Wolf at the Door

by Fedora

Crashing

A young pegasus sat by the river’s edge in the humid air of the tropical climate, preening her feathers as she waited. The sun was high in the sky, and there was not much for Medley to do while awaiting her travelling partner’s return.

Medley was about 17 years old, and had had a blueish green coat. Her cutie mark was that of a rain cloud, which meant that her specialty was in weather control. Usually she preferred to gather clouds for a rainstorm rather than clearing the sky, but on this occasion she had made sure that there wouldn’t be anything blocking sunbeams. Her partner had been very specific on his need for natural light.

She flicked through the pages of her book, which she had pulled off the ship’s bookshelf at random. It was titled Raxacoricofallapatorius: A Brief History, and she wasn’t interested in the least.

Medley sighed, and shut the book. She needed something else to read, something more interesting. She was about to get up to leave when she heard a sound echoing through the air.

It was a bit distant, but it seemed to be coming in the direction of the mountain.

Medley stood up, and walked over to the edge of the grass, just over the hill by the river’s edge. Spread before her was a vast rolling field of tall grass, ending in the distance where it met the rain forest. She could see a small figure entering the grass, cutting through at high speed.

She heard the sound again, still too faint to hear but growing stronger.

Six more figures burst from the trees, not much taller than the first but each taking a new path bent on catching up. Behind them were six more, and then six more after that. The first figure was being chased by a small army of similarly sized creatures.

The first figure was now coming up over a hill about halfway toward Medley, and she could see who it was. It was a tall bright-green stallion with a curly blond mane, and he was wearing a garish outfit that seemed cobbled together out of many clashing fabrics. She listened, and heard the sound more clearly this time.

“MEDLEY!!!! GET TO THE TARDIS!!!”

Behind the patchwork stallion came the first line of many small lizard-like creatures outfitted in woven plant fibers and throwing spears at the stallion. The stallion cried out to his companion once more, and it was Medley’s turn to jump into action.

The TARDIS was on the opposite bank of the river. Medley had no trouble flying across and getting in using the key strung around her neck, but she thought of the Doctor coming up right behind her across the field. Leaving the door open, she searched about the white interior to try to find something she could reach out with.

“MEDLEY!!” the Doctor cried, reaching the edge of the river with tribal lizards still in pursuit. Left with no other way out, he jumped into the coursing waters. Spears were flung at him, and splashed into the water at his side.

Medley reached out of the TARDIS doors with a long coat rack, holding it out as far as she could to try to get it within the Doctor’s reach.

The Doctor battled the current to try to reach the opposite shore, paddling with his hooves and scraping the rocky bottom of the river. He jumped up, reaching for the edge of the brass coat rack. One of his legs wrapped around a hook of the rack, allowing Medley to help drag him out of the water.

The Doctor leaped up onto the bank and in through the TARDIS doors, just as a volley of poisoned arrows were launched by the lizards on the other side. A few of them got lodged in the blue woodwork but none reached inside, for the door was slammed shut.

Inside, the Doctor panted. His clothes were all soaking wet and he was out of breath, but at least he was still alive.

Medley put the coat rack back where it originally came from, in a corner by the white roundels. The Doctor stood himself up, and hung his dripping coat on one of the hooks. He was still panting and wheezing like a dog.

“Doctor… what happened?” she asked, “I thought you were going to try to slip in unnoticed by the Silurians.”

“Well… evidently I arrived a bit early. No fault of mine of course, it was the TARDIS malfunctioning again,” the Doctor replied, “The Silurians haven’t even progressed beyond stone tools and leaf garments, I doubt they have a calendar yet. Probably they won’t for at least another thousand years.”

Medley went around to the other side of the console, and opened a screen as the Doctor had taught her to do. Outside the pair could see the tribal Silurians angrily throwing things at the closed door of the TARDIS.

“If it’s too early to find a copy of the Silurian calendar, then why did you stay and get noticed?” asked Medley, helping the Doctor back onto all fours, “You could’ve been killed?”

“Me?” Killed?” the Doctor protested, “Please Medley, the worst that could’ve happened is another regeneration, and I’m in no mood to waste this body of mind so soon. It’s only been fifty, sixty years since I got it? No… they mistook me for some kind of game animal. They chased after me on first glance.”

“They probably thought you were some new species of rainbow deer,” Medley joked.

“Hardly,” the Doctor retorted, wringing water out of his hair, “There aren’t any mammals that big on Earth yet, and there won’t be for a few million years. This is still very much the age of reptiles and birds.”

He flicked a switch on the TARDIS console, and the ship dematerialized. They were now flying in the time vortex.

“It was a waste of time to have you clear the sky, they won’t have solar powered buildings for quite awhile.” the Doctor said, “but I suppose that can wait.”

“Oooh, where are we going Doctor?” Medley asked, “Somewhere where I can go exploring? I want to do something fun!”

“Fun?” the Doctor repeated, “Fun?! Oh all right, I suppose I can take you somewhere… fun. What did you have in mind?”

Medley opened her mouth, but the words were cut off by a monstrous crash. The TARDIS had hit something, and the two were thrown out of balance. The Doctor clutched the edge of the groaning console to keep himself from falling down onto the wall, while Medley suspended herself in flight.

“We’ve crashed into something!” the Doctor cried over the TARDIS rumbling in protest, “Something else in the time vortex collided with us and we’ve been knocked out of flight!”

“What does that mean?!” Medley cried, as the TARDIS lurched onto the other side, spinning out of control.

“We’re crashing!”

The TARDIS fell through the cloud coverage on an unknown planet, crashing down onto sand dune on it’s side and rebounding into the air. It flipped upside down and then landed right side up, skidding to a stop. Not far from it, another police box hurtled through the atmosphere and smashed its way through a sand dune. It came to rest not far from the 6th Doctor’s TARDIS, but on its side. The door flung open, and three figures fell out in a heap.

One was a gray pegasus with a blond mane, the second an aquamarine unicorn. The third was a light blue stallion, and he wore a leather jacket. He was the first to stand up, staring at the other TARDIS with piercing eyes.

The Doctor had grabbed his still dripping coat, and stormed out of the TARDIS doors angrily.

“That’s bang out of order, you should know better than to fly a time ship over the path of another….”

He stopped, staring at the other stallion and the police box, now on it’s side in the sand.

“Oh no,” the other stallion said, “Of all the other incarnations, it had to be this one.”

“What?!” the Doctor cried, standing up to the stallion and staring him down, “and just who do you think you are?”

“Symbol of a hourglass on my flank and a TARDIS in the shape of a police box, not that hard to work it out, is it?” the leather-clad stallion said, “Oh, this is just fantastic.”

“Doctor?” Derpy asked, standing at his side, “Who is that other stallion, and why does he have a blue box like yours?”

“That,” the Ninth Doctor said, “Is me… well, a past version of me. It’s the Sixth Doctor.”

“If I were going to change out of this form of mine I’d have hoped for something a bit better than that… what are you, an edgy war hero?” the Sixth Doctor scoffed. He and the Ninth were circling each other, sizing each other up.

“Doctor…” Medley asked, “Who is he?”

“That, Medley, is me,” Six said, “It’s the future me. I might not have told you this, but my species can change form when a body is near death to keep alive. My personality and appearance changes, but my memories are intact. What incarnation are you on, Doctor?”

“Erm… I’m the Ninth Doctor.”

From behind the Ninth Doctor, Derpy snickered. She remembered the coat she had borrowed during their trip to Starswirl’s time, and now she knew where it had come from.

“What I want to know is why our two TARDISes crashed into each other like that,” the Ninth said, “because that’s not how the time vortex is supposed to work.”

“Indeed.” Six replied, furrowing his eyes and nodding his head once. The two Doctors paused in their bickering to take a glance around and take in their surroundings.

The two TARDISes and respective crewmembers had crash landed near an ocean. Both sat atop the sand of a very large beach, with the Ninth Doctor’s TARDIS lying on its side a bit closer to the water’s edge. On the other side of the dunes behind the Sixth Doctor’s TARDIS the sand dunes gave way to grass, and in the distance were green hills and mountains. Between two of the distant mountains was a village.

“There’s also another problem,” the Ninth Doctor said after a moment, facing away from the others and staring out toward the small village.

“And what would that be?” the Sixth Doctor asked, positioning himself in the latest Doctor’s line of sight.

“I don’t remember this,” Nine answered simply, “That is… I don’t remember being you and meeting my Ninth self. This entire incident has been wiped from my memory.”

Both of the Doctors were silent for a moment, leaving all three of the companions to speculate as to what the significance of the Ninth Doctor’s revelation was.

In her own mind, Derpy figured that he might have forgotten due to aging. She couldn’t even fathom how many centuries had passed between the time of his sixth body and his ninth, and she herself could hardly remember stuff from a decade ago. Lyra considered that another alien could have tampered with his mind.

Medley thought of how the Doctor had told her stories about how he had acted to his previous companion before her, who had witnessed the change to his sixth form from his fifth. He had described himself as unstable, amnesiac, and irrational. Perhaps he had forgotten due to some problem with one of his regenerations?

The whole concept was alien and ultimately none of them could grasp what exactly the Doctor was trying to imply, but the Sixth Doctor seemed to understand what his future self was trying to get at.

All thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a distant explosion, and a plume of smoke stretching into the sky over the tops of trees. The ground shook with a second explosion, and the Doctors took a step back towards the beach.

“Was that a bomb?!” Medley gasped.

“I don’t know, Medley.” the Ninth Doctor said, “But I think we can find out. Do you still have those flight goggles?”

“Still?”

“It’s been centuries since I last saw you Medley, bear with me.”

Medley nodded.

“They’re in the TARDIS,” she said, “Well, my Doctor’s TARDIS.”

“Same TARDIS, two different points in time,” the Sixth Doctor corrected, walking past the pair and opening the door. He stepped inside his box, and came back out with two pairs of flight goggles. One was tossed to Derpy, the other to Medley.

“Why do I need these?” Derpy asked.

“Because, we need you two to survey the surroundings aerially,” the Sixth Doctor replied, “and if that was a bomb or an explosion rather than an earthquake… well, you don’t want to be flying through a cloud of whatever gets released into the air with your eyes exposed.”

“What are we looking for, Doctor?” Medley asked.

“Anything,” the Ninth Doctor said, “Everything. Tell us what you can see.”

With that, Derpy and Medley took to the sky. The two Doctors and Lyra remained on the ground, watching as the pegasi shrank to a tiny size and disappeared into the clouds. The ponies on the ground were silent for a moment, until the Ninth Doctor spoke up.

“So… where am I meeting you at? Obviously it’s after the trial, but how long after?” he asked.

“Yes,” the Sixth Doctor replied, looking upwards and raising a brow, “Er… I’ve met Medley in the mid 1980s, we’ve been to an alternate version of Gallifrey- dismal place- stopped a group of scientists in the 22nd century from creating a race of vampire-ponies… oh! we rescued Romana from a prison facility operated by the Nestene on Polymos… built another version of K9… and most recently I tried to obtain a Silurian calendar.”

“Wound up running for your life, haha! I remember that bit!” the Ninth Doctor interjected, “Was that right before now?”

“Yes, immediately.”

“Well… there’s no gap between that and my next memory of being you,” the Ninth said, “I sort of remember taking a nap and waking back up in the TARDIS, business as usual.”

Derpy and Medley were returning now, and the pair landed a short distance from the Doctors and Lyra, and chose to gallop the rest of the way.

“There’s a group of squiggly lines not too far from here,” Derpy said, “and then there’s some sort of space in between them and another set of lines.”

“They look like a bunch of creatures dug rows and rows of lines in the dirt,” Medley continued, “and the space in between is…”

“Nopony’s land,” the Doctor said in unison.

“What?” Lyra spoke up, “Like from the war with the Gryphons?”

“No… it can’t be.” the Ninth doctor said, pulling out a watch from the pocket of his leather coat, “It’s 1934 right now, this should be peacetime…. Derpy, how far did the trenches reach?”

“Not that far,” she admitted, “They just sort of block off the village.”

“The villagers must be defending themselves from attack,” the Sixth Doctor said, “I think we ought to find out just what is going on here.”

Comments

[themouthofmush]

this seems like a promising story. good start.

[Big Brother is Watching]

Not bad! But here's a question: If it is the Age of reptiles and birds, where did the Silurians get all their fur clothes?