The Eighth Element?!

by PaisleyPerson

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

“Doctor, you’d better be telling the truth this time.”

“I am, I swear! One planet of muffins, coming right up!” The strange earth pony stallion Ditzy knew as ‘The Doctor’ danced around the TARDIS console, pushing levers and entering coordinates.

“The last time you ‘promised’ me my planet of muffins, we ended up on Tall Tale Beach, just in time to be thrown into the middle of a changeling invasion!”

“Actually, we were thrown right into the group of rebels standing up against the changelings. And we got to witness the return of the hippocampi and the defeat of Kindling Pyre, which resulted in the transformation of Charcoal Stormwood... come on, Ditzy. Tell me you didn’t have fun.”

“Sure, but I still didn’t get my muffins,” she crossly reminded.

“Right. Muffins.” The stallion sighed in exasperation, and resumed mapping their course. “Let’s see... I’m sure it was around here somewhere.” He scrutinized the map displayed on his console.

“You lost it? Ugh! That’s it, Doctor! Take me home!”

“But Ditzy-!” he whined, crouching at her hooves as though pleading for mercy.

“One way or another, I’m getting my muffin. Take me home so I can stop at Sugar Cube Corner on the way.”

“Oh... fine,” the time lord/pony sighed, reluctantly resetting their heading for the familiar Ponyville Plaza. At least that was one location he could get them to... usually.

Suddenly, the TARDIS gave a violent jerk, sending the Doctor and Ditzy sprawling into one another. The Doctor’s vision was obscured under a sheet of black, though he wasn’t sure if he had lost consciousness or if that was merely Ditzy’s rump. When the alarms started blaring, he realized that he was still awake.

“Ow,” Ditzy groaned, rubbing her head. Her ears flattened as the ear-numbing screeches and flashing lights starting going off all around the TARDIS. “Doctor? What’s that?”

“I don’t know. You’re crushing my face,” came the muffled response.

“Oops! Sorry!” She sheepishly hopped off and hoisted the brown pony back to his hooves. He woozily regained his balance, then stumbled back to the control hub to assess the situation.

“Huh. Interesting...” he quickly snapped back into focus, eyes trained intently at the massive amounts of data being streamed before his eyes.

“Uh oh. That’s never a good sign with you,” Ditzy gulped.

“I’m sorry, Miss Doo,” Time Turner abruptly turned away and started jabbing another keyboard. “It looks like we aren’t going to get you home after all.”

“Oh, no you don’t,” she fumed, suddenly up in his face. “We talked about this, Doctor. You HAVE to take me home when I say so. Otherwise it’s considered ponynapping, and you promised not to do that anymore.”

“No, Ditzy, you don’t understand,” the Doctor shook his head, shaggy brown hairs falling into his eyes. “I am not physically able to take you back to Ponyville. At least, not the Ponyville you remember anyway. Time is currently rewriting itself- the jolt that shook the TARDIS was the aftershock.”

“What do you mean, ‘not the Ponyville I remember’?”

“It’s hard to say. I’ll know more when I pinpoint the source of the temporal disturbance,” he promised, still furiously poking at the keyboard.

“Well, how long will that take?” she pouted.

“Aha! Got ya, little troublemakers!” he proudly gloated in response.

“Wow. That was fast.”

“Now, let’s see who’s instigated this mess.” The Doctor hit the ‘play’ button on the screen, and the very moment that triggered the temporal disruption was portrayed on the monitor as one might watch a video.

“Huh? But that’s just Rainbow Dash and Soarin’,” Ditzy scratched her head.

“They’re going awfully fast, aren’t they?” the Doctor mused, squinting, scrutinizing every inch of the screen as the scene played out. Though the monitor image couldn’t come close to capturing the full majesty of the real thing, both ponies were nearly blinded by the spectacular colors that soon burst from behind the married couple.

“WHOA!” Ditzy actually ducked for cover as the TARDIS speakers mimicked the thunderous crash of the original Rainbooms.

“Aaaah,” the Doctor sighed almost contently, rubbing his chin in thought. “That explains everything!”

“What?” Ditzy’s head bobbed back up.

“Weren’t you paying attention? They performed two rainbooms at once!” he exclaimed as though it were obvious.

“So?”

“Don’t you see? That’s what rewrote time!”

“How did two Rainbooms rewrite all of time and space?”

“Well, not all of time and space. It only affected a few years- from this, I’d say about the last twenty years were altered. The period of time between Rainbow’s first Rainboom when she was a filly and Soarin’s first Rainboom, just now, is now in flux. See, Sonic Rainbooms are completely different from regular sonic booms. Sonic booms occur when a person or object breaches the sound barrier. Rainbooms breach not only the sound but also the magical barriers, which gives it that spectacular coloring. It appears that two magical breaches formed at precisely the same time was too much for the wall of time and space to handle. It created a time fracture, allowing opportunity for any and all events within a given timespan to be altered. You and I are safe, since we were out in the time vortex when time rewrote itself. And I would think that those closest to the explosion would have been the least dramatically effected, especially Rainbow Dash and Soarin’.”

“In english, that means....?”

“An alternate reality has just been created.”

“Is that a bad thing?” The Doctor opened his mouth to reply, but shut it just as quickly. His first inclination was to tell her, “Yes, of course! Very, very bad!” But was it really? What if things had changed for the better? Then again, the ponies representing the Elements of Harmony had been directly involved, and the Elements could be very touchy.

“I don’t know,” he carefully enunciated. His hoof came down hard on one of the console’s levers, dramatically throwing the TARDIS back in motion. “Let’s find out.”