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An Old Friend
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“What the heck are you doing?” Dash asked, tilting her head at Alex as he cast a completely unrecognizable spell, “Are you capturing some air in a bubble or something?”
And that’s what it looked like. He had created some kind of golden bubble between them that seemed to ripple slightly, as if it were under water.
“I was told to do this if I ever needed to get a hold of him…” Alex said quietly, focusing solely on the spell in front of him, “Come on…”
“Alright, alright. I’ll shut up for a minute,” Dash said, walking away and sitting down on a rock.
Biting his lip, Alex managed to increase the size of his bubble, causing it to start rippling in all directions.
“Okay, I think I got it!” Alex called, stepping away from the bubble as it’s size continued to grow.
“Uh, is it supposed to be getting that big?” Dash asked, scooting away from the expanding magic.
Before Alex had a chance to tell her that it wasn’t supposed to be getting that big, a blue box rocketed down from the sky and crushed the spell, leaving no trace of it.
“Ah.” Dash said with a widening smile, “So that’s who you were calling.”
The doors to the blue box opened, and a large amount of smoke poured out from within, which was followed by loud coughing, as two ponies stepped out from the inside.
“You weren’t supposed to make the spell that big!” A stallion said through his coughing fit, “You almost blew out the core of the TARDIS!”
“It’s fine!” The mare said, walking out from behind him, “I emptied the magic buffer in time!”
“Indeed you did!” He laughed, stepping out of the smoke, revealing his brown coat and hour-glass cutie mark, “Now, which of our friends have called upon us?”
“You know who it is,” Alex said, walking toward the Doctor with a broad smile, “It’s been too long, doc!”
“Has it?” He asked, scratching his head, before shrugging and looking forward, “You tend to lose track of that kinda stuff in there.”
“Right.” Alex nodded, having recollections of time lost in there himself, “Anyway, I was hoping you could help me out. Something’s going on with one of our friends, and I was hoping you could zip us back in time a little bit so we could see something.”
“Did they all go out, and not invite you two?” Derpy asked, “That happened to me a lot when I was a filly…”
“Aw…” Dash hummed from the corner.
“It’s nothing like that,” Alex shook his head, “It sounds like a dark entity is controlling our friend Applejack, and if we could go back, we might get some answers.”
“Alright,” The doctor smiled, “You don’t need to ask me twice to go on an adventure! Come on, I’ll have us there in no time!”
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The Doctor, true to his word, had them back in under two minutes.
“Is everypony ready?” The Doctor asked, looking around at the ponies and smiling.
“Yeah,” Alex and Dash said together, as Derpy simply nodded along.
“Perfect! Then Let’s go find your friends—“
As the Doctor finished, he walked in to the front door to his ship, and seemed to collide off of it, sending him on to the floor.
“Are you okay?” Derpy asked, rushing to his side and looking down at him.
“Yeah, I’m alright.” He said, rubbing his forehead where he impacted the door.
Suddenly, one of the many screens attached to the main control panel lit up, and made a horrifying alarm sound.
“What the heck is that?” Alex shouted over the screech, looking at the computer screen as it flashed red.
Dashing over, Derpy pulled a few levers, and twisted a dial, switching the screen to show some information.
“What’s it say?” The Doctor asked as he got up from the floor, joining her at the screen.
After a few moments of silence, Dash finally spoke up.
“So… what’s going on?” She asked, “Are we good to go out? Or…?”
“There’s some kind of magical aura surrounding the area,” The Doctor said to them suddenly, “The TARDIS won’t open her doors…”
“What? Why not?” Dash asked, “I mean, what is opening the door going to do to us?”
“The magic field around us will seep in.” He answered, walking around the center control, as he adjusted some more settings, “Could lead to a catastrophic failure of her systems.”
“Oh, well, I guess going back in time is out of the question,” Alex said, frowning, “Can you just take us back to the present?”
“Well… not exactly,” The Doctor replied, turning to face them, “If we dematerialize here, it’ll likely allow the field to seep in to the ship.”
“I don’t understand!” Dash suddenly let out, getting all of their attention, “Why didn’t the ship suck up the magic when we first landed?”
“There was nothing here when we landed,” Derpy explained, looking at a graph on the screen, “It… um, only just showed up!”
“Okay, then fly this thing away from the magic field,” Alex offered, squinting at the uncomfortable expression the Doctor now wore.
“Actually, I fried the anti-gravity circuit a couple days ago…” The Doctor laughed nervously.
“So wait, if we can’t go through time, fly away, or leave the ship, what can we do?” Alex asked, looking back and forth between Derpy and the Doctor.
“That… is a good question!” The Doctor laughed nervously.
“How long will it take you to fix your anti-gravity circuit?” Alex asked, hoping the answer wouldn’t be something that broke his heart.
“Well, I was waiting on a part, so…” The Doctor coughed awkwardly.
Alex whined and fell back on to his butt, “But I don’t wanna wait for a paaaarrrttt.”
“Look, why don’t the two of you explore the inside of the TARDIS a little bit while Derpy and I work on a solution,” The Doctor offered, “You can head back to the race car room if you feel like it.”
“Race car?” Alex asked, scratching his head.
Dash looked at him with a deadpan expression.
“Race car.” She said.
“Oh.” He nodded quickly, pursing his lips and raising his eyebrows, “I could uh… go for some of that.”
“As if.” Dash said, levitating him off the ground with one of her chaotic spells, “Come on, we can—“
“How the heck did you just do that?!” The Doctor asked, racing over to Dash as he grabbed his sonic screwdriver off the console, “Did I just see you using class two anomalous—er—chaotic magic?”
“Yeah,” Dash nodded, “I’ve been able to do this for a while now!”
“This must have to do with the Elements of Harmony, right?” The Doctor asked, biting the activator on his screwdriver, as he ran it over her body.
“Yeah,” She said slowly, unsure if she was happy with being scanned, “I accepted the dark side within me, and Discord made it so I could… geez, I’m not even sure at this point.”
“Well, these scans just might allow me to use magic myself!” The Doctor said, walking away from her and plugging his device in to the TARDIS, “I can’t tell you what a pain it is to regenerate as an earth pony. Magic is very useful in my line of work.”
“Would you quit it with all that?” Derpy said, “You can try and use magic later. Right now, we need to escape this spell!”
“B-but!”
“You two go and explore!” Derpy said with both a broad smile, and broad field of view, “We’ll take care of everything here.”
“Thanks.” Dash said, looking to her sitting fiancé, “Wanna go for a walk?”
“I guess,” Alex sighed dramatically, “We’re going to the race car room though.”
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