Twilight Sparkle had a smile on her face as she trotted along the roads of Ponyville. While much had happened in the last couple of months, things like Tirek, her duties as the princess of friendship, and the fiasco at Canterlot High, it felt good for things to finally be normal, well, as normal as things get in Ponyville anyways. There was still Twilight’s new castle, most of it still unexplored, but that would have to wait for another day, for now, she had full day planned out with her friends. As she made her way to Sugarcube corner, she made a mental checklist of the activities for the day. That would be the last thing to happen before the storm happened.
Storm was the best word to describe it; in fact it was the only word relatable! At the moment, the sky turned dark, and thunder could be heard from a distance. Twilight thought that at first, an unexpected storm was taking place. As soon as she thought that, she was immediately proven wrong when the sky started to rain meteors. While everypony else went into full-on panic mode, Twilight was in shock. Why was this happening, she thought to herself. It was impossible for this to be of natural occurrences, as far as she knew, there weren’t any meteor showers expected, especially none of this magnitude! This left only one other option; this was a spell, a powerful one at that. A spell of this extent could only be cast by an alicorn.
“WATCH OUT!!” a voice from afar cried out.
Suddenly, Twilight’s vision became blurred as she was pushed by an unseen figure. As they tumbled to the ground, she had a look at the culprit: he was a brown earth pony, with an hourglass for a cutie mark. “Time Turner,” Twilight scolded, “what was that for?”
“Well, excuse me for saving your life!” the earth pony replied.
“I-I had everything under control!” the alicorn lied, taking a look at where she previously stood, realizing Time Turner was right. Only a few feet away, a meteor was settled, parts of it still on fire from reentry. Had the earth pony not pushed her, just the heat alone from the meteor would have taken a number on her, or worse…
“Sure you did,” Time Turner continued, “and, another thing, please stop calling me Time Turner! Quite frankly I am starting to get really annoyed now!”
“Why? Isn’t that your name?”
Time Turner sighed, “Look I have a lot to tell you, and we only have a little time, you need to come with me right now!”
“Look, I know you just saved my life, and I sincerely thank you for that, but I can take care of myself. I need to see if my frie-“
Time Turner didn’t let Twilight finish, “Of course, it’s always you and your friends! Look, Twilight, I know that your care for your friends, you’re the princess of friendship! But this wasn’t supposed to happen!”
“Of course this wasn’t supposed to happen! I’ve studied astronomy for years, this is scientifically impossible!”
The earth pony sighed, “You don’t understand, how do I explain this, the hail of meteors literally should not have come down. Today should have been normal.”
Time Tuner motioned to Twilight to follow him. Curious as to what the earth pony had to say, she decided to follow him, for now. He went on to explain that the events that happened today would start a chain reaction of even more tragedies. He had come to Ponyville to find the source, and in a way, he did.
“If you knew this was going to happen, why didn’t you warn anypony?”
“If I did, who knows what would have happened! For all we know, even worse things could have happened! Whatever this is, it expands throughout the entire universe. I came here because I need to find out who is doing this, the fact that this all starts in Equestria is so far the only thing I know about all of this is that it starts here!”
By the time the earth pony finished talking, they arrived at the edge of the Everfree forest. Twilight wondered what they were doing there, when Time Turner produced what seemed to look like a silver rod. When he activated it, a faint buzzing nose could be heard, along with the illumination of a blue light. Suddenly, a fairly sized wooden cabin materialized in front of the earth pony.
She was flabbergasted, “Wha- how did you do that!”
Time Turner responded with a sly grin in his face, “Well, not everyone has magic you Twilight, I just had to improvise.” He entered the cabin; Twilight went after him.
Inside was an incalculable amount of information. All around the alicorn, data was being processed, various machined hummed, giving the occasional noise or two. What little space that was not taken by machines was plastered with charts, some in a language unknown to Twilight. To gather all these figures, she thought to herself, it would have taken a long time, even for her. Maybe this crazy earth pony wasn’t so crazy after all.
“Chameleon circuitry,” Time Turner said, breaking Twilight’s thoughts, “kept any stray pony from accidently getting in here. I thought that if I came here, before…the storm, maybe I could have stopped it, but here we are.”
His face conveyed a melancholy mood, Twilight saw that his emotions were genuine, that he wasn’t a mad pony, she saw a colt who tried his best, but failed, something that she could relate. But his eyes…they were the eyes of a pony who’s seen too much suffering, the only time she saw those eyes until this point were the rare occasions when she caught Princess Celestia off guard. Those eyes were old, too old for him.
“Who are you?” Twilight asked, feeling that this question was long overdue.
The earth pony trotted towards a blue box that she hadn’t noticed until now. The words POLICE BOX glowed, though Twilight had no clue what those words meant.
“I'm the Doctor,” he said, looking at the glowing box, and then back at her, “I'm a Time Lord. I'm from the planet Gallifrey in the constellation of Kasterborous. I'm nine hundred and one years old, and I’m going to stop the destruction of life as we know it, but I need your help, I need you to come with me Twilight.”
Twilight was alarmed, but as she put the pieces together, it all started to make sense. The name Time Turner, he was a…she forgot what he said, Time Lord, or something similar. It would explain his cutie mark, and everything time related he did at Ponyville. It also explained whenever she saw him; he always seemed to be in a mind of his own, muttering things to himself. The only questions she had in mind now were why and how.
“Truth is Twilight, you are smart,” the Time Lord said, “well, not as smart as me, but you get the point.” If it weren’t for their current situation, she would have found an opportunity for a rebuttal, but for now that would have to wait for later. “What I’m trying to say is, with everything you’ve read, you know more about Equestria then probably anyone. I haven’t been here for long, so I’ve only read what I could find. If we’re going to stop the thing that did this, I need to know at the very least what we’re up against. So far I’ve come up with nothing, and that’s very rare. With your talents, we have a fighting chance. So what do you say? Will you come with me?”
“What you’re saying is inspiring,” Twilight responded, desperately trying to get back to reality. “But if you haven’t noticed, this is all we have, how are we going to stop…whatever this thing is, if the only data we have is in here!”
The Doctor sighed, putting a hoof to his head, “And here I thought that we were having a moment!” He thumped the wooden box labeled POLICE, “You see this, she’s my TARIDS, short for Time and Relative Dimensions in space. How did you think I got here? My point is, as the name says, the Tardis can move anywhere in space and time. Once we stop the pony that did this, none of this would have ever happened, gone just like that. And I know that you’re feeling a bit reluctant, with you just being pronounced princess of friendship and all, you don’t want to abandon your subjects. I assume you know the basics of time travel, even though Equestiankind hasn’t achieved it yet…if we leave, it would be like if you never left!”
He was right, to a point; she was worried about her role as the princess of friendship, but not as much as her friends. “This…this is a lot to take in Ti- I mean Doctor, but I don’t think I can help you. From the start, my friends have always been with me, and I don’t feel-“
The Time Lord sighed, “And here I thought we were having a moment!” He looked at the blue box, giving a “Why do I even bother?” look at it, then turned back to Twilight, “I never said you couldn’t bring your friends, in fact the more the merrier! Just don’t take too long retrieving them, if they’re still alive that is.”
The thought sickened Twilight, but the moment had been prepared for. In the days when she was alone, even from Spike, the alicorn thought of a spell, one similar to her fail-safe spell, only it would safely bring all of her friends to her. She never thought she would ever need to use it, so she stopped progress on the spell on a very early stage. The question wasn’t if it could be cast, but rather, would it work?
There was another problem though, one the Doctor seemingly hasn’t caught on to; if they were all to leave in the Tardis, how would they fit? The box seemed only big enough for two. It stumped Twilight how there could even be room for all the technology it must take to achieve time travel! When she mentioned this to the Doctor, he seemed confounded, if only for a second. Immediately after, he told Twilight just to “trust him.” She was sure there was something he wasn’t telling her, but for now, she wouldn’t think too hard on it, right now her main priority was casting her spell.
She trotted a few steps away from the Doctor and his box, she had to have a clear mind in order for this to work, and ever since she met the earth pony, she knew that there was no way that would happen if she stayed near him. Twilight exhaled, and began to concentrate, with enough effort, this might work. Mere seconds now felt like minutes as she put her all into the spell. With a grunt of effort, Twilight felt the spell beginning. Even with her eyes closed, she felt her horn glowing, pulsating with magic as the spell was being generating, a noise now beginning to drown out any other noise that she might have heard.
Finally, after what felt like hours for Twilight, the spell’s immense need for energy had been met. There was a brilliant flash of light, which, unfortunately for the Doctor, whom had been oblivious to Twilight’s spell casting until this moment, caught him off guard, letting out a cry of surprise as he was temporarily blinded.
Twilight heard several thuds and different variations of “Ouch!” along with “Huh?” and one, “I take a nap for ONE SECOND!!!!”. A smile formed in Twilight’s face, even though her eyes were closed, she knew her spell succeeded. When she opened her eyes however, she didn’t receive the warm welcome she was anticipating, nor expected.
It was true, by casting this spell, Twilight was being greedy, she took them away from their family, or anything else in that manner. When Twilight tried to explain herself, the Doctor cut in, “Well, a little warning next time before you blind me! Good! Your friends are here!”
“Hold on a minute Twilight,” Applejack said, breaking the ice between them, “Exactly what are you doing with Time Turner?”
Twilight began to explain, but once again, the Doctor cut her off, “I remember you, Applejack was it? Yes, the cider competition you had with the Flim-Flam brothers! I helped keep the time, and sabotaged their machine.” While saying this, he produced the same tool used to bring out the shed when Twilight first met him.
“What was that last part again, sugarcube?”
“Erm-nothing!” at this time, he put the metallic stick back into his tie.)
“I’m glad everypony is alright,” Twilight said glad that the Doctor didn’t interrupt her “I know that things seem bleak with the meteor storm, but-”
“You think that was bad!” Rainbow Dash abruptly spoke, interrupting Twilight yet again. “How long have you been in here with this creep? (She managed to get a brief “Oi!” from the Doctor.) Haven’t you noticed the massive army attacking us?”
“Army?” The Doctor and Twilight said in unison.
As if right on cue, a loud thud could be heard outside, as if somepony deliberately rammed into the roof. Immediately afterwards, the figure broke through, letting the sun into the dim cabin, momentarily blinding Twilight. At first glance, the solder didn't seem to impose much of a threat. Had her friends not have said that they were being invaded, Twilight would have thought him as one of the royal guards.
However, those are whereby similarities ended. While it's true that the invaders looked like guardsponies, they certainly didn't act like them. Baring thier fangs, the Doctor pulled out his metal device, the blue light flickered to life, creating a buzzing noise.
The guards trotted back a few steps, as if they were dazed by the light the stick produced. Thier image started to flicker, until thier form became translucent, all of them now the same purple color of thier armor.
"How...how did you do that??" Rarity asked.
"My sonic screwdriver," the Doctor replied, looking quite proud of himself, "nifty little thing isn't it? I'm getting off topic, we need to get going, everyone follow me into the Tardis!”
The earth pony turned around and headed towards the blue TARDIS box.
Rainbow Dash let out the obvious, "How are we all gonna fit there? And whats a Tardis!!!"
The doors to the Tardis opening, out popping the Doctor’s head, “Just get in!!”
With the ghost guards closing in on Twilight and there friends, they didn’t have much of a choice. However, she was in for a surprise as for when she entered, instead of the cramped space she was expecting within the relatively small box, there was an abundance of room. A green light emanated from the center of the surprisingly large room, that and the array of circles in the walls seemed to be the only source of light. The center of the room seemed to be a control panel of sorts, how it worked, Twilight had no clue, there were so many contraptions that even with all the time in the world, she doubted she could ever fully understand it. The most surprising part about all of this was that-
“It’s bigger on the inside!” Pinkie took the words from her thoughts. She then went on to
explain how this was like the balloons she uses: both were small at first then were huge later on. The Tardis… it kept on surprising Twilight, apparently it could travel trough time and space, and now it was bigger on the inside! The machine seemed as mysterious as the owner himself.
“So we locked ourselves in here,” Rainbow Dash said, cutting Twilight’s train of thought, “and now we are sitting ducks until those guard ponies bust in here!”
“Trust me Rainbow Dash,” the Doctor said, looking at his surroundings with a gleam of excitement in his eyes, as if he were a foal in a candy store. “There is no way they can get inside, I should know, the Romans, try as they might, couldn’t get inside here, I doubt those ponies can!”
“The what?”
“Never mind, the point is, we’re safe. And those guards, they weren’t normal.”
Twilight could already sense the sarcastic reply Rainbow Dash would soon come up with.
However, the Doctor continued before the pegasus could let loose, “When I used the sonic on them, (He then brought up the silver rod, which he seemingly got from nowhere.) They showed their true form. They weren't natural. Thier form was composed of solid light."
"How can somepony do that?" Rarity added in, "I've never seen anything like that!"
"Isn't that the question of the day? The light was being kept together by magic, doing that alone takes a toll on a unicorn. Then to have them go about destroying the town...that's something only an alicorn can do."
The Doctor's last words sent a shiver down Twilight's spine. While she had guessed it, there was now definite proof that an alicorn had caused this. The only unicorn that also had this much magical reserves was Starswirl the Bearded, but that was only under a numerous amount of circumstances. Besides, Starswirl was long gone by now, so there only was three culprits.
The Tardis shook, as if a small earthquake had started, throwing everypony off balance. When Applejack asked what was happening, the Doctor replied, "That's them trying to get in!"
He continued, "We have to go, now! Everypony sit down and hold on, except for you Twilight, you're going to help me fly her!"
"What!"
"You heard me right! Now get on here, it's simple really, just do as I say and we'll be fine!"
Twilight approached the console with a sense of uneasiness, looking at the various levers and gears, The Doctor's task seemed easier said then done. Thought Twilight tried to think positive, she had always wanted to time travel, and now here was the opportunity. Well, that was if the Doctor wasn't a psychotic pony who just made this Time Lord stuff up. She thought to herself, what's the worse that could happen?