Pinkamena Diane Pie: Consultant Detective

by Time Pony Victorious

The Impossible Hero (2)

I wasn’t very sure if I had reacted properly to a big blue box materializing in the middle of my library and a pony that had been deemed a figment of my imagination so many years ago popped out of said blue box, but, personally, I think I gave it a good shot. For starters, I stood there, mouth agape, as the impossible pony jumped around the library, staring at all of the books with infinite curiosity.

“I say, you even have books here!” he quipped cheerfully. “But how would you hold on to it? These hooves are rubbish for fine manipulation of objects, I- op!”

The curious stallion tripped over his own hooves and fell flat on his face, but that hadn’t impeded his happy demeanor as he simply laughed and got back on his hooves again to continue babbling on. I stood there and stared at him, trying to absorb every single detail about him. I knew of Pinkie’s methods, I should apply them shouldn’t I?

First thing to note is that this pony appeared to not have aged a single day! He looked exactly as I remembered: messy brown mane, big bright excitable blue eyes, and a golden hourglass for a cutie mark. The only real difference was his clothes. Instead of his tattered coat, he wore a clean coffee brown jacket that only partially covered his cutie mark and a curious red bowtie around his neck.

“Ah, hello! Is anyone there?” Suddenly, the pony was right in front of me, staring at me with infinite curiosity. “Are you okay? Didn’t hit your head there did you?”

“I-I-I…” was all I could muster.

“That’s three ‘I’s in one sentence, it makes you sound like an egotistical young, uh, unicorn,” he laughed, as if he were sharing a secret joke with me. “But really, do you have something edible here? I think I could eat anything, I’m so hungry. Well, except for pears, do I still hate them? Ah, best not test that.”

“H-how are you here?!” I cried. “You can’t exist, you were just a figment of my imagination. It isn’t scientifically possible that you’re here, you’re not scientifically possible!”

“And why not? I may be a horse now, but I’m still me, at least, I think so. But still, these hooves are absolutely terrible, it’s impossible to walk on them much less fly the TARDIS.”

“And on that subject, what is a TARDIS? Who are you? How are you here and for Celestia’s sake, please don’t break that!” I ran over to him as he was moving toward my bust of Leonard DiHoovsie I levitated the bust away from him and safely secured it by the front door.

“Fascinating!” he gushed. “Telekinetic abilities through a localized resistant medium. I wonder…”

He then reached into his coat and pulled out a strange little device, it looked like a wand except it was silver with a bulb at the end of it. At first I thought it was some sort of weapon, so, I stepped back, entirely wary, but he then dropped the device. Cursing, the pony tried to pick up the wand with his hooves but awkwardly fumbled it.

“How do you horses pick things up with these hooves it’s impossible I tell you! Give me five minutes and I’ll figure it out.” He turned back to the wand and struggled to pick it up, giving up finally after thirty attempts; he simply bent over and picked it up with his mouth.

He grinned at me and said something that was incoherent, but I think it went like this: “See! Figured it out!”

“Listen, I, ah!” I stepped back because the wand was now glowing a dull green and he aimed it at my horn. “What’re you doing?!”

He spat out the device and pressed a button on it which made it open up and he stared at it for a second. “Scanning your horn, don’t worry, completely harmless that is until it shorts out. Ho, ho, that’s how you do it. Redirecting the energy there but with several psychic barriers to prevent it from clogging up and causing a nasty little explosion, it doesn’t seem designed for simply telekinetics, probably a learned function.”

Then, he flicked the wand, causing it to jump in the air and caught it effortlessly with his right hoof. Raising his eyebrows at me, as if I were supposed to be impressed, he pocketed the device and smiled at me. “Say, you look familiar then again I don’t know many purple unicorns with attitude problems.”

“Attitude problems?”

“Exactly! Do I know you from somewhere?” He got uncomfortably close but this time I hadn’t backed out. Letting him get this close was only affirming my theory, this was the Doctor, the same eccentric pony that bounced into my life for fifteen seconds and left just as quickly.

“Twilight Sparkle,” I told him. “You know, the little unicorn you scared half to death eleven years ago?”

“Twilight Sparkle! You mean the little unicorn with the attitude and the rather high opinion about herself who thought she knew more about ponies and horses than me?”

“Yes!”

“Never heard of her.”

“Doctor!”

“I’m just kidding!” the Doctor then wrapped his legs around me and put me in a great big hug. “Haha! Twilight Sparkle, the curious little unicorn! How could I ever forget you? It feels like last time I saw you, you were only a child! Oh, or is the term filly?”

I pushed him off and glared at him indignantly. I don’t quite appreciate a pony messing up my childhood and having everypony think I’m a crazy unicorn with an imaginary friend suddenly reappearing in my life as if he were some long lost friend. Whoever this Doctor thought he was he had a lot to explain.

“Filly, I was nine back then when you fell from the sky! In that… TARDIS whatever it is. You know how embarrassing it was to explain to the princess what happened that night? She looked at me like I was crazy! The guards were convinced that you were just a figment of my imagination, and I nearly got sent to some ‘special’ doctors as they put it. What are you doing here again? What exactly is a TARDIS? And that strange device you had earlier? WHO ARE YOU?”

I probably shouldn’t have raised my voice like that, but I was frustrated. Pinkie leaving earlier had put a toll on me, something that I hadn’t expected was entirely possible, and then this pony comes back again to make everything worse. Anypony in my situation would’ve reacted the same way, I was not in the mood for the Doctor’s games, and I wanted answers now.

To my surprise, however, the Doctor hadn’t reacted to my sudden mood change. He looked at me with those enigmatic eyes of his; he wasn’t smiling anymore but wasn’t frowning either. His expression was absolutely neutral.

“Time and Relative Dimension in Space,” he said simply. “I’ve told you this before. It’s a time machine, with it, I can go anywhere in space and any time, and the whole universe is at my beck and call, if you will. And as for this”—he took out the wand—“it’s a sonic screwdriver, as I said. It can do pretty much anything I want it to, much like your horn except cooler.”

“Time travel?” I scoffed incredulously. “That isn’t possible. There aren’t any spells for major time travel, only one that lasts for, like, fifteen seconds.”

“Well, obviously, you lot haven’t tried hard enough, you see, it is relatively easy once you understand the basics of quantum temporal-spatial manipulation to- ooh, what is that!”

Like a sugar-wired hyperactive foal, the Doctor ran across the room and toward my desk where Owlowiscious stoically stood, unimpressed with this so-called time traveler. Rolling my eyes, I followed suit as the Doctor marveled at the simple owl, which made me think how a time-traveler could be easily impressed by a woodland creature.

“You are beautiful, been a while since I’ve seen an owl, hopefully, this one won’t fancy me for a meal eh?” He looked over his shoulder and grinned at me before turning back to Owlowiscious. “Hello, I’m the Doctor.”

“Hoo,” responded Owlowiscious.

“No, just Doctor.”

“Hoo.”

“Me, I’m the Doctor.”

“Hoo.”

“You cheeky little bird-“

“Are you quite through yet?” I interrupted, staring incredulously at the Doctor. Here I was under the belief that this Doctor was an amazing, yet eccentric, pony but he was just a strange stallion with some serious attention span problems. “Why exactly are you here then?”

“Twilight, how much do you remember about that night eleven years ago?”

“What do you mean? I remember your TARDIS dropping from the sky and you running around like some sort of foal, you couldn’t even stand up straight you were so disorientated.”

“I told you, it’s difficult to walk on these hooves! After 700 years, I’ve grown fond of feet,” he defended childishly.

“Anyways,” I continued, ignoring the bit about feet. “Then we were talking about super heroes then about Mare Do Well then..”

I frowned, my memory stopped there. I couldn’t remember what happened next, but it was so fuzzy and so physically there that I could basically imagine what had happened. You know when you have a word on the tip of your tongue? Like you know what the word should be, but can’t remember what it is? It was like that for me, except about something that I could never ever forget; but why did I forget it?

“You don’t remember, do you?” the Doctor guessed.

“N-no,” I muttered, my heart racing a bit, this was impossible, how could I forget? It’s like forgetting the face of your own mother. “I don’t. Doctor, how could I forget it?”

“Twilight, don’t panic, I wouldn’t expect you to remember much anyways. You were so young,” he trotted toward me and I hadn’t backed off, placing his hooves on my head, he stared intensely at me, “I’m here because you were attacked back then Twilight. Normally, I would have been able to handle whatever that had attacked us, but this horse form is too awkward to navigate.”

“Pony,” I corrected as a nostalgic smile came to my face, back then he couldn’t tell the difference either, I suppose ponies don’t change.

“Right, pony,” he chuckled. “I need you to remember what we were talking about, Twilight. About superheroes.”

“What? Why? Just tell me about whatever that had attacked me, I can help you-“

“There’s no time for that. Just remember.”

I wanted to argue but I knew it wouldn’t go anywhere with a pony as stubborn as he was. So, instead I remember about our conversation. The Doctor wanted to come up with a new catchphrase because his old one, apparently, wasn’t suitable. Then I brought up Mare Do Well and that’s when the Doctor behaved weirdly. He asked me why I brought up her and then asked me to describe her.

I haven’t read a Mare Do Well comic in a very long time, but I could remember what she looked like. She wore form-fitting tights with a large, obnoxious purple collar to match her purple cape. Her mask was as dark as her outfit along with her eyes, and atop her head, hiding her unicorn horn, sat a very large, very fancy purple hat.

The entire library became twenty degrees colder. I heard Owlowiscious fly away and I shivered, it was as if a snowpony was standing behind me, breathing down my neck. Opening my eyes, I yelped, because right behind the Doctor stood the Dark Pony, the Mare that trots in the night; Mare Do Well was standing right beside the TARDIS.

I couldn’t see her expression underneath her mask, but I swore she was glaring at us, as if the Doctor was her coltfriend and she was jealous that I was making a move on him. Instinctively, I backed off as the Doctor turned to look at Mare Do Well.

“How did she get in here?!” I cried.

“Short range temporal displacement via vortex manipulator, very nasty way to time travel,” answered the Doctor as he walked toward the masked hero. “But you! I thought I got rid of you so long ago! What are you doing here?”

Mare Do Well looked at him, then moved her head a fraction at me. The Doctor looked at me then back at her and laughed. “Her? Why do you want her? She’s a bit loud, and rude, oh, and she’s always in a bad mood-“

“Hey!” I interjected.

“So why her?”

Mare Do Well stared at him for a few moments, and I still couldn’t really believe my eyes. This was the real Mare Do Well, exactly as I imagined her, either this was a very, very avid fan who could piece together that suit so quickly or this was… no, Twilight, that’s impossible.

Looking at the Doctor, however, I was beginning to accept that impossibilities are disturbingly more common than I would hope for.

“She is the daughter of the sunburst,” Mare Do Well said, but not in a normal voice. Her voice was mechanical, and lacked any semblance of emotion, but it wasn’t robotic, it was still pony-like but was dead in terms of tone. “She will do.”

“For what?” the Doctor asked. “What do you want her to do?”

“She is the daughter of the sunburst.”

“Yeah, yeah, heard that part already, what does that entail?”

“She is the daughter of the sunburst.”

“Doctor,” I whispered to him, even though I was sure that Mare Do Well could still hear me. “What is she talking about?”

“I’ve got a few hunches. Maybe seven. Good news is, they aren’t bad hunches,” he whispered back before diverting his attention back to Mare Do Well. “Well! Now that we’ve got that out of the way, I’ve got some bad news to break to you Ms. Mare Do Well. Whatever you want with her, whatever you plan to do with, or to, her is going to be horribly impeded. Because last time we met, you weren’t a very nice super-hero to me, tried to blow me up, I don’t appreciate that very much; I try not to get blown up before Thursday. Whatever you want, you’ll have to go through me, Twilight Sparkle and this whole planet is now under my protection!”

Mare Do Well hadn’t reacted, maybe she wasn’t affected by his oh-so riveting speech as he had expected. In fact, she stood so still I thought she had been inflicted by a cockatrice’s stare! After a few seconds, she tilted her head, like a confused dog.

“Threat determined, Time Lord. The daughter of the sunburst will remain unharmed,” she said in her mechanical voice.

“See!” beamed the Doctor. “All better.”

“You will be extinguished Time Lord, your involvement will not impede my progress, as you say. You will die, Time Lord.”

“Wait, what did she call you?” I asked.

“That’s what you’re concerned about. Not the fact that she threatened to kill me?!” squeaked the Doctor.

“Sorry! But Time Lord what kind of pony is that-“

“Move!”

The Doctor tackled me as a fireball flew past my head and incinerated a bookshelf. I yelped in horror as I watched the Mystery section burn up. To my right, I could see Mare Do Well floating, she was several feet off the ground but she wasn’t using her wings, she just floated there. Her eyes were glowing white and her horn burned with magic.

“Those are offensive spells!” I cried.

“Yeah, well, she doesn’t seem very pleased with us now does she?” the Doctor snapped.

“No! I meant these spells are something even the Royal Guard aren’t taught. They’re too powerful and unstable, the only one capable of using these spells would be the princesses or me!”

I saw another fireball spelling being conjured by Mare Do Well. I needed to act fast or the entire library would be burned down. Using my legs, I kicked the Doctor off me and sent him flying across the room, hopefully he’ll be safe.

As expected, Mare Do Well focused her attention on me. If she wanted me so badly, she’s going to have to try very hard. Her horn glowed and mine did as well as I charged up a spell. Another fireball shot out of her horn, aimed right at me, but it got absorbed by the force-field I erected. A large purple bubble surrounded me as the fireball neared and diminished as it touched it. The bubble disappeared and I countered with a magic blast of my own, not a fireball, of course, but a bolt of pure magic.

The bolt struck Mare Do Well in the chest, making her stagger in mid-air, I thought I had properly stunned her but she just looked angry. She recovered from her hit and fired a beam of magic at me, having no time to produce a force-field I faced her beam head-on, and by that I mean I fired a beam at her as well. My beam of magic collided with hers and I nearly passed out from the intensity of her power.

I focused, I wasn’t Princess Celestia’s pupil for no good reason, I was chosen because of my raw ability; now it was time to prove it to this imposter. Managing to maintain my magic, we stood at a stalemate for a few moments. I was so focused on my magic that I hadn’t noticed the Doctor to my left fumbling with his sonic screwdriver.

“Twilight! Keep that up, I’ve got a plan!” I heard him yell.

I wanted to respond but the most I could muster were awkward groans and pained mutterings. My body was burning now, my muscles felt weak and my mind addled. I felt faint as a rainbow spectrum of colors dotted my vision, I was losing consciousness.

Hurry Doctor, I screamed in my mind. The magic beams were now growing unstable, as wisps of energy sparked out of the stalemate and clashed against the walls and ceiling. If this continued, the entire library would blow up from the raw energy creating friction between them.

A very loud, very painful buzzing noise was then emitted from the Doctor’s direction. As soon as I was able to hear it, my mind went fuzzy, my muscles felt like jelly and my spell was stopped abruptly. It wasn’t from an outside source, the spell was stopped because I was unable to concentrate on it; thankfully, however, Mare Do Well’s spell stopped as well and when I looked up I saw her reacting to the Doctor’s interference the same way I had.

I dropped to my knees and placed my hooves on my head, hoping to stop the ensuing headache that made the world appear monochromatic. As much as I wanted to cry out in pain, I couldn’t for my mouth was useless and wasn’t listening to my commands.

As suddenly as it came, the noise stopped. Instantly, my mind cleared and my body slowly recovered from the pain. Blinking the dots out of my vision, I saw the Doctor run up to Mare Do Well, aiming his screwdriver at her.

Because he had the screwdriver in his mouth, it was difficult to understand what he was saying, but I hazard to guess he meant to say, “What are you? And why take that form?”

But Mare Do Well was tougher than she appeared; she had recovered faster than I from the Doctor’s attack, spun around and expertly kicked him on the chest, sending him across the room. I stood to help, but I was too weak and was useless as she looked right at me and said, “The Doctor will continue to interfere, it seems. You are no longer of any interest, daughter of the sunburst.”

I was going to say something cool like, “What does that mean?” but mumbled incoherently as a sphere closed around Mare Do Well and she disappeared.

“No, no, no! Blast! Who knows where she’ll be now?!” The Doctor ran around the library like a crazed pony. Thankfully, he had helped me put out the fire but the library looked horrible. Books were thrown everywhere, the walls were charred from the power of our magic, the windows were broken, but thankfully, my bust of Leonard was untouched.

Then, the Doctor turned on his hooves, his flank slamming into my bust causing it to fall and shatter on the floor. Oh, great…

I didn’t have the energy to yell at him for destroying a priceless artifact, so, like a weak foal, I got to my hooves and turned to the Doctor.

“What was that thing? Why was she calling me ‘daughter of the sunburst’?” My voice was hoarse despite not having yelled, high intensity magic of the degree I produced earlier was enough to knock out a fully grown Guard pony.

“But where could she have gone?” he mumbled, “And why here? Why not when she was younger?”

“Doctor, what are you talking about?” I moved toward him and nearly tripped over myself, the Doctor caught me with his shoulder, preventing a nasty fall.

“What does an inter-dimensional, shape-shifting psychically imbued time-traveling alien want with a simple, yet powerful, unicorn? There is something I am missing, something out the corner of my eye…” he mumbled to himself, my head swam as he talked and I was unable to follow his rather sporadic train of thought.

“Can you start making sense any time soon? And make the room stop spinning,” groaning, I shook my head to get rid of my disorientation and my near-debilitating nausea.

Ignoring me, the Doctor brandished his sonic screwdriver. Placing it within his mouth, he pressed the button and swung the device around the library, scanning it, I presumed. After he was done, he spat out the screwdriver into his hoof and looked at the readings.

He frowned, which didn’t exactly help my nausea. “What’s wrong?” I asked.

Placing his screwdriver behind his ear, he looked at me and smiled. “Nothing, nothing. I know where she’s going, but it might get a little complicated. New universe, new rules, haven’t memorized anything here, if we’re lucky we won’t end up inside a black hole or a dwarf star.”

“Lucky?!” I chocked.

“Don’t worry, that has happened in a long time. Come along Twilight, we wouldn’t want to keep our alien waiting now would we?”

“Wait, wait, but you drove her away! She’s gone right?”

“Don’t be silly Twilight! It was only a mild cognitive disruption sound frequency, I got the proper frequency from when I scanned your horn. Thankfully, since she has perfectly assimilated to your kind, she copied that sort of frequency as well. Think of it as a sort of anti-magic charge, sorry about that by the way, you should be feeling tip-top in a few minutes though!”

“Okay, but- wait, Doctor, where are you going?!” I nearly tripped over myself following the Doctor as he ran toward the TARDIS.

“We need to hurry, the TARDIS has been acting rather temperamental ever since she dropped me into this universe. I’m not even sure how long she can maintain herself here.”

He stopped in front of the doors and frowned, looking at his hooves he stamped his hind legs in frustration. “How do you ponies cope without fingers?! Ah, whatever, I’ll manage!”

By the time I caught up with him, he was glaring at the TARDIS doors as if willing them to open with his mind alone. If I weren’t so ill at that moment, I would’ve laughed at his silly expression. But, to my surprise, the doors flung right open (inward, strangely enough despite the sign).

“Won’t it be a little cramped?” I remarked, noting the rather unaccommodating size, “We’ll be pushed up against each other.”

“Oh, there’s no need to worry about that Twilight Sparkle.” He looked over his shoulder and smiled that arrogant grin of his as he made his way inside. I followed and for the very first time in my life was left speechless.

“It’s… bigger on the inside.”

Oh, it certainly was.

Inward, completely betraying my expectations of the relatively small was an entire room. Perhaps room was an embarrassing understatement, more like control center. It was about the size of my library as a staircase ascended upward into the more centralized part of the “room”. A large tower, which glowed a sickly color of green, sat in the middle of everything while more staircases sprawled outward from it. The floor, underneath the entire platform, was yellowish and covered in holes which reminded me awfully of Swiss cheese.

On the console itself were a slew of strange contraptions and devices which, I imagined, operated this.. machine, ship, whatever it is. But these controls weren’t designed with a pony in mind of navigating it. Some of them required more delicate tactile manipulation, some that were unkind to the Doctor’s hooves as he fumbled with them.

What had Mare Do Well called him?... A Time Lord?

Somehow, I get the feeling that a Time Lord is anything but a pony.

Snapping out of my TARDIS-induced stupor, I focused on the Doctor, wary and suspicious of the mad pony as he ran around the consoling pressing buttons and pulling levers at random, it seemed.

“Doctor?” I asked, walking up to the console. “What is-“

“It’s basically like a dimensional rift within the TARDIS which is what makes it appear bigger on the inside. Imagine, if you will, two cakes, one larger than another and placed at a certain angle where the large cake appears at the same size and it’s basically like that. Well! It’s actually nothing like that, but if it helps you understand then go for it, well! Don’t because that would just make me hungry.”

I shook my head, unable to both understand his strange analogy and cope with my nausea. “No, I was going to ask-“

“Why the TARDIS is a blue police box? Every time with you lot. The TARDIS likes that form, and it certainly has nothing to do with the malfunctioning chameleon circuit I may or may not have forgotten to fix-“

“Doctor!”

He staggered back, tilting his head the other side as if I had damaged his ears.

“Um, yes Twilight?”

“I was going to ask what you are. She called you a Time Lord, what is that?”

He didn’t answer and pretended to be busy with his controls, fiddling with knobs and levers like a hyperactive foal.

“You’re an alien.” It was more of a statement rather than a question.

“Yes, from your point of view, I suppose I am an alien. I’m not from this universe and, for some reason, adopted a pony form. And Mare Do Well, it seems, followed me here, there is no way she would’ve gotten here by herself after all. But we are in luck! The reason she is hunting you is because of how strong you are, traveling to this new universe must have drained her considerably. Which is understandable, even the TARDIS is weakened by this new environment. But now she has determined that I am a threat to her and will protect you at all costs, so, logically speaking, she is now going to go for the next available target.”

“Who?”

“Let’s find out, shall we?” With that, the Doctor clamped his mouth over a lever and pulled it down. The entire ship began to shake violently, nearly knocking me off my hooves. The Doctor tried to hold on to the console, but his hooves slipped and he crashed into me as the world tilted sideways.

Sparks then began to fly from the console and from the Doctor’s reaction, I figured that wasn’t a good thing.

“No, no, no!” He jumped toward the console and tried to fix it but his hooves were too awkward for the small buttons. “If I can adjust for orbital velocity…. There! Hold on tight Twilight, this might get a little bumpy!”

I wanted to complain that this entire escapade was already “bumpy” but to keep from biting my tongue I just wrapped my legs around the railing and held on for dear life.

The Doctor laughed as the TARDIS shook more, and I figured, well, this is where I die huh?

“Geronimo!” He cried joyfully.

There was that lyrical wooshing sound of the air, it was as if the universe was catching its breath at the sight of the TARDIS in transit. Then a dull thud which reverberated off my very body and the shaking ceased.

The Doctor frowned as if he ate some bad apples and looked at me, “Geronimo? Did I really used to say that? Ah, rubbish, I’ll need to think a little more huh?”

“What are you talking about?” I complained, following the Doctor to the doors.

“Well! Time we should get going right? If my calculations are correct, we’ll have landed right where she is intending to jump to. But whatever is out there, I can’t expect they’ll be more than receptive of us. The landing was a little rough and, to be honest, I have no clue where, or when, we are. But that’s the fun in it, right?”

“Wait, wait, wait. You basically take me into a crazy ‘ship’ that’s bigger on the inside, time-travel right toward a rampaging, raging alien with no idea where, or when, we are? No, that’s not fun, that’s crazy!” I yelled as he stood at the doors. The Doctor turned and smiled at me, those bright eyes glittering with excitement.

“What’s the difference?” he said with that brilliant smile of his.

He opened the door and we stepped outside.

Comments

[Time Pony Victorious]

2323664

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[Dropped C]

Frankly, these two chapters feel like they don't belong here. They break the pacing, mood, and setting. The rest of the fic is wonderful, but this seems out of place and I can only hope the Doctor won't become a regular cast member.