Missing In Equestria

by VoxelTron

Our Shadows

MISSING IN EQUESTRIA
A FanFic by VoxelTron

Chapter 4: Our Shadows

The next morning...

“SPIKE!!”

The Doctor opened one eye begrudgingly trying to locate the source of the disturbance; the shrill voice nearly destroyed his eardrums and quite frankly, after surviving that sort of regeneration process, he needed the rest. And his eardrums. He opened the other eye, and pulled his head up off the pillow that was supporting it. Looking around, he was in some sort of cottage. well, it looked like a cottage, with a tidy wooden planked floor, and ornately carved beams across the ceiling. The bed he was in had the same craftsmanship the rest of the room displayed, but in a much darker, rich spruce, that distinctly reminded him of the smell of honey. There were a few bookshelves in the small room, crammed full of ancient yet beautifully preserved hardbacks. “The person who lives here must have quite a taste for literature” The Doctor said to himself aloud. Just then a crash was heard from below.

“Oh C’mon Twilight, it was just a joke!” Another crash reverberated around the room.
“I don’t care! You know I use that ink to send letters to the Princess! How am I meant to send her anything with INVISIBLE INK?!”
The voice once again pierced The Doctor’s ears causing him to grimace in pain.
“Ok, ok, I get it… geez; I’ll go and get the real ink, who twisted your horn the wrong way this morning?”
A door slammed shut below the Doctor, and the bellowing voices, crashes, and the occasional clucking chicken stopped.

He sighed in relief, now that was over he can get back to working out where he was. He got out of the bed, and tried a few tentative steps, just to check that the skeletal changes had finished. No problems, good. The round window at the back of the room was still closed with curtains pulled across it, so he walked over, pulled the curtains back and looked out.
What he saw made his jaw drop, he was looking down on was seemed to be a medieval town, complete with thatched roofs, and exposed wooden girders. The window he was looking out of was imbedded in a huge oak tree near the centre of the town.

He jumped up and down a few times. Yep, definitely normal laws of physics, but there’s something else, another element to the air. The world around him was colourful, more colourful than anything he’d ever seen before. But where was he? Just then the door behind him creaked open. Out of the opening came the lavender pony that he saw before he passed out; “Oh! You’re awake… great! You’ve been out for a week you know?”
He looked back towards the window deep in thought “A week?!? I’ve never normally stayed in regeneration stasis for more than couple of days, but then again, given the circumstances I probably needed more rest than usual… plus there was no tea…”
The Doctor then turned round to face the pony, once again with the signature smile on his face “do you have tea?”
The reaction to his hyperactivity from the purple unicorn was utterly priceless, better than any of the confused faces of all of his companions combined. The Doctor could help but smile at the thought.
“Wha... regeneration stasis? What in the hay are you on about?”
“Oh nothing to bother you over dear, don’t worry about it”
That response was clearly not what the unicorn had in mind “Hey we have names you know!” The horn on the top of the pony’s head lit up in a deep purple glow. I think I may have pushed a little too far
“Well then, in your own time, please do share” with this the mare returned to a more casual stance
“Twilight, Twilight Sparkle”

“Twilight…Sparkle?”. This was all the Doctor could manage before bursting into laughter
“BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Oh… Sweet Silurians... ”
The Doctor wiped the tears from his eyes, nearly falling over in absolute hysterics.
“That has got to be… the best name I’ve ever heard… 900 years of travelling around the cosmos and not once have I come across anything or anyone with a name like that, well apart from Staal The-Not-So-Quite-Undefeated-But-Never-Mind, but that’s another story”
The Doctor then trotted over to the door, passing the utterly confused Twilight, continued through the open door and down the stairs on the other side.

Twilight was still stood there, in complete shock. The strange stallion, who’d taken her bed for over a week, had just cast her aside, not said any words of gratitude, and then laughed at her introduction! And what in Celestia’s name is a Silurian!?!. The Doctor suddenly popped his head back round the door frame
“Don’t mind me if you hear a few crashes from downstairs, just going to cook myself some breakfast… You do have eggs right?”
Twilight barely had time to reply before the pony was charging back down the stairs, to make whatever mess he deemed necessary to make breakfast. This was the final straw for the faithful student of Celestia, who promptly fainted on the spot, and hit the ground with a light thud.

The Doctor had finally found the eggs required for making breakfast about ten minutes ago, thankfully with fewer breakages than he had estimated initially. Then again, the quality of the scrambled eggs would be hardly acceptable if he’d had done it with hands, but beggars can’t be choosers he told himself, after the twelfth egg to fall from his clumsy grasp smashed against the floor with a resounding splat. He’d already created a makeshift way of using the sonic screwdriver that was still hidden behind his ear. By flicking his head, the small stove in front of him lit up in a brilliant orange flame. The next half an hour was filled with the smell of scrambled eggs and curiously enough; brown sauce. (For some reason the Doctor had found a bottle of brown sauce behind his right ear) Finishing his breakfast, the Doctor cleaned up after himself, left a portion of the scrambled eggs on the table with a poorly written note, and proceeded out of the kitchen.

Twilight, on the other hoof, came around an hour later with a familiar cyan Pegasus standing over her. The pegasus’ face immediately lit up, noticing that Twilight had finally woken up.
“Hey hey! You ok Twi? I heard there was a bit of a commotion going on over here, something about invisible ink?”
Twilight came to her senses immediately and bolted up “Rainbow! Did you see him?!? Where’d he go? How long was I out?!?”
“Hey calm down, it’s been about an hour, and yes, your ‘patient’ as you put it, is downstairs whizzing through the library, although he prefers being called the Doctor, pretty weird name eh?”
“Um… What do you mean whizzing?” Twilight had now calmed down thoroughly, and had decided to hear more about the strange pony that was downstairs in her house.
“As in literally whizzing through every single book, seriously, it’s amazing Twi! He is literally reading books in no time flat, always muttering to himself afterwards about some strange thing or another. In fact, I’d go as far to say he may be a bigger egghead than you”
Twilight snorted at the claim “Oh C’mon Rainbow, I hardly doubt it’s THAT bad and just for the record there is nothing wrong with enjoying reading you should know that or need i remind you of Dari-”
Just then, the Doctor poked his head round the door
“Oh hey… Um… Twilight was it? Have you read this one? It’s a bit predictable, but I do like my souvenirs of the places I visit, is there another copy anywhere? ”
Both Twilight and Rainbow Dash turned round to see the gargantuan, dusty tome the Doctor had somehow managed to carry from the library and up the stairs. Twilight did a double take.
“ I’ve only ever seen a single book with those runes on the front before… that’s Starswirl The Bearded’s research journal…but that’s in Canterlot, in the restricted section, that can only be opened at the request of Celestia herself… How’d the heck did you get that?!?”

As if on cue, the Doctor closed his eyes and cringed as in pain and within the second, he was no longer the hyper, overly-exaggerated pony that both Twilight and Rainbow were speaking to not moments ago. Now he had large black shadows under his eyes, his hair had flattened, becoming sleek, almost dripping with dark venom that had now dyed his hair from the usual chestnut brown to a jet black. He smirked with an evil intent as he eyed both of the mares infront of him.
“why Twilight… when you are a 2000 year old demi-god, the idea of locks and keys just don’t fit into the equation”
There was an unnerving silence across the room, with the Doctor still staring straight at Twilight. Dash was the only one brave enough to break the silence, thankfully being the only one not being targeted for something.
“Say, um… Doc, you’re kinda getting a bit worrying now, are you sure you’re ok?”
The venomous stare of the Doctor then turned towards the window, as he paced towards it.
“My dear Rainbow Dash. No-one is ok…Well they were, but now that I’m here things are going to get…”He then turned around showing a grinning face that would make even the staunchest Royal Guard running in utter terror. “Complicated….”

Both of the mares stood there in absolute shock, this obviously did not please the stallion who once again frowned
“Oh don’t look like that, after all you were the ones to raise me back to good health, if it weren’t for that foolish other me that seems to be completely resistant to all my advancements, I would have been out of his grasp sooner”
Twilight now had too many questions, and began confronting the dark stallion in front of her “Wait, there’s other yous?”
the look of discontent increased on the Doctor’s shadowy face “Now Twilight you really are disappointing me… After all you are the cleverest one here, besides me of course. But if you really must know, I am just another part of the fool that you’ve had in your home for a week that he keeps so well in check, he is after all, such a dark man”
He then turned back towards the window “However every so often we just let our guards down, just enough for our other selves to leak through the gaps. I am all that the Doctor fears in himself. And worst of all, he can do nothing to stop me”
“Oh Yeah? Try stopping this!”
With that Rainbow Dash jumped forward and kicked the Doctor across the room. He then smashed against the wall while Twilight began a binding spell to keep him from moving. The Doctor struggled against the binds, but without magic himself, it was a useless venture.
“Damn…. once again my mouth is my downfall, I underestimated you two, but don’t think that will happen again. I will withdraw back to corners of this mind. Tell the Doctor this from me: his Shadow is back for good”
The Doctor then fell completely unconscious, the spell dissipated as though it was holding nothing. Twilight recovered quickly from the rapid use of magic and stood next to Rainbow Dash whom was watching as the colour returned to the Doctor’s mane and eyes. Checking to see if he was still breathing the two hauled him back onto the bed and left the room, hoping to recover from the mighty strange ordeal downstairs.

Author's Note:

Next part in the pipeline, but going a bit slow with it now that A-Levels have become a slightly higher priority. But I do REALLY enjoy writing Doc Whooves chapters, hopefully i'll bring the two parts together fairly soon, running out of ideas on the human side of things....
VoxelTron out!