The Time Meddler
Dinky was burning from the inside out. She could feel her friends huddling around her, not quite sure what they could do to help. Rumble, Scootaloo, Apple Bloom, Button Mash, all their faces blurred in the golden haze that clouded her gaze and fogged her mind. The heat was terrible, but it was more than mere heat that was cooking her. She could see time as it unspooled, forking off in all directions. She saw possible futures, alternate nows, histories that hadn’t happened, all laid out before her like a road map as wide as her field of vision. All the time it as growing, as though she was getting farther and farther away from reality, higher and higher in the air above a maze on the ground far below. What was the right path to take? Where was the path she had been on? How far could this maze go on for? Her vision swam as she tried to take it all in, the burning growing ever more painful, the heat muddying her mind
And then there was a blast of cold clarity and Dinky was dripping wet.
Everypony was staring at Sweetie, who was levitating a now-empty bucket over Dinky’s head. “What? She was literally burning up. Would you rather I used a fire extinguisher?”
“Won’t hold,” Dinky said, steam curling off her coat. “Too much power. Not built to hold it.”
“Er…” Button looked around. “Can you give it to the TARDIS?”
Dinky considered this as best she could. “... Maybe. Gimme a hoof…”
Apple Bloom hauled her upright and helped her stumble to the console. Dinky slammed both forehooves down on a panel. “Alright,” she growled. “You’re feeling hungry? Eat up.”
Slowly, the pale golden flames shifted down to concentrate in her hooves. The other Crusaders watched as the energy flowed through the console, twisting around the controls in glowing coils and curls before being absorbed into the time rotor in the center. For almost three minutes, Dinky stood perfectly still, her hooves pressed firmly against the wooden panel, her brow furrowed in concentration. Then the connection seemed to fade, and Dinky fell back. Button quickly caught her and Rumble bent down to allow her to lie on his back.
“Feelin’ better?” Apple Bloom asked softly.
Dinky took several long, labored breaths before nodding. “Better,” she muttered. “Still bad, though.”
“What was that?” Scootaloo asked. “Some kind of poison that the Nightmare was spewing?”
Dinky shook her head. “Energy. Artron. Very powerful. Runs the TARDIS. Useful if you can channel it properly. Fatal if you can’t.”
“But… you got it out in time?” Sweetie said hesitantly. “You’ll survive, right?”
“... Probably?” Dinky guessed. “TARDIS took almost all of it. Just left me a little piece -- no more than what she gave me all those years ago…”
“Come again?” Apple Bloom said, tilting her head.
Dinky chuckled drily, her eyes still unfocused. “Of all the things the ‘price to pay’ could’ve been… I wouldn’t’ve guessed this…”
“Alright, enough chatter,” Rumble said firmly. “We need to get you to a hospital. Scootaloo, too. Probably all of us, actually.”
Button started consulting monitors until he found one that purported to be a model of the TARDIS’s interior. “Looks like there’s something called a ‘medbay’ that’s not too far from here,” he said. “That sounds promising… uh?”
“What?” Scootaloo asked, glancing over.
Button frowned. “There’s a flashing dot in another room. And the medbay’s flashing too… hold on.” He twisted a couple of knobs to increase the resolution of the screen, zooming closer to the two rooms. “The other one’s something called the ‘Zero Room’.”
“Sounds kinda creepy,” Sweetie said.
Button’s frown deepened. “The flashing in the Zero Room… it’s an icon of a pocket watch.”
Everyone looked at Dinky’s flank. The image of a pocket watch was proudly emblazoned there. “...Could be a coincidence,” Apple Bloom said. “Maybe it’s just some kinda alarm? Like, a timer that says it needs some maintenance?”
“Maybe,” Button said. “On the other hoof, the medbay is a lot less ambiguous.”
The others trotted around. Indeed, flashing in the medbay was an icon of Scootaloo’s cutie mark.
“You think it’s the TARDIS telling us where to go?” Apple Bloom asked. “Like th’ Cutie Map?”
Button shrugged. “That seems to be the general idea, yeah.”
Rumble grunted. “Guess we’re splitting up again.” He glanced at his back. “Guess I’m with Dinky.”
“An’ Ah’m with Scoots,” Bloom said. “Button? Sweetie?”
The two glanced at one another. “Well, I don’t have much medical experience,” Sweetie admitted. “And I’m really curious to find out what a Zero Room is…”
Button nodded. “I’ll go with team medbay, then,” he said. “Can’t believe the Doctor’s never taken us there before, with all the scrapes we got in over the years…”
Rumble studied the map for a few more seconds, memorizing the route before nodding firmly. “Alright. Let’s see what this place has got.”
He set off toward one of the flights of stairs heading up, Sweetie Belle quickly bounding after him with a quick wave goodbye to the others as they trotted across a catwalk and into the hall beyond.
“Martha,” said the Doctor. “Forgive me if I’m being a little slow today, but… weren’t you Fitz a minute ago?”
“Yep,” she said, looking herself over. She was a batpony. Her coat was a rusty brown shade, with a slightly darker blaze and socks. The icon of a golden caduceus emblazoned each flank. Her mane was black and tied back in a ponytail.
“Right,” said the Doctor. “That’s… a bit strange, I think. Usually I’m the one changing bodies.”
Martha grinned a bit at that. “How is it being on the other end of it?” she asked.
“Er… confusing,” the Doctor admitted. “Where did Fitz go?”
She shrugged. “Where did the you with the leather jacket go?”
“I… alright, that’s different. I kept my continuity.”
Martha let out a gasp of mock horror. “Continuity? You? Oh, Doctor, what would Iris say?”
“I -- alright, no. Martha never met Iris Wildthyme, at least not as far as I ever knew, and she certainly never met my ninth self. Who are you? Really?”
Martha smiled at him. “As far as anything goes practically, I really am Martha Jones,” she said. “Just as much I really was Fitz Kreiner.”
“You’re a simulation, then.”
She rolled her eyes a little. “Well, yeah. Thought we’d established that.”
“But --”
She held up a hoof. “Look, I’m sorry, just let me… let me treasure this moment. Me knowing more about the situation than you, you quite desperate for my help… I don't mean to lord it over you or anything, but it’s rather refreshing.”
The Doctor frowned. “...Alright, I suppose I had that coming,” he admitted. “But really -- who are you?”
“Call me... Companion,” Martha said. “I’m part of your mental landscape, which is where we’re standing at the moment -- at least, we’re standing in a version of it that can be understood as a physical landscape.”
The Doctor scrunched up his face. “So… this piece of the Matrix is…”
“Your personal biodata,” Martha said. “Your life’s experiences, your thoughts, your memories, your DNA. Everything.”
“...Right,” said the Doctor. “Okay. That makes a sort of sense. So you, as Companion… you could be any of my friends? You could be --”
“If you say Rose, I swear--”
“--Jo?” he said, not missing a beat.
Martha’s form flickered, and the Doctor saw in her place a smiling blonde pegasus with a mint-green coat. She wore go-go boots and a fluffy white scarf, and she had a cutie mark of an open lock. Then Martha was back.
The Doctor nodded. “What about Fitz? Can you bring him back, or --”
She flickered again, and Fitz nodded at the Doctor. His leg was healed, and so was his guitar. Martha returned.
The Doctor considered this carefully. “What about… Adric?”
Martha frowned slightly at that and shook her head.
The Doctor exhaled slowly through his nose. “Some restrictions apply, then.”
“Only the ones that you’ve placed on me,” Martha said quietly.
He nodded. “There are some faces that I can’t bear to see, some voices I can’t hear without them breaking my hearts all over again,” he said. “The twisted friends in the ruins of Gallifrey -- the ones I can’t forgive myself for.”
Martha nodded. “With some exceptions, of course,” she added. “You saw that Fitz is fine, because in the end, he was alright. I could do Romana, because she forgave you in the end. Same with Sam, or Evelyn, and so on.”
“...I see. And if you’re Companion… does that mean that we’re standing on Planet?”
“And that we were just attacked by Monster, yes.”
“Hm.” He nodded. “Alright. As fascinating as this all is, and no offense meant to you, but I have to get back to my real friends. They’re in incredible danger, and --”
“And you’re not in much of a position to fix that,” Martha said, her voice firm but not unkind. “Do you remember what state you were in when you arrived in the ruins of Gallifrey?”
“Well… yeah, but I’ve moved beyond that now. That was just the Nightmare and the Valeyard manipulating my emotions, but I’ve beat them!”
Martha shook her head. “No. They were manipulating your emotions, yes. They picked at your wounds, your paranoia, and all your worst impulses, that’s true. But those wounds didn’t come from nowhere, Doctor -- you’ve been accumulating traumas for the past sixteen centuries or so, along with what are, in my opinion, some incredibly unhealthy ways of dealing with them. You had an adrenaline rush and a hit of serotonin, which adds up to trying to put a plaster and a bit of ointment on cancer!”
The Doctor blinked. “Er,” he said.
Martha took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “All I’m saying,” she said, her eyes softening, “is that you have your own problems to face before you can face the Nightmare and the Valeyard again. After all, they’re facing off against not just the princesses and the former Elements of Harmony, they’ve also got to contend with Ditzy, the Cutie Mark Crusaders, and Discord. They can hold their own.”
The Doctor nodded. “So… while they’re in imminent peril from some of my oldest and deadliest foes… I’m going to have a therapy session?”
“Essentially.”
The Doctor chewed his lower lip. “...D’you think they’d swap with me?”
Martha stared at him through lidded eyes.
“Kidding! Kidding. Mainly kidding.”
As the five pegasi made their way through the tower, made their way toward Rainbow Dash and hopefully toward Cloudchaser’s salvation, Cloudchaser herself made sure to always keep in contact with at least one of the other four. There was something comforting about it, something material, warm, something to hold onto. It was nice.
Of course, Cloudchaser would never ever let any of them know that, so she did her best to disguise it with constant grousing about the tower and how long this was taking and occasionally just swearing.
She was pretty sure they knew how she really felt anyway. Buncha sentimental dorks.
The chessboard wasn’t a problem. Ditzy fussed a bit about trying to recite pi backwards, but then Thunderlane pointed out that they could probably just fly over and be fine. It’d take a lot of lightning to kill a pegasus, anyway.
As it turned out, he was quite right. Apparently the chessboard had been warded against teleportation and levitation, but not just flying. Whodathunk? Apparently not Rassilon.
And then they went down the spiral stairs, and that made everypony’s skin crawl a little save for Fluttershy because Bird Brain Says Enclosed Space Bad.
But again, they were fine. They made it out at the bottom and moved on down the poorly-lit hall.
Everypony stopped when they saw the figure in the gloom. Nopony ever called Dash ‘small’, at least not more than once. She liked to boast that she was compact and zippy. Most ponies didn’t usually realize how short she actually was because she moved too fast for them to get a good look at her. When she did, her brash personality and natural swagger always made ponies think she was bigger than she really was. Her habit of getting up in ponies’ faces didn’t hurt, either.
Now, though, she looked small. Motionless as she was, diminished as she was, imprisoned as she was, the determined posture that she had been frozen into now seemed rather cruelly ironic.
“Okay,” Ditzy said. “I’m going to take away the mirror. Cloudchaser, you get right up in her face. The rest of you…”
“Don’t blink?” Fluttershy said.
“Exactly.”
Ditzy moved quickly and with purpose toward the statue. Hopefully, if she could keep that up, she wouldn’t lose her nerve completely. Bad enough that she was making her way down the hall to free a deadly monster, bad enough that she would have to face a friend who she had betrayed, whether she had been in her right mind or not, but to face both at the same time was a more unpleasant prospect than the sum of its parts.
Nevertheless, that was what she had to do to save Rainbow Dash and Cloudchaser alike. So, as though ripping off a band-aid, she shoved the mirror away from Rainbow’s petrified face. She winced slightly as the force sent it smashing to the floor, shattering it into shrapnel.
“Seven years’ bad luck,” Cloudchaser’s voice observed in hr head.
“With the number of mirrors I’ve broken, I can all but guarantee that’s wrong.” Ditzy took wing, hovering over the shattered glass. “Alright. You wait here. When I give the word, blink. Dash will do the rest.”
There was a sensation of agreement in her head. Ditzy quickly flew back to the others, who all had their eyes trained on the statue, blinking in turns. Ditzy settled down beside them, joining in their staring contest. “Okay,” she said as calmly as she could. “Blink.”
There was an instant of total darkness. When Ditzy reopened her eyes, there were two mares lying where the statue had stood. She sighed in relief and trotted forward, but stopped when she got too close to the shards of glass.
“Uh-oh,” said Flitter.
“Ow,” Dash groaned,
Fluttershy winced. “Okay. Um, Thunderlane, Flitter, you pick up Cloudchaser. Ditzy, you help me move Rainbow. We can set them down, injuries-up, in that main foyer, the light’s a little better in there.”
“You got it,” Thunderlane said. “C’mon, Chase, let’s get moving.”
“Drop me, and I’ll stab you with a shard of glass.”
Ditzy grabbed Rainbow near the head while Fluttershy took the tail end. Together they led the way quickly and carefully down the hall. Rainbow looked up at Ditzy, her face haggard and her eyes dark. Nevertheless she managed a grin. “Thanks for coming back,” she muttered.
Ditzy smiled, though it didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Of course,” she said.
Privately, she was cursing herself for not being more careful, not thinking about the mirror, not getting ahold of herself in time to save Dash long before now.
Even more privately, in the parts of her brain that the conscious areas weren’t yet ready to acknowledge, she wondered how many times something like this had happened to the Doctor to make him the way he was.
Romana waiting in town square with her ragtag militia of Ponyvillians. She wasn’t totally surprised when a body fell from the rift -- indeed, it was just the other horseshoe dropping after the two other unconscious figures had fallen out earlier. She was gratified to see Lyra catch the mare in a pair of large golden hands before she hit the ground. “Nice work,” Romana said. “Put Cloudchaser with her sister and Thunderlane, if you would.”
Lyra summoned a third, smaller hand to flip the Time Lady a mock salute. “Aye-aye, captain!”
“Please don’t call me that.”
But Lyra had already turned away to place Cloudchaser’s comatose form next to those of the other two victims.
Romana sighed. She had no idea what could have caused this reversal of the pegasi’s time-altered states. That was frustrating to her -- she disliked not knowing what was going on. Unfortunately, pragmatism prohibited her from investigating further. There was a siege going on, after all.
“Blueblood,” she said. “Organize a team to get them over to the hospital, if you would.”
He nodded, then paused. “Ah. It appears that may not be necessary. The hospital seems to be coming to us.”
“Hm?”
The prince inclined his head toward a pair of approaching figures, two earth ponies. One had a spiky mane, and the other wore it tied back in a bun. “Nurse Redheart -- Doctor?”
The crowd parted as the duo trotted toward Romana. The Doctor gave her a tight smile. “Hello.”
She arched an eyebrow. “You’ve been trapped in the Matrix by a maniac entity for the last six hours, and all you can say is ‘hello’?”
He rolled his eyes. “Fine. Hello, Romana. Redheart briefed me on the situation at large on our way over, at least in the broad terms. But what did you do to seal off Ponyville?”
“I’ll explain when things are a little less busy.”
The Doctor frowned at that. “They don’t seem to be particularly busy now,” he pointed out.
“That could change at any moment. Look -- Redheart, we’ve got three more coma victims.”
Redheart cringed. “You’re joking.”
“Afraid not. On the other hoof, I’d say it’s a step up from where they were before, no offense to Tender intended.”
Redheart frowned. “--to Tender -- you mean the others?”
“Yes, come on, I’ll show you.” She paused. “Doctor? Would you like a look as well? I can’t quite understand what happened. I’d appreciate your perspective.”
The Doctor looked distinctly underwhelmed for a moment. “No, no. I’m sure you’ll be fine on your own. I’ll just be… investigating the rift. I wasn’t able to get a good look at it in the Matrix.”
“Of course,” said Romana.
She led Redheart over to the three unconscious pegasi. “What happened?” she asked quietly.
Redheart frowned, glancing between Romana and the comatose trio. “I think I ought to be asking you that.”
“No, not about them. They fell out of the rift, we can’t know what caused that unless we can get to the other side -- what happened with the Doctor?”
Redheart shrugged. “He woke up. It was very sudden -- quite a relief, really. He insisted on coming here straightaway. He’s recovered remarkably well, I must say.”
Romana tilted her head thoughtfully. “Time Lords are hardier than we seem. Has he been acting at all oddly, do you think?”
Redheart hesitated. “Why do you ask?”
“Because he didn’t want to inspect these three, for one,” Romana said. “Not only are they a mystery, they’re his friends. That’s a virtually irresistible combination.”
Redheart chewed her lip. “He has struck me as being rather… chilly,” she admitted. “Perhaps it’s just the stress of the situation?”
“That’s possible, I suppose,” Romana allowed. “On the other hoof, he claims that he didn’t get a close look at the rift, but surely that’s the only way he could have returned to this plane. Put that together with the fact that, in order to leave the Matrix, he would have had to abandoned everypony else in there…”
“You think he’s been compromised?”
Romana rubbed her muzzle thoughtfully. “It’s a distinct possibility, I must say. I’ll rope Blueblood and Fancy into helping you get your new patients back to the hospital. Tell them our suspicions. I’ll keep him distracted.”
Redheart nodded. “You’ll be alright here?”
“I’m hardly alone,” Romana pointed out. “Three ponies missing aren’t going to make much difference.”
Redheart chewed her lip. “Tender?”
Romana tilted her head. “She’s still with you?”
“Where else do I have to go?” echoed through the back of Romana’s head. She repressed a shiver. She could sometimes remember events from her alternate self’s life, in dreams. The battle with the Neverpeople was a fairly common one. She tried not to be prejudiced about this kind of thing, but the total slap in the face to causality was upsetting on a biological level as well as a physical one.
“Would you stay here with Romana?” Redheart asked. “If something goes… wrong… you can fly and get us from the hospital.”
Romana didn’t hear the response, but from the way Redheart smiled in relief, she guessed that it had been affirmative.
“Well,” said the echo of Tender Care. “How are you doing, Romana?”
Romana attempted to smile back at Redheart and failed quite badly.
Rarity awoke slowly. She was no longer resting in Sombra’s surprisingly comfortable embrace. She was no longer reclining on a hard stone floor, either. Furthermore, she was no longer having a terrible nightmare in which she was alone and totally without friends, living forever in a tower of gold and jewels and desolation.
So far, she was prepared to count all this as a net positive, until she rolled over and saw that the ground was far, far beneath her, and the only thing that stood between her and the all-too-solid rock was the thin golden membrane of a bubble. She squealed in terror, sitting bolt upright.
“Oh. Good morning, Rarity.”
Rarity glanced up. “Twilight? Darling? What is -- what exactly is happening?” She glanced around. “Are we back in that dreadful tomb? Where are all the others? I see Sombra and all you gods, but --”
“Rarity, please,” Twilight said, wincing. “Ugh. My ears are still ringing from that last attack…”
Rarity tilted her head. “Attack?”
“We are prisoners. Again,” Luna said, scowling, from her own bubble. “Personally, I’m getting rather tired of it.”
“Ah,” said Rarity. “I see.”
“Basically, almost everypony escaped from where they’d been trapped,” Cadance said. “This is the more high-security prison, I guess. Once the Nightmare managed to beat us, again, he went straight for the only two ponies who he could still actually find.”
“Ah,” said Rarity. “Well… tits. I knew I ought to have gotten out while I still could have.”
Cadance tutted sympathetically. “On the upside, your sister is still alive.”
Rarity's lips tightened. “That’s not funny.”
“Rarity. Do you honestly think I would joke about something like that?”
“...No,” Rarity admitted. “You’re sure?”
Cadance nodded. “She and the other Crusaders -- mostly Dinky, really -- managed to, I guess, depower the Nightmare somewhat? Then they escaped into the TARDIS over there, and big, mean, and ugly can’t get in after them.”
Rarity sighed in relief. “Well. I’m glad that there’s some good news in all this. That being said, I think I would rather like to escape. Thoughts?”
“The bubbles are impenetrable,” Cadance said. “Magic can’t get through, as Celestia found out the hard way.”
Rarity looked around. Celestia had turned to face the back wall, clearly sulking. Her coat was singed and her wings blackened with ash. Her mane had shifted colors from soft pastels to warm sunrise hues. It had also been half burnt off.
“Don’t ask,” Twilight said.
“I’ll tell you about it later,” Luna said. “It was very funny.”
“Our current theory,” said Discord, floating above the others in a much larger bubble where they lay curled up on the top, “is that these bubbles are made of time, much like the shield we saw around Applejack, Rainbow Dash, and the Valeyard. We can still speak to one another through them because we’re all coexisting in the same continuum of relative time, but we can’t communicate with anyone outside them.”
“Which, on the bright side, means that the Nightmare shouldn’t be able to eavesdrop on us,” Luna concluded.
“But that doesn’t actually help us escape,” Rarity said, tilting her head.
“At times like these, you really have to look for the positives where you can find them,” Sunset said. “And, of course, keep up hope. After all, there are still ponies out there, and the Nightmare’s been severely weakened. Maybe they can overcome it.”
There was a *pop*, and suddenly Shining Armor and Trixie were floating in their midst, looking alarmed and confused.
Everypony looked flatly at Sunset. “I know, I know,” she said with a sigh. “I jinxed it.”
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The Time Meddler. The first appearance of the Meddling Monk, other Time Lords in general (though they weren't called that then) and of the concept of a villain "changing history". Unfortunately, the Monk would be left behind in the Hartnell era in favor of the Master being the Time Lord antagonist of choice, with his appearances relegated to audio and prose formats. (Though he made it into the Wibblyverse before the Master did, so that counts for something, I guess?)
Oh hey, the Zero Room! Guess the current status of it is "not ejected". It's 50/50, I swear.
From what little I know of Iris, I'm guessing a quip about a famous continuity error (UNIT Dating comes to mind) followed by somehow looking directly into the camera like it's The Office despite being in prose form.
God, I can picture this perfectly.
Remembering that Third Doctor era Time Lords could fly ... Throws up hands Nope, not touching that one.
So, it looks like the Doctor isn't back after all. Or rather, it isn't our Doctor. But are they friend or foe? Meanwhile, Ten is getting his long overdue therapy session.
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True. Though, to be fair, the comic where 3 learned to fly implied that it required a certain level of telepathic power and control, and I do think it's a fairly Rassilonian move to allow those who were skilled/""""worthy"""" enough to simply bypass the chessboard and simply leave the rest to their fate.
Whether he likes it or not!
Oh boy. The question with that returned energy is whether the Nightmare has immediate access to it. "Right of conquest" and all that.
That raises a number of questions about both. And how well they'd get along. (There's a role reversal to consider. A blue unicorn and a bluish-purple crystal pony trying to deal with all this "linear time" nonsense.)
Ah, the beauty of archetypes.
Okay, yeah, one good turn isn't nearly enough for the Doctor to get out of the hole. He'd need to be strapped down to accept therapy, and that's basically what happened. Here's hoping there's some sort of time dilation in effect.
Ah. Right. Can't have a mind in the Matrix without its body elsewhere if that body actually exists. Hence Rumble's family falling from the sky.
Hoooo boy. I think I can guess what's going in with the Doctor. At least his reactions are immediately raising red flags.
Hmm. The question then is whether the inhabitant of one bubble can affect the space contained in another. If sound of all things can travel between them, line of effect doesn't seem out of the question. This doesn't seem hopeless. It'll just take a lot of finagling to do something useful.
Okay, yeah, it's a long shot. The Crusaders are almost definitely going to need to resolve this one. Still, this doesn't seem impossible to work with, especially depending on how much power the Nightmare is burning to keep up the temporal isolation.
Eagerly looking forward to more. This is getting really interesting.
But... if the energy is returned to the TARDIS then doesn’t that risk the Nightmare getting...
*looks at Dinky smoldering away*
Yeah, never mind. Worth the risk.
Thank you, Companion!
And it looks like part of the Doctor was, in fact, listening when their friends and family were trying to talk to them. And now they’re using the Matrix to straighten themselves out. Most excellent.
And of course 3d travel wouldn’t activate the grid’s defenses... otherwise, hopping over incorrect squares wouldn’t have worked for the Master back in the day.
Yyyyyyyyyyep. And, hat’s off to Ditzy for that, too. And then there’s...
Yay! Let’s hear it for intelligent characters!
And perhaps I should have mentioned this before, but somehow Rarity’s choice if using “tits” as an expletive is much more in-character than I would have thought.
On to the next.
So, if they can teleport from one bubble to the next, perhaps they might be able to combine their efforts thataway... or perhaps they would have to construct a tesser, so as to completely sidestep spaces in-between? Perhaps it depends upon how teleportation works in this world, and whether... hmm...
*continues reading*