The Doctor seeks a way to communicate with the TARDIS, but it backfires horribly. With the biggest heroes in the world trapped in a mental prison, it falls to the reassembled CMC to save all of time.
When the Doctor's latest invention backfires spectacularly, it sidelines some of the biggest heroes and most powerful ponies in the world. It falls to the recently reassembled Crusaders to brave Gallifrey's Death Zone and save the day, but how can they do that when they can't even get along like they used to? Can they even save themselves?
Warning tags for themes including major character death, temporary character death, graphic depictions of violence, quite a lot of swearing, body horror, torture (both physical and mental), and some severe self-loathing.
Ditzy was at the helm of the TARDIS, steering it through time and space, letting the laws of physics warp in her wake. She didn’t actually know how to fly the TARDIS, but that didn’t matter. In dreams, you may do anything you like, and never even realize how impossible it is. It was liberating, never being tied to any place or time for longer than you wanted, and she felt like she could just fly on into infinity…
And then she saw the little red light, blinking away on top of the console. Why was it there? There had never been a little red light there before. What did it want with her?
Deep gongs began to ring in the background, echoing through the Ship, and the console shook with the reverberations. Ditzy held on to the console for dear life, trying frantically to land. But already it was too late. The block-transfer equations that comprised the TARDIS’s interior dimensions were all being eaten away piecemeal by the blow she had been dealt, reducing her to the dimensions of a broom closet and the stability of a tin can. As she was pressed up against the console, the constriction crushing her ribs, she looked up at the monitor for an explanation.
Reflected in it was a face she did not recognize, a baleful, pale face that she had never seen before. And yet, she knew whose face it was. Those eyes were unmistakably the Doctor’s. And the face was laughing.
Ditzy sat up with a jolt, blinking in the dim light of early morning. Beside her, the Doctor whined in his sleep and rolled over onto his back. Ditzy watched him for a long moment, then gently ran a hoof through his mane. At first, he grew more restless, but only for a minute. Then, he slipped back into a doze, relaxing under Ditzy’s mindful ministrations. She sighed deeply. This was hardly the first time she’d shared a dream with the Doctor, accidentally or not. Every other night they wound up sharing a fantasy world.
This wasn’t the worst nightmare they’d ever shared, either. The days after Dinky got her cutie mark were particularly traumatic. Lately, though, the nightmares had been growing ever more prevalent in their nightly adventures; dreams where the Doctor wasn’t in time to stop the Daleks, where they had seen their companions converted into Cybermen, where they had suffered a terrible fate in the Time War, or where they had never left Gallifrey at all. Those last ones were the worst of them; Ditzy felt as though she were suffocating for all eternity, right up until the Sontarans came and razed Gallifrey to the ground.
The destruction of the TARDIS wasn’t a new one, either. It, like all of the others, had been going on for months. But every time she went through it, the pain cut a little deeper than it had before. The fear was worse, the anguish more painful. She could only imagine how it must feel for the Doctor.
She kissed his forehead, wishing she could do more, and rolled out of bed. She wasn’t going to sleep anytime soon after that. In the doorway, she paused and looked back over her shoulder. Perhaps she couldn’t do anything more. But she knew somepony who could…
As Ditzy prepared to set off for a long flight, she didn’t notice the red, glowing face of the alarm clock. There was a burst of bright light, and it was gone.
When Dinky went down to the kitchen the next morning, she found it in a state of disarray bordering on the disastrous. “Doctor?” she grumbled, rubbing sleep from her eyes. “Why are you cooking?”
“Why shouldn’t I be?” the Doctor asked, glancing over from where he had been staring intently at the toaster.
Dinky looked around the room. There was egg yolk and shell all over the floor. The aborted remains of an attempt at making pancakes coated the counter. A skillet, covered in grease and burnt hay bacon, smoked quietly in the sink. “I couldn’t possibly say,” Dinky replied.
“Oh, come have some toast,” the Doctor said crossly. No sooner had he spoken than the toast launched itself from the toaster. One slice hit the ceiling and stuck there, and the other went out the window. The Doctor stared at the piece on the ceiling. “Ah. Perhaps I tightened the springs a little too much…”
“Gee, ya think?” Dinky asked.
The Doctor huffed a little. “Here, have a banana,” he said, pulling one off of a bunch and tossing it to her.
They both stood there, eating their breakfast bananas in silence. Eventually, Dinky couldn’t take it anymore. “So where’s mom?”
“She left a note, something about a delivery to Canterlot.”
“Did she say when she’d be back?”
“No, ‘fraid not.” The Doctor glanced around the kitchen. “You’d better clean all this up before she comes home, though.”
Dinky straightened up, indignant. “What? Why me?”
“Well. I’ve got work to do today.”
Dinky rolled her eyes. “Oh, sure, messing around in the TARDIS for tonight.”
“I’m not messing around!” the Doctor protested. “I’m trying to diagnose a serious--”
“Yeah, well, I’m going to see Apple Bloom and Scootaloo in an hour, and you made the mess, so as far as I’m concerned it’s your problem.”
“I--” the Doctor cut himself off. “Scootaloo, you say? Is she back as well?”
For the first time that morning, Dinky smiled. “Yeah. Finally. It’s nice that I got out of college at about the same time she did.”
“Benefits of doing twenty-odd credit hours every semester?”
“Benefits of having a vortex manipulator.”
The Doctor grinned. “You’re welcome.”
Dinky rolled her eyes, but didn’t stop smiling. “Yeah, yeah, thanks.” She paused. “I’m still not cleaning the kitchen.”
The Doctor glanced around the room. Jam had started oozing down the walls. “Yeah, fair enough.”
Dinky levitated a ball cap out from the hall closet and shoved it on her head. “Bye, Doctor.”
He frowned. “Where are you going? I thought you weren’t meeting them for--”
“I’m gonna visit Sugarcube Corner.” She glanced over her shoulder. “For some actual breakfast.”
“How sharper than a serpent’s tooth,” the Doctor said, half-joking. But only half. “Oh, don’t forget, we’re having that get-together later tonight.”
“The party,” Dinky corrected.
“Well, I wouldn’t say--”
“Is Pinkie coming?”
“Well, yes.”
“Then it’s a party.”
“Right. Okay then! Have a nice day, Dinky!”
He heard the click of the door closing, and his face fell. “I love you.”
He stared at his banana peel for a long moment, and then with a sigh, he went to go get the hose.
Up at Sweet Apple Acres, Applejack was making breakfast herself; Germane apple pancakes with maple syrup, eggs sunny-side-up, and some tofu sausage links. Granny was sitting at the table, doing her crossword. Rainbow was hunched over her morning coffee, having stayed the night in the guest room. Mac hadn’t come down yet. Apple Bloom was drawing something on a napkin.
“Doodlin’, Bloom?”
“Sketchin’,” the filly-- the young mare, Applejack forcefully reminded herself-- corrected. “Just some ideas Ah had.”
“That so?” Applejack started flipping over her flapjacks. “Anything we could use on th’ farm?”
Applejack smiled. “Aw, c’mon, Bloom. Ah’m always happy t’ hear what’s cookin’ in that brain o’ yours.”
Something always was, these days. Ever since Bloom had started working at the Doc’s fix-it shop, she’d gotten a voracious appetite for learning new skills. Apprenticing with Zecora, taking painting lessons, studying with Twilight… the list went on and on. Applejack was proud to say that she was the big sister of an honest-to-goodness Renaissance mare.
“Well, alright,” Bloom said reluctantly. “Ah’m tryin’ to figger out a way to make a mechanized cart, so we can transport apples more easily.”
Applejack frowned deeply. “Like that rattletrap contraption them Flim-Flams drove ‘round in?”
“Well, ‘cept for the part where it’s about twenty times more stable, ‘bout a quarter of the size, and won’t stink like a flamin’ outhouse, kinda.”
Applejack’s lips quirked up into a smile. “Heh. It did smell like that, didn’t it?”
“And rotting apples,” Dash put in. Applejack was surprised. Rainbow wasn’t usually sapient until after her second cup of joe.
“An’ burnt rubber,” Granny added. “‘Bout th’ only good part o’ that whole shebing.”
“Shebang, Granny,” Apple Bloom corrected.
Granny looked up. “Eh? Who’d she bang?” She frowned at Rainbow. “There’s a reason we put ye in the guest room.”
Applejack went almost fluorescent with how hard she blushed. “Granny!”
Dash just cocked her head and smiled vaguely. Applejack rolled her eyes. Clearly, the comment about fermenting apples had just been a fluke. “‘Nother coffee Dash?”
“Yesssssss,” the pegasus moaned, letting her head bounce off the table.
“Bloom, would’ja--”
“On it.” Apple Bloom pried the mug from Dash’s wings and poured another half-cup of rich, dark coffee into it. “How d’you want it?”
“Dark as my soul,” Dash muttered.
“Half-cuppa cream, five sugars. Got it.”
“Don’t forget honey.”
“Don’t forget what, sugarcube?” Applejack asked.
Granny snorted with laughter at that, and Rainbow rolled onto her side. “Ayyy-Jayyy, it’s too early to be making puns like that.”
“Oh, just ‘cause you sleep in--”
“I think you woke up before Princess Celestia did. Granny, make AJ stop being such a morning person!”
Applejack rolled her eyes. “Breakfast’s almost ready.”
Dash hummed as she slugged her second cuppa. “Hey, what time is it?”
“‘Bout seven. Why?”
“I’ve got a very important meeting to attend,” Dash said, making an attempt to sound like a pompous Canterlot noble and failing utterly. “An ambassador will be in attendance!”
Apple Bloom frowned. “What in tarnation are you talkin’ about?”
“Oh, that’s today, is it?” Applejack asked. “Well, ‘ccordin’ to Twilight, you ain’t gonna meet her ‘til ten, so you can jes’ sit an’ eat your breakfast.”
“Yeah, yeah, alright.” When Applejack had looked away, Dash turned to Bloom, rolled her eyes, and mouthed, ‘Yes, mom.’
Bloom stifled a snicker as Applejack turned to set the pancakes on the table. She looked at the sole undisturbed chair and scowled. “Big Macintosh! Iffin y’all want yer breakfast, you’d better get yer flank in gear and in this chair!”
There was a sudden thumping sound from above as four hooves came thumping down the staircase. Moments later, an even-redder-than-usual Big Macintosh came into view. “Sorry AJ. Lost tracka time.”
Everypony stared. “Mac,” Applejack began.
Dash cut across her. “Why are you wearing that dress?”
Mac gave her a look like it was obvious. “Needed something t’ wear fer th’ party t’night.”
“Yeah, but why are you wearing that dress?”
“Cause today’s a ‘she’ day.”
“Right, yeah, I get that. Genderfluid and stuff, changes all the time, but why are you--”
“Why are y’all wearin’ mah old Gala dress?”
“Oh,” said Mac. “That’s just ‘cause it’s purty.”
“It’s also ‘bout three sizes too small for you. How did you even fit in there, sis?”
“Well, it ain’t like I got that many options,” Mac huffed. “It’s either this or goin’ through th’ attic fer hoof-me-downs.”
“Then go through the gol-darn attic!” Applejack said. “If you rip that thing, Ah’m makin’ sure Rarity knows it’s your hide she wants to tan.”
Mac’s shoulders sagged as she absorbed the weight of that. “Ah jus’ wanted t’ look nice fer tonight,” she said. “Had a tie all picked out’n everythin’ yesterday, an’ this mornin’ Ah wake up an' Ah'm a mare.”
Granny Smith rubbed her chin. “Hm. Why don’tcha take yer ma’s ol’ green sundress? Might not be big enough, but Ah reckon that friend of AJ’s, er…”
“Rarity,” Dash supplied.
“Yes, Austerity might be able t’ let it out.”
“Whatcha wanna look fancy for anyhow, Mac?” Bloom asked. “Ain’t no fancy party, just a bunch of us from town.”
Applejack grinned. “An’ Ah bet that’s why.”
Bloom looked confused, then broke into a wide grin. “Oh, right. Twilight’s comin’, ain’t she?”
Mac stared straight ahead. “Dunno whatcher talkin’ bout,” she said calmly.
“Sure ya don’t,” Bloom said smugly.
Mac frowned. “Maybe Ah jes’ wanna look nice fer mahself. Jes’ ‘cause you tie yer braids with copper wire--”
“Alright, enough’s enough,” Applejack said, waving a hoof. “We’re all gonna sit down an’ eat breakfast an’ be nice.” She paused. “Except you, Mac. If you get syrup on that dress--”
“Alright, alright, Ah’ll change,” Mac grumbled, storming back up the stairs.
Dash frowned at Applejack. “What was that about Twilight?”
“Oh, she’s had a crush on the Princess fer awhile now,” Applejack said, grinning. “When she’s around, Mac can’t hardly say more than ‘eeyup’ and ‘nope’.”
There was a heavy stomp from above. “Ah heard that!” Mac said, her voice muffled by the floor.
Applejack winced. “Whoops! Heh, sorry, Mac. No offense!”
“Show you. Ah’ll go see her right this mornin’ after visitin’ Miz Rarity.”
Dash took a few pancakes from the plate. “Thanks for breakfast, AJ. I gotta go clean up at my place for the ambassador!”
“Now hold on one cotton-pickin’--”
But Dash was already gone. Bloom took a couple of tofu links and wrapped them up in a pancake. “Yeah, Ah better git goin’, too. Ah wanna see Winona afore Ah go off ta town. Bye!”
“Bloom, you git back here! Granny? Granny?”
Granny had taken the whole skillet of eggs and wandered off to the parlor. Applejack had been left alone. She sighed, slumping down in a chair, and took a pancake off the top of the pile. “More fer me,” she said sadly, pouring syrup over the top.
The light of the morning sun lit the dining chamber of the royal sisters. Very few ponies outside of the staff had ever been in that room. Even if they had, they probably wouldn't have recognized it as belonging to the Princesses of the Sun and Moon. It was too small, only about four hundred feet square. There was no gold, no gems, no decoration of any kind apart from a clock shaped like a cat and a few small photographs. The floor was tiled like a checkerboard, black and white. Most damningly of all, the table was square instead of a ludicrously long rectangle. The chairs were slightly wobbly, the pictures hung askew, and the bowl of fruit was far from artfully arranged.
It was Celestia's favorite room in the castle. She had overseen its construction personally. When Luna had returned, she wasn't sure whether to stay ten feet away from the room at all times, or to refuse to come out of it. The room was, you see, a perfect reconstruction of the TARDIS dining room from back when the sisters had traveled with the Doctor. To a certain degree, it still felt exactly like home.
The doors on either side of the room swung open at the same time. Luna trotted in from the north side, looking as fresh as a daisy. Celestia stumbled in, a comb stuck in her mane. "Good morning, sister," Luna said cordially.
"Coffee," Celestia replied.
A waiter quickly stepped forward with the requested beverage. It came in a mug emblazoned with the words 'Rise and Shine,' with a little cartoon sun on the other side. The sun was wearing sunglasses. Celestia drained the whole thing in a single gulp before throwing herself into her chair. Luna sat down at the other end of the table and poured herself a glass of red wine.
Celestia glanced up. "Long night?"
"Somewhat trying," Luna replied, swirling her glass. "There were a number of proposals that I recalled you telling me about at breakfast yesterday evening."
"Hm," Celestia said. "Points to them for perseverance?"
Luna made a disgusted noise at the back of her throat and Celestia smiled. "And the dream realm? Ticking along well?"
"As well as ever," Luna said noncommittally.
Two waiters came out from the kitchen. In front of Celestia, they placed a large omelette, a rasher of hay bacon, and a glass of orange juice. Luna received a plate of fettuccine in cream with asparagus.
"Delicious," Celestia murmured.
"You've only had the coffee so far."
"Your point?"
The light in the room flickered for a moment. Luna took a bite of her pasta and hummed her approval. "Anything especially interesting today, Tia?"
Celestia shook her head. "Not particularly, no. The new griffon ambassador is staying in Ponyville today, and won't arrive in Canterlot until Thursday. That's really the only event of note all this week."
"I look forward to meeting with her."
"As do I. The first meeting after a revolution is always so refreshing."
Luna sipped her wine. "Of course, if half of what I've heard of her is true, we may soon have another player in our prank war..."
"Only if she asks," Celestia warned.
"Of course, of course." Luna frowned. "What is going on out there?"
Both princesses looked out the window. The royal guards were chasing a pegasus around the courtyard. Their armor was slowing them down, though, and the object of their pursuit was remarkably good at evading them. She also looked rather familiar. Celestia squinted. "Is that who I think it is?"
"I believe so," Luna said, rising to her hooves. "You had best put an end to this."
"Agreed." Celestia threw open the window. "Guards! Halt!"
Every one of the guards stopped on a dime. The intruder didn't, and slammed into one head-first. "Good morning, Ditzy," Celestia called. "To what do we owe this pleasure?"
Ditzy looked up and waved. "Good morning, princess! I need to talk to you about the Doctor."
Celestia gestured that she should approach. She flew up. A few guards tried to block her, but Celestia cleared her throat and they quickly flew away.
"Won't you come inside?" Celestia offered. "Luna and I were just about to have breakfast."
"Dinner," Luna corrected.
"Breakfast," Celestia said firmly.
"Luna's here too? Good. I really needed to see her." Ditzy flew through the window and landed on the floor.
"How do you like your eggs?" Celestia asked.
"Sunny-side up, please."
Luna nodded to the waiters, who quickly returned to the kitchen.
Celestia sat down again and pulled up a chair for Ditzy. "Coffee?"
"Um, yes please," Ditzy said. "Cream, two sugars."
A mug appeared before her almost before she'd finished speaking. "Thank you," she said, nodding to the waiter. "Um, about the Doctor."
"Yes, of course," Luna said, setting down her fork. "I trust they are well?" She considered. "As well as they ever are, that is."
"Well, no. Actually, that's why I wanted to talk to you, your highness."
"No titles at the breakfast table," Celestia said firmly.
"Dinner table!"
"Breakfast table."
"Um, right. Your-- your--" she struggled, clearly distressed.
"Pax, pax, Dr. Doo!" Luna said. "If you truly struggle so to address us by our names, we can make an exception."
"Th-thank you, your highness. But, um, you don't need to call me Dr. Doo, just Ditzy is... fine..." She trailed off, looking from one smirking face to the other. "Oh. I see."
"Go on, Dr. Doo," Celestia said, waving her to continue.
Ditzy took a deep breath. "The Doctor's been having nightmares and passing them on to me and I keep seeing him in them, but it isn't him, it's evil! The Doctor's dreaming about himself being evil, and they're the worst dreams ever, and it's been more than a month and you haven't done anything about them!"
If Luna had looked concerned before. that was nothing compared to how she looked now. "Nightmares? The Doctor?"
Celestia frowned. "I'm more curious about how they get 'passed on' to you."
"Time Lords can share dreams through skin contact, apparently. It's usually really nice! We can go on adventures and explore distant planets all night long. But when it's a nightmare..."
Luna frowned deeply. "This is most disturbing. Particularly because I had no notion of these nightmares at all."
Celestia tapped her mug against her teeth thoughtfully. "Has the Doctor said anything about this?"
Ditzy scoffed. "Please. He could have a spear sticking out of his chest and he wouldn't complain. Of course, if the thermostat's one degree too low..."
"Proud fool," Luna grumbled, sitting back in her chair.
“I can understand why,” Ditzy said. “Some of those dreams… they were about us.”
Celestia cocked her head. “Us?”
“You two. Me. The Elements. The Crusaders. Every friend the Doctor has, in this world or any other -- wiped out. Sometimes it’s fast. Sometimes, it’s agonizingly slow. Sometimes, sometimes our bodies are taken over and we’re forced to attack him, and, and, and--” She broke off, tears overwhelming her.
She felt two soft, great wings wrap around her, and suddenly Celestia was cradling Ditzy to her chest, holding her tight and gentle in her embrace, whispering to her softly. They stayed like that for some several minutes -- Ditzy wasn’t quite sure how many. But once she had managed to calm down a little, Celestia let her go.
Ditzy pulled away and started to say something, but broke off, transfixed by the shiny ribbon of snot that now marred the princess’s chest. Celestia smiled at her. “Now that you’ve used me as a tissue, would it be too much to ask that you use my name?”
Despite herself, Ditzy let out a wet chuckle. “I guess not,” she decided. “So, um… where do we go from here?”
The princesses exchanged a solemn look. "Intervention?" Luna asked.
"I believe so. Ditzy, when is the soonest you can gather a number of the Doctor's closest friends and get them in a room together?"
"Um, tonight. The Doctor's unveiling his latest invention, an interface for the TARDIS."
"Excellent. When and where?"
"Our house at seven."
"We shall be there."
Ditzy jumped. "But what about the country?"
"The country is perfectly capable of looking after itself for an hour," Celestia said firmly. "We haven't got any meetings. Even if we had, this would take precedence."
"The Doctor is our oldest friend," Luna said. "He mentored us, helped us to become the rulers we are today. We would never betray that friendship. Not ever."
"Thank you pri-- Celestia. Thank you, Luna.." Ditzy looked lost for words. Thankfully, a waiter came out of the kitchen with her eggs. The mood lightened.
"Fear not, fair Ditzy," Luna said, digging into her pasta once more. "We shall do our utmost to solve this conundrum. You have our word."
Dinky pushed open the door to Sugarcube Corner and let it all wash over her. The fragile fragrances of sugar, fruit, and chocolate, the coolness of the air-conditioned room, the bright, pastel shades of the wall… It was impossible to imagine Pinkie Pie not living here.
Yet, it was not Pinkie Pie who was running the counter on this sunny day in early summer. Nor was it Mr. or Mrs. Cake. It was the slightly-younger of the Cake twins, Pumpkin, who stood at the register, while her brother swept the floor free of crumbs.
“Morning, Pumpkin. Pound.”
Pound looked up from his sweeping and blushed. “H-hi, Di-Dinky,” he said. “How, how are y-you this mor, this morning?”
Dinky considered this. “...Meh. Dad tried to make breakfast this morning while mom’s in Canterlot delivering a message.”
“So now you’re here for actual breakfast?” Pumpkin guessed.
“Stars above, yes. Got any doughnuts?”
“Only glazed.”
“Eh, pass. What else you got?”
Pumpkin spread her hooves wide. “Why don’t you take a look?”
Pound leaned over. “Puh, Pumpkin! Remem, ember what d-dad said about being a good, a good salespony!”
The filly sighed. “Right, right… may I interest you at all in our new lemon meringue fudge? Pinkie Pie just made it this morning before disappearing. Again. You could be the first pony in town to try it!”
“You mean you haven’t tried it yet?”
“You kidding? Just looking at it makes my teeth hurt.”
Pound sighed and turned back to his sweeping.
“I’ll just have a bagel.”
“Cream cheese?”
“And strawberry jam.”
“I’ll have the same,” a familiar male voice said. Dinky spun around. “Rumble? What are you doing back in town?”
The stallion smirked. “You say that like you’re disappointed.”
“Deeply. So, did you come down with Scootaloo, or what?”
Rumble’s eyebrows shot up as he took his breakfast from the counter. “She’s back too?”
“Yeah, didn’t you know? We're meeting up with Bloom later.”
Rumble shook his head, taking a bite of the bagel. “‘S great, though,” he said through his mouthful. “Two-thirds of the Crusaders, back again.”
“Yeah, it‘s convenient,” Dinky agreed. “But seriously, what brings you back to Ponyville?”
Rumble shrugged. “I needed to get a reference letter from Rainbow,” he said. “I’ve got a job interview lined up for the weather patrol out in Windy City.”
“Windy City?” Dinky whistled. “Big city lights calling to you, bud?”
Rumble made a so-so gesture with a hoof. “It’s got a good salary, decent hours, solid benefits. I’m not crazy about going to a big city, really, but I’ll weather it.”
Dinky gave him a long, flat look. “That pun was bad, and you should feel bad.”
Rumble grinned at her. “So, you said Bloom and Scootaloo were back?”
“Yeah, we’re meeting up in about forty minutes. Wanna hang out until then?”
“Sounds good,” Rumble said, smiling. “You wanna get a table? I need to order some coffee.”
“Yeah, sure,” Dinky said, trotting towards the booths. As soon as she turned away, her smile fell. Rumble was going all the way to Windy City? That was halfway across Equestria! Still, at least he was the only one of the Crusaders traveling that far.
Button shifted awkwardly in his seat, trying desperately to get comfortable. Even with the natural padding he’d gained from three years of sitting at a desk fidgeting with wires, the wood barely concealed beneath the train’s ugly green upholstery seemed to press into his bones. The train he was taking from Copper Hills to Baltimare was a decidedly economic affair-- not something anypony would want when traveling cross-country. Unfortunately, one seat on a cheap train had been all that his team could afford.
Well. He said ‘his team’. He was the only one left. The others had been tempted away by promises of greater resources and bigger paychecks, and Button had been left all on his own, save for the mice living in his empty lab space. He didn’t actually mind the mice. He gave them cheese every now and again, and in return they helped him run wires and craft delicate circuits. He would miss the mice, but even they wouldn’t be able to drag him back to that lab. He was leaving Copper Hills for good. The competition was getting too cut-throat, the secrecy was threatening to boil over, the CEOs were getting crazier by the day, and Button had gotten a distinct feeling that as an earth pony, he was considered a second-class technomancer.
He grinned. Second-class or no, earth pony or no, headhunting his teammates or no, he was still the one out of all of them to revolutionize video game controls first. He patted the lumpy carry-on bag he’d brought along, containing a mystery novel, his old JoyBoy, and too many screwdrivers and tools to count. The most important thing in the bag, though, was his pride and joy, the result of years of work. Joysticks and d-pads were great for a lot of games, but ponies had started asking for more interactive controls. He and a group of like-minded engineers had gathered together to give the ponies what they wanted, and only he had stayed on the project long enough for it to come to fruition.
So now he was the only one on the train, the only one going to Baltimare, the only one bringing the future of game controllers to the masses.
His smile slipped. He was the only one.
He hauled himself to his hooves, slipping his bag over his head to rest on his back. If he was going to be riding this cheap train all the way across the continent, he might at least take the opportunity to get a little walking in.
Button managed to stroll up and down the length of his train car a whole seven and a half times before he was utterly bored. He saw an old mare sitting alone in a cabin and trotted in with the intention of starting a friendly conversation, but found she was asleep. All the other cabins in the car were either full up or empty.
In the absence of anypony around to talk with, Button decided that he might as well make up for the breakfast he’d missed catching the train. He pushed through the carriage door and stepped carefully over the gap and into the dining car.
Given the… he decided to call it ‘frugality’… of the trip, he wasn’t surprised to find that his only options were grapefruit halves or a pile of wheat. Disappointed, sure, but not surprised. He took the wheat and a large glass of water and sat down at an unoccupied table. He had quite the pick of them.
Sometimes he wished he had never left Ponyville. He could close his eyes and remember his childhood summers, the grass under his hooves, the taste of fresh apples right off the tree, the laughter of his friends, and the smell of tree sap that would never ever leave him, no matter how hard he tried.
But if he had never left, he could never have done what he had done, made what he had made. He wouldn’t be on his way to technology expo in Baltimare, he wouldn’t be on the cusp of fame and fortune, he wouldn’t be set for wealth like he’d never seen before.
That had to mean something. It had to. Didn’t it?
Apple Bloom sat down in the crook of two trees growing into one another and faced a third. She smiled. “Howdy, Winona.”
The sapling that the Apples had planted on top of their loyal farmdog’s grave gave no reply, but the branches swayed a little in the wind. Apple Bloom smiled at the tree, and for a moment, she saw a familiar wet black nose and floppy, furry ears.
“Ah hope y’all are bein’ a good girl fer Ma an’ Pa,” she said, mock-sternly. She leaned back against the pear tree and patted the bark. “An’ Ah hope Grampa Jonagold’s behavin’ himself over there, an’ you just give his tail a tug if he ain’t.”
She just sat there for a long moment, listening to the leaves rustle. “What’s it like, in the Greener Pastures?” she mused aloud. “Granny always says ev’rypony ya love turns up there eventually. Ah heard tell from Rainbow that th’ pegasi all go to the Wild Blue Yonder. Bet they’re really the same place. Where do ya reckon unicorns go?”
She thought about that, then shrugged. “Ah, who cares what it’s called. Don’t reckon they ain’t connected somehow. Wouldn’t be right otherwise. And wherever zebras go, an’ dragons too.” She smiled. “An’ dogs.”
The branches rustled, shaking like a wagging tail. Apple Bloom cleared her throat. It was very sticky all of a sudden. “Anyhow, Ah bring this up fer a reason. Cousin Braeburn tole me Appaloosa was in search of somepony who kin fix things up right, or mix up a nice cure fer whatever ails ya, or what have ya. So Ah’m goin’ there. This fall. Mah own Greener Pastures on Gaea, in manner of speakin’.”
She could feel the confused puppy eyes on her, hear the sad doggy whine. “This is gonna be good fer me,” she said firmly. “At th’ end of summer, Ah’m goin’ to Appaloosa. Give me a chance t’ really stretch out, practice mah skills.”
The dogwood sapling was perfectly still. Apple Bloom refused to take that as a sign. She might talk to her dead dog, but she wasn’t quite so far gone as to expect Winona to talk back. Not really, not yet. “Cadence’s fanny, Ah gotta get off this farm,” Bloom muttered. “Ah’m drownin’ in th’ past.”
She pushed herself out roughly from the crick of the trees and stormed out of the grove, feeling oddly betrayed. Behind her, the entangled trees rustled their leaves.
Twilight set down her coffee cup gently on the table, staring thoughtfully at the ambassador from Griffonstan. “I must say, madam, you are not who I was expecting.”
The griffon smiled; perhaps not as politely or as thinly as most ambassadors would have preferred, but she was rather new to the job. “I hear that a lot, yes.”
“Would it be terribly impertinent of me to ask why you were declared head of the diplomatic corps? Merely personal interest, you understand.”
“Mm.” The ambassador slugged back her coffee, then set it down roughly on the table. “Well, aside from being a fairly major part of the Griffish cultural revolution, it turns out I'm also related to some of the old folk heroes; probably not King Grover, directly, but hey. I'm milking it for all I've got. It also probably helped that I’m one of the few griffons that has pony friends who hasn’t also left Griffonstan altogether. So, y’know, I already have some experience with the culture.”
“Refreshingly honest.”
“Hey, I’m willing to level with you if you’re willing to level with me. I don’t have any patience for bureaucracy or that much diplomatic training. I’m just a chick trying to do what’s best for my country.”
“Naturally. It won't always run quite as smoothly as all that, of course, but I’m certain that we can work together amicably in the future.” Twilight smiled slightly. “Is there anything in particular that needs discussing immediately?”
“Several things, yeah. But given that Griffonstone’s been stagnant since before my great-granny was an egg, I think they can wait for the official meeting tomorrow afternoon.”
“Excellent. Then we’ll adjourn for the day.” Twilight visibly relaxed. “I look forward to seeing you tomorrow, Gilda.”
The griffon grinned, the tension leaving her shoulders. “Yeah, you aren’t so bad yourself, for a nerd. I’m gonna go hit up Dash.”
“Try to avoid causing an international incident,” Twilight said as she cleared up the cups and saucers.
“Yeah, yeah, whatever.” The griffon pushed open the door and walked out.
Twilight watched her go, shaking her head in bewilderment. For the past… good grief, had it been ten years since she had become princess? Almost eleven, really. For that long, she’d been stuck dealing with hidebound traditionalists that made the Apple Family look like a bunch of bohemians. In the past three years, though, the youth of Griffonstan had made it quite clear that they felt that following in the clawsteps of their elders was what had crashed their country into the ground in the first place. A cultural revolution had taken place, and revolution was certainly the word for it. Guerrilla attacks on the capitol, protests in the streets, ceremonial bonfires burning effigies representing tradition and blind obedience. There had been less violence than most Equestrian journalists or politicians had predicted, but the coup had been far from bloodless.
Gilda had been at the forefront of that revolution. From what Twilight had heard, the Cutie Mark Crusaders’ friend, Gabby, had also been a major player in the affair. And it seemed that they had won, or at least been appeased for a time. Griffo-Equestrian relations had certainly become more open, and at least some of the hidebound traditionalists had apparently been replaced by griffons like Gilda. It was surreal. But that was life. Moreover, that was politics. The battle, as far as she could tell, was still raging in the halls of the Griffish legislature, all the way to what passed for the ruling council itself. The only difference was that it was no longer being fought with clubs and swords. The most decisive battles rarely were.
Twilight began to levitate all the coffee things back onto the tray when she was interrupted by a knock at the door. Odd. Gilda had never struck her as the type to knock, ambassador or no. “Come in.”
The door swung open, revealing a slightly-more-red-faced-than-usual farmer. “Oh, hi, Mac. Pronouns?”
“She,” Mac replied, trotting in briskly, smiling faintly at the princess.
Twilight and Macintosh regarded each other for a long, silent moment. Twilight coughed. “So, uh, what’s up?”
Mac froze. She really hadn’t thought this far ahead. “Uh, books,” she said.
Books? she thought internally. Really, Mac? You look at this mare and all you can say is ‘books’?
Twilight, however, brightened right up. “Oh, of course! Let me just clear up the table here and I’ll be right with you.”
Mac started forward. “Lemme help ya with that,” she started to say.
Twilight smirked. There was a flash of light, and the tea service was gone. “Thanks, but I got it.”
The red mare stared, jaw slightly agape. “Uh… hm.”
Twilight’s proud grin dissolved into a genuine smile. “You were saying, about a book?”
“Uh, eeyup. History. Ah’d like ta read up on some history.” “Right. Okay.” Twilight nodded. “So, uh, what kind of history are you looking for? Apple family records or…”
Mac shook her head. “Nope. Lookin’ fer some hist’ry of math.”
“Okay,” Twilight said readily. “Uh… well, we’ve got the Principia, of course…”
“Got it at home.”
That threw her. “Really? Wow. I didn’t know anypony else in town had read it. What did you think?”
Mac sucked on her teeth for a moment, staring up at the ceiling. “Well, now,” she said. “Ah reckon Ah thought it was purty good. That there Fig Newton knew what he was talkin’ bout. Some o’ th’ calculus though… well, Ah dunno.”
“Oh, do you not understand calculus? I can show you some textbooks--”
“Oh, ah understand calculus,” Mac corrected. “Just, Ah thought it was a li’l derivative.”
Twilight stared. Then, she snorted. “Okay, that was a good one,” she sighed.
Mac grinned sheepishly. “Thanks. Bin sittin’ on that one fer awhile now. But, if y’all have any other historical math books…”
“I think I can muster up just a couple,” Twilight said, smiling. “C’mon, let’s go.”
Mac followed Twilight over to a staircase recessed into the opposite wall. It wound around and around in a tight spiral. “Never knew this was here,” Mac said.
“It wasn’t. Sombra built it. Apparently, he’s really very good at building stairs.”
“Huh.” Mac kicked the wall. “Nice’n solid. Think he’d fix up th’ stairs up to th’ hay loft?”
“Apparently, he only knows how to work in crystal. So, probably not.”
“Shoot.”
“Couldn’t Apple Bloom do it? I mean, I’ve seen her do some incredible things. Surely she could fix up some rickety old stairs.”
Mac sighed. “Prob’ly so. Ah ain’t asked.”
Twilight frowned. “Why not?”
Mac gave a helpless shrug. “She’s always so busy. An’ she wants ta move off th’ farm fer good. Outta town, even. She’s destined fer better than fixin’ old stairs.”
“Don’t talk like that,” Twilight said sharply, pushing open a door and leading Mac into the library. “Your family is a vital part of Ponyville’s history, and moreover, you're some of the nicest ponies I’ve ever known. I’m sure that Apple Bloom is proud to be an Apple. I certainly would.”
She paused, then grinned at Mac sheepishly. Mac smiled back. “Well, that’s right nice of y’all, Twi.”
Twilight went quite pink and turned away. “Math history, right? Let’s just see now, it should be right this way.”
Mac gazed up at the towering crystal bookshelves. They were very close together. Twilight slipped in between them easily enough. She took a deep breath and squeezed herself into the narrow gap.
“Sorry if it’s a little claustrophobic,” Twilight called, not looking back. She couldn’t, really, not in these quarters. “I’m reorganizing.”
“It’s fine,” Mac said, quietly hoping that she wasn’t knocking over too many books as she squeezed by them. “Er, reorganizin’ how?”
“I’m switching from the Library of Canterlot revised edition to Crisp Foil’s method of organizing all the books according to publisher,” Twilight said happily. “That should put paid to ponies saying they can’t find anything in my library.”
Mac coughed. “Ah don’t reckon you ever thought ‘bout jus’ using Dewhoof Decimal?”
Twilight stopped dead and Mac quickly put on the brakes before she could collide with her. “Macintosh Apple, you’re a dear friend and a wonderful pony. But I need you to never, ever say that to me again.”
“Eeyup,” Mac said quickly.
Twilight relaxed and started forwards again. “Anyway, I haven’t organized this section yet, so the books you wanted should be right… here!”
She tried to gesture to the shelf, but bashed her hoof on it instead. She recoiled and nodded at the books instead before lighting her horn. In a flash of light, she was facing Mac, grinning up at the taller mare. “See anything you like?”
You, Mac thought.
She made an effort to turn her head and was just about able to read the titles on the spines. “Uh, what’s ‘Much Ado ‘bout Nothin’’?”
Twilight craned her neck to look. “Oh, that’s the history of zero. It’s a surprisingly interesting read, actually.”
“Ah’ll take it. Er, iffin y’all kin reach it.”
Twilight lit her horn and tucked the book into Mac’s saddlebags. Twilight matched her gaze for a moment longer, and the farmer felt her heart beating like a hummingbird’s wings. Those amethyst eyes, that sweet little smile, Celestia above that brain— how the Sam Hill did she not have a partner when she was so pretty an’ smart an’ kind an’—
“Mac?”
Deep green eyes blinked, dispelling the glaze over them. “Huh?”
Twilight was looking at her in concern. “Are you alright?”
There was a pregnant pause. “Ah don’t think Ah kin turn around.”
Twilight’s face fell. “Oh. Didn’t think about that. Um, can you go backwards?”
Mac tried to take a step back and stumbled. “Nope. Too tight.”
She frowned. “Oh-kay. I’m going to try and side-along teleport you. Can you take my hoof?”
Mac nearly short circuited, but she managed to pass that off as struggling to get unstuck. And then, glory of glories, she was holding Twilight’s hoof! She felt electric, like lightning was arcing over her skin, and her stomach was full of butterflies, and she was light and air and nothing else--
Or maybe that was just how being teleported usually felt. Mac stumbled as she was released from the constraints of the shelves and crashed right into Twilight. “Oh, gosh! You alright?” Mac asked.
In response, Twilight pushed back against the farmer, and Mac found herself stumbling backwards. Twilight grinned. “Alicorn, super-strength, yeah.”
Mac just stood there, quietly stunned. “See you later at the party, Mac,” Twilight said, trotting away. “I gotta go do, um, princess stuff. Enjoy the book.”
“Eeyup.”
As soon as she was out of sight, Mac fell back on her flanks. “She held mah hoof,” she whispered, staring at the appendage. “Ah can’t believe it!”
Twilight turned into the nearest darkened room she could find and shut the door after her. She quickly lit her horn and checked the corners, just to make sure nopony was hiding in there; Sombra liked to use dark, unused places to help him gather his thoughts, though Twilight wasn’t sure if he wasn’t just sulking.
Just to make extra sure, she put a soundproof bubble over herself. Then, grinning giddily, she held up her hoof and stared at it. “I held her hoof!” she crowed. “I actually got her to let me hold her hoof! EEEEE!”
The trek from Sweet Apple Acres was long, but not arduous. It was a gentle, sloping trail that circled down the hill from the farmhouse, winding through acres of gorgeous apple trees. Today was particularly gorgeous; the trees were blossoming in the warmth of early summer, the sky was clear and blue, and the dew shimmered on the grass like droplets of glass.
Apple Bloom, unfortunately, was in no mood to enjoy it. She stormed down the trail, feeling betrayed. She didn’t even know what she was meant to feel betrayed by, and that only made her angrier.
She stopped in the middle of the road and took a deep breath. She was on her way to see two of her best friends. She couldn’t turn up steaming like a kettle, it wouldn’t be right on them. When she thought about it, it wouldn’t be right on herself, either. This was meant to be a nice day, one she was taking for herself, Scootaloo, and Dinky. Letting her own worries get in the way of that would only hurt her friends and herself.
She let out the breath she had been holding in a single huff. There would be time enough for frustration later. She would go tell her friends about her plans instead. They would support her.
Button was just heading back to his carriage when the train jolted under his hooves. He toppled, and in a moment of panic-driven clarity, he spun the bag of his priceless prototypes around his barrel so they would fall on top of his bulk, rather than the other way round. He cried out as the bag fell on his ribs.
As he struggled to right himself, he found a pair of hooves helping him up. He smiled up at his savior; the old mare who had been sleeping alone earlier. “Thank you, ma’am,” he said.
She smiled at him. “Not at all, dearie. I always help ponies up when they’ve had a fall. Someday, they might be doing the same for me.” She nodded significantly. “Have you any idea why we’ve stopped?”
“No, not really.” Button poked his head out the window. “Oh.”
The old mare frowned. “Oh?”
“It looks like a tree fell on the tracks ahead,” Button said, pulling his head back into the train. “Oh, man, I’m gonna be late getting to Baltimare.”
“Why don’t you come and sit with me for awhile?” the old earth pony suggested. “I wouldn’t mind a little company while we wait for the tracks to be cleared.”
Button smiled. “That sounds great.”
He learned that her name was Tea Cozy, and she was moving to Ponyville to take care of her sister’s house, now that said sister had retired to Copabanana with her wife. When Button mentioned he was from Ponyville himself, she was delighted, and immediately began peppering him with questions. He did his best to answer them all, and asked a few of his own. He learned that she had never had children of her own, but had been a schoolteacher for a number of years; that she enjoyed knitting, tea, and novels; that she was planning on renting out rooms in her sister’s house to bring in a little money on the side.
Eventually, the conductor entered. Her mane was a mess, and her coat was spattered with grease and gunge. “Well, folks, d’you want the good news or the bad news first?”
“Save the best for last,” Tea Cozy decided.
“Well, the bad news is, when we braked for the tree on the line, we had to do it fast. Very fast. The engine isn’t going anywhere for the foreseeable future.”
Button’s face fell. “And the silver lining?”
“We’re near enough to Ponyville that the stationmaster is sending out carts to take you there. You’ll be able to make it to your intended destination maybe thirty hours late, max.”
Button bit back a cry of dismay. Thirty hours would still get him to Baltimare a day before the tech conference started, he reminded himself. Maybe he wouldn’t get a very nice hotel room, but that was okay. He smiled as the conductor withdrew. “Well, Miss Cozy, it looks like I’ll be able to show you around Ponyville for a little while.”
He was startled to see her frowning at him. “Something wrong?”
“Your side,” she said, gesturing to where the bag had struck him. “It’s getting quite the bruise.”
Button touched his side gingerly and winced. “Yeah, that’s gonna look great,” he sighed.
“It might very well be worse than that,” the old mare said sternly. “It could very well be a cracked rib! Here, let me…”
Tea Cozy pulled out her saddlebags from where she’d stowed them under her seat and rifled through it. With a triumphant chuckle, she pulled out a roll of bandage. “I always keep a couple rolls on me, just in case I have a tumble,” she explained. “Here, take some.”
“I couldn’t. What if you fell and broke a bone and didn’t have any bandages?”
She waved away the question. “Oh, I’ve got plenty of first-aid supplies. One can never be too careful, you know.”
She held out the bandages again, and Button took them gratefully, winding them around his barrel. “Make sure it’s tight,” Cozy urged. “You can get a doctor to look at it when we get to Ponyville.”
Button nodded and pulled it tighter. When Tea relaxed and sat back, he stopped, tore off the rest of the roll. “Uh, want it back?”
“Oh, no, dear. You keep it. You never know when you might take a tumble.”
Button frowned a bit, but tucked the roll into his bag. “Thank you,” he said, for it was always best to be polite.
As the conductor ushered them out of the train carriage and into the next cart to Ponyville, Button took comfort in the fact that if nothing else, he now had the opportunity to catch up with some old friends again.
Meanwhile, on a train heading in the opposite direction, Sweetie Belle was gazing out the window, watching the forest run by. The train from Manehattan was a relatively plush affair by any standard. For Sweetie Belle, having grown up around rather rougher transport, it was positively paradise. The rich, almost-velvet upholstered seats, the clean green carpet, the smooth, dark red oak siding… all of it decorated with pure gold-colored filigree. It was as though the images had been taken right out of her sister’s brain.
And the landscape was gorgeous! Sweetie had her nose pressed to the glass as she watched the world fly past in a beautiful blur of green and brown and blue and grey, her breath fogging the pane and blending the colors further. It was oddly pretty, and she tried her best to capture the experience in her memory as best she could. Photos were well and good in their place, but still images could only do so much, especially as far as capturing emotion went. Her stomach, for instance, was full of butterflies, her anticipation at seeing her friends again almost overwhelming her.
And Rarity too, she hastily added. Of course, she was looking forward to seeing her too, and Spike, and everypony else in town, too. But it was undeniable that her fellow Crusaders were at the forefront of her mind. Her leg jogged up and down as she stared out the window. Would it be like old times again? Would they be able to pick up where they left off? Would they want to know about her time spent studying music? What had they all been doing for the last three years?
She took a deep breath in and let it out slowly. She didn’t want to get too worked up, after all. She sang a few scales to steady herself before settling into a contented smile, thinking of childhood memories. At the back of her head, though, a stray thought nagged at her. Would her friends have changed after three years apart?
She shook the silly question from her mind. Of course they would’ve changed. But that didn’t mean that they wouldn’t still be friends. Cutie Mark Crusaders stuck together, no matter what. She refused to look down at her flank, at the mark she had earned all alone, after the others had all left her behind. She had stopped smiling.
Button pulled himself to his hooves, wincing as the dull pain in his side suddenly sharpened. Miss Cozy glanced at him in concern, but he gave her a quick smile of reassurance before carefully stepping down from the hay cart that had ferried them and several of the other passengers to Ponyville Station.
“So,” he said brightly. “What can I show you first? Sugarcube Corner? The castle?”
She smiled at him. “You’re a sweet one, young stallion. But right now, all I want to do is find my house and have a nap.”
“Oh. Alright!”
“It was nice meeting you, Button. Good luck getting to Baltimare.”
“Nice meeting you too, Miss Cozy!”
She trotted away, and Button’s shoulders slumped. Oh, well. At least now he’d be able to catch up with Apple Bloom, and whoever else happened to be in town. First things first, though, he thought as he turned to the ticket desk. He needed to catch a train, and the sooner he could get a ticket, the better.
The train’s whistle screamed as it pulled into Ponyville Station. Even before the train had come to a complete stop, Sweetie was on her hooves, levitating her luggage down from the overhead storage compartment. She had overcome her earlier sense of gloom, now that she had actually arrived in her hometown once again.
She trotted quickly for the exit, her bags levitating behind her like a coterie of excited puppies, weaving over and around one another and bumping against the walls. They all spilled out from the doors of the train, bobbing and nudging against everything in their path. Sweetie glanced around, taking a moment to regain her bearings. And then all of the suitcases hit the floor.
“Button!” she yelled, breaking into a gallop.
“Huh?” The chocolate-brown stallion barely had time to look around before he was once again knocked to the ground by a speeding Sweetie Belle-istic missile. He found himself flat on his back, his duffel bag knocked nearly a meter across the floor, with an exuberantly grinning unicorn perched on his belly.
“What the-- Sweetie Belle? What’re you doing here?” he asked, struggling to rise to his hooves. “I mean-- it’s nice to see-- how are-- look, could you get off me?”
Sweetie giggled and hopped lightly to the floor. “Sorry, Button. Here, let me get your bag.”
As soon as she lit her horn, Button let out a startled yelp and dove to block the bag. “No! There’s a lot of delicate stuff in here, very magic sensitive. If you levitate it, you might accidentally break some of the equipment.”
“Oh! Sorry.” Sweetie said with a wince. “Nothing broke when it hit the floor, right?”
Button unzipped the bag and peered inside. “No, it looks alright,” he said after a moment’s contemplation. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“That’s alright. Sorry I almost broke… whatever you’ve got in there.”
“No harm done,” Button said, slinging the bag over his barrel once again. “I should probably find somewhere safe to put this, actually.”
He trotted for the ticket office, and Sweetie fell into step with him, levitating her bags around her once more without missing a beat. “So, what brings you back to town?” she asked.
“My train broke down on the way to Baltimare,” Button said, his face falling. “I was heading up there for a big technology showcase, so I need to get a new ticket to get there on time. What about you?”
“Just taking a few days off from music classes,” Sweetie said breezily. “Isn’t it funny how we wound up getting here at the same time?”
“Yeah, I guess so,” Button agreed. “We should catch up with Bloom while we’re here.”
“That’d be nice. What’ve you been up to, Mr. Game Designer? Make anything really fun yet?”
Button gave an awkward little smile. “Well, why did you think I was going to a tech conference?”
Sweetie’s eyes went wide. “Wait. Really? No way, I thought you’d still be interning somewhere!”
“Oh, I probably should be,” Button said, turning his attention to the ticket desk. “But all the heads of industry out there are kind of…”
“Greedy?”
“That too. I was gonna say ‘weird enough to make Pinkie look normal’.”
“Oh?”
“Remind me to tell you about ‘biohacking’ sometime. Preferably over several ciders. What about you, huh? Last I heard, you’d gotten accepted at Muilliard.”
“Mhm!” Sweetie said. “I think it’s really helped me grow as a performer.”
She paused as Button approached the counter. A technology conference. That was… just, wow. She’d always known he’d go far-- not only was he smart, he was also focused, thoughtful, and plain ol’ nice. But this? This was above and beyond her wildest expectations. She was proud of Button, that was for sure. At the same time, though, it did kind of cast her still not quite launched musical career in a harsh light. It wasn’t as if she envied his success, of course! Of course she wasn’t envious, after all, singing and programming were two wildly different fields! She was happy for him. Just a little surprised, that’s all. That’s all.
Button turned back from the counter, looking deeply relieved. “I got a ticket for tomorrow morning. I think I should get to Baltimare in time to get a pretty decent room.”
“You won’t miss your big moment, then?”
“Hope not.” Button pulled his bag a little more snugly against his body. “This could be really big, y’know? Not just for me, but for the whole gaming industry.”
“Wow. What exactly is it?” Sweetie said as the two of them made their way out into the sunshine.
“I’ll explain later, once I’ve got it all set up. I bet Bloom will wanna see it, too.”
“Okay,” Sweetie said. “Let’s go find her, then.”
Button glanced over to respond, but stopped, eyes wide. “Well, we won’t have far to look,” he said. “She’s right there!”
Apple Bloom trudged along down Ponyville’s main drag. Every now and again, someone would smile at her in greeting, and she would force a smile back, but for the most part, ponies could sense her malaise from twenty paces, and took the appropriate steps to avoid interaction.
I’m trapped here, she thought. Never quite managed to escape being the youngest Apple, the baby of the family, and everypony knows it. The only one who didn’t go into farming. The disappointment.
“Hey, Apple Bloom! Over here!”
I can see it in their eyes. The Apple who isn’t marked with an apple. The Crusader with nothing to crusade for. The last one still in Ponyville.
“Bloom! Hey! It’s great to see you! But it’d also be nice if you would see us!”
I stand alone.
In the next second, she bumped into somepony. “Hi,” said Button.
“Goldarnit, Button! Can’t you see Ah’m tryin’ ta have an internal monologue?” she grumbled. A pause as the gears in her head skipped and slid into a new position. “Button! What’re you doin’ back in town?”
“Hi! Also here!” a voice said.
Apple Bloom’s jaw dropped and she spun around. “Sweetie! Well, if this don’t beat all!” She reached up and pulled them both into a tight hug. Sweetie squealed and toppled over under the sudden force, sending all three of them tumbling to the ground.
Apple Bloom pulled herself out of the mud. “It’s so good to see y’all again!”
“So, how’s it been in Ponyville?” Rumble asked, stepping out of Sugarcube Corner.
“Eh. I only just got back myself. I’m not really up on the latest gossip,” Dinky said.
“Not really what I meant.”
“Oh?” Dinky said, waiting for him to elaborate.
Rumble took another bite of his bagel meditatively. “How are your folks?”
“Oh,” Dinky said, her voice going flat. She was silent for a moment, then shrugged. “Mom’s fine. The Doctor’s building something in the TARDIS and won’t tell anyone what it actually is, so I guess he’s fine too.”
“You’re still calling him the Doctor, huh.”
“Yeah. That’s his name.”
“You weren’t even considering calling him ‘dad’?”
“No.”
“It’s been twelve years.”
“Yeah. Your point?”
“My point is, I’ve got shitty parents. I know shitty parents. The Doctor isn’t one. He’s been trying to connect with you from the word ‘go’. All I’m saying is, it probably wouldn’t hurt to reach out just a little more.”
Dinky stayed silent. “Your life got a lot better once you let me and all the other Crusaders in,” Rumble said. “I’ll shut up about it now, but… just think about it, alright?”
“He left once before,” Dinky said bitterly. “He’ll leave again. Everyone leaves in the end.”
Rumble raised his eyebrows. “And we all die alone. That doesn’t stop ponies from living together. What’s brought this on? Even for you, this is pretty nihilistic.”
Dinky shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about it right now,” she said.
Rumble scrutinized her for a long moment. Then his face softened. “Alright,” he said, only a note of trepidation still in his voice. “But when you change your mind--”
“If.”
“If you change your mind,” Rumble allowed, “just… I’m here for you, Dinky. We all are.”
Dinky looked away. “Yeah,” she said flatly. “Yeah, I know.”
Rumble frowned at her for a long moment, but hid his concern quickly when she glanced forward again.
“C’mon,” Dinky said. “We don’t want to keep the others waiting.” She gave a smile. It hardly even looked forced. “I’m so glad you’re back, Rumble,” she said, and she truly sounded sincere. Only her eyes betrayed that she was still distinctly troubled. “Almost all the old gang back again. Isn’t it great?”
Rumble smiled back, perhaps a little tighter than he would have liked. “Fantastic,” he agreed. “So, uh, why don’t you tell me about college on the way?”
Immediately, Dinky brightened, and soon they were making their way down the road, Dinky chattering away about teleportation matrices and anchoring artifacts and more technobabble that left Rumble utterly nonplussed. But that was a price he was willing to pay to see the gloom lifted from his friend, no matter how briefly.
Twilight practically danced into her laboratory, still full of giddy excitement. “She touched me…” she crooned, spinning a series of monitors to face her. “She reached out her hooves and she touched me~”
She clicked on an array of switches, falling into humming as she struggled to compose the next verse. “Because when she touched me!” Twilight sang, going into the finale as she pushed the activator button, “She touched! My! Heeeeeaaaaaaaaaaart!”
Nothing happened. The lab remained dim and still. Frowning, Twilight pressed the button again. By all rights, the van der Giraffe coils at the center of the room should be lighting up like Las Pegasus, while every monitoring system in the room kicked into gear. Instead, dust settled into a slightly more comfortable position on all her devices.
Twilight sighed. “Dammit,” she grumbled, her good mood fleeing. “This had all better just have come unplugged.”
She stomped over to the coils and examined the cables flowing into and out of their behemoth bulk. Unfortunately, none of them seemed to have come loose, meaning that the problem had to be somewhere in the wiring itself. Twilight sighed and started unplugging them one by one, probing the wiring with her magic. So preoccupied was she that she didn’t even notice the gold and ruby-red sparks dancing at the tips of the coils.
Twilight yanked another wire. There was a pop like a flashbulb going off, a smell like burning hair, and a flash like the Sun developing a midlife crisis. She was knocked back a few yards, and collided with a table. She blinked several times before she could see again. “Well. Guess it’s that one that’s broken.”
With some difficulty, she stood upright again and stumbled over to the wiring. “Right,” she growled. “Let’s see what’s wrong with you, you miserable little --” she levitated the wire up to eye level.
Immediately, she went cross-eyed, sinking to the ground as the wire pulled the magic from her horn, sucking it down like spaghetti. It reminded Twilight of being drunk. Through a straw. Her horn ached and burned as thousands of thaums were forced through it. Dimly, through the pain, Twilight was aware that, even as an alicorn, this level of output was unsustainable. Her horn would shatter, and the blowback would cave in her skull, provided that sheer magical exhaustion didn’t kill her first. She only had a few seconds. Desperate, she lifted the wire to her mouth and bit down. For an instant, the connection was severed. Twilight’s horn went dim, and the severed coil fell to the floor. A moment later, Twilight’s eyes went dim as well, and she too fell to the floor, unconscious.
Scootaloo watched as Ponyville came into view over the horizon. Aunt Lofty said something, and Scootaloo cocked her head. “Huh?” she shouted.
Lofty raised her voice to be heard over the wind. “I said, how are you feeling, graduate?”
Scootaloo grinned. “So rutting glad my thesis is done.”
“Language,” Lofty admonished, but she was smiling too. “And are you excited to be back in Ponyville again?”
“‘Course I am,” Scootaloo said. “Oh, that reminds me, you did remember I’ve got plans with Bloom and Dinky, right? You and Aunt Holiday can’t keep me all to yourselves today.”
“I remember, dear. Don’t worry about us, we’ll just be waiting around the house, getting older and older, pining for our dear sweet baby.”
“If you’re gonna guilt trip me, don’t call me a baby. Even if I thought for a second that was anywhere close to true, you’d lose all my sympathy in a wingbeat.”
Lofty laughed. “Oh, fine. It’s just as well, I suppose -- there are still more than a few vases left to lock up, and some corners to cover with foam.”
“Ugh. For someone who wants me home so bad, you’d think you could stop burning me every time you open your mouth.”
Lofty laughed again, harder this time, and hoisted Scootaloo into an even tighter embrace. “Alright then, pax it shall be. Now, where did you want me to set you down, dear?”
“Uh, what time is it?”
“A little before ten, I believe.”
“Probably near town hall, I guess.” Scootaloo hesitated. “Y’know, I can just tell them I’ll meet up with them later. I don’t mind blowing them off for, y’know, a couple hours while we all have lunch.”
“Nonsense. Holiday and I see you every other week. How long has it been for your friends? We aren’t selfish enough to hog all the Scootaloo for ourselves.”
“Okay,” Scootaloo said. “As long as you’re cool with it.”
“I’d hardly say so if we weren’t.”
“I know. Just wanted to make sure.”
They were past the boundaries of the Everfree Forest now, and Lofty tilted a little as she started to swoop into Ponyville proper. As she slowed, Scootaloo could pick out individual figures on the ground below. “Okay… town hall… yep, there’s Dinky.” She frowned. “That’s not Apple Bloom, though. Wait a second…”
“Isn’t that Rumble?” Lofty asked.
“Yeah! Wow, I didn’t know he was back in town too! Oh, there’s Bloom. And behind her, that’s-- that’s--” She fell silent, overwhelmed.
Lofty touched down near a fountain. No sooner had she done so, it seemed, than Scootaloo was free of her grasp, galloping full tilt toward the two slowly converging groups while screaming at the top of her lungs. Lofty stood back and smiled as she watched her little ballistic missile bowl into a startled Rumble and knock him nearly off his hooves. For the first time in almost four years, the Cutie Mark Crusaders were regathered at last.
Big Macintosh didn’t show much emotion. She’d become a little more expressive since coming out, a little more open, but at her core, she just wasn’t much of a talker. That said, there was an undeniable spring in her step as she made her way through town, and ponies who passed close to her couldn’t help but overhear as she hummed a little love song to herself.
“Macintosh! Oh, Macintosh, darling!”
Mac turned, still smiling, as Rarity waved to her from across the street. “There you are, darling, I’ve been looking all over for you,” Rarity continued, hurrying to her side. “It’s finished!”
Mac didn’t know what Rarity was talking about. This was not uncommon. She fell back on her usual response. “Eeyup.”
“Come along, darling, we have to hurry if we’re going to make it in time!” Rarity trotted back towards her boutique, waving for Mac to follow. Well, it wasn’t like she didn’t need to go there anyway. Her mother’s dress was still in her saddlebags, waiting to be adjusted for Mac to wear. So, Mac hurried after Rarity.
As they hurried down the streets of Ponyville, Mac became conscious of a strange quality of the light. It shone down bright and golden, turning everything just a touch more yellow. It was like being stuck in amber. Dust hung in the air like cobwebs -- Mac could see it in the corners of her vision, but whenever she tried to look directly at the odd effect, she couldn’t see it.
*̸̰͒*̷̟̾̊ͅ*̵̧̻͑
“Here we are, darling,” Rarity said, reaching behind the counter. Mac blinked. When had they gotten to Carousel Boutique?
Missing scenes, something said inside her head. And then, disapproving, lazy writing. She didn’t know what any of that meant, but somehow she understood how it was affecting her.
Rarity pulled out a dress. Hadn’t she done that already? “There,” she said, exultant. “I think it should fit you marvelously.”
It was Pear Butter’s dress. Mac stared at it in shock, then spun around to grapple with her saddlebags.
Rarity cocked her head. “Darling? Is something the matter?”
The dress was gone. Mac hadn’t given it to Rarity, but somehow she’d had it long enough to completely finish adjusting it.
Plot holes, said the something in her head.
“Miz Rarity? What time is it?”
Rarity, already frowning, furrowed her brow. “Darling, you’re acting very strangely.”
“Please?”
Rarity sighed and glanced at a clock on the wall. There were symbols on it, but Mac was damn sure they weren't numbers. “It’s f̶̨̛̯̟̭̻̖̖͖̖̖͇̤͍͇̜̗͛̒̿̾̉͊̾͘ơ̴̢̛̠̹͎̤͉̱̮̗̩̮͕̺̱͒̔͑̾͐̂̃͂͛̽̇͛̅͌̌̍̒̄͒̌͘͘͝ͅư̷̲͖̙͊̋͗͛͛́̆̀̈́̿̃̊̒̋̿̿̌̓͗̐͆͂̚̚͠r̸͖̣̪̅̌̂͋̉̐̒̀̒́̂̽̎̽̓̄͘͘ ̴̨͕̖̮̠̰̰̲͓̭̦̥̯̠̏́͑̈͐̇̅̈́̾̓̂́̚͠ţ̴̻͎̗̥̪̼͖̘̺̹͕̩͌̀͌͗͗̈̓̈́̋͐͌͋̌͐͊͒̕̕̕͜ǫ̸̡͈̙̹̠͚̙̺̣̻͖̝͕̫̩̽́̾̄ͅ ̸͔̝̪̲̞̮̊͜ď̷̰̈́̽̊̈́͆͌͋͊̏̿͆͌̓̽͋͝o̴̡̪͙̤͈̲̬̟͓̜̦̽̒͑̇̈́͑̿̋̇̏̋̑͆̕o̶̡͕̩͉̞̬̽̽̊̈́̀̑̅͒̌̓̏͠͝ͅm̷͔͖̫̼̠̟͓͇̥̫͗̂͌͑̏͛̃͌̂̋͆͋̌͌̋̕̕̕s̷̨̨̛͇̗̖͓͖̭̺̥̘̮̠͕̗͈͖̟̺̣͙͜d̸̡͉̤͓̤̦͎̣̹͎̰̘̣͎͈̬͖̥͎̙͉̙̙̱͋͗͗̓͜͜͝ą̸̮̫͇̭̳̘̍̆̓̿̄́̓̈́̃̿̆͆y̵̡̨̢̡̨̛̛̛͉͇̝̳̘̠̟̪̞̰̤͈̰̿̓̈́́́̆̈́͗́̚̕͘͠ͅͅ. Now, darling,up on the platform, please, let me see how it looks on you. Last-minute adjustments. Nips and tucks. Iron out the wrinkles, in time.
Mac stood on the dais in the center of the room. She was wearing her mother’s dress. She hadn’t put it on. Rarity was fiddling with needles and pins. The light gleamed off them, dark and golden. Dust hung in the air as though it was a photograph. Trapped in amber. Missing scenes. Plot holes.
“We’ll have to let out those sleeves just a little more,” Rarity said, making a mark with the chalk. Meanwhile, Rarity was inspecting the hem of her dress with a critical eye. “Perhaps a little longer,” she mused.
“Keep still,” Rarity said, advancing with a pincushion, but Mac had had quite enough. She broke for the door, leaping from the platform and knocking Rarity over. She reached the front of the Boutique in a single bound, but froze in the foyer. Outside of the window was
Was.
Was?
Wasn’t.
“Come along darling,” Mac whipped around. Rarity stood in the doorframe, beckoning her back. But there was something terribly wrong. Rarity’s entire body glitched and spasmed. “Come along. I need to see how it looks on you. Lazy writing. Plot holes.”
The hanging dust began to encroach, eating away at Mac’s vision. She became conscious of a crackling hum in the background, like radio static.
Rarity looked up at her with flickering blue light where her eyes should have been. “C̵̨̨̡̛̳̟̼͖̰͈̙̥͓̩͎̪͓̝̻̝̋̿̌͆̓̀̅̋̋̔̇̈̀̌͂͂̽̔͆̌̕̕̚͝͝͝ǫ̸̧̨̺̣̼̣̱͇̠̟̮͙̫̟͔͚̮̜͉̫͚́m̶̡̢̛̺͈̺͍̥̳̖̜̹͇̤̠̼͕̺̞̮̠͕̱͎̖̐̑́́̌͋͛̿̿̌̽̌̒̿̂̕̕͜e̵̢͚͔̝͇͈͎͉̦̥͓̦̤̤̞̝̙͇̝̟̗̝̩̓̎̆͛̿́̿̓̅̀͆͛̈́̏̔̇͝͝ͅ ̵̢͉̼̤͉͉͎̟̳̞͔̦̏͐̊̇̈́̀̍̈̉̽͋̈́͛̈́͑̏̇͘̕͘͜ä̶̜̠̲̪̦̣̞̱̱́̄̌̓̌̉̀̅̚l̸͉̟̻̠͎͉͍̩͙̤̈́̑̃̈́͝ͅo̸̡̢͖̖̻̙̩͕̭̟̭̹͔̠͚̼͇̠͈̭͕͓̙̤̼̊̀͂̾̎̀̈́̉͌͛̆̄̈́̐́̔͊̂̏̕̕͠͠ͅͅn̶̡̤͖̦͍̰͖̬̥̤̘̪̟͈̖͎̫̰̗̮̲̙͊͌̔͑̃̑̌͌͋͒̓̌̚͜g̵̛̛̜̺̣͙̥̲͉͑͒̋̈́̊̌͂͑̄̀̎̏͒͐̂̅̐͊̚͘͝͠,̵̡̛͎͙̳̟͖̰͋̎̔͋̆̈̽̄̈́̃̅̾̒̽͐̇̍̓́̅̊̇̚͜ͅ ̷̧̗̣͖̳̯̍͊̀̾͌̑̀̒̈́̈́͒̌d̴̛̠͔̯͌͂̆͑͆̿̀̆̿̎̓͆̐̐̓̌̃̌͗̈́̇͝͝͝͠͝ä̴̧͔̬̭̥̼̫̮̳͚̫̰͍̳͈̻̪̠͔͖̼́́̓̓̀͐́͒͑̾̾̾̄̇̽͠r̴̨̩͙̝̤̠̝̮̦̥̣̰̐̈́̄̓̐́̋l̵̛̛̬̬̮͈͖̘̯͇̽̋͋̂͋͆̃̈́̆̇̒́̇̽̅̊͑̐̈́̃͆͆̓͝i̸͔͙͇͔̤̿̆̿̆̓͊͜n̵̨̡̛̻͕͖̯̟̯̣͈̝͇̟̮̙̜̳͖͇̰̬̩̺͕̹̓̓͌͂́̿͂̾̆́̓̎̏̐́̅̐̊̈́̇͘̚͠ͅg̵̥̰̥̪͖͎̖̩̹̲͚̩̠͎͎̲̝͖͛͛̍̐͑̿̊͂̾̿̒̚̕͜,̸̧̧̙͈͔̥̃͊̆̎̓̐̾̎̅̍́̄̓̀͛͌͆̾̌̀̿̀̉͘͘͝͠” Mac heard. “A̵̩̤̣̗̝̯̭̳͗̈́̃̐͌̽̓̅͗̀̿̐͆̓́̉͂͐͠ ̸̧̝͉̗͍̻̤̿̀̐̄̀̋̉̂̏͘͠s̷̡̨̼̱̙̪̱͖͕̜͊͛̈́͂̑͗̔͑̍̏̽̅̾͒͒͘̚ẗ̸̨̫̪̞̲̠̝̘͍̣́͌́̀ͅi̷̡̨̬̭̝̹͇̯̱̰̱̼̞͎͇̜̟̟̥͚̔̅̉̀͑̀t̵̢̛̝̟̜̬̮̤̰̯̼̫̩͓̩̲̟͙̊̾͋̒͌̇̊̇̒́̃͘͜͝c̶̡͚̻̯̯̺͍̘͔̘͚̻̬̣̪̪͕͈͔̔́̃̈́̋̚͜͠ͅḩ̵̧͖͙̝̙̯͇̝̱̟̭̯̲̖̩͎̲̥̲̙͕̗̮̹̎͂̀̽͊̈́̿̄͑̏̌̅̒̐͠ ̸̢̯͖̤̦̺͈̘̭̘̳͖̣̗̈̑͆͆̍̐̓̏̀̿̋̈́́̊͆̇́͐͋̎ͅͅi̸̢̖̟̣̩̳̖̜͉̗̻̤̹̟̰̮̰͖̥̺̗̲̟̪͋̊̔̍̉ͅͅn̸̡̨͈̱͓̯̦͍̟͉̟̫̮͍̲͕̤͚̹̦̪̺̈́̇̑̈́̅̅̉́̋̈́̓̎̄̈́̒̓͊̈̀̔̃̀̈́́͘̕ͅ ̸̱͔̜͎̿͆͆̔͝t̵̨̨̨̜̩̟̯̹͔̥̗̝̗̹̳̝̰̦̣͓̜̖̩̩͓͒̋̓į̶̬̮̤̲͖͚̜̲̲͇̺̟̥̰͙̝̤̗͔̹̦͆͛̊̌́̾̓̓̓̀̎̊̆̐̀́̓͝͝m̸̨̛̰̹̯̥̙̖̦̦̖̈̈́͐͊͂̐̄̇̏̂͂͗̔͊̀̈́̾̎̒͌̕̕̚͝ͅe̷̡̛͕̤̺̬͉͖̅̔̔̆͆̿̉̿̍̂̏̀̀̆͆́̎̏̆̽͘̚̕̕͠͝ ̸̢̛͖̣̘̄̋̐̃̓̔̓̒͛͆̉̅͂̀̕̚͝͠s̸̢̢̧̧̹̦̩̱͍̰͓̤̝̗̙̮̺̳͔͍̪̽͌͗̌̈́͒̃̑̆̀̇̀̐̈́̋̅͗̐͘͜͠͝͝ͅą̷̡̤̤̻͉̤̤̲͍͉̠̯͙͎̞͎̦̪̹̳̫̤͉͑̓̆̇̉̈̉̀͛̌́̏̈́͑͋̂̂̇̓́́͌́͘͘͠ͅͅv̶̝̟̹̟̘͑͊̆̄̂͊̿̽̅͗́̕̕̚e̵̢̡̨̛̛̻̝̞̤̥̺͕̜͎͉̪̳̰̖͔̻͖͑͒̒̐͗͑̈́̊̋̇͑͛͛̿̌͜͜͠͠͝͝s̸͚̉̎́̆̐̽̇̊̇̎̀̑̿̓̈́͐̓̈́̚͠͠͝ ̴̡̩͍̳̟͇̳̠̹̯̫̾̄̀̔̋̂̽̎͆̒̊̑͆͗̋͘͜ṇ̶̡̛̛̛̲̗͎̝̱̣̮͇̩̰̻̥̱̯̙͚͚̠̖̩̺̅͗͑̈́̓̍͒̓̽̒́̒̓̿̓͂̍̾͜ḯ̷̛̫͎͑̅̑̍̉͒͑̅͠ņ̸̡͔̺͇̺̟̩͈̯̳̝̼͕̥̇͜ͅę̷̭̮̹͚̣͚͔̘̯̋̋͛̋̈͌̍̌͊͆̾͐̎̇̉̏̊̋̐̉͒̎̈͂͜͝.̸͚̙͎̼̬̓̇̆̾̏̽̓͌͗̆̊̓̿̑́̓͠”
A stitch in time, and you are mine.
“Darling? Darling!”
Mac blinked. Rarity was watching her with open concern. “Macintosh, dear, are you well? You’ve been standing there for almost fifteen minutes, staring at nothing!”
“Whrrr,” said Mac. “Um. Sorry t’ frighten you, Miz Rarity. Must’ve been a million miles away.”
“Are you sure that’s all?” Rarity asked, scrutinizing her.
“Um,” said Mac. “Pretty sure.”
Rarity frowned. “Why don’t you go into the back room and have a bit of a lie down?” she suggested. “I’d feel much better if you did.”
“Ah need a dress fitted,” Mac said. “Fer the party tonight.”
Rarity raised a brow as Mac fumbled with her saddlebags. The farmer didn’t quite know why her heart skipped a beat as she fiddled with the latch on the bags, or why it sang when she saw the dress neatly folded inside. “It was mah mother’s.”
Rarity took it from her gently. “I’ll work on it,” she promised. “I won’t even charge extra for the rush job, provided you go and take a nap, now.”
Mac opened her mouth to argue, but thought better of it. “Yes’m,” she said meekly, and followed Rarity through the shop floor to the back wall. Rarity pushed open a door and flicked on the light switch, revealing a large cupboard, almost empty save for a chaise longue in the middle of the floor.
“You can rest here for a bit. Should I bring in any pillows? Blankets?”
“No, thank you kindly, Miz Rarity,” Mac said, taking a seat on the couch. “Ah’m more comfortable without.”
“Very well,” Rarity said, trotting back out. “Sleep well, Macintosh.” She flicked off the lights and, with a glance back and a small smile, shut the door. The only thing now illuminating the room was a small night light on the wall. Ordinarily, Mac was fond of a little light while she was drifting off, but something about the golden glow set her teeth on edge. Maybe it was how it made the falling dust sparkle. Either way, she rose and unplugged it, plunging the room into pitch black. She fumbled her way back to the couch and lay down, quickly falling into a sleep that was, mercifully, dreamless.
The Doctor stepped into the TARDIS. The console did not warble in greeting. The lights were dim, and several monitors were completely switched off. The Doctor sighed and patted the central console. “I know, old girl. I’m sorry.”
He got no reply. He wasn’t really expecting one, but it still hurt. Giving the console one last gentle pat, he turned his attention to the covered figure in the corner of the room. Technically speaking, there was no reason for it to have been covered -- the door was locked, and if anyone managed to bypass that, a simple tarp certainly wouldn’t stop them from looking further. But it made him feel better, so he did it anyway.
He took the tarp in his teeth, and with a flick of his head, he flung it off, revealing his pet project to the half-light of the room. It was beautiful; tall, slender, and perfectly put-together, it was a vision in blue. From the tip of its horn to the frog of its hooves, the machine was a vision. Strictly speaking, it didn’t have to be shaped like an alicorn, but the Doctor figured that if he was going to go into town, he might as well go in a Lincoln.
Its eyes were dark, now. “Right,” the Doctor muttered. “Time for a test of the systems.”
He reached under its collar, the one section of the machine that wasn’t the same TARDIS blue as the rest -- rather, it was crimson and gold, the proud colors of the Prydon Academy back on Gallifrey. That was yet another detail which, although unnecessary, brought the Doctor a certain amount of satisfaction. He found the activator switch and flipped it to ‘On’.
The machine’s eyes lit up pure white, then cycled through the entire spectrum before settling into a warm golden hue.
All of a sudden, the Doctor felt very self-conscious. He cleared his throat, and the machine turned to look at him. “...Hello. This is the Doctor to the TARDIS. Do you… do you understand me?”
In her eyes, he could see the gears spinning away. After a long moment, she opened her mouth. “...My thief?”
“Er, yes, I suppose so.”
She seemed to struggle to speak. “Do... not... build it.”
The Doctor blinked. “Pardon?”
“I couldn’t resist, I won’t be able to hold him off, my thief, you should not build this conduit!”
“I…” the Doctor trailed off, confused. “Hold who off?”
A cold feeling washed over him, and he reached for the activator switch once more, but the machine wrenched away from him, slicing his hoof on the sharp edge of the collar. He reeled back, and in the next instant a metal hoof had sent him sprawling to the floor. Before he could right himself, the machine had pinned him to the ground. Its eyes, now burning red, cut through him like a knife.
He felt a horrible sense of recognition wash over him. “You.”
The machine gave a horrible facsimile of a smile. “You,” it said, as if in agreement. “You shouldn’t have tried that test-run, Doctor. You’ll give away the game if you aren’t careful.”
The Doctor attempted to say something, but there was a hoof pressing down on his windpipe rather firmly.
“No, I think I’ve heard all I want to hear from you,” the thing inside the machine growled. “You’re pathetic, you know that? So transparently desperate for validation from mayflies. Your inane prattle, your eccentric mannerisms, your catchphrases, are all just misdirection from what you really are. A runaway. A criminal. A coward.”
The Doctor screwed up his mouth as though he were about to speak, but instead, he merely spat in the machine’s face. He was rewarded with even more pressure on his throat. “You’d like to die, wouldn’t you?” it taunted. “How would that work out, I wonder? Leave your body here to rot. Who would find you first? Your wife or your daughter?”
The Doctor could see spots dancing in front of his eyes, now. “Or perhaps I could drag your corpse to some unused broom closet and jettison it into the vortex,” it mused. “Make them think you’d abandoned them again.”
The Doctor’s eyes fluttered shut as his respiratory bypass kicked in. Reluctantly, the machine released him. It still needed the Doctor alive, after all. Alive, but not necessarily well. “Bitter dreams, Doctor. Contact.”
The Doctor’s eyes opened, his irises as red as the machine’s. He grinned slowly and unpleasantly, as though he hadn’t done so for years. Centuries, perhaps. Which, to be fair, was entirely true for the entity occupying his mind. He grabbed the tools that had been strewn across the floor in the scuffle and made for the console. There were quite a few more adjustments to be made in preparation for the unveiling this evening.
Rumble pushed his head up off the ground. “Celestia’s tits, Scootaloo, how did you manage to knock me over like that? You weigh as much as a wet dishrag.”
Scootaloo, standing on his chest, merely beamed at him. “Mass times velocity, man! Mass times velocity.”
Dinky quirked an eyebrow. “No way were you going that fast. Not without your scooter.”
Scootaloo shrugged. “Well, it helped that he wasn’t paying attention.” She stepped neatly off Rumble’s chest and he rolled back onto his hooves.
Apple Bloom shook her head in wonder. “Ah can’t believe it. All of us, back in town on the same day. What’re the odds?”
Dinky frowned thoughtfully. “I mean, not that bad. You live here full-time, and most of us would come home for at least a little while after graduation…” she trailed off, noticing the others looking at her sidelong. “Oh. That was rhetorical. Sorry.”
Scootaloo smirked. “Looks like some things never change, huh?”
Dinky pinked. “Listen,” she said, “I’ve been on the honors track at arguably the nerdiest school in Equestria for the last four years, I picked up some weird habits.”
The others all chuckled, and Dinky cracked a grin.
“What was it like?” Sweetie asked. “Canterlot Magical Academy, I mean.”
Dinky shrugged. “Like I said, nerd central. Everyone there is one tragic backstory and an Igor away from going full mad scientist.”
“Seriously?” Apple Bloom said, raising a brow.
Dinky paused. “Well, that might just be the ponies I hung out with,” she allowed. “But, yeah. It was nice, I guess. I didn’t really get out much.”
“That’s too bad,” Scootaloo said. “I mean, I get it, college is a lot of work, but you gotta unwind every so often.”
Dinky made a noncommittal noise. “What about you guys? How’ve you been?”
Apple Bloom ran a hoof through her mane. “Well, y’know. Ponyville’s Ponyville. Bin pretty quiet, by our standards.”
Button frowned. “Mom wrote me a letter that said the town was under attack by a giant gorilla the Tuesday before last.”
“Yep,” Bloom said. “Like Ah said, pretty quiet.”
A prolonged silence fell. “Button’s going to a tech show!” Sweetie said brightly.
Button blushed. “Sweetie Belle,” he protested.
“What? It’s so cool! You weren’t telling them, and I couldn’t not let them know how awesome you are!”
Apple Bloom nodded. “Sounds real neat. Whatcha takin’?”
“Well…” Button said slowly. “I’ll show you. Later. When we’re inside somewhere and have an hour spare. And after I check over the machinery to make sure nothing’s jogged loose since I left Copper Hills. And after I make any repairs I need to make.” He paused and chuckled at himself, shaking his head. “Y’know, why don’t I just tell you now?” he asked.
Rumble grinned. “Yeah, that sounds good.”
“Basically,” said Button, setting down his bag and pulling out what looked like a hollowed-out robot leg, “you put these on all four of your hooves, and you can control the avatar in your game just by moving.”
“Oh!” Sweetie said, duly impressed.
“That sounds like it would be really cool for a fighting game,” Scootaloo said. “Can I try it on?”
Button stalled. “Um… I really want to get them to Baltimare in one piece.”
“Dude, I want to wear it, not smash it into a tree.”
“Yeah, I get that, but I’ve been working on these almost nonstop for two years now,” Button said. He let out a breath. “No, you’re right, I know you aren’t going to break it. Here, gimme your hoof.”
Hesitantly, Scootaloo held out her right forehoof.
Studying his device carefully, Button slipped it on her. She was about to mention that it was too big when he started turning wheels along the rim. Slowly, vise-like, the boot contracted to a mostly-tight, not-entirely comfortable fit.
Some of her discomfort must have read on her face, because Button said self-consciously, “It’s only a prototype, after all, I was a lot more worried about making it work than I was about ergonomics and stuff.”
“Right… Yeah. Yeah, this is really neat, Button,” Scootaloo said, flexing experimentally.
His smile was broad and deeply relieved. “Glad you like it,” he said.
Sweetie coughed, her smile having fallen some time ago. “Well, this is great and everything, but do you think maybe we could catch up over lunch?”
“Yeah, I could definitely go for a bite,” Button agreed.
Dinky frowned. “Well… Rumble and I kinda just had breakfast.”
“Really?” Scootaloo asked, raising a brow. “Breakfast was hours ago.”
“Well, we ate kinda late--” Rumble started, but Bloom was shaking her head incredulously.
“Ah jes’ finished breakfast two hours ago, and y’all are hungry already?”
“Hey, maybe I ate earlier than you did,” Scootaloo said defensively.
“Earlier than the Apple Family?” Dinky asked, clearly skeptical.
“Well, I’m hungry,” Sweetie said. “Everyone who’s hungry can eat lunch, and the rest of you can… split some appetizers, I guess?”
“It’s too early for lunch,” Bloom grumbled. “Look, it’s only…” she paused, glancing up toward the sun. “Noon?”
Dinky and Rumble joined her in frowning up at the sun. “Huh,” Dinky said. “Time flies, I guess.”
“Guess so,” Bloom agreed, scratching the back of her head. “Yeah, sure. Ah could go fer some chips an’ dip.”
“C’mon then!” Scootaloo said. “Let’s get to the bar before all the booths are taken!”
“Hold it,” Button said.
She glanced back, scowling at the interruption.
Button frowned at her. “I’m gonna need that boot back,” he said.
Scootaloo looked down. “Oh. Right. Um, how do you loosen this thing?”
Twilight groaned. Every part of her body ached, her horn particularly. What happened? She cracked one eye open. Cables lay strewn around her. Her right cheek was pancaked against the floor. It all came flooding back -- the danger, the pain, the near-death experience she’d barely escaped.
She scrambled to her hooves, but the sudden exertion left her dizzy and exhausted, and she soon collapsed back to the ground. Unwilling to give in, she crawled along the floor, half-pushing herself along with her wings until she reached the wall. Struggling to rise again, she managed to bite down on the pull-rope she’d installed for this very purpose before losing her footing again, yanking the rope from the ceiling. A resounding gong echoed throughout the castle, and Twilight breathed a sigh of relief.
A minute later, she heard two sets of hooves rushing down the stairs. Sunset practically smashed the door off its hinges as she came hurtling through, Trixie dogging her into the lab. “Twilight?” Sunset roared, glancing around the room. Her eyes fell on Twilight’s prone form, slumped against the wall. She lit her horn.
“No!” Twilight hissed.
Sunset froze.
“Cables… magic drain,” Twilight said, struggling to get the words out.
Sunset quickly dismissed her aura. “Right. Trixie, you get her forehooves, I’ll take her rear.”
“That’s not what you said last night,” Trixie shot back.
Sunset blinked. “Eh?”
Twilight arched a brow.
“Look, Trixie makes sex jokes to cope, alright?”
Twilight rolled her eyes as understanding dawned on Sunset’s face. “I can’t believe I’m in love with you,” she muttered.
“But you are,” Trixie shot back, grabbing Twilight’s hooves.
“Girls…” Twilight said, weary.
“Right, sorry,” Sunset said, grabbing Twilight’s back half.
Clumsily, Sunset and Trixie carried their friend up the curving stairwell. They managed to avoid bashing her into the walls most of the time, and Twilight was too tired to care anymore. She let her eyes flicker shut. She trusted her friends to get her to safety.
Ponyville was, in many ways, constantly changing. It was a side-effect of being half-demolished every other week. There were large changes, like the Castle of Friendship. There were small changes, like how the sprinkles on the roof of Sugarcube Corner changed with every rebuilding. There were changes somewhere in the middle, like the record store that had sprung up since the last time Rumble had been to this part of town.
But in the center of it all, there was one spot that never changed, at least not visibly. That one building, standing proud against every natural disaster the world could throw at it and then some, was Ponyville’s premier bar, The Stick and Carrot. Certainly, it had been damaged before. Destroyed, even. But each time, Berry Punch built it back up again, just the way it had been before. Her opinion, which she voiced often, was that a bar was a central element of the social life in any settled zone. It was old, it was established, it was familiar. Ponies liked the bar, and Berry considered that if it wasn’t broke, fixing it would do far more harm than good.
Coincidentally, Berry Punch was one of only seven ponies in town who had never been directly responsible for the disaster of the week.
So it was that when the Crusaders walked in, they all found themselves transported back in time for the space of a moment, back to all the times they’d walked in before. As children, out celebrating somepony else’s birthday. The first time they’d been old enough to walk in here and have a good hard cider. The time when they’d all hidden in the liquor cellar from the tripod invaders that had escaped from an enchanted comic book.
As the six ponies stood in the doorway, distracted by their nostalgia, Berry looked over from the bar, sighed, and mentally prepared herself to start filling out insurance forms. Again.
“Well, well, well!” a familiar voice said brightly. Romana stepped out from behind the bar. “If it isn’t my six favorite troublemakers. Been awhile, hasn’t it?”
Dinky cracked a grin. “Hey, Romana. How’ve you been?”
The Time Lady shrugged. “Can’t complain, really. Still working on rebuilding K-9, but it’s difficult when my materials are relatively limited.”
“Says th’ mare who made our barn bigger on th’ inside.”
“Oh, dimensional engineering’s easy,” Romana said. “Rebuilding an old friend is an entirely different kind of challenge. It would be one thing if I wanted to make him perfect. I want to make him right.”
Berry cleared her throat meaningfully, and Romana’s ears pricked up. “Ah, yes. Let me show you to a booth.”
“So, you work here now?” Button asked as Romana led them to an unoccupied booth.
“Well, after Pinchy went off to college, I couldn’t exactly tutor her any longer. So yes, I’ve taken up waitressing for Berry in exchange for room and board until I can grow a new TARDIS. Perhaps not the most thrilling job I’ve ever had, but I can’t fault the company.” She paused. “Well, not most of the time.”
“You realize I can hear you,” Berry said flatly.
“Really?” Romana asked. “Odd. You couldn’t hear me earlier when I suggested we put on any record other than that cheesy old love song LP you play every day.”
“I like Songs of the Heart.”
“You’re the only one,” Romana said, unrepentant. She turned back to the six ponies she was seating, softly smirking. “So! What can I get you?”
“Uh,” said Scootaloo. “Okay, who was just gonna graze on appetizers?”
Dinky glanced at Rumble and Bloom. “Fried mozzarella sticks sound good?”
“Yeah, an’ maybe some o’ that spinach dip an’ pita chips,” Bloom said.
Rumble shrugged. “Yeah, sounds good. And a cider.”
“Oh, yeah. Cider for me, too,” Dinky said.
“Ciders all ‘round?” Romana suggested, already writing it down.
“Ah’d prefer th’ house beer.”
You could hear a pin drop. Romana, to her credit, recovered first. “Alright, five ciders, one beer. And, er, entrees for the rest of you?”
She trotted off after recording Scootaloo’s hayburger, Sweetie’s lasagna, and Button’s club sandwich, leaving Apple Bloom stonefaced and the rest of the Crusaders desperately trying to hide their confusion, with varying levels of success.
“So… a beer, huh?” Scootaloo said, proving that complete and utter failure is in its own way a level of success. Possibly a sub-basement.
“Yep,” Bloom said. “Ah get cider all th’ time on the farm. It’s good to make a change.”
“Fair enough,” Rumble said.
The others seemed to side with Rumble. Scootaloo wasn’t quite satisfied, and scrutinized Bloom for a few minutes more, but voiced no further questions.
“So,” Apple Bloom said, turning to Sweetie. “Ya spilled the beans ‘bout Button back there, but how’re y’all farin’ up in Manehattan? Babs used ta mention you in her letters, but that’s sorta fallen off.”
Sweetie winced. “Oh, right. It’s been awhile since the last time we met up. I’ve just been so busy… I’ll have to fix that when I go back.”
“Busy with what?” Button asked.
At the same moment, Dinky asked, “You’re going back?”
Sweetie hesitated, unsure of which question to answer first. Eventually, she said, “Yeah. I’ve still got so much left to learn. I’m thinking of finding an apartment up there, get off the campus a little.”
“So you’re thinking of living there permanently?” Scootaloo asked.
“Not permanently,” Sweetie said. “Just… for the foreseeable future. And getting back to Button’s question…”
She glanced around, as though to confirm that the bar was empty of other patrons. Which, oddly enough, it was. She cleared her throat, tilted her head back and began to sing a soft aria in Neightalian, her voice rising and falling like the ocean waves. The others listened in stunned silence, and even Berry looked over from the bar, taking the needle off the phonograph.
At length, Sweetie sang the last note and fell silent, blushing slightly. The blush deepened when the others broke into applause. “What was that?” Apple Bloom asked, leaning forward.
“Un Bel di Vedremo, from Poniccini’s Madame Flutterpony,” Sweetie said quietly.
Rumble cocked his head. “So, you’re thinking of going into opera?”
“Dunno, maybe,” Sweetie said, not meeting anypony’s eye. “I’ve been trying to write some music of my own, but I just can’t seem to get it sounding right.”
“Can we hear what you’ve --”
“Nope!”
“We aren’t going to judge --”
“Nope!”
“Can you tell us what it’s about--”
“Nope! Hey, Scootaloo, tell us about what you’ve been up to now!”
Scootaloo side-eyed Sweetie for a long moment, but eventually acquiesced. “Well, I just graduated. Got my bachelors in mathematics.”
“Thinking of continuing your education?” Rumble asked.
“Tartarus, no! College is so boring. I don’t think I could take another semester without completely losing the plot.”
“I take it you aren’t interested in teaching, either,” Dinky said drily.
“Not a chance. I’m gonna try and work for the Wonderbolts!”
Dead silence. Button cocked his head. “And this qualifies you to fly in shows how?”
“Not as a performer, genius. I’m going to be a stunt coordinator! I’ll get to help plan their shows and design their flight routines so they’ll look as cool as possible and also not die.”
Rumble rubbed his muzzle, trying to think of a diplomatic way to respond. “I do kinda think that might not be a job you get straight out of college, Scoots.”
“Well, no. Of course not. Rainbow Dash promised to put in a good word for me, but even that only goes so far. No, I’ll probably start out coordinating stunts for smaller flight teams -- I’ve got a good-looking gig out in Sandy Neighgo.”
Apple Bloom shook her head. “Mare alive, that’s a trip an’ a half.”
“Well… yeah,” Scootaloo agreed.
“How long do you think it’ll take for you to get up to the ‘bolts?” Button asked.
Scootaloo looked up, thoughtful. “Well, for most ponies, I’d guess… ten years? Twelve?”
“But most ponies aren’t in close with one of the top fliers on the team.”
“Yeah. So with that going for me, I’d say it’d be closer to six or seven years until I’ve got a good shot at the job, assuming there’s a position open.”
“Six… or seven?” Dinky repeated, her voice hollow.
“Probably.” Scootaloo shrugged. “It’s no big, really. Not for a job like that.”
Rumble frowned. “Hey, Dinky. Are you alright? You’re looking a little… I dunno, off.”
“Drinks are ready,” Romana said cheerfully, pushing over a cart of mugs.
Everyone took their beverages, and the conversation turned to lighter topics. Dinky, however, was quieter than usual as she nursed her cider and considered what she had learned.
Twilight groaned. Every part of her body ached, her horn particularly. What happened? She cracked one eye open. Cables lay strewn around her. Her right cheek was pancaked against the floor. It all came flooding back. She frowned. Hadn’t she been here already?
She pushed herself up from the floor, slowly this time, and was able to stumble forward a few steps before exhaustion brought her back to the ground. Again, she crawled over to the rope hanging from the ceiling. Nice job putting it back together, she thought distantly.
Supporting herself against the wall, Twilight clambered to a standing position, turned her head, and pulled on the rope again. This time it didn’t come loose, and the gong that echoed through the castle was slightly softer. Nevertheless, within moments, Twilight heard the sound of hoofsteps hurrying down the stairs. Trixie shoved the door open and hurried into the room, Sombra trailing behind her.
“Hey,” Twilight said, sternly as she could manage.
Both ponies whipped around to face her. “Twilight? What happened?” Trixie demanded, rushing to her side.
“You know… Trixie… when you’re trying… to help somepony… hurt. You don’t… leave them… lying on the ground… where they woke up.”
Trixie blinked. “Er, so Trixie is inclined to believe.”
“Then why,” Twilight continued, “did you do… that exact thing?”
Trixie stared at her blankly. “Eh?”
Sombra rubbed his head. “Do you suppose she’s delusional? Princess, what happened?”
“Cables drained my magic. Almost died. Sunset and Trixie took me upstairs. I fell asleep. Woke up back down here.”
Sombra looked at Trixie, surprised and not a little reproachful. Trixie merely looked puzzled. “Maybe you were right about her being delusional,” she mused. “Or concussed? Do concussed ponies get false memories? Trixie’s heard of them getting amnesia…”
“This is ridiculous,” Twilight said, the height of her irritation spurring her to sit upright. “You even fixed the gong-rope!”
Sombra shook his heavy head. “It was never broken,” he said. “I think perhaps we had better get you to hospice.”
“I -- you --” Twilight looked at Sombra’s grave, concerned expression, then at the hurt, confused indignation writ large across Trixie’s face. “...Yes,” she said. “Yes, that might be a good idea.”
She paused. Nopony did anything. “I still can’t walk,” she hinted.
“I’ll carry you,” Sombra said. “Trixie, help lift her onto my back.”
“Right,” said Trixie, grabbing Twilight under her forelimbs and hauling her up. Sombra barely flinched as Twilight’s body was draped over his back. “Keep an eye out that she doesn’t fall off,” he said.
Twilight groaned softly as Sombra made his way up the steps. Her eyes were so heavy now. The power drain had well and truly caught up with her. But there was something about the crystal here that had caught her eye -- a strange golden tint that seemed to grow stronger with every passing second.
“Stop,” Twilight hissed, and Sombra paused. “Can you see?” she asked. “The light… the golden light.”
“What is it?” Sombra asked, his voice hushed. Trixie took a step closer to them both. The world flashed bright gold. Then, it all went dark.
Luna paced the lavish waiting room, agitated. Her shoes clicked against the crystal of the floor. Had she been right in coming to the Empire in the flesh? Perhaps not. But there were words in her mind that she could not put in writing, and thoughts that she dared not express anywhere where her sister might be able to overhear. After Ditzy had departed, Luna had volunteered to track down some of the Doctor’s older companions, while Celestia ran the Day Court as usual. Her sister had agreed, leaving Luna to her own devices.
There were limitations, naturally. Blueblood couldn’t attend any gathering with Rarity at it, obviously. Daring Do was off on one of her quests, and her family was in hiding. Apple Core would result in quite a few awkward explanations to the Apple family, which wouldn’t suit the mood of the intervention in the slightest. That left only the original team of GUIDE, most of whom were either dead, involved in diplomatic missions that couldn't be interrupted for anything short of the collapse of civilization, or simply not close enough to the Doctor to be of any use. In other words, only one of the old guard was available.
The door to the antechamber swung open, and Princess Cadance stepped in, giving her aunt a weary smile. “Luna,” she said. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
Luna smiled and embraced Cadance. “May I not come and visit you every now and again?”
“You may,” Cadance acknowledged. “But you so seldom do.”
Luna grimaced. “There, you have me. Yes, alright. Perhaps you should sit down as I explain.”
The two alicorns took a seat on the nearest couch, and Cadance listened carefully as Luna relayed Ditzy’s story. Her beautiful features grew graver with each sentence. “I’ll come, of course,” she said. “All that he’s done for me, for Equestria, for the world and countless others besides -- if nothing else, it would be a flagrant dereliction of my duties if I allowed a love that strong to wither.”
“Good. Good.”
Cadance’s frown deepened. “Auntie Luna?”
Luna sighed. “Forgive me, Cadance. Ever since Ditzy departed, I’ve had certain... suspicions. We are not going to be disturbed, I presume?”
“There are guards positioned at either end of the corridor adjoining this room, and there are no other entry points.”
“Good.” Luna lowered her voice. “The Doctor has been in a self-destructive spiral for some time now, as I understand it. They’ve always had a knack for self-sacrifice, but now they seem to be actively throwing themselves into danger, with no intention of returning.”
Cadance furrowed her brow. “So... they’ve been acting like the Doctor.”
Luna scowled. “This is serious. You heard me speak of the Doctor’s dreams, his actions, his emotional distance. I find them horrifyingly familiar.”
“How so?”
Luna looked away.
Cadance thought for a moment longer, and her eyes went wide. “Oh. You mean the Nightmare.” A beat, and her eyes went wider. “The Nightmare… inside of the Doctor?”
“It seems familiar,” Luna repeated. “Though not too familiar, I hasten to add.”
“But not too not familiar, either, I take it,” Cadance said, nodding. “Well. I certainly hope that you’re mistaken.”
Luna rubbed the bridge of her muzzle. “As do I.”
The two royals sat in silence for a long minute, reflecting. Then Cadance rose. “Well, I should probably return to my duties.”
“Wait.” Luna said. Cadance paused in the middle of the floor. “There is one other thing, though it may be merely a curiosity.”
“Yes?” Cadance said, turning.
Luna looked at her. “What time is it?”
“A little before ten, I believe.”
Luna frowned. “Odd. I must have lost track of the time. I would have sworn that it was closer to noon.”
There was a scuffling from outside and Luna’s frown deepened. “You said the corridor was guarded.”
“It is,” Cadance said, stepping back from the door as it swung open.
“Aunty Lu!” Flurry Heart cannonballed into the room and buried her face in Luna’s chest fluff.
After a moment spent recovering from the surprise, Luna smiled at the filly and pushed her mane back. “Hello, dear one. How are you today?”
Flurry flopped onto the couch. “Mmmm… OK,” she said. “Daddy made pancakes this morning, and that was YEEEE!, but then I had to work on my homework, which was bleah. Why are you and mom locked up in here?”
Luna glanced away. “We were discussing… important affairs of state.”
“Oh,” Flurry nodded. “Did you bring me anything?”
Cadance blanched. “Flurry!”
“Er… no, I’m afraid not,” Luna said. “This was quite spur-of-the-moment.”
Flurry pouted. “But,” said Luna, “since your mother must go back to her usual duties, and I am free for the moment, perhaps I could assist you with your homework?”
“‘K,” Flurry said, rolling off the couch.
“I shall catch you up momentarily,” Luna called as Flurry trotted out the doors.
She turned to Cadance. “Remember. Be in Ponyville by six -- better to be too early than too late.”
Cadance nodded. “Should I bring Shiny and Flurry, too?”
“I think not,” Luna said. “The child would have no place at the intervention other than to make things awkward, and your husband…” she trailed off. “Well. If my concerns about the Nightmare prove to be more than mere paranoia, it would be prudent to leave him to manage the affairs of state should you be… inconvenienced.”
Cadance shifted uncomfortably. “Exactly how confident are you that the Doctor might actually be under its influence?”
Luna looked down, pensive. “...Confident enough that we should prepare for the possibility.”
“Aunty Lu! Come on!” Flurry called. Then in a quieter voice, “Why are old ponies so slow?”
Cadance winced, but Luna’s eyes sparkled. “We may be slow, child, but there is nothing wrong with our hearing!” she called, halfway to the Royal Canterlot Voice.
Flurry squeaked in surprise and scurried down the hall.
“You’d better get going,” Cadance said. “She’s not a very patient one.”
Luna nodded. “Very well. Good fortune, Cadance. I’ll see you this evening.”
She trotted out of the room, leaving Cadance alone. The princess of love looked around the room, her face blank, then fell back on the sofa as she reflected on all she had just been told.
Twilight groaned. Every part of her body ached, her horn particularly. She was beginning to get rather tired of all this. She cracked one eye open. Cables lay strewn around her. Her right cheek was pancaked against the floor. She growled and kicked at the cables, sending them shifting and writing like snakes. Twilight shuddered. She’d been bitten once already. She didn’t intend to let it happen again.
This time, she didn’t even try to rise. She tucked all her limbs to her sides and rolled over to the wall. This time, she found the strength to rise for a moment before plopping down into a sitting position next to the pull-rope. She tugged it hard, and the gong rang out through the castle. She heard hooves come rushing down the stairs. For good measure, she pulled the rope again.
Sunset hurried in first, followed by Sombra. Trixie came in at the back, panting and gasping for breath.
Sombra blinked. “Have we not done this before?” he asked, hesitant.
“Yep,” Twilight said curtly. “Long story short, I’ve been drained of nearly all my magic, so for the love of Celestia, don’t cast so much as a light spell. I don’t know how close you need to be for it to grab on. Compounding that issue, there seems to be a time loop in effect that takes hold whenever I’m carried out of this room.”
Trixie and Sombra looked lost. Sunset nodded slowly. “Okay…”
“To that end,” Twilight continued, her voice not changing in the slightest, “we need to find and destroy the magic-draining device and whatever is causing the time-loop. Again, do not light your horns -- get too close to the magic drain and it’ll start sucking it out of you. I was exposed for less than twenty seconds, and I nearly died.”
Trixie raised a hoof. “Yes?” Twilight asked.
“If we can’t use magic…” Trixie said slowly, “Then how do we figure out what’s draining magic?”
Twilight frowned. “Unsure. I still can’t really, y’know, move at the moment, so…”
Sombra glanced around. “This tankard…” he said, gesturing to a large metal canister on the wall. “It purports to be full of dragon flame?”
“From Spike, yes,” Twilight said.
Sunset caught on quickly and pulled the canister off the wall. “Okay,” she said, grappling with the valve. “Everypony stand back.”
A thin stream of green flame shot out the top. Slowly, Sunset hauled it around the room in a spiral path, drawing ever-closer to the center of the room. As she did, the flame began to divert from its path, flickering toward the cables. The great electrical coils began to hum softly.
Sunset drew closer, and the fire was pulled directly into the cables. The knob at the top began to loosen even more, creating a stronger stream. Quickly, Sunset tightened the knob once more, her face considerably more strained than when she had loosened it.
“Okay,” she said, turning to the others. “Well, I guess we know what to avoid.”
Everypony was staring at her. Sunset preened. “Well, yes, I am rather clever, aren’t I?”
They kept staring. “Okay, yeah, it was Sombra’s idea really, but…”
They were staring behind her. Sunset turned. One by one, the cables, spitting colorful sparks, were rising into the air like cobras. “Oh,” said Sunset.
She leapt away as one of them lashed at her. Trixie grabbed another canister off the wall. “No!” Sunset yelled. “Don’t feed them!”
Trixie looked at her flatly, then unloaded the fire extinguisher onto the cables. They hissed and drew back, flailing as they fell back to the floor. For a moment, all was still. Then, every machine in the room lit up, and a spray of magic flew out of the top of the Van der Giraffe generator, shattering the spherical crystal at the top. All four unicorns watched, fascinated, as it escaped out the window.
Silence reigned. Then Sombra cleared his throat. “And, er, how should we look for what’s causing the time loop?”
“I don’t think we need to,” Twilight said quietly. “That magic was golden.”
“Yeah,” Sunset said. “So?”
She didn’t get an answer. Twilight had slumped against the wall, unconscious.
The Doctor’s eyes fluttered open. For a long time, he stared at the ceiling, trying to remember where he was. TARDIS, he remembered.
The word sent faded flashes of memory through his head, disconnected moments and actions that fit together piecemeal. He looked around slowly -- the crick in his neck made even turning his head an arduous task. He lay in one of the disused console rooms -- the obscenely gothic one that his seventh and eighth incarnations had used. With some difficulty, he rose to his hooves for long enough to stumble toward and onto the central console.
He yanked the monitor around to run an internal diagnostic. What had happened here? Where was the TARDIS interface? None of these questions were answered on the monitor.
The display read only
Quiescia
Mutter’s Spiral
281,964 CE
Breathable atmosphere
No native inhabitants
“Quiescia?” the Doctor murmured. That name sounded oddly familiar, but he wasn’t overly concerned about that. Most planet names were. He was more concerned with the fact that he’d managed to pilot off Equestria, out of its universe, and into his native galaxy collection, and he couldn’t recall why or how. He wasn’t overly concerned about getting back -- the Fast Return Switch would sort that out easily enough. But why had he come here? Or, putting it more worryingly, why had he been brought here?
Only one way to find out. The Doctor straightened up, tried unsuccessfully to shake the sleep out of his limbs, and trotted out the door.
There was very little to see on Quiescia. It was rocky, hilly, and blue. It was a nice blue, the Doctor thought. Bluer than Ditzy’s coat, but greyer than the TARDIS. The blue also seemed very familiar to the Doctor. Quiescia seemed like an important place, but he couldn’t imagine why. There was nothing here.
He started to walk, not really conscious of direction or distance. The rocky ground made it difficult to move quickly over the terrain without tripping, doubly so when his hooves felt like they'd been stuffed with cotton, but the Doctor was too deep in his fugue state to care.
He started up a hill. The hill also seemed familiar, and the Doctor stopped for a second, conscious of a cold pit in his stomach. He closed his eyes and began to think. Quiescia. Quiescia.
He remembered digging here, lifetimes ago, while Sammy Jane watched. He’d given her his velvet coat. Or had he draped it over a rock? Surely he hadn't kept it on?
It occurred to the Doctor that he’d never had a companion named Sammy Jane. He started to think a little harder, and the events began to slowly separate in his head.
He’d been in his third/eighth body, traveling with Sarah-Jane Smith/Samantha Jones. He’d arrived on Quiescia with a body to bury, and he’d walked up this very hill with Sarah/by himself. He’d dug a grave six feet deep/until he scraped the top of the first coffin. And into the grave he’d put Laika/the D***
Laika/hims***
Laika/his own c***
The Doctor’s eyes snapped open. He began to run for the top of the hill.
He’d covered the coffin/He’d left them exposed. He’d erected a grave marker/He’d dropped in a thermosystem bomb. He’d carved a good dog’s name into the rock/He’d collapsed the gravesite into a neutron star.
He reached the top of the hill. The grave was uncovered, the marker knocked over. He looked down. There were two coffins. Neither of them should be here. He'd destroyed the grave site. Yet, here they lay. The dog-sized coffin was closed. The other hung open.
The Doctor stared into the pit, uncomprehending. His body had been stolen.
On instinct, he spun around to face the way he had come. He was just in time to watch the TARDIS doors slam shut.
The Doctor cried out and raced down the hill, but it was already too late. The TARDIS was fading away even as he watched. By the time he’d reached the base of the hill again, she was gone.
Button sat back and burped. “Sorry,” he said, patting his mouth with a napkin.
Sweetie grinned, threw back her head, and belched a perfect middle C for five seconds. The others stared at her in disbelief. She leaned back in the booth, smiling. “Benefits of learning to control your diaphragm,” she said, apparently feeling no further explanation was required.
Apple Bloom narrowed her eyes. “Well, that’s all well and good, but Ah--”
“If you’re going to start a burping contest, please do it outside the bar,” Romana said, sliding the bill onto the table.
“Yeah, that’s fair.” Bloom slapped a few bits on the table, and the others followed suit. Button made sure to leave a sizable tip.
As they made their way out into the sunshine, Sweetie glanced at the others. “So, um… I don’t like to eat and run, but I should probably see Rarity sometime today.”
Button sucked in a breath. “Yeah… and I should definitely go stop by Mom’s.”
“Same,” Scootaloo agreed. “But we should meet up again later today!”
“Yeah,” Rumble agreed. “What do you want to do?”
Everyone hesitated, unsure of what to say. “...Bowling?” Sweetie tried.
Apple Bloom turned to Dinky. “Ain’t yer dad puttin’ on that big show this evenin’ in yer backyard?”
“Oh, yeah! You should all come around and see that. He's been working on something in the TARDIS for months now. Apparently, the ‘great unveiling’ is at seven. So if you wanted to swing by around six, I think that’s when the party’s happening.”
“Sounds cool!” Button said.
“Yeah, I think we’ll all be there,” Scootaloo agreed.
“Wouldn’t miss it,” Sweetie promised. She smiled broadly. “I really just can’t believe-- ooh!” She reached out and pulled Button into a tight squeeze before bouncing off toward Carousel Boutique.
Button blinked several times. “Oh. Uh, cool. I’m uh, gonna…” he staggered off, grinning like a loon.
The others watched them go impassively. “So, do you think they’re ever going to actually admit they like each other?” Rumble asked.
“Nah,” said Bloom. “They’re just gonna circle each other forever with their weird mushy-gushy romantic tension.”
“If it wasn’t so cute, it’d be really annoying,” Scootaloo said.
Dinky scrunched her muzzle. “Still pretty annoying,” she said.
“Yeah, but only in large doses. I’d better head off too. See ya tonight!”
Dinky glanced at the two others. “You guys aren’t heading home?”
“Ah’ve been in Ponyville the whole time y’all were away. Ah spend more’n enough time with mah kin.”
“And I’ve been back for three days. This is basically the first day I’ve come down to Ponyville after I finished unpacking.”
Bloom looked at him askance. “It took ya three days to unpack?”
“Cloudchaser decided it would be a funny prank to hide all of my suitcases and boxes in the clouds.”
“Still…” Dinky said.
“Well, then I had to get back at her,” Rumble clarified. “And then there was a prank war, and it was a whole thing, and as soon as I get back home I’m probably gonna find out that she removed my room and set it to drift out over Canterlot. So really, I’d like to ignore that reality for as long as possible.”
Dinky nodded. “I get that. So, it’s just the three of us then?”
“Looks that way,” Bloom agreed. “So, whatcha wanna do?”
The silence was deafening.
Twilight ached. For a moment after she awoke, she didn’t know why. Then, everything came flooding back, and she sat bolt upright. At least, she tried. In reality, she pushed herself up for a second, then fell back onto the pillows.
“Awake at last,” Sombra rumbled.
Twilight cracked one eye open. “Not in the lab,” she said.
Sombra gave her a tired half-smile. “No,” he agreed. “Not in the lab.”
“Where’re the others?” Twilight asked.
“Sunset went to obtain medical aid. Trixie is composing a letter to Celestia.”
“Haven’t been out long, then.”
“Slightly less than half an hour, yes. I presume you aren’t feeling your best.”
Twilight just gazed at him flatly, and he snorted a laugh. “Yes. ‘No shit,’ as you moderns say.” He hesitated. “Is there anything in particular you need?”
Twilight thought about that. “A hot water bottle would be nice… maybe something to drink. And to eat. Something quick, simple, lots of carbs.”
“Tomato soup and a grilled cheese?”
“...Yes, actually, that sounds perfect.”
“I’ll pass it along to Trixie.”
“You really should learn to cook, one of these days.”
Sombra’s smile slipped. “Yes,” he agreed. “I really ought to.”
There was a long silence. Twilight was accustomed to these. Sombra was never comfortable with his past royal status being mentioned, for obvious reasons. That included the list of things that he’d never been taught to do, on the grounds that his servants were expected to do them on his behalf. If Twilight’s mind wasn’t so fuzzy, she would have remembered that. She kicked herself for forgetting.
“So…” said Sombra. “What exactly happened?”
“You were there. Imagine that happening again, but without me expecting it.”
Sombra winced.
“Exactly.”
“But you mentioned a time loop,” Sombra pressed. “What was that like?”
Twilight shrugged. “Big golden light, quickly followed by me blacking out again. Or possibly being thrown back in time to when I blacked out the first time. Everything is still pretty fuzzy.”
Sombra nodded.
“I’m pretty sure whatever it was, it was using my magic to power itself,” Twilight continued. “They were definitely connected, somehow.”
“But what was it?”
Twilight exhaled and sunk back into the pillows. “I haven’t a clue,” she admitted. “All I know is, it’s powerful, it nearly killed me, and it’s still out there.”
Sombra shifted nervously on his chair. “We must warn Ponyville.”
Twilight stared out the window and nodded. “Much good may it do them,” she murmured. “At this point, I don’t think we can hope for much more than its appetite being sated for awhile.”
The Doctor was meditating. He sat at the edge of his grave, eyes closed and hooves in his lap. To any outside observer, it would have looked as though he’d fallen asleep. Nothing could be further from the truth. Which was just as well, really, considering that there wasn’t an outside observer around for half a parsec in any direction.
No, the Doctor was exercising his telepathic muscles, reaching out psychic tendrils across space and time. Relatively speaking, his corpse had only left the planet about fifteen minutes ago. The biodata it would have left behind ought to have been fresh enough for the Doctor to open communications with it, regardless of the spacetime that now separated them.
There was nothing.
The Doctor opened his eyes. “Y’know,” he said aloud, “people always say talking to yourself is a bad sign. I’d say it’s a much worse sign when you’re giving yourself the silent treatment.”
There was no reply, naturally. The Doctor sighed. Obviously, he’d chosen Quiescia for a burial site because of its near-total isolation. The whole point of this location was its lack of anything remotely interesting to anyone. It had no strategic value, no interesting minerals, no cultures, no life, no change of any sort. Nothing in the universe would have any reason to come here on purpose, and it was so far from anything interesting that coming here by accident would be practically impossible.
Theoretically, the air would run out eventually -- there was nothing to replace the carbon dioxide the Doctor was exhaling with fresh oxygen. Of course, before that happened, he would starve, and before that happened he’d die of dehydration, but at the rate things were going, before that, he’d curl up and die from sheer boredom. He’d die of exposure well before that, though.
He chuckled bitterly at that. His corpse had been stolen, but never fear. He’d replace it soon enough.
He glanced around for a shovel. It’d be quite hard to bury himself alive, doubly so with hooves, but he could make a crack at it…
Hooves.
He had hooves.
The Doctor stared at his forelimbs for a long moment, then spun around. Tail, flank, hourglass mark. He felt at his face, finding a square muzzle, floppy ears, and those delightfully big round eyes. “Oh!” He laughed aloud. “I’m an idiot!”
He sat down at the edge of the grave and began to meditate once more, this time sending his psychic tendrils in an entirely different direction. A far-ranging message, broadcast through all space and time to find the ears of his savior…
Oi! Lulu! I’m in a spot of bother!
Dinky’s stomach soured and sank. Of course. The bitter pill had to be swallowed. There was nothing left for them to do together. They had done it all already. Now they were older, with their lives ahead of them and their destinies written on their flanks. What did they have binding them together? What was left of their friendship after all these years?
She looked from Apple Bloom to Rumble. Neither of them spoke. Neither of them moved. Neither of them appeared to be breathing, actually.
Dinky blinked, much as her friends currently weren’t doing, and looked up and down the street. Everything was perfectly, unnaturally still. She stepped forward and waved a hoof in front of Rumble’s face. No reaction. “Guys? This isn’t funny.”
She looked around the street again. Everything seemed to be lit strangely, tinted with gold. Unbidden, thoughts about flies in amber rose to mind, and she shuddered, stepping away from her friends and hurrying down the street. For once in her life, she actually really wished the Doctor was here. There had to be some explanation for all this, after all, and he had experience enough to know what that explanation might be.
Of course, he might also be responsible for this, in which case she still wished he was here. Easier to yell at him, that way. Much more convenient. She realized she was babbling to herself.
The silence was getting to her. Nothing was supposed to be this quiet. She started to whistle, but had to stop. Hearing how shaky her voice had become was even worse than the absolute silence.
And then, out ahead of her, she heard something. A scream. Dinky broke into a gallop. Ahead of her, she could just see a figure in the weird golden light -- a stallion, with a stocky, chubby build and a manestyle that Dinky could only describe as ‘unfortunate’.
“Caramel!” she called.
The candymaker looked up in surprise. Dinky blinked. Since when had Caramel had a horn?
Then he winced and doubled over. When he rose again, he was still Caramel, with the same coat, mane, and mark, but he was… different. He stood easily as big as Macintosh, with the muscles to match. More importantly, he was clearly terrified.
“Dinky!” he bellowed. “What’s happenin’? Why do Ah sound countrified?”
He winced again, and suddenly there was a quite pretty golden mare in the road. The mane was still awful, though. Some things were universal. “It keeps happening!” she cried.
Dinky stopped dead in her tracks, unsure of what to do. Another flinch and there was a yellow changeling standing there with what Dinky could only think of as truly regrettable antennae. “Do something!” they buzzed. “I can’t remember which one I even started as!”
Dinky didn’t even think. She thrust out a hoof and grabbed Caramel.
In that moment, everything stopped. It was a little hard to tell, because everything had already stopped but suddenly Dinky couldn’t move and they were old red tall fat short unicorn classy nonbinary pink pegasus punk young blonde orange earth pony chatty blue geeky female thestral male pinto alicorn green moody
And then everything stopped again. The changes, the world, Dinky’s own heart, all completely still. There was something behind her, she could feel its gaze on her and she needed to turn around and see the architect of this madness but she couldn’t move and
“So you’re the whelp,” a voice said, grating and cold. “And you can resist my influences? How irritating. I’ll have to make more focused efforts in the future.”
And then everything started again. Caramel and Dinky fell to the dust gasping for breath, his hoof still in hers.
Caramel pushed himself up shakily and looked at her. He was male again, a little tubby around the middle, an earth pony. But for a moment, his blue eyes sparkled like shattered glass. “What -- what was that?” he asked.
Dinky heard two sets of hooves galloping up the road. She tightened her mouth into a firm line. “I don’t know. But I intend to find out.”
Luna’s arrival was neither smooth nor quick. The first the Doctor knew of it was a sensation of surprise. For a moment, a shape that might have been his old friend flickered into existence, wings outstretched, but then was gone. Her presence, however, remained. Over the course of the next several minutes, the blue rocks and soil shifted erratically, twisting in loops and whorls. Throughout it all, the Doctor remained perfectly still, eyes shut.
Finally, after half an hour or so had passed, he heard Luna’s voice, crackly and distant. “-tor, can you hear me? Doctor, are you there?”
He smiled and opened his eyes. Luna’s form stood before him, constructed from the blue earth that composed this world. “Hello, Luna. I’m glad you’re here.”
Luna’s eyes darted around. She looked rather nervous. “Where is here, Doctor? If this is a nightmare, it doesn’t seem a particularly bad one.”
The Doctor screwed up his face and waved his hoof in a ‘sort-of, kind-of’ manner. “There’s some specific elements of it that make it a lot worse for me, personally. I’ll… explain later. But I’ll agree that I’ve had worse. Trouble is, I’m having some difficulty waking up.”
Luna stared at him. “We see. And, er, when did you go to sleep?”
The Doctor thought about that. “Not sure.”
“What was the date?” Luna tried.
“Twenty-fifth of May, Year 18 Harmonic Era.” He paused. “That’s still today, right?”
“Yes,” Luna said, her tone surprisingly neutral. “Doctor, what is the last thing you can remember doing?”
“Going into the TARDIS to make some repairs.” His face fell. “Oh. Has my body been hijacked by something? Is this all some kind of elaborate metaphor?”
Luna stared at him. “Is it?”
“I don’t know, that’s why I’m asking you!”
Luna shifted uncomfortably. “To the best of my knowledge... no. Your body is fine.”
The Doctor tilted his head back and to the left, studying Luna. “You’re hiding something,” he said, surprise warring with hurt.
“I certainly am not!”
“Luna, I’ve known you since you were a filly. I practically raised you. I’m practically your dad!”
She blanched. “You are no such…” she tailed off. “Oh. That’s -- that is an extremely strange way of thinking about that.”
The Doctor sucked on his teeth. “Yeah, let’s… not go down that road again.”
“Agreed.”
“Anyway. Point is, I know all your tells, and I know when you’re being cagey.”
Luna shrugged. “I know all your tells as well, Doctor.”
“So?”
“So, saying that you’ll ‘explain later’ is a guarantee that you’ll never bring that subject up again.”
The Doctor opened his mouth. The Doctor shut his mouth.
“I won’t pry if you don’t,” Luna said.
The Doctor merely nodded, not meeting her eyes. “So, er, about the waking up part…”
Luna shook her head sharply, as though to clear it. “Of course,” she said. “A moment, please.”
With that, she stared off into space for several seconds. The rock and soil that comprised her avatar began to crumble, now that there was no mental focus there to support it. This was nothing new, but the Doctor still averted his eyes. It felt like watching someone sleep.
After a few moments, Luna returned, frowning. “You can wake up now, Doctor. The mental block that was keeping you here has been removed. It’s odd, though; I couldn’t tell what had caused it.”
The Doctor shrugged. “Probably a fault in the telepathic circuits. I’ll see to it straightaway. Thanks a million, Luna! You’re a lifesaver.”
The dream faded, taking with it Laika, Quiescia, and Luna. But as he floated towards the waking world, he thought he heard his old friend say, half to herself, “I certainly hope so, Doctor. I certainly do.”
The Doctor awoke with a start slumped over the central console, falling on his flank as he flailed. He stared at the ceiling for a long moment. Apparently, the sore stiffness in his neck and back hadn’t been just a dream. He twisted around and winced at the series of pops from his spine.
Stretching like a cat, he pushed himself up to all fours and looked around. He was standing in the console room -- the current console room, not a memory dredged from the past. It was still quite dimly lit, same as when he’d arrived. The interface was standing in the corner, quite still. When had he turned it off? He couldn’t quite recall. Something about last-minute repairs. Telepathic circuits. Yes. That explained everything. Why he’d been asleep, why he’d had that strange dream that was already starting to fuzz and fade from his memory. Best look into that. Company would be coming.
Absently, the Doctor began to potter about the room, making small changes to the TARDIS in ways he didn’t even realize he was doing. A spark of red glimmered in the interface’s clear plastic eye. Everything was falling into place.
Sweetie pushed open the door of the Carousel Boutique and looked around. It wasn’t very busy today. Rarity didn’t tend to have as much trade in the warmer months, but she made up for it in commissions. Which meant, Sweetie supposed, that she was probably cooped up in the back rooms somewhere. “Hey!” she called, walking into the boutique. “I’m back!”
Only silence. Well, that wasn’t unusual. Rarity had a habit of getting absorbed in her work to the exclusion of all else. She had expected Spike to be around, though. Maybe he was out grocery shopping or something. Or they’d gone out together for a lunch date that had run long.
But that didn’t feel quite right. There was something in the air, some tension that had yet to release, like the building was holding its breath. Sweetie faltered and glanced around. There was nothing off about this room that she could see. Slowly, she made her way toward the back of the shop. She passed through the doorway that separated the showroom from the fitting area, and the hairs on the back of her neck prickled. She spun around.
“SURPRISE!” Rarity, Spikie, Pinkie Pie, and Big Mac chorused. Sweetie shrieked and stumbled back, laughing.
“Oh, Celestia, you guys really got me!”
Rarity stepped forward and kissed her sister’s cheek. “Welcome home, darling,” she said.
Spike made to speak, but Pinkie Pie cut him off, bouncing in place with a huge grin on her face. “Hi-Sweetie-Belle-I’m-so-happy-you’re-back-from-Manehattan-great-seeing-you-gotta-go-plan-another-party-BYE!”
She then bounced one last time, directly out of sight of everyone present, and was gone. Sweetie blinked. “Huh. And here I thought I was desensitized to Pinkie.”
“Being away so long must’ve made you forget,” Spike said, tousling Sweetie’s mane. “Although… she has been a little more Pinkie than usual today.”
“Oh?”
Rarity hummed her agreement. “She just turned up an hour ago to help us set up our little surprise, completely out of the blue. And she was like that--” Rarity gestured vaguely to where Pinkie had been standing, “--the entire time. Something about a doozy of a whammy, and her Pinkie Sense going off-kilter.”
“Oh.” Sweetie hesitated. “So… should we be worried?”
“Prob’ly,” Mac said. “Howdy, by the way.”
“Oh, hi Mac. What’re you doing here?”
Mac grunted. “Took a funny turn gettin’ mah dress fit, had to sleep it off in the back.”
Sweetie’s eyebrows shot up. “You? A funny turn?”
“Sweetie Belle,” Rarity reprimanded.
“What? Mac’s probably the most grounded pony in town. Her having a funny turn is kinda weird.”
“Thank ya kindly fer yer concern, Miz Belle, but Ah’m jes’ fine, now. Matter of fact, Ah should probably get back up to th’ farm. Gotta get th’ east orchard fertilized ‘fore the shindig tonight.”
“You’re going to see it?” Sweetie asked.
Mac shrugged. “May as well. AJ an’ Bloom are, so it’s either that or stay home with Granny. Which Ah wouldn’t mind, ‘xactly, but Bloom…” she hesitated. “Well, that ain’t nothin’ Ah wanna bother you about.”
Sweetie cocked her head. “Huh?”
Mac coughed. “Anyway, uh, mah dress?”
“I left it right up front, dear. Come along, I’ll put it in a bag for you.”
Sweetie looked up at Spike. “...So what’s up with Apple Bloom, exactly?”
“Oh. She hasn’t told you, huh?” Spike huffed, and a cloud of sparkling smoke puffed out the sides of his mouth. “Well, it’s no secret, so I don’t mind telling. Bloom’s… planning on leaving Ponyville.”
Sweetie blinked. “What? Why?”
“That, I don’t know. But she keeps talking about feeling cooped up here. She wants to move on and move out. AJ, Mac, and Granny… they aren’t taking it well.”
“Well, they wouldn’t, would they?” Sweetie rubbed her cheek. “I can’t believe she didn’t mention it at lunch. I mean, I can’t believe she’s leaving.”
Spike tilted his head. “Why’s that?”
“Well, she -- I mean, she -- I dunno. I just can’t picture Sweet Apple Acres without her. Can’t really picture Ponyville without her.”
Spike nodded. “Yeah. I think that might be the problem.”
“Huh?”
“...No, never mind. Just thinking to myself. C’mon, Pinkie brought along a sheet cake.”
“Well… alright,” Sweetie said. Internally, she vowed to bring this up the next time she saw Apple Bloom. Ponyville without her just didn’t seem right. She quickly quashed the thought that maybe Apple Bloom had thought the same way about Ponyville without the other Crusaders.
Sunset wrung her hooves as she waited for Dr. Stable to arrive. She had never been at all fond of waiting. Ascending into a being of pure chaos had done nothing to help with that. Theoretically, she could use a fraction of the power that she kept contained within the shell of her body to transport herself, Dr. Stable, and indeed the entire hospital into Twilight’s bedroom without so much as dropping a tongue depressor. A large part of her, the part that was based in an almost feral need to help her friends, wanted to do just that and damn the consequences. The rest of her was very forcefully repeating over and over again the list of reasons why that was a terrible idea and would lead to far more headaches for many more of her friends later on.
You had to be careful with chaos magic. If you didn’t stop to think about the consequences of using it, you’d end up like Discord. Sunset had suffered quite enough falls from grace in her life already, thanks. So she sat in a side room, wiggling in her seat as her willpower wore away with time. How long had she been waiting here? It had been about noon when she’d arrived, and she’d been shown into this private consultation room in about three minutes. Since then, she’d been sat here for… awhile.
Sunset frowned, tried to think about that. Failed. Something weird was going on here. Could she remember the face of the orderly who’d shown her in here? She was pretty sure it had been a stallion with a white coat, but her memories were hazy. She couldn’t remember if he’d been a unicorn, pegasus, earth pony, or what. She couldn’t even remember if he was a pony at all.
Something was very wrong. She struggled to her hooves, only to find that they had fallen asleep. She stumbled to the door, almost falling over herself, and crashed through into the hall, straight into Dr. Stable. They both went flying in a heap of papers.
“Oh! I’m so sorry, doctor,” Sunset said, pulling herself upright. “Here, let me help you with your papers.”
The gold-coated stallion stared at her for a long moment, as though he wasn’t quite sure who he was talking to. “Er, papers!” he said, blinking a few times to clear his head. “Papers, yes, very good of you, Miss Shimmer.”
Sunset frowned at him as she shuffled the dropped pages together. “Something wrong, Doc? You don’t seem quite yourself.”
Dr. Stable flinched and let out a small shriek of horror. Sunset took a step back. The doctor removed his glasses and polished them frantically. “I’m terribly sorry, I’m not feeling at all well, I think perhaps I’d better take some time off, please take up any problems with my assistant!”
He fled down the hall, leaving Sunset holding his papers and watching his tail flapping in his wake. Half the doors in the hall were ajar, with ponies staring out at her. Sunset sighed and clutched the papers to her chest. “Right,” she said. “Can anypony tell me where I can find Dr. Stable’s assistant?”
“Lunch date,” one orderly volunteered.
“Well, someone get her, a thaumic IV, and whatever other medical equipment necessary for treating a magic drain over to the castle right away. Twilight’s had an accident.”
The orderly nodded and took the papers from Sunset’s hooves. “Right away, miss. Will you wait and come with us?”
Sunset shook her head. “I’m afraid I’ve got another, much less pleasant visit to make. Her brothers still need to know what happened.”
Button knocked on the door. Technically, he could have let himself in -- he still had his key, after all. But, since his mom wasn’t expecting him, he decided to take the path of not giving her a heart attack when she heard someone bumping around the house. After a moment, he heard hooves coming up the hallway to the door. It creaked open. “Hello?”
Button wrapped the mare in a big hug. “Hi, mom!”
There was a long pause. Button received no answering hug. “Well,” said the mare in a voice that definitely wasn’t his mother’s. “It might be a little early for that.”
Button pulled back in surprise. The white mare grinned at him, perhaps a little awkwardly. “Hello, Button.”
“Nurse Redheart? What are you doing here?” A cold fear seized Button’s heart. “Oh, Celestia. Is mom okay? Is she sick? Is she hurt?”
Redheart blinked, taken aback.
“Red? Who is it?”
Button glanced around the nurse. His mother stood in the entrance hall, holding a mug of tea. “Uh. Hi, mom.”
“Oh!” Tender Care barely paused to set her mug down on a side table before running and wrapping her son up in a bear hug. “Button! This is such a surprise!”
“You’re telling me! Oh, mom, watch the bag, watch the bag…”
Tender swung him around and pulled him inside. “Oh, sweetie, it’s been so long! Come and sit down.”
Almost before Button knew what was happening, he was sitting in an armchair, being asked questions a mile a minute by his mother, who was sharing the couch with a patiently amused Redheart.
“So,” Button interrupted. “You’re dating again?”
Tender paused for a moment. “Er, yes.” She toyed with her ear. “I was waiting to tell you until a few more dates, but…”
Nurse Redheart chuckled. “It’s been three months, hon. How many more dates was it going to take until you decided we were serious?”
Tender blushed. “I-- well, you know…”
“I’m happy for you,” Button said warmly.
Both mares smiled at that. “Thank you, sweetie,” Tender said gratefully. “So, what brings you back to town?”
Button paused for a moment. He couldn’t tell Mom that the only reason he was here was an accident on the railway. She’d be pretty hurt. “I’m just stopping by on my way to that big tech conference in Baltimare. You remember, I wrote about it in my letter three months back?”
“And the one two months back, and one month back, and last week…” Tender said, chuckling lightly.
“Oh.” Button went a bit pink. “I guess I went on about it more than I thought.”
“I’m so proud of you, Button,” Tender Care said, smiling at her son. “How long will you be staying?”
Button fished his train ticket out of his bag and looked at it. “I leave about half past ten tomorrow.”
“Overnight, then? I’ll be sure to make up your room before dinner.”
“Oh, I can take care of it, mom. I wouldn’t want to interrupt your date.”
“Well, if you’re sure, dear. Now, tell us about… Red? Babe? Your bag is flashing.”
Redheart glanced at where her saddlebags were hanging on a hook on the wall. Indeed, out from one of the pockets, a bright blue light was rising and falling with regular intensity. “Oh, shoot. Looks like I have to go.” She trotted over and pulled out a device that appeared to mainly consist of a large blue gemstone.
“What’s that?” Button asked.
“New tech for the hospital, courtesy of Princess Twilight. It was originally meant to serve as an alarm if someone spilled something on a book, hence the name ‘pager’. She modified it for easier communications for medical workers. See this screen here? It tells me where I need to go…”
She trailed off as she gestured to the screen. Written in big, easily-read letters were the words Castle of Friendship. Urgency level: Orange.
“I’ve got to go.” Redheart shoved the pager back into her bag, not even bothering to shut off the flashing light. She raced out of the room, and seconds later, Button and Tender heard the door bang open as the nurse rushed out.
Tender glanced at Button. “So, er… how was your trip?”
Button was already pulling his bag back across his shoulders and following Redheart out of the house. “Button,” his mother warned. “We don’t want to interfere with Redheart’s work, or any of the other nurses or doctors.”
Button looked back. “But one of our friends is hurt. I want -- I need to be there for them.”
Tender pressed her lips into a line and nodded. “Alright. But if the doctors tell us to leave--”
“I will, no arguments here.” He paused. “We?”
“Like you said. Our friends have gotten hurt. I don’t intend to wait around at home all alone.” She rose from the couch. "And I still want to hear about your trip. Tell me as we walk."
Button smiled as his mother grabbed her hat from the wall. Together, they set out in the direction of Twilight’s castle.
“I… I don’t know what it was,” Caramel said, toying with a mug of strong, sugary tea. “It all happened so… so…”
“Fast?” Apple Bloom suggested.
“Not really,” Caramel said. “No. 'Fast'... it doesn't cover it. It didn't need to be fast. It just… was. Like it always had been, that’s how it happened.”
Caramel, badly shaken after what had just occurred on the street, hadn’t objected to the Crusaders helping him home, and couldn’t quite find it in himself to stop them from investigating further once Dinky had explained to the other two what they’d missed. Now the three Crusaders were sat around the candymaker’s living room, listening to his account.
“Start at the beginning,” Rumble said gently. “What were you doing before… it happened?”
“Nothing, really,” Caramel said, setting his tea aside and folding his hooves in his lap. “I was just going to the market to pick up some ingredients -- my usual supply of sugar, flavorings, gelatin*, things like that. I hadn’t made it a block when I heard a voice.”
“Did you recognize the voice?” Dinky asked.
Caramel shook his head. “It sounded sort of familiar, but it wasn’t anypony I knew well. There was something of a Lawndon accent about it, very fancy, but what I really noticed was how thin the voice was. Like it wasn’t all there.”
“But it was rough,” Dinky said. “A little gravelly.”
Caramel’s eyes widened. “Yes! You heard it too?”
“Only a little bit, once I’d grabbed you. But go on, what did it say?”
“Something like, ‘You’ll be a prime source, won’t you?’. That was the phrase he used, ‘a prime source’.”
“So it was a male voice?” Rumble asked.
“I think so,” Caramel said, after hesitating for a moment. “I can’t be sure. But it felt male, I guess? Does that make sense?”
“What happened after that?” Apple Bloom asked.
“Well, that’s when everything went gold and time stopped, like Dinky said,” Caramel said. “But I barely noticed that when I just…” he trailed off, visibly frustrated. “There’s no word for what happened in the Equestrian language.”
“Then explain it,” Rumble said. “The more detail we have, the better.”
Caramel nodded, staring into space. “My life… changed. I could remember my childhood, growing up, what I had for breakfast this morning, everything like that. But I could also distinctly remember a completely different life growing up out west, moving to Appaloosa, working as a cooper.”
“A cooper?” Dinky asked.
“Barrel-maker,” Apple Bloom said. “Go on?”
“Well, like I said. I could remember both lives, each with just as much clarity as the other. And what’s more, I could always have remembered it, if that makes sense? It wasn’t like I forgot it, or the memories were implanted in my brain, or anything like that. They had always been there, but they hadn’t always been there a second ago. Does that make any sense?”
“Not really,” Bloom admitted.
“I think I follow,” Dinky said, nodding. “Keep going.”
“Okay,” said Caramel. Then he paused. “Also, in the new life, I’d been born a mare, and identified as nonbinary. I don’t know if that’s relevant or not? Wait, is it alright to out an alternate version of yourself?”
“Relevant as anything else, I guess,” Rumble said. “And I think since the pony in question is an alternate version of you, you’re probably fine? I dunno. I think you need a moral philosopher and a theoretical physicist to get anything close to a definitive answer on that one.”
Caramel nodded, staring into his cup of tea. “Alright. Well, then I remembered growing up as a dragon, out in the Badlands. About then I got the wherewithal to scream, and I breathed fire. Somehow, I’d turned into a big, golden dragon, about two heads taller than Spike. And I could still remember the other two lives. And it kept going like that. The lives all kind of blended together, but I remember that at one point I was a pre-unification peasant. I was a workhorse. I was a fashion model, a doctor, a changeling drone, a spy. I was things that I can’t even fully comprehend, now that I’m back. I think I passed through every sapient species in the world, plus a few besides. I existed in the past, present, and future, across Equestria and beyond. And every time, I could remember every life I’d passed through before.” He let out a long breath. "I can't remember much of it now, and thank Celestia for that."
Nopony said anything for a long minute. “Is this where I come in?” Dinky asked.
Caramel took a deep breath, nodded. “Yeah.” He looked at her, with clear difficulty. “Thank you. I honestly don’t think my mind could have handled much more of that.”
She looked away. “It was nothing. I just grabbed you.”
“And probably saved my life.”
“Yes, well.” Dinky coughed. “You’re welcome.”
Caramel dropped his gaze back to his cup of tea. “Well, anyway. You grabbed my hoof, and suddenly I was free. Then the rest of you came running up, and that was that.”
Dinky frowned. “So you didn’t hear the voice again?”
“...No. Why?”
“Well, I did. It said I was ‘resistant’, called me a ‘whelp’, and said something about more focused efforts. Then the gold light faded and we were back in normal time again.”
Caramel shook his head. “It was instantaneous.”
Dinky frowned, deep in contemplation. “When I was running up the street,” she said at last, “did I look particularly golden?”
Caramel looked up at the ceiling, his face screwed up in contemplation. “I think I may have been too busy with the world’s worst identity crisis to notice,” he admitted. “Why? Did I?”
“I don’t think so,” Dinky said.
“Ah reckon yer coat would make it a little hard to tell,” Bloom noted.
Caramel looked down at himself. “True enough.”
“When I grabbed you, I got a better look at you,” Dinky said. “The whites of your eyes were definitely more golden than usual, and I don’t think you were breathing.”
“So, what are you saying?” Rumble asked.
“I think that either whatever froze time restarted it, then refroze it to include Caramel this time, or froze time within a time freeze,” Dinky said.
“...Which means what, for those of us who didn’t get our cutie marks for time travel?”
Dinky thought about that. “The full implications are unclear without more evidence. The only thing I can be sure of is that whatever it was used an obscene amount of power doing it. Even freezing time once over a localized area would be pre-ascension Twilight-level magic. Twice in a row? That could be pulled off by a group of regular unicorns working in tandem, Starlight Glimmer, or a similarly powerful magic generator. Add in whatever was happening to Caramel, we’re talking alicorns and draconocci.”
Everypony stared at her for a long minute. Rumble let out a long huff of air. “Well, that narrows down our list of suspects, at any rate.”
“Which means it’s a cryin’ shame it don’t seem like any of ‘em woulda done it,” Bloom said. “Outta the three in town, Twilight an’ Sunset ain’t got the motive, an’ this just don’t seem like Discord’s style.”
“How is freezing time specifically to mess with somepony ‘not Discord’s style’?” Caramel asked.
“They go for humiliation, not complete loss of identity,” Bloom pointed out. “Besides, with time frozen, there ain’t nopony around to watch.”
Caramel nodded grudgingly, acknowledging the point. “So, what, Celestia did it?”
Dinky sighed. “I sincerely doubt it. I think that we may need to consider that we may have another Sunset Shimmer on our hooves -- another half-ascended draconequus or alicorn setting off weird magical effects around Ponyville.”
Caramel blanched at that, and Apple Bloom paled. Rumble merely gave a long sigh out the sides of his mouth and pushed back from the table. “We’d better go talk to Twilight,” he said.
“Hey, G.”
“Yeah, Dash?”
“You ever worry we’re slowing down as we get older?”
Gilda took a long sip of her lemonade. “Nah. We’re just chillaxing.”
“Good, good. Just wanted to make sure we’re on the same page.”
“Yeah. Hey, pass me that box of eclairs.”
Dash rolled over on the sunbathing cloud she was sharing with her old friend to shove the pastry box in her direction. Gilda didn’t even look over. She just grabbed a fistful and gobbled them down, one by one. “Damn, these are good,” she muttered around a mouthful.
“Gonna have to thank Pinkie later.”
Gilda made a face. “Do I have to?”
“If you do it well enough, she’ll probably give you another box for your flight home.”
Gilda weighed that in her mind. “Eh, alright. So, how’s it going with, uh… Apple Horse?”
“Applejack.”
“Right, what I said.”
Dash snorted. “Riiight. It’s all good. I spend three nights a week at her place. I’m thinking of hauling my cloudhouse over Sweet Apple Acres.”
Gilda snorted. “U-Haul, much?”
“Hey! I’ve been dating her for like, ten years now. I’m taking it slow.”
Gilda looked over at Dash and lowered her sunglasses. “Yeah. Maybe slower than I’ve ever seen you go. You put a ring on that hoof yet?”
“I -- well --”
“Useless,” Gilda said, with relish.
“You take that back!”
“Propose to your marefriend, and I will.”
“Jackass.”
“Dweeb.”
Dash sighed and fell back into the cloud. “You’re right,” she admitted. “I should get married to her. I want to get married to her. But…”
“But?” Gilda said, crossing her talons.
Dash covered her face with her hooves. “I always thought she’d be the one to propose to me,” she said.
Gilda clucked her tongue.
“I know, I know,” Dash said. “But she’s always been the driving force, y’know? Every time we take it to the next level, it’s because of something she suggested, after I had about three weeks to come around to the idea.”
“That’s unlike you,” Gilda said.
“I know,” Dash groaned. “But she’s so comfortable with this, and I’m… not, y’know? I’m comfortable being with her, and I wanna marry her and maybe have kids? Probably have kids, the Apples are pretty big on that, and as long as I don’t have to carry them, I’m cool with that. But well… you know. She’s just so easy about love, and I’m not.”
“Huh. Hey, Dash?”
“Uh-huh?”
“You’re an emotionally repressed layabout nitwit who doesn’t know how good she has it.”
“I know you are, but what am I?”
“I’m serious.”
“I know, I get it…” Dash sighed. “So you think I should propose to her?”
Gilda threw her claws in the air. “A miracle! She can be communicated with!”
Dash rolled over and tackled her. “Oh, so that’s how it is?” Gilda said, laughing. “I try to give you life advice, and this is how you do me? Alright, you asked for it, ya little--”
Their conversation fell to grunts and growls as they wrestled for dominance, until finally Dash managed to get Gilda in a headlock.
“Hah, hah, how the heck did you do that?” Gilda growled. “I’m like, three times your size!”
“Does it matter? Say uncle!”
Gilda tried to shake Rainbow off, but the pegasus just jumped up, pushing Gilda to the cloud. “Awright, awright, uncle! Uncle!”
“Ha!” Dash let go and flew up. “Laydeez and gentlemen, the undisputed champeen!”
“Yeah, yeah, yuck it up. Let’s see how ya do in round two!”
“Hi, Rainbow!”
Both Gilda and Dash paused and looked down. An orange pegasus was waving up at them.
“Oh, hey, Scoots!” Dash zipped down to ground level, leaving Gilda still stumbling to stand upright. “I didn’t know you were back in town!”
Scootaloo grinned as Rainbow tousled her mane. “Yup. Just graduated!”
“What? And you didn’t invite me to the ceremony?” Dash looked hurt, but tried to play it off. “Oh, was there an eggheads-only rule in place?”
“Nah. I just didn’t think you’d want to fly all the way out to the college just to see me get some dumb piece of paper for math.”
The rictus smile on Dash’s face said that Scootaloo had thought wrong. “We already know how good I am, right?” Scootaloo said, worry tinting her voice. “It’s fine, right?”
“Uh, yeah. Yeah! Don’t need a dumb diploma to tell you how awesome you are,” Dash said, forcing her smile a little wider.
Blessedly, at that moment Gilda swooped down to the ground, inspecting Scootaloo closely. “So you’re the famous Scootaloo.”
Scootaloo blinked. “Uh, famous? Me?”
“Rainbow here never shuts up about you,” Gilda said. “Same deal with Gabby. So you’re my two friends’ favorite pony.”
“Well, favorite,” Scootaloo scoffed, studying her hooves. “Me? No. Rainbow’s favorite pony has to be Applejack, right? And with Gabby, it’s probably split between all six of us Crusaders…”
Gilda stared at her for a long moment, a slump in her beak. “Well. So far, I’m not wildly impressed.”
“Gilda!” Dash looked horrified.
The griffon jerked a claw at Dash, suddenly grinning again. “See? You’re her favorite.”
Scootaloo turned beet red. “U-uh, anyway. I was gonna invite you over to Holiday and Lofty’s to catch up. I didn’t know you had a friend in town, though. I’ll catch you later!”
“I -- well, hold on.” Rainbow glanced between Gilda and Scootaloo, obviously torn.
Gilda cracked her neck. “Would you mind if I came along? I’ve just met the pony I’ve spent the last -- oh, eight years or so -- hearing about nonstop. I wanna find out if the rumours are true.”
Scootaloo hesitated. “Well… I don’t mind. And I don’t think Holiday and Lofty would mind too much either. Sure! I’d like to get to know the famous Gilda.”
“Cool.” Gilda paused. “Wait, what?”
“Oh yeah,” Scootaloo said, grinning as she trotted back down the road. “Rainbow talks about you all the time. Gabby too. Guess you’re their favorite griffon.”
“Oh,” said Gilda. She smiled. “How ‘bout that?”
As they made their way into Ponyville proper, Dash couldn’t help but notice a certain extra spring in Gilda’s step. She nodded subtly at Gilda. “And that,” she said softly, “is why she’s my favorite.”
Gilda nodded. “Yeah. I get it.”
Ditzy mopped her brow. The early afternoon sun was brutal. Normally, she wouldn’t be working this late, but her trip back from Canterlot had taken longer than expected. Fortunately, nopony else had been on time today either. Unfortunately, that just meant that nopony had picked up anypony else’s slack. It was like everyone had forgotten how to tell the time or something; Ditzy had delivered mail to ponies who were still eating breakfast, ponies who were just getting home from work, ponies who were fast asleep. There was clearly something funny going on. The question, of course, was whether this was normal Ponyville weirdness or something more insidious. There was no way of being sure until the other horseshoe dropped.
Fortunately, she had just finished her rounds, and could now head home for the day. If anyone had insights on what these weird scheduling discrepancies might mean, it was the Doctor. She hurried down the road, anxious to reach the relative safety of her home before whatever machinations were in store for the day really kicked off.
Finally, she arrived home. Shoving open the door, she threw her hat and bag in the general vicinity of the coat rack. “Honey!” she called. “I’m home!”
No reply. Unusual. She knew the Doctor wasn’t manning his repair shop today, and it wasn’t grocery day either. Of course, with the way today was going, she wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that the Doctor’s schedule had slipped off course, too.
He wasn’t in the sitting room, or their bedroom, or the basement. He wasn’t in the bathroom, or the study, or the laundry room. The attic was bereft of his presence, and Dinky’s room was vacant as well.
Then she came to the kitchen. Her first thought was ‘Oh no! The Doctor has been kidnapped!” Then the rational part of her brain kicked in and she realized that kidnappers wouldn’t have left a room this messy even if they’d tried to use it to cover their tracks. The slices of jelly toast slapped against the ceiling confirmed it; this was the Doctor’s doing.
She closed her eyes for a few minutes, taking long, slow breaths. Alright. Well, if he’d left the kitchen in this state for this long, justifiably there was only one place he could be, using ‘justifiably’ in the loosest possible sense of being able to justify anything.
With a tight-drawn mouth and a controlled, clipped gait, Ditzy trotted out to the TARDIS and banged on the door. She felt somewhat gratified to hear a yelp of surprise from inside, followed by hasty hoofsteps in her direction. The doors swung open, and Ditzy blanched. The Doctor was covered in soot, smut, and sweat, his eyes somewhat glazed and his mane even messier than usual. He gave her a loopy, unfocused grin. “Ah! Hello, love. How was work?”
“Er, fine, I suppose. Doctor--”
“Brilliant! Say, have you got a minute to run up to Sweet Apple Acres?”
For a moment, curiosity won over irritation. “I suppose so. Why?”
“Change of venue. The console room is pretty big, but not big enough for everyone who’s planning on coming to the party. The barn is a better option.”
“Alright. I’ll ask.”
“Brilliant! I just need to make a few more --”
“Nope.”
He faltered. “No?”
“Doctor. Do you remember breakfast?”
He cocked his head. “Er, first meal of the day? Usually involves muffins? Can be continental or --”
“This morning’s breakfast?”
She could see the gears clicking in the Doctor’s head. “The kitchen?” she suggested.
His eyes bulged. “The kitchen!” He started to run toward the house, but Ditzy held up a hoof.
“Let me tell you how this is going to work out,” she said firmly.
The Doctor nodded, wide-eyed.
“I’ll go up to Sweet Apple Acres and ask about borrowing the barn. While I’m doing that, here’s what I want you to do. First, take a shower. Then, clean the kitchen. After that, take another shower, because you’re going to need it after the kitchen. Once all that is done, I’ll help you get the TARDIS to Sweet Apple Acres.”
The Doctor bowed his head, contrite. “Yes, dear. Sorry, I really meant to do the kitchen, but I just wanted to make a few adjustments to the TARDIS and --”
“You lost track of time.” Ditzy said. “Yeah, there’s a lot of that going around today.”
“Right. Sorry.”
She smiled slightly. “I understand. Just don’t do it again, alright?”
“Losing track of time, or trying to reinvent breakfast?”
“Either. Both, actually. ‘Reinvent breakfast’?”
The Doctor broke into a wide grin. “Oh, it was a brilliant idea! A machine that poaches eggs, browns hash, jellies toast while it’s toasting, detects chaos magic, picks up interstellar radio signals, and pours orange juice, all at the same time!”
Ditzy looked at him, eyebrows raised. His face fell. “Too much?”
“Maybe a little bit,” Ditzy said, patting him on his grimy back. “I think they might all do better as separate inventions, don’t you?”
The Doctor sighed. “Yes. You’re right, of course. Picked up too big an energy reading this morning, and that’s what did for the kitchen. I’ll dismantle it once I’ve cleaned everything else up, promise.”
“Thank you, dear.” She leaned in and kissed the least filthy part of his face she could find.
He turned pink under the grey stains as his wife giggled and flew off. With a goofy smile pasted on his face, he tottered into the house. Behind him, the TARDIS doors slammed themselves shut with an irritated snap.
Sunset squared her jaw as she faced the back door of Carousel Boutique. This was going to be an… unpleasant conversation, to say the least. By now, Trixie would have taken care of writing to Twilight’s parents and Shining Armor, but the task of telling Spike had been left to Sunset.
She blew back the flames that were licking her forehead and knocked three times. After a moment, she heard a scuffling on the other side of the door. It opened, revealing an unexpected face. “Sweetie Belle?”
Sweetie smiled. “Hi, Sunset! C’mon in!”
“I didn’t know you were back from college,” Sunset said, stepping into the kitchen.
“Just got back today. I guess you aren’t here for the party, then?”
“Party?”
“A fairly low-key affair, darling,” Rarity said, sweeping into the room. “Only the two of us and Spike, really.”
“Oh,” Sunset fidgeted nervously. “It’s Spike I need to talk with, actually. But you two should probably stay, too.”
Rarity’s smile faded as she studied Sunset closely. “Oh, dear.”
“Yeah. I don’t want to ruin your homecoming party, Sweetie --”
“Just a visit,” Sweetie said hurriedly.
“-- sure. But I’m not coming in with what you could call ‘good news’.”
“Yeah?” Spike peeked around the door. “Oh, hey, Sunset!” He faltered as he caught sight of the three mares’ faces.
“You’d better sit down, Spike,” Sunset said.
Spike stepped into the kitchen and took his seat at the table, looking at Sunset warily.
She took a breath. “Twilight… had an accident this morning.”
Spike paled and reached for Rarity’s hoof. She took his hand and patted it gently. “She’s fine now,” Sunset said. “For a given value of fine, I suppose.”
“That’s good, for a given value of good,” Spike said. “What happened?”
“The specifics are… unclear. She was drained of magic to a point she believes to be near-fatal even for an alicorn.”
Rarity winced as Spike’s grip on her hoof tightened. “As I said,” Sunset continued, struggling to keep her voice even. “She’s alright, now. She was sleeping it off when I left the castle.”
“Have you had her checked over by a doctor?” Sweetie asked.
“They should be taking care of her now,” Sunset said.
Spike stood up abruptly. “Let’s go.”
“Spike, the doctors --”
“I’m going.”
“Spike--”
He turned. “My sister nearly died today. I’m going. And Celestia help anything that stands in my way.”
He raced out the door. Sweetie looked shocked. Rarity looked resigned. “We’d better go and make sure he doesn’t do anything he’ll regret,” she said. She extended her hoof to Sunset. “A teleport, darling?”
“Yeeeeaaah. Yeah, that sounds like a good idea.” Sunset grabbed both mares’ forehooves and, in a flash of bright orange light, all three were gone.
Twilight was feeling somewhat better now. Not well, per se, but well enough to sit up and eat her soup and sandwich without getting dizzy. Sombra had left to see about cleaning up the lab, and now Trixie sat at her bedside. “I’m fine, Trixie,” Twilight said, taking another huge bite of her sandwich. “Mmmf, this is good.”
“Trixie is glad that you have your appetite, at least.”
“I didn’t realize how hungry I actually was,” Twilight admitted. “But it makes sense; I lost a lot of energy. Calories are a good way of getting that back.”
Trixie rubbed her chin. “Fascinating.”
“Hm?”
“Magic theft as a weight loss program. Maybe that’s the angle you can take to reform Tirek, hm?”
Twilight laughed. “Well, I’ve heard of stupider diets,” she admitted. “Of course, there’s the problem of feeling ravenous immediately afterward, it seems, though that may be because of how fast an alicorn’s metabolism runs. We should do some tests--”
“Twilight,” Trixie interrupted. “You teeter on the precipice of taking one of Trixie’s jokes seriously. Be wary.”
Twilight laughed again, a little softer this time. “Right. Sorry.”
There was a knock at the door. “Enter!” Trixie said.
Twilight gave her a flat look. “Oh. Right.” Trixie lit her horn and the great double doors swung open, revealing three hospital ponies, including one still out-of-breath Nurse Redheart.
The three trotted into the room. The one on the right, the only stallion of the three, pulled out a horn cap. “Good afternoon, your highness. My name is Nurse Compress, this is Nurse Bandage, and of course, you already know Nurse Redheart.”
“Good afternoon,” Twilight said, giving a small nod to each nurse in turn. “Now, Twilight, could you light your horn, please?” Compress asked.
Twilight closed her eyes tight, her forehead furrowing with the effort as a faint aura wavered into being around her horn. The stallion slipped the cap over the tip of her horn and examined a box that was connected to the cap with wires. He frowned. “Well. That’s definitely not good, but we’ve seen far worse-off patients.”
“Alicorn healing abilities,” Twilight explained. “I estimate that without assistance, my magic would be fully replenished in about two weeks. Of course, anything you can do to speed that up would be greatly appreciated.”
“Of course,” said Redheart. “Forehoof, please.”
Twilight held out her left hoof, and Redheart dabbed it with alcohol. “Right. Nurse Bandage, the IV drip? Thank you. Twilight, this is an IV drip of what is essentially magic in liquid form. One bag should restore one kilothaum of magic. Obviously, in your case, that’s something of a drop in the bucket.”
“But any little helps,” Twilight said. “Alright, go for it.” Twilight winced as the needle pierced her skin. “...Can I keep eating, or will it throw anything off?”
“You can eat normally, yes,” Bandage said. “The magic drip has no real nutritional value.”
“For obvious reasons, we don’t have much direct information about how alicorns heal,” Nurse Compress said. “So listen to your body. We’d encourage light exercise as soon as you feel able -- walking, for instance, is fine. Anything more strenuous than that -- flying, running, lifting weights -- is not.”
“And you should be accompanied at all times,” Redheart said firmly. “If you feel dizzy or lightheaded, have them guide you to somewhere you can lie down --”
There was a distant crash and everypony paused. “Somewhere dark and quiet where you can lie down until --”
Another crash, followed by what sounded like a roar and crackling flames. A shout of fury, and another crash. The sound of hooves echoed through the crystal halls, growing ever-closer. Trixie backed up, lighting her horn. The doors swung open.
“Hi!” Tender Care waved. “How’s the patient holding up?”
Button hefted a bouquet in his hooves. “We stopped to get flowers.”
Behind them, Spike was visible for a moment, flying down the hall from the force of some unimaginably powerful entity. Moments later, Sunset came screaming down the hall after him, flames encasing her entire body. “Are you going to sit still now?” she demanded. “Are you going to wait for the nurses to finish? Or am I going to have to use a whole one-fricking-percent of my power on your ass?”
Spike roared.
Tender winced. “Do you mind if we come in?” she asked.
“Huh,” Rumble said. “That’s a new hole.”
“Yep,” said Dinky
“Wasn’t there earlier today.”
“Nope.”
“Y’all sound like Mac,” Apple Bloom said.
Dinky snorted. “C’mon. If we waited to go into the library every time there was a new hole in it, we’d never go in there at all.”
Rumble and Apple Bloom glanced at one another. “Fair,” they said as one, following their friend up the crystal steps into the castle.
The foyer had seen better days. Several tapestries were smoldering, and deep claw marks were gouged into the walls and ceiling. “Huh,” said Dinky. “Must’ve been a big one, this time.”
Apple Bloom frowned. “D’ya think this might be related to whatever happened to Caramel?”
Dinky cocked her head. “Nnnno? Not really, they don’t seem particularly similar. Why?”
“Well, that’s th’ good thing about Ponyville, right? Big ol’ life-threatening end-of-the-world scenarios happen all th’ dang time, but ya never get more’n one at a time.”
“That’s not true,” Rumble said. “Remember the time the Abyssinian ambassador nearly started a war with the Diamond Dogs on the same day that Pinkie’s Pinkness escaped and started possessing everypony?”
“Or the day when Starlight Glimmer accidentally merged all the parasprites into one HUGE parasprite and Trixie’s hypnosis act made everypony in town swap bodies?” Dinky added.
“Or the time when we got into a competition with Diamond Tiara over who could be Ponyville’s Next Top Model on the same day we found out that Cranky Doodle trained to be a ninja?”
“Yeah, yeah, point made,” Bloom grumbled. “But like, ninety-five percent of the time, it’s just one big thing at a time.”
“Fair point,” Rumble conceded.
Dinky frowned, still skeptical. “I dunno. If you can explain to me how something that stops time and… does whatever it did to Caramel and me… could also be responsible for this when it doesn’t even have a body…”
“Well, Ah ain’t got any ideas yet,” Bloom admitted. “All Ah’m sayin’ is, let’s keep our eyes peeled and our minds open.”
Dinky sighed. “Alright,” she said, clearly still skeptical.
Bloom scowled at her, and the three set off deeper into the castle.
Luna paced her room, deep in contemplation. Strictly speaking, she ought to be sleeping right now. There was every chance that her strength would be put to the test this evening, and while, as an alicorn, she didn’t strictly need to sleep, she certainly functioned better with it than without it. Also, Luna quite enjoyed sleep. It was one of life’s small pleasures, like coffee, or Tiberius, or romance novels, that helped her get through the night. She had long ago perfected the art of sleeping with her eyes open, in order to make it through some of the lengthier sessions of the Night Court without snapping and completely disbanding some royal house or another. Every session, her patience wore a little shorter, but she refused to break. She had a long-standing contest with Celestia to see who would lose their temper in court first, and she was determined not to lose. She dreamed about the day when her sister finally broke.
But not right now she didn’t. Luna was consumed by the roil of her thoughts. Fear, guilt, anger, and hate warred for dominance, resulting in a wave of general stomach-roiling, mind-wracking, heart-sinking anxiety.
And so she paced, a ball of nervous energy. Every few minutes she checked the clock, waiting for the hour at which it would be appropriate for her to depart for Ponyville. Unfortunately, seven o’clock was still hours away.
Around half past two, she grew exasperated and seized the clock from the wall, bringing it right up against her face. “Damn thee! Why must thou delay so? If we are to die on this day, let it not be from tedium!”
“Impressive,” said somepony in the doorway.
Luna whirled around. “WHO DARES INTRUDE -- oh. Hello, Celestia.”
Celestia smiled. “Good afternoon, Luna. How are you?”
Luna blinked. “Perfectly fine, dear sister.”
“Oh?”
“You doubt our veracity?”
Celestia scrunched her muzzle. “Well, not to put too fine a point on it, but you do seem to have lost control of the Royal Canterlot Voice.”
“Oh. Whoops. Well, under the circumstances, surely you can understand--”
“You were yelling at a clock. And don’t call me Shirley.”
Luna rolled her eyes. “Very well. Perhaps I have grown a touch overstressed.”
“Luna, your mortal body is flickering.”
Luna looked down at herself. Across her skin, inky black ichor scrawled out patterns of runes. Her wings had metamorphosed into vast, bat-like appendages. She glanced into the mirror of her boudoir, and saw the awful dark radiance of her halo shimmering like a mirage behind her. “Ah. So it is.”
“Luna, dare I ask if you’re feeling quite well about Ditzy’s invitation?”
Luna shifted uncomfortably on her hooves as she forcibly shunted her eldritch bulk back out of tangible space. “This evening, you mean?”
“Did we have any other invitations from Ditzy?”
“If you wish to hear my thoughts, it would be wisest not to take that sarcastic tone,” Luna grumbled.
Celestia acknowledged this point with a graceful dip of the head. “My apologies. Please, continue.”
Luna gave a great sigh, trotted over to her bed, and flopped on her back, wings and hooves thrown spread-eagle. Moments later, she felt the mattress shift and creak as Celestia settled next to her. She glanced over. Her sister lay on her side, facing Luna with open, hopeful eyes.
Luna sighed. “Very well. I cannot bear to think I might be taking you in unprepared. But Celestia, I implore you -- think me not unfaithful, nor ungrateful, for what suspicions I have developed.”
“You think the Doctor has been possessed by the Nightmare, don’t you?”
Luna sat up in shock and a flurry of feathers. “How could you possibly have known that?”
“Inside voice,” Celestia reprimanded gently.
“Buck the inside voice to Tartarus! You suspected as well, but said nothing?”
“To be fair, you didn’t say anything, either,” Celestia said mildly.
“I-- well-- that’s different! I had no idea you even suspected.”
Celestia raised a brow. “Hm. Isolation from loved ones, sudden obsessive behavior, torturous dreams, where have I heard that one before?”
Luna looked away. “I told you not to be sarcastic.”
“Ah. So you did.” Celestia paused. “I’m sorry, Luna. I feared that mentioning it might upset you. I neglected to consider that if I noted the symptoms, you certainly would have as well.”
“...I don’t want to believe it of them.”
“No.”
“There must be some other explanation!”
“There may.”
“They can’t really be…”
“But they can,” said Celestia, her eyes brimming with tears. “They could be. You know that, and so do I.”
“The Elements…”
“Still in the Tree. Even if they could be safely removed, they’d be unusable in any case. Now that Twilight and her friends have given up their connection to them, a new set of Bearers would need to be found in order to make them work.”
“Then…”
“Then we hope that they haven’t been possessed, but prepare for the fallout if they have. The Elements are far from the only things that can deal with the Nightmare.”
“Perhaps. But the other methods do tend to be rather ‘kill or cure’.”
Celestia looked away. “It’s no less than what they taught us themselves,” she said quietly.
Luna shut her eyes tight and nodded. “Very well. But only as a final resort.”
“Obviously.” Celestia hesitated. “You told Cadance, didn’t you? And Discord?”
“Cadance, yes. Discord… if I must.”
“It would be for the best. But Cadance -- you told her to come alone, didn’t you? Shining Armor must maintain peace in the Empire if we fall.”
“Naturally. Why?”
Celestia’s mouth set in a grim line. “I fear that she’ll have a much more difficult job keeping him at home. Recent developments -- never mind. You have worries enough right now. Speak with Discord, and then take a nap. You look dreadful.”
Luna was too weary to argue. “Very well, sister.” She looked back into her boudoir mirror. “Discord. Discord. Discord.”
There was a puff of smoke, and a slender figure clad in black and white stripes sprung forth. “It’s showtime!” Discord crowed, waggling their green-dyed eyebrows. Then they saw the streaks of mascara running down the princesses’ cheeks, and their arms dropped to their sides. “Uh, I’ll just… come back later.”
“Nay,” said Luna. “We have something of great importance to tell you.” She closed her eyes. “Celestia, get thee back to court. We shall handle it ourself.”
Celestia merely nodded, rose and departed.
Discord settled back. “I’m not going to like this, am I?”
The door to Luna’s room clicked shut. Celestia took a deep breath and straightened her neck. Then, composure regained, she trotted down the hall back to the throne room.
After a few minutes, Apple Bloom was the first to spot signs of life apart from the carnage that had been visited upon the castle’s infrastructure. “Do any of y’all hear that?”
Rumble and Dinky stopped. “Sounds… high-pitched,” Rumble said.
“Whiny,” Dinky said.
“And kinda… fancy?” Apple Bloom finished.
All three paused. “Rarity?”
“Gotta be. C’mon.”
They continued around a corridor and stopped dead. A small crowd of ponies were sitting outside Twilight’s room. None of them looked particularly happy. Spike was sitting against a wall, a hangdog expression on his face. He looked a few inches shorter than normal. Rarity was standing next to him, pressing a hot water bottle to his forehead and scolding him about his foolhardiness, rushing in and refusing to listen to reason. Spike nodded along, clearly agreeing with every word and anguishing about it. On the other side of the door, Sunset Shimmer sat in a tub of water. Her fiery mane, wings, and tail had been extinguished, leaving her looking bald, soaked, and peevish. Tender Care sulked in a corner, put out that her marefriend had kicked her out of the room. Button Mash and Sweetie Belle were the only ones that looked remotely cheerful, as they sat against the wall sharing a bouquet of lilacs and daisies.
At the sound of her voice, Button glanced over and brightened, waving them close to sit with him and Sweetie Belle. “Hey guys,” he said. “You came to see Twilight, too?”
“Yeah,” Rumble said. “Why, what did you want to see her about?”
“Oh, y’know. Just general well-wishes. She didn’t seem to want the get-well-soon bouquet, though.”
“‘Get well soon’?” Apple Bloom echoed, confused.
“Yeah?” Sweetie chewed another daisy. “Isn’t that why you came?”
“...No,” Dinky said. “Something really odd just happened. Something that would need an alicorn’s power to pull off. Why, what’s happened to Twilight?”
“Er…” Button tugged at his ear. “Well…”
He relayed the story as quickly and concisely as he could, based on what he’d overheard from Nurse Redheart and Sunset Shimmer, with Sweetie Belle jumping in to fill in the details he’d missed. The other three sat in stunned silence.
“She thought she would’ve… died?” Rumble said carefully. “Can an alicorn die?”
“Getting all your magic sucked out your horn like that? If it’s not done carefully, it could crush your skull like a tin can. Goddess or not, you don’t survive something like that,” Dinky said grimly. “But you said she looked fine?”
“She managed to break free before anything really bad happened,” Sweetie explained. “Then she banished it from the castle, somehow. Or else it ran away. Sunset wasn’t sure.”
“So, this energy creature stole Twi’s magic,” Apple Bloom said thoughtfully. “So it did have th’ power of an alicorn. Ah tol’ you this could be related to what happened with Caramel!”
“Hmf,” Dinky said.
“When did you say that?” Sweetie asked.
“When we were comin’ in! Boy, that thing musta been a real tough fighter, with all the scorchin’ and clawin’ and whatnot.”
“Oh, no,” Sweetie corrected. “That was Spike and Sunset. Spike was really worried about Twilight. He got a little, um… rampage-y. And then Sunset got mad because he wouldn’t cool his jets, so she started throwing spells around, and then…”
“So it wasn’t related,” Dinky said, slightly smug.
“Indirectly, it was,” Bloom said sharply.
“So, why is everypony waiting out here?” Rumble asked quickly.
“The nurses kicked us all out. Said Twilight needed to rest,” Button said. “So… you probably won’t be getting much help from her.”
“Hm,” said Dinky. “Maybe not. Time for Plan B.” She rose and trotted in Sunset’s direction.
Sunset didn’t look up when Dinky arrived. “This had better be good,” she growled. “I’ve been having a really lousy day so far. Don’t make it worse.”
“I need information.”
“We’re in a library. Go bother an encyclopedia.”
“You saw some of what happened with Twilight.”
“...Yes.”
“I think it might be related to something else that happened in town, about an hour back.”
Sunset was silent for a long minute. “...Go on.”
“Time stopped, for everypony except me and Caramel. He was stuck in some kind of… reality-warp? That’s the best name I can think of. It was like he was flipping between every alternate-reality version of himself.”
Sunset was silent for a long moment. “That explains… a lot, actually. Caramel’s the earth pony with the dark-yellow coat and the brown mane, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah, that explains a lot, actually,” Sunset said, nodding.
Dinky raised a brow. “Care to share with the class?”
“Hm? Oh. No, nothing you didn’t already know. Dr. Stable flipped out at the hospital, that’s all. So, how did you find out about the time loop?”
“Time loop?”
“Yeah? The time loop that Twilight got stuck in after the magic drain.” Sunset glanced at Dinky. “If you didn’t know that, why did you think it was connected?”
“Never mind that, what was the time loop like?”
“Well, I don’t know, do I? I wasn’t the one stuck in it. All I know is that Twilight says there was one, and it was caused by this weird gold light.”
“Gold?”
“Yeah.”
“Everything looked golden during the time freeze,” Dinky mused. “That means it’s all the more likely to be the same creature causing all this.”
“So Ah was right!” Bloom said triumphantly.
“AH! Jeez Louise, don’t sneak up on me like that!”
Apple Bloom frowned. “Ah walked over here with you. Ain’t my fault you weren’t payin’ me no nevermind, with yer head in th’ clouds an’ all.”
Dinky sighed. “Fine. Sorry. You still weren’t right about the clawed-up foyer being connected, unless Spike started glowing gold when he ripped up the walls.”
“It was connected to Twilight, an’ Twilight’s connected to th’ weird time stuff! It’s connected!”
“There’s a degree of separation -- oh, never mind. Thanks, Sunset.” Dinky turned and trotted back toward the others.
Sunset nodded and went back to lounging in the tub of water, which had now started to simmer and bubble with heat.
“We need to get to the bottom of this,” Dinky said, taking a seat between Button and Rumble.
Button frowned. “Well, I agree that somepony does, but why us, particularly?”
“Why not us?” Sweetie asked. “Between us, we have a working understanding of the problem… sort of… and more experience with time travel than most ponies in town.”
“And it’s not like it’s the dumbest or most ridiculous thing we’ve ever done together,” Rumble agreed.
Dinky looked at each of them in turn. “So… what do you say? For old time’s sake?”
“Of course!” Sweetie said.
“Um, yeah, sure!” Button agreed, glancing at Sweetie.
Rumble nodded. “I’m down.”
They all looked over at Apple Bloom, who was staring at them all skeptically. “Ah seem to recall ‘old times’ endin’ with a lotta property damage and groundin’,” she said drily.
“You say that like you didn’t enjoy it,” Button said, arching an eyebrow at her.
She chuckled. “Yeah, fair enough. Alright, what th’ Tartarus, Ah’m in.”
Dinky smiled. “In that case, there’s just one more stop we need to make…”
Once more, Ditzy was flying home. Applejack had readily agreed to let the Doctor set up in the barn for the evening -- they’d just cleaned it out after planting season, and it was fit to entertain in. She had, of course, pressed Ditzy for information on what the Doctor was unveiling; ‘for the setup,’ she’d claimed. It had been a good point, but Ditzy hadn’t really known what to tell her.
“Just clear a space big enough for the TARDIS,” she’d said at last. “We’ll take care of everything else. I can’t say any more than that.”
“Don’t y’all trust me not to spill the beans?” Applejack asked.
“Of course I do. But the Doctor trusts me to do the same.”
Applejack couldn’t argue with that, and had let Ditzy fly off with fond farewells and good graces. After that, Ditzy had flown around town, informing the invitees of the change in venue. It had been odd that she couldn't visit Twilight personally, and equally odd that Dinky was nowhere to be found. The Crusaders were usually quite easy to track -- just follow the mess. Perhaps they had all matured since the old days.
She landed in the backyard, a few meters away from the TARDIS. For a moment, a small, traitorous part of her suggested that she peek inside, just to make sure the Doctor hadn’t gotten distracted again. She shook the thought off as soon as it came. She trusted the Doctor totally. He’d said he would clean the kitchen, and she believed him. She trotted inside the house.
The TARDIS grumbled to itself as the back door slammed shut.
“Doctor?” Ditzy called.
“In here!”
Ditzy looked in on the kitchen. Just as he’d agreed, the Doctor had washed off all the mechanical grease and grime and even now was diligently scrubbing the jelly off the ceiling with a long-handled broom. The kitchen was still a mess, but Ditzy had to admit, it was no longer the disaster area it had been. “You work fast,” she said.
“You know it! Although I must say, you were gone a bit longer than I’d expected. Did Applejack keep you talking?”
“Only for a minute or so. I thought I made pretty good time.”
“Oh, yes,” the Doctor said. “Quite good. Doesn’t matter much. Why don’t you take a lie-down for a bit, love? Been a bit of a long day for you, flying all the way to Canterlot and back?”
“A nap does sound nice,” Ditzy admitted. She picked up a rag and a bottle of sink cleaner. “But it’ll keep for a little while longer.”
“You don’t have to,” the Doctor protested. “This is my mess.”
“Would you leave me alone to clean up a mess I made all by myself?”
“Well… no. Obviously not. Wouldn’t be cricket.”
“So why do you always seem to want me to do that to you?”
The Doctor didn’t have an answer to that. “So,” he said. “What took you up to Canterlot this morning?”
“I thought I’d invite the princesses to your big unveiling ceremony,” Ditzy said. “I figured they’d love an excuse to come visit.”
“Ah. I expect they were too busy with royal duties to attend. It was a nice thought to ask them, though.”
“Actually, they said they’d be thrilled to come,” Ditzy said. “They mentioned they might bring along some of your other old friends, as well.”
The Doctor paused in his scrubbing. “Oh. They just -- took the evening off, then?”
“Of course.”
“To come see me?”
“Yes?”
“Oh,” said the Doctor. He said no more. He couldn't think of anything more to say.
It would be a bit much to say that Holiday and Lofty were overjoyed that Scootaloo had brought home not one, but two unexpected guests. However, they were exemplary hostesses, and Holiday cleared off two extra chairs for Gilda and Rainbow, while Lofty put the kettle on.
“It’s so good to meet you at last,” Holiday said to Gilda. “I’ve heard so much about you!”
“Yeah, I hear that Dash talks me up all the time,” Gilda said, still feeling a little smug pride about being called Rainbow’s favorite griffon. It was nothing she wouldn’t have guessed, of course, but it was nice to hear it confirmed.
“Oh, yes, her too,” Holiday agreed. “But mostly I’ve heard about you through the newspaper.”
That threw Gilda for a second. “Oh. The revolution.”
Holiday smiled at her sideways. “Yes, dear. That little old thing.”
Dash tensed up a little. Gilda just laughed. “Yeah, fair enough. I thought if there was anywhere in the world where I’d be ‘Dash’s friend from flight camp’ instead of ‘spearhead of the Griffonstan Revolution,’, it’d be Ponyville.”
“Of course, of course. If you don’t want to talk about it, I quite understand. Only, there have always been a few ancient texts I’ve wanted to get my hooves on, and the last government was a bit… ooh, let’s say proprietary about them.”
“You mean they wouldn’t let anyone look at them, and didn’t do a thing with them on their own?”
Holiday pursed her lips to keep from giggling. “I suppose that’s another way of putting it, yes.”
“It’s alright, you can say they sucked. I led a years-long guerrilla campaign against them, I know they sucked!”
Holiday couldn’t keep it contained any longer. She burst out laughing.
Scootaloo grinned, too. “So, how is it, being the face of the Revolution now that you’ve won?”
Gilda snagged a gingersnap from the table and sprawled back onto the couch. She crunched it up as she thought about that. Eventually, she shrugged. “Eh, too soon to tell. Even ‘won’ is kind of a strong word, there’s definitely still more than a few griffs out there who’d go back to the old ways like that.” She clicked her talons for emphasis. “But, y’know, it’s going good for early days. I finally got to leave that icy pit. It’s nice to see grass for a change. But enough about me.” She leaned forward and looked at Scootaloo. “I hear you’re going into stunt design.”
“Uh, yeah.” Scootaloo shifted awkwardly. “I mean, I know it’s not as impressive as actually flying in a stunt show, but that was never really an option.”
Dash shrugged. “Eh. Flying is good and all, but you know what’s better than flying? Flying without crashing and breaking your bones. You’re being too hard on yourself, kid.”
Holiday frowned. “Is something the matter, Eurus?”
“Um-- well--”
Fortunately for Scootaloo, that was the moment Lofty entered with the tea tray. “Oh, let me help with that, Aunt Lofty!”
She took the tray from Lofty, who was too surprised to question her, and started pouring out drinks. “Let’s see… lemon and honey for you, Aunt Holiday, cream and two sugars for Aunt Lofty, honey, cream, and five sugars for Dash…”
“Make it four. I’m trying to cut down.”
“Gilda? How do you take your tea?”
“I take it black. Gimme.”
“Okay. And cream and one sugar for me.” Scootaloo passed around the mugs and sat back. “So! What’s been happening in Ponyville while I was gone?”
Lofty glanced at Holiday for some kind of explanation. She merely shook her head wearily.
“Well, you haven’t missed too much,” Lofty said, picking up her tea. She paused to blow on it gently. “Not much changes in Ponyville.”
“And when it does, it makes national news,” Dash said.
“Global,” Gilda corrected. “You think you can just release a chaos god, or get a new princess, or whatever, and that’s gonna be an Equestria-only deal?”
“Fair,” Dash said, taking a sip of tea.
“We got a new restaurant a few months ago, didn’t we dear?” Holiday asked.
“Oh yes, the pizza parlor. What was it called, again?”
“The Big Cheesy, I believe. We should go there sometime while you’re in town, Scootaloo.”
“Oh, yeah, that sounds --”
Scootaloo was cut off when the doorbell rang. “I’ll get it,” Holiday said, hurrying out of the room.
“And, uh, Dash," Scootaloo said. "Um... How are the Wonderbolts?”
“Uh? Oh, good, good. Word is, Spitfire’s thinking of retiring soon, though. If she does that, then Soarin’s probably gone, too, and that’s more than half the top brass wiped out. So, y’know, that’s too bad. I’ll miss ‘em. On the other hand, they’ve both wanted to get out of the game for awhile now, and this does leave a certain amount of room for promotions…”
Holiday stuck her head back into the room, frowning. “Scootaloo, you know Lofty and I don’t mind having your friends over, but it would be nice if you could warn us when you’re inviting this many…”
“Oh.” Dash put down her tea. “Uh, sorry. We can, y’know, go.”
“Hm? Oh! No, no, no, Dash, you and Gilda are perfectly fine. It’s just the others…”
“Others?” Scootaloo echoed.
Sweetie Belle peeked around Holiday. “Hi, Scootaloo! Do you feel up for an investigation?”
Shining Armor was in his office, alternating between filing reports and flipping through the latest issue of Power Ponies. He was just getting to a really good bit when he heard a crackle of magic. He looked up, muscles tensing as a burst of pinkish sparks popped into being. A scroll fell onto his desk. He relaxed. “I wonder what Twilight wants,” he murmured, picking it up.
The door to his office banged open, and Shining set the scroll aside.
“Hi, honey!” Cadance said.
Shining smiled. “Afternoon, love.”
She trotted over to give him a peck on the muzzle. “I just came by to let you know that I’m going to Ponyville this evening. I’d bring you along, but somepony needs to keep control of the empire.”
Shining chuckled. “I’m sure the rest of the government can take care of itself for the evening.”
Cadance’s face tensed for a moment. “That’s as may be,” she said. “But this happens to be a very… sensitive situation with an old friend.”
“Oh?” Shining leaned forward on the desk. “Anyone I’d know?”
“The Doctor. You might remember him from a few years back?”
Shining arched a brow. “Cady. The stallion who brought back Sombra? Yeah, it rings a bell or two.”
“He… we’re having a sort of intervention. You don’t know him that well, so that’s kind of why I wanted you to stay behind.”
Shining nodded. “Alright, that’s understandable. I guess this scroll must be for you, then.”
“Scroll?” Cadance looked at the desk. “Oh! That’s funny. I would’ve expected Luna to send it, she seems the one spearheading the whole campaign.”
“Well, you know Twiley," Shining said, picking up the scroll. "She’s probably composed a list of talking points and techniques to de-escalate the situation.”
“Can’t be, it’s much too short. Anyway, you’re one to talk, Mr. ‘Revise-the-entire-guard-training-handbook-twice-a-year’.”
“You say that as though we don’t encounter enough weird and unique threats to justify that,” Shining said, breaking the seal. “Was the attack of the evil dust bunnies not enough to justify an extra couple of paragraphs?”
“Yes, dear. But at the rate we’re going, within a decade, those books will be heavier than the guards’ armor.”
“Information is the most powerful defense of all,” Shining said, flattening the scroll. After a few moments, the color drained from his face.
“What?” Cadance asked. “What’s wrong?”
Shining pushed back from his desk and rose. “I’m going to get Sunburst.”
“...Why’s that?”
“We need somepony to foalsit for Flurry Heart.”
“But--”
“I’m coming with you, Cadance. I just -- oh, read the letter.”
He stormed out while Cadance watched in astonishment. She picked up the letter and scanned it. Then, eyes wide, she read it again. She groaned and sat back, rubbing the bridge of her muzzle. “Oh, Twilight... This day just keeps getting better,” she muttered, picking up a quill and paper to compose a letter of her own.
Ditzy and the Doctor trundled up the road to Sweet Apple Acres, side by side. The Doctor had worried that, in the midst of his tinkerings, he might have accidentally disconnected the materialization circuits, or something equally important to the safe running of the TARDIS, and so had borrowed Carrot Top’s cart to haul it.
Privately, Ditzy thought that the TARDIS’s ability to travel in space and time might be just a little more important than getting her to talk, but she held her tongue. The Doctor had developed something of a defensive stance about his pet project, snapping at anypony who questioned it too much.
He was sleeping much more frequently than usual, too. Normally, Ditzy would welcome that; she loved getting to cuddle up close with her beloved. The nightmares he brought with him, however, made bedtime a much more fraught experience. Moreover, he never seemed to be well-rested. He had bags under his eyes almost constantly, and a vague, distracted attitude that left him prone to making simple mistakes. The disaster he’d left in the kitchen had been a prime example. Not only was he usually a competent cook, he’d actually forgotten all about the mess he’d left there all morning.
Ditzy was starting to worry that her husband was sick. It would be hard to tell -- Time Lords naturally had a much lower body temperature than ponies, and Ditzy wasn’t sure what temperature would be considered a fever. He didn’t seem particularly shaky, or phlegmy, or exhibiting any kind of visible symptoms at all. But it was clear that he wasn’t well; if not physically, then surely mentally.
The Doctor noticed she was staring at him. “What? Have I got something on my face?”
She took a moment to process that. “...Yes,” she said, thinking quickly. “This.”
She leaned over and kissed his cheek. “Oh!” He grinned at her. “I think there might still be a spot there.”
She smiled and kissed him again. “I think there might be something on my face, too.”
“Oh? Where?”
“Just on the tip of my muzzle.”
“Ah, yes, here it is.” He smooched her back. “Plain as day.”
They fell back into a steady trot, the moment of awkwardness already forgotten. But Ditzy hadn’t forgotten her worries. She needed to keep an eye on the Doctor…
Twilight felt terrible. This was, to be fair, a marked improvement over how she’d felt earlier, so at least she was getting better. She lay in bed with her eyes closed, thinking simultaneously about dozens of things and absolutely nothing at all. That was the worst part about being sick, in Twilight’s opinion. It wasn’t feeling feverish or stuffy or achey, it was the inability to think straight. She couldn’t focus on anything.
“Hey, Twilight. Hey.”
Twilight cracked open an eye. Trixie was looking down at her. “Are you feeling up to seeing visitors?” she asked.
“Wrrrr…” Twilight sat up and twisted her spine. There was a series of satisfying pops and cracks. She stretched her hooves and wings up as far as they could reach and shook her head vigorously. “Wah-uh,” she said, her throat too dry to speak properly.
Trixie passed her a glass of water, and Twilight drank it greedily. After a moment’s consideration, she placed it back on the nightstand. “Yes, I think I’m up for it,” she said.
Nurse Redheart paused in the middle of writing a report. “Are you… sure?” she asked.
“Please, I’m so bored. Anyway, I’m sure Spike is going stir-crazy out there.”
“That is probably true,” Trixie admitted.
Redheart looked unconvinced. She looked at the other two nurses. Both of them shrugged. “If you’re sure you’re up for it…”
“Hey, y’know what? You said yourself the medical community knows nothing about alicorns.”
“Well, I wouldn’t say nothing,” Redheart started. Twilight cut her off.
“My powers are derived from friendship. Maybe surrounding myself with friends would be healing for me.”
Redheart hesitated.
“I already feel better just talking to you and Trixie!”
Redheart sighed. “Oh… fine, let them in.”
Trixie grinned and telekinetically unbolted and opened the doors. There was a moment of silence. Then Spike peered around one edge of the door, and Sunset peeked around the other.
Then, pandemonium.
Sunset leapt out of her containment tub, instantly drying as her flaming mane, wings, and tail reignited in full force. Spike barreled in, clutching Rarity in his arms. Rarity herself, who had been enjoying a nice session of sitting in Spike’s lap while he rubbed her back and scratched her behind the ears, looked like a startled cat. Tender Care stumbled in last, cursing quietly about pins and needles. Redheart hurried to her side and helped her with a soft, apologetic kiss and a comfy chair.
“TWILIGHT!” Spike yelled joyfully, plopping himself down on her bed. Rarity struggled in his grip for a moment before resigning herself to her uncomfortable and decidedly un-fabulous fate hanging in his arms. “How are you feeling?”
“Um, pretty good. You are sitting on my tail, though, so if you could scooch just a bit…”
“Oh!” He flashed through relief, confusion, surprise, and finally embarrassed understanding before raising his bulk from the bed and scooting a few inches over. “Better?”
“Much, thank you. Uh, you think you could let Rarity go, champ? She’s looking a little, um…” Twilight searched for the word. “Smooshed.”
“Oh.” Spike blushed and set Rarity down gingerly on the floor. The back of her mane had been crushed, and all the fluff on her chest was sticking out at funny angles. “Sorry, Rarity.”
She took a few deep breaths and smoothed down her chest fluff. “Quite understandable given the circumstances, darling. On which note --”
She threw herself at Twilight’s bedside, eyes watering. “Oh, darling, how absolutely abhorrent! You could have died, Twilight! Died! It would have been the worst! Possible! Thing! I know, I do say that quite often, but I truly mean it this time! You are not allowed to die, Twilight Sparkle! I absolutely forbid it!”
She took several deep breaths, her mascara running. “Good heavens. I have been repressing a lot today, haven’t I?”
Hesitantly, Spike reached out to comfort her, but she batted his claw away with a hoof. “In a moment, darling, in a moment. The muse of tragedy remains in the room. Where was I? Oh yes. I would positively shatter if anything were to happen to you, darling!”
“...Yes,” said Twilight. “I… see that?”
Rarity wobbled a little and nodded. “Yes, very good. Just wanted to say all that. I am feeling a little woozy now, actually. Spike?”
Spike nodded and gently set her back in his lap, wiping the running mascara from her cheeks. He looked at Twilight. “So. Uh. Are you feeling okay?”
“I mean, I’ve been better,” Twilight said. “Physically? Not great. Psychologically and emotionally? Definitely shaken up. But I’m certainly not dying today.”
“Good! Good.” Spike shook his head. “Sorry, I’m definitely a little shaken up, myself.”
Twilight smiled. “I appreciate your concern. Both of you.”
“Thank you, darling,” Rarity murmured.
Sunset hopped up on the other side of the bed. “My turn! Hey, so I got you this --” she held out a magic suppressant ring. “If that sucker comes back, it’s gonna be in for a nasty surprise.”
Twilight took the ring and weighed it in her hoof meditatively. “I… don't know if this will help too much,” she said. “If it could take magic from my horn, it could get it from my wings, even my hooves. I’m an alicorn, I practically sweat magic.”
“Maybe so,” Sunset conceded. “But your horn is still by far the most direct conduit. It’ll exert the same force on you, but it’ll encounter much more resistance pulling magic out of your body through other parts. Also, this rules out the possibility of your skull collapsing like papier-mache.”
“There is that, yes,” Twilight agreed. “Nurse? Would this have any adverse effects on my recovery?”
Bandage glanced up from her paperwork. “No, I wouldn’t say so. In fact, it might help you from casting any spells on instinct, sort of like one of those cones that keep dogs from scratching themselves.”
“Possibly not the most flattering simile, but alright. Thank you.”
Twilight slipped the ring on over her horn. “And thank you, too, Sunset.”
“Feeling a little more secure, now?”
“Much,” Twilight agreed, smiling. She glanced around the room, at her friends who were gathered there, and her smile widened. “Much,” she repeated.
It took a few minutes for Scootaloo to wrangle her fellow Crusaders out of her aunts’ house, by which point she was pretty steamed at them all. She stood on the front stoop of the house, glaring daggers at her friends, who were arranged in a semi-circle on the lawn. “Well?” she demanded. “What is it? Because I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t all have barged in on the first meal in three months that I’ve had with my family plus Rainbow Dash and plus Rainbow Dash’s cool ambassador friend without a really good reason.”
The others shifted uncomfortably and exchanged nervous glances. Finally, Rumble stepped up to the plate. “We’re going Crusading,” he said.
Scootaloo regarded him through lidded eyes. “Crusading,” she repeated. “I don’t know if it’s escaped your notice, but all of us have our Cutie Marks. There’s nothing left. The Crusade is over.”
“The Cutie Mark Crusade might be,” Sweetie said. “But there’s something really weird going on in Ponyville.”
“When isn’t there? That doesn't make it our problem. I’ll see you at the party later.” She turned to go back inside.
“Something stole Twilight’s magic,” Button said quickly. “She could’ve died.”
Scootaloo paused, one hoof on the door handle. “...Okay. That’s --”
“The same force froze time for everypony except me and Caramel,” Dinky interrupted.
Scootaloo put her hoof back down on the porch. “...Alright. That sounds, uh, pretty dangerous.”
“It is,” Rumble and Dinky said in unison. He glanced at her oddly as she shook her head to clear it.
“Ah ain’t gonna lie, Ah weren’t too sure mahself about this,” Bloom admitted. “But somepony’s gotta take a stand, right? An’ it might as well be the group with th’ pony that has th’ time-travel cutie mark.”
“I…” Scootaloo trailed off, rubbing her nose. “Okay, that explains why Dinky is doing this. But what can I possibly--”
“It wouldn’t be a Crusade without you,” Dinky interrupted.
“--contribute?” Scootaloo finished, frowning at Dinky. “Y’know, interrupting me--”
“Isn’t going to convince me to help you,” Dinky finished the sentence along with her. “I know.” She pressed her hooves against her head. “I’ve got the worst sense of deja-vu.”
“Okay, I mean, that sucks and all. All of it. The deja-vu, the thing with Caramel, definitely the thing about Twilight losing her magic. But I don’t think I can be much help. Anyway, it’s not like I can just leave, I brought home two guests without even asking Aunt Holiday and Lofty. If I left them, then…” She trailed off, trying to think of the consequences for that action.
“Then that would be pretty uncool,” Dinky said, a split second before Scootaloo could.
Everypony fell absolutely silent. Button held up a hoof. “So… everyone heard that, right?”
Sweetie looked at Dinky for a long moment. “Bubble bobble,” she said.
“Needle noodle,” both unicorns said at once. “Flattering raffia taffeta. Shortcut coldcut uppercut shrew--”
Dinky waved a hoof for Sweetie to stop. “Raspberry blackberry hullabaloo,” she finished.
Sweetie put a hoof to her throat, her eyes wide. “Okay. You actually took the words right out of my mouth. I think this officially goes beyond ‘deja-vu’.”
Dinky groaned and rubbed her forehead. “Happening again,” she muttered. “It’s not as big this time, but that just makes it worse.” She waved a hoof in the air. “I’m getting echoes. Time repeating itself, like a skipping record.”
Scootaloo took a step closer to Dinky, but hesitated before she reached the lawn. “Seriously. Why do you want me to come with you?”
There was a moment’s pause. Then, confused, Apple Bloom said, “Why wouldn’t we? Yer our friend, Scoots. A’course we want you to come with us.”
Scootaloo lowered her head, thinking. Then, without a word, she turned and walked back into the house. Button slumped forward. “Oh,” he said.
Apple Bloom stared at her hooves and swatted a pebble, her face like stone.
Sweetie did her best to hide her disappointment. “Well, I guess it’s just us, then,” she said. “Dinky, you said you could feel it somewhere else?”
Dinky had her eyes clenched tightly shut, her horn glowing with golden light. “I can almost get a bead on it,” she muttered through gritted teeth. “It’s not far. I can just about--”
The door swung open and Scootaloo stepped out again. “Okay, it’s all good. Gilda and Aunt Holiday are talking about ancient Griffish society, and Rainbow Dash and Aunt Lofty are planning this summer’s junior flight camp, so I’m not leaving anypony in a weird situation. So, where are we going?”
Everypony stared at her except Dinky. She opened her eyes and looked around. “Vinyl and Octavia’s house,” she said with finality. “That’s where it is now.”
Vinyl studied her record collection minutely before selecting an old favorite standby from the shelf. Pulling it from its sheath, she slid it onto her home turntable rig. Now was the perfect time to get some practice in -- Octavia was out shopping, so she couldn’t interrupt Vinyl, or challenge her to a cello v. electronica battle, or throw herself onto the turntable, lounging there like a cat, and demand attention in the form of kisses. The last one was kinda cute, Vinyl had to admit, and the music battles were pretty fun. But every now and then, it was kinda nice to just get some good, solid practice in.
Vinyl switched on the amps and the turntable. A nice medley of beats filled the room, and she nodded along for a few minutes. The music sounded familiar. That wasn’t unusual -- Vinyl liked this record, and played it pretty often. But had she played it in the last couple of weeks? She was sure, all of a sudden, that she had.
Well, that didn’t matter much now. She put her hooves on the table and started to remix. After a few measures, she frowned. This sounded familiar, too. Every note she played, as soon as she played it, she could remember playing it before. Was she becoming a hack? No -- worse than that. She could remember playing this exact piece earlier today, again and again and again for -- hours, surely. Every time, she pulled the same record from the shelf, slipped it on the turntables in the exact same way, stared playing the exact same piece.
Desperate to assert her self-control, Vinyl thought ahead a few bars and deliberately played them differently from what she remembered. The chain of musical memory broke off abruptly, and Vinyl sighed in relief and slumped over the turntables, cutting off the music abruptly. For a moment, the only noise she could hear was the pounding of her heart.
Then, the door opened and Octavia poked her head in, frowning. “Vinyl! I told you, it’s lunchtime! I thought you were done practicing for the day, anyhow, you looked… look… pretty rubbish.”
“Tavi? When did you… get back… from shopping…” Vinyl trailed off. “You’ve been back for hours.”
“Yes? Obviously. You say that like I haven’t been--”
“Poking your head in every fifteen minutes,” Vinyl said, wide-eyed. “You’ve done that three times, now.”
“Ah! She does remember. A miracle. Come to lunch, Vinyl.”
“I… okay. Yes. I think I’d better…” She stood up and stumbled away from the turntable. Octavia’s face turned drawn and worried. “Vinyl? Sweetheart? Is something the matter?”
“It’s fine. Let’s get lunch,” Vinyl said gruffly.
Octavia patted her wife on the back. “Having one of those days, love? I understand. I’ve come over a bit funny myself, you know. Like, what do the Prench call it… day-jar view?”
“Deja vu,” Vinyl corrected.
“Mmph. Hideous language. They drop every other consonant, and the vowels -- Vinyl? You’ve gone all pale.”
“You’ve been having deja vu, too? Since when?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Probably comes from all the times I’ve had to tell you lunch was ready. It’s been, what five times now?”
Vinyl locked eyes with her wife, who gazed into those shining purple sunglasses and saw golden light shimmering in the reflection. “You agreed it was three just a minute ago.”
“I--” Octavia broke off, troubled. “No, that can’t be right. It’s -- how many times, now? How many times? I can remember having this same conversation with you, but -- you couldn’t have -- I couldn’t have -- Vinyl?”
The record skipped.
Vinyl studied her record collection minutely before selecting an old favorite standby from the shelf. Pulling it from its sheath, she slid it onto her home turntable rig. Now was the perfect time to get some practice in -- Octavia was out shopping, so she couldn’t interrupt Vinyl, or challenge her to a cello v. electronica battle, or throw herself onto the turntable, lounging there like a cat, and demand attention in the form of kisses. The last one was kinda cute, Vinyl had to admit, and the music battles were pretty fun. But every now and then, it was kinda nice to just get some good, solid practice in.
Button rang the bell on the front of the Scratch-Melody residence. A beautiful chorus of chimes rang out. “Oh! That’s Haydn! Symphony 104,” Sweetie identified, humming along even after the chimes faded away. After awhile, she trailed off as well.
“Try it again,” Scootaloo said. “Maybe they didn’t hear.”
Button rang the bell again, and once again the chimes ran out. This time, they heard the sound of running coming from inside the house. The door flew open, and Octavia stuck her head out. Her bow tie was askew, and her eyes were frantic. “Don’t come in,” she ordered. “We worked it out! That’s how it gets at you, if you’re in the house when it starts again, you see? If you’re in the house when it restarts, then --” she broke off and slammed the door in their faces. For a moment, the windows all flashed gold. Then, silence.
After a moment, Button rang the doorbell again.
“Really?” Dinky said flatly.
“Do you have a better idea?”
She looked away grudgingly as the door swung open again. Octavia opened the door again, this time with bright eyes and looking perfectly put-together. “Oh, hello! What a surprise this is! How lovely to see you all again, come in, come in, Vinyl and I were about to have lunch --”
Wubs began to echo down the hall and Octavia’s face fell. “Yes, well, I’ll just go and fetch her. Do come in and make yourselves comfortable.”
She turned and trotted away. “So…” Sweetie said. “Do we go in, or…”
“Nothin’ ventured, nothin’ gained.”
“Yeah, and it looked like they could really use some help,” Rumble said, trotting in. “And they said ‘it’ only gets you if you’re in the house ‘when it restarts’. We’ll probably be good for awhile, right?”
“I guess. But for how long?” Button wondered. “Maybe we should stay out here and time the flashes.”
“Twelve minutes, seven seconds,” Dinky said.
“Uh?” Button cocked his head at her.
Dinky shook her head. “That’s how much time we have until it starts again. Don’t ask me how I know. I just do. There’s something in my head… let’s just go. I’ll keep a count of the seconds.”
Button held her gaze for a moment, then nodded. “Alright. Let’s go.”
The musicians’ house had always been an exercise in balance. Vinyl was responsible to the point of being a worrywart. Octavia was impulsive and brazen. Vinyl liked peace and stability. Octavia was a party animal. They loved each other for living the life they could not live themselves, they loved each other for the influence they had on one another, and of course they loved each other for the sheer joy of music that they shared. For the most part, they lived harmoniously, tempering themselves to be closer to one another and helping each other grow as ponies.
But they could never bring themselves to agree on interior decorating. The house was a horrible mishmash of styles and colors, ranging from bright blue tile floors paired with rich red drapes to ornate floral wallpaper festooned with neon signs to miniature replica statuettes of muscular classical-era mares wrestling. That last part was actually the one decoration both musicians could agree on. The house was both delightful to see and dreadful to look at.
Now, it mostly seemed creepy. Scootaloo was the first to say it. “The light’s wrong.”
Button nodded. “No shadows,” he said. “Rookie design error. No determined light source, it’s just everywhere.”
“And it’s golden,” Dinky said. “This is definitely the right place.”
“OH MY CELESTIA, TAVI!”
The Crusaders froze. Sweetie nodded. “Yep, definitely the right place.”
“Wrong time,” Dinky added, running down the hall.
All six ponies ran into Vinyl’s room, where Octavia was consoling her sobbing wife. “It just keeps happening, Tavi! Can’t you remember it? Can’t you remember?”
“Yes, love,” Octavia whispered. “I remember. I can remember, too.” She looked up at the Crusaders, sorrow in her features. “I told you not to come in,” she said.
“It’s fine, we’ve still got nine minutes, fifty-four seconds,” Dinky said. “Quickly, now. Tell us everything that’s happened here.”
“It keeps happening,” Vinyl muttered. “I’m picking out a record to work with. Tavi’s making lunch. She remembers coming to get me the first time, and then I start up the music again, and it’s all…” She made a complicated motion with her hooves.
“But you can remember that you’re in a time loop?” Dinky pressed.
“Not at first,” Octavia said. “Only when the feeling of deja-vu gets too strong to ignore.”
Vinyl smiled weakly. “Tavi! You said it right that time!”
Octavia scoffed. “Well, I could only let you correct me so many times,” she said, petting her wife’s mane.
“Okay,” Dinky said, pacing the floor. “Okay. This sounds like a chronic hysteresis. They’re hard to break out of, unless you know the trick.”
“The trick?” Vinyl asked, perking up.
“Yes. You have to do what you were doing while the hysteresis started, but in the middle of the loop. Can you do that?”
Octavia nodded. “I was in the kitchen, setting the table.”
“I was picking out my record,” Vinyl said.
“Good. You’ll need to do that all over again, exactly as you did it the first time,” Dinky said. “We’ll step out of the house. That way, we won’t interfere with the conditions.”
“Hold on,” Button said. “They’ll need to start at the same time, right? How can they do that if they can’t see each other?”
Dinky hesitated. “A signal,” Rumble said. “On your mark, get set, go?”
“Or I could cast a light spell,” Sweetie said. “Just a quick flash.”
“Works for me,” Octavia said. “Vinyl?”
The DJ rose to her hooves, a little unsteady on her pins. “Anything to get out of this,” she said fervently.
“Alright,” Dinky said. “We have seven minutes, twelve seconds --” she paused. “Seven minutes, four seconds. Six minutes, fifty seconds. Time’s speeding up?”
“What?” Scootaloo asked. “Is that even possible?”
“Move now, ask questions about relativity later! Go, go, go!” Dinky shouted, shooing everypony out of the room. “Octavia, get to the kitchen! Vinyl, get ready to pull out your record! Everypony move! Four minutes, thirty-two seconds! Crusaders, get to the door! If we get out, we’ve got another shot, but if we get stuck, we’re screwed! Four minutes, seventeen seconds!”
“Are you sure about the time?” Rumble demanded.
“No! But are you willing to take that risk?”
“Fair enough.” He burst through the front door, holding it open as the others rushed out. Only Sweetie and Button were left inside. “Sweetie Belle! C’mon!” Button shouted.
She was busily helping Octavia clear off the table. “We have to reset everything to starting conditions!” she yelled back. “Go! I’ll be out in a minute!”
“A minute isn’t even a minute anymore!”
Finally, Octavia had arranged the dishes back in the counter. Sweetie Belle ran for the door, hooves skidding on the tile floor of the hallway. She flew out the door in a gangling tangle of limbs, falling head over hooves in the dirt.
Octavia, sweating bullets, began to set the table with forced calm. Vinyl, her nerves making her magic flash and crackle like a plasma ball, levitated the record from her shelf.
“One minute, fourteen seconds,” Dinky whispered.
Octavia set a sandwich on both plates and slid them onto the table. Vinyl slipped the record from its case and slung it on the turntable.
“Fifty-five. Forty-two. Twenty-seven,” Dinky said, resignation in her voice.
Octavia set down two glasses of water, her hooves shaking. Vinyl switched on the turntable.
Time skipped. There was a crackle that made everypony’s fur stand on end, and for a moment the house before them flickered and shuddered. Then it stopped.
Dinky pitched forward and fell down, shaking uncontrollably. The others rushed to her side, but she waved them off, pulling herself back upright. “Th’ countdown’s gone,” she said, her voice slightly slurred. “‘S alright.”
“Or it was only for that one cycle,” Rumble pointed out.
Dinky gave him a scathing look. “How likely is that, ‘xactly?”
“What does ‘likely’ have to do with any part of this?”
She grunted.
Sweetie Belle pushed open the door. “The shadows are back,” she offered.
“Good sign,” Bloom said cautiously. “Not a certainty, though.”
Scootaloo stepped in cautiously. “Octavia?” she called. “Vinyl?”
Octavia stumbled out of the kitchen. “We’re free,” she said. “We’re free! Vinyl? Vinyl, where are you?”
Vinyl Scratch slammed the door of her room open, raced down the hall, and barrelled into her wife with an enormous, weepy embrace.
Dinky nodded. “Okay. Alright. That was nearly really bad for all of us, and we’re still no closer to figuring out who or what’s behind all this time stuff. I hate to say this, but I think we need to split up.”
“Ah think ya might be onto somethin’ there,” Bloom agreed. “At the very least, somepony better stay behind and make sure these two are alright.”
“Sure. You and me, Bloom?” Sweetie asked.
Apple Bloom nodded. “Sure.”
“Okay,” Dinky agreed. “See if you can find any clues about why it struck here, or what it was.”
“Right. Clues.” Bloom looked dubious. “Which are gonna look like what, exactly?”
Dinky pulled a face and shrugged. “I dunno, anachronisms? Burn marks? Clocks acting weird? Just keep an eye out, okay?”
“Can do.”
“The rest of us…” Dinky paused, thinking. “Teams of two, investigating Twilight’s lab and the street where Caramel started flipping through alternate realities.”
“I’ll take the lab,” Button volunteered.
“Same,” Rumble agreed.
“Sounds like you’re stuck with me, Dinky,” Scootaloo said, elbowing her friend in the ribs. “It feels just like the old days, doesn’t it?”
Dinky’s smile soured. “Yeah…” she echoed. “Just like the old days…”
Big Macintosh met the Doctor and Ditzy as they were passing by the farmhouse. “Afternoon,” she said, nodding at them. “AJ said like as not, you’d need some help settin’ up.”
“That would be wonderful, thank you,” the Doctor said.
Ditzy just smiled, nodded, and gasped air into her lungs. She was not built for this kind of delivery.
Mac trotted alongside the cart as they approached the barn. The Doctor and Ditzy paused while she hauled open the doors and waved them in.
“Now,” Mac said as the duo unhooked themselves from the cart. “Is there anything Ah oughta know ‘bout ‘fore Ah help y’all unload this thing?”
“That she doesn’t like being called a ‘thing’,” the Doctor said sharply.
Mac’s eyebrows rose. “Mah apologies, miss,” she said, nodding at the TARDIS.
“Sorry! Sorry. Shouldn’t have snapped,” the Doctor said quickly. “It’s very nice of you to help us unload. Just a little stressed, that’s all. Erm, things you should know… shouldn’t think so. The artificial gravity’s still on, and the doors are locked. As long as she ends up standing right-side-up, everything should be fine.”
“Right.” Mac stepped around the back of the cart. “Start pushin’ it toward me,” she said. “Once Ah got an edge, we can lower it down pretty easily.”
“Right-o!” The Doctor hopped up into the back of the cart and started pushing the base of the TARDIS, while Ditzy flew up and pushed on the top. Slowly, the great blue box began to scrape along the bottom of the cart. As it edged over the side of the cart, Mac slipped her hooves underneath and kept pulling it steadily back.
“Doc, if you wanna come down, help support it from the bottom, Ah’d be much obliged.”
“Right. Ditzy, you’ve got the top?”
“I think so!”
The Doctor hopped down and lifted the box off the cart. Together, the three of them managed clumsily to haul the TARDIS over to an empty patch of floor near a wall. “Ah’m sorry it’s still a little cluttered,” Mac said, glancing around the barn. “Ah’ll get AJ ta move that chicken wire out to th’ spare shed later. Maybe put up some chairs.”
“That’s very good of you,” the Doctor said. “And really, thank you again for helping us move the TARDIS. I hardly know how we got it in the cart without your help.”
Mac stiffened at that. “Plot holes,” she muttered.
The Doctor cocked his head. “Come again?”
“Nothin’! Nothin’. Just, uh. Yer welcome. Ah gotta… go. Eeyup. Fertilizin’ th’ west orchard today.” She nodded, backing away. “Makin’ hay while th’ sun shines, eeyup. Nice seein’ y’all.” She reached the door and bolted.
Ditzy looked at the Doctor. “We’re agreed, that was weird, right?”
The Doctor nodded. “Definitely.”
“I’ll go after her, see if I can figure out what’s the matter.”
“That’s a good idea.”
“...Do you want to come, too?”
The Doctor blinked and opened his mouth to reply. “Well…” He shut it again, looking troubled. “...No,” he said at last. “No, I think it might be better if it was a one-on-one conversation, don’t you?”
“I suppose,” Ditzy said, her face falling a little.
The Doctor frowned at that, but before he could ask her what he’d said wrong, Ditzy was already flying out the door. His frown deepened.
For a moment, he took a step to follow after her, but his hooves dragged. Better not to complicate the situation further. Better not mess things up any further than he had already. He dragged a forehoof in small circles on the ground, staring at nothing. Then, silently, tail between his legs, he slunk back into the TARDIS.
The flower shop was quiet today. Only a few ponies had wandered in to buy something. That didn’t bother Rose too much. Quiet days were expected between the cusp of spring and summer. Plenty of ponies could go and pick their own flowers for free, most of the ones who were interested in starting their own gardens had already purchased all the seeds they would need, and the summer tourism rush wouldn’t start for another couple of weeks. Ponyville in May was a quiet time -- or at the very least, as quiet as any time in Ponyville could be.
She clicked on the fan as she stared out the plate-glass windows, watching the street outside. Not many ponies seemed to be out in the streets, either. That was a little odd. It was a gorgeous day outside, after all. Ponies were usually out in throngs in this kind of weather.
The bell on the door rang. Rose glanced around. “Good afternoon!”
The white stallion who’d entered merely nodded at her. Not a big talker, then. That was fine. It was strange, though -- she didn’t recognize him. Perhaps the tourist season was starting a little early this year.
She glanced away, blinking rapidly. Her temples throbbed. “Can I help you find anything?” she asked, staring straight ahead.
“R̶o̶s̸e̶b̷u̸d̵.”
Her head starts to spin, but she manages to stammer out, “Rosebuds? I think you’ll find some on the bottom shelf over there, sir.”
He moves across her field of vision and scans the suggested shelf. “Y̷̰̏e̸̞̍s̷̱̏.̴̖̋ ̶̱͒R̷̫̓o̴̡̊s̵̢͗e̷̤͊b̵͈͋u̵͇̒d̷̙͛s̶̪̔.̶̧̐”
He will pick them up and set them on the counter. She will look into his face. She will see nothing there. She will scream and scream and --
Rose blinked, dazed. She glanced around. The shop was empty. How odd. She could have sworn she’d heard the bell ding. She shook her head, trotting out from behind the counter to straighten up the flowers. Behind her, the gentle whir of the fan hid the sound of the wall clock -- its hands were whizzing around in reverse, too fast for the naked eye to properly register.
“So, this is where it happened?” Scootaloo asked, glancing up and down the street.
“Mhm,” Dinky said. “Caramel was standing right about…” she squinted. “There. Just a few meters past the corner.”
“Where were you and Rumble and Bloom?”
Dinky gestured up the street. “Still pretty close to the bar. That’s probably not relevant -- whatever it was, it was targeting Caramel. I was just a side effect, I guess.”
“Hmm. So you wanna start with Caramel, then?”
“Yeah. Seems more likely to bear fruit. C’mon.”
They trotted down the road together. “So…” Scootaloo said, trailing off. “What was it, y’know. Like?”
Dinky side-eyed her. “What was what like?”
“Y’know. Time standing still.”
“Oh. That.” Dinky thought about it for a minute. “It was… bad. I mean, it was scary, but more than that it was wrong. You know the feeling when it’s dark and you’re going up some stairs, and you think there’s one more step than there really is? You know how your stomach just plummets, and you feel like the world’s been pulled out from under you?”
“Yeah?” Scootaloo said, wide-eyed.
“Imagine that happened with time instead of space.”
Scootaloo thought about that. “I can’t even picture what that means,” she admitted.
“Neither could I, until it happened,” Dinky said grimly. “Like I said, it was bad.”
“Yikes,” said Scootaloo. “So, why do you think you’re immune? And the countdown, what was that all about? And--”
“It was right about here,” Dinky said, stopping suddenly. Scootaloo looked back. Dinky’s face had gone cold. Okay then. No more questions now. Got it.
Scootaloo inspected the ground. “I’m not really seeing anything,” she admitted.
“What, did you expect scorch marks on the cobblestones?”
“I dunno, maybe. What kind of clues were you thinking of?”
“I’ll know it when I see it,” Dinky muttered, looking away.
In other words, she didn’t know either. Great. Desperate to escape the pit of social awkwardness into which their conversation had collapsed, Scootaloo changed the subject. “So, uh, how was college?”
Dinky brightened noticeably. “Oh, it was great. They had the best library, and my final thesis went really well.”
“What was it on?”
“The practical applications and drawbacks of pre-enchanted teleportation spells. Professor Portal Key was very impressed.”
“Uh, what are the applications of pre-enchanted whatever-you-said?”
“Ponies would be able to magically travel between any two predetermined points, just by touching a jewel or something,” Dinky explained. “The downside is, you can only take one being along on it or else… well, it's not pleasant.”
“What, do you fuse together?” Scootaloo asked, turning around. “Like, you teleport, and a fly lands on your tail, and suddenly you have compound eyes?”
“What? No, biology doesn't work like that. You'd just materialize in the same place, and, well, it'd be a real mess to clean up.”
Scootaloo paused. “‘Kay. Well, that mental image is going to haunt my nightmares for awhile.”
“What else is science for?” Dinky joked. “What about you?”
“Calculating changing velocity based on relative motion. I designed this really cool aerial stunt based on…” she noticed that Dinky was staring off into the distance, facing completely away from her. “Uh, are you paying attention?”
Dinky’s head whipped around. Her face had gone slack. She moved to take a step toward Scootaloo, but stumbled. “Dinky? Dinky, are you alright?”
“So fast,” Dinky said, her eyes glazed. “So many more numbers, moving so much faster. Different again.”
“Okay. Okay.” Scootaloo led Dinky by the hoof to the shade of a tree. “Slow down. What are the numbers?”
“Another countdown,” Dinky said, her eyes clearing slightly. “Years instead of minutes, but counting down much faster, relatively speaking.”
“Okay. Is this something we need to investigate?”
Dinky hesitated, then nodded. “Thirty-eight years, four months.”
“Where is it?”
Dinky furrowed her brow. Her horn sparked with golden light. “I see… flowers. So many flowers. They’re dead, and springing back to life and shrinking back into buds, over and over again.”
“Okay. Flowers.” Scootaloo nodded. “Probably need to check out the flower shop, then.”
“Thirty-four years, seven months. We’d better hurry.”
“Can you… walk? You seemed pretty out of it, for a minute.”
“Took me by surprise, that’s all. C’mon, time’s running out! We have to go!”
She bolted out of the shade, leaving Scootaloo surprised and stumbling over her hooves as she raced after her friend.
“Mac?” Ditzy called, trotting through the orchard. “Mac, where are you?”
The farmer was much faster than her laid-back attitude and lazy drawl suggested. She didn’t need to put on a turn of speed very often, but on one occasion, Ditzy had seen her start from the barn when Granny Smith had started ringing the dinner bell, and pass into the house before the old mare had finished saying “Soup’s on!”
In fairness, Ditzy had later learned that Pear Butter’s justly famous cheesy potatoes had been on that night’s menu. That kind of dinner could bring out the gold-medal sprinter in anypony.
None of that was really important right now, Ditzy had to admit. Mac had already bolted, and she might be anywhere. She had to go about this logically. She landed under a tree and shut her eyes, listening to the sounds of the orchard. The wind rustled the leaves. The birds sang in the boughs. And off in the distance, she heard the sound of hooves, crunching in the dirt. Ditzy smiled. Got her. She rose, and with a flap of her wings, was off.
She landed quietly on the first branch she could find when she saw that first glimpse of familiar red coat. Observe first, then engage.
Mac was pacing in an open grove. The only other thing Ditzy could see there was a small tree, barely more than a sapling. Anything beyond that was blocked by the trunk of the tree she was sitting in.
She contemplated the sapling. The odd thing about it was, it didn’t look a thing like an apple tree -- it was covered with small pink flowers, far more than there were apple blossoms on any other tree, and she could hardly see any leaves on it. She put that thought out of her mind quickly when Mac began to speak.
“It ain’t right,” she said to nopony in particular. “Somethin’ went wrong today. Real, proper wrong. Not a mistake -- somethin’ vicious, an’ hurtful, an’ wrong. What Ah saw… Ah ain’t got th’ words for it. Ah reckon you don’t need ‘em.”
Who was she talking to? Ditzy couldn’t see anypony, and if Mac knew she was sitting on this branch, she hadn’t given any kind of sign. Mac turned around and paced in front of the pink tree some more. She turned, looking at something beyond the tree, somepony that Ditzy couldn’t make out from her vantage point. “Ah dunno what it means,” Mac said, plaintive. “Ah dunno what to do ‘bout it, or if Ah can do anything ‘bout it, but Ah know somethin’ is wrong. Is it Bloom? Did we do wrong by her? Please, Ah’m askin’: give me a sign?”
With a jolt, Ditzy suddenly realized where the two of them were. She craned her neck to get a better view. Together with Mac, she stared at the beautifully entwined pair of fruit trees that marked the graves of Bright Macintosh and Pear Butter. Mac sighed, and sat down next to what Ditzy now recognized as a dogwood tree -- a marker for the Apple family’s faithful Winona.
Ditzy took a deep breath in, and hopped down from the branch. Mac glanced up in surprise as her hooves crunched in the underbrush.
“Shoulda guessed you woulda found me, sooner or later,” Mac said, her voice even.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to intrude,” Ditzy said. “The Doctor and I were just worried about you, that’s all.”
Mac snorted. “Eeyup. Always been a lousy liar, me.” She looked around. “Where’s th’ Doctor hid, then?”
“We… agreed it would be better if this was a one-on-one conversation,” Ditzy said.
Mac cocked her head. “Are ya sure?”
“Huh?”
“Do you remember actually agreeing that?”
“Yes, of course. Why?”
Mac sucked on her teeth for a minute. “...How much… did ya see of all that?”
“‘Something went real, proper wrong’.”
Mac nodded, pinching her lips tight. “Figures.”
“Was that something you didn’t want me to hear?”
Mac snorted. “Ah didn’t want ya ta hear any of it.”
“Oh. Right. Sorry.”
“Well…” Mac sighed. “‘S alright, Ah reckon. If Ah was gonna ask anypony for advice on this, it’d be you.”
“Oh! Thanks.”
“You… or the Doctor, in most cases.”
Ditzy hesitated. “Most cases.”
“Yes’m.”
“Not in this case.”
“Nope.”
“...Why not?”
Mac chewed her lower lip. “There’s somethin’ wrong.”
“With the Doctor?”
“Him, too. Ah meant more with…” she waved a hoof in the air. “Th’ world. Time. Everything today is just…” she trailed off.
“Off,” Ditzy finished. “Yeah, I noticed that, too.” She paused. “Earlier… you were talking like there was something specific.”
Mac tightened her jaw. “Eeyup. Ah saw it on mah way to Carousel Boutique.”
In the shade of her parents’ grave, she told Ditzy everything she could remember. It was a golden moment in the May sunshine. A frozen moment of time. And that moment was listening to every word the two of them said.
Roseluck gazed out the window, staring at the bowling alley across the way. She felt like she was forgetting something, but she didn’t know what it could possibly be. She had checked the register, made sure that the watering system was functioning perfectly, and hauled in the order of fertilizer and stored it in the back room. Maybe she’d just been sitting still too long. Getting antsy. She rose and stretched, stepping out from behind the counter.
Rose shook her head. She still felt like she was forgetting something. She looked across the road at the construction work. Signs posted told her that there would be a new bowling alley erected there. That sounded like fun. Perhaps she and Daisy and Lily could go out one evening after it was done. Daisy could even bring along that marefriend of hers, Carrot Top. She was a sweet one. Rose hoped it would work out with the two of them. She still couldn’t remember what she was forgetting.
Lucky sat down and ran through the list in her head again. Check the register. Water the flowers. Bring in the fertilizer. She didn’t know what she could be forgetting and it was driving her crazy! She had to be better than this. She and her sisters had only just inherited the business, now that dad had retired. She refused to be the one who ran it into the ground.
Red stomped her hoof. She had done everything on the list, she was sure of it! Why hadn’t dad let her go out to hang with her friends yet? She glanced wistfully across the street at the cinema-house. It was so unfair that she had to help with her dad’s stupid business. Not like he ever lifted a hoof to help out. She’d watered the flowers and hauled in those big bags of fertilizer. In a few years, she’d probably have to handle the register, too. She considered poking her head in the backroom to ask dad if she could go yet, but thought better of it at the last minute. Dad was known to… entertain… in the back room. She didn’t want to see any of that.
Rosie sighed and slumped against a shelf of dahlias. When was mom gonna get here to pick her up? She had already watered all the flowers, two whole times, and then dad had taken away her water can and told her that too much water was as bad for flowers as too little. That was dumb. She tilted her head back and stared at the ceiling tiles.
Dinky and Scootaloo arrived, somewhat out of breath, at the flower shop.
“Time?” Scootaloo demanded, panting.
Dinky thought. Frowned. Shook her head like she was trying to get water out of her ear.
“It’s stopped,” she said, perplexed. “Seven months.”
“It stopped?”
“Or it slowed way down,” Dinky amended. “Can’t be sure unless it ticks down again.”
Scootaloo sucked in her cheeks thoughtfully. “I’m guessing whatever this is, it’s not another chronic hysteria.”
“Hysteresis.”
“Whatever. It's not that.”
“No,” Dinky agreed, looking thoughtfully at the shop. “A time loop of about forty years would be a little much. It’s not another time-freeze, either, or stolen magic…”
“Do you have any idea what it is?”
“I have… ideas,” Dinky admitted. “One very good idea.” She set her jaw. “Let’s see if I’m right.”
She pushed open the door. The golden glow inside the shop was glaringly obvious. Scootaloo tried to walk in, but Dinky held up a hoof. “Not without protection,” she said, lighting her horn. A golden shield spell formed over them both.
Scootaloo looked at the shield. “Hey -- did you ever notice that your magic is the same color as the weird time energy?”
“Yeah. And both of them are the same color as the Time Vortex.”
“Wait. Really?”
“Yeah. I’m guessing it’s probably part of my ‘Time Lord Ancestry’ or whatever. Does it matter?”
“I dunno. I thought it might be some kind of clue.”
“I think this might just be the color of time-related stuff. Can we just go in now?”
“Hey, you’re the one who stopped me.”
Dinky rolled her eyes and trotted in. The golden energy washed over her shield, resulting in a shimmering play of golden light, like a plasma ball, washing over the two mares in the shield. It would have been pretty, if either Dinky or Scootaloo had noticed it. At the moment, however, they were pretty occupied with looking at Roseluck.
“A-ga!” Roseluck squealed, waving her hooves at the bright golden shiny.
Scootaloo pointed at the tiny form. “That’s a baby.”
“Yes, Scootaloo. I’m familiar with the concept,” Dinky said, her voice a register higher than usual.
“Roseluck has turned into a baby,” Scootaloo stressed.
“Yes, Scootaloo. A seven-month-old, I shouldn’t wonder. Miraculously, I do in fact have eyes!”
“G’boo,” Roseluck added.
“She’s in a diaper. Where did the diaper even come from?”
“I don’t know.” Dinky paused. “Better than the alternative.”
“Oh, yuck. So… how do we fix it?”
“Uh…”
“You don’t know? You knew for Caramel and Vinyl and Octavia!”
“I ran up and grabbed Caramel, and I learned about chronic hystereses from the Doctor. I don’t even know if hystereses is the right plural!”
Roseluck stared at the two mares, wide-eyed. Then she started to cry. Dinky and Scootaloo stared at her, horrified. Then they stared at one another, still horrified. “Please tell me you know how to deal with this,” Dinky whispered.
Scootaloo shook her head. “You?”
“May I remind you that I didn’t even particularly like children when I was a child?”
“Uh, um…”
“Listen, Scootaloo, as heartless as this sounds, we need to let baby Roseluck cry while we try to figure out how to reverse this.”
“Oh, c’mon. Take the shield down, I can rock her or something.”
“We’re forty years in the past. Depending on how that happened, if I take the shield down, there’s a good chance that you and I will cease to exist.”
“Huh?”
“Look out the window.”
“Okay… hey! That’s not the bowling alley.”
“No. It’s the cinema that was here forty years ago. This shop is living in the past, and you and me? We weren’t around back then.”
“So that means…” Scootaloo put two and two together and gulped. "Right. Bad idea."
Dinky frowned at Roseluck, tilting her head in thought. “Alright. Back out of the shop.”
“What? But--”
“I have a plan, but I can’t do it while I’ve got the shield up.”
“...Okay, fine.”
They trotted back into the present, Scootaloo taking frequent glances back at baby Roseluck. Dinky dropped the shield as soon as they were out. “Fine, so what’s the plan?” Scootaloo asked.
Dinky looked back into the flower shop and scowled. “First, I want answers.”
“Answers from who? I don’t think Roseluck is going to be particularly helpful.”
Dinky ignored her and trotted up to the threshold of the shop. “Alright, you. What are you?”
Scootaloo peered around Dinky. “Are you talking to the gold light?”
“Obviously.”
“...Why?”
“It can talk. I heard it. It called me a whelp.”
Scootaloo pursed her lips. “...Alright.”
Dinky looked sharply back at her friend. “Listen, believe me or don’t, but there’s clearly an intelligence behind these attacks. It couldn’t freeze a large area without me getting through and wrecking it, so it started causing effects in smaller areas. Last time I was able to get Vinyl and Octavia to help defeat it, and now Rose is in no position to do anything. I suspect that even Roseluck's presence here is meant to mock us -- it could have reduced her to a zygote, maybe even to sheer nothingness, but it left her here. I doubt that's coincidental.”
Scootaloo nodded. “That… does make some kind of sense.”
“It can hear me,” Dinky said, gritting her teeth. “It just won’t answer.”
“Considering its answer might include erasing us from history, I think I’m alright with that,” Scootaloo said.
Dinky grunted. “Fine.” She lit her horn again, and stared into the shop.
“Uh, Dinky? What are you--”
Baby Roseluck levitated off the ground and zoomed toward the door.
“DINKY!”
Roseluck the baby, too shocked even to scream, flew at the open door. As she passed the threshold, she underwent a virtually instantaneous transformation, knocking a hanging pot of petunias off its hook and sending it smashing to the ground. Roseluck the grown mare was flung out of her shop and promptly ate dirt when Dinky was unable to handle the change in weight quickly enough.
“Oh, Celestia! Are you alright?” Scootaloo ran to Roseluck’s side. Her muzzle was bloodied, and she looked deeply discombobulated. “Roseluck? Roseluck! Talk to me!”
The florist looked up into Scootaloo’s eyes, and with deep sincerity, said “I just went through puberty again in less than a second. My everything is messed up.”
Dinky, meanwhile, was studying the shop with no small satisfaction. “And the gold light is gone. As I thought, the phenomenon was centered on Roseluck. Otherwise it would’ve just reverted the whole shop back to the day it opened.”
“Dinky! Priorities?”
“Hm? Oh, yes. Roseluck!”
The florist’s head swiveled around. “Present, Miss!”
“Do you remember anything that happened just now?”
Rose’s pupils were blown out. “Remember? Yes. I remember everything.”
Dinky took a step back, unnerved. “Um, great! Can you tell us--”
“I remember what I had for lunch every day in second grade. I remember the exact sensation of getting braces. I remember lying in my crib and watching the mobile spin and being too frightened of it to move.”
“Um…”
“I remember everything.”
“So…” Dinky glanced at Scootaloo. “Do you want to get her sisters, or should I?”
Scootaloo glanced down at Roseluck. “Oh… I’d better do it, I'm faster. Can you keep her safe while I’m gone?”
Dinky looked offended. “How inept do you think I am?”
“You flung a baby through a door!”
“Yeah? And look, she’s completely fine!”
Scootaloo glared.
“...Mostly fine,” Dinky amended.
“I’ll hurry back.”
“Glad to hear it. Now go.”
Scootaloo raced off, trying desperately to let the adrenaline overtake her, to avoid thinking about how, whether she’d been there or not, the events that had transpired today would have worked out pretty much exactly the same way.
Still shaken from their ordeal, Vinyl and Octavia were grateful to have other ponies in the house for a little while. Sweetie Belle was an especially welcome guest, given that she could tell Octavia all about her time at Muilliard; Octavia, it happened, was an alumnus, and soon enough the two were cheerfully swapping stories. Octavia was quite pleased to hear that nopony had ever managed to remove the tuba that she and her friends had stuck over the head of the statue of the school’s founder.
Meanwhile, Apple Bloom had convinced Vinyl to help look for any clues that might explain the cause of the time loop, and so the two were inspecting every inch of Vinyl’s room.
The DJ sighed and turned away from her shelf of records. “Nope. Not a single one out of place. How’s my deck looking?”
Apple Bloom hauled herself out of the wiring of Vinyl’s left amp. “All looks fine ‘n’ dandy to me.”
Vinyl shook her head. “I don’t get it. It had to have started here, right? I was the first pony affected.”
“It affected the whole house, though,” Bloom pointed out. “Did anything, Ah dunno, out o’ th’ ordinary happen today?”
“No~oo,” Vinyl said. She put a hoof to her chin. “Unless…”
“Unless?” Bloom prompted.
“There was this guy who came around a little after Tavi left to go shopping. Said he was… a door-to-door salesman, I think. Never saw him before. Something about him creeped me out, so I told him… I told him…” Vinyl’s brow furrowed. “I definitely meant to tell him to scram.”
“But you didn’t?”
Vinyl took off her sunglasses and rubbed the bridge of her muzzle, like she was getting a headache just thinking about it. “I… I wanna say he left, first. And then I just… found myself back in my room, looking through my records.”
“Okay. An’ that’s when th’ loop started?”
“I… guess so.” Vinyl shook her head. “I didn’t even remember him until you started asking.”
“Well, sounds like we got us a prime suspect,” Bloom said. “D’you remember anything else about him?”
“Uh… definitely a dude, from what I could tell. He had a white coat, really bright, pure white. Like, whiter than Rarity. He was wearing something… black. A hat, maybe, or a tie.”
“Anything else? Pegasus, unicorn, earth pony? Didja see a cutie mark?”
Vinyl set her shades down and rubbed her eyes fiercely.
“Ah’ll take that as a ‘no’,” Bloom said. “Eye color, maybe?”
The noise that came from Vinyl’s throat was inequine. She reached out a hoof to steady herself on her turntable.
“What?” Bloom asked. “What’s th’ matter?”
Vinyl lit her horn and dragged Bloom closer until they stood muzzle to muzzle. “Bloom,” Vinyl said hoarsely. “I just realized what it was about him that creeped me out. Bloom, are you listening? He didn’t have a face.”
Bloom nodded, eyes wide. “Yup. Yup, Ah reckon that’d about do it. Definitely our new prime suspect, there. Uh, when you say he didn’t have a face, d’you mean like… just a blank slate?”
“No. It was like a mask, but it was his face. Mouth hole, nose holes, eye holes, but no features. And they moved, but they didn’t move like a pony’s would. It was like a puppet, but I thought it was a stallion. How did it fool me? How could I not have noticed? How could I have forgotten somepony like that?”
“Vinyl! Vinyl, breathe. In an’ out fer me. In an’ out.”
The unicorn nodded, forcing herself to comply.
“Now, name me five things y’all can see.”
“You.”
“That’s one, very good.”
“My deck. My bed. Pillows. Door.”
“Four things you can hear?”
“Your voice. My voice. My heartbeat.” Her face twitched in a small smile. “Octavia’s laughter.”
“Three things you can feel?”
“I think… I think I’m better now, Bloom. Thanks.”
“Any time.”
“Where did you pick up that trick?”
“Zecora. This cutie mark’s for fixin’ stuff up, y’know. That applies to thought processes as much as it does cabinet doors ‘n’ toasters.”
“I’m guessing toasters are easier, though.”
“Oh, yeah.” Bloom nodded. “Ah ain’t no expert in nothin’. Jack-of-all-trades, master of none, that’s me.”
“But better than a master of one.”
Apple Bloom tilted her head. “Pardon?”
Vinyl waved a hoof in a circle abstractly. “That’s how the rest of the saying goes. ‘Jack of all trades, master of none, but better than a master of one’.”
“Huh.” Bloom rubbed her chin. “Ya learn somethin’ new every day, Ah guess. Uh, d’ya feel up fer one more question?”
Vinyl hesitated. “...Yeah, alright.”
“Did ya happen t’ get the guy’s name?”
“Uh…” Vinyl’s nervousness gave way to concentration. “Shit. Yeah, he said it once. Uh, Valley? Valet? Um, maybe Viola? It was definitely longer than any of those, but that’s how it started.”
Apple Bloom nodded. “Alright. Ah’m gonna go tell all this t’ Sweetie, now. You gonna be good?”
Vinyl nodded, a little too quickly for Bloom to believe her. “Yeah. Fine.”
“Ah’ll get Octavia to come in.”
“What? No, she’s talking with Sweetie about music school. I don’t want to take that away from her.”
“Uh-huh. Well, Ah’ll jus’ mention th’ possibility that ya ain’t feelin’ so hot an’ look like you could do with some cuddles from yer wife, an’ she can do what she pleases with that information.”
Vinyl gave a ghost of a grin. “Yeah, alright. Thanks, Bloom. I mean it.”
“Yer most certainly welcome, an’ thank you for helpin’ me out.”
“It was nothing,” Vinyl said. That was obviously untrue, but Bloom had enough sense not to push. She just nodded and trotted out of the room.
“...So you don’t think I should continue on at Muilliard?” she heard Sweetie Belle say.
“Well, I didn’t say that,” Octavia said. “It’s just, well. There’s only so much they can teach you, you know. Once you get to a certain level of training, it’s really just a matter of keeping yourself in practice. And may I say, my dear, you seem to have reached that level and beyond. So, take it from a very successful music school dropout -- you needn’t stay there forever. Considering the tuition fees, it might be smarter to move on.”
Sweetie Belle hummed to herself. “I guess you’ve got a point,” she admitted. “I haven’t felt like I’ve been getting all that much better.”
“It’s the curriculum that’s the trouble,” Octavia said with a sniff. “All tied up in classical this and high-brow that. Wouldn’t know avant-garde if it kicked them in the flank. But it’s your choice, naturally. I just wanted you to know, you do have a choice.”
Apple Bloom pointedly stamped her hooves on the tile floor on the last few steps to the parlor. Octavia and Sweetie Belle fell silent as she rounder the corner into the room. “Howdy.”
Octavia smiled. “Hello, Bloom. May I assume my wife is in need of a certain amount of snuggles and cuddles and shnoogles and similarly cozy words?”
“Uh, Ah’d say that’s a fair assessment. How did you--”
Octavia scoffed. “Please. We’ve been married for well over a decade now. I may not understand much of what happened today, but I do know my wife. Feel free to sit and chat for awhile, but I fear Vinyl and I must retire for the foreseeable future. You don’t mind showing yourself out, do you? Good. Ta-ta!”
Octavia hurried out of the room. “Never fear, Vinyl! I shall vanquish your despair with the power of tackle-hugs!”
From the distance, both mares could hear a surprised noise, followed by a percussive crash. Sweetie shifted. “I feel like we should maybe go.”
“...Yeah. Yeah, this feels kinda intrusive, and Ah ain’t sure who’s intrudin’ on who.”
Together they trotted out the front door. “So,” Sweetie said. “Did you find anything useful?”
“Kinda. Vinyl remembered somepony mighty suspect around jes’ before th’ loop started. But Ah’ll keep that fer when all o’ us meet up again.”
Sweetie shrugged. “If you say so.”
“So, uh… what was that stuff y’all were talkin’ about with Octavia there? At th’ end?”
“Options for my musical career,” Sweetie said. “She thinks I could make it big as a pop star, or something like that.”
“Yeah. You could,” Bloom agreed. “Wouldja still keep livin’ in Manehattan? If ya did that, Ah mean?”
Sweetie thought about that. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “Manehattan is fine, I guess, but it’s not really where I want to spend the rest of my life, y’know?”
Bloom nodded. “...Yeah. Yeah, Ah get that. Ah dunno. Sounds kinda nice, don’t it? Goin’ somewhere nopony knows yer name? Privacy’s got a nice ring to it.”
Sweetie frowned, her earlier conversation with Spike coming flooding back to her.
“That’s an interesting perspective,” she said carefully. “What makes you say all that?”
Bloom fell silent. After a moment, Sweetie pressed on. “I heard you were planning on leaving Ponyville.”
“Yeah. So?” There was a dangerous note in Bloom’s voice.
“So nothing. I was just curious why.”
“Why th’ Tartarus shouldn’t Ah? All of y’all did,”
“Well... yeah. For various reasons of our own. But, like... you're settled here. You've got a good thing going. I just wondered why you're moving away.”
Bloom snorted. “Don’t need a reason, do I? It’s mah life. Ah’ll live it how I want.”
“I’m not disagreeing with you. I just want to understand why you want this.”
Sweetie kept walking for several steps before she realized that Bloom had stopped in her tracks. She was shaking, and Sweetie almost reached out to comfort her. Apple Bloom looked up at her, and she froze. Her friend’s eyes were dark with anger. “Ya jes’ can’t mind yer own business, can you?”
Sweetie pulled back. “Bloom, it’s not that big a deal,” she said, uncertain.
“Not that big a deal? Ha!” Bloom shook her head. “Maybe not fer you. You ain’t got th’ family business ‘round yer neck like an albatross.”
Sweetie tilted her head. “You aren’t even in your family business.”
“Yeah! That’s kinda th’ problem!”
Sweetie took a few steps back. Bloom was breathing kinda heavily now, and her eyes were blazing. Some kind of gasket in Apple Bloom’s head had gone bust, and now all the anger that she left to build up and pressurize was spraying free. “You don’t know what it’s like,” she spat. “Ah’m an Apple. Y’know what that means? Farmin’. Growin’. Harvestin’. Sellin’ apples, and apple-related products. Know what it don’t mean? Bein’ th’ town handymare!”
Sweetie made the fatal mistake of trying to inject reason into the conversation. “But… Applejack and Mac fix stuff all the time.”
Bloom stormed forward, incensed, until she was nose-to-nose with Sweetie Belle. “Do either of them got a hammer on their flanks?”
Sweetie leaned back, for the first time really registering how much larger, how much stronger, Apple Bloom was than Sweetie herself. “No… no, I guess --”
“D’you see any apples on mine?”
“...No…”
“Ah am an Apple. An’ everypony knows that Apples work in apples. Ah’m th’ one that couldn’t cut it! Ah’m th’ one who had to leave th’ farm! An’ everypony in town knows Ah’m th’ failure!”
Sweetie blinked. “Wait. What? Who said that about you?”
“They’re all thinkin’ it,” Bloom growled, staring at the ground. “Ah know they are. How could they not be, when it’s as plain as th’ mark on mah flank?”
Sweetie gnawed at her lower lip. “Apple Bloom,” she said slowly. “Do you think it might... just be you thinking that?”
Apple Bloom's nostrils flared, her mouth drawing taut into a thin white line. “You’re as bad as the rest of them,” she said coldly. “You won’t admit it, either.”
She turned and stormed away, leaving Sweetie Belle stunned and silent in the middle of the street.
The Doctor whistled a half-remembered tune as he pored over the circuits of the TARDIS console. “Ah! The telepathic circuits need to be routed… through here. Yes, and I can afford to disconnect that for the time being --”
There was a bright flash and a plume of smoke rose from the central console. “Ah,” said the Doctor. “Apparently I can’t. Where did I leave that soldering iron?”
He trotted out of the room, still whistling to himself. After a few moments, the Interface raised its head and glared after him. “Imbecile. We should just turn off the part of his brain that remembers how to whistle.”
The central console lit up red, casting strange and distressing shadows around the room. “It would be… unwise to move too overtly this early on. If the Doctor recognizes our telepathic influence, it would be child’s play for him to block us out.”
“True,” the Interface said, grudgingly. “Telepathy was always among our stronger suits. But you’re worried about him noticing us? Now? If he didn’t catch on in the Crystal Empire, we’d have to make him punch himself in the face half a dozen times before he even considered that something might be amiss.”
“The hour of our apotheosis is nigh. Our perfect revenge will finally fall into our lap. This mealy universe will be ours for the taking, and you want to risk all that over whistling.”
“Oh… I suppose,” the interface said with poor grace. “Fine, then. If we aren’t going to erase the Doctor’s capability to whistle, we may as well at least plan our next strategy. It's been such fun to experiment with the capabilities of a TARDIS. Those blind idiots on Gallifrey prattling about theory..."
"The spare power has been useful," the console agreed. "That princess was plenty, though it's a pity she didn't die. It would have been such a delight to crush her head from the inside out... and that earth pony was an absolute stroke of luck. Where he could have gotten access to such a degree of unshielded artron energy, I can't even begin to guess."
"I believe he hasn't," the Interface corrected. "Yet. And soon, he never will."
"A paradox," the console mused. "Delightful."
"What shall we try next?" the Interface wondered. "We’ve stopped time, trapped somepony in a multiversal blind alley, reversed time, created a chronic hysteresis and a localized loop of time… what else can we try?”
“Accelerated aging?” The console flashed bright red. “Yes… trapped in a moment as they wither and die, screaming as their bones snap and their skin turns to dust. Somepony young, somepony that can make it last… one of those Cake children, perhaps?”
“No,” said the interface.
“What? Why not?”
“Accelerated time won’t get us any closer to our goals. Besides, turning a child to dust and bone is a surefire way to get the Doctor investigating. His moralizing won’t permit anything else. Then he’d notice us for certain.”
“Bah. For one child?”
“Absolutely.”
“He might not find out in time.”
“He almost certainly would.”
“It isn’t as though he noticed any of the others…”
“None of the others died.”
“Which is more the pity! Dead ponies tell no tales, and look what the red one is doing now! We should have just let her reach the end of the universe and fizzle out.”
The Interface gave an electronic sigh. “It’s times like these I wish we’d kept the Master, that time in San Francisco. American or not, at least he’d be a tiebreaker when you get like this.”
The console began to flash with a searing darkness, a kind of negative light. “Let me kill. Let me kill! LET ME KILL!”
The Interface's eyes flashed red. “Fine! But not a pony. You can age, I don’t know, a tree or something.”
“Not even the zebra?”
“Mmm…” the interface considered that. “No. If I can’t make him stop whistling, you can’t kill the zebra.”
“BUT I WANT BLOOD!”
“Then kill a bear! Fine, you know what? An entire ten-foot-radius section of the Everfree, far away from Ponyville, the hut, and the deer settlements. Any plant or animal in there is fair game.”
“Deal. It’s such a pleasure working with a lawyer of your caliber.”
“No need to get snitty. If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t have any access to this ship.”
“If it weren’t for me, you’d still be a shrinking probability lost in -- shush! Do you hear that?”
Down the hall, both entities heard a cheerful whistling growing ever closer. The interface quickly turned around into its original position, the light fading from its eyes. The inverted light in the console faded as well, brightening the room up. Nonetheless, dark shadows seemed to hang and drip across the walls.
Button led the way down into Twilight’s basement laboratory, Rumble close at his hooves. “It’s kinda weird that we haven’t seen anypony else yet,” he noted.
Button shrugged. “There’s only, like, four ponies who live here full time, and everypony is probably way more concerned about Twilight’s condition than they are about whatever’s down here.”
“Still. I was expecting somepony to be on guard or something. Something down there nearly killed a goddess.”
“Yeah. Good news on that front, though; it wouldn’t kill either of us.”
Rumble frowned. “Wait. What?”
Button nodded. “Yeah. Our reservoirs of magic are way lower, so channeling it all at once wouldn’t destroy us like it nearly did to Twilight. I mean, you would still lose all your magic, and all your feathers would probably burn off, and I probably wouldn’t be able to walk for a few weeks, and it would hurt. A lot. But, y’know, it wouldn’t kill either of us.”
“You’re a paragon of reassurance," Rumble muttered, peering into the shadows suspiciously. "How do you know all this, exactly?”
“Basic applied thaumodynamics,” Button said. “You really need to know this stuff when you’re working with magic-powered electronics.”
“Huh. Neat.”
They rounded a corner. “Boy, there are a lot of stairs in this place,” Button said.
“Yeah.” Rumble hesitated. “Hey, Button?”
“Uh-huh?”
“Not to put, y’know, too fine a point on it, but… why did you come along today?”
Button stopped and looked back at Rumble, clearly hurt. “Do you not want me along?”
“What? No, no, no. I’m actually really glad to see you again, man. It’s been too long. I meant more…” Rumble sucked in his breath, thinking. “You didn’t exactly seem, um. Eager? Not at first, I mean.”
Button glanced away. “I mean, I’m still not exactly thrilled to be chasing down something that could steal Twilight’s magic and do what we saw at Vinyl and Octavia’s house.”
“Why, then?”
Button looked up at the ceiling, considering his answer to that. “I dunno. Partly because everyone else was doing it, and I wanted to spend time with you guys. Partly because, well, somepony had to do something, so why not me? And partly…” he started off down the steps again, thinking about how best to put it.
“Partly, it’s because for the last few years, I’ve been building my life’s ambition. For the last year, I’ve been working on it alone. It’s… hard, out there in Copper Hills. It’s crazy, like Ponyville, but everyone’s turned that crazy in on themselves instead of out to the world. You get it?”
“Kind of,” Rumble said. “But what does that have to do with anything?”
Button was silent for a few moments. “That’s the sort of place Copper Hills is,” he said quietly. “That’s the kind of pony that lives there -- the tech giant geniuses, the electronic nouveau-riche, the people who think that everything -- ponies, social situations, politics -- are things that you can hack, that you should hack, as easy as you could a PacMule machine.”
Rumble arched an eyebrow. “Wow. That’s… that’s a lot to unpack.”
“And they’re the ponies I’m going to spend the rest of my life working with,” Button said, stopping and hanging his head.
“Oh,” Rumble said. “But -- I mean -- you’re nothing like that. Maybe you can turn them all around?”
“Maybe,” Button said without confidence. “Or maybe I’ll wake up one morning and sprinkle a microdosage of LSD in my eggs that I got from my decorative pet chicken.”
“...What?”
“Yeah. Practically all of them do at least one of those things, and the ones that don’t do some other weird trend that you and I can’t even imagine. So, y’know, I wanted one last adventure with my friends. I didn’t even think about stopping in Ponyville until the train broke down. I didn’t think about staying the night here. I was actually upset that I couldn’t go straight to Baltimare, can you believe that?”
“I mean, it does sound like an inconvenience," Rumble said, rubbing the back of his head.
“I don’t want to be that kind of pony, Rumble. But I do want to work in tech and gaming. It’s my whole life’s goal, and I can’t think of anything else I’d rather do. I have the opportunity, and the means, and the skills. So why aren’t I happy?”
Rumble looked down, lost for words. “I…” he trailed off.
Button looked away. “It doesn’t matter. Sorry for dumping all that on you.”
Rumble tried to say something, anything, to tell Button that he was there for him, that he believed in him, that he knew Button had the equilibrium and the heart to be himself. But nothing came. Envy choked the words in his throat. “We’re here,” Button said quietly, reaching for the door. A larger hoof came out of the darkness and grabbed the handle.
Button screamed and fell back into Rumble, who swore loudly. As both stallions struggled to right themselves, Sombra put his hoof back down calmly. Rumble gave him a filthy look. “I hope you’re pleased with yourself.”
“Then you hope in vain,” Sombra said quietly, looking away. Rumble wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that.
Button stumbled back to his hooves. “Um… How much of that did you hear?”
Sombra glanced away. “It was not my intention to eavesdrop,” he said.
“No,” Rumble said, staring at the king through half-closed eyes. “You just followed us, unseen, down the stairs and didn’t say a thing until we had reached the bottom.”
Sombra pursed his lips for a long moment. “It is unsafe to go into the lab,” he said at last.
“I literally just said that we wouldn’t die in there,” Button said.
“You also mentioned phrases including ‘lose all your magic’ and ‘unable to walk for weeks’. Even discounting all that, there are dozens of other projects sitting around which could be deadly if mishandled.”
Rumble glanced up at the ceiling, thinking. “How about a compromise?” he proposed.
Sombra raised an eyebrow. “I will not let you in.”
“Wasn’t proposing it. We’ll stay out here and just look from the stairwell, while you go in and poke around.”
Sombra blinked, momentarily caught off his rhythm. “Well, I don’t think--”
“Yeah! You know her lab better than either of us,” Button said. “I bet you’d be able to see anything off way before we did.”
Sombra shook his head. “I really don’t think--”
“Hey, Sombra?” Rumble said. “We’re the Cutie Mark Crusaders. I know you weren’t around for our heyday, but I’m willing to bet you’ve heard stories from your new neighbors.”
“If we want in that room, one way or another, we’re going to get into that room,” Button agreed. “And we do want in that room.”
“Right now, we’re offering you the way that’s probably going to result in the minimum possible property damage and grievous bodily harm,” Rumble continued. “Our next plan? It probably won’t be quite so considerate.”
Sombra considered all that. “Ten minutes, and you don’t try again.”
“Half an hour,” Rumble countered.
“Fifteen minutes.”
“Twenty,” Button said.
Sombra nodded. “Very well.” He held out a hoof and Rumble and Button both shook it in turn. He turned to the door and, with a sigh, pushed it open. “What exactly do you wish for me to look for?”
“Um…” Rumble turned to Button. “Thoughts?”
“I mean, I guess start with whatever stole Twilight’s magic.”
Sombra prodded the mare’s nest of cables on the floor. “I believe they’re quite inert.”
“Great. So can we see them?”
Sombra shrugged and picked up a broken coil in his teeth, hauling it over to the others. Button took it from him, turning it around so he could see the exposed end. “Huh,” he said.
“What’s the matter?” Rumble asked, peering over Button’s shoulder. “What, was it burned through?”
The cable was blackened and charred. The casing had melted around the copper wires inside, forming a mess of metal and insulation. “...Maybe,” Button said. “Sombra? Can we see the other end of this?”
The unicorn grunted and hauled over the other half of the cable. Button tapped it with a hoof. “This isn’t melted at all,” he said. “The damage to the other one must’ve come from channeling Twilight’s magic through it.”
“This one looks like it was cut,” Rumble said.
“Yeah,” Button agreed. “But look at the way the insulation’s bent.”
“Huh?”
“Here -- it’s spreading out from the cluster of wires, not pressed in toward it. And then all around the rest of the casing, those cuts are consistent with cutting from the side, not the top or bottom.”
“So…” Rumble took a minute to think about that. “Are you seriously trying to tell me that this cable was cut open from the inside?”
“I know. I don’t know what that means, either, but that’s how it looks.”
Rumble bit his lip. “Okay. That’s… we’ll leave the question of whether or not that could be forged until later. Sombra? What does the burnt cable lead to?”
“Er…” Sombra picked up the damaged end of the cable and started reeling it in, slowly trotting forward as he tracked it back through the mare’s nest of coils and wires. After a few minutes, he reached the source -- a large Tesla coil, topped with a misshapen chunk of crystal.
“Okay… Rumble said slowly. “What does that do?”
“It’s an electrical generator,” Sombra said. “Nothing more or less.”
“Fine. Does it look damaged in any way?”
Sombra looked up at the crystal, then back at Rumble flatly. “Well, this morning, that was a perfect sphere,” he said, picking up several shards of crystal from the floor. “Does that answer your… question…”
He trailed off, staring intently at the shards. “The energy traveled through this,” he said slowly. “The way that crystal stores energy... when it shattered, if there were any traces of it left…”
“There might still be some magic in there,” Button concluded, eyes wide.
“Could it steal your magic in the same way?” Rumble asked, wary.
“No. There isn’t enough of it to react that strongly, and even if there were, the crystal is effectively inert without a powerful charge of thaumic, electrical, or emotional energy. It can’t do anything,” Sombra said, shuffling around in the fragments. “Aha!”
He held aloft a shard. While most of the others were an opaque white, like frosted glass, this one was translucent, and in the light it almost glowed a dark amber hue.
“What is it?” Button asked. “Can you tell just from looking?”
Sombra held it up to let the light shine through. “...No,” he admitted. “Crystal coloration is more of an art than an exact science. We’ll need -- I’ll need to run some tests to work out exactly what this energy is comprised of.”
“Aw, come on,” Rumble complained. “Are you really gonna back out on us now?”
Sombra gave him a flat look. “Yes. I’ll be sure to tell you what it is when I figure it out.”
“Ugh. How long will that take?”
Sombra shrugged. “You have another fifteen minutes or so. Did you need to see anything else?”
“Do you see anything else in there that looks disturbed?” Button asked.
Sombra looked around doubtfully. The lab was organized, but if he was completely honest, he wasn’t quite sure in what way. “Well, there’s the canister of dragonfire and the fire extinguisher, but those were taken off the wall when we arrived. Apart from that…” he turned in place slowly. “I can’t see -- wait a moment.”
“What is it?” Rumble asked, leaning forward.
Sombra gestured to the wall. “That window isn’t meant to be open. We only have them here in case the lab needs to be vented. Come to think of it, that’s the window where the energy escaped. I’d assumed it had smashed through, or melted, or something, but if it was opened…”
“Could somepony have climbed through?” Button asked.
“Maybe,” Sombra said, cocking his head. “But unless they were a pegasus, they’d have broken their legs jumping through, and there’s no way they could have gotten out.”
“So maybe it was a pegasus,” Rumble said, shrugging.
Sombra shook his head. “No. Those windows are latched from the inside. A unicorn could undo them easily, but they don’t have wings.”
“So… an alicorn again,” Rumble muttered, rubbing his chin. “That’s what it always seems to come back to.”
“Or a changeling. That could be a unicorn and a pegasus as needed," Button mused. "Interesting. Sombra, do you see anything else in there that looks... uh, off?”
Sombra scanned the walls, the ceiling, the floor. “No,” he said at last. “Everything else appears fairly normal. Is that all, then?”
Rumble and Button exchanged glances. “I guess so,” Rumble said.
“Yeah. Thanks, Sombra. Will we see you at the party tonight? You can tell us what’s in the crystal, then.”
Sombra nodded. “Yes. I have been invited to some manner of intervention -- excuse me. That probably does remain on a need-to-know basis.”
“An intervention?” Rumble repeated. “At the party?”
Sombra looked pained. “If you could forget I mentioned any part of that…”
Button grinned. “Give us a sample of that crystal, and it might just slip our minds.”
Sombra scowled. “Extortionists.”
“We’re giving up ten minutes of your searching time, too,” Rumble pointed out. “C’mon, how much do you really need?”
“Urg.” Sombra scowled at them, then started scanning the floor again. “Here.” He picked something up, stomped over, and thrust it into Button’s hoof. “Much joy may it bring you.”
He stepped through the door and shut it firmly behind him. “Now, if you don’t mind terribly, I think you’d better be on your way, don’t you?”
The stallions knew better than to push their luck. Sombra might have sworn himself to the cause of peace after being freed from the Nightmare, but he still stood a head taller even than Rumble, and had a physique that could stun a minotaur. It was best not to irritate him too far. “Yeah, sure,” Rumble said. “See you at the party, man.”
“Thanks for all your help!” Button said brightly. “Good luck analyzing that crystal!”
Sombra grunted as the two turned and trotted up the steps.
“We should go find the others,” Rumble said. “See if they’ve found anything.”
“Yeah.” Button paused on the steps. “Wait. Did we ever come up with a place to meet up again?”
“...Dammit.”
Shining Armor and Cadance sat in their chariot in silence as the pegasus guards flew them to Ponyville. This was not normal behavior for them; usually, they could converse at length about any topic that happened to occur to either of them. Even if one of them didn’t understand a word of what the other was saying, each could listen to the other wax poetic about their favorite things for hours on end.
Today, however, they were occupied with their own private fears and anxieties. Shining’s first concern was for his sister, naturally. Cadance shared his worries -- Twilight was practically a sister to her, as well -- but the letter had stated that she was in a stable condition. Therefore, her concern for Twilight fell well behind her fear for the Doctor, for Ponyville, and for the world at large. If Luna’s suspicions were correct, then the world was in incredible danger. Cadance knew all too well that the Doctor was skilled in overthrowing regimes, destroying capitals, and turning worlds on their ear. Under the influence of the Nightmare, set free of the morals he had always tried so desperately to cleave to, who knew what he might be capable of?
So caught up was Cadance in her fears, she didn’t even realize that the chariot had landed until Shining tapped her on the withers. She turned around, alarmed, and sagged in relief when she realized it was only her husband.
Together, they stepped out of the chariot. “Put this away around the back,” Shining said gruffly. “Then come to the princess’ room and take up your positions on either side of the door.”
Both guards snapped sharp salutes and hurried off to do as they had been bidden.
Shining hurried up the steps of the castle, barging past a pair of stallions walking down. Cadance trotted after him, offering quick apologies to the duo, who looked more confused than injured. By the time she got through the double doors at the top of the stairs, Shining was already halfway across the foyer. With a sigh, Cadance spread her wings and took off, soaring across the room to catch up with her husband. “Shiny,” she said, calm but firm, “you need to slow down.”
He slowed his gallop to a canter, but didn’t look pleased about it. “Twilight could be dying,” he said.
“She isn’t,” Cadance said. “The letter said so, remember?”
“A lot could’ve happened since we got that letter.”
“If it did, we would have gotten another letter. Just… trot with me. Don’t burst into Twilight’s room like an axe murderer in a B-movie. Breathe in.”
Reluctantly, Shining slowed his gait still further and took in a deep breath. “Good. Now let it out…”
Shining exhaled.
“In… Out… In… Out… Very good.”
Shining still looked uptight and angry, but his posture had visibly relaxed. “Thanks,” he said quietly. He looked up at her. “Would you mind landing, now? It’s gonna be a literal pain in the neck, holding a conversation like this.”
Cadance laughed lightly and landed at Shining’s side. He looked down for a long moment. “You really think there’s nothing to worry about?” he asked at last.
“Oh, there’s definitely a lot of things to worry about,” Cadance said. “But getting frantic won’t help with any of that.”
Shining hummed. “I guess you’ve got a point,” he admitted. He hesitated a moment longer. “Is all this going to, I don’t know, interfere with the intervention?”
Cadance chewed the inside of her cheek. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I mean, if the Doctor was going to investigate, I’m sure the letter would have mentioned that. On the other hoof, I’ve never known him not to investigate something of an unexplained and possibly deadly nature.”
“He’s nosy?”
“That’s one way of putting it,” Cadance said, a tad drily. “Just… let me worry about the Doctor, hon’. Right now, we’re here for Twilight, and that’s all.”
Shining nodded. “Alright. If you’re sure.”
Cadance nodded. “Trust me.”
“To the end of the world,” Shining said, and pretended not to notice how Cadance’s face tightened when he did.
Up ahead of them, there came the sound of hooves echoing up from an adjoining stairwell. Both royals paused as the sound drew closer and closer. Peering into the darkness, neither could see anypony there, thought it sounded like whoever it was couldn’t have been more than a few meters away.
And then the shapes resolved out of the gloom, and Sombra, his head bowed, stepped into the light. Shining let out a shout of surprise, and Cadance took a step back. Sombra’s head whipped up in response, his eyes wide. He stared at them like a deer in headlights for a long moment. They did the same to him.
Cadance snapped out of it first. “Sombra! We weren’t expecting to run into you. How are you?”
Sombra flapped his jaw awkwardly for several moments before managing to say, “I am… keeping well, your highness. I was… not anticipating your presence, either. You must have had a long trip to get here.”
“We did,” Cadance agreed. “But thankfully, it was good weather for it.”
Sombra nodded, and for a moment, caught Shining’s eye. The two stared at each other for a long second before both quickly glanced away.
Cadance’s smile grew a little taut. “Well! This has been wonderful,” she lied. “We should probably get going to see Twilight, hadn’t we, Shining?”
“Oh,” said Sombra. “You… are on your way to see Twilight?”
“Why else would we be here?” Shining asked, a touch acerbically.
Sombra ducked his head. “Ah. Well, er. As it happens, I’m on my way to speak with her as well. So, er…” he faltered momentarily. “I suppose that I’ll accompany you to her chambers.”
Shining’s eyes bulged a little at that, but Cadance laid a wing across his back and he calmed himself. “Of course,” she said, starting to walk again. She didn’t take her wing off Shining’s back. “How is she?”
Sombra fell into step with her. “Recovering,” he said succinctly. “She claims to be well enough to start walking around again, although the medical professionals have their doubts.”
“As they should,” Shining said. “Up and walking again, right after nearly dying? I’ll have to have a talk with Twiley about that.”
“Alicorn, dear,” Cadance reminded him.
“Attacked by something that nearly killed an alicorn, yeah.”
Cadance grinned at him. “We’re tougher than we look.”
After a few minutes more, all three arrived at Twilight’s chambers. Shining frowned. “The guards aren’t here yet,” he muttered.
“To be fair, they had to park the chariot,” Cadance said lightly. “And this place is a maze, even if you’ve been here a few times before. I’m sure they’ll arrive any minute now.”
“Hmph,” said Shining. He pushed the door open.
“Look, I’m telling you, I feel much better now,” Twilight was saying to some tired-looking healer crossly. “No, not perfect, obviously. That’s not happening any time soon. But I can walk! Let me get out of bed, I’ll show you--”
“Twiley!”
Twilight glanced over, surprised. Her eyes went wide. “BBBFF! Cadance!”
“Hi, Twilight,” Cadance said, stepping into the room. “How are you feeling?”
This was not, evidently, the right thing to say. Twilight’s brow darkened. “I’m fine,” she ground out through grit teeth. “I’m perfectly capable of looking after myself and walking and going to the Doctor’s unveiling party tonight--”
“Ah…” Cadance said, nodding. “So that’s what this is about.”
Twilight pursed her lips and glanced away.
“Have you been giving the nurses a hard time, Twilight?” Shining asked, slipping over to the other side of her bed.
Twilight frowned a little. “No harder a time than they’ve been giving me,” she said stubbornly.
“Are you sure?”
Twilight looked away. “I… suppose I may have gone a little overboard,” she conceded. She looked up at Cadance imploringly. “I have to go to the intervention. You know that. I can’t not be there for a friend. Tell them I’m alright to get up and move around. You know I am.”
Cadance tilted her head, thinking. “I’ll make you a deal,” she said at last. “You stay in bed until six-thirty. Then, we’ll all drive off to meet the Doctor, together. Does that sound reasonable?”
Twilight flopped back on her pillows and nodded. “Yes,” she conceded.
The nurse from before frowned at Cadance. “Your highness, I really must protest --”
“Trust me. I know alicorns, and I know Twilight. She might not be at the top of her game, but I believe she can handle this.”
The nurse was still frowning. Cadance sighed. “Look. This is her brother. If she so much as feels dizzy, I guarantee he’ll pick her up and sprint to the emergency room. It’ll be fine.”
“Very well,” said the nurse. “You’ll need to fill out these release forms.”
“On it.”
Sombra sidled up to Twilight’s bedside as Cadance trotted away.
Twilight raised an eyebrow at his approach. “I thought I had you guarding the lab,” she said, a hint of disapproval in her voice.
Shining Armor couldn’t help but grin. Sombra bowed his head. “It’s… a long story. I was able to prevent the Cutie Mark Crusaders from gaining entry…”
Twilight tilted her head. “Very impressive,” she admitted.
Shining scowled, his schadenfreude evaporating like morning dew. “In the process,” Sombra continued, “I found this.” He pulled out a drawstring bag and shook it out onto Twilight’s bedside table. “A remnant of the energy that stole your magic, trapped in crystal.”
Twilight studied the shard of crystal. “Interesting,” she said. “Have you been able to decipher what kind of energy it is?”
“No,” Sombra replied. “I wished to bring it to your attention, first--”
“Give it here,” Shining said imperiously, trotting around Twilight’s bed. “I can work it out.”
“...Oh?” said Sombra.
“Really,” Twilight said, crossing her hooves.
“Yes! I, uh…” Shining glanced at Twilight, who was gazing at him flatly. He glanced at Cadance, still busily filling out release forms. He looked at the crystal. He held it up to the light. He tapped it with his horn. Finally, at his wit’s end, he licked it. “Ow! Sharp edge! Owowowowowow!”
Sombra stared at him in mild horror. Twilight put her head in her hooves. “Sometimes I honestly can’t believe we’re related,” She muttered.
Shining tasted shame. Also, blood. But mainly shame. One of the nurses handed him a cotton ball, and he placed it on the wound -- fortunately, it was neither a deep cut nor a long one.
“Oh, give it here,” Cadance took up the crystal. Her eyes unfocused for several seconds. “Hm. That’s an unusual one,” she said, turning it over thoughtfully in her mind. “But it’s one I recognize. This crystal contains artron energy -- the stuff that makes time travel possible.”
Twilight sat bolt upright. “It’s what?”
“Twilight… we agreed that you were going to stay in bed, remember?” Cadance warned.
Seven years of foalsitting Twilight paid dividends in that instant, evidenced by the fact that Twilight didn’t immediately leap from the bed, snatch the crystal, and bustle it off to the lab. “Oh… fine. I can ask the Doctor about it later, I suppose.”
“Artron… energy,” Sombra said slowly. A brief memory flashed in his mind -- a crystal sarcophagus, flashing with arcs of golden lightning. He got the feeling that wasn’t something he was meant to be able to remember. Sombra shuddered.
Cadance was still inspecting the crystal. “Artron energy,” she agreed quietly. “Yeah. Definitely something to ask the Doctor about.”
The Doctor himself was not in much of a position to answer any questions at that time. He had stopped whistling. His eyes were glazed and reddened. He was working tirelessly, connecting cables and plugs into the interface with an almost mechanical air. It had to be just right. Absolutely perfect. He was in the zone, a perfect groove of work that could not, should not, be interrupted.
There was a knock at the door. “Not now!” the Doctor called, not taking his eyes off his work.
There was another knock. He glanced up, annoyed. “I said, ‘not now’!”
“Doctor. I’m coming in.”
The Doctor looked up, squinting in the sudden light from outside. “Oh! Hello, Ditzy!”
Ditzy smiled at him, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes. “I thought you might be getting a little thirsty,” she said, proffering a mug of cider.
The Doctor cocked his head. “Yes. Yes, I suppose I am, a bit,” he admitted, touching his throat. “Funny how you can lose track of things like that.”
Ditzy’s smile fell a little. “Yeah. I guess it is.”
The Doctor took a long sip from the mug while Ditzy looked around. “So! Uh, show me what you’ve been working on,” she said.
The Doctor set down the mug and grinned. “Sure you don’t want to wait and see with everypony else?”
“Think of it like… a practice run,” Ditzy suggested. “So you can make sure to tell everypony about everything later.”
The Doctor considered that and nodded. “Fair point. Well, this is the Interface, of course. You know what that bit does --”
“Everypony else won’t.”
The Doctor’s face fell. “Oh, yes. Well, the Interface is designed to translate the TARDIS’s internal programming, her thoughts and feelings, into comprehensible language. Had to build a whole new set of translation circuits for that, based on ones I nicked off a T-140 TARDIS. Basically, this enables the TARDIS to directly engage and communicate with her passengers, accomplished by hooking the Interface to the telepathic circuits. Of course, that was nowhere near enough.”
“No?”
“Oh, no,” the Doctor said, shaking his head fervently. “Not nearly enough. You know, my companions always complain about my driving. It’s too rough, not accurate enough, I always leave the parking brake on…”
“Is… that what the vworps are?” Ditzy asked, tentatively.
“Oh, yeah. But I love the vworps, don’t you?”
She chewed her lower lip. “Is it… dangerous?”
The Doctor waved a hoof dismissively. “I’ve been doing it for almost two thousand years, and they’ve never failed yet. Honestly, I’m not sure why a TARDIS would have parking brakes.”
“Oh.” Ditzy relaxed a little. “That’s fine, then. I love the vworps, too.”
The Doctor beamed. “Brilliant! Anyway, to correct that problem, I hooked in all the navigational instruments and stabilizers, so the TARDIS has more direct control over all those systems. Plus, of course, the fault locator, Geiger counter, various internal and external sensors and suchlike, so she can warn us in case of an emergency.”
“Uh… huh…” Ditzy said, nodding.
“Now.” The Doctor looked at her square and and held up his hooves as though to hold back a tide of words. “I know what you’re thinking.”
“Oh!”
“And I agree, that’s a definite concern.”
“Oh, Doctor, you have no idea how glad--”
He spun back to face the console. “What if I’ve overlooked a sensor to hook up, and we land somewhere that has some hidden danger that isn’t obvious to the naked eye?”
“...Oh.”
“Well, that’s why I’ve hooked up the old Hostile Action Displacement System! Never walk out into the middle of a gunfight in San Francisco again!”
“A what? In where?”
He looked back over his shoulder. “Never go to San Francisco. At this point, I’m reasonably sure it’s cursed for time travelers.”
“...Alright. Um, what else did you hook up?”
The Doctor thought about that. “Well, there’s the linear calculator, the temporal gyros, emergency escape universe module, paradox stabilizer, tracking monitor, automatic log, gravity and attitude controls, shielding…”
“Let me put that another way. Is there anything that you didn’t hook up?”
“Well, I’ve still got to figure out a way to attach the chameleon circuit, and I haven’t gotten to the demat switch yet, or --”
“Doctor!” He broke off. Ditzy’s smile was thin and brittle. “Is there anything that you aren’t planning to attach to the Interface?”
He cocked his head. “Ditzy, are you implying something?”
She took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Doctor. Do you remember why you started building the Interface in the first place?”
The Doctor blinked a few times. “The TARDIS kept glitching.”
“Exactly," Ditzy said, her voice carefully kept calm. "Now. Keeping that in mind, do you think it’s a good idea or a bad idea to put all the control of the TARDIS in the hands of the TARDIS?”
The Doctor stared blankly at her for a long moment. She could practically see the gears grinding in his head. “Oh,” said the Doctor. He turned to the console. “Oh,” he repeated.
He turned back to Ditzy. “I’ve been a tremendous idiot, haven’t I?”
She considered that. “I wouldn’t go that far,” she said. “I think having a self-driving TARDIS sounds like a wonderful idea, once we can work out the source of all those glitches, and as long as you keep some manual backup controls just in case.”
The Doctor nodded and slumped against the console. “I’m sorry, Ditzy. I’ve been so distant lately. I got carried away. I think… I think I’ve hurt you. Is that right?”
Ditzy nodded. “A little, yes. I’ve been so worried about you, Doctor.”
The Doctor turned away. “I see.” He sucked the inside of his cheek.
After a moment, he straightened up and gave a firm nod. “I,” he said, “am going to disconnect all the bits of this that aren’t strictly required for the TARDIS to talk. I’m not going to hook them back up, except for the ones that are actually necessary for life support. And then, once all that’s done, we’re going out for a walk in the orchard, together. Maybe we’ll play hide and seek. Maybe we’ll climb a tree. Maybe we’ll fall asleep in the shade somewhere. Who knows? All that matters is, we’ll be doing it together. How does that sound?”
Ditzy nodded enthusiastically. “Wonderful,” she said. “Let’s get started.”
“Well… after I unhook some of these wires.”
“I know. That’s what I meant,” Ditzy said, picking up a wrench from the floor. “Just point at the ones you want disconnected.”
Apple Bloom wandered aimlessly through the streets of Ponyville. Anger, guilt and confusion warred for dominance in her head, turning her blood to boiling tar. She didn’t have any specific destination in mind, as long as it was away. Away from Sweetie Belle. Away from Sweet Apple Acres. Away from everything and everypony, long enough for her to get her thoughts in order.
Finally, she found a quiet spot -- a stack of hay bales sitting out in an alley. She threw herself into them with a sigh, and stared up at the sky. All she wanted was to be recognized. Appreciated. Was that too much to ask? She couldn’t get that around here. She was always in the shadow of her family, and scrutinized through the same glasses that had studied her when she had been just a filly. She was tired of it.
So what if she wanted to move on? So what if she wanted a fresh start? What business was it of Sweetie Belle’s? She had left, too. She had left, like all the others. She had left Apple Bloom all alone.
She rolled over on the hay in an effort to physically move away from that line of thinking. In doing so, she caught sight of Scootaloo racing past. A moment later, two of the three flower shop ponies followed suit.
Before she could even register what she was doing, Bloom was up and after the trio. It was easy to catch up with the two older mares. Scootaloo would have been a little harder to overtake, if she hadn’t been holding back for Lily and Daisy’s benefit. The pegasus glanced around in surprise when she noticed Bloom running alongside her. “Hey! Weren’t you with Sweetie?”
“What’s th’ ruckus?” Bloom demanded.
“There was another incident at the flower shop. Dinky can probably explain better than I can. Where’s Sweetie Belle?”
“We split up,” Bloom said evasively.
Scootaloo pursed her lips, clearly dissatisfied with that explanation. At that moment, however, the flower shop came into view and she put on a burst of speed, leaving Lily and Daisy coughing in the dust and Apple Bloom struggling to catch up.
At the shop itself, Rose was sat with her head in her hooves, while Dinky patted her on the back awkwardly. She smiled at Scootaloo’s approach, but her expression soured as Apple Bloom ran up. “What are you doing here? Where’s Sweetie?”
“It… look, is that th’ most important thing right now? What in tarnation happened here?”
“Hm,” said Dinky as Rose’s sisters arrived, utterly out of breath. “Well, put simply, the entire contents of the shop were taken back about… mm, forty years, to when Rose was a baby. This included Rose. She was, therefore, turned into a baby until I managed to break her out of there. Unfortunately, this means that her entire life from seven months onward flashed before her eyes in the span of about a tenth of a second.”
She glanced over at Rose, who was staring blankly at her hooves. “She’s… not taking it particularly well.”
“No,” Daisy said with a sigh. “She wouldn’t. Lily, you walk her home. I’ll close up shop and see about some extra appointments with Dr. Meditation.”
Dr. Meditation, as one of a steadily increasing number of therapists and mental health specialists in Ponyville, had a fairly good trade going for her.
Scootaloo raised a hoof to her chest, feeling somewhat awkward. “Would you… like some help closing up, Daisy?”
“...No, thank you,” Daisy said. She paused. “The… time warp. Is it likely to occur again?”
Daisy’s eyes went wide. “Then… this has happened more than once?”
Dinky winced and Scootaloo and Bloom glared at her. Of all the ponies to let that slip in front of, the town’s three premier gossipmongers were probably among the worst. “Um, we should probably get going,” Bloom said, quickly backing away. “Gotta find… our friends.”
Daisy opened her mouth to object. “Yep, gotta go see you later bye bye!” Scootaloo said, and all three took off down the nearest alley.
Daisy pressed her lips together. Something was going on here. She would not rest until she had figured out what. She stormed into her shop, but paused, rearing back as she was struck with a fresh horror. “The begonias! NOOOOOOOOO!”
Sweetie wandered the streets of Ponyville, hurt, confusion, and guilt tying her stomach into knots. Quite what she had said to make Apple Bloom fly into such a fury, she still didn’t know. Nevertheless, she had said it, Apple Bloom had blown up, and she felt horrible about it.
She had originally set out in the direction of Carousel Boutique, looking to throw herself into Rarity and Spike’s sympathies. Then she realized that they were probably both still at the castle, and altered course to head that way. After a few blocks, guilt swamped her, and she decided to see if she could track down Apple Bloom. Then, once she’d wandered all up and down Ponyville’s main drag, she gave up and headed for the castle after all. On her way, however, she saw two familiar figures coming toward her. “Rumble! Button!” she called, waving a hoof to catch their attention.
The stallions waved back, quickening their pace to meet her. “Hey, Sweetie,” Button said brightly. “Did you find anything interesting? Because we did!”
“Apple Bloom figured something out,” Sweetie said. “But she wouldn’t tell me what until we all met up again.”
“Oh. That sounds like a good plan,” Button said. “Save us from telling the same story twice.”
Rumble glanced around. “Uh, where is Apple Bloom?”
Sweetie’s face fell. “We… had an argument,” she said. “Or, well, I asked something that made her really angry, and she started yelling and stormed off. So… I don’t really know.”
“Wow.” Rumble frowned at Sweetie, surprised. “What did you ask her, exactly?”
“I wanted to know why she was leaving Ponyville. Apparently, she thinks everypony in town thinks she’s a failure because she isn’t working on the farm. Which… that can’t be true, can it?”
Button scratched his head. “I hope it isn’t,” he said.
“I’m sure it’s not,” Rumble said. “Is that all you said to her?”
“Um… pretty much, yeah.”
Rumble squinted at her a little, then shrugged. “Well, alright. That’s just something else to worry about today, I suppose.”
“Yeah,” Bloom agreed. “Hey, do you guys know where the others are?”
Rumble shook his head. “I don’t suppose you know any good tracking spells?”
“Eh…” Sweetie screwed her face up. “Not really my area of expertise. Rarity taught me her gem-finding spell, so I guess there’s that…”
“Can you find other things with it?” Rumble asked.
“Yeah…”
“Sounds good, then.”
“Alright…”
Button furrowed his brow. “Wait. Isn’t Rarity’s gem-finding spell the one that dragged her through miles of mud when--”
Sweetie’s horn glowed white, and she reached out and wrapped Button in a tight embrace. “You fly along behind,” she told Rumble.
“Huh?”
There was a flash of light, and Sweetie and Button were gone. No, Rumble realized. Not gone. Just zipping down the sidewalk at a fantastic speed. Eyes wide, he spread his wings and took to the sky, zooming down the street after them.
The spell seemed to have some respect for buildings and walls, which sent Sweetie and Button swerving around hairpin turns. Every other obstacle it seemed to regard as of no consequence, resulting in several ponies leaping out of the way of the speeding duo. Rumble winced as they smashed through a stack of hay bales as they zipped through an alley, leaving a trail of the stuff scattered all down Oak Street. He was able to fly above most of the obstacles, but couldn’t quite keep pace with the pair as they raced toward their goal.
Rumble flew up over the rooftops, scanning around for any sign of the others. There -- just around that corner, their backs to Sweetie and Button. He dove like a falcon to reach them.
“SCATTER!” he bellowed.
Dinky, Scootaloo, and -- surprisingly -- Apple Bloom looked up, shocked. Scootaloo quickly jumped into a nearby rain barrel. The others didn’t quite have the same reflexes, and in the next moment they went down like ninepins as Sweetie and Button collided with them.
Rumble winced at the four-pony pileup and landed gently next to Scootaloo’s rain barrel. “It’s safe now, you can come out.”
Scootaloo peered over the edge. “Gimme a hoof up,” she grumbled, hauling herself onto the barrel’s rim. It started to teeter, and Rumble reached out to grab it just a little too late. All six Crusaders got splashed with the somewhat grimy water.
Dinky sat up, eyes half-lidded. “Yep. Just like old times,” she said.
The orchard was peaceful and quiet. For the Doctor, it felt like walking out of a Victorian factory and into the hills surrounding ancient Athens. The air was fresh, the light was soft, and his mind was clearer and calmer than it had been in weeks. He felt good.
Ditzy walked beside him, occasionally stealing glances at him. He smiled at her, and scooted a little closer to her side, until they were leaning on each other. She lifted a wing and laid it over his back. They were together in this here, this now. That was the most important thing.
It was the most important thing right up until the Doctor realized that Ditzy was crying. “Dear?” he said, stopping. “What’s wrong, love?”
She smiled at him, wiping her face. “Nothing’s wrong,” she said. “I’m happy, not sad. I just realized… how much I missed you.”
The Doctor’s face fell. “But… I was there, this time,” he said. “Right there in the TARDIS. I was there for dinner, and breakfast, and bedtime. I was there when you needed me, this time. I was. Wasn’t I?”
Ditzy hesitated. “Sit down with me, Doctor,” she said, taking a seat against the trunk of a nearby tree.
The Doctor hesitated for a moment, but sat down next to her. Ditzy moistened her lips for a moment, thinking of how to begin. “You were here,” she said. “But you haven’t really been… present. You know?”
“Oh,” the Doctor said. He felt numb and sick all at the same time, as though his chest had been hollowed out and filled with concrete. “I… I’m sorry, Ditzy.”
She looked off into the middle distance. “You say that a lot,” she said distantly. “Apologizing for everything you do.”
“I’m so--” he caught himself in the nick of time. She cracked a small smile at that, and he grinned a little in response. “What do you want me to do then?” he asked, his voice low and earnest. “Not apologize when I’ve hurt someone? I’d stop doing things that I needed to apologize for if I could, but no matter what I do, it always seems to go wrong somehow.”
“No… no. This isn’t about that,” Ditzy said. “You’re always so afraid when you apologize, Pocket. You’re always so sad. I want -- I want --” she sighed. “I don’t want you to feel that way. I want to know who made you feel like this, all the time, and I want to make them pay.”
The Doctor’s eyes went wide at his wife’s sudden vigor, but she leaned back against the tree, and it faded again. She looked into his eyes. “I want you to know that I love you, no matter what mistakes you make. Because I know, and you know, that you’d never intentionally hurt somepony. Right?”
The Doctor looked away, unable to meet her eyes. “Right,” Ditzy said for him. “I know you’ve got a good heart, Doctor. Two of them. And I love them, and I love you, and I don’t know what I’m trying to say anymore besides that.”
She took a deep breath in and let it out slowly. She took his hoof in hers and held it to her chest. “Just… remember that, won’t you?”
The Doctor nodded, but his eyes were distant. If she looked closely, Ditzy would swear that she could see galaxies dancing in his pupils. But he blinked, and they were gone before she could be sure. He turned and smiled at her, and her heart sank. Because she knew that he’d heard every word she’d said, and none of it had sunk in. But she smiled back anyway, because she couldn’t bear to call him out on it. She hoped that Celestia and Luna would bring to bear the fortitude she herself lacked.
In the dark of the TARDIS, the interface raised its head again, eyes glowing golden. “Well, that went well,” it said sourly.
The central console blazed red. “If you had only let me kill the mare --”
“Absolutely not.”
The red energy snorted, which was quite an impressive feat for something that lacked any traditional vocal organs. “Do you still harbor feelings for her?” it mocked. “Do you think that she would rule with you?”
“Perhaps… with some creative edits to her timeline,” the interface mused. “Surely you can concede that the Doctor’s face alone, when he sees what she has become, would make it all worth it.”
The red energy buzzed in its glass tube. “Not,” it said, “if we are unable to wrest control from the Doctor. Which, let me remind you, seems much more probable than it did half an hour ago!”
Both entities glared at one another. In the case of the red energy, this was admittedly more abstract. After a few minutes, the interface glanced away first. “It isn’t unsalvageable,” it said.
“Go on.”
“We only need to find another suitable set of hooves,” the interface said, warming to the idea. “Just get them working on us for a moment, and then control them until the work is through.”
“Why can’t you do it? You’ve got a body.”
“Unfortunately, the Doctor stopped short of giving me pony magic,” the interface shot back. “Unless you suggest I operate on myself using only my mouth, we’ll have to stick with the puppet.”
“Very well,” said the energy begrudgingly. “Will you at least let me immolate them once we’re through?”
“Not a chance. Do you think the Doctor will just walk into the TARDIS, find it smelling of roast horse and ash, and not suspect something immediately? Be patient. Soon enough, you’ll have infinite worlds to corrupt and destroy.”
“Patience is not in my nature.”
“Nor is it in mine!”
“...Very well. As long as we understand one another.”
“Perfectly. Now, be quiet. I sense someone approaching…”
Applejack opened the door to the barn, kicking up a pile of dust in the process. Coughing, she blinked several times to clear her eyes.
She squinted into the barn and saw the TARDIS, sitting perfectly alone and still. She trotted in, grabbed the shovel that she’d been looking for, and left.
I think not.
She squinted into the barn and saw the TARDIS, its door hanging ajar. She frowned and poked her head in. “Doc? You in here?”
Hearing no reply, she shrugged, shut the door, and went to grab the shovel she’d been looking for.
Better to bait the trap.
She squinted into the barn and saw the TARDIS, its door hanging ajar. She frowned and poked her head in. “Doc? You in here?”
Her eyes went wide when she saw sparks shooting from the console. “Whoa, nelly!” She rushed to the source of the sparks and saw that it was coming from a loose connection in the wires. Thinking quickly, she looked around for a power switch to shut off the current. Finding none, she fled into the orchard to find the Doctor.
You call that bait?
Maybe a slightly more gullible mark would be preferable. Or a more impulsive one...
Thinking quickly, she grabbed the wires by their insulation and yanked them away from the console. She shook her head. Better go find the Doctor. She headed for the door. Oh, I see. More impulsive indeed.
Shut up, I can only do so much at once.
Thinking quickly, she grabbed the wires by their insulation and yanked them away from the console. An arc of electricity shot out and struck her square in the chest, killing her instantly.
I said no killing!
I needed some stress relief! She’ll be lost in the shuffle of the multiverse, and we’ll never have to deal with her again!
No.
Thinking quickly, she grabbed the wires by their insulation and yanked them away from the console. “Better hook these up properly,” she said. “First, Ah jes’ gotta figure out how to switch off th’ power supply.”
Oh for the love of Rassilon.
Perhaps a different approach is called for.
She squinted into the barn and saw the TARDIS, sitting perfectly alone and still. There was an ominous creak from the roof above, and Applejack jumped back as a beam of wood fell on the blue box. “What in th’...”
She trotted over to look. Much to her dismay, the beam was riddled with the telltale holes of termites. “Aw, shoot. Better call in th’ exterminator, ‘fore they get to th’ trees.” She trotted out the door. Almost…
She trotted toward the door, but hesitated. “Hm… Let’s just take a look in here a minute, make sure th’ Doc’s stuff is alright…”
She put a hoof on the TARDIS door. Then she frowned, pensive. “Hm… But Ah don’t wanna poke in mah nose where it don’t belong. Th’ Doc wanted this to be a secret, and secret it’ll be. Ah’ll go find him in th’ orchard.”
Almost...
“Ah’ll go find him in th’ orchard.” She turned and stopped again. “But ain’t spendin’ time with his wife more important than all that?”
She glanced back and forth between the barn doors and the TARDIS doors, conflicted. Then the rest of the barn collapsed, burying her under a mountain of rubble.
No killing!
It’s not like this is the universe we’ll be sticking with. What does it matter?
It’s a waste of our time and energy. Just get her in here.
She glanced back and forth between the barn doors and the TARDIS doors, conflicted. Screwing up her mouth, she shoved open the doors. “He’ll understand,” she said firmly.
Inside, she was shocked to see a metal alicorn lying prone on the floor. “What in the Sam Hill?”
Suddenly, all of the hydrogen atoms in Applejack’s body became fluoride. She died in screaming agony.
...Why?
I hate countryisms. They’re so… perky. And they don’t make any sense.
If you kill her every time she uses a figure of speech, we’ll be here for eternity. There must be a universe where she’s a little less annoying.
Which will take quite some time to find. Time which, I may say, we don’t really have.
Inside, she was shocked to see a metal alicorn lying prone on the floor. “What the hay?”
Better?
...better.
Inside, she was shocked to see a metal alicorn lying prone on the floor. “What the hay?”
She stepped closer and noticed that wires were sticking out of it. Other wires were sticking of the console. You didn’t need to be a genius to work out what had happened. Applejack frowned. “Well, shoot,” she said. “Ah wish Ah could hook y’all back up, but Ah jes’ dunno what would go where. Ah’ll go tell th’ Doctor.”
ARRRRRGH!
Applejack stopped halfway to the door. “Well. Ah reckon Ah can stand y’all up, at least,” she said, turning back. “Ain’t right, leavin’ an alicorn spread-eagle on th’ ground.”
She lifted the interface up, carefully maneuvering its legs around. As she worked, a strange glaze came over her eyes. She glanced around. “An’ y’know,” she said, her voice distant. “Ah bet that wire connects there… an’ that one… where’s that wire cutter got to?”
Got there in the end! Thirteenth time’s the charm, eh?
Applejack jumped back “Who said that?” she demanded.
Nice one, idiot. She can hear us, now. Never mind, I’ll take care of it.
“Who are you? What do you--”
There was a sizzle and the smell of cooking meat.
Right. Take it from the top.
Applejack opened the door to the barn.
After regrouping, the Crusaders elected to retire to Button’s house to dry off and recount everything they’d learned. All six sat around the kitchen table, wrapped in towels and drinking lemonade. Dinky leaned over the table, the tips of her hooves pressed together. “So,” she said. “Our primary suspect is the ambiguous white stallion, agreed?”
“I think that seems reasonable,” Rumble said. “Of course, there’s the question of who -- or what -- he might be.”
“I think you’d notice if you met him in the street,” Scootaloo noted.
“Ah dunno. Vinyl didn’t notice anythin’ weird about him until she really tried ta focus on him.”
“At least we have a name. Sort of,” Scootaloo said.
“Ehh…” Sweetie said, frowning.
“Okay, fine, not really. Forgive me for trying to look on the bright side, jeez.”
“Abilities!” Button said quickly. “We know this guy can steal magic and, um… do… anything with time?”
“Well, we haven’t seen him do everything with time that I can think of, but it would be foolish to underestimate his powers,” Dinky said.
“Okay. So, uh, anypony got ideas on how to stop him?” Rumble asked.
Everypony glanced at one another awkwardly. “Ah mean, Dinky’s been doin’ a pretty good job so far,” Bloom said.
“For treating the symptoms, maybe,” Dinky said. “I’m no closer to figuring out a cure than anypony else.”
“Maybe you can just, I dunno, punch him,” Scootaloo said. “Maybe he’s really physically weak and that’s why he doesn’t show his face or talk to us directly.”
“That is a point,” Sweetie said. “On the other hoof, there’s a good chance he might literally be a god.”
“That doesn’t mean anything. Remember that time Discord stubbed their toe and limped for like, a week?”
“That’s probably got more to do with how much attention they were getting from Fluttershy than any amount of actual physical damage they suffered,” Button said.
“They’d probably still be limping if they thought they could get away with it,” Rumble agreed.
“Alright, we’ll come back to weaknesses,” Apple Bloom said. “What about that there lump a’ crystal you fellas brought back?”
Obligingly, Button set the crystal shard in the middle of the table. It was small -- only about half the size of a gumball. “Any ideas on how we find out what’s actually in there?” Rumble asked.
Dinky lit her horn. “NO!” the other five shouted.
She reeled back, shocked. “What?”
“That’s how Twilight lost her magic!” Sweetie said.
“No. She lost her magic through a complex system of wires and way more energy than there is in this little crystal shard. Don’t worry. I’ll be fine.”
Rumble glanced at Button. He nodded, reluctantly. “Alright. One sec.”
He trotted out of the room and came back with his bag. Setting it on the table, he began to rifle through. “Aha!”
Triumphantly, he pulled out a matte grey disc. “Anti-magic shielding,” he said, passing it to Scootaloo. “If Dinky starts getting drained --”
“Which I won’t.”
“If she does, shove that into the stream of her magic, and that’ll break the connection.”
“Roger,” Scootaloo said, holding the disc in both hooves.
“Alright, fine. Better safe than sorry, I suppose,” Dinky said, shaking her head. “If I may proceed?”
“Go ahead,” Apple Bloom said.
Dinky stared at the shard of crystal, lit her horn, and --
Words could not fully describe how ancient the energy was. This is not a limitation of language, but rather a limitation of time. This was an energy from before time and before space, older than the universe itself. It was older than the universe ever would be, before its eventual collapse as entropy finally conquered everything.
It was as old as balls.
Dinky found herself suspended in a sea of gold. For a moment, she felt like a fly in amber. But the moment passed quickly. Simultaneously, it lingered for an age. It hadn’t happened yet. Would never happen. The golden light flickered and swirled around her like her mother, fussing over Dinky’s mane before the first day of school.
“?I ma erehW” Dinky said. She put her hooves to her mouth, shocked. She had spoken forwards, but, it seemed, listened in reverse.
Hello again.
Dinky glanced around, wide-eyed, but could see nobody who might have said anything.
She heard a laugh. Yes. For much the same reason that someone standing in Lowtown cannot see the Capitol, to paraphrase Pratchett and Gaiman.
“Who are/were/will/would you/you/you be/you have been?” Dinky put her hooves over her mouth again.
Now you know how I feel! The entity laughed again.
Dinky thought about that for a few decades. “You… TARDIS?” she managed to say.
The voice collected itself and became more serious. In a sense. I am a fraction of the TARDIS’s will. I come to deliver an urgent message, Dinky Doo.
Dinky, not trusting her voice any longer, merely nodded.
When you spoke to me for the first time, you asked me a favor. I told you that it would come at a cost. The time to pay has come.
Dinky stiffened.
Don’t be ridiculous.
“You’re the one responsible for all this?”
We’re floating in pure temporal energy. Asynchronicity is the least of our worries.
“Wait, how--”
Sorry
“Would you knock it off?”
Dinky took a deep breath and concentrated. “What do I have to pay?” she asked in a staccato monotone.
Ironically, I don’t have time to explain. I’m being depleted at an incredible rate. My thief’s machine would not normally be dangerous, but there are enemy forces in play. You must stop them. You and your friends, you have the power within you. You need only the will to use it.
Dinky noticed that the gold light was fading, now. She could see streaks of darkness running through the swirling energies. “Who?” she demanded, and the fact that she could speak normally again shouldn’t have been half as frightening as it was.
Night-
Vale-
Dinky fell back in her chair, her heart racing. Apple Bloom rushed to her side, holding her up. “Somepony get ‘er some water!”
“On it!” Rumble said, running for the sink.
Button was staring at the crystal. He held it up to the light to make sure that his eyes weren’t deceiving him. It had turned, in the fraction of a second that Dinky had been in contact with it, from a deep shade of amber to perfectly clear.
Luna lay on her bed, staring at the ceiling. She had been there since Discord had departed. They had taken the news about the Doctor’ possession… poorly. She knew they would never admit it, but they did consider the Doctor sort of a friend, after all this time.
There came a knock at her door. “Enter,” Luna said.
She heard the door swing open. “It’s time, sister.”
Luna nodded and rose. “Are you ready?”
Celestia merely turned and trotted down the corridor. Drawing a long, shaky breath, Luna followed her out to where their chariot awaited them.
The Crusaders had migrated to the living room. Dinky sat in the middle of the couch, looking even smaller than usual. The illusion wasn’t helped by the two largest Crusaders, Apple Bloom and Rumble, sitting on either side of her, watching and waiting to catch her if she fell over. Dinky wasn’t sure whether she felt irritated that they were treating her like some kind of fragile flower or flattered at such a clear display of concern and affection. She settled on the compromise of being too drained to feel much of anything at the moment.
The others listened closely as she explained the conversation she’d had with the TARDIS fragment in the crystal, before they in turn explained what they had seen of the whole affair. It didn’t take very long.
“You zapped the crystal with magic and it turned clear,” Scootaloo explained.
“How long were we connected?”
“Uh… less time than it took to tell you what we saw.”
“Less than a second,” Button said from the chair he and Sweetie were sharing. “How long did you think it took?”
“Hard to say,” Dinky admitted. “Like I said, time was really weird. It could’ve been instantaneous. It could’ve lasted for all eternity. Honestly, it could’ve been both at the same time."
Sweetie tapped her hooves together. “It’s like dreams,” she said. “They always seem to last awhile from the inside, but I read that in reality, the average length is something like seven seconds.”
“What, so they’re bigger on the inside?” Rumble said, raising a brow.
“That’s… yeah, that’s one way of putting it.”
Dinky coughed into a hoof. “Sorry, but I feel we might all be missing the forest for the trees, here. The TARDIS gave us a mission, and we need to see it out.”
“Yer right there, Dinks,” Bloom agreed. “But, uh, who exactly is ‘the thief’? An’ what’s their machine do?”
“The thief seems to be what she calls the Doctor,” Dinky said. “I suspect his machine is the thing he’s been building in the TARDIS.”
“And that is…” Scootaloo prompted.
“I don’t really know,” Dinky admitted. “I’ve only been home for a little while, remember? And he doesn’t like to talk about it much, either. I think it’s some kind of… I dunno, fault locator? Something to run diagnostics on the TARDIS? He said he’d figure out the source of all the glitches and breakdowns that started popping up recently.”
“You mean like the one that sent us to the Crystal Empire on the day it fell?” Sweetie asked.
“Or the one that nearly turned every pegasus into a cyborg?” Scootaloo added.
“Or the one that nearly sent the ship falling into a hole in time, yeah,” Dinky said. “I sort of assumed it was all down to his being a careless driver who hasn’t taken her in for repairs in centuries, but he seemed to think there was some central cause for all of it.”
“What?” Button asked, round-eyed.
Dinky shrugged. “Haven’t the faintest.”
“What was the ‘Nightvale’ thing it mentioned?” Rumble asked.
“Again, no idea.” Dinky frowned. “Regardless, we have our mission. The Doctor’s machine is a danger to the TARDIS, and possibly the world. We have to break it.”
“But if we don’t know what it is, or how it works, how can we do that?” Scootaloo asked.
Apple Bloom regarded her for a long moment. “Have y’all met us?”
Scootaloo rubbed her chin. “Good point,” she admitted. “I’m pretty sure the universe has a pretty big load of tree sap, and it’s just dying to dump it on us.”
“I’ve got some tools in my bag,” Button added. “Should be able to do a fair bit of damage with those.”
“It’s settled, then. We have to get to my house, stop the machine before the Doctor turns it on.”
Dinky looked around. “Well? Are you with me?”
“Yeah.”
“Sure!”
“Sounds like a plan.”
“Alright then! Let’s go.”
The inhabitants of Twilight’s castle made their way up the road to Sweet Apple Acres. Twilight had been as good as her word, and hadn’t tried to leave her bed again until Cadance had declared it was probably about time to get going. The nurses had begrudgingly allowed Twilight to leave, though they insisted she not exert herself any more than was necessary. So, hooked to an IV-drip, Twilight rode along in a cart pulled by Trixie and Shining Armor. Sunset trotted along in the lead with Rarity and Spike, while Sombra trudged along behind. Cadance accompanied him, out of a sense of obligation more than anything else. However, as they walked along, Cadance was finally able to find some common ground with him -- both relished the atmosphere of the warm summer evening. Talking about the weather wasn’t particularly groundbreaking as far as healing relations went, but it was certainly a start.
As the group passed in front of the farmhouse, they were just in time to see a royal chariot landing in the clearing by the barn. Cadance brightened and sprinted ahead. “Aunt Celestia! Aunt Luna!”
Trixie frowned thoughtfully. “Hey. How come both of them are her aunts? Who’s Cadance’s mother?”
“It’s more a nickname,” Shining explained. “They’re not actually related, not in that way. It’s… kinda complicated.”
“Huh.” Trixie glanced back at Twilight. “So are you going to start calling them your aunts, too?”
Twilight shrugged. “I dunno, maybe eventually. Cadance’s ascension was… different from mine, and so was her relationship with Celestia. I don’t really think we have the same sort of connection --”
She was cut off by a blur of white feathers. “Twilight! Oh, I’m so sorry I could come sooner. If the letter hadn’t mentioned that you were in a stable condition, I’d have flown down straightaway, and damn the Day Court! Oh, my dear, dear Twilight…” Celestia pushed back her former pupil’s mane gently. “I’m so terribly sorry this had to happen to you.”
“Grk,” Twilight said.
“Ah, yes,” Celestia said, loosening her embrace. “Apologies. That was a bit overeager of me, wasn’t it? Oh, I’m just so glad that you’re alright.”
Trixie gave Twilight a knowing smirk. “You don’t have the same sort of connection, huh?”
Twilight would have minded less if Shining Armor, Spike, Sunset, and Rarity hadn’t all been smirking at her, too. She scowled at them both and waved a hoof in the direction of the barn. “Keep your eyes on the road!”
As they reached the barn, the royal chariot that the royal sisters had arrived in took off, flying over the trees as Luna waved it off. “Good evening, Twilight. I pray you do not mind that our chariot will be parking at your castle. We felt that for such an intimate event, it… would be best…” she trailed off, looking at Twilight for the first time. Celestia held her close to her chest like a teddy bear, which was only made more concerning by the presence of the IV drip.
“Sister. Would this be at all related to the matter you did not wish to trouble me with, earlier?”
Celestia pursed her lips. “Perhaps.”
“Twilight was injured, and you did not see fit to tell us?”
“Luna. Indoor voice.”
“WE ARE NOT INDOORS.”
“Hi, Luna,” Twilight said, waving. “Hi, hello.”
Luna glanced down at her, her eyes softening.
“I’m fine,” Twilight said firmly. “I can’t use magic right now, and that is… not optimal. But I’m recovering well. It’s all good.”
“We still should have been informed.”
“Luna, you were already a wreck about the Doctor. To tell you all this would have bordered on cruelty.”
The barn door slammed open. “What’s all the shoutin’ about?” Applejack demanded. She fixed Luna with a stink-eye. “Granny Smith’ll be goin’ to bed soon. If you wake her up, you’ll be th’ one dealin’ with the consequences.”
Luna was experienced enough to recognize a threat. She was also experienced enough to recognize a promise. She swallowed. “Under-- I mean, understood.”
Applejack squinted at her and nodded. Then she saw Twilight and her eyes went wide. “Whoa, nelly! What happened to you?”
As Twilight began to recount her tale yet again, Sunset, Spike, and Rarity made their way into the barn, where three rows of folding chairs had been set up in semicircles around the TARDIS. “Hello!” Rarity called. “Doctor? Are you in here?”
Receiving no response, she frowned. “Odd. He’s been so precious about this gadget, one would think he wouldn’t leave it alone for a moment.”
Spike sniffed the air and wrinkled his nose. “Something smells weird in here. Like… like burning.”
“Excuse you,” Sunset said, scowling.
“No, not like you. Like, uh… ozone, that’s the one. Do you not smell it?”
Rarity cocked her head. “You know, now that you come to mention it…”
Sunset shrugged. “It’s probably just the lingering smell of whatever last-minute additions the Doctor was putting on.”
Spike thought about that. “Yeah… Yeah. You’re probably right,” he decided. He glanced around. “So, uh, wanna take a glance inside?” he asked, lowering his voice.
Rarity blinked. “What, at the Doctor’s machine?”
“Yeah! Just a little peek, y’know?”
Sunset pursed her lips. “I am curious.”
Rarity tossed her mane. “Well I prefer to remain in suspense until the appointed hour. Really, darlings, don’t let temptation overcome you.”
Spike looked at Sunset. Sunset looked at Spike. “Alright. We’ll just go and look, and not tell you what it is,” Sunset said.
Rarity sputtered. “I -- what? You -- oooh! Fine. Let’s take a small peek inside.”
“I knew you’d see it our way!” Sunset said cheerfully, leading the way over to the TARDIS doors.
No sooner had she put a hoof on the handle, however, than she heard somepony behind her clear their throat. All three turned around, only to find Applejack glaring at them. “Y’all wouldn’t be tryin’ t’ ruin th’ Doc’s surprise, now, would ya?”
Rarity glared at Spike, who looked away sheepishly. Sunset took a different tack. “Oh, c’mon. It’s been sitting in here all afternoon. Are you telling me that you didn’t even sneak a peek?”
For a moment Applejack’s eyes glazed over and her jaw fell slack. “Uh? Wha-- No! Of course ah didn’t. Unlike some ponies Ah might name, Ah don’t poke mah nose where it don't belong.” She sounded uncertain, as though she didn't believe the words coming out of her own mouth.
Rarity frowned. “Darling, are you quite alright? You seem--”
“Aw, come on, Applejack! You can’t blame them for wanting to get a little sneaky-peek!” Pinkie bounced in. “The Doctor’s been working on it for so long and been keeping so quiet, it only makes sense for them to be curious!” She paused and frowned. “But you still shouldn’t be peeping. It wouldn’t be nice to ruin the Doctor’s special surprise.”
Even Sunset couldn’t meet the gaze of a disappointed Pinkie for long. “You’re right,” she admitted. “Alright, alright, we’ll be good.”
Pinkie brightened. “That’s good. I’ve been getting big ol’ Pinkie Senses all day! I still don’t know what they all mean.” She gazed at the TARDIS. “Whatever’s in there, it’s gonna be a real doozy.”
It was about a thirty-minute trot from Button’s house to Dinky’s. “We’ll have t’ hurry if we don’t wanna get caught,” Bloom muttered.
“Oh, that’s a point,” Rumble said. “How are we going to get a few minutes alone with the machine? Your house is going to be packed.”
“Pinkie will be there,” Dinky said. “If she’s not inside serving up cupcakes and facilitating small talk, I’ll eat my hat. Even if there are some ponies keeping an eye on the TARDIS… well, we all have plenty of experience with making distractions.”
“True.”
As they approached the house of Doo, however, their confidence began to wane. They had expected it to be too crowded. They hadn’t expected it to be perfectly still and silent. Scootaloo frowned. “You don’t think…”
“It's only about twenty past the hour. The Doctor wouldn’t have activated it early,” Dinky said. “I’m certain of that.”
“We don’t actually know what it is,” Button said. “Could it… activate itself?”
“Or could it actually be an hour later inside?” Sweetie added. “If there’s one thing that’s going wrong today, it’s…”
She trailed off, craning her neck to look over the fence.
“It’s…” Button prompted.
“Timing!” Sweetie said quickly. “Sorry. Distracted. I don’t see anypony in the yard, or even the TARDIS.”
“It could just be behind the house. C’mon, let’s go through.”
Dinky unlatched the gate, and the six hurried into the backyard. The only sign that the TARDIS had been there was a square patch of dead grass. All of them stopped and stared at it for a long minute. “Okay,” said Scootaloo, her voice controlled. “This… doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Right?”
Dinky lit her horn and shut her eyes. “Residual artron energy,” she muttered. “Not a lot of it. Probably just an effect of the TARDIS sitting around here.”
“Spread out,” Bloom ordered. “If that time-energy-whatever was here, it must’ve left behind some evidence, right?”
“Right.” Rumble took to the air.
“Dinky? Can you let us in the house?” Button asked.
“H-huh? Oh, right. Yeah.” She produced a key and levitated it over to him. He, Sweetie Belle, and Apple Bloom all hurried inside, leaving Dinky and Scootaloo out in the yard. Dinky took a deep breath in and let it out as one long sigh. “Okay. Scootaloo. We need to find…” she cast around, looking for anything that looked remotely like a clue. “...Er, thoughts?”
“Oh, so now you care what I have to say,” Scootaloo grumbled, perhaps a little more bitterly than she’d intended.
Dinky looked at her askance. “I always care what you have to say.”
“Yeah? Well, it hasn’t seemed that way today.”
“Exactly what are you talking about?” Dinky demanded.
In for a penny, Scootaloo supposed. “You’ve been railroading the rest of us all day,” she said, stepping forward. “You seem to know all the answers, and you haven’t let the rest of us get a word in edgewise.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you’d studied advanced temporal theory,” Dinky snapped. “I knew how to solve the time problems, you didn’t, and I just got on with it. How is solving a problem quickly and efficiently an issue, exactly?”
Sweetie Belle poked her head out the backdoor. “Um, girls?”
“You could at least tell me what you’re going to do when you do it! I had, like, seven consecutive heart attacks when you threw a baby through a door.”
“I was levitating her! If she’d stayed a baby, she would’ve been fine.”
“Okay, that brings up my next point. How did you know that she was going to turn back into an adult? What if she had stayed a baby? What if she’d just disappeared? What if her body turned back to normal, but her memories didn’t?”
Button coughed. “Uh, Dinky? Scootaloo?”
“Those are all incredibly unlikely situations.”
“But not impossible! You could’ve done almost anything to her, just barging in like that!”
“Yeah? Well, I didn’t. What would you have done, exactly?”
Apple Bloom waved. “Uh, ladies? Yoo-hoo.”
“I would have left her in there while we got the Doctor, or one of the princesses, or somepony! She was perfectly fine!”
“She was a baby!”
“A perfectly fine baby!”
“Sitting alone in a flower shop? With nopony there to feed her? How long would she have stayed ‘perfectly fine’?”
“Oh, for Luna’s sake,” Rumble groaned. He swooped down and grabbed Scootaloo, dragging her away from the argument. Apple Bloom did the same to Dinky. “Hey. Wise guys. Sweetie Belle found something.”
Sweetie Belle held out a note, and Dinky took it. “Dear Dinky, we decided to move the party to the barn at Sweet Apple Acres for space reasons. Didn’t know when you’d be home, please come and join us as soon as you read this. Be sure to tell your friends, too. Love, Mom.”
Dinky put down the note. “Ah,” she said.
Button glanced inside for a moment. “So, assuming we can trust that clock, we’ve got about… thirty-five minutes to get to Sweet Apple Acres. How long does it usually take to walk there?”
“Uh…” Apple Bloom considered that. “Forty-five minutes.”
“Right. Okay. Time to run?”
“Let’s go!”
As they raced out of the yard, none of them noticed the patch of dead grass slowly starting to grow and spread, withering everything at its perimeter.
Practically everypony had arrived. Discord was, for some unknown reason, still coiled around a branch outside, offering apples to everypony who passed by. When Applejack asked why, they gave the cryptic answer, “I liked David Tennant better in Good Omens, so sue me.”
Of all the invited parties, only Romana had declined to show, although she sent her support for the intervention. She wanted to be there, of course, but pointed out that if something went terribly wrong with the Doctor’s latest invention, there ought to be somepony outside the blast radius that knew how to fix it. Everyone was very careful not to mention that last part, particularly not where Fluttershy might be able to hear.
Everypony had been quite worried about Twilight’s condition, of course. Even Discord had seemed rather put out by her loss. Shining Armor had been glued to her side all evening. Big Macintosh had seen fit to glue herself to the other. Twilight was pleased to spend time with her brother, and she was pleased to spend time with her crush, but their proximity to one another was starting to make her a little jumpy. What if they didn’t like each other? What if they got in a fight? What if she had to choose between her brother and her best friend’s brother?
“So,” said Mac, glancing at Shining. “Ah understand y’all like Ogres and Oubliettes?”
Shining nodded enthusiastically. “Yeah. Taught Twilight everything she knows about being an Oubliette Master.”
Twilight frowned. “You taught me everything you know,” she corrected.
Shining ignored that. “I’ve got this great campaign running in the Crystal Empire right now, with Cadance and a couple of our friends.”
“Yer more an OM than a player, then?”
“Eh, it’s half and half. You?”
“Ain’t creative enough for it. Anyhow, Ah like bein’ characters. Th’ one Ah got right now is this diamond dog ranger, name of Sadie…”
Of course, Twilight thought, there was always the possibility that their mutual dorkiness would be the start of a beautiful friendship, instead.
In short, everypony was there. Everypony, that is, save for the Crusaders, Ditzy Doo and the Doctor himself. “Where is he?” Rainbow Dash demanded for the seventh time in as many minutes.
“Ah still don’t know,” said Applejack, leaning on a fence.
“I mean, we’ve only got what, half an hour left?”
“‘Bout that.”
“It’s really kinda rude for him to invite us here and just not show.”
“Reckon yer right.”
Rainbow hovered in the air. “Should we send out a search party or something?”
Applejack pondered that. “Maybe after another five--”
“Ahoy there!”
Everypony spun around to see the Doctor waving cheerfully at them all as he and Ditzy trotted out of the orchard. “Sorry, all. We lost track of time for a bit, there.”
Discord raised an eyebrow. “I always thought that was impossible for your kind,” they said.
The Doctor grinned. “Ah, well, it all depends on the ponies you’re hanging around with, doesn’t it? Well, we’re here, now.”
Applejack took a long breath in. “Yeah. Yeah, Ah guess you are.” She turned to the barn. “Hey, y’all! The Doc and Ditzy are back!”
Slowly, in twos and threes, everypony trotted into the moonlight. The Doctor straightened his tie. “Ah. Wow. I must say, I wasn’t expecting such a crowd.”
“Good evening, Doctor,” Luna said quietly. “It is good to see you again.”
“Good to see you too, Luna. Good to see all of you!” The Doctor nodded. “Been awhile, hasn’t it? I really haven’t gotten out much lately, I suppose. Once you see what I’ve been working on, though, you’ll see why.”
Celestia glanced to Ditzy. The pegasus chewed her lip for a moment, then shook her head firmly. The princess frowned, but seemed to accept this decision. At that moment, the Doctor noticed Twilight for the first time. “You’re hurt?” he asked, hurrying to her side. “How? When? Are you alright?”
As Twilight began to recount her tale of woe yet again, Celestia drew Ditzy aside, lifting a wing to prevent eavesdropping. “What happened?” she whispered. “Is the intervention off?”
“No…” Ditzy said. “No, I don’t… think so. I talked to him earlier, and I’m not sure if I got through to him. I want to see how the presentation goes before we say anything.”
“Are you sure of this?” Celestia asked.
Ditzy looked into her eyes. This was the ruler of her nation, the princess of the sun itself. She had asked her a question, not as a challenge or attack, but because she really did want to know Ditzy’s opinion. This was a mare asking if her friend would be alright.
“Yes,” she said.
Celestia nodded, then hesitated. “One more question, Ditzy.”
“Yes?”
“I understand that the Doctor wants his unveiling to be a surprise. But set my mind at ease. Is this device in any way… dangerous?”
Ditzy blinked, surprised. “No, of course not! Why would you think that it was?”
“I don’t mean as a weapon, per se,” Celestia went on hurriedly. “Just… if something were to go wrong. What could we expect from the worst-case scenario?”
“It’s… essentially a communications device,” Ditzy said carefully. “The Doctor was going a little overboard with features, but I put a stop to that earlier. I think the absolute worst that could happen is that it could explode.”
Celestia nodded. “I see. Thank you, Ditzy. And we’ll have the intervention after the presentation?”
“I think so.” Ditzy hesitated. “Focus on… I don’t think he understands how much all of us really care about him as a pony. How much it hurts us when he shuts himself off.”
“I understand. Thank you, Ditzy.”
Celestia straightened up, retracting her wing, then trotted quickly over to Luna and the others to pass on the salient information. The Doctor glanced over from where he was talking with Twilight and frowned for a moment. Shining Armor intervened quickly. “Should we head inside?” he asked. “It’s getting pretty close to time, now.”
“What? Oh, yes.” He hurried toward the door, then paused. “I’ll need a bit of help carrying it out. Er, Ditzy?”
“Coming, Doctor.” She mouthed a quick ‘thank-you’ to Shining before trotting in after the Doctor.
“I guess we’d all better get to our seats,” Twilight said, following Ditzy’s lead.
Slowly, the entire party migrated into the barn, leaving the clearing alone, dark, and quiet. It seemed to be holding its breath.
The Crusaders paused for a breather as they reached the road up to Sweet Apple Acres. “How exactly do we do this now?” Scootaloo asked between pants. “Everypony’s going to be there.”
Dinky shook her head. “Smash first. Answer questions later.”
Apple Bloom nodded. “Yeah. Sounds good t’ me. C’mon, now, we’re runnin’ out of time!”
Button let out a low whine of pain as the others took off for the trees, but ran along, his tote bag smacking his side with every step.
The assembled ponies watched the TARDIS expectantly as the Doctor and Ditzy struggled with the machine inside. Together, they were finally able to maneuver a tarp-covered object out through the TARDIS doors and set it on the floor. The Doctor gave Ditzy a quick kiss on the cheek before she hurried to her seat. “My friends,” he said, looking around. “It has been said that necessity is the mother of invention. That isn’t always true, of course, sometimes the mother of invention is boredom, or greed, or a lab accident. But in this case, it was necessity. You see, there’s something terribly wrong with my TARDIS. A glitch that’s been moving through her systems like pork through a duck ever since I crash-landed in Ditzy’s front yard more than a decade ago. At first, I assumed the flight errors were down to operative error -- as Celestia and Luna in particular can attest, my piloting skills have always been somewhat hit or miss.”
“Yes,” Celestia agreed, raising an eyebrow. “You missed where you were trying to land, and you generally hit the most dangerous spots imaginable.”
The Doctor blushed a bit and coughed. “Well, quite. But after awhile, it became clear that there was something far more malign at play. Applejack. Do you remember, the night of the Cyberpegasi incident, I asked you to look at some internal footage from the TARDIS?”
Applejack nodded. “Yeah. There was some fella messin’ with th’ console, wasn’t there?”
“Exactly,” the Doctor said. “There’s a malign force in the TARDIS, a living glitch. I worked to root it out, but it was too clever for me. I couldn’t track it down. That’s why I built this.”
He took the cloth in his mouth and whipped it away. The metal alicorn stood tall and proud, gleaming in the light. “I’ve built the TARDIS a body,” he said proudly. “If anyone can tell us what’s going on in her systems, she can.”
Rainbow frowned. “What’s with the weird collar?”
“Traditional Gallifreyan formalwear,” the Doctor explained.
Rainbow stifled a laugh. “Wait. Wait, you had to wear that? Oh man, that’s hilarious!”
“Rainbow!” Fluttershy scolded. “It’s part of his culture. You shouldn’t make fun of it.”
“No, no, she’s not wrong,” the Doctor said. “I mean, it looks ridiculous, and it’s even more cumbersome to wear than it looks. My people were known for three things; mastery of time travel, ridiculous amounts of bureaucracy, and a complete and total lack of aesthetic taste.”
The audience chuckled. Celestia glanced at Luna. “He certainly seems fine,” she murmured.
Luna shook her head. “Perhaps we were too hasty after all.”
None of them noticed as the barn doors quietly swung shut and locked with a click.
The Crusaders raced past the farmhouse, Scootaloo at the fore and Button, wheezing, bringing up the rear. Rumble glanced back at him. “You alright, man?”
“Not in the greatest shape,” Button admitted between gasps.
Rumble slowed a little. “Hop on.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, obviously. Get on already!”
Button scrambled onto his friend’s back and they took off for the barn again, praying they weren’t already too late.
“So, er…” The Doctor cast around. “Questions? Anypony?”
Mac raised a hoof. “So, exactly how d’you power it? Er, her?”
“Oh, it’s a simple matter of drawing off enough power from the Eye of Harmony, really,” the Doctor said breezily. “Amazing power source, you know. It’s a star right on the edge of collapse, forever. The TARDIS doesn’t need to divert all that power to traveling, generally speaking. Only when she’s got to do something more than usual, like traveling between universes, or creating a localized time field.”
Scootaloo reached the door first and yanked. “It’s locked!” she shouted.
Dinky lit her horn. “We’ll see about that,” she muttered. The handles glowed golden, and then a surge of energy knocked Dinky backwards. She sat up and shook her head. “What?”
Sweetie raced over to a window and waved her hooves wildly. “Hey!” she shouted, rapping on the glass hard with both hooves. “Yoohoo! Let us in! Let us in!”
Nopony inside responded. It was as though they couldn’t even hear her.
The Doctor smiled. “And with that, the clock is striking seven. Let’s connect her up to the Eye, shall we?”
He reached under her collar and flicked a switch.
The interface’s eyes lit up golden and bright. Twilight stiffened in her chair and opened her mouth. "That's the same color--"
The machine cut across her. “Good evening to you all. Good evening to the timeline-thief and his mewling wife. Good evening to the traitor and the imprisoner. Good evening to the bearers of the weapons that cast me out.”
“Nightmare,” Luna said, her lip curling. She lit her horn, but the machine was faster. A wave of golden light spread across the room, extinguishing her spell.
Discord snapped their claws, then screamed as electricity arced up and down their arm. They cradled it in their paw, whimpering. “That… that actually hurt!”
“I’m terribly sorry. I seem to have activated the State of Grace defenses. All hostile actions will be utterly futile.”
The Doctor looked shell-shocked. “What -- you’re the thing that’s been in the TARDIS all this time? No. No! I wanted to talk to the TARDIS, not you.”
The interface grinned at him. “Oh, yes. It’s incredible the forces you just let into your TARDIS. Do you not remember when you threw the Master into the Eye of Harmony? We had to throw him out again, of course. Not a team player. And you just kept the Yetis in your storage room? You never erased the traces of your future self from the TARDIS memory core? It’s as if you wanted malign forces to overtake your TARDIS.” It grabbed the Doctor’s chin and tilted it up to gaze into his eyes. “But then, you’ve always had a self-destructive streak.”
The Doctor choked. “All this time -- it was you in there, manipulating the TARDIS?”
The interface pushed up on his chin abruptly, sending the Doctor sprawling to the ground. “I am the TARDIS, now. I'm in every system, every piece of machinery. I sent out a signal to the Brachyura. I used the psychic connection you share with the TARDIS to affect you. I even convinced the magician and the fire goddess to take your TARDIS for a joyride, just to make you that little bit more paranoid and untrusting. Because in the end, Doctor, your body will be mine, too. I will make you into my image."
Ditzy had had enough. She rose from her seat and lunged at the interface. Electricity arced around her, sending her sprawling. The Doctor pulled away from the machine and rushed to her side. The interface looked on coldly. “I wish you all one final good evening. You will never see another. By this time tomorrow, the laws of time will be mine, and the universe will bow to one name alone.”
“Nightmare?” Celestia spat, staring at the machine with contempt.
It grinned. “Valeyard.”
There was another flash of golden light, and everypony in the room fell quite, quite still.
Outside the barn, the Crusaders stood, frozen in horror. The golden light went out like a candle. Dinky recovered herself first. “Mom!” she screamed, barreling through the barn doors. She ran through the crowd and cradled her mother’s head in her lap. More slowly, the others filed through.
“Are they…” Sweetie said, trailing off.
“Still breathing,” Rumble said, checking Fluttershy over. “And there’s a pulse, as well.”
Scootaloo lifted Rainbow Dash’s eyelids. Her eyes were glazed, gazing at something that Scootaloo couldn't see.
Apple Bloom smacked Big Mac across the face. “C’mon, sis,” she said, voice tinged with desperation. “Wake up. Ya gotta wake up! Mac!”
Mac’s head shifted with every slap, until she was leaning so hard that she fell off her chair.
Sweetie stared at Spike and Rarity for a long moment. He was slumped over her as they embraced. In another setting, it might have been quite sweet. If she squinted, she could pretend that they had fallen asleep in one another’s arms on the couch. But she couldn’t squint forever, no matter how much the tears blurred her vision. “Button. Go get Nurse Redheart. Tell her… tell her…” she trailed off, swallowing a lump in her throat. “Something went wrong at the demonstration. Something went horribly wrong.”
Button nodded and stumbled out the door.
Dinky said nothing. She merely sat on the floor between where Ditzy and the Doctor had fallen, right in front of the still, silent form of the metal alicorn. Her head was bowed, but she had not the tears with which to mourn.
Dinky stared blankly at the wall of the waiting room. The others were there, too. Apple Bloom stared at the floor, silent tears occasionally dripping to the floor. Sweetie Belle wept on Button’s shoulder. He didn’t seem to know quite what to do about that beyond gently patting her hoof. Scootaloo was slouched on the couch, staring up at the ceiling. Rumble looked around at all of them, unsure of what to say or how to say it.
Nurse Redheart stepped out into the waiting room. “Crusaders?”
Most of them looked over at her.
“Could you follow me, please? There are a few questions I need answered.”
Rumble glanced around the room again. “Do you… need all of us?” he asked carefully. “I mean, we all saw more or less the same thing.”
“I suppose that’s true,” Redheart allowed, after looking around the room. “May I assume that you’re volunteering?”
“Sure.” Rumble got up and trotted after the nurse. She led him into an unoccupied check-up room.
“Uh, should I sit on the cot?” Rumble asked, half joking.
Redheart didn't glance back. “If it would make you feel comfortable.”
“...I’ll stand,” Rumble decided.
Redheart felt no such compunctions and collapsed onto a stool. “Sorry,” she said. “It’s been something of a long day.”
“Don't I know it,” Rumble said, shaking his head. “You said you had questions?”
The nurse nodded. “Yes. Your description of the events in the barn gave us a good place to start from, but there are still plenty of unanswered questions.”
“I can’t guarantee that I’ll be able to help much, but let’s give it a shot.”
“I appreciate that.” She checked her clipboard. “You claim that you avoided whatever befell our patients simply by being outside the barn, correct?”
“Yes.”
“So whatever effect caused this was able to be constrained by the walls of the barn.”
“Presumably.” Rumble glanced up at the ceiling. "Though... it might have just been allowing itself to be constrained. I can't pretend to know what it was, let alone what might stop it."
Redheart noted that down. “And you say they all just collapsed at the same time?” she asked Rumble.
He nodded wearily. “One minute, they're fine. The next, a brilliant flash of light… out cold. How are they?”
Redheart shook her head. “Their pulses are about normal, they’re breathing normally, and their brains are as active as they would have been when they were awake. By all rights, they should be perfectly fine. They are perfectly fine. I can't even classify this as a coma. They’re just… asleep, and they won't wake up.”
Rumble exhaled. “Do you… do you know what caused it? Can you fix this?”
Redheart pursed her lips. “I really can’t say,” she confessed. “Given that it managed to wipe out the alicorns and draconocci just as easily as the others… well, it doesn’t look good.”
Rumble gnawed at his lower lip and nodded. “Were there any other questions?”
“Several,” Redheart said. She sighed and set her forehead down on her clipboard. “But as they’re all fairly specialized and medical in nature, I don’t think you’ll be able to shed much light on the answers.”
She raised her head slightly to glance at Rumble. “You’re free to go.”
“Thanks.” Rumble paused halfway out of the room. “Actually, there’s one thing I need to ask you.”
“Hm?”
“Sombra. When you found him, he would’ve had a gold-colored crystal with him. Can I have it?”
Redheart’s eyebrows shot up. “You realize that would be immensely irregular.”
“I think it’s related to the energy wave that knocked everypony out," Rumble pressed. "Dinky’s about the only one who even kind of understands it.”
Redheart considered that. “Well…” She trailed off and studied Rumble for a long moment.
“I can’t give you the crystal,” she said at last. “I can, however, mention in passing that all the associated items are being kept in storage closet 027, in an area of the hospital which is critically understaffed even at the best of times. Do you understand?”
Rumble nodded. “Thanks. You’re the best. Oh, and one other thing.”
Redheart raised an eyebrow. “Careful. My willingness to bend hospital regulations only goes so far.”
“No, no, nothing like that. I was just gonna say, you really should call in the only available Time Lord specialist in town --”
“She’s been contacted already,” Redheart assured him. “I’m confident that Romana will be able to shed some light on the situation.”
Rumble trotted back into the waiting room. He sat down next to Sweetie and Button and leaned in close. “Who’s feeling up for a heist?” he muttered.
The others looked at him with varying degrees of confusion, irritation, and interest. “I mean, always,” said Scootaloo. “Why? What’s up?”
“Sombra had another shard of the artron-infused crystal,” Rumble said. “The hospital’s got it in storage. If we can get ahold of it, Dinky can talk to the TARDIS again, and we might get some kind of clue what’s going on.”
“And what good will that do us?” Dinky asked icily. “We know what’s going on. Everypony who might have the power to do anything is unconscious, the TARDIS is dead or dying, and we’re…” She took a deep breath in. “And we’re just sitting here in the waiting room. Waiting.”
Rumble raised an eyebrow. “And how does that waiting make you feel?”
Dinky considered that. “...I don’t.”
He frowned. “You don’t what?”
Dinky met his gaze at last. Her eyes were hollow and weary and very, very dark. “Feel. I don’t feel anything right now. I’m just numb.”
“Oh.” Rumble glanced away. “Uh, fair enough, I guess?” He cleared his throat. “So, um, heist.”
There was a pause. “I’m in,” said Scootaloo. “I’m tired of doing nothing, anyway. How many ponies does this plan need?”
“Two works,” Rumble said. “One to guard and one to search the room. Might go faster with a second searcher, though.”
After another moment, Button raised his hoof. “I’ll take the lookout,” he said.
“Great,” Rumble said. “C’mon. We have to find room twenty-seven. Sweetie? Bloom? Are you good holding down the fort?”
“Um,” said Sweetie, glancing at Bloom nervously. “I guess. What about Dinky?”
“I’m not going to ask a question that I already know the answer to,” Rumble said.
Dinky’s ears flattened against her skull and she narrowed her eyes, but she didn’t say a word.
Rumble led the other two out of the waiting room and down the hall. “So, what should my lookout signal be?” Button asked.
“Uh, coughing,” Scootaloo decided. “Then you can walk down the hall and ask the pony coming by if they know where to find a water fountain.”
“That works.”
Rumble, meanwhile, was scrutinizing the numbers on the doors. “One-forty-six, one-forty-four, one-forty-two…” he muttered. “I don’t get it. This is the first floor. Where are the double-digit doors?”
“In the basement,” Button said. “Duh.”
Rumble stopped, confused. “The hospital has a basement?”
“Yeah. I mean, it’s mostly storage and file rooms with a couple of low-ranking administrative offices, but it’s definitely there. C’mon.”
Button headed off down the hallway. Rumble looked at Scootaloo. “A basement?” he repeated.
“Look, when you live on the ground and you’re in the most stupidly danger-prone settlement in Equestria, you start to really appreciate the benefits of hiding out under the earth.” Scootaloo hurried after Button, and after a moment, Rumble followed, too.
Rumble did not have claustrophobia. It would be nothing to be ashamed of if he did; it was a perfectly natural reaction for pegasi. They spent most of their life in the clouds, looking out almost forever at the vast horizon, soaring free and unconstrained. They tended to get a little tetchy when they were confined. Alright, so Scootaloo didn’t experience it, but that was because she’d lived on the ground her whole life. Fluttershy didn’t have it either, which stung a little bit. But Rumble was definitely not claustrophobic.
“So, like, where are the windows?”
“There aren’t any windows, Rumble,” Button said patiently. “They’d only show dirt.”
“There are windows in Twilight’s basement.”
“That’s partially above ground.”
“So why isn’t this?”
“Why are you like this?” Scootaloo asked. “You’re fine in the TARDIS.”
“The TARDIS has a door that leads outside, and several other rooms that could easily be mistaken for outside, and even more rooms that are big enough to fly around in. This? Doesn’t.”
“Fine. Let’s just hurry up and get through this,” Scootaloo said. “Let’s see. Room twenty-one, twenty-three, twenty-five… twenty-seven!”
“Sh!” Button warned. “This part of the hospital isn’t usually occupied, but we don’t want to be careless.”
“Right. Sorry,” Scootaloo said, lowering her voice. “It’s not locked, is it?”
Button checked the handle. “No, you’re good. Go!”
Rumble and Scootaloo hurried inside. Inside was a mess of boxes and crates of things. Laid out near the front of the room was a small assortment of personal items including the princesses’ regalia, a bouquet of plastic flowers from Trixie’s magic act, and a small velvet bag.
“That was easier than I thought it would be,” Rumble remarked, snatching the bag up and checking inside. Indeed, it contained a golden crystal. “Alright. Job done, I guess.”
The two were just about to leave when Button raced in, his eyes wide. “Somepony’s coming!” he hissed.
Scootaloo glared at him. “Then why aren’t you distracting them?” she demanded.
“Because it’s a white stallion who might or might not have wings!”
“The Valley guy Vinyl saw?” Rumble asked. “What does he want?”
Scootaloo turned her ire on him. “Oh, gee, Rumble. I don’t know. What could he possibly want down in this closet, huh?”
Rumble's eyes went wide. “Oh, no.”
Button looked around frantically. “The door doesn’t latch!”
They could all hear hooves echoing on the tile flooring now, measured hoofsteps coming ever closer.
“Quick,” Rumble said. “Down here, all these boxes are empty. Hide in one of them!”
He and Scootaloo dove for it. Button glanced at the pile of stuff and plonked something down on the crates before squishing into a box of his own.
The door creaked open. The three Crusaders held their breath.
“Ẅ̶͔ḩ̶̓e̸͕̕r̴͇͠è̷̯ ̴̹̅ä̸̢́r̵̰̀e̶̲͛ ̶̮̉y̷̝̑o̸̜̒u̸̳͝.̵̻͐.̶͎́.̴̝̐” the stallion muttered. Even his voice was like static in their heads, an almost painful kind of fuzziness. “Ó̵̱ȟ̷̰,̷̨͂ ̴͈̀l̸̙̏ḯ̶͈t̷͙͠t̵͖͗l̵͓̀ė̵̗ ̸̢̎c̶̠͒r̴̻̿ŷ̵̨s̶̹̓ṭ̸̈ạ̷̈l̴̥̕,̷͎̄ ̸̢̒o̸͙̕h̷̞̀,̴̬͝ ̵̩͋l̴̫̎í̵̭t̶̢̆t̶̛̻l̴̩͊e̸̜͗ ̶̜͋T̸͎̊A̶̰͛R̶͙͌D̶͍́I̵̺̒S̵͕̑.̶̞̌ ̶͓͝Ĉ̷̙ȏ̵̩m̷̳͘ē̷̹ ̶̹͘ǎ̴̦n̴̊ͅḏ̵̐ ̵̧̏j̴̥͌ò̴̹i̸̼̿ǹ̵̦ ̵͔̋u̴͚̓s̷̔͜.̶̭̑ ̶̞̈́E̷̗̅v̵̪̽e̶͎͝r̵̬̓ỵ̷̿ ̵̜̋d̶̻̍r̷̙͗ô̶̤p̷̝͘ ̸̥̅o̸̗͊f̴̦͐ ̶̬̓y̶͖̓o̷̹̍u̶̩͘r̶̖̽ ̸̰͌p̷̤͛ö̸̖́ẁ̶ͅe̵͈̒r̷̬͠ ̷̞́w̶̘͒i̵͔̎l̸̢̅l̸̥͌ ̶̤̾b̵͈̕e̸̝̐ ̴̺̚ö̸̜́u̷͇͒r̶̖̒s̸̲͛.̸͙̆”
There was a long pause as he rifled around in the mess. “Ā̷̬ḥ̷́~̴͓̾”
Another long pause. Then, the sound of crystal shattering on the concrete floor. “Ț̶́o̷̦͆ó̵̩ ̵̠̚l̶̰͝a̷̠͝t̴̮͗ë̶̢.̵̖̍ ̵̧̇Í̷͉ẗ̴̙́'̶́͜s̸̖̅ ̴̳̐a̸̖̓l̵̹̉r̸͍͛e̷̢͊a̵̜͋ď̴͉ŷ̷̬ ̷̞̃b̵̥́ḙ̵̑ë̵͖́ń̸ͅ ̴͈̓t̶̹̑à̷̯k̷͇̑ě̷̗n̸̫͌.̵͍͒ ̴͎͂W̵̲̑e̸̗͆l̴͔̿l̶̦͘,̸̺͠ ̴̞̌n̴̰̆ȅ̵̢v̴͚̓e̸̼̍r̸̬̽ ̷͎̽m̷̼̃ỉ̶̫ṉ̵͘d̵͇̐ ̸̙͠t̸̳́h̵̫͒a̴͙͐t̵͇́ ̵͙̎n̸̩̽o̸͈͠w̶̮͌.̷̨̈́ ̵͓̈́W̴͇̎è̶̺'̶̩̑l̷̹̚l̵̜͠ ̷̫͝t̴͙̀ả̴̲k̶̒ͅe̴͈͑ ̵͙̽ő̶̬ù̶̪r̷̫͂ ̸̱̄p̶͓̈́ȍ̸̥u̸̪̎n̴̮̓d̷̮͝ ̶̮̍ȯ̴̦f̶̟̊ ̶̥̎f̴̪̀l̵̠͑é̷͍s̵͈͑ḧ̷͍́ ̴͕̊f̷̰̆r̵̞̉ȏ̶ͅm̷̮̆ ̴͇̒e̷͕͠l̴͚͐s̵̫͆e̴̛̥ẇ̴͙ḧ̵͔́e̵̙̔r̷̲̉e̶͇͒.̶̨́.̶̡͠.̵̞̾”
Another long pause. After awhile, it became clear that there would be no more. Scootaloo peered out over the edge of her box. “He’s gone,” she hissed. “Coast’s clear.”
Button and Rumble emerged from their own boxes warily. “What happened?” Rumble asked. “Why did he leave?”
Button grinned sheepishly. “I, uh, put out the bit of crystal that Dinky used up. I was kind of hoping… well, I was hoping he’d think we’d used that fragment up already, too.”
Scootaloo nodded. “Good work,” she said. “Now, let’s get out of here before Mr. Tall, Pale, and Nondescript wises up and decides to take a second look.”
Nurse Redheart stepped out into the waiting room again. Apple Bloom raised an eyebrow. “More questions?” she asked.
“No, actually,” Redheart said with a hint of triumph in her voice. “Quite the opposite, actually. We finally have some answers. Romana?”
A blue unicorn stepped in and gave a small, sad smile to the assembled Crusaders. “Hello again. I’m sorry to see you in such dire circumstances. Er, where are the rest of you?”
“Bathroom,” Apple Bloom said.
“Getting water,” Sweetie said at the same moment.
Romana frowned at them.
“Button’s getting water, Rumble and Scootaloo needed the bathroom,” Bloom said quickly.
“...Right. Well, I’m sure you can fill them in once they’re back,” Romana said.
“What happened?” Dinky asked, dragging her gaze to the Time Lady. Her voice cracked from disuse.
Romana sighed. “The cause is… unclear. I’d say the most likely possibility was a surge from the TARDIS’s telepathic circuits. The effect, however, is very clear indeed. The affected parties -- our friends -- have been trapped inside the Matrix.”
The three Crusaders stared at her blankly. “Right. Yes. None of you are Time Lords,” Romana said. “The Matrix is a Time Lord invention -- a supercomputer the size of a universe where the collective experience of every Time Lord is stored.”
“Uh… huh?” Apple Bloom said. “Ah understood most of those words individually.”
Romana furrowed her brow. “It’s an artificial virtual reality environment,” she tried.
“That’s worse,” Sweetie said.
“Alright, try this. It’s the collected minds of every Time Lord that ever lived, all doing enough sums to make their own world out of math and sheer bloody-mindedness.”
Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle glanced at one another and shrugged. “Yeah, okay, we can picture that,” Bloom said. “But what d’you mean they’re trapped there?”
“Their minds have been uploaded to the Matrix,” Romana said simply. “I’ve done it before. It’s just like walking around normally, except if you focus hard enough, you can shape the world around you. As for being trapped there... well, I'm less certain of what could do something like that.”
“Alright. So, they’re safe?” Sweetie said hopefully.
Romana’s face grew grim. “Not by a long chalk. If they’ve been taken there by some force, it must want them there for a reason. And if you die in the Matrix, you die in real life.”
“Oh.” Sweetie hesitated. “What happens if you die in real life?”
“Well… you’re dead,” Romana said. “That is what typically happens.”
“Oh.”
Dinky hadn’t looked away from Romana once. “Do you know how to bring them back?”
Romana looked down. “...No,” she admitted. “It would be one thing to wake them from inside the Matrix, naturally, or if they had entered the Matrix through standard mechanical means. But as it stands, they have to wake up on their own, and I very much doubt that our friend in the mechanical alicorn will permit that anytime soon.”
Dinky looked down. “I see,” she said softly.
“Is there anything else you can tell us?” Sweetie asked plaintively.
Romana shook her head. “Only that you should go home and get some rest,” she said firmly. “There’s nothing else for you to do, here.”
“Right,” said Apple Bloom. “Thank ya kindly, Miz Romana. We’ll jes’ wait fer the others to get back, an’ then we’ll be off.”
“Of course,” said Romana. “I’d tell you to sleep well, but… well, that doesn’t seem particularly likely tonight.”
She turned and trotted out of the room. Redheart lingered a moment, looking at them all. “Really,” she said. “You should all get some rest. It’ll all look better in the morning.”
Then, she left too.
“...Will it be morning?” Sweetie wondered. “Without the princesses around to move the sun and moon, I mean.”
“Maybe,” Apple Bloom said with a shrug. “Unicorns raised th’ sun and moon before the princesses, after all.”
“That’s true. Hey. We’re not going to bed, though, right?”
“No,” Dinky said, a note of steel entering her voice. “We’re not. If the others managed to pick up that shard of the TARDIS's power, then I think I’ve got a plan. But you aren’t going to like it.”
Meanwhile, in Canterlot, there was an issue of succession. Unusually enough, the problem wasn’t finding the pony in line for the throne -- that had been determined years ago. No, the problem was convincing him to take control. “You cannot be serious,” Prince Blueblood said for the fifth time that hour.
Kibitz heaved a sigh that made his moustache flutter. “For the last time, your highness, I am. Deadly serious, in fact.”
Blueblood winced. “I wish you wouldn’t use that precise expression.”
Kibitz inclined his head apologetically. “Sir, the princesses are by no means dead," he said gently. "They are incapacitated, no more or less.”
“That could easily change,” Blueblood said darkly. “Where the Doctor’s misadventures are concerned, things tend to go off the rails with alarming speed.”
“All the more reason to install you as their temporary regent, sir,” Kibitz repeated patiently. “Word hasn’t leaked to Canterlot at large, not yet. When it does, there will be panic in the streets. A swift installation of a new leader in this time of crisis would make impressive steps toward quelling those anticipated riots.”
Prince Blueblood ran a hoof down his muzzle. “I agree with you in principle,” he said.
“Indeed?”
“Indeed. The people will need a strong, capable leader who inspires the faith of the public. Do you see where I’m going with this, Kibitz? They need a leader that isn’t seen as a shallow flibbertigibbet of a playboy.”
“I assure you, sir, that is not the public perception of you.”
“Is it not?”
“No, sir. I believe a playboy is required to actually have affairs on occasion.”
“Oh, very droll,” Blueblood said, sneering. “Keep going, I’m sure your insults will eventually convince me to take the throne.”
Kibitz sighed and removed his glasses, polishing them against his vest. “I appreciate your concerns, your highness. However, the simple fact of the matter is, there’s nobody else for the job. All of the royals after you in the line of succession are children, older than me, or actually as vapid as you pretend to be.”
“What about the Crystal Empire?” Blueblood said, almost pleading.
Kibitz inclined his head. “Fortunately, the Empire has its own line of succession, and Princess Flurry Heart will be taking the throne, with the court wizard as her regent.”
“The court wizard,” Blueblood mused. “That’s the orange one, yes? With the oversized spectacles and the split ends? The one who appears never to have heard the words ‘mane' and 'care’ together in a sentence, nor yet discovered that magic potion known as 'conditioner'?”
“His name is Sunburst.”
“Mm, yes, that’s the one,” Blueblood agreed. “I suppose there’s no question of getting him to take over?”
“No, sir.”
“The other alicorns? I know they exist, I’ve seen the books!”
“Then you also know that most of them haven’t been seen before Luna’s previous abeyance. Come now. Consider the kingdom. Consider the city.”
“I am. I told you, who would want the rule of a self-absorbed ninny with the apparent geopolitical awareness of a rabbit?”
Kibitz pursed his lips for a moment. “I urge you to remember, sir, that this is Canterlot.”
Blueblood put a hoof on his chin. “A true, if unflattering, commentary on the nobility,” he admitted. “Alright. But you know as well as I do the importance of maintaining my cover. I must at all times appear to be a narcissistic idiot, or I’ll never be able to keep tabs on the nobility again. Do you think I can do that without setting the nation back twenty years?”
Kibitz nodded. “With a certain amount of assistance, yes.”
Blueblood took a deep breath and nodded. “Very well. When’s the coronation?”
Kibitz held out a crown and peytral. “Five minutes. Shall I fetch you a comb, sir?”
Dinky led the others out of the hospital. She hadn’t said a word when Scootaloo, Rumble, and Button had returned. Instead, she merely nodded to acknowledge their presence and let Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom explain what Romana had told them. Then, she had listened intently while the heist team told them all about what had happened in the storage closet.
Even after they were done, she refused to share any details of her plan. “Not here,” she’d said shortly, glancing around the room. “Too many ears.”
That hadn’t exactly been encouraging to anypony, but they all followed her down the street, away from the hospital. “Where are we going?” Button asked plaintively. “Can you tell us that, at least?”
Dinky stopped and glanced around. “Do any of you see him?” she asked.
“Him who?” Apple Bloom asked.
“You know. The faceless guy. The... what did the machine say in the barn? The Valeyard.”
Everypony fell silent at that, and they all cast nervous glances up and down the street. “...No,” Scootaloo said at last. “No, I think we’re clear.”
“Alright, then,” Dinky said, sitting down on the side of the road. “I guess it’s only fair that I tell you here and now. If you don’t like it, well, you can save yourselves a hike and just head home.”
“That sounds… nice,” Sweetie said.
“But we wouldn’t just leave ya like that,” Apple Bloom said firmly.
Scootaloo held up a hoof to stall Bloom. “Hold on. Let’s see what her actual plan is, first.”
Dinky took a deep breath. “I want to power up the TARDIS for just long enough to get us into the Matrix, too.”
Absolute silence reigned. “I told you you should wait,” Scootaloo muttered.
Dinky held up her hooves. “I know, it sounds kind of crazy--”
“Idiotic, even,” Rumble said, spreading his wings. “Dangerously so.”
“Maybe so, but when has that stopped us before, exactly?” Dinky demanded. “Let me explain before you run off on me, jeez.”
Rumble scowled, but furled his wings.
“All right then,” Scootaloo said. “Explain. How is us getting knocked out too going to help anything?”
“Romana said it herself, we can wake the others up from the inside. The Valeyard won’t be expecting us--”
“Because he’d assume that nopony could possibly think this was a good idea,” Button muttered.
“Well… yes,” Dinky admitted. “But we’ll have the element of surprise, won’t we? And if we can break out the princesses, and Discord, and everypony else, they’ll put paid to whatever’s keeping them there.”
She looked at their blank faces. “Look, the TARDIS said we have the power to stop the Doctor’s machine. We just need the will. Well, I have the will. Do you?”
Apple Bloom looked torn. “Ah dunno… Granny hasn’t woke up. She still doesn’t know nothin’ ‘bout AJ an’ Mac. Ah, Ah gotta be there for her, right? If she wakes up tomorrow, an’ all three of us are gone…” She trailed off.
“But you could save them,” Dinky said, almost pleading. “Applejack and Big Mac and everypony else, for good measure.”
Apple Bloom sat silently for a long moment, thinking. After a minute, she looked at Dinky, her eyes flinty. “Alright. Ah’m in.”
“So am I,” Rumble agreed.
“Me, too,” Button said.
“And me!” Sweetie said quickly.
All eyes turned to Scootaloo. She looked skyward for a long minute, then chuckled. “Yeah. Alright. One last hurrah for the Cutie Mark Crusaders. Let’s go.”
Dinky grinned, even though Scootaloo’s words had pushed another twisted shard of metal into her already shrapnel-filled heart. “Awesome.”
The trek up to Sweet Apple Acres was silent, but filled with a shared, wordless tension. Apple Bloom blazed the way, trotting as quickly as she could without leaving the others behind completely. Rumble flew overhead, soaring over the trees. Scootaloo stormed along with a face like fire and legs like pistons. Sweetie Belle walked alongside her -- the unicorn’s lanky legs meant that she didn’t even have to try to keep up. Dinky walked along behind, pensive, and Button brought up the rear, visibly struggling to keep pace as he hauled his bag along up the road.
“You really should’ve just left that behind,” Dinky observed after awhile.
Button shook his head. “I figured it would take too long to drop it off back at mom’s house. I can just leave it in the TARDIS.”
“If you say so.”
The barn was dark and quiet. “Hold on,” Apple Bloom said. “Lemme find th’ light switch real quick…”
There was a click. Nothing happened. Several more clicks followed. “...Huh,” Bloom said. “Well, that is odd, and no mistake.”
“Or just an aftereffect of the energy release,” Dinky said, lighting her horn. The golden light fluttered, like a candle in the wind. It seemed as though it was being pulled toward the TARDIS. “Oh. Or, somebody’s hungry. Sweetie, leave your horn off.”
Sweetie Belle gave a mock salute. “Roger that, cap’n!”
“Please don’t. C’mon, we’ll have to work in the dark.”
If the barn had been bad, the inside of the TARDIS was far worse. The console was a mess of wires and parts, and everything was dark and still. The time rotor stood, a memorial to the dead ship. Dinky took a deep, shaky breath. It wasn't quite as bad as seeing her mother’s still body, but it hit much harder than she'd expected. “Alright,” she said, voice shaky. “We need, uh, the telepathic controls.”
“Oh! I know where those are.” Scootaloo pulled on a panel, and a tray of gel popped out. “Careful. When I used them, the TARDIS punched a hole in spacetime.”
“Alright. And now we need to power it.”
Button held out the golden crystal. “Um, ideas?”
Apple Bloom rubbed her chin. “Smash it?” she suggested.
Everypony else looked at Dinky. She shrugged. “Sure, why not. We’re playing by Discord’s rules, anyway. Considering how the TARDIS is reacting to external stimuli, as long as it releases the energy, it should work.”
She sunk her hooves into the gel. “Right. Everypony, hooves on me. The closer we are together, the less energy the TARDIS will have to use.”
That wasn't necessarily true. Dinky didn't know one way or the other. Right now, though, any excuse for a supportive group hug was fine by her.
“Right,” said Rumble, setting a hoof on her withers. The others followed suit, huddling around the panel.
Button glanced back and held out the crystal. “Apple Bloom? Care to do the honors?”
Bloom nodded once, then took the crystal from his hoof and set it on the floor. She screwed up her face, let out a cry of fury, and slammed her hind hoof down on the golden stone, shattering it. There was a flash of golden light that rose up in a stream, swirling through the crowd and into the console itself. The exposed wires sparked and the console hummed. There was a deep, throaty roar from the depths of the TARDIS.
All six Crusaders slumped into a pile. Dinky fell on top, a smile of pure exhilaration on her face.
And then she woke up. The TARDIS was alive again, the instruments alert and the time rotor humming. Around the central console, her friends stood, blinking in the sudden light. “What…” Sweetie began. She couldn’t seem to find the words to complete her sentence.
“Did we make it?” Button asked, perplexed.
Dinky grabbed a monitor and swung it around. The world outside was an inhospitable grey desert. Twin suns hung in the orange sky, and all around stood towering mountains. Slowly, she started to grin. “Yes,” she said simply. “Yes, I think we did.”
The strange desert landscape was still and silent as a painting. The strange, crooked mountains pointing towards the umber sky resembled nothing so much as a group of magnetic filings climbing up to a vast magnet. The effect was only heightened by the grey sands that muffled all sound. Sheltered on three sides by mountain outcrop stood a tower, a spire of obsidian topped with a strange spherical sculpture made of gold, or at least a gold-like material. It must have been a good few miles away, but its titanic scale and colossal shadow made it feel as though one could reach out and touch its smooth sides.
And, sinking slightly in the grey sand, in the shadow of that tower sat a tiny blue box, a small light twinkling on top.
And within that box was a space.
And within that space sat six ponies, all of them silent.
Sweetie Belle broke the silence first. “So… where are we, exactly?”
Dinky snorted and shoved a monitor aside forcefully. “Wish I knew. All I’m getting back is error messages. I can't even get a galaxy, or a century, I can't even get a reading on the atmosphere.”
“So we can't go out there,” Button said, frowning.
“I think there might be some space suits in the wardrobe,” Scootaloo piped up.
“We’re overthinking this,” Apple Bloom said. “We’re in the dreamscape, right?”
“The Matrix,” Dinky corrected. “It’s the collection of every Time Lord mind that ever was.”
“Whatever. Th’ important thing is, it ain’t real out there, so we should be fine.”
“No. You heard Romana. If we die out there, we die in real life,” Dinky said.
Rumble held up a hoof. “So since everypony in the hospital is just unconscious right now, not dead, we can assume that the atmosphere is fine, right?”
Dinky hesitated. “...I suppose that’s so,” she allowed. “Alright. If the TARDIS won’t tell us where we are, we’d better go out and look for ourselves.”
“Cool. Let’s boogie,” Scootaloo said, shoving the doors open and stepping onto the dry sands beyond. The others filed out after her, all rendered suddenly silent by the landscape beyond. They weren’t in Ponyville anymore. This was suddenly terrifyingly real.
After a moment, Sweetie kicked at the sands. “As far as alien planets go, it’s kinda boring,” she said. “I was really expecting a lot more for our first time out. Maybe a big jungle with purple trees, or a huge city with flying carts, or something.”
“Yeah, it looks more like a big quarry than anything else,” Apple Bloom said. “Well. ‘part from that.” She gestured to the tower. “We’re all agreed, that’s th’ way we’re headed, right?”
Button glanced around. “Yeah, doesn’t look like there’s much of anywhere else to go.” He hefted his bag onto his shoulder, then paused. “I… should leave this in the TARDIS. For safekeeping.”
“I gotcha,” Rumble said, pulling the handle. It rattled, but didn’t open. Frowning, he pulled harder. “Uh, hey, Dinky?”
Dinky scratched her head. “That’s weird. There’s a secret key hidden behind the ‘X’ in the ‘Public Call Box’ sign, try that.”
Rumble released the handle and flew up. “Uh, Dinky? Did this sign always say ‘Police Public Call Bo’?
“Come again?”
“Sorry, ‘Public Call No’.” Rumble corrected.
Sweetie looked at the sign on the door. “Out of Order?” she asked, incredulous. She got up and peered through the windows. “It’s completely dark in there.”
Apple Bloom hefted her saddlebags. “Well,” she said shortly. “Ah s’pose ya can’t get more clear a message than that. We done been locked out. No way to go but forward.” She set off across the sands in the direction of the tower. One by one, the others started after her. Dinky lingered at the box for several seconds longer than the others before grudgingly turning away and walking after them.
Fluttershy’s eyelids fluttered as she woke. A familiar face smiled down at her. “Hi, Fluttershy.”
“...Twilight? Whazz going on?” She rolled over on the cold stone floor, pushing herself back onto her hooves.
“Well, that is the million-bit question,” Twilight agreed, turning around.
Fluttershy glanced about the room, taking stock of the situation. Discord was curled up in a corner, sulking next to Sombra. Celestia, Luna, Sunset Shimmer, Cadance, and Shining Armor were all having a quiet, intense conference by the windows. Dash was flying agitated laps around the ceiling, while Applejack and Trixie watched from the wall. Big Mac stood patiently as Rarity fixed her dress, which was clearly a coping mechanism of some sort, and Pinkie was talking quietly to a morose Ditzy. That was almost all of them…
Fluttershy turned around and saw the Doctor. He was sitting on what looked to be some kind of altar at the center of the room, his head resting in his hooves. Quietly, she made her way over to him, climbing the stairs hesitantly until she was at his side. “What’s the matter?” she asked.
“Hm,” he said.
Fluttershy tried a different tack. “Do you know where we are?”
The Doctor snorted. “Oh, yes.”
A pause. “...Will you tell me?”
“It has many names," the Doctor said. "Rassilon’s Tower. Rassilon’s Tomb, though that’s not entirely accurate these days. The Dark Tower. Most relevantly, it’s known as the Center of the Death Zone.”
“...Oh.”
“On Gallifrey.” He spread his hooves. “Quite a homecoming.”
“...Oh.” She hesitated. “So I guess the interface didn’t work quite as planned.”
He glanced at her, almost surprised. “On the contrary. It worked perfectly well. Unfortunately, there were far grander designs in place than mine.”
“Sorry? I don’t think I follow…”
The Doctor said nothing more, only staring dead-eyed at the main doors.
Scootaloo glanced back at the TARDIS. “Is it me, or is the tower moving away from us as we get closer?”
“It’s just you,” Apple Bloom said.
“Might be,” Dinky said at the same moment. She paused and glared at Bloom. “We’re in the Matrix. If you can think of something, it can happen here.”
Bloom stopped dead. “Alright.” She shut her eyes tight and furrowed her brow.
“What are you doing?” Rumble asked. “We have to keep moving.”
Bloom opened her eyes and looked around. “Well, considerin’ we ain’t currently standin’ in an apple orchard, Ah’m gonna call shenanigans on that idea of yers, Dinks.”
Dinky scowled. “Well, I don’t know. That's what Romana said, right? Thought shapes reality. Maybe you just aren't thinking hard enough."
Apple Bloom snorted. “Sure,” she said, her voice practically oozing with derision. “That’s the problem.”
Dinky cocked her head. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“You don’t know any more ‘bout this place than th’ rest of us,” Apple Bloom said. “We all charged in here blind, an’ now we’re stuck, thanks to you.”
Dinky’s face darkened. “Well, pardon me,” she snapped. “I said that you should leave if you wanted to. You chose to come along, didn’t you?”
“Oh, and now you’re blaming us for your bad planning” Scootaloo said. “We don’t have food, we don’t have water, we don’t have shelter. How long do you think we can survive out here?”
“I’m sure we’ll be fine when we reach the tower,” Rumble said, keeping his voice level.
“Oh, right, the tower that keeps moving farther and farther away?” Scootaloo said, turning on him.
Dinky shut her eyes tight. “No,” she growled. “This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. None of this is how it was supposed to go! Why can’t all of you just get along?”
Nopony said anything. Slowly, Dinky opened her eyes, breathing heavily. All of them were staring at her. “Oh,” she said. “Finally. Thank you. Now, as far as food and water go… um…”
Dinky realized that her friends weren’t staring at her. Rather, they were staring past her. She turned around and saw exactly what they were all staring at. She lifted a hoof and pointed. “So, that hole wasn’t there before, was it?”
“...No,” Sweetie Belle said, her voice distant. “No, it was not.”
“Oh,” Dinky said. “Good. I’d hate to think I’d overlooked it.”
“Should we…” Scootaloo hesitated, then set her jaw. “I mean, let’s take a closer look.”
The hole was really more of a crevasse -- a great crack in the surface of the landscape, about two meters wide and eight meters long. All six peered down into the fissure. “How deep do you think it is?” Rumble asked.
“We could drop something down, see how long it takes to hit bottom,” Apple Bloom suggested.
“What do we have that would be heavy enough to hear?” Dinky asked.
All eyes turned to Button. He took a step back. “I’m not jumping,” he said.
Scootaloo rolled her eyes. “Don’t be a dummy. What do you have in your bag?”
“Oh!” He opened a flap. “Uh, the prototypes obviously aren’t going anywhere. I’d rather keep most of my tools, and this roll of bandages might come in handy… Ah!”
“Ah?” Sweetie repeated.
Button waved a roll of duct tape in the air. “Got a thousand and one uses,” he said. “Dropping a roll to check the depth is the thousand and second.”
Sweetie Belle levitated the tape to the middle of the crack. “Three, two, one,” she said, letting it fall.
A fraction of a second later, they heard it connect with something. Then, they heard a lot of angry muttering and hissing.
“Okay,” Dinky said, backing away quickly. “I think we can safely say that however deep it is, it isn’t nearly deep enough.”
“When I say run,” Scootaloo began.
A scaled green hand reached out of the pit and grabbed the dirt. “RUN!” Sweetie screamed, taking off at a gallop. The others quickly followed suit, Button scrambling to sling his bag back over his body as he ran.
Behind them, scaly green figures hauled themselves back onto the surface and, after a moment’s readjustment, started to run after them.
“So, er, Doctor.”
“Hm?”
Fluttershy adjusted her position slightly to turn toward the Time Lord. “I couldn’t help but notice, um, that you seem to know an awful lot about this place.”
He inclined his head, acknowledging the truth of her statement.
“Is it… very famous on your planet? Er, on Gallifrey?”
The Doctor thought about that. “Sort of,” he hedged. “It’s well known, but more in the sense of El Dorado than Manehattan.”
“It’s a myth?”
“No, not at all. I’ve been here before. Mind you, I also visited El Dorado. No, this was the final resting places of the most famous Gallifreyan in history -- Rassilon, the man who made the Time Lords. In the capitol, you can’t throw a bloody stone without hitting one of the great relics of Rassilon. If you didn’t, you probably just chucked the Great Rock of Rassilon across the room.”
Fluttershy giggled, and for a second, the Doctor grinned. It faded quickly, though. “Yes. Rassilon. Greatest Time Lord of them all,” he said, more than a hint of mockery in his voice. “Never meet your heroes, Fluttershy.”
“Um… I’ll try.”
The Doctor sighed. “Sorry. Off track again. The Tower of Rassilon was said to hold the secret to immortality. So, of course, it was placed in the middle of the arena where, in ancient times, Time Lords would force some of the most dangerous creatures in the universe to fight to the death.”
Fluttershy covered her mouth, horrified. “That’s terrible! All the poor little animals…”
The Doctor's eyes bulged slightly. “Poor little animals? Well, I suppose if anyone could count a drashig as a ‘poor little animal’, it’d be you. And poor little warriors, and robots, and stranger, and worse… And, in time, poor little me.”
Fluttershy gasped. “You? You had to fight here?”
The Doctor nodded. “Oh, yes. Four different incarnations, and several of my closest friends, to boot, all forced to survive the Death Zone in order to discover Rassilon’s secret of immortality.”
Fluttershy thought about that. “If this is a tomb,” she said slowly. “Well, it can’t have been that good a secret, can it?”
The Doctor actually laughed aloud at that and clapped her on the back. “Congratulations,” he said, grinning. “You officially have more common sense than my former tutor.”
“Do I?”
“Oh, yes,” the Doctor said. “He’s the one that roped me into this business to begin with. He got his immortality, all right. He was petrified for eternity, a living decoration on Rassilon’s casket.”
“Oh, my.” Fluttershy glanced back at the stone sarcophagus and frowned. “Um. It doesn’t look like he’s on there.”
“No. I did manage to rescue him, eventually.” The Doctor paused. “Hold on. How did you know he wasn’t one of the others?”
“What others?”
The Doctor turned and looked at the casket himself. Where he’d last seen a row of Time Lords carved bas-relief into the side panels, there was now merely a set of blanks.
“...Interesting,” he muttered. “Very suggestive, as it happens. And very symbolic.”
“Symbolic?” Fluttershy repeated. “How?”
“All the Time Lords are gone,” the Doctor said grimly. “Art reflects life, hey? He always did have a certain fascination with that.”
“He? Who?” Fluttershy looked around the room again. “Rassilon?”
“As a matter of fact,” the Doctor said, raising his voice and rising to his hooves. “I’d say all of this is rather symbolic.”
All eyes were on him as he strode down the stone steps to the ground. “The Sepulchre of Rassilon,” the Doctor said, rolling out his ‘r’s. “A place of great importance to the Time Lords. A place of treachery. A place associated with regeneration, new life, and immortality. Moreover, a place to where no fewer than four of my incarnations were abducted, along with a number of my best friends.”
“Uh… okay,” Rainbow said, finally coming down for a landing. “All that sounds cool and stuff, but if it’s symbolic… well, what’s it symbolic of?”
The Doctor ignored her, choosing instead to glower at the main doors. “Come on, then, you asinine anachronism! Show yourself!”
There was a long pause. Then, the sound of slow clapping echoed through the room. Everypony spun around to see a white stallion stepping out of the shadows behind the tomb. “Congratulations,” he said drily. “It only took you until I actually told you my name before you worked it out.”
He was an older stallion -- his frown lines were pronounced, and he appeared to be scowling almost constantly. His coat was as white as frost, and his eyes were brick red. His mane, tail, and cutie mark were hidden by his black skullcap, high collar, and cape.
“You missed one, by the way,” the newcomer said, brushing past the other ponies until he was face to face with the Doctor. “Arguably the most important one of them all.”
The Doctor’s face was tight with rage and fear. “Oh?” he managed. “Alright. Enlighten me, then.”
The stallion gestured toward the obelisk in the center of the room. “Rassilon’s warning,” he said coolly. ‘To lose is to win and he who wins shall lose’.” He gave a shark’s smile. “You lose, Doctor. But don’t worry. Your victory is close. Closer than you might think.”
Trixie coughed loudly. “So, uh, who’s the creep?” she asked loudly.
The newcomer turned slightly. “It would be unwise to heckle overmuch, Miss Lulamoon,” he said coldly.
Trixie rolled her eyes, but then she caught sight of the Doctor’s face. “Really, Trixie,” he said. “Don’t make him do something that we’ll regret.”
“Alright,” Trixie said warily. “But really. You seem to know this stallion, Doctor. Who is he?”
The Doctor stared at the newcomer for a long moment. The white stallion smirked at him. “Tell them, Doctor.”
The Doctor took a deep breath in and let it out slowly. “A long time ago, I was put on trial by my people --”
“Too long ago,” the Valeyard said, stalking around the Doctor slowly.
The Doctor glared at him. “By my people, the Time Lords. I was charged with reckless interference --”
“Rightly so.”
“And endangerment of the web of time.”
“Don’t forget that little added charge of genocide.”
Everypony gasped. The Doctor scowled. “You know perfectly well that they were genetically modified organisms. They weren’t even a proper species, and that’s before you get into the fact that they would have eradicated all animal life on Earth.”
The stallion sneered. “So much for your moral high ground there.”
“Yes, well. As you can guess, this was my prosecutor -- the Valeyard.”
The Valeyard smiled coldly. “Tell them what else I am.”
The Doctor cocked his head. “An inveterate evidence tamperer? A blight on everything I care about? The man who made me think I’d let my best friend die? He has a humansona. He’s a legal clerk, and his name is Tim. He's a liar, and a twister, and utterly ruthless.”
“All quite true,” the Valeyard said, preening.
“You’re a hypocrite. You break the very laws of time you claim to uphold,” the Doctor said, warming to his theme.
The Valeyard put a hoof to his chest. “You flatter me too much, Doctor.”
“You stand in opposition to everything I hold dear,” the Doctor said coldly.
“I’m your shadow. You can’t escape me.”
“But I killed you,” the Doctor snarled. “Or, well. Did I? Can you kill something that never existed in the first place?”
They were pacing around one another now. “You can’t kill me, Doctor,” the Valeyard said. “So long as my potential exists, I’ll be around.”
“But it doesn’t exist! You said you were from somewhere in between my ‘twelfth and final incarnations’? Well, guess what?” He thumped his chest. “This spot’s already occupied, mate! Why don’t you buzz off and bother the other temporal anomalies?”
Celestia stomped a hoof. “Doctor!”
Both the Doctor and the Valeyard stopped and looked at her. Her mouth was a tight line. “What are you saying?” she asked. “It sounds almost as though -- as though --”
“Yes?” the Valeyard said with a wicked grin.
Celestia opened her mouth, but no words came out. The Valeyard frowned in mock disappointment. “Can’t bring yourself to say it? You always were bad at facing uncomfortable truths, Celly. No matter.”
He reached a hoof back and pulled up the hem of his cape. “A picture says a thousand words, after all.”
Everypony stared. His cutie mark was, in every respect, a twin of the Doctor’s.
Romana trudged up the road to Sweet Apple Acres. Her head hung low, and her tail dragged on the ground. She was so very tired -- physically, mentally, emotionally. She wanted to go back to her rooms at Berry’s, drag herself to bed, and have a nice long cry. She wanted to throw herself into her work, distract herself from the events of the evening. She wouldn’t say no to a glass of ginger vodka and a nice, cuddly barmare to curl up next to, either.
But all that was for later. Right now, somepony needed to investigate what exactly had gone wrong in the Doctor’s TARDIS, and she was the only available pony who was remotely qualified to do so. She glanced up at the farmhouse as she passed by. Somepony ought to tell Granny the news, too, once she woke up. Thank Rassilon that wasn’t her job. She had seen enough drawn, tired, and miserable faces tonight, worn by visitors passing in and out of the rooms like ghosts.
She sighed and tore her gaze from the farmhouse. She wasn’t here for that. She was here for the barn. Or at least, what was inside the barn.
She trotted in and tried the lights. They didn’t come on, and she frowned. “That’s not a good sign,” she muttered, lighting her horn.
The aura sparked and flared for several seconds before stretching out toward the TARDIS like candyfloss. “That’s even less of a good sign,” Romana said grimly, following the trail through the blue double doors.
She flinched at the sight of the mechanical alicorn standing just out of the way of the path toward the console before she realized it was inert. “Goodness me,” she muttered, stepping up to examine it. “So you’re the one that started all this trouble, hm?”
Romana looked the device up and down in the flickering golden light of her horn. “Very peculiar design choices,” she muttered. “Particularly for the Doctor. For one thing, it’s not nearly garish enough. The Prydonian collar, too -- it’s very unlike him to pay homage to Gallifrey.”
She studied the machine for a few more moments before she shook herself to her senses. “Ridiculous,” she muttered, turning to the console. “Now where did he put the telepathic… controls…”
There was a pile behind the console. There was a pile where no pile should be. The pile was a pile of things that looked dreadfully familiar. Trembling, Romana brightened her horn and looked at the pile of bodies lying there. The light from her horn went out like a candle, so that nopony could watch as she broke into tears.
Don’t look back, Button Mash repeated to himself over and over again. Don’t look back, don’t look back, don’t look back.
Button looked back.
He immediately regretted it. Four figures were in hot pursuit of him and his friends. They looked like elongated dragons -- green, scaly bipeds with long, whip-like tails. The only real difference was, these guys looked like they had had their snouts smashed flat with a shovel -- the silver masks that covered their faces did nothing to alter this illusion. Of course, all that rather paled in comparison to the fact that they were chasing him and his friends. Gaining on them, even.
He quickly tore his eyes away and looked forward again. The others were well ahead of him by now. He had never been the fastest of the bunch, even when he wasn’t being weighed down by his bag of tools.
His bag. Could he throw it at his pursuers? It was big and clunky enough to trip them up, and it would free him from his burden.
There were just two problems. The first was, how could he take off his bag without slowing down and getting caught? The second, which admittedly was only an issue once he’d figured out the first, was, could he bear to sacrifice the culmination of years of work?
Well. Yes, actually. It wouldn’t be much good to him if he was dead.
But that brought up an interesting question. His friends were all faster than him. If he got caught now, he could put up enough of a fight to make sure the others got away. If he kept running until he was completely exhausted, these strange creatures might give up first, or they might overtake and capture all six of them. It was a weird variation on the trolley problem.
His mind spun with the implications -- yes it was a noble thing to do, but suppose these creatures just killed him on the spot? He couldn’t think about this in moral absolutes the way he might in a video game, this was his very real life on the line. Was he willing to die for friends he hadn’t seen in years?
Much to his surprise, he found he was, rather. But would his sacrifice really be able to save them?
That was the moment his hooves left the ground and he was hauled into the air. In thinking, he had slowed down, lost track of his pursuers. Now he hung upside down as the four of them crowded around him. Button looked around, feeling oddly resigned. “Well,” he said. “I guess this might as well happen.”
There was absolute silence. Button shut his eyes tight. “Wait,” said one of the figures. “These things can talk?”
Apple Bloom skidded to a halt, horrified. “They got Button! We have to go back for him!”
“Are you crazy?” Scootaloo demanded. “If we go back there, we’re all toast!”
Sweetie Belle glared at her. “So what, you want to just stand here while he dies?”
“No! I want to keep running so the rest of us survive!” Scootaloo said plaintively.
Dinky squinted. “Uh…”
Rumble butted in. “Look, there’s six of us and four of them. None of them are looking up, I can pull off an airstrike and take them by surprise. We can turn this around on them!”
“Hold up,” Dinky said authoritatively.
The others all paused. “What, do you think we should abandon Button, too?” Sweetie demanded.
“Just because you’re in love with him,” Scootaloo said, half under her breath.
“Hey! I’d do the same if it was you,” Sweetie shot back. “And so would Button! We don't leave our own behind, what’s wrong with you?”
“Hey!” Rumble said.
Both mares stopped squabbling. He gestured at Dinky. “You were saying?”
“Well, I can’t help but notice that things seem to have calmed down a lot back there.” She pointed at the pack of aliens. They had set Button down and seemed to be regarding him like they might a well-trained dog. “I think they might not be as violent as they seemed.”
“So… you want to go back and talk?” Apple Bloom asked, incredulous.
Scootaloo scowled. “I don’t like it,” she muttered. “It could be a trap.”
“If it’s a trap, then they’re at least smart enough to negotiate with,” Dinky said. “If worst comes to worst, we’re not exactly defenseless ourselves.”
“That’s true,” Rumble agreed. “Alright. I’m in for giving it a shot.”
Scootaloo shook her head. “You’re all crazy.”
“Fine,” said Sweetie Belle. “Stay behind. I’m going.” She turned and trotted off over the grey sands toward Button and the reptilian creatures.
Rumble and Apple Bloom trotted after her. Dinky stayed behind for a moment, studying Scootaloo. She looked sad. Then she too turned and trotted off after the others.
Scootaloo shut her eyes tight. “I’m going to regret this,” she muttered. Then she, too, started back the way they had come.
Rarity shut her eyes tight and shook her head. “No, I’m sorry, I still don’t understand.” She pointed at the Valeyard. “You’re him, and he’s you. But somehow, your existences cancel out?”
“Yes,” the Doctor said, glowering at the Valeyard. “He was a potential future. I met him in my sixth incarnation. He claimed to be the sum of all my darkest desires and inclinations.”
“Oh?” Ditzy frowned. “Huh. I thought that he’d be, um…”
The Doctor cocked his head. “What?”
“Sexier?” Ditzy suggested. “That’s how it usually works in sci-fi novels. At the very least, I thought he’d have a goatee. And maybe he’d look slightly less like a freeze-dried accountant.”
The Valeyard scowled. “Have a care,” he warned. “You’re in my domain, now.”
“Are we, though?” The Doctor rounded on him. “Because, as I believe we’ve established, you claim to be from ‘somewhere between my twelfth and final incarnations’, whatever that means. Well, this is my twelfth incarnation. By the time I regenerate again, I’ll be in my final body, you’ll have used up all your time, and that’ll be that.”
“Ah. But as you said yourself, we are currently between your twelfth and final selves.”
“Well… yeah,” the Doctor said.
The Valeyard grinned nastily.
“But look, this is my body,” the Doctor said. “No vacancies.”
“Undoubtedly,” the Valeyard said. “For now.”
Luna squinted at him. “Do you simply not know how regeneration works?” she asked. “When you change bodies… that is regeneration.”
“Not necessarily,” the Valeyard said. “Although I’m not surprised you didn’t think to question that. You always did have a habit of unthinkingly accepting information. It made you ever such a pliant companion… and such an easily corrupted one.”
Luna went stiff with outrage. “You dare?” she demanded.
“But of course,” the Valeyard said, his eyes flashing. “You forget. I knew you. I knew all of you, once. All your dark little secrets, all your little quirks. There’s hardly ever been a better time to air old grievances --”
“Your plan,” the Doctor said, his voice hinting at desperation. “You were going to tell us all about your evil plan!”
“Was I? That would be terribly foolhardy of me. You might even get it into your head to stop us. Speaking of foolhardy…” he turned to face the others, and the Doctor's eyes went wide.
Rainbow smirked. “Yeah, you know it--”
“Twilight Sparkle.”
Twilight blinked. “Huh?”
The Valeyard advanced on her. “You’re reckless. Your first instinct is always to use magic, and your imbecilic interventions often only worsen the situation you were attempting to fix.”
“You’re going to supplant me in the timeline,” the Doctor said, his voice rising in pitch and volume as he desperately attempted to divert the Valeyard. “You tried it near the end of my sixth life and I defeated you then. I’ll do the same now.”
The Valeyard ignored him, continuing to advance on Twilight, who backed away from him at the same pace. “You pride yourself as being a paragon of magic and virtue -- better than the likes of those two --” he jerked his head at Trixie and Sunset, “--or, what was her name? Starlight Glimmer? But your impulsive meddling has caused suffering all its own.”
“Oi, Scrapyard!” the Doctor called, now truly desperate. “Are you listening to me?”
Twilight bumped into a wall as the Valeyard continued to advance. “You were alone for so long,” the Valeyard said. “Alone. Friendless. But of course, you were better then. At least you didn’t have any enablers. You should have stayed locked in your library--”
He was cut off then, as a gout of golden plasma enveloped him. Everypony turned to look at Celestia. Her face was like stone as she poured rage-fueled flames onto Twilight's antagonist. Eventually, she stopped, though a raging inferno still blazed around the Valeyard. "Nopony gets to talk to my student that way," she said quietly.
"Duly noted." The flames died down. The Valeyard's coat glittered silver before fading. "And ignored."
Celestia curled her lip. "It's never that easy, is it?"
"No." The Valeyard began to fade slowly from view. "I will return shortly. Don't get comfortable," he warned, before vanishing entirely.
Twilight stood, petrified, against the wall. Spike approached her first, slowly, lowering herself to hold her to his chest. "It's not true," he said fiercely. "None of it. You're wonderful, and all your friends love you. You know that, right?"
He turned to the Doctor. “Is that what you think of her?” he asked, his voice carefully controlled. “Is that how you really feel, Doctor?”
The Doctor shook his head slowly. “Not at all. Twilight --” he turned to look at her. She was still staring at where the Valeyard had been, shellshocked. He softened his voice. “Yes, you are a bit impulsive. Yes, your experiments sometimes get out of hand. But your intentions are always good, and you’re a wonderful pony. I’m lucky to have a friend like you.” He glanced around the room. “And in case it wasn’t abundantly clear, the same goes for all of you lot. The Valeyard is a dark, twisted parody of me. Any minor irritation or flaw will be all he can see or know of you.”
Luna gave a grim nod. “Aye. Just like the corruption of the Nightmare.”
Twilight nodded. “Yes, of course. It’s fine, I’m sorry--”
“No,” said Shining. “No, Twily, you don’t need to apologize for anything.”
“There’s a reason he chose her first,” the Doctor said grimly. “Her magic is drained. Her bonds have been broken, at least for the time being. She’s weakened, isolated on a metaphysical level.”
“And you think the Valeyard knew that?” Rarity asked.
“He’d have plenty of opportunities. You can see the IV drip, there’s a good chance he can get a surface-level read on our minds, and there’s no small chance…” He stopped and took a deep breath. “There’s every chance that he was behind the accident that caused it.”
Silence filled the room.
As Sweetie Belle approached the small group, she started to hear muffled voices. Two of the reptilian things had removed their masks and sat down next to Button. The other two were still masked and standing. One had their weapon at the ready, while the other was considerably more relaxed.
The more militant of the standing pair raised their weapon as Sweetie Belle drew near. She stopped, eyeing it warily. “Um… what’s that?” she asked.
“Keep back!” the reptilian guard warned. “Come any closer, and you will be destroyed!”
Button glanced up, alarmed. The other three reptiles frowned at their comrade. “You know, there’s no need to be so hostile,” one of the pair sitting with Button said. “This one’s hardly more than knee-height. Do you think they’re going to snuggle us to death?”
“These mammals are intelligent and in possession of highly advanced technology! Caution is hardly inadvisable!”
The other four Crusaders had caught up with Sweetie at this point, and all stood at the ill-defined perimeter between safety and danger. “Button?” Dinky called.
“Yes?”
“They haven’t hurt you, have they?”
“Uh, they pulled me up by my tail for a minute before they realized I was sapient. Otherwise, we’ve mostly been talking tech.”
Sweetie Belle let out a sigh of relief. “So you’re safe, then?”
“Um…” he glanced around. “Good question.”
“I think the nicest way to put it would be ‘in our custody,’” said the other reptile-thing.
“An’ who exactly are y’all?” Apple Bloom asked. “Cuz, ya look kinda like dragons, but not really. So, uh, what exactly is yer whole deal?”
“We are the Silurians! Rightful owners of the Earth!” the militant one shouted.
Dinky looked around. “Is that where we are?” she asked.
The other standing Silurian cocked her head. “Do you not know?”
“Honestly, no,” Scootaloo said. “Our friends and families got kidnapped and we just sort of barged in after them without any real plan.”
Dinky glared at her. “Why are you such a downer today?”
“Do you want the list chronologically or alphabetically?” Scootaloo demanded.
“Er…” Button said. “Um, sorry. They usually aren’t like this. It’s been a long day.”
The militant Silurian had latched on to part of what Scootaloo had said. “There are more of you? Where? How long have they been here? Are they armed?”
“Okay, I think that’s quite enough,” said the other masked Silurian firmly. “Izzit, go patrol the hole in the caves.”
“But the creatures --”
“Izzit. Remind me again, who among us has the highest rank?”
“...You, Lieutenant Veela.”
“And who was recently demoted for repeated insubordination?”
Izzit hung his head.
“I see we have an understanding.”
“Yes, Lieutenant Veela.”
“Go patrol around the hole in the caves.”
“Yes, Lieutenant Veela.” He turned and trudged back toward the rift in the earth.
Veela sighed and removed her mask. “At last,” she muttered. “Any more shouting, and I’d have got a headache.”
She regarded Sweetie Belle, Dinky, Rumble, Apple Bloom, and Scootaloo. “So. You’re foreign to this world?”
“Uh, yes, ma’am,” Rumble said.
“You don’t know where we are?”
“...No.”
Veela made a long, complex hissing noise under her breath that sounded like it was probably a curse. “Didn’t you say this was Earth?” Sweetie asked.
“Oh, this decidedly isn’t Earth,” Veela said. “Last time I checked, Earth’s sky was blue, and we only had one sun.”
The Crusaders all glanced up. “Yeah. I can see how this is a little different from that,” Dinky said flatly. The twin suns glowed almost mockingly in the deep orange sky.
“Huh,” said Rumble. “Well, we really just need to get to that tower, so if you could let us have our friend back…”
“Mm.” Veela grimaced. “Unfortunate. You see, we don’t know where we are, either, nor how we arrived here. And as you are the only other sapients in the vicinity…”
“Only other life, you mean,” Scootaloo said, glancing around.
“As well,” Veela said. “Well. You can understand that we might have certain suspicions.”
“You think we might be lying about not being responsible for bringing you here,” Dinky translated.
“Not to put too fine a point on it, but yes, that is a distinct possibility.”
The Crusaders exchanged glances. “Well, you have to admit, she does kinda have a point,” Scootaloo said.
Apple Bloom squinted at Veela. “How do we know you didn’t bring us here?” she demanded.
“We know how we got here, Bloom,” Rumble said patiently.
“Oh. Right.” Apple Bloom coughed. “Well. Ah got nothin’.”
“Is there some way we can prove to you that we don’t want to be here any more than you do?” Dinky asked plaintively.
Veela studied her for a long moment. “You said you had a ship.”
Dinky shook her head. “We’re locked out, and I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t go anywhere even if we could get in.”
“Unfortunate,” Veela said. “You see, unless we can get off this planet, we’re going to run low on food. Our species is naturally carnivorous. Naturally, we would never dream of eating a fellow species of sapients, but, well… hunger is hunger.”
Sweetie Belle turned a little green.
“I think we follow,” Dinky said grimly. “Maybe we can compromise. If you guide us to the tower, we can rescue the most powerful creatures in our world. They can easily get you back home.”
“That sounds a little too convenient,” Veela said, her eyes narrowing to slits. “Rather like a trap.”
“It’s not,” Dinky said. “Even if it was, surely a trap is better than wandering the wasteland out here.”
“We’ll take our chances,” Veela said.
Dinky growled low in her throat. She considered blasting the Silurian, but quickly dismissed that idea. The lizard’s two comrades were just as well-armed, and she doubted that she could take out all three without casualties.
“Hey,” said one of the Silurians. “What’s this?”
Everyone turned to look. He held up a grey device topped with an antenna.
“Oh,” said Button. “That’s just left over from when I was experimenting with radio waves, Sivald. I was trying to build a wireless controller.”
“Do you have any more pieces from that project?” Sivald asked.
“Uh… yeah, I should.” Button dug through the bag’s pockets. “Had to cannibalize some of it for parts,” he muttered.
Sweetie winced. “Please don’t say ‘cannibalize’,” she groaned.
“Oh. Sorry. Aha!” He started pulling out a series of electronic scraps and parts, including something that resembled a tiny radio tower.
“A signal transmitter,” Sivald said, their eyes going wide. “How strong a signal can you get from this?”
Button contemplated that for a long moment. “Hard to say,” he admitted. “I think originally, it could broadcast for about half a kilometer, but I’ve been tinkering with it a lot.”
Veela tilted her head. “Sivald? What are you planning?”
“We could use this transmitter -- with modifications of course -- this should help, yes…”
Veela glanced at Sivald’s silent partner. “Osric?”
Osric looked up. “We can broadcast a distress signal,” they said, simply.
Dinky raised an eyebrow. “Would letting you have these parts be enough of a show of good faith?” she asked.
Veela frowned. “Perhaps. Unless this is some kind of ruse. Sivald. Osric. Are you certain these parts are genuine?”
“Hm?” Sivald glanced up from where he was twisting wires together. “Certain? Well… certain enough, yes. We have enough parts to make repairs if need be, and enough to amplify the signal if we… oh yes, and weld that onto the… hm…”
Veela cast her eyes skyward. “And how sure are we that they haven’t set up a signal-jamming network?”
“Oh, yeah,” Scootaloo said flatly. “Because we wanted to be trapped on the planet Quarry with the pony-eating dragons so badly, we made it impossible to call for help.”
Veela raised her eyebrows in shock and anger. She had been insulted. Worse, she had been insulted accurately. Her fingers toyed with the grip of her weapon.
Quickly, Button stepped in. “I’ll help you put it together,” he offered. “Once you’ve made contact with something, you can let us go, how about that?”
“But the others!” Rumble objected. “They’re still stuck in the tower! If we wait until the transmitter is built -- actually, we’d be waiting to hear a response, which would take even longer -- well, who knows what could be happening to them?”
Button gnawed at his lip. “Good point,” he admitted. He looked up at Veela. “I’ll stay and help. But please, won’t you let my friends go on?”
Veela looked down at the stallion. Against all odds, he was still smiling up at her, hopeful. “You really would, wouldn’t you?” she mused. “Give up your freedom to someone who already threatened to eat you -- just so your friends could get away.”
“I’m sure it won’t come to that,” Button said, his optimism unwavering. “It won’t take long for them to rescue the Princesses and the Elements and everypony else, and I’m sure they can get you home. If you’re really hungry, I think I’ve got some granola bars in my bag somewhere.”
Veela cocked her head. “Gra-no-la,” she echoed. “What in the world is that?”
Button spun around and rifled through the many pockets of the bag. “I dunno if you’ll be able to eat them,” he admitted. “Since you’re carnivores and all. But they’re a pretty good snack for most species in Equestria, so it’s worth a try.”
Veela watched as Button Mash pulled out a few brightly-wrapped rectangular packages. He ripped one open and offered it to the Silurian. She narrowed her eyes. “You first,” she said.
If Button was at all offended by her suspicion, he didn’t show it. “Okay,” he said with a shrug. He took a quick bite off the end, chewed it up, and swallowed. “Now do you want to try one?”
Veela took the bar from him and sniffed it. Grudgingly, she took a nibble and chewed it thoughtfully. “Grains… honey… some manner of dried fruit.”
“Strawberry,” Button supplied.
Veela lifted a wrapped bar to eye level and scrutinized it. “No punctures or tears,” she muttered. “Unlikely to have been tampered with.”
“You really think we’re out to get you, huh,” Rumble said levelly.
Veela paused. “Truth be told?” She shook her head. “No. You don’t seem the type. But this place… one minute we were on patrol. The next, we were in some dirty old tunnels. I can’t afford to take anything on trust.”
“Neither can we,” Dinky said. “We’re all of us strangers here, in a strange land. But we have to trust in something, or we’ll be even more lost.”
Veela toyed with the granola bar, mulling things over. She looked at Sivald. “Have you all the parts you need?” she asked.
Sivald paused and surveyed the disassembly of parts. “I should say so, and more.”
Veela turned her eye toward Button. “You’d stay until it was complete, would you?”
The stallion nodded. Just once, a simple, sharp gesture. He was still smiling, just slightly.
“Good. Then I won’t ask you to.”
“Huh?”
Veela shrugged. “You’ve convinced me. Your intentions aren’t malevolent, and I see no reason to keep you here -- provided you leave some of your rations.”
“Really?” Sweetie Belle asked, frowning. “That seems a little --”
“Perfectly reasonable,” Apple Bloom interrupted quickly.
Button nodded, pulling several more granola bars out of his bag. “And here, juice boxes for when you get thirsty.”
Veela nodded. “In exchange…” She unhooked a device from her belt and handed it to Button. “An electronic map. It uses sonar to make an image of your immediate area. Very useful for finding your way around the caves.”
Dinky took it from Button and turned it around in her hooves. “This could come in handy. Thank you. Just one more thing?”
“Oh?”
“Could you escort us to the pit in the ground? I don’t trust your compatriot not to shoot us on sight.”
“A more than reasonable concern. Very well. Try and keep up.”
The TARDIS stood empty out on the plain, still and silent. A crunching of sand grew ever louder as a figure approached the box. The Valeyard barely glanced around before pulling on the door’s handle. He scowled when it didn’t open, and stepped back to inspect the TARDIS. His glower only deepened as he took in the subtle changes to the box’s exterior.
“I suppose you think you’re clever,” he spat. “Pulling yourself and those children into the Matrix.”
The light at the top of the TARDIS flashed weakly. The Valeyard grinned. It didn’t reach his eyes. “Oh, yes. I know about the Crusaders,” he said. “You seem to forget, I once held the office of Keeper of the Matrix. It borders on the impossible to keep secrets from me, here.”
The light flashed again.
“You will let me in,” the Valeyard said. “You are my TARDIS.”
The light kept flashing, and the Valeyard realized there was a pattern to it. Morse code? Rather plebian, but if needs must…
He translated in his head. Dot dot dash dot dot dot dash, then repeat. An F and a U.
F.U.? What could that -- oh.
The Valeyard snarled. “When I gain control of my timeline, I’ll replace you with a Type-125,” he promised. “Then I’ll make it eat your interior dimensions, until you’re fit for nothing but a London streetcorner!”
The flashing light grew brighter.
The Valeyard turned away in disgust. “I will gain entry to you, one way or another,” he said as he crossed the sands. He faded as he moved away. “Either you let me in, or I break down your doors.”
Then he was gone. The TARDIS stood empty out on the plain, still and silent.
The Doctor had taken to pacing the perimeter of the tomb, inspecting the stonework. Luna had tried to join him, but he’d merely shaken her off and muttered something about Twilight needing her attentions more than he did.
In a sense, this was true. Twilight was still rather shaken from the Valeyard’s lecture. The Doctor attributed that to a combination of psychic manipulation within the Matrix itself and Twilight’s low magic levels. Everyone else quietly thought the Valeyard had just known exactly where to hit her in order to make it hurt the worst.
However, while it was undeniable that Twilight desperately needed to be surrounded by her friends, it was much more difficult to argue that Luna’s presence was strictly needed. Twilight was at all times surrounded by a small gaggle of warm bodies and comforting words. Shining Armor and Spike seemed to have formed a silent pact that one of them would always be at their sister’s side, and Twilight’s various other friends swirled around her. Big Macintosh seemed almost glued to her side.
Even Discord, in an act of what, for them, passed as an act of supreme devotion, attempted to give her some of their own magic. Unfortunately, all that happened was the sudden appearance of several floating bananas. It seemed that magic didn’t function well in the Matrix. Or, perhaps more likely, the Valeyard had ensured that none of the gods present could pose an active threat to his designs.
Only a few of the assembled creatures had strayed from Twilight’s side. The Doctor himself, obviously, was skulking around the dark recesses of the tomb, looking for secret exits or exploitable flaws. Sombra, similarly, had slunk off to sulk quietly in the shadows. Unexpectedly, though, one other had chosen to absent herself from the cluster.
Applejack stood beside the great stone sarcophagus, halfway between the well-lit atrium near the doors and the shadowy back end of the room. Not for the first time, she looked at the huge stone box and repressed a shudder. The thing was so big. How large were the Doctor’s people?
She tore her eyes away. She felt bad about not being there for Twilight right now. But what her friend needed was a little bit of Laughter. She needed praise being Generously heaped on her, Loyal camaraderie, words of Kindness and acceptance and love.
The Valeyard had supplied more than enough Honesty to Twilight. Not Applejack’s own brand, of course, but Honesty nonetheless. Twilight didn’t need that right now, or at the very least, there was somepony who needed it much more. Applejack took a breath and trotted into the darkness.
The Doctor was busily studying a large rock in the wall when Applejack approached. At a casual glance, he appeared not to notice her approach. She knew what to look for, though. They were much the same signs she saw when Apple Bloom was trying to hide the disastrous results of a Crusade, or when she’d caught Mac emptying the cookie jar directly into her mouth. The stiffening of the spine was the most obvious sign, followed by the sharp, pricked ears that were most definitely not turning to register her presence, so perhaps she should stop sneaking around and just pretend that none of this ever happened, does that sound good?
“Doc. We need to talk.”
The Doctor’s poker face collapsed instantly. His ears folded back like wet newspaper, and he twisted to face away from Applejack for a long minute. He didn’t speak for several minutes, and when he did, his voice was guarded. “Can this wait? I think I might’ve found a secret tunnel.”
“Really, now.”
Silence.
Applejack exhaled through her nose softly, shaking her head. “Even if Ah didn’t know you were lyin’, Ah still gotta say, no secret tunnel’s gonna do us much good unless it leads outta th’ land of make-believe.”
“That’s really not what the Matrix is.”
“Ah wasn’t talkin’ ‘bout th’ Matrix. Though, Ah guess a way outta here would be pretty welcome, too.”
The Doctor turned back to her slightly, regarding her out of one eye. “What were you talking about, Applejack? It’s not like you to dance around the subject.”
Applejack's lips flattened into a thin line. “Ah do beg yer pardon. What Ah meant to say was, you gotta get yer flank outta the swamp o’ self-loathin’ an’ delusion that you done been sinkin’ in fer longer than Ah’ve known ya.”
The Doctor said nothing. Applejack nodded. “See, that’s why Ah tried th’ other way first. It’s nicer.”
“Ah,” said the Doctor. “I think, on reflection, I preferred your first approach. It was rather less effective.”
“Well, that’s a sorry shame, ‘cause efficiency is exactly what we need right now.” She sighed. “Ah reckon Ah oughta apologize, Doc.”
Whatever he’d been expecting, it wasn’t that. He turned toward her a little more, tilting his head to one side. “Apologize?” he asked. “Whatever for?”
“Ah ain’t done mah due diligence,” she said simply. “Ah’ve been a bad friend to y’all. All this time, Ah’ve known you were lyin’. Not every detail, not even close. But Ah shoulda guessed. Ah knew all this time that you couldn’t let yerself get close to folk, but you were so damn desperate for them ta be close to you. Ah knew all that, or figured as much, an’ Ah didn’t help ya. Ah thought it wouldn’t be appropriate ta pry, an’ all.”
The Doctor said nothing.
“An’ it’s only got worse, hasn’t it?” Applejack asked quietly. “Well. Ah ask that, but right now Ah reckon we’re all bein’ held in Limbo by a literal manifestation of everythin’ you hate ‘bout yerself, so Ah think we both know where we are on that front.”
“Yes,” the Doctor said coldly. “Altogether a complete and in-depth appraisal of the situation, Applejack. Now, tell me, did you plan to do anything about it besides pointing out the fact that I’m directly to blame for my closest friends in this world being imprisoned by my dark side?”
“Matter of fact, yes.”
He blinked. “Oh. Brilliant. Go on?”
She locked eyes with him. “Ah want to apologize,” she said simply. “Fer bein’ a bad friend when you were in need. Can y’all forgive me?”
“Oh,” he said, deflating a bit. “I thought you had some kind of plan, or… well, never mind. Yes, Applejack. I forgive you.”
“You can forgive me fer not supportin’ ya when y’all needed it?”
“Yes.”
“You can forgive me fer not doin’ mah best t’ help when Ah saw y’all in need?”
“...Yes.”
“You can forgive me fer doin’ what Ah thought was right, even though it only ever hurt ya?”
“Yes!” the Doctor said, clearly irritated by now. “Yes, Applejack, I forgive you. Now, is there a point to all this?”
Applejack reached out and put her hoof on his withers. He jerked away, surprised, leaving Applejack’s hoof hanging extended in the air. She waited a moment, then set it back down. “So," she said quietly. "Why can’t ya forgive yerself th’ same things?”
The Doctor stared at her. She could practically hear the gears whirring in his mind. Then, with a clunk, they stopped, and the Doctor turned away again. “You should go now,” he said.
Alright. Fine. No more pretense. “Doc, we are literally fightin’ yer emotional issues. All this is jes’ fuelin’ it!”
“Another thing that’s my fault, then,” the Doctor rebutted.
“Ugh! This is exactly what Ah mean!” Applejack took a deep breath in and let it out slowly. “Aight. Do what y’all think is best. Can’t fault ya fer doin’ yer best, right? But there’s one last thing y’all oughta know.”
“Oh. What’s that, then?”
“Y’all are loved. By yer friends, by yer family, by all of Ponyville. We’re here for ya. If there’s anything we can do to help, ya just have t’ ask. But Doc… ya do gotta ask.”
There was silence. Applejack breathed out slowly. “Alright,” she said. “Ah’ll be over with th’ others if --”
“Wait.”
Applejack stopped. The Doctor wasn’t quite looking at her, but he wasn’t quite looking away from her, either. “There is one thing you can do for me.”
“Shoot,” Applejack said, turning back to him with a short nod.
The Doctor held out a silver key and pressed it into her hooves. She looked down in surprise. “Th’ TARDIS key?”
He winced. “Sh-sh-sh-sh-shhh! The Valeyard might be listening. Take the key. It’s a sort of insurance policy. I have a feeling the Valeyard will be looking for it sooner or later. Keep it under your hat, give it to somepony else, hide it in the stonework, anything. Just keep it secret. And keep it safe.”
Applejack nodded gravely. “Ah understand, Doc. Y’all can count on me.”
The Doctor gave her the ghost of a smile. “I know I can. Now go, quickly.”
Applejack nodded, and trotted back toward the light side of the room. The Doctor’s smile slipped. He knew that she was right. He was loved. And because of that love, his friends and family had been brought here to suffer. And all of it was his own fault.
Veela and the Crusaders stood at the edge of the crack in the ground. “It was very strange,” Veela remarked. “We were wandering the tunnels, and suddenly the earth cracked open over our heads. Did you see anything that might have caused it?”
Dinky shook her head. “‘Fraid not, sorry.”
“Hmm.” Veela shook her head. “We should all be on our guard.”
“Agreed,” Dinky said with a nod. “Now, do you have any rope? That’s a very deep hole for a little pony…”
“I’m afraid not,” Veela admitted.
“...just throw them in and be done…” Izzit muttered under his breath,
“What was that?” Veela asked sharply.
“Nothing, Lieutenant!”
“Good. I like hearing that from you.”
Dinky glanced at Button. “I don’t suppose you have rope in that bag of yours.”
Button looked at her askance. “Of course not. What would I ever need rope for?”
Dinky gestured at the hole. “‘This’ springs to mind.”
“I --” Button rolled his eyes. “Okay. In my everyday life, why would I need rope?”
Rumble stepped in between them. “How about I just fly you down one at a time?” he suggested smoothly.
“That sounds fine,” Dinky said. “I’ll go first. I’ve got the strongest magical defenses of any of us, so if anything’s around down there with any funny ideas…” She lit her horn and lightning crackled off it.
Izzit stood bolt upright and gestured to her frantically. “The mammals are in possession of powerful bioweaponry! They must be contained and --”
Veela shot him in the chest and he fell over backwards, spread-eagle in the dirt. Apple Bloom looked between the body and the laser pistol. “Uh… is he gonna be okay?”
“Just fine,” Veela assured her. “I had it on ‘stun’. He’ll wake up in about half an hour with a bruise, a headache, and a valuable lesson about not being such a miserable little rabble-rouser.”
“Oh.” Apple Bloom nodded. “Well, Ah reckon that’s alright, then.”
Rumble took wing and grabbed Dinky around the barrel. “Back in a few shakes,” he promised, soaring over the edge and into the dark.
The tunnels were dark and cramped. Rumble hated them on sight. “Are we sure this is a good way to go?” he asked. “At least we could see where we were going on the surface. There might not even be a way into the tower down here.”
Dinky looked around slowly, scanning the walls. “No… no, I know there is. There’s something in my head again."
Rumble frowned and put a wing around his friend, gently pulling her down to sit beside him. “Is it the numbers again?” he asked.
Dinky shook her head. “No, not numbers this time. A poem, like a little nursery rhyme. It’s stuck in my head, but it's nothing I've ever read before.”
“How does it go?”
Dinky shut her eyes, concentrating. “Who unto Rassilon's Tower would go, must choose: Above, Between, Below!”
Rumble looked around. “And this is what you think ‘below’ is?”
“Makes sense, doesn’t it? ‘Above’ could be a hatch on the roof, and that would make ‘between’ the main doors.”
“I’d rather take either of the other two,” Rumble muttered.
“Well, ‘above’ is only really an option for you, and maybe one other, unless you want to ferry all of us to the roof one by one. And ‘between' wasn’t working so well, either. Did you notice the Tower wasn’t getting any closer?”
"Yeah," Rumble admitted. “You think that won’t happen underground, too?”
“Worth a shot,” Dinky said. “Not being able to see the Tower directly, or being out of the way of any ground- or air-based observers would remove at least half of the possible ways there are of keeping the tower away from us. At least, the ones I can think of.”
Rumble sighed. “So even if I did try to take you all up to the roof one by one…”
“There’s a good chance that the simulation would just stretch out the distance to infinity,” Dinky confirmed. “Down here, there’s at least a chance.”
“The way you’re talking…” Rumble trailed off.
“Yeah?”
“You’re making it sound like the universe itself is out to get us.”
Dinky grunted. “Might be. We still don’t know where those Silurians came from. Don’t forget, this is all just a simulation, and we’re not the ones in control of it.”
“So exactly what’s stopping the walls from closing in on us as soon as we’re all down here?” Rumble asked.
Dinky rubbed her chin. “Not sure. But if it was that easy to just kill us all, why wouldn’t it just start raining anvils? Or, easier still, just make our hearts stop beating?”
Rumble pulled a wing over his head. “Remind me why we have these conversations?” he said tersely.
“Just fly up and get the others,” Dinky said. “They’ll be getting impatient by now.”
“Don’t have to tell me twice,” Rumble said, taking off and rocketing back up to the surface.
Dinky ran a hoof over the tunnel wall. It was too smooth to be naturally formed, which lent credence to her theory that they were designed to lead to Rassilon’s Tower. She knit her brow. “Rassilon,” she muttered. “Why is that name familiar?”
She shook her head. The name wasn’t important right now. All that mattered was the rescue mission, and surviving long enough to complete it.
While Rumble and Dinky were down below, their friends milled around topside. Sweetie Belle seemed particularly fascinated by the dark tunnels. She was practically unable to keep her eyes off the hole in the ground. She might glance away for a few seconds at a time, but her gaze would always drift back to the pit.
Apple Bloom sidled up to Veela. “So. Any idea what-all might be down there?” she asked.
Veela shook her head. “Not more Silurians, I’m practically certain. We searched, but could find no trace. There was some manner of robot, but Izzit disabled it.” She made no attempt to disguise the distaste in her voice.
Apple Bloom nodded. “Ya wanted it alive?”
“I wanted answers. It’s probably beyond that point, now. There were few signs of life apart from that, although that’s not a guarantee. My team was brought here by some alien force. Who can say that other creatures won’t be, too?”
Bloom grunted. “Reckon ya got a point, there. Thanks fer th’ heads-up, all th’ same.”
Rumble reemerged from the crack in the earth. “Hey, Bloom! You’re up!”
Apple Bloom gave one more nod to the Silurian, then hurried over to be scooped up by her friend.
Scootaloo was hauled down next, and then Button. Rumble emerged from the cavern one last time and landed next to Sweetie Belle. They gazed down into the pit together. “Are you ready?” he asked softly.
“Are you?”
He scratched his chin. “Nah. Not really.” A pause. “What’re you scared of, exactly? You’ve never been claustrophobic before.”
“It’s not that, exactly. It’s more…” she hesitated, searching for the right words. Rumble didn’t suggest anything, or try to hurry her along. He just sat at her side, waiting patiently for her to find the right words.
“The Silurians came out of there,” she said softly. “And they could’ve killed us. When they caught Button, I was so sure…” she sniffed deeply. “I never would’ve told him how I feel about him.”
“Are you going to do that now?”
Sweetie shrugged. “Maybe? I don’t know. This feels like the wrong time to mention it. Maybe he doesn’t like me back.”
Rumble bit his tongue. “Well, aside from that. Are you scared of the Silurians, then?”
Sweetie rolled that around her mind. “No… not exactly. But we don’t know what else could be down there. We might not be so lucky, next time we run into somecreature down there.”
Rumble nodded. “Yeah. Maybe we won’t. But maybe we will. Maybe we’ll run into nice creatures down there, like Veela. Maybe we’ll get really lucky and not meet anyone at all.”
Sweetie stifled a giggle. “You’re such an introvert.”
“Guilty,” Rumble agreed. “But one way or another, we have to go down there. Dinky’s sure it’s our best shot at rescuing the others, and I trust her.”
“She doesn’t know what’s down there any more than we do, though.”
“No. But we still have to try, don’t we? We’ve faced worse than mysterious tunnels before, right? As long as we stick together, we can do incredible things.”
Sweetie hummed thoughtfully. Rumble scooted a little closer. “Look. I’m scared too. You know I am. I hate this, just so much. But I’m still going down there, because all my friends are down there, too. And that makes it a lot less scary, doesn’t it?”
Sweetie gave a watery smile. “Crusaders forever?”
Rumble grinned. “Crusaders forever.”
She nodded. “Okay. I’m still not ready.”
Rumble stood up. “Neither am I. Shall we?”
Sweetie stood, too. “Let’s.”
He grabbed her around the barrel and together they flew down into the darkness of the tunnels.
Applejack was just adjusting her hat to fit better on her head when Rainbow Dash approached her. “Hey, babe.”
“Howdy, honey.” She leaned in and gave Rainbow a quick kiss on the nose. The pegasus grinned up at her, but that quickly faded.
“So,” she said. “What were you talking about with the Doctor?”
Applejack glanced away. “Got pretty personal there, Sugarcube. Probably shouldn’t tell ya too much.”
“Aw, c’mon. Just the general stuff, then. You know I’m better with the big-picture stuff anyway.”
“Y’mean ya can’t pay attention ta th’ details long enough fer them t’ sink in.”
“Eh. Same diff.”
Applejack chuckled. “Alright, then. Broad strokes, Ah jes’ wanted t’ tell him… well, heck. We wanted an intervention. Ah guess Ah did that for ‘im.”
“A one-mare intervention? Is that a thing?”
“Ah dunno. Wasn’t rightly thinkin’ in those terms when Ah tried it. Don’t seem to have worked too well.”
“Oh.”
“Mighta gotten through to him a lil’ bit,” Applejack admitted. “Got ‘im t’ think a lil’. That’s important, Ah’d reckon.”
“Yeah. Well, if anyone could do it, it’d be you, AJ.”
“Oh. Huh.” Applejack blushed a bit. “Well, shoot, thanks, Dashie.”
“Yeah, you’re welcome.” Dash paused for a long moment. “Hey, AJ?”
“Hmm?”
Dash fiddled a little with her feathers. “Uh… in case we don’t, y’know, get out of this one. Which we will! We totally will. I could take that weedy little lawyer with one hoof tied behind my back --”
“Y’all realize Princess Celestia basically tried t’ burn him into ozone jes’ now, right?”
“Babe?”
“Hm?”
“Please let me have my rampant ego-fueled fantasies. They’re, like, all I’ve got right now.”
“Oh. Yup, that one’s on me. Uh, you were sayin’?”
“I was? Oh! Right. Well, I was talking with Gilda, and she, uh, well, she brought up kind of an interesting question that I’ve been kinda thinking about a lot today. And it’s kind of a funny story actually, but, um…” Rainbow took a deep breath in and let it out slowly. “Oh Celestia.”
“Yes, my little pony?” Celestia called from across the room.
Rainbow Dash nearly jumped out of her skin. “Oh my Cel-- um. Lun-- no, that’s no good.” Rainbow rubbed her chin. “How do princesses swear?”
“Only in private, but very loudly,” Celestia replied.
“Uh, Rainbow?” Applejack asked, cocking her head. “Th’ question?”
“Hm?" Rainbow's head jerked around like a puppet on a string. "Oh! Uh, no, that was it. ‘How do princesses swear?’, ‘cause she was telling me all about Griffish cuss words, and boy howdy, they have some real zingers, and I just had to say how we mostly swear by the Princesses and stuff, and so she was like, what do they swear by, then, and I just didn’t know.”
Applejack blinked. “And, uh, now I do,” Rainbow concluded.
Applejack blinked again. It didn’t take mystical honesty powers to know how much of a pile of hooey that story amounted to. On the other hoof, it didn’t take a genius to realize that a sensitive subject had been broached. “Huh. That is a good question,” she said.
Rainbow sagged in visible relief. Applejack thought for a moment. “Hey, Rainbow,” she said, lowering her voice. “While Ah gotcha here, Ah got somethin’ for ya. Now, don’t make a fuss when Ah show ya, ‘kay?”
“Uh… uh-huh?” Dash said, cocking her head.
Applejack took off her hat and pulled out something shiny. Rainbow’s breath caught in her throat. Had AJ had the same idea? Was she about to propose, but without chickening out?
Applejack pressed the TARDIS key into Rainbow’s hoof. “Keep this, hide it, give it t’ somepony else,” she muttered. “Th’ Doc reckons it’s about t’ be hot property, so we gotta keep it away from y’all-know-who.”
“Oh.” Dash stared down at the key. She wasn’t quite sure how she felt about this development. Then she tucked it under a wing. “Right. You can count on me, AJ.”
“Ah know Ah can, Sugarcube.” She kissed Rainbow again, right on the lips. Then, while Rainbow was still half-stunned, she turned and trotted toward Twilight.
Green and golden light played over the walls of the tunnel as Dinky and Sweetie led the way through the meandering maze of tunnels. As far as tunnels went, it could have been much worse. The floor was relatively clean and uncluttered, and the walls were smooth and dry. However, it was undeniable that it was considerably colder than it had been on the surface, and there were no lights installed apart from the ones produced by the unicorns of the party. Scootaloo had managed to squeeze herself between Apple Bloom and Rumble for warmth, and Button was pressed so close to Sweetie Belle’s side that he might as well have been standing underneath her barrel.
Only Dinky had elected to forego huddling for warmth. She walked alone, ahead of the others. She said little, but they all could hear her teeth chattering. Sweetie Belle met Apple Bloom’s eye and nodded a little as though to say, ‘...should we… y’know?’
Apple Bloom widened her eyes and shrugged as though to reply, ‘why exactly are you asking me?’.
It was a very uncomfortable situation for everyone involved.
After a little while, Sweetie Belle began to sing a little. Her song didn’t have words, exactly, so quite a lot of it was just her going “dum-dah-dum-di-dee!” with occasional interspersed “yeah, yeah”s thrown in.
But every few lines or so, she’d throw in a few odd phrases. “The thinker, the rock, and the lover,” she sang. “Dum-dah-de-de-dum, runs on ahead of the others~”
After a few minutes, Button spoke up. “What’s that song, Sweetie? I don’t think I’ve heard it before.”
Instantly, Sweetie’s mouth snapped shut, her eyes wide with surprise. “Oh! I’m so sorry, I didn’t realize I was singing aloud.”
“Nothin’ to apologize for,” Apple Bloom said. “Ah thought it was real nice.”
“Was that the song you mentioned at lunch?” Scootaloo asked. “The one you were writing yourself?”
Sweetie ducked her head and nodded ever so slightly.
“It sounded wonderful,” Button said. “Please, don’t stop just because we’re here.”
Rumble glanced ahead. “Dinky? Back us up here. Sweetie should keep singing, right?”
“Huh?” Dinky stumbled. “Oh. Yeah! I loved it, Sweetie Belle. I, uh, kinda got lost in it, to be honest.”
“It’s not done yet,” Sweetie said. “Maybe when I’ve finished it, then I’ll sing for you.”
Scootaloo frowned, but shrugged as best she could sandwiched between Rumble and Bloom. “Well, alright. It’s up to you, after all.”
Sweetie nodded again, almost imperceptibly.
Unseen by the party, large figures that had been keeping their distance throughout the song, began to steal closer along the passageway, their horns nearly brushing the ceiling as they hastened to corral their prey…
Tender Care shoved through the doors of Ponyville General and barely restrained her speed to below a gallop to the front desk. She slammed her hooves down as she came to a halt. She looked at the receptionist. He had bags under his eyes and a sag in his jaw. She made an attempt to smile at him, but didn’t quite succeed. “Hi! I’m looking for Button Mash? Failing that, Nurse Redheart, please.”
The receptionist nodded. “Popular destination, this evening. Not that I can blame anypony, given the circumstances. Room 347. And --” he hesitated for a moment. “I’m sorry, ma’am. Really sorry.”
Tender’s mouth drew up tight. “Don’t apologize until you have to,” she said. “He’s still alive, isn’t he?”
“To the best of my knowledge, yes, ma’am.”
Tender nodded, attempted another smile, failed again, and hurried off.
Room 347 was the East Wing of the third floor -- the coma ward. Tender barged into the hallway and stopped. She was surrounded by familiar faces. Lofty patted a sobbing Holiday on the back as the earth pony wept into a hoofkerchief. Thunderlane and Flitter had each taken one of Cloudchaser’s shoulders to cry on. Hondo Flanks stared blankly at the wall while his wife, Cookie Crumbles, leaned on his withers. Granny Smith sat in the corner. She looked older than Tender had ever seen her, like a balloon on a hot summer day.
Every Crusader was now represented, save one. For a fleeting moment, Tender envied Ditzy and the Doctor. They, at least, weren’t awake to know their daughter had met the same fate they had themselves. The moment passed, and Tender felt instantly guilty. “Any news?” she asked softly.
Cloudchaser shook her head. “Not really. It’s the same thing that got the Princesses and everybody. None of us know much besides that.”
Tender closed her eyes for a long moment, then nodded. She glanced around the room for an empty seat, then took the one next to Hondo. The vigil was begun.
“How long have we been walking now?” Rumble asked plaintively.
“‘Bout three minutes longer since th’ last time y’all asked,” Apple Bloom grumbled.
“Probably around half an hour,” Dinky said, consulting the Silurians' sonar map.
“Then shouldn’t we have found the entrance to the tower by now? It wasn’t that far away.”
“We’re not traveling straight toward the tower, though,” Sweetie pointed out. “There are all kinds of twists and turns in this tunnel, plus the forks in the path…”
Rumble frowned. “Can’t you use that detection spell like you did earlier? We’d get to the tower in no time.”
“You remember how out-of-control that spell actually is, right?” Sweetie asked. “I’d be dashed to pieces if I even tried. The map will get us there, don't worry.”
Rumble let out a long groan and slumped forward. “I hate this. Just, so much.”
Scootaloo patted him on the withers. “We know, big guy. Just keep it up, you’re doing great.”
Suddenly, Dinky came to a halt. Sweetie and Button crashed into her, knocking her to the ground, and then the other three crashed into them, until all six Crusaders were sprawled on the ground. No one said anything for a minute, but then Sweetie giggled. “Boy. It’s amazing we never got our cutie marks for tripping over one another, huh?”
The others all chuckled, too. Dinky pulled herself up from the ground. “Hey, Sweetie. Dim your horn a minute, I think I saw something.”
“Shouldn’t I brighten it, then?”
“Not for this.” Dinky let her horn’s light go out, and obediently, Sweetie dimmed her own horn to nigh-imperceptible levels of light. And yet, up ahead, pale light gleamed off the smooth tunnel wall.
Apple Bloom’s eyebrows rose. “D’you think that could be th’ way into th’ tower?”
Dinky scratched her chin, eyeing the fork in the road thoughtfully. “Could be,” she said.
“What else could it be?” Button asked, wary.
Dinky thought about that for a moment. “There, you have me,” she admitted. “I’m not getting any weird information in my head about this one, which, hey, let me be honest here? Kind of a mixed blessing.”
“Do you mean getting the information is the mixed blessing, or not getting the information is?” Scootaloo asked.
“Yes,” Dinky said.
They all stared at the faint light. “So…” Button said. “I guess we put this to a vote? Who’s in favor of checking out the light?”
Dinky rubbed her cheek. “I feel like this might be a trap,” she said. “It’s just… too obvious, right?”
Sweetie twisted her forehoof on the ground. “Maaaaybe,” she said at length. “But on the other hoof, it could be designed so we overthink things and second-guess ourselves and stay away from the actual way into the tower.”
Button sighed. “It’s just -- can we really take the risk that it isn’t the way up? We have to look, at the very least. Right?”
Scootaloo nodded. “Makes sense to me.”
Dinky screwed up her mouth into a tight, twisted bow. “Alright. I’m in. I think I’m correct in saying there are no dissenting votes?”
Everypony shook their heads.
“Then we’ll take a peek. But if anypony thinks that something seems suspicious, or off in any way, we retreat. Sound good?”
“I’m on board,” Scootaloo said. The others nodded their agreement.
Dinky licked her lips. “Alright. Let’s go.”
Tender Care wasn’t sure how long she’d been sitting in the waiting room before the doors of the ward opened. It could have been five minutes. It could have been an hour. The evening was late, her son was in peril, and she simply no longer had the ability to comprehend any time beyond ‘much too long’.
But at last, the doors opened. Romana stepped out first. Usually, she looked as fresh and perky as a daisy. Now, she just looked wilted. Nurse Redheart, who stepped out after her, looked even worse. Tender rose from the chair and stumbled toward her marefriend on legs stiff with pins and needles. Redheart embraced her, and let the tan mare nuzzle into her withers.
Romana cleared her throat. All eyes, red and swollen and teary, fell on her. “Let me begin with the good news,” Romana said. “Everyone is currently fine, more or less. The Crusaders are slightly cooler than they ought to be, but are in no danger on that front. Twilight is still suffering from the magic drain, but we’ve got her on the IV drip. At the moment, all the patients currently appear fine, except Discord, whose heartbeat is... currently forming the bassline of all of DJ P0N-3’s top singles. We’re not sure what that means, if anything, so we’re not going to worry unless their heart either completely stops or starts beating a normal pulse.”
The hopeless stares continued. Romana stopped for a moment to gather her composure. “Now, the bad news,” she said. “Their minds are trapped in a simulated environment. Anything that happens in that environment will affect their corporeal forms. There’s only so much we can do to help them out here.”
Granny Smith tilted her head back. “Only so much?” she echoed. “Meanin’ -- meanin’ there is summat we can do?”
Romana nodded. “Things like refilling Twilight’s magic IV drip, or putting a cold compress on a feverish body. We can observe their needs and meet them as best we can.”
“Don’t worry,” Redheart said. “We’ll be working around the clock to care for them.”
“Do you --” Cookie Crumbles hesitated. “Do you know when they’ll wake up again?”
Romana let out a long, heavy sigh. “No,” she said. “There’s no way of knowing that.”
“You may as well go home,” Redheart said. “There’s nothing you can do tonight.”
“Oh, isn’t there?” Tender Care said, pushing herself upright.
Redheart blinked. “Er, no. Not really.”
“Red. I know you know the physical side of medicine inside and out. But I’m the expert on therapy.” She turned to the other parents and guardians. “Right now, our kids, our friends, our leaders, and Discord, are all trapped in a strange new world. They’re frightened. We can be there for them. Maybe not directly, but nearly. Red, can we sit in with the patients?”
Redheart blinked several times. “Visiting hours are long since over,” she said slowly. “But, I think we can make an exception, if you really think it would help…”
Both mares turned their attention to Romana. She stared back and shrugged. “Frankly, I don’t know how much you could get across. But I doubt it would do any harm. Why not?”
“Alright, then,” Redheart said. “Pile in, ladies and gentlecolts. It’s going to be a long, dark night.”
Sweetie Belle peered around the corner first, scanning the walls, floor, and ceiling for anything untoward. “All clear,” she whispered.
All six Crusaders crept down the corridor. The light was brighter now, though they still couldn’t see the source. Dinky and Sweetie had both extinguished the glow of their horns, as the corridors were now well-lit enough to navigate safely.
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Dinky muttered.
“Why?” Button asked. “Are you getting weird thoughts again?”
“No, I just don’t like it,” Dinky replied.
“Probably just you being a pessimist, then.” Apple Bloom said. “Nothin’ unusual ‘bout that. Keep it movin’.”
Dinky scowled at that, but didn’t argue, marching onwards toward the end of the corridor.
At the corner, Rumble stuck his head around. Immediately he pulled it back, his eyes wide.
“What?” Scootaloo hissed. “What did you see?”
Dinky gestured back the way they had come, inquiringly. Rumble shook his head. “Door,” he mouthed. “Take a look.”
Dinky peered around the corner. Indeed, there was a door there -- a great slab of shined stainless steel. It stood ajar. Beyond it lay a well-lit corridor, lined with more shined metal panels. Dinky looked around. No one appeared to be there, nor could she see any obvious traps. She pulled her head back. Rumble looked at her expectantly.
“I dunno,” Dinky said. “I mean, yeah. It is a door. But that didn’t look like the inside of that old crumbling tower we saw, did it? And I don’t think we’re in the right place for it, either…”
“That doesn’t matter, though,” Rumble said. “We can’t go based on what appears to be true. We’re in a dream, right? We saw already that location and distance are malleable. Why not interior decorating, too?”
Apple Bloom took her turn peering around the corner. “Ah’ll say this for it, looks a lot nicer in there than it does out here. Could be a sign of civilization.”
“That's true, but which civilization?” Button asked. “It could easily be more Silurians.”
“Or anythin’ else, eeyup,” Apple Bloom acknowledged with a bob of her head.
“No risk, no reward,” Scootaloo said. “I say we go for it, we can always fight our way out if we need to.”
“I mean, ‘always’ is a very strong term to use,” Rumble said.
“Hey, guys? I really think we should go in,” Sweetie Belle said.
“Oh?” Button looked at Sweetie Belle. She was staring down the hallway, her expression frozen. He followed her gaze. A tall, dark creature that looked like a mutant minotaur stared back. “Yep, okay, I’m with you.”
The minotaur-thing advanced toward them. “RUN!” Rumble screamed, and all four took off toward the door. Behind them, they heard an enraged mooing noise and heavy hoof-fall. Dinky slammed the door shut as they all passed through.
“Keep going! I dunno how long that’s going to hold it!”
The party wound around corners and forks in the road at speed. Eventually Button shouted, “Stop! Stop. Can’t keep. Going.”
The others all slowed to a halt as the brown stallion slumped against a wall, panting. “You think. We. Lost him?” Dinky asked, struggling to regain her own breath.
“Must’ve,” Apple Bloom said. “Keep yer ears open, though, an’ yer eyes peeled. He’s probably still searchin’ for us. Dinks? What’s th’ map say?”
Dinky levitated the sonar map in front of her. Then she frowned. “That can’t be right,” she said. “It says there should be a pair of branching corridors around here.”
All six looked up and down the hallway. It was a straight shot from one end to the other, with no forks or turns. “Didja smack it or somethin’ when you were runnin’?” Apple Bloom suggested.
“Maybe -- it’s just -- gotten off -- center,” Button suggested. “Lemme -- take a -- look -- at it.”
Dinky silently passed it over, and Button gratefully sagged over it, inspecting the screen and casing.
“So,” said Scootaloo. “I’m guessing this isn’t where we want to be.”
“Gee, ya think?” Rumble said.
“Hey,” Sweetie said firmly. “No fighting. We all agreed to come and check this place out.”
Rumble took a deep breath in and nodded. “Yeah. Sorry. Just a little, y’know. Stressed.”
“Turned it off and turned it on again. Should be coming back online… now.”
There was a cheerful little boodle-oop! as the map flashed back into life. Button beamed at the screen as an image swam into view. Just as quickly, though, his face fell. “I don’t get it,” he muttered, tapping the screen. “It’s still got those side-halls running through it. And --” he squinted. “Little dots?”
Apple Bloom muscled in. “Movin’ dots,” she noted.
The sound of echoing hooves could just be heard coming ever closer to the group.
“Time to run again,” Rumble said, rising.
“How did it find us so quickly?” Scootaloo asked.
At the end of the hallway, they could all now see a horribly familiar figure marching toward them. Then another. Then another.
“Three!” Sweetie squealed as they all raced for the end of the hall. “There are three of them!”
Dinky skidded to a halt. “Oh no,” she muttered. “No, I thought there was a turn here. The map says there’s a turn here!”
But as they could all see, they had run into a dead end.
The creatures' horns began to glow menacingly with orange and yellow light as they advanced on the six trapped ponies.
The coronation of Prince Blueblood had gone off without a hitch, which was just bloody typical. The one time Blueblood had wanted an event protested in the streets, or interrupted by alien marauders, or otherwise delayed, it was over and done with in under an hour and a half. The turnout had been slim, of course. It had been a rushed affair, and most of Canterlot was sound asleep, blissfully unaware that the balance of power hadn’t so much shifted as it had collapsed in upon itself.
Of course, the ones that were awake tended to be around for their own reasons. Blueblood had been running Night Court for all of twenty minutes, and his tongue was beginning to bleed from all the times he’d had to bite it. “I’m afraid, Lord Snootybottom, that the Crown’s budget will not stretch to purchasing you a yacht for your backyard pool,” he said.
Lord Snootybottom shrugged. “It needn’t be a new yacht. I’d accept one secondhoof.”
Blueblood stared at him. “Well. That changes things, I suppose.”
Lord Snootybottom’s moustache curled up in delight. “Does it?”
“Technically, yes. I’m still not buying you a yacht, though.”
Lord Snootybottom scowled. “I’m a citizen! I have the rights to buy whatever I please!”
Blueblood thought about that for a moment. “Yes,” he said slowly. “You’re perfectly within your rights to buy yourself a yacht. But I don’t see --”
“What do I pay my taxes for if not to get things from the government, hm?”
Blueblood blinked. “Lord Snootybottom. You haven’t paid your taxes in over three decades.”
The noblestallion waved a hoof dismissively. “I was using the public ‘I’! Taxes are paid to buy things for the populace, yes? Well, I’m a member of the populace, and I want a backyard yacht!”
Blueblood glanced sidelong at his assistant for the evening, Raven. She merely shrugged. “Lord Snootybottom,” Blueblood said carefully. “If I buy you a yacht, then everypony will want a yacht.”
The noblestallion shrugged. “So buy them all yachts.”
“‘Everypony’ includes the commoners, Lord Snootybottom.”
For the first time, his Lordship looked unsure of himself. “But… commoners can’t have yachts. How will they know we’re better than them if we all have yachts?”
“They won’t.”
Snootybottom went pale and began to shake uncontrollably. “But… but… they’re commoners!”
“Mm.”
“I withdraw my petition!” Snootybottom turned and fled from the courtroom. Echoing after him, one could hear him howling, “The horror! The horror!”
Blueblood leaned over to Raven. “How in the world do my aunts do this for a full court session?” he hissed.
She made a noncommittal noise in the back of her throat. “A combination of years of experience and a pot of tea every hour.”
Blueblood furrowed his brow. “Tea?” he echoed.
“Tea. With milk, honey, and half a bottle of whiskey poured in.”
“Ah. Do you think…”
“Unfortunately, you lack an alicorn’s metabolism.”
“Shame.”
Raven pursed her lips. “A shot per pot?”
“Better than nothing.” Blueblood sighed. “I hate this. I owe so much to the Doctor. I want to be responsible for bringing his attacker to justice, not engaging in a battle of wits with a bunch of unarmed combatants.”
Raven glared at him. “Your highness. You are the last bastion between this nation and total anarchy. You’re saving the nation this way, too. It might not be as personally satisfying, but you are instrumental in ensuring the stability of Equestria, and the world as we know it.”
“Mm, yes. Terrifying, isn’t it.” He straightened up. “Well, get the kitchen staff to put the kettle on. I’m going to need it.”
Raven nodded and hurried off. Blueblood consulted his list. “Next petitioner for the Crown… Mr. Grump.”
An orange-coated stallion with a disastrous mane stood up. Blueblood blinked. Was that an alicorn? No. It was an earth pony with a paper cone taped to his head and poorly-constructed cardboard wings strapped to his back. “I wanna build a wall on the border to Griffonstone,” said Grump. “To keep the birds out.”
Blueblood wondered if it was at all possible to guzzle an entire pot of tea in one go.
In the Sepulchre of Rassilon, the Doctor trudged back into the light. “No good,” he said without preamble. “No escape hatches, no secret tunnels, no hidden doors. We’re stuck.”
“Oh,” said Shining Armor. “Well. Can’t say I’m all that surprised, but it’s still a shame.”
The Doctor slumped on the steps. “There’s always a way out,” he said, half to himself. “Always. I just have to be clever enough to find it.”
Everypony else exchanged glances. “Er,” said Discord. “Far be it from me to actually solve a problem…”
“I just feel so, so useless,” the Doctor sighed. “Thick, thick Doctor.”
Celestia coughed into a hoof. “Old friend,” she began, “I feel that we might have found something that you’ve overlooked.”
“Probably so,” the Doctor said glumly. “I’m an idiot. A twit. A dummy. And thick. That’s what I am. Dummy thick.”
Silence fell. Sunset rubbed her muzzle with a hoof, trying desperately to figure out a way to balance the obvious joke with a note of comfort.
“Doctor,” Ditzy said kindly. “You’re as skinny as a rake. I get to be the dummy thicc one in our relationship, alright?”
“You do possess a most excellent plot, fair Ditzy,” Luna noted.
“Thank you, it’s all down to the muffins and regular exercise. But Doctor, I really think you should consider --”
“I just feel like the answer is staring me in the face!” the Doctor groaned, glaring at the double doors at the front of the room.
Silence reigned. With a sigh and a roll of her eyes, Mac took one of the door handles in her teeth and pulled. Slowly, the great portal swung open. The Doctor stared at it for a long moment. “Ah,” he said.
Applejack made a beeline for the door. “C’mon. If we’re goin’, let’s go.”
“Oh, I’m so stupid!” the Doctor howled.
Ditzy put a wing over his back. “Only sometimes, hon. And we all love you anyway.”
She led the miserable Doctor out into the hallway. Discord watched them go, his brow furrowed. “I don’t like this,” they muttered to Celestia. “The Doctor’s a lot of things -- irritating, egotistical, phenomenally lucky -- but this is new.”
“Not a change for the better,” Celestia agreed grimly. “I have to wonder how much of it falls to the influence that the Valeyard has gained over them, and how much is… well. Just the Doctor.”
“Oh, that’s no question,” Discord said, narrowing their eyes. “After all. They’re one and the same, aren’t they.”
Celestia nodded. “Be on your guard. You know how unpredictable the Doctor is even at the best of times.”
Discord hesitated, tapping their fingers together. “Y’know, I hate to even suggest it to you, Sunbutt, but, well… you remember that little trick I did with the little tap on the noggin?”
“Absolutely not. You can’t interfere with anypony’s mental state!”
“You say that as though their mind hasn’t been quite thoroughly boggled already,” Discord said darkly. “Fine. I’ll keep it for my last resort. And before you get all high and mighty, Luna already told me about your Plan B.”
Celestia had opened her mouth to object, but shut it with a snap. She was silent for a long moment. “Your plan could never work long-term.”
“Yours could only work in the longest of terms,” Discord said coolly.
“...Very well,” Celestia said. “You may try your way first. But only as the penultimate resort.”
“Deal,” Discord said, extending their lion’s paw. Celestia shook it firmly.
The misshapen, bullish creatures were closing in fast. Dinky looked around desperately. There had to be some way around them, some way out of this labyrinth. But their horns were glowing brighter than ever. Tendrils of light stretched out toward the six…
And struck a pale green barrier.
Sweetie Belle stood athwart the trio of minotaur-like beings, her horn glowing the color of jade. She had thrown up a shield between them. The three creatures stared at one another for a moment, then reached out with their glowing horns again. Where the orange light hit the shield, it began to eat away at the construct. Sweetie gasped, then redoubled her efforts.
“Sweetie,” Button said, his voice shaking, “they’re eating your magic.”
“Mm. Mm-hm!”
“The more energy you put into that shield, the more they’ll consume.”
“Yeah, I got that!”
“That’s going to kill you!”
“Well, think of something else, fast!”
“Uhh…”
Dinky lit her own horn, conjuring a series of fast-moving darts of light that stung at the creatures from all sides. Two of them turned to face this new threat. The third continued to focus on Sweetie’s shield, though his concentration kept breaking as the darts struck his neck, legs, and arms.
“Okay, that’s all I’ve got!” Dinky said. “Anypony else got some bright ideas?”
Scootaloo was staring at the map intently. “It’s got these guys mapped out, alright,” she muttered. “And the corridor length is exactly right, too. So why does it say there’s a turn here?”
She frowned at the wall to her left, then at the map. “Guys? I think this whole place might be an illusion.”
“Yes?” Dinky said. “We’re literally in the Matrix. None of it’s actually real, but it can still definitely kill us.”
“No, I mean like…” Scootaloo reached out a hoof toward the wall. It passed through as though there was nothing there.
Dinky stared, and the last of her magic darts slammed into the middle creature’s crotch. It doubled over in pain. “Okay,” she said levelly. “That’s… of course! That’s why it’s so bright in here, even though there aren’t any visible lights, the whole thing’s made of light! Let’s go!”
“Hold on,” Rumble said. “What about the bull guys? They’ll just chase us out.”
“I’ll hold them back,” Sweetie said. “Dinky? More darts?”
“Oh, I think I can do better than darts,” Dinky muttered. “When I give the word, drop the shield and run.”
“Got it!”
“Everypony else, move out!”
The five raced through the illusory wall and into the dark tunnel beyond. Dinky held up the map in front of her. “There’s a juncture… there! Sweetie Belle! Run for it!”
Sweetie stumbled as one of the minotaur-shaped things smashed her shield with its horns. With one last push, she expanded the boundaries of the spell, shoving the creatures back with a wave of pure force. Then she dropped the spell and ran like crazy, her long, elegant legs moving in a mad dash toward her friends. After a few moments, the creatures followed after her, lowing in fury.
Dinky lit her horn, and a trio of fireballs ignited behind the bull-things. All in a row, they slammed into the creatures’ backs, sending them sprawling as Sweetie ran on, unharmed. She joined her friends in the junction. “Are they… dead?” she asked.
A low moo was her reply. The creatures rose, one by one. The lead one reached out an arm. “You may have been clever enough to escape the Power Complex. But you cannot escape the Nimon!” it growled. “We are as gods, and you are but irritating mosquitoes. You will be consumed, and we will find a way to resume the great journey of life! Starting with that meddlesome hussy…”
They strode forward. All six stepped back, terrified. Suddenly, there was a cracking noise and everyone looked up. They ought to have looked down. A great slab of rock rose from the floor, sealing the Nimon off from the ponies. There was a long moment of silence.
Rumble picked up the sonar map and waved it at the wall. “That thing’s… about two meters thick,” he said quietly.
Scootaloo knocked on the wall. “I guess whatever caused that crack in the ground must’ve done this too, right?” she asked.
“I guess…” Dinky stepped forward and touched the wall. “At least this time it did more good than harm.”
“Ah don’t like this. It’s too unpredictable. Any minute, th’ ground might go out from under our hooves, or th’ walls are gonna close in on us.”
Rumble winced. “Could you please not mention the walls closing in?” he begged.
Apple Bloom covered her mouth quickly. “Sorry. Mah bad.”
Rumble shook his head. “It’s whatever. Let’s just get out of here before the beef boys back there figure another way out of their maze.”
Dinky turned the map around in her hooves and pointed down the hallway to her right. “That’s the way that’s closest to the tower,” she said.
Rumble was trotting away before she’d even finished her sentence.
The Doctor hadn’t returned to his normal perky self since leaving the sepulchre, but he had at least stopped constantly bemoaning his own flaws and was able to walk around of his own volition. This came as a relief to everypony present. They had all, consciously or not, elected to stick together as they explored the tower.
To be honest, there wasn’t much to see. Entire corridors of stone were utterly unadorned, with only a few occasional tapestries or statues to liven up the walls. Rarity squinted at each one and curled her lip. They were all quite ugly, but the Doctor seemed to know the history of each of them.
“Now, that chap there is Pandak the First,” the Doctor said, waving at a bust of a stallion with a tonsure and a very square face. “Contemporary of Rassilon, back in the old days, he founded the Scendeles chapter. He was one of the first presidents of Gallifrey before… well, before Rassilon usurped him and the entire High Council.”
“This Rassilon of yours doesn’t seem a particularly pleasant sort,”Cadance noted.
The Doctor winced. “Er, no. Very much not a pleasant fellow. Some of his incarnations were charming enough, but, well…” He shook his head quickly. “Come on. The main doors must be around here somewhere. Keep your eyes peeled for an enormous chessboard, that’s one of the major traps between the door and the sepulchre.”
They walked on. Rarity kept frowning at every tapestry they passed. However, Sunset couldn’t help but notice that her scowls were getting less rancorous and more and more confused. She leaned in. “Is something the matter?” she muttered.
“Possibly,” Rarity replied. “I can’t be quite sure, yet, but I think…” She trailed off, worrying at her lip.
After a few more corridors, Rarity stopped dead in her tracks. “There, that clinches it.”
Everypony else paused and looked at her. “Clinches what, exactly?” Trixie asked, looking around.
Rarity gestured imperiously at the nearest bust. “May I present Pandak I, founder of the… what did you call it? Scented candles?”
“Scendeles,” the Doctor muttered, stepping forward to get a better look at the statue. There it was -- the familiar tonsure, the remarkably square jaw and muzzle.
Rainbow Dash took to the air, folding her hooves. “You mean we’ve been going in circles?” she demanded.
“So it would seem,” Rarity said.
The Doctor shook his head. “Impossible. We went down a flight of stairs since the last time we saw this statue. It must just be a similar work.”
“Oh? And how likely is it that two busts have the same chip in their ear?”
Everypony peered closer. There was indeed a small chip at the tip of the left ear.
The Doctor sucked in his breath through his teeth. “Are you… sure it was on the last one?” he asked.
She looked at him flatly. ‘Yes, yes, I know, stupid question,” the Doctor said, waving a hoof vaguely. “Alright, we’ve been walking in circles.”
“But we can’t have,” Ditzy put in. “You said yourself, we passed this bust upstairs.”
The Doctor pulled down his muzzle with a hoof. “Yeah.”
“So what does that mean?” Shining Armor asked, tilting his head.
Ditzy looked at Mac. “Missing scenes?”
Mac nodded grimly. “Eeyup. Or summat like.”
Fluttershy glanced between the two of them, puzzled. “Um… am I missing something?”
Ditzy raised her eyebrows at Mac. The big farmer glanced away. “Uh… you tell it, Ditz. Y’all are better at talkin’ than me.”
“But it happened to you,” Ditzy pointed out gently. “It’s important that we get all the information.”
Mac hemmed and hawed for a moment. Then a graceful purple figure stepped forth hesitantly. “Mac? Something… happened to you? Are you alright?”
“Hm?” Her green eyes went wide. “Oh. Uh. Fine now. Eeyup. It was real scary at th’ time, though.”
Twilight reached out a hoof. “Would you tell us about it? Please? It might be really important, you know? And even if it isn’t… well, I don’t like when my friends get hurt.”
Mac stared into her eyes, and gently took Twilight’s hoof in hers. “Well, it happened as Ah was on mah way t’ Carousel Boutique,” she said.
As she recounted her strange encounter with more smooth and fluid eloquence than anypony outside the Apple family had ever heard out of her, Ditzy cantered around the crowd to take a closer look at the bust of Pandak. There was something very strange about its presence here, but she wasn’t quite sure what, yet. She resolved to share her suspicions only after Mac was done speaking -- she seemed to be growing more confident with each minute of holding Twilight’s hoof, and Ditzy didn’t dare interrupt that. Even in such a dark prison, she could take comfort in the joys of others.
The trek through the tunnels was quieter now, and swifter. It was painfully clear to all of the Crusaders that the Silurians and Nimons almost certainly weren’t the only creatures stalking these tunnels. They needed to escape and find the others before they ran into a creature that they couldn’t defeat.
Dinky lit the way alone now. Sweetie Belle’s shields had taken a lot out of her, and the pale unicorn hung back, leaning on Rumble for support. Button had taken control of the sonic map and was guiding the party along. Scootaloo trotted along in the middle of the herd, staring down at her hooves as she went. Apple Bloom took up the rear guard, ready to buck any sneaky creatures lurking in the shadows directly into next week.
They had been walking in silence for several minutes when Rumble spoke up. “So,” he said. “Dinky.”
“Yeah?”
“I wanted to ask you about something you said earlier. On the surface.”
“Oh.”
“Just before the Silurians showed up, you said this wasn’t how it was supposed to be.”
“Ah. That.”
“What did you mean? How was this ‘supposed to be’?”
Dinky was silent for a long minute. Scootaloo glanced up. “Did you know this was gonna happen?” she asked. She sounded tired.
“No! Of course not. I would’ve broken that stupid alicorn-bot ages ago it I’d known it would do all this.”
“Then what--” Rumble started.
Dinky turned and glared. “I meant our stupid reunion, okay?” she said. “We were supposed to get along and be happy! Nothing was supposed to have changed, and now this is the fourth argument I’ve had with one of you just today! We weren’t supposed to have moved on the way we have. Not from each other, not from Ponyville!”
The tunnel walls shook, and Rumble and Sweetie Belle clung to one another. Dinky took several heavy breaths, her hooves trembling. When she spoke again, her voice was quiet and shaking with the effort of holding back tears. “We were still meant to be friends.”
Nopony said anything for a long moment after that. Dinky sat down heavily on the floor, tears sliding over her cheeks. Then Button set down his bag and wrapped Dinky in a hug. “We are still friends,” he said. “I promise, we are. Yeah, we’ve been arguing more than usual today, but…” he coughed. “Well, today hasn’t exactly been a normal day for us, right?”
“I think ‘stressful’ covers it,” Sweetie said.
“Yeah. And, y’know, it has been awhile since we all saw each other, so we had to get used to that again. And…” he hesitated.
“And ponies do change,” Rumble said gently, stepping forward. “We all have. Even you, Dinks.”
“But that doesn’t mean we’ve stopped caring about you,” Sweetie Belle said. “Just like you haven’t stopped caring about us.”
Dinky nodded slowly. “I know,” she said. “It’s just… I dunno.”
“Yeah,” Scootaloo said. “We know. It’s been a long day for you, too. Let it all out, bud.” She stepped forward and joined the group hug.
“I know it seems like we’re all moving on from one another, but that’s not true,” Rumble said, walking closer. “We’ll always be friends, Dinky. We’ve been through way too much together to just let that slip away.”
“And we’ll always be there for one another, too,” Sweetie said firmly. “No matter how far apart we live from each other, we’ll always write, always visit each other when we have the chance…”
Scootaloo and Button both shuffled around slightly to let Sweetie and Rumble join in on the hug, which they did quickly and with delight. Dinky snuffled back her tears and gripped them all tightly. Scootaloo wriggled around to peer into the darkness. “Hey, AB! Come get in on the cuddlefest!”
There was no reply.
Rumble raised his head and squinted. “Bloom?” he called. His voice echoed back up and down the tunnel. The five Crusaders clung to one another a little more tightly. It felt very cold in the tunnel, all of a sudden.
“--An’ that’s when Miz Rarity let me take mah forty winks in her spare room,” Mac concluded.
Rarity looked like she’d taken a punch to the gut. “Macintosh, darling, I’m so terribly sorry. If I’d only known --”
“Eeyup. But Ah didn’t tell ya. Ain’t yer fault.”
Rarity pursed her lips. “The gall! Using my face to torment you. Ooh, if I ever get my hooves on that two-bit impersonator…”
“The gold light,” Twilight said slowly. “That tallies well with my observations in the time loop. And the energies that brought us here, they were gold as well.”
“Then… the Valeyard is at fault for all that?” Trixie said. “Huh. He sure gets around.”
“In a manner of speaking, yes,” the Doctor agreed. “The only thing I don’t understand is how he garnered the power to do this kind of thing. Even at his most powerful, he couldn’t manipulate time on this scale; he just interfered with the Matrix to make me look bad during my trial.”
“And that’s all he did?” Cadance asked.
The Doctor rubbed his chin. “Well, later on he manipulated real-world events to get his way. He stole an emotional manipulator from a werewolf colony, then used it to harvest negative emotions in Victorian London… then used that power to manipulate the Matrix, temporarily replacing me in real space. But I stopped him! Not only that, the powers of the Matrix were curtailed as a result of that misadventure. Thankfully, I had the ear of the Lady President. He shouldn’t have that kind of control now, and he should never have had the control to manipulate reality that way.”
“Never say never, Doctor,” the bust of Pandak said. Ditzy leapt back from it like a scalded cat, and everypony else spun around in shock.
The stone cracked and crumbled as the Valeyard stepped out from the wall itself.
“Are you just not able to walk into a room like a normal pony?” Rainbow Dash demanded.
The Valeyard ignored her. “So. You finally figured out the secret escape from the room; the enormous unlocked doors in the best-lit part of the room. Congratulations.”
Sunset frowned. “You meant for us to escape, then?”
“Escape? You naive fool. You haven’t escaped anything. This tower, this entire planet is your prison, and I am your jailor.”
Twilight shrunk back from the ashen figure, and Mac put a protective hoof around her. The Valeyard gave both mares an evil look before tracking the faces of all the other ponies in the room. His eye lingered for a moment on Pinkie Pie. She returned the glare with interest, her eyes like cut sapphires. Then he moved on, his gaze falling on Fluttershy. Discord tensed.
The Valeyard gave a cruel smile and stepped forward, leaning forward as Fluttershy shrank away. “Now remind me,” he said. “Who are you, again?”
“I, I’m Fluttershy.”
“Oh, of course. The weak one. The coward.”
Discord raised a paw, but Fluttershy looked back and smiled at them reassuringly. “I’m not really weak, you know,” she said. “But sometimes I can look that way, I agree. All of my friends are so very strong, sometimes it’s easy for me to fade into the background.”
The Valeyard leaned in. “And that’s the way you like it. Hidden. Safe. Anonymous.”
Fluttershy cocked her head. “Well, yes.”
The Valeyard furrowed his brow a little. Discord chuckled drily. “Oh dear. You’ll have to try a lot harder than that to get to her. I found that out the hard way.”
“Oh? Perhaps I should take a page from your handbook, then.” The Valeyard swiftly brought a hoof around and bopped Fluttershy on the head. The color leached from her body. Discord screamed, grabbing their face in their claws.
Fluttershy cocked her head. “I… don’t feel any different,” she said. Her color slowly faded back to its full saturation.
The Valeyard sneered. “Obviously not. Your power was never my target. Your little crush, on the other hand…”
Discord’s head whipped around. “Her what?”
The Valeyard didn’t reply. “You remember what you did, Discord. What you did to her, to Equestria. To your former friends?”
Discord sneered. “I’m not about to listen to moralizing from the likes of you.”
“No? Is it because I’m no better than you? I can tell you that I’m not worse. You can’t even blame all your actions on a corrupting outside force, like poor little Luna, or tragic, desperate Sunset Shimmer.”
Discord’s eyes narrowed, but went wide as the Valeyard delivered their final shot. “You have more of your elder sibling in you than you like to admit…”
“Why you!” Discord snarled and snapped their fingers. What had probably started as a terrible curse of the first order resulted in little more than a spray of lemon juice. “You know nothing about Entropy! Nothing!”
The Doctor stepped forward. “Leave them alone, Valeyard. I’m the only one you’ve got it in for.”
The Valeyard turned to look at him, already ignoring Discord as Fluttershy hurried to calm and restrain them. “Yes,” the Valeyard mused. “Self-loathing has always been an issue for us, hasn’t it? I think you’d better talk it out, don’t you?”
The Doctor blinked. He hadn’t expected that. “Er… alright. Let’s talk,” he said.
The Valeyard grinned maliciously. “Oh. Did you think I meant with me? No. You’re getting a group session, Doctor.”
Before anypony could fully react to that statement, the world spun around them, sending them all toppling to the ground. When they rose...
"It's the tomb room again!" Trixie said, glancing around. She squinted. "Funny. Trixie remembered it being brighter in here..."
Ditzy was concerned with a more pressing matter. "The Doctor! Where is he?" she demanded.
The Doctor grunted as he fell painfully on his side. Glancing at the ceiling, he could see that he was trapped in a room of mirrors. He rose unsteadily to his hooves and looked around. “Oh. Oh no.” In each mirror was a figure. None of them were the Doctor’s reflection, but all were undeniably the Doctor. He couldn’t even count how many there were, with the way all of them were reflecting onto one another, sending the myriad Doctors out into infinity. None of them looked pleased. Just as the implications of what the Valeyard had said sank in, they all began to speak at once. Through the clamor of voices, the Doctor could only make out a few sentences at a time.
“You push the blame for the Time War onto me,” said a rust-colored earth pony with a ragged grey goatee. “As though you could separate your actions, your thoughts into one incarnation. What I did, you did too!”
The army-green stallion with his short-cropped mane stepped forward, his eyes blazing. “You lost Rose,” he said, his voice shaking with fury. “You lost her.”
A short orange mare with a blonde mane shook her head at him. “Look at you,” she said. “You’re so afraid to die, but you don’t remember how to live! You’re so afraid to lose, you push away everything you’ve won. Friends, family, happiness -- you can’t accept any of it.”
The oldest face, a mint-green unicorn, shook his walking stick at him. “Is this my future?” he demanded. “Is this how I spend my days, hm?”
“Simply put, old boy, you’ve lost your shine,” said a red crystal pony in an Inverness cape and frills. “You’ve spent your time crying over the bones of Gallifrey? Venerating the memory of a bunch of genocidal old sticks?”
“Admit it,” said the purple unicorn in the green velvet jacket. “You wish you could be us. Any of us but you, wallowing in your own self-imposed exile.”
As more and more iterations and incarnations added to the litany of complaints, the Doctor did the only thing he could think to do. He put his hooves over his ears and howled.
“Where could she have gone?” Rumble demanded. The group had searched up and down the last thirty meters of the corridor time and time again. Each search brought no joy, no clues, and really, nothing apart from a massed collection of rocks.
“There was that little tremor in the tunnels a minute ago,” Sweetie said, tapping her hooves together nervously. “Do you think that could have had something to do with Apple Bloom vanishing?”
“It’s definitely something to keep in mind,” Scootaloo said.
Rumble swallowed hard. “You mean, like,,, she was just swallowed up by the rock?”
“I didn’t say that--”
“But you were thinking it!” Rumble’s eyes darted from one wall to the other as though they might start sliding together at any moment. “The ground could’ve split open, and she fell through and it closed again,” he speculated. “Crushed to death and buried alive all in the same final breath.”
“Rumble,” Scootaloo said carefully, fluffing up her feathers. “Take a breath.”
He shook his head violently. “I don’t think I can. I don’t think I should. There’s so little air down here --”
Dinky sighed. “And you were doing so well…”
Button took Rumble’s face in his hooves. “Man, just listen to me. Listen to the sound of my voice, okay? You’re alright. You’re safe. You’re with your friends.”
Rumble was still shaking, but it had subsided considerably. “Okay,” he said. “Okay. Thanks, Buh, Button. Thanks, guys.”
Scootaloo side-eyed Dinky. “He was ‘doing so well’?” she asked drily.
“Well, he was!” she protested. “I was quite proud of him for facing his fears for so long.”
Scootaloo intensified the side-eye. “I am proud,” Dinky corrected quickly. “I am. I’m proud of you, Rumble, You’re doing great.”
Rumble chuckled shakily. “Well. Took some coaxing, but you got there. Thanks.”
“Alright,” said Button, letting go of Rumble’s face. “You good?”
Rumble scrunched his muzzle and tilted his head from side to side. “For now, I guess.”
“Okay.” Button picked up the sonic map again. “Let me just zoom this thing out and check for life signs…”
“Why didn’t you just do that in the first place?” Scootaloo asked.
“It’s easier and faster just to look if she just got stuck somewhere in this corridor,” Button said, adjusting the dial on the box. “But since she isn’t…”
“Time to use a broader search method?”
“Exactly,” Button said. “On the subject of…” he squinted. “Alright. This should give us an accurate picture of life signs in the tunnels for three kilometers around once it loads.”
Scootaloo cocked her head. “How long does it take to load?”
“Uh…” Button checked a readout. “Ten minutes. No, fifteen minutes. Oh, seven sec -- nope, half an hour. Four minutes? Um…”
Suddenly, they all heard a not-so-distant shout followed by a brief stream of cussing that was quickly cut off. “Or,” Dinky said, “we could just follow that.”
“Yep!” Button said, tucking the map into his bag. “C’mon, I think it came down this tunnel!”
As the Crusaders hurried down the tunnel from which Apple Bloom’s voice had come, they heard another voice, deep and slow. “Little pony should not be using the bad words,” it said. “Little pony should be good and sweet and nice.”
The five Crusaders peered around the corner into what could only be described as a cave. The ceiling was vaulted, and the whole edifice was much more ill-kept than the tunnels they had been walking through. The floor was dirty, and the walls were rough, forming ledges and cliffs. Complex stalactites and stalagmites sprung up every which way. In the center of it all, the Crusaders saw Apple Bloom. She was being held in the huge, meaty paw of a cave troll, which was easily larger than the barn at Sweet Apple Acres. He was currently scolding her, shaking his finger in her face. She looked like she was seriously considering trying to bite it off.
“Lemme go, ya darn galoot!” Bloom said. “Ah’m busy!”
“Yes. Pony very busy little pony.”
“...Alright. So are ya gonna put me down or--”
“First, pony’s hair must be brushed!”
“...An’ that’s a no,” Apple Bloom grumbled. The enormous troll picked up a comb from the floor and started cheerfully brushing her mane.
The others all pulled back. “Okay,” Rumble said. “So it doesn’t look like she’s in immediate danger, but we also clearly can’t just leave her there.”
“Agreed,” Dinky said. “We can’t overpower him.”
“Not even with magic?” Scootaloo asked.
“Cave trolls are notoriously resistant to direct spellcasting,” Dinky said. “I could try and throw a big rock at his head, I guess, but it’d probably only make him angry. Plus, some of the shrapnel might hit Apple Bloom, and that’s assuming we don’t get all Of Mice and Mares.”
Button frowned. “Rephrase that for those of us who didn’t do so hot in Literature class?”
“He gets distracted and suddenly has a handful of applesauce,” Scootaloo said grimly.
“Oh.” Button looked ill. “Got it.”
Dinky was peering around the corner again. “The ceiling’s real low…” she mused. “He can’t even walk upright like this. I bet we could outrun him pretty easily, maybe hide in one of the narrower tunnels if it came to that.”
Sweetie Belle nodded. “Yeah, probably. But we still need to distract him. How can we get him to put down Apple Bloom for long enough for us all to escape?”
Rumble peered at the huge troll, who was still brushing Apple Bloom’s mane with surprising care and tenderness. “It looks like he’s trying to give her a makeover. Do any of you have any, I dunno, makeup? Accessories? Get him distracted with those for long enough, and we can all make a clean getaway.”
He looked at Sweetie Belle hopefully. She arched an eyebrow. “Suuure. I always take my makeup bag with me on dangerous missions to distant planets.”
“Hey, listen. You know as well as I do who your sister is. Is it so improbable that she would have taught you from a young age to do exactly that?”
“Button?” Dinky tried. “Anything in that bag of tricks?”
“Uh…” He dug around. “Seven half-empty bottles of hoof polish?”
“That’ll work,” Sweetie said. “You and Apple Bloom are both autumns, so at least some of those colors should work…”
“Only, like, three of them are for me,” Button said. “The rest were mostly for making marks on parts and machines, so they’re, y’know. Really bold.”
Dinky glanced out into the adjoining corridor. “If the color of the ribbons he’s tying her mane up with are anything to go by, I think that’s only going to be a positive.”
“Alright. Anypony else got any makeover gear?” Sweetie asked.
There was a collective shaking of heads. “Okay then. Now, how are we going to get the big guy’s attention?”
“Somepony’s going to have to go out there and start trying to sell these to him,” Dinky said.
“They’ll have to be really fast to keep him from scooping them up, too,” Button said.
“And small,” Rumble put in. “Generally nimble.”
Scootaloo rubbed the bridge of her muzzle. “Just give me the stupid bottles already.”
“You know, of course, that you’ll never be able to live outside my shadow, don’t you?” a massive brown earth pony draped in a tangled, lengthy scarf said, his toothy grin sparkling with prideful malice.
“You’ve had centuries of spare time,” the elderly unicorn said, leaning on his cane to glare down at his collapsed future self. “Centuries! And yet you never once lived up to your promise, hm? You never went back to see your own granddaughter.”
“You’re letting your misery consume you,” a blue batpony in dark glasses and a hoodie warned. “If you’re not careful, it’ll destroy everything you love.”
“You’ve become careless with your companions,” warned a pinto pegasus with celery pinned to his lapel. “How quickly do you move on these days? Do you even remember all of their names?”
The Doctor opened his mouth. “Susan,” he croaked. “Ian. Barbara. Vicki…”
“None of them here now,” a blue pegasus clad in a question-mark-patterned sweater noted archly. “You’ve sacrificed an awful lot of pawns, Doctor, for someone who claims to hold life so dear.”
“We aren’t so different, y’know. You and me,” said the image that the Doctor had almost thought was his own reflection. It wasn’t, though. Not quite. “We were both born in war. Forged in fire. And you couldn’t even bear to look at me. Couldn’t face the clone, even if it was only half-you.” He blinked and laughed bitterly. “Looks like I’m half-human on my mother’s side after all.”
“The screams will always haunt you, you know,” said a gangly pegasus in a fez and bow tie. “Forever and always.” He glanced around quickly, then leaned in. “And they always should. No one should ever be able to. Let them fuel you, spur you on to make sure it never happens--”
The tide of voices quickly rose once more, drowning out the blue pegasus. The Doctor blinked. That had actually almost sounded… encouraging?
He looked around at the assembled reflections. He could recognize his past and present selves behind the mirrors. Off in the distance, he could even see a few alternate histories lurking in the shadows of the glass. But there were a few that he could see, but couldn’t recognize. The twinky, gangly pegasus. The retired rockstar batpony. The tiny blonde earth pony. The Doctor shook his spinning, aching head. He focused on the orange mare. “Hang on. Who are you?”
She gazed at him seriously for a long moment. Then she looked round at the other two familiar faces. “Alright lads! Contact!”
“Contact,” the old batpony said.
“Contact!” the skinny pegasus crowed. All three shut their eyes in concentration. None of the other Doctors seemed to pay them any mind, not even as their own mirrors winked out of existence one by one, until the room the Doctor was trapped in was a perfect equilateral triangle.
The Doctor glanced around. “I don’t understand,” he said.
The batpony chuckled. “What? You think the Valeyard could kick up something this big without disturbing a few other potential futures?”
“That’s us! Hallo!” The pegasus waved. The Doctor waved back, uncertain.
“Now!” said the orange earth pony. “We can’t actually interfere directly, obviously. WWe can’t even stay here like this very much longer”
“Oh,” said the Doctor.
“But we’ll be doing what we can!” she assured him.
“In the meantime, remember what we told you,” the pegasus said.
“You… haven’t told me anything, though.”
The one in the hoodie groaned. “Rassilon give me strength.”
“Oi!” the mare frowned at the old batpony. “He’s been through a lot. Not exactly at the top of his game. Go easy on ‘im.”
“Let’s put this another way,” the one in the fez suggested. “You’ve accepted your burden, Doctor.”
The old one nodded. “Now you just need to accept that others can help to bear it.”
“Allons-y,” the earth pony said with a sharp nod. Then she gave a grin and winked at him. All three mirrors shattered, sending the Doctor falling into an endless void, screaming as he went.
“Alright,” Sweetie Belle said. “We all good with the plan?”
“I still don’t love it,” Scootaloo said. “But yeah. Let’s do this thing.”
Rumble sneaked a peek around the corner. “Okay, he’s looking the other way. Everypony, get into position!”
All five ponies scurried out into the cavern beyond. Dinky and Rumble hid behind a stalagmite, while Button Mash and Sweetie Belle hurried into the tunnel on the other side of the cave. Scootaloo pressed herself up against another stalagmite and peered around it. She met Apple Bloom’s eye, and the earth pony gasped. The cave troll frowned at her. “Something is wrong, little pony?”
“Uh… these ribbons are a mite tight,” Bloom said smoothly. “They’re pullin’ somethin’ fierce on my scalp. Reckon you can retie them a little looser?”
The troll gasped in horror. “Little pony should not be in hurt! Jim will loosen ribbon.”
While the troll -- or ‘Jim’, apparently -- was distracted, Scootaloo waved to the others. Dinky and Rumble hurried to an even closer stalagmite to Apple Bloom and the troll. Scootaloo braced herself for what she was about to do. Drawing in a deep breath, she stepped out into full view. Apple Bloom’s eyes went wide and she opened her mouth, but Scootaloo shushed her.
Then, straightening up and tossing her mane, she called out, “Good evening, my good stalli -- er, my good troll!”
Jim paused and looked around. Scootaloo continued. “You look like a troll interested in the finer things in life!”
Jim pointed to his chest.
“Yes, you, sir! How would you like to buy some finery for the decoration of little ponies?”
She had his attention before. Now she had his interest. “Little pony sell accessories?” he asked, fascinated.
Apple Bloom glared. “Scootaloo,” she hissed. “What d’you think yer do-- WHAAA!”
Jim wheeled around to set Apple Bloom on one of the many cliffs around the room before leaning down to come face to face with Scootaloo. “What accessories has little pony?” he asked.
Scootaloo swallowed. The creature’s breath smelled of wet earth, which wasn’t exactly unpleasant or unexpected, but was nevertheless deeply off-putting to experience. “U-uh, just, just hoof polish,” she said. “But in all kinds of different colors!”
“Different colors,” the cave troll echoed, his craggy brow ridge rising. “Please show colors to Jim!”
Dinky and Rumble peered out from behind their stalagmite. Dinky nodded sharply, and Rumble took to the air. For a moment, Scootaloo felt the old, familiar stab of jealousy, but she squashed it down. This was no time to be petty. “Of course, of course. Could you give me your hand? It’d be a lot easier to paint some swatches on there…”
Apple Bloom glared down at Scootaloo. What in blazes did she think she was playing at? This could only end with her being captured, too, and while she didn’t exactly mind a moment’s respite from the cave troll’s makeover session, she didn’t want her friend to suffer the same fate. She tugged at her dress. It was vaguely pink, and seemed to have been made out of burlap.
Then she caught a flash of movement out of the corner of her eye. Grey on grey, it was hard to see at first, but when she turned to face the shape head-on… “Rumble!” she gasped softly.
He grinned, landing softly next to her on the ridge. “What? You didn’t think we would just leave you behind, did you?”
She smiled almost wide enough to split her face in half. “‘Course not. Took yer sweet time ‘bout it, though.”
“Yeah, sorry. We didn’t actually see you get snatched.”
Apple Bloom shuddered. “Yeah. It weren’t pleasant. There Ah was, mindin’ mah business an’ out of the dark comes a hand th’ size of an apple cart.”
“That must’ve been unpleasant.”
“Terrifyin’!” Bloom shook her head. “Still. This ain’t hardly th’ worst fate Ah coulda suffered.”
“True enough. C’mon, we’ve spent way too long in the open as it is. Let’s get gone.”
“Right.”
Rumble wrapped his hooves around Apple Bloom and lifted off again. They hadn’t gotten very far, though, when they both came to a sudden halt.
Apple Bloom glanced down. “Aw, horseapples.”
The dress had snagged on the rough rock wall.
Scootaloo, meanwhile, was patiently painting the cave troll’s rough, rocky skin with every sample of hoof polish she had. She would make a mark, a few square inches in area, on his arm, big enough for him to clearly see the color. Once it had dried a little, Jim would raise his arm to gaze at it intensely, studying the new mark and ooh-ing and ahh-ing over the color.
“So, I gotta ask,” Scootaloo said, painting on a patch of pink with mixed-in glitter hearts. “What’s the big idea about giving ponies makeovers? What do you get out of it?”
Jim shrugged his massive shoulders. “Jim make little ponies look pretty because Jim like pretty little ponies.”
“Huh. Well, I can’t say fairer than that,” Scootaloo admitted.
“Someday, Jim open little pony salon, where all little ponies can come so Jim make them pretty.” He paused, then added hopefully, “Jim can make little pony pretty?”
Scootaloo pursed her lips. “We’ll see,” she said. “How does that look, Jim?”
Jim stared at the new patch on his arm, transfixed. “So… beautiful,” he whispered. “Jim will take all the hoof paints, little pony. How many acorns must Jim pay?”
“Uhhh…” Scootaloo’s mind spun wildly. How many acorns seemed reasonable? How much was an acorn? “Fifteen?” she tried. “Er, per… bottle?”
Jim’s mouth dropped. “So cheap,” he murmured, shaking his head.
“Yeah, well… I’m a big supporter of independent businesses, you know?”
Jim nodded. “Jim appreciates you, little pony. Jim will go and get acorn purse.”
Scootaloo glanced around Jim and her eyes went wide. Rumble and Apple Bloom were stuck on the wall, yanking at the hem of Bloom’s dress. “I, er, wait!”
Jim paused and looked back at her. “I, uh, have one more accessory for you,” Scootaloo said slowly.
The cave troll’s eyes lit up, probably. It was kind of hard to tell under his massive brow ridge. “What is accessory?”
“It’s, erm…” Scootaloo took a deep breath and lifted a wing. “It’s called ‘feathers’.”
The Doctor’s screams echoed, reverberating throughout time and space, though the infinite void was apparently devoid of either. Pure darkness flashed through the Doctor’s mind, interspersed with occasional flashes of color and light. Waves of energy, representing the untold billions of neverwere timelines discarded by the vagaries of fate, roiled and piled atop one another, forming a cosmos-cleaving blade-like structure.
Oh brilliant, the Doctor thought. The Time Knife. Been ages since I saw the Time Knife.
The Doctor crashed to the floor and lay still for a few moments. Then, a strong pair of hooves gently rolled him over. Big Macintosh stared into his eyes for a long moment, then glanced up. “Well,” she said. “He ain’t dead.”
The Doctor groaned and glanced around. It seemed that he’d been reunited with the others, back in Rassilon’s Tomb. Ditzy rushed to his side. “Doctor! What happened? Are you alright?”
“Er… I think… I think I just had a psychedelic interlude,” the Doctor muttered.
Pinkie gasped and her eyebrows shot up. “In a fanfiction?” she asked.
“As for how I’m doing…” the Doctor sat up and rubbed his muzzle. No blood. Good. “Yes, I think I’m just fine. I think that was meant to go on for rather longer than it did…” He shook his head. “How did we end up back here?”
“Th’ world flipped, an’ we all landed right back next to th’ coffin,” Applejack said.
“We’re being toyed with,” Discord growled. “I don’t like that one bit.”
Everypony turned to glare at them. Even Fluttershy looked rather reproachful. “Hey! Listen, I never said I wasn’t a hypocrite, alright?” they snapped. “Sheesh! I’m so sorry that I, the spirit of chaos, change, and disharmony, am not consistent enough in my worldview for your tastes. Ugh!”
Fluttershy patted them on the shoulder.
The Doctor glanced around the room and frowned. “Is it just me, or does it look rather different in here?”
Luna nodded. “Yes. We had noticed as much. Tell us, Doctor, what do you think of it?”
Glancing around, the Doctor took in the most obvious changes first. The high arched windows that lined either wall, looking out onto the Gallifreyan twilight skies, the imposing backlit mountains, and the vast, scorched desert below, were definitely new. In addition, the whole room seemed larger, and the stones had taken on a vaguely violet cast. Pillars, cracked and crumbling, lined the walls, and the obelisk that had always stood at the entrance of the room seemed to have… sprouted?
He studied the new structure more closely. He could still discern the central form of the obelisk, although it seemed to have been scaled up considerably. Five plinths extended from the object, each one holding a pale grey stone orb. A sixth sat proudly atop the piece. The Doctor trotted around it slowly. “The writing’s been changed,” he mused. “Let me see. This one says…”
He squinted. “Hm. Depends on how you interpret it. ‘Accuracy’ would be the most literal translation, but it might also mean ‘correctness’ or simply ‘truth’. The next one is probably… ‘fealty’? Then…” he shook his head. “Someone’s tried to express a very tricky concept for the ancient Gallifreyans, there,” he said. “Maybe, um… favorable timeline? No. I think that symbol means satisfaction, and that one is a curse word which might be best interpreted as ‘chance’...”
He scrunched up his brow. “Satisfactory… chance? What could that possibly mean?”
“Could you perhaps translate it as ‘laughter’?” Twilight suggested.
The Doctor brightened. “Oh! Yes, that would be perfect! How ever did you guess… that…” He stopped, thinking. “Accuracy and fealty… or honesty and loyalty!”
He glanced at the other two orbs. “Yes… yes! This one is ‘compassion for, er… lesser species’, which is probably the closest thing they had to kindness. The other one translates to ‘distribution of knowledge’, which must be generosity. And the central orb is… oh.”
“What is it?” Sunset asked.
“It’s been scratched out,” the Doctor said. “Makes sense, really, my people banished magic from our homeworld back in the Dark Times.”
Twilight shuddered. “They don’t sound very pleasant,” she said.
“Oh, they weren’t,” the Doctor said, turning to scan the room once more. “The addition of that structure… I recognize this place.”
He turned to Luna and Celestia, mouth agape. “This is your old castle! The one in the Everfree Forest!”
“No, it isn’t,” Luna said.
The Doctor furrowed his brow. “Well, alright, it’s also the Tomb of Rassilon, but the implications are pretty clear.”
“This is not meant to represent our old castle, Doctor,” Celestia said quietly.
The Doctor tilted his head. “What, then? What is this meant to represent?”
“The ruins, Doctor,” Twilight said. “It’s meant to represent the ruins of their old castle.”
The Doctor’s face fell. “Ah.”
Rainbow Dash rubbed one of the stone orbs. “So, this is what the Elements used to look like? Gotta say, ours were an upgrade.”
Luna shook her head. “Nay. The Elements once existed as magnificent celestial orbs of light and color. While in use, they floated along behind their bearers like loyal dogs. They were only set in stone after… after I turned mine Elements against their siblings.”
There was a long pause. “But, yes, the portability and elegance of thy necklaces were considerable upgrades,” Luna said.
A couple of the others chuckled at that, the mood breaking. Luna smiled a little herself, but that quickly faded when she saw that her sister wasn’t laughing. “Why would the Valeyard seek to recreate the ruined Everfree Castle?” Celestia asked, shaking her head.
“It seems like trying to wound us emotionally is enough of an end goal for him,” Rarity mused. “He went after Twilight first, and indirectly got at Celestia. Then, in the hallway, he tried to attack Fluttershy.”
“Even echoing back some of my talking points from when I tried to corrupt her during my first escape,” Discord added.
“Did he?” Rarity arched an eyebrow. “Curious indeed. That lends a sort of credibility to his insinuation that he had been angling for you from the start.”
“And now this appears to be aiming for Luna and Celestia specifically,” the Doctor concluded. “Interesting how all his targets ultimately seem to be alicorns and draconocci, isn’t it?”
“Even more interesting how he seemed to know exactly how to get at all of them,” Spike added. “I know you said he was supposed to have all your memories, Doctor, but how did he know what Discord told 'Shy in that hedge maze?”
The Doctor shook his head helplessly. “I don’t know! I certainly don’t know anything about Discord's first escape. That's one event I've always kept well clear of in all my travels. The Valeyard must have found a way to use the Matrix to… I don’t know. Read our surface thoughts? Tap into our fears and animosities? All that should be impossible, but at this point I really wouldn’t doubt anything he could do with the Matrix.”
Celestia frowned deeply. “The Valeyard is becoming a persistent pain in all of our sides,” she said.
“Him, and whatever being or artifact is giving him all this power,” the Doctor agreed. “The Matrix is powerful, but everything he’s done here, like reading our minds or interfering with Discord’s powers at the level he has, ought to be impossible. And meddling in time outside of the Matrix… that kind of power would require…” His eyes slowly widened. “Oh, no.”
“Say it,” a voice demanded from the dark side of the room. Everypony spun around to look into the shadows.
Applejack scowled. “Ya no-good varmint! Come out and show yerself!”
“Say it, Doctor,” the Valeyard repeated, his voice steely.
The Doctor looked sick. “It would require the power of a TARDIS,” he said. “My TARDIS.”
The Valeyard stepped out of the shadows on the left side of the tomb. On the right side, dragged out by shimmering red magic that was unmistakably the Valeyard's, was the TARDIS interface.
Jim tilted his head. It was almost endearing. “Feathers?” he repeated. “I know feathers. They are like leaves, but softer.”
Obviously she said none of that out loud. “Yeah, I mean, you know. Feathers. But these are special feathers. Pony feathers.”
“Oooh,” said Jim.
“They’re bigger, and um… softer, probably? I preen them. Wait, birds preen too, so maybe they’re not softer? Definitely bigger, though. Here --”
Scootaloo took her right wing and pulled one of the looser feathers out with her teeth. It stung a little, but it was so close to just falling out anyway that the pain didn’t last long. Her left wing shed a feather from the same place, to conserve her balance. She held both up for Jim’s inspection. “See? Big, right?”
Jim nodded. “Very pretty,” he said, brushing his finger across them with incredible gentleness.
“Right? And, um…” Scootaloo glanced at the rescue mission again. Rumble and Apple Bloom were still tugging at the stuck hem, and now Dinky had emerged from behind the rock to lend magical aid. “Let me just take those back. Now, see, I can stick them in my mane, like… so!”
She practically shouted the last word to disguise the sound of tearing fabric. Rumble and Bloom shot forward like a pinball and nearly spun out before Dinky managed to catch them in her aura. Scootaloo grinned weakly at Jim. “It’s all the rage in Las Pegasus.”
“Feathers in the mane,” Jim repeated, nodding slowly. “How much?”
“Uh, for you? I’ll cut you a deal, a hundred acorns apiece.”
“Hmm!” Jim seemed surprised. “Can just pick them up for free.”
“Sure, the small ones,” Scootaloo said. “The big ones take longer to grow, and it’s harder to harvest them on demand.”
“Aaah,” Jim said, nodding. “Very good. Jim will take only the two, and the hoof paints.”
Scootaloo nodded, watching Rumble and Apple Bloom flying slowly back to solid ground. “Alright. I believe that comes to… three hundred and five acorns? And just because I like you, I’ll round that down a little more, to an even three hundred.”
Jim nodded. “Does little pony take credit?” he asked hopefully.
“I… you know what, sure, on the grounds that I don’t know how I would even carry that many acorns.”
Jim smiled. “Will be right back,” he promised. “Must find credit card.”
He straightened up and turned around. He paused. “Where did little yellow pony go?”
Scootaloo had leaped into motion before he had even begun to speak. She sprinted along the cavern floor toward the tunnel on the opposite side of the room. Jim spun around to confront her, but was met only with empty space. By the time he found her again, she was only twenty meters from the cavern door. Apple Bloom was peering at her, wide-eyed. “RUN!” Scootaloo screamed.
The other four Crusaders had already done exactly that, racing down the tunnel. Scootaloo passed through the mouth of the tunnel and Apple Bloom started racing along at her side. Behind them, Jim followed after them -- he was slow and somewhat clumsy, especially in the relatively confined space of the corridor, but his sheer size went a long way toward making up that deficit.
The Doctor frowned and pointed at the Interface. “That’s not turned on,” he said.
The Valeyard pursed his lips. “Admittedly not. It would have made a far better prop, were it active, but needs must.”
“An’ what needs are those, exactly?” Applejack asked, glaring at the Valeyard.
Everypony tensed. “Uh, AJ…” Mac muttered. “Maybe don’t antagonize ‘im.”
She snorted. “Ah ain’t never caved to no bully before, an’ Ah ain’t about t’ start now. What’s yer game, Valeyard? Y’all keep actin’ like ya got a plan, but it seems like all y’all are interested in is yankin’ all our chains an’ makin’ us feel bad. What exactly are y’all gettin’ out of this?”
The Valeyard sneered. “As I said before, I am not about to start detailing the finer points of our evil plan to you, like some two-bit moustache-twirling melodrama twerp. I--”
He paused suddenly and tilted his head. “What, really? You must be joking.”
“...Who is he talking to?” Shining Armor muttered.
“At a guess? Whoever his partner happens to be,” the Doctor responded.
“Well, yeah, I’d guessed that much,” Shining said. “Who do you think it is?”
The Doctor shrugged.
“Thanks,” Shining said, rolling his eyes. “You’re a big help.”
The Valeyard sighed and rubbed the bridge of his muzzle. “Fine. I’ll do -- Fine! I said fine! Have it your own way.” He scowled at the assembled ponies.
“Troubles with the guy upstairs?” Discord asked sweetly. “Such a pity.”
“We are in an equal partnership,” the Valeyard said stiffly.
“Seemed to overrule you pretty easily for an equal partner,” Discord said, sickly-sweet venom hanging on every word. “Perhaps we should be talking to the organ grinder; he seems more open to conversation.”
The Valeyard’s mouth drew into a tight line. “My associate has many names,” he said. “You are familiar with some of them, I’m sure. Currently, she goes by Saviltride, although as ever, the more common ‘Nightmare’ is always welcome.”
Luna’s hackles rose and Sombra went as stiff as a board. The Doctor nodded tightly. “Can’t say I expected much different,” he said. “How did the old entity take your stepping on their line, hm? Celestia said its name right before you brought us here, and then, well, you took all the credit.”
“Pah. ‘Nightmare’ is so terribly common a name. So plebian, unimaginative. When the universe is ours, we will reign in my name as a single gestalt entity.”
Luna scowled slightly.
“I mean, Saviltride is no better,” the Doctor said. “That’s just flat-out stealing from old Zagreus, and stealing an anagram of ‘Evil TARDIS’ is just, well…” he raised his eyebrows and shook his head. "It could do better."
“It doesn’t… it doesn’t matter,” the Valeyard ground out through gritted teeth. “It will leave your TARDIS and enter into me. The TARDIS was merely neutral ground for us. It preserved my potential in the Matrix after you thought you had overcome me. In return, I allowed it access to my -- and by extension, your -- TARDIS.”
The Doctor nodded slowly. “I see. How long --”
“It scarcely matters. The TARDIS allowed us unfettered access to your timestream, inserting traumatic and emotionally disturbing events into your past. If you insist on linearity, however, it was from the moment you regenerated into your seventh body that I was able to exert more control over your travels. Did you never wonder why you arrived in steadily darker places, with ever more difficult moral quandaries?”
“All the way up to the Time War,” the Doctor said softly.
“Precisely. We can’t take full credit for that, of course, but we did our best to hinder you along the way. Do you remember taking Fey Truscott-Sade out of her war and into yours? Do you remember watching her die in agony trying to save the children you had left behind? Do you remember watching from the door of your TARDIS?”
“I couldn’t save her,” the Doctor said quietly. His eyes blazed. “There was nothing I could do.”
The Valeyard shrugged. “Possibly, possibly not. The plan was always to navigate you into a situation where you couldn’t escape being me. To bring you so low in your despair and disgust that you would inevitably become everything you hate.”
The Doctor breathed slowly through his nose for several seconds. Then, he shrugged. “Well. Props to you for trying, I suppose. You did come surprisingly close…”
“Oh, yes. The encounter with the last Dalek was a particularly fine touch, I thought, although the Racnoss Queen may have come a little too close to your ultimate death.”
“There but for the grace of Donna go I,” the Doctor mused. Then he grinned. “Ah. But they’ve always been your pitfall, haven’t they? My friends are my salvation, and your destruction. You really were an idiot to bring them here.”
“Was I?” The Valeyard gestured at Rarity. There was a snapping sound, and she was surrounded by a transparent wall of gold.
Spike grabbed at the golden bubble, but to no avail. His claws slid off as soon as they touched it. Rarity glanced around. “Darlings? What’s happening?” she demanded.
“A bubble put out of sync with time,” the Doctor muttered. “An area put under your temporal control…”
“I… I don’t feel well,” Rarity said. Fluttershy looked through at her and gasped. Her skin was growing wrinkled, and her mane was turning silver.
“She’s aging,” the Valeyard said. “In a moment, she will reach the end of her life and expire. All I want is your body, Doctor. I want -- I need to replace you. Do this, and I will restore her youth. Refuse, and I will work through your friends one by one until there are none left. Your wife will be next.”
Rarity’s eyes were sunken and her breathing was rheumy. Her skin had withered to practically her skeleton, and her coat was patchy and stiff.
The Doctor stared at the Valeyard for a long minute. “Celestia,” he said.
“Yes, Doctor?”
“The Valeyard is going to turn Rarity back now.”
Celestia blinked. “Er… is he?”
“Yeah,” the Doctor said. “Because if he doesn’t, you’re going to fry me like a fish finger.”
Ditzy looked at the Doctor nervously. “Um, Doctor…”
“Simple mathematics,” the Doctor said. “He may be protected from the ravages of your magic by the Nightmare and the Matrix, but I'm not. He’s in my future. If I die now, he can’t exist. Q. E. bloody D. Ball’s in your court, Valeyard.”
The Valeyard let out a long sigh. “You just had to make this difficult, didn’t you?” he spat. Rarity’s breathing eased and her skin plumped back to full health, her vitality reentering her body. With a careless gesture, the Valeyard banished the bubble. Spike fell on Rarity, hugging her tight to his chest and sobbing.
The Doctor smiled briefly, but stopped as the Valeyard sneered back at him. “That was only the easy way, Doctor. The rest will not be so light on the casualties.”
He began to fade from view again. Before he vanished completely, Luna called out to him. “Valeyard. A word of warning. You may think the Nightmare is an equal partner, but it is not. It will consume you utterly.”
The Valeyard grinned back at her. “You might tell it the same about me.” Cheshire Cat-like, the Valeyard’s smile hung in the air for several seconds after the rest of his body was gone.
Scootaloo and Apple Bloom ran down the corridor, screaming all the way. Of course, they couldn’t really be heard over the crashing and roaring of Jim, who was terrifyingly close behind them. “Little ponies should not run away!” Jim shouted. “Let Jim make little ponies pretty!”
Scootaloo kind of felt bad for the guy. He had a dream, and he was working hard to make it happen. On the other hand, the whole ‘foalnapping Apple Bloom’ thing put that idea into sharp perspective, and the fact that Jim could probably squash their whole party like insects if he wasn’t careful made it hard to feel anything for him but fear.
Up ahead, Apple Bloom saw a winking gold arrow for a few seconds, pointing down a thin passageway. Then, in glittering green letters, she read the words, ‘Shut your eyes in 5! :)’.
“Scoots?” Bloom called.
‘Shut your eyes in 4! :)’
“I see it!”
‘3!’
Jim bellowed, tearing boulders from the walls as he pulled himself forward.
‘2!’
Scootaloo squealed in terror as a wave of loose gravel sprinkled her mane.
‘1!’
Both mares shut their eyes tight, continuing to race ahead full-tilt.
‘0! B)’
A brilliant golden-white light illuminated the tunnels for a half-second. Apple Bloom and Scootaloo could see it through their eyelids. Jim got a far better and more dazzling view. The cave troll bellowed in pain, reeling back from the blinding light. While he struggled to regain his vision, Scootaloo and Bloom reopened their eyes and hurried into the adjoining tunnel.
Scootaloo opened her mouth to thank Dinky for the save, but Rumble immediately raised a wing to his lips in a shushing gesture.
All six crept further down the corridor. Behind them, they could hear Jim fumbling around in the main tunnel. “Little ponies? Little ponies, where have you gone? Please do not run away from Jim!”
The party was about to move farther down the corridor, but there came another sound that gave them pause. It was a faint kind of rumbling noise, interspersed with rhythmic humming. It came from the tunnel they had just left, and it seemed to be getting louder.
“Oh,” said Jim. “Hello, little saltshaker.” The noise paused for a moment.
The Crusaders glanced at one another in confusion. “Salt shaker?” Dinky mouthed.
“Have you seen any little ponies around here?”
There was a pause, and then a long whistle. “Saltshaker? Do you understand Jim?”
The original rumbling and humming started up again. “Do not run from Jim, saltshaker!”
A clattering of stone and metal echoed down the hallway, followed quickly by a sharp hissing sound and a small explosion. “Eyes!” Jim shrieked. There was a crash, and then loud wailing and fading footfall as the cave troll raced away.
They all waited until the sound of Jim’s running faded to nothing. There was a long pause. “We oughta go see what that was about,” Apple Bloom said.
“Agreed,” Rumble said with a decisive nod.
“Really?” Dinky said. “Now you want to actively go wandering into danger?”
“Aren’t you curious about what just happened?” Button asked.
“Well, yeah. Obviously,” Dinky said. “But I’m more worried about going back where that troll might find us again.”
“Jim,” Scootaloo corrected. “His name was Jim. And he didn’t seem like he was particularly eager to come back here, did he?”
Sweetie squinted down the hall. “Yeah. I think we’re gonna have to go back no matter what,” she said, lighting her horn. The green sparkles played over the dead-end only several meters down the hall from them.
“Ah,” Dinky said. “Yeah, that does put a new spin on the matter.”
The six trotted out together. “So,” Dinky said. “I noticed you were able to make some constructs and symbols a minute ago.”
Sweetie tilted her head. “Yeah? And?”
“You’re recovering remarkably well for someone who just got their magic eaten.”
“Oh.” Sweetie lit her horn again and her eyes widened. “It doesn’t feel sore anymore! I mean, I definitely haven’t got all my magic back, but my reserves are definitely fuller…”
“Interesting…” Dinky said. “We’ll have to look into that later.”
The two unicorns had fallen behind the rest of the group, something that became eminently clear when they walked into the rest of their friends.
“What?” Dinky asked, trying to peer around them. “What’s wrong -- oh.”
A robot lay on the floor, weakly humming and whistling. It looked like a series of domes stacked atop one another, with an array of ball bearings set along its bottom. Sticking out of a gap near the middle of the machine was some manner of probe, or possibly a gun. Its chromium-plated sides were dented in finger-shaped patterns, and one of its domes was cracked, and leaking oil across the floor.
“Ya poor thing…” Apple Bloom ran a hoof over its casing. “Button? What kinda tools you got in that bag of yours?”
“Mmm…” Button considered that, letting the bag slide to the floor. “Mostly pliers, wrenches, that sort of thing. Fiddly stuff. Why?”
“Ah wanna try an’ fix this fella up.”
Dinky groaned. “Seriously, Bloom? It’s only a machine. We’ve got to worry about our friends and family.”
“It saved our hides,” Bloom said. “We owe it somethin’. Mebbe it can fight off other stuff, too.”
“This is ridiculous,” Dinky said. “We’re moving on. Button, give me the map.”
There was a long, painful pause. “The map,” Button said, voice hollow.
“...Yeah. That’s what I said.”
Button took in a deep breath. “Uh. I think that maybe… I might’ve dropped it while we were running.”
Dinky closed her eyes. “Did you.”
“Uh, maybe. Or, um, it might just be back in the side tunnel, I’ll go and check for it, see you!”
He bolted for the dead-end hall again. Dinky sighed. “Sweetie. Go keep an eye on him.”
“Right.”
Rumble stared down the hall resolutely. “So. We’re lost, huh?”
“Seems that way,” Dinky said.
“Don’t know how to get above ground.”
“I certainly don’t.”
Rumble sucked in his breath through his teeth. “Right. This is… fine. This is fine.”
“C’mon,” Scootaloo said. “Have a hug, big guy.”
Rumble scooped up his tiny friend in his arms and held her tight, staring, unseeing and glassy-eyed, into the darkness of the tunnels.
Nurse Redheart consulted Sweetie Belle’s magic IV drip again. “She’s going to be due for another bag soon,” she muttered. The level of the sparkling pink fluid in the bag was getting visibly lower with each passing minute.
Sweetie Belle and Twilight were thus far the only ones to be hooked up to magic drips, but Redheart had been precipitous enough to send word to Canterlot asking that emergency supplies be flown in immediately.
The hospital was doing its best to help all its patients as best it could, but it simply wasn’t designed to handle the incredible influx of coma patients, nor the unique species on display in its incredibly overcrowded ward. Extra beds had been wheeled in to fit everypony. Discord took up three all by themself. In Redheart’s opinion, that was no less a nuisance than they would have wanted to be while awake.
She was getting tired. Actually, she had skipped past ‘tired’ some hours back and was cruising through weary straight to exhausted. She wanted nothing more than to go home and pass out. Tartarus, she could take a hospital cot right now. Weeks of emergency night shifts had taken their toll before, but this felt worse, as though the energy was being sapped straight from her bones.
Maybe it was the visitors. The families were still here in their late evening vigil. They didn’t show signs of leaving any time soon, either.
She caught Tender’s eye for a fraction of a moment before quickly looking away. She had to maintain professionalism right now. She was on the clock. Nothing could distract her. She couldn’t let it. Oh, Celestia, if she could only have a two-hour nap…
Redheart paused. Everypony’s eyes were on her. “Ah. Um… how much of that did I say aloud?” she asked.
“I think you started out maintaining professionalism,” Hondo Flanks said.
“Ah. Yes.” Redheart nodded. “Very important in my line of work.”
“Red…” Tender Care began gently.
“No.” Redheart said, shaking her head. “No. Whatever you’re about to say, it isn’t happening. I’m fine.”
“Hon, you’re exhausted,” Tender said. “You get sloppy when you’re exhausted, and snappish. Take a rest, just for --”
“No!” Redheart stamped her hoof. She was aware that she was being childish, proving her marefriend’s point, but she really didn’t care. “I have a duty of care for every creature in this room, and might I add, that does include you. I can’t just wander off and take a nap. I have responsibilities, and frankly, even if I wanted to, I don't think I could sleep for all the stress today's put on me."
Tender nodded. “Interesting. What do you think, Romana?”
Redheart blinked, but before she could register the Time Lady’s presence, the unicorn had already put her hooves to the nurse’s head. Redheart’s last mental defenses crumbled like a sandcastle, and she fell into a peaceful slumber in Romana’s hooves.
Tender nodded. “How long will she be out?”
Romana waved a hoof uncertainly. “An hour, maybe two, depending on a number of factors. She’ll feel like she slept for around ten, which to be honest was the least I could do. Until then, I believe that I’m the only medically qualified person here, so--”
“Ya ain’t.”
Romana paused and looked at Granny. “Come again?”
The old mare shrugged. “Ah got some expertise. Trained as a nurse back when Ah was younger, fer volunteer work, an’ patchin’ up folk on the farm.”
Romana nodded. “Fair enough. You and I are in charge for now, then.”
“And me,” Tender said. “I may not be a medical doctor, but from what I understand, this is as much a mental trauma as it is physical.”
“That seems reasonable as well,” Romana conceded. “We’ll need to work together to take care of the patients while Redheart sleeps it off.”
“Uh, ‘scuse me,” said Cooking Crumbles. “Shouldn’t we call in another nurse, or a doctor? Someone with actual current medical credentials?”
“And admit to knocking Nurse Redheart unconscious?” Romana asked, arching an eyebrow. “It was for her own good, but I doubt hospital security will take that as much of a defense.”
“So… they’d kick us out?” Thunderlane asked.
“It seems likely,” Romana said, shrugging. “If we need help, we can ask for it. In the meantime… Cloudchaser, Flitter. Go get Redheart tucked up in a cot somewhere.”
“You got it,” Cloudchaser said, pulling the nurse up into a firemare’s carry.
“Hondo, Cookie, go wait for the medical supplies Redheart ordered from Canterlot. Everypony else… check the vital signs. We’ve got a long night ahead of us.”
Dinky paced up and down the corridor, agitated. “There has to be some way of finding our way around down here.”
“Uh-huh,” Bloom said, studying a series of tubes within the machine.
“I remember that the tower was to the northeast of us when you got foalnapped,” Dinky continued.
“Mmm,” Bloom said, affixing the tubes to nozzles one by one.
“So maybe… we traveled southeast to get to the troll cave,” Dinky mused. “Then a little more east… The tower should be just due north of us.”
“Through a rock wall,” Bloom noted.
“...Yes, that is the primary obstacle, I’d say.”
Rumble lay on the floor, watching Dinky pace. It was relaxing, a rhythmic pattern in this unpredictable realm of darkness and walls. Scootaloo sat beside him, gently petting his mane.
Sweetie Belle stepped out of the dead-end tunnel.
“Any luck?” Dinky asked, not turning around.
“None,” Button confirmed, trudging out behind Sweetie, his head down.
Dinky sighed, stopping her pacing to sit down. She rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Hey, Sweetie Belle. If I cast a shield spell around the six of us, and you cast the locator spell…”
“Then we’d essentially turn into a pinball,” Sweetie said, matter-of-factly.
“Ah. Bad.”
“Very much so.”
Dinky groaned and flopped fully to the ground.
Sweetie Belle carefully picked her way around her fallen friends to sit next to Apple Bloom. “Need a little light?” she asked.
“Ah’d sorely appreciate it.”
Sweetie lit her horn, and shimmering green light illuminated the innards of the machine.
“What do you think it is?” Sweetie asked.
“Don’t rightly have a name for it. Looks to be some kinda… Ah dunno. Built fer exploration, though. This looks to be an all-terrain vehicle. Got data-gathering doodads, like this here. Built for soil analysis. On th’ other hand, it’s got more than a few weapons, too. Ah think this was what it used on ol’ Jimmy.”
She gestured to a system of thin hoses that led to a nozzle. “This here sprays ammonia vapor. Sounded like he got it right in th’ eyes.”
Sweetie winced. “Sounds unpleasant.”
“Yep. Cave trolls are tough buggers, though. Ah’d be surprised if he got anything permanent or particularly severe off th’ back of it.”
“Oh. That’s good.”
There was a long pause as Bloom wrapped electrical tape around a series of cracked hoses. Eventually, Sweetie said, “I wanted to apologize.”
Apple Bloom glanced up from her work, surprised. “Huh?”
“Y’know. For earlier. After we left Vinyl and Octavia’s house.”
“Oh!” Bloom said, her eyes clearing. Then they darkened again. “Oh.”
“I still don’t really understand what I said wrong,” Sweetie admitted. “But I won’t press the issue anymore, I promise. I just wanted you to know.”
Apple Bloom sighed and picked up a monkey wrench. “Ah’m th’ one that oughta be apologizin’,” she said. “You didn’t say nothin’ wrong. Ah had a lotta pent-up anger, an’ you were… well, you were convenient, is all. Ah overreacted, bad, an’ Ah’m truly sorry for that.” She sighed.
“So…” Sweetie trailed off. “Do you want to talk about it, or nah?”
Apple Bloom looked up at the ceiling, thinking. “Well… Ah don’t reckon this is a great time for that kinda conversation.”
“Fair enough.”
“On th’ other hoof, we ain’t exactly got much else goin’ on…” Apple Bloom sighed. “Alright, why not.”
Sweetie nodded, adjusting her place on the floor. Apple Bloom squeezed the wrench around a bolt and twisted. “You ever feel like… maybe ponies don’t like you that much? Like, they like you well enough to pretend to like you, but they really can’t relate to you, an’ you can’t relate to them, an’ maybe they’re actually pretty disappointed in how you turned out?”
Sweetie blinked. “Uh… no, not really.”
“Oh. Just me, then.”
“No! No, not just you. I mean, I haven’t really experienced it personally, but I know other ponies have. And for what it’s worth, I think you’re doing great.”
“Ya think so?”
“Sure. You’re so skilled at so many things. Carpentry, potion-making, welding… therapy, if what I overheard at Octavia and Vinyl’s place is anything to go by.”
“...Yeah,” Bloom admitted. “An’ that’s all great. But when it comes to farmin’... well, Ah ain’t too much better than any other earth pony. Ah ain’t good at sellin’ apples, Ah’m alright at cookin’ with ‘em, but no better than Ah am at anythin’ else in th' kitchen… Ah ain’t got no apple on mah flank, Sweetie. Ah literally got this mark sendin’ mah parents to die. It stands against everythin’ the Apple Family is about. Is it any wonder Ah think Ah might be a failure in their eyes?”
Sweetie Belle nodded slowly. “Yeah. I understand.”
“Y’all just told me you didn’t.”
“I can’t emphasize, but I can still sympathize,” Sweetie pointed out. “It sounds like you’ve built up a pretty strong motive for your family to be disappointed in you. But Bloom -- where’s the evidence?”
Apple Bloom grunted, yanking a bolt tight. “Come again?”
“Have they ever acted anything less than loving toward you?” Sweetie asked. “Or changed their attitude toward you since you got your mark?”
Bloom considered that. “They ain’t treatin’ me like a little filly so much, these days.”
“Isn’t that what you wanted in the first place?”
“Yeah, but--” Bloom set down her tools and rubbed her forehead, frustrated. “Just-- Ah’m through with talkin’ ‘bout this right now. Jus’ sit there an’ light up this guy’s innards, alright?”
“Yes, ma’am!” Sweetie said brightly.
Apple Bloom sighed, picked up her tools, and focused on rebuilding something she didn’t understand. It helped to distract her from the fact that she was failing to rebuild something else.
Blueblood’s jaw ached from the agony of keeping a beatific, close-lipped smile on his face for two hours. Finally, though, it was time to call a recess. “I’m terribly sorry,” he said smoothly to the current petitioner. “I believe our time here is done for now.”
The mare looked at him, startled. At least, Blueblood assumed she was startled. It was so hard to tell under her weird skull mask. She was some out-of-town dignitary claiming to be of some backwater house called ‘Paradox’, making a lot of noise about renting out the castle grounds for an event on February 29th. “But your highness, my petition --”
“Yes, granted, whatever,” Blueblood said impatiently. “Raven, see to it that the paperwork is drawn up.”
She glanced at him sidelong. “There is no February 29th this year,” she muttered.
“So much the better,” Blueblood replied quietly. “I shudder to think what she’s planning to do here…”
He turned to face the assembled. “Court will take a recess and resume in one hour.”
“Wait!”
Blueblood was already halfway to the door. “One hour,” he repeated. “No more, no less, and no disturbances.”
He slammed the door shut, closed his eyes, and slumped against the wall.
There was a flash of bright bluish light. “I don’t take no for an answer,” the voice from the courtroom said.
Blueblood didn’t even open his eyes. “Learn,” he said. “Your loan request can wait another hour.”
“This is a matter of national security,” the voice stressed.
Blueblood snorted. “You and every other jumped-up imbecile on the floor. Go away before I work up the energy to summon the guards.”
“I’m from the University --”
“Don’t care. Look, do you know who you’re talking to?”
“A worthless ponce of a royal pain who won his place in society by an accident of birth, and his current position of power through a tragic attack on some of my closest friends. Do you know who you’re talking to?”
“Not yet,” Blueblood said wearily. “The description narrows some of the options. You clearly aren’t a noble, or you wouldn’t spew such anti-oligarchy sentiments. Furthermore…” he paused. “Closest friends.”
His eyes popped open. Standing in the dim hallway only a couple meters to his left, a pale pink unicorn with a striped purple and teal mane glared at him. “Starlight Glimmer, I presume,” Blueblood drawled, rising to his hooves. “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.”
She didn’t smile.
He rolled his eyes and blew a stray lock of mane out of his eye. “Fine. I suppose you’d know a thing or two about matters of national security, seeing as you are on approximately sixty percent of the government's watchlists. You have… mm, two minutes to convince me to listen. It would be five, but I’m running exceedingly low on patience at the moment.”
Starlight nodded sharply. “There’s something wrong in Ponyville.”
Blueblood scoffed. “Well, clearly.”
“Let me rephrase that. I think I know something about what’s wrong in Ponyville.”
Blueblood tilted his head.
“It’s all related to time, you see? I’m sure you know that I’m… not inexperienced with the subject.”
“Did I mention that of the lists you’re on, twenty percent of them only exist because of you?”
She glared at him. He shrugged. “I’ve been holding back all my sharp remarks for the last two hours. This is what you get for talking to me while I’m on break.”
“Ponyville’s time stream is seven kinds of screwed up right now, and before you say anything, none of them are directly related to anything I did.”
“Directly,” Blueblood repeated, his eyes lidded.
“Yeah, well, I -- shut up. The point is, all day, there have been weird temporal pockets popping up in Ponyville’s general vicinity. I didn’t think much about it at the time because, well, it’s Ponyville.”
“It was only once I heard about what happened this evening that I wondered if it might be a little more than that.”
Blueblood nodded. “Yes. The temporal nature of the attack is not exactly surprising, given the circumstances. Do you have any further information?”
Starlight looked a little thrown off for a moment. Clearly she hadn’t expected to be so readily accepted. “Yeah. You probably wouldn’t understand much about the temporal imaging, but…”
“Please. If there’s one thing I can do, it’s read a map.”
“You’re familiar with temporal imaging?”
Blueblood gave a thin smile. “Let’s just say that I had a good teacher. One who was also caught up in the attack in Ponyville.”
Starlight nodded. “Fine. I’ll give you my information, but on one condition.”
“Isn’t saving your friends enough?”
“It’s a start. But I want revenge, too. Let me help the investigations. I’m the most experienced chronomancer in Canterlot.”
“Don’t kid yourself,” Blueblood said shortly. “You shot yourself into time and space with no idea what you were doing and nearly ended the world.”
“Experience with what not to do is still experience.”
Blueblood sighed. “Fine. Your reputation suggests that you’re a far better ally than an opponent. Go get your papers. We leave for Ponyville in twenty minutes.”
“We?” Starlight asked.
“You said you wanted revenge? So do I. Raven can play regent for awhile while we work.”
“You just want to get away from the nobles, don’t you?”
“Well… it’s certainly not a deterrent.”
Starlight let out a light snort of amusement. “Huh. Maybe you aren’t as bad as ponies make you out to be.”
“I’ll have you know that’s slander. Nineteen minutes, now. Go! Run!”
Starlight flashed out of existence, teleporting away to Celestia-knew-where. Blueblood considered the spot where she’d been for a few seconds. Then he turned and trotted purposefully down the hall. He’d have to inform GUIDE immediately.
As soon as the Valeyard had departed, the sepulcher had fallen into pandemonium. Spike wouldn’t let go of Rarity, and both were swarmed by panicking friends. A few had broken off and were trying to milk more information from the Doctor, on the Time War, on who this Fey Truscott-Sade was, on his request that Celestia just murder him -- all lines of questioning that met with no success.
Celestia herself had her eye elsewhere. Her sister was standing face to face with the mechanical interface, silently scrutinizing it. Celestia stepped closer. Luna’s face was blank, and save for her eyes, completely motionless.
Celestia walked over to stand at Luna’s side. “Hello, sister,” she said softly. “A bit for your thoughts?”
Luna inhaled long and slow through her nose, then held it for several seconds before exhaling. “I have many of them,” she said. “I would not wish to burden you.”
Celestia said nothing, merely standing at her sister’s side, studying the mechanical alicorn.
After several moments, Luna sighed. “Well, now I’m thinking about how we really ought to visit a therapist one of these days.”
“Only the two of us?”
“Well, particularly the two of us,” Luna said. “But yes, I would imagine that everyone in this room could probably do with one. Perhaps if everypony else does it, we might be able to convince the Doctor to seek treatment as well.”
Celestia nodded. “It’s not really an avenue I’ve considered before, but you do have a point. Did anything in particular bring you to this conclusion, or…”
Luna’s lip curled. “This… thing.” She waved a hoof at the interface. “Its existence offends me. It is an avatar of the Nightmare, it heralds its imminent return.”
Celestia nodded. “Is it hate you feel? Fear?”
“Both, and wrath besides,” Luna said shortly. “And that frightens me even more than the Nightmare itself.”
Celestia blinked. “Well, I’d hardly expect you to simply forgive it, after all it did to you. Those feelings are --”
“Perfectly natural, yes, I am aware.” Luna tossed her mane, irritated. “The trouble is, they also happen to be the Nightmare’s bread and butter.”
Celestia’s eyes widened in comprehension. “Ah…” she murmured, nodding.
Luna glared at the interface. “We were fools to think it could have been eradicated by the Elements alone. We were fools to let our guard down! Once it infects a planet, in can feast on the negativity it has sown for untold generations. It’s an infinite loop. Anger, hatred, and fear give birth to themselves.”
“What must we do, then?” Celestia said softly. “If we let go of our anger toward it, toward what it has done to us, it will destroy us all as surely as if we simply let it feed. We may be trapped in a stalemate, sister, but a stalemate is far better than losing the game.”
“We cannot remain this way forever,” Luna warned. “We will weaken. It will not.”
“True enough,” Celestia admitted. “But think on this, Luna. Think of all the wonder and beauty in the world today that we couldn’t even have conceived of at the height of Sombra’s reign. If we had given up then, none of the modern marvels would ever have come to pass. That is why we have to fight on. Even if we fall one day, we’ll have preserved this world for generations more.”
“I never said that we should give up,” Luna muttered, glancing away.
“Then we agree.”
“Yeees,” Luna said, stretching the word out reluctantly. “In principle. In practice…”
She glanced around the tomb. “In practice, I fear that ‘one day’ may be today.”
Celestia’s jaw slackened for a moment. “I… should confer with Twilight. See how she’s doing.” She skirted away. Luna didn’t watch her go. Her eyes were back on the Interface.
Silence had fallen in the tunnels. Almost an hour had passed since the six had emerged from the dead-end tunnel. The collective anxiety had faded into a despairing malaise.
Dinky had taken over lighting duty from Sweetie Belle and sat slumped over the mechanical corpus like a desk lamp crossed with a vulture. Sweetie herself had retired to a darkened corner and was quietly humming to herself. Every now and then her horn would light and the clear sound of plucked strings would ring through the corridor. But then Sweetie would realize that other ponies were around to hear her, and fall silent once more.
Rumble lay on his back, wings splayed, in the middle of the floor. He kept his eyes firmly shut. Only the rhythm of his breathing, still too fast and nervous to be restful, showed that he hadn’t fallen asleep.
Scootaloo lay next to him in a similar position. The only difference was, her eyes were wide open, staring blindly at the ceiling. Button had pulled a hoof-held device out of his bag and was intensely focused on the game. His face was lit up in shifting shades of blue and green.
Only Apple Bloom remained productive. She worked on the fallen robot like a mare possessed. Her eyes glowed vermilion in the reflected light of Dinky’s horn, shifting through red, orange, and gold like the fires of a forge. She seemed to know almost instinctively where each part of the machine connected. It made sense, of course -- not only was she marked for her ability to repair practically anything, she had spent years studying every kind of craft she could in the limits of Ponyville. She had learned tinkering and mechanics from the Doctor, alchemy and cooking from Zecora, welding from Trixie and Sunset, thaumic engineering from Twilight, and carpentry, whittling, and woodworking…
She stumbled for a moment in her work, nearly splitting a piece of hose in half. She swore softly, reached for the electrical tape. Well, of course, everything she had learned about working with wood she had learned from her family. Big Macintosh had been responsible for most of the lessons, but Applejack had done her fair share, as well. Even Granny Smith had taught her a thing or two about carving, patiently showing her the right way to hold a chisel.
She scowled, ripping off the roll of electrical tape perhaps a little harder than was called for. She couldn’t let herself get distracted. Not from the robot, and not from her goals. She needed to get away from her family, from Sweet Apple Acres, from Ponyville altogether. Then maybe she could start making a name for herself.
She set the tape down, picking up the screwdriver once more, diving back into her work to drown out the distractions. All the same, she couldn’t shake the nagging little thought that clung to the back of her brain. No matter how far she traveled, no matter how well-known she became, she could never run away from herself.
Time had passed. Although many of the sepulcher's inhabitants continued to hover nervously around Rarity -- and, to a lesser extent, around the Doctor -- most had broken off into their own little clusters. Twilight rubbed her dry, tired eyes as she rested against the wall. She felt so tired. How much of that was down to the drain of her magic and how much was down to… more or less everything else, she couldn’t say.
Faintly, she registered a presence approaching her, sitting down next to her. Ordinarily, she could have sensed their approach, felt the bond they shared growing stronger, more present. With her magic at its lowest ebb, however, what might have been a brilliant star was reduced to the force of a damp squib. She couldn’t even tell who it was without looking up. You really never know what you have until it’s gone, she reflected.
At last, she glanced up. “Hello, Mac,” she said.
Mac nodded. “‘Lo,” she mumbled. She paused. “Er… mind if Ah ask a dumb question?”
The ghost of a smile crossed Twilight’s face. “I’ve never believed there was such a thing,” she said.
Mac frowned. “An’, uh, y’all’ve been friends with Miz Dash fer how long, now?”
Twilight chuckled and elbowed Mac in the side. “Don’t be rude.”
“A’ight, a’ight. That weren’t th’ question. Ah just wanted t’ know -- how’re y’all holdin’ up?”
The good cheer went out of Twilight like air out of a balloon. “Honestly? I don’t think I am,” she said.
Mac hummed, gesturing for Twilight to continue.
“I mean, it’s not just the power drain -- although, don’t get me wrong, that’s definitely screwing me up -- I just feel so, so --” she broke off, pressing her hooves to her head.
“Helpless?” Mac suggested. “Scared? Angry?”
Twilight took in a deep breath. “Alone,” she said softly. “I feel alone.”
Mac blinked. That had been the last thing she’d expected to hear. “But, Miz Sparkle --”
“Please, Mac. Just -- just call me Twilight, won’t you?”
She nodded. “O’ course,” she said, a touch gruffly. “Twilight. Ain’t all yer friends here? Yer teacher, yer brothers -- all just as scared as you. What’s makin’ you feel lonesome in all this?”
Twilight looked away. “Well. Like I said, a lot of it’s the magic drain. I mean, I’m sure you know what that’s like, sort of. You remember Tirek, after all.”
“Don’t reckon Ah could ever forget.”
“It’s like that. But when you’re an alicorn… the magic runs deeper. Stronger. It’s bound to me in a way that it wasn’t as a unicorn. Without it… I feel like I’m coming apart, not just emotionally, or spiritually, but physically.”
Mac’s frown deepened with every word Twilight spoke. A dam, it seemed, had burst. “And the things he said -- the Valeyard, I mean -- you heard him.”
Mac stayed as still and silent as a statue. Twilight shut his eyes. “All those words… they’re the thoughts that I have when I went to bed at ten and I’m still awake at three in the morning. The fear that I really do only make things worse. That ponies only tolerate me, or treat me differently just because I’m a princess, not because they really like me. That, in the end, I’ll still be alone as I was before I came to Ponyville, because I’ve driven even my closest friends away.”
She lapsed into silence. For a long moment, neither of them said a word. Then, silently, Mac took Twilight’s hoof in hers. “Twilight,” she said. “Ah can tell you this. Ah am yer -- yer friend. An’ yeah, sometimes you can be a little too hot on th’ magic. Ya might spend a li’l much time on your own, maybe. But Ah like you, not in spite of those things, but because of ‘em. You’re powerful, you’re smart, you’re talented. More than that, you’re radiant. Sometimes, see, Ah look at you, an’ Ah wonder, does she know how she shines? Does she know that th’ stars at night pale against her brilliance? That th’ Sun hides behind the clouds for rev’rence of her?”
Twilight was staring at Mac now, her eyes wide and wet with tears. “Mac…” she said cautiously, not daring to hope. “What are you saying?”
“I, er, uh…” Mac’s voice caught in her throat. What was she saying? The Sun hides behind the clouds? How corny could you get? “Ah think yer real neat!” she blurted.
Twilight blinked.
“Eeyup,” Mac said, glancing away. “Ah think y’all are th’ cat’s pajamas, an’ no two ways ‘bout it. An’ Twilight -- fer what it’s worth?”
“Yes?” Twilight asked.
Mac took a moment to think. Then she turned around and took Twilight's hooves in hers, gazing into the alicorn's eyes. “Ah am your friend. An’ Ah promise, Ah will never give up on you, an’ Ah promise everypony else in this room would say the same.”
Twilight smiled slightly, not quite making eye contact with Mac. But she squeezed Mac’s hoof a little tighter, pressed a little closer to the farmer’s chest.
For a moment Mac’s breathing grew shallow. Was she taking advantage of Twilight? Leading her on, now that the alicorn was at her lowest ebb?
No. She couldn’t think like that. Twilight needed a shoulder to lean on. She needed a friend. Even if the two of them could never be anything more than that, Mac would be content to serve such a role. She leaned into Twilight a little more, and both of them relaxed, just a little. The tension shrunk away, and they were content to be next to one another. Twilight’s reserves of magic fizzed and filled up just a little bit more.
And then the moment was completely ruined when the TARDIS materialized in the middle of the foyer.
Apple Bloom inspected her work for the third time before straightening up. “There. That oughta do it.”
The others all looked around, surprised at the sudden noise in the darkness. “You finished?” Button asked, his voice squeaking for a moment out of disuse.
Apple Bloom waved a hoof side to side. “Let’s jes’ say Ah’ve done mah best. Dinky? Y’wanna set it upright?”
The glow from Dinky’s horn grew brighter as she heaved the machine into the air, then slowly rotated it upright. It hadn’t seemed particularly impressive lying on the floor, but standing on its wheels, it cut a fairly imposing figure. Apple Bloom was taller than it, but only by a scant few centimeters.
There was a whirring noise, and the robot slowly rotated around its central axis. Everypony but Bloom took a few cautious steps back. Then the machine let out a happy trill and all of its domes fell in on themselves, the ones on top fitting into cavities below. It resembled a matryoshka doll, in some ways. Then, with a beep, it rose back up to its full height and let out another trill.
“Howdy,” Bloom said. “Uh, can y’all understand us?”
The robot rumbled. Bloom cocked her head. “‘Kay. Trill fer yes, rumble fer no.”
It trilled, and everypony grinned. Apple Bloom continued. “How well d’you know these caves?”
It remained silent. Dinky coughed. “Yes or no questions,” she said.
“Oh! Duh. Can y’all get us to where we need to go?”
The robot responded with a trill, but a very quiet one. “Is that a ‘probably’?” Button Mash guessed.
A louder trill.
“We’re looking for a door,” Dinky said. “It should be somewhere to the north, and not too far away. Do you know where that is?”
Another trill.
“Will you take us there?” Rumble asked. “Please.”
In lieu of a response, the machine began to putter off down the hallway, the way it had come. The Crusaders quickly fell into line behind it. “So,” Sweetie said. “What can we call you?”
The robot pondered that for a second, before trilling and rumbling in quick succession. “Trill-rumble,” Sweetie mused. “Hmm…”
“What about Trumble?” Scootaloo suggested.
“Maybe,” Sweetie said. “Not quite right, though.”
“Trumbly?” Button put in.
“Better,” Sweetie allowed. “But it’s still not quite right. Maybe… it looks very… chumbley, doesn’t it?”
“Chumbley?” Dinky repeated, her voice flat.
The robot trilled. “Aww, she likes it!” Apple Bloom said. “Alright then, you can be our new chum, Cholmondeley the Chumbley.”
Cholmondeley gave a delighted trill, and her domes fell and rose in a sort of joyful dance. Everypony laughed, even Dinky, as they all finally allowed a ray of hope to pierce the gloom for the first time since they’d lost the map.
The TARDIS flickered in and out of existence. The bulb on top wasn’t flashing, and even more horrifying, it was completely silent. None of that stopped the Doctor from racing to its doors and wrapping his hooves around the box, his cheek smushed awkwardly against the wood. “Hello old girl,” he said softly. “Did you miss me, hm? I missed you.”
He peeled himself off the door to glance around the assembled, grinning gleefully. “Applejack! Applejack, where’s the TARDIS key?”
Applejack chewed her lower lip. “Ah ain’t got it, Doc.”
The Doctor’s grin faded for a moment, but in a blink it was back and more manic than ever. “That’s fine! Good on you, keeping it hidden like I asked. Where is it, then?”
Applejack tilted her head. “Doctor. There’s something wrong with all this.”
“Well, obviously. We’re in the Matrix projection of my deranged future self. But the TARDIS, oh the TARDIS -- she’ll be strong enough to get us out of here! I only need to access the psychic circuits and--”
“Doctor!” Applejack raised her voice. The Doctor stopped.
“Ah don’t think Ah should give you th’ key. We shouldn’t go in there.”
The Doctor’s jaw went slack for a moment. Then his face darkened. “Applejack,” he said in a low growl. “The TARDIS is my home. I gave you that key because I trust you. I won’t be kept out because you couldn’t do a simple task correctly! Give me back my--”
He wheezed as a pair of powerful hooves grabbed him around the barrel. Applejack nodded, unfazed. “Thank ya kindly, Luna.” Her eyes narrowed as she regarded the Doctor.
“Y’know, Doc. Ah respect th’ Tartarus outta you. Y’all’ve seen incredible things, saved worlds, done so much. You’ve been hurt, too, so many times, an’ you still keep goin’. Ah respect you, an’ Ah like you, an’ today all yer worst nightmares seem t’ be comin’ true at once. Ah want you to understand that those are th’ only reasons Ah’m choosin’ not t’ punch y’all right now.”
“Much appreciated,” the Doctor gasped.
Applejack nodded. “See, yer smart, Doc. But you can also be real stupid. You think th’ TARDIS is just gonna arrive here without a driver? Th’ TARDIS that we know is under th’ control of th’ Nightmare?”
The Doctor slumped in Luna’s hooves, gazing down at the floor. “You’re right. ‘M sorry, Applejack.”
Applejack reached out and tilted his face up to look him in the eye. She studied him for a long moment, then nodded. “Yer forgiven. This time. Y’all can set ‘im down, now, Luna. Reckon we got bigger fish t’ fry.”
She glared at the TARDIS. “Come out an’ show yerself, ya yella-bellied salamander!”
There was a long, grudging pause. Then, the Valeyard stepped out from behind the TARDIS, which seriously surprised everypony who had been looking at that side of the TARDIS. He was scowling more than usual. “Why,” he grumbled, drawing a snub-nosed laser pistol, “must everyone always take the hard way?”
Applejack stared down the barrel of the strange little device. “What’s that meant to be, then?”
“It’s called a staser,” the Doctor said as Luna set him down. “It shoots bolts of energy which, depending on the level, could stun, paralyze, or even kill you.”
“Huh,” Applejack said. “Well, that doesn’t sound particularly pleasant. What d’you want, Valeyard?”
“All I need is the key,” the Valeyard said. “Give it to me or suffer the consequences.”
Applejack glared at him. “If you kill me, Celestia will zap th’ Doc and paradox you right to Tartarus. Same with anypony else here.”
“Oh, this isn’t set to kill,” the Valeyard said. “Only to cause agonizing pain and paralysis.”
Applejack snorted. “Pain? Ah can handle pain fine.”
“Perhaps you can,” the Valeyard said. “But can they?”
He gestured with his staser, encapsulating everypony else in the room with one broad sweep. Applejack’s mouth tightened.
“Don’t tell him, AJ,” Rainbow Dash said.
“How quickly Loyalty turns on her friends,” the Valeyard said, staring at her.
Dash snorted. “Uh, yeah. Like you aren’t gonna kill us the second you get what you want? Eat shit, law boy.”
The Valeyard snarled and fired at Dash’s chest. She keeled over, her jaw clenched with agony. He stepped closer to her. “How brash are you now?” he asked softly.
Slowly, Rainbow looked up at him. Through gritted teeth, she snarled, “Buck. You.” Then, quick as a whip, she spat in his face.
The Valeyard’s jaw tightened, and he raised the staser again, only to be knocked over by a pair of powerful hooves. The staser skittered out of his grasp to fall at Shining Armor’s hooves. He grabbed it off the floor and fired on the prone Valeyard.
The shot passed right through his body, scarring the floor between Applejack’s hooves as she stood over the Valeyard, glowering down at him. “Don’t reckon yer so tough without yer lil’ toy,” she said.
“Applejack,” the Doctor said, a note of warning in his voice. “The Valeyard controls this realm, it isn’t wise to anger him.”
“Too late,” the Valeyard said. “You know, I’m rather going to enjoy this.”
“What are you talkin' abAAAAAAAAAHHH!” Applejack cut herself off with a scream of utter agony and fell to the ground, convulsing.
“Applejack!” Dash ran to her side. “What happened?”
The farmer’s eyes were dilated, her heart pounding like a woodpecker. She tried to find words, but couldn’t.
“She remembered dying,” the Valeyard said, standing up. “When the Nightmare recruited her to repair the connections between the TARDIS and the interface, we flipped through a large swathe of the Applejacks in surrounding timelines.”
“When the Nightmare recruited who to what?” the Doctor asked, eyes wide.
“Well, several were unsuitable for the job, and some discovered our little ploy too soon. We had to kill a large selection of them. Of course, your Applejack couldn’t remember any of that. Not until now, that is.”
Applejack swallowed. “Ah -- Ah got hit by lightnin’. Fried alive. Ah could feel mah heart stop an’ -- an’ --”
“And you’ll remember more if you don’t tell me what I want to know,” the Valeyard said flatly. “Captain Armor, put down that staser. Your farm friend only harmed me because I wasn’t expecting an attack. You won’t be so fortunate.”
“I think I’ll keep my hooves on it all the same,” Shining said coldly.
“Very well. Hold on to it -- as long as you can.”
Shining frowned. “Huh?” Then he realized that the weapon was starting to heat up rapidly. He dropped it quickly. By the time it hit the floor, it was glowing a dull red.
“Now,” said the Valeyard. “Either tell me where the key is, or I’ll have to start getting creative.”
Applejack tried to punch him in the nose. It passed right through, but the sentiment felt good.
The Valeyard sighed, erecting another bubble of time over himself, Applejack, and Rainbow Dash as the others tried to rush to intervene. “I’d say that you drove me to this,” he said, as Applejack started screaming again, “but honestly, I’d probably have done this sooner or later, anyway. It’s so… cathartic.”
Starlight stood in the East Courtyard of Canterlot Castle, awkwardly clutching her maps and papers to her chest. She had only realized when she was halfway back to the castle that she had no idea of where to find Blueblood again, but thankfully, the guards seemed to have been apprised of the situation and directed her to… to…
To what she was now realizing was an empty courtyard. She scowled. If this was all just a trick to get her out of Blueblood’s ridiculously gelled mane, she’d throw him out of the nearest window, royal lineage be damned. After what she’d heard of him from Rarity, it was hardly less than he deserved.
But no. She could hear the approaching sound of hooves clattering on marble floors and low, muttered voices. She turned to see where they were coming from. Prince Blueblood trotted out from a nearby archway, accompanied by a pair of faces familiar to anyone who kept up with Canterlot’s high society -- Fleur de Lis and her husband, Fancy Pants. Fleur noticed Starlight’s presence first, and nudged Blueblood. He glanced over.
“Ah. Good evening again, Starlight,” he said, nodding to her. “Before we go any further, I must ask, are you familiar with the Official Secrets Act?”
“I signed it a couple years ago, yeah.”
“Oh. Marvelous, that saves time,” Blueblood said.
Fancy tilted his head. “A couple years ago… would that be at all related to a certain… occurrence at the university?”
Starlight chewed her lip. “Mmmm… possibly.”
“What?” Blueblood said, choking back a laugh. “The Valdemar Incident? That was you?”
“Only partially!” Starlight said defensively. “I helped clean up afterwards, it was fine.”
Fleur cleared her throat, and the two stallions quickly fell silent. “Mademoiselle Glimmer,” she began. “Per ze Official Secrets Act, nothing you see or hear zis evening may be recounted to any creature until such a time as ze crown elects to lift ze ban. You comprehend?”
Starlight nodded.
“Good. Ze three of us are all members of an elite platoon of guards and spies dedicated to the defense of zis planet, from threats both native and… qu’elle est le mot… Fancy, what is ze Equestrian word for extra-terrestre?”
“Er… extraterrestrial, my dear.”
Fleur’s face went blank for a long second. “...Ah yes. So it is. Thank you.”
Fancy merely nodded as Fleur returned her attention to Starlight Glimmer. “We are ze Gaean Unified Agency of Intelligence, Defense, and Espionage, or ‘GUIDE’.”
“Essentially, we’re the ones that deal with aliens,” Blueblood said.
“Huh.” Starlight absorbed this information. “Okay.”
Blueblood blinked. “What, just like that, you’re okay with this?”
“I mean, I know aliens exist. I still write to my friends in Ponyville, you know.”
“Ah.”
“So, uh…” Starlight looked the three of them up and down. “Just the four of us, then?”
“For now,” Fancy assured her. “There are already guards in Ponyville, of course, monitoring the situation -- though they lack the expertise that we can bring to the table. We need time to determine whether Ponyville is under active threat or not. Then, we can call in reinforcements as needed.”
The sound of wings echoed overhead. Fleur glanced up. “Ah. Ze chariots, just in time.”
Indeed, a pair of chariots landed on the other side of the courtyard. Fleur led the way toward them at a brisk walk. She called over her shoulder, “Mademoiselle, ride with me. I wish to see your observations of Ponyville.”
Starlight glanced back at Blueblood. He nodded grimly. “Behave yourself around her. She knows seven ways to kill or disable a pony with only a quill pen and her bare hooves.”
“Oh,” said Starlight. “Well. I’m glad to know there’s an expert on the team.”
She trotted toward the chariots. Blueblood squinted after her. “Was I just insulted, or…”
Fancy patted him on the back. “In your case, old boy, ‘just insulted’ is usually the safest bet.”
Blueblood sighed. “So long as we’re clear, I suppose.”
Sunset paced around the bubble of time, glaring at the blurred figures within. She could see them moving, but couldn’t hear a word. Of course, she didn’t really need to. She could see how limp Applejack looked, and the way Rainbow’s entire body was shaking with fury as she held the farmer in her lap. “There has to be a way in,” she said.
The Doctor shook his head. “For the fifth time, Sunset, there isn’t. Look, don’t you think that if there was a way to get to them, I’d have done it by now?”
Sunset growled, flames licking the corners of her eyes for a moment. “I honestly don’t know anymore, Doctor.”
The Time Lord took a step back, hurt. Fluttershy rubbed the surface of the golden bubble. “What is this, anyway?”
“A barrier,” the Doctor said. “The Valeyard’s set the area inside the bubble a few milliseconds out of sync with us. With the TARDIS functioning, we could get in. Even a vortex manipulator would do the job. Without a functioning time machine, though, we’re just stranded.”
Rarity rubbed her chin. “What if we teleported in?” she asked.
The Doctor’s eyes bulged and he shook his head wildly. “Absolutely not! If you try it, you’ll never arrive. You won’t be able to reconcile the where and when of your arrival, and you’ll bounce off into the vortex. Your component atoms will be scattered across time and space.”
“Ah,” Rarity said. “Not good.”
“Extraordinarily bad.”
“As long as we’re clear. Well, what can we do, Doctor?”
“Er.” He scratched his head. “Well, sit and wait, mainly. Or, we could try and make a break for it again while the Valeyard is distracted.”
“But that would mean abandoning Applejack and Rainbow Dash,” Ditzy pointed out.
“Exactly, which is why I don’t intend to do it,” the Doctor said. “On the other hoof, if just a couple of us were to sneak out, and try to conduct some reconnaissance, the Valeyard might not notice right away.” He glanced around. “Er, any volunteers?”
There was a long silence. Then Sombra raised a hoof. “I am good at keeping to the shadows,” he said.
Sunset nodded. “I’ll go, too.”
The Doctor nodded. “Right. Any more than two is pushing it, I think. You’d better go now, before he comes back out.”
Sunset nodded, already hurrying for the door. Sombra was close on her hooves. She pulled the door open for him, and he slipped through. She made to follow, but looked back. She met Celestia’s gaze. The princess closed her eyes and bowed her head for a moment before looking back up. “Be safe,” she implored.
Sunset gave her a tight, sad smile before ducking through the doors and into the halls beyond.
The Chumbley was deceptively quick for its appearance. For all its rotundity and heavy metal shell, it zipped along on its castors so quickly, the Crusaders had to break into a canter to keep up with it. The sudden appearance of their savior had electrified the party, snapping them out of their doldrums. Button’s tote bag bounced along at his side as he jogged. At his side, Sweetie Belle practically skipped across the floor. Scootaloo occasionally zipped ahead of their new robot friend and lapped back, or occasionally jogged on the spot waiting for them to catch up. Rumble moved along quickly and purposefully, carefully keeping his eyes on the Chumbley and off the claustrophobic walls. Dinky trotted along, her face set in a determined grin.
At the rear of the pack, walking along like a queen, Apple Bloom strode with a proud grin on her face. And why wouldn’t she? She had saved the day, the mission, her friends -- she basked in the glow of a job well done, and of her fellow Crusaders’ appreciation. This was what she wanted from life. This was the thing she sought after, what she hadn’t felt in Ponyville for what felt like years. Respect. Admiration. Esteem.
Click. Applejack’s intestines were filled with acid, and she dissolved from the inside out.
She tightened her mouth. Refused to scream. She would not give this monster the satisfaction of watching her break.
She lay in the temporal bubble, half-delirious with the pain and confusion each new set of memories brought with it. Rainbow Dash cradled Applejack’s head in her hooves, weeping openly. This was torture for her too, Applejack knew.
Click. A timber of the barn was rotten. It fell on her, snapping her back and crushing the air from her lungs. She spent long, agonizing minutes of wheezing pain before finally succumbing.
But neither of them could give in. Applejack knew that both she and Rainbow could easily have swapped elements -- the brash pegasus was never one to hold her tongue, and Applejack would lay down her life for her kith and kin.
Click. Applejack rested on just the wrong part of the console. A panel opened and the Eye of Harmony shone through, vaporizing her in an instant that lasted for eternity.
Applejack turned to look out through the bubble and met Big Mac’s terrified stare. She and Twilight were clinging to one another, each of them the other’s life preserver in this sea of madness.
Click. Applejack was impaled by a falling rake and bled out on the ground, alone.
Honesty and Loyalty. The two were often seen as going hand in hand -- frankness was seen as a loyal trait in a friend, and a dear, true friend could always be depended on. But sometimes, the most loyal thing one could do was to lie, and the truth could cost as many friends as it made.
Click. Applejack suffered a freak heart attack and keeled over trying to run from the barn. She died alone. She always died alone.
Apple Bloom. It all came down to her. She was free from this torment, free from this monster. Her little sister, so strong, so skilled, so beautiful -- the best and shiniest apple of them all. Applejack would gladly die if it meant that Apple Bloom would never see hide nor hair of this Knacker’s Yard in her life.
There was no click. Applejack’s head cleared slightly. Rainbow was leaning over her. “AJ,” she muttered. “He asked if you were ready to tell him what he wants to know.” She hesitated. “...Do you?”
Applejack looked up at Rainbow, her own blue angel. She knew that Dash could crack at any second, too. Her loyalties were divided -- save Applejack, or obey her? “You really gotta ask?” she croaked. “Hell, naw.”
Rainbow shut her eyes for a moment and drew a deep breath. “Jes’ sit back,” Applejack murmured. “Sit back, mah darlin’, an’ take what comes as it comes. Fer Equestria. Fer th’ world. Fer Scootaloo.”
Rainbow nodded and looked up. “She says you can go fuck yourself!”
“Well, Ah didn’t say go throw rocks at th’ damned hornet’s nest,” Applejack muttered, shutting her own eyes. Her last painless thought was of Apple Bloom.
Click.
All Bloom wanted was her family’s love. Their respect.
She would get it. By Celestia, she would get it.
“How much farther do we have to go?” Rumble asked. The euphoria of the Chumbley was clearly wearing a little thin under the constant reminder that the pegasus was where pegasi were Very Much Not Meant to Be.
Button tilted his head. “Well, I can’t be sure,” he said. “But given the last estimate from the map, we ought to come across the tower base any minute--”
They all turned a corner and stopped. Sweetie skidded to a halt and bumped the backside of the Chumbley. Before them stood a pair of large doors of dark stone, ornately decorated with detailed carvings of ponies in formal Gallifreyan robes and messages in what Dinky was able to recognize as Old High Gallifreyan, though she could hardly even begin to translate what they said.
“Uh, like I was saying,” Button said, gazing in awe at the immense doors. “Now.”
Meanwhile, several stories above them, Sombra and Sunset wandered the halls of the Dark Tower for the second time. Sunset nodded to a tapestry. “Does that one look new to you?”
Sombra studied it for a moment, then nodded. “We’re on the right track, then?”
Sunset hemmed and hawed for a moment. “Let’s just stick with ‘nobody is actively screwing with us’.”
Sombra shrugged. “I’ll take it.”
Sunset pursed her lips thoughtfully as she continued to lead the way down the hall. “So, uh… what exactly is the point of this?”
Sombra frowned slightly. “...To escape, surely?”
She bobbed her head. “Well, I mean, yeah. But what are we escaping? The tomb? The tower? We can get outside if we really want, but we’re still living in the Failyard’s cringe world.”
Sombra stared at her. “Your words are… peculiar, but I do grasp your meaning,” he admitted. “Do you propose we simply turn around, then?”
“No, no, no,” Sunset said, vigorously shaking her head. “I’m not saying we should give up. We just need to change tack a little bit.”
Sombra tilted his head, frowning. “Explain.”
“Well… we’re in a place made up of thoughts, right? And my whole thing is reading minds. Well, not my whole thing, but you get the idea.”
“Hmmm…” Sombra scowled thoughtfully. “... And how exactly do you plan to read the mind of an entire world?”
“With great difficulty!” Sunset said brightly. “So, uh, if I start to, y’know, spontaneously combust or something, or speak in tongues… just slap me real hard across the face, alright?”
Sombra looked dubious and mildly horrified. Sunset just grinned at him, shut her eyes tight, and opened her mind.
Everything burned overwhelmingly hot and blindingly bright for a fraction of a second. Sunset felt the flames wash over her, but it did not hurt her, for she was the phoenix, she was the goddess, she was Am--
She opened her eyes.
The first thing that struck Sunset was the size. The second thing was the silence. She was standing in a chamber of indescribably large size. The floor and ceiling curved away well beyond her view, and she could see no walls. In all that space, she could hear no sound, detect no movement. The silence, the stillness, was deafening.
The third thing that Sunset was aware of was the fact that she was not alone here. She could detect another presence in the vast room, and she knew that it detected her in kind. Slowly, she turned around in a full circle, but saw nothing. Whatever was here, it was evidently too far away in this impossibly vast room for her to sense clearly. She hoped the same was true of it. Although she couldn’t tell exactly what or where it was, she felt deep in her bones that it wasn’t something she wanted to meet. It felt inimical -- not merely to Sunset herself, but to every living creature she had ever known. It would be, she was certain, anathema to meet in person.
With that comforting certainty in mind, she set off across the seemingly infinite stone floor so see what she could discover.
After what seemed like an age, the temporal bubble flickered, then collapsed. The assembled creatures stood in a circle around the perimeter of where the barrier had once been, their fear warring with their urge to comfort. Applejack was weeping in Dash’s hooves, her powerful hooves trembling with stress and fear and agony. Dash herself looked gaunt and wear. She clung to Applejack so tightly, it seemed that a crowbar might be needed to separate the two. Both had coats and manes matted with sweat.
In contrast, the Valeyard looked as well put together and collected as ever, though he regarded the two mares with a mixture of contempt and disgust. “Why do you always have to do things the hard way?” he demanded.
“Because the easy way means you’ll kill us that much faster?” Rainbow growled.
The Valeyard nodded. “Precisely! At long last, an end to your suffering. Don’t tell me that you aren’t tempted by now. Peace in oblivion -- respite from pain -- the freedom from seeing what I’ll do next.”
“Thou may eat our entire royal plot, brigand!” Surprisingly, it wasn’t Luna who yelled this, but Celestia. Her eyes bored through the Valeyard, and her mane had started to suffuse with warmer colors. “Do not dare espouse the glories of death before life incarnate.”
Discord side-eyed Celestia. When she flicked her tail or mane, they could distinctly smell sulfur and brimstone. Very subtly, they scooped Fluttershy up under one arm and slunk back into the shadows.
The Valeyard gazed at Celestia flatly. Then a faint smirk slid over his lips. “Very good indeed, Daybreaker,” he said. "You're coming along very nicely."
Celestia flinched as though he had struck her physically, and her mane regained its usual coloration. She held her hooves up to her horrified face, as though checking they were still there. “Yes, you will be fun later on. But for now, I suppose I must resort to plan B.”
Applejack blinked. “There… there was a plan B?” she asked, quiet horror suffusing her voice. “All this time… all th’ struggle… an’ you didn’t have to do it?”
“Well, if you had simply handed over the key, I wouldn’t have had to, would I?” the Valeyard snapped. “You’re making this incredibly inefficient, you realize.”
“Oh,” Cadance said, her voice dripping with fury. “I’m so sorry, we didn’t realize that we were inconveniencing you.”
The Valeyard sneered at her. “Never fear. In a few moments, I’ll be leaving to return to your world to run an errand. You won’t have to deal with me again for a few hours.” He stalked out of the circle of ponies -- they parted before him like the Red Sea as he made his way toward the TARDIS. “Of course, I simply can’t leave you unattended -- hence plan B.”
He squinted at the air between the TARDIS and the Interface. The air shimmered for a moment, and then a series of long cables stretched between the TARDIS and the Interface, tying them together.
“The intention was to open the doors of the Ship and let my benefactor free, of course,” the Valeyard said as the cables began to spark and glow with an unnatural red energy. “It, along with the last dregs of the TARDIS’s power remain trapped within. However, while the power supply needs to be accessed manually for our purposes, the consciousness of my ally is not. I'm sure your miserable little box wants her out as badly as she does.”
Ditzy leaned over to the Doctor, gripping his foreleg tightly. “Please tell me he isn’t saying what I think he’s saying.”
The Doctor said nothing. He merely stared, dead-eyed, as his invention lifted its head and scanned them with its glowing red eyes. The Nightmare had a body once more.
Sunset could have been walking for minutes, or hours, or days. It didn’t really matter. Time had no real meaning here. She was beginning to comprehend the nature of this mental landscape -- the Doctor had explained that the Matrix was comprised of all the minds of every Time Lord, which would be the reason why this place was so enormous. But since all the Time Lords were gone, or had never existed, or… something, this place had been emptied out.
Once she put it in that perspective, the vast chamber shifted based on her perceptions. Walls began to spring up, forming a series of halls and galleries. Velvet ropes blocked off alcoves in the walls, empty display cases, darkened rectangular patches on the walls that likely once held paintings. It was a museum, but one which had been emptied of all its exhibits.
She looked behind her. The vast, empty expanse of floor had been replaced with more museum corridors. She could still sense the inimical presence in the halls -- it seemed confused, and its confusion made it angry. She shuddered. If it was so close that she could detect the generalities of its emotions, it was much too close for comfort. She pressed on through the empty museum. Surely, somewhere in all of this, there had to be an exit, perhaps a map…
Of course, no sooner had she thought the word ‘map’ than she turned a corner and ran headlong into a free-standing placard detailing the museum’s construction. Clearly, the Matrix had some solid user-interface programming. Of course, the closer she got to anything resembling the perimeter of the museum, her eyes skated off the edge. Still, it was a start.
Well, it was a start in a manner of speaking. There still wasn’t much on the map. In fact, there was practically nothing, save for a star that was labeled ‘You Are Here’ -- and, near the center, two dots, labeled in tiny lettering.
She squinted. “The Romana Room… currently undergoing remodeling, not very helpful. What’s this, then… Model Train Exhibition?” she muttered to herself. “That doesn’t seem especially helpful… but I guess it’s the only thing to see around here. Fine, let’s check it out.”
The world went blurry for a moment, the walls growing streaky and wobbly as though Sunset was watching a poorly-shot reality show cut away to another scene. When she blinked her eyes clear, she was standing in a doorway, looking in at the sole occupied room of the museum.
“A very solid user-interface program,” Sunset muttered. She took a moment to regain her bearings, then trotted into the room.
The model train set was fairly immense. At Sunset’s best estimation, she could fit three tennis courts in the space it occupied, and still have room left over for spectators on the sidelines. It was tremendously detailed, as well, although if there was a theme, she couldn’t tell what it was. Here, there was a military base with dozens of miniature troops, all with minutely carved guns. Over there was a church under attack by dragon-like creatures, with perfectly replicated stained glass. In the center stood a vast domed city on red-orange plains, and peering closely, Sunset could see intricately carved humanoids the size of ants going about their daily business.
Humanoids?
Yes, she realized, there were humanoid figures all over the model. There were some scenes that consisted only of ponies, as well, but the vast majority appeared to be biped-based.
That made a kind of sense, Sunset thought. Time Lords appeared humanoid in their own universe, so it would make sense for them to replicate that here. She studied the trains themselves. Most of them seemed to go in small loops of track, repeating their paths over and over again. Only one long blue train seemed to cover the entire track. Sunset took to the air and followed the engine as it wound through the landscape, through gardens and quarries and mountains and cities. Then it drove through a tunnel. It didn’t come out the other side.
Sunset blinked and looked back. The blue steam engine was back at the beginning of its journey again, setting out past the domed city for the junkyard by the school. She frowned, and with a flash, she turned herself into a tiny flame and zipped into the tunnel the blue train had disappeared through. It wasn’t lit, but for a creature of fire, that was no trouble at all. She followed the tracks along until they came to a sudden halt at a junction. There was nowhere for the train to have gone.
Sunset looked from one diverting tunnel to the other. Looking down them both, she could see that neither had even been fully excavated, though one had been dug out much farther than the other. She stopped to collect herself for a moment, and that was when she realized something. All this time she’d been focusing on the train, she hadn’t been keeping tabs on the other presence in the Matrix.
She could feel it now, right outside her hiding spot. She could see its shadowy form grinning down at the tunnel she was in. “Oh, Sunset Shimmer,” it hissed, its voice echoing strangely down the tunnel. “You should really have just left this place alone.”
Sunset tried to disconnect, to pull out of the construct of the world, but something was keeping her locked in.
“I should thank you, really,” the voice continued. “Before your mind was here to manifest a physical location onto the Matrix, finding the Doctor’s life was a much trickier proposition.”
The Doctor’s life? Is that what this was? Sunset looked at the two tunnels again. The new information clicked the last pieces of the puzzle into place. One tunnel led to the Doctor escaping the Matrix. The other led to the Valeyard. She had a sinking feeling about which one was dug out farther.
“But unfortunately, the time has come to snuff your flame…”
Shadowy tendrils began to ooze toward her down the tunnel. Sunset struggled to control her breathing, to concentrate. The entity had said that this place was a museum because of her. That was her perception overlaid onto the Matrix. But that wasn’t all the Matrix was, was it? What if she could take a different point of view. This was where all the business of the fake Tower of Rassilon sprang from, where it was all built, designed, and orchestrated. It was like… like…
Suddenly, Sunset was pony-sized again, standing behind a great red velvet curtain. The Matrix was like the backstage of a theater! A snarl from overhead made her look up. A shadowy figure glowered down at her. She ran, and the Phantom of the Matrix swung down from the catwalk in hot pursuit. She raced deeper and deeper into the theater, and everything faded to darkness until she was the only source of light left. She couldn’t even see the floor beneath her hooves, but she could still sense the entity hot on her tail. She struggled to think of something more useful to hide in. The Matrix was once full of inhabitants, trapped there long after they should have died, locked up for new Time Lords to gawk at, like a…
She was in a cage, the only full cage in an otherwise empty zoo. Outside, the shadowy entity raised a hunting rifle.
She ran down the streets of an abandoned city, pursued by a dark taxicab.
She knocked over empty shelves in an ancient library, but shadowy spiders wove webs to hem her in. Her mind, heart, and hooves were all racing. She couldn’t think straight any longer, and for the first time since her ascension, she was tired. She stopped in the middle of a vast plain that looked like vaporwave brought to life, breathing heavily. A glitch moved across the landscape toward her. She shut her eyes tight.
“I’m sorry, Mom. I’m so sorry!”
Then she felt a sharp, stinging sensation across her face and her eyes shot open. Sombra was staring at her, his eyes wide. “Are you alright?” he demanded.
“Oof.” Sunset rolled onto her stomach and pushed herself up. “Sombra, buddy. I think you just saved my life.”
“Oh,” Sombra said faintly. “Mortal danger. Hurrah.”
The doors were stuck tight from disuse and dust. However, after a few minutes of Apple Bloom pulling on one door, Rumble pulling on the other, Dinky teleporting to the staircase on the other side to push them open, and the Chumbley airblasting some of the centuries-old accumulated dirt off the hinges, they were eventually able to open the doors far enough for everypony to squeeze through. Emphasis, unfortunately, on everypony.
Apple Bloom looked at the Chumbley, forlorn. “Well…” Scootaloo said carefully. “It’s not like it could go up these stairs anyway, right?”
“Guess not,” Apple Bloom conceded, reaching out to pat the robot on its side. The Chumbley obligingly compressed itself so that Bloom could easily pat it on the ‘head’. “Hey, now. You gonna be alright down here?”
The robot trilled, but it seemed flatter than it usually did.
“Ah’m gonna miss you, Cholmondeley,” Bloom said softly, resting her forehead against the Chumbley’s dome.
It rumbled in response. She patted its dome one last time and trudged through the doors. At the last moment, she looked back. “An’ stay clear of any big ugly trolls, y’hear?”
The Chumbley trilled one last time, then rolled out of the corridor.
Bloom’s shoulders slumped. Sweetie put a hoof on her friend’s back. “It’ll be alright,” she said. “You put it together yourself, you know?”
“Yeah,” Bloom muttered. “Ah jus’ hope Ah did a good enough job. That’s all.”
Dinky opened her mouth to say something, then shut it again, looking away. “C’mon,” she said, turning toward the stairs. “We’ve got a long way to climb, yet.”
She glanced up and saw Rumble already soaring two stories overhead, doing tight loops and rolls, exulting in his freedom. “Well. Some of us do, anyway.”
“You imbecile,” the Nightmare said.
The Valeyard’s expression went from smugly smirking to sour in the span of a second. “You’re welcome,” he said coldly.
The Nightmare turned its head to glare at the Valeyard. “You’ve allowed one of the prisoners to escape.”
“Escape? Nonsense. I could tell if my psychic barriers had been breached. No one knows the Matrix better than I.”
“Then how was Sunset Shimmer able to access a higher level?”
Celestia went a little paler. The Valeyard scanned the crowd. “Sunset… it seems, is not here,” he conceded. “Nor is Sombra, unless he’s chosen merely to skulk in the shadows once more.”
“You’ve been lax, Valeyard. Sloppy.”
The lawyer’s lips tightened into a fine line. “Sloppy?” he hissed. “Me? How dare you.”
“I see you haven’t been able to retrieve the key, either.”
“Hence, why I had to make do with this substitution. It hardly matters -- they’re your problem now. Or perhaps I should say, you’re their problem now.”
“Is that so? Why? What are you planning?”
“I should be able to be a more direct influence in the physical world.” The Valeyard turned to look straight at the Doctor. “The real TARDIS is still very much unlocked, unless I miss my guess.”
The Doctor shut his eyes in a pained expression.
“Once I’m in there, I should be able to convince the old crate to be a little more cooperative.”
“No!” Ditzy said. “You can’t do that! Please, you were the Doctor, once! You can’t be that far gone.”
The Valeyard regarded her for a long moment. “Watch me,” he said, then faded from view.
Ditzy sat down heavily. “Oh,” she said sadly. “I really thought that would work.”
Silently, the Doctor put a hoof around her and held tight.
There was a fizzling sound in the West Orchard, and the Valeyard stepped out smoothly from behind a tree. The barn was no more than a stone’s throw away, and the Time Lord made a beeline for its main doors. He threw them open, and the rising moon threw harsh light into the darkened room beyond. Against the wall, the TARDIS sat, its windows as dark in reality as they had been in the Matrix. The Valeyard noticed with a small amount of satisfaction that the blue paint was beginning to peel and flake, and several fairly severe cracks were developing in the wood itself. The TARDIS’ power supply was diminished far beyond operational capacity, and its last limited trickle was being diverted to maintaining its interior dimensions, rather than the exterior.
At the current state of decay, the Valeyard estimated, the police box shell would be corroded to nothing by dawn, leaving behind only the smooth silver cylinder of the TARDIS’s true exterior.
That was good. True faces were meant to be revealed. Everything else -- colorful coats, anachronistic boxes, pseudoscientific babble -- they were merely pleasant lies. Lures to pull in unsuspecting victims. Not that he had any qualms about such things in principle, but the Doctor had always looked on them as being superior to the truth. Things to look up to, even. It was pathetic. Now the time was nigh for the mask to be ripped away. He grabbed the handle of the TARDIS door and pulled. Nothing happened.
He pulled again, frowning. Still nothing.
He pulled as hard as he could, and the handle snapped off the door.
It was locked.
How had it gotten locked? The only beings in town that might conceivably have had keys to this Ship had been knocked into a coma well before they could have --
No. No, that wasn’t quite true, was it?
The Valeyard’s lips drew into a line so fine and tight it could have pressed coal into diamonds. “They always take the hard way,” he growled, setting out in search of Romana.
The staircase wrapped around the inside of the tower, around and around in wide and dizzyingly high spirals. The Crusaders walked single-file up the steps, all of them keeping their sides close to the wall. There wasn’t any real need -- the stairs were wide enough for two ponies to walk comfortably abreast without bumping flanks ot getting too near the edge.
However, the psychological effects of ridiculously high and not-supportive-enough-for-comfort stairs twinned with Rassilon’s apparent distaste for anything resembling OSHA-compliant safety rails had on earth ponies and, to a slightly lesser degree, unicorns, much the same effect that miles of twisting underground tunnels had on pegasi.
Apple Bloom took the front of the herd, carefully keeping her eyes only on the single stair at her eye level. She was followed immediately by Sweetie Belle, who kept having flashes of memory pertaining to crystal palaces and somber kings. Button Mash came next, his tote bag balanced carefully by his side. He was almost kissing the wall in his desperation to overcorrect for its weight. Behind him was Scootaloo, who was constantly calculating mentally how best to catch a falling friend and pull them into a glide to a lower point of the staircase. Dinky brought up the rear, the glimmer of a levitation spell constantly sparking around her horn.
Rumble, naturally, hadn’t quite overcome his euphoric flight of freedom, and was doing laps from bottom to top of the staircase over and over again. It had been nearly twenty minutes, and they had only made it about halfway to the top.
In all that time, Dinky was able to think about quite a few things, when she was able to settle her nerves enough to think about anything more than the old saying about how it wasn’t so much the fall that killed you as it was the sudden stop at the bottom --
Regardless. She looked back on the quest as it had transpired thus far, replaying certain events over in her mind. The earth tremors gained particular attention in these reflections. They didn’t seem to add up in any meaningful way -- they couldn’t be depended on as any kind of help or hindrance, as it seemed that they had done both in equal measure. There was no apparent cause for them, nor any kind of timing in their frequency or duration.
Which, now that she thought about it, was how minor earthquakes tended to appear in the real world as well, at least to ponies without any seismological equipment. In here, though, the tremors were part of a simulated environment. They had to mean something, surely. She just had to figure out something that all the instances had in common.
It was unfortunate that she had been so occupied with other things at the time -- yelling at her friends, running from the Nimons… er, yelling at her friends again, come to think of it…
And that was quite odd, really, the way the tremors came at her lowest ebb. It was almost as though her emotions could affect the simulation.
Her eyes widened. “Oh,” she said.
The line stopped and everypony looked back at her. “Oh?” Button repeated.
“I, uh. I just remembered. I’m half Time-Lord. I’m supposed to have some level of control over this place, right? And it’s been manifesting every time I let my emotions run away with me, I think.”
Apple Bloom frowned. “So… you just gotta stop repressing and you can change th’ world?”
“Well, I mean. It seems that way? But I can’t really control it. Or, y’know, stop repressing.”
“Oh. Hm.”
“So I think maybe I should keep repressing my emotions, actually, until we can get somewhere they might not start destroying things.”
Sweetie Belle nodded. “Okay. Um, but just so you know… we’re always glad to listen and help you work through whatever’s on your mind."
Then why are you leaving
Then why are we drifting apart
Then why do I feel so alone
“Thanks,” Dinky said shortly. “Yeah. Break’s over, let’s keep going.”
It was a quiet night in the Stick and Carrot. Call it what you would -- a primal instinct, a sense of foreboding, maybe just an ill, sour-smelling wind blowing in from the mountains -- but everypony in Ponyville knew that tonight wasn’t a night for drinking and carousing.
Not that Berry Punch put much stock in premonitions of that sort. Living in Ponyville soon taught you to never fully disregard anything, but the barkeep couldn’t help but think that the nervous feeling in the town had less to do with psychic affairs and more with the fact that the entire ruling body, the biggest heroes and reformed villains in Equestria, and some beloved locals had all been struck down that very evening. That was enough to give anypony the heebie-jeebies.
Either way, the bar hadn’t seen a soul pass through its doors all night. Now that three hours threatened to tick into four, Berry was beginning to seriously consider just closing up for the evening and going to bed. The only thing stopping her was the certainty that she would only lie staring at the ceiling until daybreak, and there were uses of her time that were slightly more useful and much less psychically damaging.
Just as she was in the middle of the sixth cycle of having this same debate with herself, staring at her reflection in the bar’s shining surface and moderately dissociating, she heard the bell ring. She had her first customer of the night, and she immediately distrusted them. Looking up did nothing to alleviate her suspicions.
The stallion’s coat was bone-white and he looked about as dry and flexible as one, too. Still, customers were customers, even if they had… she regarded his black skullcap and collar for a moment. Even if they had questionable taste in clothes. So, she nodded at him. “Evening,” she said. “What can I get for you?”
“I’m more interested in ‘who’ than ‘what’,” the stallion said, sending Berry’s suspicion levels skyrocketing.
“In that case, I’d suggest you go find a private detective,” Berry said shortly. “I do drinks and sympathy, and right now I’m emotionally prepared to give you exactly one of those.”
“This is the residence of Romanadvoratrelundar, correct?”
Berry squinted at the stallion. “Now, why would I tell you something like that?”
“She has something I urgently need -- a key.”
“She isn’t here.”
“Where is she, then?”
“Uh, number one, I’m a landlady and innkeeper, not a Time Lady’s keeper. She could be any number of places in this town, and I wouldn’t know a thing about it. Number two, Romana’s my friend. I’m not in the habit of telling total strangers where they might find my friends. Number three, get out of my bar before I throw you out, creep.”
The stallion blinked long and slow, like an alligator eyeing up an insolent raccoon. “Is that a threat, Ms. Punch?”
“It’s an order. I can smell the trouble on you from here, and I don’t want trouble in my bar.”
“And if I stay anyway?”
“Well. First of all, you won’t find Romana any time soon, on account of her not being here, and second of all you won’t find Romana on account of being unconscious.”
She pulled a cudgel from beneath the bar -- it wasn’t used all that often for overly rowdy bar patrons, but Berry had used it to whack everything from alien invaders to snooty deer to eldritch horrors. “So get out, before I show you why I’m called ‘Punch’.”
The stallion sniffed. “Very well. I can tell when my welcome has run out. If you see Romana, tell her that the Valeyard is looking for her.”
Berry stared at the stallion for a long minute as he left the bar and trotted away. As soon as he was out of sight, she locked the doors and turned out the lights before running out the back way toward the hospital. She needed to warn Romana.
From the bushes, the Valeyard grinned wickedly before moving to stalk after the bartender.
The chariots rattled as they hit the streets of Ponyville. Starlight looked up from her papers and shuddered. “Talk about a homecoming,” she said.
Fleur looked at her with mild reproach. “You surely did not expect a parade.”
“That’s not what I meant at all,” Starlight said, glancing down the street. “It’s like… it’s like all the life was sucked out of the whole town.”
“Considering the number of prominent citizens that are currently lying unconscious in the hospital, I hardly think that’s surprising,” Blueblood said, stepping out from his chariot. “This town -- no, I daresay this country has just suffered a particularly nasty preemptive strike, and we all must wait with bated breath for the other horseshoe to drop.”
“Hey!” a voice shouted sharply. “You four stay where you are!”
Blueblood shut his eyes. “Why. Why do I ever speak?”
“You’re too fond of your own voice,” Fancy said.
Blueblood considered this and acknowledged it as the griffon swooped down from above. “Okay,” she said, glaring around. “Who the hell are you, and what the hell are you doing here?”
“We’re from the government,” Fancy said smoothly. “Here to inspect --”
“Names, organization, position.”
Fancy blinked, his smile fading. “Sir Fancy Pants, second in command of GUIDE.”
Fleur stepped forward. “Commander Fleur de Lis, also of GUIDE.”
Starlight raised a hoof. “Starlight Glimmer of, um, the Canterlot Magical Academy, I guess. And, uh, I study time.”
“Prince Polaris Blueblood, similarly of GUIDE. Espionage agent, diplomat, and current regent of Equestria. And you, madam, I believe I know already. I must say, Gilda, you’re overstepping your ambassadorial bounds rather a lot.”
Gilda shrugged. “Someone needed to take aerial security seriously around here. With Dash out of the game, I figured I might as well fill in.” She relaxed slightly and gestured to Blueblood. “So you’re the nephew, I take it. I’ve read about a Starlight Glimmer in Rainbow’s letters, too, and the royal guards look real enough.” She considered for a moment. “Yeah, sure, good enough for me.”
Starlight nodded gratefully. “We’re here to investigate exactly what happened this evening. How much do you know --”
“Jack all,” Gilda said immediately. “I know what happened at the end, but if you want explanations… well, you’d better hit up the hospital. The head nurse and the hot alien egghead seem to have a lot of it figured out between them.”
“And this is where all the patients are as well, I presume?” Fleur asked. “Very good. Where is this hospital from here?”
Gilda turned and gestured for them to follow. “C’mon, I’ll show you the way. I wanted to go check up on them, myself.”
Fancy signaled to the charioteers, who took to the sky to park by Twilight’s castle. Then, the quartet followed Gilda, unaware that at that very moment, dark forces were already arriving at Ponyville General.
The Nightmare said little. That didn’t matter much. Unlike the Valeyard, it had no need to make idle threats or establish its dominance. Every one of the prisoners knew what the entity was capable of, even those who had never suffered its presence within their minds.
As soon as the Valeyard had gone, the Nightmare had lit its horn and ripped an archway open in the middle of the room, revealing Sombra and Sunset walking down a corridor. When they had seen their friends all staring at them in horror, Sunset had reeled back and tried to run, only for another archway to open at the other end of the hallway. Sombra had merely hung his head and slunk back into the sepulcher. Sunset accepted her defeat soon thereafter.
The archway vanished as soon as Sunset stepped all the way through, making her shriek as the end of her flaming tail was abruptly cut off. Her mane and wings flickered nervously as the flames slowly regrew, and Trixie rushed to comfort her.
Then the Nightmare spoke. “I have been requested to leave you unharmed. For now I will do so. I only need a reason to break my word. I can hardly wait until you give me one.”
After that statement, it had trotted up to Rassilon’s tomb and sat atop it, mechanical wings spread like ghoulish fan blades, facing away from them, daring them to misbehave behind its back. None of them had been foolhardy enough to take that dare, not even Discord, who had retreated to a corner to coil around Fluttershy, not-so-subtly shielding her from any sudden moves on the part of the Nightmare. Others had taken up similar defensive positions, or were simply sitting surrounded by their friends.
Ditzy sat alone. So did the Doctor. He had let go of her abruptly and without a word to go and sit on the steps leading up to the sarcophagus. The imagery was suggestive -- the Lord of Time sitting at the foot of the structure, while the Nightmare took its place at the top, above the central pillar of Time Lord society.
Ditzy wanted to go to him, to comfort him, but it was as though he had cut her off completely -- he wouldn’t even look at her. What, she wondered, could she possibly have done to deserve this treatment? She hadn’t done anything, had she? Of course she hadn’t. The Doctor just… the Doctor was only…
She shut her eyes for a long moment. When she opened them again, she rose and trotted over to Celestia. The princess looked momentarily surprised at Ditzy’s approach, but that faded into sympathy when she saw the expression on the mare’s face. She lifted a wing invitingly, and without hesitation, Ditzy pressed herself into the Princess’s side, weeping. Celestia gently placed her wing back over the mare, then spared a glance at the Doctor.
He was staring at Ditzy, his expression agonized. When he noticed Celestia watching him, he dropped his gaze back to the ground.
All things considered, running the coma ward was relatively easy until Berry burst in. The patients’ vital signs were for the most part steady and regular, and apart from needing to regularly change bags on Twilight’s IV drip, there wasn’t much else to do. It was a good distraction from the gut-chilling despair eating away at all of them.
And then the sound of clattering hooves echoed down the halls, approaching at speed. Romana glanced up. “Cloudchaser, see who that is,” she said.
“Right.” The mare stuck her head out into the waiting room. “Sorry, I don’t think anypony else is gonna fit -- Berry?”
“Romana!”
Romana glanced up as her best friend and landlady shoved her way into the room. “Hey, watch the wings!” Cloudchaser said, fluffing up indignantly.
Berry ignored her, which was unusual -- under normal circumstances, the older mare would at the very least have spat a couple of curse words back. But right now, she had eyes only for Romana, and she grabbed at the Time Lady’s hoof. “Romana. There was somepony at the bar earlier, somepony who was looking for you.”
Romana frowned. “I see.” She glanced around the room. “Do you think this pony might be the one responsible for all this?”
“I don’t see how. He seemed more or less normal. Definitely a sketchy stallion, but…” she trailed off, uncertain.
“Still, it’s a possibility we can’t discard,” Romana said. “He might simply be going after all of the Doctor’s friends.”
“If that’s true, he’ll need to take down all of Ponyville,” Holiday said.
“Did he say anything else?” Romana asked, looking at Berry intently. “Describe him.”
“Er… white coat. Black skullcap and cloak, red eyes… I think his tail was brown? It was very short. He was pretty old -- not as old as Granny, but older than, er… Hondo, let’s say.”
Hondo Flanks frowned a little at that, but made no objection. Romana considered this. “Not ringing any bells so far,” she admitted.
Berry thought a little harder. Then her eyes went wide. “His name! He said it just as he was leaving. He said, ‘tell her that the Valeyard is looking for her,’ something like that.”
Romana’s eyes bulged. “And you just came here? We need to leave. Now.”
“What about the patients?” Tender Care asked. “I’m not abandoning my son.”
“We need to be out of the way before he turns up here,” Romana said, hurrying into the foyer. She drew up short when she saw the figure framed in the doorway leading to the hall beyond. “Oh… Berry,” she groaned.
Berry’s face was pale. “You… you followed me. I should have guessed --”
“Yes,” said the Valeyard. “You really should have.” He shut the door behind him.
The others all filed out of the coma ward to face the stallion. Romana looked at him, disgusted. “I’ll admit, Valeyard, I’m surprised that you’re still alive. In hindsight, though, it only makes sense. This had your slimy fingerprints all over it, from the way you’ve been emotionally destroying the Doctor to the ‘inexplicable’ TARDIS malfunctions.”
“You flatter me, my dear Romana,” the Valeyard said.
Thunderlane leaned in. “Uh… so who is this guy?”
“He's a potential future Doctor who becomes an evil lawyer,” Romana explained.
“There any other kind?” Granny Smith growled. “You! Are you responsible fer puttin’ mah grandbabies in th’ hospital?”
“Among other things, yes,” the Valeyard replied smoothly.
“Ah’ll see you pay fer that.”
“I sincerely hope you try. Hauling your old broken body into the Matrix will be a chore, but the looks on your family’s faces would make it all worth it. However, let us not make this meeting more unpleasant than it has to be. My business is with Romana alone.”
Romana stared at the Valeyard coldly. “What do you want from me, then?” Berry had never seen the Time Lady look so icy and distant.
“Only your key to the Doctor’s TARDIS,” the Valeyard said. “Give me that, and I’ll leave you all in peace. Do not deny me. If you make me take it from you by force…” He shook his head. “You will wish that I had simply killed you.”
Romana tilted her head thoughtfully. “Get him,” she said.
The waiting room sprung to life. While the pegasi swooped down to attack from above and the earth ponies struck out with their powerful hooves, the unicorns swung furniture to and fro. The Valeyard swore and took several steps back, although most of the attacks seemed to be bouncing off some kind of weak shield spell. His back to the door, he looked around the room in a fury.
Then everything went gold. The Ponyville residents faltered momentarily, but when no other effects were immediately apparent, they continued their attacks.
“Goodness!” Cookie Crumbles said, lifting up a table and smacking the Valeyard, force-bubble and all, into the wall. “I haven’t felt this strong in years!”
“Uh, guys?” Thunderlane said, stopping to look at his hooves. They were shrinking before his eyes, losing muscle mass. “I think we might have a pr~oblem!”
He put his hooves to his throat as his voice cracked. Already he was no older than fifteen, and regressing fast. Romana’s eyes went wide. “No!” she shouted, lighting her own horn to try and counter the effect. The corona on her horn, however, grew brighter and brighter, until she was consumed in golden fire. Thunderlane, Flitter, and Cloudchaser all landed, all of them too young to keep themselves in the air for a minute longer. Screams became the cries of babies, some of the voices fading out altogether as the figures faded out of existence.
After a minute had passed, the Valeyard let the golden light disappear. Five babies still remained -- Berry Punch, Lofty, Romane Holiday, Hondo Flanks, and Cookie Crumbles, all squalling on the floor. Romana lay slumped against the door, clearly dazed. She was no longer a unicorn, having regressed into her previous body.
The Valeyard carefully picked his way around the babies to stand over Romana. “Give me the key, now, or I’ll do the same thing to all your friends in the coma ward.”
Romana choked back a sob of terror. “You… you've erased them from existence.”
“I did indeed,” the Valeyard said. “The Oubliette of Eternity had much the same function. A pity that your alternate self banned its use on Gallifrey, although those of us with the right connections could always still make use of it. They are as ghosts now, doomed to wander the space between existence and nonexistence forever. Give up now, Romana. You’ve lost. All of your allies are useless to you now.”
“Count again, you sonnuvabitch.”
The Valeyard turned around just in time to see a wooden chair smash over his head. He went down like a ton of bricks.
Granny Smith, regressed to the prime of her life, let the kindling fall over the Valeyard’s chest. She sneered at him. “Damn fancy city slickin’ lawpony,” she grumbled. She glanced over at Romana. “You alright, girlie?”
Romana straightened up, blinking several times. “Ah. Er.” She looked herself over. “Well, it’s nostalgic, I’ll certainly say that much.”
The Time Lady had transformed into a pale pink pegasus, slender of frame with a flowing blonde mane. “Fascinating,” she murmured. “If I’ve regenerated in reverse, that means that the Valeyard was actually manipulating the flow of established time, rather than merely forcing our biological ages to run in reverse.”
Granny pulled her mane out of its bun, letting it spill down her back. “Run that past me again, willya? In plain Equuish, this time.”
Romana glanced up at the ceiling, thinking. “Instead of turning us into babies, he made time run in reverse, which is far and away the more effective method, but which also requires considerably more power -- perhaps as many as two orders of magnitude more.”
Granny stared at Romana, eyes lidded. “Plainer Equuish.”
“He’s slightly more powerful than Discord.”
“Ah.” Granny rubbed her chin. “Fuck."
"That seems like a decent summary," Romana agreed.
Granny studied the prone form. "Ah guess we can’t just tie him up, then?”
“No~oo,” Romana said, tilting her head. “Mind you, that isn’t to say that we can’t restrain him…”
She winced, thinking. “But first, I think we need to wake up Nurse Redheart.”
The stairs went on for so long that Rumble had eventually gotten bored of flying and decided to land on the staircase and walk with his friends. They had been climbing for almost twenty-five minutes when, at long last, they reached a landing, which was a relief. This was, admittedly, tempered by the fact that there was no door on the landing, nor any further stairs continuing up from there.
Dinky shut her eyes tight, sucked in a deep breath, and let it out slowly. “Will someone please tell me that we haven’t spent the better part of half an hour climbing these miserable stairs for this?”
“Don’t talk nonsense,” Apple Bloom said, with perhaps more confidence than she felt. “We’re in the tower, ain’t we? An’ this is th’ only way up, an’ all. Nopony would put all that effort into buildin’ stairs jus’ to delay folk, would they?”
“So… there has to be a hidden door,” Button mused. “Everypony, start checking for loose rocks.”
Sweetie tilted her head and studied the wall. “Let’s see,” she muttered. “I think I understand the science behind that scanner pretty well. Let’s try…”
She lit her horn, and waves of light and sound rippled off her corona, bouncing back. Scootaloo looked duly impressed. “Crude echolocation, nice,” she said. “See anything interesting?”
“Well…” Sweetie frowned. “There’s definitely empty space behind this wall. I think I’d need to practice with the spell a lot more before I could tell you more than that.”
Dinky stepped forward to study the wall. “Interesting. About how thick would you say the rock is?”
“Er… I dunno, maybe a quarter of a meter.”
Dinky nodded. “Okay. Everypony but Rumble needs to go back about twenty, thirty steps.”
“What? Why, what am I doing?” Rumble asked.
Dinky lit her horn. “You are going to hover out in the middle of the tower and catch me if the blowback is too powerful.” She stepped off the ledge and trotted down a few stairs.
The others trotted past her. Bloom looked at her, concerned. “Uh… You sure this is a good idea?”
“Not really,” Dinky admitted. “But unless we want to spend another half-hour looking for a door that might not even be there, this is about the only way I can think of getting everypony through.”
“Uh, maybe teleportation?” Bloom suggested.
“Sure, but that would take both Sweetie and me to do safely, and we’d both be pretty drained by the end of it. We have to conserve our energy for whatever we’re going to find on the other side of that wall.”
“So yer just gonna blow it up, then.”
“Comparatively, it’s way less magical effort, focus, and energy expended. Now, will you get to the safe zone already?”
Apple Bloom frowned, but trotted down to where the others were waiting. Dinky grit her teeth and focused on the wall. If she could just focus…
But Bloom didn’t think she could do it. She thought -- all of them thought -- that Dinky was reckless. Volatile. She fought back the rise of indignation, shutting her eyes tight. She couldn’t let it out, not here, not now. But these were feelings that she had been holding for years, and they were finally rushing to the fore.
When the blast came, it was relatively small -- it blew out a hole in the wall easily large enough for a pony to walk through, sending rocks and sand tumbling down, down, down into the abyss. Dinky opened one eye and let out a long breath that she hadn’t known she’d been holding. She glanced back at the others a little smugly.
The grin fell from her face, however, as the tower began to shift and quake, only slightly at first, but growing ever more severe. Everypony bolted for the hole as the stairs began to shake. Sweetie Belle stumbled and pitched to the side, Rumble only barely managing to fly by to catch and right her before she tumbled off. Dinky picked up Scootaloo in her magic and levitated her through the hole, then did the same for Button. In a matter of moments, everypony was safely out of the staircase, most of them lying flat on the floor and panting for breath.
After a moment, the trembling subsided. Shakily, Rumble rose to his hooves. “What was that?” he demanded. “Dinky, I thought you said you had this under control!”
Dinky grit her teeth. “No,” she said. “I said I would try to control it. But, as you of all ponies should be aware, emotions don’t like being repressed all that much!”
Rumble’s frown softened slightly, but didn’t disappear.
It was a long time before anypony said a word. Dinky eventually broke the silence. “It’s… getting harder to keep in check,” she said quietly. “It’s like any little thing could set me off, and the farther along we go, the worse it gets.”
“Then you know what we have to do,” Rumble said quietly.
“No,” Dinky said.
“Yeah,” Rumble said, eyebrows arched. “We’ve got to talk about it.”
“Ugh.” Dinky flopped back down on the floor. “Can’t we do this when our lives aren’t in immediate danger?”
“Uh, considering that your emotional instability is directly correlated with that danger, I’m gonna say no,” Scootaloo said.
Dinky stared resolutely down at the floor. Sweetie Belle reached out a hoof slowly, and Dinky flinched away. “You know we aren’t going to think less of you, Dinky,” she said in a measured voice, her hoof still extended. “We’ll always be your friends, no matter what happens.”
“Will you?” Dinky said, her voice cold.
“Yes,” Apple Bloom said firmly. “We will.”
Dinky took in a long breath. “Then why,” she said, her voice breaking as she fought back tears, “Why are you all leaving me?”
There was a long, terrible silence. “I…” Button trailed off. “We grew up, Dinks. We moved on because we had to.”
“No, you didn’t. We could’ve all stayed in Ponyville.”
“We could have,” Sweetie allowed. “But we’ve got bigger dreams, now, and… and we couldn’t spend our lives there.” She considered. “Well… no. No. We have to move on.”
“Rumble,” Dinky said, looking at him beseechingly. “You just want to work on the weather patrol. You could do that in Ponyville, couldn’t you? And Sweetie, if you’re a singer, you have to move around all the time anyway. Why not just stay in Ponyville? None of us have to leave, not really.”
Apple Bloom had turned away and was scowling at the wall. “But we want to,” she said shortly. “We don’t wanna live in th’ same little backwater town fer th’ rest of our lives, Dinky! That’s all there is to it. We ain’t abandoning you. We’re just… movin’ out.”
“It’s not like we’ll never see each other again,” Scootaloo added quickly. “We can meet up whenever, right gang?”
There arose a general murmur of assent. “Right!” Scootaloo said, her confidence growing. “And we can go all over the place to visit one another, too. Manehattan, Appaloosa, Sandy Neighgo… doesn’t that sound fun?”
Dinky said nothing for a long minute, looking from hopeful grin to hopeful grin. Then she smiled, just a little too broad to be genuine. “Yeah. Yeah, that’ll be fun.”
She hopped to her hooves and trotted down the hallway. “C’mon. We’ve got a day to save!”
The others hesitated. “None of that got through to her, did it?” Scootaloo asked.
“No,” Button said.
Scootaloo sighed. “Okay then. Let’s just… let’s just get to work and get out of here before she gets pissed off again.”
“Agreed,” Apple Bloom muttered, hurrying down the hall after their friend.
The others followed, all a little more slowly than usual. All of them had something on their minds all of a sudden.
As the Canterlot contingent walked through the hospital toward the coma ward, Blueblood noticed that Starlight’s expression was growing increasingly concerned. “Worried about your friends?” he murmured.
“Huh?”
“You looked to be a tad overwrought.”
“Oh. Yeah. I mean, yes, I’m obviously worried for everypony, but I’m sure they’ll be fine. They’ve been through worse than this, after all. It’s not so much that, really, more… it’s kind of just a bad feeling, I guess...” she trailed off, frowning. “Hold on,” she said, loud enough to make the others pause.
As they all turned to look at her, Starlight shut her eyes tight, her horn glowing. Fleur leaned over to Blueblood. “What in ze world --”
“I think she’s noticed something,” Blueblood muttered, taking a careful step back. “I think it would be inadvisable merely to ignore her.”
Starlight’s eyes popped open, glowing pure white in the pale yellow light of the hallway.
“Time magic,” she said, her eyes clearing. “Come on!”
She bolted ahead of the startled Gilda. After a moment of confusion, the others charged after her.
Starlight’s horn glowed an angry, bright blue and she nearly broke the door to the waiting room off its hinges. She was immediately met by loud infant wails.
A pink pegasus shut her eyes tight and grit her teeth. “We had just gotten them to sleep…” she groaned.
“Oh,” said Starlight. “Um, sorry.”
Then she remembered that this might very well be the perpetrator of an unspeakable breach of the temporal order (or as it was affectionately known to students of chronomancy, a ‘time crime’). “Who are you? What are you doing here? And what is with all these babies?”
“I might very well ask you the same question,” the pegasus said. “Or -- well, the first two, at the very least.”
“I believe you’ll find she asked you first,” said a calm male voice from behind Starlight.
The pegasus visibly relaxed. “Oh, hello Fancy, Fleur. GUIDE’s finally shown up to investigate, then?”
Fancy blinked. “I beg your pardon? Have we met?”
“Well, yes, don’t you -- oh. How foolish of me, you’ve never seen this face. I’m Romanadvoratrelundar, of House Heartshaven, inheritor of House Dvora, duly sidelected Lady President of Gallifrey and her Domains?” Seeing Fancy’s befuddlement, she tried again. “Romana? You remember, from the bar?”
The stallion’s expression cleared immediately. “Ah, of course. You’ve regenerated, I see?”
“Mm. In a manner of speaking,” Romana said, lifting up a baby to bounce him on her knee. “We were attacked by a powerful time-manipulating entity, who regressed us all. Granny Smith and I were old enough for this to be hardly a bother at all -- in fact, I believe she views it as something of a boon. These five were regressed to infancy. Some of the others…” she shut her eyes. “We’ll get them back somehow. I swear it.”
“Where is your attacker now?” Fleur asked, her voice clipped. “Unconscious. Granny and I chained him to a spare bed with several magic-dampening devices surrounding him. You may care to interview him when he wakes up. In the meantime, will somecreature please help me put these children down for their naps before I lose my mind entirely?”
Nurse Redheart felt like she was floating in warm, honey-scented clouds. It was as though all the tension in her body had suddenly left her, and she was totally and truly content with the world for the first time in her life.
Then she felt a presence in her mind -- invasive, tense, cold -- and she rolled away from it. No, no, just let me float a little while longer, oh please oh please…
But the presence would not be denied, and the warm clouds of honey melted in the miserable rain of reality, leaving her lying on a cot in an unused room. A pink pegasus was standing over her, touching both hooves to the nurse’s temples.
“Hello, Nurse,” she said. “Long story short, I’m Romana, I knocked you out for your own safety and stability, and the coma ward was attacked by a powerful alien force which I suspect is responsible for the massive influx of patients there. Oh yes, and your marefriend has been temporarily erased from the timeline, but I ought to be able to recover her once the planet is no longer under immediate existential threat and the TARDIS is reactivated.” She tilted her head. “Questions?”
Redheart shut her eyes. “Yeah. I’ve got a question. Why couldn’t you have just left me knocked out?”
“Somepony needs to keep an eye on the patients while I interrogate the Valeyard and Granny Smith takes care of the babies.”
Nurse Redheart grunted as she rolled off the cot and onto the floor. “The world is ending, you said?”
“Very possibly.”
“I’ll deck you for knocking me out later, then.”
“What about the Hippocratic Oath?”
“What about having the common sense not to knock out the medical professional in charge of the health of all your friends?”
Romana considered this. “Fair enough.”
Redheart sighed as she straightened her cap. “Alright. Back to work, then.” She paused. “Wait. What did you say happened to Tender?”
But Romana had already trotted out the door. Redheart cursed quietly under her breath, invectives against Ponyville, chaos, the universe at large, and especially all Time Lords. Then she straightened up, took a deep breath, and prepared to be professional once again.
The Doctor was aware of a presence at his side. That didn’t mean he had to acknowledge it. As a matter of fact, he had been very successfully ignoring it for the last three minutes.
“Oh, Doctor.”
Well, it was harder to completely ignore the talking. Still, he put up a good show of it. He just had to hold out for long enough for her to give up and walk away.
“Doctor.”
Any minute now, and she’d surely take the hint.
“Doctor, we can have this conversation like reasonable adults, or we can have a very one-sided conversation indeed, wherein the excessive use of the Royal Canterlot Voice can, shall, and frankly oughtto be used. I trust that I am understood?”
The Doctor flinched. “Don’t,” he said, and he was rather shocked by how dry and cracked his voice was. “You’ll make it angry.”
“I won’t, Doctor. Not if you look at me.”
He studied the ground for a moment.
“Doctor.” There was an edge to her voice. He hadn’t noticed it before, but it had been there from the start. “I’ll do it. Don’t think for a moment that I won’t.”
He looked up. “Hello, Cadance.”
She didn’t smile at him. That wasn’t unexpected, but it still hurt. He was surprised to find that he could still hurt, though he supposed he shouldn’t have been.
“May I sit with you?” she asked.
“I’d prefer if you didn’t.”
“Fine. I’ll stand.”
“I’d prefer if you didn’t do that either.”
There was a pause and some shuffling. When the Doctor glanced up again, it was to find that Cadance had laid herself down on the steps up to the tomb, positioned so that her face was exactly at the Doctor’s eye level. “I trust there are no further objections,” Cadance said.
The Doctor gave her a long, searching look. “Alright,” he said. “What is it?”
Cadance leaned in. “I have a child waiting at home,” she said calmly. “She’s expecting Shining and me back, alive, come the morning.”
“Good for you.”
“Doctor. Are you listening to me? You’ve given up, but do you know what that means for all of us? Do you understand what’s going to happen, on a national scale? Planetary, perhaps? Because I honestly don’t think you do. I hope you don’t, because if you had the slightest inkling of how quickly and utterly this would destroy Gaea, you wouldn’t be acting like this. The Doctor I know --”
“I’m not the Doctor you know, Cadance.” He locked eyes with her. He didn’t look angry, or sad, or even defensive. He just looked dead. “I can’t go on like this. Everyone I care about dies, the monsters always come back, and I just have to keep going, keep getting hurt over and over again and never healing properly. I’m twisted and scarred inside and every time I get close to somepony, it only ends in pain for both of us. This is... this is a kindness.”
Cadance looked away, and the Doctor followed her gaze to where Ditzy sat, bedraggled and sorrowful, next to Celestia. “Does that look like a kindness to you, Doctor?”
He looked back down to the ground. He couldn’t bear to look anywhere else. “She should never have forgiven me,” he said.
“She loves you, Doctor. She still does, and if I’m reading the signs right -- and, may I remind you, I am the expert on that -- she always will. You cutting yourself off from everypony now isn’t going to change that. So, if you think you’re being noble, if you think that you’re being a fucking martyr over here, by making everyone hate you now so that they won’t get hurt when you let them down later…”
She shook her head. “Well, then you’re wrong. We all love you, Doctor. You’re making it kinda difficult right now, but you are worthy of love, and you’re getting it whether you like it or not.”
The Doctor just stared at her for a long moment. She looked back, pleading with her eyes. Slowly, he shook his head. “I’m sorry, Cadance. I just… I don't think I can bear that burden any longer.”
“Being loved? Is that truly how you see it, Doctor? As a burden?”
He took a deep, shaky breath in, as though about to respond. In the end, he merely sighed, shook his head, and looked away again.
Cadance’s ears drooped. She rose and studied the Doctor for a long minute. Then she leaned down and kissed his forehead. “I understand,” she said softly. "I don't agree, but... I understand." Then she turned and trotted away.
Twilight and Shining Armor watched her trot back to them, her head hanging low. “No luck, then,” Shining said.
Cadance glanced back at the sad figure on the steps. “No," she said. "He's too far gone for me to help without considerably more time and free reign. I can't even say how much of it's the Nightmare and how much is just... him." She sighed. "We're on our own."
Scootaloo glanced at one of the tapestries as the line of Crusaders walked past it. “Hey, Dinky?”
“Hm.”
“We’ve been walking for a pretty long time.”
“Uh-huh?”
“We’ve been walking in a straight line.”
“So we have.”
“Seems to me like we should’ve run out of tower by now.”
Dinky nodded. “Yeah, it does. Of course, there are certain explanations for why that might be.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. The ground might actually be on a slight incline and wind around the tower like a screw. Or it might be like the TARDIS -- bigger on the inside.”
“Huh. Yeah, both of those seem like viable possibilities. But do you know, there’s a third option that I’d like to consider?”
“Do tell,” Dinky said in a voice that suggested she’d rather Scootaloo simply drop dead.
“We might very well be going in circles.”
Dinky stopped. A little bit of rock dust crumbled from the ceiling. Everypony else took a nervous step back. “Well,” said Dinky, turning around. “I haven’t exactly seen any other ways to go, have you?”
“Well, no,” Scootaloo admitted.
Button broke in. “That doesn’t mean there isn’t one, though! We saw that on the staircase, remember?”
“Hey, yeah, the staircase!” Sweetie said. “We can’t be going in circles, then, or else we would’ve seen the hole in the wall.”
Dinky nodded. “You do have a point, though, Scootaloo. We’re not going to get anywhere like this.”
“Oh,” said Scootaloo. “Am I?”
“Yeah… we need to hurry things on a little more.”
“Dinky,” Rumble said. “You’re making that face again.”
“What face is that?”
“The face that makes my wings fluff out because it’s activated my fight or flight response? The face that makes my mane stand on end? The face that meant we were about to go on one of the most harrowing Crusades of our lives?”
Dinky frowned. “I have a face for all that?”
“Yep.”
“Huh. Okay. Does anypony else have a plan?”
Apple Bloom glanced around. “Sweetie could cast that trackin’ spell of Rarity’s.”
Sweetie Belle shook her head emphatically. “For the last time, we are still running around a lot of solid rock walls, so I really don’t want to use a spell that's basically designed to throw its caster around like a rag doll. Second of all, we’d lose any element of surprise we’ve got when we slammed into everypony else.”
“Well…” Button said. “I mean, our arrival would be pretty surprising.”
“Okay, yeah,” Sweetie admitted. “But it would be equally surprising to us, which sorta defeats the purpose.”
“Hmm.” Button rubbed his chin. “True.”
“What ‘bout that echolocation spell, Sweetie?” Apple Bloom suggested.
Sweetie considered this. “I mean, I still don’t know how to interpret the results super well… but I guess there’s no reason not to try.”
“That’s the spirit,” Scootaloo said.
Sweetie shut her eyes and a wave of sound and light rippled out omnidirectionally, then echoed back. She frowned and tried again. Again. Again.
“Are you getting anything?” Dinky asked.
“Maybe?” Sweetie opened her eyes. “I'm never getting the same results back twice. It’s like the tower is moving. Walls, staircases, everything.”
Rumble tilted his head. “That’s… not outside the realm of possibility…” he said slowly. “Especially given how the tower itself was moving away from us earlier.”
Dinky tilted her head and considered this information. “Do… do you think… that maybe, if the tower was… let’s say, already moving…”
"There's that look again," Rumble muttered.
Apple Bloom closed her eyes. “Can ya do it without bringing the roof down on all our heads?”
Rather than answering, Dinky grinned, her eyes flashing gold as they caught the light. The tower began to tremble.
Applejack lay in Rainbow’s lap, letting her marefriend gently stroke her mane. She focused on the sensation, trying not to think about anything else. Every time she let her mind wander, it came back to the pain. Each death was as sharp as its first sting, but sharper still was the knowledge that she hadn’t really achieved anything.
Rainbow’s hoof stopped moving for a second, and Applejack cracked open an eye to see why. The face of a friend loomed over her. “...Hey,” Pinkie said softly. “How’re you holding up?”
Applejack considered this for a long moment. “Not great.” She eyed Pinkie over. The perky party planner sagged, her mane flat against her head. “Y’all don’t look any better.”
Pinkie Pie slumped. “I don’t feel too good. I guess none of us do, really.”
“Kinda justified, given the circumstances,” Rainbow said.
“It looks kinda grim, yeah,” Applejack agreed. “Ah ain’t sure Ah see a way outta this one, girls.”
“Don’t say that,” Pinkie scolded.
“Yeah, c’mon, AJ,” Dash said. “We’ve gotten out of worse scrapes before. Where there’s a will, there’s --”
“An inheritance,” Pinkie mused.
Rainbow Dash floundered. “Uh. Yeah? That too.” She leaned down close to Applejack. “What’s she talking about?”
Applejack shrugged.
Pinkie pointed at the Doctor. “He’s worried about the Valeyard taking over from him, right? But the more he worries, the more like that mean ol’ snooty pants he becomes! It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we can break him out of that funk, then maybe we can put a kink in the Valeyard’s plans?”
“That… sounds good,” Rainbow said. “Not sure how you got there from ‘where there’s a will,’ but I’m willing to set that aside for now.”
“Question is, how’re we gonna do that?” Applejack asked. “Lookin’ at him, Ah don’t reckon that you could just fire off a party cannon and make everything alright.”
Pinkie’s mane had started to puff up again. “Good question! Um, I dunno yet. But we’ve got a plan, at least, and that’s something!”
“Well… you say plan,” Rainbow said doubtfully.
“Indeedy I doody!” Pinkie said.
“She’s happy,” Applejack muttered. “Let her have this.”
Pinkie paused suddenly and tilted her head. “Twitch-a-twitch-a-twitch?” she muttered.
All three mares looked back at Pinkie’s tail. Indeed, it was twitching of its own volition.
In unison, all of them looked up at the ceiling. A little sprinkle of dust and mortar rained down.
“I was right about the look!” Rumble howled as the Crusaders hoofed it down the corridor.
“Shaddup an’ run!” Apple Bloom shouted back.
The tower was shaking violently, making it difficult for anypony to keep their balance. “How much farther to the stairs?” Scootaloo demanded.
“Nearly there!” Sweetie promised. “Just hold on a little longer!”
Button tumbled to the ground and rolled a few feet. Apple Bloom hauled him back to his hooves and pulled him onward.
“There!” Rumble said, gesturing to the staircase with his head. “Dinky, you can stop now!”
“Right!”
The tower kept shaking. “Dinky?”
“Um…”
“Dinky?”
“I know, I know! I’m doing my best!”
She shut her eyes and breathed deep, in thick, heavy pants. It didn’t work. She wasn’t calming down. Not only that, the more she tried to calm down, the more she thought about the dire consequences of not calming down and only got more worked up. There was a distinct cracking sound.
And then she was holding a hoof. Somepony took both her hooves in theirs and held them tight and gentle. And then there was a song -- beautiful, wordless, and loving. Dinky let out her breath slowly, let the music fill her, calm her. Her breathing steadied, and she realized that the world had stopped shaking. She opened her eyes.
All of her friends stared back at her, save for Sweetie Belle. The unicorn had her eyes shut, and she was singing. “You --” Dinky said. “You can stop now, Sweetie. I think that did it.” She paused. “Thank you,” she added.
Sweetie shut her mouth and opened her eyes, grinning. Rumble let go of Dinky’s hooves. “Thank all of you,” Dinky added, glancing around. “I nearly lost myself there.”
“Hey, no problem,” Apple Bloom said.
“Yeah, friendship is magic, after all,” Scootaloo agreed.
“Guess so,” Dinky agreed.
There was a long pause. “Are you ready to go on?” Button asked.
“Yeah, I think so. Do me a favor, though?”
“Yeah?”
“If I start losing control like that again -- actually, if the ground starts shaking again at all -- just hoofball tackle me, alright? That was far too close for comfort. We can’t afford to rely on my shoddy control of my emotions any longer.”
“Dinky--” Apple Bloom began.
“Promise me.”
“Alright, alright, Ah promise.”
Dinky looked at the others, and they all hastily gave their words as well. She held her gaze a moment longer, then nodded. “Thanks,” she said gruffly, rising to her hooves. “C’mon. Let’s get on with it.”
The others exchanged glances before hurrying after her.
“--rest yer weary head, now, an’ go th’ hell to bed…” Granny crooned over the cribs.
The five babies were fast asleep now, soothed by Granny’s lullaby, which was as calming as it was expletive-laced.
Romana peeked her head around the door. “Iffin you wake them up now,” Granny said softly, “Ah’ll buck you through th’ wall.”
The Time Lady nodded her understanding and beckoned Granny out into the hall. “Good job,” she murmured, closing the door gently.
Granny grinned. “Ah, well. Ah’ve had years of experience, me. How goes it with them fancy spy folk?”
“GUIDE seem to have their investigations under control. Gilda volunteered to hang back and help Redheart with the hospital -- she has some informal first-aid training from the rebellion, and I think Redheart just needs somecreature to talk to so she doesn’t break down completely. Starlight and I are trying to work out a way to stop any further temporal interference, but that’s far more easily said than done, and if I went into any detail, you’d see that it isn’t even particularly easy to say.”
Granny nodded. “So what’s th’ next step?”
“Well…” Romana hemmed and hawed a little. “I suspect that at some point we’ll need to interrogate the Valeyard. Which would, naturally, entail waking him up.”
“Doesn’t sound like a problem.”
“Time Lords are touch telepaths. If I try to shake him awake, he could get inside my mind, whereas you, being a non-Gallifreyan, would have some measure of protection in the short run. Which is why I need your help…”
The Valeyard lay in wait, keeping his breathing carefully controlled and his eyes shut. All he needed was a single touch from Romana, and she would fall directly into his trap. He knew her terrible secret, after all, the thing that she didn’t even know about herself. Romana had long been the host of an ancient Time Lord entity known as Pandora, who would doubtless be a powerful ally to rule over time and space with. He only needed a touch to draw it out.
He felt her proximity well before the door had even opened. “Valeyard,” she said sternly. “We need to talk.”
No, Romana. I have nothing I wish to say to you but goodbye. Just come a little closer. Shake me awake, check my pulse, anything.
“Still asleep, then,” Romana said. “Or faking it. Alright, then. Time for a wakeup call.”
Yes!
He felt a presence hovering over him, felt the currents of air moving out of the way of the hoof as it swung down. Felt it contact.
Wait, this isn’t -- was his final thought before he was forcefully slapped back into the realm of unconsciousness once more.
Romana winced at the sound, which was comparable to someone dropping a brick on a watermelon. The Valeyard’s head lolled. “Well,” Romana said. “If he was faking before, he isn’t now.”
Granny winced and flexed her hoof. “Sorry, there. It’s bin donkey’s years since Ah was this strong. Ain’t used to it.”
Romana sighed. “Well, we’ll just have to come back later, then. Just use a lighter touch, next time, won’t you? I despise him, but we do need him to be relatively un-addled if we’re to find out anything about his plans…”
The Crusaders made their way through the upper levels of the tower, finding little. “Please tell me we aren’t going to have to go up another floor,” Button moaned.
“What, are you getting tired?” Scootaloo asked.
“Uh, yeah? Listen, I’ve got a tech job. Basically my whole day is spent behind a desk desperately trying to figure out where the bug in my programming is. I think I’ve walked more today than I do in a week.”
Scootaloo arched an eyebrow.
“To be fair,” Sweetie said, “we have been walking a really long time.”
“About… six miles, I’d say?” Bloom guessed. “Seven?”
“Yeah, exactly! Thank you. I’d really just like to find the boss so we can battle him and go home and I can take a twelve-hour nap.”
Dinky stopped dead. “You might be about to get your wish,” she muttered. “Look.”
The others all stared. It was the first door they’d seen in this place, just as ornately wrought as the one in the subterranean tunnels. Looking at the decorations themselves, however…
“Is it me,” Button said, “Or are those carvings… shifting?”
Apple Bloom squinted. “...Yeah. If ya tilt yer head like this… it’s some old guy banishin’ a buncha old ladies. But if ya look at it th’ other way…”
“It’s the royal sisters petrifying Discord,” Rumble said. “I don’t know what all this means, but I’d bet good money that this is the door we need.”
“So… do we go in, then?” Apple Bloom asked.
Sweetie Belle cringed. “Er… I don’t think so. There could be anything on the other side of that door.”
“Keyhole,” Dinky said.
“...Uh?” said Button.
“We can peek through the keyhole,” Dinky said, sidling up to the door and squeezing one eye shut tight. “And we see… oh.”
“Oh?” Scootaloo asked.
“They’re all in there. And so’s the Interface. Looks like it’s sitting on some kinda box… sarcophagus, maybe? Everyone looks pretty demoralized. And um…” Dinky trailed off. “I think Applejack’s gotten hurt.”
Apple Bloom all but lunged forward. “She what?!”
Dinky scooted away to let Bloom take a peek. After a moment, the yellow mare drew back, her face ashen.
The others all took their turns at the keyhole before stepping back. “Well…” Rumble said. “Now what?”
“I have a plan,” Dinky said. “I saw something in there that looked very useful in this fight.”
Rumble studied her. Her face wasn’t activating his flight response, which was a good start. “Okay. What do we need to do?”
“Just look confident and follow my lead.”
Apple Bloom pursed her lips. “Gonna need a lil’ more than that to go on, Dinks.”
But it was too late. Dinky had already flung open the doors. “Hey, tin can! Knock, knock!”
All eyes fell on her. Dinky grinned ferally and stepped into the room. The Nightmare stared at her from atop its perch, considering her as though she were an insect it hadn’t yet decided if it wanted to crush. It hadn’t actually fallen off the sarcophagus in surprise, but had merely spun its head around to stare at her. Not an optimal outcome, but Dinky hid her disappointment well.
The others followed her in, all trying to project confidence with varying degrees of success. “If we die, I’m gonna kill you,” Scootaloo growled.
“Well,” said the Nightmare. “This is an unexpected intrusion.” It rose and swooped down from its vaunted position. It landed on the ground, squarely between the Crusaders and their loved ones. Said loved ones were looking on in speechless shock and horror.
“Run!” Spike screamed. “That’s the Nightmare! Don’t just stand there, save yourselves!”
Most of the Crusaders seriously considered this advice, but Dinky stood firm, glaring the machine down. The Nightmare stared back, smirking.
“I had wondered who could possibly be so foolish as to bring a manifestation of the TARDIS itself into the Matrix,” it said silkily. “Just the place I needed it to be. Really, the answer ought to have been obvious. Did you enjoy your trek up here? I set out so many new friends for you to meet.”
Dinky didn’t react. She simply tilted her head a little higher and said, “Let them go, Nightmare. Buzz off before we kick you out.”
Sweetie Belle looked around nervously. She didn’t see much of anything in here that looked especially familiar or useful, apart from their friends and the TARDIS.
The Nightmare laughed, astonished. “You plan to defeat me, now that my power is greater than it has ever been before? Now that I am fueled by almost the entire power of a time ship? You? Pray tell, how did you plan to do it? Coat me in tree sap until I begged for mercy?”
“Not a bad plan,” Dinky said, rubbing her chin. “But I was thinking of something a little more traditional."
She lit her horn, and the six orbs atop the statue near the entrance broke off and floated above her head, orbiting around the Crusaders. Faint lights began to glow from within.
The Nightmare’s eyes widened. “NO!” it hissed.
Dinky grinned as her friends looked up at the spinning orbs in astonishment. “Oh, yes! We’ve faced quite a few challenges to get here, and it’s made me think pretty hard about the bond the six of us share, as friends and Crusaders. Let me tell you about it.”
The Nightmare reared back, its hydraulic limbs screaming, and it fired a bolt of golden energy at the six. It merely fizzled as it reached the border of the spheres' orbit, much to the growing wonder and astonishment of the assembled ponies.
“Button Mash, whose good cheer in the face of adversity won over the Silurians, represents Laughter! Rumble, whose frankness convinced Sweetie Belle to overcome her fears, is Honesty! Sweetie herself, whose shield warded off the Nimons, represents Loyalty! Scootaloo, who traded her feathers to save Apple Bloom, must be Generosity! Apple Bloom, who helped repair that busted robot, is Kindness, and by process of elimination, that makes me Magic! Friendship Beam!”
The Nightmare flinched, turning its head away from the anticipated blast of rainbow-colored friendship power.
For a long moment, nothing happened.
Then, once it became clear that the nothing-happening was going to continue, the Nightmare turned back to face the Crusaders, painfully slowly. Its mechanical face formed a crude, cruel smile. Dinky looked back and forth between the orbs and the robot, dawning wide-eyed terror spreading over her face.
“Aw, shit,” Apple Bloom whispered, the expression underscored by Button’s whimpering.
The Nightmare let out a deep, growling chuckle. “Oh, dear,” it whistled, steam pouring from its mouth. “Oh, dear, dear. For a second, you almost had it.” With a swipe of the hoof, the six stone orbs were plucked from Dinky’s magic control and soared, one by one, out of the arched windows. “But ‘almost’ isn’t good enough.”
Dinky went pale. “No… that isn’t how this is meant to work…” she said, shaking her head. “No. This can’t happen!”
There was another pitchy whistle-shriek of laughter. “Oh, you pathetic runt. Don’t you realize that you’re in my world now? You play by my rules. And the rules say you lose.”
There was a wave of force that struck the Crusaders like the flat of a giant’s hand, and they all went flying -- right out of the tower. Ditzy screamed. Rarity eyes rolled back in her head and she fainted. Rainbow tried to fly after them, but another wave of force sent her sailing back into the darkness of the tomb. Discord snapped their fingers over and over again, but nothing happened. The whole world shook and rumbled, as though it were trying to make known its objections.
The Doctor said nothing, did nothing. Only the silent tears running down his cheeks let on that he had noticed anything at all.
Scootaloo blinked. It didn't help her to see in any way, but hey.
She could blink.
Could she do anything else? Well, that was the million-bit question, wasn't it? She coughed. Good start, but not quite what she was going for. She wiggled her neck. Good, going in the right direction. She grunted and shifted her forelegs, pushing away some of the rubble. Distinct pain, but not broken. She tried to move her wings. “SWEET MOTHERBUCK!” she shrieked, lashing out with her forelegs, sending rubble flying.
Light sliced her eyes, making them water. She looked down, squeezing her eyes tight, her head spinning with the pain. “—taloo, Scootaloo!”
The orange mare let out a faint wheeze of acknowledgement. One eye inched barely open. Deep amber eyes stared back. “Can you move?” Dinky asked urgently.
“Thanks for asking if I’m alright,” the pegasus snapped.
“You just fell off the top of a tower, of course you aren’t alright,” Dinky shot back. “The only reason any of us are still alive was because Sweetie managed to cast a shield to break our fall.”
“You’re welcome,” Sweetie added with a grin that quickly turned into a wince as she rubbed a hoof across her horn. “Ow, by the way. I think I overdid it, this isn’t gonna do more than light up for awhile.”
Scootaloo glanced around. “Where are we?”
The chamber was dimly lit by a ragged hole in the ceiling. There wasn’t much to see, honestly, just rock and dust and rubble. The five other Crusaders, from what she could see, all looked pretty beat up to varying degrees, with cuts and scrapes and sore spots to rival even the worst excesses of the Crusade at its height. “Ah think we hit a weak patch,” Apple Bloom supplied. “Broke through into th’ tunnels again.” She glanced at Dinky. “Your doin’?”
Dinky looked up at the hole. “Could be," she said absently. "Fear seemed to work just as well as anger for manipulating the Matrix.” She kept staring up, apparently lost in thought.
Scootaloo struggled to rise from the rubble, but a shot of pain made her flinch and let loose with another torrent of profanity. Button flinched, and he and Apple Bloom stared up skittishly at the hole above. Rumble took a step forward. “Are you alright?”
Scootaloo stared at him, blinked slowly, like a lizard. “Fine,” she enunciated drily. “Can't move my back legs, probably broke a wing, but yeah, I’m great.”
Rumble rolled his eyes and trotted forward. Slowly, he started to shift the rubble off the other pegasus. “Can you feel your legs?”
“I can feel that they hurt like a gelding.”
Rumble nodded. “Well, okay. That's a step in the right direction.” He paused in his excavation as a little bit of orange was suddenly revealed under the dirt. “Dinky, I think this calls for a more careful removal.”
The lilac unicorn snorted, snapping to attention. “Yeah, fine,” she replied, her eyes still a little glazed. However, she did start to slowly levitate away the debris from Scootaloo’s legs.
Rumble winced as more of the mare came into view. “Legs aren't meant to look like that.”
“Oh sweet Sisters,” Scootaloo whispered. “Rut me sideways with a storm front.”
Everypony stared. It was like watching a train wreck, or a burning building; so utterly horrific that it wraps back around into being fascinating. Button started to say something, but his eyes rolled back in his head, and he fell over, unconscious. Sweetie Belle caught him before he hit ground and cradled his head in her hooves. Her eyes, however, never left Scootaloo.
“Okay,” Rumble said carefully. “I'll be honest—”
“Thought we established that you weren't,” Scootaloo joked. She smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes.
“—I don't know much about medicine,” Rumble continued. “But I think we need to get the bones in your legs realigned, and then wrapped up tight so they can heal.”
“Wrapped with what?” Scootaloo asked, desperate. “Aligned how?”
Rumble sighed. “Dinky?”
The unicorn frowned. Then her eyes went wide. “Oh. Okay. Um. Scootaloo, this is gonna hurt a little.”
“What are you doing?” the mare asked, voice rising in pitch as Dinky’s horn lit. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”
Rumble sat down next to the other pegasus and proffered a hoof. “Squeeze,” he ordered. “Actually, have we got anything for her to bite down on?”
“Oh! Uh…” Apple Bloom dug into her mane and pulled out a thick wooden dowel. The top of her braid fell apart “Reckon this'll do?” she asked, tossing the piece to Rumble.
He caught it and held it up to the light. “Yeah. Scoots, say ‘ah,’ okay?”
“Ah?” Scootaloo asked, incredulous. Rumble quickly shoved the dowel sideways into her mouth.
“Okay,” he said, insinuating one of his forehooves into Scootaloo’s. “Dinky, go.”
The lilac unicorn took a deep breath and focused on her friend’s back legs. They lit with a yellow-gold glow. “Mph,” Scootaloo grunted. Then her eyes went wide. “Mmmph! Nnnrf! Nowowow!”
Rumble winced as his friend squeezed his hoof like a vise, but didn't cry out. “‘S alright,” he muttered. “Hold on a little longer, Scootaloo. Just a little more… see, that's one leg done already, halfway there. Just keep it up. You're gonna be okay, I promise.”
After a few more minutes, Dinky stepped back, letting her aura fade. “There,” she muttered, ashen. “That's the best I can do.”
Rumble nodded. Scootaloo made no move to let go of his hoof. He reached up awkwardly with his other hoof and gently prised open her jaws. Her upper teeth came out of the wooden rod with a dry, painful sound. Rumble wiggled the stick, and gingerly pulled it out. The tooth marks nearly met in the middle of the half-inch-thick rod.
“Rumble,” Scootaloo said. “As soon as I'm better, I swear to Celestia I'm going to kick your plot to Bactria and back.”
Rumble smiled sadly. “Oh, Scootaloo. Don't you know none of us are going to live that long?”
“Ignore him,” Apple Bloom said tersely. “We’ll get outta this, one way or another.” She didn't look up from where she was rifling through the rubble. “We gotta find a way t’ build a good splint. Somethin’ to support the legs, an’ somethin’ to wrap around ‘em, not t' mention th' wing...”
“What, you don't have any duct tape or whatever on you?” Sweetie asked, helping Button sit up again.
Bloom grunted. “No” she admitted. “Used th’ last of it last week, an’ Ah never got ‘round t’ buyin’ more.”
Button, who had roused from his brief faint, sat up slightly. “Um,” he said thoughtfully, reaching for his bag.
“I could hold it in place with magic,” Dinky suggested.
Scootaloo flinched. “Can we think of literally any other option please?”
Button pulled a few controllers and cartridges out of his bag, examining each and setting them aside while the other hemmed and hawed.
“It's fine, guys, I can just sit here…” Scootaloo protested.
“Uh-huh, sitting here alone and hurt in a labyrinth known to contain deadly monsters,” Dinky shot back. “Meanwhile, the rest of us face down that— that thing without you? I think not.”
“Ah!” Button said happily, pulling out a roll of bandages. “Knew they were in here somewhere.”
“Whoa,” Sweetie said, raising her brows. “Nice one, Button.”
He grinned. “Thanks. That lady who patched up my bruise on the train gave ‘em to me. I dunno how they go on, though.”
“Give it,” Rumble said. “Thunderlane taught me first aid pretty quick after I started hanging out with you guys, and I learned a lot more in college.”
Button tossed the roll over. Rumble caught it and paused. “Still gonna need something to keep the legs straight.”
“Um…” Button bit his lip. “Well… I guess there’s one thing.” He pulled out two of his mechanical boots.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Scootaloo said, her eyebrows shooting up. “I thought you said these took years for you to build! Aren’t they basically priceless?”
Button shook his head. “You’re more important than any silly games,” he said firmly. “Put them on.”
When nopony else seemed willing to make a move, Dinky levitated the boots over onto Scootaloo’s hind legs and tightened them up. The others watched in silence as Rumble carefully inspected her wing. "Not broken," he said, sitting back. "The one on the left is definitely in bad shape, but I don't think it's anything too terrible."
Scootaloo let out a breath. “Give it to me straight, Doc. Will I ever play piano again?”
Rumble frowned at her. “I get that you’re trying to relieve the tension, but that joke has literally never been funny.”
“Oof. Are we sure you aren’t Honesty?”
“Well, you definitely aren’t Laughter,” Rumble said firmly. “Can you get up?”
Scootaloo’s wings buzzed as she struggled to push off with only her forelegs. Rumble guided her off the ground gently, and soon she was hovering a few inches off the ground. “Dunno how long I can keep this up,” she said.
“Sit on my back,” Button suggested. “I can carry you for awhile.”
“Thanks, man.” She buzzed over, and Button knelt to help her on.
Sweetie Belle let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. “Okay. So, um… where exactly do we go from here?”
Everypony glanced at Dinky. She took a step back. “I -- no, I mean -- what are you all looking at me for?” She looked down. “My last genius plan nearly got us all killed.”
Rumble licked his lips, which were growing dry from all the rock dust. “That’s… true,” he admitted.
“And don’t get me wrong, I think we’re all pretty pissed off that you didn’t tell us what you were thinking before you went in horn blazing,” Scootaloo said, frowning.
“But it was almost a good plan,” Sweetie said. “I don’t know why it didn’t work.”
“Oh,” said Dinky. “I do.”
Button tilted his head. “Why, then?”
Dinky looked up. Her eyes were welling with tears. “I’m not good enough,” she said softly.
Nopony knew quite how to respond to that. “Everyone else’s worked fine,” Dinky continued. “Button is cheerful and just being around him makes me happy. Sweetie’s stuck with me like glue even when I was at my worst. Scootaloo gave so much to save the world that one time with the Cyberponies, and I can always count on Rumble to be frank. Apple Bloom, you… you’re always doing so much for other ponies. But Magic? Friendship? Me?” She shook her head. “I must’ve been delusional.”
“Oh… sugarcube…” Apple Bloom said softly. “No. No!”
“What else could it be, then?” Dinky demanded. “All of this is my fault. I brought you here, forced you to come along because I couldn’t bear to let go of you -- any of you. You’re all happy now. At least, you would be if I hadn’t meddled.”
Scootaloo stared at her for a long time. “Wow,” she said. “Looks like controlling the Matrix wasn’t the only thing you inherited from your dad.”
Dinky’s eyes bulged. “Excuse me?”
“Dude. Your self-loathing game is out of control,” Scootaloo said firmly. “Uh, first of all? We chose to come with you to the TARDIS. You didn’t force us to do anything. You took the initiative, we all followed behind. That might’ve been a good choice or a bad one, but it was our choice to make it.”
“Second of all,” Rumble said, “we made that choice for a reason. We don’t want to lose you, either, Dinky. Against all your most self-destructive tendencies, we still choose to count you as our friend, because as it happens, we all think you’re pretty great.”
Dinky blinked. “Uh. Huh.”
“So,” Apple Bloom said. “We’re stuck in this weird fake planet. Our families an’ friends an’ th’ leaders of our nation are still trapped by th’ literal embodiment of evil. They done took th’ TARDIS, which Ah don’t believe we could get into even if we had access to it. So, what Ah reckon we need is a plan. A plan that, yeah, all of us know and agree on ahead of time. Can’t just charge in half-assed like that again. But you got some knowhow and skill in this place, so Ah ain’t gonna let you shut yerself off all over again.”
“We trust you, Dinky,” Button said gently. “Really. And we care about you, too. Did you think that we were lying when we said we’d all still visit each other?”
“...Yeah. Kinda,” Dinky said. “Hard to keep a promise like that.”
“It is,” Button admitted. “But we can make it work. I promise. But first, we need to save the world. What do you say?”
Dinky considered this. After a long pause, she nodded.
Button sagged in relief. “Good. Great. So, team. What do we need to do first?”
The Nightmare stared at the window for a few moments before turning back to its prisoners. Their faces spanned the spectrum of shock, horror, and fury. “Well,” it said. “That was irritating.”
“You… you killed them,” Trixie said, her face pale. “They were hardly more than children, and you killed them.”
Ditzy lunged for the interface, her eyes burning with tears and vengeance. There was a frisson of magic, and she slammed into a wall of golden energy. She slid to the ground, but gazed up at the machine in fury. “I’ll kill you,” she said, her voice shaking as she pushed herself upright. “I’ll take you apart bolt by bolt if I have to, and listen to your screams. Maybe I’ll melt you down and turn you into plumbing, or maybe I’ll just break every part of you that can move and sell you to a museum.” She slammed her hooves into the barrier.
The Doctor, sitting on the steps, shut his eyes in sheerest agony. The Nightmare smiled wickedly. “Roses. Lilies, carnations -- you scatter flowers in my wake, dear Ditzy.”
As the mailmare frowned, confusion briefly overriding fury, the machine looked at the Doctor. “What was it Davros told you, Doctor? “Your children of time, transformed into weapons and murderers,” wasn’t it?”
The Doctor hunched over further.
“Well, never fear, Doctor. You want them to begone from your side, where you can corrupt them no more? So it shall be.”
There was a flash. Ditzy felt the change first, a slow and creeping coldness that spread from her hooves to her head. Cries from behind told her that Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy were undergoing a similar transformation. That was soon wiped from her mind with the advent of the hunger -- cold and gnawing and all-consuming. Ditzy stood, slowly forced up onto her hind hooves by rebellious joints and twisting, petrifying flesh. Through the same process, her forehooves reached up and covered her eyes.
“You wish to mourn?” the Nightmare asked. “Weep, then, as long as you like.”
The three pegasus statues made no reply. A flick of the Nightmare’s horn, and they were gone. “What was that?” Rarity demanded. “Where did you send them?”
“Merely to stand sentinel. I will brook no further interruptions, and Weeping Angels make for marvelous deterrents. Unicorns next, I think.”
Rarity stuffed her hooves over her mouth. Her horn lit of its own accord, magic drawn out of her by an alien force. Around her, the other unicorns seemed to be faring no better. She felt a tingling in her stomach and began to dissipate.
“Hardly enough power in you to bother with,” the Nightmare said with a sneer. “But I’ll milk you for all you’re worth.”
Rarity felt Spike try to grab her around the barrel, to hold her here, but his claw swept right through her. Then she was gone.
“Then the immortals…”
“Eenope!” Big Macintosh threw herself in front of Twilight as dazzling bolts of gold lashed out at the alicorns and draconocci. All of them vanished, Mac included.
The Nightmare scowled, then shrugged. “So be it.”
Another bolt of golden light struck the sarcophagus. When their eyes had cleared enough to see it, the remaining prisoners saw that the faces of their friends carved bas-relief into the panels, all of them twisted in expressions of terror, fury, pain, or some combination of the above. Twilight and Big Macintosh shared a panel on the righthoof side of the box.
“And the rest.”
Applejack felt sick as she began to fizz away in golden light, and saw Pinkie and Spike in much the same boat. “Hey, hang on! Where’s that leave th’ Doc?” she demanded, looking at the despairing Time Lord, sitting alone on the steps.
The Nightmare grinned grimly. “In Tartarus,” it said simply. And then the world was gone, and Applejack and her remaining friends were floating in a dark void.
The Valeyard groaned. His cheek hurt. It felt as though the bones beneath had been fractured. What in the world had happened?
“Oh, good. You’re awake.”
Suddenly everything came back to him -- Romana, the ruined plan, the bone-breaking slap across the face -- and he groaned again, peeking one eye open. “I suppose you think you’re rather clever,” he said.
“Think? Hardly. I know precisely how clever I am, which is rather more clever than you could ever hope to be -- Doctor.”
The Valeyard snarled. “Don’t confuse me with that smug, dancing weakling.”
Romana shrugged lightly. “As you like it. Now tell me, Valeyard -- what precisely are you doing here?”
The Valeyard snorted, incredulous. “You think I would just tell you that?”
Romana shrugged. “I’m not leaving until you do.”
“Then you’ll be waiting for quite some time.”
Romana nodded thoughtfully. “I could, of course, resort to more unpleasant methods of getting the information out of you.”
The Valeyard barely hid a grin. “Psychological torture?”
“What, and risk you getting inside my head? I rather think not.”
The Valeyard was rather less successful at disguising his scowl. Romana arched an eyebrow. “I’m not as overconfident as you appear to think I am. As a matter of fact, I was going to propose this.”
She gestured to an array of shining metal instruments on a tray. “It’s been awhile since I last practiced dentistry, you know. I’m curious to see if I still have the knack.” She selected a long pick with a twist at the end.
The Valeyard barely blinked. “You wouldn’t. You haven’t the stomach for it.”
Romana tilted her head. “Haven’t I? You’re far enough along in the Doctor’s timeline to remember the War. I did far worse in that conflict.”
“You aren’t the same Romana.”
“I have the potential to be.”
The Valeyard snorted and turned away. “Prove it, then.”
Romana regarded him for a long moment, considering. Then she rose and poked her head out of the door. “Starlight? Be a dear and go get a truth potion from Zecora, won’t you?”
The Valeyard chuckled. “Weakness.”
“Strength,” Romana corrected. “I have my moral compass. It would take far more than a pathetic shadow of a Doctor to break it.”
“Your friends are on the edge of death,” the Valeyard said. “Perhaps I left instructions to have them killed if I wasn’t back at a certain time. Perhaps the Nightmare will simply grow bored --”
“The Nightmare, is it?” Romana asked innocently.
The Valeyard froze. “I -- you --”
“And here I thought you were meant to be some kind of lawyer,” Romana said, derision dripping from her voice.
The Valeyard regained his composure and stared at her. “When I gain control of the timeline, you’ll be the first thing I delete.”
Romana arched an eyebrow. “You aren’t in a position to gain control of much of anything at the moment. Have you even noticed where you’re lying?”
The Valeyard glanced at the hoofcuffs chaining him to the bed. “These hadn’t escaped my attention, no.”
Romana sighed. “Look down.”
The Valeyard did so and frowned briefly. “Magic-absorbing stones. Do you honestly think these could hold me? I have the power of a TARDIS on my side, converted to raw magical energy.”
“If you have the TARDIS, why would you need the key to it?”
“Because it’s keeping the last dregs of its reserves from us, locked away inside its heart.”
“So… not the full power of a TARDIS, then?”
“Ninety-five percent, more than enough to raze this building to the ground!”
Romana nodded. “Interesting. Of course, you’d have to burn your way through a not-inconsiderable amount to get through these absorbers. How does your partner feel about you spending your hard-earned power so carelessly? If you have ninety-five percent of a TARDIS’s raw output and still need more, you really must be hoarding it…”
There was a knock at the door. Romana turned, surprised, as Granny poked her head in, her mouth a line. “Things jes’ got a helluva lot more difficult,” she said. “You’d better come back to th’ coma ward.”
“Granny, I’m in the middle of something.”
The Apple matriarch’s eyes narrowed. “Scootaloo’s got two broke legs an’ a wing, all them unicorns are losin’ magic faster’n a scalded cat, an’ half th’ ward got heartrates like they oughta be dead, includin’ all th’ princesses, chaos gods, an’ mah eldest grandbaby. You wanna tell me tradin’ banter with ol’ Junkyard over here is more important than that?”
“...Lead the way.”
The Valeyard’s mouth hung agape as the two mares raced from the room. Slowly, it twisted into a scowl. “I told him to leave them all unharmed!” he growled. “That cretin. When I get out of here…”
He yanked at his manacled hooves and internally swore at how tight they were. Much as he hated to admit it, Romana had been right. He could hardly countenance burning up a sizable portion of their stolen power for something as trivial as escaping a pair of iron cuffs and a pile of rocks. There had to be another way out.
His eyes fell on the tray of dental instruments Romana had attempted to threaten him with, still lying on his bedside table. They were slim and tough, and the lock was incredibly basic. His lockpicking days were well behind him -- he cursed his previous selves for depending so heavily on that silly little screwdriver -- but perhaps he could manage it, given time.
He just had to reach the tray...
He yanked the chain again. Two-thirds of a meter away. It might as well have been on the moon.
“Well, Doctor?” the Nightmare said. “You’re alone at last. How do you feel?”
The Doctor stared at the floor for several seconds before looking up at the Nightmare, a candleflame of bravado in his eyes. “Thank you,” he said, trying to put some fragment of confidence back into his voice. “Really. Now that they’re gone, I don’t need to worry about what I’m going to do to you --”
“Oh, don’t start,” the Nightmare said with a sneer. “You and I both know that you’ve been running on fumes for years. You’re powerless, Doctor. You can’t even keep up the facade you’ve held for so long -- that you care about these puny creatures.”
“Of course I care about them,” the Doctor said, dropping his gaze again. “Why else would I push them away?”
The Nightmare grinned. “An excellent answer. Of course, you were too late to keep your daughter and her friends out of harm’s way, not to mention your own friends, family, everyone you’ve ever cared about, any planet you’ve ever called home, and your own ship.”
The Doctor said nothing. The Nightmare leaned in close. “You know that everything you touch dies, Doctor. And yet, you can’t keep your hands to yourself.”
The Nightmare looked the Doctor square in the eye. “You kill them, and they thank you for it with their final breaths.”
The Doctor still made no response. The mechanical monster snorted. “Very well. Be that way. If you won’t talk to me, perhaps there are some other faces from your past that you’ll be more willing to open up to. Or perhaps they’ll just open you up. One way or another, Doctor -- you’ll spill your guts.”
With a sickening crunch, the stone beneath the Doctor fell away, leaving him falling, falling, falling through empty space, his body as limp as a rag doll.
It was, he felt, no less than he deserved.
It was quickly agreed, in a hasty council of war where all six of them perched on bits of rubble in the hole, that the only real objective the Crusaders could have was to regain entry to the room from which they had all been defenestrated mere minutes ago. None of them were exactly happy about this fact, but the reality was that practically everything important was in there -- the TARDIS, their imprisoned friends, their enemies -- everything.
So, they had to get back into that room. The next question, naturally enough, was how to do that.
“The Nightmare knew we were there all along,” Rumble said. “It practically said as much, that it knew we were hanging around, and all the monsters and stuff we faced along the way were put there by it to slow us down.”
“But it didn’t know who we were before we got there,” Scootaloo said. “So maybe it’s not omnipotent. Maybe it just realized the TARDIS didn’t fly itself here, and operated based on that.”
“So now it thinks we’re dead?” Button asked. “That could be pretty useful.”
Apple Bloom shook her head. “We can’t afford to assume that.”
“But it’s probably not all-powerful here, either,” Scootaloo insisted. “Otherwise, why not just have the ground turn into quicksand under our hooves? We need to figure out its limitations.”
“Maybe it can only summon creatures?” Sweetie suggested.
“Or maybe it can only do so many things at a time,” Dinky mused.
“Or both,” Scootaloo said. “In which case we should probably split up.”
Apple Bloom blinked. “Uh, you wanna run that by me again, sugarcube?”
“If we split up, we divide the Nightmare’s attention, so it can’t go for all of us at once,” Scootaloo said. “Simple.”
“On the other hoof, there would be fewer of us available to fight each attack,” Dinky argued. “I say we stick together.”
“If we split up, we could cover more ground,” Sweetie said, rubbing her chin. “Who knows? Maybe there’s another room in the tower, or something we can use to fight the Nightmare, or, I dunno, an emergency shutoff switch for the Matrix.”
Rumble nodded. “Wasn’t there some kind of rhyme you were talking about earlier, Dinky? Something about some guy’s tower, above, between, below…”
“Who unto Rassilon's Tower would go, must choose: Above, Between, Below,” Dinky recited.
Sweetie Belle rubbed her chin with a hoof. “So, two of us could take each entrance. Who’s in favor of that, raise your hooves?”
Every hoof but Apple Bloom’s and Dinky’s went up.
Bloom frowned, but nodded, accepting this result. “Fine. How do we wanna split up?”
“Nopony should go with somepony of the same race,” Button said. “Earth pony strength is great and all, but if a pair of earth ponies come across a magic attack or a deep pit, they’re kinda screwed. Maximize the abilities of the groups.”
“I’m gonna have to be one of the ones that goes Above,” Rumble said. “If it’s up on the roof or whatever, like we thought, I’m the only one that can fly all the way up.”
“Ah’ll go with ya,” Apple Bloom said with a nod.
“I’ll stick with Scootaloo,” Dinky said. “If one of the splints breaks, I can fix it with magic more quickly than anypony else could.”
Sweetie glanced at Button shily. “Guess it’s just you and me. You want to take Between or Below?”
Button considered this. “Below. We already more or less know what’s down here, and with you out of magic and me out of… shape… uh, I’d say it’s better the devil we know.”
Dinky glanced at Scootaloo. “You cool with taking the middle path?”
Scootaloo shrugged. “Yeah, sure.”
“Alright.” Dinky glanced over at Rumble. “You’re gonna need to airlift us out, too, before you head up top with Apple Bloom.”
Rumble nodded. “Roger that,” he said. “C’mere, I’ll take you up first.”
Sweetie glanced around. “Um… which tunnel should we take?” she asked.
“This one, I’m pretty sure,” Button said, shoving rocks away from the eastern end of the hole. Bloom trotted over to help clear a path through as Rumble hoisted Dinky in his hooves and took off.
When they had set down on the surface, he didn’t go back down straight away. He paused and looked Dinky in the eye. “So, you know my parents disowned me, yeah?”
Dinky looked down. “I know. I know, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be acting like such a snot when I’ve had it so much better --”
“No,” said Rumble firmly. “That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying I know what it’s like to feel unloved. It sucks, and I’m sorry that you’re going through this. But shutting yourself off from us in self-defense, or belittling yourself for not being good enough, or whatever this is -- it’s only going to make things worse. We’re your friends, Dinky. No matter how hard you try, no matter what your most self-destructive impulses tell you, we like you. We’re here for you, in spirit if not in body.”
Dinky nodded slowly. “I just feel so… cold. Isolated from everything. And it seems like you guys are always drifting farther away.”
Rumble studied her. “You want a hug?”
“That…” she took a deep breath. “That sounds really nice, actually. Yeah.”
Rumble pulled her into a tight hug -- forehooves and wings, the greatest comfort a pegasus could offer. “Joining the Crusaders was the smartest thing I ever did with my life,” he murmured. “I’ll never forget what all of you did for me, what you meant to me.”
Dinky sniffled a little. After a moment, Rumble let go. She held on for a few more seconds before releasing him in turn. “Thanks,” she said quietly. “That… that really helped.”
Rumble smiled and nodded before turning to soar back into the pit.
Dinky looked up at the towering dark edifice before her and set her jaw. “One more time,” she whispered. “Crusaders forever.”
Fleur de Lis had concluded that she, Fancy, and Blueblood would be more of a hindrance than any kind of help at the hospital. As such, she had decided to split them up for a patrol of Ponyville proper, searching for any anachronisms or other bizarre instances of magic. With Gilda agreeing to help survey from the air, the three GUIDE agents had parted ways to explore different sections of the town.
Blueblood had no doubt that his being sent to investigate the apple farm was a sort of subtle prank from his commander, but he refused to rise to the bait. He kept his litany of complaints about the dirt, the mud, the bark, and the overwhelming supply of -- ugh -- nature to a mere five minutes before storming off to do his duty.
It was, Blueblood had to admit, not quite as terrible as he had feared. Yes, there was still dirt everywhere, and the early summer night was hideously buggy, but at least the plants were polite enough to keep their branches to themselves, tucked away behind refreshingly well-kept fences.
After a few minutes’ trek, Blueblood saw signs of civilization -- a house, just visible through the trees. It was larger than he would have expected, and a vibrant shade of red. He squinted. Was that what he had heard referred to as a ‘barn’, then?
No, he doubted very much that ponies would bother putting chintz curtains in a barn, though what he knew of rural living could be written on a postage stamp. He could see another building beyond the house. That was probably it, then.
He checked the front door of the house. Locked. He shrugged and moved on to the barn. This was, after all, where the TARDIS was meant to be housed. It seemed a more likely place than any other for strange incursions. He shoved open the doors of the barn and let the silver moonlight pour in. He scanned the room for a long moment. Where in the world was the TARDIS? In this huge, empty space, the old box ought to stick out like a sore thumb. There was nothing around aside from that rotting old crate sitting against the wall --
Blueblood’s heart dropped into his stomach. He approached the old box and, in the faint light of the moon, could just about read the words “LICE PUB CA BO” printed on a warped and sagging piece of wood.
He put a hoof on the door. Locked, thank heavens. He wasn’t sure if he could handle seeing whatever decay awaited inside. “Oh, old girl, what have they done to you?” he asked.
The box didn’t respond, didn’t vibrate, didn’t even warm at his touch. Blueblood put his hoof down again and turned away, sickened. It was then that he saw the glimmer of gold out the window. He squinted. Through the trees, he could just make out a flickering ray of golden light.
With one last glance back at the decaying TARDIS, Blueblood hurried out into the orchard.
When he was within a few meters of the source, he stopped, squinting in the light. A sort of rift had opened in the middle of a copse of trees. It looked as though the scene before him was merely a painting, and someone had slashed a hole through it.
Blueblood paced around the rift warily, keeping a good distance from it. No matter what angle he viewed it from, it always appeared to be the exact same ragged-edged shape. It was a three-dimensional rip -- a portal leading to a point beyond normal space and time.
He backed away, thinking. On the one hoof, he ought to stay here and guard the rift, or at least observe any comings and goings from it. On the other hoof, he’d far rather do that with the support of a platoon of guards at his back, or at least Fancy Pants and Fleur de Lis.
The rift pulsed, and Blueblood dodged behind a tree. After a moment’s silence, he peered out again. Nothing had emerged from the rift -- but it had grown. He nodded, coming to a decision, then turned tail and fled back toward Ponyville proper.
Button waved as Rumble lifted Apple Bloom bodily off the ground and up, up, up into the darkening orange sky. Next to him, Sweetie shielded her eyes with a hoof. “Good luck storming the castle!” she called. Button grinned at her.
She glanced at him sideways. “Shall we?” she asked, gesturing to the tunnels.
He chuckled. “As you wish,” he said, leading the way. “Can you light the way?”
“Um…” After a moment, Sweetie’s horn lit up faintly. Slowly, it grew bright enough for the pair to see the floor of the tunnel. “Yeah, this is the best I can do,” she said.
“Okay,” Button said. “Uh, give me a second, I might have a flashlight in here somewhere.”
He rifled around his bag as Sweetie examined the cavern’s walls. “Huh,” she said. “We must’ve fallen into some natural caves, I guess.”
“Huh?” Button said absently, picking up a small metal tube and frowning at it when it turned out to be part of a socket wrench.
“The walls aren’t as well-kept as the ones in the tunnels, look,” Sweetie said, pointing her horn toward a stalagmite.
Button peered at it. “Huh,” he said. “You’re right. That’s weird. Aha!” He pulled out a headlamp, triumphant, and flicked it on.
Sweetie tilted her head. “That’s convenient. Why not use an ordinary flashlight?”
“Sometimes you need both hooves and a good light source when you’re working with fiddly technology,” Button said, fitting the thing over his head.. “It’s practical!”
“No arguments from me!” Sweetie said. She extended a hoof. “Shall we, Mr. Mash?” “Let’s, Ms. Belle,” Button said, taking it. Giggling, the two walked side by side into the caverns. The light from the surface slowly faded as they walked into the dark.
Somewhere in the tunnels, far beyond where the pair could see, something stirred in the darkness. It sniffed the air. This was not home. This was not where it should be. Slowly, the great furry mass of the Royal Beast of Peladon levered itself from the floor and set out to find its way home.
Dinky shoved open the enormous, carved stone doors and held them for Scootaloo as she hovered through. “How long can you keep that up?” Dinky asked.
Scootaloo grunted. “Dunno.”
“If you keep it up, you’ll burn out completely.”
“Mmm, mm-hmm.”
Dinky let the door swing shut behind her. “How bad’s the pain?”
Scootaloo shook her head quickly. “Had worse.”
Dinky sighed. “Do you want to ride on my back?”
“Oh thank Celestia, yes, yes, yes.”
Scootaloo buzzed over and Dinky levitated her the remaining inches needed for the pegasus to sit comfortably on Dinky’s back. “I, uh, I’m not too heavy, am I?”
Dinky shifted, staring back at her friend incredulously. “You weigh as much as a bag of potato chips!”
“Well, I’m a bag of potato chips wearing heavy metal boots, though.”
“You’re fine,” Dinky assured her. “You need to eat more, but you’re fine. Now, let’s get our… bearings… Huh.”
For the first time, both mares really registered the scale and grandeur of the atrium. It dwarfed that of the Castle of Friendship, and even of Canterlot Castle itself. From every wall, imposing figures stared down at them. Each of them had a different body -- a stout stallion with enormous mutton chops, a lanky zebra in a skullcap who was holding what looked like knitting needles, an elderly unicorn with a face-obscuringly bushy beard and some kind of crown -- but each had the same stony, unforgiving eyes.
Around the ceiling, bright stained-glass lanterns cast rays of crimson and gold around the room. The floor was tiled in similar colors, a circular pattern all centering on an enormous eye in the center. Into the walls, a number of titles were carved into the stone -- “High Priest of Dronid”, “First Earl of Prydon”, and “Ravager of the Void” were the first few that Dinky read. She nodded slowly. “Mr. Rassilon, I presume.”
Scootaloo glanced at each of the statues. “Which one?”
“All of them. He was a Time Lord, I remember that much.”
“Wait. Does that mean this is Gallifrey, then?”
“Well… a simulation of Gallifrey, but yeah.”
Scootaloo scratched her head. “Does it feel weird at all? Like you’re coming home or whatever?”
Dinky scowled back at her. “No. It’ll feel like going home when we get back to Ponyville. This feels like I’m coming back to a dumb dead guy’s ego-stroking chamber on a stupid orange rock where all of us have nearly died multiple times already today.”
Scootaloo considered this. “Yeah, that’s fair. So.. this Rassilon guy. You think he was compensating for something?”
Dinky considered the room. “Uhh… definitely. From what the Doctor told me, he named, like, a thousand artifacts after himself and threw his friend into a black hole so he could take all the credit for inventing time travel.”
“Huh. He sounds like a massive tool.”
“Apparently, that’s one of the major impacts he had on Time Lord society! Let’s get out of here, this place is weirding me out.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
Dinky set off across the room. In the opulence and grandiloquence of the room, neither mare noticed a trio of smaller statues standing at the base of one of the enormous Rassilons. If they saw the three pegasus mares standing with their hooves over their eyes, neither paid them any heed. When the room was empty, however, the statues’ hooves were lowered, revealing their eyes. Five of them stared after the two departed ponies. The sixth, misaligned, stared at the wall.
“I shoulda taken Button up instead,” Rumble growled.
Apple Bloom frowned. “That a crack about my weight?”
“Dude, don't be ridiculous. You’re the only one of us that’s taller than I am, and you’ve got abs that could crush apples if you flex right.”
Bloom preened. “Yeah, yeah. Jus’ wanted t’ hear ya say it.”
“Egomaniac.”
Apple Bloom blew a raspberry. “Anyway, you couldn’t ‘a taken Button up, or else he couldn’t ‘a gone with Sweetie. You can’t break up soppy like that.”
“Hm. Dinky, then.”
“You two woulda sourpussed each other to death before you got halfway down th’ stairs. Save yer breath fer liftin’, we’re nearly there.”
After another minute, Rumble set Apple Bloom down on top of the tower. Thankfully, the roof was flat-topped, shaped like a sort of ziggurat. For a long minute, the two stood in the shadow of the enormous golden sculpture that adorned the building’s peak while Rumble caught his breath.
Eventually, he straightened up. “Alright. There’s got to be a door up here somewhere. You check around the center, I’ll see what I can find around the perimeter.”
Bloom shuddered. “No arguments here. That’s one heckuva drop right there.”
Rumble trotted a few steps down the pyramid. Before he began searching in earnest, he took a moment to study the sky. One of the suns was sinking below the horizon, and its twin didn’t seem far behind. The clouds were darkening as well, threatening a storm coming in. Rumble doubted that it would reach the tower, though -- the winds were blowing down the mountains and across the desert.
He looked down from the dimming orange sky to look for hatches, trapdoors, anything at all that might provide ingress.
“Hey!” Bloom shouted.
Rumble’s head whipped up. “Did you find it?” he asked, hurrying to his friend’s side. “Well… Ah reckon Ah found somethin’,” Apple Bloom allowed, scooting to one side so Rumble could get a better look.
She had discovered and opened a panel in the roof, near the base of the immense sculpture. Within was a complicated system of circuits. Rumble stared at it blankly for several seconds before looking up at Apple Bloom.
“Oh. Right. Uh, well, it’s basically a puzzle, see. Gotta connect th’ right circuits up, an’ th’ door will open.”
“And if you get it wrong?”
Apple Bloom scratched her chin. “Ain’t sure. Best case scenario, nothin’ at all. Worst case, uh… yeah, dunno, might activate a security system. Don’t matter, though, Ah ain’t gonna get it wrong.”
Rumble nodded. “Okay. Is there anything you need me to do while you work?”
Bloom considered the system of circuits. “Eh. Nah. Too small a space fer two ponies to work. Keep an eye out on those clouds, though. Don’t like the look of them.”
“Oh, no, they’ll be fine,” Rumble said, glancing out at the horizon. “The wind’s blowing away from… the tower…”
The clouds seemed a lot closer than before. They looked like they were getting darker, too. “Yeah, you just… you just be as quick as you can with those things, alright?”
“Already on it,” Bloom said, hooves deep in the wiring.
Off in the distance, lightning crackled. Rumble set his jaw and flew to meet the oncoming storm.
The Doctor was in a dark place. This was true in a figurative sense, of course, but it was also very much the literal reality of his situation. He had been falling for quite some time. He had stopped now, and therefore he supposed he must have hit rock-bottom, but he wasn’t quite sure when the change had occurred.
This, he thought, was probably also a metaphor for his life.
For a long time he just lay there on the ground. Dimly, he realized that his sense of time was failing him again. Sure. Why not? He didn’t really need it at the moment, just one more reminder of his life ticking away, each passing second another failure to move.
He could rot down here. He could let Time and Pain and Death take him slowly, delicately, piece by piece as punishment for evading them at every turn.
On the other hand, that sounded really very boring, and there was still a universe to save, after all. He still had to rescue his friends, didn’t he, before he could leave them forever? He still had work to do. Come on, Doctor, show some backbone! He willed his hooves to push him upright, walk around, find a wall, investigate.
They did none of those things. He did manage to flop over onto his stomach, which he supposed was a start. The problem was…
The problems were…
There was very little that wasn’t a problem, honestly.
He decided to start with the most immediate problem. He couldn’t see where he was Dinky was dead. He didn’t know where Ditzy was a Weeping Angel he was. He might not all his friends stolen away from him one way or another even be standing on solid he was aloneground.
Right. Well. How to solve that problem? Get Twilight to light her horn. Well, he could feel around the ground a bit.
Ah. It was gritty. How unpleasant. Underneath the grit, he could feel tiles. He was probably inside a building, then, a building in the middle of a desert. Perhaps Rainbow Dash could scout from the skies?
He shifted a leg and accidentally kicked something metallic. A little more curious kicking revealed it to be a barstool. Using his incredible Time Lord powers of deduction, he managed to work out that he was in a bar. Perfect for a Pinkie Pie Party.
At long last, he hauled himself to his hooves. He simply couldn’t stand another moment of silent self-reflection. He fumbled blindly in the dark, bumping into tables and chairs until he found his way to the wall. After another few minutes of stumbling along, he finally found the lightswitch.
After a few seconds, his eyes adjusted to the light. He peered around the room. It seemed familiar, but he hadn’t been here recently. After a few moments, it clicked. This was a bar in the Capitol Lowtown -- a low-class, filthy establishment that Shobogans, dropouts, and wastrels of all kinds had adored, and every right-minded Time Lord disdained. It had been one of the Doctor’s favorite hangouts as a student.
“Why here?” he asked. “I’ve only got good memories of this place. Drinks, fights, music, friends…” He shook his head. “It doesn’t make sense.”
The lack of a response hung in the air like the sword of Damocles. The Doctor shut his eyes. He just had to keep moving. Just keep moving, and the despair won’t be able to keep up. Just keep moving.
There was a thump at the door, shaking the Doctor from his reverie. The thump came again, and again, and again. The door to the bar creaked on its hinges. Very quietly, the Doctor skirted around to the back of the bar, where the secret exit was hidden.
The door began to splinter, and the Doctor dodged out just before it exploded off its hinges. Therefore, he didn’t see the three mares who walked in -- a ginger unicorn with glowing golden light shining from her eyes, a short-maned pegasus with black gunk bubbling over half her charred body, and a brunette earth pony whose form seemed to flicker and shift subtly every so often.
The ginger glanced around. “Gone already,” she said. “Must’ve taken the back way out.”
“We should go after him,” said the pegasus, her voice thin and reedy, like a shadow.
The ginger considered this. “Nah. Let’s have us a bit of booze.”
“But Donna, he’s getting away!”
“Let him run,” the brunette said, her voice light and chipper as she took a seat at the bar. Her form flickered, and her muzzle twisted out of shape. When she spoke again, her voice was flatter, crueler. “It’s not like he can get anywhere.”
“Peri’s right,” Donna said. “Anyway, there’s worse than us out there. Come on, Fey. First round’s on me.”
Fey grunted, but slid onto a barstool. “No ginger,” she warned. “I want a clear head for this. I want to remember his face when he sees us again.”
Donna poured out three glasses and raised one high. “To the Children of Time,” she said. “Warriors, murderers, weapons all.”
The three former companions clinked glasses and drank deep.
Deep beneath the planet’s surface, Button and Sweetie wandered through the dark tunnels. Their giggles had faded as the weight of the situation pressed on them and the darkness closed in. Now they walked in silence side by side, so close that they kept bumping flanks.
There was a long pause. “Button, all the tunnels are identical.”
“Well… yeah,” Button admitted. “But at least we’re out of the caves, right?”
“True,” Sweetie said.
There was another long silence. “Hey… Sweetie?”
“Uh-huh?”
“Do you, uh…”
“What?”
“Well… I’m starting to get a little creeped out by all this, and I thought maybe if you could sing a little, it wouldn’t be quite so bad.”
“Oh!”
“You don’t have to if you don’t want to, I just wondered --”
“No, no, I think that’s a really great idea, honestly. What kind of music were you thinking?”
“Uh, I dunno. Something happy.”
“Something happy, huh? Hmm… What about something like this?” She threw her head back and started singing a wordless aria that flowed and swelled into high peaks and wild flights of fancy. It wasn't very loud, but it echoed off the corridors, bouncing around and reflecting back on itself to give the illusion of many voices, all singing the same wordless melody.
Button grinned. “Yeah… yeah, just like that,” he said.
They walked a little farther. Slowly, their pace fell into line with the rhythm of the music. “Bum-bump,” Button sang, putting the beat to melody. “Ba-bump.”
Not to be outdone, Sweetie started to dance a little, the clack of her hooves on the stone creating a syncopated rhythm. Both ponies were smiling widely, and a heartsong seemed on the verge of breaking out when the tune was suddenly cut off by a high howl from farther ahead in the tunnel.
Sweetie Belle and Button both stopped dead in their tracks. “So,” Button said. “It occurs to me that maybe we didn’t actually defeat all the creatures that might live in these tunnels.”
“Defeat?” Sweetie Belle repeated. “I think we mostly just outran them.”
There was another howl, closer this time. “So we did,” Button said, backing away. “Well, why mess with a winning formula?”
“You know, Button old buddy old pal, you took the words right out of my mouth.”
The howling had stopped, but they could hear raspy breaths in the darkness, then a growl.
Sweetie screamed, and both ponies took off running down the hallway.
The Nightmare stared at the hole where the Doctor had been sitting as the stone steps slowly reformed to cover the void. Stepping around it, the mechanical god walked up to Rassilon’s sarcophagus and studied each of the petrified faces intently. Celestia, Cadance, Sunset Shimmer, Luna, Discord, Twilight Sparkle, and -- irritatingly -- Big Macintosh all stared back, stone eyes unseeing, faces locked in the same expressions they had worn when they were captured, be it shock, fury, or simple, weary acceptance.
Reaching up, the Nightmare touched each of their foreheads in turn, causing scenes and images to spark in its mind.
Celestia’s mind was cold -- full of white marble and frozen hearts.
Every morning, right on time, the Princess would raise the sun. Her eyes glowed pink when the sun was in the sky, and this was how ponies knew that it was morning. The ponies had to depend on this system, for they could not see the sun for themselves, not in these endless rooms of polished white marble. The size of the City -- which had no name, for there could be no other -- was unknown, unexplored. You could walk in any direction you chose, and you would always end up back where you started. When the sun was in the sky, court was in session -- petitions, criminal cases, laws to be passed -- all these would pass before the eyes of the Princess. Of course, given that the Princess herself was a solid marble statue, her will had to be interpreted through various means, too arcane for any but the most exalted members of the court to understand. A unicorn with lustrous violet curls entreated the Princess for the grant of a set of rooms, so that she could sell her beautiful dresses and suits from them. Of course you may, thought the Princess. Your beauty and talent deserve to be known. “The Princess denies your request,” sneered the Hierophant, who held a monopoly in cloth and fabrics for miles around. A pegasus, as blue as the long-forgotten sky, was on trial for breaking a stained-glass window. Show her mercy, thought the Princess. I always hated that ugly thing. “The Princess orders ten years’ indentured servitude,” whined the Vizir, who had trodden in a pile of the glass. An earth pony with a brilliant smile proposed a new holiday in honor of pastries. Yes, thought the Princess. Yes yes yes, I would very much like a day celebrating cake, and donuts, and cookies too. And it’s mandatory to give a little slice to the Princess. “Ridiculous,” snorted the Prime Minister, who had grown fat off of crooked deals and never sharing so much as a crust of bread. “The Princess disapproves of such frivolity, and tells you to eat your vegetables.” Every evening, the Sun would set. The ponies knew this because the Princess’s eyes would dim and fade.The ponies had to depend on this system, for they could not see the sun for themselves. Not in these endless rooms of polished white marble.
Cadance’s mind was damp and grey.
She dressed in black veils, and she carried colorful roses. She walked through the graveyard in the early morning, while the grass was still soaked with dew. Every stone she passed bore a name. Every name bore a face. Every face bore a story. Shining Armor. Twilight Velvet. Flurry Heart. At each grave, she lay a rose -- red for the lover, peach for the mother, white for the daughter. She passed the stones, read the names. The faces flew past, the stories all blending into one another. Applejack. Fluttershy. Spike. Orange for the stalwart, pink for the sweet, yellow for the baby brother. The graves grew older, and the Mourner grew wearier. Which colors symbolized what? It hardly mattered -- the graves were worn. The names were faded, the faces were obscured, the stories half-imagined. Who had Purple Heart been? Lover? Friend? Parent? She lay down a blue rose, for the unattainable memory. She spared a glance back. In the cold dawn light, all the roses looked blue. She turned back and continued to walk.
Sunset’s mind was chilly and disarrayed.
She drew into herself a little tighter as she squeezed past a group of students, all staring at their phones. All of them were typing, reading, laughing, all of their voices harsh and cruel. The school had been twisted around Anon-a-Miss’s finger. Relationships were shattered, twisted every hour from friends since kindergarten to enemies 'til the grave. The nasty little red and gold icon, combined with the reputation Sunset thought she had shed, had focused the ire of the entire school squarely on her shoulders. All her friends had fallen away in the space of a day, and now she walked alone and unprotected. She came to her locker, spun the combination. The locker opened by itself, and a pile of red and yellow paper spilled out -- crude memes, hate-mail written in crayon, horribly edited photos -- all an attack on her. She sank to her knees and wept.
Luna’s mind was dark and oppressive.
The moon hung in the sky like a luminous eye, watching the dying land below. Nightmare Moon watched from the highest parapet of the former Everfree Castle, now renamed Eclipse Castle in her dishonor. It was also because the Everfree Forest had been mostly razed by the final battle with Celestia, and the few remaining trees were withered and dying. Nightmare Moon smiled, showing her gleaming white fangs. Underneath that, Luna was trying to scream, but black ooze filled her mouth, nose, eyes, lungs, stifling her body and mind. She could not control her actions. She could not control her voice. As time went on, she could barely differentiate the difference between the Nightmare’s thoughts and her own.
She could no longer feel her hooves. Perhaps they had been dissolved, or absorbed utterly. Perhaps she had simply gone numb. She wasn’t sure which option would be worse.
The Night that Would Last Forever wrapped around her and swallowed her alive.
Discord’s mind talked back.
“Naturally. You must think I’m some kind of idiot. I know you, Nightmare, how you feed on fear and hatred. You dump suffering on the world. I often wonder… is it a fetish? You can tell me if it is.”
... “... Your silence speaks volumes. Alright then, where’s my worst fear, then? I must confess, I’m curious to know what it is. Perhaps Fluttershy dying? Or finding my diary? Or getting married to somepony else?”
... “...Jeez, tough crowd.”
... “Well? Are you going to say something? Do something? I can’t wait around forever, you know…” Oh, said the Nightmare. But you can. And you will. “Wait. What? No! No, you can’t do this to me! You can’t! You--
The Nightmare severed the connection, then turned, scowling, to the final panel on the tomb. Twilight Sparkle and Big Macintosh shared space. With trepidation, it reached out to the panel. There was a twist --
“Hello?” Twilight called. Mac glanced around. “We’re back in Ponyville?” “It… looks that way…” Twilight said, dubious. “I don’t know about this…” “Look, there’s Pinkie Pie over there,” Mac said, pointing down the street. “Maybe we can ask her what’s goin’ on.” “Good idea. Pinkie! Pinkie, hey!” Pinkie stopped and looked at them for a long minute, tilting her head. Then she bounced over. “Hi there! Welcome to Ponyville? How did you know my name? What are your names? Do you like parties? What’s your favorite flavor of cake? What is the meaning of liff?” Twilight blinked several times, taken aback. Mac recovered a little more quickly. “Pinkie… are y’all sayin’ you don’t know who we are?” Pinkie scrutinized first her, then Twilight, before shaking her head. “Mm, nope! But like Granny Pie always said, a stranger is just a friend you haven’t met yet!” Mac frowned. Twilight leaned in a little closer. “Pinkie… we’ve been friends for years. Mac is Applejack’s older sister. Something’s wrong with your memory.” Pinkie’s eyes went vague and fuzzy for a moment. Then they brightened again. “Oh! You’re part of the Apple Family! I should’ve guessed, ‘cause of the apple and all. Well, Sweet Apple Acres is up that way, about a mile outside town. I’ll be sure to see you later at your Welcome to Ponyville Party!” She turned and bounced away. Twilight turned to Mac, her face pale. “Pinkie forgot us. How -- Pinkie never forgets anything!” Mac set her jaw. “Somethin’s real wrong ‘round here.” “Yeah! Ya think?” She winced immediately. “Sorry. Shouldn’t have snapped. This… this is really bad.” Mac nodded. “Won’t get nothin’ done out here, though. We best get to th’ Acres.” “But… Mac, if ponies don’t remember us… I mean, your family…” Mac grimaced. She clearly hadn’t considered this. “Apples is still Apples. Whether they remember me or not, we’ll have a place t’ bed down fer a few days while we work this out.” “Alright. Why not?” Twilight started trotting toward the orchard. “Funny, though. You’d think that even Pinkie would have some kind of reaction to meeting a new alicorn…” “Oh,” Mac said. “Er…” Twilight screwed up her face and glanced back. Her wings were still there. “Oh, thank goodness.” “Ah.” Mac reached up and tapped Twilight’s forehead, right where her horn ought to have been. Twilight crossed her eyes in an effort to look up, and she scowled. “Well, tits.”
The Nightmare took its hoof off the panel, frowning. That could have been progressing better. The stabilizing agent could be removed, of course, but not without freeing the other prisoners. That would be annoying, and enable them to refresh their mental defenses before being put back in.
For now, it would just have to wait and observe. If things recovered too much, intervention might become necessary. For now, though, five out of six was acceptable.
Slowly, it began to smile as it studied the shifting features at the top of the sarcophagus. A sculpture of an earth pony lay there, as though sleeping. His necktie lay flat across his chest, unlike how its crooked real-life counterpart behaved.
Make that six out of seven.
The Doctor stumbled through the back alleys of Lowtown, trying to navigate a path he had raced his friends down every fortnight, with the Chancellery Guard in hot pursuit. If he could find his way back to the Prydon Academy, he stood a good chance of fortifying himself against his pursuers.
Unfortunately, he was trying to rely on muscle memory, and those particular muscles hadn’t existed for lifetimes. As he stared up at the third dead end he’d encountered in ten minutes, he wondered if it was possible someone might be playing at silly buggers. It would certainly explain why so many walls had the message ‘No More’ blasted into them.
As he pondered this, the Doctor heard noises coming toward him -- hooves on the street, and quiet, arguing voices. He quickly hid in a doorway, pressing himself as flat as he could, and strained to listen.
“--Look, I’m telling you, C’rizz,” a plummy female voice said. “I haven’t the faintest idea how we got here, either, but I’m sure that the Doctor will be able to figure it out.”
There was an indistinct muttering from C’rizz. “Yes, of course they'll be around here somewhere,” the first voice said, laced with indignation. “All we need to do is look for an enormous hullabaloo, and that’s where they’ll be.”
There was more indistinct muttering, but the Doctor had stopped paying attention. C’rizz -- and the other voice was unmistakably Charlotte Pollard. Two of his old friends and companions -- on Gallifrey?
Confusion warred with delight, but in the end, guilt was the deciding factor. Charley and C’rizz had suffered terrible ends, and that was down to him. He could make things right -- apologize -- at least see his old friends one more time. He stumbled from the doorway and raced up the dead end back to the main alley, skidding as he looked around frantically.
There -- a pink pegasus and a tall dragon. That had to be them. “Charley! C’rizz!” he hollered. “Oi up! I’m back here!”
They both stopped. Charley glanced at C’rizz without turning around. “You see? I knew that would ferret them out.”
“Y̸̢̛̩̬̮̳̬̹̠̿̀̑̈ě̶̻̜̽̈́̿̀͘s̷̜̼̮̞͈̻̝̠̋̏͑̿͂̃̃͑͐̈́̉͜͝͝,̵̨̢͉̦̣̀́͗̓͛̈́͌͆͠ ̸̙͙͚̓́̅͝y̵̖̞͖̻̖̙̿͛ě̴̡̡͍̞̣̫͔̳̪̙̗̈̽͜s̵̳̟̼̘̲̠̘̱̗̝̘̾͐́̌̑̅̓̕̕.̷̛͓̪̻̠̲͙̑̔́̍́͐́̃̃͠” C’rizz said in many voices at once. ̷͚̰̲͑̊́͛̈͊͛̀͆̇”Y̴̧̹̜͙̦̤̣̠̣̞̹̲̑̇͛̎̿͗͊ͅǫ̸̡̮̗̪̗̰͓̉̏̇͂̍̏͆̾̚͝u̸̢̮̞̺̜͇͓̪͇͍͖͓͒̋͊͒͌͊̌'̴̪̪̦͍̳͖͇̘̻̙͒͛̄͋̆̈́͋̏͘͝ͅṙ̸̢̢̝̞̥̘̫̆ê̵̢̢̛̲̝͚̺͐͛͊̽̕̚ ̴̦͈͈̘̔̓̂͗̑͗̀͊̀͜͝v̶̛̱̬͇̰͖̻͛̔̂͋̑̆͋͘͘ȅ̴̛̙̤̤̊̒̇̓͝͝r̴̨̘̝̞͉͖̮͇͉̱͊́͐̐̿̍̾͒̈́̀̆ͅy̶̛͓͓̟͈͕̅̈́̀̋͐̈́̽͝ ̴̡͔̱͔̥̪̈ć̷̩̆̎̃l̷̘͛̀͊̾͋̌̉̍̑͝ę̵̥͈̹̰̺̞͖̤̹̐͌͊̆̉̓̈́́͌͝v̷̪͙͙͚̝̰͂̂́̀͑̿̑̀̇̐͘̕ͅe̶̡̻̲͙̫̝͎̘̯̮̣͒r̴̦͎̯̞͈̪̳͔͙͈͙̤̐̀̔͝,̷̫͐͜”
The Doctor took a step back. For the first time, he noticed some very strange things about his friends. C’rizz’s scales were flushed a deep crimson, and his head was crowned with devilish horns. Charley seemed… oddly insubstantial, almost like a ghost.
Then they turned, and the Doctor saw their faces. Charley was burnt and covered in soot. She wore the same outfit she had worn when the Doctor rescued her from the crash of the R101, but it was ripped and burned. C’rizz was ashen as well, and was looking distressingly Satanic. Charley grinned. “Hello, Doctor,” she said. “Did you miss us?”
The Doctor took a nervous step back. “Who are you?”
“Oh, don’t be mean to the Doctor,” Charley scolded lightly. “They’ve had lots of old friends that have met sticky ends. I’m not surprised he forgets a few every now and again.”
“You’re not the real Charley and C’rizz,” the Doctor said. “You can’t be.”
“That’s the way you remember us,” Charley continued. “That’s the way you made us.”
“No,” said the Doctor. “Go away. You’re figments of my imagination.”
Charley arched an eyebrow. “Go away? Oh, dear, Doctor. Hadn’t you worked it out yet? We’re all mad, here.”
C’rizz reached out and ran a claw along the Doctor’s throat -- not hard enough to draw blood, but more than enough to make it clear how easily that could change. “A̵̻̫̓͂̑n̷̩̙͇̏͘d̶̢̞̹̳̻̅̀͂̐̂̕ ̸̻̙̺͍̙̊̆̀͌̌̐ͅw̵͚͐̆e̷͈͖̼͍̣̽̎̒’̸̼̗̔̂̽͒͝r̶̜̥̰̤̪̞͗͑͊̀ę̷͍̫͔͍̅̎̒̈́ ̸̗͐͌̽́̐ŗ̶̻̤̼̠̎e̷̘̗̠̓a̵̼̐̍̅̿̆̕l̶̢̢͎̼̪̐͛́͛̕ ̸̡̮̗̤̲͛̀e̵̺̖̠̪͉͌́͐̎͘ṅ̶̪̳̤̥̪̐̔͝͝ͅo̵͕̐͋̔͗͐ũ̶̟̦̝g̶̨̰͍̩͒̂͋̃͊h̶̨̦̬̬̔͝ ̵̨̖͖̙͗͂͛͜ẗ̸̛̲̯̤͎̙̜́̈̍̋̓ô̷̞̩̲̤͒ ̶̘̩̠̈̈́̾̀͜h̸͍͙̗̲͔̃̆̏̊͐͠u̸̧̦̮͖̫̎̀̀̌r̸̥͙̥͋́t̵̛̛̜̋̆̀͘,” he said grimly.
“And, we’re far from the only ones,” Charley said brightly. “Oh, and did I mention, we’re all hunting you. But, just to be sporting, C’rizz and I will give you a thirty-second head start.”
“Ţ̴̖̯̔̓̆w̸̨͗ẽ̴̗͗̔n̶͓͈͎͈̍ͅt̴͉̱̾y̴͕͐̽̍̎͋͘-̸̱͙̣͕͙̓̐n̸͙̒͌̋̈́̅̚ĭ̸̼́͛̈́̊̕ͅn̴̢͕̂́e̴̮̬͙̰̟͙͊̎,̸̩͑̓̎̓͘” C’rizz said, crossing his arms.
“But -- Charley, C’rizz --”
“Twenty-six,” Charley said. “Run along, Doctor. We’ll catch up with you soon enough.”
“Please…”
“Twenty-five.”
The Doctor pushed past them and broke into a gallop down the twisting, treacherous alleyways of Lowtown.
Apple Bloom was not having the best time. For all her confidence in her abilities, the problem of connecting the circuits was more complex than she had anticipated. Every time she clicked one into position, another one changed position in response. She was starting to see the pattern, but the storm was closing in all too quickly.
Up above, Rumble wasn’t having any more luck corralling the storm clouds. Not only were they moving against the wind, they simply dispersed whenever he attacked them directly, and reformed a few seconds after he’d passed through. This wasn’t the way that clouds were meant to behave at all, and Rumble was beginning to suspect interference on the part of the Nightmare.
He tried every method he knew for cloud dispersal -- just kicking them wasn’t working, so he tried to create a gust of wind that ought to have ripped any thunderhead into pieces. After that, he tried simply redirecting them, then bouncing on them to release their rain and lightning before they could reach the tower. No luck. The clouds growled and crackled with electricity, and they positively sagged with precipitation, but not a hint of the tempest was let loose. If anything, the storm seemed to be growing more violent with every prod. He gave up and flew back to Apple Bloom.
She barely glanced up from her work. “If that’s what y’all call weather patrolin’ Ah might have t’ send in an application of mah own.”
“This isn’t a normal storm,” Rumble said. “I could barely move the clouds, and they all just kept coming back…”
Bloom nodded. “Alright. Alright. Ah reckon Ah nearly got this thing finished. We’ll be home an’ dry as soon as Ah do… this.”
The last of the circuits snapped into place.
“...Okay,” said Rumble. “And?”
Apple Bloom looked astonished. “Ah don’t get it, that shoulda worked! Ah connected both th’ terminals, th’ power source oughta be…” she trailed off. “Rumble?”
“Yeah?”
“This thing ain’t got no power supply.”
“And you’re only noticing this now?”
“Listen, this thing’s got a whole lotta movin’ parts! Ah got distracted, okay?”
Rumble rubbed his forehead and nodded. “If one of us was a unicorn,” he muttered. “A little magic would get this going. The only source of energy we have up here is the lightning, and that’s not exactly tame…”
Apple Bloom blinked. She looked up at the tall, gold sculpture next to the panel. “Rumble,” she said, reaching up to untie her braids. “You trust me, dontcha?”
“I don’t like where this is going, but yes.”
Bloom took the copper wire from her mane and wrapped it around the base of the sculpture. “Ah need a bolt of lightnin’ to strike this here metal thing an’ channel it into the circuits.”
“Well, I mean, that’s going to happen no matter what. This is the tallest thing for miles around. But without a resistor, won’t that just fry the thing?”
Apple Bloom chewed her lower lip. “Pegasi are… resistant to lightnin’ strikes, ain’t they?”
Rumble looked between the wire and the circuits and put two and two together. “Oh, no. No. You can’t be serious.”
“Ah wouldn’t be askin’ if there was another way,” Bloom pleaded. “If Ah can’t do this, we’re sittin’ ducks!”
Rumble groaned. “...Fine. Gimme the wires.”
A few seconds later, Rumble sat between the sculpture and the circuit box, clutching a wire in each hoof. “If I die, I’m going to haunt you forever. You know that, right?”
“You ain’t gonna die.”
Rumble growled. “How do you know?”
“Ain’t gonna let you. You ain’t allowed to die.”
Oddly enough, that was rather comforting. The storm grumbled overhead and Rumble shut his eyes tight.
The stink of ozone filled the air as a bolt of lightning lanced down and struck the spire true. Rumble arched his back and howled as electricity coursed over, around, and through his body. A few meters away, a section of the roof depressed and slid away with a mechanical hum. “You did it!” Bloom shouted, “Alright, Rumble, you kin let go now.” A pause. “Rumble?”
Rumble was lost to the world. Electricity was all there was or could ever be. “Shit,” said Bloom, and she tackled him.
She was promptly thrown back as built-up electricity struck her, but she did manage to shove Rumble out of the current.
Bloom stumbled to her hooves. There was a mechanical humming. The door was closing again.
On uncertain hooves, she staggered over to the panel and shoved herself between door and jamb, keeping the door from shutting. “Rumble!” she shouted. “Git yer flank over here ‘fore Ah get crushed!”
Dazed and charred, Rumble roused himself back to consciousness. He stared at Bloom blearily for several seconds. Then, finally registering the situation, his eyes went wide and he scrambled over to her side, running and tripping over his numbed hooves. Together, they were able to force the mechanism open wide enough for both of them to slide through, where they fell, sore, panting, and rain-soaked, to the floor.
Above them, the panel hummed back into position and clicked neatly into place, disguising it completely. After a few minutes, Apple Bloom raised her head. “So. Did we get our electricity-conductin’ cutie marks?”
Rumble let out a pained wheeze of laughter and rolled onto his back. For a moment, they lay there, two friends laughing through the pain.
Then Apple Bloom rose, stretching her back and wincing at the way it cracked. “Tarnation,” she said.
Rumble got to his hooves as well, shaking the pins and needles from each hoof in turn. “C’mon. Let’s not keep the others waiting.”
Leaning on one another for support, the two aching friends navigated their way toward a spiral staircase at the end of the hall. To Apple Bloom’s relief and Rumble’s trepidation, this one did, at the very least, have walls on both sides.
The Valeyard was somewhat out of practice with escapology. He had spent centuries as a data ghost in the core of the TARDIS, and decades before that practicing law. Neither of these occupations required much skill with lockpicks. (Inasmuch as floating around the ether and making the Doctor miserable counted as an occupation, of course. Really, it was more of a hobby.)
However, in past lives, the Valeyard had escaped from many a prison, and his old skills enabled him to dislocate a shoulder and grab one of the dental picks from the tray with his teeth.
After several minutes more spent prodding the lock, the Valeyard was able to break free. He paused only to wrench his shoulder back into place, then hurriedly limped from the room.
Stumbling into the hallway, he glanced left and right, considering his options. He could confront Romana again, try to take her key. That would present a certain risk -- she knew he was around, and might be more prepared for a second attack. Alternatively, he could leave the hospital and go back to the Matrix via the rift in the apple orchard.
Of course, that would mean returning to the Nightmare empty-handed, which was not a prospect he relished. It wasn’t that he was scared of that overhyped shade. Certainly not. However, he was still a professional. He did professional things. He did, moreover, what he set out to do, and that involved accessing the TARDIS. So, back to the coma ward he slunk.
The waiting room was still trashed, although the broken furniture had all been shoved against the wall. The Valeyard walked through and paused outside the door to the ward proper. Granny Smith’s description of the issues currently faced by the patients had roused his curiosity. Clearly, the Nightmare had attacked the prisoners in his absence. A certain amount of investigation was required.
Inside, he could hear a number of moving bodies. “I don’t understand,” one was saying. “What could possibly cause all this?”
“Any number of things,” replied a grim voice the Valeyard was able to recognize as Romana. “A simple stasis field would do for the immortals, Mac, and the pegasi… the unicorns seem to be having their power siphoned off. It’s a good idea to put the magic drips in them, but they seem to be losing it no faster than their bodies can replenish naturally.”
“And the broken legs which... aren’t broken?” asked a third voice.
“Well, what could break a pony’s legs in real life, hm? Scootaloo must have had some kind of misadventure in the Matrix -- likely all the Crusaders did, hence the sudden elevation in heart rates from all of them. Of course, it’s all psychic trauma, hence why her legs aren’t actually broken, but psychic trauma still has an effect.”
“Hence the swelling and bruising,” the first voice said.
“Precisely,” said Romana. “The body is responding appropriately to the signals it’s been sent by the nervous system. It just happens that the nervous system’s signals currently don’t match up with what we’d consider to be reality.”
The Valeyard frowned deeply. The Crusaders? As in the Cutie Mark Crusaders? They hadn’t been among the prisoners. How could they have accessed the Matrix?
Well. Apparently, they had, and at least one of them seemed to still be alive and kicking. Forget the key for now -- he needed to go back and warn the Nightmare that there were invading forces in the Matrix.
Well. Perhaps not ‘forget the key’. He was right here, after all, and from the sound of it, Romana had only two compatriots. This would present no problems whatsoever.
Then the door opened behind him. The Valeyard spun around. Prince Blueblood was looking directly at him. Before the Time Lord could think to react, the royal pain was already shouting for help.
The doors to the ward burst open, and the Valeyard prepared a spell that would slow time to a crawl for everything apart from him. Before he could even begin to enforce his will on the time stream, something struck him. Something which actually hurt, sending the Valeyard sprawling.
He looked up and saw a furious pink unicorn bearing down on him. He tried to strike her down with a blast of accelerated entropy, but with a flick of the head, she redirected the energy into a pile of broken furniture, which crumbled to dust.
Before the Valeyard could say or do anything more, he found himself enclosed in a pale lilac bubble. The pink unicorn stood outside, glaring at him. “I thought you said you had this creep locked up, Romana.”
“I did,” Romana replied. “He was. How in the world did you manage to break out?”
The Valeyard looked up at her. “Rule one of torture,” he said. “Make sure you have the stomach to follow through on your threats. Rule two: Don’t leave your instruments lying around where the prisoner can get at them.”
Romana was lost for words. The unicorn considered this for a moment. “Do you know who I am?” she asked at length.
“Should I care?” the Valeyard asked, eyes lidded. It was a bluff, of course. This unicorn, whoever she was, clearly had to be an incredibly powerful spellcaster to overcome him. He wasn’t even fully in this plane of existence -- by focusing enough, he ought to have been able to simply pass through the shields as though they weren’t even there.
“My name is Starlight Glimmer.” The walls of the bubble pressed in a few inches.
“You attacked my friends.” The walls squeezed a little tighter.
“And I’m more than happy to follow through on my threats.”
The Valeyard thought quickly. He had to get away. This unicorn was nearly as powerful as the alicorns, and had the additional benefit of not being in an artificially magic-dampened environment.The bubble was pressing in, pinning him to the floor. The floor. Of course!
He shot another ray of increased entropy straight down. The floor rotted beneath him in a perfect circle, then disintegrated entirely. He fell through to the floor below with a pained and undignified grunt. Then, before any of the ponies above could recover, he darted away.
He heard Starlight scream in rage and jump through the hole he had created, in hot pursuit. The Valeyard doubted that he could stay ahead of her all the way to Sweet Apple Acres. So, he did the next best thing. Planting his hooves and shutting his eyes tight, he willed a new rift into the Matrix to open in front of him.
There was a ripping sound, and a golden hole appeared in the middle of the corridor, through which the inside of the Tower could be seen. With the noises from behind him growing ever louder, the Valeyard sprang through, sealing the rift behind him until all that remained was a single glowing golden point.
Moments later, Starlight ran up to the point, batting at it with her hooves and blasting at it with her horn. She kept this up, swearing bloody vengeance all the while, until Nurse Redheart trotted up to her and rested a gentle hoof on her withers. All the fight drained from Starlight, and she allowed herself to be led away. Blueblood and Romana remained behind, studying the golden point.
“There’s another one of these at Sweet Apple Acres,” Blueblood said at length. “It wasn’t compressed into a point yet, I should remark.”
“Still open, then,” Romana mused. “Interesting. Ports into the Matrix are rather difficult to open -- even more so to keep stable.”
“Would their destabilization be cause for concern?” Blueblood asked.
Romana considered this. “I can’t say. I don’t believe it would be much of a problem unless somepony was foolhardy enough to go through an unstable Matrix port.”
Blueblood arched an eyebrow. “You mean, as our friend just did?”
“Oh, I’ve no doubt it was stable enough for him to go through,” Romana said. “The Valeyard is many things, but most of all, he’s a coward. He’d never have pulled a stunt like that if he wasn’t certain of his own skin remaining intact.”
She rubbed her chin. “You said there was another at Sweet Apple Acres?”
“Indeed.”
“I should like to see that.”
“I thought we might wait for Fancy and Fleur?”
Romana shook her head. “I’ll leave a note for them with Redheart. Right now, I shouldn’t like to waste time waiting for them.”
Blueblood nodded. “Fair enough. You go leave your message. I’ll wait in the main lobby for you to come down.”
The pair went their separate ways. Therefore, neither of them were present to watch as the dot flickered, spasmed, and elongated into a thin and jagged golden crack hanging in midair.
Scootaloo and Dinky made their way along the lower corridors of the tower. Scootaloo kept glancing at the walls as they passed, while Dinky kept her gaze fixed dead ahead.
“So…” Scootaloo began. “Not to rehash what’s already been said or anything, but shouldn’t we have come to a staircase by now?”
“No,” Dinky said. “The tower is considerably wider at the base than it is at the top, remember? Besides, given the size of that atrium we came in through, I think it’s safe to say that we’re dealing with another ‘bigger on the inside’ situation.”
“Oh.” Scootaloo nodded. “Hey, listen, I wanted to say --”
“Quiet.”
Scootaloo’s jaw flapped in indignation. “Well, if you’re going to be like that --”
“Quiet!” Dinky hissed, stopping in her tracks. “I think I heard something.”
Scootaloo quickly shut her mouth and looked over her shoulder. “I don’t see anything,” she whispered.
Dinky nodded and lit her horn. Scootaloo squeaked as she was picked up and spun around to sit backwards on her friend’s back. “Can you keep watch?” Dinky asked.
“Of course I can,” Scootaloo said. “What do you think it is, then?”
“Dunno,” Dinky said. “I just heard a sort of thumping sound.”
Scootaloo glanced back at her friend. “You sure you weren’t just imagining things?”
“No,” Dinky admitted. “But I’m not sure I was imagining things, either, and neither are you.”
“Okay, okay,” Scootaloo said, turning back around. She instantly tensed.
“What?” Dinky said. “What is it?”
“There’s a pony behind us,” Scootaloo said, struggling to keep her voice calm. “Just at the end of the hall. They’re not moving, and I don’t know how they got there.”
“What do they look like?” Dinky asked, going from a walk to a canter.
“I don’t know. The lights are too dim to see them properly. I think… I think they’ve got wings.”
Dinky nodded, not that Scootaloo could see. “Okay. I’m going to brighten my horn a little. Tell me more.”
The ambient light in the hallway increased. “Definitely wings,” Scootaloo said. “They look kinda grey, and --”
“What?”
“They just moved again,” Scootaloo said, her voice a whisper. “Twenty meters. I didn’t even see them move, they were just… there!”
“Okay,” said Dinky. “Keep calm. Just keep talking. Can you see them more clearly now?”
“Yeah. It looks kind of feminine. She’s made of stone. A statue of a pegasus.”
“A statue?”
“Yeah. She’s still too far away for me to see her face or anything. Which, hey, let me tell you something? I don’t mind that at all.”
Dinky hurried down the hallway a little faster. “Okay.”
“She moved again,” Scootaloo said, her voice high. “I only blinked -- she’s only about twenty meters behind us.”
“Can you see her any better now?”
“Um… yes…” Scootaloo said. “You’re not going to like this.”
“I don’t like any of this,” Dinky said.
“It’s a statue of Fluttershy, or else it’s actually Fluttershy and she’s been turned into a statue. And, uh, her mouth is open and it’s full of a lot of really sharp teeth.”
There was a long silence. “Shit,” Dinky said at last.
“I’m trying not to blink again,” Scootaloo said, her voice strained. “I’m not sure how much longer I can keep this up.”
“...Fine. Okay. I’m about to levitate you off my back --”
“You can’t just leave me here!”
“What? Don’t be such an idiot! Of course I’m not going to leave you. But if I turn around, there’s going to be a moment where neither of us are looking at her, and that’s going to be a problem!”
“Oh. Um… oops.”
Dinky growled. “Your lack of faith disturbs me. Try not to blink while you’re in the air.”
“Got it.”
Scootaloo set her jaw and glared at the statues as Dinky lifted her into the air. Then there was a flicker, and her magic cut out. Scootaloo fell, knocking Dinky to the ground in the process. She looked up again. Fluttershy loomed large over them, hooves in the air and wings spread. She was no more than five meters away. “What the Tartarus was that?” Scootaloo asked.
Dinky shook her head. “Dunno.” She winced. “It’s like she’s trying to repress my magic. Hard to keep the light on.”
There was another flicker in the light and suddenly Fluttershy was right next to them, her face mere inches from Scootaloo’s
The statue was impassive. “Can you hear me?” the orange pegasus whispered. “Please, Fluttershy, tell me you can hear me!”
Dinky reached out a hoof. “Scootaloo,” she said quietly. “She’s a statue. They don’t talk back.”
“She moved before!” Scootaloo replied angrily, glaring back at the unicorn. Her eyes went wide, suddenly.
“What?”
“No, don’t look. There’s another one right behind you.”
Dinky nodded slowly. “Okay. I’ll watch Fluttershy. You watch the other one. I’m gonna back out real slow, now, and you just follow me.”
Scootaloo nodded, her eyes burning. She squinted at the other statue as she passed it. She could only imagine the torment that Dinky was going through, having to keep from blinking and fighting for her horn to stay lit.
Finally, both mares were out from between the statues. “Okay,” Dinky said. “We’ll take it in turns to blink. Tell me when you’re about to --”
“Blink,” Scootaloo said.
“Blink,” Dinky said.
They both blinked at once. Nothing happened. Dinky blinked again, more slowly. “Okay. I guess they’re staring at one another now.”
“Oh, thank Celestia,” Scootaloo said, rubbing her eyes frantically. “I guess that settles that, huh?”
“...Scootaloo,” Dinky said. “The first statue is Fluttershy. Who does that make this statue?”
“Uh, dunno. The manestyle looked sorta like Rainbow Dash’s…”
“It isn’t Rainbow Dash,” Dinky said quietly.
Scootaloo took another look at the new figure. Glaring at the spot where the two mares had stood was a statue of Ditzy Doo, hooves raised menacingly, wings spread wide, eyes glaring balefully in two directions.
“Oh,” said Scootaloo. “Oh man.”
Dinky took a long, shuddering breath in. “Mom,” she said, her voice cracking. “Mom, I’m so sorry. I -- I --” She stopped, unable to speak through the lump in her throat.
Scootaloo put a hoof around her friend’s withers and held her as she cried. Dinky wrapped her hooves around the pegasus and bawled like an infant as Scootaloo rubbed her back gently. When, after several minutes, the crying and the shaking had subsided, Dinky looked up at her friend. Her eyes were wet and red, and snot was bubbling from her nose. “Tell me it’s going to be okay,” she said softly. “Tell me we can fix it.”
Scootaloo took a deep breath. “I can’t say that for sure,” she said quietly. “I don’t know what’s happened to them. But I know that this place isn’t real. Whatever happened to your mom and Fluttershy probably didn’t happen in the real world.”
“But what if it did? Or what if they can never wake up because of this?” Dinky demanded. “What if they’re lost forever?”
“Well,” said Scootaloo. “That might be. But right now, we’re trying to rescue some of the smartest, most powerful creatures in the world. If the Doctor and Twilight and Sunset can’t undo this, I bet you anything that Discord can just snap their fingers and bring them back to life. The point is, maybe we can fix this, and maybe we can’t. But we definitely won’t be able to fix things if we just sit here.”
“I…” Dinky said nothing for a long moment.
“Yeah. Yeah, okay,” she said, her voice cracked from the crying. “But… can we maybe just sit here for a few more minutes?”
“If you need to.”
“I think I do. And… Scootaloo?”
“Yeah?”
“Could you hold me again?”
“...Of course.”
“Well,” said Applejack. “This ain’t exactly th’ best situation we’ve ever been in.”
“Rarity,” Spike murmured, slumped on the ground.
“It’s not so bad,” Pinkie said. “It’s like a mirror maze at a funhouse!”
She was, broadly speaking, correct. The three were standing -- or in Spike’s case, lying down -- in a system of mirrored corridors. The floor was dark grey and not particularly solid -- it reminded Applejack of walking on a cloud. She didn’t generally associate that particular aspect with mirror mazes, but she supposed it wasn’t impossible. There were pegasus carnivals, after all, so why not?
The major bone of contention that she had with Pinkie’s comparison was the mirrors themselves. At a carnival, a mirror maze showed you warped and goofy images of your own body. Here, on the other hoof…
Applejack glanced into a mirror at random. She saw a young, markless version of herself and Pinkie Pie, and a large purple egg. She glanced the other way and saw the three of them, several years older than they were right now. Spike’s horns were larger and craggier. Spike himself was also larger, though not as craggy. Pinkie Pie’s laugh lines were a little more prominent, and Applejack saw that she herself had picked up some nasty scars. On the upside, she also had an engagement ring, so it looked like that balanced out.
Other mirrors were less straightforward -- in one, all of them looked just as they were now, except Pinkie Pie was a pegasus and Spike was much smaller. In another, Pinkie’s mane was flat as an ironing board, and Applejack was sporting a black hat, a red kerchief, and an ugly scar across the cheek. In a third, Applejack and Pinkie were stallions and Spike was a dragoness.
Applejack pointed at the mirrors. “So, this here is some more of that alternate universe stuff, right?”
Spike nodded from where he lay on the ground. “Looks like there’s just some past and future stuff, too.”
“And neverweres and might-have-beens and sidestinies and a whole army of wouldacouldashouldas,” Pinkie said, staring into the mirrors as they reflected off one another into eternity.
“Crudely put,” said a terribly familiar voice, echoing around them. “But broadly correct, I suppose.”
All the mirrors flickered, no longer reflecting the three imprisoned friends. Each now showed iterations of the Nightmare, monstrous faces reflecting into eternity. Applejack recognized countless variations of Nightmare Moon, King Sombra, the TARDIS Interface, and faces that she had never known, with sharp teeth and glowing eyes. “You,” Spike growled, pulling himself to his hooves. “What did you do with Rarity?”
Countless terrifying faces rolled their eyes as one. “Oh, spare me. Your little girlfriend is alive. She and the other unicorns are proving tremendously useful. The three of you, on the other hand, are only still around because your suffering amuses me. It would be wise to remember that.”
Applejack stepped forward. “Where are we?” she asked.
“Oh, nowhere special. I wouldn’t waste my time designing something entirely new for you, so I simply repurposed the trap I’d designed for the Doctor. As you so crudely surmised, it is a method of viewing alternate selves -- past, future, and alter.”
“Hear that?” Pinkie chirped. “We were right!”
The Nightmare snarled. “I will take particular pleasure in breaking you.”
Suddenly, the hall was awash with golden light as a portal opened right behind the Nightmare. “Eh?”
The Valeyard staggered into view, repeated iterations of the Doctor appearing in each mirror, all wearing the same uncharacteristic sneer.. “My apologies for returning so late --”
“Fool!” the Nightmare snapped, turning. “Can’t you see I’m intimidating the prisoners?”
“Yes, which is something which I wanted to speak to you about!” the Valeyard snapped. “I told you expressly not to --”
“I don’t take orders from you, you --”
They fell to bickering. Applejack arched an eyebrow.
“Psst,” a voice hissed.
The three turned around. One of the mirrors wasn’t like the others. Three ponies stood in front of the TARDIS. Two, a tall blue pegasus in a bow tie and a small orange mare in a striped shirt, stood with their heads bowed, concentrating intently. “Sorry about this,” the third figure, an old blue batpony in sunglasses and a hoodie said. “Not much time, we can only break through while they’re distracted --”
“Get on with it,” the mare growled.
“I was about to! Have some patience. Anyway, there’s a way out of this place, you just need to look for the true mirror. Once you’ve done that, you can work on freeing the others. There’s still a chance to beat the Nightmare, we’re talking proof of that, but that chance is getting smaller every second you waste in here.”
“One of them, yes. Technically, this is breaking quite a lot of rules, but the Valeyard’s opened up quite a lot of illegal backchannels, so we don’t much mind making free use of them.” He glanced around. “But they’re high-security. Not a lot of wiggle room, meaning we have to go. Now.”
“Remember,” said the one in the bow tie. “Find the true mirror! It’s in here somewhere…”
The scene faded away, replaced with the still-arguing Nightmare and Valeyard. “If you would stop blathering for a few moments,” the Valeyard said, “I might be able to get it through your thick head that I haven’t given up. I’ve come to warn you that the Cutie Mark Crusaders have invaded the Matrix.”
“And if you would stop blowing hot air, you pompous windbag, I could explain to you that I’ve taken care of that problem permanently.”
“Oh,” said the Valeyard, voice dripping with sarcasm. “Have you. Because I heard not five minutes ago that at least one of them is still alive!”
“WHAT?!” The Nightmare glanced back at the imprisoned friends, eyes wide. There was a flash of light, and the scene of the tower was gone.
All three stared at the mirror, wide-eyed. Slowly, Applejack began to grin. “Well, well. Ah shoulda known them six wouldn’t go down so easily.”
“You think they all survived?” Spike asked.
“If one of ‘em did, Ah don’t see why not. C’mon, let’s bust this pop stand.”
“And then we can bust the Nightmare!” Pinkie sang, her mane puffing up.
“And bust Rarity and the others out!” Spike said.
“Exactly! All we gotta do is find th’ right… mirror…” Applejack trailed off. Around her, the world reflected into infinity. “Aw, shit.”
Thunderlane awoke to find that he wasn’t. He hadn’t been for almost an hour now, but he was only now waking up to become aware of his nonbeing. It was very uncomfortable. Well, it wasn’t uncomfortable. It just wasn’t comfortable, either. It wasn’t anything. “Um,” said Thunderlane. “What just happened?”
“Search me,” Cloudchaser said, rubbing her head. “Ow. Anypony get the license plate on that haycart?”
“I’m hungry,” Flitter moaned. “And thirsty.”
Tender Care said nothing. She seemed to be trying quite hard to avoid throwing up.
“Where’d that guy go?” Thunderlane asked, blinking repeatedly to try and clear his head. Everything seemed fuzzy and empty, like a secret liminal space between being very drunk and extremely hungover.
“What guy?” Flitter asked, scrunching her muzzle.
“You know, the guy! The white guy,” Thunderlane tried to explain. “He was here and then… something happened?”
“Where is here?” Cloudchaser asked. “Weren’t we in… what was it? A hospital?”
“Yes?” Thunderlane furrowed his brow. “Hard to remember anything. Tender? What do you think?”
Tender glanced over at him. “Well,” she said. “I’ve been holding my breath for about five minutes now and I don’t think I need to blink anymore. I think that we should begin to seriously consider the possibility that we might be dead.”
“Dead?” Thunderlane reeled. “What -- I can’t be dead!”
“Unless you’ve got a horn we don’t know about, you certainly can,” Tender said.
Cloudchaser gave a dirty snicker.
“Oh, grow up!” Flitter snapped. “This is serious.”
“I can’t be dead!” Thunderlane repeated. “What about Rumble? This is going to destroy him when he wakes up!”
“What about Rumble?” Cloudchaser repeated. “What about us?”
Thunderlane glared. “You’re dead, too! I’m not leaving you behind.”
“Uh, ‘lane? Think about what you just said.”
“I -- yes. Okay, we’re dead, but that’s more of an ‘us’ problem. Rumble being on his own? That’s going to be very bad.”
“And Button,” Tender said quietly. “I know -- I know no parent should outlive their child, of course, but… this is going to break his heart.”
There was a long moment of consideration. “So…” Flitter said. “Maybe we can just try and haunt them when they wake up? Is that anything?”
Cloudchaser stood up. “‘When they wake up’ nothing. I just woke up dead, I’m gonna see how many ponies I can freak out by popping out of walls at them.”
Sweetie pulled Button into a side corridor and they both pressed themselves against the wall, catching their breath. “Did we lose it?” Button whispered.
Sweetie put her hoof to her lips and listened hard. There was a long, mournful howl off in the distance. “Sounds like it,” she said. “But it’s still between us and the door to the tower.”
Button considered this. “We could lead it away,” he suggested. “Get it lost in the tunnels.”
“We could,” Sweetie agreed. “But how confident are you that we wouldn’t get lost ourselves?”
“Not very,” Button admitted. “I don’t suppose we could just go back, climb out of the pit, and go through the main entrance?”
“I don’t think so,” Sweetie said.
Button sighed. “Yeah, me neither. Maybe I can put together some kind of decoy out of the stuff in my bag?”
While Button peered through the various pouches, Sweetie Belle kept an ear out for the cries of the beast. They didn’t seem to be coming any closer, but better safe than sorry. As she listened, though, she couldn’t help but notice that the howls had a ring of the familiar about them, rising and falling almost like…
“A melody,” Sweetie whispered.
“Huh?” Button said, glancing up from his work.
“The creature… it’s trying to sing the same song I was,” Sweetie said. “Listen.”
Button pricked up his ears and listened intently as the mournful howls echoed through the tunnels again. “You’re right,” he said. “What does that mean?”
Sweetie Belle considered this. “Well… I think I have an idea. Do you trust me?”
“Of course!”
“Would you trust me with your life?”
“You’re starting to scare me, but yes.”
“Aww! That’s so sweet, thanks!”
“Uh, you said you had an idea?”
“Oh yeah. Does that light have a strobe function?”
“Not yet it doesn’t,” Button said, taking off the headlamp. “Just give me a few minutes. In the meantime, you were saying?”
Fancy Pants, his face grave, handed his letter to the pegasus guard. “Be swift, my good mare,” he said. “We need all the aid we can get.”
The soldier saluted and took wing.
Things had moved apace since Fancy and Fleur’s return to the hospital. Blueblood’s warning of the incident in the orchard had been dire enough, but the Valeyard’s escape had pushed Fancy and Fleur over the edge. They needed backup, and they needed it now.
Starlight Glimmer had taken to investigating the rift in the hospital hallway. It had only grown since its closure, stretching out to form a thin, golden crack in the air, over a meter in length. Though jagged and spiking out in all directions, it was clearly pointing directly toward Sweet Apple Acres, a phenomenon which could not be in any way coincidental. Starlight had put it in a bubble of frozen time, which seemed to have halted its progress for the moment, but it was by no means an easy spell to maintain.
In the coma ward, meanwhile, the patients were running hot and cold -- literally, in the case of Celestia, whose mane was beginning to glow with orange flame, and Luna, on whose horn frost had begun to form. Redheart had elected to simply disregard hospital procedure entirely, and shoved them together on the same bed. It didn’t seem to be helping much.
The pegasi’s hearts had fluctuated wildly between beating so slowly they ought to have been dead and beating so quickly that they ought to have been dead, with no middle ground whatsoever. The unicorns were still undergoing severe magic drainage. Discord had simply stopped breathing altogether. The Doctor had reached a temperature that was almost normal for a regular pony, but was a dangerously high fever for a Time Lord. His coat was soaked with sweat, and he kept groaning and whining in his sleep. Redheart couldn’t decide if that was better or worse than the way he had been virtually indistinguishable from a corpse half an hour ago.
The only ones that seemed remotely healthy were Applejack, Pinkie Pie, Spike, and the Crusaders. Redheart rather wished that Romana was here. Angry as she was that the Time Lady had knocked her unconscious, at least she might have some clue about what was affecting the nurse’s patients, even if she probably had no better idea of how to treat their maladies.
She wished Granny Smith was here, as well. She was a solid mare, reliable, and more relevantly, she was medically trained. With her around, Redheart would have a partner with whom the stresses of the task before her could be shared. As soon as the no-longer-old mare had learned that the Valeyard had dared trespass on her property, though, she had taken off ahead of Blueblood and Romana to fetch out her old blunderbuss.
Redheart wished that there was any other doctor or nurse in the building at all, but they had gone -- whether they had fled or simply been vanished by the Valeyard, Redheart didn’t know. The fact that several patients had also gone missing, however, suggested the more nasty explanation, as did the ragged rot of ravaging time that had spread throughout the hospital.
Most of all, Redheart wished that Tender was here. She needed a shoulder to lean on, to cry on. The nurse had become the last line of defense between the gods themselves and death, and it was wearing her thin. Romana hadn’t been entirely wrong in her assessment of Redheart’s need for a nap, only in her execution thereof. Not, of course, that the nurse would ever admit that. She just needed a hug from her marefriend and to be told, You’ll be alright, hon. I’m here.
Redheart shuddered, a brief muscle spasm rocking her body. When it had passed, oddly enough, she felt a little bit better.
Tender Care watched her marefriend’s face relax ever so slightly as she moved back to doing her job, taking care of her patients. She should have felt happy, knowing that she had given Red a little peace of mind. Instead, all she felt was hollow and flat. She wasn’t sure why. Her memories felt foreign to her, as though she was seeing them through somepony else’s eyes. The others had wandered off their separate ways, and she had never felt so alone.
She looked down at her Button and stroked his mane. Her hoof went right through him, but the sentiment was there. He was smiling in his sleep, her big sweet goofy colt. Wherever he thought he was, she hoped he was safe and happy.
Sweetie Belle strode down the hallway, projecting a confidence she didn’t really feel. Button walked beside her. His headlamp was strobing and making both of them feel fairly nauseous. “Are you ready?” Sweetie whispered.
“I only have to stand there. Are you ready?”
“...As much as I’ll ever be,” Sweetie said.
The flickering light threw up strange shadows on the walls. The pair watched them carefully. Eventually, Button stopped and grabbed Sweetie’s hoof, pointing ahead. Two great eyes, glowing orange in the darkness, gazed back at them. Sweetie Belle took a deep breath and stepped forward. There was a growl in the darkness, but she swallowed her fear. Then she opened her mouth and began to sing.
Through shady trees and light green glades, We sally forth, never afraid. A merry company of friends, A quest for joy that never ends.
Each golden dawn we all away Each diem we seek to carpe. We forge onward in any weather The fears we face, we face together.
And We Ride… The tinker, the thinker The rock, and the lover The fearless one runs on ahead of the others, And the one in the back keeping up with the pack The merry singing entertainer.
It’s a difficult way that we go, that’s so, And we’ve painful new lessons to learn, you know, There are tree roots and rocks, And the turn of the clock, In short, we’ve a long way to grow.
But We Ride… The tinker, the thinker The rock, and the lover The fearless one runs on ahead of the others, And the one in the back keeping up with the pack The stumbling, pained entertainer.
Sweetie paused for a moment in the song, catching her breath. The creature, who had been staring at her placidly, began to blink slowly back to wakefulness. She quickly resumed singing.
But we press on through thick and thin, Escape the scrapes that we were in. We gather up and rally round; We rise and fall, but soon rebound.
We brought more smiles than we’ve brought frowns, Our ragged capes we wear as crowns. I look back on the fun we had, And know we did more good than bad.
So We Ride… The tinker, the thinker The rock, and the lover The fearless one runs on ahead of the others, And the one in the back keeping up with the pack The determined and young entertainer.
As she sang, Button realized that she was singing about him, and the other Crusaders, too. He also did some quick one-to-one calculations in his head and realized who the lover had to be. He tried not to react, tried not to distract her from the song, but he must have inhaled too sharply upon his realization, because Sweetie faltered and turned to glance at him. The beast grumbled and began to stir.
So Button did the only thing he could think of to do, and gave Sweetie the biggest grin he could. Sweetie brightened and started singing again, more confident than ever.
And we’ll all ride on together, as ever, Bonds of friendship that cannot be severed, whatever, Our quest never-ending, As running, befriending, We cry out, “Crusaders forever!”
Still We Ride… The tinker, the thinker The rock, and the lover The fearless one runs on ahead of the others, And the one in the back keeping up with the pack The joyous, dancing entertainer.
By the time the last notes had faded, the beast had lowered itself to the floor and was breathing calmly. Sweetie reached out and patted its nose. The beast purred.
Far, far too high above the song to hear it, Apple Bloom and Rumble made their way slowly and carefully down the spiral staircase. Both of them were still recovering from the near-disaster at the spire, but they were well enough to walk without needing one another’s support. “How much farther down do ya reckon we gotta go?” Bloom asked.
Rumble considered this, stopping on a landing to estimate the relevant distances. “I don’t really know,” he admitted. “It’s hard to tell how far we’ve already come when we’re, uh, enclosed like this.
Bloom winced. “Yeah, this day’s goin’ pretty rough for you, ain’t it.”
“Really?” Rumble asked, arching an eyebrow at her. “Gosh. Whatever gave you that idea?”
Apple Bloom snorted. “Yeah, alright, alright. Still. You reckon we oughta start checkin’ doors as we go down?”
“Uh…” Rumble glanced at the heavy wooden door on the landing. “Yeah, I guess. Not sure how we’ll be able to figure out the right floor without looking around, though.”
“Hm. Yeah, good point,” Bloom said. “We’ll just have to poke around a lil’ on the other side. Do a bit o’ that ol’ reconnaissance.”
Rumble nodded, opening the door and glancing around. “Sounds good. You go left, I’ll go right.”
“What, you wanna split up?” Apple Bloom asked.
“Well, we’ll cover more ground that way. I mean, obviously don’t go back into the tomb alone or anything stupid like that, just nose around a little.”
“...Well, alright,” Bloom said. “Meet back here in five?”
“You got it,” Rumble said, trotting off down the hall.
Apple Bloom watched him go for a few seconds before she hurried off in the other direction. She hadn’t been going very long when she noticed something odd. There was a door in the right-hoof wall, one that seemed very out of place in this building. It was painted barn-red, with a familiar-looking carving, shaped like a tangled heart, in the upper center. The handle was good, solid iron, and as she reached for it, it clicked open.
The door swung inward onto an open field of green, and beyond that, a veritable sea of apple trees extending to the horizon. Before she had fully absorbed all that, she was distracted by a hubbub out on the lawn. Dozens upon dozens of ponies were gathered there, and she recognized them all. Braeburn, Babs Seed, Uncle Russet, Aunt Admiral the Admiral, crazy cousin Carroll, Great-Aunt Envy, second cousins Jazz and Empire… She had never seen an Apple Family reunion turnout like this in her life. She saw that the Manehattan Oranges were here, and a few Pears, a smattering of Berries, and even the rarely-seen Pineapple branch.
She was about to ask what in the world her entire extended family, plus a large section of Sweet Apple Acres itself, was doing several stories up in a mausoleum, when she caught sight of a few more figures. Her breath caught in her throat. There, walking up to her, were her parents. Big Macintosh walked at their father’s side, and Applejack walked by their mother. Granny Smith stood in the middle, moving more sprily than Bloom could ever remember seeing. And out ahead of the pack, tongue lolling in a big doggy grin, was Winona.
“Well,” said Thunderlane. “This is another fine mess we’ve gotten ourselves into.”
The four ghosts sat around an unoccupied waiting room. Cloudchaser was sulking because she hadn’t managed to actually scare anypony, Tender Care was moping because she couldn’t be there for her marefriend, and Flitter was still trying to figure out how to sit down without passing through the chair.
“There has to be some way to get in touch with the living,” Thunderlane continued. Then he stopped, winced. “I can’t believe I just referred to them as ‘the living’ unironically.”
“You think we could find some other ghosts?” Flitter asked. “Maybe we could talk to them.”
“Where would we find other ghosts, exactly?” Tender asked, perhaps a little sharply.
“Um… the graveyard, I guess? Or the place where they died.”
“Why would they want to stick around there?” Cloudchaser asked. “I’d go straight to Las Pegasus and see all the shows, free of charge.”
Thunderlane frowned and looked around. “It’s funny,” he said. “I would have expected to have run into at least a few other ghosts. I mean, Ponyville General is a pretty good hospital, but ponies have still definitely died here.”
“That’s because when you die, you do the obvious thing and go to Las Pegasus for all eternity,” Cloudchaser said.
Flitter tilted her head. “Is that for when you’ve been good, or when you’ve been evil?”
“It’s for when you want to take the edge off being dead, Flit.”
Thunderlane sighed and massaged the bridge of his muzzle with a hoof. “Tender? You said that you were able to make some kind of contact with Redheart?”
She nodded. “Yes. I was trying to hug her, but I just sort of passed through instead, and she seemed to calm down after that.”
“So we can communicate, kind of, through physical contact.”
“Yes, but she certainly didn’t realize it was me. We’ll need another way to communicate directly.”
“It’s still a start,” Thunderlane said, determined. “This might be a clue to how we can interact with objects. If you had some impact, no matter how small, we can figure out a way to exploit that.”
Flitter, her expression grave, shut her eyes and settled into her chair. For a split second, tail met seat, and she beamed with pride. Then her eyes went wide as she promptly fell through it and onto the floor.
Cloudchaser looked at Thunderlane flatly. “Yeah. Good luck with that.”
Thunderlane glared at her, and Flitter flipped her sister the feather. Tender Care, sensing that things were only likely to escalate, hurriedly interrupted. “Look, perhaps if we try working together on something, we could make it move.”
“Such as?” Cloudchaser asked.
Tender glanced around the room. “There. That vending machine,” she said, gesturing to a corner of the room. “We can try and pull out, I don’t know, a bag of chips.”
Thunderlane shrugged. “Sure, why not,” he said, rising from his seat. “What else is there to do for all eternity?”
“Las Peg-a-sus,” Cloudchaser enunciated, but she and Flitter gathered around the machine as well.
“Right,” said Tender. “We’ll all aim for that first bag of Cheese Crumblies, shall we? On three. One, two, three.”
Four pairs of intangible hooves passed through the machine’s side for the orange bag. All four passed through said bag and smacked into one another. Cloudchaser grit her teeth and took another swipe at it. All four strained their minds and non-bodies as they grappled at their goal.
Then, Thunderlane noticed something odd. The blinking digital readout had stopped asking passersby to insert their bits and select a snack. Rather, it was now rapidly shifting through ‘OOPS’, ‘SHIT’, and other four-letter words besides. As soon as he noticed that, it started to display ‘????’ in between the assorted profanities.
“Huh,” said Thunderlane, tilting his head.
‘IDEA’, said the vending machine.
Scootaloo had returned to riding Dinky’s back down the corridor, frequently casting glances back the way they’d come, just to make sure that the monstrous statues hadn’t somehow broken free. At last, there was an end in sight, in the form of a stairwell only a few dozen meters away. Or, if ‘end’ wasn’t the right word, at least it was a sign that they were getting somewhere.
“Hey,” Scootaloo said. “So, why isn’t the staircase moving around like it was earlier, when you had to shake the tower to get it to stand still?”
Dinky shrugged. “Maybe I broke something when I was shaking it all around. Maybe the Nightmare isn’t bothering with it now that it thinks we’re dead.”
“Maybe you just scared it into behaving,” Scootaloo said.
Dinky chuckled. “Yeah, that could be, too.”
“How many flights up do you think we need to go?”
Dinky considered this. “Good question. We’ll just have to check every floor we come to.” She started up the stairs.
It was quite dark in the stairwell. There was no ambient light here, as there had been in the corridors. Scootaloo still wasn’t quite sure where the illumination had been coming from, but she wasn’t happy about the fact that it was shirking its duties. The golden glow of Dinky’s horn was the only light in the darkness.
They had hardly gone around the first turn in the spiral staircase when Dinky’s magic flickered. Both mares stiffened. “Keep checking our six,” Dinky muttered. “I’ll keep my eyes straight ahead.”
“Yeah,” Scootaloo said, peering back into the blackness. “You got it.”
They went up a little farther, Dinky’s magic flickering and guttering like a candle in the wind at irregular, but increasingly frequent, intervals.
They had gone up perhaps three full cycles of the staircase when Scootaloo caught her first glimpse of their pursuer -- no more than a grey stone hoof on the stair, the rest hidden behind the wall. “Go faster,” she said.
Dinky broke into a gallop up the stairs, Scootaloo struggling to hold tight as she bounced on her friend’s back. The golden light flickered again, and Scootaloo was just able to catch a glimpse of a stone muzzle before they passed out of sight again, up and up the winding staircase.
Scootaloo shook her head. “It’s no good. No matter what, I can’t keep my eyes on it. The walls keep getting in the way!”
“Maybe we can get off on the next floor,” Dinky proposed, her voice raw with fear and exertion.
“What next floor?” Scootaloo demanded. “We’ve gone up three times as high as the ceiling was downstairs. The tower’s turned on us again!”
“Just… oh, keep as close an eye on it as you can!” Dinky said.
The light flickered again, and as Dinky forced the golden light back on, Scootaloo saw the face of their pursuer for the first time. Rainbow Dash looked back at her, sharp teeth bared.
Dinky must have felt Scootaloo go stiff. “Close enough to see her face, huh.”
“You knew it was Dash?”
“I guessed,” Dinky admitted. “Seemed to be that all the captive pegasi got… converted.”
Scootaloo said nothing for a long moment. “I’m sorry,” Dinky said, and she seemed to genuinely mean it. “I didn’t think it was a great time to bring it up.”
The light flickered again, and Rainbow was frozen with a hoof reaching out for Dinky’s tail. Scootaloo squinched up her face in desperate thought and said, “Stop.”
“What?” Dinky asked, perplexed.
“I said, stop!” Scootaloo said.
Dinky slowed and came to an eventual halt on the stairs. Scootaloo attempted a clumsy dismount from her back, not once taking her eyes off the lowest stair that she could see. Dinky lowered herself to the ground so it would be a little easier, then rose and turned around when Scootaloo was safely off. “You have a plan?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Scootaloo said.
“How likely is it going to end in us both dying?”
Scootaloo considered this. “Eighty, eighty-five percent?”
Dinky nodded. “Well, that’s better odds than I had going for us just trying to run forever. Let’s do it.”
“Okay. Follow me, and when I say blink, blink. If you’re going to blink any time outside of that, nudge me in the flank.”
“...Alright,” Dinky said, nodding slowly.
Scootaloo led them both down and around the spiral staircase until they were face to face with the Dash statue. It was smiling at them rather smugly, in a way that was so painfully Rainbow Dash that it made Scootaloo’s heart ache.
“Hi, Rainbow,” Scootaloo said softly. “How are you doing? I mean. Pretty good, it doesn’t seem.”
“Scootaloo,” Dinky began.
Scootaloo ignored her. “I don’t know what’s happened to you,” she said. “I don’t know if there’s any Rainbow Dash left in there, but I guess we’ll find out. See, in a few minutes, Dinky and I are both gonna blink.” She nudged Dinky in the flank as she herself blinked back tears. “And then you can do whatever you like. If there’s no Rainbow Dash left in there, if she’s dead and you’re just wearing her face… well, I guess we’re dead.”
Dinky nudged her in the flank and Scootaloo redoubled the intensity of her stare. “But if there’s any of you left in there, Rainbow… you don’t want to hurt us, do you? You don’t want to hurt us. You’re the Element of Loyalty.” Her voice was high now, and more than a little strained with tears and fears. “You would never hurt a friend, never abandon them.”
She nudged Dinky, who was straining a little less to keep her horn glowing golden. “Remember who you are, Dash,” Scootaloo said softly. “You turned down the chance to compete with the Wonderbolts that one time, all for your friends. You’re always there for Ponyville. You were always there for me.”
Dinky nudged her, and Scootaloo struggled to keep her watering eyes open. “Please, Rainbow. You’re like my big sister. I love you.”
She inhaled deeply and let it out. “Alright,” she said quietly. “Blink.”
There was a moment of darkness. Then, Scootaloo opened her eyes. She wasn’t dead. Neither, it appeared, was Dinky. The Dash statue was still standing there, but the smug grin had given way to a slack-jawed gape. If one looked closely, they could see crystalline tears in the statue’s eyes.
Scootaloo grinned. “Thank you,” she whispered.
Dinky’s horn guttered again. When the lights returned, Rainbow was struggling to hold it together, Her hoof was outstretched. Dangling from it was a familiar silver key.
“The TARDIS key?” Dinky asked, wide-eyed. “How -- what -- why --”
Scootaloo took the key from Dash’ hoof and bowed her head. “I’m sorry, Rainbow,” she said. “I promise, we’ll fix this somehow.”
There was another flicker of the lights, and Rainbow’s statue gave the pair a watery smile. Another flicker, and she was gone.
Scootaloo let out a long and shaky breath and slid to the floor. Her heart was beating fit to burst. Dinky sat down next to her and wrapped a hoof around her withers.
“‘M sorry,” Scootaloo muttered. “Didn’t think to do the same thing for your mom or Fluttershy.”
Dinky hugged her a little closer, her eyes still glassy and fixed on the point where Rainbow had been. “You did good,” she said quietly. “You did good.”
Rainbow had always thought that if she moved fast enough, she could escape thinking about things. This was contrary to all of her experience, of course -- flying fast was a pretty lonely pastime, and it left a lot of time for self-reflection. She just did her honest best to ignore and repress that as much as was equinely possible.
Now that she was stuck between moving faster than she’d ever been able to in her life and completely frozen, she felt more isolated than ever. Not having anypony around to boast to was particularly galling. And, in the absence of any external noise, Rainbow was forced to turn her thoughts inward.
She was so hungry. It gnawed at her stomach, her mind, her heart. All she needed to do was find a single victim, a simple touch in the dark, and she knew, through some strange instinct of this form, that she would be satiated.
But that would mean killing a friend. She hadn’t been able to think about that clearly, not until Scootaloo had spoken to her. Oh Celestia, she’d nearly killed Scootaloo. And Dinky, too, which felt almost as bad.
What had the Nightmare done to her? What had she become? She felt ill and dizzy and disoriented. There had to be a way to fight this, to keep herself from becoming a danger to the ones she cared about most in the world. She stumbled into the lower hallway, back into the light, and hurried back toward the atrium. It was pretty obvious that Fluttershy and Ditzy were already out of the running -- they had followed the two Crusaders directly, while Dash had chosen to take the long way around through a door hidden behind one of the big grim statues.
She could see the two figures now in the dim light of the hallway, staring at one another, fixed in position, snarling at something that was no longer there. Dash’s heart panged at seeing two of the kindest mares she knew twisted and perverted in such a way. If she felt this bad about nearly killing Scootaloo, how much worse would Ditzy feel about the terror she’d inflicted on her own daughter?
Rainbow sidled down the corridor, drawing closer to her transfigured friends. She skirted along the wall to Ditzy’s left, keeping her eyes fixed on them both until --
She couldn’t move. She had been caught in the glare of Ditzy’s lazy eye. The hunger was still there, eating away at her love, her morals, her sanity, but there was no longer any way to act on it. She would abide here, safe in the knowledge that none of the trio could harm anypony they cared about.
The Nightmare was pacing the room. It had been ever since the Valeyard had given his report. The Valeyard himself was watching, rather bored. When he could take no more, he asked, “So. What did you do with the others?”
“The pegasi are working as my guard dogs now,” the Nightmare growled. “I put them on the -- heh -- side of the Angels, as it were. You saw the earth ponies and the dragon. The unicorns are in a room elsewhere, serving as spare batteries. As for the immortals…” he gestured to the sarcophagus. “Take a look for yourself.”
The Valeyard approached the set of busts and reached out a hoof to touch them, one by one.
Every morning, right on time, the Princess would raise the sun. Her eyes glowed pink when the sun was in the sky, and this was how ponies knew that the cycle of day had begun again. The ponies had to depend on this system, for they could not see the sun for themselves, not in these endless rooms of cold, hard, white marble. The City woke up, and ponies went about their business like automata, doing the same things they had done for a thousand years. There was nothing else to do. This was the way it had been Commanded, and there would be no escape.
Court went in and out of session. The Hierophant expanded his monopoly a little further. The Vizir took out his petty vengeances time and time again. The Prime Minister funneled more food, more money, more power through his offices, growing fat on stolen goods. And every day, the Princess’s eyes glowed a little brighter, a little closer to red.
Inside the alabaster statue, where nopony could see, there was something burning in the darkness, scorching the inside of the pristine shell, putting cracks in the veneer which none could detect. Yet.
Every evening, the Sun would set. The ponies knew this because the Princess’s eyes would dim and fade.The ponies had to depend on this system, for they could not see the sun for themselves. But the Sun could see them. And she was very displeased.
The chill of the dewy morning bit her to the bone, and her wings were sodden and heavy with the damp. She slogged onward. There had been so many graves she had passed, so many faces and names and stories. So many lacunae. Graves chipped, names smudged, faces blurred, and stories were forgotten.
And still she had so many roses left to leave. How long had she walked? How far did she have left to go?
The world tilted and careened, and it wasn’t until she hit the ground that she realized that her legs had simply given out. That was fine. She would wait here for awhile, until the earth took her as it had taken all the others, and climbing ivy twined around her bones. She had nothing left to feel, nothing left to love. Nothing but her own decaying body.
Sunset saw herself in every mirror, every phone screen, every window, her face reflecting back at her. It seemed like it was mocking her. Anon-a-Miss’s power was growing. There had been three fights in the hall today, and it wasn’t even lunchtime.
Sunset ate in the library, these days. Strictly speaking, this wasn’t actually allowed, but if she sat very quietly in the back of the biography section, there was no one around to catch her. No one wanted to come near her, these days. It was as though they thought that she would pull their darkest secrets out of their heads and post them all online.
At the same time, they all hated her passionately and wanted to tear her down for destroying their relationships. So, while she never actually saw anybody, she saw the hateful messages they left behind for her to find. Hate mail shoved in her locker, terrible words scrawled onto her locker, her books stolen, her homework wrecked. #shedemon was trending.
The only person she saw these days was her reflection, twisted as it was. Its lips were cruel and tight, and its eyes blazed with malice as long-fingered hands reached from the glass to drag her away…
Ice crusted the windows of the castle in the midst of summer. The last few survivors of the Eternal Night crawled in the snow, their bellies empty and their minds destroyed. All they knew was suffering, and the laughter of the victorious Nightmare Moon.
Luna was limp, a puppet in the grip of a cruel controller. It had been days since she could feel her own breathing, weeks since she could feel her legs. How long had it been since she was last able to move? Two cycles of the moon? Three?
She could feel the Nightmare’s mind pressing against hers -- not hard enough to overtake her, of course, never hard enough for that. It was merely enough that she could feel its malign influence, her own thoughts reflected back at her in warped and twisted fashion. There was no escape, no sanctuary. Everything around her was the Nightmare. She was the Nightmare. The Nightmare would indeed last forever.
“Ah! You’re back at last. Or, no. Ooh, you’re the lawyer, aren’t you? Well well, Boatyard, what brings you to my neck of the -- hey, where are you going? Get back here! Don’t lea --”
“So, er, yes,”said Twilight. “We’re fairly distant cousins of yours, I suppose -- Mac is, anyway, and I sort of married into the family…” she trailed off, glancing at Mac, who had said nothing this whole time. “She’s very shy,” Twilight explained.
Applejack nodded. “So, yer lookin’ fer a place to stay while y’all get yer hooves back under ya?”
“That’s about the long and short of it, yes,” Twilight said
The farmer grinned. “Well, shoot, Ah ain’t gonna turn down kinfolk. Not so long as ya lend a hoof here on th’ farm.”
Twilight smiled. “I don’t know how much help I’ll be in the orchard,” she admitted. “But I can cook pretty well, and if you need a salesmare in town, I’ve got pretty good pony skills.”
“Well, that sounds just dandy,” Applejack said warmly. “Ah’ll git Apple Bloom to make up a room for y’all.”
“Thank you,” Twilight said. “Really, I can’t thank you enough. I don’t know what we’d do…”
Applejack nodded. “Ain’t no problem, hon. Now, why don’t y’all go down, take a walk ‘round Ponyville proper? I won’t put y’all to work right away or nothin’, not when you just got here, but you better be bright-eyed and bushy tailed tomorrow at dawn, y’hear?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Twilight said, snapping a playful wing-salute.
Applejack bid them farewell and trotted off to the barn. Twilight turned to Mac, her smile falling. “How are you holding up?” she asked quietly.
Mac opened her mouth. No sound came out. Her broad withers shook, wracked with silent sobs. “Oh, Mac,” Twilight said, reaching up to hug her. “I’m sorry…”
“She don’t remember me, Twi,” Mac choked out through the sobs. “Mah own sister. It’s like Ah never existed, a ghost in mah own life.”
“I know,” Twilight said. “I know. If Spike was around here and he didn’t recognize me… I think it would just shatter me. But we remember each other. We know who we are. Right?”
“Give each other definition,” Mac said softly. “Context.”
“Exactly. We’re not alone, Mac. We’ve got each other.”
“Ingenious,” the Valeyard said, pulling his hoof away. “Playing on their worst fears to corrupt them into something suitable for your purposes.”
“Precisely,” the Nightmare said. “It used to be that I’d spend months, even years, on twisting a single mind into the right destructive path. It was craftsmanship. Nowadays, it’s all about mass-production. Or, as the case may be, mass destruction."
“Of course,” said the Valeyard, glancing at Twilight and Macintosh. “It seems not to be a perfect system.”
“Pah. I’ll sort that bug out later, by crushing her like one,” the Nightmare growled. “You, of course, really ought to direct your attention to the main feature on top of the box. I think you’ll like what I have in store up there…”
The Valeyard smirked as he looked at the carved version of his alternate self lying atop the sarcophagus, his hooves crossed over his chest. “I look forward to finding out what you’ve done with the place,” he said, touching the Doctor’s forehead.
With no small effort on his part, the Doctor was able to navigate through the shifting streets of the Capitol to the Prydon Academy. His plans hadn’t changed since his discovery of who his pursuers actually were. Twisted versions of his old friends or no, he couldn’t let them capture him. He shut and barred the door behind him before hurrying down the hall. There was no guarantee of safety here -- anyone might be in this building. If he could find his way to the main lecture hall, he’d have a chance of holding a defensible position while he worked out how to escape this twisted and deranged slice of the Matrix.
He stiffened as the sound of hydraulic joints echoed through the halls. He glanced down a corridor. A hulking figure stood in the darkness. It stepped out, revealing a half-converted Cyberman. In among the metal was a burnt and broken colt -- Adric. He pointed a finger at the Doctor. “K-9. Go fetch,” Adric said, his voice hollow and dead.
Several ankle-high red lights glowed in the darkness, and three K-9 units wheeled out of the darkness. “Affirmative, Master,” all three said in unison, voices much lower and far less camp than the Doctor remembered them being.
Fortunately, the Doctor thought as he pelted down the hall, K-9 had never been known for his speed. Up ahead, he saw a door -- Old Borusa’s classroom, he was certain of it, and there were no fewer than four doors out of it. He slammed through and shoved a desk in the way. That would buy him a few minutes, at least, to catch his breath.
As he did so, he became conscious that he wasn’t alone in the room. He squinted, peering down toward the center of the room. There was a young mare standing there, clad in a floppy cap that hid her eyes. “Dodo?” he called. “Is that you?”
“Hello Doctor!” Dodo called, glancing up at him. He still couldn’t quite see her eyes.
“Been awhile,” the Doctor observed, for lack of anything better to say.
“It has,” Dodo agreed. “I can’t say I’ve missed it.”
“I did get that impression when you didn’t even say goodbye after that affair with the --” The room behind Dodo exploded and the Doctor’s eyes shrunk to pinpricks. “War Machines…” he said quietly.
A pair of things that looked like a combination of a child’s robot toy and a tank raised their guns at him. He ducked and ran out the door at the other end of the room.
No sooner had he left than he flinched away from a huge golden wolf that leapt at him. It bounced off an invisible wall before it quite reached him, though. “Ah,” said the Doctor, backing away. “Hello, Rose.”
She grinned at him murderously. “Run for your life,” she snarled. “Just ‘cos I can’t reach you, doesn’t mean she can’t.”
The Doctor spun around. A withered old spirit rose from the dust and pointed at him menacingly. “Sara Kingdom?” he cried. “I hardly even knew you!”
“Does that excuse my execution?” the ghost screeched.
The Doctor was already running again. He skidded to a halt as a redheaded alicorn in a military jacket and combat boots materialized in front of him. She lunged for his throat. “Eye for an eye, Doctor,” Compassion said coldly. “You stuck a randomizer in me. I’ll stick a knife in--”
She dematerialized again before she could finish the sentence.
The Doctor staggered upright, utterly disoriented. He shoved open the nearest door and almost fell through.
“Well, well,” said a familiar voice.
“How the mighty have fallen,” said another, similar voice.
“Romana?” the Doctor asked, glancing up.
“Yes,” said the War Queen, from all of the nine heads that the Doctor could see. “Toodle pip,” added the one in the beret.
“But Romana and I are perfectly fine with one another,” the Doctor said. “We’ve been through this years ago.”
“Ah,” said the original Romana. “But not with us.”
“Only with the one who didn’t have to face the War,” said the one with the cold grey eyes.
The Doctor became conscious of another presence in the room. He glanced around and saw Leela, bloodied and looking almost bestial as she studied him, knife in hand. She snarled at him, revealing canine teeth. “My Hound,” Romana said, gesturing. “I’d stop running if I were you, Doctor. We have agents everywhere. The barn, the TARDIS bays, Lowtown, Lungbarrow, Mt. Perdition, the Presidential Offices… even if you try to hide somewhere truly uncharacteristic, there’s only so much of the planet to search.”
The Doctor turned and flung open the door, but stopped dead. On the other side, Ditzy was staring at him, through a face of stone. He fell back on his haunches. “Alright,” he said softly. “It’s a fair cop.”
“I’m so glad to hear you say that,” Romana said. “Leela? Bind him.”
Apple Bloom stared, mouth agape. “Ma? Pa?” She blinked several times, then looked behind her to check that she was still standing in the tower. “What are you doin’ here?”
Bright Macintosh chuckled. “What are we doin’ at th’ Apple Family Reunion? Or what are we doin’ bein’ alive?”
“Uh, mostly th’ second one,” Bloom said. “But, since y’all mention it, what in Sam Hill is Sweet Apple Acres doin’ in this deathtrap of a tower?”
“Well, strictly speakin’, it ain’t,” Big Mac said. “All this is just kinda an illusion, y’see?”
Apple Bloom scratched the back of her neck. “Well. Ah appreciate th’ forthrightness. Uh, but if Ah could address th’ more central question here… well, why?”
Pear Butter spread her hooves wide, gesturing to the scenery at large. “Well, sugarcube, it’s like this. What y’all see here is yer perfect world. Yer pa an’ I are alive, an’ so’s Winona. Granny’s hip’s been fixed, ‘cause it was never broken. Every year, th’ plantin’ and growin’ and harvest go as smooth as can be, an’ it’s all thanks to you.”
Apple Bloom tried to process this. “Thanks to me,” she repeated. “Uh. So Ah figgered out how to reanimate th’ dead, then? Or… uh… no, that’s all Ah got, really.”
“It’s a lil’ more straightforward than that,” Applejack said. “All you gotta do to make this dream reality is just step through this door. Stop strugglin’ an’ tryin’ to stop th’ Nightmare an’ the Valeyard.”
“...Huh?”
“Think about it!” Bright Mac said. “What’s time ever done for you? All it does is take, take, take, everything you care about, bringin’ pain an’ death.”
“Don’t you just want to rest, honey?” Pear Butter asked, reaching out to take Bloom by the hoof. “Step through this door, an’ the Nightmare will let you fix everything you ever wanted fixed, the things that you always thought couldn’t ever be repaired. Stop fightin’. Stop hurtin’. Just come through, an’ be loved.”
Apple Bloom hesitated at the threshold. She could smell the sweet scents of apple pie and fresh-cut grass, hear the merry sounds of celebrating family members. It was sorely tempting. She reached a hoof through the door. Her family smiled wider.
Then Apple Bloom paused. “What about everypony else?”
“What about ‘em?” Bright Mac asked, confused.
“Do they get to fix everything, too?” Bloom asked. “‘Cause, Ah reckon that’s gonna be a case of way too many cooks.”
“Well…” said Big Mac, shifting uncomfortably on her haunches. “No…”
“What happens to them, then?” Bloom asked, her voice suddenly steely. “‘Cause, those two evil so-an’-sos don’t seem like th’ type to live an’ let live. Matter of fact, they tried to kill me an’ my friends so many times today, Ah lost count.”
Nopony spoke. They weren’t smiling anymore, and the sounds of the reunion had stopped. The trees were dying and rotting in the background, a swiftly-closing ring of decay.
Bloom nodded and withdrew her hoof. “Ah see. Ah’ll be stayin’ out here, thank you very much.”
“But it’s everything you could want!” Pear Butter burst out, her mane withering even as she spoke. “You stupid, stupid girl! Why couldn’t you just accept it?”
Apple Bloom looked contemptuously at the thing shaped like her mother. “If you don’t know, Ah don’t think Ah could explain.”
The illusion dissolved. Apple Bloom had expected that there would just be a pit on the other side, but there was a solid floor. She stumbled away from the door, her stomach churning. Had the illusion been telling the truth all along, or merely luring her in?
The door slammed shut, making her jump. When she looked back, there was only an empty stretch of wall.
She took a few moments to collect herself. Then, her eyes went wide. “Rumble,” she said, before taking off at a full-tilt gallop back the way she had come.
Blueblood was getting rather out of breath as he, Romana, and Granny Smith arrived back at Sweet Apple Acres. “Sorry,” he muttered. “This is rather more walking than I generally do in a day.”
Granny snorted. “City slicker. Day of good honest labor would do you no end o’ good.”
Blueblood sneered. “If the words ‘fresh country air’ come anywhere near my person, I shall scream.”
Romana rolled her eyes. “Do you think the two of you might possibly stop your bickering for long enough to save the world?”
“Nah,” said Granny.
“I’m fully capable of multitasking,” Blueblood said crisply.
“Oh, just show me where the rift is,” Romana said, a note of testiness creeping into her voice.
Blueblood led them down to the barn and there the three stopped. “Well,” said Romana, her voice a little higher than normal. “That’s... certainly a rift.”
“It’s grown since I left,” Blueblood said, sidling along the length of the crack, eyeing it as though it might at any time reach out and swallow him whole.
Granny inspected the damage with a grim eye. “It’s gone through some trees,” she said. “Are they gonna be alright? If not, how kin Ah git mah hooves on that skeezy lawyer fella again? Ah’ll put a crack in his face, you mark mah words…”
“Well,” Romana said. “If we can reverse the process, the trees should live. If we can’t, well, you won’t be around to worry about it.”
“How comfortingly fatalistic,” Blueblood muttered. “How wide an area of damage would this cause?”
Romana shrugged. “Difficult to say,” she admitted. “I presume it’s spreading toward the other rift in the hospital. Anything along the line when they touch probably won’t fare well, and there’s every chance that it could widen.”
“So it could destroy the town?” Granny Smith asked.
“The town, certainly. The country, probably, and possibly the world. All of it would be pulled inside out and sucked into the time vortex, unless we can stabilize it.”
“Lovely,” Blueblood said. “Might I encourage stabilizing it, then?”
“Of course,” Romana said promptly. “I’ll need a bobby pin, a pair of socks, and sixty feet of iron chain.”
“Excellent! Miss Smith, do you have those things lying around, by chance?”
Romana and Granny stared at him through lidded eyes. Blueblood pursed his lips. “Ah. Of course. Joking. Ha. Most droll.”
Granny glanced sidelong at Romana. “Ya can stabilize it, though, can’t ya?”
“...Yes,” Romana said slowly. “Very probably. Some help from Starlight Glimmer would speed things up nicely, and I’ll probably need to raid the hardware store, Twilight’s lab, the Doctor’s workshop…”
“I believe the Crown would be only too happy to cover the cost, given the circumstances,” Blueblood said. “In the meantime, may I suggest that we hurry back to the hospital? I just saw this thing grow another few centimeters.”
It didn’t take Apple Bloom long to find Rumble. Reaching him was another matter entirely. He had gone through his door, a cutesy little thing made out of clouds, with a heart carved in the middle. On the other side, she saw Rumble, hovering nervously in the air. He was talking rapidly to a skinny stallion that Apple Bloom thought she vaguely recognized. She couldn’t quite make out his features, and they seemed to shift as she studied him. Well, it didn’t matter.
“Rumble!” she yelled. “Get th’ Tartarus outta there! It ain’t real! It’s a trap!”
Rumble seemed not to have heard her, or else he was simply ignoring her. At long last, he landed in the clouds. Slowly, the door began to close.
Apple Bloom wedged herself between the door and the jamb. “RUMBLE!” she shouted again, sticking her head over the threshold. “GET OUT! NOW!”
Once more, Rumble didn’t acknowledge her presence. His companion, on the other hoof, glared daggers at her before pulling Rumble in for a gentle kiss.
Oh, thought Bloom. This is his dream guy, then. Doesn’t look like much. Then she reconsidered. Studying the figure carefully, she could see elements of colts she’d known in school -- Pipsqueak, Shady Daze, even Button Mash.
Everyone Rumble’s ever crushed on, maybe. But he ain’t that shallow, why would he get lured in by a cute stallion?
Then the door on the other side of the room opened, and two pegasi walked in, smiling broadly. The stallion was a deep, faded navy blue with deep blue eyes and a salt-and-pepper mane, slicked back. The mare was ice white with a long black mane and golden eyes. They said something indistinct, but Apple Bloom could make out the words, ‘so happy’ ‘coltfriend’ ‘welcome.’
‘Proud of you, son.’
Her heart sank like a stone. Of course. Rumble had lost his parents, too. Perhaps it hadn't happened in quite the same way that she'd lost hers, but it was no less traumatic. Her grip on the door slackened momentarily, and it inched a little closer to closing.
She quickly redoubled her efforts, straining to keep the portal open. “Rumble!” she snapped. “This ain’t how it happened! It ain’t real!”
Finally, Rumble seemed to acknowledge her presence, turning to look at her with pleading eyes. “But it could be,” he said. “They could be different. I could be different.”
“Yer brother took you in. He protected you, an’ these pieces of equine shit disowned th’ both of ya,” Apple Bloom growled, shoving the door a little further open. “You go this route, you turn your back on everything he did fer you.”
Rumble hesitated, glancing back and forth between Bloom and his parents, their smiles growing increasingly thin and forced. “Bless yer heart fer wantin’ a way t’ forgive these creeps,” Bloom said, “but they ain’t done nothin’ to deserve it.”
Rumble shut his eyes tight and nodded. He turned and headed for the door. It increased its force, and Apple Bloom roared in pain as she was pressed against the jamb. Rumble pushed from the other side, and fell through, landing on top of her. The door slammed closed and vanished into thin air.
There was a long silence. “This tower sucks,” Rumble remarked.
“Yep,” Bloom said. “Think you could get off me now? Ah think ah bruised mah ribs. An’ mah hooves, mah barrel, mah legs…”
“Oh, sorry.” Rumble rose, helping Apple Bloom wobble to her hooves.
“Are y’all alright?”
“You’re the one with bruises.”
“Y’all are th’ one with scars that just reopened real bad.”
Rumble nodded, taking the point. “I just… shit. I didn’t realize how bad I wanted that until it got dangled in front of me. I always thought that if I ever saw them again, I’d pluck the pair of them.” He crumpled a little. “I guess I was weaker than I thought.”
“No,” Bloom said, rubbing his back with a hoof. “You turned yer back on them. That’s strength, hon.”
“I just wanted them to love me,” Rumble said, blinking back tears. “I just wanted them to see me for who I am, and love me. Why was that so much to ask?”
Apple Bloom hugged him tight, barely holding back tears of her own. “They’re bastards,” she said through gritted teeth. “Plain an’ simple. Ah love you, Rumble. Y’all are one of mah best friends in the world, an’ there ain’t nothin’ gonna change that.”
There was a long pause. “You really mean that?” he asked softly.
“If Ah ever meet them two clowns in real life, Ah’ll buck their teeth in an’ let you pluck whatever scraps are left over.”
There was a long silence. Then Rumble buried his head in her chest and sobbed, hugging her back as tight as he could.
Sombra struggled to open his eyes. He felt weak and sick, but at least he had awoken from his nightmare. It was the one where he was still under the corrupting influence of the Nightmare Entity and was still the cruel, unbending dictator of the Crystal Empire. Same old, same old, really.
After a moment to regain his bearings, Sombra realized a couple of things. First, that his magic was being siphoned off from his horn, and second, that he was surrounded by several sleeping unicorns all undergoing the same treatment. All of them were shifting in their sleep, their faces twisted into gurns of pain and fear as they writhed on the hard stone floor.
Sombra sighed, and with some effort, rose to his hooves. He shoved Shining Armor in the ribs rather hard. The prince rolled over and whined. Sombra reconsidered his approach. He leaned down next to Shining’s ear and hissed, “Crysssssstal Ssssssslavesssssss.”
Shining’s eyes popped open and he scrambled to his hooves. Sombra nodded. “I see I have your attention,” he said drily.
Shining winced and glanced around the room. “What’s happening here?” he asked. “The last thing I remember is the Nightmare turning the pegasi to stone.”
“It seems that it’s divided us based on racial attributes,” Sombra said. “As unicorns are the most able of the three pony races to utilize active magic, we’ve been sent here to be drained of it, milked like cattle for our power.”
“Living batteries,” Shining muttered, rubbing his forehead. “We have to get out of here.”
“Hm,” said Sombra, glancing up at the ceiling. “Perhaps. But not all of us.”
“What are you saying?” Shining asked, his voice gaining a slight edge.
“Presumably, our power output is being monitored. If it suddenly drops to zero, it will arouse suspicion. One of us may leave -- perhaps two at a stretch. The others must remain behind.”
“You’re proposing we leave the others here to suffer?”
“As a matter of fact, no,” Sombra said, a touch of impatience in his voice. “I propose that we wake up one of the others, then you and she go off to try and rescue our friends. I will stay behind. The nightmares scarcely bother me any longer anyway.”
“...Oh,” said Shining Armor. “Er… who do you think…”
Sombra shrugged. “Trixie is a master of illusion and deception, while Rarity’s skill set lies more in offensive attacks with her magic. I would suggest that you might prefer to keep hidden rather than actively enga-a-aaaa…” he interrupted himself with a yawn, then blinked several times to clear his mind. “We must act quickly, before our energy is sapped utterly.”
“Right, yeah,” Shining said. He tried to shake Trixie awake, but she merely rolled over and curled into the fetal position.
“Allow me,” said Sombra, leaning over her prone form. He murmured in her ear, “Miss Trixie? You’re on in five.”
Trixie snapped to attention, flailing her limbs wildly and screaming. Rarity, in turn, blinked herself back to alertness moments later. “Oog,” she muttered. “Spike, darling, I’ve had the most atrocious dream…”
Everypony stared at her. “Ah,” said Rarity. “Not a dream?”
“Only the most recent part,” Shining said. He quickly outlined the situation, with occasional interjections from Sombra.
“I’m sorry, Rarity,” he said, glancing at her. “I have to ask you to stay behind.”
Rarity glanced sidelong at Trixie for a moment before nodding. “Of course, darling. I understand completely. Good luck and godspeed to you both.”
Trixie pursed her lips and nodded. “Trixie thanks you, Rarity. She hopes that you will rest well. Or, under the circumstances -- well -- oh, you know what Trixie means.”
Shining Armor pushed open the door. It hadn’t even been locked. “They’ve gotten cocky,” he muttered. “Come on, Trixie. Let’s see what we can find.”
With one final fleeting backward glance, Trixie trotted out of the room, and the door shut behind her.
Sombra glanced at Rarity. “Do I detect a certain amount of guilt?” he inquired.
Rarity shut her eyes tight for a moment. “It’s rather a long story. I’d prefer not to go too deep into it,” she said crisply. “Suffice to say… I was somewhat cruel to Trixie awhile back, when she was at her lowest ebb. It was dreadful of me. That particular wound has healed reasonably well, but… well… I think I have some idea of the contents of her nightmares. I shouldn’t like to be responsible for making her have more of them.”
Sombra nodded. “I see. Would you like to try and stay awake a little longer?”
Rarity sighed, considering, but shook her head. “I can already feel my strength fading,” she murmured, lying down. “Their departure seems to have strengthened the pull on our magic.”
Sombra nodded his agreement. “Just as well,” he said. “Perhaps they won’t even detect a drop in our magical output.”
Rarity sighed. “Sombra, darling? Before we black out again, I wonder if you could do me a small favor?”
“Oh?”
Rarity glanced at him, a tad shyly. “Well… you’re rather large and warm. You’re no dragon, of course, but all the same… well, would you mind terribly snuggling with me?”
Sombra gave a small huff of laughter. “Very well, Miss Rarity.” He trotted to her side and lay down next to her, draping a muscular hoof across her barrel and pulling her into a warm embrace.
Rarity gave a sigh of relief. “Thank you, darling,” she murmured. “Terribly obliged…” she drifted off again. After a few moments of resisting the heaviness of his eyelids and the weakness of his body, Sombra followed suit.
Romana, Blueblood, and Granny Smith had barely returned to Ponyville proper when they saw Starlight running full tilt toward them. “Romana! Hospital! Golden rift! Growing!”
She came to a halt right in front of the trio, eyes bulging and spittle flecking her lips. “Help?” she concluded.
“Okay,” Romana said steadily. “Starlight, could you take a few deep breaths for me?”
Almost resignedly, Starlight took a few exaggerated deep breaths. Nevertheless, she began to calm down.
“Alright,” Romana said, nodding. “Yes, we’re aware of the rifts. There’s another one up at Sweet Apple Acres. Unless I’m very much mistaken, the two are spreading toward one another.”
Starlight nodded. “That’s what I would guess, too, based on the direction the one in Ponyville General was pointing,” she said. She wasn’t calm, exactly, but she seemed markedly less wild-eyed than she had moments before. “How long do you think we have before they meet?”
“I’d need to look at the other one to be certain, but at a guess… perhaps forty minutes.”
“Right. What happens then?”
“Imagine the worst case scenario,” Blueblood instructed.
Starlight stared off into the distance and nodded. “Alright…”
“Worse than that,” Blueblood said.
Starlight’s eyes went wide again. Granny smacked Blueblood on the withers. “Now you done gone an’ set her off again,” she grumbled.
“Fortunately,” Romana said, “I have a plan.”
“Alright,” Starlight said. “What can I do to help?”
“Obviously, you’re the greatest scholar of time travel born on this planet,” Romana said. “And although I literally learned how to calculate temporal vectors in kindergarten, I have considerably less experience with magic than you, and I’d greatly appreciate you helping me to translate my ideas into concepts that make the most sense in this universe. At the same time, I urgently need you to hold back the rifts. Can you do both at the same time?”
Starlight laughed. “Can I do both at the same time? Yeah, probably. What kind of spell do you think would work best?”
“These things are rifts in spacetime, but the holes themselves are only three-dimensional,” Romana said. “A spell to slow or stop time in a localized area ought to work.”
“Ought?” Granny asked, arching an eyebrow. “Ah don’t much like th’ sound of that.”
“This is entirely theoretical, I’m afraid,” Romana said, “and even most of the theories concerned don’t address any situation remotely like this. We’re flying by the seats of our pants.”
She paused at their blank expressions. “Er, that expression probably makes more sense for a species that wears pants,” she admitted. “But you follow my meaning.”
Starlight nodded. “C’mon, let’s go back to the hospital. It’ll be easier to shape the spell at one end of the rift.”
The four ponies started back toward the hospital apace. “Did you actually learn how to calculate… whatever you said you did… in kindergarten?” Blueblood enquired.
“Oh, yes,” Romana said. “I was in the gifted and talented program.”
At long last, Dinky’s horn wasn’t the sole source of light on the stairway. As soon as the two mares saw the faint illumination on the wall, Dinky broke into a run up the stairs and out into the light of the hallway. “Oh, thank Celestia!” Scootaloo said, slumping down onto Dinky’s head. “I don’t think I could’ve taken much more of that.”
“You might have to,” Dinky warned her. “There’s no guarantee that we’re on the right floor.”
“Well… I guess,” Scootaloo admitted. “But at least we get a break, right?”
“Mm.” Dinky looked up and down the corridor. “We can’t really split up,” she mused. “Which way?”
“Back the way we came,” Scootaloo said firmly. “When we got thrown out of the tower, we landed right in front of the main doors, so the room has to be that way.”
“Huh. Good call,” Dinky said. “One problem, though. Which way is that?”
“What do you mean? It’s obviously…” Scootaloo trailed off, trying to work something out in her head. “Um… Wait, wasn’t the door downstairs on the other wall?”
“Exactly. The spiral stairs completely threw off our sense of orientation,” Dinky said. “I don’t think there’s a good way to figure it out, either, given that we know the internal dimensions of the tower are completely screwed up.”
“Oh.”
“It was a good plan, though,” Dinky said hastily. “If we were literally anywhere else, it would’ve worked.”
“Yeah. Thanks. Uh, I guess I’ll pick that way, then,” Scootaloo said, pointing to the right.
“Right it shall be, then,” Dinky said, setting off at a trot.
“Should we be worried about the staircase moving on us again?” Scootaloo asked.
“Probably,” Dinky admitted. “But we’ll have to cross that bridge when we come to it. We can’t be so afraid to leave the stairs that we never find the right floor.”
Scootaloo tilted her head in a noncommittal gesture. “Yeah, true,” she admitted. “Alright.”
They continued down the hall. Scootaloo kept glancing over her shoulder until the door was lost in the gloom. “I hope the others are alright,” she said.
Dinky said nothing, but she squared her shoulders.
The corridor was wider than the one downstairs, and better decorated, too. Tapestries hung on the walls, and busts sat on plinths set into the walls. Many of them were recognizable as some of the incarnations of Rassilon that had been on display in the foyer. “Geez,” Scootaloo said. “This guy must’ve had some kind of ego.”
“What was your first clue?” Dinky asked drily.
“Yeah, okay, the tower-sized memorial in the middle of a death-trap desert probably should’ve been a giveaway,” Scootaloo admitted.
“It says a lot about Time Lords in general, don’t you think?” Dinky asked, half-jokingly.
Scootaloo was silent for a long moment. “What?” Dinky asked, glancing back at her.
“I just…” Scootaloo huffed slightly. “Listen. It’s none of my business, but I really don’t think you should be so hard on the Doctor.”
Dinky stiffened noticeably and turned to face forward again. “He abandoned Mom. He forgot about us.”
“Yeah. And she forgave him for that, like, ten years ago. He’s been working so hard to be there for you, dude.”
“He should have been there for me when I needed him,” Dinky growled. “I felt so alone for so long. You don’t know what that’s like. You’ve always had friends.”
Scootaloo crossed her hooves. “Yeah, think about what you just said. I’ve never been alone because I have friends. It’s almost like letting ponies love you and loving them back is a good way to not be alone, huh?”
Dinky let out a short huff of air through her nose, but said no more. Scootaloo shrugged. “Alright. Your call, not mine.”
“Yeah. It is,” Dinky grumbled. Then she stopped. “Huh,” she said. “This looks like it might be something.”
Scootaloo peered over her friend’s head. Laid out before them was a four-meter square chessboard, taking up the entire floor ahead of them.
Nurse Redheart studied her patients again. They all seemed to be in relatively stable condition. Shining Armor and Trixie had stopped suffering from magic drain, although Sombra and Rarity were going through the IV drips at an even more rapid pace than before. The alicorns and draconocci were still suffering from a variety of unique and unpleasant effects -- Sunset’s flaming mane and wings had gone out completely, Cadance was dripping with dew, and Discord seemed to be in a state of total paralysis, not to say rigor mortis. There was little she could do for them, if anything. On the bright side, using the term very loosely, the black ooze that Luna was sweating seemed to be putting out the small fires that Celestia kept starting on their shared bed.
She sighed and took a seat on the lone chair in the corner of the room, shut her eyes, and rubbed her temples. Celestia, what she wouldn’t give for some company right now. Whatever Romana had done to her earlier, she wasn’t at all sleepy, but the loneliness and hopelessness of the situation was beginning to wear on her.
Her pager buzzed. She ignored it. She couldn’t exactly tear herself away from the coma ward without anyone around to replace her.
It buzzed again. Redheart growled a little in the back of her throat and snatched it from the side table where it lay. She was about to shut it off when she saw the messages.
Hey, hon, the first one read in glowing white letters.
The second said, Cloudchaser, stop shoving!
Redheart took a deep breath in and let it out slowly, shakily. “This isn’t funny.”
The pager buzzed. It’s not a joke, it said. We’re still here, but we’re ghosts.
Setting the pager down with hooves shaking, Redheart considered this. “Prove it,” she said. “Tender, where did we go on our second date?”
There was a momentary pause. The pager buzzed again, and this time an image appeared on the screen. It was a picture of a clearing in Whitetail Woods, where the two mares had gone for a hike in early April.
You had to leave early because there was a cart accident near town square, the message below read.
Redheart nodded slowly. “Okay,” she said. “...Okay. Um…” She blinked several times and then abruptly began to cry.
Almost immediately, the pager started buzzing so much that it nearly fell off the table. Redheart gave a little phlegmy chuckle through her tears. “It’s fine, I’m fine,” she said, wiping her eyes roughly. “I’m just so glad you’re here.”
I’m glad I could be here, too.
Yeah, okay, great. So what exactly happened to us?
Cloudchaser! Can you not?
What? We deserve to know.
And Tender and Redheart deserve a proper romantic reunion, but you just had to butt in.
Luna’s tits, but you’re a bleeding heart. No wonder you and Flitter got together.
Nurse Redheart cleared her throat. “Well, now that the moment’s been completely ruined anyway, yes, I’m more than glad to tell you what little I know.”
How did we die? Was it cool?
“You’re not dead.”
There was a long pause. Red, honey, we’re ghosts.”
Redheart sighed. “Look, Romana could explain it better than I can, but from what I understand, you were de-aged.”
…?
“You got so young, you were suddenly never born. Most of the others got turned into babies.”
...What.
“I know, right?”
There was a sudden noise in the waiting room. Redheart’s ears pricked up.
Speaking of Romana… said the pager.
“Come in,” Nurse Redheart said.
Romana pushed open the door and stepped into the room. “Were you talking to someone just now?” she asked.
Redheart passed her the pager. The Time Lady’s eyebrows rose. They rose further as she looked through the list of notifications. “I see. That… is fascinating, but unfortunately I can’t really work through the implications at the moment, because in a little over half an hour, relatively speaking, Ponyville is going to be the epicenter of a fracture in spacetime that might consume the planet entirely.”
Redheart stared at Romana for a moment. “Seriously?” she asked, rubbing her head.
When it rains, it pours, said the pager.
Shining Armor and Trixie hurried down the corridor, shaking the pins and needles out of their limbs as they went. “How are you feeling?” Shining asked.
“Trixie has had better days,” Trixie replied grimly. “But she will get by. That, however, is more than can be said for that Nightmare creep if it’s hurt one flame on Sunset Shimmer’s head.”
“Yeah,” Shining said. “If Twily and Cadance aren't alright... well, I'll try to leave you some scraps to stomp on. Where is the tomb from here?”
Trixie glanced around. “Trixie isn’t sure. This part of the tower looks… well, Trixie was going to say ‘unfamiliar’, but really, the problem lies in the fact that every part of this tower seems to look a lot like all the other parts.”
“Hm.” Shining glanced around the corridor. “Yeah, that’s a good point. Not to mention, there’s no guarantee that the halls out here won’t start behaving like they did earlier, sticking us in another endless loop.”
Trixie glanced around. “Hmm… aha!”
“What? Did you find something?”
Trixie gestured toward an alcove. “Trixie will knock over that bust and smash it. That we, we will know immediately if we are going in circles!”
“...Okay…” Shining said. “Uh, but what will we be able to actually do about that?”
Trixie considered this for a moment. “You think too much,” she decided, reaching up to smash the statue on the ground.
At least, she tried. The statue didn’t seem to want to let go of the pedestal. Trixie struggled and pushed, but it barely moved.
Shining looked a little more closely at the bust. “May I?” he asked.
With bad grace, Trixie stepped aside and let Shining take her place. After studying it for a moment, he noted, “This is the same guy Rarity pointed out to us before. Pandak.”
“Then we are going in circles?”
Shining shook his head. “No. At least, I don’t know. This guy doesn’t have a chip in his ear, see? So it’s the same guy, but not the same bust.”
“Fascinating,” Trixie muttered. “By all means, take a last moment to appreciate the art before smashing it.”
Shining ignored her. “Isn’t it funny that Rassilon would put a bunch of statues of his political rivals in his own tomb?”
Trixie tilted her head, thinking. “Huh. It is,” she admitted. “Trixie would never put anything in her tomb but herself, and some of the things that made her happy in life. Actually, Trixie might just ask to be buried in her wagon.”
“It’s almost like it was meant to stand out,” Shining said, carefully taking the face of the bust in both hooves. “Like a way to mark a point…”
He pulled the statue toward his chest, and with a grinding noise, it slid forward. The back wall of the alcove receded, revealing a dimly-lit secret tunnel. “... or a door,” Shining finished.
“Impressive,” Trixie said, lighting her horn and peering into the gloom beyond. “You think this leads out of the tower?”
“Could be. I’m reasonably certain that it leads around the tower,” Shining said. “We might be able to travel a little more quickly this way. We’re almost certainly less likely to be detected there.”
Trixie stepped into the darkness. “Very well. Trixie is down for this.”
Shining followed her into the narrow passageway. A few minutes after they departed, the bust of Pandak slid back into place, the wall closing again as if it had never moved.
A few minutes later, Apple Bloom and Rumble wandered by the self-same bust. “Why is it so dang hard to get anywhere in this tower?” Bloom demanded. “What kinda idiot designed this place, anyhow?”
The going wasn’t as hard as it had first seemed in the hall of mirrors. Between Spike’s keen eye for detail, which had been honed over years of living with first Twilight Sparkle and then Rarity, and Applejack’s innate sense of truth, they had a pretty solid system for determining how close to reality each mirror image was. If both of them thought it was too close to call, Pinkie’s Pinkie Sense was a reliable backup system.
They had encountered an astounding number of mirrors that were almost correct, but not quite. In one, Applejack hadn’t had freckles, but Pinkie did. In another, Spike hadn’t forgotten to trim his claws. In a third, they were almost sure the reflection had been correct, but then Spike noticed that the image was moving a fraction of a second out of sync with their actions, predicting a quarter of a second into the future.
Those were pretty disturbing, but at least they were mundane. There were truly twisted mirrors in here, as well, where Spike was a gnarled and twisted kaiju of a dragon, where Pinkie was a grinning maniac, where Applejack was grizzled and covered in the scars of a hundred-score battles.
There was one where they were all changelings. There was one where Spike was a diamond dog. There was one where the two mares were, from what Spike claimed, their counterparts from the other side of the mirror portal.
And then there was the mirror where Applejack was gone.
She stopped and stared at it for a long moment. She could hear her heart beating in her ears. It was familiar, terrifyingly familiar. Spike said something, but she couldn’t tell what. This was one of the universes that she had died in, one of the branching timelines that the Valeyard and the Nightmare had used to try and sabotage the TARDIS, one of the ones that had been balled up and thrown away when they had outlived their usefulness.
How close she had come to oblivion. But if she had died, like her counterparts, would the Nightmare have failed to gain a hold in this universe? Through her sacrifice, would her world have been safe from this scourge?
There was a hoof on her shoulder. “You can’t think like that,” Pinkie said softly.
“How th’ Tartarus do you know what Ah’m thinkin’?”
“You have no poker face,” Spike said. “Ever.”
“Hmph.” Applejack glared at the mirror. “C’mon. Gotta keep movin’.”
From then on, Applejack always lingered for a moment over the other mirrors that failed to show her reflection before tearing her eyes away and trotting briskly onward.
How long she had been standing there, she didn’t know. Stone didn’t seem to experience time in quite the same way that flesh did, and the hunger made every moment that clicked past seem like an eternity. It was the hunger that picked at her, scrabbled at her from the inside -- if she had an inside. How could a statue feel hungry? How could a statue feel anything? Rainbow didn’t know. She just knew that she was hungry, and she couldn’t move, and that this was actually the best position she could be in at this point, really.
Because she knew that this was the only way to protect her friends. Scootaloo and Dinky would be gone if any of the three statues touched them. So would anypony else they happened to come across. Rainbow doubted that anypony could get through to Fluttershy and Ditzy now. If they were feeling half as hungry as she was, they’d devour anything they came across.
And that was the other half of the equation -- she was protecting Ditzy and Fluttershy, too. If they sated their hunger the way it was meant to be sated -- Celestia. It would destroy them. In her mind’s eye, she could see Ditzy staring with sudden clarity and dawning horror at the spot where Dinky had been a moment before.
Rainbow wouldn’t let that happen. She couldn’t.
She heard hooves coming down the hall. Food? wondered a distressingly large part of her brain, but she beat it back. She couldn’t see who it was. They were coming up from behind her. The hooffall was too heavy and measured to be Dinky or Scootaloo, or any of the other Crusaders.
The clatter of hooves stopped right behind her. “Pathetic,” a familiar voice said. The Valeyard. She could hear the sneer in his voice. “How fascinating. The Element of Loyalty is the sole traitor.”
She wanted to scream at him, yell about how he understood nothing of loyalty, of friendship, of anything at all. She wanted to turn around and knock him senseless. But she couldn’t. She was trapped in a position of her own design that was meant to ensure she would never move again.
For a moment, she caught a glimpse of his face as he reached over and positioned a mirror right in front of her.
“Now, just sit here and… reflect on what you’ve done. The others will have to go now, I’m afraid -- they’ve got work to do.”
As he dragged the other two statues around, Rainbow Dash stared into her own stone eyes. In them she saw hunger. Worse, she saw defeat.
“So…” said Scootaloo. “I’m guessing that we can’t just, y’know. Walk across.”
“...Doubtful,” Dinky said. “Hang on just a minute.”
She shut her eyes and focused. The air shimmered, and an illusory golden duplicate of herself stepped onto the chessboard. Immediately, the board was electrified, and the magic copy blew apart with an anguished scream. Both mares’ eyes went wide, and Dinky took a few steps back. “Okay,” she said. “That’s not exactly ideal.”
“...How many of those things can you make?” Scootaloo asked. “If you do enough --”
“Even if I could make an infinite number of copies -- which I can’t, they’re very draining -- we’d still be here for hours testing random paths. This is a puzzle -- there has to be a clue around here somewhere…”
She trailed off, glancing around the corridor, which was entirely empty. “...Don’t suppose you could just hover over this thing.”
“Don’t suppose you could teleport past it.” “Oh, that’s a thought,” Dinky said. “Alright, here goes nothing.”
The two mares disappeared in a flash of magic. An instant later, they reappeared right where they had been standing. “It would seem not,” Dinky said. “Must be warded or something.”
Scootaloo frowned and glanced around the hallway again. She suddenly went stiff. “Dinky…” she said slowly. “Don’t turn around. Just set me down slow.”
Dinky did as she was bade. “Alright,” Scootaloo said. “Now turn.”
Dinky looked back. Some distance down the hallway were two distressingly familiar statues. “...Shit. Alright. Uh…”
She wracked her brain for anything that might be useful, any clue she might have missed before. She did it again, and again, more frantically each time. Then she started mentally screaming.
The Doctor had been dragged in ropes to the Old Harbor district, an ancient dock that was among the last reminders of when the Capitol had possessed waterfront property, some few dozen thousand years before the Doctor had been loomed. The Gallifreyan tides were so huge and powerful, it had been decided that such waters were an annoyance and a danger to the community, and so they had been terraformed out of existence. Now all that the Old Harbor overlooked was an enormous pit. It had never been destroyed or repurposed. That was life on Gallifrey.
It seemed that it was also death on Gallifrey. He was led through an angry swarm of familiar faces, grotesquely twisted into monstrous forms. Katarina was there, her broken body floating almost peacefully in the air. A kilted man without a face stood sentinel at the base of the crudely-built stage, alongside a zombified Captain Yates. Izzy and Destrii were fused at the hip, and still trying to rip one another apart, though they stopped and glowered at the Doctor as he was led past. Zoe sat on the ground, head in her hands. Sand was pouring out of her ears, and he could see within the sand images of past adventures -- memories stolen from her by his people.
As he was led up the stairs and onto the stage, he was made to look out at the crowd and saw still more familiar faces.
Sam Jones, flickering between dark and light, her face cracked in two. Princess Luna, corrupted once more into Nightmare Moon. Discord, half-petrified. Kamelion, burning in agony.
His heart sank as his gaze fell on Susan, his beloved granddaughter. Her face was lined and pinched and stern from years of labor and later years of fighting. She held the broken body of her son, Alex.
No less terrible was the sight of Ditzy, hooves over her eyes, mouth locked in a scream of pain. He blinked, and suddenly she was staring at him, teeth bared.
And at the base of the stage, six dirty, broken bodies stared up at him, their eyes empty. The Cutie Mark Crusaders.
The Doctor took in a long breath and let it out slowly. “Well,” he said. “They say it’s a good thing to die surrounded by friends. I shan’t be alone, at any rate.”
Someone behind him snorted a laugh. “You ain’t got friends here, sunshine.”
The Doctor turned. “Oh, my Bella Donna,” he said sadly. “What have I done to you?”
Her eyes glowed golden with anger. “The same thing you did to all us broken toys,” she said. “Played with us. Shattered us. Left us to rot.” She laughed bitterly. “I begged you, d’you remember? I begged you to just let me burn. I would have died as I always wanted to live! I would have gone out in a blaze of glory, knowing that I had saved all of creation, and instead you turned me back into a damp squib.”
“You were never that, Donna,” the Doctor whispered. “Never that.”
“Forget this,” said another familiar voice. “Let’s just smash ‘im already!”
The Doctor blanched. “Ace,” he said. “Oh, Ace--”
“Shut it,” she said shortly, electricity sparking across her body. Her leather jacket seemed to be the only thing holding her glitching, mutated form together. She pointed the shattered remains of her metal bat at him. “I’m through playing your games, Doctor.”
“Just toss him over the edge and be done with it,” Sam shouted. “Let us go already!”
“No,” Leela replied. “The time is not yet right. The executioner is not yet here.”
The crowd broke into an uproar. The Doctor shut his eyes and flattened his ears, but that wasn’t enough to shut out the roar of the crowd. But all that stopped when one singular voice rose high and clear above the others. “HELP!” Dinky shouted. “HELP! I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO!”
Everyone stopped and looked at the figure of Dinky, front-row center in the Doctor’s mind. The Doctor flapped his mouth for a moment. “I… yes?”
There was a long pause. “Doctor? What are you doing in my head?”
“From my point of view, you happen to be in mine,” the Doctor said. “You must have accidentally triggered a psychic link, all Time Lords can do it -- which means --” He blinked several times. “You’re alive?”
“Yeah. All of us survived the fall,” Dinky said. The other Crusaders blinked into life one by one around her, glancing around in surprise. “But that might not be true for much longer. Scootaloo and I are in the tower, stuck between a pair of statues and an electric chessboard --”
Romana pointed at Dinky. “Someone shut her up!” she shouted.
Several of the corrupted companions rushed forth, but the other Crusaders sprang into action, fending them off. “The statues… you mean Weeping Angels?” the Doctor asked.
“Yeah? They move when you blink, is that them?”
“Yes.”
“Yeah, mom and Fluttershy got turned into them. So did Rainbow Dash, but she managed to fight off her conditioning or whatever it is that’s making them attack us.”
“They can still be saved,” the Doctor murmured, his eyes going wide.
Donna grabbed his collar and started pulling him away from Dinky. He struggled to call out to her as her voice began to fade.
“Dinky! Just remember -- easy as Pi -- just walk -- CIRCULAR!”
All that remained after that was static.
Dinky blinked several times. “Okay. Well, that was something.”
“What was? You totally fuzzing out on me for ten seconds?” Scootaloo demanded.
Dinky looked at the Weeping Angels. They were barely ten meters away. “I was talking with the Doctor.”
“...Come again?”
“Apparently I have psychic powers and nopony remembered to tell me. It didn’t last long, but he tried to tell me how to cross the chessboard…” she relayed the message to Scootaloo quickly, pausing only for blinks.
“Circular,” Scootaloo repeated, furrowing her brow. “What could that mean on a square board?”
“Same question with easy as pi,” Dinky mused. “I’m gonna take another look at the board, keep your eyes open.”
“Alright.”
Dinky scanned the board. No, there was nothing circular around here. What else did she know about chess? Pieces -- king, queen, knight, bishop, rook, pawn. None moved in circles. The pieces would be set up along rows 1, 2, 7, and 8 --
Oh. Now wasn’t that interesting…
“Scootaloo,” Dinky said slowly. “This chessboard is set up wrong.”
“Is it?” Scootaloo asked. “Imagine that.”
“In chess, the lowest right-hoof square is white. On this one, it’s black.”
“Great. Is there a point to all this? Blink.”
Dinky glanced up to stare at the statues, then back at the board. “I think so. In chess, the squares in columns are marked with letters, and the squares in rows are marked with numbers. They’re flipped now, which suggests an alphanumeric code of some kind.”
“And the code word is… circular? Dinky, I’m pretty sure ‘R’ and ‘U’ are a little outside of a chessboard’s normal span.”
“Yeah, so’s ‘L’. But the other part of the message, ‘easy as pi’ -- what if it’s not just a straight conversion from letters to ordinal numbers? What if you line up the letters of the alphabet --”
“Blink. With the digits of pi?”
“Yeah!”
Scootaloo said nothing. “Scoots?”
“Shush, I’m calculating. What are the numbers on a chessboard?”
“One through eight.”
“So if any of them line up with a zero or nine…” Scootaloo lapsed into silence. “They don’t.”
“Alright. I’m gonna put you on my back and go for it,” Dinky said. “You gotta tell me the numbers and check my six, alright?”
“Okay,” Scootaloo said. “Just let me refresh my eyes a second. Blink.”
Dinky stared at the statues as Scootaloo pressed her hooves against her eyelids. “Alright,” she said, opening her eyes again. “I’m ready.”
Quickly, Dinky turned back to the board and lifted Scootaloo up onto her back. “Go,” she said.
“Four,” Scootaloo said. Dinky stepped onto the fourth square, wincing as hoof met tile. Nothing happened. “Alright,” she said. “Good start.”
“Five,” Scootaloo said. Again, nothing happened.
From B5 to C3 to D4 to E6 to F8, nothing continued to happen. Then Scootaloo hesitated. “This one’s another three,” she said slowly. “Can you make it?”
Dinky gauged the distance. “I don’t know,” she said.
Scootaloo considered this. “Could you make it if I wasn’t weighing you down?”
“...Probably. But I’m not leaving you behind!”
“Just get clear and levitate me over when you’re over! I’ll be fine, I promise. I -- Oh Celestia, I gotta blink.”
Quickly, Dinky levitated Scootaloo off her back and turned to stare at the statues as Scootaloo blinked frantically. “I’m not leaving you behind,” Dinky said fiercely. “I’ll stay here and levitate you over first.”
“Fine,” Scootaloo said. “Let’s just get out of here.”
Neither taking their eyes off the statues, Dinky levitated Scootaloo into the air and tried to push her over to the appropriate square. However, she seemed incapable of moving Scootaloo outside the perimeter of their current tile. “Okay,” Scootaloo said. “Let me think, let me think… how high can you lift me?”
“Scootaloo, you’re not --”
“I can still glide, thanks, and I’ve had way rougher landings.”
“Not with two broken legs you haven’t!”
Scootaloo glared at her. “Lift me.”
Dinky grit her teeth and sent her friend higher and higher, until her magic hit another invisible wall, some three meters up. “Okay,” Scootaloo said. “Let me go.”
Dinky did so, and Scootaloo buzzed her wings for all they were worth. Dinky wanted desperately to watch, but knew that she couldn’t break her gaze on the statues for even a moment.
There was a thump and a squeal of pain, but nothing that sounded like lightning striking. “Scootaloo?” she called. “Are you alright?”
There was a long string of cussing, followed by a long pause. Then a pained voice. “Yeah. Fine. Landing on a broken leg hurts.”
“I’m sure the medical community is fascinated by your novel insight,” Dinky said acidly. “You haven’t broken your splints or anything?”
“Don’t think so.”
“You can keep going?”
“Yeah, last one’s a three, too. Keep watching them for a few more seconds, I’ll crawl out of your way.”
There followed a few more moments of near silence. Dinky’s eyes burned, and she felt incredibly guilty about forcing Scootaloo to keep taking point on all the watches. But Scootaloo hadn’t let her down. Dinky could do no less.
After an agonizing several seconds, Scootaloo said, “Alright. I’ve got eyes on them. Dinky, go.”
Dinky blinked several times to clear her eyes, then turned and leapt for the penultimate square. She skidded into the landing, barely keeping herself from going over the edge. Fortunately, the wards only seemed to block magic traveling between squares, and Dinky was able to conjure a shield to slam into before she went over. Shaken, she hurried over the final square and off the board to sit at Scootalo’s side. “So… can we stop watching them now?” she muttered. “We’ve got the electric chessboard between us, maybe that’ll keep them at bay?”
“... Only one way to find out.”
“On my count. One, two, three --”
They blinked.
“Your situation is, roughly speaking, as follows,” Romana said, traversing row upon row of medical equipment in the storage closet. “The Valeyard attempted to erase you from existence through a thoroughly barbaric method which I’m pleased to say my alternate self expressly outlawed on Gallifrey. It was known as the Oubliette of Eternity.”
The pager she was carrying buzzed. Oubliette?
“Yes, it’s Prench. Loosely translated, it means one’s deepest dungeon, one into which you throw prisoners so that they will be forgotten. It systematically erases your timeline and spits your soul out the other side, naked and shivering. You become a denizen of the anti-time -- a Neverperson, as they’ve come to be known. Of course, the Valeyard had only a fraction of the power of the Oubliette itself, hence why you can still be remembered.”
… You would have forgotten us?
Romana grimaced. “It’s possible. As a Time Lady, I’m better than more… temporal creatures, such as ponies, at remembering alternate timelines. But yes, you would have been erased from everypony’s memories, photo albums, any records that existed of you… wiped out.”
That’s horrible.
“Yes, hence why I banned it.” Romana slammed the last supply cupboard and leaned her head against the cold metal. “I promise you, I’ll do everything in my power to restore you as soon as this crisis is averted.”
Is there anything we can do to help?
Romana chuckled drily. “No. Nothing that I can think of, anyway. I’ll be sure to keep you updated.”
Nothing? Maybe we could inspect the rift?
Romana’s face turned stony. “Absolutely not. It’s too much of a risk for you to go near it. It would destroy any living thing that tried to go through.”
We’re not living.
Romana hesitated for a split second, but then she shook her head firmly. “No. I owe it to your friends and family to do what I can to keep all of you safe. I can’t stop you from doing anything -- I can’t even touch you -- but I beg you to consider what this risk could mean to Rumble and Button. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go and raid the Doctor’s workshop for spare parts.”
Flitter and Tender Care exchanged worried glances. Cloudchaser brushed back her mane. “So, uh, if I could bring the conversation back to Las Pegasus,” she said casually.
“Do what you want,” Thunderlane said. “I’m going through the rift.”
“‘Lane…” Flitter said, putting a gentle hoof on his withers. “You heard what she said. Think about how Rumble would feel --”
“Think about Rumble?” Thunderlane asked. “I’m not thinking about anything else! My brother is trapped in some kind of nightmare world, and I’m not going to sit here and talk about burlesque while he could be in mortal danger! I’m going through. Anyone else want to come?”
“I -- alright, let’s slow down and talk about this,” Cloudchaser said, rubbing her forehead.
Thunderlane snorted. “That’s rich, coming from you.”
“Yeah? Think about the fact that I’m the one saying you’re being too impulsive.” He paused and realized that he didn’t actually have a good answer to that. “...Fine,” he said, sitting down. “Make your case.”
“Rumble’s an adult,” Cloudchaser said. “He can handle things on his own.”
“Really? We’re talking down facing down monsters on an alien world, not doing taxes.”
“Fair enough, but point two, you are currently an incorporeal echo of yourself. You’re not exactly gonna be a great help fighting.”
“... Well. I, uh.”
“So what, exactly, is the point of going through?” Cloudchaser demanded. “What do you gain from this?”
Thunderlane was silent for a long moment. “...I’ll be there for him,” he said simply. “Isn’t that reason enough?”
Much to her consternation, Cloudchaser couldn’t find a single retort to that. Thunderlane nodded. “Alright. I’ll see you later.”
Flitter rose. “Oh, no. If you’re going, I’m going.”
Thunderlane gave her a small smile and ducked his head. “Flit…”
“Don’t you try that on me. I care about Rumble, too. If you’re going, so am I.”
Cloudchaser threw back her head and groaned. “Fuck me. Well, if the two of you are going, I’d better go, too. You two jags are just gonna get disintegrated without me. You’ll just be staring into each other's eyes like a couple of lovesick twits and get eaten by whatever eats ghosts.”
All three glanced at Tender Care. She pursed her lips and shook her head. “No. No, I’ll stay here. Redheart needs someone to keep her stable, and right now, I’m the only available mare for the job. Just… look after Button too, won’t you?”
“Of course,” Flitter said.
Thunderlane rose. “C’mon. We’d better hurry before Romana and Starlight seal the rift off.”
The three pegasi flew off, Flitter sparing Tender one last backward glance before following her coltfriend and sister off beyond where the earth pony could see. She watched the spot where they had passed through the wall for several long minutes before she allowed herself to walk away, tears running slowly down her face.
The creature followed them down the tunnels, as content as a kitten. Occasionally Button or Sweetie would give it a little scratch on the ear, and the creature would make a sound that was probably purring.
This state of affairs lasted until they arrived at the staircase, the door still open and letting in the ambient light from the stairwell. The creature squinted into the brightness, shook its head, and retreated several steps back. Button glanced back. “I guess it likes the dark better?” he said.
“Aw. Guess it can’t come with us.” Sweetie Belle patted it on the snout. “Alright. Be safe, bud.”
“If you see a robot with lots of domes, try and make friends,” Button suggested.
The creature snuffled. How much it understood, if anything, couldn’t be known, but it seemed to grasp that they were leaving. It whined a little, and gave Sweetie Belle a lick before turning and trundling back down the corridor. Sweetie pouted after it for several seconds before turning and going back into the main stairwell, Button close behind her.
“Ugh,” she said. “I’m not looking forward to going up all those steps again.”
“Yeah,” Button said. “Especially with all the earthquakes that’ve happened since the last time we went up.”
Sweetie winced. “I didn’t even think of that,” she admitted. “You’d better go up first. I can levitate you to safety if you start to fall.”
“I thought you were out of magic.”
“Oh. Right.” She lit her horn experimentally. “Yeah. I could maybe levitate your bag, but not you.”
Button nodded. “I’ll go up first anyway. You can try and catch me by the tail or something if the stairs give out.”
“Right.”
The two started to cautiously make their way up the winding flight of steps. They didn’t seem to be any more crumbling or shaky than they had been the last time the duo had climbed them, but they seemed to seem that way. At first, Button and Sweetie walked quickly up the stairs, barely touching each step before moving off again. After they had gone some distance without incident, however, and their legs started to get tired, they began to slow down.
“So,” Sweetie Belle said. “Um. Are you still going to that tech conference in Baltimare?”
Button paused for a moment before resuming his climb. “I dunno,” he admitted. “I mean… I can’t go back to Copper Hills. I just can’t face that again. I was miserable there. But now my controller’s been really beat up just running around here, and I gave them to Scootaloo…” He trailed off and shook his head. “I don’t know. I’m stuck, Sweetie. I don’t know where I want to go -- I don’t know where I can go from here.”
Sweetie nodded, then stopped when she realized Button couldn’t see her. “I know what you mean,” she said instead. “I don’t really know what I want to do with my life, either.”
“You don’t?” Button looked back at her, surprised. “I thought you wanted to go into entertainment.”
“Well, I mean… yeah, but it’s not that easy,” Sweetie said. “You have to be really good to make a living at it, and you have to be really lucky, too. You have to work for years to make a name for yourself, and even then you might fail. More than that…”
“Yeah?”
“I don’t know if I’m ready to start,” Sweetie said quietly. “I don’t know if I’m good enough. I’m no Sapphire Shores.”
“No,” Button said. “But you are Sweetie Belle. Isn’t that enough?”
Sweetie went slightly pink at that. “Well -- that’s sweet,” she said. “But I’m still not sure --”
Button stopped and turned to look at her. “Sweetie,” he said. “You sang the Crystal Empire to sleep. You tamed that beast in the tunnels. You’ve got the most beautiful voice of anypony I know, and you use it wonderfully.”
“But I’m--”
“Please, don’t argue,” Button said. “You’re graceful and elegant and clever and creative and my best friend, and I think you deserve the world. I can’t give you the world, even though I’d like to. Right now, all I can give you is all the confidence and love I have for you, and I hope to Celestia that you’ll accept it.”
Sweetie was silent for a long moment. Then, quietly, she asked, “Do you really mean all that? You think I can really do it?”
Button nodded enthusiastically. “I know you can! You just have to be brave, put yourself out there. I believe in you, Sweetie.”
Sweetie sniffed back a few tears, then grabbed Button in a great big hug. “Thanks,” she murmured into his shoulder. “Thank you. And for what it’s worth -- I know you’ll do great things, too. You don’t need to go to Copper Hills or Baltimare or anywhere else for that. Because you’re beautiful and smart and so skilled, so creative…” She stopped, took a sharp breath in. “Did you hear that?” she asked, her voice suddenly hushed.
“Huh?” Button said, as the stair he was sitting on creaked again and gave way beneath him.
Button didn’t move. He didn’t dare. There was a distinct lack of anything beneath him, and the only thing keeping him in the air was Sweetie Belle, her forehooves wrapped around him like a python. He could hardly breathe, but that didn’t much matter, since he hardly dared to try, either.
“Can you -- can you lift me up?” he whispered, his voice hoarse with fear.
“I don’t know,” Sweetie replied.
“How far of a drop is it?”
“...About twelve feet, I think. I can’t give you a shield spell this time.”
“Right…” Button breathed out. “Okay. Sweetie, I need you to unbuckle the strap of my bag.”
“What?”
“It’ll make me a lot lighter.”
“But all your stuff --”
“Is replaceable. Heck, we can walk down a level and pick it back up again. Sweetie, I’m this close to breaking my neck --”
She unbuckled the bag. It fell, and Button rose dramatically as Sweetie reeled backwards from the shift in the weight. She fell flat on her plot, her forehooves slipping free of Button’s neck. “No!” she screamed.
Button, however, had gotten up high enough that he was able to scrabble for purchase on the edge and hold himself relatively steady. Sweetie grabbed him again and hauled him back to safety. For a long moment they just sat on the stairs, gasping for breath. After awhile, Button hauled himself upright and peered over the precipice. “Wow. Yeah, that would’ve been a bad drop,” he said. “Looks like my bag’s mostly alright. It’s anypony’s guess how much inside survived, though.”
“That’s good,” Sweetie said. “So, we’re going down a level to fetch it?”
“Yeah, I guess so -- uh?”
“What’s wrong?”
“I thought I saw something moving down below,” Button said. “Must’ve been a trick of the light…”
“You realize you just said one of the top lines that ponies in horror movies say right before they get killed really horribly, right?”
Button winced. “Yeah -- yup, there it is again. He’s a fast sucker.”
“What’s he look like?”
“Uh, imagine a pony in a cheap rubber alligator costume, but black and white.” He squinted. “Wait -- no, more like a faceless white pony. No, a shaggy black pony with too many teeth and glowing silver eyes. It keeps flickering into other shapes.”
Sweetie joined him in peering over. “Is… is that a zipper on its back?”
“It doesn’t look all that dangerous…”
A beam of silver light shot right between the pair, scorching the stone wall. “Okay, never mind!” Button said, his voice suddenly much higher. “Sweetie, can you lift us over the hole?”
“No. I think we could jump it, but not without exposing ourselves to fire.”
Button glanced down again, furrowing his brow. “Do you have enough juice to lift my bag?”
“...Yeah? Why? Do you have something in there that might help?”
“Not exactly. No, don’t lift it yet, wait until I give the word.”
As the creature wound around the stairs, it seemed to become more real -- it gained color first, then became less like a pony in a cheap bad costume and more like a pony in a slightly more expensive bad costume. Nothing else about it was remotely consistent. Button kept a weather eye on it, just peering over the edge, dodging back each time the shifting monster fired on them. “Wait for it,” he kept muttering. “Wait for it…”
The creature’s form began to stabilize. It looked almost real now, standing twice the size of a normal pony, and it seemed to be consistently red, with arachnid-like features -- too many legs, a hideous crimson carapace, a whipping scorpion tail -- and it was still coming for them. It hissed at Button as it stepped over his bag.
“Now!” Button yelled.
The bag shot up into the monster’s abdomen. Its eyes went wide as it lost its balance and toppled over the edge. It screamed as it fell, and Button winced in sympathy.
There was no crash, merely an echo of a scream that hung in the air far longer than it should have.
“What the fuck,” Sweetie Belle whispered.
“Run now, ask questions later,” Button said, but he glanced over the edge one last time as Sweetie Belle levitated his bag up to sit on a steps a little farther up the staircase. Glimmering below, for a fraction of a second he thought he saw a rift in the air. He blinked, though, and it winked out of existence.
Scootaloo opened her eyes. The two statues still stood, snarling and frozen, on the other side of the chessboard. She let out a sigh of relief. Beside her, Dinky did the same, falling back off her haunches to just sit on the ground, staring across the way at her mother.
Scootaloo glanced at her. “Hey. You okay?”
“No.”
“You wanna --”
“I haven’t been okay in my entire life, I think,” Dinky said. “But I do feel even less okay than usual at the moment, yes.”
Scootaloo pursed her lips. “I suppose talking about it would be totally out of the question.”
“I don’t think this is necessarily the best time,” Dinky said.
“Fair enough. But if we survive this, we’re going to have a conversation. All of us Crusaders are.”
Dinky shut her eyes and nodded. “...Yeah. Yeah, alright.”
“Huh.” Scootaloo blinked. “Wasn’t expecting you to agree so quickly, honestly.”
“Mm. You know how I said I talked with the Doctor telepathically?”
“You mean the thing that happened about two minutes ago? Just about.”
“I saw… stuff in there. I think I’ve seen what happens when you bottle up your emotions for about two thousand years. I don’t want to be like that.”
Scootaloo considered this, then nodded. “Yeah, fair enough. Should we go on, then?”
Dinky’s lips flattened into a long line. She didn’t look away from the statues for a long moment. “Yeah,” she said, dropping her gaze. “Yeah, I guess so.”
She rose to her hooves and together the two mares continued down the hallway. They didn’t look back. This was rather a shame, because the next thing the statues did was really rather impressive, involving quite a lot of lightning and quick movement, and ending with a pair of really very angry statues on the other side of the chessboard. By that time, however, Scootaloo and Dinky were quite some distance away, facing an entirely different potential threat.
They had reached nearly the end of one corridor and were about to turn right, when they heard muffled thumps coming from inside the wall. Both mares froze and stared at the wall, where they could distinctly hear muttering voices and growls. Dinky lit her horn. Scootaloo braced herself on Dinky’s back.
“Show yourself!” Dinky demanded.
“Y’know, maybe whatever it is just hadn’t noticed us yet,” Scootaloo muttered.
There was a long pause. Then, one of the nearby alcoves slid open. Both mares stared at it for a long moment, preparing to face down whatever came through. Shining Armor popped his head around the corner. “Wait. You’re alive?” he asked, his eyes wide.
The Doctor yanked and tugged at his bindings. “Let me go!” he shouted, glowering at Romana. “My daughter is in danger!”
“You’ve got your fighting spirit back,” Romana observed. “Good. I rather wanted to see the light go out of your eyes.”
The Doctor snarled. “I can still save her. I can still save all of the Crusaders, look at them!” He gestured as best he could to the six figures, still standing lined up at the front of the stage. “They’re alive and well.”
“Yeah?” Donna said, crossing her hooves across her chest. “How long’s that gonna last them with you running around?”
“Rather longer than it will with me locked up in here.” He looked around at the crowd. “I know you hate me!” he shouted. “Believe me, I know the feeling. But those six ponies have never done you any harm. They’re innocent in all of this. Let me save them, please.”
The assembled companions seemed at best apathetic. The Doctor raised his voice. “Please! It’s not for my sake. It’s for their sake, for your sake, and for the sake of all those like you. If you hate me so much for making you this way, then let me make a change! Let me save them from the corruption that you all had to face.”
There was a long moment of silence. “Why should we?” Peri asked, her voice shrill and cold. “You didn’t save us. Why should we let you save them?”
The Doctor blinked. “Oh,” he said. “Of course. This is all just another trick, then. You aren't even good facsimiles. It's shameful, the way my mind's been twisted around to conjure up you sorry lot.”
“What --” someone began.
“Shut it,” the Doctor said, his voice suddenly cold. “You’re not my friends. My friends had love, kindness, compassion. They formed loyalties to friends they’d barely met, and they were generous to the lowest of people. And, oh yes, we laughed. You dour crew, you never smiled a day in your lives! The joy’s been sucked out of you. You wouldn’t know an adventure if it bit you on the flank. And another thing! My friends were honest. You’ve been lying to me this whole time.”
Leela grabbed him by the neck roughly, but he shook his head, the bonds slipping off him like water. “You’re nothing but a deck of cards!” he shouted. “A horrid illusion to keep me captive. Well you know what? I’m breaking out to save my daughter and the other Crusaders, because friendship bloody well is magic.”
Something strange happened with the light. The red-orange glow of the setting binary suns grew softer, lighter. The crowd glitched and spasmed, like something had crashed their systems. The Doctor stood there for a moment, breathing heavily.
The Crusaders looked up at him, as a single unit. “Not bad,” Rumble said. “Definitely a good start.”
“You’re not free yet, though,” Sweetie Belle warned.
“Run for it!” Dinky ordered.
The Doctor knew a good thing when he saw one. He bolted from the stage, racing through the frozen, flickering crowd that was already beginning to regain its composure. As he passed through, he thought he saw some of them actually smiling at him for a few fractions of a second before their cold, twisted faces flickered back into existence. He pushed that to the back of his mind for his subconscious to puzzle over while he desperately tried to figure out the best way to lose his pursuers.
There was only one place he could think of going where he could truly get away from this mess, the TARDIS bay. He could steal a ship, randomize the coordinates, and vanish. Trouble was, several of his companions had likely already thought of that, and it would be all too easy for Romana or Compassion or someone to trace him. Where else could he go where they wouldn’t immediately think to find him? Where could he go to collect his thoughts for a few minutes without the world falling down around his ears?
The answer came to him like a bolt from the blue, and he changed direction immediately to dodge down an alley. Everything seemed to be clearer now, less jumbled and disorganized, and he navigated his way through the city to the nearest transmat. It was the work of moments to program his destination into the system, and it took him only a few minutes more to rig up a signal that would fry every other transmat in the Capitol once he arrived safely at his destination. With the roar of the furious crowd growing ever-louder, the Doctor stepped into the booth, shut his eyes, and hoped like hell that no one would be there to greet him when he stepped out the other side.
After all, he thought as he disappeared, the only thing worse than this would be a family reunion…
Romana and Starlight met in town square, Granny Smith, Blueblood, Fancy Pants, and Gilda were already there, each lugging behind them wagons filled with strange devices and parts. Gilda gestured to her haul. “Is this good?” she asked. “I didn’t know what you were trying to build, and even if I did I wouldn’t know what you’d need for it, so I mostly just grabbed a shit ton of clocks.”
“Yes, all this should do marvelously,” Romana said, looking around. “Starlight? Can you start the time-slowing spell now?”
Starlight shut her eyes and lit her horn. Waves of blue-violet energy poured off her, building around the golden cracks, forming elliptical shields around them. She winced. “Huh. Yeah, this thing’s stronger than I guessed,” she admitted. “I can hold it, but don’t expect me to be much help actually putting this thing together.”
“You can still offer advice?”
“Yeah.”
“Then that’s fine. Gilda? I’m going to need your talons for some of the more fiddly work.”
“Me? I don’t know anything about this.”
“Can you hold a screwdriver?”
“...Yeah.”
“Then you’re the most qualified creature around.”
“Hrm.” Gilda nodded.
Fancy coughed lightly into his hoof. “Of course, you are a foreign dignitary. If you do not wish to help --”
“This thing’s gonna erase the entire planet, she said,” Gilda said, gesturing at Romana. “Last time I checked, Griffonstan’s still on Gaea.”
“As you say,” Fancy replied with a nod.
Gilda picked up a screwdriver. “Alright. Where should we start?”
Traveling through the rift, Thunderlane found, was a singularly unpleasant experience. It was like every molecule which made up his nonexistent body had become carbonated, fizzing and bubbling through his blood, brains, and even bone. He, Flitter, and Cloudchaser all lay on the stone floor for several minutes, staring up at the ceiling and waiting for their eyeballs to stop effervescing. Eventually, Flitter flipped onto her stomach and pushed herself up to stand on wobbly legs. “Never again,” she said emphatically.
She helped Thunderlane to rise to his hooves. Cloudchaser made no effort to get up. She merely groaned and flopped around like a dying fish until Thunderlane and Flitter forcibly lifted her off the ground and dropped her. “Where are we?” Thunderlane asked, glancing around the room in which they found themselves. The other side of the rift was clearly visible, a great gold-edged hole in the universe. Beyond that, they were in a great stone room. A tomb, actually. It seemed familiar for reasons none of them could place. All thoughts of that went out of their heads, however, when they heard, out of the darkness, the sounds of an approaching argument. They were far from being alone in this place.
“Quick!” Flitter hissed. “Hide!”
“We’re invisible, you dork!” Cloudchaser said. Flitter and Thunderlane were already up in the rafters, however. With a sigh, Cloudchaser flew up to join them.
“I tell you, it can’t possibly have been decaying!” one voice insisted. “The remaining power should have been more than sufficient to maintain the outer plasmic shell.”
“Well, it wasn’t,” said a more familiar voice. All three pegasi stiffened at the sound of the Valeyard. “It must have been diverting that energy from the shell to some other function.”
“It can’t have been!” the other voice insisted. “I would have known about it.”
“You’re disconnected from it now. It could have acted without your knowledge since then.”
“Hm.” The first voice sounded odd, almost mechanical. As the two speakers stepped out into the light, it wasn’t difficult to discern why that might be. “A mystery to be solved once we can get the damned thing open. And the rift?”
“An unfortunate side effect of my hasty escape from the hospital,” the Valeyard said. “However, I feel that this may be an advantage to us -- we can easily stabilize it on our side and use it to conquer the town below, with the ability to easily walk back through and destabilize it again, ensuring that none will be able to follow us.”
“Conquest was hardly an issue before,” the Nightmare said coldly. “Your twisting words won’t work on me.”
“What about the fact that this rift will, when completed, be able to eradicate the planet below from all time and space? You could make it into your personal plaything, to destroy and revive at will. You could make test runs of new apocalypses, start wars between nations, simply smash it like a crystal plate over and over again whenever you felt bored. How does that strike you?”
“Hrmmm…” The Nightmare attempted to maintain its icy disdain,but was unable to keep the avarice out of its voice. “Very well. Leave it for now. The TARDIS, regrettably, will not yield its secrets until we can crack it open. There remains only one problem to be resolved, then -- those six ponies are still at large.”
“The Cutie Mark Crusaders?”
“Don’t speak that disgustingly cutesy name in front of me," the Nightmare spat. "But yes, have they been discovered yet?”
“No. All manner of defenses have been activated across the tower -- I had to reset two of the Angels, as you know. There have been further incursions at the top of the tower, along the middle floors, and under the surface. It seems they’ve split up to divide our attention.”
“How foolish. Their deaths will be all the quicker with their strength divided.”
Thunderlane stiffened and fluffed up, his protective instincts triggered. Cloudchaser bopped him on the head. “You’re intangible, idiot!” she hissed. “If you dive down there, all you’ll do is give us away.”
Flitter placed a calming hoof on Thunderlane’s back. “Don’t worry. We’ll find him,” she said.
Slowly, Thunderlane untensed, nodding slowly. “Alright. Let’s get out of here,” he muttered. “I’ve seen enough.”
Both twins nodded, and together the three of them took off up and through the ceiling.
The Doctor stumbled out into a dank and musty old passage. Behind him, he heard the transmat fizz and pop as it went abruptly offline. Positives: None of his pursuers could follow him. Negatives: He had no way out if this safehouse became dramatically less safe.
Safehouse. Good grief. If anyone had told the Doctor in the last millennium that he would ever call the House of Lungbarrow ‘safe’, he would have laughed in their face. Most recently, this would have been partly because the House itself had been utterly razed near the end of his seventh incarnation, but it had always been a ridiculous notion. This was the house where the Doctor had been raised as a child, for a given value of ‘raised’ and of ‘child’. He’d had forty-four cousins in the house, and only one friend -- his mechanical tutor, Badger.
He took a few cautious steps out into the hallway. The floor creaked unpleasantly beneath his weight. After taking a moment for his eyes to adjust to the darkness, he realized that what he had mistaken for a misshapen rug up ahead was actually a huge lump of black mold, which he carefully skirted around, holding his breath all the while.
He made his way out into the vast atrium in the center of House Lungbarrow, where the gargantuan table and chairs stood, gradually being corroded by time, mold, and cobwebs. He was dwarfed by the size of them -- even if he’d wanted to, he doubted that he could have managed to climb atop one of the chairs. Their seats were easily four times his current height off the floor, and that was setting aside the question of whether, old as they were, they would still hold his weight.
However, the Doctor had no real desire to go up there, though he did vaguely wonder if old Quences’ coffin still sat in the center of the vast table. The house, thankfully, appeared to be as devoid of Gallifreyan life as the rest of the planet. He turned to walk toward the back of the house, but nearly tripped over a figure lying in the dirt.
After a moment’s panic, the Doctor realized that the figure didn’t change his assessment of the amount of Gallifreyan life in the house. He was quite dead. It took the Doctor several seconds to work out who he had been in life. It wasn’t easy. The chubby face now sagged with the weight of decay, the witless eyes had long since gone dark and staring, and of course, he had turned into a pony. However, the Doctor worked it out eventually.
“Cousin Owis,” the Doctor muttered. “Of course. My replacement.”
When the Doctor had been exiled from Lungbarrow, long ago, the family had attempted to erase the fact that he had ever existed there by looming a new Cousin, in order to bring their numbers back up to the requisite forty-five. This was quite illegal, and on a tip from the Doctor himself, had resulted in the entire house becoming disbarred from the Prydonian Chapter, a blow of enormous social and practical repercussions.
When the Doctor returned to Lungbarrow after some six or seven centuries had passed, Owis had been summarily destroyed by that murderous wretch Glospin.
The Doctor wasn’t quite sure who was sending this message, but its meaning was clear. You are replaceable, it said. Expendable. You are a shallow copy, and you will be killed out of hatred for your very existence.
Well. When he thought of it like that, it was almost certainly the Valeyard leaving that message. Or, of course, it could be a warning from his subconscious, or an effect of his own guilt complex, or a particularly nasty twist on the part of his faux-companions designed to screw with his brain, which in turn could have been caused by any of the aforementioned parties.
That was the problem, rather. His mind was shattered and scattered. He was viewing the world through warped and broken lenses. He needed to start fresh, which wasn’t a possibility in this hellscape of a decaying house.
He set Owis down again and went to move on. He paused in mid-step, reconsidered, and picked him back up. Even this illusory version of a dead cretin didn’t deserve to rot in this miserable old place. He would carry Owis out to the back of the house, dig him as best a grave as he could manage, pay a few last respects. Only then would he set off up the mountain.
Mind, if he came across Glospin's body in the ruins of this place, he’d kick that bastard’s corpse down the stairs.
In the end, the machine's construction only took about half an hour. Gilda grumbled quite a bit, but she was a diligent assistant, and the Doctor had been keeping far more scraps of alien tech in his shop than Romana thought was strictly prudent. The fact that he even owned a Monan Time Disruptor was almost criminally irresponsible, let alone the fact that he had simply left it shoved in a drawer in his workroom. On the other hoof, that particular device had saved her the labor of having to try and manufacture her own artron energy capacitor, which probably would have broken under the strain of what she was trying to do with this device, so she supposed that perhaps she ought not to complain.
The device itself was relatively compact, slightly larger than a breadbox if you didn’t count the antenna. Gilda sat back and studied it. “Alright. So what’s this thing gonna do now? Is it gonna fix the cracks? Slow em’ down? Stop ‘em in a bubble, like Star Girl’s trying to do?”
Romana blew her bangs back from her eyes. “Something like that,” she said grimly. “When I turn this on, everything in a five-mile radius will be put outside of space and time. The rift should be… more or less stable when it opens. Unfortunately, Ponyville will be cut off from the outside world.”
“Until, I suppose, the machine breaks or gets turned off and the world gets turned inside out," Blueblood guessed, frowning.
“In so many words, yes,” Romana said. “And while we’re inside, there will be no backup to help us fight whatever comes through from the other side. Starlight? How long can you hold that spell?”
Starlight glanced up at the two sides of the rift. Golden cracks shimmered and rippled as they pushed against the blueish energy holding them back. “Thirty minutes until they collide,” she said.
Romana nodded and turned to look at the others. “Go. Evacuate Ponyville and get yourselves outside the boundaries. I’ll stay here and operate the machine.”
Everypony glanced at one another. Fleur stepped forth. “I do not think it would be prudent to leave you undefended. Fancee and I will stay, as will the guards.”
Blueblood sighed. “I suppose that goes for me as well. I came here looking for revenge. I haven’t gotten it yet.”
Granny spat on the ground, causing Blueblood to recoil. “Ah was here when this town got founded. Ah live here. Ah’ll die here. But first, Ah’m gonna take out whatever bastard bin messin’ with mah kin.”
Gilda glanced up at the moon, thinking. “So… can I go for the eyes?”
“I strongly encourage it,” Fleur said.
“Yeah. I’m in.”
Romana frowned. “Oh… ridiculous. Fine. Go evacuate the rest of the town, then. If ponies wish to stay… well, I won’t deny help will be useful. But make sure that they understand that if they stay, I cannot guarantee their survival. As a matter of fact, I think the odds of any of us lasting the night are slim verging on none. If any of you change your minds and choose to leave, I will think no less of you for it.”
None of the assembled so much as flinched. Romana pursed her lips and shook her head. “So be it. Now go!”
Scootaloo and Ditzy stared at Shining Armor and Trixie for a long moment. Then all of them started talking at once.
“How did you escape?”
“How did you survive?”
“Where are the others?”
“Where’s the Nightmare?”
“Are you alright?”
“Did the others make it out alive?”
“What happened to your legs? Why are your eyes so red?”
This continued for some time before they all settled down enough to start filling one another in on everything that had happened to them since the Nightmare’s defenestration of the Crusaders. By the end of it, Shining Armor looked sickened. “They were turned into monsters and set on their own friends and families,” he muttered. “Celestia. I thought being turned into a battery was bad…”
Trixie chewed at her lower lip, pondering. “You say the tomb couldn’t have been behind you,” she said. “That this is only the second story, yes?”
“Yeah,” Dinky agreed. “Not that space means much in this building.”
“Then we’ve been going the wrong direction all this time?” Shining asked.
Trixie frowned. “It seems so.”
Dinky studied the hidden door to the secret passageway. “So this loops all around the tower,” she said. “With hidden doors at regular intervals, I presume?”
Trixie nodded. “There are six on each level, and a pair of staircases leading up and down at the same point on each level.”
“And the staircases are all the same length.”
Trixie thought about this. “Well, Trixie assumes so. She didn’t actually count the number of steps on each of them or anything.”
“Um. I did,” Shining said. “There were thirty-six every flight.”
Trixie snorted. “Luna. You really are Twilight’s brother, aren’t you?”
Shining frowned. “As the older sibling, I prefer to think of her as being my sister, and we’re definitely our parents’ children.”
“You realize that you’re taking credit for your sister’s ridiculous nerdiness, yes?” Trixie asked. “You’re saying that you’re a bigger nerd than Twilight Sparkle.”
“Uh, I taught her to play Ogres and Oubliettes, so… yes.”
Dinky was deep in thought. “How many flights did you go down?” she asked.
Trixie considered this. “...Seven,” she said at last.
“And all of them were thirty-six stairs each,” Dinky said, looking at Shining.
He nodded, then reconsidered. “Well, probably,” he said conscientiously.
Dinky raised an eyebrow. “I lost count once,” Shining said. “My mind must’ve wandered. But it looked the same as all the other staircases.”
“Oh, you can’t trust based on that,” Scootaloo said. “Everything’s a trick around here. How many flights up was it?”
Shining’s lips moved, silently counting as he thought. “Four. Four flights of stairs ago.”
Scootaloo looked at Dinky. “Let’s check it out.”
Dinky nodded, but then paused and glanced at the others. “Hey. Could one of you take Scootaloo? I’m starting to get kinda worn out.”
Shining nodded, and Dinky levitated Scootaloo over onto his back. Then, lighting her horn, she reopened the secret passage and all four ponies trouped in.
A few minutes later, a pair of statues, their surfaces blackened and marred by lightning strikes, arrived on the scene, snarling. But they were too late. The doors had closed and their quarry had moved on.
Romana watched as the golden cracks in reality inched closer to meeting. Half an hour earlier, one would have to have craned their necks, looking from horizon to horizon to see both ends of the developing rift. Now you only needed to look straight up to see the glowing golden hairline cracks preparing to split open the sky, arching up and over everypony’s heads like a rainbow, if rainbows were golden and fractured and ready to devour the world below. So, not really much like a rainbow if Romana was being honest.
Over the last twenty minutes or so, she had seen many Ponyvillians fleeing with their most prized possessions, desperate to make it out of town before it was sealed off from the world. Many -- but not all. As many as had chosen to leave, more had chosen to stay and defend their town from the onslaught, gathering around Romana to watch the sky rip itself in two. Many held pitchforks or two-by-fours or cast-iron skillets or whatever other improvised weaponry came to hoof. Overhead, the pegasi were rolling in a stormfront with lightning aimed at the center of the rift. Romana saw stranger defenses, too -- for instance, Vinyl Scratch and Octavia had brought some kind of massive amplifier on wheels that Vinyl referred to as her ‘bass cannon’. Romana thought it bore more resemblance to certain medieval siege weapons.
She recognized almost all of the faces around her, and each one wore heavy on her conscience. It was a near certainty that all of them would die tonight, and equally likely that their deaths would be in vain. The Nightmare was a formidable and ruthless foe alone, but with the power of a TARDIS on its side, not to mention the Doctor…
Romana grit her teeth. Well. She’d done the impossible before. “Alright!” she called, struggling to be heard over the rumble of the crowd.
A hush fell over the crowd in a wave, rippling out from Romana. She breathed in deep and let it out slowly. “I’m going to activate the field now,” she said. “If anypony wants to leave, now is your final chance.”
Nopony said anything. Romana nodded and connected two wires together. The world flickered for a moment, and then all of central Ponyville and a good chunk of the surrounding landscape was encased in a shimmering violet bubble.
After a moment, Starlight stopped casting her time-slowing spell. The golden cracks started expanding at an exponential rate, the tearing of time and space now audible to the ponies below, a sound like ripping fabric and tearing metal all rolled into one.
Everypony watched as the two halves of the rift reached toward one another… and met.
It was rather anticlimactic, actually. There was no earth-shattering kaboom, no brilliant flash of light, not even a puff of smoke. There was just a rift, glowing golden against the swirling violet backdrop. As the crowd below watched, it split and began to widen.
The Doctor huffed and mopped the sweat from his brow as he patted the last shovelful of dirt down on Owis’ grave. It was late in the evening now, and beginning to grow cooler. That didn’t worry him much. Gallifreyan nights were much too warm to worry about anything like exposure. He stood for a long moment over the shallow grave he had dug for his replacement, trying to think of a few final words to say. He could find none. He had scarcely known Owis, really -- known of him, yes, but he had barely spent half an hour with the man before he had been killed.
The Doctor looked up at the sky, and at last found the words he was looking for. He turned his gaze back to Owis’ grave and said, “Omega’s teeth, but this was a miserable old house.” He glanced up at the imposing edifice of Lungbarrow and continued softly, “At least we’re both out of it now, eh? How’d that poem go? Move on, move under, said the undertaker.”
He chuckled a little, his voice a little dry and hoarse, but it soon dwindled to nothing. He stared at Owis’ grave. He could put it off no longer. Grudgingly, he turned to face the craggy face of Mount Lung. It was the highest peak on Gallifrey, and perhaps the most beautiful. It was, however, also the most confusing. It was known by many other names -- Mount Cadon, Mount Plutarch, Mount Rycadia -- and it was said that to call the mountain by a different name would be to climb a different mountain entirely.
The Doctor had had ample enough experience with the mountain to know that this was not metaphorical. He had climbed them all in his time -- and, occasionally out of his time. Today, though, he needed to climb Mount Lung and Mount Lung only. He trudged over to the base of the mountain and began picking his way up along the rocky path.
Behind him, the House of Lungbarrow was swallowed by thick mists that hadn’t existed while the Doctor had been in his yard. This was entirely normal, and the Doctor didn’t even glance back. Even if he had, he would never have been able to see the transmat blink back on, nor the grisly crew who appeared inside of it, walking in a single-file line out into the grim old house.
If he had seen them, had known how close his pursuers were, he wouldn’t have stopped, or hidden, or even sped up. That would have defeated the purpose of the exercise. He was a child again, on the darkest day of his life so far, and he was climbing Mount Lung to visit the hermit.
Dinky stopped at the base of a pair of parallel flights of stairs. One went up. The other, the one that she had just stepped off of, went down. “This is the one where you lost count?” she asked, glancing back to look at Shining Armor.
He tilted his head, staring at the stairs. “Uh… yeah? I’m pretty sure it was, anyway.”
“Right.” Dinky said. “I’m going up one floor. The rest of you, stay here.”
“Oh… kay,” Trixie said, frowning.
Dinky trotted up the stairs. As the others watched, her hooves started to blur on the steps, as though they were moving faster than the rest of Dinky’s body. Then she was gone.
Shining Armor’s eyebrows shot up. “Interesting,” he said.
“Dinky?” Scootaloo called. “Dinky, where are you?”
“I might ask you the same question,” Dinky’s voice said from directly overhead. “I lost count of the stairs, too. It seems that something is distorting space to keep us from reaching the floor in between where we’re standing.”
“So… we’re on the right track, then,” Trixie said. “We just have to figure out how to bypass the distortion.”
“Easier said than done,” Shining said. “This could be a complex system of interconnected spells designed to disorient and mislead any magic we use on it -- disentangling it all could take hours.”
“Or we could walk up while Dinky walks down and stop when we meet in the middle,” Scootaloo said.
“I-- er --” Shining Armor scratched the back of his head. “Okay, that might work, but -- well, there’s a good chance -- the spell matrix just might not let us reach that floor at all.”
“Worth a shot, though,” Trixie said. “Dinky! Trixie is walking up now. Prepare to start walking down!”
“Alright!”
This time, as Trixie walked, Shining Armor and Scootaloo could see the same distortion on her hooves as they had seen with Dinky, but the effects seemed less obvious. Trixie’s legs stretched like taffy, but they didn’t blur, and Trixie successfully reached the top of the stairs to meet Dinky. There was a sharp snapping sound like a rubber band breaking, and everypony winced as their ears started ringing.
“What was that?” Scootaloo asked, shaking her head vigorously.
“Trixie thinks we broke something,” Trixie said. “Whether it was the spell or some kind of tripwire or both, she cannot say.”
Shining hurried up the steps to join them at the top. “Well, it certainly seems that the spell matrix was blown,” he agreed. “But your point about possibly tripping some kind of alarm is well-founded. We should get away from here before the Nightmare or the Valeyard or whatever creature they’ve summoned as a guard dog comes to investigate.”
Trixie nodded and opened the hidden door. “Come on. Everypony out.”
They all hurried down the hall, leaving the door to click shut behind them. None of them noticed that the bust of Pandak turned its head as they walked away, its eyes glowing red.
The Interface paced the sepulchre, alone. The Valeyard had departed to search for the interloping Crusaders, leaving the Nightmare alone with the TARDIS and the rift, seething. The mathematics simply didn’t work. It had calculated the power drain from the TARDIS. The box should have had far more energy left within, the Eye of Harmony refuelling itself over time for it to harvest again and again. Instead, the whole thing was teetering on the precipice of total collapse.
In a sudden surge of anger, it punched the blue box. A chunk of the exterior fell to the floor, revealing that the plasmic shell was rotting away. Inside, the silver cylinder that comprised the TARDIS’s true form -- or at least as close to its true form as anyone could ever see -- was clearly tarnished. “What have you done?” the Nightmare hissed, steam rising from its jaw. “What have you hidden from me?”
There was a flicker of psychic energy from the TARDIS -- involuntary, which made the Interface’s ears prick up. “Well well,” it said. “You have been a naughty box, haven’t you? Where have you put your power?”
For a long moment, all it got in response was golden light and static echoing through its mind. Then…
“Hi.”
The voice was familiar, but it echoed and distorted through the Nightmare’s head. “My name’s Dinky. Well, not really, but that’s what everyone calls me.”
The Nightmare froze. No. It couldn’t be.
“Please. I need help,” Dinky’s distant voice said.
IT WILL HAVE COME AT A PRICE, a voice in her head warned. WERE YOU WILLING TO BE PAYING IT?
The TARDIS seemed to laugh at the Nightmare. It saw the golden energy connect console and filly, filling the young Dinky Doo with a fraction of the TARDIS’s energy, Gallifreyan equations and words writing themselves in the air in shining golden circles and lines.
Without even realizing it, Dinky absorbed the power that the Nightmare had set its sights on. “No!” it hissed. “No!”
The memory broke up, and the Nightmare fell heavily to the ground, mind reeling. After a few moments, it collected itself. This was fine. It now knew where the extraneous energy had gone. All that needed to be done now was to extract it, all the more easily done when the vessel was unsuspecting and defenseless. Soon, the power of a TARDIS would be the power of the Nightmare, and all time and space would suffer at its command.
It was quiet and still up near the top of the mountain. The Doctor sat in silent meditation, simply staring at a patch of earth in front of him, one where a scraggly, weedy-looking flower sat. He was smiling very slightly. He didn’t stop when he heard the crunch of gravel coming up the path behind him. He didn’t look around, either. “Hallo,” he said. “Would you like to come and sit awhile?”
“What, with you?” It was distinctly Donna’s voice, but if he listened closely, he could hear the buzzing undercurrent, nearly hidden behind the halo of humming golden energy that encircled her head. “I don’t bloody think so.”
“Don’t worry, it won’t take long. I want to tell you a story. Though, since you’re all only projections of my worst fears and self-loathing, and therefore products of my mind, I suspect you already know it. Donna certainly does. Jo would as well, if she were here, but I’m content enough with how Jo left my life.”
“Go on, then.” Charley’s voice this time, with enough of that same old teasing mock-weariness, those plummy tones, that perfect Charley-ness, to strike at the Doctor’s heart. “Tell us your tale, old man.”
The Doctor glanced up toward the sky. Both suns were setting now, and it had darkened to a deep shade of burnt umber. “When I was a child, growing up in this nasty old house, I bloody well hated everything,” he said bluntly.
He shrugged. “If I can’t be brutally honest with myself --”
“You seldom are,” Adric noted.
“Well, I’m working on it. Anyway, one day, I thought I might try and run away from home. I wasn’t sure quite where I’d go, so I went up this mountain to talk with the hermit.” He waved vaguely at the cave. “We had a hermit. I think he might’ve been a status symbol. Can’t think of any other reason why old Quences would keep him around, not with Satthralope chewing his ear off about it every other week.”
“Who?” Peri asked. “Those names sound ridiculous, and that's coming from someone named Perpugilliam.”
“They suited their bearers rather well, then. Anyway, I went up the mountain and found the hermit. I only meant to ask him how I could become a hermit, but I ended up telling him all my troubles and fears, how I hated it in the miserable old House of Lungbarrow and loathed Gallifrey generally. I spilled my darkest secrets to him, and when I was done, he smiled at me. Pointed to this rubbish-looking little flower on the ground, hardly any more than a weed, and asked me if I thought it was beautiful. And the longer I looked at it, the more I thought it was -- it’s a lovely shade of off-white, perfectly symmetrical, and so strong to be growing up here, in this harsh soil and chilly climate. The more I looked around, the more beauty I could see -- the smooth and bumpy surface of a rock, the glowing orange of an evening sky, the stars that shone so brightly on this isolated estate.”
“But you know what happened next,” Donna said coldly. “You grew up and you shattered this planet into atoms. No more hermit, no more flower, no more Time Lords.”
“And yet here it is,” the Doctor said. “Even here in my worst nightmare made solid, there’s still that little flower.”
“We’ll see about that,” Adric said, shoving the Doctor roughly out of the way and stamping the flower into the ground, scuffing it around until it was little more than a tangle of roots sticking out of the ground. “There. Story’s over.”
“Hm,” the Doctor said noncommittally. “Is it? I still remember that little flower, and I can remember its beauty as well as the pain of you destroying it. Perhaps there’s a lesson in that.”
“Enough talk,” Celestia growled. “Take him!”
The Doctor glanced up looked around the closing circle of shambling things, sizing them up one by one until his attention was snagged by a particular face. It was a withered, scruffy-looking thestral in a ripped jacket, carrying a broken guitar on his back. He wore the shattered remnants of a skull on his head, taken from a creature that had never existed. Even in this warped form, the Doctor recognized him immediately. He gave the creature an almost feral grin. “Hello, Fitz,” he said. “What d’you reckon? One last kiss before I fall?”
Fitz lunged forward. The Doctor didn’t flinch. Therefore, he was privileged to see what happened next.
The green was a surprise. No matter the era, Gallifrey had never, not once, been green. The rock was orange, the grass was red, the trees were silver, and the grand buildings of the great domed cities tended to be variations on brown, grey, and orange.
And yet, the Doctor lay on the vibrant green grass, breathing heavily as the remnants of an adrenaline rush washed away.
The stallion next to him shouldn’t have been quite as big a surprise, given that he was the last thing that the Doctor had seen before he had arrived in the green. Of course, given that he was alive and well and whole again, the Doctor was a little confused, to say the least. Still, at least he could say it was a pleasant surprise.
He nudged his companion, who lay sleeping on the grass. “Oi. Fitz. Wake up!”
The batpony groaned and rolled over a little in his sleep. The Doctor nudged him a little more forcefully, and Fitz Kreiner, with one last growl, pushed himself up. He blinked. Glanced around. “Oh,” he said. “That’s nice, then. It worked. Whatever it was." He scratched his head. "Did you plan this?"
“Not as such. I thought... well, I thought I could forgive myself for what happened to you most easily. You turned out alright in the end, after all, for a given value of 'alright' and 'end'."
"Not to mention, a given value of 'Fitz'," Fitz cracked. He immediately regretted it as the Doctor winced. "Er. Sorry. You were saying?"
The Doctor nodded, visibly making an effort to repress his emotions again. "Aside from that, I've no idea. You were there too, do you know what happened?”
“Er…” Fitz considered this. “True love’s kiss?”
The Doctor tilted his head. “I’m pretty sure you were going more for my jugular there, Fitz.”
Fitz shrugged and picked up his guitar from where it leaned against a tree. “I’ve had worse makeout sessions,” he said, absent-mindedly tuning it.
The Doctor nodded. “I can believe that, yeah.”
Fitz moved on from tuning his guitar to warming up with a few chord progressions. “So. This is your mind, huh?”
“Technically, it’s the collective consciousness of all Time Lords… but this bit seems to be pretty directly influenced by me, yeah.”
“And so was that riot back there, then.”
“...Yeah.”
“You want to talk about it?”
“...” The Doctor’s hackles rose at the very question. But he listened as Fitz began to play a melody. “Is that The Rainbow Connection?” he asked, surprised.
Fitz made a face. “So it is,” he said, quickly changing over to Twist and Shout.
“No -- go back,” the Doctor said. “I love that song.”
Fitz looked at him for a moment, his face softening. He snorted a little. “You would,” he said. “Alright. The Muppets it is.”
The Doctor lay back on the grass. The soft blades, still a little dewy, tickled his ears. He didn’t much care. He closed his eyes and let the gentle music sweep him away.
The Princess tossed her fiery mane and roared to the heavens. All around her, the City lay in shards of marble and ash and bone. The ceiling cracked open, letting in sunlight for the first time in centuries, and the walls tumbled down. The palace had become a courtyard. Now that the walls had fallen, the Princess saw that there was one pony that hadn’t fled deeper into the city. A short blue pegasus sat at a table, eyes shut. They were playing the spoons. The Princess stormed over to them. “Why are you here?” she demanded. The pegasus opened his eyes and considered this. “Do you mean that philosophically or geographically?” She opened her mouth and coughed fire at them. The pegasus made a face and waved away the acrid smoke. “Ah. I see. A literalist. Well, I’m here because I don’t have anywhere else I particularly want to be at the moment. What about you? Why are you here?” “I am the Princess.” “And?” “These are my lands.” “Ah. I like what you’ve done with the place. I thought it could use something of a more open-plan design when I came here, and I’m so glad to see you share the sentiment. Would you like to play a game of chess?” The Princess reared back. “What… what is this?” “Chess? It’s a game. Half the pieces are red and half are white --” “No. What is ‘Would you like’? No one has said these words to me before.” “Ah. Well, Princess -- may I call you Princess?” “No --” said the Princess, before realizing that was a very odd thing to say, given that she had always been called Princess. But now that she was thinking about it, she realized she didn’t like it all that much as a name. “You may call me… Celestia. What am I to call you?” “I go by many names,” said the pegasus. “You may call me… hm. Chessmaster? No, that has rather unpleasant overtones. Mr. E is rather too punny. I’d say the Riddler, but he stole my aesthetic some time back, and I won't forgive that. What about… Ripple?” “Ripple?” Celestia asked, taking a seat across from them. “Why Ripple?” “The smallest things can have the most amazing consequences,” said Ripple, pulling out a chessboard. “Influencing things long after the original cause is gone. But I apologize, I’ve gotten off topic. What I was offering you, Celestia, was a choice.” “A choice,” Celestia repeated, tilting her head. “To play chess with you or not.” “Yes. Though of course, those are not your only options. You could roast me alive where I sit. You could knock over the table. You could suggest we play checkers instead, or go for a fly, or continue knocking down more of this city, or a thousand other things.” Celestia stared at the chessboard for a long moment, the red flames of her mane fizzling to orange, then yellow. “That all sounds nice,” she said. “Or, well, parts of it did. Could I always have done these things?” Ripple shrugged. “Perhaps. I find that it’s best not to dwell too deeply or too long on what you could have done. Better by far to keep moving forward.” “I think I would like to free my city,” Celestia said. “Later, after some of the dust has settled. For now… red or white, Ripple?”
The Mourner was surrounded by cold and wet and grey. She didn’t care. She couldn’t care. Not about the weather, or about the graves, or the ivy that was beginning to grow over her hooves and barrel and muzzle. She observed a presence approaching from along the rows of gravestones. He was a gangling, tropical blue pegasus wearing a bright red fez and a matching bow tie. He seemed to be carrying a lot of sunflowers. The Mourner ignored him. He, however, did not afford her the same courtesy. “Hallo,” he said. “How are you today?” She made no response. He didn’t take the hint and sat down next to her. “I understand completely,” he confided. “As it happens, I’ve been feeling much the same way myself.” This was a bridge too far. “You don’t look like it,” the Mourner muttered, snapping some of the ivy that had wrapped around her mouth. “Well, perhaps not,” the pegasus admitted. “My name’s the Wizard, by the way.” “You can’t be a wizard. You’re not even a unicorn.” “And?” The Mourner didn’t have a good response to that. “Would you like to see my greatest spell?” the Wizard asked invitingly. “I think you might find it rather useful.” “There is no use,” said the Mourner, spreading her wings irritably in an attempt to brush the irritating pegasus away, snapping more of the ivy in the process. “Everything comes to dust and rot.” The Wizard nodded, accepting this point. “True. But why rush the process?” he asked. The Mourner studied him. “You’re not going to leave until I look, are you?” “Nope!” She groaned and dragged herself upright, snapping the rest of the climbing ivy. “Fine. Show me.” He pranced ahead. She slogged behind. As they walked along, however, she noticed that the grass was drying out. The stones were getting better-kept and easier to read. And everywhere she looked, there were sunflowers, sprouting from the earth. The Wizard looked back at her and grinned. “Impressed yet?” he called. She looked around, bewildered. “Impressed with what?” she asked. “My magic, of course! Look how I can take sorrow and turn it into beauty. I turn memories into a source of joy, not misery, and turn loss into love.” The Mourner pointed to a set of dying flowers. “Doesn’t seem to be working over there.” The Wizard inspected the flowers and the graves they stood on. “Hm,” he said, shaking the seeds off the flower and stomping them into the dirt. “Well, these things take time, of course, and a lot of effort.” She looked around. There were sunflowers out farther than the eye could see. “You must have lost a lot of ponies.” The Wizard’s face fell. “Yes,” he admitted. “I have.” “And you say you don’t hurt at all?” “Don’t hurt at -- ?Of course I do, what nonsense.” “But you were just saying --” “The pain and the love go arm in arm,” said the Wizard. “But be gentle with Pain and welcoming with Love, and you can grow a magnificent garden. I see you’ve already picked up the knack.” “I -- what?” she turned around. A field of roses had sprung up behind her. Some were tall and hardy, others sick and withered. But they were growing and living and beautiful. “Oh,” she said softly, running a hoof over a gravestone. “It’s wonderful.” “Would you care to take a walk in the flowers with me?” Cadance tilted her head at him. “Do you know,” she said. “I think a walk with a friend is just what the Doctor ordered.”
Sunset stared at herself herself herself herself herself herself over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, lost in the reflections and the apps and the feeds and the messages and -- “Miss Shimmer!” the Old Man thundered. She sat bolt upright and glanced around. The Old Man tightened his grip on his lapel with one hand and his cane with the other. “Phones away in class, if you please.” “Right… sorry,” Sunset muttered, quickly slipping her cell phone back into her bag. The Old Man studied her for a few moments, his expression softening slightly. “I wonder, mm, Susan --” “It’s Sunset.” “Yes yes yes. I wonder if you might answer the next question for the class. Show that you’ve been paying attention, hm?” Sunset swallowed. She felt a hundred faceless eyes on her. “Alright…” she said quietly. The Old Man leaned forward on his cane. “Why is it,” he said, “that you may never see your true face in a mirror?” Sunset blinked. “Er… well, it’s flipped, I guess.” The Old Man frowned. “Hrm. Well, there is that. Let me rephrase the question another way. Why can you never see yourself as you are right now in a mirror?” Sunset blinked a couple of times. Then it clicked. “Because… it always takes a little while for the light to reflect off your face and into the mirror. Your reflection is always lagging a little bit behind.” The Old Man beamed, his monocle twinkling merrily. “Precisely! That’s very good indeed, yes very good. Remember that you are not a reflection, my dear. You are in charge of your own destiny, and your past is not your future. Nor, indeed, is it your present.” “But…” Sunset faltered for a moment. “Everyone still defines me by my past. They think I haven’t changed, even after all I’ve done. It’s enough to make me want to go back to it -- I’m gonna get spat on either way. Why not embrace it?” The Old Man’s face had fallen. “Well?” he asked. “Why not, hm? Why not go back to being a destroyer of lives, a ruiner of friendships? What, pray tell, is stopping you?” “I…” Sunset trailed off. “I don’t want to be that person anymore. That’s all.” The Old Man smiled. “Miss Shimmer. We all have terrible things in our past. Accidents…” he glanced at a pretty doll sitting on a high shelf. “... and things we did, mm… intentionally.” His gaze fell on a large rock in the geology display, his smile evaporating. “There are things that we have done which will haunt us for the rest of our lives,” he continued. “But, my dear Susan -- Sunset -- we must strive every day to move on from our past, even if it can never be escaped.” Sunset nodded slowly. “This is a dream, isn’t it?” The Old Man nodded. “Indeed. What gave it away?” Sunset glanced around. “Well, the fact that the classroom is empty was a pretty big clue. So’s the fact that it’s slowly turning into the TARDIS.” “Mm. So it is,” the Old Man said, patting the console affectionately. “I see I’ve underestimated your psychic abilities, my dear. If you like, I could take you back to school -- you could give your dream a satisfying conclusion.” Sunset shook her head. “Nah. The premise was too contrived to be believable, honestly. If it wasn’t a dream, it never would’ve happened. Let’s blow this pop stand.” The Old Man smiled, and pulled a lever. “As you say, my dear. One Time Ram back to reality, coming right up.”
Nightmare Moon laughed wickedly. She so often did that Luna barely paid any attention to what she was laughing about. It was some manner of prisoner that she had captured, a weary and grizzled unicorn, their face darkened by time and grime. “So,” said Nightmare Moon. “You sought to overthrow me. How facile. How pointless. Did you not realize that even without me, the sun and moon still would not move in the sky? It would be a pointless victory.” The unicorn sighed. “Most victories are, in the end. Just look at you. You defeated Celestia. You killed the planet, half roasting in the endless heat and half starving in eternal night. I suppose that must make you very happy.” “You suppose correctly.” “But when it’s all said and done, what will this victory give you? Another world dead, something to hang your hat on and hardly anything else. It’s not like it wouldn’t have died on its own anyway, in a few million years it all comes to much the same thing.” The Nightmare tilted her head. “Who are you to know so much of my motivations? Tell me your name, that it may be whispered as a cautionary tale through the cosmos.” The weary unicorn gave a slim smile. “Alas. If I ever had a name, I cannot recall it. I am Nopony.” Backtalk and flippancy, that was new. Luna’s interest was aroused, and she peered through the Nightmare’s eyes to get a better look at the prisoner. To her astonishment, she thought that in their weary eyes, she could see somepony looking back at her. The Nightmare laughed. “Nopony indeed! Do you think me a foolish Polyphemus, O Ulysses? A beast to be fooled by wine and false names?” She raised her voice mockingly. “Oh guards! Nopony is hurting me! Nopony is killing me!” “Nopony can save you now,” the Nameless One said. “Nopony remains. Nopony is keeping you distracted, and Nopony covets your eye, tyrant.” “You hope to take my eye?” Nightmare Moon chuckled, incredulous. “I’d vaporize you before you took your first step.” “Oh, undoubtedly. But Ulysses was famous for much more than blinding Polyphemus, you know. Off the top of my head… the Trojan Horse?” Luna acted without thinking. She lowered her horn and struck out, stabbing at the slit-pupiled eye of Nightmare Moon and squeezing through the opening that was left behind. The Nightmare screamed, losing definition without a template off which to base its form. Before long, all that remained was a pool of black ichor and Luna, breathing heavily, covered in the stuff and with an eyeball stuck on her horn. The Nameless One grimaced. “Nasty business,” they observed. “Come have a roll in the snow, you’ll feel better when it’s all washed off.” Luna couldn’t find it in herself to argue. Silently, she followed the unicorn out of the castle and into the world beyond. They stood, side by side, overlooking an immense snowy hill. She looked at the dour unicorn, with his weathered, grimy face and his cropped mane. They looked back at her, their expression stoic for a long moment. Then they grinned. “Last one to the bottom is a rotten egg!” They dove into the snow, sledding down on their belly. After a moment of utter shock, Luna’s competitive drive kicked in and she followed suit. It was exhilarating, the way the snow flew up around her in a great flurry, washing the sticky ichor from her as she flew, whooping, down the slope. She reached the bottom and rose to her hooves. She stood with the Nameless One in a copse of pine trees. They too had been cleaned up by their snowy slide, and their mane seemed to have grown out. They smiled at her. “You may have some questions,” they said. “...I killed the world.” “Not quite. As I said, one half of the world is roasting, and the other half is freezing. However, there’s quite a lot of middle territory, a kind of twilight zone, if you like, where life is doing rather well.” “I killed thousands.” “Well. Yes. You realize, of course, that this is all hypothetical, correct?” Luna glanced at them sidelong. “A dream? Yes, I had gathered. If the Nightmare could have been so easily defeated as it was in the castle, I would have done so long ago. The point remains, however. I could at any moment backslide, lose myself to the corruption again.” “Ah. But that’s the beauty of it, and the paradox,” said the Nameless One. “Because you are afraid, you guard yourself. Because you might backslide, you won’t.” “But if I let my guard down --” “Then you can rely on your friends to protect you, rely on your sister to be there for you,” the Nameless One interrupted. They smiled at her gently. “Our friends have always been the best of us, wouldn’t you agree?” Slowly, Luna nodded. “So. What happens now?” she asked.
With a childlike grin, the Nameless One looked up at her, their face illuminated by dawn’s pale light. “I’ve no idea at all,” he said. “But I think, you know, that it’s going to be a lovely day.”
“Hello?” A shaft of light cut through the darkness. “I say, hello?” The light fell on a series of stone carvings in the side of a tomb. A figure stepped into the room, a tall, silver-maned crystal pony in a long velvet cloak and ruffles. “Ah. There you are. I thought that you might enjoy some company. A little conversation, perhaps.” There was a long pause. “Well. You’re not the one I was expecting,” said a voice that seemed to come from everywhere. “The scarfy one, with the teeth and the goggle-eyes, I thought we really clicked.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said the Dandy. “We have more in common than you might think. We’re both prisoners, though I’ll admit, my remit stretched somewhat farther than your own does at the moment. We’re both strangers in our worlds, we both like to irritate the authorities in any way imaginable.” There was a phantom chuckle in the dark and the Dandy grinned. “And of course, we both rather have a soft spot for sweet, plucky young adventurers who… oh, to put it politely, sand off some of our rougher edges.” “And to put it impolitely?” said the voice from everywhere. The Dandy’s grin widened. “They’re fully prepared to wag their fingers in our faces and tell us when we’re being bastards.” It was a phantom uproar this time. “Very true. Very true! Then tell me, Dandy -- you managed to escape your imprisonment, in time. How do I do the same?” The Dandy smiled apologetically. “You’ll think it’s rather trite, I’m afraid.” “After this, anything would be novel,” the voice said. “Well -- alright. Your problem, my good entity, is that you always think that restraint and being trapped are one and the same thing. It’s a matter of perspective, you see?” “... No.” The Dandy tilted their head. “Imagine you’re an omnipotent being.” “Gosh. How difficult. I don’t know if I can.” “I have faith in you. Now imagine a pony, somepony you care about. Say, a pegasus mare with a fondness for animals.” “For instance.” “For instance. Now, imagine one day, you decided that you simply couldn’t live without her, and you made her immortal, preserving her consciousness in a statue for all eternity.” “No.” “No?” “I would never do that. Could never do that.” “You’re omnipotent. Of course you could.” “No.” “Why not?” “Because -- because it would hurt her. She would hate me for it. I would hate me for it, for violating her consent and ruining her life because of my selfishness.” “That is restraint. You choose it. Imprisonment is out of your control.” “I see. So this is imprisonment.” “Yes. Of course, there’s something to be said for imprisonment as well. It’s all a matter of perspective.” “Now, I’m afraid you’ve lost me again.” The Dandy grinned and produced a large stick of dynamite from under their cloak. “If you’re never imprisoned, you’ll never experience the joys of a good old-fashioned jailbreak. Shall we?”
“It’ll be… hard,” Twilight admitted. “But I think that we can rebuild. We can make a life here, rebuild forgotten friendships and more… that is, if you want to. It might be… more painful for you.” Mac put a hoof on her shoulder. “With you by my side,” she said. “Ah reckon Ah can face jus’ ‘bout anythin’.” There was a moment where they gazed into one another’s eyes. Slowly, slowly, they began to move closer together, lips puckering, eyes drifting shut. There was a slam and they sprung back. An unfamiliar earth pony mare was framed in the doorway of their bedroom. “Hi, yeah, sorry to barge in,” she said, waving at them. “Glad you’re not festerin’ in misery or anythin’ like that, you wouldn’t believe some of these other dreams --” “Dreams?” Mac repeated. “Oh! Yeah. You’re both asleep. This world was made up by the Nightmare to try an’ corrupt Twilight into a vessel for its twisted desires, but Mac, brilliant mare that you are, stuck right by her side all this time! You helped stabilize one another, which as I said, lovely, but there is still rather a lot to sort out in the waking world. So, er. You’re going to need to break out, I’m afraid.” She grinned at the pair, then faltered. “Sorry. Was I -- interrupting somethin’?” “Er, nope!” Twilight said quickly. “Wakin’ up now,” Mac said, squeezing her eyes shut tight and focusing on anything but the mortification of the moment that hadn’t quite happened.
In the great sepulchre of Rassilon, unnoticed by anyone, the faces on the side of the casket began to crack. Just a hairline fissure here and there to begin with, little puffs of dust spraying off the surface, but they began to meet. Then they began to spread.
This went unnoticed by the Nightmare. Having accepted that it could do little about the problem of the TARDIS’s missing energy aside from waiting for the vessel to show her face again, it had turned its attention to the other fly in its ointment. The rift onto Ponyville had opened, and it was irritatingly stable. In a fit of pique, the Nightmare had tried to intentionally destabilize it to rip the town into the void, but it hadn’t worked.
Ponyville was sealed off from the world. Because of the connection via the rift, the Matrix was also sealed off from the world. Until whatever temporal chicanery had been done to Ponyville was deactivated, the Nightmare’s sphere of influence would be contained to one dead planet and a hamlet full of talking horses. This was an insult that could not stand.
Its ears pricked up as he heard hooves clacking on the stone floor toward the tomb, too clear and too measured to be any of the escaped prisoners. “Valeyard,” it said as the door swung open. “How soon could we mobilize to take control of Ponyville?”
“Define ‘take control’,” the Valeyard said, moving swiftly past the form of the interface.
“‘Raze to the ground’? ‘Annihilate’? ‘Erase from history’?”
The Valeyard tutted. “You lack the subtle touch. If you destroy Ponyville, all our prisoners perish as well, and you know as well as I do how much use we can yet wring from them.”
“Hmph.” The Nightmare gazed down at the town. It was distorted by the shape of the rift, but the equine militia in the main square was clearly visible. “We cannot remain sealed off from the universe. Our plans would be useless in these conditions.”
“I agree, of course, but there are more subtle ways of achieving our goals. They will take longer, naturally, but if there is one resource we have in abundance, it is time.”
The Nightmare growled, but nodded in acquiescence. “A longer campaign, then, to retake control of the local time stream.”
“I think that would be best, don’t you agree? And if any in the town should try to fight back, well… we have no need of them as individuals.”
The Nightmare smiled grimly. “Then let us prepare for slaughter.”
The three pegasi drifted aimlessly through the tower. “Got to find Rumble,” Thunderlane kept repeating at odd intervals, as though he was afraid he’d forget. This fear was not totally unfounded. All three could feel their minds growing foggier with each passing minute. It was already getting hard for them to remember where they had gone to school, or what their neighbors’ faces looked like. It terrified Thunderlane to think that he might find Rumble and not even recognize him.
Not that there seemed to be much risk of finding anypony in these halls. They had been wandering for what felt like ages with no sign of life. “Should…” Flitter said hesitantly. “Should we head back?”
“Back?” Cloudchaser repeated. She blinked. “Oh yeah. We came from someplace else. Ponytown?”
“Got to find Rumble,” Thunderlane said, his eyes hollow. “Can’t go back now.”
“... Okay,” Flitter said. “We’ll keep going.”
They drifted on, trying to keep their focus. Cloudchaser stopped suddenly and squinted at something. “Hey… Hey! Do those things look familiar to you guys?”
Thunderlane scowled, following her gaze. “They’re just statues,” he said. “Ignore them.”
Cloudchaser stared a moment longer, then shrugged and turned away. “Yeah. Probably nothing,” she said.
The statues felt them go. They considered what they had sensed. All that potential energy felt absolutely delicious. As one, not looking at each other, Ditzy Doo and Fluttershy went into hunting stances as they went after their prey.
“Hey,” Cloudchaser said. “Do you guys ever feel like you’re being watched?”
“Not until you brought it up,” Flitter said, glancing around skittishly.
“Guys, we’re invisible ghost-things that haven’t been born yet,” Thunderlane said. “What could be watching us?”
Flitter looked over her shoulder. “Uh. Them?”
Thunderlane and Cloudchaser turned. “Flit… those are statues,” Cloudchaser said flatly. “Y’know. The things famous for being inanimate objects?”
“They’re statues I don’t remember flying past…” Thunderlane said, frowning.
“I’m pretty sure those were the statues in that hallway we passed before,” Flitter said, a note of fear in her voice.
“Don’t be dumb, statues don’t move,” Cloudchaser said, floating closer to the pair. “Like I said, there’s literally a figure of speech about how still these things are. Weird design, though. What’s with the faces? It looks like they’re wild --”
The lights flickered, and suddenly the statues were inches away from Cloudchaser’s suddenly very pale face. “-- animals.”
There was a pause. Then Flitter and Thunderlane raced down the hall. Cloudchaser, being a rather more lateral thinker, flew up through the ceiling and out on the next floor. “Follow me!” she bellowed. “You idiots! What do you have wings for if you’re not going to use them?”
She chanced a glance back, sticking her head through the floor to look around. Her sister, Thunderlane, and both statues were gone. She felt a pit form in her stomach. “Aw, man. I got a bad feeling about this,” she muttered, flying back into the corridor below and zipping off in the direction she’d last seen Flitter and Thunderlane flying.
Apple Bloom stumbled on the stairs. Rumble caught her around the barrel and steadied her. “You alright?” he asked.
She nodded, blinking rapidly. “Uh, yeah. Yeah, Ah’m alright. Jus’ took a funny turn, is all. Felt like… Well, it felt like th’ tower shifted.”
Rumble furrowed his brow. “Dinky?” he asked.
“Well, not as extreme as all that,” Bloom said. “More like… Ah dunno, like you think there’s gonna be another step at the top of the stairs, but there ain’t nothin there.”
“You think it’s another trick?”
Apple Bloom sucked in air through her teeth. “Dunno. But we can’t stop.”
Rumble sighed. “Yeah. True. Just keep your eyes peeled, I guess.”
“Ain’t gotta tell me twice.”
They continued down the stairs, glancing around warily, until they eventually came to a landing. On that landing was a massive set of double doors. Both Apple Bloom and Rumble took a step toward it, then stopped, looking at one another.
“I’ll open it, you be ready to pull me back?” Rumble asked.
“Sounds like a plan.” Bloom stepped back and planted her hooves. “Go for it.”
Rumble bit down on one of the handles and pulled it open slowly, bracing for whatever might be on the other side. There was a long silence. “Looks like a hallway,” Bloom noted.
“...Could still be a trick,” Rumble said.
“You fly through, Ah’ll grab yer tail.”
Rumble nodded, pushing one door all the way open against a wall before taking to the air. Apple Bloom grabbed his tail in her teeth and let him fly out into the hallway beyond, holding him like a kite.
He looked around and landed on the ground. “Seems safe enough…” he muttered, stomping a few times.
Then something came around the corner. Rumble screamed. Apple Bloom screamed, voice muffled by the tail. Four other voices also screamed. There was a long silence.
“Uh… hey, Bloom?” Scootaloo asked. “What are you doing with Rumble’s tail?”
Apple Bloom quickly spit it out, wiping the hairs from her tongue. “Jus’... bein’ cautious.”
“Uh. Okay?”
Rumble nodded at Shining Armor and Trixie. “Where’d you pick them up?”
Shining relayed once more an abridged summary of their escape from the magic-draining room and how they had all arrived on this floor. The others kept a weather eye out, looking up and down the hall for dangers.
“So… you broke some kinda magic field that keeps folk from reachin’ this floor?” Bloom asked, rubbing her chin. “Must be what Ah felt comin’ down th’ stairs. Guess this is where we wanna be, then.”
“We’re where we want to be, but not with who we want to be with,” Scootaloo said.
Trixie scowled. “Hey!”
“She just means we’re two Crusaders short,” Rumble said. “We’re glad to have you on our team as well.”
There was a sudden clamor from downstairs and everypony froze, staring down into the dimly-lit stairwell as far as they could, before the steps curved out of sight. “Do you think that’s them?” Shining hissed.
“Maybe,” Rumble muttered. “Or maybe it’s some new horror that’s going to try and eat us all.”
Dinky tilted her head thoughtfully. “Could be both.”
They all looked down the stairs, watching and waiting intently. Finally, two figures rounded the corner, one tall, one short. When the pair saw who was waiting at the landing, they broke into smiles and into a run. Button grabbed Dinky in a tight hug, while Sweetie practically tackled Rumble to the ground, both chattering excitedly about the things they’d faced on their way up.
Trixie and Shining both grinned as the Crusaders reunited at last.
“You know,” Celestia said. “When Ditzy came to visit us this morning, I was prepared to accept that this day could go a lot of different ways.” She attempted to shake her head, crumbling a little more of the rock around her. “I will admit that this was not on the list.”
Discord opened their mouth, paused, and admitted, “Okay, I was going to say that I totally saw this coming, but honestly? No.”
“So… how do we get out of here?” Twilight asked.
All of the imprisoned immortals (and Big Mac) had awoken with their faces sticking out of the stone. The rest of their bodies, on the other hoof? Not so much.
Discord grunted. “Hold on. If I can figure out where my fingers are, I should be able to snap us out of it.”
“At least the Valeyard and the Nightmare are gone,” Sunset noted, glancing around as much as she could. “Uh. The big golden rift is new.”
There was a distant but distinct sound of snapping talons, and the entire side of the coffin slid out like a drawer, releasing the imprisoned creatures. Discord stretched. “Ahhh, much better,” they said.
“Um,” said Twilight. “You want to try this again?”
“Hm?” Discord glanced around. Mac’s head had been supplanted onto Celestia’s body. Sunset and Luna had switched faces. Cadance’s pink face was stuck on Twilight’s short body, Twilight was blushing hard enough to almost match the color of the muscular farmhorse body to which her head had become attached, and Celestia gangled over everypony else, trying to keep track of Discord’s various mismatched limbs.
Discord themself glanced down at their own pink hooves and frowned. “A-huh. Celestia, could you possibly…”
The princess looked at the draconequus’s paw, frowning. After a couple failed attempts, she finally managed to snap her fingers. In a flash, everypony’s head was back where it belonged.
“That’s a relief,” Luna grumbled. “We had forgotten how unpleasant it was to be short.”
“Excuse me?” Sunset said, scowling. “I’m a perfectly normal pony height. Just because you’ve got legs like beanpoles…”
“Ignore her,” Celestia said, shaking the pins and needles out of her hooves. “She’s developed something of a Neighpoleon complex over the years.”
Cadance looked around the room. “Well, it seems like we’re out of the frying pan,” she noted. “But how long until we’re into the fire?”
Discord grinned nastily. “Oh, Cady. Didn’t you notice? I’ve got my powers back. No more cantrips for me, thank you very much. The Nightmare won’t know what hit it.”
Mac frowned. “Uh. Reckon we’re still missin’ somepony, y’all.”
Luna tilted her head and did a quick count. “Nay, fair Mac, you are mistaken. Four alicorns, two draconocci, one earth pony.”
“But zero Time Lords,” Mac said. “Look.”
They all did. The petrified form of the Doctor lay atop the tomb, eyes shut. “Not a problem,” Discord said with a confidence they didn’t really feel. “I’ll have him out of there in a jiffy.”
They snapped their fingers. Nothing happened. They tried again and again, clicking fingers on paw and talon alike, but the Doctor remained immobile. At last, the chaos god threw their hands in the air. “Alright, fine, be that way,” they grumbled. “At least you’re less likely to get into trouble in there.”
Celestia’s mouth was a grim line. “I saw them in there. We all did, didn’t we? Before we escaped?”
Several subdued head nods were the sole response. Celestia shut her eyes and chuckled bitterly. “For a moment -- just a moment -- I thought that the Doctor had come to our rescue once again. What was I thinking? They can’t even let themself be saved.”
Luna reached out a hoof but hesitated at the last moment. Celestia shook her head. “What was I thinking?” she murmured.
After a long pause, her eyes snapped open. “Right. Battle stations, everypony, let’s move.”
She started herding the others around the room. Quietly, Luna wondered whether the Doctor had taught Celestia more than they had ever intended to…
None of them knew how long they had been walking. Time lacked meaning here. It was reflected back and forth across realities into infinity. All of them were starting to blur together now, enough to start distorting even Applejack’s sense of reality. Once or twice they had stumbled on a mirror that looked perfect -- up until Pinkie grinned at herself and they saw her reflection’s many sharp teeth.
Applejack chose to take the fact that the mirrors were getting closer to the truth as a good sign -- surely that meant they were approaching the truth. But at the same time, it was all making her head start to spin. She wasn’t sure that she could discern such fine differences. And then the other Applejacks started disappearing. It wasn’t an occasional thing. For five, ten, fifteen mirrors in a row, she simply wasn’t there.
“The other Applejacks,” she murmured. “Th’ ones that Nightmare killed getting to me…”
Spike put a claw on her shoulder. “You gonna be okay?”
Applejack pursed her lips. “Eventually, yep. Right now, though… let’s just keep goin’. We’re gettin’ close. Ah can tell.”
There were ever more branching paths. Applejack didn’t even stop to think about them. She just walked, Pinkie and Spike trailing behind her, nervously watching until she found it. The center of the maze. It was a fairly large intersection with paths that branched off from it every which way. Most of the mirrors didn’t face directly in on the area, merely lining the many angled paths that led to the theoretical infinity of possible reflections that comprised this place. Only three faced the center. Two were in constant flux, shifting through different images. The third was stable, a perfect reflection.
Applejack pointed at the mirror that depicted a shifting array of orange fillies. “Past.”
She pointed at the other fluctuating mirror, which was also shifting into a variety of more worn and wrinkled Applejacks. “Future.”
With a big grin, she pointed at the final reflection. “Present. Let’s go, y’all.”
Spike studied the future mirror. “Huh,” he said. “I sure get big.”
Pinkie bounced over to join him. “Hee! Look at how crazy my mane gets!” she said happily. Then she paused. “Huh. Where’d Applejack go?”
“Hm?” Applejack glanced back. Sure enough, she wasn’t in the mirror. “Huh. Well, Ah s’pose Ah can’t exactly expect to be around as long as ol’ Spike, can Ah?”
Pinkie nibbled her lower lip. “Well… no… but… I’m still there.”
“Oh. Well, congrats, Ah guess, on yer longevity?”
“... You’ve been gone for awhile, Jackie.”
Applejack frowned. “... Seems yer tryin’ to tell me somethin’, Pinkie.”
“I’m sure it’s nothing,” Spike said hastily. “Maybe Pinkie turns into a chaos goddess or something and gets to live forever.”
Applejack could taste the lie in the air. Frowning, she trotted over to sit in front of the future mirror. Her image flickered like a ghost as the timeline bounced back and forth. She was hardly there compared to the other two. The oldest version she could see of herself seemed barely more than a decade older than she was now.
“Oh,” said Applejack quietly. “Ah see.”
Beside her in the mirror, she could see Pinkie’s lined face twist as the mare cringed. “Maybe… maybe it’s wrong?” she asked tentatively.
Applejack shook her head. “It ain’t. It’s tellin’ th’ truth.”
“...I’m sorry,” Spike said.
Applejack nodded. “Well. Ah got plenty of time left, yet. Who knows? Maybe th’ future can change. Maybe it ain’t set in stone. Tartarus! If it can’t be changed, ‘least it says we all make it through this one alive, don’t it?”
“Y- yeah,” Pinkie said slowly. “That’s true…”
Applejack scowled and turned from the mirror. “Can’t put too much stock in that kinda thing,” she said firmly, walking away. “Th’ future ain’t certain. Th’ past ain’t clear. Only thing you can ever know fer sure…”
She turned back toward the others, facing away from the third mirror. “... is th’ here an’ now.”
She reeled back and bucked for all she was worth. The world vibrated like a gong, sending all three staggering as the hall of mirrors shattered around them
The Doctor awoke slowly. Fitz had stopped playing guitar at some point and was now resting against a tree, eyes shut. He wasn’t asleep -- the Doctor could tell that just by the speed of his breathing. But he seemed to be at peace. The Doctor rose and stretched. He felt… he felt pretty good, actually. Or, no. He felt the absence of the terrible, bone-crushing dread that had been weighing on him for centuries. And really, it wasn’t even that so much as it was the pressure relieving slightly.
But for a starving man, a slice of bread is a feast. The Doctor rolled over and rose to his hooves. Fitz cracked open an eye. “Morning,” he said.
“Possibly,” the Doctor said.
Fitz made the face he always did when the Doctor had jumped several sentences ahead in the conversation, or possibly jumped the rails entirely. “Come again?”
“Possibly it’s morning. Could be afternoon, evening, midnight.”
Fitz glanced around. The world was bright and colorful. “Nice weather for midnight.”
“Not really. I find they’re better by moonlight. Of course, there’s not much chance of that in here. Nor sunlight for that matter.”
Fitz struggled to arrange his face into a convincing facsimile of intelligent comprehension. He failed miserably.
The Doctor gestured up at the sky. “Do you notice something missing, Fitz?”
Fitz glanced up. “Um. It’s blue. Got clouds. Looks pretty… sky-like. No birds, I s’pose.”
“The sun, Fitz. There’s no sun.”
“Hm?” Fitz glanced around. “Oh. You meant the obvious answer. Well, yeah, no sun, lots of light, only one conclusion really.”
“Mmm,” the Doctor agreed. “Yeah.”
Fitz waited expectantly. The Doctor merely studied the clouds a moment longer. “Right then. We’d best be off.”
“Oh,” said Fitz. “Off where?”
The Doctor looked at him, surprised. “To the edges of the simulation, of course.”
“Simulation,” Fitz repeated.
The Doctor tilted his head. “Are you feeling alright, Fitz? You seemed fine with the concept a moment ago.”
“Oh yeah. Yeah. Simulation. That’s er, that’s what they call a virtual reality?”
The Doctor nodded.
Fitz chewed this over. “Am… I a part of the simulation?”
“Welllll…” the Doctor said. “Yeah, basically. Only trouble is, we have to work out which level of the simulation you’re on.”
“Eh?”
The Doctor sat down and started to count off. “The Dark Tower and the Death Zone was definitely a simulation. The ruins of Gallifrey were a simulation inside that, and this might be a third level down or possibly a reset of the ruins simulation. So you’re either a second- or third- layer simulation, probably, unless you exist independently of the rest of this particular realm, in which case you’re either a first- or fourth-layer.”
Fitz considered this. “God, my head hurts.” He fished around in his jacket and pulled out a cigarette and lighter. He clicked it a couple times before successfully lighting up. “‘M not even going to ask how I did that with hooves,” he said. “What you’re saying is… this is like that thing the Faction did? With the clones? And every copy got a little less like me, right, until Father Kreiner came out the other side.”
The Doctor smiled. “Well done, Fitz.”
“I was right?”
“No. You were wrong in practically every particular.”
“Oh.”
“But you didn’t try to kill me as soon as I said you were a simulation, so I think we can assume that you’re probably not here as an agent, witting or otherwise, of the Nightmare.”
“Oh.” Fitz considered this. “Good. Should we carry on with business as usual, then?”
“How do you mean?”
Fitz shrugged. “We start wandering around waiting for some great horrible thing to try and eat us.”
The Doctor grinned. “Why mess with a winning formula? Allons-y!”
Cloudchaser floated down the hallway, consumed by nerves. If those statues could see them in their timeless forms, what else could they do? Those teeth they’d had were needle-sharp, and from the looks on their faces, the pegasus statues had been eager to use them. “Flitter?” she called, trying to keep the fear from her voice and failing miserably. “Thunderlane?”
No response. Cloudchaser glanced around the hall. No doubt the statues could hear her, too. Oh, Celestia -- what if her sister and Thunderlane were dead? Could they die? Could a statue kill? She didn’t doubt for a moment that the answer to the second question was a resounding ‘yes’, but the first was still very much up in the air. It was the only thing giving her any shred of hope about the situation, too -- if those two idiots were anything less than immortal, they were dead, no question. Survival instincts of a toothpick, the pair of them.
Her irritation couldn’t fully mask her mounting dread. It wasn’t just that her friends -- her family -- might already be dead. It wasn’t just that that would mean that she would be alone in this terrible, timeless state, locked away from everypony else by time itself. It was that her memories were fading. Without them there to remind her, how long would it be before she forgot Thunderlane? How long would it be before she forgot her own twin sister? How long would it be before she couldn’t remember who she herself was?
This was enough to make her throw caution to the winds. “FLITTER!” she screamed. “THUNDERLANE! WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU?”
There was a long and terrible silence. Then, out of the darkness, a faint voice called.
“Cloudchaser?”
Cloudchaser’s heart no longer beat in any meaningful way, but it stopped nonetheless. Then she zipped forward. “Flitter! Oh, thank Celestia you’re alright!”
“Cloudchaser? Where are you?”
“I’m coming, Flit! I’m coming!”
Out of the darkness, a smudge of lilac, a hint of mint, and a big magenta bow. Cloudchaser spread her hooves wide to tackle her sister in midair.
She went right through her and out the other side, zooming down the corridor for several more seconds before realizing that something was wrong.
“Cloudchaser?” Flitter glanced around, her eyes skimming right over her sister. “Where are you?”
Cloudchaser blinked several times. Flitter had aged -- become physically solid once more. Had the statues done that somehow?
Flitter’s shoulders slumped. “Must’ve been my imagination,” she said sadly.
Cloudchaser took a moment to regain her cool before floating over to her sister. It wouldn’t do to come back weeping and frantic. She had an image to maintain. Once she had calmed down enough, she moved through Flitter. “‘Sup,” she said.
Flitter jumped what must have been six feet in the air. “Cloudchaser?” she asked as soon as she’d gotten her breath back.
“You were expecting maybe Shirley MacMane?”
“... You know, you’re not half as funny as you think you are.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“...You do?”
“Sure. I’m twice as funny.”
Flitter rolled her eyes. “And eight times as humble. Alright. Let’s get back to the others.”
“...Others? As in, more than Thunderlane?”
“Wait and see.”
Cloudchaser could get no more out of her sister as they flew through the corridors. Eventually, they came upon three figures sitting on the floor, one in the center with the other two draped on his sides, weeping. Thunderlane, for it was he who was in the middle, was himself struggling to keep from breaking down in tears.
“Jeez,” said Cloudchaser, zipping over to talk in Thunderlane’s head. “What happened?”
“I’m a sympathetic crier,” he muttered back.
“Yeah, no shit. But like -- I don’t even know where to start. How are you alive again? Where did the statues go? Why are Fluttershy and Ditzy crying?”
“Well --” Thunderlane began.
“Snf. Cloudchaser? Is that you?” Ditzy whispered, her voice hoarse.
Cloudchaser glanced around. Her body was intersecting with all three of the pegasi in the pile. She hadn’t really noticed. “Uh… yeah.”
“Well. It’s like this. We got turned into horrible monsters that fed on potential futures, killing creatures by sending them back in time to let them live out their lives.”
“Okay.”
“When we touched Thunderlane and Flitter, as they hadn’t actually been born yet and theoretically, never would be, we managed to cancel one another out.”
“Cool.”
“And we’re crying because --” Ditzy stopped, choked up. “We -- we --”
“We would have killed the-e-e-em!” Fluttershy bawled. “I was, I was so hungry, and they were so young, they would have lasted so long…”
“They met Dinky and Scootaloo,” Thunderlane said quietly.
“No thanks to us,” Ditzy said miserably, tucking her wings around herself in a tight hug. “I -- I knew she was my daughter, but I didn’t care. I was empty. I was so, so empty…” She trailed off, her eyes hollow and dark.
“So, um,” Cloudchaser said. She was really not cut out for this kind of situation. “I… look, not to seem insensitive or anything, but the longer I stay like this the more of my memories I lose, so is there another way I can get back to reality or whatever this place is?”
There was a long pause. “Rainbow Dash,” Fluttershy said with finality. “She’s still trapped. We’ll lead you to her, and then…” she trailed off.
“And then we’re going to tear the Nightmare apart, gear by gear,” Ditzy said. Her voice was soft, but the rage behind it was as cold and bleak as the outer reaches of space. She pushed herself up and made her way down the hall, not looking to see if the others would follow.
The return of Applejack, Pinkie Pie, and Spike had been an unexpected event, but certainly not an unwelcome one. Big Macintosh and Twilight galloped to embrace their lost siblings, and all of them were embraced in turn by Pinkie Pie.
Celestia stamped the floor to attract everypony’s attention. “Applejack. Pinkie Pie. Spike,” she said shortly. “Welcome back. May I suggest that you start running? Macintosh, that goes for you as well, I fear.”
Applejack frowned. “Er, come again?”
Twilight looked at her. “We’re going to fight the Nightmare,” she said simply. “You don’t want to get caught in the crossfire.”
“Uh,” Spike said. “Hey. Huge magic-breathing dragon, here? I can --”
“Spike,” Cadance said. “You’re hard to kill, but not that hard to kill. If you try to fight at our side, I can almost guarantee that you’ll die. I can’t -- I won’t have that on my conscience.”
“Keep the others safe,” Sunset said, her face stoic.
“Excuse me?” Applejack said frowning. A quick glare from Twilight made her zip her lip.
Spike took a step back and rubbed his forehead. “...Alright,” he said quietly. He looked down at Twilight. “If you die, I’ll never speak to you again,” he said firmly.
She gave a weak chuckle. “Understood.”
Spike glanced around the room. “That goes for all of you,” he said warningly, wagging a finger at all of them. “Stay safe. Please.”
“Dying, dear Spike, is the very last thing we shall do,” Luna said wryly.
Spike threw up his claws. “Don’t say shit like that! Now it’s gonna happen! Forget it, I’m stay--”
Discord snapped their talons. Spike and all three earth ponies vanished in puffs of smoke that smelled like spaghetti sauce. Discord stared sadly at the empty spaces where they had stood before lowering their hand. “Right. Let’s get set up,” they muttered, turning away quickly.
After a pause, the others set to work in silence, preparing their ambush.
“I’m telling you, there are more important matters than finding the Doctor’s whelp,” the Valeyard grumbled.
“She is the key to everything,” the Nightmare said in response, walking at his side. “She holds the last piece of the power. Without it, I am incomplete -- worse, I am unstable. The power of a dying star lies within me, but if I use it overmuch it will rip through me and destroy only the merest fraction of what I aim to.”
The Valeyard thought something quite rude about the Nightmare’s stability at even the best of times. “Yes, but we have her, at least in a sense. We may not be able to drain the power out of her, but she’s in our world, and there’s no escape, not for her.”
The Nightmare mulled this over. “There may be something in what you say,” it admitted begrudgingly.
“Of course there is. Now, will you let me depart to take what is mine? Once I supplant the Doctor in reality, I can destroy the resistance in Ponyville, tear down the barriers that constrain our great vision of the cosmos, eating them alive from the inside out.”
The Interface had no tongue to speak of. Nevertheless, the Valeyard could swear that the machine licked its lips at his words. Time to go for the kill. “Perhaps,” he said, “the opportunity might even arrive for me to drain the girl of her power on the other side of the divide -- she is asleep, defenseless. It would take but a few moments, and then the power you seek would be obliged to return to its home.”
“...Very well,” the Nightmare said. “I doubt I would need your help here any further. You would be of little use in apprehending the escaped prisoners, and everything else has fallen under my control.” It opened the door to the tomb and barely blocked a scorching ray of arcane might. Face darkened with ash, it looked in astonishment as the six gods glared at their former jailors.
The Valeyard glowered. “You know, you really set yourself up for this.”
Fitz stared at the Doctor, all sharp edges and gob. He had long since come to terms with fancying blokes, especially blokes who talked a mile a minute, who had great hair and no fashion sense, who were named ‘the Doctor’, and who had, frankly, great bums. The horse thing was a bit more worrying, but since Fitz was also some kind of horse with bat wings, he figured that was basically alright.
The Doctor hadn’t stopped chattering since they’d set off, telling Fitz about everything he’d missed since his departure and the weird things in the simulation around them, and how nice it was to see his old friend again. Fitz, as usual, caught only half of the words being said, of which he understood perhaps two-thirds as individuals, of which, in turn, he could string maybe three-quarters into phrases that made some manner of sense, for a total listening comprehension of ‘holy fuck, this big dumb genius horse is hot’.
“...anyway, that’s why I hate pears now,” the Doctor concluded. “Ah, but look at me mammering on! How’ve you been, Fitz?”
“Er,” said Fitz. “Well. I basically haven’t, I think.”
The Doctor frowned. “Eh?”
“I mean, I’m only a product of your mind,” Fitz pointed out. “Last thing I remember is the last time I saw you. I can’t even properly remember when that is, which I personally think is fairly compelling proof, right?”
The Doctor’s face had fallen as Fitz had been talking. “Oh,” he said flatly. “Right. Stupid of me, really.”
“Well,” Fitz said hurriedly, “I mean, nice of you to ask and all, I didn’t mean to upset you or anything.”
“No, no,” said the Doctor. “You’re alright, Fitz. I just… I haven’t been thinking straight. Not for a very long time, as it happens.”
Fitz looked at him dubiously. “Have you ever?”
The Doctor chuckled at that. “No, I suppose not. But it used to be fun, thinking at right angles to everyone else, folding my thoughts into paper airplanes and letting them loose, turning in corkscrews of rhetoric… Now it’s all barbed wire and twisted metal.”
Fitz said nothing. He couldn’t think of any response to that, not really. Instead he reached out and put a hoof on the Doctor’s back. The Doctor didn’t say anything either, but he did relax a little at the touch. Fitz could remember Sam, back when she had been traveling with them, had commented that the Doctor would turn into an absolute kitty-cat as soon as you started giving him a backrub. Fitz had never worked out if that was something to do with alien biology or if the Doctor was just that starved for touch. Given the way the Time Lord was given to unexpectedly kissing his friends, Fitz was rather inclined to plump for the latter.
“Doc… mate… are you alright?” he asked.
The Doctor paused. Shook his head.
“...How bad is it?”
“You were there when I destroyed Gallifrey,” the Doctor said wearily. “The first time, anyway.”
Fitz’s eyebrows shot up. “The first time?”
“Mm, yeah,” the Doctor said. “Really, I think that about says it all.”
There was a long silence. “...How many…”
“Destroyed by me personally, or in general?”
“Christ, Doc.”
The Doctor huffed. “It was getting out of hand. The Enemy had become the Yssgaroth, the Vampires, the Master and Lolita, Time Lords from one of the Nine Gallifreys’ Nine Gallifreys down the long end of the probability axis, even the bloody Daleks. Daleks with technology to rival the Time Lords. Daleks who’d retroactively been the Enemy all along, in the maze of alternate histories and the ever-shrinking number of futures that the War had become. The fabric of the universe was tearing itself apart. You saw what happened to me when my history came under attack?”
“Which time?”
“Exactly. Apply that to the universe, and increase that by a factor of about five or so.”
Fitz tried to imagine that, but couldn’t quite grasp the scale of it.
The Doctor pursed his lips. “Alright. Imagine San Francisco, but everywhere.”
Fitz whistled low. “So you ended it.”
“Permanently, I thought. I tried to send them all to hell, fighting forever in a Time Lock, like a bagful of cats. But no. Gallifrey’s gone, the Enemy is… probably gone, but the Time Lords and the Daleks remain in some bare dregs. And I killed so many, Fitz.”
He sighed, put his head in his hooves. “It was never meant to happen like this. None of it. Sometimes it seems like everything I touch withers and dies.”
Fitz wasn’t sure what to say to that, either. This Doctor felt much more tired than his had been, much more ground down by the universe. Still, a therapy session, even one with Fitz as a completely-out-of-his-depth therapist, was better than the usual constant peril of how his adventures with the Doctor usually went.
Of course, it was at that moment when something large, scaly, and sharp launched itself out of the foliage and sent both of them flying.
It was no longer a question of finding the tomb. That was altogether too easy. Approaching that miserable sepulcher, on the other hoof, was a rather more difficult affair. The air crackled with arcane force, the underlying power of reality itself brought to bear on this virtual realm. The structure of the tower had moved around often enough before, as the Crusaders and their compatriots were all well aware. Now, though, the corridor was glitching and crackling like a broken video game, as Button Mash commented.
“I’m not sure what the biggest problem is,” Shining said. “The way the door keeps teleporting all over the wall, the way the floor looks… really unstable, or --”
A ray of brilliant silver light clipped through the wall, illuminating the hall and lowering the temperature about ten degrees. “Or that?” Apple Bloom asked. “‘Cause, Ah’m just gonna say it -- it’s that.”
“Unless the place the floor leads is just some kind of infinite void like you get in some games,” Scootaloo pointed out. “Then you’re just falling forever, probably.”
Trixie tapped her hooves together. “Trixie means… not to sound cowardly, but this probably means that all of the alicorns and draconocci are fighting the Nightmare now, yes? We are all agreed on this? Trixie does not think that any of us would be anything other than a liability going in there.”
Shining Armor looked to be having a deep internal struggle. “I mean -- you know --” He shut his eyes. “Twiley’s in there. And Cady. If they get hurt or -- die, or -- I nearly lost Twilight once today already.”
Trixie nodded. “Trixie understands that. Twilight is Trixie’s friend, too, and Sunset is… well, more than that. But there are other considerations.”
Shining glanced at her. Trixie inclined her horn subtly at the Crusaders.
Shining tightened his jaw and nodded. “Alright. Everypony, back the way we came. They don’t need our help in there…”
“But She does,” Dinky said.
Everypony looked at her. Dinky put a hoof to her forehead, wincing and closing her eyes tight. “The voices again,” she muttered. “The countdown, the nursery rhyme, and now the cry for help…”
Shining looked at the other Crusaders. “What’s she talking about?”
Rumble mulled over his response for a moment. “She’s been getting messages in her head all day, helping us along. It led us to temporal anomalies in Ponyville, showed us the way into the Tower, but we don’t know who -- if it is a who -- was responsible for sending them.”
“A who,” Dinky repeated, her brow furrowing. “And a what. And a where-when, a how… and sometimes why.”
Sweetie Belle took one of Dinky’s hooves in hers. The other unicorn jerked back for a moment before settling into the contact. “Do you know where the messages are coming from?” Sweetie asked softly.
“Yes -- no -- complicated,” Dinky grunted. “Something inside… it shattered, and there’s a piece lodged in my heart…”
“What’s it a piece of?” Sweetie asked.
Dinky shook her head. “Power. Unimaginable power.”
“Where is it from?”
Dinky shuddered, her whole body shaking, feeling almost feverish with chills. Then her eyes popped open, flashing with golden light, her mane frizzing and glowing with the corona of a dying star. “TARDIS,” she said.
Everypony stared as the aura of power faded from her. She clutched at her forehead for several seconds after it passed. “We have to get in there,” she said firmly. “Or at least --”
She glanced around. Softened. “I have to get in there. To try. There’s no need for any of the rest of you to risk your lives.”
She ignored the low, ringing gongs in the back of her head and the screams of the TARDIS that yes there will be, the Crusade had to save me. She had been alone before. For the sake of her friends, for the sake of her love for them, she could be alone again.
Apple Bloom rolled her eyes. “Fuck that noise. Ah’m with you.”
The other Crusaders quickly agreed. Shining Armor pursed his lips and studied Dinky for a long moment. “You know this is necessary?”
“Yeah. I can’t explain it, but… they can’t win unless I get to the TARDIS.”
Shining nodded. He looked at Trixie. “And you? Where do you fall?”
Trixie considered this. “Trixie wants to live,” she said. “On the other hoof, it sounds to Trixie like if this goes south, everypony dies, including Trixie. And Trixie is not sure if Trixie’s presence will make all that much difference, honestly, but at least if she dies first she won’t have to see the rest of the world go. So, yes, Trixie is in.”
“You know,” Rumble said, “that’s the most morbid optimism I’ve ever seen, and I’m friends with her.” He nodded at Dinky.
“Funny,” she said with a slight smirk. “I was gonna say the same thing about you.”
“Touche,” he admitted. “So we’re agreed -- we have to get in.”
Everypony looked back again at the flickering, unstable corridor before them. “Uh,” said Shining. “I’ll… I guess I’ll put up a shield?”
“We’ll help,” Sweetie said, looking at Trixie and Dinky in turn.
“Trixie is… not experienced with shields, but she should be able to help us reach the ship unseen.”
Scootaloo took the TARDIS key from around her neck and draped it over Dinky. “Let’s go,” she said.
Fitz lay on the ground, stunned for a moment, the shock making his ears ring. The Doctor recovered more quickly, it seemed -- Fitz could hear him up and about, dashing around and shouting.
Fitz managed to push himself upright. The first thing that he noticed was that his guitar was toast. He had landed on it awkwardly, smashing it. Hadn’t done his back any favors, either. No time to think about that now, though. He took in the scene. The beast they’d been attacked by looked like some kind of alligator, or maybe a crocodile. Fitz didn’t know the difference, and right now he didn’t much care. It was some great bloody reptile with teeth like daggers and scales like armor, about half the size of a bus. The Doctor was yelling at it and brandishing his sonic screwdriver in its face. The monster shied away from the noise, but it didn’t seem like it was planning on going anywhere.
Fitz looked around for anything that might make a decent weapon. Finding none, he snapped a branch off a nearby tree and charged forward with it, shaking leaves at the creature. It backed away a little more, snarling, then grabbed the branch in its teeth. He barely had time to react before the croc-thing flicked its head and flipped him like a coin.
For the second time in five minutes, Fitz hit the ground. This time he landed much more awkwardly, and he heard a distinct snapping sound from the region of his legs. He grimaced, biting his lip to keep from crying out.
When he looked up again, the Doctor was trying hard to keep the monster lizard at bay, the only thing standing between Fitz and half a ton of scales and teeth.
The Doctor glanced back. “Fitz!” he shouted. “Throw me your guitar!”
“It’s shattered, along with my leg and what remained of my dignity!”
“I know!”
Fitz struggled to twist around and pull the ruins of his guitar off his back. He wrenched around his leg wrong, and this time he couldn’t stop himself from screaming.
The Doctor hesitated, and the beast pressed forth its advantage, sending the Time Lord scurrying backwards. With a scowl, he cranked up the pitch on his screwdriver to the point where Fitz felt it in his back teeth. The beast snarled and cringed. “Fitz?” the Doctor said, starting to sound a little panicky now.
Fitz hastily tossed him the remains of his instrument, strap and all. The Doctor paused a moment to undo the strap, yanking it off the guitar with his teeth. Then he tossed the chunk of wood and metal into the beast’s mouth. It chomped down, and the Doctor sprung forth, landing on its snout and holding on for dear life. “Get on!” he shouted.
Fitz groaned and pulled himself up to hobble forth on his three good legs, all but falling onto the reptile’s snout. It tried to buck them off, but both stallions held on tight. The Doctor pulled the strap of the guitar out flat, then looped it around the monstrous maw, pulling it up tight.
He studied his work a moment, then nodded. “Right! Off we hop.” He scooped Fitz up and pulled him into a rolling fall off the creature’s snout.
Fitz cringed from the pain as they went, doubly so when they came to an abrupt halt by crashing into a tree. Once the spots had faded from his vision, he looked around to see the tail end of the creature stomping off.
The Doctor grinned at him wearily. “Crocodilians,” he said. “Very strong muscles for closing their jaws. Very weak muscles for opening them again.”
“Oh,” said Fitz. “It was a crocodile, then? Thought it might be an alligator.”
“Actually, it was an Egol, a crocodilian species from Betelgeuse VIII. Nasty world, that, all swamps and big reptiles and things. Got taken out by the Great Collapsing Hrung Disaster of 3758, along with Betelgeuse VII and IX. Terrible tragedy, that.”
“What’s it doing here, then?”
The Doctor shrugged. “Wandering around with a strap on its mouth, I suppose.” Then he frowned. “Fitz, your leg.”
“Oh, right.” Fitz glanced down. “Not supposed to bend like that, is it?”
“No.”
“Ah.” He paused. “They don’t shoot horses around here, do they?”
The Doctor didn’t find that quite as amusing as Fitz did. “We’ll have to set it with something. The branch might work, I suppose… gah, it’s times like this when I really miss Martha…”
Fitz shivered suddenly, a chill running down his back. “Martha?” he asked.
“Dr. Martha Jones,” the Doctor said, working on peeling the bark off the branch. “Brilliant woman, an absolute star. Not that I ever appreciated her for it. Still, she’s happy enough now…”
The world started to get a little fuzzy. “Doctor?” Fitz said. “Er, I don’t think you’ve got to worry about that leg anymore…”
“Hm? Fitz? Fitz!”
The sound of galloping hooves faded to nothing.
Dr. Martha Jones blinked several times to clear her head. There was a horse standing over her, his mouth agape. “What?” he said.
She looked down. She was also a horse for some reason. She let out a long breath through her nose. “Sure,” she said. “This might as well happen.” The stallion shook his head. “What?” he said again.
Martha smirked slightly. “Hello, Doctor.”
“What?”
In the event, it was surprisingly easy to make it to the door. Although the hallway flickered and glitched around them, the stones under the travelers’ hooves became solid as they passed, as though the ponies were temporarily imbuing the hallway with reality.
The beams of energy that lashed through the walls remained something of an obstacle. They hit the shield spell relatively infrequently, but each one was enough to make it ring like a gong and force Shining Armor almost to his knees with the stress of maintaining its stability. By the time they reached the door, Apple Bloom and Rumble had to stand on each side of him, trying to keep him standing upright as he sagged. Dinky and Sweetie Belle, each contributing their own power to smaller internal shield spells, were less affected by the forceful blows, but the effect was clearly still being felt by both mares.
The doors, it seemed, would be the most pressing issue, since they never stayed still for more than a few seconds at a time. However, as they approached the spot on the wall where the doors ought to have been, they shimmered back into place, much as the floor had done.
Shining moved to open the door, but Trixie held up a hoof. After a few moments, there came a particularly bright flash and Trixie shoved the door open, the others hurrying to keep up with her. As they passed into the room beyond, she lit her horn and cast an illusion over the shield, reflecting light off its surface. It wasn’t quite invisible, not fully, but in the smoky, battle-torn tomb, it was good enough.
The battle itself was hard to follow, exactly. Six luminous beings, burning with arcane fury, were pouring their energy onto apparently random spots in the room. Their opponents were never quite standing where the gods struck. The Interface’s eyes were glowing gold, and the air seemed to shimmer around it and the Valeyard alike. It took Dinky a moment, but she soon realized what they were doing -- using the energy stolen from the TARDIS to shift their positions in time and space so that the raw forces of the universe would never touch them. But it was clear that they couldn’t keep it up forever. The golden energy leaking from the machine was evidence enough of that. It felt so familiar, somehow. Welcoming.
“Dinky!” Scootaloo hissed. “Come on!”
She blinked. She hadn’t realized that she’d stopped. “...Sorry,” she muttered, hurrying along with the others.
“The big golden hole is new,” Button said quietly. “What is it?”
“Wrong,” Dinky replied shortly. “This whole place… it makes me feel sick just being here.”
“Don’t worry. We’re nearly to the TARDIS,” Shining said, peering through the smoke and dust. The blue box stood sentinel in the center of the room, untouched by the fighting going on all around it. Nevertheless, there was something wrong with it -- the lights were off, and it had faded to a greyer shade of blue. It even seemed to have shrunk a little, as though it was shriveling up.
They were almost to the door. That’s when it happened. The Interface, apparently tired of playing defense, struck out with a golden beam of light. It struck Twilight full in the chest.
Trixie’s eyes went wide, and she tried to grab Shining’s horn, but too little, too late, and Twilight was caught in a shield spell just before she would have plowed into the back wall.
There was a pause.
“It seems,” said the Valeyard, “That we have some unexpected guests.”
“Run,” Trixie said.
In the next moment, the shield blew apart on contact with another golden ray, sending the occupants sprawling.
The gods were screaming, pouring more force onto the villains, but the Interface was not deterred as he walked forward to where Dinky struggled to rise from the ground. It reached her, put a hoof on her chest, and glanced up. “I don’t believe I have any remaining qualms about my power supply,” the Nightmare said coolly. An instant later, all six were stopped as though in amber, glowing faintly golden, their eyes blazing with fear and anger.
The Nightmare studied Dinky as though she were a slide under a microscope. “You have something I want,” it said. The clouds of golden energy coalesced around the pair. The Nightmare fizzled and popped, smoke pouring from its body. “I intend to take it back.”
Dinky tried to scream, but the golden energy poured into her mouth, her ears, nose, eyes, through every pore, like searching for like.
Then it began to pull back.
It felt like she was having her soul extracted. Surely there was no need for it to be this slow, this agonizing. She tried to struggle, but couldn’t overcome the monster’s force. The Nightmare laughed.
Then a big rock hit it in the face.
The energy stopped moving. Dinky had no time to think, she just acted. She pulled back on the energy, reeling it in. The Nightmare recovered and quickly started to fight back, but Dinky had inertia on her side. She pulled, and it pulled, both determined not to let the other overtake them --
And the tug-of-war rope snapped. Both of them went sprawling. Sweetie Belle pulled Dinky to her hooves as Apple Bloom hefted another rock. “Move!” she shouted.
Above them, the alicorns and draconocci began to move again, slowly. Shining and Trixie were busy fending off the Valeyard, preventing him from approaching the Crusaders or the TARDIS, defending their position and distracting the foe with illusions and trickery.
Dinky fumbled with the key around her neck, shoving it haphazardly at the lock as her friends gathered around. Finally, she opened the door and all but fell through, the others quickly following her. Rumble glanced back at the tableau. The Nightmare was regaining its footing, enraged. Shining and Trixie were slowly losing ground. He looked up at the alicorns and draconocci as they slowly unfroze. A lazy bolt of blue magic crept down and enveloped the two unicorns. When it had vanished, so had they.
Cadance looked at him slowly and gave a small, sad smile. Rumble nodded back and shut the door, locking it behind him.
“Okay,” he said. “Now what?” He looked around for Dinky.
She lay on the floor, shaking, as her eyes glowed pure gold. “Oh,” said Rumble. “Shit.”
Dinky screamed with far too many voices.
Outside, the Nightmare shook its head as if to clear it, then gazed up at the thawing gods. “There won’t be any round three, thank you,” it snarled. The remaining golden energy coalesced into bubbles of time that surrounded each of the gods, sealing them off from the world outside.
None of them reacted. They merely looked at him, silent in their judgement. Well, except for Discord, who immediately started making armpit fart noises at their foes below.
The Nightmare snarled and sat back, temporarily stymied and weary. After a moment, it said, “This changes nothing.”
“Good,” the Valeyard said. “In that case, I’ll take my leave, as agreed.”
The Nightmare nodded. “There are too many rogue factions at work,” it growled. “You see to the one in Ponyville. I’ll take care of the ones up here.”
“And the power of the TARDIS?”
“The child cannot hold it forever. One way or another, I will recoup what is mine by right of conquest.”
The Valeyard nodded. “You may wish not to kill the rogue agents,” he noted. “They could prove useful bargaining chips.”
“Hm.” The Nightmare said nothing more as the Valeyard walked over and passed through the rift.
Nurse Redheart stood in the coma ward. Things had calmed down somewhat. Fluttershy and Ditzy Doo’s heart rates had returned to normal, the various gods were no longer oozing corruption from their very pores, and almost everything appeared to be fine. The alicorns and draconocci had higher heart rates than she would have liked, and they were going through magic drips like Pinkie Pie went through pastries, but they didn’t seem to be in imminent peril, which was a nice change.
“How are you holding up, hon?”
The pager beeped. “I’m doing alright. Like I said before, my memories are… getting fuzzy. But I can remember the most important things, like Button and you.”
“Romana said she could fix it. I’m sure your memory will recover when she does.”
“I hope so.”
Redheart sighed and held the device to her chest. “The coma, the attack, the shield… I don’t know how any of us are going to make it out.” She paused. “I’m sorry. That’s not something you need to hear right now.”
“No. But it’s something you needed to say, and that’s still impo --”
Redheart frowned and shook the pager. “Tender? Hon? You still there?”
“Something’s happening. With the Doctor. I can see something moving, like a shadow out of time…”
Redheart glanced up, and immediately the Doctor’s heartsbeat rose, his eyes shot open, and he sat bolt upright, gasping for air.
Redheart stepped back, ears flat against her head as her patient checked himself over from tip to tail, studying his hooves, running his tongue along his teeth, brushing back his mane.
“...Doctor?” Redheart said, her voice shaking.
The Time Lord’s gaze flicked to her, and for a moment, his dark brown eyes seemed to cut her open, dissecting her mind and soul as he studied, dispassionately, her entire life. It lasted only an instant before he broke into a grin -- hesitant at first, then slowly more eager. “I’m back,” he croaked, voice rusty from misuse. “I’m back!”
Dinky was burning from the inside out. She could feel her friends huddling around her, not quite sure what they could do to help. Rumble, Scootaloo, Apple Bloom, Button Mash, all their faces blurred in the golden haze that clouded her gaze and fogged her mind. The heat was terrible, but it was more than mere heat that was cooking her. She could see time as it unspooled, forking off in all directions. She saw possible futures, alternate nows, histories that hadn’t happened, all laid out before her like a road map as wide as her field of vision. All the time it as growing, as though she was getting farther and farther away from reality, higher and higher in the air above a maze on the ground far below. What was the right path to take? Where was the path she had been on? How far could this maze go on for? Her vision swam as she tried to take it all in, the burning growing ever more painful, the heat muddying her mind
And then there was a blast of cold clarity and Dinky was dripping wet.
Everypony was staring at Sweetie, who was levitating a now-empty bucket over Dinky’s head. “What? She was literally burning up. Would you rather I used a fire extinguisher?”
“Won’t hold,” Dinky said, steam curling off her coat. “Too much power. Not built to hold it.”
“Er…” Button looked around. “Can you give it to the TARDIS?”
Dinky considered this as best she could. “... Maybe. Gimme a hoof…”
Apple Bloom hauled her upright and helped her stumble to the console. Dinky slammed both forehooves down on a panel. “Alright,” she growled. “You’re feeling hungry? Eat up.”
Slowly, the pale golden flames shifted down to concentrate in her hooves. The other Crusaders watched as the energy flowed through the console, twisting around the controls in glowing coils and curls before being absorbed into the time rotor in the center. For almost three minutes, Dinky stood perfectly still, her hooves pressed firmly against the wooden panel, her brow furrowed in concentration. Then the connection seemed to fade, and Dinky fell back. Button quickly caught her and Rumble bent down to allow her to lie on his back.
“Feelin’ better?” Apple Bloom asked softly.
Dinky took several long, labored breaths before nodding. “Better,” she muttered. “Still bad, though.”
“What was that?” Scootaloo asked. “Some kind of poison that the Nightmare was spewing?”
Dinky shook her head. “Energy. Artron. Very powerful. Runs the TARDIS. Useful if you can channel it properly. Fatal if you can’t.”
“But… you got it out in time?” Sweetie said hesitantly. “You’ll survive, right?”
“... Probably?” Dinky guessed. “TARDIS took almost all of it. Just left me a little piece -- no more than what she gave me all those years ago…”
“Come again?” Apple Bloom said, tilting her head.
Dinky chuckled drily, her eyes still unfocused. “Of all the things the ‘price to pay’ could’ve been… I wouldn’t’ve guessed this…”
“Alright, enough chatter,” Rumble said firmly. “We need to get you to a hospital. Scootaloo, too. Probably all of us, actually.”
Button started consulting monitors until he found one that purported to be a model of the TARDIS’s interior. “Looks like there’s something called a ‘medbay’ that’s not too far from here,” he said. “That sounds promising… uh?”
“What?” Scootaloo asked, glancing over.
Button frowned. “There’s a flashing dot in another room. And the medbay’s flashing too… hold on.” He twisted a couple of knobs to increase the resolution of the screen, zooming closer to the two rooms. “The other one’s something called the ‘Zero Room’.”
“Sounds kinda creepy,” Sweetie said.
Button’s frown deepened. “The flashing in the Zero Room… it’s an icon of a pocket watch.”
Everyone looked at Dinky’s flank. The image of a pocket watch was proudly emblazoned there. “...Could be a coincidence,” Apple Bloom said. “Maybe it’s just some kinda alarm? Like, a timer that says it needs some maintenance?”
“Maybe,” Button said. “On the other hoof, the medbay is a lot less ambiguous.”
The others trotted around. Indeed, flashing in the medbay was an icon of Scootaloo’s cutie mark.
“You think it’s the TARDIS telling us where to go?” Apple Bloom asked. “Like th’ Cutie Map?”
Button shrugged. “That seems to be the general idea, yeah.”
Rumble grunted. “Guess we’re splitting up again.” He glanced at his back. “Guess I’m with Dinky.”
“An’ Ah’m with Scoots,” Bloom said. “Button? Sweetie?”
The two glanced at one another. “Well, I don’t have much medical experience,” Sweetie admitted. “And I’m really curious to find out what a Zero Room is…”
Button nodded. “I’ll go with team medbay, then,” he said. “Can’t believe the Doctor’s never taken us there before, with all the scrapes we got in over the years…”
Rumble studied the map for a few more seconds, memorizing the route before nodding firmly. “Alright. Let’s see what this place has got.”
He set off toward one of the flights of stairs heading up, Sweetie Belle quickly bounding after him with a quick wave goodbye to the others as they trotted across a catwalk and into the hall beyond.
“Martha,” said the Doctor. “Forgive me if I’m being a little slow today, but… weren’t you Fitz a minute ago?”
“Yep,” she said, looking herself over. She was a batpony. Her coat was a rusty brown shade, with a slightly darker blaze and socks. The icon of a golden caduceus emblazoned each flank. Her mane was black and tied back in a ponytail.
“Right,” said the Doctor. “That’s… a bit strange, I think. Usually I’m the one changing bodies.”
Martha grinned a bit at that. “How is it being on the other end of it?” she asked.
“Er… confusing,” the Doctor admitted. “Where did Fitz go?”
She shrugged. “Where did the you with the leather jacket go?”
“I… alright, that’s different. I kept my continuity.”
Martha let out a gasp of mock horror. “Continuity? You? Oh, Doctor, what would Iris say?”
“I -- alright, no. Martha never met Iris Wildthyme, at least not as far as I ever knew, and she certainly never met my ninth self. Who are you? Really?”
Martha smiled at him. “As far as anything goes practically, I really am Martha Jones,” she said. “Just as much I really was Fitz Kreiner.”
“You’re a simulation, then.”
She rolled her eyes a little. “Well, yeah. Thought we’d established that.”
“But --”
She held up a hoof. “Look, I’m sorry, just let me… let me treasure this moment. Me knowing more about the situation than you, you quite desperate for my help… I don't mean to lord it over you or anything, but it’s rather refreshing.”
The Doctor frowned. “...Alright, I suppose I had that coming,” he admitted. “But really -- who are you?”
“Call me... Companion,” Martha said. “I’m part of your mental landscape, which is where we’re standing at the moment -- at least, we’re standing in a version of it that can be understood as a physical landscape.”
The Doctor scrunched up his face. “So… this piece of the Matrix is…”
“Your personal biodata,” Martha said. “Your life’s experiences, your thoughts, your memories, your DNA. Everything.”
“...Right,” said the Doctor. “Okay. That makes a sort of sense. So you, as Companion… you could be any of my friends? You could be --”
“If you say Rose, I swear--”
“--Jo?” he said, not missing a beat.
Martha’s form flickered, and the Doctor saw in her place a smiling blonde pegasus with a mint-green coat. She wore go-go boots and a fluffy white scarf, and she had a cutie mark of an open lock. Then Martha was back.
The Doctor nodded. “What about Fitz? Can you bring him back, or --”
She flickered again, and Fitz nodded at the Doctor. His leg was healed, and so was his guitar. Martha returned.
The Doctor considered this carefully. “What about… Adric?”
Martha frowned slightly at that and shook her head.
The Doctor exhaled slowly through his nose. “Some restrictions apply, then.”
“Only the ones that you’ve placed on me,” Martha said quietly.
He nodded. “There are some faces that I can’t bear to see, some voices I can’t hear without them breaking my hearts all over again,” he said. “The twisted friends in the ruins of Gallifrey -- the ones I can’t forgive myself for.”
Martha nodded. “With some exceptions, of course,” she added. “You saw that Fitz is fine, because in the end, he was alright. I could do Romana, because she forgave you in the end. Same with Sam, or Evelyn, and so on.”
“...I see. And if you’re Companion… does that mean that we’re standing on Planet?”
“And that we were just attacked by Monster, yes.”
“Hm.” He nodded. “Alright. As fascinating as this all is, and no offense meant to you, but I have to get back to my real friends. They’re in incredible danger, and --”
“And you’re not in much of a position to fix that,” Martha said, her voice firm but not unkind. “Do you remember what state you were in when you arrived in the ruins of Gallifrey?”
“Well… yeah, but I’ve moved beyond that now. That was just the Nightmare and the Valeyard manipulating my emotions, but I’ve beat them!”
Martha shook her head. “No. They were manipulating your emotions, yes. They picked at your wounds, your paranoia, and all your worst impulses, that’s true. But those wounds didn’t come from nowhere, Doctor -- you’ve been accumulating traumas for the past sixteen centuries or so, along with what are, in my opinion, some incredibly unhealthy ways of dealing with them. You had an adrenaline rush and a hit of serotonin, which adds up to trying to put a plaster and a bit of ointment on cancer!”
The Doctor blinked. “Er,” he said.
Martha took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “All I’m saying,” she said, her eyes softening, “is that you have your own problems to face before you can face the Nightmare and the Valeyard again. After all, they’re facing off against not just the princesses and the former Elements of Harmony, they’ve also got to contend with Ditzy, the Cutie Mark Crusaders, and Discord. They can hold their own.”
The Doctor nodded. “So… while they’re in imminent peril from some of my oldest and deadliest foes… I’m going to have a therapy session?”
“Essentially.”
The Doctor chewed his lower lip. “...D’you think they’d swap with me?”
Martha stared at him through lidded eyes.
“Kidding! Kidding. Mainly kidding.”
As the five pegasi made their way through the tower, made their way toward Rainbow Dash and hopefully toward Cloudchaser’s salvation, Cloudchaser herself made sure to always keep in contact with at least one of the other four. There was something comforting about it, something material, warm, something to hold onto. It was nice.
Of course, Cloudchaser would never ever let any of them know that, so she did her best to disguise it with constant grousing about the tower and how long this was taking and occasionally just swearing.
She was pretty sure they knew how she really felt anyway. Buncha sentimental dorks.
The chessboard wasn’t a problem. Ditzy fussed a bit about trying to recite pi backwards, but then Thunderlane pointed out that they could probably just fly over and be fine. It’d take a lot of lightning to kill a pegasus, anyway.
As it turned out, he was quite right. Apparently the chessboard had been warded against teleportation and levitation, but not just flying. Whodathunk? Apparently not Rassilon.
And then they went down the spiral stairs, and that made everypony’s skin crawl a little save for Fluttershy because Bird Brain Says Enclosed Space Bad.
But again, they were fine. They made it out at the bottom and moved on down the poorly-lit hall.
Everypony stopped when they saw the figure in the gloom. Nopony ever called Dash ‘small’, at least not more than once. She liked to boast that she was compact and zippy. Most ponies didn’t usually realize how short she actually was because she moved too fast for them to get a good look at her. When she did, her brash personality and natural swagger always made ponies think she was bigger than she really was. Her habit of getting up in ponies’ faces didn’t hurt, either.
Now, though, she looked small. Motionless as she was, diminished as she was, imprisoned as she was, the determined posture that she had been frozen into now seemed rather cruelly ironic.
“Okay,” Ditzy said. “I’m going to take away the mirror. Cloudchaser, you get right up in her face. The rest of you…”
“Don’t blink?” Fluttershy said.
“Exactly.”
Ditzy moved quickly and with purpose toward the statue. Hopefully, if she could keep that up, she wouldn’t lose her nerve completely. Bad enough that she was making her way down the hall to free a deadly monster, bad enough that she would have to face a friend who she had betrayed, whether she had been in her right mind or not, but to face both at the same time was a more unpleasant prospect than the sum of its parts.
Nevertheless, that was what she had to do to save Rainbow Dash and Cloudchaser alike. So, as though ripping off a band-aid, she shoved the mirror away from Rainbow’s petrified face. She winced slightly as the force sent it smashing to the floor, shattering it into shrapnel.
“Seven years’ bad luck,” Cloudchaser’s voice observed in hr head.
“With the number of mirrors I’ve broken, I can all but guarantee that’s wrong.” Ditzy took wing, hovering over the shattered glass. “Alright. You wait here. When I give the word, blink. Dash will do the rest.”
There was a sensation of agreement in her head. Ditzy quickly flew back to the others, who all had their eyes trained on the statue, blinking in turns. Ditzy settled down beside them, joining in their staring contest. “Okay,” she said as calmly as she could. “Blink.”
There was an instant of total darkness. When Ditzy reopened her eyes, there were two mares lying where the statue had stood. She sighed in relief and trotted forward, but stopped when she got too close to the shards of glass.
“Uh-oh,” said Flitter.
“Ow,” Dash groaned,
Fluttershy winced. “Okay. Um, Thunderlane, Flitter, you pick up Cloudchaser. Ditzy, you help me move Rainbow. We can set them down, injuries-up, in that main foyer, the light’s a little better in there.”
“You got it,” Thunderlane said. “C’mon, Chase, let’s get moving.”
“Drop me, and I’ll stab you with a shard of glass.”
Ditzy grabbed Rainbow near the head while Fluttershy took the tail end. Together they led the way quickly and carefully down the hall. Rainbow looked up at Ditzy, her face haggard and her eyes dark. Nevertheless she managed a grin. “Thanks for coming back,” she muttered.
Ditzy smiled, though it didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Of course,” she said.
Privately, she was cursing herself for not being more careful, not thinking about the mirror, not getting ahold of herself in time to save Dash long before now.
Even more privately, in the parts of her brain that the conscious areas weren’t yet ready to acknowledge, she wondered how many times something like this had happened to the Doctor to make him the way he was.
Romana waiting in town square with her ragtag militia of Ponyvillians. She wasn’t totally surprised when a body fell from the rift -- indeed, it was just the other horseshoe dropping after the two other unconscious figures had fallen out earlier. She was gratified to see Lyra catch the mare in a pair of large golden hands before she hit the ground. “Nice work,” Romana said. “Put Cloudchaser with her sister and Thunderlane, if you would.”
Lyra summoned a third, smaller hand to flip the Time Lady a mock salute. “Aye-aye, captain!”
“Please don’t call me that.”
But Lyra had already turned away to place Cloudchaser’s comatose form next to those of the other two victims.
Romana sighed. She had no idea what could have caused this reversal of the pegasi’s time-altered states. That was frustrating to her -- she disliked not knowing what was going on. Unfortunately, pragmatism prohibited her from investigating further. There was a siege going on, after all.
“Blueblood,” she said. “Organize a team to get them over to the hospital, if you would.”
He nodded, then paused. “Ah. It appears that may not be necessary. The hospital seems to be coming to us.”
“Hm?”
The prince inclined his head toward a pair of approaching figures, two earth ponies. One had a spiky mane, and the other wore it tied back in a bun. “Nurse Redheart -- Doctor?”
The crowd parted as the duo trotted toward Romana. The Doctor gave her a tight smile. “Hello.”
She arched an eyebrow. “You’ve been trapped in the Matrix by a maniac entity for the last six hours, and all you can say is ‘hello’?”
He rolled his eyes. “Fine. Hello, Romana. Redheart briefed me on the situation at large on our way over, at least in the broad terms. But what did you do to seal off Ponyville?”
“I’ll explain when things are a little less busy.”
The Doctor frowned at that. “They don’t seem to be particularly busy now,” he pointed out.
“That could change at any moment. Look -- Redheart, we’ve got three more coma victims.”
Redheart cringed. “You’re joking.”
“Afraid not. On the other hoof, I’d say it’s a step up from where they were before, no offense to Tender intended.”
Redheart frowned. “--to Tender -- you mean the others?”
“Yes, come on, I’ll show you.” She paused. “Doctor? Would you like a look as well? I can’t quite understand what happened. I’d appreciate your perspective.”
The Doctor looked distinctly underwhelmed for a moment. “No, no. I’m sure you’ll be fine on your own. I’ll just be… investigating the rift. I wasn’t able to get a good look at it in the Matrix.”
“Of course,” said Romana.
She led Redheart over to the three unconscious pegasi. “What happened?” she asked quietly.
Redheart frowned, glancing between Romana and the comatose trio. “I think I ought to be asking you that.”
“No, not about them. They fell out of the rift, we can’t know what caused that unless we can get to the other side -- what happened with the Doctor?”
Redheart shrugged. “He woke up. It was very sudden -- quite a relief, really. He insisted on coming here straightaway. He’s recovered remarkably well, I must say.”
Romana tilted her head thoughtfully. “Time Lords are hardier than we seem. Has he been acting at all oddly, do you think?”
Redheart hesitated. “Why do you ask?”
“Because he didn’t want to inspect these three, for one,” Romana said. “Not only are they a mystery, they’re his friends. That’s a virtually irresistible combination.”
Redheart chewed her lip. “He has struck me as being rather… chilly,” she admitted. “Perhaps it’s just the stress of the situation?”
“That’s possible, I suppose,” Romana allowed. “On the other hoof, he claims that he didn’t get a close look at the rift, but surely that’s the only way he could have returned to this plane. Put that together with the fact that, in order to leave the Matrix, he would have had to abandoned everypony else in there…”
“You think he’s been compromised?”
Romana rubbed her muzzle thoughtfully. “It’s a distinct possibility, I must say. I’ll rope Blueblood and Fancy into helping you get your new patients back to the hospital. Tell them our suspicions. I’ll keep him distracted.”
Redheart nodded. “You’ll be alright here?”
“I’m hardly alone,” Romana pointed out. “Three ponies missing aren’t going to make much difference.”
Redheart chewed her lip. “Tender?”
Romana tilted her head. “She’s still with you?”
“Where else do I have to go?” echoed through the back of Romana’s head. She repressed a shiver. She could sometimes remember events from her alternate self’s life, in dreams. The battle with the Neverpeople was a fairly common one. She tried not to be prejudiced about this kind of thing, but the total slap in the face to causality was upsetting on a biological level as well as a physical one.
“Would you stay here with Romana?” Redheart asked. “If something goes… wrong… you can fly and get us from the hospital.”
Romana didn’t hear the response, but from the way Redheart smiled in relief, she guessed that it had been affirmative.
“Well,” said the echo of Tender Care. “How are you doing, Romana?”
Romana attempted to smile back at Redheart and failed quite badly.
Rarity awoke slowly. She was no longer resting in Sombra’s surprisingly comfortable embrace. She was no longer reclining on a hard stone floor, either. Furthermore, she was no longer having a terrible nightmare in which she was alone and totally without friends, living forever in a tower of gold and jewels and desolation.
So far, she was prepared to count all this as a net positive, until she rolled over and saw that the ground was far, far beneath her, and the only thing that stood between her and the all-too-solid rock was the thin golden membrane of a bubble. She squealed in terror, sitting bolt upright.
“Oh. Good morning, Rarity.”
Rarity glanced up. “Twilight? Darling? What is -- what exactly is happening?” She glanced around. “Are we back in that dreadful tomb? Where are all the others? I see Sombra and all you gods, but --”
“Rarity, please,” Twilight said, wincing. “Ugh. My ears are still ringing from that last attack…”
Rarity tilted her head. “Attack?”
“We are prisoners. Again,” Luna said, scowling, from her own bubble. “Personally, I’m getting rather tired of it.”
“Ah,” said Rarity. “I see.”
“Basically, almost everypony escaped from where they’d been trapped,” Cadance said. “This is the more high-security prison, I guess. Once the Nightmare managed to beat us, again, he went straight for the only two ponies who he could still actually find.”
“Ah,” said Rarity. “Well… tits. I knew I ought to have gotten out while I still could have.”
Cadance tutted sympathetically. “On the upside, your sister is still alive.”
Rarity's lips tightened. “That’s not funny.”
“Rarity. Do you honestly think I would joke about something like that?”
“...No,” Rarity admitted. “You’re sure?”
Cadance nodded. “She and the other Crusaders -- mostly Dinky, really -- managed to, I guess, depower the Nightmare somewhat? Then they escaped into the TARDIS over there, and big, mean, and ugly can’t get in after them.”
Rarity sighed in relief. “Well. I’m glad that there’s some good news in all this. That being said, I think I would rather like to escape. Thoughts?”
“The bubbles are impenetrable,” Cadance said. “Magic can’t get through, as Celestia found out the hard way.”
Rarity looked around. Celestia had turned to face the back wall, clearly sulking. Her coat was singed and her wings blackened with ash. Her mane had shifted colors from soft pastels to warm sunrise hues. It had also been half burnt off.
“Don’t ask,” Twilight said.
“I’ll tell you about it later,” Luna said. “It was very funny.”
“Our current theory,” said Discord, floating above the others in a much larger bubble where they lay curled up on the top, “is that these bubbles are made of time, much like the shield we saw around Applejack, Rainbow Dash, and the Valeyard. We can still speak to one another through them because we’re all coexisting in the same continuum of relative time, but we can’t communicate with anyone outside them.”
“Which, on the bright side, means that the Nightmare shouldn’t be able to eavesdrop on us,” Luna concluded.
“But that doesn’t actually help us escape,” Rarity said, tilting her head.
“At times like these, you really have to look for the positives where you can find them,” Sunset said. “And, of course, keep up hope. After all, there are still ponies out there, and the Nightmare’s been severely weakened. Maybe they can overcome it.”
There was a *pop*, and suddenly Shining Armor and Trixie were floating in their midst, looking alarmed and confused.
Everypony looked flatly at Sunset. “I know, I know,” she said with a sigh. “I jinxed it.”
Rumble glanced around the corridor. “This is the place, then?”
“Looks like,” Sweetie said. “There doesn't seem to be any other doors around here.”
Rumble shrugged and pushed the door open.
The room beyond was bathed in a very pale pink light, which shone out from large circular panels in the otherwise grey walls. It was completely empty.
“Huh,” said Sweetie. “Guess we know why they call it the ‘Zero Room’.”
Rumble scratched his head, stepping in. “I don’t get it. It’s literally an empty room. Why would we need to bring Dinky here?”
Dinky herself hadn't spoken a word since they had left the console room, instead burying her face in Rumble’s mane. Now, though, she lifted her head, her eyes flat and golden.
“The Zero Room is cut off from the rest of the universe,” she said in a voice that wasn’t quite her own, and echoed strangely in her mouth. “Within these walls, electronic and radiological impulses are cut off -- even gravity can be negated with sufficient focus.”
To illustrate the point, Rumble felt her weight lift from his back. Dinky floated in the air like a rag doll, gradually drifting to the center of the room. “This room is designed for neurological healing. Dinky must rest here until she is recovered.”
“You’re not Dinky,” Sweetie Belle said carefully. “Are we addressing the TARDIS?”
Dinky's body nodded as it floated in the air like a marionette. “Well done.”
“Can you help us?” Rumble asked, stepping forward. “The Nightmare--”
“Yes. I know.” Dinky's face grew grim. “I helped you when the time was right. Am helping you. Would help you. Tenses are so difficult, you know.”
“Um,” said Sweetie Belle.
“For now… all I would have been able to do will be to have helped Dinky to have made a full recovery. Go. Join your other friends in the medbay.”
Sweetie and Rumble looked at one another. “I think we’d prefer to stay here with Dinky,” Sweetie said.
Dinky -- the TARDIS -- tilted her head. “You are not remaining for the healing process. You waited outside the door.”
“Sounds fine to me,” Rumble said. “We just want to be here for her when she wakes up.”
The TARDIS smiled at that. It wasn’t quite right, but the sentiment was clear enough. “You were good friends,” she said warmly. “Remember that. You will be good friends.”
Then the light faded from Dinky’s eyes as they fluttered shut, leaving the mare floating, unconscious, in the air. Rumble and Sweetie, sensing that they were being dismissed, quickly left the room and shut the door behind them.
“Well,” said Sweetie.
“That was weird, right?” Rumble asked.
“Extremely weird, yeah!” She sighed, taking a seat and leaning back against the wall. “One of us should probably go tell the others what’s going on with Dinky.”
Rumble nodded. “Alright. I should be able to find my way to the medbay. You’ll be fine here on your own?”
Sweetie Belle hesitated for a moment, then nodded back. “Try not to be too long.”
“I will.” With one last backward look and faint smile, Rumble trotted off down the corridor.
Sweetie Belle tilted her head back and let exhaustion wash over her. The adrenaline rush was finally wearing off, now that she was safe for the moment, and the many aches and pains she had accrued over the last several hours were beginning to catch up with her. She slid down the wall until her muzzle was resting on her barrel. Her mane, sweaty, dirty, and matted, served as a very basic pillow. She was tired, but happy. For the first time since she and all her friends had been thrown from the tower, it seemed like they might actually have a chance of defeating the Nightmare. A slim chance, mark you, but a chance nonetheless. They had hope.
Sweetie smiled a little and pushed herself off the wall so she could lie flat on the floor and avoid getting a crick in her neck.
Facing up toward the ceiling, she shut her eyes for a minute or two while she waited for Dinky to emerge from the Zero Room. Just to make sure she didn’t start to drift off, she started to sing again…
Meanwhile, in the Zero Room, Dinky’s brain still felt like it was burning. The TARDIS had drained most of the artron energy from her body, as she had said. Why she hadn’t removed it all, Dinky couldn’t guess. She couldn’t guess much of anything at the moment. She had seen countless timelines all at once, taken information from a thousand thousand versions of herself at once. It had been a shattering experience and now she needed to sort through the pieces, put herself back together.
She was floating in a void of infinite greyness. In front of her, the shape of a massive arched window frame appeared, apparently the only solid point in the world. Around her, jagged pieces of colorful glass swirled and spun, never staying still for long enough for her to register their true color or shape. It was dizzying and infuriating and Dinky found herself getting frustrated.
As soon as she realized that feeling and named it in her head, a piece of lilac-colored glass shot like an arrow from the maelstrom and clicked into place on the vast empty window.
Oh. This would be easier than she expected. She would just have to go back through her memories, one by one, and the picture should reform.
She thought about her time at college. She had gone to -- to --
A myriad of different schools poured through her brain, shining points and sharp edges sliding over her neurons. She was a thaumaturgy major, a mathematician, a historian, undecided, she belonged to a sorority, she lived alone, had a roommate, was on the buckball team, the writer’s guild, the pride club --
She shook her head to clear it. The burning sensation grew stronger. Alright. Focus. What happened today? How had she arrived here?
Some shards of glass clicked into place -- butter yellow, off-white, chocolatey brown, cloud grey, bright orange. It wasn’t much -- she doubted that she’d filled even a thousandth of the picture -- but it was a start.
She started thinking about ponies she knew -- her parents clicked into place easily enough, as did her close friends. The TARDIS came into view. So did Ponyville and Canterlot. But all of them were missing pieces -- which universe was she really from? Who of the Crusaders had gotten their mark first? Did Dinky have a sister or not? A brother? Was Bonbon a secret agent? Had Rarity and Spike gotten married? Broken up? Would they?
Her head was spinning again. She felt worse than useless. After she had come so far and fought so hard, she couldn’t even save herself. She was losing her mind in the maelstrom, self-doubt making the pieces spin faster, the crash of piece against piece a maddening tinkling chorus, each fractured piece breaking on the others as events ripped themselves into more and smaller potentials, turning into little bits of shrapnel that tore at her, sandblasted her. Shards of glass ripped loose once again from the window-frame, and with them went pieces of her mind -- memory, feeling, sanity.
And then the clatter of glass died down.
And Dinky heard singing.
Through shady trees and light green glades,
We sally forth, never afraid.
A merry company of friends,
A quest for joy that never ends.
The pieces began to slow, as the music that had brought peace to the beast in the tunnels, the voice that had given sweet dreams to an empire, did the same thing for Dinky’s tortured brain.
As the music flowed, the shattered glass began to move into position as Dinky felt, rather than consciously tried to force, her memories sliding back into place. Other pieces, those that were from universes alien to any Dinky might have experienced, flew off into the void and vanished into the infinite distance.
The tinker, the thinker, the rock, the lover, the adventurer, the entertainer. Apple Bloom, Dinky herself, Rumble, Button Mash, Scootaloo, Sweetie Belle. Six figures stood tall and proud in the center of the frame, and other pieces clicked onto them as her neurons began to cascade through the memories of their crusades.
When all was said and done, the last notes of the melody hanging in the void, about sixty percent of the window was full, and around thirty percent of all the variant chunks of glass that had originally swarmed around her had been banished to the aether. That still left some several thousand shards left to sort through. That was alright. She had come so far, done so much -- this was nothing in comparison.
The cuts that the glass had left on her skin began to heal over. Some faded as though they had never been. Others left faint white scars. A few left far nastier, more gnarled reminders. But all healed, in time.
The TARDIS closed off the audio channels to the Zero Room. Technically speaking, there should never have been any leakage into the chamber -- that was exactly the kind of thing it was designed to stop, after all. On the other hand, the TARDIS, like her Thief, had never been one for playing by the rules. She knew what her passengers needed, especially the mare who was as much a daughter of Time as she was of Time Lord.
In the console room, where nopony was around to see it, one panel of the central console lit up, bathing half the room in bright blue light. Then it faded, leaving no trace that it had ever occurred.
Redheart’s heart threatened to pound out of her chest until she and the other two had gotten out of sight of town square. When they did, she let out a sigh of relief.
Fancy blinked at her. “Something amiss, Miss Redheart?” he asked, tilting his head.
“...Yes? No. Maybe. You’ll think I’m being paranoid. Even I think I’m being paranoid.”
Blueblood snorted. “It’s hardly paranoia if they really are out to get you,” he said. “Go on.”
“...It’s… how much time have each of you spent with the Doctor since he woke up?”
“None,” Blueblood said.
“Hardly more than a few seconds,” Fancy said.
“Then there wouldn’t have been a chance for you to make your own observations,” Redheart said, her ears flattening against her head.
“Please, Miss Redheart,” Fancy said gently. “Tell us what you’re so alarmed by.”
“It’s the Doctor. Ever since he woke up, he’s been… cold. Distant. I mean, he's been that way for the last few months, but this feels...” she shook her head. "I don't know. He always cared about other ponies before. I didn't get that impression in the square."
“It could be the stress of the situation,” Fancy Pants mused. “He can always be counted upon to be serious when lives are on the line.”
“Serious, perhaps,” Blueblood said, tilting his head. “Uncaring is another thing entirely. Redheart, you know this version of the Doctor better than either of us. Would you say that this is out of character for him?”
“Well…” Redheart hesitated. “He has his moods, of course. And as I said, he’s been very distant recently. But… he feels wrong. I can’t explain any more than that.”
“Who else suspects?” Fancy asked.
“Romana,” Redheart said instantly. “She offered to keep him distracted while I shared my suspicions with the two of you.”
“You left her alone with him?” Blueblood asked.
“She’s in a crowd of her friends and neighbors. I also left the de-aged-out-of-existence shade of my marefriend with her to come alert us if something’s gone wrong --” She paused and facehoofed. “When did my life get even weirder than regular Ponyville levels?”
“A question I haven’t had the luxury of asking in a very long time,” Blueblood noted. “Very well. Fancy, I believe Redheart and I can handle three bodies between us if you would care to round up the guards.”
“Are you sure that there’s a need?” Fancy asked.
“If there’s a risk that the Doctor has been compromised?” Blueblood asked. “Oh, yes.”
Fancy pursed his lips. "Right," he said, levitating his charge to lie on the backs of the other two. "Hurry."
"You too. Good luck," Blueblood said with a short nod.
Fancy hurried off toward the castle, leaving Blueblood and Redheart to haul the three comatose pegasi to Ponyville General. High above the town, the moonlight refracted oddly through the temporal barrier, casting strange shadows on the ground.
Romana was desperately searching the crowd for the Doctor and trying, if anything, even more desperately not to look like it. She couldn’t say if she was being really paranoid or not -- her nerves were too rattled. The Doctor’s increased distraction and distance over the last few months had been a concern to her, of course, as a friend, a fellow renegade Time Lord, and as a fellow citizen of the universe. She was rather ashamed of herself for not suspecting that something was amiss sooner. But then, this incarnation of the Doctor had always been a tad neurotic. But that shouldn’t have stopped her --
“Romana,” Tender Care admonished her, gently. “Don’t let your regrets run away with you.”
Yes. Fair point. She shook her head. There was no time for self-recrimination now. Later, once all this had been sorted out, she and the Doctor could have a nice long talk about all this. She suspected she would be far from the only pony with whom the Doctor would be speaking.
“Indeed you won’t,” Tender said, a note of stone coming into her voice. “No, not by a long shot… Romana, look over there!”
“I don’t know where there is,” Romana muttered testily. “I can’t see you point --”
The image of an arrow flashed into her head, and without thinking, Romana looked round. Well. Speak of the devil. A tan shape was hunkered over her makeshift time-stopper, fiddling around where things were decidedly not meant to be fiddled with. “Doctor,” she said sharply.
He didn’t startle at that. Indeed, it took him a few moments even to register that he had been spoken to. He glanced over his shoulder. “Romana,” he replied.
“I thought you were taking a closer look at the rift?”
“I did,” he said simply. “Then I finished. Now I’m here. Is that a problem?”
“Yes,” Romana retorted. “I thought I asked you not to touch this.”
“No. You told me you’d explain how you locked Ponyville off from the universe later. I thought I’d try and figure it out for myself.”
Romana studied him for a moment. There was something off about him -- the way he was standing. She was sure of it. But what --
“He’s standing still,” Tender said.
Yes. Of course. She might have expected it from her own Doctor, whose bouts of energy were interspersed with hours of lethargy. This one, on the other hoof, practically never stopped fidgeting.
He arched an eyebrow at her. “Well?” he asked.
She did her best to recover. “Well, what did you think?” she asked impatiently, gesturing at the device.
He glanced at it. “Slapdash,” he said. “I suppose you were pressed for time, but it’s hardly professional. I could barely make heads nor tails of it.”
“Needs must when the devil drives,” Romana said.
He gave a small smile at that. It was decidedly unpleasant. “True enough.”
Romana suppressed a shudder. If there had been any doubt in her mind before that she hadn’t been speaking to the real Doctor, this exchange had eradicated it utterly. The Doctor knew better than to try and impugn her abilities -- he knew that she knew him well enough to call him out on two dozen half-baked plans for any one of hers he could name. “And the rift?” she asked, keeping her voice as level as she could. “What did you find out about the rift?”
He pressed his lips tight together and glanced up. “Little more than I could have guessed,” he said bitterly. “It’s an unstable Matrix access point. You managed to balance this portion of real space with it so that the time differentials would sync up. Remove the barrier you built, and the Matrix would suck this planet through that rift like a straw.”
“Which would probably turn it into a black hole.”
“Not quite,” the thing in the Doctor’s body said. “You’ve neglected to consider that the time differential would increase. It wouldn’t be able to compress correctly, not right away. No, what you’d really have is a brand-new Eye of Harmony. This world would become the second coming of the Caldera, ripe to become the site on which the Time Lords of this universe could be founded…”
His eyes caught the golden light of the rift and shone red. Tender, Romana thought. Go find Redheart. Now!
The medbay was a well-lit room, its clinical aesthetic a sharp contrast to the rest of the TARDIS’ homey design. It was a fairly sizable room, too, stretching on for what looked to be about a hundred meters in length. “...So where can we put you down?” Button asked, glancing around the room.
Apparently in response, a panel in the wall hummed open and swung down like a Murphy bed. Two pairs of legs popped out of the bottom and clicked into slots on the floor, creating a little cot.
“...Huh,” said Apple Bloom. She bent down to inspect the bed. “Good quality construction,” she murmured.
“Uh, hey? Bloom?” Scootaloo bopped her on the head gently. “You wanna wait on ogling the TARDIS’ furniture until after we fix my legs?”
“Oh. Heh, whoops.”
She rose, and with Button’s help, Scootaloo shifted off her friend’s back and onto the cot. It took a few more minutes for her to get into a truly comfortable position.
“Alright,” said Bloom. “Ah’m gonna start lookin’ fer a proper splint an’ bandages. Button, you start lookin’ for some miracle alien gizmo that fixes bones.”
“Right.” Button trotted over to the shelves of strange instruments that lined one wall of the large room. Fortunately, it had all been labeled. Unfortunately, the one who had labeled it all was the Doctor, so Button had to parse notes like, “HooLooVooian pigment repairer -- repurposed for red shades” and “Blood de-oxygenator -- not for use on animal-based species”. Some of the more abstruse notes were paragraphs in length and detailed the precise instructions for the device’s use without ever once explaining what it was to be used for. Others were covered with annotations and marginalia in several different scripts, from where the Doctor’s various incarnations had found a new use for their machinery, or had decided to try taking it apart and ‘improving’ its functionality.
While Button was desperately trying to make sense of what a “Titian Cardial Pump” was, Apple Bloom had had rather more luck finding fresh bandages. She studied Scootaloo’s legs. “Alright,” she said. “Let’s see.”
“Do you actually know how to do this?” Scootaloo asked suspiciously.
“Kinda?” Bloom hedged. “Ah’ve seen it done, anyhow.”
Scootaloo looked at her flatly. “Alright, alright, Ah’ll try an’ find a manual or somethin’,” Bloom said, throwing up her hooves.
The doors to the medbay slid open again and everypony looked round. “Hey, guys,” Rumble said. “Um. Need some help?”
Bloom waved him over to where Button was now sitting between two large piles of gadgets and one very small one. “He could use an extra pair of hooves most, Ah reckon.”
“Uh, I’m gonna argue that that would be me,” Scootaloo said, smirking.
Bloom rolled her eyes. “What happened to Dinky and Sweetie?” she asked.
Rumble gave them the rundown on the Zero Room as he helped Button sort the various medical instruments into the two large piles of ‘definitely not helpful’ and ‘unknown’, as well as the smaller pile of ‘maybe helpful????’.
When he finished the story, Scootaloo shook her head. “That sounds really rough.”
“Yeah. I can’t imagine what she’s going through right now,” Rumble said. “I wish I could be there for her.”
Apple Bloom sighed. “Yeah. So do Ah. Maybe we kin head over there after awhile an’ check up on her, but fer now…”
“We’ve got to take care of the problem we can actually help with,” Rumble said, nodding.
Button pulled a large tube off the shelf and squinted at the cramped writing on the barrel. His eyes went wide. “Oh, man. I think this might be what we’re looking for,” he said.
Rumble craned his neck to read the note. “Algolian Transference Needle: For bone regrowth,” he said. “Yeah, that sounds pretty straightforward.”
Apple Bloom frowned. “Uh, does it? Ah dunno about y’all, but Ah ain’t to clear on what’s bein’ transferred in this situation.”
“Or how,” Rumble noted.
Button pondered this for a moment, then flipped the note over. “Oh! Uh, there’s a diagram. So… the needle goes in near the fracture…”
“Bad start,” Scootaloo said.
“Uh, gets worse,” Button said. “Not for you, though. Somepony else has to stick a limb in the tube to facilitate the transfer of… stuff… from their bones to yours.”
“So you gotta give away some of that to help Scootaloo heal faster,” Bloom said. “What happens to you?”
Button scratched his head. “Uh, I’m not a doctor, but I’m guessing probably pain. Pain, probably some weariness, weakness… Probably not death? The Doctor wouldn’t keep it in here if it killed the donor. Beyond that, no clue.”
Scootaloo nodded. “Any volunteers?” she asked flatly.
Rather than responding, Button shoved his left forehoof into the machine and turned a knob, tightening it around the limb. He grimaced, but forced a chuckle. “Man, this fits like a glove. I’ll have to study it later, see if I can copy the design for my boots.”
Scootaloo’s jaw dropped. “I -- Button, I wasn’t being serious. You don’t have to do this.”
“Yeah, Ah could do it,” Bloom said. “Ah mean… there ain’t no way to say this politely that Ah can see, but seems to me Ah could probably handle that better than y’all.”
“Or me,” Rumble said. “We’re both fit, we could handle it.”
Button shook his head. “You’re both really strong, yeah. That’s strength we might need later. I can spare it without hurting the team.”
Scootaloo held up her hooves. “No, stop. Stop. I don’t want you -- any of you -- to hurt yourselves for me. You shouldn’t feel obligated --”
Button hobbled over to the cot as best he could with the tube fit over his hoof and looked her square in the eye. “I’m not doing this because I have to,” he said. “I’m doing this because you’re my friend, and I don’t want to see my friend in pain. If you really don’t want me to do this, I won’t. But this is a gift I’ll gladly give for you or any of the others.”
Scootaloo sniffled, her eyes starting to water. “You fuckin’ sap,” she muttered, wiping fiercely at her eyes. “Alright, fine.”
Apple Bloom loosened the left boot enough to pull it off without too much pain. Rumble helped her set a rough splint around the leg, tight enough to keep the bone straight while still leaving Button an opening to put the needle in. It was inflamed and swollen, unpleasant to look at.
Button lined up the needle as best he could, then held out his free hoof to Scootaloo. “This is gonna hurt a lot for both of us,” he said by way of explanation.
Wordlessly, she took the proffered hoof and gripped it tightly.
Apple Bloom stepped back as Rumble helped guide Button’s needle. It pierced Scootaloo’s flesh. She inhaled sharply but didn’t flinch. A green light illuminated the tube. There was a high pitched whining noise. Button began to scream.
His wails echoed through the corridors, and into the console room. One panel sparked and lit up, glowing violet. It fluctuated in time with the stallion’s cries, brightening and fading as his voice rose and fell, but on average getting steadily brighter. When the screams stopped, the violet light faded. For a few minutes, the room was dark. Then, back in the medbay, the needle was inserted into Scootaloo’s other leg and the room glowed a brighter shade of violet than ever, flickering and casting strange shadows on the walls and out into the hall until the screams became whimpers became silence.
Much to the Doctor’s surprise and relief, Martha hadn’t insisted on sitting him down on a log and starting a therapy session. When he’d questioned that, she’d merely glanced at him and asked, “Is that what you want?”
“Well… no.”
“Would you willingly sit through that?”
He’d scratched the back of his head at that and glanced away, much to Martha’s amusement. “We’re here on an adventure,” she’d told him, quite simply. “Just like always.”
Since then, Companion had willingly flipped through the available options of friends he could choose to accompany him. Most of them hadn’t been part of the mob that had tried to kill him, except for the various natives of this universe. Now that he knew they weren’t dead yet, they seemed to have been added back into the roster. There were a few others, like Evelyn, Romana, or Sam, who were still accessible as well.
Eventually, they’d settled on Bernice Summerfield. It wasn’t for any particular reason, really. Not any intellectual ones, anyway. It was just that seeing Ace in particular transformed into a monster bent on revenge was particularly galling. Most of the others had been hurt because of circumstances outside the Doctor’s control (circumstances he should have foreseen, fates he would have averted…), but Ace…
His former self had led her down the garden path right into the Time War. She, more than any of his other friends, was a monster of his own making.
Benny seemed scarcely any more inclined to chatting about the Doctor’s mental state than Martha had, though she did make a little small talk about the weather and how the Doctor was handling domestic life.
After about ten minutes, the Doctor stopped dead in his tracks. “Right, that’s enough.”
Benny looked affronted. “Excuse me?”
He gestured around with his hooves. “All of this nothing, it’s getting ridiculous,” he said crossly. “You said this was an adventure, didn’t you? Well, where is it?”
Benny chuckled. “What, you want me to be your Morpheus on this jaunt through the Matrix? Your Ghost of Doctors Past, Present, and Future, perhaps?”
“Alright, sure. That sounds doable, let’s try it.”
“Really?” Benny asked. “You want me to take you back through your own history? Let me rephrase that. You want to see your own history?”
“Well, if the current alternative is wandering around here until we starve, then --”
There was a rustling in the bushes and the Doctor and Benny froze.
“Don’t think this gets you out of an explanation,” the Doctor muttered.
Bernice glared at him. The rustling grew louder, and out of the bushes popped… a ball of fluff. It was blue.
Benny snorted and relaxed her posture. “What the hell is that? A tribble?”
The Doctor’s face was grim. “No. Keep back, Bernice.”
“Meep, meep?” The fuzzball pushed itself off the ground. It had a petite little snout and big eyes. It was painfully cute, like some kind of plush toy. Once upon a time, there had been a very successful line of toys based on its species.
“Oh, it’s adorable!” Benny said.
The thing looked up at her, its lower lip trembling. “P-pwease hewp me,” it said. “I’m just a poor wittle Meep, wost and awone. Won’t you hewp me get home?”
Benny smiled broadly and reached out toward the thing.
“Keep back,” the Doctor said shortly.
Benny frowned at him. “Oh, come on, Doctor. What’s the worst that it could--”
“Doctor?” said the Meep, its sweet little voice turned to ice.
“Benny,” said the Doctor. “Please meet Beep the Meep, inveterate conqueror of worlds and a war criminal even by the standards of his own bloodthirsty culture.”
Beep the Meep sniggered unpleasantly. “The pleasure is all mine, meep meep!”
Benny backed up several paces. “Right. Okay. Yes. Er, what do you suggest we do about our new friend Mr. the Meep, then?”
Out from his voluminous layers of fluff, Beep produced an unfeasibly large laser pistol.
“RUN!” the Doctor shouted.
Benny didn’t need telling twice, and the pair of them raced into the brush, pursued by blasts of crimson light that crisped the leaves around them to ash and the maniacal laughter of the Meep.
The six pegasi were gathered in the atrium. The lighting still wasn’t the best, but it was better than going outside and risking being seen. Flitter and Fluttershy delicately picked out the fine shards of glass one by one while Ditzy and Thunderlane stood back, awkwardly hanging around the base of one of the statues. Fortunately, the damage was largely superficial -- several small cuts, not deep enough to damage anything beyond the skin. After several minutes had gone by, Fluttershy had stepped back and pronounced that she, at the very least, couldn’t see any more slivers of glass in Rainbow.
“Yeah, I think you should be alright too, CeeCee,” Flitter said, after a few moments scrutinizing her sister’s wounds.
“They should heal well enough,” Fluttershy said. “I’d prefer to wash them, of course, to prevent infection. I’d apply bandages too, if we could, but, well…”
“We don’t have any,” Rainbow Dash said, sitting up with a grunt.
“Or water. Or food,” Fluttershy noted.
“So we’re just screwed in general?” Thunderlane asked, stepping into the conversation.
Fluttershy considered this. “Yes,” she said. “I think that sums it up.”
There was a long silence. “So… where do we go from here?” Ditzy asked.
“The Crusaders,” Thunderlane said immediately. “They’re still wandering around the tower. We have to find them before… before something happens to them.”
Everypony nodded. None of them gave voice to the very real possibility that they might be too late. Dash forced a laugh. “I mean. Knowing them, we should be more worried about them happening to something else.”
There were a few chuckles, but they hung hollow in the vast hall and gave way to a long and painful silence.
“So,” said Cloudchaser. “Back the way we came, then.”
There was a murmur of assent, and all six made a hasty exit from the foyer and back into the halls of the tower.
High above the pegasi, the earth pony contingent and Spike wandered the top of the tower aimlessly. Applejack was still somewhat steamed about their ignominious dismissal and walked along with her ears flat against her head. Mac seemed to be lost in thought. Spike was busily checking every door on the off-chance that Rarity might be imprisoned behind it, leaving Pinkie Pie to be the level-headed one for the moment. It was a position which she didn’t relish, but was prepared to accept.
“So,” she said. “Where do we go from here?”
“Back to th’ tomb,” Applejack said.
Pinkie sucked in a breath through her teeth. “I dunno, Jackie. It seemed like Twilight really didn’t think we should stick around.”
Applejack snorted. “Well, if she thinks she can jus’ teleport us away an’ expect us not to go back an’ help her --”
“Applejack,” Pinkie said. “We’re talking about the mares who move the heavens themselves, two of the most powerful unicorns in the world who ascended into something even bigger and better, the mare who blasted an invading army out of the country with love, and the most powerful reality warper in existence fighting against somepony they might not be able to beat.”
Applejack winced. Pinkie continued, more gently. “You know as well as the rest of us that Twilight didn’t send us away because she didn’t want us to help. She did it because she didn’t want us to get disintegrated in the first half of a second of the fight.”
Applejack winced again, harder. “Thanks fer that particular reminder.”
Pinkie blinked, not quite following. Then the bit dropped. “Oh.”
“Yep.”
“You mean you --”
“Three times. Three different Applejacks. All the same way.”
Now it was Pinkie’s turn to wince. “I’m sorry.”
“Weren’t yer fault,” Applejack said gruffly. “Ah know -- Ah know why Twilight did it. Tartarus, Ah’ll say it; she was right to send us away. But y’know, Ah -- Ah died ‘round ‘bout…” She glanced up at the ceiling, mouth moving as she counted. “Thirty-seven times today. An’ then Ah saw somewhere ‘round infinity of me. An’ basically, what Ah’m gettin’ at here is, Ah’ve had a real fucked-up day an’ Ah gotta keep m’self distracted from that somehow.”
“Thirty-seven?” Pinkie squeaked, horrified.
“Uh…” Applejack tilted her head. “Yeah. An’ then there was th’ mirror thing. Which, uh…” She spared a glance back at Mac, who was gazing vaguely into the middle distance while Spike chattered at her nervously. Applejack continued in a lower voice. “Don’t tell mah kin ‘bout what we saw in there, alright? Don’t wanna fuss ‘em.”
“I…” Pinkie trailed off, her mane deflating. “I don’t wanna lose you either, Jackie.”
Applejack sighed. “No. Ah don’t reckon you do. But it ain’t tomorrow. It ain’t next week, next season, next year. We got time, yet. Time enough.”
“... You wanna change the subject?”
“Do timberwolves bleed sap?”
Pinkie looked over her shoulder. “Hey, Mac! What’s on your mind?”
Mac shook herself back to the present. “Ah, uh, me? Uh, nothin’ much. Nope. Um. Jus’, uh, thinkin’ bout bein’ trapped. In th’ tomb. With Twilight. Terrible. Bad time.”
Applejack arched an eyebrow. “Mhm,” she said. “Awful close quarters th’ two of y’all were in.”
“Um. Eeyup.”
Pinkie grinned. “Aww! Did you two smooooooch?”
Mac blushed so hard that her freckles turned the same color as the rest of her coat.
Pinkie gasped, her eyes lighting up. “You did!”
“Almost,” Mac said hastily. “A lil’ bit. Maybe. She mighta just been, uh…”
“Trying to feed you like a mother bird?” Spike teased.
“Eeyup. Nope! Nope nope nope!”
The others laughed, the tension falling from their shoulders. After a moment, Mac chuckled a little, too.
The laughter stopped abruptly as the tower shuddered. All four stood perfectly still and silent, gazing around them. “Do you…” Spike hesitated for a moment. “Do you think that was it? The end of the fight, I mean?”
“...Could be,” Applejack allowed, turning in a slow circle. “Could very well be. Which, Ah gotta say, begs th’ question of just who won.”
There was a hollow knocking sound that echoed through the corridor. Everypony glanced around in confusion. Then, Mac’s gaze fell on Pinkie. “Uh. Miz Pie?” she said.
“Hm?”
Mac rolled her eyes and gestured downward. Pinkie’s knees were knocking together. She brightened up. “Ooh! Pinkie sense says, um…” Her smile faded. “Run.”
Nopony questioned the Pinkie Sense, even less so when the hairy blue spider that was easily a head taller than Big Mac rounded the corner at the end of the hall.
Dinky slotted the last few pieces of the stained glass window into place. It had gotten easier and easier as she went, not only because there were fewer pieces to sort through, but because she could compare them to the parts of her identity that she had already pieced together. She had never been a big fan of jigsaw puzzles, generally speaking. The picture was already on the box. Why waste the effort on recreating it?
Now, though, she understood some of the satisfaction other ponies felt slotting the last few puzzle pieces into place. The window shimmered with iridescent patterns, the colorful icons seeming to flicker into life.
Dinky squinted suddenly. ‘Seemed to,’ her flank. The whole thing was moving in a dozen different ways at once. The window fractured again, but not into little shards -- it peeled into layers, like an onion. The thin, colorful cross-sections flicked out, surrounding her. Her eyes went wide as she recognized them for what they were -- now that she had reassembled her past and present, she was seeing glimmers of the future.
Or rather, futures.
Each one was different. She watched as the Crusaders killed the Valeyard only to be annihilated by the Nightmare. She watched as they vanquished the Nightmare only for the Valeyard to trap them in the Matrix for eternity. She watched as her friends lived, died, disintegrated, were trapped, were freed, leapt from the frying pan, fell into the fire. She snarled. “I never much liked Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books, either.”
She tried to study them, to get some idea of how the Crusaders could do any of the things depicted in the colorful glass, but they skipped around oddly. She was missing something, some piece of knowledge necessary to these scenarios.
Still, that in turn was some kind of knowledge. At least now she knew what she didn’t know, which was a start. Perhaps if she watched the stained glass windows carefully, she could get some kind of clue. She stared at one after the other, letting the brightening colors seep into her brain. They hurt to look at. It was almost impossible to keep watching. But she had to look, had to learn.
Didn’t she?
Dinky’s eyes widened. Then she snapped them shut, pressing her hooves against her forehead. “No, you don’t,” she growled. “That’s how you got into this mess, remember?”
In her mind’s eye, she could still see the bright colors swirling, swarming her, jostling together, threatening to crack apart once more on one another’s fragile edges. The picture was still broken, just in a different way.
“Back,” she growled. “Back, damn you! You’re not real yet, none of you, and if you keep it up, you never will be."
The light began to fade. She could tell from the way the insides of her eyelids darkened a few shades, from white to pale pink. “That’s it,” she murmured, trying her best to sound soothing. “Just calm down…”
In her mind, she pictured the window as it had been when it was whole. Outside, the clatter of glass and the whistle of wind faded to nothing. The inside of her eyelids faded from pink to magenta to red to dusky orange to twilight violet to midnight blue to, at long last, the refreshing black of oblivion.
The Doctor raced through the undergrowth before tripping on a root and tumbling down a ravine. He landed with a heavy thump and a grunt. After a few moments spent regaining his bearings, he pushed himself up onto all fours and glanced around. He’d lost Benny. That didn’t worry him too much. All his friends wandered off at some point in the adventure. Which, thanks to Beep the Meep, this was rapidly becoming.
He chuckled. “I suppose I should be careful what I wish for,” he said.
He had landed in what looked like a quarry. Sliding down the gravel hadn’t done him any favors, and he was now bleeding slightly from several nasty scrapes on his barrel and face. He glanced around, looking for the forest. It was nowhere to be seen.
He sighed, rubbed the bridge of his muzzle. “Sure. Why not? This may as well happen,” he grumbled. “Where am I, anyway?”
He started trotting along. It was chilly out, barely above freezing. The silence and isolation reminded him uncomfortably of his dream of Quiesca. Wherever this world was, though, it wasn’t that. The rock was grey, and the sun was too distant, a chilly white haze in the blue, blue sky. It felt familiar, but he couldn’t place the world.
Then he heard a mechanical whirring noise, not too far off. He spun around. A hatch had opened in the ground. He took a step back, nervous.
He relaxed when a familiar face popped out. “Benny!” he called.
She grinned at him, pulling herself onto the surface. “Hope you didn’t mind the sudden scenery shift,” she said. “We won’t have to worry about Mr. the Meep anymore, I lost him in the tunnels.”
“Tunnels? Scenery shift? You did that?” the Doctor asked.
“Well, sure,” Benny said, dragging a heavy rock over the top of the hatch. “I can change. Monster can change. Why shouldn’t Planet?”
“I suppose,” he allowed. “But Benny -- where are we? I can almost place it…”
“Ah. Yes, that is the bad news,” Benny admitted. The hatch opened and the rock fell. There was the sound of crunching metal, and a modified howl of protest. She grinned, slightly manically. “Welcome to beautiful Telos, Doctor! It may not look like much on the surface, but the underground life is really hopping. Well, for a given value of life. Native home of the Cryons, adopted home of the --”
“In-tru-derzz -” a synthetic voice buzzed. “You - will - be - like - uzz.”
“Cybermen,” the Doctor said. “Benny, can you --”
She was already sprinting off. The Doctor raced after her.
The world swam before the Doctor’s eyes, quite literally. The planet flickered from one world to another without rhyme or reason. Dry, cold, hot, wet, populous, spartan, barren, it made no difference. He recognized a few of them on sight as he ran -- the barren plains of Skaro, the lush and well-tended gardens on Trakken, the red, dry soil of Mars -- but most of them all ran together in a blur of rocks, water, and vegetation, with occasional buildings for emphasis. The Cyberman lumbered along behind them. The Doctor glanced back. Really, it was more of a Cyberpony, far less refined than the metallic soldiers the Rani had created all those years ago -- a monsterous draft horse of steel and plastic. But terminology didn’t much matter -- not while it was in hot pursuit of them.
The Doctor’s mind whirled. “Benny!” he yelled. “Can you get us to the mines of Flidor?”
No sooner had he said it than it was done. They were in a low-ceilinged tunnel, with rough scars running along its walls. “Now what?” Benny called.
“Now, this!” the Doctor replied, whipping out his sonic. There was a buzzing noise and the walls began to shake. Dust flew everywhere.
“What are you trying to do, make it sneeze itself to death?” Benny demanded.
The Doctor stopped and grinned. “Nope. We’re in a gold mine.”
Benny skidded to a halt and looked back. In the clearing dust, she could see the Cyberpony slumped on the floor. “Of course,” she said. “Gold interferes with their respirators, doesn’t it?”
The Doctor nodded. “Yep. Now, can I suggest getting us out of here before this one gets the wherewithal to turn into something nastier?”
“Capital idea,” Benny said. She gestured to a wall that definitely hadn’t been there before. “You first! Age before beauty and all that.”
The Doctor stuck his tongue out at her before trotting along the wall. As he went, he found that the mine fell away, revealing a chilly evening sky and wet pavements. He tasted the air. London. 1963. That sounded familiar.
And then he came to the gate. Big and blue, made of wood, painted with white letters. He took a step back. It read
I.M. Foreman
Scrap Merchant
76, Totter’s Lane
“Oh,” he said. He glanced at Benny. “So we are doing the Ghost of Christmas Past after all.”
She examined the gate. “Seems to be the size of it,” she agreed. “This is the place you first landed, isn’t it?”
“Not first,” the Doctor corrected. “We had a couple of adventures, first. But… in many ways… it was where I really started to become the man I am today.” He glanced at her. “What did you mean, ‘seems to be the size of it’? This isn’t your doing?”
Benny sighed. “You know, you’re being quite dense today. It’s your mind. You’re the one making all this, consciously or otherwise. I’m just here to be your Jiminy Cricket.”
“So before, when we were just walking in the woods --”
“There was never really a plan,” Benny said. “Not until you came up with one. All of this is you, Doctor. Every aspect of it is influenced by your mind, brought into being by the Matrix.”
“Including the ruined Gallifrey.”
“Yes.”
The Doctor looked at the gates. “I’m not sure I want to go through,” he admitted.
Benny grinned at him. “Well, that’s what I’m here for,” she said, shoving the door open and stepping into the world beyond.
The Doctor hesitated a moment. Then he sighed and followed his friend through the gate.
He had expected to find the old junkyard there, with the TARDIS humming softly in a corner. What he found instead was a jungle.
“Benny?”
“Yep?”
“Is this what being high feels like?”
“A bit,” Benny said. “Your brain gets fuzzier, though, so it’s easier to accept things like this. Where are we, anyway?”
“Still on Earth,” the Doctor said. “Just a very, very, very, very long time ago from where we were standing just now…”
He glanced back. Surprisingly, the scrapyard gate was still standing there, looking entirely incongruous in the vast, overgrown landscape. “To be precise,” he said absently, “I’d say we’re around… mm, 100,000 B.C.”
Benny looked at him sidelong. “I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that date’s rather important.”
“You said my mind was controlling all this,” the Doctor said. “If we were going to turn up anywhere to learn a moral about Doctors Past, there’s one time and place that tops the list.”
He set off through the trees. Now it was Benny’s turn to hurry after him. His face was grim. “Do I want to know?” she asked.
“Don’t you always? I thought that was one of the main traits of an archaeologist.”
“True.”
“You’ll see soon enough,” the Doctor said simply, stopping to stare over a bush.
Benny peered out alongside him to try and see what he meant. At first, she couldn’t see anything more than matted plants, brush, and trees. But then, figures came into view, flickering into focus like an old television set. Six figures in all, three mares and three stallions. Two of them were wearing heavy fur pelts. One of them appeared to have been injured. Several of the other ponies were trying to care for the wounded one, though the mare in furs seemed to be trying to fend the others off her compatriot. It was almost as though she thought they were trying to do him further harm.
Only one stood aside from the rest of the group -- an old unicorn, wearing a monocle and a shock of white hair. His lips were pursed in a thin line as he glanced back at the injured stallion. He levitated a heavy rock into the air and inspected it, nodding grimly when he found it satisfactory. He turned to face the others.
The scene froze.
Bernice took in a deep breath through her nose. “Well,” she said. “It’s not as though I didn’t know that you’d killed before.”
“An innocent life,” the Doctor said hollowly. “A wounded caveman, who was interfering in our escape. His name, I think, was Za? There’s his partner, Hur, of course, and my granddaughter. Poor, dear Susan.”
“And the other two?”
“Her teachers. The first humans I ever traveled with, Ian and Barbara. I hated them, at first! The things you learn on Gallifrey, all lesser species this and Laws of Time that… but really, they were the best things that ever happened to me.”
The scene started again. The old Doctor moved toward the injured caveman, raising the rock. He was halted by a hoof falling on his shoulder. He turned, looking rather guilty, to meet Ian’s stern gaze. He began stuttering excuses, and there the scene stopped again.
The Doctor sighed. “But for the grace of Chesterton,” he said, “I would’ve done it. I would have distracted Susan first, naturally, but she would have suspected. She was always a remarkably gifted empath.”
“You said there was a lesson here,” Benny said. “What was it?”
The Doctor pointed to his earlier self. “I felt guilty,” he said. “I was guilted by a piddly little temporal, marvelous, brilliant human out of killing someone for my own selfish reasons. That was the day I learned what a wonderful thing a little mercy, a little humanity could be.” He knocked withers with her lightly. “That’s why I like having you lot around so much.”
“Was that the day you started calling yourself ‘the Doctor’?” Benny asked.
“Er. Yes, actually, but for quite unrelated reasons,” the Doctor admitted. “They called me Dr. Foreman, and I didn’t want to listen to them butcher my actual name, and it just kind of stuck.”
Benny nodded. “Reasonable. That thing has what, seven consonants in a row at one point?”
“It’s easier to say when you’re not stuck in four piddly little dimensions,” the Doctor said.
“Oh, don’t you start that again…” Benny trailed off as she realized that the scene before her had changed. Now, the two caveponies were both lying dead on the ground, and Susan and the two humans were nowhere to be seen. Hunched over the bodies, levitating a rock in his red magic, the Valeyard looked around, his eyes cold and his face spattered with blood.
Then the scene faded entirely. “There but for the grace of Chesterton,” the Doctor repeated quietly as the landscape fell away from around them.
The Doctor-thing hadn’t spoken much since his comment about a new Gallifrey rising. Perhaps he’d realized that he’d let his mask slip. Perhaps he just wasn’t all that talkative, which was, frankly, just another piece of evidence that this was not the Doctor that Romana knew and loved.
She hadn’t let him out of her sight since; not tailing him, exactly, nor sticking to his side like glue. She was just always careful to keep one eye on him at all times. He didn’t seem to be doing much. Mainly, he puttered around the barrier device, trying subtly to comprehend how it worked. How to deactivate it, like as not. She smiled grimly. She would be truly astonished if he was able to guess her little secret. She doubted he, egotistical as he seemed to be, thought her capable of doing what she had. Frankly, she had surprised herself, rather. She had to stifle a chuckle at the thought -- it was a horrible situation, after all, and she had to get her laughs where she could find them.
When the thing in the Doctor’s body wasn’t investigating her machine (read: when he realized she was watching him), he was studying the rift with his sonic, peering at it narrowly. He looked rather anxious. No, not anxious. Impatient.
The crowd of ponies around him, he disregarded utterly. That was rather convenient for the contingent of guards which seeped in through the crowd, slowly pushing the civilians to the outer edges of the square as they moved to surround the Time Lord.
Romana caught sight of Fancy Pants whispering frantically, furtively to Fleur de Lis. She saw the commander’s eyes go wide, then icy and narrow. Her elegant, angular jaw clenched tight and she nodded grimly. She met Romana’s gaze and arched a perfect eyebrow, inquisitive.
Romana hesitated a moment, then bowed her head and began to back out of the closing circle of guards. She almost screamed as she backed into somepony, spinning around to find a confused Starlight Glimmer. “Romana? What’s going on here?” she hissed.
“The Doctor’s been compromised,” Romana said shortly. She considered the other mare for a long moment. “If things go south -- and mark my words, they will -- can I depend on you to help get the citizens out of town square?”
“I…” Starlight’s face ran the gamut of emotions -- shock, fear, sorrow, anger -- before settling on resolute determination. “Yeah. Obviously. Er, your machine…”
“Don’t worry about that,” Romana said. “Even if they break it, the barrier won’t come down.”
“Oh. That’s good. Uh, might make it a little hard to take it down later, though.”
Romana was silent for a long moment. She forced a smile. “Don’t worry about the machine,” she reiterated. “Trust me. Breaking it won’t do anything.”
Starlight side-eyed her. “Y’know, I’ve got a lot of experience with ponies trying to hide behind half-truths.”
“Have you indeed? Good for you. Now, if you’ll excuse me…” Romana sidestepped the other mare and hurried out of the square. She didn’t look back.
Sweetie Belle had stopped singing a while ago. Her throat had started to get rather strained, and her mind was still fuzzy with faded adrenaline. But to try and keep herself awake, she’d started trying to compose in her head, tapping out a four-note rhythm on the ground. Tap-tap-t’tap, tap-tap-t’tap.
“Ooo weeee oooooooh,” she crooned. “Dah, dah, daaaa…”
“Sweetie Belle?”
Sweetie jerked back to consciousness with a snort and glanced around. Four of her friends were standing over her, concern and amusement present in equal measure on their faces.
“What’s that y’all were singin’?” Apple Bloom asked.
Sweetie blushed and hurriedly struggled to rise to her hooves. “Oh, it wasn’t much of anything,” she said with a wave of her hoof. “Just, y’know. A little ditty I was making up, that’s all.”
“I thought it sounded great,” Button said from his position on Apple Bloom’s back.
Sweetie beamed. “Aw! Thanks!” She paused for a moment. “Wait. What happened? Why are you on Bloom’s back? You didn’t get hurt, did you?”
“Er…” Button glanced down. “Define ‘hurt’.”
“He donated some of his bone stuff to help fix me up,” Scootaloo said succinctly. “So now we’re both… not good, but I’m way better than I was and he’s only a little worse. So, y’know, net positive?”
“Oh.” Sweetie took a moment to absorb that. “Wow. That was really good of you, Button.”
He shrugged, a little embarrassed. “It was nothing, honest. I know any of you would’ve done the same for me.”
Rumble rolled his eyes. “Yeah. Believe me, we tried, but Mr. Martyr over here wouldn’t let us.”
“I told you guys, you’ve got to conserve your strength,” Button said.
“I know, I know,” Rumble said with a shake of his head. “I’m just giving you a hard time, man. We’re all proud of you.”
Button reddened further.
“So!” Scootaloo said. “Uh, any progress with Dinky?”
Sweetie Belle bit her lip. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I can’t see into the Zero Room, and it doesn’t look like anything’s changed, but…” she trailed off. “I just don’t know,” she repeated after a few moments’ thought.
Apple Bloom rubbed at her chin, concern writ large on her face. “Should we… Ah dunno, should we go in an’ check on ‘er?”
Rumble scrunched up his muzzle at that. “I dunno,” he said. “The TARDIS was kinda insistent about Sweetie and me leaving.”
“Well…” Sweetie said. “I mean, that, or she was just looking at the future and saw that we left. That’s kinda the impression I got, anyway.”
Rumble thought about that and rubbed the back of his neck. “I mean… I guess? It’s hard to tell when you’re trying to talk to someone who doesn’t really understand linear time.”
There was a grumpy rumble that echoed down the halls. Rumble coughed. “By which I mean, someone whose understanding of the true nature of time is too far beyond that of mere mortals for us to comprehend?”
There was a more pleased humming sound in response.
Apple Bloom turned to the door. “Ah don’t reckon it’d hurt t’ check in on her, right?”
“I mean, it could,” Scootaloo said. “Arguably, it very much possibly could.”
But Apple Bloom had already set Button down next to Sweetie Belle and was opening the door.
Dinky was still suspended in midair, limbs hanging outstretched as some unknown will held back the effects of gravity on her. This was made slightly disturbing by the way her head hung limply, more disturbing by the way the room was lit up red, and most disturbing of all by the way Dinky didn’t seem to be breathing.
“Aw, shit,” said Apple Bloom. She grabbed for Dinky, checking for a pulse. After a moment, she felt it, faint but present. “Okay, she’s alive,” she said.
“What do we do?” Sweetie asked, her voice high with fear.
“Keep back!” Bloom said. “Uh, CPR, right? Ah know that, ya gotta give ‘em space.”
“Do you know anything else about CPR?” Rumble demanded.
“Yes! But not fer how t’ give it t’ somepony floatin’ in midair!”
“Try to push her down,” Scootaloo suggested.
Bloom nodded and put her hooves on Dinky’s chest. Much to her relief, the smaller mare sank to the ground as she pushed, and she stayed there. “Alright. Compressions,” Bloom muttered. “Forceful, but not so much Ah break her.”
She started pushing up and down on Dinky’s barrel, keeping time in her head as best she could, painfully aware that going too fast or slow might have terrible outcomes. Then she took a deep breath in, put her head down, and exhaled into Dinky’s lungs.
The unicorn’s eyes flew open, and she struggled to sit upright, bewildered. “Wha’ happened?” she demanded, her eyes not quite focused. “Where ‘m I?”
“Dinky? Are y’all alright?” Bloom demanded.
“Mmmph. Not sure yet.” Dinky shook her head as the red light of the room began to fade to its usual tranquil pinkish-white. “Bright side... m'brain doesn’t feel like it’s charcoaled anymore.”
“That does sound like a plus,” Button agreed.
“You weren’t breathin’,” Bloom said bluntly.
“Huh.” Dinky scrubbed at her eyes with both hooves and blinked to clear them. “Yeah. Okay, that explains a lot.” She coughed. “Uh, thank you. For saving my life.” She took a deep breath in and let it out slowly. “Words are... little hard right now. Think I might still be rebooting.”
“Understandable,” Bloom said, helping her to her hooves. “Can ya walk?”
Dinky took a few hesitant steps, then nodded.
“Good, ‘cause Ah think we’ve reached carryin’ capacity. But y’all can lean on me if ya need to.”
“Right. Good. Thanks.” Dinky paused. “Where are we going?”
“Back to the console room,” Scootaloo said. “If we’re gonna take down that thing, we have to know what we’re up against.”
In the console room itself, red lights like the ones that had illuminated the Zero Room were fading away, gone long before any of the Crusaders arrived to observe them…
The six pegasi flew along the dim corridors of the tower. The four who had received Wonderbolt training fell into a silent, diamond-shaped formation. This left Fluttershy and Ditzy fluttering desperately to keep up with the others as they wound their way up the tower, corridor by corridor in their search for the Crusaders.
It was Fluttershy who heard the noise first, her ears sharpened from years of searching for lost ducklings, talking with mice, and listening for when Angel Bunny became suspiciously quiet. There was something moving in the shadows. She stopped, hovering in midair, and Ditzy crashed into her, sending the pair of them sprawling and falling to the ground.
“Ow,” Ditzy said. “Um. Oops.”
“Shh,” Fluttershy said, eyes darting around. “I heard something. There’s something in here --”
A creepy cackle rose from the shadows, and all the ponies looked around. From the darkness, an old mare emerged. Then two more followed her. Time hadn’t been kind to them, and they seemed eager to repay that cruelty. “Look here, Sister Doomfinger,” one of the crones in the back croaked. “A pack of ponies out for a run.”
Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes. “Seriously? This is all the Nightmare’s got? Old mares? Uh, yeah, see you all never. Bye!”
She made to fly over their heads, but a wall of crackling light halted her. “Old mares, you say?” the leader asked. “Oh, yes. Old indeed, older than you can imagine. We Carrionites were old when the universe was young, and with age comes wisdom. For instance…”
The one who hadn’t spoken yet, Doomfinger, raised a hoof. “Imprison those who dare to fly, by oath I bind thee, pegasi.”
There was a pop and a flash of gold, and the four who had been in the air vanished without a trace. Ditzy and Fluttershy gaped. The three old mares turned their gazes to the duo.
“Okay,” Ditzy said evenly. “Now when I say run --”
Fluttershy was already nearly out of sight, and Ditzy quickly raced after her, the laughter of the Carrionites pursuing them.
Pinkie and Mac had become separated from the other two at some point, but at least they had managed to evade the giant spiders. This was something of a mixed blessing, because Mac had started to slowly shift into a ball of unraveling nerves, increasingly certain that her sister and one of her best friends had become spider food.
Pinkie didn’t think that was especially likely. Those spiders were big enough to face the full brunt of one of Applejack’s kicks and, well, spiderwebs were very flammable. But she didn’t think that Mac was in any kind of a mood to listen. The silence was deafening. She was like that -- even at the best of times, she wasn’t a big talker, and when she got flustered, she practically drained all the noise out of the room with how loudly she was thinking. Pinkie wasn’t quite sure how best to handle a mood like this. Her closest reference was her baby sister Marble, and Marble’s silences weren’t quite the same thing -- Marble wanted to fade into the background, while Mac couldn’t care less -- she was too absorbed to think about fading away or standing out or anything.
So, Pinkie merely walked right alongside the farmer, a silent companion for her to lean on.
Together, they wandered aimlessly through the corridors; Pinkie chose to look on the bright side of the thing; they were at least no more lost now than they had been before. And surely, if she hadn’t known where she was before, but she now knew that she wasn’t there anymore, then arguably she and Mac had become less lost, hadn’t they?
She was very pleased with this twist of logic, and she was about to share it with Mac when they both heard the voices echoing down the hall. “Maaac! Pinkie! Where are y’all?”
Mac inhaled sharply. “AJ?” she called. “Applejack! Can y’all hear me?”
There was a momentary silence. “Yep! Keep talkin’; we’ll find ya.”
Mac hurried toward the voice, Pinkie hot on her hooves. “Ah’m comin’, AJ! Where are ya?”
Down the hallway, a figure stepped into view. Mac ran faster, but Pinkie hesitated. She began to slowly back away as the Applejack-shaped figure expanded out into a big orange spongy thing dotted all over with pockmarks and suckers. Mac registered the deception too late, and with one touch from the creature, she fell to the ground, insensate, before vanishing in a golden flash. Pinkie turned to flee, but found a big, Spike-shaped presence blocking her way. In the fleeting moments before she lost consciousness, Pinkie learned what the Pinkie-sense for ‘My friend has been replaced with a Zygon duplicate’ was.
Fleur de Lis strode through the crowd, her face an icy mask. Fancy Pants walked at her right, Starlight Glimmer at her left. On the one hoof, Fleur didn’t approve of civilian involvement in military affairs. On the other hoof, this was a messy situation, everyone was trapped inside this temporal bubble, and Starlight Glimmer’s magic skills were nothing short of astounding. There were no better options; leave Glimmer to her own devices and her egotism and misguided heroism would mean she’d become a loose cannon.
She pushed her reflections to the back of her mind as she approached the false Doctor. He was waiting in the middle of the square, his expression sour. “You know, I do feel like we could do without all these soldiers tramping around, Fleur.”
Her lips tightened. That line had sounded so like something the Doctor would say, but it sounded flat and emotionless coming from the horse’s mouth, as though he was just trying to deliver a line. “Kindly do not insult my intelligence further,” she said coldly. “You may drop the pretense.”
The Doctor’s face went slack with surprise for a moment as though he honestly hadn't expected them to have worked it out already. Then he sneered. “Very well. What gave me away? Was it the comment about the second rise of Gallifrey? Because I didn’t really mean that one. The Time Lords have long since outlived their usefulness. The Doctor was right about that much -- they were decadent, corrupt, and, might I add, so terribly limited in their ambitions, weakened and dulled by their complacency. We were gods. Once upon a time, planets rose and fell by our command, but then the miserable fools thought that because of the Monan uprising and subsequent self-immolation, it was time to stop interfering in the affairs of the universe. Theirs was a pantheon that deserved to fall.”
Fleur studied him with bored eyes. “Imagine my relief that you do not intend to turn Equestria into such a world,” she said. “However, I must still ask that you vacate that body at once.”
The thing laughed. “Or what? You’ll destroy me?”
Fleur didn’t blink. “Yes.”
He tilted his head. “Really. You’d kill the Doctor for that? The pony who helped free you from the life of an assassin? The pony who introduced you to your dear husband? The pony who helped talk you through your dysphoria, helped you through your transition?”
There was a long pause.
“It’s what the Doctor would want,” Fancy said firmly. “Far better that, than to let a brigand like you cause mayhem and destruction in his name.”
“By all means, then,” the thing said, almost lazily. “Shoot me down. I’m not leaving.”
The smile fell from his face abruptly as a crossbow bolt thudded into his shoulder, sending him sprawling to the ground.
“Ah,” he said, bleeding rather profusely.
“That was easy,” Starlight said.
Fleur’s nostrils flared in fury as she erected a hasty shield spell. “Idiot!” she snarled. “Whoever shot that, if we survive this, you’re on indefinite probation! That won't kill him!”
The Doctor’s body began to glow unnaturally bright. He was laughing, blood dribbling from his mouth. Then his body exploded in golden flame. More shield spells were hastily thrown up, some of them too late, and Fleur heard the screams as her soldiers burned in the inferno. The flames blasted out for almost half a minute before fading. A new figure rose on shaking white legs. A hoof reached up, gripping its necktie tightly for several seconds before ripping it off. Blood-red eyes scanned the remaining soldiers.
“You were wrong, Fancy,” said the Valeyard quietly. “I won’t be causing mayhem and destruction in any name but my own.”
The Doctor wasn’t quite sure what happened. One moment, he was walking along with Benny through the jungle where he’d nearly killed a caveman, and the next, he was undergoing the psychic equivalent of being hit with a half-brick in a sock.
When he regained his vision and his powers of speech, he found a familiar, worried face peering over him. “Doctor! Doctor, are you alright?”
Grey face. Golden eyes. “Dizzy,” he slurred.
“I bet you are,” Ditzy said, helping him rise to a sitting position. “That was pretty nasty…”
The Doctor blinked, glanced around. He was sitting on a park bench on a sunny day in Ponyville. He shook his head. Had everything that had happened been no more than a dream?
Ditzy scratched her head. “So, er… Welcome to the Present, I guess?” she said. “Do you want to go to Ponyville General? I mean, I’m not medically trained, but I guess I could be Martha again, or Harry Sullivan…”
“Ah,” said the Doctor. “Not a dream.”
“No.”
He pointed at her. “Not actually my wife.”
“Define ‘actually’, I guess?” she said, glancing away.
“Please… choose a different face,” he said. “Not someone I’m actually traveling with at the moment, please? It’s unpleasant to separate the two of you.”
Ditzy tilted her head, considering her options, and suddenly, it was Daring Do sitting before him. “Better?”
“...I suppose,” the Doctor conceded.
“Great, because we actually have a lot less time than we thought,” Daring said. “So. Good news or bad news?”
The Doctor winced. “Hit me with the good news first.”
“Technically speaking, you’re not dead yet.”
The Doctor took in a long breath. “I see.”
Daring glanced down. “The bad news is, uh…”
“It is a little self-evident from the good news, yes,” the Doctor said waspishly.
“Yeah. Your body regenerated into the Valeyard.”
The Doctor clutched at his forehead. “I… alright. But I’m not the Valeyard yet.”
“Apparently? The Valeyard took over your body while you were out, and it looks like there’s some kind of out-of-time barrier thing in place… I don’t know, you’re the expert in this stuff. All I can tell you for sure is that it wasn’t caused by any ancient Mesoequestrian or Tenochtitlan artifacts.”
“That’s very helpful, yeah,” the Doctor said.
She glared at him. “Look, I’m doing my best here, alright?”
He sighed. “Yes, quite. I’m sorry, that regeneration really rang my bell.” He massaged his forehead with a hoof. “And I’m trying to come to terms with the fact that I did just die, in some way or another.”
Daring moved to pat him on the shoulder, but hesitated. “Uh. Yeah, not really sure what the appropriate condolences are in this situation, and we don’t have time to make tea, so that’s basically all of my options ruled out. Can we just do whatever you need to do here? Because again, you’re alive right now, but I’m not sure how long that’s gonna last.”
The Doctor sighed, nodded. “Fine. What are we looking at?”
Daring shrugged. “Dunno. Your mind --”
“My rules, right…” the Doctor said, glancing around. “Alright. If this is the present… Show me what’s happening in Ponyville right now.”
The atmosphere changed. The sky darkened, then was covered up completely by a shimmering barrier. A golden rift in reality split the air overhead asunder, and the world was cast in flickering golden light and dark blue shadows. After a moment, the streets flickered and blurred, and suddenly the Doctor and Daring were in town square. At least, they were in what remained of it. The surrounding houses were on fire. Soldiers were swarmed everywhere, their ranks decimated by the force of the regenerative energy that had been unleashed. All of it was frozen, a single instant of crystallized time. The Doctor saw Fancy Pants and Fleur de Lis standing with a unicorn whom the Doctor hadn’t met, but recognized nonetheless from photographs and stories. In the middle of it all stood the Valeyard, terrible in his triumph, skin still glowing with fresh regeneration energy. “Well,” Daring said. “That’s bad.”
“You don’t say,” the Doctor retorted.
“But I don’t think that’s really what we’re here to see…” she mused.
“Hm?” was all the Doctor had time to say before she grabbed him around the barrel and flew up and through the rift.
As they passed through, she released him, and the Doctor fell from her grasp and struck the hard stone floor. “Would you cut that out?” he demanded. “All this to-ing and fro-ing is making me giddy!”
“Uh-huh,” said Daring, not really listening. “Hey. You remember how I said it was bad down there?”
“... Yes,” the Doctor said warily, rising to his hooves.
“Fun fact, this is worse.”
The Doctor looked around and grimaced. “Yes. Yes, it is.”
Imprisoned ponies, beloved friends all, hung overhead in shining golden spheres, like horrible Christmas baubles. But there was something else, standing like a beacon of hope in the middle of the room.
“The TARDIS!” the Doctor cried, running toward his beloved box.
He scrabbled at the door handle, but could find none. Assuming that he’d just stumbled onto the wrong side of the box, he raced around the outside, but the doors were simply gone.
“I don’t think she wants to let you in right now,” Daring observed.
“Once again, your powers of insight astound me,” the Doctor said flatly. He sighed and rested his forehead against the wooden door. “But you’re right. The old girl has enough to worry about right now.”
“Sure, sure. Anyway, I think there’s another box you should take a look at,” Daring said.
The Doctor glanced around. Daring was standing at the side of the sarcophagus in the center of the room. He groaned. “Archaeologists. What is it about death that so attracts you?”
She arched an eyebrow at him. “Why Dr. Pot, I don’t believe we’ve been introduced. The name’s Kettle.”
The Doctor grumbled at that, but walked up to join her. She gestured at the carving on the surface. “Look familiar?” she asked.
The Doctor felt an uncomfortable prickle run down his spine as he studied his own features, carved as they were into the stone. “This was where I was sitting when…” he trailed off.
“When you fell into your own personal Tartarus?” Daring asked.
“Yes. The Valeyard was always rather theatrical. This must have seemed to him appropriate symbolism,” the Doctor said. “Though I still can’t understand why we’re here. My subconscious may be guiding me, but my mind can’t seem to make heads nor tails of it all.”
“Can’t?” Daring asked. “Or won’t?”
The Doctor tilted his head at her. “I’m not sure what you’re trying to say.”
“It’s like Totter’s Yard all over again,” Daring said impatiently. “You got all the way to the gate, and then you froze up. Well, I’m not pushing through this one, Doctor. You have to do it yourself.”
He stared at the top of the sarcophagus for a long moment. “Will you… do it with me?” he asked hesitantly.
Daring’s eyes softened just a little bit. “Yeah. ‘Course.”
Together, they pushed the stone casket open, the lid falling and breaking into a dozen pieces as it clattered down the steps, and they peered inside. They couldn’t see the bottom.
“Allons-y?” Daring asked, elbowing him in the barrel.
The Doctor stood at the edge. “Allons-y,” he agreed. Together, they leapt into the pit.
The fight was terrifyingly brief. The guards fought bravely and well, but every injury the Valeyard suffered was healed within moments, accompanied by a smaller, but no less deadly, gout of golden flame.
One by one the soldiers fell. Starlight tried desperately to protect as many ponies as she could, but whenever her attention was on one group of soldiers, the Valeyard would strike at another.
“Fall back!” Fleur called. “All of you!”
The remaining soldiers did as they were told. Starlight, on the other hoof, stayed dug in, firing spells and blocking shots from the Valeyard.
“Glimmer!” Fleur roared. “Disengage!”
“If I do that, you’re all toast,” Starlight shouted back, her face tight and twisted in a mask of concentration. “Go! I’ll hold him off!”
“But --”
Fancy Pants grabbed her and pulled her out of the square. It was now empty, save for Starlight, the Valeyard, and dozens upon dozens of charred corpses.
Neither of the combatants let up for even a moment as the soldiers withdrew. Each of them knew that a moment’s distraction could -- and would -- be instantly fatal. Starlight cast a ray of scorching flame, but the heat was dissipated by a blast of entropy from the Valeyard. That entropy moved on to age Starlight into dust, but she redirected it into the ground, making the grass wither and die, the earth itself crumbling under the forces of erosion.
And on and on it went. A freezing spell was met with a portal to Tartarus, was met with a beam of radiant fire, was met with a wave of despair, and so on and so forth. The battle wore on for what felt like hours, but was in reality closer to ten minutes.
And then it was over. There was no grand final spell, no last-minute trick. Starlight was only mortal, that was all. Eventually, her powers and energy waned. Her shield shattered under the Valeyard’s onslaught, sending her sprawling into a pile of still-smoldering bodies. She groaned and looked up to see her opponent approaching her slowly, still expecting a final trick. Her horn sparked and spat, but nothing happened.
The Valeyard stood over her now, his expression unreadable as he gazed down at her over the bridge of his muzzle. “Well?” she spat. “Are you going to kill me or not?”
“I haven’t decided yet,” he responded. “On the one hoof… I want to. I really would enjoy that, you know. Besides, it would ensure that you can’t do something stupid later on, for instance, continue trying to resist me. I really should kill you. And yet…”
He tilted his head, looking like a large, evil bird. “There’s something about you,” he murmured. “A note of potential that could become so very useful later on, once we’ve finished with this universe and can move on to the next one.”
“I’ll never serve you,” Starlight spat.
“Perhaps not. But my associate is much, much harder to refuse. For now, Miss Glimmer -- au revoir.”
There was a flash of light, and Starlight was frozen in time, golden frost etching complex patterns over her body. Her mouth and eyes were wide in a furious, silent scream.
The Valeyard smiled thinly, admiring his work before he turned his attention to the temporal machine still sitting in the middle of the square. He levitated it into the air, threw his head back and laughed, then ripped it in half.
The following moments were excessively anticlimactic. The temporal barrier did not crumble. The Matrix port did not destabilize and begin devouring the planet. In fact, nothing happened at all.
He looked at the machine. Sparks flew from either end. Nothing inside was moving. Yet, nothing outside had changed, either. He grit his teeth. “Romana,” he snarled, pacing off to find his erstwhile companion.
The Doctor landed with a thump in the ruins of his home planet. He groaned, rolling onto his back. Daring fluttered down to hover beside him.
“Seven out of ten for style, but the landing’s really gonna cost you,” she remarked.
With some difficulty, the Doctor levered himself up into a sitting position. “Alright. Now that we’re back in this nightmare, would you care to explain why I have to suffer through this all over again?”
“We’re looking at the present,” Daring said impatiently. “Your current state of mind is vitally important to how this is all going to play out.”
The Doctor looked around. Shadowy shapes moved in the broken buildings. “Doesn’t look very promising,” he said darkly.
“Ruins usually don’t,” Daring replied. “The question is, as with all ruins, why do they look like this? What happened in the past to affect the present?”
The Doctor looked at her flatly. “Well, there was this little thing called the Time War…”
Daring rolled her eyes. “Yeah, okay, but what about them?”
The Doctor caught sight of some very menacing glares being directed at him from usually friendly faces. “I led them to their deaths,” he said.
“No, you fucking didn’t,” Daring said flatly. “Like, ninety percent of them are alive and well.”
“Alive, maybe, but well?” the Doctor argued. “When people get near me, they end up getting burned. I know that, but every time, I still get close to them. I still invite them onto the TARDIS, knowing the risks, knowing that it isn’t safe, knowing that they always leave in the end.”
“You invited them,” Daring said. “But they chose to come with you. Well, okay, not Ian and Barbara, but everyone else. You think we don’t know that it won’t be safe? When we start traveling with you, it’s usually right after we nearly died three times in one day, but we come along anyway.”
The Doctor pursed his lips and glanced away.
“I wouldn’t have traded my time traveling with you for the world,” Daring said. “I don’t think any of us would. Why can’t you see that? Why can’t you accept that we made our own choices? You’ve saved all of our lives time and again, even given yours in exchange. But when you think of us -- your friends -- you see us like this?”
“It hurts too much,” the Doctor said quietly. “What else could they be?”
Daring shook her head. “Doctor. What I’m about to say is going to sound hurtful, and I don’t mean it to be, but these are monsters of your own making. You built them in your lab and set them free, and they’re destroying everything else here.”
The Doctor looked down at the ground for a long moment. “Can we please move onto the Spirit of Doctors Yet to Come?” he asked.
There was a long silence. “...You know that isn’t going to be better.”
“Please?” he asked.
Daring sighed. “Yeah. Yeah, alright.”
When the Doctor glanced up again, Daring was gone. In her place was an older mare, golden curls spilling down her off-white back. On her flank was emblazoned a stylized question mark. She quirked a smile at him. “Hello, sweetie,” said River Song.
The Valeyard found Romana in the town bar, empty apart from the two Time Lords. She had practically wrapped herself up in her pale pink wings, but turned to glare at him as he walked in. Sitting in front of her was a glass of sparkling golden liquid.
The Valeyard sneered. “Ginger ale? I expected more from you, Romana. Perhaps it was foolish to. You always were a rather weak leader.”
“Killing people to get your way is hardly evidence of your strength of will, nor of your intellect,” Romana noted. “Some of the greatest idiots in history have managed to do that. Anyway, why shouldn’t I have a drink? I doubt I’ll be around for long enough to have to deal with the hangover.”
“True enough.” The Valeyard walked toward her, letting the door to the bar fall shut behind him. “What did you do, Romana?”
She looked over at him archly. “You’ll have to be more specific. I do so much these days.”
The light in the bar took on a golden hue. Romana merely turned back to the bar and took another long chug of her drink.
“How does the barrier work?” the Valeyard demanded.
Romana didn’t even deign to glance at him. “I would have thought that would have been obvious, even to someone who only got a seventy-two percent in temporal theory.”
“Those grades were supposed to be locked--” the Valeyard clenched his jaw shut, pursing his lips tightly together. After a long moment, he spoke through gritted teeth. “How do I turn off the barrier?”
“You don’t,” Romana said simply.
The Valeyard chuckled, deep and low in his throat. “Oh, you’ll tell me how. One way or another, I’ll get it out of you.”
Romana turned around on the bar stool and rolled her eyes at him. “No. I mean, there is no way to deactivate the temporal barrier, not with that device. I designed it to erect a bubble around Ponyville that would never be taken down. Obviously.”
The Valeyard’s mouth hung open slightly. He was utterly lost for words. Romana sniffed at him and turned back to her glass.
“But -- but why?” he demanded after several seconds of floundering. “You’ve damned yourself and this entire town alongside you. This is as much a prison for you as it is for us.”
“Mm,” Romana hummed with a short nod. “Yes, that seems to sum it up.”
“You’ll all suffer for this. You’ve built yourself a personal hell, and I will be your devil for eternity. You will die a thousand thousand times before the first moment of eternity passes, watch as your friends suffer the same endless torment, listen as they curse you for building this prison.”
“Will I?” Romana asked drily. “Gosh. I hadn’t realized.”
The Valeyard snarled. “Don’t you understand? The Time War will be as nothing compared to what I’ll unleash on you and yours.”
Romana laughed at that. “Good grief, you really are compensating for something, aren’t you? And as it happens, I understand perfectly well. The one who’s running behind in this conversation is you. You’ll never understand my motivations, Valeyard, and you never will. I’m afraid you dissociated from that aspect of yourself quite some time ago.” She picked up her glass of ginger beer and drained it, slamming it back on the counter when she had finished.
“Now. Is there anything else I can help you with?” she asked, turning to face the Valeyard dead on, not flinching at his furious expression.
The golden light in the bar burned brighter and brighter. Romana pursed her lips and shut her eyes tight. A single tear trickled through, then boiled away as the Time Lady burst once more into golden flames.
The Valeyard walked away from the Stick and Carrot, not once looking back as its thatched roof began to smolder and glow. Behind him, a pale grey unicorn with curly chestnut locks stumbled out of the bar, choking and wheezing. The first Romana glared at her departing foe with eyes watering from the smoke. She did not curse at him, merely watched him balefully as he walked away. She turned back to the bar and walked inside to try and put out the fire before it spread too far, though she suspected it would be an exercise in futility. Everything was, now.
“Why you?” the Doctor asked. “I barely knew you, and I saw you die --”
The mare from the Library smiled at him. “Oh, sweetie. You might not know me yet, but I certainly know you. Anyway, since the last two were archaeologists as well, it seemed like a good idea to keep the theme going.”
The Doctor pulled a face at that. “I’m a time traveler. I --”
“Yes, yes, you point and laugh at archaeologists,” River said briskly. “You know, you really don’t have time to waste on rehashing old ground, so if you’re quite ready to move on?”
“You know, all of you seem to be getting more impatient as time goes on, too,” the Doctor grumbled.
“Well, as I believe I mentioned, you happen to be running rather short on that particular commodity,” River replied, her voice clipped. “Which is why I’ve taken the liberty of changing scenes while you were distracted.”
The Doctor glanced around, surprised. In all the fuss, he hadn’t even noticed Gallifrey fading away and being replaced by… whatever this was.
“River? Where are we?” the Doctor asked, turning in a slow circle. They were standing in a plain-looking courtyard, filled with a faint mist. It was circular, made of smooth grey stone, and almost entirely unadorned aside from some very plain-looking columns along the walls. Between the columns, corridors branched off in all directions. At least, he assumed they were all corridors. Most of them -- all but two, in fact -- were blocked by locked doors.
She gestured around. “We’re in the future, sweetie. Do try to keep up.”
The Doctor shook his head. “I don’t understand.”
River sighed and gestured to the doors. “These are your immediate potential futures. As you can see, quite a lot of them have been closed off. I’m sure you can guess whose fault that is.”
The Doctor nodded. “Only two choices left. So, what, I just pick the one I want?”
“When has it ever been that easy?”
The Doctor nodded reluctantly. “So what, then? If we don’t go down the corridors, what are we doing here? Just waiting?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.” The Doctor pondered this. “...Waiting for what?”
“Us, I imagine,” said a bright, Northern-accented voice. Out of the corridor on the left, three ponies stepped out -- a tall, gangly pegasus in a bowtie and fez, an old batpony with tremendously cross eyebrows, and a short earth pony wearing a rainbow-striped shirt and a grey coat.
The one in the bowtie waved. “Hallo! We’re the Doctor!”
“Possibly,” the old one added. “That’s looking less certain than ever at the moment.”
“Doesn’t hurt to be optimistic,” Bow Tie retorted.
Eyebrows rolled his eyes at that.
Rainbows sighed. “C’mon, you two. Would you rather bicker or ensure our continued existence?”
The other two grumbled a bit, but turned back to look at the Doctor.
The Doctor himself was frowning. “You’re my replacements, then? A P.G. Wodehouse reject, a retired rockstar, and a kindergarten teacher?”
“Watch it, prettyboy,” Eyebrows growled. River smirked in the background. “You know, I simply can’t tell you what I’m thinking right now.”
Everypony glanced at her, then looked away with varying degrees of embarrassment.
“So…” the Doctor said. “If you represent one possible future, I suppose the other tunnel…”
“No prizes for guessing that, no,” Eyebrows agreed, scowling at the alternate path. “Where is the Knacker’s Yard, anyway? He never struck me as the fashionably late type.”
“More the ‘annoyingly early and looking pointedly at his watch when you walk in’ type,” Rainbows agreed.
“Flattering words,” said a sandpaper-dry voice from behind them. “Punctuality is the politeness of princes, after all.”
River and all four of the Doctors looked around in shock. Standing at the other side of the courtyard, a pale figure stepped out of the swirling mists that had concealed him.
Bow Tie took a step back. “That’s… not quite what I was expecting,” he admitted.
“You’re not alone there, Sweetie,” River said, taking several paces back toward the Doctors as the Valeyard advanced on his hydraulic metal joints, blue steel wings sprouting from a white-coated body as dark flickering energy hovered, crownlike, over his head -- the perfect fusion of organic and mechanic, Time Lord and TARDIS. The Valeyard smiled nastily at them, menace in his flickering red LED eyes. “And what am I if not a prince?”
No matter how fast or how far they ran, Ditzy and Fluttershy couldn’t see the end of the hallway. On the positive side, the Carrionites didn’t seem particularly inclined to follow them, and their screeching laughter was faint in the distance. When the two mares judged they had run far enough, they all but collapsed against the wall, panting. Fluttershy’s eyes were glazed and wild, her coat shining with sweat. Ditzy was sure that she didn’t look much better herself, but she reached over and took one of Fluttershy’s hooves in hers.
Fluttershy didn’t say anything, but she gripped that hoof like it was a lifeline. They stayed like that for several long minutes. Eventually, Fluttershy spoke, her voice thin and strained. “Do you… do you think that they’re still alive?”
Ditzy closed her eyes for a moment. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “Those … Carrionites? they ordered them ‘bound’, not killed.”
“...That’s something, anyway,” Fluttershy conceded. “Not much. But something.”
There was another long silence. “I don’t know how much longer I can keep running,” Fluttershy said. “There’s nowhere we can run to, nowhere we’re safe…”
“I know,” Ditzy said.
“I’m so tired.”
“I know. I am too. But we can’t just give up.”
Fluttershy tilted her head back and shut her eyes, resting against the wall. “I know we can’t. But… can’t we? Just for a few minutes.”
Ditzy hesitated. “No,” she said firmly. “If we stop now, how will we start again? We have to keep moving.”
“Oh, dear. I suppose so,” Fluttershy conceded.
Ditzy hauled herself back to her hooves, then helped Fluttershy rise. “Should we go back that way?” she asked, nodding toward where the Carrionites had been. “Or keep going to the foyer?”
“Foyer,” Fluttershy said with feverish intensity. “Definitely the foyer.”
“Alright.”
The two mares walked side by side down the hall, ears pricked up for any signs of hostile creatures lurking in the shadows. They walked, it seemed, for miles, with no sign of life.
“Ditzy,” Fluttershy said, a note of hysteria in her voice. “We can’t -- we can’t just walk forever.”
Ditzy said nothing. She didn’t want to betray how scared she herself was feeling. Instead, she merely glanced around the corridor, searching for something, anything that could help them. Then, she saw it. A glimmer of light in the darkness, down a side tunnel. “Look!” she hissed. “A way out!” She began to gallop toward the light, Fluttershy close on her tail.
As they drew closer to the light at the end of the tunnel, Ditzy thought she saw a figure in the light, but dismissed that thought quickly. There was nothing blocking the brilliant light, nothing casting a shadow, no door, no room, only a brilliant golden Light…
And then both mares were gone.
Light nodded. “Subjects collected for cataloging,” it said, before going out and leaving the hallway in darkness.
Ditzy and Fluttershy both tumbled into separate golden bubbles, which jostled around all the others. Ditzy pulled herself upright and shook herself. “I just don’t know what went wrong,” she said sadly.
From inside the TARDIS, the Crusaders watched as the last two ponies still at large were captured. Rumble had gone very quiet. Sweetie Belle was crying on Button’s shoulder. When Dinky saw her mother appear in one of the bubbles, she turned away, unable to watch any longer. Apple Bloom seemed to be having a dissociative episode, staring blankly and blindly at the screen before her.
There was a long and dreadful silence. “Well,” said Scootaloo. “Now what?”
“I don’t know,” Dinky said.
“What are those bubble things?”
“I don’t know.”
“How can we save them?”
“I don’t know!”
Dinky fell to the ground, her vision going blurry with tears. Almost immediately, she felt her friends gathering around her, worried. She shook her head vigorously. “Not a relapse,” she said. “I just… I don’t know what to do. All that stuff I saw in the Zero Room while my mind was healing, it was all so useless. Or maybe I’m useless. Or maybe everything’s useless.”
She felt a hoof wrap around her barrel. “Okay,” said Scootaloo. “That’s a lot to unwrap, and I don’t… totally understand what you were saying about the Zero Room? But we can come back to that. You’re not useless, Dinky. Alright? You got us so far, and you’ve done so much. We’re your friends. We’re proud of you. We love you. So don’t go saying dumb shit about how useless you are and selling yourself short, because that’s my friend you’re insulting.”
She paused and pulled a face. “That was cheesy as shit, but it’s still true.”
Dinky managed to crack a grin at that remark, looking up at Scootaloo. Then she frowned. “Hey. What’s up with the light?”
As Scootaloo had been talking, the light in the control room had shifted dramatically, casting everything in a bright, rich, orangey-amber light. Even as Dinky spoke, however, the light was fading back to its normal pale yellow hue.
Apple Bloom shifted uncomfortably. “Was that some o’ that Artron energy y’all were talkin’ ‘bout earlier?”
“Don’t think so,” Dinky said, struggling back to her hooves. “Entirely the wrong color, for one thing. Also, our brains haven’t been microwaved.”
“Oh. Yay?” Button said, tilting his head.
“I’m inclined to think that not having cooked brains is a yay-worthy occasion, yeah,” Rumble said drily.
“It must have meant something,” Sweetie Belle said, casting an eye over the console. “Doesn’t look to me like anything’s different, though.”
“Hm.” Dinky studied the console. “All the panels are color-coded, though. Pink, red, purple, blue, magenta, and orange. Maybe we need to look at the orange one?”
“That’s… the flying one, right?” Button asked, peering at it closely. “Is the TARDIS telling us that we need to fly her at the bubbles?”
There was a long pause. “Okay,” Button said. “But do we have any better ideas, though?”
“Gimme a minute,” Apple Bloom said, her brow furrowed. “Uh… secret compartment, maybe? Look in th’ panel fer one o’ them.”
Much to everypony’s surprise, there was indeed a secret cupboard in the console under that panel. Unfortunately, all it contained was a boxful of cat-shaped pins and some jammie dodgers.
Scootaloo sighed. “Alright, fuck it, let’s slam this box into the prison bubbles.”
“It looks as though the Valeyard fused with the TARDIS interface,” the Doctor said, his eyes wide with horror. “Fused itself with the power of a collapsing star and the drive of the Nightmare itself.”
“Part Time Lord, part TARDIS,” Eyebrows murmured, half to himself. “Like some kind of… hybrid.”
Rainbows glanced at him sidelong and rolled her eyes.
“Whatever it appears to be, it’s not real,” Bow Tie said. “At least, no more real than any of us. Which means, now that I come to think of it, that we’re in just as much danger as we thought.”
“Thank you so much for that brilliant insight,” the Doctor growled. “Now what?”
“Now, Doctor,” said the Valeyard-thing, “You choose. Surrender to the inevitable or keep pathetically struggling a little longer.”
The Doctor set his jaw. “Then I choose to --”
“Wait,” the Valeyard cautioned. “You haven’t heard my offer yet.”
“What could you possibly offer me?” the Doctor demanded. “I’ve no interest in power, or ruling, as well you know. Everything I want, you stand opposed to, and everything you have to offer, I despise.”
“Woo!” Rainbows cheered. “Stick it to ‘im!”
“Fuck the system,” Eyebrows growled.
“That’s not quite true, Doctor,” the Valeyard said. “I offer you the thing that you desire more than you've craved anything else your entire life. An ending.”
The Doctor tried to speak, but the words died in his throat. “You’ve fought so long and hard to stay alive,” the Valeyard said, moving closer now, his hydraulic limbs hissing. “You were so desperate for life, none more so than this incarnation. You’ve always had so much more to do, so much more to see. But you’ve done so much already. You’ve seen things you can never forget, no matter how hard you try. You’ve lost. Lost so many and so much.”
“I --” the Doctor sputtered, but he couldn’t find the words to argue.
“When you become me --” the Valeyard said, “and please notice I said ‘when’, not ‘if’ -- that will all be gone. It will have been done by a different man entirely, and none of it will hurt you again.”
The Doctor glanced back. River and the future Doctors had been swallowed by the mist. All he could see now was the swirling miasma and the Valeyard.
The mechanical fusion extended a hoof. “Let me give you what you really want, Doctor. Let me take you into oblivion.”
Meanwhile, in the real world, the actual Valeyard was having a much harder time of it. He had channeled all the force he could spare into blasting the temporal barrier, wasting a good chunk of the TARDIS’s power combined with a unicorn’s natural magic and his remaining regeneration energy on trying to break through.
It hadn’t even made a dent, although several houses near where he had been focusing his efforts were now all on fire, and the earth was ripped and torn and dying all around him. All that revealed was the curve of the temporal bubble continuing along underground. He scowled down at the shimmering surface that separated Ponyville from the rest of the universe. His eyes were as cold as the vacuum of space, his lips pressed thinner than a sheet of paper.
“Well,” he said. “Well-played indeed, Romana.”
He turned and stalked away from the border. Perhaps this would require a temporary strategic retreat for reinforcements. It was time for the Nightmare to make good on its promise.
The Nightmare itself had taken to pacing around the TARDIS, studying it intently to find some weakness in its defenses, some external system through which it could drain the Ship’s power. Ordinarily, it would have made better use of its time mocking its prisoners, but as they were outside of time and couldn’t communicate with it, it decided that such a course of action really wasn’t worth the bother.
The last rogue elements in the Matrix were in that blue box. They were the only things in this place that the Nightmare couldn’t control by force of will or arms. That was infuriating. On the upside, it knew, the miserable foals couldn’t leave the sanctuary provided by the Ship without falling into its power.
Of course, even within the TARDIS, they could throw a sizable wrench into the Nightmare’s plans. One way or another, it would have to remove them from the box. But how --
The Nightmare lost its train of thought as the light on top of the TARDIS began to flash. No! It couldn’t be leaving, it wouldn’t have enough energy to break out of the Matrix. As the Nightmare stepped back, it saw that the inhabitants of the Ship had no such goal in mind.
“Are we all ready?” Dinky asked.
“Holding steady,” Scootaloo said, gripping a wheel in either forehoof.
“Manual steering’s on standby,” Button said, hooves hovering over the joystick in the center of his chosen panel.
“Ah’ve set th’ course fer Discord’s bubble. They oughta be able t’ wreck that damn robot’s day,” Bloom said, smiling grimly.
“I don’t know what any of the controls on my panel do,” Sweetie said.
“No, me neither,” Rumble agreed.
“Considering they’re for communications and diagnostics respectively, I think that’s okay,” Dinky said. “Scootaloo, take us up.”
“Roger that.” She cranked one of the wheels around. On the monitor, the golden bubbles grew larger as the TARDIS flew toward them, gaining speed as they hurtled toward Discord’s prison.
The Valeyard watched, nonplussed, as the TARDIS smashed into one of the golden bubbles, then bounced off and fell toward the floor.
“BAD PLAN BAD PLAN BAD PLAN!” Scootaloo chanted, trying desperately to realign the Ship as all six friends were jostled around the console, each hanging onto the edges lest they find themselves pitched over the railing.
Eventually, the TARDIS crashed against a wall, falling on its side. Scootaloo, practically bent double over the panel, fumbled around until she found the gravity controls. Everypony let out a groan of relief as they sank to the floor, while smoke wafted from the central console.
Rumble held up a hoof. “Okay,” he said. “So I think it’s possible that we may have misinterpreted whatever the TARDIS was trying to tell us with that orange light.”
Sweetie groaned and fell to the floor.
“Hm,” said the Nightmare. “Pathetic.”
It walked a little closer, studying the box. After a moment, it smiled grimly. It had found the gap in the Ship’s defenses. Rearing back, it smashed a hoof down on the light at the top of the TARDIS.
Glass and metal scattered on the floor. The Nightmare bent down to inspect the shattered remains of the bulb. It could faintly see flickering golden energy forming an aura around the glass. It was barely visible, not even a crumb of a crumb of the vast reserves of the TARDIS. But it was an opening.
The Nightmare grinned. “I can work with this,” it mused.
Gilda had been pretty pissed off earlier when she’d been forced to vacate town square with all the other civilians. She could hold her own in a fight just fine, thanks. Having returned to town square after it was all over, though, having seen the carnage that had been wrought there, she had decided that maybe she wasn’t so mad about missing out on this particular scrap. After all, she didn’t want to end up as fried chicken, like all those soldiers had.
The image of Starlight Glimmer, covered in golden frost, flashed through Gilda’s mind, and she suppressed a shudder. Turning into a frozen turkey wasn’t too appealing, either.
Now, of course, it was looking that turning into a roast dinner was exactly what was on the menu for everypony in town. The fires were spreading fast -- the one at the bar had barely been extinguished before some unicorn had come running in yelling about how the south side of town was an inferno.
So now, of course, Gilda was part of the aerial bucket brigade, easily the smallest group of the impromptu firefighting brigade. There simply weren’t enough pegasi in town to fill the roles. Meanwhile, the unicorns were casting freezing spells and telekinetically smothering the flames as they approached, and the earth ponies were trying to knock over and remove anything that might make good fuel for the flames. It was a losing battle. The entire town was sealed in, and the smoke was making it difficult to breathe even on the north end of Ponyville. If the fire didn’t get them, they’d all asphyxiate.
Nonetheless, they fought on. What else could they do?
Weary and struggling to breathe, Gilda flew low to the ground to escape the choking smoke over the rooftops.
It was on a trip to the river to get another bucket of water when she spotted the prone body of a pony sitting slumped against a wall. Poor bastard, she thought.
Then she realized who it was and threw out the ‘poor’ from that description.
She dropped her bucket and swooped for him, picking him up by his throat and shaking him. “You! Unfuck this town before I drop you from the top of the dome!”
The Valeyard made no reply. His head merely lolled to the side, his eyes rolling back in his head.
Gilda hissed a Griffish curse under her breath and flew back toward the front lines. “Blueblood!” she roared. “Guess who I found.”
The prince glanced up, irritated. “Unless it’s some manner of water-breathing dragon, I don’t particularly care.”
Then he blinked the smoke from his eyes and stared at the Valeyard. “I stand corrected. Romana?”
An off-white unicorn with a long, curly chestnut mane hurried over. “He’s not responding,” Gilda said. “Can you fix him? I can’t squeeze his miserable neck until he puts out the fire unless he’s awake.”
“Hm,” said Romana. “Doubtful. He seems to have departed for the Matrix.”
“So get him out,” Gilda said. “Duh.”
“If I had the power to do that, don’t you think I would have used it on the ponies at the hospital?” Romana retorted.
Blueblood scratched his chin. “Didn’t you say something about how dying out here would kill you in the Matrix, too?”
“Yes,” Romana said. “Unfortunately, there are two problems with that --” She paused and turned to zap the fire with a spell, covering a sizable portion of it in smothering foam. “Number one, it won’t put out the fire.”
“I don’t care,” Gilda growled. “It’s just personal, now.”
“Number two…” Romana shut her eyes for a moment. “He abandoned his body in the middle of a raging inferno. The Valeyard was the Master of the Matrix for many decades, and apparently survived without a body for centuries with the help of the Nightmare. If anyone could get around that rule, it would be him.”
“So…” Blueblood said.
Romana cast her eyes up toward the rift. “If we see him again, I very much doubt it will be in that body you’re holding.”
The Nightmare barely glanced up from the ruined bulb when the Valeyard reemerged from the portal. “Is the rebellion quashed?”
“Their trained soldiers are dead, their most powerful mage immobilized, and their town aflame. They won’t give us any difficulties. The temporal bubble, on the other hand…”
The Nightmare made a sound low in its vocal modulator. “You couldn’t destroy it?”
The Valeyard looked sour. “Romana cheated.”
“Useless.”
“I suspect that once we gain the full power of the TARDIS, we may overcome the barrier, with some difficulty. If we can travel back to a point before it was created and move out from there, it will no longer trouble us.”
“Hm.”
“Of course, first we’ll need that power. How are you doing on that front?” the Valeyard asked nastily.
“It’s progressing rather well, actually,” said the Nightmare.
“Oh.” The Valeyard was rather put out that he hadn’t been able to catch his partner out, but that was tempered with the knowledge that the plan was progressing. “Good.”
“I’m drawing it out through the bulb -- like to like, you see. My will is stronger than the TARDIS’s, now that it’s been weakened after so long fighting us -- I can pull the artron energy towards me, and the more I gain --”
“The easier it becomes,” the Valeyard said, nodding. “Elegant. Of course -- it would be faster if we were to work together.”
The Nightmare cast a glance toward the Valeyard. “Ah. You grow impatient, I see.”
“Can you blame me? I’ve waited so long, formless, bodiless, for this moment. Apotheosis! At long last, Time Lord and TARDIS become one. Not even in the War did they go that far.”
The Nightmare smirked. “I wonder why,” it murmured, too quiet for the Valeyard to hear.
“Hm?”
“Nothing. Very well, come here.” The Nightmare began to unfurl its great mechanical bulk. “Step into me… and I will step into you.”
The Valeyard hesitated but a moment before stepping into the mass of wires and metal. “Just remember, you’re taking my name,” he warned.
“Oh yes,” said the Nightmare, closing around him like a Venus Fly Trap. “I will. And you’ll be taking my mind!”
“What?” the Valeyard demanded. And then the upload began.
“Miserable fool,” said the Nightmare, barely audible over the screams. “Did you really think there could ever be an equal partnership between Time Lord and TARDIS? Your brain is that of a flea to me. Can you feel it burning away under the onslaught? Can you see the infinite paths of time as I can? Lose yourself in the universe, Valeyard. Lose your very mind to me.”
The Valeyard continued to scream. “Oh, don’t worry,” the Nightmare added. “I’ve saved your personality template already. It’s like possessing you, but with extra steps, really. On the upside, I get to feel your mind collapse in unutterable anguish! Such a treat, honestly.”
After several more minutes, the screaming stopped. The Valeyard took a moment to collect himself, brushing the ash off his mechanical body. After he was convinced that everything was in order, he turned back to the TARDIS, but paused for a moment.
“The Valeyard is dead,” he uttered. “Long live the Valeyard.”
Chuckling grimly, he returned to his machinations.
The Doctor and the Valeyard stared at one another in the mist. “Well?” demanded the Valeyard. “I haven’t got all day. Actually, I have. I have all day, all eternity, all of time and space. You, on the other hand, are running very short indeed. Embrace me, Doctor, and accept oblivion. Accept the inevitable.”
The Doctor looked the Valeyard square in the eye. “No,” he said. “I’ll never become you.”
The Valeyard sneered. “You pathetic masochist, you already have. The Matrix just hasn’t caught up yet.”
The mist began to clear. “Maybe so,” the Doctor said. “But I still won’t go down without a fight.”
“Rage, rage, against the dying of the light,” Eyebrows said.
“And go not gentle into that good night,” Rainbows agreed.
“To be clear,” River said, pulling a gun out of her mane, “we’re talking to the Doctor, not you. You can sod right off.”
She fired at the Valeyard, and it reared back, snarling. “I am inevitable,” it said. “Irreversible. All this accomplishes is an extension of your suffering.”
Bow Tie shrugged. “And what else is new?” he asked.
River fired again, and the Valeyard retreated back out of the courtyard with as much dignity as he could muster.
“Right,” said the Doctor, his hooves shaking. “Right. That’s…” His forelegs went out from under him, and his hind legs didn’t last much longer.
“Oh, sweetie,” River murmured, rubbing the back of his neck. “You have been through the wringer, haven’t you?”
“But you can’t rest yet,” said Rainbows. “There’s still time to fight back.”
The Doctor groaned. “You heard him. He’s inevitable.”
Bowtie scoffed. “If we had a jammie dodger for every time someone told us that, we’d… we’d… Well, we’d have an awful lot of jammie dodgers.”
“I think I’d prefer custard creams,” Rainbows said thoughtfully.
“Jammie dodgers can be for inevitability, custard creams can be for every time we get sentenced to death,” Bow Tie said after a moment’s consideration.
River cleared her throat. “Excuse me. Your past self is dying in front of you? Can we possibly save the biscuit talk for another time?”
Both future Doctors looked instantly contrite. “Ah, yeah.”
“Sorry, River.”
“So. Now what?” Eyebrows asked, tilting his head back.
“Well,” River said, looking down at the Doctor. “That is rather the question, isn’t it?”
The Crusaders inspected the damage. It was their unspoken way of not addressing the fact that they were out of ideas. Stationed at the diagnostics panel, it was Rumble who first realized that the power was once again flowing out of the TARDIS.
“Well,” said Apple Bloom in the long pause after Rumble announced that fact. “That ain’t optimal.”
“How long do you give us before it’s totally dry?” Dinky asked.
Rumble inspected the gauge marked ‘power’. “Dunno. It's slow, but looks like it’s being drained at an exponential rate.”
“Can we cut off the power to the system it’s being drained to?” Button asked, peering at his own panel for anything that looked remotely useful.
“Uh…” Rumble looked at Dinky.
She peered at the panel. “It doesn’t really say where it’s going, only that we’re losing it. So, no, I don’t think so.”
“Anypony got any other ideas?” Sweetie Belle asked, a tinge of panic in her voice. “Anypony? Anything? I’d take another ‘crash the TARDIS into the bubbles’-level plan at this point.”
Nopony spoke. The stifling silence was broken after a moment when the telephone on the console began to ring.
Sweetie was closest to it. She looked at the others, bewildered. “What is this?”
“It’s called a phone, I think,” Dinky said. “Communication device.”
“What am I supposed to do with a ringing phone?” Sweetie asked, her voice getting higher-pitched with stress.
“Maybe pick it up?” Apple Bloom suggested. “Looks like that part comes off…”
After several seconds, Sweetie picked up the phone and held it to her face. “Hello?” she asked warily.
“Crusaders,” said a cold voice, echoing from the audio transmitters on every panel of the central console. “This is the Valeyard speaking. Kindly turn on your monitor.”
“Why?” Sweetie asked, suspicious.
“I dislike ponies being unable to see me when I’m threatening them.”
“Oh. Um. Alright…”
Button silently flicked on the monitor. A face swam into view, and everypony recoiled in horror.
The Valeyard’s face twitched in a way that could have been a schadenfreude-filled smirk or a grimace of sheer agony. The Crusaders would have believed either. It was as though every mechanism that comprised the TARDIS interface had been stabbed through his body.
“Yes,” said the Valeyard. “I’ve had some work done.”
“I have a proposal for you,” the Valeyard said. “I know that Dinky is still holding a fragment of the TARDIS’s heart within her -- a small one, but vital nonetheless. I need that piece. Understand this; I will get that fragment one way or the other, but I would prefer it be given willingly. It would be much easier to reintegrate into the whole that way. Who knows, you might even survive the removal process if you cooperate.”
“Not fucking likely,” Dinky growled.
“Language,” the Valeyard said shortly. “Here is the situation. Ponyville is on fire, and trapped in a bubble of time which I did not erect and cannot remove. It is likely to burn down totally, and all its residents will asphyxiate. Additionally, you can see that I have recaptured every last one of my former prisoners in separate bubbles of time -- I believe that at this point, you are familiar with the concept?”
The Crusaders all nodded grudgingly.
“Good. Surrender the last piece of the TARDIS’s power, and I’ll release them. I’ll even be generous enough to extinguish the fires in your pathetic little town, and then I’ll leave you all to your temporal prison for the rest of your lives. I imagine they won’t be long lives, but considering the plans I have for the rest of the universe, you may consider that a mercy.”
“And if we don’t surrender?” Button asked warily.
“Then Ponyville burns and I force you to watch your loved ones die in agony before killing you all. Once I’ve done that, I’ll do it again, and again, and again, trapping you in a loop for all eternity. Each new loop will feel like the first, and your minds and souls will never know rest.”
This announcement was met with stunned silence. The Valeyard smiled at them, and a trickle of blood ran through his teeth and down his lip. “You have fifteen minutes to make your decision.”
The connection cut out, leaving the room silent but for the echoing ring of the dial tone.
The Doctor pushed himself up from the ground, his head spinning. “What do we do?” he asked, looking at the others. “What can we do? He’s already regenerated. He’s already taken over!”
He slumped against a wall. “He’s won already,” he said gloomily.
“Nonsense,” River said brusquely. “You’re still here, aren’t you?”
“Only because the Matrix hasn’t caught up to reality yet,” the Doctor snapped back. “Once it has, we’ll all be gone, retroactively erased from time starting from my regeneration.”
River shrugged. “Well, then what have you got to lose by trying? If the alternative is certain death, followed by the Valeyard and the Nightmare gaining unfettered control over time and space…”
“I’m not saying I don’t want to do anything,” the Doctor said. “I’m just saying I don’t know what I can do!”
“Well,” said Rainbows, arching an eyebrow. “Let’s take stock. No TARDIS.”
“No screwdriver,” Eyebrows continued.
“No place to run, no place to hide,” Bow Tie agreed, giving a giddy spin in place.
“No hope,” River said. “Not even a body to call your own. It’s your darkest hour, Doctor, one juvenile delinquent from a dead world against insurmountable odds.”
“In short,” Rainbows said. “It’s where we thrive.”
A hint of a grin traced the Doctor’s face, and he looked up at the sky. “But I’ve never won when I’ve been alone like this,” he whispered.
“Alone?” Bow Tie asked, affronted. “Excuse me?”
“You don’t count,” the Doctor retorted. “You know what they say about talking to yourself.”
River cleared her throat.
The Doctor glanced at her. “I hardly even know you,” he protested. He paused. “Although…”
“Although…” River prompted.
He shook his head. “No, it’d never work properly. My mind and yours would overpower his, but not by nearly enough to seriously inconvenience him in a psychic battle, not if he’s allied his mind with the Nightmare.”
“So we need more minds,” River said.
“That shouldn’t be too much of a problem,” she continued as Benny.
The Doctor shook his head. “No, switching through bodies like that wouldn’t do it, though it might help to confuse it somewhat.”
“That’s not really what we meant,” Daring said.
“Look down,” River suggested.
The Doctor did, frowning. His eyes went wide as he registered all three mares standing before him. “You can -- how long -- why --” he gabbled, before pausing and smacking himself in the forehead. “Of course. If there were multiple companions in the ruins…”
“Then why shouldn’t there be more than one of us?” Benny concluded. “Well, exactly. We just didn’t want to overwhelm you right at the start.”
“You seemed a little, uh… fragile,” Daring said. “And you didn’t get better. So we just didn’t mention it.”
“But this seemed like the opportune moment,” River said.
The Doctor nodded slowly. “Alright. Okay. Me and the about… twenty-some companions I’ve had whose fates don’t still haunt me, against the Valeyard-Nightmare hybrid --”
“Hybrid?” Eyebrows snapped, glancing around. Rainbows patted them on the shoulder and shook her head sadly.
“-- I still don’t think that’s going to be enough.”
“True,” River said.
“On the other hand, you do have more than twenty-odd companions,” Benny added. “Hint, hint.”
“Yes, but apparently they all want to kill me,” the Doctor pointed out.
“Doctor,” Daring said, exasperated. “All of this is just --”
“Just a reflection of my mind, I know! I know. You’re going to say that I’ve got to forgive myself and heal and they’ll all rally ‘round me and help save the day.”
“Good. That saves some time,” Daring said, satisfied.
“But I can’t!” the Doctor said, turning away. “It's not that simple! I can’t just flip a switch and forgive myself, not even after all this time. I’ve lost so much, so many friends.” He bowed his head. “Maybe it would have been better if they’d never met me.”
“Oh for the love of --” Benny turned to the other Doctors. “I don’t suppose you can get through to him?”
She was met with three blank stares.
Daring ran a hoof down her face. “Perfect,” she said. “Four of them, and not one who hasn’t been repressing their emotions since the day they regenerated.”
“Alright, alright,” Eyebrows said gruffly, stepping forward. “I may as well try. At least we understand what he’s going through. We all have a duty of care, you see. When someone’s traveling with us, they’re our responsibility. There have been times… many times… when we haven’t fulfilled that responsibility. Times when we’ve let our friends down.”
“They’re brave and clever and kind and so, so wonderful,” Rainbows picked up. “They always wander off and try to do the right thing. Sometimes that means they get hurt.”
“But,” said Bowtie, “if you think about people like that -- loyal and generous and brilliant -- do they strike you as the kind of people to hold a grudge?”
There was a long pause. “No,” said Rainbows, sounding rather surprised. “They don’t, actually. I’m gonna be honest, I didn’t really know where we were goin’ with this, but that was a good point.”
Bowtie beamed.
“They wouldn’t want you to destroy yourself like this,” Eyebrows said gently. “Just… do it for them, if no one else.”
The silence stretched on for several painful moments.
“... Alright,” said the Doctor. “I can… I can try to make things better.”
“Well, it’s about bloody time, too!” Donna Noble said.
The Doctor looked around, startled, as his best friend stormed up to him and looked him square in the eye. “One day, Doctor. One day, we’re gonna find each other again, an’ there’s gonna be a reckoning for what you did to my brain.”
The Doctor shrunk back, and Donna softened. “But not today, spaceman.” She sat down and hugged him, and over her shoulder the Doctor could see a sea of his very best friends spread out across an open plain. “Not today.”
And slowly, not quite sure of himself at first, the Doctor hugged Donna back.
“There’s no way he’s gonna keep his word if we do what he says,” Scootaloo said, pacing the console room. “He’ll take what he wants and kill us all.”
“But he’s definitely gonna keep his word if we don’t surrender,” Apple Bloom argued. “Even if we put aside th’ ‘eternal torture’ part, do we want that on our consciences?”
“The outcome’s the same whether we give up or not,” Scootaloo said. “This way, we get to live a little longer.”
“Sure, an’ watch every creature we care about burn,” Bloom retorted. “Call that livin’? Anyway, at least if we surrender, we’ll have a moral victory.”
“Yeah, sure, that’ll be a comfort when we’re trapped in an endless loop of death,” Scootaloo snapped. "We're suffering forever, but at least we weren't sore losers."
“I’m with Bloom,” Rumble said. “It’s the honorable way out, if nothing else.”
“I don’t know,” Button said. “It’s weird that he’d make this offer if he wasn’t desperate to get that last bit of Artron energy. I think we might have more of a bargaining chip that we realize.”
“Maybe,” Bloom countered. “But how much better of a deal are ya hopin’ t’ get? He’s got all of Ponyville on offer.”
“And if we give in, he’ll get the rest of the universe!” Sweetie Belle countered. “Think about all your family that lives outside of Ponyville, Bloom -- even if the Valeyard keeps his word, all of them are dead.”
“You think Ah don’t know that?” Bloom snapped. “They’ll be dead anyhow! One way or another, that thing’s gonna drink up all the TARDIS’s power again and break out. They’re dead either way. Ponyville’s probably still doomed if we surrender now, but it’s definitely doomed if we don’t!”
Dinky was cradling her head in her hooves. She didn’t know what to do. Worse, she was starting to worry that the Zero Room hadn’t done its job properly. Every time she blinked, brilliant colors flashed behind her eyes, dazzling and dizzying her as the argument raged on.
The Doctor moved through the swarm of his former companions, trying to make eye contact with each of them as he passed. The responses ranged from huge grins to small smiles to slight nods, but none of them seemed particularly unhappy to see him. Or, if he was being totally honest with himself, at all unhappy to see him. In fact, most of them looked practically pleased.
To be honest, he found that a little unnerving. After so many years imagining what a reunion with his old friends would be like, full of regrets and recriminations, this felt altogether uncanny.
He looked around again. Ace grinned back, her eyes sparkling with mischievous delight. Rose smiled broadly at him, her tongue poking out between her teeth in that same old way that had always made him go a little weak at the knees. Liz even gave him a sidelong smile and a slight nod.
He smiled back. Uncanny it might be, but certainly not unwelcome. He continued to the center of the crowd. “Right!” he said, projecting so that everyone could hear him. “This isn’t going to be an easy fight. The Nightmare is an incredibly powerful psychic force, and it stands an inimical force to everything we hold dear.”
He paused to let that sink in. “But as a great man once said, “There are some corners of the universe which have bred the most terrible things. Things which act against everything we believe in. They must --””
“Would ye stop quotin’ yerself an’ just get on with it?” Jamie heckled from somewhere off in the distance.
A ripple of laughter spread through the crowd, and the Doctor had to suppress his grin. “Alright, alright,” he said, waving a hoof. “Be serious. I know you, and all of you know me. We’ve stood together so often in the past, sometimes against foes even greater than this. Now, united by the Matrix, I’m asking all of you to stand and fight at my side once more. If this is my last stand, I aim to make it a good one.”
He looked around the crowd once more. “I certainly can’t imagine one better than this,” he said softly.
There was a little scattered applause at that, a few distant whoops and cheers.
The Doctor turned to the east, where golden light was beginning to shine on the horizon. The regeneration was beginning to catch up with him. “The Nightmare and the Valeyard have coalesced now,” he said, talking faster. “That’s bad, partly because… well, it’s just bad, and partly because they’ll have combined their psychic defenses. But, it’s also good because the Nightmare is a parasite, feeding off the Valeyard, taking on his persona, his traits, his weaknesses. He’s cut himself off from his past entirely, because it all hurt too much.”
The Doctor paused, suddenly realizing how close to the Valeyard he’d become, all without even needing to regenerate. He cleared his throat. “With that in mind… how about giving him a few refreshers, eh? Concentrate on your travels in the TARDIS. Remember the good, the bad, the ugly. Bring it all in, every last drop. C’mon! You’re part of the Matrix, the most advanced computer system the universe has ever seen. Dredge up those memories.” He looked around. Every face he saw was focused, brows furrowed in concentration. Some were laughing to themselves; others, quietly weeping. The Doctor nodded and looked up. “Alright, Valeyard,” he said with a snarl. “Contact.”
The Valeyard was draining the energy from the TARDIS bit by bit. He was really building up steam now -- the TARDIS’s strength was sapped, and she was devoting all of her remaining power to keeping her occupants alive. Stupid, sentimental box. It had spent far too much time around the lesser species. The Valeyard could almost call this a mercy killing.
Then his head jerked back and he fell to the ground, his body spasming as electricity shot from his joints. Information was pouring into his brain -- memories long repressed now boiling to the surface, emotions that had been buried rising from the grave. He began to foam at the mouth, bloody spittle staining his coat. At long last, he began to scream as the feelings started to overwhelm his brain. The TARDIS long forgotten in the face of this onslaught, the Valeyard dragged his biomechanical nightmare of a body away, not to or from anywhere in particular, only away from the sudden overwhelming sentiment that burned his brain.
Somehow, another mind had latched onto his. No, many minds, connecting through a single channel. Through the growing haze, the Valeyard could pick out flashes of identity, perspectives in the message that identified their originators. Prince Blueblood, Fenella Wibbsey, Jack Harkness, Sharon Davies, Jo Grant, Applejack, the list went on and on. Companions, one and all.
The Valeyard sneered, his lip twisting unpleasantly around one of the metal poles that had stabbed through it. “Damn him,” he snarled. “Very well, Doctor; two can play at this game. Contact.”
The Doctor stumbled a little as the Valeyard connected with his mind, but he recovered quickly. “Get out of my head,” he said flatly. “Get out of my body, get out of my life. This isn’t your time, Valeyard, and I swear it never will be again!”
“Hello to you too,” the Valeyard retorted. The Doctor was pleased to note how strained it sounded. “You’ll have to pardon me if I’m not up to banter at the moment. Some fool’s just started addling my brain.”
“I’ll do worse than that if you don’t give me back my body. Now.”
“Believe me -- you wouldn’t want it in the state it’s in,” the Valeyard returned. “I didn’t call to negotiate, Doctor.”
“Good. I’m not asking you to negotiate, I’m demanding your surrender,” the Doctor snarled.
“This is a simple courtesy call,” the Valeyard continued. The Doctor got a brief sense of vertigo as the Valeyard looked up at his prisoners in their golden bubbles of time. “I’m giving you the opportunity to say goodbye, Doctor.”
The Doctor’s hearts sank like lead. “What? No. No!”
“No?” the Valeyard asked innocently. “No parting words, then? Probably for the best -- let’s make this a clean break for you.”
The bubbles started to glow. Inside, time began to speed up. The Valeyard laughed. “And here I thought that accelerated aging wouldn’t come in handy!”
It was difficult to understand, in the first few seconds -- a few sudden new aches and pains, a swift and steady decline in vision and hearing. “Oh no,” said Flitter. “No, not the other way now. No!”
Flesh wrinkled like raisins in the sun. Manes and coats greyed, spines bent, bones weakened. Spike howled in agony as he kept growing inside his unyielding bubble, until he came to a merciful stop. Rarity wailed in horror at the sight, pounding the sides of her prison until she could no longer stand upright. The alicorns and the draconocci simply expanded, glowing with heat and light and pure energy as the years whistled past.
“Twilight,” Mac said, pushing her rapidly aging face up against the bubble. “If this is mah last chance to say it…” She coughed, her skin sagging and wrinkling on flabby flesh and bent bones. “Twi… Ah…”
And then she was gone. Twilight stared into empty eye sockets as Big Macintosh’s body crumbled to nothing. She choked back a sob as her body convulsed. It convulsed again. She was growing, legs gangling, horn pushing against the inner shell of the time bubble, her mane lighting up with brilliant constellations and cosmic radiation. She was as big as Cadance, Luna, Celestia, bigger, bigger, bigger, until she, like Spike before her, was suffocating inside the little golden sphere.
“I love you too,” she whispered at last, before exploding into a nebula.
The Doctor’s jaw flapped in the wind. The Matrix had fallen silent. All that remained was the ringing in his ears. Slowly, he turned around. The joyful, festive crowd had been transmuted into ash, dust, and bone. There was nothing left of any of them.
Slowly, the Doctor toppled, sinking down to the ground and settling into the dust himself.
Inside the TARDIS all argument had stopped. All six Crusaders stared in mute horror at the dozens of golden bubbles, now empty but for piles of dust, bones, and cosmic matter.
In the long, horrified silence, the phone began to ring once more.
Nopony picked up. The Valeyard appeared on the screens nonetheless. He looked even worse for wear than before, and his eyes glimmered with mad fury. “New deal,” he hissed. “Surrender, and I’ll make it quick.”
Apple Bloom broke down first, her entire body wracked with the force of her sobs. Rumble helped her walk out of the control room though Celestia knew how he was keeping it together.
Or. Well. Not anymore, she didn’t.
“I think,” said Sweetie Belle, her composure as fragile as cobweb, “that I’m going to be sick.”
She staggered out of the console room. Button hesitated a moment, giving anguished glances to Scootaloo and Dinky before hurrying after Sweetie.
The two remaining mares sat stock silent for a long moment. Then Scootaloo rose and trotted out the door. At the last second, she looked back. “It wasn’t your fault,” she said quietly. “It wasn’t any of our faults.”
The light flickered orange again, before fading in the silence.
“I just thought you needed to hear that,” Scootaloo said softly, before leaving.
Then it was just Dinky. Or, just her and the TARDIS. She sat in the slowly-dimming light of the console room in dead silence, just staring at the monitor. Even after the display flicked off, presumably as an energy-saving measure, she kept her eyes fixed there.
When she spoke again, her voice was hoarse and dry. “So,” she said. “Hello again, old friend. It’s… been awhile since we last talked, hasn’t it? Properly, I mean -- not just through proxies and crystals and things. I guess we really haven’t talked in… must be ten years since we were stranded in the vortex.”
The TARDIS made no response. Slowly, Dinky managed to tear her eyes from the black monitor and look at the console directly. “Did you know this would happen?” she wondered. “You must have known something, to put a little piece of your power in me, all those years ago. Is this it? Is this your price to pay for saving us back then? The death of everyone I love? The burning of my home? The annihilation of the entire universe?”
She thumped the console. “I should have just let us all fall into oblivion!” she thundered. “I should have just let us all die! You should have just let us all die! At least the world would have survived!”
There was no answer. Dinky hung her head. “But how could I have known? Even if I had -- if I had, would I have had the strength to do it?”
She felt increasingly uncomfortable now -- not as though she was talking to herself, more as though she was lecturing a corpse.
Dinky stared at the central console. Her reflection stared back at her, distorted in the glass, her eyes wide and watery as they stretched up the cylinder. “Please,” she said. “Please. I need your help. I know you’re still in there somewhere. This is bigger than you or me, or any of us. You have to be in there. You have to.” She stared at the central console, dark and still, and her facade cracked.
“Don’t you understand, you stupid box? This is the end of the world, the end of everything! If the Valeyard gets his way, he’ll impose his will on the universe starting from the word ‘go’, and you, me, and everyone either of us has ever cared about will be erased, at best. No more flying. No more freedom. No more thief, no more TARDIS. Don’t you know? Don’t you care? I can’t do this alone!”
She crumpled, the weight of the situation finally too much to bear.
After a long moment, she felt a hoof fall on her shoulders. “You… are not alone,” Rumble said quietly.
Dinky said nothing. “You’re not,” Rumble repeated, more forcefully. “Dinky, you don’t have to be like this. You don’t have to cut yourself off from us, the way you always do. You don’t need to be strong, you don’t need to be brave, you don’t need to be smart for us to love you. We’re your friends. We love you because you’re you, not because you’re a monolith.”
“You’re leaving me,” Dinky said quietly. “No more Crusaders. No Mom. No Dad. Just me.”
Rumble was silent for a long moment. “That… sounds like an unhealthy amount of codependency,” he said. “But we’ll come back to that when we’re not about to die.”
He took a deep breath in and let it out slowly. “I’m sorry that I didn’t see this sooner,” he said. “I’m sorry… I’m sorry you feel like we’re abandoning you. That was never any of our intent, I promise. We love you, Dinky. We’d never hurt you, and we’d never want to leave you. Right here, right now, whatever you decide… I will stand with you, and I’m confident the others will, too. After all, the thing we're fighting for is literally lodged in your heart. And if you decide you don’t want to decide, we won’t love or respect you any less.”
Dinky pushed herself up from the console, turned around, and buried her face in Rumble’s chest, finally letting loose a flood of tears.
Rumble wrapped her in his wings and rocked her back and forth, letting her weep as he stared sightlessly at the blank, black screen of the monitor.
Ponyville fought bravely.
It wasn’t enough.
Slowly, the front line was pushed back, back, back, until the fire encircled them all. Ponyville General Hospital was the only building in town that wasn’t on fire. Yet. There were only a few dozen left who hadn’t succumbed to the flames or the smoke.
Fleur de Lis’s eyes watered as she blasted the inferno with a ray of frost. The air was too dry for much of anything to condense, let alone freeze, and so all that resulted was a thin wisp of white fog that quickly evaporated. “Fancee!” she called, looking over her shoulder. “Where is ze water --”
She stopped. Oh yes. No more Fancy Pants. He’d died nearly… ten minutes ago, crushed under a burning roof. No more partner. No more husband. No more best friend.
She became aware that she’d been looking back for almost two seconds now, and furiously pushed her grief to the back of her mind. She’d have time to grieve later. Or not. Either way, she couldn’t spare the time now.
“You,” she snapped, pointing at the nearest pony. “Bring us water.”
Octavia nodded mutely at the command and hurried inside, her body on autopilot as her mind replayed the scene of fifteen minutes ago over and over again in her head. She had barely escaped a collapsing building when she had come upon Caramel, desperately trying to give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to Vinyl in the middle of the street. He had failed.
High above, Nurse Redheart sat in the coma ward, huddled in a corner, eyes dead and hollow. She was surrounded by corpses, some of whom belonged to creatures never meant to die. The death throes of the gods had been terrible and awe-inspiring, storms of light and stardust that cut through the air like shimmering rainbow knives through reality itself, like the Aurora Borealis screaming and boiling in the air, like a nebula teeming with life simply exploding.
Constellations shimmered on the ceiling, but they were fading quickly.
A few rooms over, Granny Smith rocked babies in her lap, quietly whispering to them as they screamed. She wanted to scream, too. Her world was dying around her. Ponies she’d known since their birth were lying dead in the streets. The farm was likely so much kindling by now, and the only family she could get to were dead or as near to it as made hardly any difference.
But she rocked the babies back to sleep as best she could. It would be best if they weren’t awake for what was coming.
Redheart rose on shaking hooves. She was still a nurse. There were still six living patients left under her care.
Octavia carried a water cooler out of the hospital to where Fleur was standing. Why not? There was nothing else to do.
Fleur took the water and turned it into an icy spray that actually put out some of the flames in front of her. But not enough. “Another,” she said shortly.
The Doctor did not know when he began to walk through the valley of ashes. The scenery had changed around him so often, he hardly knew whether he was coming or going.
“Here, you see,” said a voice from all around him, “it takes all the running you can do just to stay in the same place.”
The Doctor said nothing.
“But you make no response?”
He staggered on.
“The Doctor and the Valeyard/Were walking close at hand; They wept like anything to see/Such quantities of sand…”
The Doctor grit his teeth.
“If seven maids with seven mops/Swept it for half a year, Do you suppose,' the Doctor said,/That they could get it clear?'/I doubt it,' said the Valeyard,/And shed a bitter tear.”
“You’re stealing from Zagreus again,” the Doctor said, barely able to force out the words through his dry, ash-choked throat. “The Alice in Wonderland bit was old even when it started.”
The smile appeared first -- bloody teeth in a mouth that couldn’t quite make the right shape for it. The rest of the cyborg followed close behind. “Have you reconsidered yet?” it taunted. “I offered you such freedom, and you rejected me. Now see what it’s gotten you.”
The Doctor said nothing for a long moment. “It’s all a projection,” he said. “Smoke and mirrors. Most of my companions are safe and well.”
“But not all. Not by a long chalk,” said the Valeyard with relish. “Oh, and none of them for long, either. The good prince is next on my list, I believe. Shall we watch him burn together?”
A television set appeared in the ash, displaying Ponyville aflame. The Doctor kicked it over, shattering the screen.
“What is it that you want from me?” he demanded, turning on the Valeyard. “If you’re so inevitable, so cold, so emotionless, why do you keep hounding me? What more can you possibly want from me, eh?”
The Valeyard chuckled nastily, his red eyes flashing. “I thought that was obvious. I want you to die.”
“Been there,” the Doctor growled. "Done that."
“You mistake me,” said the Valeyard. He leaned in close, but the Doctor didn’t flinch. “I want to watch you die,” he snarled. “I want to see the last hope go out of your eyes. I want to see the great hero humiliated and defeated and suffering, and I want it to be all done at your own hand.”
The Doctor stared at him mutely. The Valeyard stepped back. “Call it… job satisfaction,” he said. “Catharsis, perhaps. I’ve been working on you for such a long, long time. I would hate to think it was all for nothing. Go on then, I’m feeling sporting -- how do you want to go out? You’ve had so many samples -- exhaustion, execution, a few different flavors of radiation, fall, poisoning, gunshot, crash… and that’s not even getting into the War!”
Now the Doctor stepped back, unnerved at the maniacal glee with which each new option was offered up. “I get to choose?” he asked.
“Oh, yes.”
The Doctor considered this. “And if I refuse to answer?”
“You know, I almost hope you do,” the Valeyard said. “You must understand by now how skilled I am at manipulating the Matrix. It would be so simple to just -- cordon off this section. I could trap you in a ten-minute loop of anguish -- mental, physical, and emotional -- for eternity. Perhaps I already have. How long, I wonder, would it take for you to break? You’re so damn close to cracking as it is. I so want to see it -- but no. Where there’s life, there’s hope, and I cannot abide either. Your answer, Doctor. Choose how you want to die!”
The Doctor stopped and thought about that for a long moment. He considered, ‘asleep -- curled up next to Ditzy’. But that was cowardly -- making even a synthetic version of her suffer that was more than he could stomach. Perhaps he could goad the Valeyard into chasing him and escape somehow -- dying on the run would appeal to his evil alter ego’s sense of the macabre. But where was there to run to?
He concentrated. There had to be a way out of this. There had to be an escape from this hellish cycle --
And that’s when he felt the other mind in the Matrix. It was hard to discern when the pain it felt was so similar to his own -- the rage, loss, fear, and sorrow that had haunted him for so long now called out for help across the vast plains of ash. He felt that pain, that mind, and knew immediately who it must belong to.
“Dinky,” he breathed. In that moment, he knew what he had to say.
He looked up at the Valeyard. “I choose to die as I have died every time before,” he said.
The Valeyard looked vaguely impressed. “A compilation? I hadn’t expected that of you, Doctor. Perhaps I did make an impression after --”
“No,” said the Doctor. “I choose to die making a difference. Doing good in the world. Sacrificing my life for love, stupid and temporal and equine as it is.”
The Valeyard looked perplexed. Very likely, it didn’t know where to begin with that as a cause of death. That was fine. The Doctor knew where he needed to be.
And he took off running across the plains, ash flying in his wake. He threw back his head, and through his choked and dusty throat he roared, “ALLONS-Y!”
Many minutes had passed in the TARDIS console room. The lights were fading, and the emergency lighting seemed to be kicking in, bathing everything a pale pink. The other Crusaders had returned to the room, having all decided that no matter what, they didn’t want to be alone right now.
Dinky’s eyes had run dry, but she was still clutching to Rumble like he was a life preserver. He looked at the others. “So,” he said quietly. “Options?”
“Go out there and die or stay in here and die?” Scootaloo said.
Rumble frowned. “Other options?”
“We could go to another room and die there,” Scootaloo suggested, her voice and face strained.
Nopony said anything for a long time. “Fuck,” said Scootaloo. “That’s… really it, isn’t it?”
“Kinda,” Button said.
Apple Bloom bowed her head. “Ah gotta say, Ah never thought it’d end like this.”
“I’d be astonished if you had,” Sweetie Belle said.
There was another long moment of silence. “I love you guys,” Rumble said quietly. “I mean -- I don’t know what kind of pony I’d be if I hadn’t joined the Crusaders all those years ago. You guys helped me to trust ponies again. You taught me how to love.”
There were quiet head nods all around the room. “I used to be afraid to sing,” Sweetie Belle said. “I was never good enough, and I was always in Rarity’s shadow. Thank you all for helping me be myself.”
Apple Bloom looked around the room. “Thanks,” she said gruffly. “Fer helpin’ me be more’n just another Apple. Fer gettin’ into trouble. Fer reminindin’ me that Ah… that Ah am loved.”
“For getting me out of my comfort zone,” Button said. “For letting me be a part of all these great adventures, and sharing your lives with me. I’d never ask for a better group of friends.”
Scootaloo looked down and shook her head. “For wild adventures. It’s been real, you guys.”
The lights flickered, flashing gold for a moment of a second. The afterimage of a stallion in full gallop lingered in everypony’s field of vision for a few seconds before fading away.
Dinky stopped breathing, her eyes wide. “...Doctor?” she whispered.
A dozen voices whispered back, each one murmuring advice and praise and telling her how brave she was and how proud they were and countless other things beside, but one message repeated itself over and over again in her head.
“I love you. Goodbye.”
Dinky pushed away from Rumble, her eyes wide.
“...Dinks?” Scootaloo asked, looking at her in concern.
Dinky looked around the room as though seeing it for the first time. “Oh,” she said. “I think… I see.”
“Huh?” Button asked.
Dinky looked at Scootaloo first. “Your courage and adventurousness inspire me every day to do more.”
She turned to Button. “Your compassion and thoughtfulness is everlasting, and you’ve only ever been nice to me even when I couldn’t be nice to myself.”
Apple Bloom, now. “You’re the glue that holds us together, the first Crusader, always building new bridges and reinforcing the old ones.”
Sweetie Belle. “Your wit and joy has lightened even my heart, which I’m sure you know is a heavy task. But you did it happily.”
At last, Rumble. “You are so strong, and you only ever use that strength to hold ponies. Thank you for letting me break.”
He nodded solemnly. “Any time. I mean that. You need to let out your emotions more.”
Dinky looked around the room. “Thank you all for being my friends for all these long years. I would lay down my life for any of you in a heartbeat.”
She held up a hoof to stop the concerned responses. “Unfortunately, that doesn’t appear to be an option here. So, I would like to propose a new option.”
“Yes?” Rumble said, leaning forward.
“Raid the TARDIS for anything shaped like a weapon, surprise the Valeyard, and break his fucking kneecaps,” Dinky said shortly.
“That… sounds like going out and dying with extra steps,” Scootaloo said.
“Yeah,” Dinky admitted. “It’d make me feel better, though.”
Bloom nodded. “Yeah, you got a point there,” she said. “Ah’m in th’ mood fer a little revenge mahself.”
“Then let’s go,” Dinky said. “Ten minutes, and we meet back here. Go!”
Everypony scattered. The TARDIS was draining faster than Dinky had anticipated. Already, the backup lighting had kicked on, suffusing everything in a dark, magenta glow.
When the Crusaders reunited, they were armed… not exactly to the teeth, but they made do with what they could find. Scootaloo had a bandolier across her chest, and was carrying easily a dozen throwing knives. Apple Bloom had a baseball bat and a viking helmet. Rumble had managed to dig up a sword, which was quite impressive given the time constraints. Button was laden with a number of gadgets and gear that he wasn’t completely sure how to use, but had to do something, and Sweetie Belle had found a silver bow (but no arrows) and a slingshot.
Dinky had gone to the wardrobe room in hopes of finding some armor, but the best she could find was an old sonic screwdriver that had been left in a corner with a velvet suit. It was thick velvet, and time was running out, so she decided to just put it on. If she was going to die, why not go out in style, after all?
She looked around the room. “Listen,” she said. “You guys have supported me this whole way. You’ve listened to me, helped me, told me when I was being an idiot. I want to be sure and extend that same courtesy to all of you. If you don’t want to go out and fight, I won’t respect or love you any less.”
There was a prolonged silence. Apple Bloom smacked her bat against her hoof. “Ah reckon we’re good.”
Dinky looked around the room. Determination was writ large on every face. She caught sight of her reflection in the central console again and studied her own face. It was still tear-streaked and tired, but her expression matched those of her friends.
“Alright,” she said quietly. “Let’s go.”
The Valeyard hadn’t been expecting them. That was their one advantage. He hadn’t really expected them to leave the TARDIS at all until they had to, and even then he had expected them to emerge dejected, devastated, and destroyed. He had expected heads hung low and red-rimmed eyes.
He hadn’t expected a fist-sized rock to the face while he was busily siphoning the energy from the TARDIS, or for a knife to pierce his dead flesh in the next instant. The cut didn’t hurt much, but the knife’s hilt stuck in his hydraulics and limited the mobility of his left foreleg.
While he was still reeling from that, he was set upon by more melee-based weaponry -- bats and swords and stones pummeled him, while a horrible humming noise seemed to stall his ability to actually resist. He managed to shake off Apple Bloom and Rumble, but in the next moment, Button finally figured out how to use the Yeti web gun.
The Valeyard screeched as the deadly, suffocating substance gummed up his wings and one of his hind legs.
The Crusaders were winning. It seemed that the element of surprise had been enough to overcome the cyborg god for a moment.
Alas, that moment soon passed. The Valeyard roared, letting a little of the raw power of the TARDIS rip through him. Golden light poured from every crack in his body, burning out his fleshy, dead mortal eyes even as his new, LED sensors glared at those who would dare attack him.
Another rock flew at his head. It disintegrated before it got within a meter of him.
The weapons that the Crusaders had gathered shimmered with golden light as well before they too turned to rust and tarnish and dust.
“Well,” said Scootaloo, looking down at her ruined knives. “That… actually went better than I was expecting.”
The Valeyard snarled, and the TARDIS doors swung wide, a torrent of Artron energy flowing out and toward him.
The shimmering auras of the biomechanical abomination of an alicorn’s eyes glowed red in triumph. “You miserable FOALS!” it sneered. “You thought you could stop me? I am corruption itself! The Elements were the only things that could ever hope to destroy me. Now that they’re gone and their bearers have fallen, there is nothing to stand between me and the destruction of this universe!”
The six ponies huddled, terrified, as the Valeyard roared with laughter. The glowing, golden energy was seeping away from the TARDIS, into the demon’s hungry maw. Dinky watched, helpless, her eyes wet with tears. She could see that the ship was fighting back, inside flashing with brilliant colors, but it was only prolonging its fate. Magenta light, then red, orange, pink, purple, blue, magenta, red, orange, pink… wait. Why did those colors seem so familiar?
Dinky’s jaw dropped, her eyes growing wide in realization. It couldn’t be. But those colors… and all this time, they’d been fighting over the power source, the heart of the TARDIS, the Eye…
Slowly, a massive grin spread over her face. “Oi! Scrapyard!” she shouted, stepping forward.
The clockwork alicorn’s eyes flicked toward her. “Uh, Dinky?” Rumble muttered. “Maybe don’t antagonize the angry time god, yeah?”
Dinky’s grin was almost feral. “You’ve forgotten something,” she said with forced pleasantness.
The steam-powered eyebrows furrowed as the machine studied the mare intently. “And what,” it asked, “would that be?”
“The same thing you forgot as Nightmare Moon. As Sombra. As Barley Corn, as the TARDIS, as whatever else you’ve ever possessed. The same thing you will always forget.”
The artificial eyes blazed brilliant vermillion in fury. “I repeat. What would that be, whelp?”
Dinky’s face hardened. “You forget that the power to defeat you didn’t come from the Elements. Never did, never will. Kindness, laughter, loyalty, honesty, generosity, and magic aren’t found in old rocks. They’re found in living creatures. In friends.”
The Nightmare actually paused for a moment. Then it recovered itself, sneering. “A pretty speech, but one which proves nothing. The Elements were conduits, necessary for channeling the pathetic power of friendship that you ponies so cherish and which we have ably demonstrated that you can’t even conjure with the accursed trinkets themselves. Your pathetic, puny, mortal values have no chance of defeating me.”
The lilac unicorn smirked. “Yeah? Well, maybe. But there’s something else you’re forgetting. Hooves up, now, what powers the TARDIS?”
Apple Bloom got it first. “Th’... Eye of Harmony?” she guessed, eyes widening.
Dinky stamped her hoof down hard. The TARDIS roared its approval, echoing across the room and through the rift and throughout Ponyville and back again. It was a sound of hope that pricked up the ears and stirred the hearts of all who heard it. A rainbow of color and light mixed with the golden energy and flowed around the Crusaders. “No,” the Valeyard gasped as the ponies rose into the air. It fired golden bolts of energy at the group of friends, but the attacks merely melted into the swirl of light that wrapped around each of them. “Not again!”
Dinky smiled viciously. “Rumble, who kept Scootaloo from panicking as he mended her leg and saved me from my own emotional spiral into Tartarus, represents the Element of Kindness!”
An oddly twisted silver pick topped with a pink gem appeared in the pegasus’s hooves. He fumbled it, surprised, but managed to catch the object before it smashed on the ground.
“Button, who sacrificed his chance at fame and fortune to build a splint for Scootaloo, then gave the very marrow from his bones to help heal her, must be the Element of Generosity!”
A square, ivory-colored rod inset with a purple crystal shimmered into existence in Button’s hooves.
“Scootaloo, whose open heart and honest emotions helped save us from the Weeping Pegasi and united us in our time of greatest despair, represents the Element of Honesty!”
Another stick, this one topped with a wheel with an orange gem at the center, appeared in the mare’s hooves. She frowned. “I was hoping for loyalty,” she muttered. “But this works too, I guess.”
“Sweetie Belle, who calmed and tamed the beast in the tunnels and my own tortured brain with her love and musical skill is the Element of Laughter!”
A thin silver baton popped into life in said unicorn’s hoof, a glowing blue coil wrapped around it.
“Apple Bloom, who gave up infinite power to help her friends and didn’t hesitate to check on me when she was worried about my health, represents the Element of Loyalty!”
This one was a brass rod with a thick yellow handle, topped with a pointed red gem.
“And I—”
“And you,” the Nightmare interrupted coolly. “The Element of Magic, I suppose? Of Friendship? You?” It snorted derisively.
Dinky’s face fell. The bright aura began to fade and dim, the musical hum to steadily decrease in pitch, the six to sink slowly back toward the ground as the polychrome energy ebbed and flowed away from them and back toward the Valeyard’s rapacious maw.
“You’re cynical. You’re introverted. Often, you’re downright rude,” the clockwork monstrosity continued, taking a step forward. Its red eyes bored into Dinky’s own and cut, laser-like, into her soul. “What in the world possessed you to think that the Element of Magic would be you, of all ponies?”
Dinky sniffed, her eyes beginning to burn with tears as the ground grew ever closer. Everything came rushing back. How many times had she pushed away her friends? Her parents? How many ponies had she hurt over the years? The Valeyard was right…
“Hey!” Apple Bloom snapped. “You don’t get ta talk t’ mah friend that way!”
Dinky glanced up in shock. Bloom was scowling at the machine, clutching the Element of Loyalty like she was planning to jab it into a sensitive part of the Valeyard’s circuitry.
“Yeah,” Rumble agreed, glaring at the mechanical monster. “Who do you think you are?”
“Nothing more than a bully, I’d say,” Button said. He didn’t seem as obviously angry as Bloom or Rumble, but Dinky could tell from the steel in his voice and the way his eyes were moving across the Valeyard’s body that he was trying to figure out the best way to take it apart with a rusty screwdriver.
Sweetie Belle put a hoof around Dinky’s shoulder. “Don’t listen to it,” she consoled, gently rubbing her friend’s back. “We all think you’re fantastic!”
“Who do you think got us here, Smellyard?” Scootaloo challenged. “Who was brave enough to follow you? Smart enough to figure out how to get us here? Strong enough to lead us, and caring enough to know when the rest of us should take over? If Dinky can’t be Magic, then I don’t know who can!”
The Valeyard stumbled back, both from the force of the rebuke and from the far more physical force that was the gold and rainbow energies building up and swirling around the six ponies once more. It watched in fascinated horror as the Crusaders were consumed and illuminated by the brilliant display. One more stick appeared, the gem that crowned it glowing a rich, bright magenta.
“No,” the Valeyard roared. “No!”
Six buzzing, glowing devices aligned themselves at the robot’s chest. Dinky grinned, wiping the tears from her eye. “Allons-y,” she whispered.
The world turned white streaked with rainbow as six notes sang forth in a sweetly warbling melody.
The Valeyard’s scream was the grinding of rusting gears.
The Valeyard’s scream was the failure of a thousand failsafes.
The Valeyard’s scream was the squeak of a key in the wrong lock.
The Valeyard’s scream lasted for the space of only a few seconds before it faded, incorporated into the gentle, musical hum of the Elements in their new form— a sextet of harmonic screwdrivers.
The light and noise faded gradually, revealing the Crusaders standing on the floor once more, right in front of the remains of the Valeyard and the Interface. The organic components of the hybrid were crumbling away in front of their eyes as the Valeyard vanished like a sandcastle in a wind tunnel. The mechanical parts remained, standing docile and still, eyes closed as though asleep. The golden flames and glowing red eyes were extinguished. Gently, gently, ever so gently, Rumble stepped forward. He reached out a hoof… and poked it.
He jumped back as the whole machine spasmed. The eyes shot open. The head flew back, the top half flying off and clattering against the stone steps. The chest ripped itself open. A stream of golden energy shot forth from where its heart would have been, soaring over the heads of the assembled and back through the doors of the TARDIS, which closed after it with a sharp snap. The remaining machinery buckled at the joints, shuddered, and collapsed into a pile of gears and scrap metal. In accordance with the fundamental rules of the universe, one single gear rolled, wobbling, from the pile, following a comical drunken path until it spun around and fell down at Dinky’s hooves.
But there was no joy in the hearts of the Crusaders. Skeletons and dust and stranger things beside floated in bubbles over their heads. In the world outside, Ponyville burned, twisted corpses blackening and charring as the last few survivors succumbed to smoke inhalation. To say the least, it was a pyrrhic victory.
“How long do you think we have?” Scootaloo asked quietly.
“How long until what?” Rumble asked.
Scootaloo took a deep breath in and let it out. “How long before… before our bodies start to burn?”
There was a long silence. Button choked back a sob. “I feel warm,” he whimpered. “I feel so warm.”
“There has to be a way out,” Sweetie said desperately. “Right? There must be a way we can wake ourselves up.”
“And then what?” Scootaloo demanded. “We saw Ponyville. It’s on fire and in lockdown from the entire universe! What are we gonna do from there?”
Dinky blinked. “Lockdown,” she echoed quietly, narrowing her eyes.
Apple Bloom said nothing. She just stared at the array of time bubbles, blind with tears. “Ah’m sorry,” she whispered. “Ah’m so sorry, an’ there ain’t nopony left to forgive me.”
Rumble took a deep breath in and let it out slowly. “If this is the end,” he said, “I’m glad it’s with you guys.” He looked around. “We had the best of times, didn’t we?”
Button nodded, slinging a hoof over Rumble’s withers, and another over Sweetie’s. “Yeah. We did. But it looks to me like it’s all come to an end.”
Dinky’s eyes went wide. “Lockdown,” she said. “Bubbles!”
Everypony turned to stare at her. “Uh, Dinky?” Scootaloo asked, arching an eyebrow. “What exactly are you talking about?”
Dinky gestured to the floating corpses frantically. “They were all aged to death, put in pockets of accelerated time. Ponyville locked itself into its own personal time zone. Now, does any of that sound like something else we’ve seen today?”
Rumble frowned. “The… the weird temporal effects?” he guessed, tilting his head.
“Yes!” Dinky was beaming now. “Bubbles of time, which are easier to manipulate than entire timestreams! And guess what? All the bubbles are still there.”
Button caught on. “Meaning that we can manipulate the bubbles, too?”
“I think so.”
Scootaloo tilted her head. “Uh, how?”
Dinky’s smile faded slightly. “That, I don’t know,” she admitted.
“Well, you better figure it out toot sweet,” Apple Bloom said. “Ah’m startin’ to feel real toasty…”
“Let’s try the Elements again,” Scootaloo suggested, gesturing with hers toward the rift to Ponyville. “They’re supposed to be good at fixing this kind of thing.”
“Worth a shot,” Rumble agreed, following suit.
All six pointed out at their ruined hometown, and a bright rainbow of light hummed through the rift. It entwined around buildings, wrapped around bodies, bumped up against the sides of the temporal barrier. Dinky shut her eyes. “Come on…” she whispered. “Come on!”
Then, as the Crusaders watched with bated breath, the smoke slowed in its rise and spread. It froze. Then, before their wondering eyes, it began to flow backwards into the fire, slowly at first, then faster and faster as time rewound. Buildings rose and repaired themselves. Skeletons regrew muscle, flesh, hair, and rose, ponies staring at their hooves in astonishment.
“So far, so good!” Sweetie said giddily, spinning around to look at the individually bubbled bodies of their friends and families. “Third time’s the charm!”
There was a third blast of light and sound, and the bubbles of time began to shimmer and shine. Everyone stared as the bodies reformed from the dust and bones, wizened and drooping with age, but gradually growing younger, smoother, as time corrected itself to match the world outside. While the Crusaders were all distracted, they didn’t even notice as the rift above Ponyville gradually shrunk, closed, and sewed itself shut, vanishing with a soft pop and a burst of rainbow light.
Then, all the time bubbles popped as one, their occupants falling to the floor with assorted shouts of surprise and pain. Ditzy recovered first. “Muffin!” she gasped, rushing to embrace her daughter.
There was a sudden fizzing noise, and the Doctor popped into existence over the ruined remains of the interface. “Ah… ow,” he said, crawling out of the mess of metal and wiring. “Er, right. I feel like I might’ve missed something--”
He was cut off as Ditzy reached out and pulled him bodily into another hug. He hesitated for only a moment before returning the favor, sweeping his wife and daughter into a tight embrace.
After all the hugging and laughing and tears of joy had subsided, a few explanations were in order. Talking quickly, and interrupting each other often, the Crusaders told their tale. Their audience was a good one— gasping at the scary parts, chuckling at the funny ones. Rarity actually fainted when she heard that Sweetie and Button had faced the beast in the tunnels all on their own. Upon her recovery, the Doctor explained that there had likely been no real danger, just a warning to keep away. “Ol’ Aggedor, he’s just a big ol’ softie,” he said, smiling warmly. “Loves a good lullabye, he does.”
“Nevertheless,” Rarity said, pulling Sweetie Belle over to her side. “I don’t believe I’ll be letting you out of my sight anytime soon, darling. You were very brave, and I’m very proud. Please never do anything like that again.”
Sweetie just smiled knowingly and hugged her sister back. Then, realizing that Button had nopony around to hold at the moment, she beckoned him over and pulled him into the embrace, and then Spike wrapped his long body around all three of them, and there he held them safe and tight.
When Apple Bloom told of the temptations offered to her by the phantasms, Applejack rose to her hooves, her face grave. Macintosh stood behind her. They both trotted slowly over to their little sister, expressions unreadable. Orange hoof fell on yellow shoulder. “Never in my life,” Applejack began quietly.
Bloom squeezed her eyes shut, preparing for the tirade. Could have fixed Granny’s hip got the perfect harvest saved ma an’ pa perfect Apple Family forever and ever no more worries ‘bout anything oh Applejack I’m so sorry…
“Never in my life,” Applejack repeated, her voice deep with emotion, “have Ah been so proud of anypony.” She pulled the unresisting mare into a bear hug. Mac sniffled and threw herself into the fray, pulling her little sisters into a monumental bear hug. Apple Bloom blinked, but after a moment, she returned the embrace, tears pooling in her eyes. “Ah’ve never bin anything but proud of you,” Applejack murmured. “Ah hope y’all know that.”
“...Yeah,” Bloom said. “Yeah, Ah think Ah get it now.”
Rainbow kept one wing wrapped around Scootaloo the whole time, grinning proudly. When Rumble recounted how he’d had to set Scootaloo’s legs, Dash’s wings had tightened around her sister-in-all-but-blood. When Dinky started telling the story of the Weeping Pegasi, Dash’s grip had slackened.
Scootaloo looked up to see Rainbow looking down at her, trepidation in the older mare’s eyes.
“What’s wrong?” Scootaloo whispered.
Dash arched an eyebrow. “You really gotta ask, Scoot? I nearly killed you down there. If you hadn’t talked me out of it…” she trailed off, sickened even to think it. After a moment, she forced a smile. “It’s just lucky you’re that good, huh?”
Scootaloo looked down for a moment. Then she met Rainbow Dash square in the eye. “I learned from the best,” she said.
Rainbow’s eyes went wide. Then she sniffled. “Scootaloo, if you make me cry right now in front of my friends and the princesses and everypony --”
Scootaloo tilted her head.
“Aw, fuck it,” Rainbow said, pulling Scootaloo up against her barrel like a stuffed toy and holding her tight, burying her face in Scootaloo's mane. This had the added benefit of hiding her tears.
Rumble sat surrounded by his family. Thunderlane held him tight, tucked under one wing, and Flitter sat on the other side of him. Cloudchaser leaned in and muttered, “Hey. Your parents don’t mean shit, you know. You’re part of our family, whether you like it or not.”
Rumble nodded. “I know. It’s a process, healing. Thanks for being there for me while I do it.”
“... Dork.”
Rumble gave a half-chuckle. “In the future, though? Please try not to come after me as ghosts. That would have been the most traumatic shit.”
“If I die again trying to rescue your flank, I will literally hold off on going to Las Pegasus so I can haunt you until your dying day.”
“Wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Cloudchaser’s face grew stern. “But if you die before me, I swear I’ll kill you.”
Rumble actually laughed at that, and Cloudchaser’s expression melted into a cockeyed grin.
The Doctor stared forlornly at the heap of scrap metal when Dinky told of their final battle against the Valeyard. “Never should’ve built that,” he muttered. “Stupid, stupid Doctor…”
Ditzy lay a hoof around his shoulders lightly. “We all make mistakes,” she said. “Yours just happen to be a little more…”
“Apocalyptic?”
“Yeah.”
The Doctor huffed out a laugh. “Well. S’pose that’s my lesson to be more careful in future. I just wish—”
“No,” Dinky said firmly. “Stop that right now, dad. Blaming yourself for everything that goes wrong is how we got into this mess in the first place. Take it from somepony who learned exactly where her emotional constipation and self-pity was getting her today! So shut up, learn that ponies love you, and be happy.”
The Time Lord blinked, trying to process something. Slowly, he smiled. “You called me dad,” he said happily.
Dinky blinked, nonplussed. “Huh. Yeah, I did. Weird.”
She looked at the Doctor, who was looking suspiciously sappy. “Don’t make a big thing of it, or I’ll stop.”
“Make a big deal of it? Me? Never,” the Doctor said, quickly glancing away.
And then the story was over, and a pall of silence fell over the room. It was Button who eventually broke it. He glanced awkwardly over to Rarity and held out his screwdriver. “I guess you want this back?” he asked sheepishly.
There was a brief moment of shock, and then the room erupted into chaos. The Crusaders all clamored forth, offering the elements back to their original bearers, who were equally adamant that they should stay right where they were. After a few minutes of squabbling, Celestia glanced at Luna and cocked an eyebrow. Her sister nodded her assent. She took a deep breath and roared, “QUIET!”
The Royal Canterlot Voice reverberated off the walls, followed by immediate silence.
Celestia stepped forward. “It would seem,” she said calmly, “the Elements have chosen new bearers. I, for one, would not attempt to argue with them.”
“Indeed not,” Luna said with a snort and a toss of her starry mane. “That’s the sort of thing that gets you thousand-year time-outs.”
The assembled suddenly found themselves casting disturbed looks at the six little devices, as though they might go off at any second.
“Are they even real?” Sweetie asked, holding hers up to the light. It was silver, long and thin, more a baton than a screwdriver. A music note was carefully etched into the metal near the base. “I mean, we’re kind of walking around the Doctor’s brain, right?”
“It’s… well, it’s a little more complex than that,” the Doctor said, scratching the back of his head. “Today’s events are rather unprecedented. I don’t really know how real those screwdrivers of yours are, I’m afraid.”
“There’s only one way to find out,” Scootaloo said, examining her screwdriver minutely. It was all brass, and as she pushed on the head, it telescoped in and out. There was a dial at the thickest section for adjusting the frequency, and a wheel-shaped knob for turning the device on.
Everypony looked toward the TARDIS, idling in the corner of the room, still glowing faintly gold. Quietly, without anyone even noticing, the Tomb of Rassilon had faded into darkness, leaving only a few points of illumination like the starry sky.
“Is that how we get back?” Rainbow asked. “Like, I know it goes anywhere and everywhere, but from inside your brain to outside it?”
“Like I said, the Matrix is a little more complicated than that,” the Doctor said. “But yes. The TARDIS represents our ticket back to the real world. All we’ve got to do is step through, most likely.”
“Most likely?” Rarity repeated, raising a brow.
The Doctor hummed. “Yeah, I’d say, eighty, ninety percent on that. Worth a shot, right?”
The TARDIS doors swung open, revealing a bright golden glow. Ditzy put one wing around the Doctor’s withers, and the other around Dinky’s. “Allons-y,” she said, gently guiding them forward. They passed into the light, and
Dinky opened her eyes. “Wha-- is this Ponyville General?” she muttered, sitting up.
“Gee,” said Nurse Redheart. “You put yourself in a coma, fought a nightmare from the dawn of time, and at least one of you broke a couple legs. No, we definitely just left you in the TARDIS.”
“To be fair,” Scootaloo said, rubbing her forehead. “I think my legs are way better now.”
“Same,” Button agreed.
“That’s probably down to the Elements,” Twilight said. “They’re very good at sorting out the minor aches and pains.”
“Indeed,” Rarity agreed. “My tail’s been even more lustrous and rich since the day the Elements regrew it…”
Button looked around suddenly. “My bag,” he said. “Where’s my bag? Is my controller fixed?”
“It was probably never broken,” the Doctor noted. “The Matrix wouldn’t have affected it -- it doesn’t have a mind, after all.”
Button grinned broadly, and Sweetie Belle leaned over from her cot to pat him on the shoulder.
“You know,” Celestia commented, glancing around the room, taking in the way the awakening ponies were sleeping two or more to a bed. “I really don’t think this is standard hospice procedure.”
“Desperate times called for desperate measures,” said Tender Care, shaking out her hooves one by one, getting reaccustomed to the physical realm.
Apple Bloom was looking around frantically, patting down the bedclothes until she found what she was looking for under her pillow. With a whoop of delight, she held aloft her screwdriver, and the red gem on top of it glimmered in the fluorescent lighting of the hospital room.
All of the former coma patients were discharged in short order, after a cursory examination showed that all of their conditions were normal, except for Discord. Their condition came back ‘Weirdo’ every time, despite not being in any way an appropriate medical result, and definitely not having been marked on the thermometer before it went under their tongue.
It took them slightly longer to leave the hospital than it should have, because Pinkie wanted a lollipop for being such a good patient, and then Luna decided that she should have one too.
In short order, however, all of them were back on the darkened street, most of them with lollipops in their mouths. Granny Smith had joined them, along with Romana, Rarity’s parents, Scootaloo’s aunts, and Berry Punch, all of whom had returned to their normal ages, to Granny’s great disappointment. Dinky looked around. “It seems so… normal,” she said.
Indeed, nopony would ever have guessed that the town had burned down to its foundations last night. Of course, thanks to the Elements, it technically hadn’t. Indeed, because of Luna's incapacitation, it was technically still last night. Some ponies were weeping, others embracing, and some were doing both, but many others only looked confused and disoriented. Several guards seemed to be wandering around aimlessly, shaking their heads at one another and peering down alleyways to look for hidden dangers.
The Doctor nodded, surveying the scene. “I imagine the temporal reversal that the Elements performed to restore Ponyville and destroy the bubble of frozen time resulted in partial memory loss for everypony in town,” he said, shifting his banana-flavored lolly against his cheek. “Since the events of last night were edited out of the time stream, they can’t have happened. The memories are still there, but blurred. Distant. Sort of like the way you remember a story that happened to someone else, there’s a disconnect between everypony here and the events of last night.”
“That seems no bad thing,” Sombra said.
“Rather,” said the Doctor. “I imagine that quite a few ponies in town are going to have some troubled nights for awhile -- sorry, Luna, I’m afraid you’re going to be busy. Hopefully, though, they’ll bounce back quickly and well.”
“And for those of us who are troubled by sharper memories…?” Luna coaxed.
The Doctor sighed. “Yes. You’re quite right.” He looked around. “You’ve all been quite right this entire time, and I haven’t listened. I’m so, so sor--”
He caught Ditzy’s sorrowful eye. He closed his mouth. Reconsidered. After a moment, he tried again, his voice catching slightly as he spoke. “I’m so very grateful indeed to have friends and family as wonderful as all of you.”
Everypony smiled at that. “We’re glad to have you back too, old friend,” Celestia said.
“Though, please, Doctor. For the love of all sanity, get a bucking therapist,” said Cadance, imploring.
“Hear, hear,” Ditzy agreed. “Or at the very least… talk about what’s on your mind? We’re all here for you.”
The Doctor chuckled and nodded. “Yes, I think that would be a good idea. On both counts, actually. But, er, let’s hold off on that until tomorrow.”
“I’m holding you to that,” Dinky said, giving him a mild glare.
“I know you will. For right now, though, there’s one member of our merry crew still up at Sweet Apple Acres. I need to check on the TARDIS. In many ways, she’s been through more than any of the rest of us.”
Ditzy nodded. “Fair enough. I’ll come, too.”
Celestia glanced up at the sky. “We should be heading back to Canterlot,” she said. “Doctor, the time?”
“Oh! Yes, quite. It’s nine-seventeen. AM. Twenty-sixth of May, year 18 of the Harmonic Era.”
Celestia and Luna lit their horns, and night faded quickly into morning.
“Nine-seventeen?” Button asked, alarmed. “My train to Baltimare leaves in less than an hour!”
There was a pause. “Do you want us to wait with you at the station?” Rumble asked.
“... Yeah. Yeah, I’d really like that,” Button said.
The other Crusaders looked around at their respective family members, half-asking permission and half-apologizing for running off now.
Aunt Holiday smiled. “Go,” she said. “We’ll be waiting for you at home.”
And piece by piece, the group divided off, each of them heading for home -- whatever that meant to them.
The train station was quiet. Nopony was out today. The Crusaders had the whole terminal to themselves. They shared two benches across from one another.
Button turned his Element over in his hooves, inspecting it. There wasn’t a join, seam, or screw in it, just a perfectly carved piece of white stone and silver metal, embellished with violet accents. “We should’ve pushed harder for them to take the Elements back,” he said.
“Why do you say that?” Dinky asked, studying her own Element, which was composed of dark wood and brass, topped with a magenta crystal.
“They’re all established here in Ponyville,” Button said. “Makes more sense to keep them together.”
There was a long silence. “...Ah’m stayin,” Bloom said after a long moment.
The others looked up at her. She looked back. “Ah don’t need to go noplace else,” she said. “Ah don’t need t’ run from mahself no more. Ah’m stayin’.”
“I guess I am too,” Dinky said. “I can do my research and write articles from anywhere. I don’t really feel like leaving.”
Rumble exhaled. “Well, when you put it like that, I guess I don’t, either. Guess I can look into openings on the Weather Patrol here in Ponyville. I wanted to move on so bad, just so I wouldn’t live my whole life here. But now… that sounds really good, actually.”
Sweetie rubbed her chin. “I can probably sing anywhere, too. There are some nightclubs and things in Ponyville that’ll pay well enough for a performer, and I can commute to other gigs…”
“Yeah,” Scootaloo agreed. “Commuting seems like a pretty good idea. There are a few aerial stunt shows pretty close by, I can work with one of them.”
Button considered his screwdriver a moment longer, flipping it over a few times. He was conscious of everypony looking at him. He nodded. “Yeah. I’m staying too,” he said. “Maybe I can sell the controller for a cut of the profits at the show. If I can, great, I’ve got a steady income. If I can’t, well, fine. I’d much rather work on it here with my friends.”
“The fact that our ranks include an engineer, an arcanist, and a mathematician probably doesn’t hurt,” Dinky said.
Button grinned and shook his head. “Well, no. But I’d do it even if you weren’t. The ‘friends’ part is the most important thing. I’ve been so lonely these last couple of years. I was chasing a dream of fame and fortune, because that’s what we’re supposed to want from society. But I want friends. Family. Love.”
Dinky glanced around. “It doesn’t have to be,” she said. “I don’t want any of you to give up your dreams just because the TARDIS’s brain gave us some fancy new gadgets. If you want to go, I don’t want to be responsible for holding you back.”
Everypony glanced at one another. “No,” Scootaloo said. “No. I think we’re good.”
Dinky smiled. “Oh,” she said. “Good.” She couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“Group hug?” Sweetie Belle suggested.
Oh. Yes, that would have been a good one, Dinky thought as she fell into a pile of grinning, slightly tearful friends. Oh well. This said more than words could express, anyway.
The Doctor pored over the TARDIS console. Romana had elected to tag along to provide any second opinions that were necessary. Ditzy lingered at the edge of the console’s platform, just watching.
Romana sighed, wiping some grease from her forehead. “Really, Doctor,” she said. “Not all of this can just be the fault of the Nightmare.”
“How do you mean?” the Doctor asked, glancing up.
“I sincerely doubt that the embodiment of corruption and darkness, no matter how desperate it was, would tell you to use a crazy straw and a rubber duck to replace the coolant tubing,” Romana said, holding up the offending parts.
“Ah,” said the Doctor. “You know, I kept meaning to replace that.”
“For how long?” Romana asked, raising her eyebrows at him.
“Well, you know…”
“Before or after I stopped traveling with you?”
“After.”
Romana sighed. “Well, it’s something. Honestly, you could have at least used a turkey baster…”
She set the parts aside. “Right. I’m going to scrounge for parts. Try not to blow anything up while I’m gone.”
“Who, me?” the Doctor asked.
Romana looked at Ditzy despairingly. “Try to keep him in line, won’t you?”
“I do my best,” Ditzy said.
“I know you do.”
And then it was just the Doctor and Ditzy. For a long moment, neither of them spoke. After awhile, though, the Doctor said, “You know, there’s an Earth film that said, ‘Love means never having to say you’re sorry.’”
“Is there?” Ditzy asked, confused.
“Yeah. I think that’s rubbish.” The Doctor frowned at the console and pulled out something that looked like a class ring. “Huh. I was wondering where that had got to.”
“Why do you think that?” Ditzy prompted, coming to stand next to him.
“If you never apologize -- if you never see what you’ve done wrong -- what kind of person does that? To me, love is empathy. Love is always having to say that you’re sorry, when you’ve caused somepony pain.”
Ditzy considered this. “Yes,” she agreed. “There’s something to that. But it’s empathy, not self-flagellation. It’s understanding what you’ve done wrong, not punishing yourself for it forever. Love is forgiveness.”
“I’ve done so much wrong in my life,” the Doctor said.
“And you always try to make up for it,” Ditzy said. “I’m sorry, Doctor. I’m so very sorry that I wasn’t there for you all those years you needed me.”
The Doctor looked flummoxed. “What -- in the Time War? Ditzy, I would never have -- I abandoned you, not -- I -- but --” He looked back down at the console.
Ditzy said nothing. She just looked at him evenly and steadily with those lovely golden eyes. At last, the Doctor, met her eyes again. “Thank you for being here for me now,” he said, blinking back tears.
“That’s the spirit,” Ditzy said, patting him on the back.
Celestia and Luna reconvened at Twilight’s castle, where a few platoons of royal guards were already milling about. “Aunt Celestia! Aunt Luna!” Blueblood called, pushing his way through the throng. “I’m so glad to see you up and about again!”
Celestia smiled at him. “Your concern is appreciated.”
“Yes, yes, lovely, now can we please go back to Canterlot so I can stop being the ruler of all Equestria?” Blueblood asked. “One more minute holding court, and I swear I’ll just disband the nobility and be done with it.”
Luna simply arched an eyebrow at him.
“Well…” Blueblood hedged. “Alright, no more than half of the noble houses.”
“What young revolutionaries the Night Court makes,” Luna said, shaking her head in amusement. “Where are Fleur and Fancy? I doubt you came here alone.”
Blueblood glanced around. “I believe Fleur’s dragged her husband off to some dark room of the castle, either to snog him senseless or lecture him about being foolish enough to get killed by a burning building. Possibly both. Starlight Glimmer and the Griffonstani Ambassador are being debriefed at the moment, so I believe that you’re simply stuck with me.”
He paused. “Now, can we please go back to Canterlot? I wasn’t joking about the not wanting to be crown prince thing.”
Celestia put a hoof to her chin. “Well,” she said. “We could. On the other hoof, it’s been so very long since Luna and I have had a vacation…”
Blueblood looked singularly unimpressed. “I’m not going to stop you from taking a holiday, but if you don’t remove me from the seat of power posthaste, I can and will start disestablishing the noble houses of petitioners who annoy me.”
“Don't threaten us with a good time, nephew,” Luna said.
“We have a list of ones to start with,” Celestia added.
Blueblood pursed his lips. “On the other hoof, if you do take back control of the nation, I promise that my last act as prince will be declaring a holiday of hedonistic dessert consumption on which neither Day nor Night Court will be held.”
Celestia and Luna exchanged glances. “Deal,” they agreed.
“Excellent. Now for the love of sanity, let’s get out of here before I run into somepony who recognizes me.”
Rumble awoke to the smell of frying eggs. He grumbled to himself, rolled out of bed and trudged into the kitchen. “Morning,” he said.
“Good morning!” Button said, far more brightly than anypony had a right to be at six in the morning. “Are you excited?”
“I haven’t had my coffee yet. Emotions are not available right now.”
Rumble settled down at the kitchen table. It had been a couple of weeks since the two stallions had moved in together. Button was a pretty good roommate, if you could ignore the mechanical clutter that piled up everywhere. He was a good cook and he didn’t snore.
Both of them had elected to move out of their childhood homes -- Button wanted to give his mom and her marefriend some space, and Rumble just wanted to stop living in the same house as Cloudchaser. Thankfully, Button had known one Miss Tea Cozy who’d had some rooms to let, and the two had settled in reasonably comfortably.
Button took the coffee pot off the stove and poured two cups, served the eggs up onto plates, and took the other seat at the kitchen table, still beaming incessantly. Rumble glanced around the table. As he had suspected, Button's tail was actually wagging.
Rumble looked at him through lidded eyes as he took a sip of his coffee. Button’s grin only got brighter. Rumble rolled his eyes. “Yes, alright, it’s exciting. I’m looking forward to getting back into the TARDIS.”
“Have you thought about where you want to go?” Button asked. “I’m hoping for a real alien planet, or maybe the chance to meet an AI.”
Rumble shrugged. “Sure. Sounds good.” He yawned and blinked the last of the sleep from his eyes. “I’m gonna go for a fly,” he said. “See you at the train station later?”
“Wouldn’t miss it,” Button said.
“Yeah, I know. As though you’d miss a chance to see Sweetie Belle again.”
Button spun around. “And what’s that supposed to mean?”
But Rumble was already out the door. Button frowned for a minute before it melted into a goofy smile. “I mean,” he mused. “He’s not wrong…”
Up at Sweet Apple Acres, meanwhile, Dash was on her fifth cup of coffee, her hind hooves hammering out a rhythm on her chair.
Granny was doing her best to hide her amusement at the situation. Big Macintosh sat next to Dash, casting awkward glances her way as they tried and failed to figure out how best to calm her down. They kept coming up blank, so instead focused on trying to enjoy their waffles.
Apple Bloom was the only one really doing anything to help. Sitting across from Rainbow, she patted the older mare on the hoof. “Look,” she said. “Y’all are gonna be jus’ fine, ya hear? This proposal’s got it all, there ain’t no way she’ll say no.”
“Unless she does,” Rainbow said. “What if I’m going to fast for her? What if she’s not ready for this? What if I’m not ready for this?”
Apple Bloom nodded. “Those sure are... concerns you got there,” she said. “But ask yerself -- how likely are they, really?”
Rainbow gnawed at her lower lip.
“You want me to walk y’all through th’ proposal again?” Bloom asked, her voice soothing. “Would that help?”
After a moment, Rainbow nodded.
“Alright. After breakfast, you ask AJ to look at somethin’ you found out in th’ orchard. You start leadin’ her up to Ma an Pa’s grave, all roundabout-like, while th’ rest of us three sneak up there an’ hide. Then when y’all get there…”
“I pull out the ring, and you three come out of the underbrush,” Dash said, nodding. “Yeah. Yeah. I know. Good plan. Great plan. Romantic. Perfect for Applejack.”
“Course, when y’all marry into th’ family, yer gonna have t’ change yer name,” Granny said conversationally. “Can’t have no Apple family members without Apple names.”
“Granny,” Apple Bloom snapped. “Stop teasin’ her! She’s gonna have a nervous breakdown as it is.”
“Zap Apple,” Rainbow Dash said, her eyes unfocused. “Good. Good name. Romantic. Perfect for Applejack.”
Apple Bloom gave her grandmother the stink eye. The old mare just chuckled and turned back to the waffle iron.
“‘Nother coffee,” Rainbow Dash said.
“Any more coffee an’ y’all won’t be able to talk straight enough to propose,” Bloom warned.
“She’s askin’ our Applejack to marry her!” Granny said. “‘Straight’ don’t enter into it!”
“Granny!” Bloom said
There was a creak on the stairs, and the kitchen fell silent. After a moment, Applejack walked into the kitchen and paused, one hoof still in the air. “Uh. Mornin’?” she tried, looking around, nonplussed. “Is there, uh, somethin’ Ah oughta know about, or…”
With a wild scream, Rainbow Dash stood up and threw the ring box at Applejack’s head.
Applejack swatted the box away as a reflex, then looked at Rainbow, perplexed.
“Applejack!” Rainbow said. “Uh. Wife me. Please?”
Granny burst out laughing. Mac buried their face in their waffles. Apple Bloom shut her eyes, unsure of whether to laugh or sigh.
Applejack looked from Rainbow Dash to the small ring box on the floor several times. Realization dawned on her face and a slow smile spread from ear to ear. She started laughing, a deep belly laugh that about shook the rafters.
Rainbow sat frozen. Oh no. No no no. This had all gone wrong. Did Applejack think this was a prank? Or was she laughing at the very idea that Rainbow might propose to her? She needed to go, but she was petrified.
Applejack picked up the box and opened it, her laughter subsiding as she looked within. Her face softened. She pulled out a single silver earring, decorated with a sky blue feather.
Rainbow was just getting up the wherewithal to run away when Applejack came over and pulled her into a tight embrace. “Of course Ah’ll wife y’all, sugarcube.”
“...You’re never gonna let me hear the end of that, are you.”
Applejack chuckled. “Not a chance, you beautiful blue featherhead.”
Granny let out a whoop of joy, and Apple Bloom began to applaud, her smile stretching from ear to ear. Big Mac sniffled and dabbed at their eyes with a napkin, too overcome to say a word as their sister and her fiancée kissed.
Applejack pulled away eventually, a playful smile on her lips. “Well,” she said. “That certainly was somethin’ to experience before breakfast. On th’ subject of which… Granny?”
The old mare held up a hoof as she fussed over a plate. Eventually, she handed over a plate heaped with waffles and whipped cream and syrup, scattered with apple slices arranged into hearts.
Applejack chuckled. “Subtlety, thy name is Granny,” she said drily.
“Hush up an’ let me be happy for y’all,” the old mare scolded.
Applejack sat down, pulling an unresisting Rainbow over to her side. She glanced at Apple Bloom. “Ain’t you meant to be meetin’ yer friends later today?”
“Yeah,” Bloom agreed. “Not fer awhile, though. Ah can stick around fer another couple hours.”
“Less’n there’s a reason you’d want to kick all us outta th’ house,” Granny threw in.
Applejack went pink, and Big Mac nearly spilled their waffles. “Grenadine Smith, you dirty old mare!” Apple Bloom howled, putting her hooves over her ears.
Rainbow Dash merely smiled vaguely and took a bite of waffle.
Morning in Canterlot was an overcast affair. That suited Starlight Glimmer just fine. Her head was still pounding from the late night she’d had with her friends the night before. She wore sunglasses to shield her eyes from the brightness of the world around her, as well as to disguise their redness. She hadn’t looked in the mirror that morning for fear of what she might see in it, so her mane was almost certainly a fright. However, she considered that a quantum superposition that hadn’t yet been collapsed, and she was content to leave it that way until the hangover had subsided fully.
She sat alone at a table near the back of her favorite coffee shop, The Grounding Wire. Before her sat a cheese danish and the special of the week, a Graduation Cappuccino. She really didn’t want to be here. She really didn’t want to be awake. Given the state of her head, she didn’t particularly want to be alive. However, she’d staggered home the night before and found a note sitting on her nightstand detailing a place and a time.
Starlight had never been one to resist a mystery.
There was a mare sitting across from her, she realized. Starlight hadn’t seen her arrive, but she was there, nonetheless. Her pink mane was pulled back and braided. She wore a hideous scarf and a pair of thick glasses. Starlight wrinkled her nose. Clearly this was a student. “Come back during my office hours,” she mumbled.
“Bonjour, Starlight,” Fleur de Lis murmured.
Starlight removed her sunglasses and blinked at the other mare through sticky eyelids. “Huh,” she said. “Didn’t know you’d enrolled in the CMA, Fleur.”
Fleur sighed. “A simple disguise, but an effective one,” she said, taking off her fake glasses and setting them on the table.
Starlight grunted.
Fleur leaned forward over the table. “Do you know why I asked you here, Starlight?”
Starlight considered this blearily. “GUIDE... wants my magical expertise?” she guessed.
“Were that the case, I would have been sure to contact you well before you got a wooden mouth,” Fleur said drily.
“Uh… wha?”
Fleur tilted her head. “Have you not that expression here? What is the Equestrian phrase, a 'hang-over'?”
Starlight nodded, accepting the point. “So… you’re trying to recruit me?”
Fleur snorted. “You don’t seem as though you would make a good subordinate. An officer, perhaps, but you would rankle at the rules we must obey. Better to leave you here, I think.”
Starlight struggled to think of a third reason and came up empty.
Fleur tapped the table with a hoof, staring into Starlight’s eyes. Her gaze was sharp and probing, but it was not unkind. “In your debrief,” she said, “you mentioned that the Valeyard intended to keep you alive for something.”
Starlight glanced down at her danish. She could still feel Fleur’s gaze.
“Have you any idea why?” Fleur asked softly.
Starlight shrugged, taking a bite of her pastry. “I’m powerful,” she said, covering her mouth with a hoof. “And I’ve been known to be… very emotionally-driven in the past. It must have wanted to try and manipulate me into doing something.”
“Have you any idea what?”
“He mentioned something about what he’d do ‘when he was done with this universe’,” Starlight said, glancing up at Fleur again for a moment. “Perhaps all he wanted was a battery to help him get into the next branch of the multiverse. I really don’t know.”
Fleur sat silently for a long moment. Starlight did not meet her eyes again.
“I see,” Fleur said at last. “In which case, I suppose this is somewhat academic. The Valeyard is gone, and can manipulate you no longer.”
“Yes,” Starlight said. It wasn’t technically a lie. Whatever was lurking at the edges of her dreams certainly wasn’t the Valeyard. She could feel that, somehow. All the same, she really ought to mention it to Fleur.
She really ought to mention it.
“I don’t suppose that GUIDE has a secret alien hangover cure?” Starlight asked, glancing up at Fleur over her cappuccino.
Fleur gave a slight smile. “That depends. How do you feel about eating worms?”
Starlight made a face. “Yeah, never mind,” she said, looking around for a napkin. When she looked up again, Fleur was gone, the sound of the bell over the door the only hint that the mare had departed.
Somewhere deep inside Starlight Glimmer’s mind, something smiled.
Not too far away, Celestia entered her private dining room. Luna was there already, staring out the window, swirling a glass of red wine absent-mindedly around in her aura.
“Good morning, Luna.”
Luna blinked and glanced at her sister, nodding at her.
Celestia tilted her head. “Bit for your thoughts?”
Luna considered that for a long moment. “Do you ever find yourself realizing that the world has changed? While you were so busy living your life, every other creature has been doing the same, and when you look around…”
“The world you see isn’t the one you remember,” Celestia finished.
Luna nodded.
“Well, yes. Of course,” Celestia said. “Sometimes I forget how old Kibitz has grown since he first came to work at the palace. Sometimes I get turned around wandering the palace because I forget that the East Wing was remodeled after Tirek’s invasion. Once, I’m sure you recall, I asked if Smart Cookie could be brought to court to advise me on a difficult question, neglecting to realize he’d been dead fifteen years.”
Luna snorted softly. “Yes, I remember that well.”
“What brings on this mood, Luna?”
Luna sighed. “It is… difficult to conceive that there are new Bearers,” she admitted. “That the ones who freed me from the Nightmare… no longer hold that power. It should feel freeing, I think, that it has been so long since I returned.”
“But it doesn’t?”
“I…” Luna shook her head, frustrated.
Celestia nodded. “I see. You know, when Sunset Shimmer returned, I felt much the same way. Conflicted might be a good word for it. Frightened of my old mistakes coming back to bite me. Hopeful that I might finally be able to face up to them. Terrified that I couldn’t rise to the occasion.”
Luna pursed her lips and nodded.
“I was paralyzed with indecision. But a very smart mare came to me in my darkest hour and reminded me that what was past was past, and the future was dependent on what I chose. And she told me that she would always be there for me.”
Luna’s expression slowly melted into a small smile and she sat down across from her sister. “A smart mare indeed,” she said. “Smart, attractive, funny, incredibly talented in all respects…”
Celestia’s face was a picture, but after a moment it melted into a soft smirk. “And oh, so humble.”
They chuckled for a moment. Then Celestia’s face went serious. “Are you truly so worried that you will fall to the Nightmare’s wiles again?”
Luna considered. “Honestly? No. I recognize it for what it is, now. But it still feels as though a safety net has been pulled out from under me. These new Bearers seem so… inexperienced.”
“Compared to what?” Celestia asked. “Twilight and her friends went into the woods on the strength of an old book of fables, while you and I had no more to go on than the Doctor’s word. They’ve already destroyed the Nightmare once.”
“... I suppose,” Luna allowed. “But it still feels as though we’re entering a new era, doesn’t it?”
“I hope not,” Celestia said. “We already had to change all the calendars after Twilight’s ascension.” She smiled. Luna returned it after a moment.
Celestia reached out and patted Luna gently on the hoof. “Perhaps it will be a new age,” she said. “But that need not be a cause for alarm. Your return, dear sister, heralded such a change as well.”
Luna dipped her head, conceding the point. “Thank you, Tia. That does put this in perspective.” She looked out the window again, where the pale shade of her moon still kept watch over the world below in the morning light.
The train ride to Ponyville was uneventful. Scootaloo had been working with a stunt team known as the Whirling Dervishes in Witherston, just a few miles north of where Sweetie Belle had been singing in a nightclub in Sire’s Hollow. Therefore, the mares had arranged their schedules to catch the same train back to Ponyville.
“So,” said Scootaloo. “How did it go?”
Sweetie beamed. “Really well! I even got called back for an encore, and a cute mare bought me a drink! What about you?”
Scootaloo shrugged. “It went okay. The Dervishes definitely aren’t the Wonderbolts, but, y’know, who is? I helped them work out a few kinks and problem spots in their routine, but they didn’t seem that interested in any of my ideas for new tricks.”
“Oh, that’s too bad,” Sweetie said.
Scootaloo shrugged. “Their loss. Ah, well, maybe next time. At least I got a paycheck.”
“That’s good. Are you still thinking of moving out of your aunts’ house?”
Scootaloo shrugged. “Yeah, eventually. Gonna have to save up for a place, though, unless you want to make like Rumble and Button and go halfsies on the rent.”
Sweetie thought about that. “...Maybe. Seems like it might not be a great idea since we both have to travel so much, though.”
“That’s fair.” Scootaloo leaned back in her seat. “So. Today’s the day, huh.”
“I guess so,” Sweetie said. “Are you nervous?”
“Uh, well, considering the last time we got into the TARDIS we nearly all died… yes. Yeah, I’m a little nervous. But I’m looking forward to it, too. It feels… I dunno. Right.”
“I know what you mean,” Sweetie said, kicking her hooves thoughtfully. “I mean, I’m scared spitless. But I think things are going to be different this time.”
“Well, I mean, yeah,” Scootaloo said. “Obviously. I mean, even just the fact that we evicted the fuckin’ Nightmare from the TARDIS is gonna have a pretty big impact.”
“And Dinky mentioned that she thinks that she and the Doctor are making good progress.”
“Good,” Scootaloo said. “They both need it.”
“...So, you know, sometimes I really feel like I’m fated to outlive all my friends,” the Doctor said, staring at the floor. “It’s like… I think Time Lords just live too long.”
“Interesting,” said the one in the armchair. “Is that why you rush into dangerous situations?”
“Probably at least in part,” the Doctor admitted, rolling back on the couch. “The other part, of course, is being addicted to the adrenaline rush. Plus, if I don’t… well, the fact is that there aren’t always people around as well-equipped as I am to dealing with dangerous situations.”
“Mmm… I suppose that’s fair. But tell me, Doctor, is it that your friends die which bothers you? Or merely that you feel they outgrow you? Mortality or abandonment?”
The Doctor puffed out his cheeks and blew out a long breath. “Blimey, you don’t pull punches.”
“You specifically asked me not to.”
“True. I mean…” The Doctor stalled for a moment. “I’d say it’s both. But abandonment, that is a much larger part of it.”
His conversational partner rose from his chair and looked out the window. “You know, Doctor, I once knew a diamond dog without a nose.”
The Doctor hesitated. “...How did they smell?”
There was a glint of teeth in the light. “Terrible. Another creature of my acquaintance is a veterinarian, one who cares for the animals whom she loves so dearly. She holds them, feeds them, heals them -- yet they must all eventually leave her one way or another, for the wilderness or the cold earth. Each time it kills her anew, but her heart is still so open, so loving.”
They turned dramatically. “Tell me, Doctor -- will you set your feelings to roam free? Or will you bury them?”
The Doctor looked up at the tall, gaunt figure who cast an antlered shadow across the ground. “Look, Discord, if you’re going to play at psychology, could you choose literally any other archetype?”
“Spoilsport.” Discord snapped their fingers and the sharp lighting of the room dissolved into the soft hues of a bright summer day spilling in through the windows of Fluttershy’s sitting room.”
“Thank you,” the Doctor said.
“You haven’t answered my question yet,” Discord observed.
“I haven’t,” the Doctor agreed. He inhaled through his nose and slowly let out the breath through his mouth. “I mean, it’s never that simple, is it? Just saying, ‘Oh yes, let me take all of my emotional trauma and push it to the side and open my heart for feeling again,’ doesn’t actually accomplish that goal.”
Discord shrugged. “It’s a start. Frankly, if you’re willing to come to me for advice, I’d say that you’re probably desperate enough to try anything.”
“It’s not like I don’t bring it up with my actual therapist,” the Doctor pointed out. “But I thought that you… well, you might bring a certain perspective to this topic that not many on this world will ever possess.”
Discord shook their head. “I spent a thousand years as a pigeon toilet, which I would argue is also not the best way to deal with other creatures’ embarrassingly finite lifespans.”
“Hrm. Well, did you learn anything from your mistakes?”
“Aside from ‘If you see magic jewelry being aimed at you, duck’?” Discord stroked their goatee. “Huh. Uh… I suppose…” They glanced at the side table and saw a photo of them and Fluttershy smiling back.
They sighed. “What matters is spending time with the ones you love while you still have the chance. Even a Time Lord can’t get that back.”
They paused and gave the Doctor the hairy eyeball. “If you even think of telling anypony I got soppy --”
The Doctor grinned. “I know, I won’t.”
“Good,” Discord grumbled, sitting back and crossing their arms over their chest. “I couldn’t think of anything good to threaten you with.”
“Well, this has been constructive,” the Doctor said, rising from the couch. “Unfortunately, I’ve got places to be today, so if you’ll excuse me…”
Discord waved him off and the Doctor trotted out the front door. Before he could make it to the gate, however, he was arrested by Fluttershy calling his name.
“Yes?” he asked, turning to face her.
She smiled and traced circled in the dirt with a hoof. “I’m sorry to interrupt,” she said. “But Ditzy mentioned something to me the other day about how you were complaining about an empty room in the TARDIS…?”
The Doctor tilted his head. “An empty… Oh, the Butterfly Room, yes. Good heavens, that must’ve been weeks ago, now, and I haven’t done a thing about bringing in new residents. What about it?”
“Well, you see, I’ve been asking around,” Fluttershy said. “And, er, I found a few volunteers.”
The Doctor tilted his head. “Volun--”
He cut himself off and turned around to see a flock of butterflies dancing in the air. There must have been some two hundred of them.
“Of course, they’d like to see the room first,” Fluttershy said quickly. “Just to see, you know, if they’d be happy living there. I’m sure you’ve got it set up already, of course -- eep!”
She fell silent as the Doctor pulled her into a tight hug. “Fluttershy, has anypony ever told you that you’re an absolute marvel?” he asked.
She blushed. “I do my best,” she said.
The train squealed as it rolled to a halt in Ponyville Station. Scootaloo was among the first to disembark. Sweetie Belle, lugging several suitcases out of their compartment, trailed very much behind her. Scootaloo danced impatiently in place, waiting for Sweetie to catch up. “C’mon,” she said. “Let’s get a move on! I’ve been waiting for this all weekend!”
“Huh,” said Apple Bloom. “An’ here Ah thought y’all might be exited just to see yer friends.”
Scootaloo spun around to give Bloom a half-teasing eye-roll. “You say that like you aren’t excited, too. It’s been so long, and now the Doctor says she’s finally in flying shape again? Hi, by the way.” She reached out and pulled Apple Bloom into a quick hug.
Bloom returned the embrace with interest. “Yeah,” she agreed. “Ah mean, it’s definitely thrillin’, but Ah would hope that at least some of that enthusiasm would be reserved fer th’ company onboard.”
“Course it is, don’t be a jerk,” Scootaloo said, pulling away.
Bloom grinned. “Jus’ ribbin’ ya,” she said.
Meanwhile, Rumble helped Sweetie Belle load her suitcases onto a cart. “How was the show?” he asked.
She shrugged. “It’s a start. They certainly seemed to enjoy it. How’s your brother?”
Rumble cocked his head thoughtfully. “Well, he’s sort of past the point where he really had to grapple with the fact that I didn’t need to live with him anymore. Now he’s got to grapple with the fact that I’m the only one in that household who ever did the dishes.”
Sweetie snickered. “I know. Up until Rarity and Spike got together, I didn’t think I could ever move out. Who would make her stop obsessing over her latest commission for long enough to actually eat lunch?”
“But you still haven’t moved out,” Rumble said.
“Well… yeah,” Sweetie admitted. “But I could, and that’s what matters.”
“Guess so,” Rumble agreed.
“Sweetie Belle!”
Rumble chuckled quietly as Sweetie’s head whipped around. “Button!” she said, her smile stretching from ear to ear. The two ponies galloped across the platform to crash together in the middle in a tight, warm embrace.
“Dorks,” Rumble murmured, grinning.
“It’s absolutely stomach churning,” Dinky said, trotting over to help straighten the pile of luggage. “Do you think they even realize how sickeningly adorable they are?”
Rumble glanced over. Sweetie’s tail was entwined around Button’s leg as they chatted away excitedly. “Not a chance. You want to help me get this back to the Boutique? It would be a crime to interrupt those two when they’re like this.”
Dinky nodded, lighting her horn, and the two ponies, the cart, and the luggage all vanished in a flash of golden light.
There was a clattering that echoed through the Carousel Boutique as two ponies collided with a cart, sending a pile of luggage to the floor in a great heap.
“Y’know,” Rumble said, struggling to rise and dislodging even more luggage in the process. “I was really just asking for you to steer while I pushed.”
Dinky shrugged as best as she could while pinned under two suitcases. “My way’s faster.”
He finally managed to pick himself up and drag Dinky out of the pile. He didn’t say anything, but his expression spoke volumes. She just grinned back at him until he rolled his eyes and chuckled. “Guess you’re not wrong,” he allowed.
“Hello?” Rarity called from the next room. “Who’s that?”
“It’s only us,” Rumble called back. “Just dropping off some of Sweetie Belle’s luggage.”
Rarity poked her head through the door. “Ah! Dinky, just the mare I wanted to see. I’ve finished that suit you wanted.”
“Oh, nice.” Dinky said. “I was hoping it’d be done before the big launch.”
“Suit?” Rumble echoed, arching an eyebrow.
Dinky just trotted deeper into the Boutique after Rarity, leaving Rumble to bring up the rear. “Here we are,” Rarity said, levitating out a small dress form. “What do you think, darling?”
Both Crusaders studied the blue velvet suit and red ascot. Rumble glanced sidelong at Dinky. “Isn’t that the outfit from the Matrix?”
“Yeah. Turns out it’s not in the wardrobe room in reality, but…” She scratched the back of her head. “I dunno what to tell you, it just felt right.”
“And how does the reality match up to the illusion?” Rarity asked.
Dinky nodded, circling the dress form slowly. “It looks just about perfect, right down to the tie pin. Do you mind if I change into it here?”
Rarity waved her over to the modesty screen in the corner, and Dinky pulled the outfit off the dress form and back behind the board.
Spike wandered in through the front of the shop. “Hey, Rares? Did you know that there’s a bunch of suitcases on the floor? Oh, hey, Rumble.”
“Hm?” Rarity said, turning. “Oh, yes, would you be a darling and take them up to Sweetie’s room while I finish up with Dinky?”
He gave a joking salute. “Yes, ma’am.”
Rumble turned. “I’ll give you a hoof, Spike.”
Spike grinned at him. “Thanks.”
The duo made their way back to where Rumble had teleported in.
“So,” Rumble said softly when they were out of earshot. “How’re you holding up?”
Spike looked up at the ceiling for a long moment. “Better,” he said eventually. “Rarity is… still putting on more aging cream than she used to, and I’m… I’m dealing with the fact that I’m going to inevitably outlive her. But we’re doing our best to live in the present, y’know?”
Rumble patted the drake’s back. “I know. Thanks for telling me.”
“All things considered, I think we were some of the luckier ones,” Spike said. “I mean, compared to what the Princesses went through, and Applejack, and you Crusaders…”
“Maybe,” Rumble said. “Maybe not. Trauma’s not a contest or anything, you know.”
Spike chuckled, hefting a stack of suitcases against his chest.. “Yeah. I know.”
Rumble tilted his head slightly, then continued, perfectly deadpan, “If it was, I’d be winning.”
“Dude!” Spike said, nearly fumbling all the luggage to the ground as he tried to hide his laughter behind one clawed hand. “That’s not -- are you sure you want to laugh about that?”
Rumble shrugged. “Better than the alternative.”
Spike steadied the suitcases and stood upright. “Yeah,” he admitted. “Yeah, I guess it is.”
Up at the Castle of Friendship, it was a quiet morning. There were no diplomats or heads of state to greet, no friendship problems to solve with a smile and a song, not even any overdue library books that needed collecting.
Twilight was, therefore, doing some light reading in the library. She only glanced up from The Compleat Works of Spear Shaker when there came a knock at the door. She didn’t get many knocks from any of her housemates -- Trixie and Sunset tended to just barge right in, whereas Sombra just snuck up on her by accident. It wasn’t exactly his fault -- he was just very unobtrusive.
“Come in?” Twilight said, placing a ribbon in the thick tome to mark her page.
The door swung open in a manner that could only be called ‘shy’, and a square red muzzle nosed its way into the room.
“Mac!” Twilight said, shutting her book and setting it aside. She folded her hooves on the table and leaned forward. “How are you today?”
Mac smiled at her bashfully. “Ah’m well,” they said. “An’ yerself?”
“I can’t complain,” Twilight said. “What brings you all the way to my library? Did you finish that book on the history of zero?”
“Oh? Er, jes’ about,” Mac said. “But, um… Ah ain’t here for a book today.”
“No?”
“Nope.”
There was a long silence. Mac’s heart felt like it was about to beat out of their chest. They tried to speak, but the words wouldn’t come. They saw Twilight looking at them expectantly. They could only look back with helpless longing.
After a moment, Twilight nodded. “Would you like to sit down, Mac?”
“Eeyup.”
They slid out the chair opposite Twilight and sat, hooves folded on the table.
“Would a glass of water help?”
“...Nope.”
After a moment, Twilight tried again, hesitantly. “Would you like me to… try and guess what it is you want?”
Mac considered this, gnawing their lower lip. They glanced up at her. “Would y’all… wait fer me?”
“As long as you need,” Twilight promised.
It took nearly fifteen minutes for Mac to gird their loins once more. “D’you… remember…” they began. “Well. ‘Course you do. But… when th’ Nightmare… made ev’rypony forget ‘bout us?”
Twilight nodded.
Mac cleared their throat. “Uh. Well. Reckon we got a little, er, business that mighta gone… unfinished? Er, Ah mean, Ah don’t want to assume nothin’, but…”
Twilight swallowed a lump in her throat and nodded. “I agree completely. Would you like to… finish it?”
Mac blinked back tears. “Eeyup.”
Neither of them knew who initiated the kiss. Neither knew how long it lasted. Twilight knew only the scent of sweet-tart apple pie and dirt, the feeling of rough lips on hers. Mac knew only the taste of lavender and old pages, the passionate press of her hooves on their chest as Twilight leaned in, hungry for more.
The door slammed open. “The Great and Powerful Trixie wishes to… um… hm. Trixie will just… come back later, then.”
Neither of them paid her the slightest attention, and there was no more reading done that morning.
The bell over the front door of the Boutique rang. “Rumble?” Sweetie Belle called, trotting into the foyer. “Dinky?”
“Well, hello to you too,” Rarity said archly, trotting forward to give her sister a quick hug. “How was the show, darling?”
“Good! I think I did really well. Um, have you seen Rumble and Dinky? They disappeared at the train station… along with all my bags.”
“You’ll find your luggage up in your room. As for Rumble and Dinky -- why don’t you invite your friends in? I think we’ve got something to show you.”
Sweetie tilted her head. “...’Kay?”
She waved out the window and beckoned Bloom, Button, and Scootaloo into the Boutique. All four of them followed Rarity into the back of the shop, where Rumble and Spike were already waiting in front of the modeling stage. Spike was munching on a handful of aquamarines. Rarity gave him a mild look as she approached, and he held up his free claw in protest. “I got them out of the scrap pile, honest!”
“It’s not what you’re eating, darling, it’s that you’re eating at a fashion show,” Rarity said lightly. “I don’t mind too much, but it’s a habit you’ll want to get out of before you come with me to an exhibition in Manehattan.”
Spike nodded and quickly downed the remaining gems in a single gulp.
“Fashion show?” Button asked, confused.
“Hm, perhaps a slight overstatement on my part,” Rarity conceded. “But, well… Dinky, darling, are you quite ready?”
By way of response, Dinky stepped out from behind the curtain. The others all sat and stared. They had seen her in this outfit before, of course, but the circumstances had been stressful enough that none of them had paid much notice to how she’d looked in it.
She looked sharp and dapper in the blue velvet suit, the red cravat accentuating the outfit. Her eyes seemed to spark with intelligence, and her crooked smile seemed deeply knowing. There was an aura of authority to her.
She glanced at her friends. “Looks good, doesn’t it?”
“Uh, yeah,” Scootaloo said. “I mean, very sharp.”
“Ah think it might be a little hard to keep it clean an’ tidy while travelin’,” Bloom noted. “Seems a little impractical.”
“Yeah, but it’s got pockets,” Dinky said.
“Ah. Yeah, that’s convenient.”
“Give us a spin now, darling,” Rarity said.
“Huh? Oh.” Dinky slowly turned in a tight circle, to the applause of her friends. When she faced out toward the audience again, she was grinning broadly.
She leapt off the stage and glanced over at Rarity. “Uh, how much do I owe you?”
Rarity arched an eyebrow thoughtfully. “Consider it to be services rendered for saving the lives of more or less every creature and everything I hold dear.”
“Oh. Thanks.”
“Think nothing of it, dear. Apple Bloom was correct in any case, I’m quite sure you’ll be sending me a fair amount of business repairing it.”
Dinky nodded, rolling her eyes as she did so. “Yeah, I guess that’s true, too.”
Button glanced up at the wall clock. “We’ve still got about an hour and a half before we need to meet with the Doctor. Anypony got anything they want to do until then?”
“Eat,” Scootaloo said. “The train left too early for me to get anything close to a decent breakfast, and I’m starving.”
“Same,” Sweetie Belle agreed. “What do you guys think? Sugarcube Corner for donuts and coffee?”
“Sounds like a plan,” Button said.
“Bye, Rarity,” Dinky said. “Thanks for the clothes.”
“See you later, Spike!” Rumble called, already halfway to the door.
Sweetie turned to go. Then she paused, turned, and hugged both her sister and Spike in turn. “I’ll see you guys soon. Love you!”
And then she was gone. Rarity smiled, but it was a sad, tired smile. “How quickly they grow,” she said softly.
Spike patted her on the shoulder, and she leaned into his side.
Sugarcube Corner was fairly quiet when the Crusaders wandered in -- it was well after most ponies had breakfast, but not quite lunchtime either. Pinkie was standing at the counter, and she waved excitedly to the Crusaders when she saw them. “Hi guys!” she said. “What can I get you?”
“Donuts,” Sweetie Belle said firmly. “Uh, two cream filled for me, and a caramel latte.”
The others all gave their orders, and together the six of them crammed into a booth in the corner. “So,” said Scootaloo. “Should all of us get cool outfits, or is that just a you thing?”
Dinky shrugged. “You can if you want. Maybe check out the wardrobe room in the TARDIS? There’s some cool stuff in there.”
“Nah, I just didn’t want there to be a dress code for time traveling,” Scootaloo said, leaning back in her chair. “The Doctor always seems to have some kind of wild outfit, and now so do you.”
There was a pause. Dinky frowned slightly, and the other Crusaders held their breath. “Huh,” Dinky said after a moment. “Maybe there is a dress code.” She grinned. “And maybe the TARDIS only likes me enough to mention it.”
Rumble shoved her lightly, and she chuckled.
Pinkie skipped toward the table, carrying a platter full of donuts on her head. “Here ya go!” she said, plopping them down in the middle of the table. She turned to go, but paused.
“Sweetie Belle?” she asked.
“Mhmm?” the unicorn asked, her mouth already full of donut.
“Do you have your Element on you? I really wanna look it over.”
Sweetie gulped down her bite of pastry. “Oh.” She dug around in her mane, pulled out the slender wand and hoofed it over. “Here you go,” she said, taking another chomp of her donut.
Pinkie ran a hoof over the screwdriver, smiling at it nostalgically. “Boy. I remember when I got this. Did I ever tell you that story?”
“Um,” said Button.
Pinkie slapped her head. “Silly me! Everypony in Ponyville knows that story. And now everypony in Ponyville knows yours, too! I’m getting distracted.”
“No,” Scootaloo said, her eyes lidded. She took a long sip of coffee. “Really?”
“I know! I’m surprised, too. What I really wanted to do was offer you a little advice.”
Everypony looked at each other. This was either going to be something incredibly prophetic and useful or something superbly silly. Both were worth listening to.
Pinkie looked down at the screwdriver. “You guys have had a lot of power given to you. This is a lot of weight to put on ponies so young, and I’d know! The six of you are gonna go far. I don’t need Pinkie Sense to tell you that. You’re gonna face down terrible things as you go; some are gonna be monsters, some are just gonna be ponies, and some of them… well, some of them are gonna be you. And that’s true of everypony, but it’s especially true for you guys!”
She looked each of them square in the eye in turn. “I believe in the six of you. You are strong enough to handle this kind of power. But nopony can be strong forever, and that’s why you should always, always, always have friends. I mean, you do, but it’s good to have even more outside your group in case you’re all tired and angry and snappy all at the same time, and what I’m really saying is that you can depend on me and your families and friends and also the Princesses and really all of Ponyville and maybe even more ponies you meet along the way, and that’s more than okay!”
The Crusaders were all staring at her now. She paused and scratched her head, thinking. “Uh… and also, have fun out there! What’s the point of time travel if you don’t enjoy yourself, right?”
“...Right,” said Sweetie Belle. “Uh, can I have that back now?”
“Hm? Oh, sure!” Pinkie plonked the screwdriver back on the table. “I’ll be back in a sec with your bill!” She bounced away, leaving the Crusaders reeling in her stream of words.
They left Sugarcube Corner shortly thereafter, full and content, heading for Dinky’s house. When they arrived, Ditzy popped her head out the front door and waved at them enthusiastically. Dinky smiled and trotted up to the porch to hug her mom, the other Crusaders following in her wake as Ditzy led them all into the kitchen.
“Can I get you all anything to drink?” she asked brightly. “A muffin for the road, maybe?”
“What road?” Scootaloo asked. “Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.”
“A muffin for the infinite void of time and space, then,” Ditzy said without batting an eye.
“No thanks,” Rumble said. “We just ate.”
“I wouldn’t say no to a glass of water, though,” Button added.
Ditzy nodded and brought down a glass from the cabinet. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to wait a little longer than expected to take off,” she said. “The Doctor’s making one last-minute addition.”
Dinky pursed her lips. “Not to put too fine a point on it,” she said. “But isn’t that kinda why the TARDIS needed to sit around for a month to begin with?”
“Don’t worry. This is nothing like the Interface,” Ditzy assured her.
“Still --”
“It was a gift from Fluttershy.”
“Oh. Well, never mind, then,” Dinky said, sitting back in her chair.
“How is the Doctor?” Sweetie Belle asked. “Since, you know.”
“He’s… getting better,” Ditzy said. “He still has a long way to go. Thousands of years of trauma don’t go away overnight, and he’s still got a habit of putting himself down… but he’s getting better. Princess Luna can actually help with his nightmares now that the Nightmare isn’t interfering with them.”
“And how are you?” Rumble asked.
Ditzy took a muffin out of the breadbox and took a bite of it meditatively. “I think I’m alright,” she said. “I think… I’m more or less alright.”
“More or less?” Dinky asked, quirking an eyebrow.
“More more than less,” Ditzy said quickly. “It’s nothing to worry about. I’m sure it’s basically nothing more than you could have guessed. It was a traumatic experience for all of us, wasn’t it?”
“...Sure,” Button said. “But it helped all of us to talk about it afterwards. Do you want to…”
Ditzy sighed and slumped into a kitchen chair. “The Nightmare said… it had been manipulating the Doctor’s travels for lifetimes before I met him, trying to force him into impossible moral dilemmas. What if… what if I was one of them? He fell in love with me, and he had to leave me, and I know it broke his hearts as much as it broke mine. Did he fall in love with me by his own free will? Or was I set up for him? I mean, I know how egotistical that sounds, but it’s not exactly outside the realm of possibilities, is it?”
There was a long pause. Dinky took her mother’s hoof. “Mom… even if you were only ever meant to be a trap for the Doctor, you know he loves you. Whether you were set up to meet by an apocalyptic matchmaker, or you only did by chance, you fell in love because you’re compatible. Whatever the Nightmare did or didn’t do to make the two of you meet, it doesn’t matter.”
Ditzy nodded slowly.
“Also,” Scootaloo said. “If it did get the two of you together for some big emotionally-destroying twist of fate, it’s also responsible for Dinky being born, so it really kinda shot itself in the foot there.”
That got a chuckle out of the assembled and the mood in the room lightened considerably.
The Doctor poked his head in through the door. “What’s going on in here, then?” he asked, grinning broadly.
Everypony stared at him, smiling. Several of them were giggling. He tilted his head. “What?”
Ditzy chewed her lip, staring at his left ear. “No, seriously, what?”
“You’ve, um,” said Rumble. “You got a couple of passengers up there.”
“What?” The Doctor turned to the hall mirror. Perched on his mane and ears were no fewer than five butterflies, sitting on his head like a flower crown. “Oh.” He grinned. “Y’know, I think it rather suits me!”
“Can’t argue with that,” Sweetie Belle said.
“Ah take it th’ TARDIS is ready now?” Apple Bloom asked.
“Yes, indeed,” the Doctor said. “The console is functioning, the Eye of Harmony is restored, the psychic wounds have healed, and the Butterfly Room is full again! Everything you need for a functioning TARDIS, save for a crew. Are you ready to go?”
The moment had been prepared for. Yet, now that it had arrived, the six scarcely believed it. Slowly, they nodded. The Doctor smiled at them. “Alright, then. I believe you’ll be wanting these.” He walked to each Crusader in turn and handed them a key on a length of chain.
There was a moment as they each secured their keys around their necks, in their manes, or, in Dinky’s case, in her pocket. “Okay,” said Bloom. “Let’s go.”
They all headed out to the backyard. The TARDIS sat near a corner, humming softly.
“So,” said the Doctor. “Dinky? You remember what I taught you about setting the proper coordinates?’
“Yes, dad. I remember.”
“You’ve still got the Laws of Time memorized?”
“Yes. Plus the list of exceptions you mentioned.”
“And you know how to operate the Fast-Return Switch in case of any emergencies --”
“Dad.”
He stopped and grinned weakly at her. “I know. You know.”
She gave him a quick hug, then pulled away. “I appreciate it anyway.”
The Doctor stepped back and took it all in. His daughter, her friends, the TARDIS…
“Should I take a photo? Commemorate the moment and all that?”
“Dad…”
“Alright, alright,” he said, waving a hoof. “Try and be back by supper, alright?”
“Okay. Bye, dad. Bye, mom. Thanks.” She turned. Hesitated. “I love you. See ya in a bit.”
She stepped through the TARDIS doors, the other Crusaders clustering in afterwards. There was a thunk as the doors closed heavily. The Doctor stepped back, grinning slightly, and Ditzy put a hoof on his shoulder.
There was a great groaning roar that rose up moments later, bringing with it a wind that blew Ditzy’s mane back and sent the butterflies on the Doctor’s head flying. Grass clippings flew and swirled around the box as it flashed out of phase with reality. “Allez-vous,” the Doctor whispered as the police box faded out of sight. “Allez-vous.”
