Killing Time

by JohnnyNorthrain

Regeneration

Some walls are built to keep things out. The type of things that can cause harm or just scare people and ponies or make a general annoyance of things such as rain, snow and the occasional bear wandering around through the town. Other walls are built to keep things in such as those of a prison cell or the chamber where I was currently sitting on a chair made for ponies with my back aching and my shoulder protesting the position I was sitting in.

Across from me was the corpse of another hourglass pony laid out on a bed with a sheet draped over its face. This chamber was deep within the castle cut off from the outside world and held four of us including the dead pony. Minuette Colgate and Lyra Heartstrings occupied positions along the wall watching me as much as they did the corpse. I had been told to wait by Colgate and remain silent. Wait for what? We’d been here ten minutes waiting for nothing. I could heart their breathing echoing off the stone brick of this deep place.

The walk from the palace to the city had taken me longer than I wished. I had been shot only a day before and my body groaned the entire way against the motion. My arm though healing had hurt too much and I had to make a sling with extra bandages just to restrict its movement. When we approached the scene it had been marked off and inside the watch maker’s shop was the dead pony. There were no marks on the body and no blood to be seen. I had expected a shooting since Nickolas still had my gun and had stated in the note that he would use it. Colgate called for a stretcher and draped a sheet over the pony then we made the journey back to the palace and deep into cells that had no reason for existing in a peaceful world. They must have been a dark secret of the palace from times past for there was no recent usage of these chambers.

There was a break in the sound of three breaths as the door opened and the Doctor entered carrying a lantern in his mouth. He sat it down and it added to the other hanging from a hook on the wall. He came and sat in the chair next to me and tilted his head to the side.
“I lost the disc that you gave me.” I told him and heard a sigh from Colgate.
“I said be silent.” She scolded me. “We won’t hear it if you talk.”
“It’s already starting but it will take a bit since he’s pretty far gone. It’s alright for him to talk Dentist.”
“I told you not to call me that Doctor.” She showed her annoyance in saying each syllable of his name loudly.
“Well I’m not going to call you Colgate. Sounds like a toothpaste. In fact it is on some worlds.” He turned his gaze towards me. “So you lost the disc? That’s not particularly good… what disc was that now?”
“The one you gave me. You said it was part of Chrysalis or from her.”
“Oh so Chrysalis has returned?”
“Of course she’s returned. You were there when she attacked us.”
“Glad to know I survived.” He smiled and looked back to the body under the sheet.
“Doctor I lost the disc.” I started to become flustered. “Chrysalis has four of the five now. The only one left belongs to Colgate.”
“Oh good.” He nodded and brushed up against me for a brief moment.
“Good? That’s all you have to say about it? Damn it Doctor she has four of the tokens she needs to break the barrier that five of you put up on the badlands and all you have to say is good.” I growled at the last part.
“Johnny,” Colgate spoke from behind me and I turned around. “He jumps around in time so much that he’s not been there with Chrysalis and us yet.”
“With me Mr.… Johnny… love the name by the way. With me I have not met you yet. I will but right now I haven’t but that does not mean that I did not because I did just now as I entered the room which means when you see me for the first time I’ll already know you but you won’t yet know me. It’s confusing if you don’t have the type of mind to follow it. Timelines are always intersecting in strange ways. So what are we waiting for exactly Dentist?”
“We’re waiting for him to regenerate.” She rolled her eyes. “You said so yourself that it had already started.”
“I say a lot of things and I can’t always be sure of them. Who’s he going to be this next time I wonder. Hopefully not ginger.”

Having given up understanding the two Time Lords I turned my head forward and closed my eyes. They continued on goading each other and talking about people and placed I did not know. The word regenerate came up once more and I started to ask what it meant when Lyra’s hoof pushed against my good shoulder and she nodded towards the body. A golden glow came from under the sheet and there was a sudden brightness through the fabric. Suddenly with a collective explosion of golden light the sheet dropped free and a completely different pony sat on the bed.

The old pony had been a combination of blue and creamy white. This new one had an orange mane and a tan coat. He stamped his hooves a couple times on the mattress then stood up and clicked his tongue feeling the teeth in his mouth. To the Time Lords this seemed as if it was a perfectly natural thing to have a pony completely change from one version to another. Lyra and I we were struck speechless while the tan pony suddenly found himself looking at his reflection in a mirror that Colgate had supplied.
“Oh that’s interesting indeed. New voice as well and higher pitched. I wonder if I still like apples.”
“Apples are rubbish.” The Doctor tossed something to the tan pony.
“Good evening Doctor. Or is it morning? Hard to tell down here.”
“It’s always morning somewhere. Right now though we need to get down to business.”
“You brought along a Human? You are Human aren’t you? Fantastic a Human. I haven’t seen one of you in Equestria in probably a decade.” The tan pony smiled then threw a medallion around his neck, the one that the Doctor had tossed to him.
“I thought that Nickolas took that.” I stared at the medallion. It was one of the tokens.
“Nickolas is the other Human I presume? Well not quite Human but once was. I stopped time locally and he was just far enough away that it did not affect him. An unfortunate side effect of that is being for all intents and purposes dead until your body catches up to current time.”
“If you weren’t dying why did you regenerate?” Colgate asked from my side.
“Oh I was definitely dying. He thought he’d be sneaky and put poison on my tea cake. It would have worked… I did eat it… and pretty much I died. Except stopping time gave me enough time to start the process and he thought he was so clever in coming for the token yet he did not know that I’d already that very morning given it to the Doctor.”
“Yes and a fine thing you did Crusader.” The Doctor nodded.

I stood from the chair and took off my hat running my finger over the brim. Stopping time coupled with dying and not dying and then coming back from the dead but as a new pony was all too much for me. I excused myself from the chamber and headed up towards the surface where there would be fresh air and something I could comprehend like the sun or a cloud or… anything beyond all this craziness. My partner followed me without any words and even though I became lost twice blessedly she said nothing. Finally I emerged into a courtyard through a door and exhaled as soon as the sun kissed my skin. With my hat back on my head I sat down on the grass folding my legs under me and Lyra sat directly in front of me her yellow eyes staring into my blue.
“How in the hell am I supposed to understand any of that?” I exclaimed slapping my good hand down on the grass.
“I don’t quite get it either.” She shrugged her shoulders.
“I think we should probably go back to Ponyville. Go back to the boring missing cat cases and just forget about any of this.”
“That’s probably a good idea but what about Chrysalis?”
“To hell with her.”
“I’m all for giving up under some circumstances but not this time. She’s out there and she wants a way back in and I can’t let her do that. You can’t let her do that.”
“I know… but what can we do Lyra? She’s powerful and Nick is a Changeling and now we have Time Lords that come back from the dead and stop time and I’m just a guy that’s been shot and slowly turning into a Changeling.”
“You have something else going for you.” She offered a weak smile.
“Celestia is furious with me?”
“Well that, but you look good in a Fedora.”
“You don’t look so bad yourself kid.”

I tapped the tip of her hat and we both shared a soft laugh. There really was nothing that either of us could do at the moment. Nick had failed in killing the… Crusader I thought the Doctor called him. He’d failed and also failed to retrieve the token which meant that there were still two out of their hands. That was something to build hope upon but I don’t rely on hope. Hope is what you have when all is pretty much lost and it gets you nowhere except a cold grave or a dark alley. The people I knew that had relied on hope ended up dead. Sometimes I wondered if they were the lucky ones not having to deal with life anymore. I shook my head and dismissed the thought. That type of thinking led back to regret and back into that deep abyss.

I pushed my hat off my head and lay back on the grass feeling the cool blades against my skin. Lyra slumped beside me and closed her eyes letting out a long sigh. I probably should have stayed in bed and my shoulder was killing me but I was never the type to stay down when an injury happened. My first year on the force I’d been stabbed by a crook who was trying to mug some poor random victim. They stitched me up and I drank half a bottle of whiskey and was back on the beat the next day. No down time for Johnny Northrain. Of course that was before I’d been shot. The wounds did not even compare in pain or severity. At least there was magic here that could help mend my shoulder but even that still took time.

After a few minutes of sun bathing with my thoughts Colgate joined the two of us. We sat up and she dropped a pocket watch in front of my feet. It was my watch and I picked it up seeing that there was something different about it. The bullet dent was still in the face but inside had been completely replaced and the roman numerals were slightly glowing blue against their usual black. My hand went to my coat pocket and felt nothing.
“I had this in my pocket when we were waiting for the Crusader to regenerate. How in the hell was it fixed in that short of time and by who?” I asked her slowly getting to my feet.
“Don’t be angry at him but the Doctor stole it from your pocket. He went back a couple days and had it fixed then brought it to me and was waiting outside the chamber door when I exited. The Crusader… now I’m using that nickname. Chrono repaired it and added something extra.”
“What did he add?” I brought the glowing blue numerals close watching them cast a soft light.
“You only get one charge. After that it’ll be completely useless and revert back to being just a standard broken pocket watch.”
“What did he add Colgate?” I asked her again.
“He had to take out the gears you understand. Needed the room for the machine. The hands are what you use to set it. At most you can only get twelve hours out of it. You just move the hands to what time you want…” She quieted as she explained.
“What did he do?” I was starting to get annoyed as she avoided the one question I had.
“Don’t be mad the watch couldn’t have been repaired. Well it could have but this is far more useful than a pocket watch. The Doctor said you’ll need it and you’ll understand when to use it. Just remember that you only get one use out of the watch.”
“Colgate…” I said very slowly moving the watch from my face to look directly into her eyes. “What the hell did he put in my watch?”
“A machine to stop time.”