Tomb of the Aquanauts (a)
“No,” Vinyl said.
Octavia suppressed a sigh. “Vinyl, it's not even that far away. Thirty minutes on the train!” She gestured with the two round-trip tickets she'd bought.
“That's not the problem,” Vinyl said, as the two of them walked through Ponyville. “The problem is that this whole event's gonna be—”
“Boring? The first serious undersea expedition in Equestrian history, and you think that's going to be boring?”
“Wasn't gonna say that.” Vinyl glared sidelong at her, and Octavia could see Vinyl’s eyes around the arms of her glasses. Was it her imagination, or did Vinyl look worried? “Nah, it's gonna be way too interesting.”
Octavia's gait broke for a moment; she'd anticipated a lot of responses to her idea of a girls' day out, and this was none of them. Vinyl seemed to notice her confusion, and slowed down with her. “Look,” she said, tilting her head sideways so that her glasses obscured her eyes, “he's gonna be there too, isn't he?”
“I assume you mean the Doctor?” After a few seconds, Octavia took Vinyl's lack of response to mean “yes”, and responded in kind: “You know he wouldn't miss a major historical event like this for the world.”
“And what happened the last time we went somewhere cool with him?”
Octavia's mouth popped open. This is seriously your argument? “Vinyl, just because Fillydelphia got nearly destroyed once doesn't mean—”
“Exactly!” Vinyl yelled, thrusting a hoof into the air. Several passersby gave the two of them strange looks, and Vinyl dropped her voice. “Every time he goes anywhere, something crazy happens—have you noticed that? He shows up in Equestria, and all of a sudden, Discord. He goes to play an arcade game, and oh no, it's an eeeevil arcade game! He walks into the woods—”
“That's so fallacious!” Octavia said, cutting Vinyl off. “Just because he's had a few odd days, that doesn't mean—”
“It totally does!” Vinyl groaned. “Look, he's a great guy, really, but... okay, analogy time. Would you trust me with a Mustang Dynasty vase?” She pronounced it with a long “a” sound.
“Of course not. And it's 'vahse'.”
“Whatever. Point is, I don't trust the Doctor with a major historical event, and neither should you!”
They reached their house, and Vinyl stopped outside the door to look Octavia in the eyes. “Seriously, Octy. Don't go.”
Octavia glared right back, not giving an inch. “I'm going, Vinyl. I'd love it if you came, but I'll go regardless.”
Vinyl kept their gazes locked for a moment longer, then sighed and heel-turned. “All right, fine, you're your own mare or whatever. Have fun, stay warm, don't get attacked by any giant sea monsters.”
She walked into the house and magically slammed the door behind her. Octavia, breathing deeply through clenched teeth, leaned against their front wall.
“So, Octavia, why isn't Vinyl here?” Lyra asked.
Octavia shrugged and adjusted her scarf as its ends flipped in the sea breeze. “Oh, you know her; she thought it would be boring.” Her expression was inoffensive as ever.
“Boring?” the Doctor exclaimed, giving her a thoroughly offended look. “The first serious undersea expedition in your history, and she thinks it's boring? I wouldn't miss it for the world!”
“That's what I said, but....” Octavia shrugged.
“Well, I wish Bon Bon and Derpy could have been here too. And perhaps Twilight... shame Celestia had to call her away on such short notice.” The Doctor sighed, casting his gaze out over the shoreline in front of them. “Even so, I suppose I can't complain. Couldn't ask for better weather this time of year.” He chuckled. “You know, where I come from, that's just an expression—but here you actually can ask for better weather! Just not right now.”
On this point, Lyra had to agree: even standing as they were at the shoreline on this autumn day, the sun shone down bright through a cloudless sky, and it was warm enough that she felt perfectly content. Frankly, she thought Octavia was overdoing it with the scarf....
Oh, but who cares about the weather? Lyra, after all, was here for the same reason as the hundreds in the crowd behind her—the scientists, the cognoscenti, the plain old normal ponies: they were here not for the beach's weather, but for its contents. For on this day, the beach was host not to a gaggle of sunbathing tourists but something much more interesting.
Lyra leaned over the railing that separated her and the rest of the crowd from both the beachfront and the submarine resting upon it. Well, there were other things on the beach as well—a podium, a thrown-together shack that would serve as the control room—but Lyra couldn't fathom why anyone would care about those any more than they might the weather.
When she'd been younger, she'd had had a notion of being an illustrator for science fiction books, and one of her drawings had been a colorful—if crude—depiction of a futuristic submarine vehicle. She'd covered it with every gadget she could imagine, until it had looked just as much a hodge-podge as any top-rate submarine ought to.
Evidently, Dr. Blue Shift had used this drawing as a blueprint, for barring the small difference of a large stylized “SL” on its side—the logo of Shift Laboratories—the submarine matched Lyra's wildest imaginings exactly. Her eyes watered as she held them open in the salty air to scrutinize every square inch of the sub, to try to figure out what each gadget did. Some of the gizmos she was able to guess at; other whatchamacallits were too obscure. “What does that doodad do, Doctor?” she asked, pointing to a small dome of dirty glass protruding from the side.
The Doctor pulled on his “brainy specs”, as he called them, and squinted. “Hard to make out from here, but... oh, that is impressive.” He frowned. “Fairly simple, yes, but I'd have to say that that is an electrically powered sonar device. Or maybe magically powered, but either way, this is very advanced for the first submarine. First an arcade machine and now this... how many doctorates does Dr. Blue Shift have, anyway?”
“Sonar?” Lyra asked.
“SOund Navigation And Ranging. You send out sound waves, they bounce off the ocean floor, rocks, fish, and so on, back to you. If you know how fast they're moving....” He paused, and Lyra thought for a moment. Then that means....
“Then all you have to do,” Lyra said, working it through as she spoke, “is time them when they come back, and you know how far away you are from whatever the sound bounced off. You can see the whole ocean floor, even if you can't see anything at all!” The Doctor nodded and smiled at her explanation, and Lyra beamed. “That is so cool!”
“Precisely! And,” he said, returning to his earlier quizzical expression as he pocketed his glasses, “it probably shouldn't exist for another few decades, judging by your planet's level of development. Or maybe I'm just biased, and Mr. Shift really is that good, but either way it is fascinating!”
Lyra wasn't paying much attention to this. Not when the implications of being able to see without eyes were this cool. “You could see everything even when you were ten million miles below and the light was gone! All the coral reefs, and the octopuses, and the seaponies!”
Octavia gave a single chuckle through her scarf. “Good one, Lyra. Seaponies.”
“Yeah, laugh if you want, but I have proof!” Lyra said, smiling widely at Octavia. “This one time, I was walking along this beach right here with Bon Bon, and I found a seapony scale washed up on the sand! Bon Bon agreed with me it was a seapony scale, and where would you get a seapony scale except from a seapony?”
“Wait, you actually believe in them?” Octavia said. Lyra noticed that she looked a bit concerned, probably for Lyra's mental health. Why does everypony always do that whenever I bring up seaponies?
“Sorry to butt in,” the Doctor interjected, “but what exactly is a 'seapony'?”
“Oh, they're amazing!” Lyra replied, forestalling Octavia's attempt to answer. “They've got the upper half of a pony, and the lower half of a fish! They save sailors who fall overboard, their scales protect you from dr—uh... having fallen overboard—some even say,” she said, her voice falling to a whisper, “that their tears can be used to bring back the dead.”
Octavia sighed. “And they don't exist. Nopony's ever seen one—”
“There are eyewitness accounts!” Lyra retorted.
“From sailors who've had a bit too much hard cider.” Octavia rolled her eyes. “It's just one of those fairy tales, Lyra, like the Headless Horse. Nopony who's sober has ever seen one, certainly.” As she readjusted her scarf, a thought appeared to strike her—that or a bit of airborne grit; her facial expression would have matched both. “Come to think of it,” she said, “why would something that lives underwater cry? That doesn't make any sense.”
“Because something made them sad, of course!” Lyra groaned in frustration. “Why doesn't anypony ever listen to reason?”
“Not a very nice thing to do, is it,” the Doctor said, still watching the submarine absentmindedly.
Lyra looked at him with some confusion—she was missing a logical bridge somewhere. “What, listening to reason isn't very nice?”
“What?” He returned his attention to her, as if dragging something from a great distance. “Oh, no, I was thinking about the seapony tears. Making one of them cry... not very nice, is it?”
“Well, you get seapony tears out of it. You could bring someone back from the dead—who cares if it’s mean if it brings someone back?” Lyra said.
“Touché.”
Octavia sighed. “What is it?” the Doctor asked.
“Nothing, nothing,” she said, fixing her gaze back on the submarine.
Lyra wondered if she wasn't annoyed that the Doctor seemed to be taking seaponies seriously, but such suppositions would have to wait; a door opened on the hasty shack, and a stallion stepped from it without any haste at all. In fact, the blue, bowtied stallion was munching on a piece of what looked like fried seaweed.
The stallion—judging by his coloration, Lyra could only imagine this was Dr. Blue Shift himself—walked to the podium and continued to munch. The ambient noise of the crowd died away in anticipation, leaving only the sound of chewing. Lyra hadn't ever realized how uncomfortable chewing could sound when magnified by a speaker system.
At long last, he swallowed, made an “mmm” noise of appreciation, and said, “Sorry about that, but I just had to sample the nibbles—free of charge after the event, of course. All sea themed. Obvious, really. Can't believe we paid a caterer umpteen bits to come up with that idea.” He winked, then blew at a strand of golden mane that the wind had pushed in front of his eye. “You know, the sea really is a fantastic place, isn't it? And it's given us so much, and yet we've only scratched its surface.... metaphorically, of course. Literally scratching the surface would do very little, as it's a fluid and so forth....”
An aide sidled up to him and placed a piece of paper on his podium, possibly a prepared speech. “All right, dear,” he said, motioning her away, “mea culpa. Where was I? Ah, yes: a whole world trapped beneath kilometers of water, beneath pressures titanically greater than a pony's body could ever handle. I mean, let's face it: you... me... we're a bit, uh, squishy, aren't we?” He poked his cheek and shrugged, then gestured expansively to the submarine. “But this isn't. This is the Nautilus, the finest traveling device that a pony has ever laid eyes on! And with it, we'll plumb depths that have never been plumbed before!”
He walked in front of the machine and began pointing out its various gizmos and doodads, but Lyra noticed something to draw her attention from the Nautilus. As Dr. Blue Shift's explanations went on, he remained in profile, displaying his cutie mark for all to see—an hourglass, just like the Doctor's. She nudged the Doctor in the ribs and motioned with her head in Dr. Shift's direction; the Doctor gave her a short nod in return, which she assumed meant, “I noticed.” His eyes were narrow as he watched.
“And of course,” Blue Shift continued, tapping another part of the ship, “here we have the turbo-retro-encabulator, for the purpose of—” Blue Shift's aide walked up to him as he worked himself up, and she whispered some words into his ear. He sighed. “Well, I suppose that the technology isn't very interesting, is it.” A small smile graced his lips. “Certainly not when compared to the brave ponies who'll be inside it! Fillies and gentlecolts, may I introduce... the crew of the Nautilus!” He gave a theatrical bow as three more ponies filed out of the shack and stood in line next to him.
“Leading the expedition, the unflappable Captain Mariana.” As the crowd applauded, the deep-blue pegasus Mariana inclined her head gracefully, while one hoof pulled back her black skirt in a sort of curtsy to reveal a cutie mark like an ocean trench.
“Her first mate and navigator, the seasoned veteran of the seas, Rusty Davey.” More applause. Davey adjusted his flatcap and gave a brief smile that twitched his trimmed silver beard. His grayish-brown coat looked like it had been tanned by something more than just sun and saltwater, and his cutie mark was of a rope—old, frayed, and covered in barnacles, but still held taut.
“And finally, the expedition's science officer, the acute Seabiscuit.”
The Doctor's eyes bulged, and he shoved a hoof into his mouth and started making choking noises. “What?” Lyra asked.
“Nothing,” he spluttered, “nothing.” Lyra wasn’t sure, but he might have been laughing.
Seabiscuit was a unicorn with a labcoat cutie mark and a coat of seafoam blue, though it seemed to be tinged with green around his face. He had pulled back slightly as his name was called, and didn't seem pleased by his round of applause. His smile looked forced.
“Woo!” yelled a pony to Lyra's right. She looked over and saw a teal filly hanging a large poster over the railing. A bit of leaning let Lyra read it: “Go Big Brother!” in big letters, cut from construction paper and pasted on the white poster. Seabiscuit glanced at the sign and gave her a wink; his smile widened, but it seemed no less forced.
“And now,” Dr. Shift said, “without further ado, let the noble work of exploration... begin!” A prerecorded, triumphant piece of music started playing over the speakers as Captain Mariana opened a door on the side of the Nautilus and clambered in, followed by Davey and Seabiscuit. The latter looked glad to get out of the spotlight. Meanwhile, Dr. Shift and his handler returned to the control shack.
A few seconds later, Shift's voice sounded on the speakers over the music. “Pegasi, ready!” A team of pegasi descended from the sky above and set to work, each tying a rope from him or herself to the submarine. When every rope was secure, the pegasi started pulling the Nautilus out to sea. It dragged against the sand for a few seconds, but once it entered the water it moved much more quickly.
Several minutes later, when the jaunty tune had finished and the Nautilus was only a faint dot on the horizon, Lyra saw a second flurry of movement around the craft. Then, a female voice came over the speakers—calm and professional. “All ropes have been detached, Dr. Shift. We are ready to dive.”
“Wonderful!” said Blue Shift from within the shack. “You may proceed when ready, Captain. I leave the mission in your highly capable hooves.”
“Diving in three... two... one....” And then the dot disappeared.
“Woo!” Lyra yelled for several seconds, as did many in the crowd behind her; Octavia flinched away at the noise. It was easy to be excited, and it was more enjoyable than entertaining any fears about the crew, now that they were diving hundreds of feet underwater in an experimental craft. They'll be fine, she told herself. It's been built with science and stuff.
A few minutes later, excitement was harder to come by, as she'd been staring at an empty ocean for that whole time. “Um...” she said, trying to suppress uneasy feelings, “should we go, or....” Come on, she told herself, you're being dumb. They're fine.
“Ssh!” Octavia hissed, as more of Captain Mariana's words issued from the speaker.
“This is incredible! We're detecting coral structures more extensive than we ever could have thought possible down here.” With nothing else to do, Lyra watched the speaker as if it were a projector screen, and imagined Mariana's face breaking into a smile. She relaxed. See? They're fine.
“Hold on, crew,” said Davey, and Lyra thought she heard something thump, followed by a small yelp from Seabscuit. “Sorry for the sharp turn—wanted to stay clear of the kelp.”
“By all means, Rusty,” Mariana said, and Lyra could tell she was still smiling. “Seabiscuit, anything to add?”
“It really is amazing!” Seabiscuit said. “I'm detecting strange magical energies unlike anything we've seen on the surface. Think what we could do with things like these once we—”
He was cut off by another loud thump, and Lyra knew she hadn't imagined this one. She jumped, as did Octavia and most of the crowd. A second later, Seabiscuit spoke up again. “Uh, Rusty, you....” He laughed nervously. “You need to be more careful about where you're piloting... you know, so we don't hit things....”
“Sonar says there's nothing near us,” Rusty said, his gruff voice betraying no trace of nerves. “Either Shift bungled the machine, or... something less expected.”
“Hang on,” Mariana said. “Look at the sonar. Over there, in that tunnel system... is that a shadow? Moving swiftly away from us... no, it's moving toward—”
CRASH. Seabiscuit yelped. “What was that?”
“Stay calm, Biscuit!” Rusty yelled. But with another crash, this was a lost cause. And then another. And another. Seabiscuit was screaming as the unknown force assaulted them, and Lyra wished she couldn't empathize; she imagined him being thrown violently in the cramped space—she saw it as clearly as if there really were a movie playing out on the speaker in front of her.
“What's hitting us?” Mariana said, her voice cutting through Seabiscuit's screams.
“Damned if I know!” Rusty replied. “There's not supposed to be anything big at this depth—” Yet another crash silenced him.
“Rusty!” Mariana yelled. “Rusty, your head! Are you okay?” Lyra watched as Rusty was thrown forward—his head split open on the controls—blood spattered everywhere. Her throat constricted; her breathing quickened.
CRASH.
“Captain!” Dr. Shift yelled over the tumult, as Lyra and the hundreds of other ponies on the beach remained incapable of looking away from the speaker. “Captain Mariana, report!”
“Rusty's struck his head, sir! He's out cold, and something's hitting us!” Shadowy forces moved outside the Nautilus, and Lyra saw them grin with too many teeth as they prepared another assault.
CRASH CRASH CRASH CRASH.
“We're dead!” Seabiscuit yelled.
“Stay calm, Seabiscuit—oh, Celestia, that's water getting in—”
The sound cut out, leaving only the white noise of static. “Captain?” Blue Shift yelled. “Captain, report!” But he was yelling at dead air. Lyra watched the image in her head go black—tasted the saltwater as it rolled down her throat, as it filled her lungs, as it choked her.
The Majestic Tale (of a Mad-Pony in a Box)
S1E7: Tomb of the Aquanauts
Written by R5h
A few seconds later, Seabiscuit's little sister was the first to scream. “Big brother!” she shrieked, trying to climb the railing; a few ponies rushed to hold her back.
Well, the Doctor thought, I suppose it was getting a bit dull. “Come on,” he said, and as the rest of the crowd started to panic in all the familiar ways—hyperventilation, loud screaming, and the like—he cleared the metal railing in one quick hop and made for the shack.
Unfortunately, his peripheral vision told him that his companions didn't seem eager to follow. He looked back and saw Lyra's gaze still fixed on the speakers; she seemed catatonic. Octavia waited by her for several seconds, then rolled her eyes and barked, “Lyra!”
Lyra jumped and gasped, taking quick breaths as if she'd been underwater too. “They're dead, aren't they?” she said, looking first at Octavia and then at the Doctor. “They're dead.”
“Not if we can help it,” the Doctor said. “Come on!”
Long strides carried him to the shack in seconds, and he opened its door to find Dr. Shift and his assistant showing slightly more self-control than the crowd. Blue Shift had pulled on a pair of half-moon glasses, and through them he squinted at a panel beneath a window, most of whose dials—such as cabin pressure—were in the red. Next to him was a plate with more seaweed snacks of the type he'd been eating in his first appearance, and every few seconds he pulled a fresh one into his mouth. “I don't understand,” he said through a mouthful. “Nothing should be able to move that fast through water—fast enough to puncture the Nautilus....”
His assistant looked up at the door sound. “Get out!” she shrieked, advancing upon the Doctor and jabbing her hoof. “We're not taking questions!”
The Doctor grimaced. “I'm not... I'm not a reporter. I'm the Doctor; I'm here to help.”
Blue Shift looked up at this, and his eyes widened. “The Doctor? Oh, you I have heard of!” He waved his assistant away, beckoned the Doctor and his friends forward, then stepped forward himself and offered a hoof. “Oh, it is so nice to meet you at last—albeit not at a fantastic time. I hear you've been making incredible strides in temporal magic in a little warehouse just outside Ponyville, is that right?”
“Uh, no one's really supposed to know about that,” Lyra said, as the Doctor shook hooves with Shift.
“Word gets out, you know—and time is my specialty.” Blue Shift tapped his cutie mark. “That is, insofar as I can be said to have a specialty—Shift Laboratories dabbles in every form of scientific progress I can manage—but if I had to choose, it would be temporal research. Oh, but where are my manners?”
He pulled a hoofful of seaweed fries from the plate and lifted them to the Doctor and friends. “Hungry?” he asked. The Doctor narrowed his eyes. “No? A little bit?” As they continued not to respond, he shrugged, said, “More for me,” and shoved them in his mouth.
“Is this really the time?” Octavia asked, as Shift messily chewed; bits of seaweed fell to the floor.
“Stress eating,” he said in a muffled voice, “I can't help it. Not to worry, I have the metabolism of a teenager.”
“Dr. Shift!” his assistant said, knocking him on the back; he coughed and the snacks sprayed out onto the floor. Octavia jumped backward to avoid any stray specks. Blue Shift glared at his assistant, who said, “The Nautilus! Please stay on task!”
“Yes, yes, you're absolutely right, the, ahem, the Nautilus... though I'm not sure what we can really do,” he said sadly, slumping against the control panel. “I suppose we must be brave of heart... it's possible they survived somehow....” This was followed by a sigh that made the assertion seem very unlikely indeed.
The Doctor ignored this, pulled on his own set of spectacles, and scrutinized the control panel. “Cabin pressure's equalized with that of the outside—the capsule's completely filled up.”
“I can read, yes,” Blue Shift said.
“But where did it go down....” He spied the depth gauge. “Four hundred and thirteen meters, and holding steady. It's landed on the seafloor—do you have elevation maps of the seafloor here?” he asked Blue Shift's assistant. As if against her better judgment, she pulled open a drawer underneath the control panel and passed a map to him. As he grabbed it, he got a sidelong look at Blue Shift—and Blue Shift was looking sidelong at him. Something about his face seemed familiar; was it the spectacles?
Back to the matter at hand, he thought, unrolling the elevation map and eyeballing it. “There,” he said, tapping the map at one exact point. “That's where the submarine's settled.”
“That was fast. Are you sure?” Octavia asked, looking over his shoulder.
“Matches the depth, and on its right....” He tapped a part of the map that formed a sort of underwater peninsula: a large raised section of land extending beneath the water for several miles out to sea. “That's the only place for the 'tunnel system' Captain Mariana mentioned.”
“So, now that we know where it is...” Octavia started.
“We can get down there ourselves,” he finished, folding up the map and slipping it into a pocket. “Blue Shift!” he said, and the scientist looked up at him. “We need another submarine. We've got to go down and see what happened—retrieve what we can.”
“Oh, of course.” Blue Shift sounded irritated as he clapped a hoof to his forehead. “The one-of-a-kind experimental craft has been sunk—naturally, I'll just send the other one down.” He sighed.
“Scuba gear?” The Doctor kept eye contact. “Send a team down outside of a craft?” But Blue Shift shook his head and tapped the depth gauge. The Doctor understood what he was getting at; at four hundred and thirteen meters, the water pressure would crush any pony who ventured down without a craft.
But a Time Lord is a different story. “I'll ask again: do you have scuba gear?” he said. “Because if you do, I will go.”
Blue Shift stared up at him. “The pressure would crush you. Are you not getting that?”
“Try me.”
“It would!” Blue Shift smacked the depth gauge again. “Unless you're either an alicorn or an alien, both of which seem unlikely, if you'll pardon my lack of confidence.”
The Doctor felt a timid tap at his shoulder, and looked around to see Lyra. “Does that mean you'd want us to sit this one out?” she asked. Octavia's attention was caught by something outside the window.
“I'm afraid so. You definitely couldn't stand the pressure for any length of time.”
“Darn,” she said. “I mean, I guess I don't, uh, I don't mind as such, but....” Despite her words, she'd visibly relaxed.
“No one is going down there!” Blue Shift exclaimed, pushing brusquely into their midst. “We are all sitting this one out. I'm sorry, but they are lost, and there is absolutely nothing to be done!”
Octavia gasped. “What?” Lyra said, leaning to look out the window as well—and she gasped too. The Doctor turned to see what it was, and though he didn't gasp himself, it was a close thing.
A pegasus was flying full-tilt over the water toward the beach, and though she was far away, it was unmistakably Captain Mariana. Several somethings hung from her neck, things that glimmered in the sunlight. Like a necklace of emeralds, except she hadn't been wearing one.
“What in the—” Blue Shift looked out the window too. “My word,” he breathed.
“That's... that's impossible,” said his assistant. “She would have been crushed—”
But the Doctor didn't hear the rest of her words; his hooves were already in motion, carrying him from the shack to the water's edge, the better to meet Mariana once she came ashore. With a glance behind himself, he saw Lyra and Octavia following him, and behind them he saw the crowd with uniformly dumbstruck expressions as they realized what was happening.
Within a minute, Mariana had landed on the beach, and the things around her neck were identifiable as several iridescent green scales, each one on its own string of kelp. “Captain!” came the cry from the crowd, as the hundreds assembled pushed against the railings. Questions came like a salvo of missiles, and almost as loudly: “What happened down there?” “Are the others safe?” “How did you get out?” “Is my big brother okay?”
“Oh, for the love of...” Blue Shift grumbled. He turned to the crowd and said, “Excuse me—” his face and tone started pleasantly, then turned ugly like a tornado destroying a clear day “—the GROWN-UPS are TALKING!”
Everyone shut up.
“Tch, ponies,” he muttered, before turning to Mariana and saying, “Tell the nice people if the crew are okay, dear.” When Mariana cast him a withering look, he amended himself with a smile: “Captain, excuse me.”
Mollified, she addressed the crowd: “The crew is fine. First Mate Davey banged his head and briefly lost consciousness, but he's since come to. None are in immediate danger.”
The Doctor noticed Lyra visibly relax, as did the rest of the crowd.
“However,” Mariana continued, “the rest of this information is for the ears of Shift Labs staff only.” More tumult erupted from the crowd, but Mariana acted as if she didn't notice and beckoned both Blue Shift and his assistant into the control shack. “That means not your ears, by the way,” she added, lifting a hoof to stop the Doctor as he made to follow.
“It's okay,” Blue Shift said, smiling as he pushed her hoof down. “I can vouch for him; he's helped Shift Laboratories out in the past. The arcade machine that got intercepted, wasn't it?”
Mariana made an odd one-shoulder shrug before proceeding into the control room. The Doctor and his companions followed her; Blue Shift leaned to his assistant, said, “Keep the crowd's enthusiasm to a minimum, won't you?” and with a last glare at the crowd (which quieted down again), he entered the shack and slammed the door.
Inside the shack, away from the crowd and the imminent threat, it was oddly peaceful. The washing of waves was the only sound for a few seconds as Captain Mariana unloaded the scales from her neck onto the floor. Meanwhile, the Doctor looked around for a chair, saw none, and stifled a complaining session; there were more important questions. Like—
“Ooh, are those seapony scales?” Lyra asked, pointing at Mariana's cargo.
Okay, not one of the questions I was thinking of, the Doctor thought.
Octavia gritted her teeth. “Of course they aren't—don't waste the captain's time.”
“Why, yes, they are,” the captain in question said. She raised an eyebrow. “Whatever made you think of it?”
“Oh, for Celestia's sake, don't humor her,” Octavia said, rolling her eyes as Lyra's smile started widening to improbable levels. “They're not seapony scales—and even if they were, how would you know?”
“Because the seaponies gave them to us personally.”
Octavia's mouth opened to make a retort and stopped there. Her eye twitched, and she closed her mouth, as Lyra's grin continued to widen. Finally, she said, “Oh, that's just not fair.”
“Are you okay?” the Doctor asked.
“I... may be about to have a moment,” Octavia confessed.
Lyra, on the other hand, was already having hers; she let out a huge whoop of glee. “I TOLD you!” she yelled. “I was right! All along I was right!” Then she noticed Blue Shift and Mariana giving her confused looks. “Er, sorry,” she said, settling down.
“So,” the Doctor said, leaning against a wall, “seaponies exist—of course they do, who am I kidding—and they're the ones who saved you, then?”
“Yes. These scales—” Mariana tapped the top of the pile “—make some sort of magic water bubble around us. I'm not sure how the magic works, but it saved us from drowning.”
Lyra did several triumphant hoof pumps. “Oh, shut up,” Octavia said, gritting her teeth.
“And yet they haven't released you all to come back up here,” the Doctor continued, piecing things together as he said them. “Just you, so you can explain things, but the rest of the crew is still sunken in the deep. So not complete altruism from them—they want something from us.”
Mariana almost nodded, but hesitated. “Well, if you put it that way it makes us sound like hostages, which is not really.... We agreed to stay. Because they need help.” She narrowed her eyes. “Whatever attacked us, it's been attacking them for the last few months. They don't know what it is, they've never seen it before, and they don't know why it's happening. They are dying down there, and... well, we put it to a vote, and two out of the three of us elected to do what we could for them.
“So I'm here for reinforcements,” she said, lifting the seapony scales from the floor. “There's enough here for several volunteers to—”
The Doctor stepped forward. Octavia did likewise. “You're sure?” Mariana said, raising an eyebrow. “It'll be dangerous. Whatever attacked, it can attack without warning.”
“Trust me,” the Doctor said, “the three of us can handle danger. Isn't that right?” He turned to his left to look at Octavia, and she nodded; he turned to his right to look at Lyra, and she didn't nod, because she wasn't on his right. She was behind him, slowly edging away. “Lyra?” the Doctor asked.
She grinned, or at least revealed several teeth. “Uh, yeah, go team. You guys can probably do this one without me, right?”
“Lyra.” The Doctor stepped toward her, trying to be reassuring, but she flinched away from him. “What's wrong? Are you afraid to go down there?”
“Afraid? Why would I be afraid?” Her not-grin stayed fixed on her face, and her shoulders inched up as she went on, as did the pitch of her voice. “I mean, it's not like I was walking along the Muylkill River in Fillydelphia when I was a kid and I fell in and the walls were too slippery to climb and I almost drowned before they got a rope down or anything, right? Wouldn't that be dumb?”
She was hyperventilating again. The Doctor tried to think of a thing to say, but Octavia beat him to the punch. “Lyra. Breathe.”
Lyra started trying to take deeper breaths. Octavia waited a few seconds, then continued: “Lyra, the seaponies are in danger, and you can help save them.”
“Okay,” Lyra said, not looking at her. “Okay. Save the seaponies.”
“And you'll probably....” Octavia glanced over at Captain Mariana before continuing. “You'll probably stay completely dry in the process.”
“Okay. Probably. Yeah.”
Blue Shift shook his head. “Oh, for goodness' sake, no need to dawdle,” he said, placing a hoof on Lyra's and Octavia's backs and shoving both out the door. “Go forth and conquer, girls!”
“But—but—but—” Lyra said, just before she fell out of the shack and onto the sand.
Blue Shift looked at the Doctor and shrugged. “Just can't get the help these days, can you?” A sardonic smile moved his lips. “Good luck, Doctor. An unexpected amount depends on you now, so do what you must and don't foul it up. I'd hate to have to come down there.”
The Doctor narrowed his eyes at Shift. This really is ringing a bell. But there were, after all, more pressing issues at hand, so he walked out behind the shack to obscure himself from the crowd's view. Under the watchful eye of Dr. Shift's assistant, they were acting quietly enough, but he hardly needed to give them a reason to misbehave.
He, Octavia, Lyra, and Mariana stood at the shoreline, each one wearing their own scale. The Doctor was certain he was the picture of confidence, and Mariana was also unperturbed. However, Lyra and Octavia seemed unsettled—but whereas Lyra was obviously terrified of the ocean, Octavia kept glancing down at the scale that hung from her neck.
Despite this, she seemed to steel herself, and said, “I'll try it first.” She took a deep breath and a few steps back, then ran full-tilt at the water and jumped.
Splash. She was gasping in the cold water. “What?” escaped her lips, but not much else of coherence. Lyra edged away further from the sea.
Mariana closed her eyes and drew in a breath through her teeth. “They said, before they sent me back up—the seaponies told me that it's not enough to just wear the scales. They won't keep you safe from the sea unless you believe, they said.”
“Oh, I'm—perfectly credulous!” Octavia spluttered, as the water continued to not be repelled by her. She dragged herself back to shore, shivering, and pulled her sodden scarf from around her neck to slap it on the ground.
The Doctor sidled over to Lyra. “Do you believe?” he asked her. She gulped, then took a step toward the water, and then another. A small wave came for her from the ocean, and she forced herself to not wince—and it diverged in front of her.
Emboldened, she walked forward, and forward, and it was soon obvious; there was a bubble of air around her that the water would not penetrate. Her smile grew and grew, until she let out a joyous “Whee!”, jumped in, and landed, so to speak, on her back. “Come on in, everyone!” she exclaimed, floating in an oceanic crater. “The not-water's fine!”
The Doctor and Mariana glanced at each other, nodded, then moved forward. It was like entering a personal aquarium—the sea surrounded him, and yet he was safe behind walls of air as firm as tempered glass, though he couldn't help but notice that his bubble wasn't as big as Lyra's. Even so, he laughed and let himself float around on the surface, noticing that he could move the bubble just by thinking that there was where he should be—and he went there, and then somewhere else, and then flew a whole circle around Lyra.
Finally, Octavia shook herself on the shoreline, getting some of the water off—and onto Blue Shift, who grimaced—and she walked into the ocean. Or rather, she walked past the shoreline; this time the magic of the scale was working, and though her bubble was the smallest of all, it was enough to protect her. She relaxed.
“All right, enough messing around,” Captain Mariana said, moving in front of the Doctor as he continued to spin in his bubble. “We've got some ponies down there who need us.” She looked up to Blue Shift and saluted. “Preparing to submerge, sir!”
Blue Shift saluted jauntily back. “Do good down there!” he said; then the Doctor willed himself beneath the water's surface. Four bubbles, defying gravity, ventured into the deep where the monsters waited.
Lyra had been following behind the Doctor—who remembered exactly where the Nautilus had fallen, even better than Mariana—for several minutes before she realized something: if the submarine had sonar, it was because its crew wouldn't be able to see down in the deep. Yet as she dove down, she could still see as if she were looking into something no deeper than a swimming pool. Is this the power of the scale? she wondered, pressing it tightly to her chest.
In any case, it felt safe, and that was more than welcome. Around her was the ocean as she'd imagined it as a child, full of color and wonder. As the group passed over a large coral reef, she laughed with delight and zoomed down to see it more clearly. It was like a little maze covered its surface, all grooves and bumps and fantastic hues.
“Lyra,” the Doctor called. She looked up with a smile. “We're not here to sight-see.”
She had to laugh at that. “Really? That's basically your job description.”
He raised his eyebrows, then shrugged. “Fair's fair. Try to keep up!” he said, and darted down past her. “Woo!”
She went after him, laughing as she chased him around the hills and valleys of coral, like playing hide-and-seek in an underwater version of Ponyville—
She halted, realizing that the simile was more apt than she'd thought. “Doctor,” she said, “look at this.”
He was several meters ahead of her, but he returned and immediately recognized what she was seeing. “Well, what do we have here?” he said, as the two of them floated outside the hole in one of the coral hills. “That's not natural, that's a door. Hey, Octavia! Captain!” He waved the two of them down. “We've found something!”
The two of them descended from above the coral. “I think I saw this on our sonar,” Mariana said. “It just looked like coral from above, but this—this is a home. Amazing.” Indeed, through the door Lyra could see what could only be shelves, carved out of the coral, and a few artistic swirls etched around them. But something was wrong, and she couldn't put her hoof on what.
Octavia ventured inside the dwelling, and after a few seconds of looking around, she said, “Not anymore.”
“What?” Mariana said.
“It was a home. Look at this.” She dragged a hoof along the shelf, which—now that Lyra thought of it—was devoid of the sort of things that might go on a shelf: necessities, keepsakes, anything. When Octavia's hoof came up, it was coated with something between dust and slime. She wiped it off on the wall.
“And another thing,” the Doctor said. “If this is a home, then this—” he gestured around them at the whole reef “—is a village. But if this is a village, then where are the villagers?”
Lyra looked around cautiously. With the Doctor's words, the silence—which she hadn't noticed before—became something palpable, oppressive. “They left, didn't they?” she said. “They fled from whatever attacked the sub.”
Mariana nodded. “We should move on,” she said. Lyra couldn't agree more; the ocean that had so briefly felt safe and inviting was once again something to fear. She tried to push it out of her mind as she rose with the other three, out of the labyrinth of coral and into the open sea.
It's still beautiful, she forced herself to think, looking all around—to admire the scenery, she told herself. The kelp is still majestic, and the life down here is still so diverse, and that tunnel over there is still... massive.
She gulped. To the group's right was a tunnel big enough to drive a freight train through, and perhaps long enough. Somehow, the ambient light of the ocean around her did not penetrate into its depths; beyond maybe twenty meters, it was an abyss. The things that attacked the submarine came from a tunnel, didn't they? She looked back to the group, intending to emphasize in the clearest nonverbal terms that this tunnel was something to be avoided—but they were already far to her left, giving it a wide berth. She zoomed to their side and made herself exhale.
The silence continued and so did they, for minutes and minutes more. The stretch of raised seafloor that the Doctor had marked on the elevation map remained on their right, and here and there more tunnels had broken through its wall. They were rough-hewn, as if made by explosives. That's not natural, either, Lyra thought. But I don't think seaponies made that. She shivered. Something that could punch through meters of solid rock must have found the thin shell of the Nautilus an easy target—and her skin was even thinner.
Shut up, brain, she thought.
Some unmeasurable time later, Captain Mariana said “At last!” and pointed down at something on the seafloor. “It's there! Oh, look what's happened to it....”
If not for the fact that nothing else of that size and construction could be down here, Lyra would not have believed that it was the Nautilus below her. One side had been ruthlessly caved in, leaving a gaping wound in the metal. Other, smaller dents covered its surface, and the gizmos that had enticed Lyra's eyes on the surface were now off-kilter. Some were off the submarine entirely.
“I'm sorry for your ship,” said an old voice in front of them. “We wish we could have saved it—it's a poor thing to see what you care about broken beyond repair.” Lyra looked up from the wreck below her, and her eyes widened. So this is what a seapony looks like.
The seapony was dark green made darker by the lines on his face, and he had a mane like slivers of kelp tanned on the seashore: green once, but brown now. His torso ended not in legs but in a tail which curled behind him, and instead of forelegs he had short flippers, through which narrow bones ran like fingers. One flipper clutched a trident, and though its points were sharp, something about the way he held it suggested that if he'd ever used it before, it had been a long time ago. “Welcome,” he said, nodding to Captain Mariana. “You kept your promise.”
“I don't remember promising—I just said I'd bring help, and here I am. So, Chief Anoese,” Mariana said, gesturing to the Doctor, Lyra, and Octavia, “may I introduce... help. Help, this is Chief Anoese of the seaponies. Sorry, by the way,” she said, twitching a smile their way, “I don't think I actually got your names earlier. Busy day.”
“I guarantee you missed mine.” The Doctor inclined his head respectfully to Anoese. “It's an honor to meet you, Chief. I'm the Doctor, and these are Lyra and Octavia, my friends. And for what you said about things being broken beyond repair....” He sighed. “Those were your homes back in the coral, weren't they.”
Anoese nodded, and pointed with the flipper that was not holding his trident. “A mile that way I lived, before the evil came. We've been driven back more times than I'd rather remember.”
“I'm sorry,” the Doctor said. “Also, and I do appreciate the welcome party of one, but....” He pointed at the underwater cliff wall behind them, and its many abyssal tunnels. “This is where the Nautilus was attacked. It's not safe here, and... well, you are the chief. Why are you here?”
“Because I am old, and you deserve a guide. And,” he sighed, “I don't know that any place is safe now.”
“Even so, this place is particularly unsafe. And you're valuable. Speaking of which.” He darted to the seafloor and began to scrutinize the Nautilus.
“You can't be worried about its cost, surely?” Octavia asked.
“Oh, like money?” He looked idly up at her as his hooves got to work with what Lyra recognized as the sonar. “Never been good with that, no. Sorry, but I need a minute.” Octavia dutifully stayed quiet as the Doctor's attention refocused on the submarine. He drew his sonic screwdriver from a pocket and trained it on a nonspecific gadget.
Lyra's attention was not on the submarine, though. Unable to help herself, she moved her bubble closer to Anoese and asked, “Excuse me, Mr. Chief Anoese? Do you mind if I ask you a weird question?”
He raised an eyebrow as his gaze met hers. “What sort of weird question?”
“Is it true that seapony tears can help bring back the dead?”
His eyes narrowed in confusion. “What are 'tears'?”
“Uh....” I guess I should take that as a no. “They're these things, these drops of water, that come out of a pony's eyes when they're sad. Or if they're allergic.”
Lyra got the feeling that if Anoese had a foreleg, he'd have rested it on her shoulder in a fatherly way. It would certainly have matched the smile he was giving her; warm, paternal, and mildly infuriating. “My dear Lyra, I don't believe I've heard of anything like that, but I'm certain I'd be delighted to see it.”
Lyra pouted. Over Anoese's shoulder, she saw Octavia stifle a chuckle.
“Aha!” the Doctor said, pocketing the screwdriver. “Chief Anoese, I'm afraid I'll have to prove you wrong. The Nautilus is not broken beyond repair after all.”
“Really?” Mariana asked, coming down to inspect the sub herself.
“Oh, yeah, I mean, it'll never be ocean-worthy again, so that's a downside. But a lot of its systems can definitely be salvaged. Could someone help me, ah....” He got behind the Nautilus, shoved his hooves beneath it, and pulled up. Octavia was there a second later, also helping him. “Thank you,” he said. “No, not you,” he said further, as Anoese moved to help as well. “You've got to be our guide, remember?”
Within minutes, they'd reached the seapony village—though calling it a village was being nice. As the Doctor looked around, pushing the Nautilus meter by meter, he recognized the unmistakable air of a refugee camp. Seaponies—fathers, mothers, and foals, too many for the size of the town—floated in the streets in silence, watching the newcomers with muted hope. Some foals were playing games of tag, but even so, sadness colored the background of their glee, and their childish screams of happiness were muted too.
Something else the Doctor couldn't help but notice: they all shared Anoese's green coloration, and his kelp-like hair, but none of them shared his age. Had all of the elders made the same judgment as Anoese—that the old weren't worth as much?
“Here,” Anoese said, as they reached a large coral structure. He went in first and rested his trident near the door. The Doctor let the Nautilus come to rest in front of it, then entered the building. Inside it were more elaborate versions of the swirls that he'd seen in the abandoned home from before, and many artifacts of the sea rested on the shelves; shells, starfish skeletons, and more.
Floating near the floor were Rusty Davey and Seabiscuit, both of whom smiled as they saw the others enter. “Captain, Chief,” Rusty said, inclining his head. His cap was slightly tilted, revealing a kelp bandage over his head wound. He lifted a hoof to indicate the Doctor and his friends. “Who are these?”
The Doctor introduced them all again, then said, “We're here to help. We might be able to get some more use out of the Nautilus, but before we do that, I need to know what attacked you. Did you see it at all?”
“Us? No!” Seabiscuit shuddered. “No windows in the sub. And sonar couldn't tell us anything about them, except that they were moving too fast. Ask him—” he pointed at Chief Anoese “—he at least saw them.”
Anoese frowned. “I did, and they are indeed what has been attacking us these past moons, but we have no name for them yet. Red they are, with large purple... frills on their tops and bottoms. Like eels, but large enough to swallow a seapony in one bite in their toothy maws—that, I can attest to.”
Octavia blinked. “Say that again. The last sentence, with the same words.”
Anoese seemed confused, but he dutifully reiterated. “Like eels, but large enough to swallow a seapony in their toothy maws—”
“Yes, that,” Octavia said, waving for him to stop as she squeezed her eyes shut. “I've heard about something like that somewhere. Read about it. I'm not sure. What else about them, what do we know?”
“They attack out of rock tunnels?” Lyra said. “Tunnels they dig themselves?”
“Yes, yes, tunnels, rock tunnels, excavators, quarry... quarry.” Her eyes shot open. “Quarray eels.”
“What?” the Doctor said. “Quarray eels—what are those?”
“The chief just described them. I think I read about them in a book once, but... it's weird.” She frowned. “If memory serves, they're always found in gorges, ravines, the kind above ground. That is to say, they have gills—they are eels, after all—but if I remember correctly they're close to vestigial. There's no reason for them to be attacking down here—”
She stuck a hoof into her forehead, then looked at the Doctor in a weary way. “Oh, not again.”
“Not what again? Wait....” The Doctor took a moment, then he realized what she meant. “Them.” She nodded.
“What?” Lyra asked.
The Doctor gritted his teeth. “A bunch of animals are acting against their natural instincts and attacking ponies—and seaponies, in this case.” He turned to Anoese. “The eels that attacked you—did you see anything wrong with their eyes? Were they glowing?”
“Thinking back....” Anoese rubbed his chin. “Yes, they glowed bright red.”
“The Order of Four,” the Doctor said, glowering fiercely. “Those—those pointless idiots!”
“Uh, the who?” Seabiscuit asked.
“A cult of cowardly anarchists who can't see more than one step ahead of their own stupid plots!” His volume was rising. “Somehow they knew you were down here,” he shouted, turning to Anoese. “Somehow they found out about you first, and instead of doing something good or even purposeful they set these monsters on you—why? Just for destruction's sake?”
“Doctor?” Octavia said.
“Those stupid—what is the POINT of them?”
Octavia darted toward him and shoved her hoof over his mouth. They stared eye to eye for a few seconds, and the intensity of her gaze told him that he’d done something very wrong. “There's something else I remember about quarray eels,” she hissed. “Their best sense is hearing. It's how they hunt.”
Oh, the Doctor thought. The room was silent.
And then, by degrees, it was not.
The Doctor was certain he heard it first, but it wasn't long before the looks of fear on everyone's face told him that they heard it too. There was something rumbling beneath them, with the intensity of a volcano coming to the surface—and it was moving quickly.
Of course, he thought. They can tunnel through solid rock, and this reef is grown upon sand. “Move,” he mouthed, jabbing a hoof to the door. No one wasted time.
Once the Doctor was outside Anoese's house, it was clear that the seaponies in the streets heard the quaking too. The only sounds from them were the muffled cries of children; even they knew to be quiet.
Anoese turned to the Doctor and mouthed, “I need to clear the streets.” He'd grabbed his trident, and now he darted away from the rest of them and started swimming in a spiral pattern, with his house at the center. The refugees understood and swam frantically away, so that within a minute it was just the Doctor, his companions, and the crew of the Nautilus in the streets.
The noise reached a fortissimo—and then, for some reason, disappeared. Perhaps what was below the surface was rearing back for its final blow. Above the seafloor, Chief Anoese's mouth sagged, and he readied his trident. The Doctor stared with bated breath, not at him, but just above the house, where he knew it had to happen.
The calm broke. Anoese's home exploded, and the quarray eel burst from the instantaneous ruin—huge as a runaway train and faster than a pyroclastic flow. Its eyes glowed bright red, and its jaw was unhinged, ready for prey.
Stay tuned: Tomb of the Aquanauts will resume in just a moment.
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For the people who are reading this for the first time because you saw my recent update, I'm doing a Q&A on my blag! After you've caught up, shoot me your questions, and I'll try to answer them! (Rules for submission are shown in that post.)
Tricky to use and direct lightining attacks underwater, unless an air, steam jet is used frst to make a coaxial conductor thats lower resistance than the sea water?
Hey, Quarry Eels have supersentivie hearing, and the Doctor has a Sonic Screwdriver. Which frequencies are driving the things mad, and how loud does it have to be to make them go away?
Has the Doctor watched Tremors?
KILL IT! KILL IT WITH FIRE!
Calling it now. Blue Shift is a timelord. Probably the Master but perhaps someone else. You might want to see if he owns a fob watch Doctor.
Yay, it updates! I'm surprised at Vinyl, she seems like the type who would be excited about getting into trouble.
Now you've got me wondering about this Blue Shift guy.. Though I suppose that was the point.
4959826 Ah, you picked up on the hearing thing. And I dunno if the Doctor's watched Tremors, but I haven't.
4960476 I hope you understand there may be a bit of a problem with that.
4960828 Oh, I'll never tell~
Well, that's a lie, but I'll tell at my own pace.
4964394 Vinyl may be excited about getting into trouble herself, perhaps, but... well, who's she trying to convince to not go?
Also, to all y'all... Q&A is still a thing, as stated in my previous comment!
4964594 Awwww.......
Plz?
Napalm?
4964594 Oh I don't expect you to tell. It's not fun spoiling things for us.
I'm surprised you haven't seen Tremors though. That's the very first thing I thought of when you talked about them burrowing under the ground and relying on sound.
And Q&A question. Any plans for any of the Doctor's enemies to make their way to this universe? (Perhaps Cyber'ponies' or Daleks.)
4964859 If you don't mind, could you send that question to me in a PM? It makes things easier to keep track of. Thanks. :)
If Vinyl's sole motivation was to protect Octavia, then she probably would've gone with her after Octavia made it clear that she was going regardless. I'm not convinced.
I love this line.
Another fun chapter! Looking forward to the next!
4965412 That was necessary. Can't you see? Have you seen the finale where the three meet up? Ten and Eleven are AFRAID of One, because HE kills. They don't.
4968374 In all honesty, I don't think you were paying attention, either to facts or to themes.
It wasn't a finale.
And yet another factual mistake on your part: they met the War Doctor, not the First Doctor.
Oh, and by the way? They kill all the time! Ten killed the Sycorax leader in his first episode, and sent the Time Lords back into the lock in his last. Eleven was often less direct, but he engineered the genocide of the Silence. You want to call this necessary, or self-defense? Sure. But ending the Time War was necessary to save the universe.
They're not afraid of the War Doctor because "he kills and they don't"—they're afraid of him because they are him, and that version of him did something so extreme that his future selves can't quite live with it yet. Frankly, the Doctor is a bit of a hypocrite, as the series sometimes demonstrates; he's got quite a high KDR for someone who claims to abhor violence.
But over the course of that very episode, they come to terms with it and let him know that he was a better Doctor than either one of them, because he was the Doctor when there was no right choice to make. (I'm paraphrasing slightly.)
Frankly, I'm beginning to think that you're just doing this:
img.4plebs.org/boards/pol/image/1390/45/1390455824625.jpg
4964859 Yeah Tremors for the win!
Graboids are a nasty funny bunch of earthworms/snakes.
4960828 When does that take place again? After 'The End of Time'? If yes, then the Master must have changed a bit.
He now knows that the drums he heard were actually a signal implemented by the high counsel, not a figment of his imagination or a side effect of him looking into the Untempered Schism. He should know that, because as far as I can remember, it was revealed as a hoax right before him. There never were any "drums of war", just a relay signal for Rassilon to locate.
Which is also the reason why he wanted to destroy the plans of Rassilon and worked together with the Doctor before the situation escalated.
The drums were one of the main reasons why the Master became so mad as well. They practically shaped him.
Additionally, he never knew where these drum sounds came from, so he assumed his own theory's of what they were, why they torment him so. This insecurity though, was relieved the moment he was told by Rassilon what the drums purpose was, an artificial signal implemented by the high counsel under Rassilon's order.
Since he is aware, that there was a perfectly logical explanation for these drums all along, that they were part of Rassilon's plan, I suppose he won't be bothered by them that much anymore.
That said, he may even have found a way to block out the signal for himself, because he knows what exactly the problem is and where it lies.
But aside from that, a good chunk of the master's madness should have dissipated by this revelation, else he wouldn't have trusted the doctor with that gun shot in the end of time.
So if this blue/blond time-lord is the master, wether the pony persona is aware of that or not, though I believe he is aware, since he already made so many characteristic remarks, plus he called them 'ponies' when referring to the crowd, he may actually have changed his ways, because there are no 'drums of war' that sporadically keep him from going saner again. He knows it's just a signal, and he may have turned it off or blocked it out already for himself.
IF the author had a different idea of the master, still the tyrannical madman person he once was, and he was going to use him that way again, I may suggest to think this over.
But then again, I'm not sure when this actually takes place, so I have to go and look it up.
Despite that, it's nice to speculate about the masters change in attitude, if he survived after the 'The End of Time', right? He always wanted to show the doctor the drums of war, but the truth is there never were any drums of war. That must have changed him somewhat, to the better.
4971254 Yeah it starts right after the end of time. It's quite possible that the Master has reformed a bit, give that Blue Shift has yet to do anything openly malicious.
Of course it's possible that he's another timelord and there's certainly enough from the original series to pick from if that's the case. After all what better way to hide from the time war than as a colorful talking pony in an alternate universe.
This assumes I'm even right about him being a timelord and not someone else the Doctor's run into. Although the only person I can think of off the top of my head that the Doctor's meet and has the technical knowledge is Davros.
Mind you this all depends on my assumptions that the Doctor's thoughts about Blue Shift being familiar is because he's from the Doctor's universe is correct. And you know what say when you assume something.
4975651 It's not as much a pretense as a difficulty, but maybe it's easier for her to care than she thinks? In any case, she wasn't DIRECTLY responsible for his death: he had a chance to survive and he chose not to.
Oh, and for the people who are making all these comments about Blue Shift....
4972090 He is probably a time-lord, given the mark is the same as the doctor's and what really urges me to believe he wasn't always a pony is the fact that he called the crowd 'ponies'under his breath. So I guess if he is the master, then he is aware of his circumstances.
In addition, there is the familiar way how he treats the Doctor, his character somewhat fits how the Master dealt with the doctor after he became 'Harold Saxon', minus his maliciousness.
I just pointed out that the drums, where responsible for the masters madness, but since he is aware that theses weren't any drums, he should be much more saner now, losing a good chunk of his evilness.
Plus the a blue blond haired stallion is generally known in the fandom as the master, especially since discord whooves tumblr.
Nautilus, huh?
ddragon.leagueoflegends.com/cdn/img/champion/splash/Nautilus_0.jpg
BEWARE THE DEPTHS.
5255942 I can guarantee you that she isn't.
Am I the only one thinking that Blue Shift is a future regeneration of The Doctor using a Chameleon Arch?