For a few tense seconds, both stallions peered at one another, neither moving from their side of the console. One grey pony—who was wearing a tweed jacket and blue bowtie—starred in excitement, while the brown one—who wore a brown suit jacket under a long trench coat—stared back in shock. In the middle, shifting her gaze between them, was a light grey pegasus who wore nothing as she simply struggled to understand the current situation.
Finally, said mare broke the silence. “Doctor… who is that?” she whispered.
The brown stallion shifted his gaze towards her for a moment before muttering back, “That’s just what I was wondering.”
As if a switch had been pulled the grey stallion quickly moved closer to the brown one, his grin widening madly. “Oh that is short,” he exclaimed. “That is proper short!” He began looking his counterpart up and down. Now that he was standing right in front of him, he noticed the immediate difference in height. The grey pony was almost a full head taller than the brown one. Standing on his tippy-hooves, he looked over the top of the brown pony’s head. “I’ve never seen it from the outside before. It’s like a special effect!” he chuckled, rubbing the stallion’s noggin.
The brown one quickly retaliated by shoving his hoof away. “Oi! I am not short, you’re just tall... and lanky!” He motioned to the stallion’s long legs. “And I—Will you stop it!” Annoyed with this stranger examining his scalp, the Doctor finally distanced himself from the tall pony. Making use of this new distance, the Doctor took this chance to examine the pony in front of him. Something about him seemed strikingly familiar; it almost felt like they had met each other before.
Finally, it clicked in his head. “No…” he breathed. "You can't be…?” Slowly, the Doctor reached into his trench coat, watching as the other pony did the same. In one simultaneous motion, both ponies removed their individual sonic screwdrivers. The brown Doctor pulled out a short metallic cylindrical one with his mouth, while the grey Doctor held a brown wand-like device in his.
The Doctor smirked a cheeky grin as he clicked a button with his tongue, extending the length of his screwdriver. “Ha, even your screwdriver is small!” he chuckled.
The other Doctor simply gave him an unamused look as he extended his own screwdriver. Though one look between them still revealed that his was shorter.
Derpy looked between them in confusion. To her all they were doing was just waving their sonic thingies around. “Umm... What are you two doing?”
The Tenth Doctor shortened his tool. “Oh don’t mind him, he’s just compensating,” he said, waving the pony off.
“Compensating?” he asked, clearly offended. “For what?”
Tenth shrugged. He flicked his head and tossed the silver sonic into the air. Opening his coat, he grinned as the machine cleanly fell into the side pocket. “Regeneration. It’s always a lottery.”
Derpy scratched her head. “What does that mean?”
While Derpy didn’t get the joke, Eleventh did and he frowned at his predecessor’s blatant showmanship. “Oh, Oh! He’s got jokes.” Eleventh put his sonic back the regular way. “He’s got jokes. He’s cool, isn't he cool?” He trotted past the Tenth and flicked his coat. “Look at me, I’m the Doctor and I like wearing a duster!”
Tenth turned and glared at him. “What’s wrong with my coat?”
His expression went from offense to shock when he heard his companion giggling behind him. He turned around just in time to see her cover her mouth with a hoof. “What...? What?!”
“Well you do have a little strut you like to do when you’re wearing that,” she chuckled, making use of her lazy eye to not look at his. She lowered her voice in a poor imitation of his. “‘Oh look at how cool I look in this long coat! Look how it flaps in the breeze when I run.’ That’s pretty much what you were like when you first put that on.”
The Doctor blushed slightly. He couldn’t deny that she was pretty spot on in what he was acting like. Instead he coughed into his hoof and turned to face who he assumed was his future self. “Anyway, why are you… Doctor?”
No longer was the Eleventh sporting a large jovial grin. Now he was staring straight ahead, his eyes shrunken to pinpricks as he peered past the Tenth at the pony he just now realized was here. “...Ditzy?” he gasped, his voice barely audible.
The mare in question merely tilted her head. “Yes?
Tenth looked between them before taking a step closer to the Eleventh. He knew that look, and it began to worry him greatly. “Are you alright…?” he asked.
The Doctor shook his head and trotted past the both of them towards the door. “It’s nothing. Don’t mind me, I’m old and I tend to daydream sometimes. Moving on now!” Now standing with one hoof on the door of the TARDIS the Eleventh Doctor turned to face them.
“You both are probably wondering why I’m here and what happened with the TARDIS just now.” The two ponies nodded. “Well I don’t know the answer to either. What I do know is that she must have had a reason. Follow me.” The Doctor pushed open the door and let himself out.
Tenth and Derpy looked between one another curiously. “So… I’m still confused. Who was that again?” asked Derpy.
“That was me,” he answered. “Or rather, a future version of me, post regeneration.” He looked back towards the console and at the TARDIS walls. He briefly wondered about the round white things that had replaced his desktop theme and if he should consider that a problem. In the end he decided not to worry about it. “Like he said, something brought us together, which means there’s something so wrong that both of us are needed to fix it.” He brought his gaze back to his companion and smiled. “Welp, should be fun at least. I can’t wait to see where we are!”
Derpy mirrored his grin and began trotting towards the doorway. “Me too!”
As she made her way outside the Doctor’s grin disappeared, with a serious expression replacing it. That look on his older self’s face when he looked at Derpy weighed heavily on his mind and gave him a terrible feeling. After a second of thought, he followed the others outside. Passing through the doorway, he quickly tuned in to the loud lecture coming from the outside.
“—do that again! Do you hear me. We thought you just up and left us!” In front of the Tardis, his future self appeared to be getting yelled at by a lavender alicorn mare. Now fully outside and standing next to Derpy, he took a look around, he also noticed that they were in Canterlot Castle, and that everypony was looking at him now.
Luna gasped in shock then squee’d in excitement while Celestia reeled back in surprise. Twilight stopped lecturing her Doctor to join in the staring. Tenth and Derpy simply looked back at them in confusion.
“What?” they asked.
“Well it took you long enough,” muttered the Eleventh.
Celestia nearly ran over to the Eleventh with a furious look. “Doctor are you mad?! Crossing your own timeline at a time like this? Are you trying to destroy the universe?”
The Eleventh backtracked and distanced himself from Celestia. “Oi, it wasn’t my fault! The TARDIS brought them here.”
Twilight meanwhile trotted closer to the tenth and examined him. She looked like she was about to say something. But before she could, she paused to look at the mare next to him. Her jaw hit the ground. “Derpy Hooves? What are you doing here?”
“Well, actually it’s Ditzy Doo. Wait a sec… Do I know you?” Derpy focused her eyes together to give her a scrutinizing look. After a few moments her eyes misaligned and her face broke out into a joyful smile. “I do! You’re the town librarian, Dusk Shine! I remember bringing you your mail. When did you become a princess?” Derpy quickly went to work examining the mares seemingly improbable wings; she eagerly pulled them out and poked at the individual feathers to make sure that they were real.
Twilight blushed at the sudden invasion of her personal space. Though by this time she should’ve been used to it of course, as the Doctor, Pinkie, Rainbow Dash, and most of her family reacted much the same way. She simply just learned to wait it out. “It’s Twilight Sparkle. I didn’t know you traveled with the Doctor.” She put a hoof to her chin and muttered, “Though that does explain a few things.”
Derpy finally stopped examining her wings and look at her curiously. “Explain what?”
“Well in Ponyville you live alone with your doummphhpphh” She immediately spit the tenth Doctors hoof out of her mouth. “Doctor!”
Tenth shook his head and wiped the spit off his hoof. “Sorry, Twilight. It’s fairly obvious that you’re from our future. Couldn’t have you divulging future events now can I,” he said with a grin.
Eleventh trotted up next to them with the same grin. “Shame on you Twilight. I thought I taught you better than that.” He turned to his past self. “Companions, they never listen.”
Tenths eyes nearly bulged out of his head. “What? You have a unicorn?! That’s not fair!” He sulked, frowning at his future self’s smug look.
Twilight raised a hoof. “Actually, I’m an ali—”
Derpy glared at him. “And what’s so great about a unicorn?” she asked. She didn’t know what it was, but she felt slightly offended at his statement.
Tenth shrugged. “Well just think about it. It’s like they have a sonic, on their head. It’s a pretty brilliant design if you ask me. Not everyday you find something that something this would has up on Gallopfrey.”
“What do you mean by that?” she asked, her offence quickly switching over to interest.
Eleventh filled in for that one. “Well there are no unicorns on Gallopfrey, only earth ponies, and in rare cases pegasi. Time Lords rarely ever regenerated into unicorns and we didn’t have any idea alicorns existed.” He chuckled. “Honestly, Twillight, you have no idea how excited I was when you agreed come with me.”
“No... I’m pretty sure I do have some idea,” she deadpanned, recalling the party he had Pinkie throw for the occasion.
“Ohhhh, remember when we were a unicorn?!” gushed Tenth, gazing upwards. He found himself completely lost in his memory. Eleventh mirrored his look as he too remembered the days he spent without his sonic. Why? Because he didn’t need one. “Some of the best centuries of my life right there,” Tenth muttered.
The sound of Celestia lightly clearing her throat brought everypony’s attention back to her. “While I understand that this must be a special occasion for you, Doctor, we still have a rather pressing crisis on our hooves.”
“Oh yes. Of course,” said Eleventh. “First things first. In order to cut down on the spoilers, I need to know where you are in our timeline. Have you met River yet?”
“Who?”
“Alright then,” he muttered. “Starting from there then. Where are you two coming from?”
“The Doctor just set the sky on fire!” Derpy cheered. “It was amazing!”
“So that was you!” yelled Luna.
Eleventh paid her no mind. “Ah the Sontarans then. Nasty little buggers with their ATMOS magi-tech.”
Luna rubbed the temple of her skull. “That was a very stressful day for us… No matter, back to the matter at hoof then?”
Tenth nodded. He found see that this terrible problem required the utmost seriousness. “Of course. Back to the pressing, pressing crisis. Very dangerous and have to solve it immediately…” He blinked as he looked around the seemingly peaceful and undestroyed throne room. “Well what is it?”
Twilight gestured to the window. “Look outside.”
Following her suggestion, Tenth and Derpy made their way over to the window to peer into the outside world.
“Oh my goodness…” she gasped, watching as random non linear events caused chaos and mass hysteria.
The Doctor’s gaze locked onto a specific part of the city where a legion of Diamond dogs ransacked a portion of the town. Yes, definitely a town. The entire area that he was looking was definitely out of it’s own time. Where one part of Canterlot was built with stone or marble—boasting a while and yellow color scheme similar to the castle—the part he gazed upon looked closer to Ponyville’s architecture. However, the strangest part was that he was staring at it for a good few minutes before it suddenly shifted into a decisively futuristic version of the exact same area.
“Well that’s not right,” he mumbled. “The surprise Diamond Dog attack happened about 10 years after the banishment. But the changeling invasion was fairly recent.” He turned towards the others. “And the mass innovation of electricity won’t even happen for another hundred or so. Do you know what could be causing this?”
Luna solemnly shook her head. “Alas we do not know. Our Doctor theorizes that time and space is folding in on itself.”
Eleventh nodded. “I’m not sure what it was,” he muttered, “but I had a vision of sorts. I saw a dark figure operating an enormous machine. Then I watched the universe collapse. I don’t know where it came from or who that stallion was, but it definitely wasn’t alright. Time is folding, there’s grey where black and white meet, creases where there shouldn't be. Things that haven't happened are happening and things that have happened are happening again and I don’t know why.”
Tenth trotted over to him and hummed in thought. “So it wasn’t the Daleks then, or the Cyberponies?”
Eleventh began pacing around the large room. “Hmmmno. Neither of them would have access to the technology needed for this kind of large scale manipulation of time and space; at least not without going undetected at this point.”
Tenth began pacing in the opposite directions. “And I don’t suppose the Master survived somehow?” Both turned and they paced towards one another.
Eleventh shook his head grimly as they passed each other in their pacing. “Not that I know of. It is possible that this is a new threat.”
He turned and stopped in front of his future self. “Weeelll. We shouldn’t stress over who’s doing it, but rather how. What kind of technology or magic would be capable of this?”
Eleventh thought on this and gave his past self a congratulatory pat on the shoulder. “Brilliant thinking. There could be millions upon millions of possibilities on who’s doing this but the amount of ways is decisively lower. If we narrow our search parameters to find the method then we can find it and the perpetrator will reveal themselves along with it. But what device is strong enough for this.” He resumed pacing. “Perhaps a mass range shrinking spell cast through the Medusa Cascade?”
Tenth continued as well. “It’d have to be extraordinarily powerful to bend time and space.”
While the two Doctor’s continued walking in a circle, with one aimlessly throwing out ideas only for the other to immediately refute them, a lone guard burst into the room.
Marching up to the three alicorns, he quickly saluted. “Your majestys, the populace’s has grown restless. Ponies are starting to gather at the castle looking for guidance. They want to know what’s going on.”
Celestia sighed and shook her head. “Yes, I suppose that this would’ve happened sooner or later.” She turned to Luna who shook her head.
“I want to stay here with the Doctor,” she protested.
Celestia rolled her eyes. Ignoring her, she turned to Derpy and Twilight. “We have to go calm our subjects down. Please, will you two keep an eye on the Doctor… Err, Doctors. Make sure that they don’t do anything too… you know.”
“We know,” both answered, knowing full well what she meant.
Magically dragging an upset Luna with her, Princess Celestia followed the guard out of the throne room.
Derpy fidgeted slightly. She looked back at the Doctors, both of which were still brainstorming. “So… what do we do now?” she asked Twilight.
Twilight shouted back at the Doctors, hoping to be heard above their discussion. “Doctors, you need help with anything?”
“I’ll need swat team ready to mobilize, a list of every known spell created from 100 years ago to 100 years from now, several cups of coffee, 12 jammy dodgers, a bookmark, and a fez,” answered the Eleventh, not even pausing in his stride.
“Unless you can compute the radius of the galaxy and factor in the amount of magical energy it could take to turn it a quintillionth of a millimeter then no thanks we’ve got it covered,” answered Tenth, much in the same way.
“Oh!” he stopped and turned to his counterpart with an excited look. “What about a warpspeed paradox machine modified to compress time by interchanging the temporal cortices and reversing the polarity of the thermo-magical regulators!” His other self simply gave him an odd look. His own expression fell. “Wait… no that makes no sense…” He sighed and they continued to pace.
Twilight turned back to Derpy. “They’re alright. Are you? You look a little nervous,” she observed. Figuring that she must just be nervous about the situation, she was quick to reassure her. “Don’t worry, I’m sure—”
“Has he said anything about me?!” she blurted. Once she realized what she said she instantly covered her mouth with a hoof.
Twilight blinked. “Excuse me?”
The grey mare blushed slightly. “Sorry… I’m just really curious. It’s kind of disheartening to see that I’m not still traveling with him…”
Twilight gave her a kind smile. “It’s alright. Though, I must admit, I didn’t know that you traveled with the Doctor in the first place.”
Derpy frowned. “He hasn’t... said anything about me? Anything?”
Twilight shook her head. Derpy pondered this new information. “Well how old is he? How far in his timeline is he from my Doctor.”
“Well I’m not sure. All I know is that the last ponies to travel with her before me was a couple named by the name of Pond and he seemed to get really sad when I brought them up.”
Derpy’s head drooped. “So I’m not even the last pony to have traveled with him. I mean, I guess if I did live the rest of my life with him and he just moved on that would be fine… but he hasn’t mentioned me at all?” Twilight sadly shook her head. “Oh…”
Twilight quickly jumped onto a different topic, not wanting to see the mare sad. “So why don’t you tell me then?” Derpy glanced back up. “If he won’t say anything why don’t you. I’m from your future so nothing you say would be spoilers.”
Derpy gasped in delight. “You’re right!” she exclaimed.
Twilight smiled, glad she was able to turn her mood around. “For instance, how did you meet him?” she asked. Despite the fact that she was about to get the story from Derpy, she still made a mental note to question the Doctor—her Doctor—later on this topic.
Prancing in place, Derpy eagerly thought back to her first meeting with the Doctor. It had been a long time since she had the chance to retell it. “Alright, it all started when—”
*CRASH!* *BOOOOM*
Suddenly, an explosion burst forth from somewhere in the castle, rocking it to its very foundations. Several ear-piercingly loud voices began echoing throughout the kingdom. All of them were demanding the same thing...
“DOC-TOR!”