“Here you go, Lucky Clover,” said Derpy, handing him a package and a few envelopes. “I’m really sorry I mixed up your mail with Lemon Hearts yesterday. I triple checked to make sure that I got it right this time.”
Lucky Clover said, “It’s okay. This kind of thing happens to everypony sometimes. Thanks, Derpy!”
With that, Derpy flew away to Sugarcube Corner for lunch. Having just finished delivering the mail, she was famished. She was greeted by a cheerful Mrs. Cake.
Derpy said, “So how’s it going, Mrs. Cake?”
“Oh, things are getting a little busy around here, you know with all those customers. The kids are sometimes getting into trouble and they are sometimes hard to handle. Pinkie Pie can be very helpful, but she’s always getting called to solve some friendship problem somewhere in Equestria.”
“Well, I could help if you need anything, Mrs. Cake. I’ll have the usual.”
“You’re such a dear, Derpy. I’ll get your muffins in a moment.” Mrs. Cake walked over to the kitchen and came out a minute later with a freshly-baked assortment of muffins, including blueberry, apple, coffee, and cinnamon. Putting the muffins in her bag, Derpy reached into her coat pocket and gave Mrs. Cake a handful of bits.
“Thank you!” Derpy cheerfully waved. She went back to her cottage and ate a few muffins. Derpy wondered how she was going to spend her afternoon, since she didn’t have anything planned that day.
“I know just what to do!” Derpy said aloud to herself. “The Doctor is always busy trying to come up with some crazy new invention or making some scientific discovery. Maybe he could use some help!” She took off her mailmare hat and coat and put the extra muffins in her bag.
Derpy had only been to the Doctor’s lab once before, even though she had gone to his house plenty of times (being the mailmare, she had gone to his house while delivering the mail, and he was a close friend of hers). When she got to his house, she knocked on the door, but he didn’t answer her.
“Doctor, are you there?” she called. No answer. The door wasn’t locked, so she decided to enter his house, even though it was rude to enter someone else’s house without permission. Derpy went down to the basement and opened the door to his lab. Sure enough, the Doctor was sitting at his worktable, tinkering with wires and metal scraps while muttering to himself. “Doctor?” she asked again. He didn’t respond. She slowly fluttered up to him and looked at his latest invention. It looked like some weird gadget with a wire and several buttons. “What’ya doing?” she asked.
“GREAT WHICKERING STALLIONS!” the Doctor screamed. “Derpy, you startled me!”
“Oh, I’m s-s-sorry, D-d-doctor,”Derpy whimpered. “I didn’t mean to disturb you and I—“
“No, it’s okay. I need to take a break anyways. I lost track of time and I’ve probably been tinkering for hours.”
Derpy said, “I was knocking at the door, and you didn’t even answer.”
“I’m really sorry, Derpy,” the Doctor said. “I was so wrapped up in trying to reverse engineer this strange gadget that I didn’t even notice you knocking at my door. What brings you here anyway?”
“You see, I just finished delivering the mail and I didn’t have anything to do this afternoon. I figured that since you’re always working on some crazy experiment, I’d just drop by and see what you were doing.”
“Well, you’re in luck! I was just—“The Doctor was cut off by his stomach rumbling. “Oh goodness, I was working for so long that I forgot to eat lunch!”
“That reminds me, I brought you some muffins!” Derpy said. She reached into her bag and offered him a muffin.
“Why, thank you, Derpy,” he said. He took the muffin and began munching on it contentedly. “This is delicious! Must be fresh from Sugarcube Corner.”
“So, Doctor, what were you doing with that weird thing with all those wires and buttons?”
“Oh yeah!” the Doctor said. “This morning, I went for a stroll around Ponyville. Around the outskirts of town, I saw a column of smoke rising in the middle of the Everfree forest. I knew the forest was dangerous, but the curiosity got the better of me and I decided to go investigate. When I got to the place that the smoke was rising from, I found a strange blue box the size of an outhouse. It looked as though it fell from the sky and crashed like a rocket ship that had fuel and engines. The box had some strange inscription on it that read POLICE PUBLIC CALL BOX. There was also another sign on it that said POLICE TELEPHONE: FREE FOR USE OF PUBLIC: ADVICE AND ASSISTANCE OBTAINABLE IMMEDIATELY: OFFICERS AND CARS RESPOND TO ALL CALLS: PULL TO OPEN. I had no idea who it belongs to or even if it belonged to anypony at all. So I decided to drag the box all the way to my lab. Behind the sign was this gadget which was apparently called a telephone. It seems to be used to contact police or something by using electricity, but I have no idea how it works.”
Derpy asked, “Did you even check inside the box?”
“Actually, no. I have yet to do so. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to get back to this fascinating gadget. And please don’t touch ANYTHING.”
“Oh no, Doc, I don’t mind at all. I’ll just sit here and watch you work.”
Minutes passed. Derpy started to get bored. The Doctor was just tinkering with some wires, and he wasn’t accomplishing much. Maybe I’ll just silently flutter over to look at some of his cool stuff, she thought. She still thought the Doctor’s plasma globe was pretty cool, and so were all the designs and vehicle prototypes lying around. Derpy saw a blueprint for some weird gun-shaped tool. A prototype of the tool was nearby the blueprint. An empty glass tube was attached to the gun, with a sticky note attached which said Find powerful energy source. Looking around, Derpy noticed the wires that the Doctor was working with. She decided to use that for the power source. After attaching the wires, the glass tube glowed with tons of electricity. It looked even more powerful than lightning!
“Hey Doc, what’s this thing supposed to do?” Derpy asked.
“WAIT, DERPY! DON’T TOUCH THAT THING!” the Doctor yelled. Right before he could grab the invention from her, Derpy accidentally pulled the trigger, shocking them both with electricity. The last thing they knew before they passed out was falling on the cold floor.
“Uhhhh…” the Doctor moaned as he stood on his hooves. “Derpy, what happened?”
Derpy slowly began to sit up on the floor. “Ow! I think I broke something…”
The Doctor rushed to her side. “Derpy, are you alright?!?” he exclaimed. “Let me take a look…” He gently ran his hoof all over her body, checking for injuries. When he touched her left wing, she winced. “I think your left wing is sprained. Nothing too serious, but that means you’ll be grounded for a few days. Why did you do that? I told you not to touch anything!”
“I’m so sorry, Doctor,” Derpy said. “I just wanted to help and—“
The Doctor yelled, “THAT WASN’T HELPING! I TELL YOU NOT TO TOUCH ANYTHING, AND LOOK WHAT YOU GO AND DO! YOU GO AND MESS WITH ONE OF MY MOST FRAGILE INVENTIONS! NOT ONLY DID YOUR WING GET SPRAINED, BUT YOU ALSO SHRUNK US TO THE SIZE OF BREEZIES!” The invention was a shrink ray, and charging it with electricity shrunk them both to miniscule sizes.
Derpy started crying, and the Doctor immediately felt bad. She sometimes had the tendency to mess things up, but she always had the best of intentions. He often would empathize with her, since sometimes it was hard to get things right. “Look, Derpy, I’m sorry I yelled at you. I should know better. But I’m going to need your help to get out of this mess. Will you please help me?”
“Okay,” Derpy said. She stopped crying. “Do you think that one of your inventions could help us?”
The Doctor said, “I don’t think so. Theoretically, if the shrink ray works, then it would be possible to make things bigger… However, all the electricity that was used to charge the gun was used up on us. The shrink ray is all the way up on the counter and we can’t even reach it. Derpy, do you have any idea of how we can get back to normal size?”
“Couldn’t we just sneak through the cracks in the doorways and get to Princess Twilight’s castle? She probably has some kind of spell that could get us back to normal.”
“Going to the princess would probably be the best solution,” the Doctor said. “However, we can’t just walk out of the house. For one thing, the castle is all the way on the other side of Ponyville and it would take forever to get there. For another thing, we could easily get crushed by other ponies or carts or anything that goes down the streets.”
Derpy got an idea. “Do you have any water?”
“Yes, there’s a hose out in the back, but why—“
“Come on! I’ll explain once we get there!” Derpy said.
Once they got outside, Derpy told the Doctor her plan. “We can float all the way to Twilight’s castle. Since I’m a pegasus, I can make clouds out of water. However, I also have a unique magical ability to my special talent: I can make magical bubbles! All I need is a little water, and I can create bubbles that’ll take us right to the castle.”
“That just might work!” exclaimed the Doctor. “Oh, you’re brilliant, Derpy Hooves!”
The compliment made Derpy blush a little. “I don’t get that very often. I mean, most ponies think I’m clumsy or just a fool.”
“That’s not true. Not everypony will see it, but you have a very big heart. You may be a bit clutsy, but you always have the best of intentions and are always willing to help out everypony. Besides, knowledge isn’t everything. In all my years, I have never found anything more fascinating than friendship. Sometimes even I miss what’s most important.”
This made Derpy so happy that she hugged the Doctor so hard that he almost chocked. When she released him, they got back to the task at hoof. He turned on the garden hose and Derpy blew two giant bubbles: one around herself and one for the Doctor. Luckily for them, the breeze was blowing in the direction of the castle. Unfortunately, right before they arrived at the castle, a tree branch popped both bubbles and they fell into the branches. Neither of the ponies were hurt, but they couldn’t see a way to safely get down.
“I don’t know what to do, Doc!” Derpy cried.
He carefully looked for ways to get into the castle. They couldn’t use the door even if they could get down because they were too small to push it open. The only way to get in was through an open window about ten feet away from the tree.
“Derpy, we’re getting in through that window over there.”
“Are you crazy, Doc?! We can’t possibly jump that far!”
“We’re not going to jump,” he said. “We’re going to surf on leaves to get over there!”
“Are you absolutely sure this is going to work?”
“No. But we’ve got to take the risk. Do you want to get back to normal or not?”
“Okay, Doc,” Derpy said nervously. Both ponies took leaves off the tree. Gripping onto the stems, they jumped off the branch and sailed all the way over to the window, screaming all the way. They managed to get inside the castle, but they crashed on the floor.
The Doctor stood up. “That was actually quite fun! We should do that again!”
“What?!” exclaimed Derpy.
“Right, now we’d better find Twilight,” the Doctor said. “Allons-y!”
They left the room they were in (which was the dining room) and entered the long hallway. Since they were so small, and since the castle was so big, it took a whole hour to find Twilight, who was sitting comfortably in the library with her head in a book. Her assistant Spike was happily snacking on gems.
“PRINCESS TWILIGHT! PLEASE HELP US!” Derpy and the Doctor yelled.
Twilight looked up from her book. “Doctor? Derpy? What are you doing here? And how did you get so small?” she asked.
The Doctor said, “Long story short, one of my experiments backfired and we came all this way looking for you so that you could use a spell to get us back to our normal size. Can you do that?”
“I most certainly can!” Twilight said. She summoned a spellbook from one of the shelves and opened it in front of her. Her horn glowed deep magenta and shot a magical beam at the shrunken ponies in front of her. Both of them returned to their normal size.
“Thank you so much, princess!” said Derpy.
“You’re welcome,” Twilight said. “But you can just call me Twilight.”
The Doctor left the castle with Derpy. “What an adventure we had today!” he said.
“Yep, it sure was,” Derpy replied.
Just before they got home, a brown coated stallion who looked exactly like the Doctor galloped up to them. He was carrying a weird gadget in his mouth. “Excuse me,” he said, “but I’ve lost my TARDIS! Have either of you seen it?”
“What?” said the Doctor. “Who are you and what’s a TARDIS?”
The stallion replied, “I’m the Doctor and I’m looking for a blue box.”