumbled as it prepared for a violent eruption. “A silly plot,” the pony remarked as it shut the doors behind them. “Simple, by the Doctor’s standards. Even I couldn’t believe the choice he made when it came to this place.”

Looking over the green plains and rolling golden hills, the pony almost bared a resemblance to a nostalgic smile, as if they were remembering the first time they saw this wondrous place. “To see this world burn… Well, it isn’t like the Doctor isn’t used to that.”

Turning around, they patted the TARDIS doors fondly, to the time capsule dismay. “I’ll see you soon, Old Girl. Take care of the Doctor for me, oh, and don’t tell him about me. We can’t spoil it for him, not yet.”

Dark smoke rolled off the pony’s legs and toward the immoveable TARDIS, surrounding the machine and perfectly encapsulating it. After a few moments, the smoke dissipated, along with the pony and any evidence that they had been there at all.

All that remained was a cold, evil whisper in the wind and the foreboding darkness of the implications of what one could do with a powerful time machine for an hour…

The Doctor ran his sonic screwdriver over the capsules, growling as he psychically scrutinized the readings. This wasn’t good. The Cybermen were absolutely top-of-the-line. That was… the Doctor didn’t want to say impossible, because clearly he had been proven wrong multiple times today alone.

“Doctor, what are Cybermen?” Fluttershy asked, nervously trailing behind the Time Pony as he continued to scan.

“Imagine the most heartless, ruthless, evil force that never sleeps, never stops, never doubts,” the Doctor answered distractingly.

“Okay.”

“Now forget that, the Cybermen are lightyears worse.” He took a look at his sonic and scowled at the readings. “This isn’t right. Cybermen shouldn’t even exist in this universe! You lot don’t even know what humans are.”

“Maybe it followed you?”

The Doctor ran over to a control panel and automatically began hacking it, well, not hacking per se more like violently disassembling the innards of this machine meticulously and ruthlessly. “They’ve been here for centuries, eons, even. What’re they waiting for? Ugh, look at this, even the controls were designed for ponies not humans.”

“Doctor,” Fluttershy said. “You said you fell into this universe, what if—“

“I’ve considered that,” he interrupted. “But even still, there’s no way these Cybermen could’ve been here for eons without my noticing.”

“Maybe whoever left you that message wanted you to find them?” Fluttershy suggested.

The Doctor paused, taking in the pegasus’s words and considered them really hard this time.

Whoever had the technology to leave the Doctor messages hidden in time, to not only encounter a Dalek but kill it and decapitate it, wouldn’t bother with Cybermen and Cyberanimals. After all the only one capable of doing all of that is a Time Lord.

The Doctor racked his mind, trying to answer all of these questions that popped in his head. Who could do that? Why would they? How on earth are they doing it? Was it a game? That’s what it felt like, it felt like something was tugging him by the ear, throwing him into trouble for the sake of it, as if trying to send a message…

I could kill you now, but where would the fun in that be?

“Right, right!” the Doctor said, pacing around nervously, trying to focus on one thing. The problem at hand. “We’ve got about a hundred Cybermen at the base of a dormant volcano now fashioned into a TARDIS with an army of Cyberanimals all primed to time travel at the expense of this planet.”

The ceiling overhead rumbled, shaking the ground so hard that Fluttershy struggled to stay on her hooves but the Doctor kept his balance. He casually checked his watch, noting the time. “In about ten minutes. If they manage to succeed they’ll have a perfect army of Cybermen to wreak chaos on this unsuspecting universe.”

“What’s ten minutes?” Fluttershy asked.

The Doctor turned and gave her a silly, childish smile. “Volcano day!”

They ran around the room which was now covered in a green glow. The Cybermen containers began to glow more intensely and beeping now echoed throughout the room, but the Doctor didn’t seem particularly worried, he ran around, scanning various pieces of equipment and working on random consoles.

Fluttershy followed him, trying to ignore the pain in her wings as it got worse and worse as time passed. It seemed that the paste the Doctor applied earlier was beginning to wear off, that didn’t help Fluttershy’s already frayed nerves.

“Doctor, what’s that noise?” she finally asked.

The Doctor looked up from his console and frowned as if he finally noticed those warning sounds. “The Cybermen are awakening,” he answered. “They’re probably going to capture and force me to pilot their TARDIS. When I refuse, they’ll force me into a Cyber suit and have me lead their army to conquer the universe.”

“Oh, okay,” she said, nodding in understanding. “So, how are we stopping them?”

The Doctor flashed a brilliant smile as he pulled out his sonic screwdriver. “Why, waking them up of course!”

He activated his sonic and the green lights faded into blood-red hues that flooded the place. The light washed over the Doctor’s face and Fluttershy shuddered, he looked like a ghost in this light. The pods became decompressing all at once, the sound of compressed air hissing out a hundredfold filled the air, reminding Fluttershy of angry snakes.

Then they opened.

The pods opened at the same time, folding upward as every Cyberman lit up and coldly regarded the Doctor. Fluttershy held her breath as she stood behind the Time Pony who grinned confidently at the Cybermen. They were incredibly taller than the Doctor, he only came up to their stomach, but he still regarded them as if he had the stature of a general.

“WARNING: TIME LORD DESIGNATE: THE DOCTOR, HAS INFILTRATED COMMAND CENTER,” one of the Cybermen reported.

The Doctor guffawed walking around the Cybermen rank fearlessly. “You just getting that now, tin-brain? I tell you, you lot haven’t gotten any smarter since the last time I met you. Well, even Handles had his moments now and then, but taking refuge in a volcano? Controlling the local wildlife? Cowardly!”

The Cybermen watched impassively as the Doctor walked circles around them, ranting and raving like he owned the place. He was so convincing that Fluttershy had to remind herself that he wasn’t in charge of them.

“Then again…” his voice dropped and became freezing cold. “Cybermen were always cowards… That’s why I beat you time and time again, eh? You lot know the drill by now! I give you a chance to surrender, you lot don’t take it, I send your collective posteriors back to the nursery and I’m home in time for tea. So if you want a warning… this is it. Get off this planet and I might leave you in one piece, whaddya say?”

The Cybermen stood as statuesque as ever, so still and impassive that Fluttershy wasn’t even sure if they were listening. The only indication she had were their glowing blue eyes which blinked rapidly, as if they were thinking.

“YOU ARE INCORRECT,” one of them answered.

The Doctor’s confident expression fell, replaced by one of absolute confusion. “Eh?”

“YOU ARE INCORRECT,” it repeated. “THE CYBERNETICS INSTALLED IN THE NATIVE WILDLIFE IS NOT OF CYBERMEN DESIGN.”

For what felt like the hundredth time today, the Doctor felt like he was dipped in ice-water. He tried to maintain a calm demeanor, but his big, expressive eyes betrayed him. “What do you mean? The cybernetics, they’re crude but they’re definitely Cybermen. Who else…”

“THE CYBER-LEGION HAVE BEEN DORMANT FOR CENTURIES,” it continued. “DIAGNOSTICS AND REPAIRS WERE REQUIRED. WE WERE ACTIVATED TOO EARLY.”

The Doctor took a step back, staggering as if he had been hit, and Fluttershy quickly got behind him as if getting behind cover. The Cybermen became more active, taking a single step forward and outstretching their arms forward as if to shoot something.

But that’s ridiculous, Fluttershy thought, they don’t have any weapons—

With a delightful pop, weapons protruded from the Cybermen’s arms and pointed at the pony duo.

“THE DOCTOR WILL BE DELETED,” the Cyberman (the leader, probably) said. “THE PLANET WILL BE ASSIMILATED.”

“How did you get here?!” the Doctor suddenly demanded. “You’re in different universe, after all. Not even her strongest ship could handle a flight here!”

The Cybermen paused as if considering the question. Fluttershy thanked Celestia for their hyper-logical minds that bent them to answer every question the Doctor posed. Or perhaps, they respected him enough to answer?

Again a ridiculous thought, but Fluttershy couldn’t help but consider that as the truth. Cybermen don’t feel emotions, they don’t feel anything, according to the Doctor, no way they could have respect for something.

“EMERGENCY TEMPORAL SHIFT,” the Cyberman answered. “THE SIEGE OF TRENZALORE LEFT THE LEGION SCATTERED. YOU THREW OUR CYBERSHIPS INTO A SPATIAL FLUX.”

The way they emphasized the fact that it was the Doctor who defeated them sounded a lot like contempt. “OUR SHIPS CRASHED HERE, WHERE REPAIRS COULD BE MADE.”

“THEN YOU ACTIVATED US,” another Cyberman remarked. “THE DOCTOR: PREDATOR, ONCOMING STORM, DESTROYER OF WORLDS, THE VALEYARD, THE BEAST—“

“Yeah, yeah,” the Doctor interrupted with an anger glint in his eyes. “We’ll be here all night if you rattle off my titles. But here’s the thing! If you lot are really the same Cybermen I faced on Trenzalore then you should know a lot better than to try to kill me.”

The Cybermen didn’t say anything, a modicum of hesitation, and kept their weapons trained on the Doctor. Fluttershy thought they were simply waiting for an order to fire but she realized they were scared of him. Scared of the seemingly innocent pony with a madcap grin and golden eyes.

Fluttershy wondered if she should be afraid as well.

“Because I remember you lot,” he continued. “You tried to Gravity Bomb Christmas! Even for you lot, you couldn’t bypass the technology barrier…”

“Doctor…” Fluttershy whispered. “What’s the plan?”

“Momentai, Fluttershy,” the Doctor whispered back. “I’ve got this.”

“SCANNERS INDICATE YOU ARE UNARMED,” the Cyberleader relayed. “ELEVATED HEARTRATE FROM THE FEMALE INDICATES YOU LACK THE RESOURCES FOR ANY CONTINGENCY. YOU ARE TRAPPED.”

“Trapped?” the Doctor repeated incredulously. “Ohoh, if there’s one thing you don’t not want me in, it’s a trap. Because that’s when I get really… dangerous.”

The Doctor raised his sonic screwdriver and it buzzed to life. The walls of the barracks exploded with such force it threw the Cybermen off their feet. The Doctor wrapped his leg around Fluttershy’s shoulder and pulled her toward the battalion as the Cyberanimals invaded.

The ensuing chaos was more than enough for the ponies to get away. The Cyberanimals certainly lived up to their independence as they attacked the Cybermen with an array of weaponry and animalistic instinct. The Cybermen rallied back, firing off volleys of energy bolts at the animal army, instantly disabling them with a glancing shot.

They ran through the cavern, back where they came from. They ran so much and so hard Fluttershy’s legs felt like jelly, her lungs felt like they were withering up. Even as a pegasus, she was fundamentally built differently than the other ponies, larger lung reserve, lighter skeletal frame, strong upper body, but she was struggling to keep up with the Doctor.

He ran as if he had been doing so for centuries, without breaking a sweat. The two continued their path into the original cave where the duplicate TARDIS was. This time around, it was perfectly empty.

“Thick lot,” berated the Doctor with a tsk. “Deploying every solider they’ve got to recover me, they’re never smart enough to leave a guard or two behind.”

“Doctor, don’t you think we have problems of our own?” Fluttershy asked.

“Of course!” the Doctor smiled as he ran around the now-completed TARDIS console. He flicked switches and threw levers which did its job properly as everything began to light up and the ground underneath them began to rumble.

“It’s based off my TARDIS,” the Doctor mumbled as he continued working. “That’s troubling.”

“Doctor, what are we going to do?” Fluttershy asked.

“If we leave this place unabated, the Cybermen will be able to deploy across the universe in this TARDIS,” the Doctor explained. “Nothing will be safe with them hanging around and I don’t exactly have the resources to stop them except—“

“DELETE!” An energy bolt ricocheted off the console, nearly catching the Doctor by the shoulder. Fluttershy yelped as she ducked under the console, the Doctor growled as he brandished his sonic and rolled to the right, dodging another energy bolt.

He rolled to his hooves and aimed his sonic at the Cyberman. It whirred to life and the Cybermen stiffened, screaming in its monotone voice, as streaks of blue electricity arced off its body. The Doctor ran up to the Cyberman as it was stunned and bucked it off its feet. Pressing the sonic to the Cyberman’s head, he activated it and the robot convulsed… then went still.

The Doctor stood up and adjusted his bowtie. “Whew, now where were we?”

“Impending doom,” Fluttershy suggested.

“Right!” the Doctor ran back up to the console and scowled. “Blasted Cyberman!” he cursed, bucking the console. “He’s disabled the shields, lucky shot…”

“So now what?”

The Doctor paced around, his expression perfectly anguished as he ran his hoof through his mane. He ran through the hundreds of strategies popping up in his mind to save the day. Nothing!

“We need to stop the Cyberanimals,” the Doctor said. “I don’t think my sonic will do anything this time around, they’ll have upgraded their defense protocols… Have you got anything to stop animals, you’re the expert, Fluttershy.”

Fluttershy stiffened and rubbed her hooves nervously. “Um, w-well…” She moved her mane in front of her face and shyly hid behind it.

“Fluttershy,” the Doctor said firmly, making the pegasus jump. “If you have anything that can stop the animals, even for a little bit, I need to know.”

Fluttershy bit her lips and blinked rapidly to stop the tears from coming. “W-well, I can do something I call the Stare on them.”

The Doctor raised an eyebrow. “On normal animals it intimidates them to stop moving for a moment, like a defense mechanism. It works on nearly every animal, but I don’t know if it’ll work on—“

“Try it,” the Doctor said as he ran around the console and began working. “Stop them for a minute, two tops. I’ll keep the Cybermen busy.”

“B-but, I don’t like doing it. It makes me feel like such a meanie…”

“You’ll have to, Fluttershy,” the Doctor said, not looking up from the console. “It’s either this, or we both  die in a fiery blaze.”
Fluttershy stayed quiet for a few seconds. “Fluttershy!”

“I-I can’t, Doctor. Please, I’ll do anything else—“

BOOM!

The entire room shook as a massive explosion rocked the southern wall. Fluttershy was nearly thrown off balance and she yelped a more explosions and energy bolts sizzled and crackled against the ground. Cyberanimals marched inside, aiming their weapons at the ponies.

“Fluttershy!”

Fluttershy whimpered but she took flight and raced toward the army of Cyberanimals, dodged a few energy bolts, took a deep breath and focused all of her concentration on a single word.

STOP.

She opened her eyes and fixed her determined glare on the animals. A glare so intense and laser-like, it cut through the army like an energy bolt. Despite being more machine than animal, something primal deep inside their subconscious forced them to stop, drawn to Fluttershy’s Stare like moths to a flame. Something instinctive that caused them to lower their weapons as they stared slack-jawed at the pegasus… and began whimpering.

All of the Cyberanimals within Fluttershy’s scrutiny began whimpering and groveling, bowing their heads and giving her their best puppy-dog expression. Fluttershy’s heart felt like it was being torn apart.

“Just a little while longer!” the Doctor announced from the console. He had dismantled part of the console and began connecting and disconnecting wires together.

“Doctor!” Fluttershy cried, trying to not blink from the tears.

“Don’t blink!” he said. “Just a little… more. Ha!”

He connected two larger couplers together and the Cyberanimals twitched, sparks exploding from their cybernetic components. “Molto bene!”

The Cyberanimals twitched and collapsed on the ground, completely inert. Fluttershy stopped her Stare only to replace it with a shocked expression as she flew toward the animals and checked if they were okay. “Doctor, what did you do?!”

“Shut off their cyber parts of their brains,” he answered immediately. “Luckily they were hooked up to this console, perhaps using the volcano as an energy source for their cyber hive-mind. Very clever if a bit rudimentary, why didn’t they just use the Cybermen barracks below—“

“I meant will they be fine?” Fluttershy asked in a harsher tone than she thought she was capable of.

The Doctor gave her a grave expression, his old, sad eyes were cold as ice. “Honestly, I’m not sure. Maybe given enough time, but we’re running out of that…”

“So you just…”

“Given the circumstances, I did the best I could,” he defended with a growl. “Even if I hadn’t done it, the detonation process had already begun! There wasn’t any other choice!”

“DELETE, DELETE!” Another squad of Cybermen flooded into the room, firing energy bolts at the Doctor. He ducked behind the console, raised his sonic and aimed it at the squadron. His sonic activated the auxiliary doors, shutting them in front of the Cybermen.

The Doctor ran up to Fluttershy as she remained kneeling before the still animals. “We only have a few minutes, Fluttershy. We need to get going!”

Fluttershy looked up at the Doctor, her big green eyes were rimmed with tears, her upper lip trembled with fear. “I… want to go home,” she squeaked.

The Doctor’s expression fell, from his cold, soldier gaze to a comforting, sad one, as if he agreed with her with every single cell in his body. “Come on!”

He took her by the hoof and led her to the console. He sat her in front of the controls and continued working, Fluttershy remained there, mute and sad, while the Time Pony ran around throwing levers and pressing buttons.

“Your wish, my dear Fluttershy, is my command,” the Doctor said as he pressed a few more buttons.

“W-what?”

The Doctor looked up, his eyes so sad and heartbroken. “You shouldn’t be here. It’s my fault. I’m sending you back.”

“W-what, but—“

“No buts!” he interrupted. “You need to be safe, I swear, you won’t end up like the others. It’ll be different… it’ll be different.”

“W-what about you?!”

“I’m staying behind,” he answered gravely. “It’s the only way.”

“But Doctor—“

“Fluttershy, if you just listen!” Fluttershy looked at him and while she was distracted he threw a lever and a blue light washed over the pegasus. She disappeared from the volcano, transmatted… back on the Doctor’s TARDIS. “Ha! That’s how you do it!”

Fluttershy landed in the middle of the Doctor’s console room, scared and confused but absolutely certain on what she had to do next. She ran up to the time rotor, gently placing her hooves on the console, and gave the TARDIS those big sad eyes of hers.

“Please, help the Doctor…”

The Doctor dismantled the first Cybermen for its weapon. He removed his bowtie and tied the weapon around his foreleg with it, sonicking the cloth so it fashioned tight against his leg. Then he sonicked the weapon again, psychically linking his mind with it so it’d fire on his mental commands and tested the weapon by tensing his leg.

The weapon activated, powering up and glowing dark blue in the dim lighting. The Doctor managed a grim smile. “One Doctor against a few hundred Cybermen, poor odds for them.”

The door exploded outward and a dozen Cybermen began marching inside. The Doctor turned on his weapon to the highest setting and fired off a massive bolt of energy, so much so that the recoil knocked him off his hooves.

The energy bolt slammed into the first Cyberman and exploded, tendrils of electricity snaking around and hitting every other Cybermen. The Cybermen twitched from the blast and fell over. The Doctor got to his hooves and checked the energy output from his impromptu weapon.

“Pretty low,” he grumbled, thankfully it wasn’t depleted immediately. Without a stable energy source, this weapon has only a few shots left. He ran back up to the console and switched on the loudspeaker. “OI! Cybermen! You wanted a fight, and I’ll give you ONE HELL OF A FIGHT!”

Right outside the volcano were hundreds and hundreds of Cybermen, flying around the dormant mass, finding no other entrance than the top of the now thundering opening. The Doctor consulted the scanner by the console, more than half of the Cybermen forces were now jumping into the volcano opening, just as he planned.

He threw a lever, accelerating the volcano’s eruption process, with a triumphant cry. The volcano exploded, spewing lava upwards at a terrifying velocity. Hundreds of Cybermen were vaporized instantly at the raw power of this massive force of nature. The interior rumbled and exploded as magma poured in through the walls and floor, causing the Doctor to hop around nervously as he worked the controls.

Sweat completely covered his body in an instant and he began to feel woozy. He threw another lever and from the console spewed freezing air so cold that it froze the ground and cooled the console. Environmental controls, the Doctor noted, but it would only last for an instant.

The walls exploded more and the Doctor whirled around, aiming his energy weapon at the source and fired off a few shots. They collided with a few Cybermen but there were dozens more and the Doctor was running out of power. He aimed his weapon up and shot the ceiling above the Cybermen and it collapsed, magma and rock crashing on them, destroying them.

The Doctor looked at his weapon and grimaced, out of power. He took the weapon off his leg and tossed it aside, so much for shooting his way out. He ran to the console again. The Doctor had sabotaged the console, activating the volcano in a violent way so that the console room (which would’ve been protected from the insulating plates) was also flooded with magma.

He worked on the teleporter controls… but they failed. They went inactive as soon as the volcano erupted. The Doctor wasn’t surprised, this outcome was expected after all.

“One Doctor for the whole universe,” the Doctor remarked sadly, walking around the console solemnly. “I quite like that…”

The Time Pony stood in front of the console, looking out as the cavern around him began to collapse around him, magma pouring in everywhere and even beginning to melt through the environmental controls. The Doctor closed his eyes and smiled wearily, accepting this forlorn fate of his.

Trenzalore would never come for him.

…

Then that most wondrous noise cut through the collapsing volcano. The Doctor opened his eyes in shock as that beautiful Blue Box materialized to his left… like directly to his left. It materialized inside the volcano’s console, completely atomizing half of the spire. It landed with its customary thud and the Doctor could barely stop his wide smile from appearing.

The doors opened and Fluttershy stepped out and she looked mad. Her coat was pale and beaded with sweat, her eyes were puffy and red from crying and her mane was a complete mess. But her expression was downright murderous as she glared at the Doctor. Stomping toward him, the Doctor braced himself for a punch but it never came.

Fluttershy hugged the Doctor as tight as she could (and she knew how to hug, ouch!) sobbing into his neck. The Doctor stood there, shocked for a moment, then regained his wits and hugged her back. Fluttershy didn’t cease her crying, nuzzling into the Doctor’s fur, dampening it further, but he didn’t mind.

After a moment, she looked back up, her eyes still full of tears, and streaks of soot across her cheeks. “I-I thought you were—“

“I’m not,” he promised, smiling. “See, I’m fine. Now, we need to go!”

“Wait, what about the animals?”

The Doctor looked past Fluttershy to where the Cyberanimals were but there was nothing there. He brandished his sonic and activated it. “No signal,” he mumbled. “They might have escaped before anything happened, I’m not sure, but Fluttershy we need to go now!”

Fluttershy didn’t argue as the Doctor led her back in the TARDIS. The environment went from blistering heat to tranquil cool instantly as the Doctor ran up to the console and worked at the controls. Fluttershy was less than enthused, she weakly followed and reached the console just as the Doctor completed a revolution.

“Getting us out of here,” he said, keeping his eyes on the controls. “The TARDIS can handle volcanic eruption, but I’d rather not pull her out of the rubble… again.”

“Doctor, what about the animals?” Fluttershy asked sadly but as firmly as she managed. “What about the planet? What’s going to happen when this volcano finishes its eruption.”

The Doctor didn’t answer for a few seconds, he kept running around the TARDIS, throwing switches and pressing buttons, his expression solemn. “Doctor?!”

The Time Pony slammed his hooves on the console and scowled, still refusing to meet Fluttershy’s gaze. “The eruption is apocalyptic,” he answered grimly. “If the heat and ash doesn’t finish off the planet, the distraction atmospheric change will. Everything will be wiped out.”

Fluttershy took a step back, mute and stricken with grief. Tears fell from her face and her voice cracked as she whispered. “You can’t do anything?”

“There’s too much temporal interference,” the Doctor said. “I can’t mess with this planet’s timeline anymore, it’s too risky.”

“An entire world will be lost in ash,” she said back. “Isn’t that a risk?”

“Of course.” The Doctor looked up and stared at Fluttershy, his eyes were as cold as liquid nitrogen. “But the temporal risks are too great.”

“But you’re a Time Lord, shouldn’t you—“

“Don’t you think I want to?!” the Doctor snarled. “Of course I want to save them! But I can’t there are rules, laws of Time, that I can’t break, maybe bend but this time around my hooves are tied.”

Fluttershy couldn’t find the words to answer, the bubbling anger in her chest melted into heartbroken sadness. The Doctor took her silence as acceptance and began inputting the coordinates, keeping his glare on the Time Rotor for if he kept looking at Fluttershy his hearts would break again.

But suddenly, Flutterhy ran up to his side, grabbing his shoulders, desperately sobbing. “Save them, please.”

The Doctor didn’t answer, he didn’t even try to shrug Fluttershy off, he kept wordlessly working. “Please! You’re… the Doctor! We’re supposed to trust you, please, please… Please be the Doctor…”

Fluttershy tugged at him with all of her strength and she managed to make the Doctor look at her. Her sad, blue-green eyes bored into his cold, golden eyes…

The TARDIS slammed through the volcano walls, causing tons of magma to pour down from the cracks but she continued on unabated. The volcano kept rumbling, thundering so loudly it felt like the whole world was falling apart.

The Old Girl kept flying through the volcanos until it found the Cybermen barracks, nearly untouched from the violent eruptions. Once it had slammed into the barracks, however, magma spilled from the wound just as quickly. Violently and abruptly the TARDIS screeched to a halt in the middle of the barracks.

Cracks and holes appeared all throughout the room and magma poured in like a coursing river. The TARDIS doors opened and the Doctor ran out, now outfitted in a bright red environmental suit. He leapt from the TARDIS and touched on spot of ground that wasn’t engulfed by magma and looked around.

“The floor is made of lava,” the Doctor remarked as nearly every square inch of floor in the barracks was covered with magma. The only parts that weren’t were Cybermen containers and pieces of the ceiling that weren’t overwhelmed by the magma.
This will be fun.

Like a child playing an imaginative game at home, the Doctor leapt from rock to rock to Cyberman container avoiding the magma as much as possible. The environmental suit was rated for deep-space exploration and harsh inclement weather but being inside a volcano while it’s erupting is generally a bad idea regardless of how good your suit was.

Blisters were beginning to form on the Doctor’s body, he was now drenched in sweat, and his face burned like he had the world’s worst sunburn. But still, he ran toward the Cybermen console, miraculously untouched by the magma. As he reached it, he brandished his sonic screwdriver and aimed it at a set of pulsating green structures in the corner then to the console itself.

Klaxon alarms rang but they quickly died off from the intense heat. The Doctor laughed as he inputted a few more numbers and pressed a large red button. The rumbling only intensified, cracks appeared in the ground and from the outside they zigzagged up and down the face of the volcano, like it was being cut in half.

The Doctor prepared to run but the rumbling threw him off balance and he tripped, nearly falling into the magma but stopping just inches away. Unfortunately, during the imbalance, he dropped his sonic and it sizzled up in the magma. He cursed but got to his hooves and jumped his way back into the TARDIS.

The TARDIS doors burst open and the Doctor spilled inside, smoking and steaming so intensely it resembled a thick fog. He kicked the doors closed and coughed loudly. “Don’t touch!” he warned. “Very hot!”

Fluttershy remained by the console, watching the Doctor with concern. “Did you do it?” she asked tentatively. The Doctor rolled to his hooves and threw his helmet off, revealing a very sweaty, a very exhausted, Time Lord. He flashed Fluttershy a childish smile and jumped/skipped toward the console.

“Of course!” he answered. “Well, I did something, who knows if it’s the something that saved this world. Hopefully my calculations were correct...”

“How will we know if it worked?” she asked.

“Like this.” He threw a lever and the TARDIS jolted, the Time Rotor activating and the time machine took off.

The TARDIS materialized two-hundred fifty-thousand kilometers in the air, floating impassively in the lower atmosphere of Perciwing, otherwise known as the Garden. The volcano grumbled in the distant, a blood-red blot in the beautiful, green environment of the thick forests and plains.

Smoke plumed from the mouth of the volcano, spilling into the clouds and turning the sky into a sickening shade of black. Lava exploded, pouring down the volcano with terrifying speeds and overtaking the forests.

Within the TARDIS interior, the Doctor pulled the scanner toward Fluttershy and flicked it to a live feed of the volcano. “I’ve put the Cybermen cells (sort of like batteries for these lot) into overdrive and threw their retro-feeds directly into the volcano so their thermal-energy output becomes ten thousand percent!”

Fluttershy nodded, not sure what the Doctor was saying but he sounded so giddy and confident that she took that as a good sign. “The cells will reach maximum capacity in”—he consulted his watch – “Two minutes and will stop the volcanic eruption.”

“Okay… how?”

The Doctor furrowed his eyebrows and patted Fluttershy. “You might want to cover your ears.”

For a moment, the eruption continued as normally. Lava spewing out and explosions occurring inside the volcano. Then a blue light washed over the interior of the volcano. It shot out from the mouth and straight into the sky, like a massive beacon. Then the light faded.

The explosion rattled the planet to the very core. A second sun bloomed on top of the volcano as the shockwave ran for miles and miles, flattening trees and boiling lakes and rivers. The shockwave was so powerful, the TARDIS was shaken from it and the two inhabitants had to struggle to remain vertical.

Fluttershy felt the explosion in her gut, like her entire insides were turned to jelly. Then the world went silent, so silent that Fluttershy thought she was deaf but the humming of the TARDIS still rang in her ears. She looked at the scanner again which displayed static until the Doctor hit it and the volcano came into view again.

Well, it used to be a volcano.

The landmass was reduced to half its original size. It no longer reached the clouds, instead it jutted out pathetically from the earth. Once the smoke cleared enough, Fluttershy finally saw what the Doctor did. The top half of the volcano was completely sheared off, as if cut by a knife.

Smoke still puffed from the volcano but it was mostly from the Doctor’s explosion than the lava. Which speaking of which, had cooled at this point and hadn’t reached any points of civilization yet.

Fluttershy sighed in relief as she saw little dots in the scanner, animals, hundreds of animal, that were a few thousand kilometers away from the explosion began crawling out of the dirt and blinked, dazed, at the sun.

He had done it! Fluttershy let out a sob of relief and ran up to the Doctor, hugging him tightly. The Doctor, thankfully, had stripped his environmental suit to accommodate her hug, laughing gleefully. “We did it!”

“We did!”

The TARDIS materialized right outside Fluttershy’s home with a dull thud and stood there, ancient and forever as if it had always been out there. The doors creaked open and Fluttershy quietly stepped out, in mute awe at the fact that she had traveled all the way home in only minutes.

She had been given several commodities while on the TARDIS. The Doctor directed her to a personal room filled with flowers and plants and a large aquarium, which felt just as impossible as what she had done while in the Garden. Fluttershy took a bath and had a lovely dinner, the Doctor even mended her wing in a place called the Zero Room.

It was a comforting experience, but hadn’t done much to lessen the blow of what she had witnessed. Cyberanimals… Cybermen, that horrible volcano, the Doctor’s cold dismissal of an entire planet… Fluttershy shivered in spite of the warm summer breeze that blew through her wings.

The Doctor stepped out right behind Fluttershy, he had showered and cleaned up as well. He wore a simple thin black blazer and a dark blue bowtie. He didn’t look very scary but Fluttershy remembered his dark expression when he got really upset.

“Well, got you back on the first go, that’s always nice,” the Doctor remarked with a smile on his face. “Same day, you’ve only been gone a few hours. So nopony would know any better.”

Fluttershy turned and noticed the look the Doctor was giving her. The silent question, the one wondering how much she would tell her friends about what happened. Fluttershy cleared her throat and looked away.

“Thank you, Doctor,” she said calmly. “Besides all of the scary bits, our trip was… nice.”

The Doctor raised an eyebrow, either incredulous of Fluttershy’s calm demeanor or wondering if she was just lying to reassure him. “Sorry about that,” he said. “I hadn’t meant for any of that to happen. I’d understand if the idea of another trip wouldn’t appeal to you.”

Again, there was this unspoken question in his golden eyes. As if wondering what she’s going to do, and an underlying fear of Fluttershy actually deciding to quit this gig. Fluttershy looked at her hooves and swallowed the lump in her throat. “I’ll… think about it. Good night, Doctor.”

The Doctor stared at her for a few seconds not blinking then nodded. “Good night, Fluttershy.”

Fluttershy turned and entered the cottage, not waiting for the TARDIS to leave, and shut the door behind her. All of her little critters gathered up at the door, happy to greet their owner with warm hugs and kisses, but they were confused when Fluttershy slumped to the floor, all of the energy drained from her body.

She leaned against the door and covered her face with her forelegs and wings. Her critter friends surrounded her, squeaking in confusion and fear as Fluttershy let out a heart-wrenching sob. Angel Bunny approached Fluttershy from the right and gave her the biggest hug he was capable of as Fluttershy sobbed…

The Doctor circled the console, flicking switches and pressing buttons as he passed them. Unlike the crazed, inspired dance he does when piloting the TARDIS, he was calm, methodical and calculative as he consulted the scanner.

Gallifreyan words blinked to life on the display. The Doctor toggled a switch and the display changed to a grainy picture of a large Gallifreyan phrase signed with Twilight Sparkle’s cutie mark and the head of a Dalek. The Doctor scowled as he considered the question, the dreadful question he had been running from all of his lives.

Doctor Who?

He flicked another switch and a picture of Twilight Sparkle appeared on the screen. The Doctor glared at the picture like he was looking at a Dalek. “Twilight Sparkle… who are you?”