Chapter 2: Future Echoes
The Centaur and the Centurion
Chapter 2: Future Echoes
“Huh,” Rory remarked after several silent seconds, “a tiny talking horse. Have I mentioned lately that the universe is weird?”
The statement did nothing to break Amy out of her dazed stupor, but the strange horse-like creature broke her gaze to look up at him. Rory noticed that it was wearing three of the same kind of pale golden rings that the small zebra from before had worn, on top of a pink neckerchief. Rory realized on closer inspection that the rings were not in fact made of gold, but rather electrum.
“Are...are you Diamond Dogs?” the mare asked him. “I didn’t know the Doctor traveled around with Diamond Dogs! Of course, I’ve never seen a Diamond Dog up-close before, so maybe you’re somethin’ else.”
Rory held back a grin at hearing the little animal talk. It was probably just a quirk of the TARDIS’ translation circuitry, but she had the cutest little American accent. “What are Diamond Dogs?” Rory asked. “And please don’t say they’re mannequins with kill appeal.”
“They’re big dogs that walk around on their hind legs and talk,” the creature explained. “If you’re not that, then I don’t know what y’are. I’ve studied every major species under...under...Zecora!” And with this last utterance she collapsed to the ground sobbing.
Amy, broken from her self-induced trance, scooped up the small animal into her arms. “There, there,” she said softly.
“They got her!” the young mare wailed. “I saw them get Zecora! She was supposed to be smarter than them. They got my family, and the Doctor, but they couldn’t touch her.” She looked up into Amy’s face with large orange eyes. “Then they jumped her, and they pulled her rings off of her, and they took her away!”
“You’re safe here,” Amy assured her, slowly rocking the creature back and forth. “Nothing can get inside the TARDIS. Nothing. Rory and I going to make sure that nothing bad happens to you, you understand?” The man in question had walked up beside her as she was speaking, smiling down at the animal in his wife’s arms. “I’m Amy,” she continued, “and we’re humans. Who—and what—might you be?”
The animal struggled to open its suddenly weary eyes. “I’m...” she started, although with her accent it sounded closer to “Ai’m”.
Amy’s eyes went wide.
“...Apple Bloom,” the animal finally said, sinking down into Amy’s arms, her voice getting softer with every word. “I’m a pony. And...and...”
“And, she’s asleep,” concluded Rory in a quiet voice.
“Well, who can blame her?” asked Amy, equally quietly. “She’s been through absolute hell, by her account. You should have felt her when I first picked her up—so tense, and shaking with fear. She found herself someplace safe, and the adrenalin drained right out of her. Now if only we knew what this ‘they’ she was talking about was?”
“Well, if I was going to make a guess, I’d say that.”
Amy’s eyes followed Rory’s outstretched finger to the wall-mounted screen. “Are those scarecrows?” she asked.
“Sure looks like it. The glowing green eyes are a good touch.”
Amy knew right away that Rory was using sarcasm as a shield to cover up how uneasy this situation was making him. “Wow,” she remarked lightly, in an attempt to keep her husband calm. “I’m sure glad I’m in here and not out there right now. Now what are they doing?”
Rory said nothing, because there was nothing he could add to what the screen was showing them. The swarm of “scarecrows”, bipedal creatures composed of twigs with glowing emeralds for eyes, were now crawling up the sides of the TARDIS. As they watched, the mob completely covered the time machine, before they started to breathe a strange green flame upon the TARDIS in unified pulses, a flame that failed to burn any part of the creatures in the slightest. As they did all of this, they did another thing uncharacteristic for things made of twigs: they failed to make any sound whatsoever.
At that moment, the rotor in the center of the console briefly activated, and the whole TARDIS shook like it was going to dematerialize.
“Look!” Amy exclaimed, looking down in awe. The rings around the sleeping pony’s neck were weakly glowing in time to the flame pulses from the scarecrows.
After about a minute of this, the twin glows stopped in unison, and the TARDIS’ attackers slid down to the ground. They turned their heads as one to take in unheard orders from a singular source, and then marched out of the barn. As with all of their actions thus far, none of this was accompanied by even a whisper of sound.
Rory walked over to the camera controls once more and used them to look around. “Well, I don’t see them anymore...”
“...But they’re obviously just outside, waiting to ambush us,” Amy concluded grimly. She walked over to one of the walls of the TARDIS and carefully slid down until she was sitting on the floor, cradling the pony to her chest as she did so. “We’ll have to get some more information out of Apple Bloom here before we do anything else.”
Rory sat down beside her, taking her hand in his own and smiling at her.
# # #
“Humans? Humans? Wake up!”
“We’re up! We’re up!” Rory exclaimed as he looked wildly around him. He looked over at the pony who was shouting so loud she was jumping up and down.
Amy lifted her head and looked quizzically over at Apple Bloom. “What is it?” she asked.
“Um...I forgot your names. I’m normally good at remembering, but you’ve got weird names.”
Amy smiled in relief in learning that they were apparently not in immediate danger. “I’m Amy, and he’s Rory.”
“Amy and...Rory,” the young mare said, suppressing a giggle on the second name.
“I’ll have you know that Rory is a perfectly respectable name! It’s Gaelic for ‘the red-haired king’.” The young man remained sitting, his arms crossed and his lips drawn into a pout.
“Are you a king?” Apple Bloom asked in awe.
“No, but that’s not the point!”
Apple Bloom sighed. “OK, I got it: Amy and perfectly-respectable Rory. We’re safe now, by the way. Those timber DD’s have left. I went outside and looked.”
“You left the TARDIS?” Rory asked as he rose to his feet. “That was dangerous! You could have gotten hurt.”
“You’re not family,” Apple Bloom told them, a touch of coldness in her voice. “And I’m plenty safe. I’m too small for them to grab me—probably my last year with that excuse—an’ they can’t send me as long as I’m wearing these.” She gestured at the rings around her neck.
“Alright, two questions,” Amy asked, shifting her body so she was on her knees, with her head only a little above Apple Bloom’s. “What are those, and what’s ‘DD’ stand for?”
“Electrum, and Diamond Dog,” the filly answered. “Zecora taught me that dragon magic don’t work on electrum.”
It occurred to Amy that if a “Diamond Dog” was the closest thing Apple Bloom had seen that resembled a human being, then “timber Diamond Dog” wasn’t too bad of a name for her to bestow on a scarecrow, especially one made more of wood than straw. Then her mind caught up with the other half of what the filly had told her. “Wait a minute—dragon magic? Are you saying you’ve got dragons on Planet Equis?”
Rory snorted as he tried to hold back a laugh. “Planet Equis,” he explained in response to Amy’s puzzled look.
Amy rolled her eyes. “Grow up already,” she said, before turning her head to face Apple Bloom once more. “How do you know that dragons are responsible for this?”
“One of my friends is a dragonling,” the mare explained. “He’s kind of the exception—most of them are all greed-bloated and mean. Anyway, dragons use gems for their magic, they use silence spells to cover up their actions, they can make servants in the shape of familiar animals out of stone, and they are able to teleport things with green flames.” The pony lightly tapped a different hoof on the floor with each point, like she was counting them off. “And they weren’t able to teleport Zecora until they got her electrum rings off of her.” She was clearly a lot more composed now than she was earlier, her voice refusing to break when saying the zebra’s name.
“But these ‘servants’ are made of wood instead of stone, and I’m betting those are not ‘familiar shapes’,” countered Amy.
“No,” said Apple Bloom reluctantly. “But that’s what Zecora told me, and I can’t think of anything else that could be behind this.”
“Is there anybody else you could get to help?” Rory asked.
Apple Bloom’s lower lip trembled. “Does that mean you’re not goin’ to help me?” she asked.
“No, we’ll help,” Amy assured her. “But it never hurts to have reinforcements.”
Apple Bloom sighed. “No, we can’t get anypony else to help,” she said. “Come outside, and I’ll show you why.”
“Well that’s a problem right there,” said Rory. “We can’t go outside. There’s something in the air that’s toxic to humans.”
“The Doctor told me to tell you to use the other doors,” Apple Bloom told them. “Right before giving me his key.”
Rory looked over at the second external pair of doors. “Oh yeah,” he said. “I kinda forgot about those.”
Apple Bloom took off two of the rings around her neck and held them out to them. “Here,” she said, turning away. “I was saving them for...well, it doesn’t matter now who I was savin’ them for. Just take ‘em.”
The humans took the rings without a word, and slipped them around their necks.
Amy walked over to the console and searched it for a few seconds, before finding a jerry-rigged switch. “That one looks newest.” She flipped it, and as she expected, the second set of doors opened. Only on the other side of this pair of doors was not a view of the barn outside, but rather a shimmery silver surface, like a pool of mercury turned on its side and convinced not to obey the laws of gravity.
“Ooh!” exclaimed Apple Bloom. “I want to see this from the other side!” She dashed out the original pair of external doors, and her hoofsteps could be heard going all the way around the TARDIS to the other side. “It’s all shiny on this side, too!” she informed them.
Rory walked over and examined the hinges of the new doors. “Is that?...No, it can’t be,” he said.
“What is it?” asked Amy.
“Well, with all the blue sparkles inside of them and the big yellow star shapes on top, these hinges look just like a pair of giant magic wands.” He found it odd that he hadn’t noticed this earlier, especially the ridiculous stars. It was like there was some sort of enchantment on the doors that made it hard to see them unless you were looking right at them. “That being said, I have no idea what this stuff is going to do to us.”
“I bet it coats you in a force field that protects you from flesh-eating...whatevers,” Amy stated. She stopped for a moment to review what she had just said. “Hmm...that started out sounding like I knew what I was talking about. I’m sure if I hang around the Doctor long enough I’ll get the hang of it.” She steeled herself and started walking towards the barrier. “Well, here goes nothing.”
Rory held out one arm to stop her. “How about if I try first? You already had your turn with the nanites.”
Amy winced slightly. She had become quite expert at dealing with the strange and uncomfortable aboard the TARDIS, but that didn’t mean she was eager to have another hand disintegrated and rebuilt before her eyes. “After you,” she said, her voice cracking slightly.
Rory stepped up to the silver surface, looking into his distorted reflection as he summoned his courage. “Well, here goes nothing,” he said.
“Hey, that’s my line!” Amy joked.
While she was saying this, Rory quickly plunged his hand through the surface of the vertical pool.
“Ooh!” exclaimed the voice of Apple Bloom.
“‘Ooh’ good, or ‘ooh’ bad?” asked Amy.
“Keep going, keep going!” exclaimed Apple Bloom.
“I’m not feeling anything unusual,” Rory said, looking at the length of arm that was cut off by the barrier. He then instructed himself that this scenario would be much less unnerving if he avoided thinking about phrases like “cut off”. “I mean, there’s no pain, I feel a little bit of a breeze, and...no wait, something’s definitely off.” He pulled his hand back into the TARDIS and examined it. “Seems OK now.”
“Aw, don’t chicken out!” exclaimed the unseen Apple Bloom.
“OK, my turn,” Amy said, stepping forward and sticking nearly her entire arm through the portal, producing a loud gasp from the pony on the other side. A few seconds passed. “Alright, I’m definitely feeling something off. But at the same time it feels natural.” After pulling back her hand and examining it, she reached back for her partner. “At the count of three, we both go through, but we leave one foot each back in the TARDIS, just in case.”
“Sounds prudent,” said Rory, smiling nervously.
“One,” said Amy.
“Two,” said Rory.
“Three!” the pair—and Apple Bloom—said simultaneously, as the humans lurched through the barrier together.
The pair landed in the hay and dirt that lined the floor of the barn, a necessary consequence of the decision to leave one foot each back in the TARDIS. They also landed with their backs to each other.
The first thing Amy saw when she opened her eyes was Apple Bloom giving her the goofiest grin imaginable. She looked around her to confirm that yes, despite using a pair of doors located right next to the usual exit, she had ended up emerging out of the opposite side of the blue box. “This doesn’t seem too bad,” she noted out loud. “I expected more of a horsey smell. Hold on, I think I’ve got something on my nose...”
“Amy...” Rory said with mounting panic, tapping her back with what felt like some kind of rock.
Amy turned around with a huff. “You’re not panicking already, are—?”
She found herself face to face with a brown-furred pony, slightly bigger than Apple Bloom. One of the creature’s limbs was stretched out towards her. Amy raised up her hands to push it away, only to see that her arms were covered with pale yellow fur and ended in a pair of hooves.
The pair of transformed humans screamed as one, before Rory wrapped a furry limb around Amy and dragged them both back into the TARDIS. Once on the inside of the barrier, they were restored to their original forms, complete with the clothing they didn’t have on the outside.
Amy’s first reaction was to frantically rub her restored hands over each other, then to bring them up to ensure that her face was human once again. “Mirror!” she exclaimed. “Mirror, mirror, mirror!”
“You looked fine!” Apple Bloom’s voice could be heard complaining.
“Amy!” Rory exclaimed, pulling her up and then putting a hand on each shoulder. “You’re fine. You’re completely back to normal.”
“Oh, thank God!” she exclaimed.
Rory stood there silently for a beat.
“Oh, and you’re OK, too,” Amy added as an afterthought.
Rory started to giggle.
“What?!” Amy exclaimed.
“It’s...it’s nothing,” Rory said, his laughter building. “It’s just...”
“Yes?”
“Planet Equis.”
This time both of them burst out laughing.
Amy took a couple of deep breaths to calm herself down. “You know,” she said in her imitation of the Doctor’s voice, “when a planet has a ‘no humans’ rule, it’s not something to snort at.”
They both started laughing again.
“Or whinny at,” Rory added, causing them to start laughing so hard they needed to keep their hands on the console to keep from falling over.
“What’s going on in here?” Apple Bloom asked, having walked around the TARDIS and entered using the usual pair of doors. Something had told her that she would regret going through the silvery barrier. “Aw, you’re humans again!”
“You knew what would happen to us?” asked Amy.
“Well, the Doctor’s a pony, and you acted like you’ve never seen a pony before, so...”
“You’re pretty smart,” Amy said thoughtfully. “And I think for the most part you’ve been handling this whole thing rather well. I think we should take her with us.”
“Well of course you’re taking me with you!” Apple Bloom exclaimed. “And if you said ‘no’, I’d just sneak after you! That’s my family and my teacher that they’ve got. I’m not gonna be left behind!”
Rory looked back and forth between the two redheads. “So it’s decided then,” he said with resignation.
Amy kneeled down to speak with Apple Bloom. “I don’t suppose you have a full-length mirror we could use?” she asked. “I’ve just got to see what we look like as alien horses.”
“There’s one in my room. Hurry up!” And with a clatter of hooves, the native of this strange world was gone.
As Amy walked out through the transmogrifying barrier once more, Rory just had to gaze in awe at his wife. Any other woman (or man) that Rory had ever met on Earth would have been horrified by the experience of becoming another species, and yet she had just shook it off like water off a duck’s back.
Rory would have called her weird, but...well, he tried that once, and he wasn’t dumb enough to try it a second time. With only a brief hesitation, he walked through the silvery curtain after her.
# # #
“It’s uncanny,” Pony Amy remarked at seeing herself beside Apple Bloom in the mirror in the filly’s room. With one significant exception, Amy looked exactly like a slightly older Apple Bloom.
Rory, standing on the other side of the same mirror, silently took in his surroundings. “Is there some kind of law that mandates cat posters in every young woman’s room in the universe?” he asked himself. Next to him, a large pink bow tie secured around a bedpost served as a memento from an earlier era in the life of the bedroom’s owner.
“So, are you like me from the future?” Apple Bloom asked Amy. “Well, me from an alternate reality where I’m a human unicorn and...” She looked over at Amy’s husband. “Ew,” she then said under her breath. Not because she had anything against these strange human creatures, and not because there was anything wrong with what the stallion looked like, but just the notion of being married in general, and the sorts of things that married couples did together. She swore she’d never let something like that happen to her. Apple Bloom snapped herself back to attention and walked around the yellow mare to see what she might have to look forward to when...“Aw, no fair! You haven’t got a cutie mark!”
Rory walked around so that he was on the same side of the mirror as Amy. In contrast to her bright red-on-yellow colors as a pony, he was a drab tan on brown. “I don’t know,” he said, looking at their reflections. “I think I could get used to it. ‘Cutie mark’ or no cutie mark, whatever that is.”
“I noticed you picked up walking on all fours pretty easily,” remarked Amy.
“So did you,” said Rory. “Like you said earlier, this feels...natural.”
“I dunno,” said Amy, craning her neck to take in her new tail, colored bright red like her mane. “There’s some things I doubt I’ll ever get the hang of.”
Rory’s eyes briefly boggled as he realized that his wife’s head was bent around at an angle that would be completely impossible for a human. “Hey!” he exclaimed as she once again faced him. “How come you’ve got one of those, and I don’t?” He pointed one hoof at the top of her head.
Amy briefly crossed her eyes trying to focus on her forehead, before giving up and consulting the mirror. “It’s called a ‘horn’, Hun,” she said sweetly. “I wonder if it works like it does in the stories?” She closed her eyes and scrunched up her face. “No laughing!” she exclaimed as she heard her husband trying to suppress a giggle at her expression. “Do you know how to work these things?” she asked Apple Bloom.
“One of my best friend’s a unicorn,” the other mare replied. “She said it’s all in your head.”
Amy concentrated some more for a few moments before giving up. “I’m sure I’ll get the hang of it eventually.”
“If you’re done with the mirror,” Apple Bloom told them, “there’s something I need to show you on the roof.”
# # #
The three ponies stood on the roof of the Apple Family house. The building was surrounded on all sides by apple trees.
“Wow!” Rory exclaimed, pointing at a castle and city set into a nearby mountain to the northeast. “I am getting some serious Tolkien vibes from that place.”
“That’s Canterlot, the capital,” Apple Bloom explained. She gave Rory a dark look as he tried to hold back a guffaw at the pun, then lowered her hoof a little. “That’s Ponyville.” Another pun, another snicker, and another glare resulted.
“Is that some sort of force field?” Amy asked, pointing at the town.
“Yup,” Apple Bloom replied. “It’s keeping the timber DD’s out. That’s Princess Twilight who’s probably casting it—she’s an alicorn. That’s like an earth pony, a unicorn and a pegasus all rolled into one. She’s another one of my teachers.”
“Alright,” said Rory, taking this all in. “So I take it that you and I are ‘earth ponies’, then?”
“Yup,” answered the young mare. “And don’t let anypony tell you there’s anything wrong with that.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” said Rory. “Although...don’t take this personally, but I’d rather have wings.”
Apple Bloom sighed. “Right now, I wouldn’t mind a pair myself.”
“What are those dots surrounding the force field?” asked Amy.
“Timber DDs,” answered Apple Bloom. “Hundreds of them. That’s the reason we can’t get any help.” She sighed. “If I had thought of coming up here before, Zecora wouldn’ta gotten captured.”
Amy reached out to nuzzle the filly with her neck, an action that just seemed to be the right one for that particular moment. “It’s alright,” she said. “We all make mistakes.”
“But together, we look out for each other,” added Rory.
“That’s what my best friends used to tell me when I was feeling down,” said Apple Bloom, pulling out of Amy’s embrace. “Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle. They live in Ponyville...I hope they didn’t get captured before the shield went up.” She sighed again before collecting herself. “I suppose the other princesses will show up with help by the morning, but I think something awful will happen to the ponies the timber DDs captured before then.” She turned to point due west, where apple trees were replaced by a dense and unwelcoming tangle of trees. “That’s the Everfree Forest—it’s where the attacks came from, and where all of the dragon smoke goes to. It’s also where Zecora lives. There’s some stuff we could use in her hut—potions, maybe a smoke bomb or two. I’ve got permission.” This last part was added quickly, like she still expected to be blocked from accompanying the transformed humans unless she said it.
“In the meantime, there might be some things from your house that we can take with us,” said Rory. “You wouldn’t happen to have a tree trimmer, would you?”
# # #
“Here you go,” Apple Bloom said a few minutes later, pulling down the bladed implement from its hook inside the barn with her mouth and laying it across Rory’s back. “What are you going to use it for, anyway?”
“You’ll see,” Rory replied. Looking hesitantly over his shoulder at the trimmer, he added, “That was a pretty good trick, there.”
Apple Bloom briefly lowered and raised her head in what must be the quadrupedal version of a shrug. “It was heavy, and I don’t have a horn,” she explained. “It’s the earth pony way.”
Rory couldn’t get the image of the pony’s slobber all over the handle of the tool, like she was some overgrown St. Bernard. “But...ew,” he said feebly.
“I don’t have cooties,” Apple Bloom deadpanned.
Amy laughed and shoved Rory’s shoulder with her hoof.
Rory shoved her back, and the mare fell over.
“Hey!” she exclaimed.
“Sorry,” Rory said sheepishly. “Don’t know my own strength.”
Amy rolled her eyes as Rory helped her up with an outstretched hoof. “All right,” she grumbled, “I forgive you.”
“Do you think we should lock up the Blue Box?” Apple Bloom asked.
“My key!” Amy exclaimed. “It was in my pocket when I changed, and I haven’t got pockets anymore!”
“That’s right!” Rory exclaimed with a leering smile. “We haven’t pockets because we’re buck naked!” He opened his mouth to make what was probably the most brilliant smart remark of all time.
Amy’s look promised unimaginable doom.
Alas, the most brilliant smart remark of all time was never uttered.
“What’s buckin’ have to do with being naked?” Apple Bloom asked herself.
Rory meanwhile had walked over to the spot where the two humans had landed after first becoming ponies. “Here it is,” he said, pointing at a small metal object amid the dirt and straw with one hoof. Then he took a good look at that hoof. “Uh...problem.”
“Try using your mouth,” suggested Amy. “It’s the earth pony way.”
“Oh hardy-har har.”
“Well look at us!” Amy exclaimed. “It’s not like we can lift things with our minds or...” Amy trailed off at seeing Apple Bloom nod knowingly at her statement and point at her horn. “Seriously?” she asked. “I thought they were for healing or something.” She pointed her horn at the key and concentrated.
Nothing happened. Rory snickered.
Amy tried to ignore him. “Rise!” she commanded imperiously, pointing one hoof at it.
Nothing happened, and Rory burst out laughing.
“Some unicorn you are!” he taunted. A second later there was the audible smack, and Rory put a hoof to his reddening cheek. “Hey! Did you just hit me with your mind?”
“Oh, that’s how it works!” Amy exclaimed. “Thanks, Dear!” She looked back at the key and narrowed her eyes. A shimmery iridescence surrounded the key, and it slowly rose into the air.
“OK, now this really isn’t fair,” Rory said with a pout. “If you unicorns are the only ones who can lift things without having to use your mouths, that dooms us poor forehead-impoverished types to being second-class equines.”
Apple Bloom rolled her eyes, but said nothing to correct him. She had been around married couples enough to have deduced that sometimes the only way you can get them to figure something out is to step back and let them work it out on their own.
Amy’s response to her husband’s statement, in the meantime, was to smile in a superior way and stick out her tongue.
Rory smiled back as he devised a comeback. “And where are you going to put that key after you use it?”
Amy stopped for a moment to think, causing the key to drop back to the ground. “Somebody—”
“Somepony,” insisted Rory.
Amy rolled her eyes. “Somepony really needs to invent pockets for ponies. Or clothing, for that matter.”
Apple Bloom looked down at the satchel that had been around her neck the entire time and contained her own TARDIS key. She then put on an expression that she had learned from Princess Twilight.
Rory shut his mouth. Then he opened it again. “Oh wait! I know exactly what we need. I saw a pile of them in the Wardrobe Room. Hold on.”
He raced inside the TARDIS. Amy and Apple Bloom heard the audible thump of his body hitting the floor as his brain failed to handle the instantaneous transition to being bipedal again. There were some footsteps fading away, and then silence.
“So,” Amy said, marking time, “what exactly do you do?”
“Oh, this an’ that. Lately I’ve been makin’ laughing gas for the Ponyville dentist.”
“Oh, chemistry! That sounds interesting,” Amy replied. She thought for a moment, before coming up with what—for her—was the inevitable follow-up question: “Ever experiment with high explosives?”
Apple Bloom furtively rolled her eyes. “Not in any way that could be proven in a court of law...” she said out of the side of her mouth.
The pair heard a pair of footsteps approaching inside the TARDIS, and then a pair of flat canvas objects flew out of the barrier, followed by Rory, who just managed to catch himself from falling on his face.
“I think I’m getting the hang of this,” he remarked.
Amy walked over to the pair of objects he had brought with him, which turned out to be saddlebags. “Good thinking!” she exclaimed. She used her telekinesis to put hers’ on.
Rory looked like a dog who had been given a jerky treat on hearing his wife’s compliment. Without looking, he reached back and pulled the TARDIS door shut with one hoof. Then he realized what he had just done and looked closely at the inside of his hoof, flexing the frog within. “Oh,” he said. “Ohhhh.”
“What?” asked Amy, having missed this.
“I take back my prior statement about being repressed,” Rory said walking up to her. “Also, this.” He put his hoof up to Amy’s cheek and pulled it away quickly with a sound faintly resembling a plunger noise.
“What?!” Amy exclaimed, putting a hoof to her cheek and rubbing it frantically. “I...how? OK, new rule: no hoof-kissing.”
“Whatever you say, Dear,” Rory said sweetly.
Amy shook her head. “How can you think handling stuff with your mouth is gross,” she muttered under her breath, “but have no problem whatsoever doing the same thing with your foot?” Of course, having seen a new trick that she could do with this new body, naturally Amy had to try out her “hoof powers” herself, with the key. Despite several tries, she utterly failed to lift it.
Rory came over and picked it up effortlessly. “Need some help?” he asked with a superior smile. He allowed it to drop, then picked it up, several times in a row.
“Gimme that!” Amy exclaimed irritably, taking the key using her telekinesis.
Rory stuck his tongue out at her while she finally locked both sets of TARDIS doors and put the key away in her saddlebags.
Amy saw that Rory hadn’t donned his own saddlebags yet. “Do you need any help?” she asked with a smirk. “I mean, even with sticky hooves, I don’t see how—”
“I’ve got this,” Rory said confidently. He slid his nose under the back and walked forward until it slid right into place.
“Were you one of those kids who asked Santa to change you into a puppy, and practiced doing stuff on hands and knees, just in case?” Amy asked.
“You say that like there’s something wrong with it,” Rory replied with a resentful sniff. He then sat back and “begged”. The saddlebags slid off, and he looked sadly at them.
Amy laughed. “You’re incorrigible.”
Looking back and forth between the two transformed humans, Apple Bloom had a brief nightmarish vision, of Applejack standing over a pregnant Apple Bloom, forcing her into a shotgun marriage with Winona, who had a trademark goofy grin on her doggy face. The mare shook her head to clear it, but the mental damage was done.
“You’re both incorrigible!” she exclaimed.
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Hello there.
4971202
I had a feeling.
I've only seen a small handful of episodes of Doctor Who, but I'm still enjoying this so far.
What was that in response to?! It sounds like a non sequitur.
Pussies. I don't see why even Amy wouldn't trust the Doctor. He's obviously safe and sound (relative to becoming proton dust) on the other side.
How about you refer to the scarecrows as timber dogs? Timber DD is not the best abbreviation, and it's somewhat Freudian.
Overcoming a serious hindrance through a gag is a bit of an ass-pull.
And all ponies can use "sticky" hooves, not just Earth ponies. Are you intentionally diverging from canon there?
Love it.
Amy and Rory are my favorite of the companions, it's nice to see them getting some love.
The whole scenario has a very strong Dr Who feel, I can't wait to see how our heroes resolve it.
Also, the story name is... badly thought out. Unless there's an actual centaur in the story later, and that seems unlikely, given Equis' arbitrary humanoid-disintegrating field. (Which seems to be there purely to make the pony Time Turner out as the Doctor, which is... just no.)
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What feeling?
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Rose Tyler all the way.
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Fair enough. I love Amy and Rory's journey, but there are very few companions who I don't like on some level.
Rose was the perfect character to reintroduce the show to a new generation of fans. Billy Piper has a nice charm to her acting, and the major arc of her character was well done. But Bad Wolf simply does not have the resonance of the Girl who Waited.