Fall of the Doctor

by Sixes_And_Sevens

Venting Rage

It took the Doctor a moment to register a few things. Firstly, he realized that the actual Crystal Heart was not, in fact, vaguely greyish (as was this one), but blue.

The second thing he noticed, although somewhat less important, was that the case was made of ice, not glass.

The third thing that he realized was that there was somepony standing right behind him.

He spun around. Another grey earth pony stood on the stairs blue eyes unblinkingly fixed on the Doctor. The Time Lord let out a mild sigh of annoyance. “Oh, it’s you again,” he said.

Then, the pony did something the Doctor hadn’t expected. He spoke. “So you do remember,” he said, dead blue eyes meeting the Doctor’s. “I was beginning to think you’d forgotten me."

The Doctor stared. “Since when can you talk?” he asked.

The grey pony gave a cultured chuckle. “Surely you haven’t mistaken me for my retinue, Doctor? We are not terribly distinct, I admit… Nevertheless, it’s hardly mannerly.”

“Ah, yes,” said the Doctor, recovering himself. “My apologies, of course. Really, how long has it been? One loses track so…”

The grey stallion’s smile twisted into a grimace. “Not nearly long enough," he growled. "Less than a century, whereas I would prefer more than an eternity. Although, so long as we're catching up on old times, let's see if you can remember what all this is about."

He turned, gesturing all around the room. "The storm shall spread, from pole to icy pole, resonating with the anguish of those below. But you make no remark?"

"Er," said the Doctor. "Could you be a little more specific?"

"Hm! Very well. I shall tell you how long I have prepared for this moment, Doctor. Three thousand. Five hundred. Seventy-two years. Three months, four days.” He looked up at the Doctor. “It was twenty past eight in the evening.”

“Ah.”

“I was going to rule this world,” he said distantly. “Start with the Crystal Empire, of course. I do love the cold. From there… work my way down. Freeze Canterlot, see if that puts paid to the sun and moon. If it does, so much the better. If not, move along.”

He looked up at the Doctor. “But then… you. You, you, always you.” His face was contorted into a grimace. “No matter how many times I tried, you never died! Not on Christmas, not in Tibet, not even in the Underground!”

The Doctor’s eyes widened in recognition. “The Great Intelligence,” he muttered. “Of course…”

The grey stallion paid him no mind. “Well, naturally, that couldn’t stand,” he continued. “So I gradually realized that the only way of stopping you was to throw myself into your timestream, corrupting all your victories into defeats, annihilating you utterly from history.”

“You WHAT?”

“But still you lived! Even after I had destroyed myself, you lived on in defiance of me!” the other snarled, his composed and cultured face twisting into a mask of rage.

“Um,” said the Doctor. "Can we go back to how you threw yourself into my—"

“But that was not the worst of it!” the Intelligence snapped. “As I was floating in the timestream, blissfully unaware of anything— particularly not your continued existence— your TARDIS comes along to pull me into THIS benightedly cheerful dimension. It took me centuries to find any suitable vessel for my plans, and when I did? Who turns up to stop me? Oh, yes, you. Again. Shattering my Heart of Despair, destroying my vessel, an imbecilic little smirk on your furry blue face, your leathery bat wings beating like a slap to the face as you annihilated my aspirations!”

“Blue… bat wings? A thestral?” the Doctor asked blankly. “I’ve never been a blue bat-pony.”

“But now, after all these millennia, I have reassembled my prize! I have painstakingly located every last shard of crystal and put it back together except for one last piece.” He glared at the Doctor. “Give it to me,” he demanded. “Give it to me or I will kill you slowly and painfully. GIVE! ME! THE! CRYSTAL!”

The Doctor coughed. “Um.” he said. “Not sure how to tell you this, mate, but… you’re early.”

The look on the grey stallion’s face brought new meaning to the word “blank”. “I’m… early?” he repeated.

“Yeeeaaahhh, I’ve… I’ve never been to the Crystal Empire at that point in its history. Also, I’ve never been a blue bat-pony. I’ve been blue, and I’ve been a thestral, but… never at the same time.”

The Intelligence looked rather like a foal told that Nightmare Night and Hearth’s Warming Eve had been replaced with dentist appointments and math exams. “I’m… early?” he whispered. “You mean… you don't have the last fragment of the Heart of Despair?”

“Never even heard of it before today,” the Doctor said.

The Intelligence sat down rather heavily on the stairs. “Without even trying,” he said. “Without even trying, you foil me, Doctor.”

“Er,” the Doctor said.

The Intelligence giggled, turning to look at him. “I’m early!” he gasped, choking on barely controlled laughter.

“Yes, as I said before—”

The laughter stopped. “And you, Doctor, are about to be late,” it roared, eyes flashing.

“Ah,” said the Doctor, just before he was flash frozen.

***

Apple Bloom and Dinky trotted through the cloud corridors. “What are we even doing?” Apple Bloom asked.

“Escaping, I guess,” Dinky replied.

“Right, right, Ah got that part, but how? Ah mean, we’re still, what, a few hunnerd feet up?”

Dinky stopped in her tracks. “Oh,” she said. “Yeah. Good point.” She sat down. Apple Bloom sat next to her.

“Mebee there’s some kind o’ control room?” the yellow filly suggested. There was a rumble of thunder in the distance, followed by a flash of lightning that lit up the corridor..

“What kind of cloud has a control room?”

“What kind o’ cloud has a prison cell?”

“...Okay, fair.”

“Come t’ that, what kind o’ cloud has a teleport?”

Dinky frowned. “Come again?”

Apple Bloom shrugged. “Well, Ah figgered that’s how we got up here, right? Some kinda fancy alien teleporter?”

Dinky’s mouth moved slowly. A flash of lightning illuminated the hallway behind them. She blinked. “Stupid, stupid, stupid!” she shouted, springing to her hooves. Apple Bloom looked offended.

“Not you, me! I never even thought about a long-range teleport, but there has to be one! Something that got us and the blue-eyes up here!”

Apple Bloom hopped up. “So, how do we find it? What’s it look like?”

Dinky’s face fell. “I... have no idea,” she admitted, sitting back down. “Anyway, I don’t think there can be a proper sort of teleporter. Otherwise, whatever’s in charge of this place would just have… picked us up, without all the business of the blue-eyes.”

“Shoot,” sighed Bloom. “An’ Ah was so sure Ah had it.”

“You do bring up a good point, though,” Dinky added. “How did we get up here? All I remember is getting grabbed by a blue-eyes, then a flash, then getting thrown in the cell with the Doctor.”

“Mebee the blue-eyes can do a long-range teleport by themselves,” Bloom suggested.

Dinky laughed for a moment, then stopped, stricken. “Oh. Oh, no.”

“What?”

Dinky looked up at her friend. “The blue-eyes can teleport,” she whispered. “And there's a lightning strike. Like the one… just...down… the hallway.” The girls looked back, only to see a massive minotaur looming over them, his blue eyes cold and dead. They screamed and rolled aside as a pair of fists slammed down where they had been sitting. Dinky ran up one end of the corridor, and Apple Bloom scurried down the other. The minotaur look first one way, then the other. After a moment, he gave chase after Bloom, running on silent hooves. Herbert the gazelle waiter appeared in a flash and boom a moment afterwards and leapt after Dinky. The chase was on.

Comments

[Coyote de La Mancha]

HOLY CRAP! THE YETI IN THE EARLIER STORY! THE MYSTERIOUS SHAPE! YOU MAGNIFICENT BASTARD, YOU USED YOG-SOTHOTH!

*Ahem*

By which I mean, well played, old bean. Very well played.

[SunflowerSwirl]

“Blue… bat wings? A thestral?” the Doctor asked blankly. “I’ve never been a blue bat-pony.”

A story to come I assume!

[Shilic]

Ah, the Great Intelligence. One of the many villians of the Second Doctor's run that was abandoned, although it was able to claw it's way back onto the show proper. Unlike some others... (one day, the Quarks and the Krotons will get their revenge...)

[Sixes_And_Sevens]

10334651
I just want the Weed Monsters to come back.