Derpy hummed to herself as she worked, hefting the old rag she’d been using from one hoof to the other. A collection of wooden and metal parts sat disassembled on the floor. She reached down, picked up a round piece of glass, and brought it up to inspect it.
She frowned. It was sparkled with dust, and partially smeared on one side too boot. She leaned over and breathed on the lens’ surface before wiping it clean. Once she was satisfied, she set it back down onto the carpet as she fidgeted into a more comfortable position.
She wasn’t in a very large room. A telescope stand stood naked by an open window. It was a warm summer afternoon, and the songs of birds trickled inside. A mailbag hung from a hook that had been clumsily hammered into the door. Posters decorated with pictures of stars and planets covered the walls above the bed, and a cut-out newspaper article proclaiming the arrival of “the grandest meteor shower in recent history” was taped neatly to top of the nightstand.
Derpy picked up the next part: the eyepiece. “Almost done,” she murmured. Her hoof brushed across the name stamped onto the side: Horsehead Nebula Industries. It’d taken a full month for the parts to ship all the way from Manehatten to Whinnipeg, but it’d definitely been worth the weight. A smile crossed her face. “We’ll definitely be ready when the shower comes.”
The lights flickered.
Derpy blinked up at the ceiling light. “Huh?”
The lights flickered again.
Derpy sighed, setting the eyepiece back down. “Oh, no,” she muttered. “I hope the electrician doesn’t have to come again.” She got up and began to make her way toward the light switch.
The bulb above her head seemed to buzz with heat, and before Derpy knew it, it’d flickered once—twice—three times more. This time, though, the lights didn’t come back on. The bedroom was plunged into darkness, with its only light seeping in through the windows.
Derpy flicked the now-useless switch up and down a few times. She sighed again. “Looks like I’ll have to ask Ampere to fix it after all.”
A cool wind blew in through the window, ruffling through Derpy’s mane. “Well,” she murmured, “let’s go see how bad the damage is.”
She pushed open the door and trotted into the hall, leaving the half-assembled telescope behind her. The lights out here were dark, too, and she found herself hoping that the whole fuse hadn’t blown. Again.
She trotted downstairs, the stairs creaking beneath her hooves. The house seemed almost eerie like this: dark, with naught but shadows flitting across the walls. Derpy frowned as she passed a window; she could’ve sworn that it’d been bright outside just a minute ago. It was probably just a cloud passing over the sun.
The fuse box was downstairs in the basement, and the only entrance was in the back of the house. Derpy passed into the kitchen, hooves echoing on the tiled floor.
As she passed by the counter, she paused, turning to the side. She’d left a glass of water out before…and the glass was shaking. Ripples spread out over its surface, lapping up against the sides.
And then she felt it: a rumbling beneath her hooves. She noticed that her teeth were rattling, and she quickly clamped them shut. She kept her eyes on the glass as her ears perked up. A low thrum filled the air—her eyes flickered to the side, and she took an unsteady step forward—and it seemed to be coming from outside. Somehow, she had a feeling that the noise wasn’t old Mr. Chrysanthemum mowing his lawn.
She turned toward the back door. Her hoof hovered over the doorknob before opening it with a click.
She poked her head outside.
Clouds swirled overhead until the sky was nothing more than a flat, dull grey. That was weird. Had the weather teams rescheduled next week’s storm? Yet… Derpy’s eyebrows furrowed. Those didn’t look like rain clouds…
A wind whipped up around her, and she squinted, mane whipping around her ears. It was a warm, heavy wind, carrying with it a pungent, metallic scent. The hair on the back of her neck prickled, the air buzzing with energy that danced over her spine. She looked backup at the black sky, her every nerve tingling like crazy—
“Get down!”
Something heavy hit her in the side and she went toppling to the ground. Her world went white.
When she finally came to, her ears were ringing—throbbing, really, her heart beating like mad in her chest. Her chest shock with wet, wracking coughs, and she could see stars spinning across her eyes.
It was like being submerged underwater; her eyes whirled, but she couldn’t see for the life of her. Shapes and colors swirled across her vision, and each breath brought with it another pound in the back of her skull. She thought she could hear somepony talking.
“—Okay? I think you hit—”
She groaned. Everything hurt, from her hooves, to her neck, and even to her tail. Blearily, she tried to feel her legs beneath her. They weren’t completely numb, but they were close. Her fur burned against her skin, and her muscles felt like they were about to give up, but she managed to prop herself up on her knees. Every nerve was screaming, protesting with each tiny motion.
She swallowed, her tongue rough against the rough of her mouth. Blinking up toward the sky—or where she remembered the sky to be—she felt her eyes slowly focus until a vague shape came into view. The ringing had faded by now into a dull buzz, and she thought that she could make out the words.
“—Hear me? Terribly sorry, but we really must move along—it just isn’t safe here.”
It was a stallion: a light brown one with a darker mane. His lips moved almost as fast as his eyes, which were darting all over like a pair of flies. Derpy winced at a sudden twinge of pain in the back of her head. The image of the other pony unfocused, blurring and smearing across her eyes.
When she opened them again, he looked...funny. Not overly strange, but...off.
“Oh, good,” he was saying. He had a thick, lilted accent—was he from Trottingham? “You’re awake! Come on—we’ve got to get a move on.”
“Who…” She grunted, her legs wobbling beneath her as she tried to push herself to her hooves. “Who are you?”
“Not important now. Really, there’s no telling when another of them might strike.”
“Another of what?” she asked, glaring at him. “What’s going on?”
“Well—” The stallion paused, wincing. “Oh, dear. Were your eyes like that before?”
“My eyes? What’s wrong with my eyes?”
But he didn’t answer. Instead, he were focused on something behind—and above—her shoulder. She turned around to see what he was looking at.
Dark, grey clouds much bigger than normal covered the sky, with any light that may have once seeped through nothing more than a memory. Strong winds whipped around her hooves, and she had to squint to see, raising a hoof above her eyes to block out the worst of it.
Lightning crackled among the clouds, leaving deep booms of thunder in its wake. Sparks of electricity crawled through the mist. It was a thunderstorm, but at the same time, it felt wrong. This was no true storm—it was dry, with not a drop of rain to be found.
“What’s going on?” Derpy’s voice trembled, and she had to take a deep breath to steady herself. “Why’s the sky like that?”
“It’s a byproduct of their hyper drives,” came the stallion’s voice from behind her. “Raise the electrical potential in the nearby areas to unreasonable levels. Well, when I say unreasonable, I mean—”
“Hyper drives?” Derpy asked, unable to tear her eyes away. “What are you talking about? Who’s ‘they’?”
There came an immense groaning sound, as if the very earth beneath their hooves was trying to move away from the angry skies. It was a screeching, metallic sound, and it left Derpy’s ears ringing again.
“Not who.” The stallion coughed. “In a manner of speaking, that is. More like...what.”
She thought that it was only another cloud, at first. It was big and black like the rest, and crackles of electricity danced along its surface. As it descended further, though, it became clear that nothing with such a round, perfectly smooth surface could be a product of a simple weather problem.
The clouds seemed to part before it, that huge, inky-black mass descending lower with each passing second. Derpy’s eyes widened, her jaw falling open.
“Is... Is that…?”
She felt her heart pounding in her chest. She felt warm—she’d never found a place to use the word “elated” before, except on that Word-Of-The-Day calendar where she’d learned it in the first place, but if she had to use it somewhere, she would use it here. She felt lightheaded, her hooves tingling beneath her.
She thumped onto the ground, staring up at the sky with big, wide eyes. “Is that…?”
“A Behemoth Model-XU, property of the Sontaran Empire, yes. Terribly tacky things, I’ve always thought.”
She shook her head. “No, no, no. Is it…?”
“What?”
The word slipped off her tongue without her even meaning it to. It felt...right, somehow. “Aliens.”
The stallion trotted up to her side. He was wearing a tie around his neck, and he reached up a hoof to adjust it. “Only in a manner of speaking. You’re the alien to them, of course. But yes, they are what you might call ‘aliens’.”
Derpy licked her lips. Thoughts of her posters—stars, planets, and galaxies—flickered across her mind, and it took all of her will to keep herself from laughing like a madpony. They were real! And they weren’t out there—they’d come here! Straight to Equestria!
Meteor showers, she decided, could eat their hearts out.
“Aliens,” Derpy said again breathlessly, savoring the word. “Incredible.”
The stallion turned away to fiddle with something at his hip. “Come on, come on,” she heard him mutter.
“What are they doing here? Nobody in Equestria has ever seen a real-life alien.”
“Oh, you might be surprised. But they’re up to no good, I’m sure, and we really must be—oh, where is it?”
The ship—for it was a ship—was in full view now, big and black and bigger than anything that Derpy had ever seen. It stretched across the sky, with spires and towers arching outward from every point of its metallic surface. She felt a bit dizzy thinking about it—it must have been the size of all of Whinnypeg! Maybe even bigger.
“It’s...beautiful.” She turned to look over her shoulder. “Where do you think it—?”
An enormous blast of white light blasted across the sky, landing right in the center of town. The earth seemed to groan like a wounded giant, shifting beneath their hooves. Derpy had to struggle to stay upright, and there came another sharp pain between her eyes.
The blast wave came next. Fierce winds blew all around them, whipping at their sides and carrying clouds of dust and debris with them. Derpy’s hoof flew up to her eyes, and she let out a low groan as sharp debris battered and scratched her face.
“The town!” she yelped as soon as it died down. “Something’s happened! We need to go see—”
She felt a weight on her shoulder, holding her back. “No,” the stallion said, his voice low and dangerous. “We can’t. I’m sorry—there’s nothing you can do there.”
“But somepony could be hurt!”
“You’ll be hurt. It’s not safe!”
Tears were gathering at the corners of her eyes. She could see smoke already rising from the town square, and the screams—oh Celestia, she could hear screams. “Where did that even come from?”
Wordlessly, the stallion pointed to the skies.
Derpy blinked back tears as she gazed up at the alien ship. An enormous tower had descended from its metal belly, with energy sizzling across its surface—and it was pointed right at the town center.
The aliens. The aliens had done this.
Her stomach dropped out from under her. “No…”
“Here!” The stallion’s voice was full of urgency. “We’ve got to get going—take my hoof! I’ve got something that will get us out of here!”
“But the other ponies—”
“—Will be in danger either way! This is the only way that you’ll be able to help them!”
It was a moment before Derpy realized that her breath was coming in short, ragged gasps. She was hyperventilating. She swallowed, her throat feeling like sandpaper. “But—”
“There’s no time! Look!”
She looked up—and froze. The alien weapon was powering up again, its cannon already filling with white light. The air seemed to shimmer and dance before it, the oxygen melting by the full force of its heat.
“Now! Take my hoof!”
Derpy’s head whipped to the side. The stallion had a band around his leg: silver, with a series of colored lights blinking around the edges. “What’s that?” she demanded.
“It’s a Sonic Thumb—now just touch it and go!”
She glanced wildly—up, toward the ship; down, toward the shaking earth; and up again, toward the smoke rising over the town—
—And the air was filled with burning ozone, the alien ship powering up again—
She grabbed his hoof and they vanished in a beam of light.
It was dark.
“It’s dark,” Derpy said, and then immediately felt extremely silly.
“Yes,” the stallion said from beside her. The silver band around his leg was gone. Instead, he held a long, silver device in his mouth. He had his hooves pressed against a rusted metal door, moving his head up and down as the silver tube buzzed, its tip glowing a bright blue. “It is."
“Where’d the ship go?”
“Well, it didn’t really go anywhere, now did it? We’re inside it.”
Derpy’s heart seized in her throat. “Inside the ship?”
“Mm.” The device stopped buzzing and the stallion snapped his head back. “Hm. Seems we’re in an old machinery room. I doubt any of them bother to come back here. We should be safe for now.”
“For now—what are we even trying to do?” Derpy said. “Those poor ponies! We have to help them!”
“Yes, yes,” the stallion replied. “We’re not much use to them dead, though, are we? Aha!”
The door clicked before swinging open with a soft hiss of air. The stallion gave a self-satisfied nod and tucked the little device back into a pocket of his vest.
“Dead?” Derpy shook her head, glaring. Why did her eyes hurt? Why did the stallion seem...blurry? “Why are the aliens doing this? What are we doing? Who even are you?”
“I’m the Doctor. And you are?”
A shiver went down her spine at the name. She could almost hear the capitalization. It was more than just a name, she realized—it was a title.
“Derpy. Derpy Hooves”
“Very good.” The Doctor turned around to face her. His eyes suddenly seemed so very, very sad.
“Miss Hooves, I am so sorry, but we really must get a move on before the Sontarans find us.”
“You mentioned those before. Are they the aliens?”
He nodded. “Quite alien. And not a friendly bunch at all. Now, are you coming or not?”
“I…” Derpy took a breath. “Aliens are invading Equestria.” She gave a little laugh, tossing her mane out of her eyes. “It seems like something out of a science fiction book. And they’re really…”
She met the Doctor’s eyes and licked her lips. “They’re really not just going away, are they?” she asked softly.
The Doctor shook his head. “No. Not unless we stop them.”
She looked around. Bits of machinery hissed and groaned, clouds of gas collecting in each corner of the room. Mold—space mold, some part of her unconscious mind realized with a hysterical giggle—lay in clusters on each bit of the ceiling and walls. All of it was black, and all of it was very, very alien.
Suddenly, Derpy Hooves felt very, very alone.
She bowed her head. “Let’s go.”
“Brilliant.” The Doctor cracked a grin and nodded over his shoulder. “Come on, then—it should be just down this corridor.”
“What is?”
“The engine room.” The Doctor grinned even more fiercely. “We’re going to send these Sontarans right out of the atmosphere.”
He took off at a gallop.
“Wait!” Derpy hissed back at him. She galloped after him, her hooves echoing on the hard, metal floor. The last thing that she saw of him before he turned the corner was his Cutie Mark: a bright yellow hourglass, with sand trickling through.
They vanished into the bowels of the ship.
“So do these aliens have a name?” Derpy asked, walking behind the Doctor. She glanced around the corridors with a wary eye; the whole place put her on edge. It didn’t help that her eyes were still hurting. “And why are they doing this?”
“They’re Sontarans,” the Doctor murmured, peeking around a corner. He beckoned for her to follow him. “Greatest military minds in the galaxy. Very aggressive race—to them, a planet’s nothing more than a trinket to add to their empire. It’s odd, though.”
“Odd?”
“Mm. Usually more focused on ‘final solutions’ and the like. A small-scale invasion like this must be a trial run. They’re testing your defenses.”
“A trial run? They’re destroying the town!”
“But not all of Equestria. That’s the important bit.”
A pipe hissed loudly beside her, and Derpy flinched. The Doctor glanced back over his shoulder. “Come along, then. The engine room’s got to be close.”
“How do you know all about this, anyway?” she asked, squinting. The light had dimmed to low amber, and it was hard to make anything out save for the occasional glowing bulb on the walls.
“I’m an alien,” the Doctor said. “A Time Lord, to be exact.”
“An alien? But you look like a pony.”
The Doctor snorted quietly. “And you look—actually, no.” He paused mid-step, putting a hoof to his chin. Derpy bumped into him with a grunt. “Huh. Guess that one’s not going to work anymore. Pity. And are you quite alright back there?”
Derpy’s cheeks flushed. “Oops—uh, sorry. Guess I’m just a bit clumsy today. But what’s a Time Lord?”
The Doctor came to a stop before a large metal door. He prodded it with his snout and frowned when it stayed close. “One moment,” he said, reaching back into his pocket to snag the silver tube he’d used before that.
“And what’s that?”
“You’re just full of questions, aren’t you?” the Doctor grunted around the device in his mouth. “It’s a Sonic Screwdriver.”
“What’s it do?”
“It Sonics things,” the Doctor said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “And a Time Lord...well, it’s a long story. Too long to tell when there’s an alien invasion going on.”
The device buzzed shrilly, the light on its tip flickering. Derpy’s ears pricked as she heard another telltale click. The door hissed open by a fraction of an inch.
“Brilliant.” The Doctor stowed his “Screwdriver”—though Derpy had certainly never seen one that looked like that before—away in his vest and licked his lips. “Let’s see what we’ve got, shall we?”
He peered through the crack.
“What—” Derpy’s mouth shut as the Doctor raised a hoof, letting out a quiet “shush.” She spoke again, but this time in a whisper. “What’s in there?”
“Their hyper drive, for one,” the Doctor murmured, squinting past the door. “Not to mention a whole lot of buttons and big, flashing lights.”
“Are you sure this is a good—”
“Oh, and a guard squadron.” The Doctor’s eyebrows furrowed. “They’ll be a chore to deal with, unless—aha!”
“What?”
“Just a patrol.” The Doctor grinned. “And it looks like they’re leaving. They’re coming…right this way.”
Derpy’s eyes widened. “What?”
“Don’t worry—we’ll just have to find a place to hide. See any side-corridors or the like?” The Doctor glanced around wildly, licking his lips again. “An invisibility generator, hm?”
Derpy looked around, her heart racing. She could almost hear the heavy thump of boots on the floor, and envisioned the aliens—great big tentacle things with sharp teeth and giant faces, she decided—getting closer with each passing second. Her eyes darted around the hall—
“There!” she hissed. “A closet!”
The Doctor turned to look over his shoulder. “Oh, brilliant!” With a twist of his head, he yanked Derpy over to the side and into the closet. She let out a muffled yelp as the pair crashed into a metal bucket—an alien metal bucket, her subconscious, still-rational mind said—toppling over onto the ground.
The closet door hissed shut behind them. Derpy held her breath as the boots thudded closer.
“Are they gone?” she finally dared to ask, the sound of the boots fading into the distance.
The Doctor nodded.
Thirty seconds later, they were back in the now-empty engine room. The Doctor went straight for a large, official-looking console. For her part, Derpy looked around at the rest of the room with amazement.
Monitors, holograms, and advanced consoles plastered the sides of the room. Lights of every color and shape danced along the screens beside a scrolling alien language. Two enormous pillars—pitch-black, with lines running up their sides that throbbed with green light—dominated the center of the room. A deep humming echoed from their depths.
Derpy trotted over to the Doctor. “What are you doing?”
The Doctor grunted. “Just making sure that the Sontarans get what’s coming to them. They’re not going to touch this planet. I promise you.”
The floor shook beneath them. Derpy’s eyes widened as she remembered that beam of light, destroying everything in its path. “But—”
“I see you’ve noticed the hyper drives, by the way.”
“The what?”
The Doctor nodded over his shoulder. The Screwdriver was back in his mouth, now whistling like mad. “The hyper drives. Y’know—big, black tower things?”
“Those?” Derpy blinked back at the pillars. “They’re...hyper-whats?”
“Drives. They’re what let the Sontarans get their ships around the galaxy.” The Doctor chuckled to himself. “And hopefully, they’ll be what let us get out of this in one piece.”
“So if you’re an alien,” Derpy said, “then where’s your spaceship?”
She could swear that she saw the Doctor’s cheeks flush a pale red. “Well,” he said, coughing. “I may have crash-landed my ship in the middle of theirs. Following that, they may have—hypothetically speaking, of course—found me and thrown me off onto the planet below, hoping I’d get caught in the invasion.”
Derpy stared. “...That doesn’t sound very smart.”
“Smart? I’m a bloody genius, is what I am,” the Doctor said. “All part of the plan, really.”
“So driving into another ship was part of the plan?”
The Doctor licked his lips. “Well…”
He met her eye and flashed her a guilty-looking grin. “As long as I get my ship back, everything’ll be fine in the end.”
His hooves blurred over the console, buttons clicking and gadgets whirring as alien characters flashed across the monitor. “Almost there…” he murmured, grinning. “Got—”
“Halt! In the name of the Sontaran Empire!”
Click-click.
Derpy froze. Beside her, she noticed the Doctor visibly stiffen.
“Turn around,” he muttered, keeping his voice down. “Slowly.”
She obeyed.
The five...things surrounding them certainly looked alien. If anything, they looked like overgrown potatoes that somepony had stuffed into a spacesuit. They were on two legs, too—like a dragon, or a Diamond Dog, and stood as stiffly as a plastic toy. In another time, and another place, and if the aliens hadn’t been pointing what looked like large, dangerous, glowing weapons at them, she might have found their appearance funny. As it was, she was happy just to stand in place, legs shaking beneath her, and heart pounding in her chest.
“What’re those things?” she whispered.
“Sontarans. They—”
“No—the things that they’re holding.”
“Oh.” The Doctor’s murmur had a bit of a hysterical edge to it. “Right—you Equestrians have never seen them before. Those are guns, actually. Nasty things. The Sontaran models shoot—”
With a squeal, one of the weapons discharged. A bright green light flew through the air before hitting the wall behind Derpy and the Doctor. Out of the corner of her eye, Derpy could see the metal melted into slag, still steaming from the weapon’s attack.
Guns. Bad news. Got it. She swallowed.
“We shall do the talking, equine scum,” one of the Sontarans spat. It had a very strange-sounding voice—deep, but with a trimmed accent that sounded almost like the Doctor’s. How were they speaking Equestrian, anyway? “How did you come to be on this ship?”
The Doctor took a step forward; instantly, every gun was glowing pointed at him. He stopped in place, a cheeky half-grin on his face. He’d stepped, Derpy realized, right between her and the aliens.
“Well,” he began, “we were just looking about, really. Spaceship inspectors. Gotta make sure that everything’s up to date—keeping that Sontaran shine, y’know.”
He clicked his tongue on the roof of his mouth as he glanced about the engine room. “And you know what? I’d say you lot get a clean bill of health—lovely atmosphere you’ve cultivated. I’m loving the militaristic decor—do you get a lot of guests?”
“Enough!” One of the aliens took a step closer, lowering its gun to its waist. “I recognize you. You’re the one who crashed his ship right in the middle of our docking bay!”
“Crashed is such a strong word. I’d prefer parked, really.”
“And now you’ve managed to come back with one of those little horses in tow.” The alien sneered. “Take them away!”
The other Sontarans stepped forward, weapons glinting dangerously in the dim light.
“Ah-ah.” The Doctor held up a hoof. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
“And why not?”
“Because we’re in the engine room.” Forget the grin from before. The look on the Doctor’s face right now was cheekier than anything that Derpy had ever seen. “And you just left me alone in a room full of flashing lights and big, friendly buttons.”
“What—”
“I’ve set up a geonautical conduit between your navigation systems and the hyperdrive engines.” The Doctor’s smile was cold. “Genius, really—just had to link the acceptable levels of energetic input to a certain set of galactic coordinates and—presto! Ticking time bomb. So long as you’re in this sector of interstellar space, the whole thing’s rigged to blow. The way I see it, then, you lovely gentlemen have—oh, fifteen minutes or so to get off this planet.”
“And if we don’t?” the Sontaran asked coldly.
The Doctor’s smile was wider than it had any right to be. “Then your ship explodes, rendering the locals safe from harm—not to mention your little ‘invasion’ a failure.
“You’re lying.”
“Check your systems,” the Doctor said. “You’ll find my little program easily enough.”
Two tense minutes later, the alien sent out to check returned. The other Sontarans hadn’t lowered their weapons in that time.
“He’s not lying,” the returning Sontaran grunted. “Somehow.”
“So let’s go down the list, then,” the Doctor went on, pacing in front of the half-melted console. “You leave this planet. You bring me my ship—because did I mention, by the way, that I’ll only disable the complete self-destruct sequence after I have my TARDIS? And then we both leave this planet, going merrily on our way.”
His teeth flashed. “So. What’s it going to be?”
The Sontarans stared, wide-eyed. “You cannot be serious,” the first one said.
“I think you’ll find that I’m being quite serious,” the Doctor said. “Deadly so, in fact.”
“Who are you?”
The Doctor ran his tongue over the front of his teeth, humming to himself. “Oh, I’ve been called quite a few things in my time. Not all of them are nice, mind you, but that’s neither here nor there. You can call me the Doctor.”
The Sontaran’s lips curled back. “Then we shall forever curse your name, then, Doctor.”
“Pity,” the Doctor said. “I can’t say I like being unpopular. But don’t let me go off on a tangent.”
His eyes narrowed. “TARDIS. Planet. Leave. Now.”
Three minutes later, the Sontarans returned with a big blue box. It was easily twice the height of a pony, and had the words “Police Public Call Box” painted on the top in big, friendly letters. Derpy stared as the Doctor, after fiddling with a few buttons on the Sontarans’ console, opened the door and disappeared inside.
He poked his head back out. “Well, come on then.”
She followed, feeling slightly dazed. That wasn’t a spaceship—that was a box! A small box at that. How could they possibly even fit, let alone—
The doors swung wide open.
“Oh.”
It was wide, with walls painted black and lines of white running from floor to ceiling. It was tall, too, with pillars colored deep blue that rose above a console placed in the center of the room, its surface glittering with lights and flashing monitors. It was alien, too, like the Sontarans’ ship had been—but in a different way, with strange, almost artistic symbols circling the tops of the walls, and a tall cylinder that glimmered in a spiraling pattern sitting atop the central console.
It was—
“It’s bigger on the inside,” she said dumbly.
A wide smile flashed across the Doctor’s face. He stood at the console, both his hooves propped up over a particularly large computer screen. “Oh, that’s an oldie—but definitely a goodie. Just love hearing that. Brilliant.”
She gave a start as the doors closed behind her. “What...what is it?”
“It’s the TARDIS,” the Doctor said, still eyeing the monitor. “My TARDIS, to be exact. Time And Relative Dimension In Space.”
“It’s a spaceship.”
“A time machine,” he added with a wink. “She’ll take you anywhere or anywhen in the universe, so long as you ask nicely.”
“A time machine,” she breathed. “But—how? What spells—?”
“Spells,” the Doctor chuckled, shaking his head. He rapped a hoof smartly on the cylinder above the console, the light within swirling at his touch. “No unicorn or alicorn magic here. This is all Time Lord technology—pure science.” He snorted. “Magic.”
Derpy took a few steps further into the interior, approaching the Doctor’s side. She looked around in all directions. “It’s incredible,” she said. “You said that it could go anywhere?”
“Yup. But for now,” the Doctor said, leaning back on the console, “let’s just get you, Derpy Hooves, right back home.”
His hooves blurred, flipping switches, pulling levers, pushing buttons—
He paused, his hoof poised above a final lever. He met Derpy’s eyes, a wide grin on his face.
“Allons-y!”
Derpy yelped as the ground shook beneath her. She lurched, overbalancing before falling over the console, clutching it with both hooves. Lights flashed and alarms blared, the monitors flickering with numbers as alien text. She felt her stomach tossing and turning. It was going too fast—
And then it stopped.
“There.” The Doctor took a step back from the console. “We’re here.”
It was a moment before Derpy could get her breath back. “We just…teleported?” she asked. “Like a unicorn?”
The Doctor rolled his eyes. “No—it’s highly advanced Gallifreyan technology. Eye of Harmony, heart of a supernova—stuff like that. Too much to explain, but certainly nothing like your unicorns’ ‘magic’. In any case,” he said brightly, “here’s your stop!”
The front doors clicked open.
“Right here,” Derpy said.
“Yup!” the Doctor said. “Home sweet home. Safe and sound from the Sontarans. What did you call it?”
“Whinnypeg,” she said. “So…that’s it? I just head out and leave?”
He shrugged. “Pretty much,” he said. He flashed her a smile. “What—it’s not like I’m going to keep you here or anything.”
“Right.” Her voice sounded very small, she thought. “It’s just a lot to take in.”
She could swear that his face softened. “Of course it is,” he murmured. “There’s quite a lot out there—it’s a big, wide, universe, after all. But you know what, Derpy Hooves?” He gave her name an odd sort of emphasis, drawing out the first word and almost flicking the final syllable.
“What?”
“It’s yours for the taking.” The Doctor gave her a smile—an honest, genuine smile, with a glimmer of something deeper in his eyes. “So go out there, Derpy Hooves, back to Equestria. Go out there and be the best pony you can be.”
She swallowed, stuck a smile on her face, and nodded in return. “I think I will,” she said. Her voice never wavered. Inside, a voice screamed silently, Why are you doing this? The chance of a lifetime—of ten thousand lifetimes!—and she was just throwing it away?
But she needed to go home. She needed to make sure that everypony was okay. So, with a small little smile, and a final nod to the Doctor, she turned, took a short breath, pushed open the TARDIS doors, and stepped outside.
Something fluttered down from the sky. It alighted on her nose, tickling her skin and making her eyes water. At first, she thought it was snow. It took but a moment, though, for her to realize something else.
It wasn’t white. It wasn’t cold. And it didn’t melt on her skin. Instead, it was grey—a pale grey, with a scent that curled in her throat and scratched at her esophagus like smoke.
Smoke. It was ash.
Something crunched underhoof. With wide eyes, she glanced down to see what it was.
It was a little wooden doll: a pegasus, with one of its wings torn off. She’d broken it.
She looked back up, and saw the city for the first time.
Whinnypeg was gone. Buildings had crumbled, leaving mounds of charred debris in their wake. The roads were scorched. Thin lines of flame still ran down their lengths, with dust and dark smoke choking every street. Scattered throughout the city, like giant, ugly scars, were enormous gouges—canyons, almost—that she could only assume had been left by the beam weapon she’d seen. They dug deep into the ground, the Earth seeming to cry out in agony as it twisted around them, bleeding patches of blackened dirt and shattered rocks.
“No,” she whispered. It seemed to echo in the silence, bouncing off of the broken walls before coming back to her. No, it whispered: a cruel mockery of her voice. No, no, no, no.
“No,” she said again, choking through the word. A tear dropped to the ground. Then another. Some part of her realized that she was crying. “No!”
She took off running, still sobbing. As she galloped, ash crumbling beneath her hooves, she thought she heard somepony call her name, but paid it no regard. Somewhere along the way, she remembered that she had wings and took flight. Stumbling into the air, her wings flapping wildly behind her, she shouted for help until her voice grew hoarse.
“Somepony!” she hollered, passing over the wreckage of the town center. “Is anypony here? Anypony!”
Nopony answered. If anything did, it was the wind, blowing up through the dead town square and scattering the ashes across the cobblestone. Her throat constricted, like it was trying to choke her from the inside.
“Mister Chrysanthemum!” she cried. “Potluck! Miss Pasty!”
Nothing.
She came at last to the broken remains of her home. The porch was shattered, its bright yellow floor torn up and broken into tiny pieces. The glass was shattered, and each brick had been charred until it looked more like dust than building material. She landed on the remnants of her yard, right beside a puddle of mud that was likely the only thing left of her plumbing. The rest of the lawn was burned now, like all the rest had been, green grass turned to black.
Something in the puddle caught her eye. She took a step forward, her legs shaking beneath her—
—and met with her own gaze, staring forlornly out of the muddy water.
The Derpy in her reflection barely looked like herself. Her mane was wild and singed, from where it had met the edge of burning ozone. Her face was scuffed with char, her coat grey in places from the falling ash. And her face…
Two mismatched, opposite-facing eyes stared back at her.
“Oh,” she said, very quietly.
So that was why she’d had so much trouble seeing today. That was why her head had been throbbing. Try as she might, her pupils refuses to align; the slightest twitch sent another twinge of pain through her skull.
Her eyes welled up with tears, her throat constricting around her lungs. With a wordless cry, she collapsed onto the charred grass, her chest shaking with deep, wracking sobs.
It was another five minutes before she heard him speak.
“I’m sorry.”
She didn’t answer. Her eyes were screwed shut, her breaths coming in short, ragged gasps.
“I’m sorry,” the voice said again—louder, closer. “I thought that we’d made it in time. I wasn’t expecting—“
“Wasn’t expecting what?”
Her own venom nearly shocked her. Behind her, the Doctor only sighed.
“The Sontarans don’t usually move that quickly. I thought that we could minimize casualties. I thought that saving Equestria would be enough.”
“But it wasn’t,” she spat, refusing to look at him, refusing to turn around. “And now the town is destroyed, and Mister Chrysanthemum, and all of the other ponies, and—and m-my h-h-h-ome.”
Another bout of sobs overtook her, and she found herself with her head buried in her hooves, crying into her fur like a little filly.
She felt a hoof on her shoulder.
“We c-c-ouldn’t save them. I-I wanted to but…”
“I know.” His voice was quiet, unassuming. “I know.”
At last she turned to face him, eyes glittering with unshed tears. Her shoulders still shook with every sob. “W-why would th-they…?”
“I don’t know,” he whispered. “The universe is a vast, and terrifying place, and not everything in it is nice. I’m sorry that this had to be your first encounter with it.”
He shook his head, his eyes looking tired and—she realized with a start—old. Like an elderly stallion’s, or that one time when she had seen the Princess up close at the Summer Sun Celebration. Years hid behind that gaze: more than she would care to imagine.
“It wasn’t supposed to be this way.”
“But now it is,” she said.
He bowed his head. “I’m sorry,” he repeated. “I’m so very sorry.”
And he turned to go.
“Wait.”
He stopped.
“Don’t go,” she whispered. “Don’t leave me here.”
He turned back to face her. “Surely you have some family you can stay with?” he asked. “Some friends?”
She shook her head mutely.
“Nopony at all?”
“Please,” she said. She swallowed. “Don’t leave me all alone. Not again.”
“Again? Derpy, what—?”
Wisely, perhaps, he noticed the look on her face and decided to halt that line of conversation. Instead, he took a deep breath before going on.
“What would you have me do, then?” he asked. There were lines on his face, and suddenly, he looked so much older, so much sadder. He looked tired.
“Can I…” She hiccupped, barely managing to get the words out. “Can I come with you?”
“That might not be the best idea,” he said quietly. “I’m a dangerous man—or stallion, really. You might get hurt.”
“I don’t care.”
“At least here, in Equestria, you’ll be safe,” he said. “I don’t want to take another companion, not after—“
“I don’t care!” she said, and it was almost a scream, tears falling from her eyes as her chest rose and fell. “Please…” she said, sniffling and glancing down at her hooves. “Please, take me with you. I have nowhere else to go.”
She felt a weight on her shoulder and looked up. It was the Doctor, looking straight into her eyes. She felt something against her cheek; it was his hoof, wiping her tears away.
“Hush,” he murmured, nabbing a handkerchief from his vest and dabbing it on her face. “I’ll take you with me.”
She felt something building in her chest—a warmth, and energy, swelling until it nearly burst—“Oh, thank you, Doctor. Thank you.”
“It won’t be easy,” he said. “And it won’t be safe either.” His voice was dark, nearly foreboding. “If you come with me, you’ll see all sorts of things. The day Equestria died in a storm of thunder and steel. You’ll see magic of the past, and aliens from the future. The universe is a big, and scary place. It can be beautiful, and it can be terrifying. It’s unpredictable, too. But I can promise you one thing, Derpy Hooves.”
She sniffled. “What?”
He smiled at her. “That I will never, ever leave you behind.”
They stayed like that for a few moments more: his neck craned around hers, her shoulders still shaking as the sobs faded away.
“Now,” he finally said. She looked up at him. “If you’re coming with me, there’s something I want to show you first.”
“Can I open my eyes yet?”
“No,” came the Doctor’s voice—from right beside her, she thought. Her hooves scratched against the TARDIS floor with each step she took. “Just a bit further.”
She heard the doors creak open. She took another—almost hesitant—step forward…and froze.
She felt nothing there.
“Now.”
She opened her eyes.
She didn’t know what she was looking at, at first. It was like an explosion of lights and colors, as though fifty fireworks had all gone off at once. They danced across her vision like spider webs, weavings of light that seemed to thrum and pulse with energy.
And in the center of it all lay a sphere, glowing with a gentle mix of red and yellow.
“Where—“ She swallowed. “Where are we?”
“The Horsehead Nebula.” The Doctor came up beside her, his hooves teetering on the edge of the TARDIS. “Technically speaking, we’re five hundred light-years away from Equestria. This particular nebula is a cradle—a nursery for young stars, you might say.”
The sphere burned a little brighter, throwing up strings of light and heat. Derpy had to shield her eyes. It almost looked like a foal, crying and thrashing as more and more dust swirled around it.
“That’s a star,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady. “And this is a nebula. The Horsehead Nebula.”
“Well, yes,” the Doctor said. He took her hoof and pointed it up into the sky. Beyond those iridescent flames of interstellar gas lay a wide, inky-black field. Tiny lights, like diamonds, glimmered in uncountable numbers from the deep reaches of space. “See up there, in that tiny little constellation? That’s Equestria.”
“The stars,” she murmured. “They’re…different.”
He chuckled. “Well, that’s what you get when you dance halfway across the galaxy. Lovely, isn’t it?”
“It’s beautiful.” She swallowed again. “This is…real? This isn’t a trick? No smoke or mirrors?”
“No,” the Doctor said, gently. “This, Derpy Hooves, is all very, very real.”
She turned back to the star. It seemed so very, very small for something that she knew, intellectually, to be several hundred billion tons of gas and dust. Its flame burned brightly, though, each bit of light that seeped through the clouds that protected and nursed it like a brave explorer, pushing its way out into a strange and enormous ocean.
“Welcome to the universe,” the Doctor said. “It can be dark, and it can be sad, and it can definitely be scary, but…”
“But it’s beautiful,” she whispered. Tears already glittered in her eyes, barely after the last ones had dried. “It’s everything I ever imagined.”
She turned to look him in the eye. “Thank you,” Derpy said. “For everything.”
He smiled.
“Can we stay a while?” she asked. “Just for a bit. I want to take it all in for a little longer.”
“Take your time,” he said. “As long as you need.” And he left her standing there, right on the edge of the universe.
It would be another twenty minutes before she let her shoulders fall, the last of her tears dry, and returned to the TARDIS. They would go to a new planet, have an adventure, and this one would have a happy ending. So would the next one, and the one after that. Not all of the stories would have happy endings, but enough would, and that was all that would matter. Soon, Derpy Hooves, mare of Equestria, would have travelled across the stars that she’d watched from afar for all her life, leaving her mark like a constellation in the sky. In time, she would find love. She would find a family. And she would find a home, in the one place that she’d been all along.
But for now, she waited, and she watched. For now, her eyes looked up at the sky, at its beauty and its majesty, as a young star took its first steps into the void beyond, and as its forebears shone from the black sky beyond. She looked up into the sky and imagined, somewhere in the far-off reaches of space, a pony looking back.
