Vortexes are Magic

by JeckParadox

Change in the Air Part 1

The Doctor looked at the door of the Tardis, then turned to have one last look at the monitor, exactly one hundred years ago, in the center of Ponyville. "Alright Pinkie Pie, we are about fifty meters from where Sugarcube Corner stands in your time, but one hundred years in the past, how about that?"

"Eee!" She squealed, letting out a dance she had been keeping inside herself. She rushed to the door of the Tardis, and begging the Doctor with her eyes to get first look.

"Fine." The Doctor sighed.

Pinkie Pie gave him hug. "Ponyville! Here I come!" Pinkie Pie burst out of the door, expecting to see people dressed in older costumes outside, but nothing. there was only fields of overgrown grass & a variety of herbs and wildflowers, the only plants that grew by themselves in Equestria. behind the Tardis stood the ever-growing fields of the Everfree. In the distance she could see one solitary sapling that had leaped ahead of the forest. She gave a few looks around, and her mane deflated slightly. "W-where is everything?"

The Doctor gave a quick look around, and narrowing his eyes, went back to the monitor. He checked and double checked it. "When was Ponyville founded?"

"...The Apple family, Applejack's great grandparents actually." Pinkie Pie tried to remember the exact date. "Um... 913... I think."

The Doctor rechecked, "Then we are about a decade too early to meet them. And even then it'll just be a few struggling families." The Doctor looked around. He Noted the tree. "I think that may be your library." He pointed to it.

Pinkie Pie looked at the tree with a kind of sad smile. "Huh, do you think I could bury something by it?"

"I don't know... do you think it would change the future a lot?"

"...No, I just think it'll be something to prove we were here."

"Pinkie Pie, first Ponyville citizen to walk the grounds of Ponyville." The Doctor said as if he were reading off of something. this made Pinkie's ears perk up, and her mane inflated a little bit more as well. "But, Ponyville isn't very suitable for living the good life yet, so why don't we try to find somewhere else? One of the older cities, ones that are already standing?" He looked at the monitor, and looked over a list. "Ooh, have you ever been to Cloudsdale?"

Pinkie's smile reached from end to end. "I have, it's great there! I tasted a rainbow!"

The Doctor's thoughts immediately went back to his Earth. "Hehehe, taste the Rainbow eh? Was it sweet?"

"Nope, super-spicy, and I put hot-sauce on cupcakes sometimes, so I know Spicy!"

The Doctor imagined Pinkie putting hot sauce on a cupcake and eating it, with comical flames shooting from her ears. He stopped laughing after he realized that could honestly happen in this universe. "I can't wait to try some, is it really made of clouds?"

"Yep!"

"I've been on Cloud cities before, varying from ones as soft as concrete to as hard as cotton candy."

"I've eaten cotton candy clouds before!" Pinkie threw in.

The Doctor simply laughed with her, setting the controls for Cloudsdale. Pinkie saw him getting ready, and pulled out a 'welcome to Ponyville' card she had made a while back. She grabbed an empty box with a latch-lock and put it inside. She ran off with it, and went up to the young tree, bending slightly under the weight of it's own branches. "Here you go, I hope that the feeling in this box spreads." She dug a skinny hole, somewhat near the tree, careful not to damage any of it's roots. She placed the box, then she picked it up, brushed it off, and kissed it, and placed it back at the bottom of the hole, about three feet below the roots. The Doctor watched as Pinkie Pie dug a hole for a half hour, being careful to not damage the tree in the slightest. She climbed up with a wide smile, glowing radiantly despite being covered in muck. She refilled the hole and pronked over to the Tardis. "Ready to go!" She announced. Then she narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "Why didn't you help me?"

"It looked like it was private." The Doctor answered simply. "Something between you and one of your friends, you and your home."

Pinkie gave a deep, calm smile, that was unlike her. "Yeah, I guess you're right." Her smile became more enthusiastic. "So, are we heading to Cloudsdale or not?"

"It's already set, do you want to wash up first? I don't think it would be very polite of us to go to their pristine white city and hop around trailing mud everywhere."

"Sure, just lead me to the bath!"

Pinkie Pie and the Doctor looked over the gigantic white city, a mass of clouds that had been curled over dozens of times, with pillars supporting the shape of it. Water flowed out of carefully made trenches in the cloud, the sewage of the city, and the natural excess condensation of the clouds, pouring out. The sides and tops of every cloud had great pillars supporting it. This was where the weather of Equestria was planned, manufactured, and delivered. Cloudsdale was the product of thousands of Pegasi weather scientists, architects, and casually overseen by Princess Celestia. "Amazing..." The Doctor said, looking over the mass of white. "and we can walk on it?"

"Well-" Pinkie Pie began, then her pupils became pinpricks as the Doctor's hooves left the Tardis. She ran to the door, reaching out with both fore legs for the Doctor, but he was simply standing on it like it was normal ground. Like he was a pegasus. "Doctor!"

"What?"

"You are standing on a cloud!"

"So? There's a bunch of other ponies over there, doing the same thing."

"But you- You don't have wings!"

"So?" He looked at the Pegasi in the distance. "They aren't flapping their wings."

"It's magic, Pegasi are magical, all ponies are magical, Pegasus magic let's them control the weather, walk on clouds, make wind & make rainbows and all that other stuff."

The Doctor looked down, he slowly turned toward the Tardis's door, and jumped in, crashing on the other side of the Tardis's great hall. "WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME?!"

"How were you walking out there?!"

"I don't know!" The Doctor yelled. A unicorn walked past the Tardis, taking a casual look inside it. She let out a breath, about to either faint or gasp at the much large inside of the box. "Pinkie, capture her!"

"Yes sir!" Pinkie grabbed the yellow unicorn, dragging her inside, shutting the door behind her.

The Doctor pulled out his screwdriver and waved it over the unicorn. "Hmm... well what do you know, this thing has absolutely no way of sensing magic." He turned to the confused unicorn. "Now then, how were you walking out there?"

"A-a cloud walking spell, how is this bigger on the inside?"

"That's a secret, now, how many times can you do that spell?"

"I- I'm Sunflower Spark, I'm the owner of Sunflower Vacations. I... I do the spell on rich Earth Ponies or Unicorns, and they spend their vacations up here."

"... Can you do it on my friend here, and tell me if I already have it on me?"

"Will you explain how your box is... like this?"

"Fine, I'll try, now spells please."

Sunflower looked over the two of them, her horn glowing at Pinkie's feet. "There, your friend can cloud walk, and you... I don't know what you are... the closest thing... I don't know, you have an incredible magic within you, a magic I have never come into contact with, you aren't an Earth Pony."

"I'm not, exactly. I'm not sure what I am in this world."

"You... you have two hearts."

Pinkie's eyes widened. "Yes, I do."

"And your stomach, it has all that stuff before it, and I don't even know what that is-"

"Enough!" The Doctor yelled, both mares taking a step back. "I'm a Time Lord, if you must know, the... last of the Time Lords. All of that stuff is completely natural, probably that magic too. Can I walk on the clouds?"

"...Yes, you can." The unicorn said simply. "And can you explain your box... thing... now?"

"Okay, my Tardis, which is an acronym for Time And Relative Dimension In Space, Is actually two things, a machine, a living thing, a gate to the Time Vortex, and a different dimension, okay four things, the place we are in now is a pocket universe anchored to the 'box', which is a time manipulator, running along the Time Vortex, circulating it inside itself. The door of the box is the meeting point between the box and the pocket dimension, so it really isn't bigger on the inside, it just has another dimension connected to it. The actual transfer is undetectable because the anchor is horizontal to the doors."

"What?"

"It's Time Lord stuff."

"..O-Okay..." Sunflower said simply.

"So, if we were to go walking around a Pegasus-only city, would we be paid attention to?"

"Well, the shops would try to attract your attention, if only because you're fresh customers, but otherwise the people are pretty familiar with my business, in fact I've copyrighted the spell, only I'm allowed to do it... also, you only have three days before I have to refresh the spell, this time was on the house, mostly because I am extremely scared of both of you, but the next time you'll have to pay like everypony else."

"Huh, well then, we might as well go have a look around then, come on Pinkie, let's have a look at a city in the sky!" He held the door open for the two mares, following them out. He pulled out his Sonic Screwdriver and made it glow for a second, and the Tardis vanished. "It's a second out of sync, we don't want to be attracting any unneeded attention, now would we?"

Cloudsdale was magnificent. It was covered with Ancient Greek-styled buildings, with great angular or domed roofs, and occasionally a natural-styled bouncy roof of cloud, supported by pillars of polished and shined cloud. Great stairways led to one building or another, and often to or from midair, meant for Pegasi to have somewhere to land more than as a bridge from on place to another. There were Pegasi filling the air and walking on the white grounds of the city.

"Amazing," The Doctor said, coming to an edge and looking out into the sky and down to the ground far below.

"Hmm... there's quite a lot of air up here... I wonder, do they bring circulate extra oxygen through the city? Or could it be that Equestria simply has a bigger atmosphere?" The Doctor stuck out his tongue and waited for a few seconds. Pinkie stared at him, unsure of what the purpose of this was. "Well, I don't have a clue, what do you want to check out first?"

"Ooh! Well, when I was here before, it was to cheer on my friend Rainbow Dash, who was part of this really really really important flying contest, so I saw the flight stadium, and... she showed me where the weather is made! They make snowflakes there! And they make rainbows, and the clouds, and they have this big water collection machine which they use to spread rain into the clouds... It was pretty cool. But otherwise I didn't see much touristy stuff. Maybe Sunflower's business didn't work out so well in the future, Twilight found that spell she had in the public library,"

"Hmm... well, let's go check out the factory then! It'd be fun to see a place where they make the weather, I've been places where people control the weather, where people make clouds even, but I've never seen someone mix up a pot of rainbow and dump it in the sky before."

At the rain-production facility a maroon pegasus mare walked down the white halls of the management area. Occasionally giving a nod of recognition to a fellow coworker, and a friendly, trustworthy smile to anypony higher ranked than her that she passed. She came to an office that said 'Rainy Day' on the front. She gulped and clutched at the paperwork under her wing. She came in to face a gray-blue pegasus stallion with an unkempt soot-black mane. He was wearing a gray suit that purposefully showed his cutie mark, a gray cloud with rain pouring down from it, obscuring the sun. He had stated that it was that his special talent was bringing life-giving water to the earth, but his subordinates decided that it probably had more to do with his need to 'rain on their parades'. Whenever something was planned for after work, or if they were expecting to go home early, something would come up and make everypony stay later. There was also the strange occurrence of heavy rain whenever he went down to the ground.

All of this added up to the conclusion that no one liked, trusted, or felt comfortable around Rainy Day, and especially not the maroon mare. "Eh, what are you doing here? I thought I gave you a new production order an hour ago, do you need new work?" The stallion said with a gritty voice loaded with irritation for just about everything.

"Uh... no, but the weather pony work force wants to delay their rainfall by two days in Hoofington."

"What?!" Rainy Day got up and put his face up to the poor mare's. "Why?!"

"I-I don't know, but, here, go through it yourself!" She backed away from the smell of wet cigars, handing the blue stallion the paperwork. She backed out of the office and threw in, "I'll get that production order through fast as possible now, sir." And she galloped away, pumping her wings for a little extra speed. She came to the mare's bathroom and locked herself in a stall. She let out another sigh and green waves fire-like magic enveloped her, leaving behind a black pony with liquidy compound blue eyes, with a twisted, holey horn and insect-like wings.

The Changeling looked at herself in the mirror and let out yet another sigh. "Mission accomplished." She said to herself proudly.

Pinkie and the Doctor were wearing white industrial suits, apparently they were still just as careful a hundred years ago. "And here is where we poor highly condensed water into the machines, then high-density clouds are expelled and rise up to the ceiling on the warm air coming from our heated floors, on the ceiling they are collected and pumped to various transportation centers, where Pegasi fill out our orders and move them all over Equestria, and even foreign nations." The Tour Guide explained to his group, who for the most part, weren't paying much attention. Actually, there was only one pony who was paying attention, and the others were all fixated on him.

The Doctor raised his hoof as if he was still in elementary school, which might not have been the wrong thing to do, since they were on the tour with a field trip group. "How exactly do you turn the water into clouds, do you boil it, are clouds just steam? Or is there a special process for clouds Pegasi can walk on?" At every stop the Doctor asked questions of the tour guide, often going into specifics the intern didn't understand and couldn't answer. The school children were staring at the two Earth Ponies, and it was actually likely that they had never seen ponies without wings before.

The Doctor's attention was drawn away though, by a maroon pegasus flying past, not caring when the workers making the clouds grumbled toward her.

She flew by, her eyes catching the Doctor's, and his questioning look sent a shiver down her spine. The Doctor's face darkened as he saw the fear in her face. "Now what's up with her?" He turned to his Earth Pony friend, "Pinkie, I think I smell trouble."

"Ooh, Goody! This tour was getting boring anyway!" Pinkie pronked off after the pegasus, noticing for the first time what might have been a signal from her Pinkie sense. "And... there's something wrong with her... I can't place it." Pinkie eyes widened as she realized what it meant. "Doctor! We do have trouble!"

SEASON 2 SPOILERS AHEAD

"What exactly is a changeling?" The Doctor asked as the galloped across the puffy streets.

"Okay, a few months ago we went to a wedding for Twilight's brother, and it was a great party, but right before it we found out that a changeling was trying to marry him, and had disguised herself as his bride, and I have this weird sixth sense that lets me tell the future, but for some reason I couldn't tell that the bride was a fake- but my Pinkie Sense was working, my heart was beating a little faster whenever I got close to a changeling!"

"So that mare was a changeling, and they do what exactly?"

"They kidnap ponies, turn into them, and then live out their lives for them, and they eat the love that the other ponies give the one they are pretending to be."

"Your kidding."

"I know it sound weird but-"

"No, no... it's just... for me, that's normal. Happens all the time actually, what you just told me is the most familiar thing I've encountered in this world."

"What about the Daleks? You said you knew them!"

"They were acting weird. This is normal!"

"But she was afraid of us."

"I'm the Doctor, of course-" The Doctor glanced at Pinkie face. "No... your right, I don't exactly have a reputation in this world yet... or do I?"

The maroon mare stopped behind a pillar of cloud. The two Earth Ponies, who were somehow walking on the clouds, were still following her, even after she was sure she had gotten completely out of their sights. Her head was spinning with various thoughts. Were they changeling hunters? Changelings themselves? Why were they chasing her? How much did they know? She hesitantly flew into a concealed tunnel, the cloud was just thick enough that it wasn't transparent, but not dense enough that a pegasus, or a changeling, couldn't fly through. She inched into the tunnel, careful not to leave any obvious dent in the wall, and entered the expansive maze of sewers inside the city in the sky. She flew down it skillfully, having memorized it years ago, and came to a large cavern in the clouds. The entire room was covered by an eery green glow by the gelatinous slime stuck to the walls and ceiling, serving as lighting, a source of energy, food, and a prison for their many victims. Inside the slime were hundreds of cocoons, siphoning off pleasant dreams, and keeping their prisoners alive and well.

She stopped by a maroon mare, well, a filly actually, trapped in her own cocoon. She had spent the last six years inside there, the changeling looked over her disguised body with a sad smile. Sunset was a beautiful mare, and the Changeling, who had come to calling herself Sunset II from her lack of a given name, wondered if Sunset I would appreciate the form II had chosen to imagine for an older her. Sunset II would live out I's life for her, get married, have full-pony children even, and eventually they would retire her, and Sunset II would play dead after maybe another sixty years, and she would be buried, (She had to remember that, it would be hard for her fellow changelings to free her from being burned to ashes than from being trapped in a coffin). Then Sunset I would be released when it was decided that the Changelings no longer had use for Cloudsdale or Equestria, and she would despair from knowing her life had been lived out by some hideous creature.

Sunset II looked down at her own legs, she was shaking, why was that? Oh yes, she was being chased. She galloped over to the center of the room, where the feminine perfect black body of their beautiful queen lay. Next to her side was a baby Changeling, one of the many their queen had over the centuries. She looked down at him and smiled, pulling some goo from the wall and wrapping him in it, allowing him to eat his way out of the warm blanket.

"M-My Queen?"

Chrysalis raised her green-blue dragon-like eyes to the Pegasus mare in front of her. "Yes my little one?"

"I was being chased, by two Earth Ponies, they saw me while I was disguised, and for some reason they started chasing after me!"

"Why would they chase after you?" The queen moved her strong, full legs up to her face and moved some of her vibrant sapphire hair out of her eyes. She frowned, showing a fang. "Do they know what we are, or why we are here?"

"I-I don't know my Queen, I got out of their sight many times, but they continued tracking me somehow. But neither are unicorns."

"Hmm... lure them here. I'll deal with them myself. She got up to her full height, even taller than Celestia, with a much fuller and thicker build. Her insect-like wings rose up behind her, and her eyes glowed with a mix of green and blue. "They'll regret scaring one of my children, or stepping hoof into my city!"

"Doctor! She's through this wall!"

"Alright, we need to find a way around it, and..." He stopped talking as he watched Pinkie blow on it, letting it quiver. "It's just cloud, but if we can stand on it it has to be strong enough to hold a pony in place, how is this cloud any different?"

Pinkie reached a hoof in and started waving it around, disturbing the wall and leaving an ugly hole. "It's just thin, come on!"

"Fine, but let me go first, it might be dangerous."

The Doctor and Pinkie entered the sewers of Cloudsdale.

Comments

[Slateblu1]

*Curl non-existent moustache* hmmmm.... Intresting...

I must agree, that is pretty standard fare for the Doctor.

I look forward to more.

Ohh, and I must add, there were multiple grammatical errors throughout. Not enough to detract from the story, though they did cause me to trip over them as I read. A quick once over would do some good.

[JeckParadox]

1518524 Thanks for commenting, I'm glad that someone likes my stories, as for the errors, I don't exactly have a pre-reader or editor to check for things like that, and the time I have on the website I spend most of writing, or reading other people's work, not going over stuff I already wrote. I fix any errors that I see, but it's probable I missed a lot. Anyway, thanks for reading, I'll be making this story for a long time.

[SP00KY NINJA-PON3]

What the hell!?!? Dislikes?!?! IMPOSIBRU!!!