Oddly enough the three of them met little resistance. In fact, none at all. Nexus followed The Doctor with Derpy not far behind. There was a massive issue with semi-accurate navigation. With the Doctor’s Sonic Screwdriver broken, they couldn’t leave any marks on the walls to mark progress. Though thankfully the maze itself didn't seem to be moving about that much. Sections would still move, Nexus could see sections flying up and moving but none near them. Though after they'd left he saw several sections at once rotate, at least double the number he saw before and half of now. Nexus didn't have a problem with it, so long as it got them out of the maze faster. That's when a thought hit him.
"Hang on." Nexus said coming to a stop.
"Everything alright Nexus?" Derpy asked turning around from her listening to the Doctor's babbling.
"I just realized something. We're going to the center of the maze right?"
"Very perceptive of you." The Doctor said rolling his eyes.
"So when we get there, how are we going to get back? And more importantly, what's going to happen when we shut down the machine?"
"That's easy, find our way out and collapse the storm and then reversing time to before the machine was active. Now let's keep going." the Doctor answered quickly.
"So I'll be back home when we turn it off?"
"Ye… Well no. Unless you're in the eye of the storm. We're the kind of going to be in the direct center of the storm. We'll still have to make our way out of here."
"You sure?"
"Positive. Now come on." The Doctor said turning around to continue forward.
"Why do I have a hard time believing that?" Nexus said.
"What? When have I lied to you?"
"It's not that you've lied, just withheld info. Nothing with you is that simple."
"Rule three…." the Doctor muddled to himself. He turned to Derpy and said, "You tell him the rules?"
"No." Derpy said defensively.
The Doctor groaned before walking back to deal with Nexus. "Look, we break that machine and everything will be normal again. You'll be home with your wife and son in no time. I promise." Nexus wasn't sure if he was lying or not. His tell was very hard to find and it was only on intuition that he could see he was lying. His intuition was failing him miserably at the moment however. Begrudgingly, he sighed, "Alright Doc."
"Good. Let's keep moving." he said blankly. There it was.
Derpy could see it too. But something told Nexus, and he hoped Derpy felt it too, that he wasn't really lying but was going to do whatever he could to keep that promise.
L: How much longer until they're in that section?
M: Calm down! They're almost there. Have some popcorn and shut up!
L: Don't you raise your voice at me again. Immortal or not, I can make you regret it.
"Nice call Doc. I told you to take the left for a reason." Nexus said slumped against the wall as the section of the maze they were in flew up into the air. It'd been some time after they'd stopped to ponder. Time was a bit of a pain to figure out there due to there being no sun or perhaps no time at all.
"Well it's not my fault!" the Doctor said slumped against the other side. Derpy just stood by and waited.
"It kind of is. I said go left, towards the beam but nooooo. You have to have it your way and drag us to not just a dead end, but one that spins!"
"Hey, the logic of a maze is to have the right way be the most annoying rout possible. So I assumed that being so close to it we'd have to go around a long way! Simple!" The Doctor finished.
"Well excuse me for wanting to get out of here faster!"
"Well pardon me for thinking at all!"
"Doctor?" Derpy said stepping past them to press her face against the force field.
"What's wrong Ditzy?" The Doctor asked walking over to the barrier.
"Look." She said pointing out the barrier to the rest of the maze. Nexus looked past her but found the maze moving like it always does. The Doctor was kind enough to point that out as Nexus stood up. "Just look Doctor."
The maze was moving, or rather they were, but instead of around, it beneath them. They were moving in a direction. And from the look of the beam in the center, it was towards the end.
"I don't believe it…" the Doctor muttered to himself. "Why? What possible reason would it be solving itself for us? I don't understand."
"I'm not sure I care. So long it gets me home faster." Nexus said as he felt the adrenaline start pumping, that familiar feeling. Though the most basic instincts told him to run, he never could. Running wasn't in his vocabulary. Whatever lay ahead he was ready. There was no way he would make it easy. He knew him far too well.
"But why is it doing this?"
"Maybe she’s board." Nexus said with a sigh.
The maze piece they were in rotated ninety degrees towards the center and another piece flew by. Looking down, they could see the last path lining up with them. Straight into the last room. From here he could see well enough. Wires and tubes going throughout the room, from so many different machines. Their lights glowing and flickering from all corners of the room. The center console was lit up like a Hearths Warming tree. The beam reaching to the heavens, splitting time and space just to be rid of him. Everything he is, was and ever would be being held there. Mom, Luna… Dust. The thought to run, once present to even the slightest degree, was gone now.
This was it. The section came down slowly, agonizingly slow. It docked with the room and the field fell. Derpy stumbled forward from leaning on the barrier. The Doctor shoved past and Nexus wasn't far behind. The Doctor was the first into the room. He spun in place taking it all in. Derpy was in the same boat. Nexus wanted to look around too but was drawn to the machine in the center. It looked like one of the anti-ship mines that were at the bottom of Horseshoe Bay. It was a black iron sphere with rods sticking out from all angles. Each one had a light on the end. Electricity arced between them once in a while. His eyes were locked on the beam going into the storm above them.
"This is it." the Doctor said jogging up to Nexus and stealing his glasses off his face.
"Hey!" Nexus complained.
"We got it!" He said running back to the back left corner and going over all the machines hooked up to the beam.
The particular one he was was circular with three tears. The lower was the widest and easiest to get to. It had several keyboards and levers for more than likely working the machine, what else would they have been used for? The tallest section had a few screens with line after line of text scrolled by too quickly to read. At least for Nexus, if he got close enough to read it he knew he wouldn’t be able to. The top was capped in a glass dome and was wider than the middle. A large uncut, yellow crystal sat within. It pulsated with a strange blue-ish green glow occasionally flashing brightly for a second. It looked like some kind of arcane generator. He wasn't an expert on arcane technology but it certainly looked like it.
"Can we stop it Doctor?" Derpy asked.
"I don’t know. I'm not familiar with these machines. I might be able to do something with it if I still had my Sonic Screwdriver."
"So there's no way you can shut it off?" Nexus asked still not looking away from beam going to the sky. He was slowly staggering towards the center machine.
"Far from that actually. It'll take quite a lot of time but I could shut it off… Maybe."
"Maybe?" Derpy said heavy with worry.
"Well, this isn't exactly Time Lord technology. It's using the same base but uh… I don't know. Magic I guess."
"Magic isn't that hard to understand Doctor."
"Maybe for you two. You live in the stuff."
As the Doctor kept babbling, Nexus kept moving towards the center device. Something was calling to him. Not technically, but there was more than a magnetic quality to it. Something about the beam kept begging him to get closer. The Doctor looked over his shoulder and saw Nexus only being a few steps away now. "Hold it right there!" The Doctor said leaving the machine behind.
Nexus shook his head and snapped back into reality. The Doctor jogged up and yanked him back. "What is it? Besides the obvious thing."
"Well… Just don't touch anything in here. Especially that." He said pointing to the center thing.
"Why?" Derpy asked.
"Well, the light he should keep as far away from as possible, but I'm not sure about the machine itself. Considering everything else in this maze it wouldn't surprise me if something did something to you."
"Yeah…" Nexus said taking his eyes off the beam. "I'd buy that."
"So how do we stop it?" Derpy asked getting up close to the paradox machine.
"I don't know. Shutting off the power source maybe but I'm not sure what it's running on. It's not quite working off of a decimated TARDIS." The Doctor ran to another more simple and familiar Bartlett 8500 computer matrix in the back right corner of the room and started typing. "If I could just- damn it!"
"What is it Doc?" Nexus asked.
"The terminal's locked." He said slamming his hoofs on the keys hard enough to knock a few off. "I can't give it any input."
"Can't you unlock it?" Nexus asked as Derpy made her way around the machine. She stopped at a window looking into the dome that looked like it came off a ocean liner.
"I could with the Sonic but it's burnt out back in the maze. And The terminal itself is locked from another location. This was used to do the calculations needed to erase you but it was activated and locked from another computer. And this one's deadlocked. There's no way we can put anything in it."
"Wait…" Nexus said taking his glasses back. "Let me take a crack at it."
"What makes you think you can do anything? I can't access the data to shut it off."
"That's the problem. You can access the data, but not touch it." Nexus said tapping away at the keyboard. "So if I can find the data streams that show us how it works…"
"We can shut it off manually!" Nexus and the Doctor said in unison, seeming to forget the warning he gave him earlier.
"Doctor?" Derpy said worried.
"Not now Ditzy." The Doctor waved off and grabbing Nexus' glasses off of his face, ensuring Nexus had no way to make clear heads or tails of what he was seeing on screen. "Nothing in the alteration matrix I don't already know. And the String Theorem Converter isn't going to help us at all."
"Doctor…" Derpy said getting more and more worried.
"Maybe we shouldn't be looking for what makes do what it's doing." Nexus said nabbing his glasses back. "It'd probably be better to look for what's powering it. If we can turn it off, then problem solved." Nexus began typing his way through the terminal looking for any indication of power sources. "Okay… So it looks like it was working on that Arcane Generator over there about forty eight hours ago but switched over to something… I can't read that formula."
"Let me get a look at it." the Doctor said tearing Nexus' glasses off their owner for a third time. "Oh my… Whoever made this found a way to get it to run on the Paradox itself."
"Doctor!" Derpy called out again, leaving the machine behind and getting up behind them.
"What's that mean?" Nexus asked taking his glasses back again, still ignoring Derpy.
"It means," The Doctor said nabbing the glasses and pointing them about as he talked. "the generator started it like the starter in an engine but the machine is built to take the energy that is a byproduct of the destabilization of the timeline to fuel it. The formula works for something but I can't remember what it is." The Doctor looked back at the screen with Nexus' glass back on. "I can tell you this much, it's using technology I've never seen before to do it. It's finding away to catalyze pure paradox energy and make it into fuel for the machine."
"Maybe if we can track where the commands are going for the conversion we can find the source." Nexus said.
"Good man!" The Doctor said putting Nexus' glasses on his nose upside down. "Get on that. What is it Ditzy?"
"I think I found that pair of docks cat a'… thingy you were talking about."
Nexus spun around so fast his glasses fell down to the tip of his nose and the Doctor's eyebrows shot up high enough to pass through the hole in space time. "How'd you find it?" Nexus asked putting his glasses on the right way around.
"I looked around." she said confused.
"Well done Ditzy!" the Doctor said grabbing her by the cheeks and kissed her on the nose. "Where is it?"
"On the middle thing."
The Doctor ran past her and started walking around it. He made a full revolution before stopping near where Derpy had. His eyes went wide and he fell back on his haunches looking through the glass. Nexus jogged over as quickly as he could, wasn't often the Doctor was left speechless at something even having only known him for a day. The light from the hole covered his face as Nexus joined the Doctor. Inside the machine, he found something he never would've expected. Inside the machine, connected to the dome by cables to what Nexus assumed were the prongs, a heart. It was clearly a heart, but for some reason it was stone gray. It beat like a heart, it looked like a heart but it seemed like it was made of stone.
"Is that a heart?" Nexus asked.
"It's not just a heart… That's the heart of a Weeping Angel."
"Their heart is what they use to feed?"
"Yes, well… No. It's what they use to catalyze the paradox energy. That's the theory anyways. Nobody's ever really opened up a Weeping Angel before. Now we know."
"I'd rather forget." Derpy said.
"So how do we shut it off?" Nexus asked stepping back.
"We can't. It's self sustaining now. The only way to stop it now is to kill the heart itself."
"Then stand back." Nexus said pulling the one pistol he bothered to take with him from the room.
"No!" The Doctor said forcing Nexus' right foreleg down.
"You said break the heart and I'm more than ready to do it Doc."
"That glass is made of Transparanttium, the most bullet proof glass ever made in the universe. No bullet can make it through it."
"Well I have to do something!" Nexus shouted taking aim again.
"Nexus listen to the Doctor!" Derpy said pulling his aim away.
"What am I suppose to do!?"
"Just wait. We'll find a way to do this. Maybe if we can find a way to knock these collectors off!" The Doctor said grabbing one and pulling with all his might. He kicked at the base of the spike but it wouldn't budge. "Gah! It's too well anchored. If I could just knock it off the-”
"Maybe a little extra kick?" Nexus asked holding up his gun again.
The Doctor looked up gave him that look, the look he had whenever he got conflicted on something he was thinking about. There was something that Nexus had picked up from being around these ponies, there was an unspoken language with the Doctor. If you were really clever, you'd never have to explain a thing to him and if you were thinking it, chances were he was too.
"Alright, Nexus. Give it a shot."
The Doctor steppe back behind him and grabbed Derpy, presumably ready to duck when the bullet ricocheted. Nexus wasn't sure if it'd do much more than bounce straight off but it'd just make him feel better. He hoped the Doctor knew that too. No matter what, there was a chance it'd help. The bullet could punch through a steel skillet but there was no telling what I'd do to this. He didn't know what metal it was made of, how think it was or even what would happen if he hit it. He had to try.
Nexus' mechanical arm pulled the hammer of the pistol and with a loud crack hit the firing pin. The crack was suppose to be followed by a thunderous bang but nothing came. Nexus pulled the pistol back and examined it.
"What's wrong?"
"Dud round. Hang on." Nexus flicked his foreleg and tried to load another shot. The first round fell out of the gun but the weapon didn't cycle correctly. The lever was locked forward and the hammer at half cock instead of full. He grabbed it and tried to manually cycle the action. When it wouldn't go, he tried to force it. When he popped the lever free, the hammer, flew off like a pinwheel. The firing pin shot out the now open back and grazed his shoulder, leaving a nick in his right shoulder.
"What happened!?" the Doctor asked examining the gash in his shoulder.
"The hammer, it came off and the firing pin went ballistic. It's useless now." Nexus sat back. "I can't break it free."
"There wasn't much of a chance it'd work anyways Nexus don't beat yourself up."
"No!" he shouted throwing the Doctor off of him. "It could've done something! Now I've got no chance of beating this! We're stuck here forever!"
"Nexus we can still fix this. Calm down!"
"No! I will not calm down, not this time! I had a chance to get home! A chance to see my wife again! There's no chance of getting out of here because of THIS FUCKING HUNK OF JUUUUUNK!" he shouted slamming his metal hoofs against the dome as hard as he could. Each hit let out a massive clang. The hits dinged the surface but nothing substantial.
"Nexus please calm down." Derpy said trying to pull him away.
"I want to go home!" Nexus said on the verge of bursting into tears. "I want to see my wife again! I want to teach my son how to play ball, be there to hold my newborn baby in a few months! I want my life back Doctor! You said we'd get out of here Doctor, now GET US OUT OF HERE!"
"I'm trying! Just keep your voice down!"
"Target located!" an electronic voice called from the entrance. "Repeat, target located."
Looking back to the entrance, they three of them saw the familiar canister of the Dalek blocking their way out. The thumping sound of something else was getting closer along with the sound of more Dalek's behind it.
"About time you showed up you glorified tin can." Nexus said facing the alien. "You're after the Doctor eh?"
"We were told to find the Doctor. The reasons were unknown." The Dalek replied turning its stalk towards him.
"And you were screaming for extermination earlier so you're here to kill us? Then go ahead. DO IT!" Nexus said getting in the Dalek's face plate. He assumed it was a face anyways, logical place for it.
"Nexus stop!" the Doctor shouted.
"Go on Spam in a Can, do it!"
"We cannot comply. You are a companion to the Doctor, you must live."
"I'm not his companion, now kill me you bastard!" he shouted as another Dalek rounded the corner and a two legged robot marched its way into the room.
"We do not take orders from lesser beings like you!" the new Dalek said.
"What is your objective?" Nexus demanded.
"To find the Doctor." the robot said with a strangely gravely, metal tone of voice.
"And if you're anything like your buddy here you want to kill him, and if you want him dead you'll go through me first now how bout that? A two for one deal?"
"You are needed for the objective." it replied.
"What was your objective!?"
"Who's on First!?" The Doctor shouted over him.
"What?" Nexus asked.
"Thought that'd shut you up. Now, I would like to know the answer to that question. What is your objective here?"
"To find the Doctor." A third Dalek said wheeling itself in.
"And what then?"
"We were only told to find the Doctor." the robot said.
"And now we know why." the first Dalek said.
"Why? Why would you want to find me if you didn't want to kill me?"
"We were trapped here by her to find the Doctor. And now you have lead us to the source."
"The source?" Derpy asked.
"You were all trapped here? She knew you'd try and kill me on sight unless I found the Paradox Machine. That cheeky little-"
"So what are you going to do if not kill us?" Nexus asked with his blood still boiling.
"To shut down the machine and save us." The robot answered.
"Save us Doctor. Save us!" the second Dalek said. The other two Dalek's repeated it a few times before shutting up.
"The terminal's deadlocked." Nexus told them. "And we can't break into the machine to shut it down."
"Nexus!"
"Irrelevant." the robot said. "Deactivation of the machine is simple."
"Kill the heart of the Paradox." the first Dalek said. "If the Doctor cannot help us-"
"Then we will help the Doctor." A second robot said entering the room.
"Ditzy, come here." The Doctor said waving his mare friend over. "You're going to let us go?"
"The destruction of this machine means this world will collapse. Anything left will be stricken from the timeline completely. Without you Doctor, the Dalek's will will cease to exist."
"What are you talking about? I nearly wiped you out."
"If not you then someone else. Your survival then kept the Dalek's fighting. Building up again to face our greatest enemy. If you are to die, it will be at our hands, not his." The third one said.
"Who's?"
"The Lord of Crows." the second robot said.
"Step aside Doctor." the first Dalek asked.
Nexus, Derpy and the Doctor did as it asked, moving out of the way as the two other Dalek's moved closer to the machine and the robots entered in behind them. "When I say so, run."
"Don't have to tell me twice." Derpy agreed.
"Are you sure we can get out of here?" Nexus asked.
"We have a chance Nexus. Do you trust me?"
Nexus licked his lips and kept his eyes on the aliens. "I do."
The robots raised their left arms and something popped up on their wrists, Nexus assumed it was their weapons. In the blink of an eye, beams of blue light shot from all five of them and slammed into the metal surface. The first few bounced off but after a few seconds of the barrage the first hits that didn't ricocheted off and instead flashed in a shower of sparks. He knew it did damage when the whole maze shook in protest. The Doctor yanked hard at Derpy's foreleg as he broke into a sprint.
Nexus was right behind him. Nexus prepared to make a hard turn in any direction only to find the wall in front of them crumbled into nothing. In fact they were starting to fall like it was nothing. Each wall ahead of them toppled like it was nothing, leaving a path straight ahead. They didn't question it, and just ran. The maze itself shuttered under their hoofs. Nexus looked to the sky and watched lightning roll across the sky as the storm started to pick up.
"What's going on Doc!?" Nexus asked as they ran.
"The storm's destabilizing! It's about to collapse and take this whole pocket universe with it! Now we have to get to the TARDIS!"
Nexus decided to shut his mouth and kept running. Derpy kept better pace than Nexus could've expected. The Doctor in fact was running at a pace that Nexus couldn't quite perfectly keep up with. He wasn't about to be left behind so he kept the lead out and just kept running. the walls fell like they were made of paper, the sheer volume of the storm was deafening. The thunder and lightning shook the maze as much as the collapsing in general. Derpy stumbled behind the Doctor and fell back, Nexus grabbed her by the foreleg and helped her regain her footing. The two of them kept running, Derpy and Nexus using their wings to push themselves faster.
Nexus was starting to wish the maze had done this before, would've saved a lot of time. The two of them caught up to the Doctor in no time and were getting close. Nexus caught a glimpse of a red checker's piece being thrown out of a room. They were almost there, he hoped. He hoped with everything he could possibly could that he'd get out of there. He kept thinking of Astral, Dust, his mother, everyone. He wasn't one hundred percent sure he knew what he was running from but he knew for sure what he was running towards. His last hope to see his only son, the thought of holding his beautiful wife again. The last few walls head of them broke down and Nexus could see the pathway they came down as another powerful blast of thunder rumbled across the fake sky.
He was going to make it! They were going to get out of there! He could see the TARDIS. The Doctor called for Derpy and she grabbed him from under his forelegs and flew them as fast as she could towards the TARDIS. As the three of them left the maze, Nexus looked back. The whole of the maze was falling apart. Nexus couldn't see his timeline from the machine, it was must've been done. The rumbling got stronger as the maze collapsed but getting closer to him. He spread his mechanical wings and pushed off as hard as he could towards the TARDIS.
"Nexus come on!" The Doctor shouted from the TARDIS doors, fumbling with his keys.
Ditzy clung to his side as he finally got the door open. He'd have thought he'd never been so happy to see the inside of his home but that wouldn't be totally accurate, there've been much worse times he'd gotten into the TARDIS. He turned around and saw Nexus flying at full speed towards him. He stepped aside and Ditzy opened the other door. He shouted for him to get going as the lightning started striking the actual body of the maze and even the path behind him. A growing sense of worry was starting to rear up in the Doctor as the unicorn got closer.
Just meters away from the doors, a bolt came from above and struck Nexus on the back. He shouted in pain and went limp shortly afterwards. The momentum he'd built up however was more than enough for how close he was. He slammed headfirst into the ground and tumbled head over heels through the door of the TARDIS. The moment he was in the door shut and Ditzy rushed to his side. The Doctor meanwhile ran straight for the controls and started the TARDIS. The familiar wheezing of the engines filled his ears as they took off from the platform they were on only moments before it collapsed.
"Haha! We're outa' here!" The Doctor said ecstatically as the TARDIS shook and shuttered away from the edge of the universe. The Doctor momentarily worried about the reverse of time but it seemed it was already done. Another two days unknown to the whole of reality for the Doctor.
"Doctor…" Ditzy called from Nexus' side.
The Doctor snapped back and ran to his friend's side. He put a ha-hoof to his neck and felt a pulse. "He's alive. Doesn't seem like anything serious right now other than missing glasses." The Doctor said noticing the lack of his spectacles.
"Oh it's going to be far worse than that Dear Doctor." a somewhat distorted voice called from the console.
The Doctor spun around to find his screen pointing in his direction with a shadowy man inside it. He quickly stood up and made his way to the console to find the origin of the transmission.
"Who are you."
"Oh come now my old friend, don't tell me you've forgotten me already?"
"Who are you? Tell me!"
"The drums Doctor… Can you hear them yet?"
It couldn't be. "It can't be… Show yourself!"
"Where's the fun in that Doctor? Tell me who I am and maybe I'll consider telling you. Twenty questions."
"I know who you are. Why did you do this?"
"Oh, that's not the right question to be asking. You're not very good with this game are you worry wart? Come now, ask a real question or say my name."
The Doctor grunted in annoyance knowing this game too well. "Master…. Tell me; what are you planning?"
"Oh… I do wish there was an easy way to say this but… might as well come out with it."
"The Master?" Ditzy asked tempted to leave Nexus' side.
"What are you talking about?"
The screen flickered for a moment before turning to static. When it came back up there was a black stallion wi- actually could've been a mare with a long red mane as well but it was rather hard to tell. It certainly looked like a changeling but… redder.
"Who are you?" The Doctor asked. "The Lord of Crows I presume?"
"Close. Cybermen are far too thick." It spoke with a man's voice but it sounded like it could've change in an instant. "I am Lorthalis of Crows. You may call me Lolk, Doctor."
"What are you?"
"You tell me."
"You look like a changeling."
"That I am. Another breed mind you. But I'm as much a normal changeling as you are a pony Doctor. Not that it matters but let me say it is an honor to finally be talking to you."
"What'd you want?"
"I was bored Doctor." It said with a smile. "You see, your adventures are quite interesting. You and your little mare friend over there. Hello Ditzy!" it waved its porous arm at the screen and at Ditzy. "As sweet as ever I see, tending to friend's wounds."
"You leave her out of it Lolk. What do you want? What's with the maze and the aliens hell bent on killing me?"
"A challenge Doctor. Ponies love a good challenge and yours are by far and away the most entertaining."
"Lolk, the producer's waiting, speed it up!" a man called from off screen.
"Fine fine. Remember this Doctor, sometimes intervening may give way to tragedy. See you again Doctor." He gave a sinister smile and the screen went black.
"What was he talking about Doctor?" Ditzy asked somewhat confused.
"I'm not sure, but we'll have to be sure we keep an eye out for him, her, it. But for now, we better get him home."
"Is he going to be alright?" she asked as The Doctor flew across the controls trying to remember where his house was at this point in his life.
"We'll have to see. I'm sure he won't feel good when he wakes up but we still need to get him home."