One Way

by jroddie

46: The Repairman

Chapter 46

The Doctor and I decided to have a late lunch and talk things over before I had to leave for Ponyville with Luna. There was a small kitchen quite out of the way of just about everything in the Royal bunker that fit the need perfectly. The Doctor ordered hay fries for me, something that he swore was God’s gift to ponies. Soon after, two steaming plates of what looked like extremely long french fries were levitated over from the kitchen.

“So Doctor.” I asked before he could smear his face with hay fry grease. The looked up at me, annoyed. “You gotta explain some things to me.” I said. The Doctor gulped and set his front hooves flat on the table.

“As long as the answer doesn’t require me to tell you about your future.” The Doctor said, and picked up a hay fry with his mouth. He chewed it with what seemed to be exaggerated expressions of pleasure. I thought for a bit and looked at my cooling fries. There were so very many things that I wanted to know about that I couldn’t figure out for the life of me.

“Tell me about Othello.” I said. The Doctor gulped up his dangling fry and looked at me for a moment.

“He’s a big red pony, big one on his flank.”

“Funny.”

“I’m serious.” The Doctor reiterated. I plopped my forelegs down on the table.

“But really. Where did you get him?” I asked. He was silent for a moment.

“About four days in the future, I found him roaming around Southern Equestria. Beat up a little bit, needed a bath. He wouldn’t tell me where he came from or why he was in the middle of nowhere. He didn’t even know where he was. That worried me.” He said, his visage becoming stressed.

“That’s a bad thing?” I inquired.

“In all of the two or three thousand years that I’ve known Othello, I’ve never known him to ever be lost. But I’ve never known him to die, either. Maybe it’s a trend...” The Doctor trailed off, trying to flag down a passing cook. A dark blue pony noticed him and walked over. “Pot of coffee, please.” He said gently. I nearly gagged on a mouthful of hay fries.

“Of all the places I’ve been, of all the things I’ve seen, you have to be one of the more interesting things.” The Doctor said. I blinked slowly and stuck out my tongue to catch some hay fries. The cook finally showed up with a levitating pot of coffee. I sniffed the air. There it was. The cornerstone of my life. I started to salivate.

“I want some.”

“I know you do. But I need you to tell me some things first.” The Doctor said, pouring out a cup from a spontaneously appearing mug. My mouth hung open.

“Tell me what you know about Cloudsdale, Edwin.” He said, taking a sip of the coffee. He smiled a wide smile and smacked his lips.

“Angelics.” I said, staring at the steaming cup of mystical brown liquid. The Doctor made a pointed stare at me.

“What about them? What kinds?” He asked.

“Weird ones. Almost entirely black eyes, and the hosts that they occupy are almost always injured in some serious manner. They seem more aggressive and powerful than other types of Angelics. I’m worried about the siege. I don’t know if I can allow mortal guards to enter Cloudsdale to fight. They might just get eaten alive.”

“So you’re worried about casualties?” The Doctor asked, taking another sip of the coffee.

“I would be incompetent if I were not.” I said. The Doctor frowned, holding his coffee under his nose. Another waiter was walking by, and the Doctor caught his attention again. He mumbled something unintelligible and the waiter nodded. The Doctor turned back to me.

“What are you going to do? I need to know where I am going to put the Tardis. I need to know just about everything that you plan on doing. And I need to know soon.” The Doctor said. I thought for a moment, my eyes squinting.

“Well, there was this... Wait. Wait just one second, Doctor.” I said snidely. The Doctor made a face at me.

“What do you mean?” He asked, slightly incredulous. I eyed the Doctor with a newfound criticism.

“You took Othello from about four days in the future and brought him here, right?” I asked. The Doctor nodded.

“That means that you are from the future in my personal timeline. I was planning on having the battle for Cloudsdale this weekend until Luna sprung a vacation on me. It’s fine, though, because I think that most of the mortals in Cloudsdale are already dead, and those that are still alive are talented enough to last three more days. Luna didn’t know that. Celestia didn’t know that. Hell, my Lieutenants didn’t even know that. And you didn’t even know that. Not even the mighty Doctor. For all of the times that I’ve killed you, you’re mighty trusting of me. But I’m wary of you now. I don’t know why, but I do know something. I was planning right now to hold the battle about four days in the future, if not sooner. Maybe even earlier the same day as the Gala, on Monday. But I know that it should be over by four days from now, I know this. The Doctor from my timeline is very strange, but he isn’t stupid. He would never bring someone from the future back into the past. Maybe from the past into the future, but never the other way around. He favors his right hoof to his left when it comes to pushing things around on a table and picking things up. He also has a slight tick when he is eating, he usually touches his left hoof with his right when he is done chewing. That’s why I’m not too sure about you. You’re favoring your left hoof. But there’s something else, too. Something that I can’t put my hoof on. Something that puts me on edge.” I expunged, trying to make sense of my observations vocally. The Doctor sipped his coffee again, looking very interested. He set down the coffee on the table clumsily with his right hoof.

“Some very serious accusations, Edwin. Very serious.” The Doctor warned. I grinned.

“I know. But I can’t trust you now that you’ve regenerated.”

“Oh? And why is that?” The Doctor inquired, trying to scoop up some hay fries with his right hoof.

“I’ve never met an Angelic that has used an earth pony as a disguise. Only a pegasus.” I said. The Doctor instantly fell silent, looking up at me. He stopped pushing his hay fries around on his plate. We locked eyes. His bright blue eyes, showing absolutely no emotion. I became afraid. My claims were completely groundless, and I never suspected the Doctor to be an Angelic. But there were some things. The Doctor never forgets where his Tardis is. I gulped, not breaking the stare. Then, there was something out of the corner of my eye. A small white plate levitated itself right in front of the Doctor and set itself down with a nearly silent clank. I looked down at it and smiled. I looked back up at the Doctor again, venom fresh in my eyes. He looked afraid. I had very little time to act. I rose to my hooves about as fast as my Numbered body could from a cold start. I pushed off with my back hooves and lunged over the table, reaching for the Doctor. I saw him blink in slow motion. He wasn’t even processing what he was seeing yet. I took hold of the air around me with magic and flew forward, grasping the Doctor under his forelegs and flying him into the opposite wall. He coughed as we impacted, spewing a glob of blood. I felt it on my foreleg. I raised the leg covered in blood and I hit the Doctor in the face. He spat blood again. He looked back at me with honest surprise on his face.

“You dumb wank! What in Equestria are you doing!?” The Doctor spat at me. I growled at him and he backed down.

“You can’t honestly think you can keep up the charade, you Angelic filth!” I shouted right back, making the Doctor bare his teeth at me. I was on my hind legs and holding the Doctor against the wall so that his rear hooves couldn’t touch the ground. I stared at the Doctor, extremely enraged.

“Edwin, just let me- hhrnk!” The Doctor was cut off because I pressed on his throat with my foreleg. I had my other hoof charged and pointed at his face. The Doctor scowled at me and blinked. His bright red eyes were a startling sight. Several of the ponies in the kitchen that were not already surprised were losing their minds. I couldn’t hear myself think over their whispering, but I couldn’t do anything to change it. The Doctor spread his mouth in a gory smile, revealing a full set of glistening white fangs. I scowled.

“How long have you been in him?” I asked the Angelic in a halting voice. When he didn’t answer, I pressed on his neck and got closer to him. “HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN IN HIM?!” I shouted. The Angelic chuckled.

“Not more than three hours. I took this body while it was sleeping. It has so much... knowledge...” The Angelic whispered the last part with his eyes half-closed. “What gave me away?” He asked. I had the urge to punch it in the face again. I did.

“The pears on that plate. The Doctor loathes pears with a passion.” I explained while the Angelic spat out a few fangs. He chuckled again.

“Very observant, Five. I now know why we fear you.” The Angelic commented. I spat in its face. He sneered at me, crinkling his nose so that I could see his fangs.

“You picked the wrong body to steal, beast.” I whispered to the Angelic. He smiled his stupid grin that was starting to get annoying. The pale brown coat of the Doctor was starting to ripple a slight bit, like something was trying to get out.

“I think that I picked one of the best. A device that can take me wherever I want to go, close ties to the Royalty and the Numbereds. And a pegasus, no less. Trifecta.” The Angelic wheezed.

“I need that body back.”

“I’m too busy using it for espionage.” The Angelic said, sounding slightly offended. I chuckled at how entitled he sounded.

“I don’t think it’s your choice.” I said, trying to remember. The memory leaped to my mind almost instantaneously. The filly bound with rope and the floor covered in broken glass became the forefront of my mind.

"If you hurt them enough, they leave their host. Then you can kill them.” She said, her brilliant green eyes burning with passion.

I looked at the Angelic again, trying to remember Earth science. Volts, watts, amps, ohms... I finally figured out the proper equation and my brain translated it into reality. An extremely high voltage with low amps should do the job. I released the modified current into the Angelic. There was a startling moment when the Angelic locked up in surprise. He opened his mouth in shock, and then started to scream. It was a pained, ragged exclamation. Rising, falling, weeping. It kept on for a few minutes. There was some slight magic coming out of the Angelic a few minutes in. The Doctor’s coat started to shimmer a little bit, growing shiny and iridescent. I pressed on. Other than the Angelic ruining his voice, that was the first sign that my torture was working. I pressed on, triumphant. Almost instantly the Angelic’s figure became superimposed over the Doctor’s body, flickering slightly like an old tv set. The Angelic stopped screaming for a moment and then groaned. His head slumped out of the Doctor, and the Doctor fell away from the Angelic. I was now standing in a room filled with at least six mortified ponies, a ragged Angelic, and an incapacitated time lord. Fun. I grabbed the Angelic by the shoulders and teleported to the outside. The warm afternoon sun made me squint my eyes, blowing sand around in the cool wind. I looked around at my surroundings. It seemed to be some kind of desert, with cacti and nearly dead foliage all around me. I looked at the Angelic that I was dragging around. He was unconscious. That wasn’t going to work. I hoisted him up above me with one hoof and punched him in the face with another. He slowly rose to consciousness and blinked, his red eyes looking unusually groggy. I smiled and started my ascent.

“Morning, sleepyhead.” I mocked. The Angelic remembered where he was and looked down at me.

“What do you think that you’re doing? Unhoof me!” The Angelic shouted, indignant. I smile and twisted in the air so that the Angelic had a good look at the ground, rapidly shrinking under the two of us.

“Choose your words carefully, beast. I just might comply.” I said to the Angelic. He paled, if that was at all possible with his coal black coat. He gulped, and I rose higher.

“Air’s getting thin. Might get hard to breathe in a few more hundred feet. Better start talking before you can’t.” I warned the Angelic. He started to panic.

“Please, don’t kill me, I’ll-” The Angelic pleaded, but I fumbled him to shut him up.

“I have no pity for your kind. There is nothing that you can give me that will make me spare you your unearned life. Now talk!” I shouted, holding the Angelic closer to the ground. It was slightly silly when I thought about the scale of the threat, but it seemed to work.

“They wanted me to figure out if there would be an assault on Cloudsdale. They wanted to know if it was possible to use the blue box to our advantage. They wanted to know how many of us could fit in the box. They wanted to know, they wanted to know, just please don’t kill me!” The Angelic said, his eyes pleading with me. I looked down at it in disgust. Of all the Angelics that I’ve met, this one has to be the biggest coward of them all.

“You make me sick.” I said to the creature. He whimpered and tried to make himself smaller. The thin air started to take hold. I muttered a spell that would keep me breathing, but would leave the Angelic open to the elements.

“Do you happen to know how long a pony can survive this many miles up?” I asked. The Angelic whimpered.

“About three minutes. Do you know how long it would take for you to hit the ground from this height?” I asked the Angelic again. “About seven minutes. And now, you affront to nature, I give you a choice. Either you can stay up here and suffocate or freeze to death, assured of a slow and painful death...” I said, gesturing all around me with my other hoof. “Or you can take the painless death and fall for seven minutes in crippling fear to your grave. You don’t have very long to decide before I decide for you.” I said to the Angelic. He sighed, his breath freezing in the air. I watched him with a strange curiosity. I had never met an Angelic like this one before. He struggled with his decision. I wondered openly at his strange display of emotion.

“Please don’t let me fall.” The Angelic begged. I cast a spell over the Angelic so he wouldn’t die of oxygen deprivation and other fun things. He gasped, inhaling the fresh air made by the magic.

“How old are you, Angelic?” I asked. The Angelic shivered.

“Three.” He said dryly. I had the urge to drop him right then and there.

“How many ponies have you eaten?”

“More than a thousand.” He commented blandly, like he was asked how he wanted his eggs. I almost vomited. I looked the Angelic in his bright red eyes. they looked slightly bored. I had to do it. I dropped him. He fell like a stone through the thin air, and I flew down with him to make sure he didn’t do anything funny, like a teleportation spell. He screamed the whole way down. He cursed me for lying to him. He raged at the universe. He shouted about everything he ever hated. It was unusual- Most of the Angelics that I have met alluded to some kind of reincarnation. This one was acting like he would only live once. I warched him fall, screaming at the world that let him die. I felt a slight pity- only a slight one. If I were to nail it down to any one thing, I would have to call it empathy. I have died before. It was only logical to have a slight stirring for something that feared death. I watched the Angelic from a distance as he entered his last few seconds of falling. He flailed like mad, trying to fly with wings he no longer had. He stopped screaming for a moment. I rushed up to see him, to see if he already died. I got a good look at his face from when he finally fell.

“I WILL KILL YOU, FIVE!” The angelic shouted at the top of his lungs, and then dug his own grave with his corpse. I felt my heart drop through my chest. It took a twisted and depraved type of soul to use their dying breath to promise vengeance. But then again, this was an Angelic. There was no telling what he was capable of. I flew my way back to the Royal bunker with a heavy heart.

“Bout time you came back.” The Doctor said, sitting in front of a plate of two green pears. I smiled as I walked through the door. My hey fries were there, congealed into a glob. I sat down in front of it and looked at the Doctor. His ageless blue eyes, his chestnut mane, his cafe coat. He perplexed me, yet at the same time gave me an analogue. He had no true match in this world, and he never really meshed with anypony else. He had strange taste in clothes (none at all), he was allergic to aspirin, and he knew how to pilot a TT type 40, mark 3 TARDIS, and had a peculiar taste in tea. Really, we were two of a kind. Peas in a pod, if you will. I looked at him, truly into his soul, and recognized him as what he was. He was necessary. The dimension that he was in could not function without him in it. There was no point in having a repairman for a machine that never broke. Lucky for the Doctor, the Universe was a machine that was almost always in crippling disrepair. The toolbox he used was a bright blue that made the universe bend over backward in its extreme improbability. The Doctor wasn’t an arbiter- That was completely different than what he was. You wouldn’t call a broken gear a war for the third cog to the left. The Doctor only intervened to fix pieces. When he was done fixing the piece that I was involved with, he would leave. He would go fix another piece in the machine that was the endless and complete universe. I couldn’t comprehend what the Doctor was- My amazing Numbered mind, designed to solve puzzles that a normal creature would take unsolved to the grave, couldn’t even touch what Doctor meant to every single sentient creature that ever existed. I was dumbfouded. If there was ever a god, the closest thing that living creature could experience of it had a chestnut mane and hated pears.

“Edwin?” The Doctor asked, waving a hoof. I was shocked out of my stupor and looked at the Doctor with actual focus now.

“What?” I asked, completely innocent.

“You’ve been staring at me for the past nine minutes.” He said. I felt insanely retarded.

“Sorry.” I admitted, blushing. The Doctor chuckled.

“It’s fine. I don’t really have much to say anyways. I need to go wipe the Princesses’
memory and return Othello back to his original timeline. That, and I need a massage in the worst way.” The Doctor explained, getting up from his seat. I felt slightly shocked.

“You can’t.”

“What?”

“You can’t wipe her memory. She needs to know that Othello is alive. She needs him.” I said, making emphasis where it was due. The Doctor sighed.

“You are the worst pony ever.” The Doctor grumbled, and started to walk out of the kitchen. I stared after him.

“So you aren’t going to wipe her memory?” I asked, concerned.

“Yes.”

“Come on, Doctor.” I complained.

“You’ll thank me someday.” He said, and flapped his way out of the room. I sighed, got up, and followed suit.

Comments

[RyujinDeath]

Hahahaha I knew Celestia was going to have sex with the Numbered 1 pony haha

[My Little Dashie]

Repairman...

Unique chapter, Jared...I like it. Perhaps my favorite so far. The description of the doctor...necessary.

...You just helped me solve something I've been working out for a while. Thank you.

I owe you one.