Against the Current

by Boldish42

Ending 3

“Doctor, I can’t thank you enough for giving me a ride back to my time. Really, it means so much to me, but if you could answer one thing that would be great. Oh what was it again? Uh.. Oh yes, now I remember. Why are we crashing?!!” Star Swirl the Bearded queried as he stumbled about the TARDIS control room.

Derpy was faring a bit better, somehow she was managing to walk around easily as she tried to help The Doctor with some of the controls, “I’m sorry! I just don’t know what went wrong…”

“Don’t you worry Derpy. It wasn’t you, but our hitchhiker who’s caused this mess!”

“I haven’t touched anything!”

“No, you just exploded with magical time travel energy in the TARDIS!” The Time Lord pony worked at his console scanning Star Swirl trying to figure out what exactly happened.

“You told me we were in a state of temporal grace! If that were true my spell wouldn’t have been able to reactivate!”

“That was a clever lie! Artron energy at critical levels, Chronon, Zygma, Huon.. Huon! Where? How did you get Huon particles!? You see, this is exactly why I said that time travel should be left to the experts, like me, and not amateurs jumping through The Vortex in nothing but their robes!”

“Um guys..”

“Amateur?! Hey I invented my own time travel spell! I didn’t just ‘borrow’ a time machine from a people who had mastered it already!”

“Guys..”

“Just because my people mastered time travel doesn’t mean I personally don’t know more about time than you do!”

“And yet you still owe me a chicken!”

“..What? You mean that bet with the volcano? What’s that got to do with this?”

“Nothing, but I’m still sore about it!”

“GUYS!!” Derpy finally yelled.

“WHAT?!”
“WHAT?!”

“We’ve landed.”

The two stallions gave each other a quick glare, only to break into laughter.

“Hahahahaha haaaaa!”

Hehe haha ha heee… I still want my chicken.”

“Not happening Mr.Drapes.”

“And what’s wrong with my robes!?”

“Oh look at me with my floppy hat and bells! Aren’t I such a wizard!”

“You’re one to talk with all your quirks and gimmicks, you could open a shop! I mean just look at this poor ship! All wonky and wibbly wobbly, falling apart at the seams, do you even fix her up? I swear, one good bump and she’ll fall apart!” Star Swirl punctuated this tirade with a hoof slamming the console.

Which subsequently popped open bathing the console in golden light.

“Huh. That’s new.”Star said, staring into the open console.

“Don’t do that!” The Doctor yelled, closing the distance as fast as he could, he slammed the console closed. Immediately he began scanning Star Swirl With his sonic.

Blinking rapidly, Star returned to the waking world, and donned a frown. “Why’d you do that? I wasn’t done looking at that!”

“Yes you are! Come on, let’s get you outside before you do something else to mess with the TARDIS.”

Stepping out of the TARDIS, the trio were met with alot of red. An impressive stone city rose around them, and everything seemed to have a red tint to it. Walking down an alley they set out looking for landmarks or anything really that could tell them when and where they were. Star Swirl and Derpy, being less travelled, decided to leave this to The Doctor. Sitting down on a bench they pony watched and talked.

“Sooo.. What’s with all the bells Star Swirl?” Derpy asked, taking the opportunity of being outside to stretch her wings.

“Well I add one for every time jump I’ve had, and I just really like bells, I like to jingle and jangle. You’d be surprised the magical applications that bells have also. For instance…”

The Doctor was nervous. He looked at the architecture, blinked, then looked again. He examined the ponies that were beginning to gather around his companions, much to the displeasure of more than a few. He tasted the air, properly this time too, gave it a good lick, then the dirt for good measure. The air again to get the taste of dirt out of his mouth. He hopped in place a bit testing the gravity, then he stared at the sun for a bit, calculating how long it took to become blinding.

This was impossible. Like really-truly-extra-super-duper-not-being-metaphorical-at-all IMPOSSIBLE.

This place.. this time, this was all time locked so hard the universe would shatter before even considering thinking about letting anything in. But they were here, and that was perhaps The Most Frightening Thing The Doctor had ever known.

Well ok maybe not The Most, he had seen some things, but it was certainly in the top five.

And then he noticed that his friends had gathered a rather large crowd of ponies that were not too pleased with something.

“What are they?”
“What could they have done to themselves to have such deformities?”
“Mommy why is that stallion wearing a dress?”

A rather irate mare seemed to be trying to start a mob or something against them. “Such blasphemy! Did you all not hear this stallion claim to have magic? For a stallion to claim to have the same powers as the priestesses, he must be criminally insane!”

“What are you talking about? It’s the simplest thing in the world for a trained mage such as myself to use magic.” Star Swirl rebutted. Not noticing the doctor trying desperately to get his attention to run away, he continued. “Here I’ll show you a simple spell, it was one of my teachers favorites.”

Channeling the raw cosmic force that fueled unicorn magic, Star Swirl expertly crafted from his decades of learning the array to focus it, and with a will that would crush lesser minds he called forth into being a magnificent handlebar moustache for his face.

That’s right. Double moustache. Plus the beard.

… He thought it was cool.

Except instead of a fresh new black moustache sitting atop his snowy white facial hair, Star Swirl the Bearded exploded.

Every pony all around backed away as fast as they could from the golden inferno that Star Swirl had become. Mesmerised by the sight, none could bring themselves to flee, and still more came, drawn by the powerful lights.

A burnt and tattered hat and robe fell to the ground from where they were thrown by the release of energy. A single bell remained to signal their return.

And then it stopped. Star Swirl sat where he had before, though a bit more confused.

Poof! His new wings spontaneously sprang into an open position for all to see.

“Huh. That spell usually doesn’t do that. Has anyone seen my hat? I seem to have misplaced it.”

The hat and robe which sat defeated and battered on the ground out of Star’s sight began to glow gold. All the damage that they had sustained reversed itself bit by bit until they were pristine again, when they simply disappeared, only to reappear on Star.

“Oh wait, never mind I’ve got them. On my head. Ha! the things you forgot when you get old.” The now very youthful looking alicorn stallion said.

The crowd of onlookers stared mouths agape, except for Derpy who was clapping and requesting an encore, and The Doctor who seemed to be trying to grind his hoof into his face.

*****

“Wow that was some adventure huh?” Derpy asked happily as she trotted back into the TARDIS.

“It sure was, can you believe the nerve of those priestesses? Using magic like that to control everypony, disgraceful. Oh well, they won’t be doing that anymore!”

The Doctor followed behind, unable to choose between all the conflicting emotions he had at the moment, he settled for an eye twitch and did his best to try to feel relieved, after all things turned out how they should have.

“I especially liked you speech Mr.Star, it was very inspiring. That last bit was really great! ‘You’re all Lords and Ladies of your own destinies, so gallop free across this world!’ Um, are you ok Doctor? You’ve been super quiet this whole adventure.”

“Who, me? Just.. having an off day is all, well anyway I think it’s past time we got our guest home, don’t you Star?”

“No rush, but it would be nice. Oh! Did you ever figure out what world that was?”

The Doctor froze in front of the console. His eye twitched a little more.

“Really? You never figured it out? That’s not like you at all. You really were having an off day, eh?”

“Of course I know! How could you not? Everypony was just chanting it as we walked away!”

“... I don’t get it, they were just chanting some of my inspirational speech.”

Derpy’s face got a bit serious as she thought about it. “Gallop free.. gallop free gallop free gallop free… Oh. Doctor was that Gallopfrey?”

“Those were Time Lords?”

“No, at least not yet, but because of what we all did just now, events will eventually lead to the Time Lords.”

“Are you sure? Cause it didn’t seem like we did that much.”

“You made a hole in the fabric of reality through which all of the Vortex can be seen! That didn’t just happen now, It retroactively manifested itself in Gallopfreyian history, and it’s called that because in the ancient when magic still ruled, The God of Time himself is said to have given everypony in the world the right to be a Lord and’ gallop free’. Oh and then there’s this..” The Doctor picked up a marker from somewhere in the console, and began drawing on Star Swirl’s Cutie Mark, “Even your Cutie Mark translates into ‘Time’, or even ‘Time God’ in Old High Gallopfreyian!”

Silence filled the TARDIS as everypony thought about that, contemplating Star’s plot. Finally Star Swirl seemed to make a decision, he arranged himself as regally as he could, put on a solemn face, and turned to The Doctor.

“My Lord Doctor, as your patron super being, I demand payment for your use of my temporal vortex, in the form of a chicken... Also twenty bits.”

“... Fine let’s settle that stupid bet, I haven’t any money though.”

“It’s only stupid because you lost, and two chickens will do just fine.”

Author's Note:

And then Star Swirl and Twilight had a dozen alicorn babies... or something like that.

This one went through a lot of changes. For instance, I originally was going to have pony versions of Amy and Rory, then I remembered Derpy. I don't know a definitive Doctor Whooves to use, so I just decided to make my own a bit(still Time turner look though), etc etc.

Enjoy and take care!

Comments

[Loeden]

*snrk* getting into the weird endings, eh? It made me laugh a good bit. :)

[FluffyNevyn]

EPIC

[Boldish42]

4693424 Ending 3 is my official Funny/Alicorn ending. I think I'm going to do action next.