Fall of the Doctor

by Sixes_And_Sevens

Stormchasers

There was a long moment of silence. Eventually, Sweetie spoke up with false cheer. “Well, at least we’re stuck inside the cloud, right? That’s where we wanted to be anyway.”

“True,” the Doctor agreed, relaxing slightly. “Besides, just give me a moment and I can work out the new frequency, shouldn’t take too long at all…”

Just then, the monitors flickered for a moment. When they refocused, a new image had appeared on their screens. An image of a scowling grey earth pony with eyes as blue and calm as the center of a hurricane. “Doctor. You live, once again.”

The Doctor turned to face the nearest monitor. “...Yeeeaaahhh, sorry about that. It’s sort of gotten to be a habit of mine,” he said, warily watching the simulacrum stallion’s face. Much to his surprise, the Intelligence smiled.

“True, true,” it agreed, almost laconic. “So too with me. Habits like that are very hard to break, you know.”

“...Yes?”

“But it can be done with strong enough incentive from, for instance… a family member.”

The Doctor’s face hardened. “What did you do?” he demanded. “Where is my daughter?”

“Fear not, Doctor. I’ve not harmed your precocious brat. Yet.” It gestured to one side, and the camera panned to reveal Dinky, shouting and struggling against the powerful grip of a kangaroo, biting down on her arms and kicking her in the pouch as often as she could, all to no avail.

The Intelligence’s voice continued from off-camera. “I've already thrown one of you to the earth. I intend to see one or the other of you strike home in the next five minutes. Just step out of your TARDIS, and your runt and everypony else can go free. I’ll even leave the planet. All I really want,” it concluded as the scene panned back toward its face, “is your death.”

The picture cut out. The Doctor took a deep breath and let it out. He looked up at his wife. “I—” he began.

“No.” she said flatly.

“—what?”

“I am not going to let you go out there. That pony’s a nut! As soon as you’re dead, he’ll take out Dinky too, then all the rest of us! We have to go save her, without trying to make some kind of idiotic sacrifice.”

“...Ah,” said the Doctor, rubbing the back of his head.”...Actually, that’s exactly what I was going to say, so yes. Great plan.”

“Oh.”

Button raised a hoof. “How do we do that exactly?”

The Doctor smiled. “Tell me, have you ever played Pac-Man?”

"Uh..."

"Pac-Mule," Ditzy corrected.

"Oh! Oh..." Button grinned. Scootaloo got up and took Sweetie's place at the console, a fire in her eyes that might have been best described as maniacal.

"Game on," she said, flipping up the altitude lock

***

The TARDIS screamed down the hallway, all pretense at subterfuge left behind. The blue-eyes were sent flying as the blue box smashed into them. “WOOHOO!” Button cried, steering the ship around hairpin turns and tight corners. Sweetie Belle had retired to the back of the room, clutching at her mouth as she fought back her motion sickness. Scootaloo was clinging to the console for dear life, yelling in equal parts fear and joy.

Ditzy was frantically trying to retain her balance and keep an eye on the monitor at the same time, and the Doctor was readjusting the sonic field, modulating the frequency as steadily as he could. At random points, the cloud layers burst into vapor as the Time Lord overshot his mark on the screwdriver.

“Faster,” Ditzy urged, “We only have two minutes!”

Button, meanwhile, was dancing. He treated the console like it was an extension of his own body, barely even glancing away from the screen. He slammed blue-eyes into the walls like bowling pins, and all the while the TARDIS console seemed to glow with a brilliant golden light that sparkled in his eyes.

Scootaloo ran an eye over her own controls. “Faster, faster, what looks like it would make this go faster?” she mused, running a hoof over the dark, varnished wood of the panel. Her eyes fell on an orange sliding switch which had a triangle next to it. At present, the switch sat at the narrow end of the scale. Carefully, the filly nudged it up a quarter of the way. Suddenly, the TARDIS slammed into a wall, careening down another hallway at breakneck speed. “WOO!” the pegasus shouted, a wild grin on her face. “Hey, Doctor, how fast can this thing go?”

The Doctor didn’t even glance up. “Fast,” he said. “Very fast. It could probably break the sound barrier, with enough time to accelerate.” He paused. “This is probably fast enough,” he added, a slight note of concern in his voice.

“Aw,” Scootaloo sighed.

“We’re nearly there!” Button said, staring at the screen.

“There’s only one minute left!” Ditzy shouted.

The ship zigzagged through the maze of clouds, the crew desperate to save Dinky.

***

Dinky, meanwhile, was staring down, down, down through the clouds. The kangaroo still held her tight in her grasp at the cusp of a very, very long fall indeed. The Intelligence, meanwhile, sat across from them both, staring at a fob watch. "You're running out of time," it said. "Time to see how much daddy dearest really loves you, hm?"

Dinky scowled at him, choosing to focus on anything other than her imminent drop. "Why are you doing this, anyway? What did the Doctor ever do to you?"

The Intelligence gave a low, throaty chuckle. "What? Why would you care about that? He hurt you too, I know. Nearly a decade of pain left at your doorstep. You know how badly he can hurt people, don't you?"

She felt a surge of anger rising-- anger at the Doctor, at her abandonment, at--

She shoved it back. She could tell when she was being manipulated. "Yeah, he hurt me. But you don't see me trying to throw him off a cloud, do you? If I can forgive him, what's that say about you?"

The Intelligence looked up, for once quite wrong-hooved. Dinky took advantage of its confusion, pushing on. "Seriously, trying to kill him once wasn't enough for you? At least these goons are a little more subtle than Yetis in the TARDIS."

The Intelligence frowned. "Yeti? What Yeti? I--" He broke off. "Thirty seconds left. Cover her mouth. Her prattle irritates me."

The kangaroo grabbed her muzzle. Dinky fought the urge bite its paw, or struggle from its grasp. Part of that was because she refused to give them the satisfaction, but for the most part, she was too afraid to risk being dropped early. “Nineteen,” the Intelligence continued. “Eighteen, seventeen, sixteen…”

The TARDIS hurtled down the last corridor, heading straight for the opulent chamber at the very heart of the storm. The blue box bashed through the doors of carved ice, and its own doors swung open to reveal a very angry earth pony. “Give us Dinky, an’ we won’t hurt ya. Much,” Apple Bloom said, glaring fire at the Intelligence, whose gaze reflected only icy disdain.

“Three,” he said. “Two.”

Button spurred the TARDIS forward with a primal scream of defiance. “One,” said the Intelligence, and over the edge Dinky pitched.

The hole began to shrink rapidly. Even at her current speed, the TARDIS wouldn’t make it in time to smash through. Though Button knew this, he pressed on, silently hoping to Celestia for a miracle. A fraction of a second later, a miracle swooshed out of the doors of the big blue box, her grey feathers tickling the tops of Apple Bloom’s ears. Before the Intelligence or his goons had time to react, she was already through the hole and speeding toward her filly. “NO!” the Intelligence cried, leaning forward. The hole stopped shrinking for a moment as he stared in despair at the tableau unfolding beneath him. An instant later, the TARDIS squeezed through the gap, flying down, down, down to the ground.

The Intelligence’s face was a picture. He refused to believe that he could be defeated the exact same way twice in one day. The thought that he had tried the exact same plan both times never even crossed its vast, addled mind. A moment later, it twisted its mouth up into a dreadful parody of a smile. It lifted a hoof and smashed it against the cloud surface. An answering bolt of lightning shot out, aimed right at Ditzy's tail.

Comments

[Coyote de La Mancha]

Um. So, the Intelligence /wasn’t/ behind the yetis?

Or wasn’t... yet?

Or something else... was? Or...

Oh. Oh, dear.

[cogwheelbrain]

9496675
Nothing is ever simple with the Doctor, is it?