• Published 14th Mar 2012
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Fallout: Equestria - Just Like Clockwork - Starlight_Tinker



When the bombs fell, where was Doctor Whooves? Better question: where is he now?

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Chapter 16 - A Slave to Time (Part 7)

Chapter 16 – A Slave to Time (Part 7)


A long time ago, in the magical land of Equestria, a Time Lord was dying...

I crawled towards the console, my limbs failing me as the metallic taste of radioactive death filled my mouth. The door had slammed shut behind me as I entered, and the soft glow of the TARDIS' interior lighting was made hazy and opaque by my delirium.

I estimated from the deterioration of my body that the gust from the valley had washed me in about 3000 rads of magical radiation, the equivalent of five lethal doses. There was a trail of blood on the floor of the console room that extended from the door all the way up to my face, where my mucus membranes had begun to haemorrhage. I could already feel the distant glow of my regeneration starting to take hold.

It wasn't fair.

Everypony in Equestria had just been doomed to extinction because of me. I had seen the world that would prevail, and although I knew that it would contain good souls, that friends would still come to one another's aid, and that love would still find a way, I still despaired for the horror that they would have to live through; the struggle simply to subsist from day to day.

And all the while, I would be secreted away in my TARDIS, insulated and safe, my body new and healthy. As ponies died in their thousands, their millions, I would live on, free to gallivant through time and space, leaving them all to turn to toxic dust in my wake.

Like I said: it wasn't fair.

And if there was one thing I hated, it was a lack of fairness.

"Ac-activate... voice interface...!" I coughed to the console room. A shimmering blue projection took shape before me, resolving itself into a four-legged form with divergent eyes, a straw-coloured mane, and a bubble-shaped cutie mark.

"Voice interface enabled," the TARDIS said through Ditzy Doo's mouth. "Please state command or inquiry."

"Brilliant..." I sighed painfully, a deep chasm of guilt opening in my already rapidly collapsing gut. "More guilt..."

"'Brilliant. More guilt' is not understood in the present context," Ditzy said, far too flatly. "Please restate."

"T-tell me..." I said, my lungs burning as the taste of metal in my mouth seemed to spread down my throat and into my chest. "St-status...!"

"Eighty-four percent of ship's systems are operating within normal parameters," she replied quickly. "Twelve percent are in need of maintenance, and four percent are offline. Itemised list follows. Chameleon Circuit is operating, but is not responding to control inputs. Bicentennial recalibration of the gravimetric sensor array is due. The following toilets are out of order—"

"No, no, no!" I coughed, blood spraying from my mouth as I did so. "Tell m-me about... Equestria...!"

"The name 'Equestria' may refer to any of the following. One: a variety of cheese produced on Fromage Prime. Two: a sovereign state of the planet—" she began.

"NO!" I shouted, interrupting the projection of my former companion as I toppled onto my side, weak and pained. "Tell me... what's happening... outside...!"

The interface was silent for a moment as it processed my command. A slight tilt of its virtual head - a gesture of minor contemplation amongst organic ponies - indicated that it had just read and compiled the readings from the TARDIS' many millions of sensors, performing a truly dizzying array of calculations in naught but a few seconds.

"The exterior atmosphere is currently being saturated with hazardous levels of Thaumic radiation." it said. "Thermal and barometric gradients are consistent with multiple large-scale explosions. Gradient peaks are centred near regions with high concentrations of either technological signatures or life signs. Conclusion: a targeted thermonuclear bombardment is in progress."

"H-how m-many... bombs...!? Wh-where...!?"

"Twenty-nine thousand, four hundred and sixty-two balefire explosives of varying yields and types have been detected since the beginning of the bombardment," Ditzy said, her face blank and expressionless. "The distribution of the explosions is global, indicating equal-measure counter-attacks from multiple geo-political entities. Conclusion: a catastrophic world war has been instigated. Projection: the catastrophic world war will conclude in approximately four minutes."

"C-casualty... projections...!"

"Planetary life signs have decreased in magnitude by approximately 68% since the beginning of the bombardment." she replied, as I involuntarily winced. "0.0004% of the sentient population appear to be isolated from the effects of the bombardment. Several species of flora and fauna appear to be adaptable to high radiation environments. Projection: 73% of non-sentient species will become extinct, the remainder will mutate over time. 99.9996% of sentients will—"

"S-save... them..." I wheezed, my breath stolen by the double sucker-punch of acute radiation poisoning and emotional devastation. "Block the... bombs..."

"Unable to comply," Ditzy responded curtly. "Current extrapolator shield capacity is insufficient to absorb all incident external energies on a planetary scale."

"Then... teleport... Teleport them all aboard!"

"Unable to comply. TransMat system targeting sensors have been disrupted by external radiation. There is insufficient power for the required signal gain to be achieved. Additionally, the life support capacity of this spacecraft is insufficient for a crew of that size. A maximum of 36'500 equinoid lifeforms may be carried aboard at any—."

"W-wait... Wait!" I coughed desperately, cutting off the hologram. "What was... that you said about the... isolated sentients...?"

"0.0004% of sentients appear to be isolated from the effects of the bombardment." she repeated.

"H... How...?" I said, now gasping for breath.

Another tilt of the head, another few trillion calculations.

"Sensors indicate that the isolated individuals are sealed inside underground structures equipped with closed-cycle life support systems, large reserves of consumables and significant shielding. Conclusion: these facilities are fallout shelters, constructed with the express purpose of surviving an apocalyptic world event."

That was it! The stables! Applebloom had already given me the solution, that little bow-headed genius! She had clearly realised once back in her own time what I only had a few minutes to here: that Equestria was doomed, and saving everypony was no longer an option. It was a numbers game from now on.

"C-copy the design...!" I panted. "Make the TARDIS into... one of those shelters...! Make it better...! Save them...! S-save as many as... possible...!"

"Unable to comply," came the shattering response. "External radiation levels are interfering with sensors. Additionally, the Chameleon Circuit is not responding to control inputs. Conclusion: system adaption is not possible."

"There... must be... some... hope..." I gasped, sliding off of the console onto the floor. I looked up at the interface hologram, and noted that it had actually turned to face me for once, its implacable, seemingly impervious demeanour having softened by an almost imperceptible iota.

The sadness in her eyes carried a tiny hint of pity, and was so slight in its magnitude that the alteration of a single binary digit could have banished it completely. The form opened its mouth to speak, her words somehow more measured, and far less harsh.

"'Hope'..." the interface said, "is not understood in the present context..."

I closed my eyes and laid down on the floor, the total collapse of my forelegs only seconds away as I began to blubber and cry like an infant. Blood and snot mixed in my mouth with the radioactive taste of metal, and crimson tears streamed out of my tear ducts as I wept for Equestria, and for its inhabitants. All doomed simply because I was a bad friend.

The warm golden glow of my regeneration began to creep into my skin, just as a brilliant white light engulfed the console room.

<<<<< O >>>>>

Meanwhile, somewhere else in time and space...

So, yeah... Time travel is, like... hard, and stuff.

The vortex swirled around the naked TARDIS console, a turbulent gale of time energy blasting past me as I strained to manipulate the correct controls. Straddling the various panels, I was just about able to hold the flux inhibitor in place with my left foreleg, turn the Thaumic release valve with my right hind leg and toggle the relay control switches with my tongue.

The console was buffeted back and forth like a leaf caught in a maelstrom, my body pounding painfully against the controls as the panels bucked up and down in the turbulence. It took all the coordination I had just to keep the thing steady while the automatic systems (which I had only just managed to turn on without vaporising us) managed to take over.

Redheart was still concussed on the floor, her mane released from its tidy bun and strewn haphazardly over her body. I chanced a look in her direction, a lump forming in my throat as the brilliant, many-coloured lights of the vortex danced across her features, making it impossible for me to visually check whether or not she was breathing.

Just as I was considering an ill-advised leap away from the controls, a sharp chime from the console announced the stabilisation of the simple time machine's flight mode. Relaxing, I pulled my limbs back from the other control panels, secure in the knowledge that the compact little timeship wasn't going to suddenly careen into a supernova for lack of supervision.

I flexed my limbs and hurriedly lowered myself down next to Redheart on the floor. I was infinitely relieved to see that her chest was rising and falling in a steady rhythm, her face flexing gently as concussed dreams swam to and fro inside her head.

Leaning back onto the console grating, I breathed a sigh of relief and allowed myself a brief respite while the bootleg TARDIS idled between moments. I looked up above the time rotor and into the bright eternity around me, my breathing finally slowing from the panic I had just escaped from.

'No,' I thought to myself, looking down at my hooves in shame. 'You didn't escape, you piece of shit. You ran away. You ran. And in doing so caused the death, no - the mutilation - of hundreds of innocents!'

'You couldn't have done anything else,' One said soothingly, trying to placate me. 'Time wouldn't allow it. The paradox was unsustainable, even for a roomful of powerful unicorns and a fledgling Time Lord.'

'Not to mention,' Three added, 'that even if you had stayed, you'd have been killed. And that's if you were lucky! You might have been caught, stuffed in one of those conversion machines, and put to work as a cyborg soldier that your younger self would end up killing two hundred years later! Like the other guy said, you couldn't have done anything else. This was your only option.'

'I know... I know...' I thought solemnly to myselves, as I looked up once again into the temporal landscape. 'That doesn't make what I did any less awful though...'

The time vortex was actually quite pretty when viewed with the naked eye (especially when you're not, you know, being torn to shreds by it). I had expected a mind-bending, madness-inducing realm of chaos and entropy, but had instead found a genuinely beautiful sight.

My disgrace was almost bearable as the ages drifted around me, motes and hues of every possible color (and a few more besides) zipping past the safe confines of the temporal bubble. I looked to Redheart, and to the console, fully aware of what I had to do next. The weight of the coming task bore down on me, making my stomach churn and my legs ache.

Redheart would have to be deposited in a Stable, I knew, so that she would be safe from the fallout, and so that she could mate, procreate and produce Caring Heart in time for my emergence from Stable 52 two hundred years later.

'And after putting her out of harm's way,' I thought selfishly, 'I'll be alone again. As alone as the first time I left the stable. As alone as I was before I met Mo, and Buckshot, and Sage, and Brandy, and Saltira, and Galinda, and—

'That's a long list, mate,' Three said suddenly, chiming into my depressed reverie like a bell resounding through fog. 'All you're thinking about is loneliness, but consider: was that list ever that big before? And has it ever grown as fast it had in the past few weeks?'

'He has a point,' One added. 'Are you sure that your using the word "alone" correctly here?'

A curious thought occurred to me at that moment, as the list of my friend's names scrolled through my mind, getting bigger with every passing recollection. I realised that, far from being alone, I was actually more complete now than I had ever been before. My friends being far away was far less important than the fact that they were my friends in the first place! Wherever they were, they wouldn't have forgotten me, just as I hadn't forgotten them!

I looked to the unconscious figure on the grating beside me, pangs forming in my stomach. I'd miss Redheart terribly once I left her in a stable, and it was more than likely that I'd never see her again once I departed. However, I would never forget her, and I doubted that she would ever forget me (especially since our introduction consisted of my embedding a bullet in her flank). We'd be friends forever, even if we never met again.

And on top of that, I realised in a moment of illumination that I had saved her. I had actually saved somepony! Her and her alone. One pony, exempted from the end of the world by a chance encounter with a rogue Time Lord. One pony whose descendants would go on to rebuild a small portion of the Wasteland, treat its wounded, and keep and hoof on its moral pulse.

In saving her, I had made a tiny difference. One that would cascade into other tiny differences, that would culminate in a community having a competent doctor with a good sense of right and wrong. A difference that would one day aid a solitary stallion escaping his stable. A stallion that would defeat a cyborg menace, liberate over a thousand slaves, and in turn ensure that that doctor would come into existence in the first place.

I looked to Redheart, and realised with a curious shudder that, although I had done many things wrong... I had managed to do at least one thing right.


"What the—!" the stable guard exclaimed, as the pressure door slid open in front of him. There, in a supply room of all places, was a lone mare, struggling to rise to her hooves. She moved as if she had been wounded, her forelegs trembling as she attempted to lift herself into an upright stance.

"Miss, are you alright!?" he asked, rushing to support her. "What's your name? Are you hurt?"

"I, uh... ooh, my head...!" she said, wincing as she spoke. "It's, ah... my name's Redheart. Wh-where...?"

"It's okay, miss, it's okay," the guard said soothingly as the mare finally righted herself. "You're safe. We're in a stable."

"A... stable...?" the mare echoed, clutching her head with a hoof. "But I was... I mean we were..." Her eyes suddenly focussed sharply, her facial expression switching in an instant from confused to concerned. "Compass!" she shouted. "Where's Compass!? The buck I was travelling with, the one with the metal horn!"

"Metal horn?" the guard said questioningly. "You mean like the one the supervisor has?"

"Supervisor!?" the mare practically shouted back.

"Yeah," the guard responded. "A stable supervisor with a metal horn and a flank-load of scars told me to check the supply rooms not three minutes ago! Lucky he did too! You might not have been found otherwise..."

"This supervisor," the mare said, as she began moving towards the door, her hooves clutching the wall for balance and support, "where did he go!?"

"Just down the corridor, miss," the guard replied, rushing to help her walk. "But we should get you to Medical before you check with him. Get your wounds seen to before you look for your duty assignment."

"Duty assignment!?" the mare said, as the door slid open again. "Why would I have a duty assignment!?"

"We'll all have them eventually," he replied, trying his best not to appall the mare any further. "I know it'll take a little getting used to, but we'll have a long time to figure things out in here. After all, it's only been about forty minutes since they sealed the door, so a little bit of disorientation is to be expected."

"Forty... minutes...? S-since the... the bombs...!?" the mare said slowly, before redoubling her efforts to follow the supervisor's path away from the supply room. She pushed on, wobbling down one corridor, then the next, before breaking into an uneven gallop as a strange, pulsing sound began to echo through the halls. The guard followed at a sprint, but was hard-pressed to match the mare's pace.

"Compass!" she shouted as she ran. "COMPASS!"

Far down the third corridor she turned into, the mare ducked into a lofty, cylindrical room whose periphery was lined with spark turbines. As the guard followed her in, the odd, scraping, pulsing sound became loud and potent, penetrating his hide all the way down to his skeleton. He blinked a couple of times as the air at the centre of the room shimmered, a golden light seeping away into nothingness as the mirage of a tall, complicated structure at its centre faded away. The mare was sitting in front of the now absent aberration, looking quietly into the distance.

"Uh..." the guard said uncertainly. "What was—?"

"Nothing," the mare said, as she rose to her hooves and turned around. "Just a weird sound I thought I'd investigate. Like you said, I guess it'll take a while to get used to this place. Now, where were we?"

"We were, uh... going to Medical," the guard replied. "To get your head wound seen to."

"Right," the mare said. "Well we can kill two birds with one stone then. I'm one of the nurses."

"O-oh!" the guard said. "Well then it's even more important that we get you down there! We can't exactly operate without a full medical staff note, can we?"

"No, no we can't," the mare replied, gesturing to the door. "Shall we, Mister...?"

"Oh! Sorry, Nurse Redheart, I'm Caring," the guard said, bowing slightly as he led the way from the turbine room. "Caring Act. And yes, let's go! We'll need to get you set up with a PipBuck, and see where your room is, but we can attend to that once you've been seen by the Doctors."

The mare - the newest nurse of the stable she had found herself in - followed her new acquaintance out into the corridor. She stopped just short of the room's threshold, turning back to regard is empty centre for a moment.

"Good luck, Compass," she whispered, a tiny smile crossing her face as a tear formed in her eye. "And... thank you."


Meanwhile, in the Equestrian Wasteland...

We darted down corridor after grey corridor on our way to the reactor, the faded markings on the stable walls forcing us to slow down and squint as we guided ourselves around the complex. By my estimation, it was going to take us just over three and a half minutes to reach the reactor, a further two to start a meltdown, and then a final twelve to reach the surface, leaving us with a whole six minutes to sprint to a minimum safe distance with the rest of the Emporium's inhabitants. Of course, there would also have to be a waiting period built in so that the Fence could do its thing and release the collars, but that would only have to be about five minutes long, and I sincerely doubted that Tower could find us in that minuscule length of time.

Now that was all well and good, as plans go, and it may indeed have been the way that things might have gone that day.

That is, if I hadn't been wrong.

As we ran, another, far closer rumble shook the corridor we were in to its foundations, forcing us to grab the walls for support. A patch of floor before us almost three metres long suddenly dropped to the level below, as we were temporarily blinded by a flash of blue light. Visions of worlds alight with blue fire flashed through my mind's eye, a trillion souls screaming out in terror as blasts of radiation annihilated entire species with utmost prejudice. I looked on in horror, despite the various complaints of my eyeballs, as a coppery dome slowly rose from the hole, a sickly blue orb suspended on the end of its central stalk.

"TARGETS RE-ACQUIRED!" the Darlok screeched, as I screamed in abject terror. "EX-TER-MIN-ATE!"

A foreleg wrapped itself around my neck a millisecond later, stifling my fearful emanations and yanking me into a retreat. The Darlok's weapon was not yet in sight when we rounded the nearest corner in our effort to escape, but this was apparently not an issue for the creature formerly known as Stone Tower. A beam of bright blue death pierced the wall in front of us as we ran, resulting in a series of strained, and rather painfully rushed, acrobatic manoeuvres. I smelt burning hide as we passed, and hoped dearly that neither of my companions had come to any serious harm.

We ducked, dived, and weaved as the beams continued to blast through parts of the structure around us, in seemingly vain attempts at out-running the Darlok. In a moment of quick thinking, Sage pulled us down a series of corridors with faded red arrows on their walls, taking us on a longer, alternate route towards the reactor. I realised quickly that he wasn't just hoping to complete our objective and destroy the stable, but that he was going to try and rely on the reactor room's significant shielding in order to slow down the Darlok and give us the time we so desperately needed.

I could feel my hearts beating through every vein in my body as we ran, and by the time we reached the airlock to the rector, my throat was dry and sore from the panicked sprint. Sage sealed the triple door arrangement with his usual ease, closing us inside the stable's reactor pod.

An aside at this juncture is called for, as one might now be asking the question: "Well why didn't Tower just blast through the floor of an adjacent level and bypass the door altogether? He doesn't seem to have any trouble with floors". The reason, dear reader, is that the reactor pod, much like the spark turbine hall that Tower's robot had set up shop in, was 'reinforced tae fuck', as my companions from Coltland might put it. Dozens of layers of enchanted concrete and disaster-grade magisteel, each several inches thick, lay between us and the rest and the stable, as well as a formidable nexus of energy and radiation absorbing spells. In typical StableTec fashion, the arcane engineers of the day had massively over-engineered the critical structures of the stables, as much for their security during a first strike as for the safety of the inhabitants in the event of a malfunction (there isn't really anywhere to escape to in an apocalypse-proof fallout shelter if there's a malfunction). As a result, the reactor was protected by a wall of solid matter and magical energy that could survive several direct hits to its exterior and an internal explosion before any cracks would even begin to appear. We were safe, for a while at least (I decided right there and then to stop underestimating our opponent, and assumed that we would be able to run, but never hide).

"Compass!" Sage shouted form the door controls, snapping me to an exhausted attention. "Get going with the meltdown! We have precious little time here!"

"Okay, okay!" I replied, as I stumbled to a nearby control panel. The reactor we found ourselves before was a standard General Atomics offering, a Type 14 crystallic spark fusion reactor capable of supplying reliable power to a facility more than twice the size of an ordinary stable - just the thing for the a few hundred trendy young apocalypse survivors. The vessel itself was a dome-ended cylinder about two metres wide, and five metres long, suspended in the middle of the multi-story reactor pod. Near its base were the various pipes that derived useful energy from the intense radiation being generated within, and at its uppermost extremity was an assemblage of hydraulics that controlled the crystal inhibitor rods, the 'brakes' of the reactor, so to speak.

Our goal was to retract the rods, and stop the flow of energy out of the reactor, thereby causing a dangerous build-up of heat and pressure inside the containment vessel. Then, at the last moment before the vessel melted into the floor from the intense heat, we would trigger the re-activation of the power distribution system. This would expose the stable's systems to the intense heat inside the vessel, triggering a flash-vaporisation of the enchanted fluid in the pipes and spark turbines, bypassing the containment vessel's otherwise impassible walls, and blasting the entire facility into a sloppy stramash of red-hot metal and concrete.

Fortunately, the control panel was still operational, and had seemingly remained unmolested by the stable's current inhabitants. Busying my hooves, I started entering familiar commands in a decidedly unfamiliar order.

"How long?" Sage said as he approached, the containment doors behind him now sealed.

"Three minutes if I wanted to," I said. "But we need to give the Fence time to shut down the collars. And, you know, get ourselves to safety."

"I'm aware of that," Sage said, as he looked back nervously toward the airlock door. "But we're almost certainly not going to have that long in here. The Darlok will find us in a matter of minutes, and unless we're out of here by then, we'll be trapped. I'm not sure if you noticed, but there's only one exit!"

"I know, I know!" I replied hurriedly, my hooves dancing feverishly across the controls in front of me. "But I don't have a clue about how we're supposed to escape the thing! We need to keep it down here, and not die, and we've only just been hanging on so far!"

"How aboot we stop runnin'?" Saltira said suddenly, her intense tone causing both Sage and I to turn immediately toward her. "How aboot we stand and fight the fucker!?"

"Fight it!?" I exclaimed, as I bypassed one safety lockout after another. "And how exactly do you envision us doing that!?"

"Well," she began, rolling her eyes as if I was missing the most obvious thing in the world. "We're armed, aren't we!? That thing cannae be indestructible!"

"Saltira," I said with a hurried sigh, "both Sage and I know what this thing is, and we're pretty certain that bullets won't do a thing against its shielding! The only way to get rid of it will be to destroy the facility and seal it inside."

"Ah wisnae talkin' aboot its armour," she replied, exasperated. "Ah wis gonnae suggest that we shoot oot that stalk its 'eye' thing is oan. Blind the bastard!"

I stopped tapping controls for a moment as Saltira's idea did the rounds in my head. It couldn't possibly be that simple, could it? A big, glaring weak spot, right there on its head for all to target. Surely not...

I turned questioningly toward Sage, just as he began to speak.

"You know..." he began, raising his hoof to his chin in contemplation. "She has a point."

"You're kidding," I replied. "A weak spot that obvious would be an enormous tactical disadvantage! It's got to have some kind of countermeasures to protect it!"

"No, I'm sure it does, Compass, but that doesn't mean fighting isn't a bad idea," Sage countered, as he continued to rub his chin. "I've been noticing a strange trend with this Darlok that I think we can take advantage of."

"And that is...?" I asked, thinly veiled aggravation spilling into my voice.

"It's too powerful," Sage said simply.

"How..." I replied, squinting as equal parts anger, fear, and confusion swirled around my mind. "How the fuck is that something we can take advantage of!?"

"Well," Sage continued, unphased by my outburst, "if you'll recall, the Darlok has managed to bypass every single obstacle we've put in its path. And it's done so by proving that it's a capable, super-advanced alien war machine, and not some cartoonish villain from a low-budget science fiction radio drama. Think about it - we were both convinced that its weapon wouldn't be able to penetrate a pressure door, and thus far it's defeated several, as well as a collapsed lift shaft, and a load-bearing section of floor. Then there was the stairwell. We both thought it would sit there like an enchanted dustbin and swivel impotently for evermore. But instead, it produced a levitation enchantment and continued to pursue us."

"Yes, thank you Sage, I was there you know," I quipped, perhaps a little harshly (my patience was wearing somewhat thin, what with death being so close and all). "What's your actual point!?"

"I'm trying to get you to consider the available data," Sage replied, a stern, disapproving look spread thin across his face in response to my sarcasm. "I say again: It. Is. Too. Powerful."

"But what does that mean!?" I shouted, my hooves flailing in exasperation. "You're just repeating what hap—!"

"WILL YOU SHUT UP, FER FUCK'S SAKE!?" Saltira suddenly boomed, causing me to jam my mouth closed in fright. She continued to speak a moment later in a far more level register. "He's saying that this Dar-whatcha-thingy is different tae whit you two thought it wis! That means that it's been updated or modified or even that it might be faulty. He's tyrin' tae get ye tae think!"

Sage and I looked at Saltira silently for a moment, leaving only the strong hum of the reactor to fill the chamber with sound. We then looked to one another, blushing slightly as we opened our mouths to speak.

"That's uh... exactly what I was saying. Trying to say at least..." Sage mumbled.

"No, no, it was silly of me not to see that," I replied. "Sorry..."

"Right, good," Saltira said hurriedly, "now that we're all caught up and acting civil, can you two please figure a way tae deck that thing!?"

I nodded.

Sage nodded.

We both nodded.

Then I started thinking.

So did Sage.

And, entirely at once, a thought occurred to both of us.

"What you were saying earlier..." I began. "About how the Darlok's too powerful..."

"Compass," Sage said, a fresh ticket for my train of though clutched firmly in hoof, "how much magical energy does it take to melt a magisteel door?"

"The phase change temperature for ST4000 series magisteel is about 1800 degrees Kelvin," I murmured, rubbing my chin excitedly as I jumped up and yanked open the throttle on the proverbial locomotive. "Enchanthalpy is equal to the product of temperature change - let's say 1500 Kelvin - mass, and thermal capacity at constant Thaumic pressure. So, for the first door we encountered, that's about, uh, 1.26 MegaFausts. It melted it in a little under two minutes by my estimate, which gives a magical power of 10 MegaPratchetts. Now, that beam was more akin to a spark laser or magic plasma than a 'radiation death ray', and lasers and plasma generators are hopelessly inefficient, not to mention that most of the heat will have been convected and radiated out to the surrounding air. Let's call the efficiency of the beam 30%, and then efficiency of the heating process, if we liken it to direct-spark heating, about 40%. So the overall efficiency is only about 12%, meaning that that beam weapon had to be delivering close to, um... about 87.4 MegaPratchetts!"

"Whit the fuck's a MegaPratchett!?" Saltira said, squinting. "Are... are ye even speaking English!?"

"That's a lot of power," Sage said, smiling.

"Yes it is," replied, a goofy grin spreading across my face. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

"I'll get the cable," Sage said, as he ran off to a supply cupboard at the other end of the room.

"I'll rig up the transfer!" I replied, returning to the console at the rector.

"Wh-whit..." Saltira stammered as activity erupted around her. "Whit the hell are you two up tae!? Want tae clue me in!?"

"The Darlok's proven that it can channel enormous quantities of magical energy, and that it's resourceful enough to blast it out of whatever orifice it needs to for a given situation," Sage explained from across the room. "Destroying obstacles, levitating, you name it!"

"And we're betting that it can - and will - do the exact same thing when it finds us aiming a super-charged Gauss rifle at it," I continued, as I pulled Prometheus from my back and started unscrewing its various panels.

"So..." Saltira droned. "You're going to beat it... by shooting it...?"

"Well," I said, stopping for a moment as another screw levitated to the floor in front of me, "yeah, but... it's more involved than that."

"How?" said Saltira.

"It's... well it's..." I stammered. "Sage, can you explain this? I'm busy."

"You see, Saltira," Sage said, in reassuring, almost chocolatey tones, "we're going to use Compass' gun to make the Darlok throw up a shield. And then, when it's blasting all of its power into defending itself, the reactor's safety system is going to think that a meltdown is occurring, and its emergency shielding is going to try and absorb the energy. Every last Faust of it! The Darlok will be powerless!"

"Wow... That's wan hell of an ambitious plan," Saltira whistled. "It's still just shooting it though. Ye realise that, right?"

"There's more to it than that!" I shouted, a bouquet of wires spread out between my hooves. "It's a lot more complicated than you're making it out to—"

Suddenly, there was a shudder as the entire room began to gently swing back and forth. Something significant had just hit the exterior of the reactor vessel, and the quake dampeners were struggling to compensate.

We didn't have to expend too much effort figuring out what it was.

"Compass, are you ready!?" Sage said hurriedly as he dropped a fat bundle of even fatter cables at my hooves.

"Almost!" I said, my horn buzzing into life as the situation became infinitely more urgent. Wires twined into one another, components were disconnected, bypassed, and reconnected, conduit cabling was crudely patched from crystal to coil and vice versa. Seconds later, an entropic stramash of technology that barely resembled a functioning device, let alone a weapon, was hoisted into my hooves by a levitation field, and I set about aiming the unwieldy edifice at the chamber door.

"Sage, I need you to *oof* queue up the power transfer!" I said, my legs already aching from the pose I was forced to adopt. Another shudder rocked the chamber.

'Two doors down,' said One. 'One to go...'

"On it!" Sage replied, as he galloped determinedly to the reactor's main console.

"Saltira!" I said, straining.

"Aye!" the fiery mare replied.

"Get ready to toss your best insults!"

"Gotcha!" she replied, smirking as she inhaled deeply.

In a blast of yellow flame, the door before us exploded into a shower of molten sparks, most of which were deflected by a quick shield that I, thankfully, had the presence of mind to try and cast at the last moment (I couldn't manage a bubble on such short notice, so a crude, unevenly faceted plane of magic materialised in front of us instead).

There was silence for a moment as we all held our collective breath in anticipation of the coming battle. It seemed as if the peace would go on forever as I stood there, my legs aching, and sweat dripping from my forehead and matting my mane. But then, as the smoke cleared, and that awful trio of lights began to shine through the cloud, I heard the harsh hurrah of our battlecry.

"COME AND GET US YA GREAT TUMSHIE-FUCKIN', ARSE-LICKIN', SON OF A DEEP-FRIED CUNTBAG!" screamed Saltira, her hoof extended in an obscene gesture.

'Good grief,' I thought to myself, frowning. 'Was that really necessary...?'

The answer, it seemed, was yes. We wanted Tower's Darlok rage to peak. We wanted him, or rather 'it', to be so focussed on obliterating us that it wouldn't even consider that we might have a plan.

And it worked.

A murderous alien scream permeated the room as the Darlok moved swiftly toward us, its weapon forcing lances of brilliant blue death straight into my shield. With every impact I could feel the weight (and heat) of a hundred thousand suns breaking my body as blood vessels began to burst from head to hoof.

"OH GODDESS, SAGE, DO IT! I CAN'T TAKE THE POWER! BLAST IT! FORTHELOVEOFCELESTIATHROWTHEFUCKINGSWITCH!" I screeched, as my body began to break under the strain of maintaining the shield.

"Here we go!" Sage shouted as he tapped a control on the panel. Deep in the floor, there was a humongous clunk as one of the biggest spark relays ever built by ponykind engaged. At the same time, I pulled the trigger on Prometheus, letting slip the dogs of Tartarus upon the Darlok.

A billion hammers struck a billion anvils as I was suddenly blasted backwards into the wall, causing my shield to evaporate, and a couple of my ribs to audibly pop. A single, ear-bursting bang reverberated around the reinforced reactor pod, as a brilliant blue-white flash flooded my optic nerves.

The projectile that had forced me backwards found its target several hundred milliseconds before I made friends with the concrete. The full burst capacity of Stable 50's reactor had been channelled into one single electro-magically accelerated round, and with the safety systems mostly turned off, that 'burst' was formidable in its magnitude.

A dense cloud had formed with the firing of Prometheus, mixing with the vapours from the door and engulfing everypony present in a blinding opaqueness. As if sapping time from the very air around me, the cloud muffled my senses (helped significantly by the borderline concussion I had just suffered) and made it as if I was watching from afar, being shown a playback of events through the eyes of another.

I could make out the vague shapes of Saltira and Sage nearby, obviously struggling to equilibrate after the shock of the super-charged Gauss rifle blast. In all honesty, I was surprised that they were still conscious at all, and worried that we had all suffered severe hearing damage from the acoustic shock of the blast. (Then I remembered that we were all almost certainly going to die anyway, and the issue suddenly became less pressing.)

The stillness continued uninterrupted for what seemed like an age, at least to somepony with a concussion, and I dared to wonder what may have become of the Darlok. Did we actually destroy it? Had our plan worked so well that it didn't even need the second part to work effectively? Was I really that smart, skilled and awesome?

The answer... was no.

"I. AM. UNDAMAGED!" the Darlok said, it's head-mounted globes illuminating the cloud like distant lightning flashes in a storm. The creature's terrible blue eye began to approach through the dissipating fog as it restarted its screaming "EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!"

My hearts sank, my stomach and inner ears rebelling painfully as I tried to panic my way back to my hooves. The strain was too much for my limbs though, and I collapsed in a heap against the wall - easy fodder for the murderous entity before me. Not only had the Darlok been unaffected by the blast, but it had also apparently managed to dissipate its energy without triggering the reactor's safety systems!

The maniacal creature drew closer, each second passing more slowly than the last. By now I could make out the finish of its armour plating, and the shiny horror of its bunker-busting beam blaster. The weapon swivelled towards me languidly, a lazy whir emanating from the motors as its owner continued to approach. The beast was going to get its satisfaction, I realised, just as the first torrents of terrified, despondent tears began to stream down my face. I let out a pathetic, shuddering whimper, and began to weep in shear terror of my imminent fate.

Closing my eyes, I turned my head and prepared as best I could for my death; to be slowly cooked by the radiation gun of a genocidal, interplanetary sadist.

The sounds of the Darlok's approach ceased. The gun moved. The room shuddered. The creature spoke.

"EXTERMIN—!" it managed, before being drowned out.

A klaxon louder than any I'd ever heard before resounded throughout the reactor pod, as a pre-recorded, two hundred year old voice announced my salvation.

"ALERT!" it said urgently. "POWER SPIKE DETECTED IN REACTOR POD! INITIATING EMERGENCY DAMPENING PROCEDURES!"

On (delayed) cue, the huge inhibitor rods atop the reactor slid quickly back into their enclosures, and an enormous grid of square patches on the walls began to glow with a faint but potent magical aura. In less than a second the entire room was bathed in a soft, throbbing green light, which was accompanied by a substantial pressure manifesting around my horn.

"WHAT IS HAPPENING!?" the Darlok demanded. "RAPID POWER DRAIN IN PROGRESS! I AM IMPAIRED! I. AM. IMPAIRED!"

The creature began to flail wildly as it's sudden impotence became apparent, its various moving parts swinging vainly back and forth.

'What are you waiting for you bloody fool!?' Two suddenly screamed into my mind's ear, a headache-inducing beam of light in an otherwise concussive fog.

'Wha—!?' I began, only to be cut off once again by my alien headmate.

'It's vulnerable!' he continued. 'No power, no shields, no damage control, no weapons! GO GET IT!'

'Oh!' I exclaimed as I finally managed to scramble to my hooves. 'Right!'

Without a moment's further thought, I barrelled toward the woeful creature with as much momentum as I could muster. We collided solidly, an excruciating wave of force compressing my spine and causing my every bone (including my two now dislocated ribs) to vibrate as the Darlok toppled backwards.

"Tower!" I shouted as I balanced atop the sentient turret. "I know you're still in there somewhere! Please, talk to me! I can save you!"

'Wh-what the hell are you doing!?' Two shouted. 'I told you to destroy it, not hug it!'

'I'm not going to abandon him!' I shouted back internally. 'There's some part of him left intact in there! I know it! I just need to find it!'

'You're insane!' Two replied, as he gesticulated wildly in my conscious mind. 'You can't reason with a bloody Darlok! You're going to get everypony in this room - no, on this planet - killed!'

'Be quiet!' I shouted back. 'You don't know him! He's a good pony! He's been warped and twisted, but deep inside he wants the best for all of us! I know it!'

'There is no 'deep inside' a Darlok!' Two replied, angry and exasperated. 'They're hatred incarnate! Raw evil! Living mal—'

"Com... pass..." a rasping, synthesised voice suddenly croaked. "Wh- Where... am... I...?"

'You were saying...?' I asked Two rhetorically, a mental grimace showing my disgust for his prejudice.

"Tower..." I said gently. "Tower, you're in the reactor pod. In Stable 50. Remember?"

"Re... actor...?" he said, as the lights in his sensor stalk and atop his head flickered feebly. "I... don't remember... anything... What... what am I in...? Where are... my tools...? My lab...?"

"You switched to a new body," I said gently, gulping down the sorrow I felt on his behalf. "It didn't work as well as you had hoped. There were a few... containment issues."

Motion in my periphery alerted me to the fact that Sage and Saltira had managed to reorient themselves. I quickly made eye contact with them, silently conveying the oh-so-delicate sense of optimism I had managed to develop for our situation.

"Why don't we get you back to your lab, Tower?" I said soothingly. "We can put you back in your old body and we'll see what we can do about—"

"Wait... Compass..." he rasped suddenly, cutting me off. "I'm starting to... remember..."

"H-hey now, y-you relax!" I said, mock concern doing little to hide my fear. "Just let your mind go blank, and we'll sort you out, okay? We're here to help, Tower. We want to help..."

"I... don't think you can..." he said, in a worryingly cohesive tone. "I can... feel it... in the back of my mind..."

"Tower..." I whispered, desperation making my voice waver as though I were weeping. "Please, fight it! It's not you, and you're not it! Please, I'm begging you! Help me save you!"

The magical sensor at the end of the Darlok eye stalk suddenly brightened, it's iris dilating as a pony's would when hit by a wave of surprise or, indeed, recognition.

"By the Goddess..." Tower whispered, his voice still choppy, but rapidly improving. "It is you! The stallion in the shield! I barely recognised you! But that was... so long ago..."

"The stallion in the what...?" I asked incredulously, squinting in confusion as what I could only assume were hallucinations took hold of Tower's perceptions. "Tower, we'd never met before today. I need you to focus. If you're going to remember anything, try to remember being a pony! With friends, and dreams, and hope!"

"Friends..." Tower whispered gently, almost hauntingly, in a voice as clear as a bell, but with all the warmth of a ghost. "I remember one. One whom I loved with all my heart. I couldn't save her... and..." The iris contracted again, as the eye stalk drooped. "And neither could you..."

"Tower..." I said. "What are you talking about...?"

"I don't blame you, Compass," he replied softly, as that awful digital rasp began to creep sickeningly back into his words. "You were wrong..."

"Tower?" I said, as I desperately tried to coax him back into conversing. "Tower!? Tower, please!"

"And it seems..." he continued suddenly, his clear, welcoming tones now gravelly and pained. "That I... was... tooOOOAAAAAIIIINITIATING EMERGENCY TEMPORAL SHIFT!"

"TOWER!" I screamed, as Saltira wrapped her forelegs around my neck and pulled me backwards. The Darlok body in front of me began to glow, its form spontaneously shifting as it rose into the air. A great burst of golden light blinded me for a moment, and the aura from the reactor pod's dampening talismans pulsed brightly before the entire grid splintered into a shower of green sparks, like a huge, cylindrical chessboard of miniature balefire explosions.

I opened my eyes again once I was sure that the light had subsided. My gaze was met by the melted rubble of the reactor pod's many doors, the shattered remnants of several hundred dampening talismans, and nothing more. Tower's Darlok side had reasserted itself, and in the time that I had taken to get through to his equine half, had figured out a way to perform some fashion of emergency time travel.

I stood still for several seconds, perhaps a minute, just staring at the spot where Tower had been laying. He was still in there, trapped in that armoured shell of alien hatred and inequine rage. What may have been my one and only chance to save him had come and gone, and I had screwed it up.

A deep pit in my stomach opened as I wrestled to control my breathing. Was I going to erupt in anger? Was I going to break down and weep? Perhaps some new, undignified hybrid of the two?

A foreleg wrapped itself around my shoulders as my diaphragm quivered to control my breathing and keep the blubbering at bay. I turned to see Sage smiling at me, his warm, reassuring gaze pushing the sadness away like a sun vanquishing darkness.

"You did your best, Compass," he said softly.

"It wasn't good enough though, was it?" I replied quietly. "I didn't save him, and now he's off to Goddess knows where in time and space, trapped in a state of constant, murderous rage and sealed inside an alien battle-suit."

"Yes..." Sage said, pulling my chin so I was forced to look into his eyes. "But we're still here, and we didn't even need to blow up the stable. You listened to your friends, came up with an alternate plan in record time, and tried your damnedest to save everypony here. And while it's true that you didn't quite manage that, there're a good thousand liberated slaves up on the surface who I'm sure won't mind. You've changed lives today, Compass. Don't for a moment sell that achievement short."

"Aye," Saltira added, smiling as she too placed a hoof upon my shoulder. "Ah certainly wilnae forget it."

The deep pit that had formed only moments earlier began to fill again, my mood stabilising. The warmth from earlier had come back to me, filling me with that most important and rare of emotions: hope.

"Maybe..." I began. "Maybe I'll catch up to him... one day. I'll help him then."

"Aye," Saltira replied. "That's whit tae dae. Besides, ye've saved too many folk today as it is. We dinnae want ye gettin' a big heed now, do we?"

I chucked at that. A genuine, mirthful laugh, for what seemed like the first time in ages. I sighed a deep sigh, and smiled.

"Thanks, guys," I said quietly, as everything around me got a little less bleak.

I looked down at my PipBuck and checked the clock. Seven minutes to go until the Fence sent its last transmission.

"What do you say we head up to the surface for the grand finale?" I said. "I want to see the look on the slaver's faces when they realise how utterly outnumbered they are."

"Actually," Saltira said, eyeing the still-glowing, now semi-solid remains of the reactor pod door, "how are we gonnae get out o' here? Wasnae that the only door?"

"It still is," replied Sage, as he turned to face the reactor controls again. "But we still have a functioning reactor, and an electro-magic mass accelerator attached to it. We can just pulse charge Compass' rifle and keep firing until we clear the rubble." He rubbed his ears as he arrived at the console. "Although I have to insist on some safety equipment this time - I doubt my ears will ever fully recover from that... initial... Uh, Compass...? How many of these indicators are meant to be red...?"

"Red?" I asked, as a deep frown began to threaten my good mood. I turned and started trotting over to where Sage was standing. "On that panel? Usually none, but given what we've just done to the reactor, I wouldn't be surprised if a couple of warning lights had— OH, FUCK!"

I leapt up onto the console, my head nearly colliding with the metal as I stared in shock at the display. A veritable sea of red assaulted my eyes, flashing, blinking and pulsing in warning of a dire malfunction. According to the gauges, the temperature and pressure inside the reactor were rising rapidly, and would soon exceed the design limits of the containment vessel. Of course, the pod around us would protect the stable from the initial meltdown, but with my preparations to destroy the facility still in place, I realised with horror that we were only moments away from the catastrophic explosion I had been planning since our encounter with the Darlok in the stairwell.

"How bad is it?" Sage asked calmly (but with an unmistakable edge of urgency).

"How bad's whit!?" Saltira asked, her voice far less level that Sage's had been. "Whit's happenin' now!?"

"The reactor's..." I began, pausing as my eyes darted to and fro across the various gauges. "It's... It's... Oh, Goddess, this is impossible! How the fuck did it—!?"

"Compass!" Sage shouted, staring into my eyes as he braced my shoulders with his hooves. "How. Bad!?"

"We... We've only got a couple of minutes...!" I whispered, my eyes wide and wet with panic. "It's going to blow, just like I planned!"

"And the Fence!?" Sage said, his expression one of absolute, desperate concern for his fellow equines. "Is there time for it to shut down the collars!?"

I shook my head meekly, too shocked to put my imminent failure into words as my mouth hung open.

"Well can't you stabilise it!?" Sage asked. "Maybe with the control rods we could—!?"

"Y-you don't understand..." I replied quietly, looking alternately into the eyes of Sage and Saltira. "The safety systems are all either fully engaged, destroyed, or disabled. And I can't bring the ones that are out of action back online in time..."

I picked a point on the floor, and stared at it, my expression vacant, and my mind blank.

"We're going to die..." I whispered. "And so are all the slaves..."

"No. No, there... there has to be a way to fix this," Sage said, resolute and stoic. "What about your gun? We just keep firing it to bleed off the energy. Would that work?"

"Building too fast..." I replied numbly, as the scant hum of the reactor began to glacially rise in pitch.

"Can't we use they big dampener things oan the walls!?" Saltira asked, adding to the pile of hopelessness with another wholly invalid suggestion.

"Burned out..." I breathed, my hide itching from the ever-so-slight, yet ever-so-depressing increase in temperature coming from the heavily insulated vessel at the centre of the room.

"There... There must be some way oot o' this mess!" Saltira shouted, desperation creeping steadily into her voice. "We cannae just give up!"

"We're not going to," said Sage, his posture strong and his face a picture of misplaced determination. "We're getting out of here, we're freeing the slaves, and we're shutting this place down once and for all! Aren't we, Compass!?"

I didn't respond. There really was very little point in doing so, after all - we only had about a hundred seconds of life left.

I decided instead— Actually, no, I didn't decide to do anything. My brain took me to places of its own accord. The sounds and moods of my internal dialogue had shattered into disharmony, the landscape of my conscious mind having become barren and silent. One was silent, morose and shell-shocked, Three was panicking so fast and loud that it was more of a drone made up of white noise than a voice, and Two was characteristically absent, seemingly for evermore.

Sage and Saltira were speaking as well. Gesticulating wildly and looking all irritable and scared. What was their problem, anyway? It was only death. Some ponies regarded the last closing of one's eyes as the beginning of the most exciting adventure in all existence.

Or so I'm told.

By liars.

The truth - that which my mental shutdown was attempting, and summarily failing, to protect me from - was that I was terrified. Not like I'd been terrified in the past though. Not like when I was facing the Darlok or the Controller or Galinda's old band of mercenaries or the Maneframe or even the spider bots back in the stable. No, nothing like those. In those situations I was fighting for my life. I had adrenaline coursing violently through my veins, my tears were hot and vital, my actions purposeful and brimming with will. Raw emotion kept me going and a combination of luck, ingenuity and help from my friends had ultimately saved me.

But this time? This time was different.

This time, death had been sprung on me like a bad birthing day surprise with all of three minute's notice. This time, two of my newest friends had been pulled toward my fate like planets toward the hungry maw of a black hole. This time, I had managed to somehow fuck up the liberation of over a thousand enslaved innocents by a margin of the order of minutes in length.

This time... I had run out of luck. And I knew it. I'd 'won', sure, but nopony was going to benefit from it. Tower was doomed to a life of temporally displaced horror, the innocents above were about to have their heads blown off, and my friends were either going to be incinerated with me, or share in the imminent explosive decapitation-fest.

The weight of realisation bared down upon me as the mass of a million galaxies, shattering my will and compressing my mind to a singularity of despair.

And despite all of that, Sage and Saltira were still talking! Something about how I needed to 'believe' in myself and how there were ponies relying on me and how I'd always managed to persist even in the most dire of yadda yadda yadda, blah blah blah.

'Oh, for Goddess' sake give it a rest!' I cried to myself. 'You're just giving me a headache! I don't want to die with a headache! And my hide feels cold and sweaty! This isn't going to be a pleasant vaporisation at all! Sweet fucking Celestia, will you stop that sodding noise!? It's like a billion bloody keys being dragged across just as many piano str—!'

Wait.

What...!?

"SHHH!" I hissed suddenly, startling myself.

"No, I will not shush, Compass!" Sage said, his face very close to mine. "There are lives at stake besides ours here! You need to help us find a way to unlock the collars, even if we can't make it out of here in t—!"

"SHUT UP!" I shouted, my every sense scanning the entirety of spacetime for even the most meagre sliver of hope. "Listen! Do you hear that...?"

Thankfully, Sage and Saltira obeyed immediately, and began to flex their ears, my behaviour altering them to the possibility of a solution to our situation, and evidently sparking a hopeful fire in them as well.

We strained our ears, maintaining eye contact as we all simultaneously picked up on it: the sound of an ethereal, permeating scrape.

"Ah hear it!" said Saltira. "But whit—!?"

"Compass..." Sage said, his mouth agape as a distant memory of an old radio series surfaced. "Is that—?"

Almost as if to answer directly, a gale started to spontaneously blow throughout the reactor pod as a brilliant, otherworldly hue of gold began to pulse from nowhere, casting deep, contrasting shadows against the cylindrical wall.

We turned in unison as a fog of steam swirled into existence with the wind, the pulsing source of the golden light floating diffusely at its heart in mid air. A large circular form began to appear in front of us, becoming more solid with each passing second. There was a loud series of clanks as the middle of the form - a huge slab of metal shaped like a giant gear, and with the number 52 emblazoned on it - moved backwards and rolled off to one side, seemingly into nowhere.

There, deep in the centre of the mist, standing just over the threshold of the TARDIS, was a lone unicorn, with a pair of brilliant golden eyes.

"Need a lift?" said Petri Dish with a smirk.


Footnote: LEVEL UP!

New perk added: Deus Ex Machina
When your HP drops below 10%, you gain an extra 3 points to your LUCK stat. Perfect for all those unlikely escapes!

New perk added: The Bigger They Are...
You've felled giants, drank their blood, and gained their sweet, sweet strength! (Figuratively, at least.) Knockback chance and distance for any melee attack has been doubled. Opponents with double your HP or more now take 10% more damage.

Comments ( 11 )

it's great to see you again.:pinkiehappy:

This was definitely a typical Doctor adventure with all the randomness that you would expect and and the frenzy humor along for the ride. Compass did his best to save the day but of all ponies, Petri Dish stool the show for him wit the arrival of the TARDUS, I am happy that she is alive and well or at least the TARDUS conscience in her. So I wander what will happen next... Also could I ask you some advice in my own Fo:e story would love some advice on how to develop it, I call it Fallout Equestria: Foalhood End. Lest me know if you are interested

Yay for update!

Yes, as someone said - it was really Doctor like type of an adventure.

well, this was over due to be read and I sat on it nice an long so it could hatch into a nice proper doctor story.
Thanks for that

hey sorry its been so long i decided to reconsider the story of it a little may take time to write

7600183

Hey man take your time :twilightsmile: Better late than never, eh?

Sorry for all the corrections, I was new to commenting on Fimfiction and didn't know they'd all be spammed on the main page. Loved the story though, I'll wait however long it takes.

6528112
Late response and I forgot names so bear with me. Wasn't Compass speaking a different language but some magic was translating everything he said to Mo (for example) and vice versa? Wasn't it established before Compass's first fight with some griffins?

Man, I remember this story. Really wish it came back. Then I could read it all over again! Guess everyone moves on eventually though, even the author. Last online 2018. Man.

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