Election Day

by Fedora

Home Again, Home Again

The day was no different than any other in the past week for Carrot Top. Ever since she had returned from gardening over a week ago, she hadn’t seen sight of her friend and cottage-mate Derpy Hooves. Ever since then she had been growing more and more frantic, worrying about what had happened. She had written letters, put up posters, talked to friends and relatives in nearly every town in Equestria, but had not been able to tell where Derpy had gone to.

Carrot Top stood in her modest kitchen, slicing vegetables she had harvested from the garden and preparing a stew for herself. The day was nearly out, and Celestia’s sun was beginning to set in the west.

A knock sounded on her cottage door, surprising her and causing her to slice a cucumber far too thick and haphazardly. Placing the knife down, Carrot Top tended to the door, secretly hoping that the pony on the other side would be Derpy, or would at least bring news of her friend’s whereabouts.

She was surprised to see Lyra standing at her door, laden with a duffel bag slung over her withers and a suitcase. Lyra spit the strap to the suitcase out, speaking first and posing a question to Carrot Top.

“Mind if I stay here for a night or two?” she asked, “I’d really appreciate it.”

“Your Dad kicked you out?”

“Not so much kicked me out as acting like such an..... well, I decided enough was enough, I needed to get away for a few days,” Lyra answered.

“Derpy’s room is upstairs, she..... she isn’t using it,” Carrot Top muttered, pointing Lyra in the right direction and returning to her work slicing up vegetables. With an extra mouth to feed, she’d have to double everything.

Lyra dragged her luggage up the stairs of Carrot Top’s cottage, finding the door marked “Derpy’s Room” with bold stickers. Upon entering the room, she was stunned to find the middle of it blocked by a tall blue box with windows. The box appeared wooden, was marked with a sign declaring that it was a “Police Box”, and had spray painted-on graffiti that read “Bad Wolf” on its side.

Lyra’s mouth sagged open. She recognized this, it was the Doctor’s spaceship, the one she had looked up through the Crypto Club! The one urban legend nearly all members of the club rejected, she was facing right before her very eyes.

The door opened and out flew Derpy, smashing head first into her own bed and laying there dazed. Behind her was another figure, a blue stallion with a somewhat bony face and a very short mane cut, clad in a leather jacket.

“Sweet Celestia...” stammered Lyra, pointing at the figure, “You’re.... you’re.... you’re...”

“I’m the Doctor,” he finished, taking Lyra’s hoof she was using to point with in shock and shaking it vigorously.

“If my coordinates are correct we should have landed somewhere near Carrot Top’s cottage... though you don’t look much like a Carrot top to me. Could you tell me where we are, Miss....”

“Heartstrings,” she replied, “I’m Lyra Heartstrings, and this is Derpy’s bedroom. There’s a big blue box in here which I’m guessing is a spaceship, and there’s a stallion calling himself ‘The Doctor’.”

“I know, fantastic isn’t it?”

Derpy and Lyra breathlessly trotted down the stairs, standing around the corner from the kitchen so as not to be seen by Carrot Top. Lyra was in a state between utter exuberance over encountering the Doctor and wanting to help her friend Carrot Top by ensuring her that Derpy was safe. At the moment, her exuberance was getting the better of her.

“Oh Derpy, that’s sooooo exciting! So what do you and him do, huh? You travel around in time? Where and when? Did you meet anyone famous? Do ponies in the future have teleporters? Did you see a space alien? I’ve always wanted to meet a space alien, how about you? Did you see flying carriages? Do-”

“Lyra!” Derpy snapped in a whisper, “time and place! I have to focus on what to tell Carrot Top.”

“Derp, like seriously, she’s been freaking out about you being gone. She’s even gotten the Mayor himself conducting searches,” Lyra said.

“How long have I been away? I thought the Doctor was going to bring me back as if I had never left,” Derpy asked, her heart sinking. Hearing how badly Carrot Top really had taken her absence made her feel absolutely horrible.

“A week, give or take,” Lyra replied, “Are you gonna tell her the truth? About traveling with the Doctor and all that?”

“Yeah,” Derpy said with a nod, “I don’t want to lie to her. Plus, it’s not like I can’t prove my story: the Doctor’s gonna park his TARDIS right outside the cottage right about now.”

From the other room, Derpy and Lyra could hear the door inside the kitchen open, and Carrot Top’s slicing ceased. The two mares fell silent.

“Who are you, and what do you think you’re doing?” came the sound of Carrot Top.

“I’m the Doctor, and I can explain!” cried the Doctor. Derpy and Lyra heard a shuffling, and a loud clang.

“Why are you in my house?!”

“M’am, calm down for a moment, I can...”

“This is a private home!” Carrot Top cried, and there was a second clang, and a scuffle.

“I know where Derpy is!” the Doctor sputtered out.

Another clang. Carrot Top had dropped a frying pan on the kitchen floor. She and the Doctor panted for a moment, and then it was her turn to speak.

“Oh... Okay.... where is she?”

Silently, Derpy and Lyra slipped out from around the corner, into Carrot Top’s line of sight. She took in the sight of Derpy with a show of relief and a surge of joy. Derpy was quick to dart over and embrace her cottage-mate and friend, a motion which Carrot Top returned. Afterwards, Derpy backed off. Carrot Top’s initial relief was waning, replacing itself with frustration and anger.

“Where have you BEEN?” she ranted, “I come home and you’re nowhere. NOWHERE! No note, no message, just poof and gone. I thought for sure it was one of those freakish abductions. An entire week you’ve been gone, and I’ve been frantic!”

“She’s not lying,” interjected Lyra, before being shut up by a death glare from Carrot Top.

“So again I ask, Where have you been?”

Derpy paced the length of the kitchen carefully, thinking of how to phrase her answer. She didn’t think Carrot Top would react well to her saying ‘oh, I’ve been wandering aimlessly through time and space with an alien’, but at the same time she didn’t want to tell a lie. As a valued friend who was very close to Derpy, she deserved to know.

It was the Doctor who answered first, taking Derpy’s uncomfortable silence as permission to interject.

“Actually, It’s sort of my fault about that,” he said, leaning against a wooden cabinet and folding his front hooves and jacket sleeves across his chest, “I sort of helped Derpy escape from the abductors, and we went traveling. You could say she and I are companions.”

“Companions?” Carrot Top mouthed. She looked incredibly saddened.

“Derpy, you really ran away with some stallion boyfriend and left me here wondering if you were dead or alive?” she asked.

“No, he’s not my boyfriend, and we were actually on our way back here right after the incident with the weird carriages and got.... erm, sidetracked,” Derpy said, “Honestly, I didn’t mean to leave you hanging this long waiting for me. I meant to come back that same day...”

She and the Doctor exchanged glances.

“....and the reason I couldn’t was a complete accident,” Derpy continued, “because.... er.... the time machine got the wrong day. And yes, I am completely serious. I’ve been traveling in time with the Doctor.”

The room fell silent. Carrot Top rubbed the sides of her head, letting out a deep sigh.

“I’ve got a headache, I’m going to need a few minutes,” she admitted, “Derpy, please go to town hall and tell the Mayor to call off the search.”

“Alright,”

“Do you need to be alone for a bit?” asked Lyra, “The Doctor and I can just pop outside.”

“I need an aspirin and some quiet,” Carrot Top said, “Take a few bits from the hutch and get yourselves something to eat. I’m not making everybody extra dinner.”

****

Derpy flew through the town quickly, not wanting to slow for ponies to gawk at as she passed by. She didn’t like this one bit; she wouldn’t be able to show her face at all without somepony saying ‘oh, you’re that Derpy mare, right? The one that went missing?’ or ‘what happened to you last week? Carrot Top was worried sick!’

She really just wished the mix-up had never happened, and they had just arrived on time.

Derpy struck a low-hanging banner without warning, crashing to the ground in a heap of plastic and dust. She coughed and waved her hoof to clear the air, and a passing couple came over to help her out of the banner.

“Are you alright?” the stallion asked, trying to unravel the plastic, “You really took a digger there!”

“I’m fine, thanks,” Derpy said, shaking her head and stepping out of the wrecked banner.

“Knocked down the Mayor’s campaign poster, you did,” the unicorn mare noted, “He had a team working all morning trying to set that one up.”

“I’ll apoligize myself, I was on my way to see him right now,” Derpy said, thanking the couple once again and zipping off down the street.

The stallion and the mare glanced at each other.

“I wonder what she was in such a hurry about.”

****

“This is it then?” Lyra asked.

She and the Doctor stood outside the cottage, where the TARDIS stood near the garden shed. The box still appeared a bit dirty and beaten-up from the crash landing in Starswirl’s time, and the white graffiti was clearly displayed on the side right of the double doors.

“Yes, the TARDIS,” he answered jovially, “Time and Relative Dimensions in Space.”

“It says ‘Bad Wolf’ on the side here,” Lyra pointed, “I haven’t seen it with those words on it before. How come?”

“Oi, how’d you know about the TARDIS?” asked the Doctor, putting his snout in front of Lyra’s face sternly, “Don’t tell me I’ve gone mainstream now.”

She pranced around all sides of the box, giddy as a foal. Truth be told, she was one of the last ponies who actually bothered looking up anything about the Doctor in the Crypto Club, let alone actually believe any of the stories.

“I’m part of a club that likes to talk about urban legends,” she admitted, “Y’know, like hydras in bogs, sea serpents in forest rivers. Stuff that most ponies think is a load of bogus.”

“This isn’t part of that LINDA lot, is it?”

“Oh no, I actually don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m the only one of the bunch who’s done serious looking into the legend of “The Doctor”. Mind you, not a lot of publication to follow, you’ve tidied up well.”

The Doctor was speechless.

“So,” broached Lyra, “I’d like to offer my help in any way I can.”

“As in....?”

“Well,” Lyra said, “It travels in time, right? I’m guessing that since you and Derpy travel together, there might be room for one more.”

The Doctor blinked for a moment, and smiled.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, now.”

****

Derpy entered town hall, gazing at political posters and banners hung up on the walls. Most were for the current mayor, Mayor Bowler, who was up for re-election in just over a week.

Well Derpy thought, Make that only a few days.

Approaching the wooden desk outside of his office, she noted that there was no clerk to greet her. She waited for a few moments before trying the door of the Mayor’s office itself, rapping on the surface with her hoof. From inside came the sounds of a scuffle.

“Who is it?” an irritated-sounding voice asked, “I’m busy right now!”

“It’ll only take a second!” Derpy insisted. From within the room came an odd sound, and she swore she saw a flash of green appear from the crack of the door near the floorboards.

The door creaked open, and the orange face of the Mayor himself appeared pressed into the crack of the door.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“It’s me, sir,” she replied, “Derpy Hooves. I just wanted to let you know you can call off the search for me.”

“That’s nice, thanks for letting me know,” he rattled off, shutting the door swiftly.

Derpy stood outside the door for a few moments, curious. She must have caught him doing something secretive, for he did not want to allow her to see what was inside his office, nor did he really want to see her in the first place.

Shrugging, Derpy chalked it up to some kind of business to do with the campaign and exited the building, taking off back toward Carrot Top’s cottage.

****

Lyra’s mouth gaped open as she stepped inside the TARDIS. The huge bronze ceiling lined with roundels, the coral-like support beams, everything seemed so massive. As usual, the Doctor leaned against the console, folding his front legs and smiling.

“It’s... it’s huge!” she sputtered. Lyra backed herself outside the box and walked around the entire exterior. It was blue-painted wood, only a few second before she was back at the door. She walked inside again.

“the inside’s bigger than the outside,” she commented, “How does that even work?”

“Aha!” the Doctor cried, jumping down and circling Lyra, “Turns out you don’t even begin to know about me. This is a separate dimension of sorts. Dimensionally transcendental.”

“and you said it travels in time?” she eagerly said, “I’m sorry if I seem pushy and all, but this is just so cool!Can you demonstrate?”

“No,” the Doctor said, “Not right now. I’ve got a few errands to run.”

He and Lyra exited the TARDIS, and the Doctor shut the doors behind him. He glanced up to the window, noticing that the curtain ruffled quickly. Carrot Top had been watching them the whole time.

“What errands?” Derpy asked, appearing from around the corner.

“For starters, paint,” the Doctor said, “I’ve got to get rid of that ugly graffiti.”

Comments

[MLZFan2130]

I’m not making everybody extra dinner.

Aren't ponies suppose to say everypony?