//------------------------------//
// The Doctor 
// Story: Out of Time 
// by Lunarus Solaris Nexus 
//------------------------------//

	It wasn't hard to get to the edge of the forest. Nopony in that town would ever dare to get there unless escorted by soldiers to get to the Castle of the Two Sisters. Even then they were hesitant. He was getting a strange feeling of déjà vu. Unlike the first time he'd gone into the forest, he hung around the edge. But he did keep moving. Sitting still was something that he'd gotten use to around the same time. 
Things were just getting stranger and stranger by the second. Vince was dead! Right? He did die right? Yeah… he died. He knew for a fact he died… So why was he walking about Ponyville? It was him, he responded to his name, so why didn't he know who he was?
"I need some time to think. I guess this is the best place for peace a-"
"Hi Nexus!" a bubbly voice called to him.
He looked in its direction but only found nothing, until he looked up. A light gray pegasus with matching yellow eyes and mane. Like most ponies he'd met he remembered the cutie mark more than the face. Her mark was as bubbly as her personality but it was a wonder how she got it. The name was coming to him…..
"Not now Derpy, I've-" Nexus' head shot up in realization of what was going on. He spread his wings, throwing the cloak me made up and then throwing himself into the air and up to her level. "Wait, what'd you just say!?" he said grabbing her shoulders.
"Uh… Hi Nexus?" she said nervously as her right eye went lazy.
"You know who I am!?"
"Yes… I never forget a face, remember?"
"Oh thank you!" Nexus gripped her in the tightest bear hug he could give her. "Somepony that knows me!"
"Okay you're starting to scare me. Are you okay?"
"I'm a lot better now! Do you know what's going on?"
"Um, besides you being crazy, no I don't."
"Look, all I know is that nopony knows who I am and everything's… different."
"Different how?"
"Well aside from ponies not knowing who I am and my dead cousin's not dead. He also called the cops on me."
"How's that possible?"
"How the fuck am I suppose to know!?"
"Okay calm down Mr. Grumpy Legs. I remember you so there has to be a way to fix this."
Nexus was about to open his mouth to protest but realized that that was something he'd over looked when trying to wonder about this situation. "I guess."
"Alright." Derpy said with a smile seeing Nexus calming down. "So why don't we go to Princess Twilight's castle and find some answers?"
"Yeah… About that."
"You got chased out didn't you?"
"Kinda'." Nexus said nervously.
"Well done. I'd say you're the smartest dummy I've met but that's a lie."
"Wait so you know somepony that can help me?"
"Well I didn't say that…"
"But if he's smarter than I am that means he can help right?"
"Well I guess but he doesn't like unwanted guests."
"Please Derpy?" Nexus got down on his knees and put his fore legs together like he was praying. "I'm literally on my knees begging you. That's no small feat. I've lost my family and everything I know and love. Pleeeeeea-"
"Okay fine!" Derpy said slapping Nexus before he finished his extended please. "But I don't really know when he'll come back."
"What'd you mean? Can't you take me to his house or something?"
"It's… complicated. His house kind of moves."
"If it's a cloud I'll just fly. Airship's all the same."
"It's a bit more than that. But he does generally come around on even days."
"Even days? Is he OCD or something?"
"Just… Come on!" Derpy said grabbing his right foreleg while they were still airborne. "You can ask all your questions over lunch."
"I'm not hungry." Nexus protested.
"I don't care! Come on already!"



Lunch was good. Muffins with a hayburger. Unfortunately for Nexus it was an odd day. According to Derpy, she'd just gotten back from an adventure yesterday and that he'd give her some down time afterwards. If it was as constant as she said it was then he wouldn't have to wait long. But he was completely wrong. No sign of this friend of hers for the past two days. All he knew about him was that he was not normal. Nexus was no stranger to odd ponies but Derpy kept saying he was like nothing he'd ever seen. And he's had tea with Discord. 
In the mean time, Nexus was doing everything he could in her humble home on the ground. It was a pain for Nexus not to leave at all. She had a treadmill so he could run for a while and the rest of his cardio with push-ups and such. He was in the middle of another massive set of push-ups in the late afternoon when Derpy came home from her mail rout. She set her mail satchel on her couch and stared with wondering eyes.
"How many push-ups can you even do?" she asked stepping into the kitchen for her afternoon tea.
"All of them if that helps you out any." Nexus said looking straight at the floor.
"Why do you even bother?" she asked dipping her tea bag into the pot. "Your legs can't get stronger right?"
"The muscles that are connected to the legs still get the work." Nexus let out a few pants to keep the blood flowing. "They just don't get as tired. Meaning I can do more."
"I still don’t understand why you do this." she then poured herself a cup and brought the tray in with a second cup. "You want any?"
"I'm not a massive fan of hot tea. got any ice tea?"
"Nope. Take it or leave it pall."
"I'll leave it then." Nexus let out a sigh as he finished his final set for the day.
As he stood up and let out a loud wheezing sigh. Wait? He'd heard that noise before. He couldn't quite place it but it sounded like a steam prop engine failing to start up coming from the back yard. Derpy perked up and put her tea on the table as she ran in the direction of the noise. Nexus left trotted after her just as the noise stopped with a deep resonating *DONG*. In the middle of her back yard, that he'd seen enough to know it wasn't supposed to be there, was a large blue phone booth. The lit up sign on top read Police Public Call Box. 
The front left door opened and a light brown head with a brown mane in a blown back style. He looked young but something was off. Nexus watched from the backdoor for now. The pony looked familiar but he couldn't quite put his finger on it. 
"Ditzy!" he said with a thick Hoofington accent. The two hugged and he spun her around. "It's been too long!"
"It's been two days Doctor."
"Well for you maybe." he looked down at a watch on his wrist and knit his brow. "Oooo. I'm not messing with Tea Time am I?"
"Not at all Doctor."
"Well then, off we go!" the doctor was about to hop back into the phone booth when he notice Nexus observing from the door. "Oh, you didn't tell me you had company Ditzy. You mind introducing us?"
Nexus quickly trotter to the door and shut it behind him. "Oh uh… Doctor, this is-"
"Lunarus Nexus. The world's first perfection of prosthetic." he said making his way towards Nexus. "Took the world by absolute storm after the Changeling War with those beautiful legs and even prevented a war without bloodshed." he extended his right hoof towards him with a smile. "I'm the Doctor."
Now he remembered him. He was playing chess with Discord that one time. Nexus shook his hoof with knit brow. Derpy didn't look too happy to have the doctor interrupt her. 
"This is The Doctor." Derpy said finishing her interrupted introduction. Nexus noticed the Doctor's mostly star struck gaze turn serious in an instant. "He needs your help Doctor."
"I can see that. Come on then," he said letting go of Nexus' hoof. "into the TARDIS, the lot of ya!"
The Doctor turned around and hopped back through the open door. Derpy wasn't too far behind. Nexus entered expecting it to be cramped with three full grown ponies but it was surprisingly roomy. Much more than he had expect. Inside this what now seemed so small box, a massive room unfolded. The brass orange walls were covered in hexagons with circular yellow lights in side them. They were set in two rows on each plate going up the whole room and into a domed ceiling.
Four stone supports that looked more like spider webs going from the raised glass hexagon floor. In the center of that raised floor was a glass column with rods and disks inside moving up and down. Green and white lights shone up from the floor and a dim peach light came from the translucent ceiling. The center console contraption was in the shape of a hexagon as well. It was covered in buttons, dials, switches and a random turny wheel on one side. Nexus let out a low whistle as he took in the black wires hanging from the ceiling and connecting to the top half of the tube where the glass chamber going through the center.
"Quite the set up you got Doc." Nexus said shutting the door behind him.
"It is pretty cool isn't it?" The Doctor said with a giddy grin on his face.
"I'll say. So how is this going to help me Doc?"
"Wait… you don't have any questions about where you are right now? This room and all?"
"Nope not really. So this machine's gonna fix everything?"
"Yes she will. Well… she won't do it all. She'll show us the problem and we have to fix it ourselves. She's called TARDIS. Time And Relative Dimensions In Space."
"So it's a time machine?" Nexus asked.
"Yes, yes it is. Are you sure there aren't any pressing questions you have about the TARDIS?"
"Nope. How's a time machine going to fix this?"
"Well first we have to understand what's going on." he must've been too ADD to keep track of himself from how much he was jumping around. "What's happened to you?"
"We've only just met. You know a lot of me and you're a time traveler apparently so why can't you just flip a switch and fix this."
"Just stick with me here Lunarus."
"Nexus, Doc. Just call me Nexus or Lunar if you have to use my first name." Nexus said leaning back on his haunches.
"Alright Nexus, what's happening and when did it start?" The Doctor said pulling a strange looking pen with a blue light bulb on the end. He pointed it at Nexus and it started flashing.
"A few days ago, I got up and kissed my wife… I got a splitting head ach and then she didn't know who I was at all." Nexus said holding back as much as he could. He might be able to help but he wasn't ready to start telling him everything.
The bulb flashed with a whirring sound. The Doctor waved the wand thingy around in front of him. "Oh my…" he said cringing a tad. "That's not right at all."
"What?"
"There's an energy that people can give off if they're far enough removed from their time. And you're emitting a large amount of it."
"Could just be magic."
"Nope. The Sonic doesn't really coupe with magic. It's uh… Complicated."
"I'm willing to listen."
"Huh… Ditzy you might wanna start working a bit harder, Nexus is giving you a run for your money."
"You're kidding right?" Derpy said with a growl.
"Yeah…" the Doctor said nervously. "Anyways. It's called Paradox Energy. It's the energy given off by the life you could've lived. It's not very powerful but some creatures do feed on it. Using a temporal shift usually. The energy is well… not found normally."
"So what does that mean?"
"It means your main timeline has been heavily altered." The Doctor put down his "Sonic" and just stared at Nexus waiting.
"What?" Nexus asked pushing him back.
"Isn't there something out any of this that's odd to you?" The Doctor asked waving his hoofs around the room.
"Okay, what in the world is your problem?" Nexus asked getting tired of the constant prodding.
"He wants you to say something. He likes it when ponies say it." Derpy informed rolling her eyes.
"What then, if it'll shut you up." Nexus said leaning against the railing on the walk way to the console.
"He wants you to say i-" Derpy would have finished what she was saying if the Doctor had not put a hoof over her mouth.
"Don't tell him!" The Doctor whined like a foal. "You'll ruin it! Go on then."
"What?" Nexus said looking around the room to find something out of the ordinary. More so than what was already there. "Simple perception filer hiding the size of your craft and making it seem like it's fitting inside the smaller space without a physical trace outside. Very exact and advanced magic but nothing I wouldn't expect."
Derpy slapped the Doctor's hoof away from her mouth defiantly and got enough distance to keep him from doing it again. "He wants you to say it's bigger on the inside!"
The Doctor groaned in annoyance and returned to his console. "You know I love hearing people say that Ditzy! Why'd you have to ruin it!?"
"Shut up and focus Doctor." Derpy said getting in his face.
"Right." He bent down and pulled a massive panel edged in rough white stone. from under the console. He put it up on the console and flipped a few switches on it. "I need your ha-Hoofs in here."
"Why?" Nexus asked leaving the walk way. "What is that thing?"
"Why do you ask so many questions?"
"Because I like to learn."
"Well, this is a telepathic circuit board. Put any organic material into those slots and it'll read your whole timeline. So come on, hoofs, in here, now." He quickly went back to the rest of the console, busily flipping switches and turning dials. 
"Uh… Doc. I hate to rain on your parade but… uh, my hoofs aren't organic. They may be living metal but they don't have a DNA coding sequence. And believe me I checked."
"Oh… Right…. Sorry 'bout that. Uh… Tongue!"
"Tongue?"
"Yeah, put your tongue in…. that slot there."
"I'm not doing that."
"You want to fix what's going on or don't you? Now come on, man up and stick it in."
Derpy did her best to hold back her laughter seeing Nexus and the Doctor pushing each other around. Nexus begrudgingly walked up to the panel and eyed the hole he had to put his tongue into.
"What are you waiting for, it to buy you dinner? Put your tongue in that slot there."
"You really shouldn't talk like that. Might send mixed messages."
"Shut up and get it over with, it's perfectly safe."
Nexus cringed and licked his lips. He wasn't one to trust easily, but due to the recent issues, he didn't have much of a choice. Nexus took a deep breath and stuck his tongue out. He slowly leaned closer to the slot the Doctor pointed to and held the breath he took in as his tongue touched the cold metal outside the slot. His tongue slipped into the slot and the strongest and most unpleasant taste he'd ever tasted shot through his nerves.
"Oo eed ho kleen hiss hing." Nexus slurred with his tongue in the machine.
"What'd he say?" Derpy asked.
"That I need to clean the slot he's got his tongue in. Quit your whining!"
"Whak youykelth Hak."
"How can you understand him?"
"Talking with your tongue out is a sub-language of baby."
"Ayay izi'n a langage."
"Yes it is. Now stop talking for a second. I'm working…" he started flying across the control panel, all the while starring up at a screen. "on finding your… Oh…. Oh that's bad. That's really really bad."
"Wha iz?"
"Here's your timeline… But there's no you."
"What'd you mean?" Derpy asked getting up against his right shoulder. "He's right here and breathing so doesn't that mean the TARDIS can find him?"
"You'd think so but according to the readings on his timeline, past, present and future, he doesn't exist."
"Ho wha are oo hooking hat?" Nexus asked.
"I'm looking at your timeline. Well… A parallel timeline to yours but without you in it. If that makes any sense."
"You lost me Doctor."
"I hkot it."
"Finally, somebody that gets me!" The Doctor said throwing his hoofs in the air. 
"Get hon whik it Gok."
"Right. So from what the TARDIS is telling me, a man by the name of Firebrand was a great soldier. He was captured by changelings a few years before the attack on Canterlot and was found soon after when his imposter was stopped before killing Princess Luna. Soon after that he finished climbing the ranks of the guard, he became happily married to a castle maid known as Dust Storm."
"WHAT!?" Nexus shouted straightening up instantly. "Let me see!"
"Forget I said that!" The Doctor said holding the monitor and rotating it around the console as he ran. "Skipping that pa-whoa!" He tripped and Nexus was right on top of him with a hoof in his chest. "Note to self, don't run with the monitor unless you get longer legs."
Nexus took hold of the monitor and read what the Doctor had been reading. "You're shitting me… she married Firebrand… FIREBRAND!?"
"Calm down Nexus." The Doctor wheezed.
"No! I won't calm down. One of my mentors and closest friends married my wife!"
"Shut up!" Derpy shouted throwing Nexus off the console. "I know you're mad-"
"You can say that again." The Doctor said rubbing his now soar chest.
"But if I got what the Doctor said right, this is just a place where you didn't exist. All we have to do is make you exist again right?"
"Not exactly. It's not like getting Marty McFly's parents together at the Enchantment Under the Sea Dance. Nobody prevented his existence, he was erased."
"I was erased?"
"Well that's what it looks like."
"How do we fix it?"
"That's the hard part. There are only two options as to what caused this. Your timeline might have became unstable and it booted you out to prevent a collapse of space and time. The only way that could happen is if there was a hole in the time vortex, it caused a storm and it chose you as collateral damage to avoid total collapse. In that case there's no way to fix it. What's odd is that it was very exact in taking you out. Normally there isn't a single trace of the person that's been taken out, not even a body."
"You said there were two options, Doc. What's the other one?"
"The other one is totally impossible. It'd require a working TARDIS console and this I the last TARDIS in existence."
"What is it Doctor?" Derpy asked.
"No…" the Doctor quickly turned to the console and started turning knobs, flipping switches and spinning the wheel thing Nexus had noticed earlier. "It's called a paradox machine. If in the right wrong hands it can erase anything from time. Whereas the timeline doing it taking the object out of both time and space. It creates a time storm and and if controlled correctly can take be devastating to the timeline of the whole universe. Or at a lower level, take someone out of their own timeline completely. The only issue is that the technology that's needed is in a TARDIS. Something that only one person can have."
"No… Doctor you have to be kidding."
"'Fraid not."
"Who is it?"
"There was a man… Another Time Lord, he, using a TARDIS I time locked him into to create a paradox machine to try and destroy me. He's called the Master."
"But you told me he was dead."
"I've seen stranger things Ditzy. But wait… It can't be him even if he's somehow still alive."
"What'd you mean?"
"It's his life goal to kill me. So why would he target somebody I don't even know?"
The tree looked to one another hoping someone could have an answer that made sense. "What about finding this storm?" Nexus asked. "There has to be a way to find the storm."
"I don't know. But we're going to do it." The Doctor quickly went back around the console and started flying across the controls again. "Twiddle that knob over there for me would you Ditzy?"
"Uh…" she looked to the panel covered almost exclusively in knobs. She reached out with a hoof and twisted a random knob.
From the Doctor's look it was the right one. But Nexus suspected they were all the right one. He watched the screen as the Doctor went about his things and felt a growing resentment to his old mentor. Especially with the picture on the screen of their wedding. A big, grand thing in the castle, her in a beautiful white dress.
"Got it!" The Doctor shouted ecstatically, snapping Nexus out of his seething jealousy. "You are not going to believe this!"
"I'm in a phone box that can travel in time and space, I think I can accept anything."
"It's not in the universe."
"Come again?"
"What'd you mean it's not in the universe?" Derpy asked.
"The universe does have a definite size unlike everyone things." 
'Not new but not proven.' Nexus thought to himself.
"Now it's obvious this storm isn't just outside the universe. Absolutely nothing can exist outside the universe unless it's inside of what is known as a pocket dimension. Meaning-"
"It's a very small universe outside our own that cannot be reached from ours right?"
"You really are brilliant."
"Just good at connecting dots."
"Same thing."
"So can we get to it Doctor?" Derpy said seeming to have slight trouble keeping up.
"Well that's the amazing part. There's a landing zone."
"A what?"
"The scanners are picking up a small area of ground more than big enough for the TARDIS to land on." The Doctor said starting to run across the console again.
"What's it attached to then?" Nexus asked.
"Let's say we find out?" he said putting his hoof on a very large switch that seemed fairly out of place. Derpy grabbed the railing she was near and Nexus knit his brow. "ALLONS-Y!" the Doctor shouted, throwing the switch forward causing the whole ship to lurch and shake violently.