Hope, Pain, and Change
The explosion broke five pinkamenium conduits. And yet, the ship held together. The Lightning Odd, built in the days of the first space explorers, merely shuddered, titanium and plastic splintering, the stars around it acquiring a deep red hue.
“Rkshkss! Damage!” yelled a balding donkey wearing the captain’s hat as he beat his hoof on a static-filled screen.
“Five Pinks just blew, Doctor Line! Rkshkss and four others got squashed!” came the frantic reply from the other side.
“What?” the donkey whispered.
“Is the crystal still active, Turniptruck?”
“No, sir, she’s dumber than a sack of rocks! The engines just quit…” the static increased, and a nearby computer station released a bright orange plume of smoke, its crystals breaking, before the screen melted into the machine.
“Lad, listen to me! Get out! Without the crystal, you’re glue in there!” Doctor Black Line watched as the screen showed a brief glimpse of the engine room, fire and smoke rising all around the young science intern, Hayseed Turniptruck the Fourth. He blinked, and the noblepony was gone, replaced by a blank screen.
“Shila, you bucking, foalish bug!” Black Line smashed the communications screen, and tore off the captain’s cap.
“I couldn’t save anypony! Didn’t Rkshkss warn you?” the doctor screamed down at the floor, where the burnt shell of the captain lay.
“He told you the Lightning can’t handle a gas cloud, you bloody inpony freak! And now, I’m going down with the ship.” The donkey stood up, and looked at the last illuminated screen in the room, a view of the crimson stars as the ship sank deeper and deeper into hyperspace, the leaking pinkamenium eating through the hull.
“I only told him the conduits might not be able to handle the extra mass. Not even I knew what would happen, dear.” The voice, a changeling hiss, made Black Line turn around.
“Rkshkss? Turniptruck said you died!” the donkey blinked, wiping tears from his eyes.
“I did, dear. But, please do not die because of me.” The changeling said, bowing his head.
“Find the escape pod. Call for help. Live.”
“Why? Without you, lad, what’s the point?” Black Line watched as the observation screen began to smoke, and the ship shuddered again.
“You know why. You will heal. The Hive needs you, Doctor Black Line of the Lightning Odd.” A hole-filled hoof pointed to the escape pods.
“As always, you’re right. The Hive needs me back alive. But, what about you? I don’t care that you’re a bloody ghost. I need you…” as the spaceship doctor stumbled toward the pods, he looked back at the love of his life.
“Everything has its time. And everything dies. I won’t haunt you.” the changeling coughed.
“You’re not him, are you, lad?” Black Line stood, his hoof on a large red button.
“No. But you needed to see him.”
“Bucking bugs, the lot of you. Well, whoever you are, thank you for reminding me I’m needed home. Didn’t have a home until I met Rkshkss…” with that, the last captain of the Lightning Odd was transported away from his collapsing ship.
“Did I do well, Eon Smith?” Woorali spoke, staring at the space just ahead of the now ruined observation screen. A door opened in the air, and a brown-maned stallion looked out.
“In the year six thousand four hundred and fifty-five, Black Line of Hive Lupinus, the only survivor of the starship Lightning Odd, was picked up by a passing Celestial ship. He remarried five years later, to another changeling male, this time a medic just like him. You were brilliant.” The timelord pony smiled at his companion.
“And stop calling me that, Woorali. I’m the Doctor. Just the Doctor.” The stallion waved Woorali inside.
“Why could we not save everypony?” Woog looked back at the dead starship.
“This ship, it has to die. That’s the first lesson. The most painful lesson. Time can be rewritten, but not always.” The Doctor put a hoof over the changeling’s wings, smoothing them down.
“Then, what did we do today?” Woorali growled, transforming into a perfect image of the Doctor.
“You saved a life, Woog. You saved one donkey who doesn’t matter. You kept hope alive.”
“Whose hope, Doctor? I watched six ponies and ten changelings die. Their Hives, their families will not see them again.” Woorali went inside the TARDIS, closing his eyes in irritation as he passed the invisibility magic around the bizarre machine.
“My hope, Woorali. Your hope. The hope of Hive Lupinus. The hope of a thousand worlds. That’s the second lesson, by the way. The whole hope-is-important-and-you-should-always-help-a-crying-child lesson. Never forget it.” The Doctor explained at a break-neck speed as he fiddled with a set of controls that looked suspiciously like a water pump and a yo-yo.
“Is everything okay?” a gray pegasus with blonde hair popped into the console room, looking over the two identical ponies.
Woorali looked over at the Doctor, the strange, impossible Eon Smith. The timelord pony grinned from ear to ear, and his mane stood straight up, but his eyes shone with tears. Heaviness tainted the aura of shifting emotions shining from his two hearts, whose beat Woog could almost detect at the edge of his hearing.
“I learned a lot!” Woorali piped up, shifting to his usual form, green flames momentarily burning around his body.
“Good! But, next time, we’re all going together!” the mare shook her hoof warningly at the Doctor before flying back to her room.
“Good night!” echoed Derpy’s cheerful voice before a door slammed somewhere in the depths of the TARDIS.
“She never learned, did she?” the changeling frowned.
“Derpy doesn’t need to know. You do.” The Doctor kicked at the console, and a loud ding rang out, followed by the rumbling, wheezing noise of a time machine leaving.
“I just want to save my kind.”
“You will, Woorali. But not through time travel. You can’t save them that way. You can’t go back and make everything better.” The Doctor’s mane seemed to get a shade darker.
“I thought I could escape what happened, Doctor. And, when you showed me all those things, I wanted to change the past, when Chrysalis invaded. I wanted to forget Ponyville and live in a world where my kind succeeded… And now, you show me there is nothing I can do? Why should I travel? Why should I want to nourish hope?” the changeling pawed at the metallic floor, staring at his blue eyes reflected in the flawless sections.
“THIS IS UNFAIR!” he screeched, black hoof smashing down on the floor, cracking it for a moment.
“Woorali…SHUT UP! I am not just a timelord. I am the only timelord. There are no more. I lost my people, my friends, my whole Universe! I have nothing but hope left!” the once-brown pony’s fur was turning a dark shade of gray as his voice rose in volume.
“I’m sorry. Please don’t tell Derpy.” The angry gray colt was gone as suddenly as he appeared.
“No, I am sorry. I will not tell Derpy anything.”
The silence that followed filled the room, and Woorali wondered how long a timelord could hold their breath, even as he felt something akin to gratitude flowing from the creature before him.
“Woorali? Will you let me be a part of your Hive?” the Doctor finally spoke up.
“Yes.”
In the depths of the TARDIS, a spark of energy, a sliver of time and infinity itself, sang her song of distant Earth, of Bad Wolf, and of the strange new world full of joy. She called herself Sexy, and praised the Sainted Physician. She even hinted, in her song, of the Oncoming Storm and the Time of Discord. But, even she was surprised when her timelord sought out a soul so similar to his. This changeling held a broken chain leading back to his people. He was an outcast. His future was like the night sky, a black abyss full of stars, and she wondered briefly if what she saw was yet another timelord, like Yana. But, underneath it all, she sensed growing hope. Even as the changeling moved closer to his destiny, the Doctor healed him, taught him, molded him into another being altogether. Perhaps, Sexy thought, giggling to herself as she bumped into the very fabric of time and space, friendship is magic.