Satellite 5, the far flung future...
"So this is the future, is it?" Ripple Pond asked in some amusement as she took a bite out of her hayburger, her eyes roaming the commons cafeteria. "Very different than the futures I've seen. It all seems so very... our time, space station or not." That much was certainly true. The place was not unlike the food courts found in malls throughout the larger cities of Equestria, loud and chaotic and slightly smelly, what with all the ponies and cheap food stands.
"Yeah, it's really rather sad, isn't it?" Eleven said, getting rather bored himself. Neither he nor Ten ordered anything, though their companions and Jack decided to break for lunch, since they'd come up with no leads over the last few hours. "Y'know, this era was supposed to be a high point for the Great and Bountiful Solar Empire. Once upon a time this era was a high point for the Great and Bountiful Solar Empire. But with so many temporal threats out there and the Time Chargers no longer available to keep things running nice and orderly like, something came in and disrupted it all. Oh, the Empire will still have its day--that's one of the things I've been checking in on recently--but it'll be a number of centuries late, now."
"What was it, then?" Blue Shield asked. "The Daleks?"
"Not the Daleks," Ten said as he made yet another sweeping motion with his sonic screwdriver. He then held it up to his ear and made a face, before doing it again. "Something else, something completely unrelated, hit this place a few centuries prior to the Daleks. Derpy and I managed to put a stop to its shenanigans, but it did leave a nice little power vacuum for the Daleks to sneak right on in with one of their crazy little schemes."
"That's where we came in," Jack Harness said, a grin on his face. "See, the three of us, me, Derpy, and the ol' grump here," ("Grump," Ten muttered under his breath. Eleven just shrugged with a smirk.) "were traveling together at the time. All fun and games at first. Disarming a bomb here, stopping a Slitheen invasion there, then we land here. I actually didn't know that the Doc and Derpy'd been here before, but I'm not the least bit surprised, either. Well, one thing led to another and the Daleks launched a full out attack on the station, and, here we are: me doing the best I can to help the ponies here rebuild and have a chance at things, while the Doctor left to grow himself a new face."
"Y'know, that's something I don't get," Derpy said, her eyes focused straight at Jack, a sure sign of her being serious. "How'd you even get left here, anyway? The very end of the attack is kinda a blur to me for some reason, something to do with how the Doctor stopped the Daleks I think, but we'd've never just abandoned you here. Well, maybe the Doctor would've--he really was a grump back then--but I never would've let him. What happened?"
Jack and the Doctors shared a quick glance--one that was not lost on the other ponies present--but Jack just flashed that disarming smile of his and winked. "Well, now, that I think I'll keep secret. More interesting that way, donch'a think? And now that everypony's all eaten, we should probably keep up the search for whatever it is that brought you guys here." He turned to Ten, his grin growing wry. "Unless you've actually found something with that thing over the last twenty minutes or so."
"Not a bloody thing," Ten responded irritably before getting a smack to the back of the head. "Oi!"
"Language, Doctor," Derpy reminded as she got up from the table and started off towards one of the exits. "And you're keeping secrets from me. Don't think I didn't notice." She cast a rather dangerous looking smile at Jack. "I'll just have to get it out of you, Jack."
Jack laughed as he joined her, the others following behind. "You'll never get me to talk. But it'll be fun having you try."
~DrW~
"That doesn't answer my question, and you know it," Derpy complained, a cross look on her face that made Jack laugh out loud (it was the puffed out cheeks that did it.).
"I told you, you won't make me talk, no matter how cute you are."
Derpy grumbled as she cast her gaze around her surroundings. The group was currently in one of those really strange sort of hallways, the ones that were sealed off from public use, station personnel only, etc., yet completely ordinary otherwise. No secret passages or closets full of skeletons (figurative or otherwise), nothing. It was surprisingly boring, actually. "Okay, then," she relented. "How about this one. What's the station being rebuilt as?"
"Ah, that I can answer. It's gonna be a communications hub, like it was originally built to be. With a whole different purpose, this time. No cheap entertainment or completely biased 'news.' The Empire desperately needs to reestablish contact and relations with other planets and lifeforms. But given the past century or three, sending expeditions out would be... lets say a bad idea. Right now, we need to start small, sending out notices and updates, letting the benign races out there know what we've gone through and the changes in the Empires outlook because of them, while hopefully letting the more malicious out here know that we did still drive off the Daleks. For that kind of range, we're not just talking about repair, but a general overhaul and upgrade." A glance up ahead later, and Jack's grin widened. "And speaking of... here's a few of my best colts. I give you Nuts and Bolts."
~DrW~
A few minutes after a short and unremarkable meeting with a pair of repair ponies, the group was continuing down the hall, the Ponds relatively quiet (they were starting to get ever so slightly bored), the Doctors engaged in a whispered but heated argument, and Derpy still asking questions on the state of things. "Y'know, there is one thing about this whole Satellite 5 thing I never did get. How did the Princesses let things get so bad for so long?"
To Derpy's surprise Jack got a little fidgety. "Aaaaaaah, that one's tough. Short answer is they've been offworld for a good long while now. The long answer...? How much do you know about the formations of the Solar Empire and Lunar Republic?"
"Not a lot. The Doctor refuses to say much about it--and that is really weird let me tell you--and I'm got gonna be the one to ask the Future Princesses about it."
"Yeah. Good call. The transition was... let's just say tough. Nothing as bad as Nightmare Moon, granted, but their relationship was strained for a few decades, there. And given that you are technically an illegal time traveler, coupled with the Doctor's reluctance to talk--wow that is weird--I probably shouldn't say more."
"Yeah. I bet the Doctor was right in the middle of it. Probably more than once. And y'know, I don't know if Princess Luna ever really 100% forgave him for not doing anything to stop the Nightmare. Your friends are following us, by the way."
Jack grunted. He'd been aware of the tail himself, naturally, but when Derpy mentioned it, the two ponies stopped. "Good hearing on 'em, too." At this point, the whole group had stopped, all of them showing subtle little signs that they knew something was odd. Well, Ripple Pond and Blue Shield's reactions were subtle, the Doctors had turned to face the two ponies with matching expressions that were somewhere between glares and smirks. No way would that end well. "I'll go see what's up," Jack said, forestalling any Doctor related chaos. "They do work under me after all."
Derpy watched in concern as Jack Harness casually clopped up to the two repair ponies. There was a certain... blankness to their expressions that concerned her. "I'm not the only one with a bad feeling here, am I?" she asked the group, her focus primarily on her Doctor.
"Pssh," he responded. "I'm sure there's nothing to worry about. This is Jack Harness after..."
The rest of Ten's reassurance was cut off by a very loud, very harsh sound, and Jack lit up like a Hearthswarming Tree, his skeleton completely visible. When the light faded and Jack's limp form fell to the ground, the two Doctors spared a split second staring at each other in shock before simultaneously shouting "RUN!"
And so they did. Any turns that presented themselves they took, to prevent from being easy shots. None looked back. All five of the remaining ponies had seen that particular weapon before, and that meant their enemy was exactly what they feared it to be. Their enemy was... "Daleks!" Ten spat the word like a curse. "Always the Daleks!"
"Yes, always the Daleks," Eleven agreed. "Except for when it's the Master, the Cyberponies, the Sontarans, the Vashta Nerada, the Autons, the Weeping Pegasi, the Black Guardian, the Zygons, that one time with the Jaggeroth..."
"Point, point! You've made your point!" Ten shouted in irritation. "And I thought I had a gob that didn't quit in this form."
"You do!" Derpy shouted from the front of the group. "Now less talky and more runny."
"And that goes double for you, Raggedy," Ripple added.
"Right. Running," the two Doctors said simultaneously.
Moments later the group arrived at a large room, with a round piece of equipment in the center stretching from floor to ceiling, designed to have somewhere between four to six ponies sitting around it. "What is this place?"
"Broadcast room, I think," Derpy said. "At least, this is what they looked like last time."
"New equipment, though, obviously," Ten said. "Doesn't look like they plug directly into the ponies' heads anymore, that's good."
"It's all very shiny and fascinating and all, but we're not here for a guided tour," Eleven said as he ran around the equipment to the door on the other side. It was locked of course, so he whipped out his sonic screwdriver to unlock it and... "It's deadlocked. Of course it's deadlocked. We're only being chased by Daleks in a partially rebuilt space station, naturally it'd be deadlocked."
"Well, there's only one thing for it, isn't there?" Ten said, almost happily, as he withdrew his own screwdriver from his coat pocket.
His mood instantly soured when he got his firs clear look at the Daleks chasing them. They weren't the usual domed monstrosities they normally were. No. They were... the repair ponies, Nuts and Bolts, only with the traditional Dalek eyestalks protruding from rather nasty holes in the middle of their foreheads, and the wand-like Dalek blasters protruding from equally nasty holes in their left shoulders.
Ten's eyes narrowed dangerously. "Those aren't just synthetic shells, are they?"
Eleven sighed. "No. No, they're not." In front of him, there were Daleks, behind him, three of the most important ponies in his universe, and beside him, his counterpart's near legendary temper was flaring like a bomb that had gone off. "This isn't going to end well, is it?"