The Legion of Bronze

by Sixes_And_Sevens

Prisoners of War

The house was clean; more than that, it was immaculate. Sterile. It felt almost criminal to walk in it, but the yellow unicorn trotted down the front hall like nopony’s business. She didn't fit with the house. It was too perfect, and she was only a mare. It was pale, a dead shadow compared to the sunshine that surrounded her. She was Psyche in the house of Eros. (The first fairytale Scootaloo had ever heard. The first fairy tale ever, from what her aunt had told her. It had lulled her to sleep as a child, but she was older now. She distrusted the God of Love, stealing away pretty fillies because he could and keeping them in a castle (and the whole diapered pegasus foal thing? Creepy. It was bad enough being hit on by fratty meathead dudebros or giggling braindead sorority chicks, let alone a kid that hasn't been toilet trained.))

She led me into the kitchen. There was no food on the counter. There were, however, rows of bottles, filled with little pills. She noticed my fascination with them, blushed a bit. “I know I shouldn't leave them out in the open, but there are so many that I need to take with food. I forget if they aren't right there, you know?”

“Yes,” I said. I didn't. I didn't even know then what she was talking about. I didn't know for a long time afterwards, not until it was too late. “I’m Romane Holiday,” I said. “Pegasus history and mythology.”

She beamed. “Solar Flare,” she said, extending a hoof. “Wavy told me so much about you!”

“Did he,” I managed to say. “All good things, I hope.”

“Oh, yes.” There was a long silence.

“He left his briefcase,” I said lamely, lifting it from the table where I had placed it, where she could plainly have seen it, where no further explanation was necessary. “Er. Is he… is he home?”

“Mhm!” she nodded, smiling. For the first time, I noticed the bags under her eyes. “I can call him down for you if you want to talk to him.”

“No!” I restrained myself. “I mean, thank you, but I just came to return the case. I must be going.”

“Flare?” a voice called. “Flare, who is that?”

She turned away to look toward the door. She didn’t see how my muzzle scrunched, how my ears went flat. But he did. He stood in the door, as frozen as I was, and almost as horrified. And then he thawed. He smiled at me, smiled at me! He knew I wouldn’t tell. He knew what that would do to my reputation, and he knew I knew what it would do to his wife. I wouldn’t stop seeing him. I couldn’t stop seeing him. (That was part of the fairy tale, too. The mare sees something she shouldn’t and is punished severely. (Not for the first time, Scootaloo reflected on just how similar Eros and Eris sounded.))

---

The Doctor wandered through the halls, the tree from Peri’s room balanced on his back. He thought he recognized this juncture, but everything seemed turned around. The TARDIS felt unfamiliar. Alien, even. The faint, ever-present background hum of machinery seemed to have gone dead. The Doctor shuddered. The silent hallways seemed unnatural, uncanny to him. It was like seeing an old friend’s corpse, or being lost in a corn maze at night while the Cyberman-upgraded farmers stalked along the pathways and Adric was trying to hide out in the chicken coop.

He shook his head. This was no time to reminisce on old adventures. The Watcher could be around any corner, and it probably was at that. He pushed open a door and found himself confronted with acres upon acres of rolling green hills spotted with trees. A false sun shone down from a bright blue sky overhead as clouds formed by block-transfer equations drifted lazily by. The Doctor frowned. “That’s odd. This should be the library.”

He stepped inside and rubbed his chin with a hoof, letting the door close slowly behind him. He could afford to rest awhile, get his bearings. He didn’t recognize the room. It was as though it were half-finished, empty of some vital components. He lowered himself to the ground, folding his legs under him. The grass tickled at his chest, and the sunshine warmed his back. The hills seemed to roll on forever, but he could, if he looked closely, see the opposite wall perhaps half a kilometer away. A faint smile flickered over his lips. “Ah. The butterfly room,” he murmured.

He’d been an avid collector, once. Thousands of species had been kept in this room, a multihued swirl of living stained glass. His smile faded as he ran a hoof through the grass. A spectrum of tiny scales, almost dust, covered the soil. There had been… a calamity, he knew. He was pretty sure Fitz had been there, and… Compassion? Anji, perhaps, or Sam? And the TARDIS had gone to sleep, and every living thing not in stasis was… gone.

He stood up abruptly. The warmth and comfort of the room had gone, suddenly. Anyway, if this was the butterfly room, he was in entirely the wrong corridor to get to the library. On the other hoof, he knew a shortcut to get to the console room from here. He turned around and strode out the door, scooping up the tree as he passed. He did not look back. If he had done so, he would have seen a pale figure crossing a not-so-distant rise. Though he didn’t see it, it certainly saw him.

---

The small group of townsfolk had stayed milling about Twilight’s lab, largely because they felt that they had no other place to go. They had, inextricably, gotten involved in matters, and there was no way that they could now go back to their beds. Twilight had, rightly enough, quickly gotten fed up with ponies staring at, asking about, and worst of all, touching her experiments. She shooed everypony out into the hall, save for Romana, Sunset, and Applejack, and with a quick plea that Trixie try to keep the peace, she slammed the door and locked it.

There was, for a long minute, absolute silence in the corridor. Then, Berry had announced that she was going to go and make some good, strong Saddle Arabian coffee, and they were all going to need it to keep awake. Bulk and Cheerilee had accompanied her. Then, Trixie had started to pester Bon Bon about where she had learned to fight like that, and they had wandered off, and then Lyra had started talking to Ruby about alien life forms. And just like that, Rumble was alone. Alone with them.

Diamond almost met his eyes, then looked away. Rumble, for his part, stared steadily at the wall. Silver looked at one, then the other, then sighed heavily. “Been awhile,” she droned, staring flatly at Diamond.

“Mm,” said the pink mare. “M-hm,”

Rumble said nothing.

Silver looked at Rumble. “So, I heard you’re at Cloudsdale Weather College these days.”

The stallion hesitated, then nodded once, sharply.

“Cool. I’m taking law. Diamond’s studying business.”

“Huh,” said Rumble. “Suits you.”

Silver’s teeth grit. “Thanks! I’m assuming that was a sincere compliment about our abilities and achievements, and not a veiled insult about how heartless we supposedly are based on actions performed in elementary school. To think otherwise would be ridiculous, because, of course, we are the bullies, and you the helpless victim, and nothing would ever happen to change that.”

“Are you implying something?” Rumble asked, turning to look at the pair of mares.

“Oh, the bit drops,” Silver said, waving a hoof. “After only about a decade, it finally sinks in that maybe, just maybe, we aren’t the same ponies we used to be? Maybe we have tried to change, if anypony would ever let us? Maybe we would be friends with you Crusaders if you hadn’t locked us out for life?”

Rumble glowered. “Why should we?” he asked.

Silver threw her hooves in the air. “Because! Isn’t that your thing? Making friends with ponies? You all made up with Babs, and she didn’t act any better than we did! You made Discord, Discord, an honorary member of your little gang. Like, half of you are related or mentored by one of the Elements of bucking Harmony, so you’d think you’d all be a little more ready to forgive us for what we did in school!”

Rumble’s expression changed not a whit. “You’ve been quiet, Diamond.”

The pink mare’s head jerked back. “Huh? Oh, right. Uh, what she said.”

Silver’s face went from ticked-off to deeply concerned in an instant. She turned to face her friend. “You doing ok, Di?” she asked, reaching out a hoof.

“Fine,” the pink mare said abruptly. “I’m fine. Listen, Rumble, I get that we said some really hurtful things back at school. We feel terrible about it, and we really do want to make it up to all of you guys somehow. But we can’t do that without your forgiveness.”

“Huh,” said the pegasus. “Well. Maybe. Maybe we could forgive you. I’m probably not the one you’d want to talk to about this. Button would probably work better, or Sweetie Belle. They’ve got soft hearts when it comes to this sort of stuff. Soft heads, too. But, fine. I can forgive you. But there’s something you need to do first.”

Silver nodded gamely. “Fine. What’s that?”

Rumble glared. “Figure it out,” he growled. “I’m getting coffee.” He flapped off down the corridor, leaving his former tormentors watching.

After a moment, Silver risked a glance back at her best friend. “How is he?” she asked quietly.

Diamond drew in a breath and let it out slowly. “Not good,” she said succinctly. “The doctors give him a year, but he says he’ll be alive to see my graduation from business school.”

“Which do you believe?”

Diamond looked at her best friend, then looked away. “Dad always keeps his promises,” she said firmly. “Always.”

---

Ditzy trotted alongside the thugs, her expression grim and drawn. Scootaloo was still unconscious on the back of a third grunt, though the grey mare could still see the gentle rise and fall of her sides as she breathed slowly but steadily. “Where are you taking us?” the postmare asked, almost hissing.

The guard to her left fixed an amethyst eye on her. It was intense, yet oddly passive, as though she was looking through the mare rather than at her. “You~ ar~e in-ter-lop-erzz~,” she said at length. “Tra~ve-lerzz~. She wishezz~ to see you~.”

Well, it was a start. At least somepony had said something. Ditzy pressed on. “Who will want to see us? And why?”

The thug’s pale purple eye blinked once, then flicked forward once more. Ditzy frowned. For a moment, it had seemed that her captor’s iris had flickered like a bad film projection. She dismissed the thought almost immediately. Obviously that was nonsense. More likely, her eyes were playing tricks on her again. She turned her attention to her surroundings, instead. The clouds were more grey here, like well-trodden sidewalks, a sign of contamination from dust and other debris.

A lot of pegasi must come here just after they've been on the ground, Ditzy reasoned. The dirt gets into the clouds and raindrops condense around the particles, like a more primitive version of the weather factory. I wonder why that doesn't usually happen in modern pegasus cities?

In addition to the grey color of her surroundings, the buildings here were more utilitarian than the grand architecture of the agora. The columns were irregularly spaced and often crooked, as though put up in a hurry or by an amateur construction worker. The buildings themselves were pressed together. The street they were currently walking down was almost an alley, barely able to fit four ponies walking abreast. In short, Ditzy was quite certain that this was not a great part of town. Pegasi trotted around with their heads down. Many of them looked fairly scrawny, particularly by the standards of the other citizens that Ditzy had encountered. Was this some sort of slum? A prison, perhaps? Or maybe these were simply those who were outcast from the warlike society.

A stallion, scarcely raising his head to apologize, pushed past the guards, a compact crossbow on his back. Down the street, a group of pegasi flew from a building, chased by a fireball moments later. Ditzy’s mouth suddenly dropped open. “This is R&D, isn't it. The science division.”

None of the grunts said anything, but Ditzy could already tell that she was right. The clamor, the chaos, the compact construction, it was all very telling of a college in a place where nopony cared all that much about learning. She herself had seen more than a few as a guest lecturer. She gnawed on her lower lip. Why were they being taken here? Hopefully not as subjects…

They all came to a sudden stop outside the columns of one particular building. It looked far more grey than those around it, and even more crooked. Whoever lived here, if anypony did, clearly wasn't much for aesthetics. The three toughs turned in unison to face the building, leaving Ditzy stumbling to follow suit as they marched forth into the ramshackle construction.

The corridors were as uninviting and grey as the exterior, if not more so. Ditzy could feel the dampness in the air, fancied she could feel the faint static charge that preceded a lightning discharge. Storm-level conditions were uncommon in structures in her time, but it could always happen. Too much dust buildup, too much damp, and suddenly all your stuff is charred and soaking.

They marched her down a side-corridor, mostly empty apart from a few doors on the right-hoof side and one on the left.

“Hey, hey, there's no need to push,” Ditzy protested as the left-hoof door was unceremoniously shoved open and she stumbled in, face-planting. Scootaloo’s prone body was dumped in on top of her, and the door was slammed in the grey mare’s face. “Celestia. What a bunch of jerks,” she muttered.

“They aren't quite perfect yet, I agree,” a cool female voice said. “Elegance has been suspended, regrettably, in the face of... necessary benchmarks.”

Ditzy spun around to see who had spoken, her mouth half open in a demand for answers. When she saw the mare, though, she stopped, her jaw still hanging wide. Her mane was the cold black of space, and her coat was silver moonlight. Her green eyes were reminiscent of bubbling beakers and mad scientists in a Hammer horror flick, a bright and toxic green in a piercingly clear gaze. When the mare walked, her model-thin legs moved with preposterous efficiency, and every move she made seemed to have been calculated and designed by a team of artists and scientists, right down to the unconscious flick of her tail against the pendulum cutie mark on her pert flank. To make a long story short, Ditzy’s brain short circuited so hard she couldn't speak.

Dear sweet Celestia, she's gorgeous.

She kidnapped you.

And I am so, so grateful.

She kidnapped Scootaloo, too.

Well, yeah…

You're married!

I can look… Oh, I can look.

She's an evil scientist!

I would gladly let her experiment on me.

...As your conscience, I have to tell you that that was the worst innuendo that I have ever heard.

The silver mare tilted her head. “Your nose is bleeding.”

Ditzy blinked quickly. “Uh? Oh! Oh no! Can I have—”

The mare silently produced a tissue and hoofed it to the mailmare. She watched with mild interest as Ditzy daubed at her muzzle in an attempt to stem the flow, then pulled out a piece of paper and pencil and jotted down a note. “I suppose that you're here to investigate me, then,” she said mildly, turning to sit down at a nearby table. “Is your husband here as well? I did expect him rather more than you, you know.”

Ditzy paused, blood trickling down her face. “How do you know who I am?”

The silver mare didn't raise a brow. However, without even a twitch of a facial muscle, her expression suddenly implied that an eyebrow might give the impression of rising upward in a few moments. “I’ve met you before, Ditzy Doo, further along in your timeline,” she said simply. “This, however, is the first time that you have met me. It's regrettably inefficient.” She scowled at nothing, a general, widespread disdain for the disorder of the universe as a whole. “Give me that power converter, please.”

Without even thinking, Ditzy picked up the black box on the table and hoofed it to the other mare. The scientist took it without even looking up. “Thank you.”

“You’re a time traveler, too, then? Another Time Lady.”

The beautiful mare didn't glance up from her work, or even nod, but Ditzy suddenly felt a faint sensation of approval from her. “You’re more clever than most of them are.”

“Who are you?”

This, at long last, caused the silver pegasus to turn her acidic green eyes on Ditzy once more. “I am known as the Rani, Ditzy Doo.” A faint smile, as of one who is unused to the expression, graced her lips. “I am pleased to meet you.”

---

The two guards set the box down in a small chamber, deep inside the cloud layer. Hurricane watched impassively from the doorway. “Open the doors,” he commanded.

Obediently, the pair of pegasi each took one handle and yanked for all they were worth. Hurricane could see the veins bulging in their necks as they strained, but the only result was that they were pulling the box closer toward the wall. “Stop,” he commanded. The duo gratefully released the box. “Dismissed,” the Commander added, almost as an afterthought.

He gazed at the big blue crate stoically as the two guards filed past, pressing to the wall to avoid brushing against him. He waited until they had vanished up the stairwell. He waited until he heard the closing of a door at the top. He waited for another three minutes, just to be on the safe side. Then, he stepped into the cell, shut the door, and locked it behind him. “This time,” he muttered. “This time, Doctor, there will be no escape for you. It ends today.”

---

Inside the TARDIS, meanwhile, the Doctor had finally reached the console room. He relaxed very slightly as he moved to the central console, setting the potted tree down on the floor beside him. The TARDIS was still distressingly silent, but when he ran a hoof over the levers and instruments, the panel vibrated gently at his touch. The Time Lord smiled slightly. “That’s a good old girl,” he murmured. “Now, I know you aren’t feeling up to travel, but you can help me out with a little something, can’t you?”

There was a moment of perfect stillness. Then the console vibrated again. The Doctor’s smile grew. “That’s the way. Now, I just need to get to the atmospheric controls…” he moved swiftly to a mostly-purple set of instruments and readouts, then gently lifted the panel, revealing tubes, wires, pipes, and more beside. He hefted the tree in one hoof and pulled out a length of hose with the other, balancing both on the console.

“Right,” the Doctor said levelly. “Hello, there. Or should I say, ‘wotcha, Watcher’? I know you can hear me, following me around like some kind of murderous fetch, a doppelganger wannabe.”

He turned around and smiled widely at the pale figure. “Ah, there you are. Hello, you! Now, look, it seems we may’ve gotten off on the wrong hoof. I’m the Doctor, this is my TARDIS, and I aim to keep it that way. You’ll get your turn in all due time. Now, I won’t go beating myself up about the whole attempted murder-suicide… whatever that was, so long as you leave me and mine alone from here on out. Deal?”

The drawn staser was a disappointment, but not a surprise. “See, now, I was hoping I could be reasonable about this,” the Doctor sighed, pulling out his own weapon. “Then I wouldn’t have to do…” he kicked the potted tree over, sending up a cloud of yellow haze as it skidded over the floor. “This.”

The pale figure paused, confused. “This,” the Doctor continued, “this stuff right here, which is currently getting very much in your eyes, is from the tree known as the Lorra-Wurra. Peri picked it up on a little backwater planet called Metabelis V, never got as much attention as the one with the giant spiders and psychic crystals, but that's not the main thing right now. It's a very interesting form of psychic pollen, one that erases most forms of hallucinations and visions to show what's really there. All it needs is a bit of a spark, and whoosh, there go the mental constructs, and there, save for a nasty taste in the air, go you.”

The Watcher’s staser dipped slightly. Then, seeming to strengthen its resolve, it fired. The Doctor was quicker on the mark, however, having the benefit of not really needing to aim. There was a sound like a metric ton of whipped cream imploding as the pollen lit up like a bottle rocket. The Doctor felt it singe his fur, and he closed his eyes as the pollen ate away at his own illusions. He boxed it round the ears and told it to bugger off. For just a moment, his whole body seemed to flicker, but it soon passed.

The Doctor breathed out. He opened his eyes. They glimmered for a moment in the light of the TARDIS, like blind, brilliant opals. And then they were brown once more. He flipped a switch in the atmospheric controls, and the soft roar of ventilation filled the room. A slow smile spread over his face. He almost certainly hadn't dispelled the Watcher completely; that would take far more power than the tree could provide. It would be enough to keep him away for a good while yet, though.

As he pushed up on the TARDIS door control to let the polluted air out faster, his brow creased as he registered that a little red light had activated on the console. “What—” he began to say.

He got no farther. The door banged open, and a fuschia stallion glared in from the doorway. “Professor Query,” he growled.

“Ah,” said the Doctor. “Commander Hurricane, hello, didn’t expect to see you—”

The armored stallion stuck him with a gimlet eye and stepped inside the box, kicking the door shut after him. “— here…” the Doctor finished weakly. That really was a very large sword he was carrying.

---

Dash swooped down onto Ditzy’s front stoop. The chilly fall air made her fluff up her feathers against the breeze before her hoof met the door three times in rapid succession.

No reply. She hammered on the door again. Still nothing. She backed up a little, and registered for the first time that none of the lights were on inside the house. “Luna,” Dash muttered. “Is everypony out having a date night?”

“Nothing wrong with having a night out,” Lofty said, squinting up to see if there were any lights in the windows.

For a second, the memory of her own date night flashed through Rainbow’s mind, and she felt a pang of guilt. She stifled it. Applejack would understand, had to understand. She’d do the same for Apple Bloom, right? She flew quickly up above the house to perch on the roof. The height would help clear her head.

The thatched roof wasn’t exactly comfortable. The straw was itchy and it rubbed unpleasantly. But it would suffice. She stared up at the half-visible moon and let out a long breath. This didn’t come naturally to her. She wanted, needed to take action. Indecision, however, left her stalled. Scootaloo had run away from the truth, and Dash knew she couldn’t go on telling the kid the same old lies. So what did that leave her?

Lofty landed beside her. “Quiet night, now that it’s all died down at the castle.”

“Yeah. What d’you think that was?”

Lofty shrugged. “Probably some new crime against nature gone horribly wrong.”

“Safe bet, yeah.”

Lofty sat back. “So,” she said. “What are you going to tell her?”

Dash winced. “Yeah, I guess I kind blew up at her back there, didn’t I? I’ll tell Holiday I—”

“Not Holiday,” Lofty corrected. “What are you going to tell Scootaloo?”

Dash lapsed into silence. “I’ll tell her,” she said slowly. “I’ll tell her that she will fly, someday. Even if I have to call in every favor I’ve ever been owed, even if it means getting the princesses and Discord to help, even if it means I—” She cut herself off abruptly. “Lofty? The moon is over there, right?” She pointed to the glowing satellite sitting in front and to the right of her.

“Well, yes,” Lofty said, uncertain as to where she was going with this.

“Then why is the house casting a shadow towards it?”

She turned, half expecting to see Princess Luna; all of this was starting to feel kind of dream-like. Her mouth popped open as her eyes struggled to register what was actually there. It was shaped like the TARDIS, and sitting in the same place the blue box could usually be found, but the TARDIS had never been the bright white color of cloudstuff. It looked like a hole, cut out of the world itself. Before she quite knew what was happening, she stood next to it, staring through it. She could see a city, old cloud buildings and pegasi milling about.

“Rainbow!” Lofty said, fluffing her feathers. “Come away from there! I don’t like the look of it.”

Fascinated, Dash reached out a hoof and tried to step through the portal, but she was stopped by some kind of invisible barrier. She peered closely at the image. Closer still. And then, suddenly, she saw something looking back at her.

A pegasus. Silver body, striated mane of purple and gold, eyes of violet. Cold, metallic eyes. It was looking at her. It was moving towards her. Dash wasn’t the sharpest thingy in the place, but there was nothing wrong with her instincts. She spread her wings, and burst skyward. “Go, go!” she yelled, and Lofty wasted no time obeying. But she could still feel those cold, unemotional eyes watching her flap frantically away from that hole in reality.

Comments

[FanOfMostEverything]

And more comes to light, from Holiday's continued tryst to Ditzy meeting the Rani. And that honestly went better than I expected. Good thing Ditzy's used to Gallifreyans in general, if not this one in particular.

As for the Doctor, if it's not one thing, it's another. And that other has a very sharp sword on his person. If nothing else, the Watcher may be content to sit and... well, watch.

Also, no "Crusaders of the Lost Mark" means no hatchet-burying, even after all these years. Though from the sound of it, Diamond and Silver never actually apologized. Still, they have other things on their minds. Poor Filthy...

Looking forward to more.

[SWEETOLEBOB18]

“Oh, the bit drops,” Silver said, waving a hoof. “After only about a decade, it finally sinks in that maybe, just maybe, we aren’t the same ponies we used to be? Maybe we have tried to change, if anypony would ever let us? Maybe we would be friends with you Crusaders if you hadn’t locked us out for life?”

"Unforgivable" is a word in the dictionary, between "unfair" and "unknown"
IDKY because everyone defines it for themselves.