Doctor Whooves: Beyond the Nth Dimension

Chapters

Chapter 2: Time Waits For No Pony
Chapter 3: An Unearthly Filly
Chapter 4: The Impossible Dimension
Chapter 1: The Doctor is IN!

Chapter 2: Time Waits For No Pony

Somewhere, more than three billion miles away from Equestria, a planet exploded. For the entire universe, it would be a silent death for a world that had long since been devoid of any real intelligent beings; completely insignificant and ignorable. The crust cracked, the mantle heaved, and from within the core a series of detonations tore the planet of Changeoid-9 apart. The largest chunks of the dead planet drifted apart from each other, the last remaining mementos of a world long past the glory of its history…

The Doctor had watched a replay of the planet’s destruction on the TARDIS’s galactic scanner, to confirm it had been destroyed. According to the data, Changeoid-9 had been detonated almost 3 days prior, indicating that the date parameter coils were indeed faulty (as he had suspected). He made a note to repair them before his next voyage.

Twilight had taken a momentary break from cleaning up the TARDIS (putting out the fires, clearing away any debris, the usual) to observe the replay as well. She could only shake her head. “To think that such a huge terrestrial body could be so… fragile,” she whispered. “It’s so… surreal.”

“…” The Doctor shut the recording off, and proceeded to mend a few split wires on the console with the sonic screwdriver. While he did, the Time Lord began to reminisce. “I’ve seen many a planet go like that,” he reflected. “Sometimes it was deserved, and other times… not so much.”

“So the destruction of the changeling’s home planet was deserved, then?” Twilight asked, her tone betraying a hint of accusation. “They try to invade other worlds to find a new home, and that’s why they all have to be destroyed?”

The Doctor seemed to ignore the inquiry at first, but then sighed and candidly informed her, “They didn’t try, they’ve succeeded. Many times, from what I observed and deduced.” Twilight’s look of confusion didn’t go unanswered for long. “You see Miss Sparkle, the Changelings are a parasitic race. They are heavily reliant on other living creatures for their nourishment. You’ve told me about how the Changeling ‘queen’ was feeding off the emotional energy of your brother…”

“Shining Armor,” Twilight murmured, her eyes staring at the floor. As an intellectual, she could already see where this was going.

“Right, him. The guard captain, I think? Anyway, Changeoid-9 technically isn’t the Changeling home planet. Changeoid-9, before they showed up, used to be a normal planet with a flourishing civilization of equines… much like our Equestria. That is, until those insects invaded and bled the whole place dry. In fact, if it weren’t for you and the others stopping them at Canterlot, then this planet may very well have someday become known as Changeoid-10.”

Twilight swallowed deeply, taking in the full implications. The changeling invasion was a lot more serious than she had thought. If they hadn’t beaten Chrysalis and cast away the changeling hoard, then…

“So I hope you’re beginning to understand,” the Doctor concluded, “that those insects were dangerous to leave alive. Changeoid-1 through 8 would have long since been dead rocks by now, so 9 is… or rather, was their last remaining nest.”

There were but a precious few ponies that could give lectures to Twilight and at the same time silence her: Princess Celestia being one of them, and the Doctor more recently being another. Knowing this, the Time Lord was in an interesting position of authority over the unicorn. Even so, Twilight’s vocal exuberance, magical prowess and closeness to the royalty had kept him on a leash; not a short one, mind, but a fairly limiting one.

The Doctor let out a mental sigh, and looked towards the lavender unicorn that was now trying to clean up some detritus knocked loose from the ceiling. She had been a good (that is to say, smart) assistant thus far, though her overtly questioning and inquisitive attitude was somewhat bothersome to the Doctor.

And he also couldn’t understand why she always needed to report everything back to their monarch, Celestia. And on top of that, Twilight needed to know his whereabouts 24/7. The system of this world of order reminded the Doctor a little too much of his dealings with UNIT, or even the old Gallifreyen government…

…and boy, did he resent that.

“Doctor,” Twilight said at last, “is this thing ready to move yet? Everything’s pretty much cleaned up.”

The Time Lord nodded. “Nearly. The date parameter coils need fixing, so that we don’t jettison to another week forward of course. …That, and the bagel-toaster requires an extra fuse.”

“‘Bagel-toaster’? Doctor, be serious!” Twilight snapped, knitting her brow in annoyance. “Just fix the coils so that this thing will go!”

“Alright, alright, don’t get pushy now,” the Doctor muttered, getting onto the floor and peeking under the console. All sorts of loose and frayed wires were dangling about, but what he was concerned about were a set of metal spring-shaped coils, jutting out from the undercarriage of the control panel. The one in the center appeared to have become completely charred, likely due to recently frying.

“Miss Twilight, could you please hand me a spare unobtanium coil?” he asked politely. “It should be in the box marked—”

Twilight let out an impatient huff. “I know where the lousy ‘spare parts’ bin is! I already have it!”

To prove her point, a new coil wrapped in a purple glow was levitated under the console and into the Doctor’s waiting hoof. He fumbled with it for a moment—still not quite that used to hooves instead of hands apparently—before at last replacing it into the slot, swapping it out with the old coil.

“Well, somebody sounds a little grouchy,” the Doctor said teasingly as he affixed the new coil with the sonic screwdriver. “Why the temper, Miss Sparkle?”

“Somepony.”

The Doctor snorted at Twilight’s insistence of the term. He found it terribly amusing at first, but on top of hearing ponies constantly use such a term and himself being corrected so many times on its proper usage had demoted that quirk to become a slight irritant. Twilight was briefly nonplussed by the Time Lord’s display, but shook it off and went on.

“And as I’ve already told you, I haven’t slept in days!” Twilight exclaimed, obviously perturbed. “If you’d not gone and run off, then maybe I wouldn’t have been so worried about you and maybe I would have slept better!”

The Doctor climbed back out from below the TARDIS console, then turned to Twilight with a raised eyebrow. “You, Miss Twilight? Worried about me? I recall you saying to me, a long time ago, that I could so easily take care of myself, and you would never be tense in my absence… and now, you renounce that claim?”

“…!” Twilight slapped a hoof over her mouth, and anxiously glanced from left to right. “Uh… of course not! I wasn’t worried in the sense that you’d die or anything, I was just… annoyed.” A light-bulb flashed over her head when the excuse struck her. “…Yeah, that’s it! I was annoyed that you were gone for so long, without proper supervision!”

“Hahahah…” The Doctor shook his head and gave a shrewd chuckle. “Miss Sparkle… did you miss me? Really?”

Twilight stammered wildly for a moment, trying and failing to bring up the right words to say in her defense. “W-w-well… ‘Miss you’ is a pretty ambiguous term… By ‘miss you’, do you mean simply acknowledging your absence? Or… the other meaning, like a ‘longing’ for you to return?”

“The other meaning,” the Doctor said, his bemused expression not faltering. He was determined to extract all the satisfaction as he could from seeing the brainy unicorn squirm.

“Th-then no. I didn’t miss you.” Much. The unicorn had come distressingly close to letting that last word slip out. Nonetheless, her denial didn’t seem to fully convince the Doctor (if his knowing smile was anything to go by). Twilight chastised herself for displaying her feelings too much; she had become a little bit fond of the Doctor, eccentric and exasperating though he was.

The Doctor kept chuckling to himself, now focusing on the control console and its many blinking lights. Now that the wiring was mostly fixed, the coils replaced, and the worst of the fires put out, the TARDIS should have been at least partly serviceable now. There were a few nicks and dings here and there, but they were superficial at best.

Now was the moment of truth.

“Alright, I think we’re ready to go,” the Doctor proclaimed, clapping his hooves together.

Twilight simply muttered something along the lines of, “Finally…”

He set to work turning dials and flipping switches on the console. “All it’ll take is a quick geographic adjustment… here, and some power re-routing… there… and Geronimo, we’re off!”

The equine Time Lord flipped the dematerialization switch, and the whole TARDIS began shuddering as the grinding and screeching noises filled the air. In the center of the round console, within a large glass tube, a setup of around half-a-dozen glass-like rods began oscillating up and down, each motion accompanying the ever-present sounds.

“Shouldn’t even take a second,” the Doctor said quickly, observing the console and tube intently. “I set the coordinates to the outskirts of Sweet Apple Acres; should be well out of the way, at least it’s a place where more permanent fixing can be done. Once her system reboots, we’ll be on our way.”

Twilight acknowledged this with a subdued nod. “As long as this machine isn’t displayed in front of the whole town. I’m surprised that everypony took it so well once they found out it was harmless.”

“Well, they must have seen stranger things then, have they not?”

“Well, on top of Pinkie Pie, and the recent Changeling invasion… I suppose they have.” An afterthought occurred to Twilight. “By the way… how do you plan on paying for the fountain you destroyed? The last time I checked, you don’t even have a single bit to your name.”

“Ah… well… see, about that…”

Just as the Doctor was about to respond to that in proper, a queer noise both interrupted and startled him. PHBBBBT! It was the sound that sounded suspiciously like somepony sitting on a common whoopee cushion. Both occupants flushed bright red at the sound of it, and Twilight had quite a bit of trouble not bursting into mad giggles. The scraping sound and blinking lights had both stopped as well, and the tube in the center seemed almost ‘stuck’ in position.

Upon regaining his composure (no thanks to Twilight’s displays of mirth), the Doctor’s expression became one of concern. “Oh dear… That’s never happened before,” he said quietly.

Twilight was still on the verge of giggles, but managed to ask, “What does that sound mean?”

“It means… well, I don’t know what it means,” the Time Lord admitted, looking over the data on the TARDIS’s computer. “…According to this, the dematerialization process hadn’t been initiated properly… Well, blast! We’re still where we started! What in Gallifrey is wrong with this? There’s more than enough power left…”

“Uh…” Twilight wasn’t quite sure what to say. She’d forgotten about that giggle-inducing sound by now; an immovable time machine was a considerably greater concern at present. “What’s wrong with it?”

The Doctor more-or-less ignored the unicorn—he didn’t have much of a clue himself, honestly—and instead gave the console a hard smack with his hoof. He did it again several times, but it soon became obvious that a little percussive maintenance wasn’t the answer. He flipped the dematerialization switch several times, but the TARDIS didn’t even start to go anywhere. “Agh, this is so frustrating…”

Twilight glanced up at the flashing computer monitor hung from the control room’s ceiling (the Doctor hadn’t noticed it yet), and unconsciously read what was displayed. “Umm… ‘Primary Temporal Generator is offline’…? What does that mean?”

“Say wha’ now?” The Doctor followed Twilight’s gaze up to the monitor, and realization dawned upon him. “Oh, that. …Huh. How ‘bout that. For a moment, I thought it was just the Eye of Harmony starting to leak again, but that… that’s easily fixable.”

“Eye of… Harmony?” Twilight’s curiosity was suddenly piqued.

The Doctor waved a dismissive hoof. “Eye of Harmony, you know, the power generator for the TARDIS,” he explained. “If it were left open and exposed for too long, it would drain the machine of energy so it can’t be used… and also bring about the end of the known universe. Had a problem with that quite a few years ago, but it’s fine now.” The Time Lord idly coughed. “Anyway, the PTG just needs to be juiced-up again. Come along, I’ll show you.”

“Alright…?”

With some slight hesitation, Twilight followed the Doctor as he led her deeper into the confines of the TARDIS, away from the control room. She couldn’t help but wonder about this so-called ‘Eye of Harmony’, for some reason…

…And she certainly couldn’t help but wonder why she was following a pony that actually blew up a planet.

>~===DW===~<

The lunch went about as well as could be expected. Derpy Hooves, in all of her near-sighted glory, had accidentally toppled over all the tables in the restaurant’s courtyard while trying to navigate her way to the table that Carrot Top and Colgate were situated at. By the time the gray pegasus did make it there, she had caused enough damage that a passing waiter ‘kindly’ advised them to leave.

Oh well. At the very least, they still managed to leave with their food. That counts for something, right?

“You are so clumsy, Derpy,” Carrot Top muttered as they left, her tone suggesting a genuine attempt at derision.

Derpy hung her head. “Sorry… I just don’t know what went wrong…”

Carrot Top was about to point out that she always used that same excuse every time there was a problem that she caused, but instead settled for an annoyed sigh.

“Well, er… at least I didn’t smash up the fountain!” the pegasus defended, trying to bring up the incident they had witnessed earlier.

“True, I guess. The Doc and his weird machines… I don’t think I’ll ever understand him.” Carrot Top shrugged. “Oh well.”

The earth pony looked to her other side, and noticed that Colgate seemed to be staring off into space again. “Hey, Colgate? Are you still with us? You’ve been awfully quiet lately…”

The blue and white-maned unicorn suddenly snapped to attention. “H-huh?! Oh! Oh…” She offered a nervous chuckle. “Y-yeah. I was just…thinking about some stuff. It’s no big deal.”

Carrot Top stared at her friend with an unconvinced stare. “Is this about that box that the Doc crashed into the square?”

“…Yeah.”

“Col, you’ve got to get your head out of the clouds. That’s Derpy’s domain.”

“Yep,” Derpy piped cheerfully. “My domain! So stay out!”

Colgate sighed. “It’s just all that stuff I overheard… That blue box, he said it’s a time machine! As in, goes to the future and stuff! Isn’t that incredible?”

“…” Carrot Top rolled her eyes. “Okay, look, I know that the Doctor goes around claiming that it’s a time machine, and it’s ‘bigger on the inside’, and blah blah blah… but whenever I ask Twilight later on, she denounces all of that as hullabaloo. Who do you think I’d believe more?”

“But Twilight said it was a time machine too! Didn’t you hear anything about what those two were talking about?”

“You were eavesdropping on them, too? Gosh Colgate, you really are nosy…”

“You’re missing the point!” Colgate was on the verge of outright screaming. The earth pony flinched; never had she seen the unicorn so riled up about something. “The point is, there’s somepony else out there that might know something about my special talent! That ‘Doctor’… he has the exact same cutie mark as me!” She indicated the hourglass mark on her flank.

“So your special talent is time?” Derpy asked, trotting up to examine the mark more closely. “That’s so cool! A time-traveling pony! And she’s my friend, too! Yay!”

”There are no time-traveling ponies!” Carrot Top snapped, prompting Derpy to shrink away with surprise. “That Doctor is really weird, yes, but I sincerely doubt that his box can go into the future or whatever. Okay, sure, it can fly around and crash, but time travel? No way.”

Colgate raised an eyebrow questioningly. “B-but what about that time that Twilight said she was visited by her future self to warn of a disaster?”

“Which never came,” Carrot Top pointed out. “She might have been lying, delusional, or just plain crazy. Remember that incident with the doll?”

“Ohh… Don’t remind me,” Derpy whined, recalling how stupid she looked wrestling with the mayor herself just to try and get at that ugly-looking doll. “…Stupid spell.”

The blue unicorn heaved a sigh. Carrot Top would never understand. She’s a sensible, down-to-earth kind of mare that manages to keep her hooves on the ground. And with that rational way of thinking, came with it a healthy dose of doubt towards anything considered “too bizarre”. Colgate knew that further discussion would not bear fruit. (Or vegetables, for that matter.)

The three of them continued walking in silence down the streets of Ponyville. Along the way, Colgate happened to notice a filly sulking somewhere nearby. She was curious as to why this foal was upset, and motioned to her friends to wait while she checked on her.

“Hi there,” Colgate said politely, putting on her most sincere and comforting smile. “What’s wrong? Why are you crying?”

“M-m-my favorite t-toy b-b-broke,” the filly cried, her voice cracking through her sobs. Her sad gaze turned to the doll at her hooves, which was snapped totally in half. “I was p-p-playing with it… a-and then I-I d-d-dr-dropped it… and n-now it b-b-broke…”

Colgate looked at the broken pony doll on the ground. It was made out of a delicate ceramic, so there was no normal way of fixing it. However, the unicorn knew of the perfect way to repair it. “Don’t worry; I can fix it for you easily.”

“R-r-really?”

“Yep! Just hold on one second…”

The unicorn took a step backwards, and started to focus. Her horn began to glow as the toy was suddenly wreathed in a dull blue light. Colgate pushed herself further, and the glow started to change; it began to coalesce into a sparkling orange-yellow. The filly’s crying ceased, and instead began to watch the scene unfold with wonder.

Rising into the air slightly, the toy’s broken halves reconnected with each other and instantly fused. Colgate finally released the hold of her magic, and the toy gently lowered back to the ground, perfectly mended. There wasn’t even a crack where the ceramic doll had been broken.

“W…wow!” the foal exclaimed, taking hold of her prized possession and hugging it. “You fixed my Pretty Pony! Thank you, miss!”

Colgate smiled sweetly. “You’re very welcome, little filly. Take good care of it from now on, okay?”

The filly nodded vigorously. “I-I will! Th-thank you!”

As the unicorn trotted back to her friends, she was greeted by a single question, courtesy of Carrot Top: “What the hay did you do?”

“Fixed that foal’s toy,” Colgate replied simply. “And I did it in my own special way.”

The carrot farmer rubbed the back of her neck with uneasiness. “Um, well… I have to say, that was really nice of you… but… how?”

Colgate raised an eyebrow with amusement. “Oh, I would tell you… but you’ve already told us that you don’t believe in time-traveling ponies. I’d be wasting my time explaining.”

As the blue-and-white-maned unicorn turned to continue walking, Carrot Top managed to ask, “B-but what does that mean?! Col, are you trying to mess with my head again?”

“Mmm… possibly,” Colgate replied curtly, not even turning to look at the earth pony mare.

Carrot Top and Derpy exchanged a puzzled and slightly worried look with each other. Neither of them seemed to have much else to say. Well, except for Derpy, who said but a solitary word that summed up her current desires quite well: “Muffins.”

“…Ah, um… muffins… okay,” Carrot Top replied, managing a strained smile. “B-but what about the food we already paid for at the restaurant before we had to… ugh… leave?”

“Dessert?”

“…Okay, fine. Muffins for dessert. Hey, Col?”

Colgate didn’t react to the call, aside from a wayward twitch of the ear.

“I suppose we’re getting… muffins. You don’t have to, but… if you want to come with us…”

“…”

“Look, I know you’re not that happy about the way I think about all of this ‘time travel’ nonsense, but that’s just how I feel. I understand your feelings as well, but really, you have to know how crazy that concept sounds.”

“…What will it take to make you believe?”

Carrot Top was a bit taken aback from the sudden question. “C-come again?”

“I said, ‘what will it take to make you believe’?”

“I… I don’t know… maybe some proof, or something? I honestly don’t see where you’re going with this…”

Colgate finally turned back to look at Carrot Top. A slightly hopeful smile was gracing her features. “…If… if I were to find proof that the blue box the… ‘Doctor’ has is a real time machine… then would you be willing to take back everything you said?”

“…” Carrot Top fought back the urge to scoff—it would’ve been quite rude—and instead decided to humor her friend. “…Alright, we have a deal. But it should be solid evidence, like… um… something. If it’s really a time machine, then go back and grab some book from 1000 years ago. And, uh… if you can’t offer any proof, then… then you have to stop thinking about this time travel claptrap for good.”

The blue unicorn grinned widely. “Okay, deal! That’ll be easy!”

Carrot Top blinked. She hadn’t expected her friend to take that challenge so seriously.

“Oh… but…” Colgate’s smile slowly drooped. “I wonder if he would even let me use it…”

The earth mare waved a hoof dismissively. “How about we not worry about this now, huh? The day is still young, and… well, we still have lunch to attend to.”

“…Alright,” Colgate conceded, and sighed. She remained hopeful that the ‘wager’ was legitimate, and that Carrot Top would remain true to her word. “Hey, where is our food, anyway?”

“I gave it all to Derpy, so she’s carrying it.”

As if on cue, the mailmare flipped open one of her saddlebags, and beamed as a pair of takeout bags from the restaurant were visible inside them. “Safe and sound!” she cheered.

“Uh, Derpy…” Colgate tilted her head wonderingly. “Aren’t those the bags that you carry your mail deliveries in?”

“Uh-huh!”

“…So, what about the letters and packages you had in them?”

“What about them?”

“Don’t they need to be… uh, delivered?”

“Already done that! I did it before meeting you guys at the restaurant! That waiter was mean though…”

Carrot Top blinked. “That… was fast. You were only gone for four minutes.”

The gray pegasus grinned ear-to-ear. “I was fast!” she said simply. Say what you will about Derpy, but she did her job and she did it pretty darn well. Clumsiness aside, she really could do things when she set her mind on it.

“Huh, maybe she traveled through time?” Colgate proposed in a playfully mocking tone, earning herself a glare from Carrot Top. “Just kidding. Sorry.”

“Don’t… don’t do that,” the earth pony muttered. She let out a sigh. ‘What I wouldn’t give for something that could possibly intervene at this point.’

KER-BOOOOOM!

'Oh, that's convenient.'

The sound of a distant explosion echoed down the street. Our trio of mares jumped at the sound. Nearby ponies wandering the street also cried out with surprise and turned towards where the sound came from.

The market square.

Colgate’s pupils dilated with shock. The square… that’s where the box had crashed! Had something gone wrong? What about Twilight, or that Doctor? Weren’t they…

“Oh no…”

>~===DW===~<

”…Eh?”

The Doctor stood up straight and looked around the area curiously. He didn’t know what it was, but if anything was certain, he definitely felt something. ‘How peculiar. I haven’t felt anything like that for… a long time…’

“Uh, Doctor?”

Twilight’s voice was enough to break the Time Lord out of his stupor. “A-ah, right, what is it?”

“Are you going to fix the thing or not?” the unicorn asked, although the question was more rhetorical than anything else. “You just stopped for a moment and sort of stared off into space.”

“Right, er… sorry about that. I… I just thought I felt something anomalous.” He quickly shook his head to dismiss the forthcoming questions from his assistant/supervisor. “It’s nothing, actually. Pay no mind to it. Now, as for the PTG…”

The Doctor, with sonic screwdriver in hoof, refocused his attention back on the cone-shaped device before him. The Primary Temporal Generator, as it was known, appeared to be offline. Well, mostly. It occasionally glowed, or made an odd distorted warbling, but for the most part remained dormant. Rarely did it ever require repair, but on the odd occasion it would require a quick nudge or two.

Raising the sonic screwdriver to bear, the Doctor aimed it at the center of the device, and turned it on. The end flashed bright blue, accompanied by a pitched whirring sound. He sustained this for a moment, and then lowered the device to check on the generator.

It still wasn’t working.

“Well. Guess that didn’t work.” The Doctor shrugged, and stowed away the pen-like device. “I’m out of ideas.”

Twilight perked up at once, distress evident on her face. “Wait… what?! It still won’t work?!”

“Yes, unfortunately. Looking at it now,” the Doctor clarified warily, “it seems that the generator is a tad…” He put a hoof on its surface, and quickly yanked it away. “…hot. Overheated, it appears. It would need some time to cool down. Huh, might make sense… this place was all ablaze earlier…”

“Overheated…? Aw, that’s just great!” Twilight exclaimed, her voice laced with copious amounts of sarcasm. “Now what are we supposed to do? We can’t just let this thing sit here in the middle of the market square! What if somepony tries to—?”

The Doctor interrupted the unicorn with a hearty, amused (and slightly condescending) chuckle. “Hah hah hah… Oh come on now, Miss Twilight… Don’t you think that the TARDIS is better designed than that? Only I have the keys to the TARDIS. Nobo—nopony else will ever be able to get in, so long as the door is closed. “

“Then how did that changeling stow away in here, like you told me a dozen times already?”

“Eh… minor misjudgment on my part…” He coughed. “Anyhow, haven’t you also noticed that most ponies tend to avoid the TARDIS? There’s a psychological modification field surrounding her at all times. Anybody… anypony else will spare it no more than a passing glance in most circumstances.”

“But what about when it crashed into the square? Everypony couldn’t take their eyes off it!”

“Well, the field was still able to keep everyone away from it at least, right? By the time everything is sorted out, they will be bound to forget it.”

Twilight sighed. Things weren’t going as planned. It was just one crazy scheme and scenario after another… and she was sick and tired of it. “Is there no way to get that thing fixed quickly?”

“Well…” The Doctor idly drew a circle on the floor. “I suppose it’s possible to cool it down artificially… Though, that might be problematic, as any contact with water or other chilled solvent would cause the generator to short…”

“Will magic do?”

”I… ah… I’ve never tried that myself, for obvious reasons… But, I don’t think that would work either…”

Twilight huffed, and took a step closer to the PTG. “I may as well give it a shot, anyway. I know an ice-wind spell that should cool down the generator in a flash.”

The Doctor bit his lower lip fretfully. “B-but Miss Sparkle, the TARDIS was never designed to interface with any form of this ‘magic’ energy… I-I don’t think that this would be such a good idea…”

He was more-or-less ignored, as Twilight was already beginning to focus her magic. “What’s the worst that could happen?” she asked, not concerned about the fact that the phrase she just used was rather popular in the ‘famous last words’ department. “It’s just a simple cold spell. Where’s the danger in that?”

“…Hypothermia?” the Doctor offered, chuckling nervously. His look turned grave after a moment as he dispensed with the humor. “Look here, Miss Twilight Sparkle. I’m aware of the power at your disposal, being a unicorn and all, but I must implore you to reconsider. Think of the possible ramifications of this!”

“Doctor, will you just calm down for a moment,” Twilight near-demanded, her horn beginning to glow with magical energy. “I got this. All that needs doing is a cool-down, right? And besides, this thing can’t stay displayed in front of the whole town forever!”

“It won’t, as long as you just trust me! The ponies here are harmless, as far as I can tell, so there will be no danger!”

“Sorry, but I can’t take that risk.”

“Miss Twilight…” The Doctor lowered his voice, making it sound like more of an indictment. “I fear that I must call your reasons for your haste into question.”

“W-what?” Twilight’s focus had faltered, but she was still readying the spell. She threw a quick glare at the Doctor. “You don’t trust me? Dear Celestia, how did I see that one coming?”

“Oh, stuff the sarcasm!” the Time Lord snapped, starting to lose his composure. Twilight might be putting the entire town at risk—inadvertently maybe, but nevertheless acting careless—and that knowledge alone was enough to make the Doctor antsy. And her attitude wasn’t helping matters. “It’s not that I don’t trust you… I don’t trust your reasons!”

Twilight rolled her eyes and snorted. “You don’t even understand my reasons anyway!” she yelled, her magic building up to critical levels thanks to her focus becoming detached. “It’s not like Princess Celestia hates you personally or anything, but she told me herself that she DOESN’T like that fact that you can go hoofin' around with space and time itself without anypony’s consent!”

The Doctor stopped, and his jaw fell slack. “Wha’…?”

“And another thing!” The light from her horn was steadily getting brighter. “I was only pretending to be your little ‘assistant’ in the first place because Princess Celestia asked me to do so! I honestly don’t even care, but you, sir, are CUH-RAZY! I don’t know HOW I put up with you all these past weeks! If it wasn’t for the fact that I liked you, then you wouldn’t catch me dead in this rust bucket!!”

“…” The Time Lord was beyond words. He’d pushed Twilight to her breaking point, and the sudden revelation of everything that spilled out of her mouth shocked him. Sure, he knew that the monarchy didn’t trust him, and vice versa… but… their princess had placed Twilight as his assistant… and as her spy?

A spy… He wondered why he didn’t consider the possibility of it before. The nagging questions and inquiries… the backseat driver attitude on those rare occasions she would come along on a voyage… the constant need to stay in contact with the monarchy… all of it made sense. She was reporting every word of it to her princess. He was being watched and tracked the entire time. His own self-declared second home… didn’t trust him. Him, the Gallifreyen Time Lord that had saved countless worlds and battled innumerable aliens. Him, a being that has lived for over a millennium, older than the princesses themselves even (older than Equestria, for that matter!), over a course of twelve separate lives. And they didn’t trust him for a single, solitary second.

So this is how it was it felt to be betrayed. Not the first time it had happened to him or anything, but… to trust in a world and its creatures so deeply and care about them… only to have them turn their backs on you… it was indescribable.

…And…what was this about ‘liking him’ again?

Twilight, after concluding her rant (still oblivious to the fact she was still charging a spell), finally took notice of the Doctor’s aghast expression and the words she had just spoke. Her face said it all; she had made a terrible err in judgment. “N-no… I did… I didn’t mean to…”

“…So this was all just a setup,” the Doctor said with hollow emotion, his face frozen with shock. “Everything I did… everything I’ve done for Equestria… was all for nothing.”

“N-no! Th-that’s not true!!” The light from Twilight’s horn was almost blinding now.

“Miss Twilight…” He gently shook his head. “No. Twilight Sparkle. All this time… you were spying on me. A spy. In my TARDIS. For the. Second. Time. In. A. Row.”

“I’m n-not a spy! I’m not! Th-the princess, she…!”

The Doctor looked at the floor. “I trusted you, Twilight Sparkle. I took you in as my assistant. And even then, you were playing me like a harpsichord.”

“I-I can explain!” Twilight cried, likely ready to start another rant in her defense, but then noticed that he magic was getting a little… out of control. “Aaahhhh! Oh no! I can’t stop it!!”

The Doctor’s feelings of betrayal suddenly came into conflict with that of extreme worry. Part of him wanted to start tearing into her verbally, while another was more concerned about the imminent danger of a second explosion in as many hours. Another part of him wondered if the bagel toaster would ever get around to being fixed.

Yet another part was concerned for Twilight’s safety.

But before he could do anything, the magic could no longer be contained. The light that had collected at the end of Twilight’s horn radiated outward, a stream of blue-white ice energy connecting with the cone-shaped generator as it did. An arc of almost lightning-like magic was formed between the two points as the energy continued flowing outward. And, curiously, all of this was accompanied by the sound of a howling arctic blizzard.

The Doctor’s vision was flooded with whiteness, and all of a sudden he was feeling extremely cold. Twilight hadn’t been joking when she said she knew a cold spell. But this was clearly a lot more powerful than what was intended. If so… then… that was bad. Quite bad. Terrible, actually. The Time Lord was none too keen on turning the TARDIS into an icebox.

“TWILIGHT!” he shouted, but his voice was quickly drowned out in the howl of the wind. Wind? Where ever did that come from? Ack, ask the questions later! Stopping coldness is top priority! “TWILIGHT, STOP THIS BLIZZARD! YOU’LL FREEZE US BOTH SOLID!”

He heard what sounded like some vestige of a reply, but it was barely audible in the artificial storm. All of a sudden, the small PTG chamber they were both in seemed like an endless wasteland of snow. Of course, it wasn’t actually possible for that to be true, but if you could see nothing but white in every direction and feel minus thirty centigrade wind lash against your body, then what would you think?

And then, a different sound.

KER-BOOOOOM!!

An explosion, obviously. And a very close-by one, to be exact. It didn’t sound like a conventional blast—and it certainly wasn’t a convectional one—but it was blast nevertheless. Where exactly, he was not sure. Nor was he aware of whatever kind of damage had occurred. But then the explosion was followed up by a much more familiar and welcoming sound.

Wheeeeeeen… wheeeeeen… wheeeeeeen…

The Doctor’s reaction timing was slowed, due to the extreme temperatures currently being experienced, but upon realizing what the oh-too-lovely sound was, his mood picked up a little. ‘Well, how about that!’ he thought. ‘The Dematerialization process started by itself! I suppose Twilight’s cold spell worked, despite the… exuberance in its deployment.’

Wheeeeeeen… wheeeeeeeeeen… wheeeeeeeeeeeeen…

As the pitch of the sound rose with every other iteration, the whiteness finally began to fade away. The first thing the Doctor could see again was the lights of the Primary Temporal Generator flashing and glowing wildly. Strangely, the arc of blue-white energy still seemed connected to it… and to Twilight. He couldn’t quite see Twilight however; the fog had yet to fully dissipate.

It soon became clear that there may have actually been a full season of an indoor winter (over the course of only two minutes!). As the fog slowly faded, along with the last wisps of wind, the Doctor noted that he was standing in at least three inches of snow. Ice and frost coated the walls of the chambers, almost painting the entire room a white and blue color (though no icicles hung from the ceiling). Where the moisture came from to produce all of this snow and ice, he didn't know. It was still positively freezing in there, as evidenced when the Doctor’s exhales of breath produced a white fog to appear and disappear. Thank goodness for his fur coat. It was one of the benefits of being an equine earth pony; they could handle this sort of thing by nature.

The sounds of the TARDIS’s dematerialization and rematerialization came and went, and what was left of the time machine's interior once the fog had cleared was as the Doctor had feared: an icebox. ‘Well, bugger. It will take me days to get this place cleaned up…’ He paused, and an afterthought occurred to him. ‘…Actually, no. This is rather convenient! If the PTG room were kept cold… then I’d never have to worry about the unit overheating! Brilliant!’

The Doctor spent a moment admiring the room and nodding to himself as he considered the idea. It was certainly a lot cheaper than installing a complex coolant system, and required less maintenance. What a great idea! He allowed himself a smile when he remembered whose idea it was… but it disappeared just as quickly. “Twilight…”

Turning back towards the PTG, which stood in the center of the room as it always had, the Doctor noticed that the arc of white lightning had vanished. It was almost too quiet in the room now. What happened to Twilight?

“T-Twilight? Are… are you there?”

He got no reply.

“Twilight! Miss Sparkle! Are you there?”

Still nothing. The Doctor ground his teeth with worry. Where was Twilight? One moment she was there, standing in front of the machine and ready to cast that spell… and now… there wasn’t anypony there.

…Well, that wouldn’t be right to say. There was somepony there, but the Doctor hadn’t thought that it could ever be Twilight… at least, not at the moment.

Lying on her side, unconscious, was a small, purple-coated unicorn filly. Her mane was purple, with a pink stripe running through it. The manestyle itself was distinctly familiar. The only difference from the mare that was once in the filly’s place is that this filly lacked a cutie mark.

You know that saying, “You’re never getting any younger”? Well… forget about that.

“…Oh dear… This is… problematic…”

Chapter 3: An Unearthly Filly

‘The time machine is just… gone?!’

It was true. The crater in the center of the market square was now completely vacant. All that was left there now were the scattered remains of the destroyed fountain, in addition to copious amounts of… ice? Oddly enough, there seemed to be a significant bit of ice formed in and around the crater.

Colgate was shocked. The blue box was gone! And in its place was now nothing more than a bunch of rock and ice! Where the hay had it gone?! It couldn’t have just vanished into thin air, could it?

And for that matter, why did nopony else seem to care? The other ponies in the square, even the ones she had followed to come to the square, seemed to have lost interest in the whole affair almost right away. But why did they? Of course, they didn’t fail to notice the hole in the middle of the square, but they acted so indifferently about it.

“What is with everypony?” she asked out loud. “Doesn’t anypony remember the time machine that was here not even five minutes ago?!”

“Time machine?” “Huh?” “What’s she talking about?” “I’m hungry…” “There’s no such thing as time travel!” “I don’t see a time machine…” “Timey-wimey-what now?”

Colgate groaned. “Ugh, you ponies are hopeless! How could you not remember? It crashed into the square only a half-hour ago!”

“Is that what it was?” “I thought it was just another box that Derpy dropped…” “There was a crash?” “Still hungry here…” “What a load of bunk.” “If it crashed, then where is it?” “Wibbly-wobbly-who?”

The blue unicorn facehoofed. “Seriously? You don’t remember? We heard an explosion coming from here just a few moments ago! And now, there’s a bunch of ice all over the place!”

“Oh, right…” “Ice? But I thought it was the middle of summer…” “Explosion? Huh?” “Okay, I’m pretty much starving now…” “So what? I’m sure there’s a… reasonable explanation.” “Maybe it blew up or something?” “Icey-wicey explodey-wody huh?”

“…” Colgate sighed. It seemed apparent that there just wasn’t any way of getting through to these ponies. She could sit here all day, and it would be pointless if the actual blue box—the centerpiece of her argument—wasn’t even present.

Just as she turned to walk away from the market with dejection, she almost walked straight into the friends she had earlier run off from in the first place.

“Col! There you are,” Carrot Top snapped, giving her an annoyed glare. “We were looking for you! Why’d you just run off all of a sudden? I even told you to relax and stay put! And what did you not do? Stay pu—” She stopped herself when she noticed Colgate’s downtrodden face. “…What’s wrong? You don’t look so good…”

Colgate idly kicked aside a pebble on the street, and sighed. “The time machine is gone…”

“Uh, what?”

“The blue box is gone… It just vanished into thin air, and nopony seems to give two hoofs about it.”

Carrot Top tilted her head to the side, wondering why her friend was so bothered about it. She quickly remembered why, and said, “If this is about our little ‘wager’… then, well, you can just forget about it if you want. Not to rain on your cumulus or anything, but if it’s gone, then there doesn’t seem to be much of a point anymore.”

“…” The blue unicorn let out an irritated sigh. “Let’s just go and eat our food or something. I’ve suddenly decided that I’m hungry.”

“H-huh? But…”

“Come on. We’re eating at your place.”

“B-bwuh? Hang on just a…”

Colgate ignored the earth pony’s objections. She pushed past her, motioned towards a certain wall-eyed pegasus to follow, and continued on down the street. Carrot Top was left standing there, greatly bewildered by the turn of events.

“…Hey! Since when has my house become a hotel to you two?!” she exclaimed indignantly, and galloped after the two mares.

Somewhere in the back of Carrot’s mind, she knew that her friend would never give up on such a challenge so easily.

>~===DW===~<

“Tw… Twilight…?”

Few things happened before that were as strange as this, but the Doctor had seen them all beforehand. This however, may have taken the cake. A full-grown unicorn, an equine by the name and reputation of Twilight Sparkle… had somehow become a filly. And on top of that, his TARDIS had been caked full of ice.

It was one of those situations where he didn’t quite know how to react at first. To see a filly, unconscious, just lying there in front of the PTG… how was he supposed to react? How was such a thing even possible?

The Doctor produced his sonic screwdriver from his vest pocket, and waved it once over Twilight’s body. He checked the results of the scan, frowned, and waved the sonic over the PTG. As he was checking the data being extracted from the core, the Doctor was not aware of the unicorn filly beginning to stir…

“Huh… So that’s it then, eh?” he muttered to himself after checking the data his sonic screwdriver had collected. “When Twilight’s spell was connected to the PTG, a reverse influx of the timey-wimey particles seems to have overflowed the chrono barriers, and… Well, essentially, it appears to have acted as the be-all, end-all ‘Fountain of Youth’. Huh, how interesting! Don’t know how I’ll fix it though…”

“Ungh…”

“Eh?”

The Doctor turned to the filly on the floor, Twilight, who was now starting to wake up and climb back to her hooves. “What… what happened? Where am I?”

“Miss Twilight! You’re okay, it would seem!” he exclaimed, giving the little unicorn a pat on the head. “A little… smaller, in any case, but okay nevertheless! How do you feel?”

“Uh… f-fine?” she squeaked, looking up at the Time Lord with a mixed look of confusion and fear. Her voice sounded so much higher-pitched, nearly to the point where the Doctor would have admitted she looked and sounded adorable. “M-mister… who are you?”

“…” The Doctor cocked an eyebrow. “Say wha’? Of course you know me Miss Twilight, I’m the Doctor! One does not simply forget meeting the Doctor, you know.”

Twilight took a tentative step backwards as she gazed at him. The look of apprehension in her eyes became more pronounced. “A d-docter? Y-you’re not here to give me another shot, are you? I-I already had mine!”

“Eh? What in blazes are you talking about? Twilight, it’s me! The Doctor! You know, your friendly neighborhood Time Lord? The one that you’ve been spying on for…” Something clicked inside his mind as the revelation from earlier sprang to the forefront. “HEY! Wait just a moment! That’s another thing! You were spying on me! Me! The Doctor! How could you, Twilight?!”

Twilight recoiled with shock, her wide eyes becoming fearful as she took another step back. “Wh-what?! B-b-but I don’t even know w-who you are! O-or how to be a spy!”

“Don’t play games with me! You confessed, not even ten minutes ago, that you were sent to be my assistant by Celestia herself—as a spy! Don’t even begin to come up with an excuse for why you can’t even remember such a severe breach of my trust—”

“W-wh-why are you y-yelling at me, mister?” the filly whimpered, tears starting to well up in her eyes. “I don’t know what’s going on! I-I just wanna go home!” Twilight started to wail with despair. “I want mommy!”

This sudden display was enough to snap the Doctor out of his anger in a flash. Was Twilight… genuinely crying? Since when does she cry? The Time Lord frowned as he thought the situation through. He hastily waved the sonic screwdriver over the now-filly Twilight and checked the data that it received from the brief scan.

His suspicions were confirmed. Not only was Twilight a filly by appearance, she was actually one. Her personal time stream had, likely due to the exposure to the PTG, been reversed by at least ten years. She could only have possibly retained memories from before then. As far as he was concerned, he may as well have snatched up a younger version of Twilight in the past and taken her along to this moment in the future. But this… this was something different. This shouldn’t even be possible; it could cause a paradox. It needed to be corrected.

“…Twilight,” the Doctor began to explain calmly, “I need you to listen to me. Something has gone wrong, and I have to fix it. Please, you must cooperate with me for only the slightest of moments—”

“NO!” the filly suddenly shouted, startling the Doctor. Her fear-filled eyes were transfixed on his sonic screwdriver. “Go away! I don’t want to get another shot!”

“For the last time, I’m not that kind of…” He stopped, and realized that Twilight was staring at the device in his grip. The Doctor took a moment to realize that, to a filly, it would have looked suspiciously (and scarily) like a doctor’s needle. “Oh… no, this isn’t what it looks like! It’s just a sonic screwdriver! See?”

To illustrate his point, the Doctor turned on the sonic, causing the tip end to split into four prongs with a glowing green light in the center. “See? Completely harmless!”

Unfortunately, seeing such a ‘demonstration’ was not sufficient to convince the filly of its supposed harmlessness. The Doctor attempted to reach out to Twilight, but the confused filly instead turned away and ran, whinnying with fear the whole way. She nearly slipped on the ice-covered floor a few times, but quickly vanished out the chamber’s doorway.

“Oh, for crying out…” The Doctor slapped a hoof to his face, not caring that it actually hurt to do so. “Twilight! Come back here! You can’t leave the TARDIS in your condition!!”

The Time Lord’s attempts at galloping after the fillyfied Twilight were rather clumsy, thanks to the zero-traction ice floor, but he was eventually able to get out of the PTG chamber and enter the corridors. The ice appeared to have not been limited to just the chamber. Like the chamber itself, every inch of the corridor was caked in snow and ice. It was a wonder that the spell didn’t freeze both of them solid.

Slipping and sliding on the floors, the Doctor finally reach the main control room of the TARDIS—and by ‘reach’, we mean that he slipped on the floor and slid straight into the console face-first without stopping. After picking himself off the ice-coated metal floor (“Oww…”), he turned his gaze full-circle around the room in search of the filly. “Twilight! Where are you? I know that you must feel afraid, and confused, but you have to listen to me! I can help you!”

Nobody—or nopony, rather—replied. The Doctor groaned. The TARDIS was beyond huge; there were countless rooms, corridors, and squash courts within its depths. But, as he remembered, each room could be ‘deleted’ from the TARDIS main console. Any living beings within those deleted rooms would instantly be brought back to the control room. It would take time to reboot the previous settings, but if it could ease the stress of finding Twilight, then it would be worth it.

However, right when the Doctor was going to go about doing this, he could have sworn that he felt a… breeze. That was odd, the fans weren’t even turned on (they were probably frozen shut anyway). Where did it come from?

‘She couldn’t have…’

The Time Lord slowly looked towards the double doors at the control room’s front. The entrance to the TARDIS, the gateway from this little dimension to a much larger one… was open. A pair of tiny filly-sized hoofprints in the snow led straight out of it.

“Oh, no…” The Doctor began walking towards the TARDIS doors, a terrible realization starting to set in. “No, no no no no…” He pulled open the doors fully, and stepped outside. “Oh sweet TARDIS’s ghost, no…” The hoofprints continued outside, evidenced by the bits of snow that were still here and there, before they trailed off and vanished. “This is not good, this is NOT good… Oh dear, look at me, I’m panicking! Been a while since I last felt something like that…”

Looking up, the Doctor realized that the TARDIS must have moved far from the square where it sat originally. It now rested on a hillside, overlooking the nearby apple farm Sweet Apple Acres. The town of Ponyville now seemed much further away. The closest building (just a couple of hundred meters at best) appeared to be a tall wooden house, with what appeared to be an oversized carrot mounted at the apex of the roof. He wasn’t entirely sure of the time period, but it couldn’t have been very long after his TARDIS crashed at Ponyville’s market square.

The Doctor scanned the landscape around him for a sign—any sign—of Twilight. The poor thing must have felt so scared to just run off like that. And as far as the Time Lord was concerned, letting her run around Ponyville in such a state was unthinkable. He needed to find her and convince her to stay in the TARDIS until the situation could be rectified.

…But where would he begin?

“Hang on, Twilight… I’m coming to find you…”

Not once turning his back, the Doctor galloped towards Sweet Apple Acres—where it appeared that the hoofprints were leading en route for. It would only make sense for her to head to the closest place to hole up that was still far enough away.

As he went, the Time Lord failed to realize that—in his urgency—he left the TARDIS doors wide open…

>~===DW===~<

As much as Carrot Top objected to the notion of having both of his friends over at her less-than-average-sized home, Colgate wasn’t going to have it any other way. Derpy Hooves didn’t really seem to mind (she preferred to ‘go with the flow’), but she did find a bit of entertainment in taking Col’s side of the argument. Two beats one, after all.

It was this decision that, ultimately, led to the three mares sitting around Carrot’s dinner table, contently munching on the food they had bought from the restaurant.

“I still think those guys were meanies,” Derpy pouted, her eyes crossing as she forced a scowl. “I don’t even know what their problem was! All I did was trip a few times…”

“…And stumble, and tumble, and crash into that table, sending a bunch of hot soup splashing all over Roseluck’s face,” Carrot Top idly pointed out, chuckling at the memory.

Colgate couldn’t help but laugh as well. “I must say, I’d never heard the phrase ‘The horror, the horror!’ spoken in quite that context before.”

The pegasus looked a bit hurt. “Hey, I said I was sorry to her…”

“You did… when she was running off, shrieking with pain and ‘horror’, that is.” Carrot Top laughed again, and looked over to Colgate. “Remind me; was that about the time that the waiter asked us to leave?”

“Please don’t,” Derpy whined, covering her face with her hooves.

Colgate smirked as the memory reoccurred to her. “Nah, I think it wasn’t until she bumped into that same waiter, which made him spill all those croutons. Boy was he ever mad.”

The gray mailmare shrunk into her seat, face flushing red with embarrassment. “B-but… I said I was… Ugh, never mind… You two are mean.”

Carrot Top shrugged nonchalantly, and took another bite of her hay fries. She grimaced as she chewed, noting how much colder they seemed. If they had been able to eat at the restaurant, without incident, then perhaps the taste would be much more palatable. It would suffice, though…

As she ate, the earth pony noticed that Colgate seemed to be doing that ‘thing’ where she stares off into space again. Carrot Top sighed; she just won’t let the whole fiasco with the ‘time machine’ go, won’t she?

“Hey, Colgate?” she asked, and the unicorn perked up upon realizing she was being called. “You still feeling alright? You’ve barely touched your food.”

Colgate trailed her gaze down at the petal sandwich in front of her, and then to Carrot. “Oh… yeah, I’m fine. I just have a weird feeling.”

“Oh, I’ll bet you do,” Carrot Top replied, giving her an eye-roll.

“It’s like… I can feel it close by…” The unicorn shook her head. “No… never mind. I must be imagining it.”

“Hey, you guys?” Derpy asked, one of her eyes focused on Colgate while the other one was busy examining the window. “What’s that thing on the hill?”

Carrot Top raised a confused eyebrow. “Huh? What ‘thing’?”

“The big blue box, outside the window!” the mailmare clarified. After realizing what she just said, Derpy suddenly gasped. “Wait… that’s the…”

“…” Silence hung over the room like a shroud. Carrot Top and Colgate shared a brief glance, and then jumped up and practically slammed their faces against the glass of the window just to see outside. The unicorn could hardly believe her eyes and her luck. The blue box—the time machine—was sitting on the hill right beside Carrot Top’s house.

“There… there it is!!” Colgate squealed, her open-mouthed grin stretching to implausible proportions. “I knew it was around here somewhere!”

Carrot Top, for one, looked shocked. “H-how in the wide open world of Equestria did that box…?” She shook her head. “I must be seeing things…”

The unicorn threw the earth pony mare a challenging look. “Hey, CT!” she exclaimed confidently. “The bet’s still on! Let’s go!”

“W-wait a second just hold on a—”

The carrot farmer’s disagreement was promptly nullified as Colgate grabbed her by the hoof and yanked her from the kitchen and out the back door of the house. Derpy, cautiously optimistic and a bit perplexed as to their behavior, followed after them.

Colgate couldn’t believe it. The box had appeared right there, on the hill between Carrot Top’s farm and Sweet Apple Acres. What were the odds of that? Even better, this proved that the box could move around with such ease! And another thing: how could it still look so ‘brand-new’ if it had crashed into a fountain in the middle of Ponyville? There had to be much more to it.

Once both mares (and Derpy) had arrived on the scene, they could only stare at the tall blue box with awe. It had to have been nearly twice their height. The sign, mounted near the top edges of the box, read “PONY Public Call BOX”. And a light of some kind, supported at the top of the thing, was flashing every now and again. The windows also seemed to have a light coming from within as well.

So, this was a time machine.

Colgate felt giddy just to be standing close to it. That odd feeling of compelling energy was less ignorable this time around, so she started to approach the ‘Pony Box’. Carrot Top raised a hoof to try and stop her, but hesitated, and lowered it again.

The unicorn walked around the vertically rectangular box, trying to size it up. She had seen both Twilight and this ‘Doctor’ go into it at the same time. How could that even be possible? Just looking at the machine close up made it seem more and more unlikely…

“Hey, looks like they left the door open!” Derpy piped up, raising a hoof to point at the double doors on the front. As it happened, they were indeed opened wide.

Interest piqued, Colgate carefully trotted up to the doorway and stuck her head through the doors while Carrot Top and Derpy watched on, somewhat concerned about the safety of the box. After a moment, the unicorn pulled her head back out and turned to face her friends. Her eyes were wide with wonder and whimsy.

“Girls… take a look at this!” she exclaimed, beaming. With that, Colgate trotted through the open doors… and seemingly vanished into the infinite depths of the box. Moments later, a familiar blue hoof stuck itself out of the door and waved them over. “Come on! This is so amazing, you two!”

Carrot Top and Derpy swapped an uncomfortable look. For the earth pony, she wondered if there could possibly be any room for them in there. For the pegasus, she just wondered if she would ever get a chance to finish her muffin. But eventually, the two slowly trod towards the box, and through the blue double doors.

“Oh sweet Celestia…”

“It’s… it’s…”

Colgate grinned. “I know, right?”

Both mares that had just entered the box were wide-eyed and slack-jawed. The interior was huge. In fact, it was nothing like what it appeared from outside. How could a huge chamber be inside such a small (by comparison at least) blue box?!

“It’s bigger on the inside,” the blue unicorn noted, taking in her new surroundings and marveling at them.

“It’s… smaller on the outside,” Derpy murmured thoughtfully, her misaligned eyes practically spinning in their sockets just to see the entirety of the room.

“It…” Carrot Top paused for thought, lifting her hoof off the floor and staring at what she was stepping in. “…looks like somepony missed a spot during the last Winter Wrap-Up…”

Only now did the three mares realize that the entire room was coated in snow and ice, from floor to ceiling. It was also rather cold as well, but that was obvious enough to notice. As a matter of fact, it was very cold. Colder than a normal winter’s day, even!

“I-I… I’m n-not too g-good with the c-c-cold,” Derpy managed to say, stuttering her words as her teeth chattered. “Ah… AHCHOO!!” She let out a huge sneeze, and sniffled. Pegasi, while often accustomed to severe weather conditions, are quite susceptible to extremely cold temperatures. Like common birds, they run the risk of freezing their feathers. It’s not a problem on the ground, but if they were in-flight…

“T-take it easy, Derps,” the yellow earth pony assured her friend, “you’ll be fine.” To keep the pegasus warm, Carrot Top huddled close to her and draped a foreleg over her neck, allowing them to share body heat.

Derpy smiled with gratitude. “Thank you…”

“Wow, it is pretty cold in here,” Colgate commented, shivering slightly. “But how did something like this happen? Unless…” Her mind immediately shifted back to the market square. All that ice that was left behind… was this the epicenter of that? If so, where had the ice come from?

Being careful not to slip, the blue unicorn approached a large, octagonal machine in the center of the room. In the center of it appeared to be a large glass tube, with some sort of apparatus inside of it that occasionally shifted upwards or downwards every now and again. The console itself seemed to have a bevy of buttons, levers, switches, gizmos, and so many other things that Colgate could not even begin to imagine what any of them did.

One of the lights, however, was blinking. Colgate noticed that, curiously enough, it was a red button with a picture of a small flame on it. So, did that mean ‘fire’? Heat? Wait a moment… heat! That was it! If it was blinking like that… maybe it needed to be pushed!

“Colgate,” came Carrot Top’s voice from behind her as she reached out to push the button, “you’d better not be touching anything! We don’t know what this stuff even does!”

“We’re about to find out,” Colgate muttered to herself, and pressed the button. Instantly, the glass monitor that was hung over the console sprung to life, causing the unicorn the flinch at the sudden shower of sparks that erupted from the console.

“I TOLD YOU NOT TO TOUCH ANYTHING!” Carrot Top yelled angrily, her eyes darting about the room anxiously. “Let’s just get out of here! I don’t like this place!”

Colgate more-or-less ignored her; she was busy reading what was displayed on the monitor. ‘TEMPERATURE IS BELOW SAFE LEVELS – ABNORMALTIES DETECTED. NOW RESTORING STANDARD ENVIRONMENTAL SETTINGS.’

“W-what does that mean?” Carrot Top demanded, galloping towards the center console and glaring at Colgate. “What the hay did you just do?!”

“I… I don’t know,” the unicorn admitted, biting her lip nervously. “I just pushed this button that was blinking, and…”

Before Colgate could continue, the lights around the chamber dimmed slightly, and the front doors suddenly slammed shut. “Eep!” the mailmare squeaked, jumping back in fright. What little light that remained shifted to an odd orange color, and the sound of a fan starting reverberating around the room. The room suddenly started to get a lot warmer, much to the relief of the three occupants.

“Whew… that’s… that feels pretty nice, actually!” Colgate exclaimed, enjoying the feeling of the warm air being blown into the room. “This thing’s even got its own heating system!”

Within minutes, the room’s temperature had soared to a much more comfortable level. At the same time, all that hot air being blown into the room had started to melt the snow and ice, resulting in a lot of the floor becoming wet and slushy. Whatever water that was in the room slowly drained away, leaving the three mares feeling not-quite-as-cold.

“…And you said, ‘don’t touch anything, Colgate! Wah, wah!’” the blue unicorn mocked, allowing herself a condescending giggle. “See? I know what I’m doing!”

Carrot Top went red with both embarrassment and anger. “Th-that may be, but this… thing isn’t even yours! It’s that crazy Doctor’s! We should leave before he comes back! Or else, he’ll probably be really mad…”

Once again, Colgate ignored the farmer. “Ah, come on! If it’s a time machine, then we literally have all the time in the world to return it! Come on CT, where’s your sense of adventure?”

“It’s being safely detained and imprisoned by my common sense, thank-you-very-much,” Carrot Top retorted. “You don’t even know how this thing works! You got lucky with the heater, okay?! Lucky!”

“Au contraire,” the unicorn shot back, grinning devilishly. “I do know how this thing works. Just look at this! The panel has a setting where you can set the date and location of arrival! And there’s even a ‘Start’ switch right beside it!”

“Colgate,” the earth pony warned, “don’t you even dare…”

Colgate shrugged, still wearing that devious little grin. “Don’t worry, we have all the time in the world. We could be gone for months, and yet, for everypony in Ponyville it would only be a few minutes!”

Carrot Top facehoofed. “HOW many times must I repeat myself? No. Way. In. Tartarus. I’m warning you Col, if you pull that lever…”

“Oooh, I think my hoof is slipping…”

“DON’T!”

“Oh Carrot, you need to live a little.” She grinned even wider as she reached for the lever.

“Colgate, I’m begging you, don’t do it!”

The unicorn’s hoof was mere inches from the lever…

“…OKAY! FINE! I GIVE!” the carrot farmer shouted, throwing her hooves into the air with defeat. “You win, okay?! Time machines are real, okay!? Now can we PLEASE just leave?!”

Colgate raised an unamused eyebrow. “You don’t mean that,” she said plainly. “You’re just scared.”

Carrot Top let out a grunt of annoyance. “Of course I am! And do you know why?!”

“Alright then, I’ll humor you. Why?”

“Because—”

“Because the Doctor is in.”

The three stowaways stiffened up, and slowly turned towards the now-open doorway. A very peeved-looking stallion was staring the three of them down, and it would’ve been hard not to remember him.

“…Oh snap.”

>~===DW===~<

“Twilight Sparkle! You open this door, right now!”

“NO!” the filly shouted defiantly from the other side of the barn door. “Go away! Please, just leave me alone!”

The Doctor groaned. This was starting to get just a little bit tedious. It was great that he had finally found her so soon, and that she hadn’t gone far, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t be a pain to get her to come back. The fact that she had locked herself in one of Sweet Apple Acres’ barns didn’t help matters.

“Miss Twilight! You come out here this instant! Or else, I’ll…” He stopped, and grimaced. “…I’ll… break the door down?”

“Go away!” the unicorn shouted in reply, her voice partially muffled by the barn door dividing them. Like a scared little foal, she was determined to hide and wait it out.

But the Doctor wasn’t one to take such impudence—such cheek—lying down. “Alright, you asked for it!” he threatened, brandishing his sonic screwdriver and pointing it at the door. “I’m opening this door, whether you like it or not!”

The sonic whirred and buzzed as the light on the end flashed green, and after a moment of exposure the Doctor stowed the device and pushed on the door. Amazingly, it remained just as locked as it had ever been.

“Ah, confound these ponies and their obsession with wooden doors!” the Doctor shouted, cursing pony society’s antiquity. He kicked at the ground, stirring up a cloud of dust as he grunted with annoyance. “I need to work out that quirk someday…”

Starting to let his irritation get to him, the Doctor slammed his frontal hoof on the barn door multiple times. “Twilight! Listen to me, for Gallifrey’s sake!” he shouted. “I know you must be scared in there, but you can’t stay here! This is all… you’re… Simply you being here is enough to potentially cause a massive time paradox! By remaining here, you’re putting this world at risk! Think of what this implies! The dimensional fabric may tear; portals to other worlds will open up; chocolate rain will fall from the sky! …Wait, forget that last one. Or not! I mean… ugh! Twilight, just come with me to the TARDIS, and I can help you!”

“…Go away!”

With a pained groan, the Time Lord slammed his face against the door. This could have certainly been going better. In fact, things would have been going at least decently if were not for somepony’s untimely arrival.

“What in tarnation is goin’ on over here?”

An orange earth pony with a yellow mane and tail was approaching the Doctor with something of a suspicious scowl on her face. She wore some sort of cowboy (or would that be “cowpony”?) hat atop her head, and a pair of baskets were slung over her back, each filled to the brim with apples. “Hey, you there! Ah’m talkin’ ta you, pard!” she shouted, stomping straight up the Doctor and glaring at him. “Whatcha’ll think yer doin’, bangin’ on mah barn door like that?”

“…Oh! Well, look at that!” the Time Lord exclaimed, marveling at the brown hat atop the earth pony’s head and ignoring her cold gaze. “A Stetson hat! Ah, the memories! I can remember a time when I used to rock a Stetson… Ah yes, they were cool back then… They were cool.”

“Whaddaya mean, ‘were’?” the farmer snapped, her glare intensifying. “Ah’ll have you know that this belonged to mah pappy! It’s mah prized possession!”

The Doctor more-or-less disregarded this. “I say, do you mind if I try it on? I wonder if the style would still compliment me, even though it blends too much with my coat color…”

“Wh-what?! No! Who do ya think ya are—”

“Actually, now that I think about it… that hat would totally clash with my vest. But then again, don’t opposites attract? No, not the season for it… Vests are cool this month, not Stetsons. So last century.”

“Hey! Ah take offense ta that!”

The Doctor clapped his hooves together. “And look at this! Who should be wearing this unstylish topper except for…?” He paused, and furrowed his brow with confusion. “Right, then… Say, I don’t believe we’ve met actually,” the Doctor said, bowing slightly. “I’m the Doctor. Pleased to make your acquaintance and all that. Sorry, but I was just attempting to coax Twi—errrrr… I mean, my niece… out of your barn. This… is your barn, right?”

The orange mare nodded, still wearing a slight glower from the Time Lord’s earlier remarks. “Rightly so. Name’s Applejack, and while Ah can understand ya’ll wantin’ to get yer niece out of there, Ah don’t think smashing apart mah door is gonna get the job done.”

“Applejack, you say…?” Something clicked inside the Doctor’s memory, and a sudden feeling of horror swept through him. Surely this couldn’t be the Applejack, right? Element of Honesty, and all that? And one of Twilight’s… gulp… friends?

‘Oh no… If she found out what happened, and relayed the news to the others… what would they think? I could come clean, but… No! This is a paradox, and it must be corrected as such! Nobody else can know!’

“Ah, that’s right… I’ve… uh, heard about you, actually…”

“Same here,” was Applejack’s terse reply. “Twilight’s been going on about ya from the day ya came to Ponyville. Heard ya called yerself ‘Time Turner’ fer a while, then Twi caught ya in some kinda fancy blue machine that’s ‘bigger on the inside’ or whatever.”

The Doctor looked upwards in thought for a moment. Ah, Time Turner. The assumed name he adopted for a while during his ‘incognito’ period in Equestria. ‘John Smith’ (his usual fallback name) wouldn’t have worked out well for a pony’s name, after all. For some reason, it felt a bit clichéd of a name, but it did the job. At least, until Twilight first exposed him in the TARDIS…

“Ah, well… The Doctor is my proper name, actually. That was just an alias, and a rather rubbish one at that…”

“Doctor, eh? Doctor who?”

“Just the Doctor.”

“…That’s it? Just ‘Doctor’?”

“That’s right.”

Applejack blinked. Her inner psyche decided that it would be best not to question this point any further. “Well… alright then… Er, anyway, ya’ll were trying to get yer niece out of mah barn?”

“Ah… yes! Yes, that’s correct!” He feigned a distraught expression. “You see, I was trying to bring her back home to her mother, but she got all fussy and hid inside your barn! I’ve been trying to get her to come out, but she’s stubborn and my sonic screwdriver doesn’t do wood.”

“…Beg pardon?”

The Doctor nervously fidgeted with his hooves. “Eh… that is to say, I’ve been trying to get her out with my ‘fancy Doctor Tools’, but they don’t work, and so, I require assistance.”

“…Oh, uh… Ah see…” Applejack frowned slightly. “So… ya’ll jus’ need me ta open the barn door fer ya?”

“Yes! Precisely!” the Doctor exclaimed. “That would very much be of help, miss… Applejack, yes?”

“Uh-huh…”

Still giving the Time Lord a strange look, Applejack slowly walked towards the door of the barn while the Doctor took a few steps back. ‘How is she going to open it? Perhaps there’s a special key? Maybe brute force is the answer here? She certainly seems well-built for that sort of option… But why would she break her own door? What can she possibly do that I couldn’t have thought of?’

He soon got his answer. Applejack trod up to the door, inspected it for the briefest of moments, and raised a hoof… to take hold of a latch on the door, and undo the lock.

The Doctor was dumbfounded as the orange mare let the wooden latch dangle loosely from its hinge, no longer blocking the door from being opened. He made a mental note to keep a closer eye out on things like that from then on. “Oh… er… I could have thought of that… Possibly…”

“Yeah, Ah’m sure ya could’ve,” Applejack sarcastically remarked with a roll of her eyes. “Well then, go on an’ git yer niece outta there and scoot. Ah got work to do.”

“Ah, yes, of course! Thank you very much, Miss Applejack! Good day!” The Doctor waved to the earth pony as she walked off again, and he quickly breathed a sigh of relief. Now that Applejack had gone, there wasn’t any more risk of Twilight’s predicament being exposed! But even so, there wasn’t any more time to lose waiting around!

Swift as could be, the Time Lord pushed the now-unlocked door open, and to his relief, found his quarry backed against the far wall of the barn. The poor thing flinched at the door’s sudden opening, and her face became fearful as she curled into a ball.

“No! Go away!” the filly that was Twilight screamed. “Why won’t you leave me alone? I’m… I’m scared!”

The Doctor slowly—carefully—approached Twilight, trying not to make his movements seem sudden or threatening. If she truly had no memory of any of this, then he had to tread carefully here. “Twilight, it’s me! The Doctor! Not a medical doctor, no, of course not! I’m a Time Lord!”

Twilight stopped crying for a moment, and slowly turned her wide eyes up at the stallion standing over her. “T…Time… Lord…?”

“Yes, the last one, as it happens!” the Doctor exclaimed, an idea forming in his mind. “I travel through time and space, looking and searching for other people… er, other ponies to help in their time of need. I’ve been all over the place; London, Rome, Ancient Egypt, Gallifrey… you name it!”

“You’re… you’re a time traveler?” the filly asked, now sounding genuinely curious.

‘Yes! Appeal to the young, curious intellectual with science-y stuff, brilliant!’ he thought, grinning. “As a matter of fact, yes I am. Pleased to meet you, Twilight Sparkle.” ‘Again…’

“You… you even know my name!”

Face, meet hoof. “Yes, I’ve been using your name for the last twenty minutes or so now…”

Twilight now stood straight up, her look of fear diminishing even further as she studied the Doctor with amazement. “That big blue thing that was all cold and icey… was that your time machine?”

The Doctor was fairly impressed; even as a filly, Twilight was a smart cookie. “Well! Aren’t you a sharp one! Yes, it is!” he replied, feeling somewhat proud of himself at the mention of the box. “It’s called the TARDIS. That is, ‘Time And Relative Dimensions In Space’. Neat, eh?”

“Wow… that’s… that’s cool!”

“And even better; it can go anywhere, at anytime! Name a place, and I can bring you there! How’s that sound?”

“Well… I… What about my mommy? I don’t think she’ll like it if I missed my bedtime…”

“That’s the beauty of it, Twilight! We can spend months at a time in the TARDIS, and yet, can always go right back to your home, just in time for bed!”

“Oh, wow! That’s sounds like fun! …But, um…” Twilight scuffed at the ground with her hoof. “But… I’m supposed to be studying… I really want to get into ‘Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns’, and then I’d learn to be really good at using magic… Like I’ve always wanted to be…”

The Doctor stopped to think for a moment. If what he was being told was accurate… then this version of Twilight was from before she had gotten into the school she had talked about in the past. The fact that her usual cutie mark was absent only added to that notion. “Well then, never fear my dear. I can get you home, without a doubt! If you want, I could even take you to the school directly, it doesn’t matter!”

Twilight looked at the Doctor with a wondering look, as if scanning him for any signs of dishonesty. “You’d… do that for me?”

“Of course I would, Miss Twilight,” he replied, smiling. “We’re friends, after all.”

“‘Friends’?” Twilight seemed perplexed by the word and its meaning. “What do I need friends for?”

‘…Ah, of course. Back then, she didn’t care much for the notion of ‘friendship’. Come to think of it, she didn’t seem to care much of it at all until she started living in Ponyville… At least, that’s what I’m told…’

“Well… how do I explain this?” The Doctor cleared his throat, and began. “Let’s say you’re at home one day, and you’re feeling lonely—”

“But I never feel lonely… I have all my books to read!”

“Yes, well, can you talk to books? Will they talk back? Can a book sense how you feel, and offer you support and comfort?”

“…Well, they… they can…” She sighed. “No…”

“Exactly. Books are just ink and paper; always telling you whatever someone else wants to say obliquely and without the personal touch, and nothing else. And books will repeat that message, over and over, for as long as they exist. But a friend can be there for you, no matter what. They’re willing to stand by your side and support you on whatever you might get yourself into. Maybe you need help with something; a friend can help you out with that, whatever it is. What if you have a problem that you can’t fix? Friends can help make it all better. Most importantly, friends are people—er, ponies that you can spend time with and have fun together. And best of all, they’ll never become repetitive or dull, like books.”

“…”

“…Am I making sense?” The Doctor sheepishly laughed as he rubbed a hoof on the back of his neck. “It’s not every day I have teach someone a lesson about camaraderie, or something of that variety, so… this is a bit new to me… Huh, how about that! I feel strangely fulfilled for some reason.”

Twilight still looked a little bit unsure. “…Um… but… but what if nopony wants to be your friend?”

‘Oh, bugger. Not this again.’ “Er… well, that’s true, not every person, er… pony will want to be your friend… but no one ever said that making friends is easy!”

“Other ponies are just crazy,” Twilight muttered, sticking out her tongue. “They never make any sense to me! Even you’re crazy, Mr. Time Lord.”

“Crazy, you say? Well, I suppose that could be debated, but I won’t argue the point.” The Doctor paused for a beat, twirling his hoof and trying to think of some witty comparison. “Look at a friend this way… Do you know those insects that make their nests inside piles of dung?”

“Uh… y-yes?”

“Well, they’re nothing like that…”

Twilight gave the Doctor a strange look. She couldn’t understand what the matter with this pony was; he seemed so bizarre! Did he even know what he was talking about sometimes? Although, she had to admit that it was kind of funny how he would talk and stuff. “M-Mr. Doctor, sir, why do you want to be my friend?”

“Well, why wouldn’t I want to be? You’re a bright and… eh… charming little filly, and I would be simply honored to be your friend.”

“But… why?”

“Why what?”

“Why am I a friend you should be ‘honored’ to have?”

The question, like many other things that day, took the Time Lord off-guard. “Er… well… I… uh… um…”

As much as it was needed for the Doctor to convince Twilight to return to the TARDIS, he could not give away any details about her future life. And though he could very fondly remember the first time that Twilight single-hoofedly took down roughly half-a-dozen Daleks (which, as it happened, was the first time that the unicorn had traveled through time and space with the Doctor), he wasn’t just going to say anything outright. But what would he say?

“Because… er…”

“Yes?”

“Because… because, you… uh…”

“Yeeeeesss?”

“Because…” The Doctor swallowed deeply, and composed himself. After a moment, he weaved together a response. “Because… you have so much potential. There’s an awful lot of hidden power inside you, waiting for the time to come out, and… well, you know.”

Twilight looked slightly confused, and yet, she was captivated at the same time. “There… is?”

“Indeed.”

“But… what kind of power?”

The Time Lord raised an eyebrow and smirked. “Ah-ah… Spoilers.”

To keep a long story (relatively) short, the Doctor managed to convince Twilight to come back with him to the ‘fancy time machine’. However, it was on the condition that Twilight be brought back ‘home’ to Canterlot, to which the Doctor replied by saying, “Sure, why not?”

As the two of them made their way back to where the TARDIS was parked, the Doctor decided to tell a hoofful of loose tales of his past adventures.

“…And then we discovered that it wasn’t the robot king after all, it was the real one. Fortunately, I was able to reattach the head…”

However, as quite a few of the Doctor’s tales were to some degree of disturbing, Twilight was more than a little mortified by the time they actually arrived at the TARDIS.

“…of course, this invariably resulted in that planet becoming uninhabitable for possibly thousands of years, which is somewhat harsh I think, but—Oh! We’re here!”

Walking up to the crest of the hill, the Doctor placed a hoof on the side of the police box, and patted it gently. “Well, here we are Miss Twilight! The TARDIS awaits!”

Twilight, who had being following close behind until now, approached the front end of the time machine and marveled at it. “It’s… really big… and blue…”

“Well, yeah, she is.” The Doctor shrugged, and couldn’t help but grin a little bit. His TARDIS, by all things considered, wasn’t the most powerful or technologically-advanced model ever made by Time Lords, but it was his own. Or rather, one could say that he belonged to the TARDIS. (Long story, don’t ask.) And that was enough. It was still something to be proud of. “So, Miss Twilight, shall we go inside?”

“Why do you keep calling me ‘Miss’?” the little unicorn inquired curiously. “I’m not some old pony! I’m Twilight! Why are you always talking like that?”

The Time Lord clicked his tongue, remembering the typical ‘question this, ask about that’ attitude that Twilight had. Even as a filly, she simply must ask even the most mundane question. Of course, that may have been because she was trying to weed as much info as possible out of him back when she was… spying on him.

After a moment, he finally replied with, “Ah… just force of habit, I suppose.” In truth, ever since his twelfth regeneration, he made it a policy of referring to all women (or in this case, mares) as Miss ‘Insert-Name-Here’. As curious as it seemed to him, he thought that nicknames (or even just names themselves) were informal and showed too much involvement in their personal lives. He also thought it was polite.

…Oh, wait, he already referred to Twilight by first name only, didn’t he? Several times? Curses. He must have become too involved, then.

Deciding not to dwell on this matter too much, the Doctor opened the door of the police box, and ushered the mare-turned-filly inside. “Fillies first, Miss Twilight.”

“Umm… o-okay.”

Without complaints, Twilight slowly trod into the TARDIS, and the Doctor followed hurriedly after. As he was closing the door and locking it behind them, he breathed a sigh of relief. Finally, he had contained Twilight within the TARDIS. Now, he could at last rest for a while. Once he figured out a way to revert Twilight back to her normal, present-day self… well, then everything will be candy and apples. Not pears, though. Egh.

“Colgate, don’t you even dare…”

The Doctor stopped cold. Who spoke just now? The voice, it was somewhat familiar, but… surely it couldn’t be? He spun towards the center of the control room, and gaped. There were no less than THREE ponies—all mares—around the central console.

“Mr. Doctor… who are those ponies?” Twilight asked innocently, for once asking a decent question.

The Doctor shook his head. “Frankly, I’d like to know myself…”

“Don’t worry, we have all the time in the world. We could be gone for months, and yet, for everypony in Ponyville it would only be a few minutes!”

The pony that just spoke was one that the Doctor didn’t recognize. She was a blue-coated unicorn with a mane that was half-white and half-blue. She appeared to be in some kind of argument with another pony.

“HOW many times must I repeat myself? No. Way. In. Tartarus. I’m warning you Col, if you pull that lever…”

Wait a moment, wasn’t that Carrot Top? What was she doing here? And for that matter, what was Derpy doing here also? Why were they all here?! And why was that unicorn reaching for… oh god, she wouldn’t. She couldn't possibly be that stupid.

“Oooh, I think my hoof is slipping…”

“DON’T!”

“Oh Carrot, you need to live a little.”

“Colgate, I’m begging you, don’t do it!”

The Doctor was stunned. Three separate ponies had practically invaded his TARDIS, and now that blue unicorn (Colgate, apparently?) was reaching out for the master dematerialization switch. Were they insane? Didn’t they even realize what this place was?

“…OKAY! FINE! I GIVE! You win, okay?! Time machines are real, okay!? Now can we PLEASE just leave?!”

…Apparently, they did realize what this place was. Well, that just made them all the more foolhardy. The earth pony seemed sensible enough to try and convince the unicorn to cease her idiocy, but it appeared to be a lost cause.

“You don’t mean that. You’re just scared.”

“Ugh, of course I am! And do you know why?!”

Now, the Doctor figured, would be a good time to step in.

“Alright then, I’ll humor you. Why?”

“Because—”

“Because the Doctor is in.”

The three mares at the control panel flinched, and slowly turned towards him. He could see the sudden shock and fear in their eyes, and he knew that they knew that there was no easy way out of this. In response, the Doctor simply glared at them. And as he did, he asked but one simple question.

“So. Which one of you lot is going to explain yourself before I need to get a tad upset?”

Chapter 4: The Impossible Dimension

Silence hung in the air within the chamber. Colgate stood, rooted to the spot by some unknown force that refused to let up. Her friends, Carrot Top and Derpy Hooves, also shared a similar feeling. Their eyes were all focused on the brown stallion that was standing in front of the doorway. Colgate felt a slight feeling of dread rise up within her. This new pony was none other than that so-called 'Doctor' from before. And he didn't seem pleased.

“So. Which one of you lot is going to explain yourselves before I have to get a tad upset?”

The question made Colgate cringe. She was quickly coming to regret stepping into the box uninvited. In retrospect, it was kind of rude, not to mention totally breaching some type of common etiquette. When nopony responded to the Doctor's inquiry (outside of a few nervous stammers and gulps), he repeated himself.

“Sorry, did I stutter or something? I asked you three to explain yourselves. What do you think you're doing in my TARDIS?”

'TARDIS? What kind of name is that?' Colgate thought, frowning with confusion. 'Is that what he calls his time machine? Weird…'

It crossed the unicorn's mind that, seeing as how they were completely and utterly exposed, she should just come clean about their “infiltration” of the box. Usually the penalties are less harsh if you own up, right? At least nothing else could go wrong.

“Oh… well, you see…”

Just before Colgate could voice her explanation (or lack of such), she was beaten to the punch by Derpy, of all ponies. “The door was open, so we took a look-see-dee around!” the gray mailmare exclaimed, grinning. “Colgate wanted to see if this really was a time machine, but Carrot Top said she didn't believe her, so they got in this big argument and stuff and oh wow I guess Colgate was right all along—”

Carrot Top quickly shoved a hoof in Derpy's mouth to silence her. “Derpy, for the love of Celestia, shut up!” she hissed, casting an anxious glance towards the Doctor. She grinned nervously. “Crazy, isn't she? Never can understand a thing she goes on about, ha ha…”

The Time Lord, for one, was briefly dumbfounded. Then, with a groan, he facehoofed. “Oh, for the love of… I left the door open AGAIN?! Goodness, I must be more scatterbrained than I thought…”

“'Again'?”

“Though, it would explain why I've been seeing mice chewing on the cables lately… but I digress.” He coughed. “ANYWAY! What do you three all have to say for yourselves? That was awfully rude, you know!”

“B-but—! W-we—! S-s-she—!” Carrot Top stammered wildly, making spastic hoof gestures at the console, Colgate, Derpy, and pretty much everything else present. The unicorn that was the brunt of her arguments had chosen to linger into the background, making herself hidden. Derpy could only exchange looks between the other ponies in the chamber with confusion written all over her face.

The Time Lord interpreted the non-response as an admission of guilt. “I expected better from you, Miss Top,” the Doctor muttered, shaking his head. “The same for you, Miss Hooves. Trespassing without permission, well, that won't make friends now, will it? Honestly.”

Both mares hung their heads in shame. Neither one felt at all proud of being scolded for something that wasn't even their fault. Carrot Top flicked a cold, unreadable stare at where Colgate was hiding, and sighed. 'You've really screwed us over BIG time, Col.'

Colgate poked her head around the console she was hiding behind, and bit her lip nervously. This was all her idea, not theirs. It felt so wrong to let them stand and be chastised like a couple of fillies getting a talking-to from their parents. And thusly, she came to a resolution. Rather than sit idly on her dock and do nothing, decided to stand up for her friends. Mustering up as much courage as she could, Colgate came out from her impromptu hiding place, and raised a hoof to the air to call attention to herself. “W-wait!”

“…Eh?” The Doctor looked at the unicorn, and narrowed his eyes. “Ah, right. You, pony whose name I do not know and have never met before.”

“It's Colgate,” she promptly informed him.

“Ah, like the toothpaste… of course it is…” Something of an amused smirk found its way onto his face, but it quickly passed.

'Toothpaste? Where did that comparison come from?' the unicorn thought, swallowing deeply. “Just… please, don't give my friends any trouble. It was all my fault. I was the one who dragged them in here. It was me who wanted to know if you really had a time machine. And…” Colgate sighed. “I wanted to know if… if you knew anything about my cutie mark… My talent, I… I just don’t…”

Carrot Top and Derpy stared at Colgate with both amazement and bewilderment. She was... defending them? Risking her own neck and willing to accept whatever consequence of her actions? For some reason, they felt humbled. 'Col, what are you doing?' Carrot almost asked out loud, but stopped herself. Derpy only stared, and waited for something to happen.

For what seemed like the longest moment in Colgate’s life, the Time Lord simply stared at her. Slowly, but surely, he trotted towards the unicorn, both of them maintaining eye contact the whole while. When they were only a hoof's length apart, the Doctor stopped and continued to scan the unicorn's face, as if searching for any sign of dishonesty. Colgate's heart began to race; why was she feeling so nervous in his presence? What was about this “Doctor” that made her feel so anxious?

“…” With a tilt of the neck sideways, the Doctor stole a glance at the hourglass cutie mark on Colgate's flank. His eyes widened noticeably. “…Well. Look at that. Fascinating. Hm.” The Doctor broke eye contact from the mark, glanced for a moment at his own, and then stared off somewhere to the side. He was silently mouthing words, as if he was debating something with himself.

Fighting back a blush (it wasn't every day that a stallion would ogle her cutie mark after all), Colgate braved an apology. “So… um… if it means anything, uh… I'm sorry for breaking into your time machine…”

The chamber was silent for a few tense moments. After which, the Doctor simply shrugged and walked past her. “If that's the case, then no harm done,” he said freely, waving a dismissive hoof as he approached the console. “Curious minds often are hard to tame, eh? Never could manage my own bloody curiosity I'll admit…”

Colgate blinked. He accepted her apology that quick? Without so much as a “and never do that again, you hear?” But why? Maybe he admired her honesty? Perhaps he was just feeling merciful this once? Or was this Doctor just plain batty? Sadly, the latter option might have been the most plausible one…

…after all, who else but a madpony would own a time-traveling box?

“However,” the madpony went on, “I’ll have to ask that you vacate the TARDIS and go about your daily lives in this time period, as it should. It was nice to meet you Colgate, I suppose, but I really must be doing something very important, and I'm afraid it can't wait.”

“Like what?” was what the unicorn was thinking of asking, but before her brain even had the opportunity to generate such dialogue Carrot Top had seized both her and Derpy by the hooves and was leading them out the door. “Yes, yes, we have a lot of stuff to do, so we'd better get galloping!” she exclaimed, throwing in a few forced chuckles. “See ya Doc—”

“Heeeey, Mr. Doctor?” a tiny voice interrupted. “When are you taking me home?” Somepony else was in the TARDIS as well? Carrot Top turned around to see who it was, and raised a curious eyebrow.

It was a filly. A small, purple unicorn filly with a deep purple mane, to be precise. She looked really young, and was still a blank-flank from the looks of it. Plus, she was beyond adorable.

“Awwww! Aren’t you just the CUTEST little dear!” Carrot Top gushed, her internal mood switch being flipped to the ‘squee-machine’ setting to compensate for the cuteness overload. Conveniently, she appeared to have forgotten all about the whole 'leaving' deal. “You’re such a cute little foal!”

The filly blushed and shied away a bit, which only served to make her even more irresistible (to Carrot Top at least). “U-uhmm… who are you?” she asked, though the earth pony didn’t reply in any sufficient way. “M-Mister Doctor, who are these ponies?”

“A-ahh… oh dear… uh… ahhhh…”

The Doctor, Colgate noticed, suddenly looked very apprehensive. He kept shifting nervous glances between the filly, her, and her two friends. For whatever reason, he had a lot of trouble trying to get any words out. Something was definitely not right here. And why did that filly seem so… familiar?

Carrot Top was still busy squealing and acting oddly stranger than her usual self, and had scooped up the filly in her forelegs and was squeezing her with delight. Of course, that was to be expected of somepony vulnerable to such endearing things. “Ooooooh, you’re so adorable! Hey, what’s your name, little filly? I bet it’s as cute as you!”

“U-uhm… I’m… I’m Twilight…”

“…” The earth mare froze as the name sunk in. “…Come again?”

“I said my name’s Twilight… Twilight Sparkle. Who are you?”

Silence hung in the air once again upon this revelation. Carrot Top’s jaw (and grip on the filly) ever-so-slowly fell slack, and she stared in abject shock at her. A certain wall-eyed pegasus was absolutely dumbstruck. And Colgate immediately managed to piece together her thought processes into a single and well-thought-out statement: “YOU’RE A FILLY!”

“Um… yes?” Twilight replied, wincing at Colgate’s sudden shout. “Why are you all staring at me? S-stop it, I’m really nervous…”

“B-b-b-b-b-b-b-but how is this even possible?!!” the earth pony yelled, trembling as she reflected on the situation. “I mean, she looks just like a tinier version of Twilight and all, b-b-but I didn’t actually think that…! Oh, Celestia help me! She was a full-grown mare when we last saw her an hour ago, b-b-b-but now…! What the hay happened!?”

Derpy, ever the pony to react to crises with blind panic and a single-minded mantra of ‘Warn everypony! Run! Hide!’, started to freak out and made a beeline for the doors. “We gotta tell Twilight’s friends! S-something’s wroooooong!!”

Unbeknownst to the three, the Time Lord at the TARDIS console had sensed a problem long before it bloomed its first ugly blossom, and took the liberty of flipping a certain switch on the dashboard. There was a distinct ‘clunk!’ audible in the room just as Derpy had reached the doors and was trying to force them open. To her (and the others’) horror, they wouldn’t budge.

“W-we’re locked in!” Colgate exclaimed, and then leveled a glare towards the Doctor. “Hey! Let us out! We need to get some help for Twilight!”

“She already has some help, thank you very much. Why else do you think she’s here?” The Doctor cast a forlorn look towards the floor. “…I’m sorry, truly I am, but I can’t let you report this.”

“And why not?!” Carrot Top snapped, stomping her hoofs angrily. “You can’t keep us in here!”

The Time Lord cocked an eyebrow. “I believe I just did, Miss Top. Those doors are thrice-reinforced, so good luck trying to break them. Sorry, but you are here, and you can’t leave. You three know too much. Yes, yes, I know that I said ‘leave’ before, but now it’s different. You’re all too involved now. The integrity of time and space may be at risk, and I have to correct it before—”

Before finishing his statement, the Doctor was rudely interrupted. By a punch to the face. He was taken rather off-guard, to say the least.

“Aaagh!” he shouted, rubbing a hoof on his now-very sore nose. “Oh, bugger me, again?! Oww… that’s going to be sore for a while…”

“Let us out of this box!” the earth pony yelled, pulling her hoof back to ready for another good slug. “It’s either that, or we’ll let ourselves out!”

“Woooah, Carrot Top!” Colgate said, eyes wide at her friend’s sudden display of bravado. “That was awesome! I never knew you had it in you!”

Carrot Top just grunted in response; her focus right now was on the Doctor. “Okay Doc, you’ve always had these crazy secrets that I always thought was malarkey, but right now, I really don’t care what you think. Just. Let. Us. Out.” She paused, and then tacked on, “And we’re taking Twilight home with us, too.”

The filly-form Twilight swapped fearful glances between the angry-looking carrot pony, and the still-getting-to-their hooves Doctor. She wasn’t sure what was going on, but if anything was sure, she didn’t like fighting. “Please stop… Don’t fight…” she whined, but was not heard.

“I’m afraid that I cannot allow that,” the Doctor said after he righted himself. “Just listen to me for a moment. I can explain everything you want to know about Twilight’s condition… just please don’t sucker-punch me again…”

While the Time Lord negotiated with Carrot Top, Derpy cautiously flew over to Colgate’s side. “Wh-what’s gonna happen to us?” the mailmare asked, traces of fear evident in her voice.

“I…” Colgate sighed. “I don’t know, Derpy. I just… I just don’t…”

It may have been because she was tired, but the blue unicorn had the most powerful urge to lean against something and rest. She had been standing and running around almost nonstop today, and it was beginning to take its toll. Gently resting against the console of the ‘TARDIS’ (still a weird name, in her opinion), Colgate raised one of her sore hooves off the ground…

…And, thanks to an utter lack of grace and/or preparation, slipped and fell down.

She had sensed that she was on the verge of falling only milliseconds beforehoof. In an action of pure defensive reflex, Colgate threw her free hoof into the air to try and catch any possible hoofhold within reach that would spare her a fall. Such attempts were null and void however, as both she and her loose foreleg fell against the console and disrupted the carefully calculated and delicately arranged positions of several switches on the board. And as one could imagine, many of them were important. And a choice few of these weren’t supposed to be touched. Ever.

With a low and resounding ‘thoom’ sound, the entire chamber began to shake and rumble. In the center of the console, a glass tube inside another glass tube began oscillating rapidly. A peculiar ‘vrrrrrrt’ noise accompanied each oscillation, each one seeming to increase in speed.

“…and if you’d just let me handle the situation, then I—eh? What in the…?” The Doctor’s look of befuddlement quickly dissolved into one of shock. He turned to look at Colgate, still splayed out on the console in a daze, and gaped. “You… what have you done!?”

It took a moment for the situation to register in the unicorn's mind, and when it did she looked horrified. “No! I-it wasn’t my fault!” Colgate exclaimed, scrambling back to her hooves. “I-I just slipped, and a bunch of buttons got pushed by accident, and—”

An explosion of sparks near where Colgate was standing both interrupted her and sent her reeling. The unicorn, startled, let out a whinny of fear and reared back, only to slip and fall again. The floor was still wet and slushy in places, and it clearly did nothing for traction. Her head made contact with a poorly placed metal railing, knocking her senseless.

“COLGATE!” Derpy and Carrot Top shouted, rushing over to check on their friend. The Doctor did not react to the unicorn's troubles, and instead stood by, watching the monitors and scanners on the console with increasing worry. Several more fountains of sparks erupted from the console itself and other locations around the chamber.

“Colgate, speak to us! Are you alright?!” the earth pony yelled, grabbing the barely conscious body of her friend and shaking it. “Wake up! For Luna’s sake girl, wake up!”

With great difficulty, the blue unicorn slowly managed to look up at her friends. She smiled weakly. “For want of a better word…” she whispered, eyelids drooping. “…Ow.”

Colgate’s head and body slumped, and she blacked out.

>~===DW===~<

‘Gah! I KNEW something like this would happen!’

The Doctor stomped a hoof in frustration. Everything just couldn’t be easy today, could it? Having to deal with not only a fillyfied Twilight, but with three separate stowaways? AND one of the said stowaways having the density to muck about with the TARDIS’s console?

It seemed, however, that the offending stowaway—Colgate, was it?—was out-cold right now, and the other two were checking on her. They were the least of his problems right now. The problem right now was where the TARDIS was even going…

‘Let’s see, the computer appears pre-programmed to enter the vortex, but… there’s no set destination…’ He stopped, and checked over the data again. ‘…Wait, that’s… oh dear… She couldn’t possibly have…!’

“Oh, BRILLIANT!” the Doctor shouted, his voice full to the brim with sarcasm. “We’re leaving the universe! How peachy!”

Such a thing had only been done by him once before, but on purpose. He was exploring a ‘soap bubble’ dimension outside the universe itself, trying to find if there were any more Time Lords somewhere. Ultimately, it was unsuccessful. How could him being temporarily trapped in said dimension and almost letting a malevolent ethereal being back into the regular universe be considered successful? At least he was able to sort everything out in the end (on top of figuring out that his TARDIS was, in fact, female (via a chain of events too complicated to get into right now)).

Carrot Top, upon hearing the Doctor’s shout, threw him a bewildered expression. “We’re doing WHAT?!” she shouted, trying to make herself heard over the noise of the TARDIS. “How are we ‘leaving the universe’?!”

“With incredible difficulty!” the Doctor replied promptly, and frantically started flipping switches and pushing buttons on the console. “If I don’t do this right, the dimensional rifts will tear the TARDIS apart! And, by proxy, us as well! Just hang on to something, you lot!” A thought struck him. “Ah! Miss Twilight!”

The filly unicorn, who had been hiding behind one of the pillars in the chamber, leaned around the side and answered, “Y-yes?”

“Just… keep doing what you’re doing!” the Time Lord instructed. “The hiding, that is! Preferably holding on as well! We may experience some slight turbulence…!”

‘Slight’ was too gentle a term.

The TARDIS shook and heaved as it crossed the dimensional plane, whizzing and tumbling about as it went. This wild flight pattern was felt by the occupants in the form of earthquake-level tremors and sparks flying from every possible place. Red lights flashed and alarm bells sounded off from some unknown location, threatening to deafen those within. The Doctor desperately attempted to get the time machine under control while his ‘passengers’ were viciously flung about.

“D-DOC, WHAT THE HAY’S GOING ON?!” Carrot Top shouted, fighting to maintain a grip on both the unconscious Colgate and the railing.

The Doctor shielded his face from another shower of sparks before replying. “WE’VE CROSSED OVER SOME SORT OF DISTORTION ZONE IN THE TIME VORTEX! SOME SORT OF ODD DIMENSIONAL ANOMALY!”

“A WHERE ZONE IN THE WHAT VORTEX?”

“DISTORTION ZONE! TIME VORTEX! I CAN SEE THAT I’LL HAVE TO SPELL IT ALL OUT FOR YOU, MISS TOP!”

“DON’T PATRONIZE ME! JUST FIX IT!”

“YOU KNOW, YOU SOUND A LOT LIKE MISS TWILIGHT WHENEVER SHE GETS ALL WORKED-UP! I CAN SEE THAT THIS WILL BE A LOVELY FRIENDSHIP!”

“DOC!!”

“OH, SO SORRY! ANYWAY! JUST THINK OF THE ZONE LIKE ONE OF THOSE EARBUD CORDS INSIDE A TROUSERS POCKET! WHEN THE LINES OF REALITY ARE CONTAINED INSIDE A SMALL, OFTEN DISTORTED SPACE, THEY’RE MORE LIKELY TO TWIST AND CROSS OVER ONE ANOTHER! THEN REALITY GETS ALL KNOTTED UP, AND YOU NEVER CAN GET IT ALL UNDONE! IT’S REALLY QUITE FRUSTRATING, YOU KNOW!”

“…WHAT?! EARBUD? TROUSERS POCKET?!”

The Time Lord sighed with exasperation. “FORGET THE POCKET! THE TARDIS IS STUCK IN SOME KIND OF LOOP BETWEEN REALITY, AND WE CAN’T SEEM TO COMPLETE THE TRANSFER BETWEEN THE INSIDE AND OUTSIDE OF THE UNIVERSE! WE’RE IN SOME KIND OF LIMBO!”

Carrot Top just stared at the Doctor with a flabbergasted expression. “HUH?!”

“IN SHORT, WE’RE IN BIG TROUBLE!”

The earth pony’s confusion shifted to panic, and she tightened her grip on the railing. Colgate was still being held safely in her grip. Nearby, Derpy Hooves was clinging to one of the railings for dear life, her eyes whirling in their sockets from such mayhem.

Twilight, being of a tiny stature, was having a great amount of difficulty in keeping herself anchored. “MISTER DOCTOR!” she wailed, fighting to keep her little forelegs wrapped around the pillar. “I’M SCARED! MAKE IT STOP!”

“DON’T WORRY, TWILIGHT!” the Doctor shouted in reply. “WE’LL GET OUT OF THIS! PROBABLY! MAYBE! I DUNNO!”

“THAT’S VERY REASSURING!” Carrot Top snidely remarked, glaring at the Time Lord.

The violent tremors and noises seemingly refused to let up. But, much to the relief of at least three occupants, the shaking slowly began to wind down, and the alarms finally stopped blaring. Carrot Top finally released her hold on the railing, and breathed a heavy sigh of relief. Derpy Hooves let go as well, then flopped onto the ground and panted heavily as if she'd flown a pega-thon. While little Twilight was still insistent on clinging to the pillar, she had also settled down and was gradually recovering from the shock.

But even as things began to calm down around the TARDIS, the Doctor was still on-edge, like a cat on a hot tin roof. Something wasn’t right. According to the scanners, they had already left the vortex and had landed somewhere. But where? None of the monitors were giving him any good information. It’s as if they were everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

“…That’s quite unusual, I must say,” the Doctor wondered aloud. “The scanner’s not returning any proper reading.”

As Carrot Top was preoccupied with trying to revive Colgate, it was Derpy who asked, “Wh-what does that mean?”

“Well Miss Hooves, it means…” He paused. “…I don’t know what it means. Goodness, this is all so new… It’s as if we’re still stuck in a rut between the folds of the fabric of time and space.”

“That’s… bad, right?”

“Unless you’re a carbon-based lifeform, then no, of course not.”

“Oh. Great!”

“No, I was… nevermind.”

Right then, the Doctor felt a pair of hooves wrap around his leg, and he looked down at the cause. “M-mister Doctor!” Twilight squeaked, fearfully clutching to him. “W-what happened? Why did everything get all shaky?”

“Now now Miss Twilight,” the Time Lord cooed, gently pushing her away from his leg, “everything will be fine…”

The filly, despite reassurance, started to cry. “I-I’m really scared! I want my mom! I want my BBBFF!”

The Doctor groaned with distaste. “Ugh, I am really not cut out for this. Miss Hooves, until further notice, you are on foalsitter duty.”

“W-what?”

“Well, this seems like a fair arrangement, don’t you think? You trespass and stow aboard my TARDIS, and in return, you take care of the young Twilight. Fair trade?”

“Bu—”

“Splendid, okay, allons-y! Let’s move on! Miss Top! How is the unconscious Miss Colgate faring?...”

The Doctor trotted off towards the other two mares, leaving Derpy behind with Twilight.

“…” Derpy stared at the young filly before her, trying to come up with something good to say. “Um… hello! My name’s Derpy!”

“What’s wrong with your eyes?” Twilight innocently inquired, tilting her head with wonder. “They’re all funny-looking!”

The pegasus frowned. This was going to go along swimmingly, wasn’t it?

“Doc, she’s out light a light,” Carrot Top explained as the Time Lord came to check on her and Colgate. “She hit her head pretty good…”

The Doctor, without even blinking, pulled the sonic screwdriver out of his vest pocket and waved it over the unicorn. “…Hm. She’ll be okay. After all, a slight bump on the cranium never hurt anyone. …Well, not for long, anyway.”

“…” The earth mare looked at her friend with worry, and gently ran a hoof through her frazzled mane. If only she had believed her, then maybe they wouldn’t be in this mess…

Not the one to associate himself with tender forms of emotion (at least, not often), the Doctor walked back to the console and flicked one of the switches on it. Another ‘clunk!’ sound was heard, signaling the release of the locking mechanism. After that, he started off towards the doorway…

“H-hey, where are you going?” Carrot Top asked suddenly, still cradling Colgate in her hooves.

The Doctor paused for a moment, and continued walking. “Outside. I need to see what’s giving the scanner false readings.”

No one argued with him.

Continuing on uninterrupted, the equine Time Lord reached the doorway and, carefully, pulled the doors open. A sight that was unlike anything he had ever before seen greeted him.

First off, it was beyond huge. The expanse the existed outside the TARDIS doors spread out far and wide, supposedly for infinity. Outside, clouds of orange and blue swirled and coalesced through the space, weaving in and around both themselves and several planet-like bodies of unknown composition floating in midair. Pillars of a rock and steel-like material rose vertically through the expanse, both ends leading to indeterminable points in the distance.

A large chunk of rock with what appeared to be a heavily distorted tree floated lazily nearby, bumping into a nearby pillar and rebounding. This action produced the sound of, curiously enough, a thunderclap. And speaking of thunder, there were many bolts of lightning being generated by the tumultuous blue clouds in the distance. The lightning seemed to ‘leap’ from cloud to cloud, and it would occasionally lash out and strike some other object in the expanse. The rock with the odd tree from earlier was hit by one of these stray bolts, causing it to burst into a green flame before splitting into two separate rocks, each with a similar-looking tree.

Gravity seemed to be blatantly ignored here, as did the passage of time itself. Some areas seemed to be moving normally, while others seemed sped up as if someone had hit the ‘Fast-Forward’ button on a VHS player. Others seemed to move so sluggishly, it was a wonder that they could actually be moving at all. Two separate planetoids, each experiencing different zones of time flow, happened to collide together, which caused the both of them to suddenly explode with a small ‘pop’.

The Doctor was at an absolute loss on what he saw. This was, by far, the strangest place he had ever been. The faculties that the known universes operated by were non-existent here. Everything he saw weren’t even possible by even irrational standards.

The only word he found that could describe it best was… chaos. Total chaos. Complete disharmony. A cacophony of impossible physics. Turmoil of endless nonsense.

Looking down, the Doctor saw that the TARDIS had managed to land on one of the more stable planetoids. A few more chunks of wayward rock flew dangerously close by, but that didn’t concern him. With a cautious step forward, the Time Lord trotted outside the doors, and into this strange new dimension.

Immediately, his entire body was wracked by some incredible force. The temporal flow here… it was unbelievable! The sheer amount of uncontrolled and undiluted energy in the air… overpowering! (And not to mention extremely painful!)

“Nnnnngh…!” The Doctor struggled to keep standing on his hooves, but it was incredibly hard to do so. ‘This power… I’ve… ngh… felt it somewhere before… it’s… familiar… but… No… no, it can’t be…’

“Doctor!” a voice from inside the TARDIS called out, which clearly made itself out to be Derpy. “What’s going on out here?”

Eyes widening with dread, the Doctor turned around just in time to see the wall-eyed pegasus start to walk out the doorway. “N-NO! MISS HOOVES! D-DON’T LEAVE THE TARDIS!!”

“Don’t leave the what-now?” Derpy replied with confusion, sticking her hoof out the doorway. Once the warning finally processed in her mind, she seized up, and at last took notice of the chaotic expanse outside. “WH-WHERE ARE WE?!”

The Doctor stared in horror. “Y-your hoof…!”

“Huh? My what?”

Looking down at the hoof she had put outside the doorway, Derpy gasped with shock. Her entire foreleg, from the point where it was past the threshold of the doorway, was twisting and distorting itself into a totally unrecognizable shape. It was quite sickening to look at. “D-DOCTOR! WH-WHAT’S HAPPENING TO ME!!”

“GET BACK INSIDE, YOU!” the Doctor shouted, leaping forward and shoving the pegasus back into the safety of the TARDIS. Thankfully, Derpy’s hoof had reverted to its normal status once she was back inside. “A-and I thought I told you to—ungh!—stay put!”

“S-sorry! My bad!” the mailmare apologized, slamming the door shut in a hurry to avoid a scolding.

Tired of all the babysitting he had to do today, the Doctor only grunted and turned away from the TARDIS. The strange energy that flowed through this dimension still whittled away at his being, and it was difficult to walk properly. However, on the plus side, he seemed capable of resisting whatever molecular-distorting effects that had briefly affected Derpy. Didn’t make it any less uncomfortable, but it could have been worse.

“S-so…! This is where we are, eh!” the Doctor exclaimed to the expanse, gazing at the impossible formations of matter throughout. “Hah! Hell of a place, I’ll give it that!” He squinted to try and make out any signs of life amidst the chaos, implausible as it seemed in this hostile environment. “So, is there anyone out there!? Hellooo? Yooohooo! The Doctor will see you now!”

Nothing but the thunderclaps of the lightning and the harsh blasts of cosmic air answered him.

“I see then! Empty! Much like my wallet I suppose, BUT ANYWAY! I suppose I best be off, then!”

The tiny planetoid he was on had little to see anyway, so the Doctor wasn’t too keen on sticking around. As intriguing as this impossible dimension was, it would be very detrimental to his health to linger around and have a tea party or something. However, before he could return to the TARDIS…

“You… are not welcome here… Devolchr…”

A booming, ominous voice reverberated throughout the expanse, and the Doctor paused. Turning back around, the Time Lord saw a large, black thing approaching from the distance.

Once it had gotten close enough, it was revealed to be some sort of winged beast. Its eyes were solid neon yellow, and a pair of horrid looking fangs protruded from its jowl. What appeared to be a set of two separate horns adorned to top of its head. The beast’s tail seemed to resemble that of a serpent’s own, but this one also sported some kind of sphere-like appendage. Its forearms and claws were decidedly smaller than a beast of this size suggested should be normal, but even so, the claws themselves seemed sharper than knives.

The Doctor, having seen countless aliens over the years, wasn’t all that shocked. “Ah… so, what are you supposed to be, eh?” he asked politely. “An inhabitant, perhaps?”

“You are not welcome here, Devolchr,” the winged creature boomed, underlying the words with a growl. “The Hallowed Place is the realm of Incogni.”

“Devol-wha? I beg your pardon sir, but my name is the Doctor, actually… and I was, eh, just leaving…”

“You are Devolchr. Our race has foretold your intervention. You will not succeed. Incogni will prevail.”

“Errrr… Forgive me, but I fear that I’m a little bit lost here… Who’s ‘Devolchr’? Sounds like a Russian bloke I once met at an Earth bar that I’d… er… rather not go back and revisit…”

“You are Devolchr. The fates have divined your path. You will never overcome us.”

“Hold up a minute, hold up just a minute! Let me get this straight… “I’m” the Devolchr?”

“The fates have divined it so,” a slightly similar but different voice said. Another one of the winged beasts had appeared, seemingly out of nowhere.

“So, there are more of you, aren’t there… Alright, so… ‘Devolchr.’ Hm. Not the first name I would’ve chosen, but… ANYWAY! Why do I need to, ahem, ‘overcome’ you again?”

“We are Incogni,” the voice went on. “Incogni will spread the Chaos of the Hallowed Place to the universe. We feed on paradox. We live to instate disharmony.”

“You must be a hit at parties, eh…”

“And we will,” the voice of another creature joined in, “bring the blessing of the Hallowed Place beyond our reach.”

“We will achieve the impossible,” the first voice continued.

“Sorry, but I may have beaten you to that more than, oh, quite a few times I’m afraid. No hard feelings, right?”

“Time and space itself trembles before us,” the voice of yet another winged alien bellowed. There were no less that four of them surrounding the Doctor and the TARDIS.

“Ah-hah! ‘Trembles’, you say!” the Doctor exclaimed, laughing. “Now that’s a clever joke! Hah! Seriously, that’s the best one I’ve heard in a while! Now, how’s this one for a larf? I’m the Doctor, you lot! The last Time Lord! I AM time and space! And really now… do I truly seem like I’m ready to tremble?”

“Your words are feeble and based on petty overconfidence. You will learn to fear Incogni, Devolchr,” one of the creatures hissed. “Your intervention was foretold… as is your downfall.”

“‘The Eleventh will fall, and the Twelfth will rise,’” another began to recite. “‘When the Devolchr learns the ultimate truth, he will tell the ultimate lie. The Incogni have won, and will have always won, until the day the question is answered.’”

The Doctor stiffened up at the last thing spoken by the beast. ‘The question’… could it be… the same one? The one he had been running from for his entire life? But… it couldn’t be…

“‘But when the question is asked…’”

“Silence shall fall,” the Doctor whispered, almost unaware that he did so.

The other creatures were quiet for several moments.

“‘…and Discord will rise. Twelve will fall. Incogni will rule,’” the first creature finished. “You, Devolchr, will never overcome Incogni. Your fate is divined against you. Even now, the air around you brings you pain. You cannot touch us. We cannot be stopped, Devolchr.”

“…” The Doctor lowered his head, gritting his teeth. The pain was starting to get to him, as much as he hated to admit it. He cursed the foul air around him. The last thing he needed was to get killed in the middle of an alien dimension. “…You lot, you know… you’re really quite an ugly bunch, aren’t you… Ugh…”

“Fate has divined your failure, Devolchr. Accept it with grace.”

The Time Lord, in spite of everything, scoffed. “Hah… Well, if you snakes-with-wings think that I’m just going to take something like this lying down…” The Doctor raised himself off the unstable ground fully, and shot a defiant glare at the creatures. “…then you’ve got another bloody thing coming, you!”

In a flash, the Doctor brandished his sonic screwdriver and held it up as high as could be before turning on the ‘noisemaker’ function. Rarely did it see such use as this, but it had proved handy on one such occasion. With an extremely noisy and pitched whiz-bang sound, the sonic glowed and spun as the creatures shrieked and shouted at the sudden assault on their hearing abilities. Not even aliens from an alternate dimension were immune to simple sound-waves!

While the winged beasts were distracted, the Doctor rushed back to the TARDIS and threw the doors open in haste before slamming them shut behind him. “Miss Twilight! Lock the door!” he shouted on impulse, rubbing his aching head.

The unicorn filly looked up from her card game with Derpy (which, from what could be gathered, she was winning) and gave the Time Lord a confused stare. “…Um… how?”

“…” The Doctor facehoofed. Of course, how could she do that now that she was a foal? So. Very. Frustrating. “Never mind, I’ll do it myself!”

And so he did. After the Doctor locked the doors and was prepping the TARDIS for another inter-dimensional flight, he took notice of both Carrot Top and a now-conscious Colgate resting against the railing. “Oh, good, she’s awake! Now both of you hold on to something again!”

“Wh-what!?” the earth pony sputtered, putting on a disbelieving look. “Again?! What’s going on?”

“Let’s just say that our neighbors out there aren’t the kinds that are keen on being your friends!” the Doctor exclaimed, flipping a variety of switches before flicking the master dematerialization control. “Come along, carpe diem! Geronimo, we’re off!”

Carrot Top’s jaw fell slack upon realizing that they were just about to go through the entire ordeal again. With fearful anticipation, she clung like a barnacle to the railing once again, which earned herself a bemused look from Colgate.

“…What are you doing?” the unicorn asked, but before she could get an answer the whole chamber began to violently shake and shudder again like before. Getting the picture right away, Colgate hurriedly braced herself against the railing. Likewise, Twilight and Derpy Hooves assumed the position as well, getting ready for the ride of their lives…

Outside the TARDIS, the winged beasts had long since recovered from the sonic’s effect and were circling around the police box like vultures. Anger shone in their eyes; they were determined to get at the Time Lord within.

However, as one of the beasts prepared to smash into the TARDIS, the time machine began to slowly fade away as an odd noise filled the air.

Wheeeeeen… Wheeeeeen… Wheeeeeen…

In seconds, the TARDIS had vanished into nothingness, and the creature that flew at it like a ram passed through the spot where it once stood without making contact. The time machine—and the Doctor—had gone.

“The Devolchr retreats,” one of the creatures growled, “but he will return.”

“The Eleventh has already fallen, and the Twelfth is rising…”

“Soon…”

>~===DW===~<

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN WE’RE GOING TO CRASH?!”

“I MEAN THAT EXACTLY! THE GYRO-SCOPIC STABILIZER IS ACTING WONKY, PLUS THE STEERING SYSTEM IS ABSOLUTE HAVOC TO WORK WITH HOOVES! IT’S TIMES LIKE THIS THAT I MISS HAVING HANDS!”

“UGH! YOU’VE BEEN TALKING TO LYRA, HAVEN’T YOU?”

“POSSIBLY! THAT’S THE ONE WITH THE PRISMATIC MANE, RIGHT?”

“NO! THAT’S RAINBOW DASH! YOU’RE NOT EVEN CLOSE!”

“WELL, I’M SO SORRY! I KNOW THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE AND PONIES, SO I’M BOUND TO GET A FEW MIXED UP AT LEAST!”

“I SWEAR, IF YOU EVER CONFUSE ME FOR SOMEPONY LIKE CLOUD KICKER, THEN I’LL—!”

“UH, HATE TO INTERRUPT, BUT… BRACE FOR IMPACT!!”

“WHAT?! …AAAAAAAAAHHH!!”

>~===DW===~<

Canterlot Palace

—Throne Room—

Dealing with emissaries is always such a tiresome task. Of course, nopony else in Equestria knew this better than Princess Celestia herself. She sat on her throne with the foreign affairs minister by her side, somehow managing to fight back the urge to yawn loudly. Being the boss was tough sometimes.

Currently, the ambassadors from both the zebra and griffon nations across the eastern ocean were here to discuss the recent border disputes… again. Or at least, that’s what Celestia was pretty sure they were going on about. Honestly, it seemed as though there was a border dispute every three hours. She was just letting the minister take care of things for her by this point.

“…gentlecolts, as we’ve made explicitly clear by this point,” the minister—a mare by the name of Silver Tongue—said, “the Royal Court of Canterlot is in simply no position to constantly mull over and moderate these disputes! Our resources are better spent on more pressing matters than these trivial squabbles.”

“‘Trivial…?’” the griffon ambassador echoed, narrowing his eyes threateningly. “These ‘squabbles’ directly affect our entire way of life, minister!”

Silver Tongue closed her eyes and rubbed her temples with irritation. “With all due respect ambassador, I honestly cannot see how a disagreement over a strip of desert landscape is that important…”

“Bah, of course you do not see how!” the griffon snapped. “That is because the zebras plan on using it as a strategic foothold into our territory! They plan to make war against us!”

The zebra ambassador looked both shocked and furious. “Lies and hypocrisy, I say! We plan on no such thing! These power-hungry griffons seek to take that land and invade us!”

“Twaddle! All of it! The zebras are not to be trusted!”

“Nonsense! You griffons are the true demons of Tartarus! Rats with wings!”

“WHAT did you call us?!”

“You heard me, ambassador! The High Priestess sends her regards!”

“Grrr…! The Emperor ought to have you hung for saying that!”

“The feathers of your kind should be plucked and worn as a hat!”

“Loony monochrome degenerates!”

“Arrogant toffee-beaked chickens!”

Celestia couldn’t help but roll her eyes and sigh. Why did these so-called ‘political disputes’ always have to be reduced to such simple and foalish insult-hurling…? What a world…

“Order! There will be order in the presence of the Princess, ambassadors!” Silver Tongue snapped, stomping her hoof with frustration. “For the love of all things sacred, please cease your bickering!”

“…Very well,” the emissaries grumbled with assent. They shot each other a fierce glare before a warning look from Silver made them refocus their attention on Celestia.

“Now then, Princess, what is your take on this?” the minister asked the majestic and very-bored-looking alicorn. “Surely you must have a few things to say by now…”

Princess Celestia sighed thoughtfully. This had been what she wanted to avoid, but… no sense in delaying. May as well deal with it now before it gets too far out of hoof. “Noble ambassadors… your troubles are understandable, and I will respect your concerns and beliefs,” she said calmly, her warm tone disguising her feelings of exasperation. “However, such a debacle is—and I mean no disrespect when I say this—happening for all the wrong reasons, and it is clouding your judgment. Both of yours.”

“But, Your Highness,” the griffon argued, “this is a matter of great concern to our Emperor!”

“And our High Priestess as well!” the zebra interjected. “This is a chief source of friction between our nations and populace as a whole! Your Highness’s great wisdom is needed to mediate this conflict!”

“While I do appreciate the praise, it changes nothing. There’s naught a thing I can do to solve this problem instantly. Do you both think I can sway the minds of an entire population with a flick of my horn?” She released a drawn-out sigh. “As much as it may be upsetting to hear, a bit of magic is only a fraction of the solution. Without the other elements, then no harmony can be achieved…”

“…Then, what will Your Majesty have us do?”

Goodness. This was always the rough part. ‘What will we do?’ As much as she wanted to say ‘solve your own problems’, it would not get anything done. The zebra and griffon nations could not (more like will not) cooperate, that much was certain. Surely there must be another way…

But before Princess Celestia could weave a proper response, a queer noise gave her pause. From outside the throne room, she could hear the muffled shouts of some guards. The strange sound, as if somepony was rubbing a key along a wire of some sort, seemed to be coming from outside the stained glass window to her right…

“Your Highness?” Silver Tongue inquired, her face expressing slight concern. “Is there something the matter?”

“Hm? Oh, pardon me… but, does anypony else hear that odd sound?”

Both ambassadors, apparently puzzled, nodded. Silver Tongue nodded as well, but still seemed rather nonplussed as to this interruption.

Slowly, all those in the room looked outside the nearest window. In the distance, a rectangular-shaped blue box was flying through the air. A peculiar sight, to be sure. One did not necessarily see such a thing in flight. Everypony’s puzzlement slowly transferred into horror when they realized that the box in question was coming straight at them with alarming speed.

“INCOMING! TAKE COVER!!” the minister shouted, diving to the floor and cowering. The ambassadors, likewise, also dove for cover. Princess Celestia, conversely, held her ground as she studied the incoming object. ‘What is that thing…?’

Craaaaaaassssh!!

Milliseconds later, the box finally collided with the stained glass window, shattering it with a horrible, earsplitting din. The next few moments passed by like slow-motion as thousands of colored glass shards were sent flying every which way, as well as several chunks of destroyed masonry. Celestia was barely able to raise one of her wings in front of her face to block some of the wayward debris in time, but managed it.

The blue box, after unceremoniously breaking through the window, crashed into the marble floor and rebounded once, bouncing off again with a wooden-sounding ‘THUNK!’ Across the entire room did the box tumble, rolling along the floor before smashing against the opposite wall of the throne room and coming to a rest at last, lying on its side.

After the sudden entrance of this unknown object and terrible racket it brought, the throne room began to quiet. All that was audible now were the clinks and tinkles of still-crumbling glass and stone, the hissing of smoke emanating from the strange blue box, and the groans of those in the room that were knocked back by the collision.

Princess Celestia was not injured, despite the violence of the crash, and surveyed the destruction with shock. What in Equestria had just happened?! Where did that box come from?! Who was responsible for this? …Was everypony else okay?

“Minister! Ambassadors!” she called out to the cowering forms of the politicians. “Are you all alright? Are any of you injured?”

Silver Tongue left the safety of her hiding spot, breathing heavily. “I-I’m fine, Your Majesty… Just a little bit shaken…”

‘A little bit shaken? Get over yourself,’ the alicorn thought, smiling with mirth. “Good. What of the ambassadors?”

“We are fine as well, Your Majesty,” the griffon envoy replied, brushing bits of glass and dust out of his feathers. “Hmph, it would take more than that to fell a dignitary of the Griffon Empire…”

Celestia nodded with acknowledgement, and focused her attention on that strange blue box… “Where did that object even come from…?”

With a crash, the large golden doorway that led into the throne room flew open, and a contingent of Royal Guards burst into the room. “Your Highness! Are you alright?!”

The alicorn sighed. “We are all fine, captain. Nopony has been injured. What is a problem, however…” She turned her gaze to the rectangular object to the corner of the room, lying on its side. “…is that… thing. What is it? Where did it come from?”

“W-we are not sure,” the guard captain responded, hanging his head shamefully. “The sentries spotted it approaching from the distance, and… well, our magic defense spells didn’t seem to have any effect on it whatsoever. They would just… disappear as soon as they made contact.”

“…” That was rather odd. A simple thing like this, immune to magic? What was this thing? It couldn’t have been a normal box… The fact that some of the most powerful defensive spells they had did nothing to deter it, on top of the fact that the box itself barely seemed scratched… it was unreal.

Suddenly, and without warning, the box opened up. A door that was on the upwards-facing side swung open and a plume of smoke rose out in a gray cloud. Everypony in the room immediately snapped to attention; the guards readied their spears and surrounded it, the ambassadors backed away with uncertainty, and the Princess held her ground with a determined gaze. Whatever was in this box, it had a lot to answer for…

“Goodness gracious, was that ever a bumpy landing!” a voice was heard saying from within. “I wonder where we ended up now. Huh, couldn’t be any worse than that other crazy dimension, though!”

“For once, I think we can agree on something,” another voice said. “Now can you PLEASE get us out of here?! I can’t hang on to this much longer!”

“Yes, yes, of course! Just wait one moment… Unngh!” A hoof suddenly shot up into the air from the open door, and grabbed the edge of the box. “Just a bit further…! Ugh, I ought to get in shape!” Another hoof, and with a grunt of exertion, the head of a brown earth pony stuck itself out of the box. “Whew! Hell of a climb up, that!”

With another heave, the earth pony stallion hauled himself out of the box and dropped down onto the floor. “My word! What a fancy-looking place!” he exclaimed, marveling at the large room that surrounded him. “Could do without the gaping and unsightly hole in the wall personally, but eh, some people have their preferences and all. …Or rather, er, ponies I suppose…”

“Doctor! A little help, please?!” the voice shouted from inside the box again.

The earth pony clicked his tongue. “Right then, sorry about that… Let’s see if I can… no, I suppose I can’t… wait, I can—! …No, that won’t work at all… Hm…”

“Oh for Luna’s sake, Doc! Get us outta here! My hooves are aching like crazy from holding on to this railing!”

“Wait! I can help!” a different, bubbly-sounding voice from within the blue box said cheerfully.

“Derpy? What are you do—”

Moments later, a gray pegasus hovered up and out of the box, lifting a yellow earth pony mare with a curly orange mane in her hooves. “Gah! Careful! I almost fell that one time!”

“Sorry!” the pegasus replied, and quickly set the earth pony down on the solid floor before going back inside the box. A few seconds later, she reemerged with a blue unicorn in her grip (and a small purple unicorn filly riding on her back as well, oddly enough). “Okay! We’re out!”

“Brilliant, Miss Hooves! Perhaps it was a good idea keeping you around after all!” the brown earth pony said, smiling appreciatively.

The pegasus smiled brightly. “Yay! Thank you Doctor!”

“What the hay just happened in there anyway?!” the orange-maned earth mare snapped. “Everything was all sideways and stuff! What’s up with that?!”

“Ah, it all has something to do with the TARDIS’s orientation in regards to the local gravity field, but I won’t bore you with details. It’s on its side? Then everything in it is oriented as such. Doesn’t that make any sense?”

“Well… no! Nothing about this does!”

“Honestly, what do they teach you in school nowadays…”

“About a million more things that make more sense than you do!”

“Only a million? Hardly that impressive.”

While the newcomer ponies bickered amongst themselves (mainly just the two earth ponies), Celestia was astounded at how they had not realized where they even were. The fact that everypony was staring at them (and the guards were aiming their spears at them) did nothing to tip those intruders off. So, to hopefully break the disillusionment, the alicorn politely cleared her throat at just the right volume to attract their attention.

The ponies stopped their chattering, and slowly turned to look at her. It was evident in their eyes that they were quite stunned. “…Oh, sorry, can I help you?” the brown earth pony asked, turning towards her. “Pardon the interruption, but, uh…”

Up until now, it was apparent that the strange ponies were unaware of their position in the affair. The earth pony with an hourglass cutie mark seemed to realize this, and he took the time to acquaint himself with the sights of the princess, the ambassadors, the throne room itself… and of course, the heavily armed guards, with their pointy instruments of war directed straight at him.

“…Ah.” He grinned sheepishly. “Okay, listen, this is not as bad as it looks.”

A nearby section of the wall, where the box had already crashed through, crumbled almost fully, widening the gap and sending a ton more stonework crashing to the floor. The guards glared at him even more.

“…On reflection, maybe it is as bad as it looks.”

Chapter 1: The Doctor is IN!

“Oh, bugger! More of them!”

Another group of the strange black insects had swerved around the corner of the cave, giving chase to the fleeing stallion. One of them fired a blast of green energy from its horn, firing it towards the pony but missing by a mere yard and exploding. The blast made him stumble, but did little to slow him down. Still, these pests were getting more than a little annoying...

With an exasperated sigh the chestnut-brown pony retrieved a small, pen-like device from his vest pocket as her ran, and pointed it behind him towards the creatures. “Have some of this, then!” With a high-pitched whir and tone, the end of the device glowed bright blue, and the pursuing insects let out shrieks of pain and collapsed to the ground, twitching spastically.

The Doctor flashed a smug grin. “Ah-hah! Nothing like 27000 hertz of sonic energy to put you bugs in your place, eh?” he chided, stowing the sonic screwdriver back into his vest pocket. “That’s how the Doctor does things!”

Still smiling victoriously, the brown stallion turned and galloped away from the scene before more Drones would inevitably arrive. These Changelings, they were so bothersome! He’d heard about them before, and how they very nearly overtook the capital of Equestria. Being the self-declared protector of Earth and Equestria, the Doctor had taken it upon himself to neutralize the source of the threat. Of course, he’d never have anticipated that they were more than just pony-shaped bugs!

In fact, he wasn’t even in Equestria. Even more, he wasn’t even on the same planet Equestria was on. The Doctor, when he last checked the navigation data on the TARDIS, was on the planet Changeoid-9, located around two or so billion miles across the Foal Nebula. It was a mostly cold and dead planet, but the ruins atop and below the surface seemed to suggest a population once survived here. Now, it was just the native inhabitants—Changelings—living among the cavernous system of tunnels and passages hollowed out into the planet.

The Doctor had spent much time pondering his options. As the world was basically dead, these Changelings had attempted to invade Equestria for the purpose of mass species migration. (Unusually, the majority of their energy supply comes from emotional waves produced by sentient creatures like ponies or humans.) But as these species seemed to display no genuine sentience aside from an all-encompassing hive mind (led by a “Queen Chrysalis”, which he had no encounters with yet), then as far as the Doctor was concerned, the universe could very well do without them.

“Let’s see now, where did I leave my... oh! Well, there we are!”

It wasn’t hard to miss the same blue police box shape of the TARDIS. The Doctor was just so fond of it. Though, he couldn’t quite understand why the sign that normally read “Police Box” now insisted on saying “Pony Box”. Wasn’t the chameleon circuit supposed to be broken? Ah well, didn’t matter. It was probably just one of the strange idiosyncrasies of this pony-dominated dimension. The TARDIS, where it stood, was in the corner of the cavern's corridor, patiently waiting for its owner to return.

Earlier, the Doctor had located the remains of a massive power generator, deep within Changeoid-9’s core. Perhaps the civilization that existed here before this Changeling hive took over had dabbled in extensive geothermal production? ‘How fascinating!’ the Doctor had thought. ‘A shame that it makes the planet terribly unstable, though.’ Knowing that, the Time Lord had managed to reactivate the generator (thanks to the sonic screwdriver) and set it to overload in… oh, about twenty minutes. When it did, the entire planet would likely implode, destroying the Changeling hive.

Now that the Doctor had found the TARDIS, all that was left to do was leave this place before things got too bright and explode-y. But it was alright; he still had at least eight minutes left. “Right, well time to get go—” Another blast of green energy cut him off, striking the side of the police box and glancing off it. The Doctor cast an irritated glare at the three Drones that had just flown in from behind. “Hey, that wasn’t very polite!”

The changeling Drones only hissed in response, drawing themselves closer to the equine Time Lord. One of them started charging another blast of magic energy, while the other two got in a position that suggested they were ready to pounce, maul, and kill (not necessarily in that order). Though the Doctor knew of the Changelings’ ferocity, he nevertheless stood up to them.

“Alright, listen here you three!” he declared, taking a protective stance in front of the TARDIS’s door. The Drones stopped advancing briefly, but did not cease their aggressive posture. “Do you even know who you’re messing with? Do you? Do you know who I am? I’m the Doctor, that’s who I am. Do you even know what I did to this planet? I rigged it to explode, that’s what I did. In exactly seven minutes and twenty-three seconds, the rock you are standing on will cease to exist. Actually, you can also add yourselves to that equation as well.”

The three changelings flinched with shock, but still held their ground.

“And do you know why? Do you know why I doomed your miserable species to extinction? Do you? Because you’re a plague. A bacterium upon the universe. You changelings are a galactic virus, and I’m just the Doctor the cure it. SO.” The Doctor stomped a hoof on the cave floor to punctuate his sentence. “So. If you brainless drones care for your lives, at all, then you will do just one thing and one thing only: Run. Run away far, and run away fast.”

The Doctor leaned forward, glaring directly into the blue compound eyes of the closet changeling drone, and it took a fearful step backward. “I know you can navigate the expanse of space. How else could you have invaded Equestria, a place that I’ve come to love as much as another planet I know? So. Go ahead and run away, my little changelings. And tell your fellow ‘chaps’ the same thing. That is, unless you fancy getting a bit cooked.”

He stamped a hoof again, with more force this time. “And you better hope that your little ‘camouflage’ magic doesn’t fail should you ever be as dense as to go back to Equestria. Because. If. I. EVER. See any of you in or near that planet ever again… then I cannot be held responsible for what I will do to you. …Ask around. Every alien civilization that I’ve ever met will all tell you the same thing: it’s never a good idea to make a Time Lord mad. Are you three willing to even try?”

And that was all it took. Perhaps the added tremors of the rock around him helped sell the effect, but regardless, the Drones were broke. The three of them turned and scampered off, their prior looks and bearings of hostility now replaced with ones of abject terror. If anypony could cow a changeling into retreat with words and threats alone, it would be the Doctor.

Paying no more mind to the retreating insectoid aliens, the Doctor tapped his hoof thrice on the rock floor, causing the doors of the TARDIS to swing open. It had taken him a while to adapt the old ‘finger-snap’ opening technique to the more mundane ‘hoof-tap’ one, on the account that his twelfth form wasn’t humanoid and lacked fingers. But it was much more convenient this way, anyhow (though not quite as theatric).

Strolling to the center console, the Doctor heard something… odd. When he walked on the metal floor of the TARDIS, his hooves always made a dull ‘clang’ sound as they met the floor. So then, why did the normal ‘clang’ per hoofstep… sound more like a ‘cla-clang’ per hoofstep? The answer was obvious. At least, it was to the Doctor. He turned around towards the open doors, and frowned. “Hmmm…” He tapped his hoof thrice, and the doors shut. No more sounds. ‘Ah, well. Nothing, then.’

The Doctor entered the coordinates of the place he had arrived from (the outskirts of Ponyville) into the navigational system, and spent a moment adjusting many other settings. In two winks, he had thrown the Dematerialization master switch, and the TARDIS began to softly shake as the usual screeching and grinding sound filled the air. Noticing this, the Doctor glanced at the switch on the panel marked ‘Brakes’, and sheepishly grinned. ‘Oops, left the brakes on again. Oh well, it’s just such a brilliant noise.’

Before long, the TARDIS was on its way. According to the computer, it would take about five minutes to arrive back in Equestria. Usually it arrived within seconds, but as the power drive was getting progressively ‘emaciated’ lately… it wasn't quite as "speedy" anymore. He may need to find time to give it proper maintenance later. But where in the whole of the cosmos would he find the necessary energy…

He didn’t have long to think, however. Without warning, something tackled the Doctor from behind with great force, sending him to the floor. “Ack! What is this? Get off!” he shouted, and struggled to throw off his attacker. Whatever it was, it sure was mad about something. Finally, the Doctor stood, reared back, and managed to buck off his assailant. “Who are you, then?! What’s the big idea?!”

The Doctor was absolutely livid when he turned around, and just when he spotted the intruder a flash of green flooded his vision. When it passed a split-second later, he appeared to standing face-to-face with… himself? “What the…? Well, that’s interesting!" the Doctor exclaimed, eyeing his double with a look of bemused curiosity. "A perfect duplicate! I must say, that’s fairly impressive!” The 'duplicate' was a changeling, of course, but it had quickly taken the brown earth pony form of the Doctor himself.

Impressive as the disguise was, the Doctor’s brief intrigue was quickly replaced by anger. Someone had stowed aboard his TARDIS! While he wasn't even looking! And without permission, too! And now, the TARDIS was already in transit! This simply would not do! “Sorry about this, but I’m afraid you’ll have to go!” the Doctor asserted, and brandished his sonic screwdriver. A quick blast of green energy knocked it out of his hoof. “Hey! That was my best one, you cowardly doppelg—”

The Doctor was rudely interrupted as his 'evil clone' leapt forward and hoof-smacked his forehead, sending the Time Lord reeling back. “Ow! Hey! That hurt, you!" he exclaimed, holding the tender spot with a hoof. "Fight with dignity, or something!” Another slug to the face was the response. Negotiations obviously wouldn't work. “OW! Okay, that does it! No more Mr. Nice… er… Doctor!”

It would be quite odd to fight with yourself, wouldn’t it? It wasn’t necessarily the first time the Doctor had done it in his 1200-plus years of existence, but it didn’t make it any less strange. Although it would be the first time a clone of him had attempted to kill him. And the fact that this changeling could very well feast on his emotional energy (and for all he knew, maybe even his corpse) was also rather disturbing, though the Doctor tried not to let it bother him.

He wrestled the rogue Drone for a full minute, the two of them crashing into numerous objects and making a mess of the TARDIS's control room, before the Doctor finally got the upper hoof. The still-disguised changeling’s head now firmly pinned between the floor and his hoof, the Doctor flashed the imitator a dirty look. “You just don’t listen, do you? You just think you can stroll on into my TARDIS like it’s the bloody circus? You bugs really are starting to bug me. Heh…” He coughed. “Not the first time I’ve used that pun, and it won’t be the last. So sorry Drone, but I’ll have to remove you from my time machine.”

The Doctor stamped his other hoof on the floor three times, and the TARDIS’s main door flung wide open. Just beyond the doorway weren’t the caverns of Changeoid-9, or the fields of Equestria. It was a violent, swirling blue whirlpool of thunderclouds that twisted and looped towards infinity: The Time Vortex.

A klaxon-horn resounded and a red light flashed madly throughout the TARDIS as the door opened, signaling a major emergency, but he knew opening the door during transit was extensively risky. It would only be necessary for but a few moments. With a farewell shout of “Allons-y!” the Doctor swiftly kicked the still-disguised changeling towards the door, and the suction of the Vortex took care of the rest.

As the shrieking changeling was thrown into the swirling blue abyss, the Doctor tapped his hoof three times and the TARDIS door shut behind it. The horns finally stopped blaring, and the lights subsided. With a drawn-out sigh, the Doctor returned to the main control console and checked to make sure everything was working alright. His eyes widened with shock. One of the changeling’s prior energy blasts appeared to have damaged the console, and it was now on fire.

…Ah.

“Oh. Well, that can’t be good.”

The alarm started to blare again as an explosion ripped through the control room.

>~===DW===~<

Everything was rather quiet in Ponyville today. The local mailmare, Derpy Hooves, didn’t really mind though. Quiet days always were perfect to think about stuff.

As she flew, Derpy thought about what had happened in the last few weeks. After the Changelings were driven out of Canterlot, a concentrated effort had been made by the Royal Guard to weed out any remaining Drones or Infiltrators. However, for whatever reason, all changelings appeared to have simply… vanished. Nopony had seen any at all, actually. Not since the wedding.

The pegasus sighed thoughtfully, and continued on her flight. Her mailbag was as heavy as ever, silently reminding the pegasus of the countless deliveries she had yet to make. With an absentminded glance to the sky, Derpy pondered what kind of things waited in the days ahead. No more changelings, right? Surely things will get better.

Wheeeeeeen… wheeeeeeen… wheeeeeeen…

“Huh?” Derpy Hooves looked upwards again, and scrunched her muzzle in confusion. What was that odd sound? For some reason, she felt as it she'd heard it from somewhere before…

Wheeeeeeen… wheeeeeeeeeen… wheeeeeeeeeeeeen…

The screech-like resonance was slowly increasing in pitch. She had no idea where it was coming from, and despite how oddly familiar it sounded, she decided that it may be best to just ignore it and keep flying. And keep flying she did, not noticing the noise getting closer with each passing second. Moments later, she heard something explode.

Booooom!

Derpy stopped mid-flight, and scanned the skies in a panic. The grinding and screeching sound was so familiar for some reason, but she couldn’t figure out why. Just where was it coming from?

She momentarily got her answer in the form of a large blue box, which zipped through the air near her at such close distance and at such high speed that the resulting air current made the pegasus spin wildly in place. Try to imagine a kid spinning a cola bottle on the floor, and you’d have a good idea of the motions involved.

“Whaaaaat’s gooooiiiiing oooooonnn?!” Derpy shrieked as she spun around uncontrollably. ‘Ooogh, I think I’m gonna be really sick! Urp!’

When the mailmare finally stopped her high-speed revolutions, she finally realized that the strange box appeared to be plummeting down to the ground—straight into the Ponyville market district! “Oh no!” she cried. “That thing’s gonna crash into Ponyville! Oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no!!”

Panicking, Derpy started to pursue the tumbling box as it fell, flapping her wings as fast as she could manage. She wasn’t exactly sure how she was planning on stopping this thing, seeing as how it was probably falling faster than Rainbow Dash could even fly… but perhaps Derpy could warn everypony to run away, before the box fell and squished somepony…

“HEEEEEEEEEEEY! LOOK OOOOOOUUUUT!! FALLING BOOOOOOOX!!”

>~===DW===~<

“Carrot Top, when are you going to stop moping about this?”

“…” The earth pony with the curly orange mane and pale yellow coat chose not to answer the question. Instead, she merely stared at the light-blue unicorn from across the stand, a look of blank apathy painted on her features.

The blue and white-maned unicorn, Colgate, stamped the ground with frustration. “Come on, can’t you get over it already?”

“…”

“So I accidentally knocked over some of your carrots on display, big deal! I told you that I’d clean them up!”

“…It’s not the carrots,” Carrot Top said at last, her green eyes looking down at the vegetables sprawled out over the ground around her carrot stand. “It’s just that… for my whole life, I’ve done nothing but grow carrots… My cutie mark is carrots, for Celestia’s sake! Carrots, carrots, carrots! And to what end? Carrots are healthy, sure, but how much more business has the Apple Family been having than me? Because carrots aren’t a moneymaker, that’s for sure!”

The mare gestured with a hoof towards the apple stand across the Market Square, and Colgate’s gaze followed it. The stand probably had at least twenty ponies lined up for some juicy apples, fresh from Sweet Apple Acres.

“Well… you can’t really blame them,” Colgate said, shrugging and levitating the fallen carrots back onto the stand in neat stacks. “They’ve been in business for an awful long time. And besides, everypony knows that ‘an apple a day keeps the doctor away’. Of course a lot of ponies take credence in apples first.” She paused, and added, “That, and they’re really tasty too…”

Carrot Top sighed miserably. “I know that. But come on, carrots have way more vitamins, and minerals! They help improve your eyesight!”

“And I know that too. I’m one of your only regular customers.”

“True…”

Both mares sighed. Carrot Top would be lucky to see more than four or five other ponies besides Colgate or one of her friends. Derpy Hooves, one of her good friends, also stops by to purchase carrots for her personal carrot muffin recipe once in a while. Today, nopony else had shown up yet. It was a pretty slow day though, and there wasn’t much that could be done about that.

“But hey, at least you’re not the only one going through a ‘cutie mark crisis’,” Colgate confided. “I’ve been bothered by my own for the longest while… I really, um, just don’t get it…”

Carrot Top leaned to the side to get a glimpse of the unicorn’s cutie mark: an hourglass. She herself had always questioned what it meant. “Hey, maybe your special talent is time,” Carrot suggested, and laughed. “But that makes no sense, because nopony can control time!”

“…” The blue unicorn awkwardly coughed and started to raise a hoof. “Um, well, actually—”

“HEEEEEEEEEEEY! LOOK OOOOOOUUUUT!! FALLING BOOOOOOOX!!”

Both Carrot Top and Colgate flinched at the sudden yell. Both of them turned to look skyward to where the shout came from, and gaped. “Derpy?! What’s going—!?”

Crrrraaaaaaaassssh!

Carrot Top’s inquiry was cut short by the loudest sound she had ever heard (at least, in a while). A plume of dirt, rock, and dust was thrown up into the air, scattering around the boulevard whilst the ground shook and heaved underhoof. Everypony in the market stared in shock at the new crater that had just formed in the middle of the street. Several of them started panicking, and ran off to who-knows-where, but others stayed to observe this strange object out of curiosity.

The fountain that previously existed there was now just plain crushed to pieces, and a large rectangular-shaped object colored a deep blue was resting at an odd 80 degree angle among the debris. Smoke billowed from the crater and from the object itself, which seemed to be on fire on the interior. Thankfully, this unknown thing didn’t injure anypony, though it did cause quite a stir (not to mention a lot of property damage as well!)

“The horror! THE HORROR!” a nearby earth pony with a rose-colored mane screamed, and the pink mare to her side fainted melodramatically while another just plain freaked out.

Both Colgate and Carrot Top were shocked at the sudden crash. “Wh-what the heck is that thing?!” the earth pony shouted, eyes wide and jaw hanging slack. “I-it came from the sky! M-maybe it’s a monster!”

“Don’t be ridiculous Carrot,” Colgate said reassuringly, though the unicorn didn’t sound sure of herself, “it’s just a big… box. That’s all it is.” That box… Why did it seem to be giving off such a powerful… 'pulling' force to her?

“Well…” Carrot Top stood back up, and slowly began to approach the crater. “It doesn’t look like a monster, I suppose… I guess the smoke made it look scarier than it was… But, now that I think about it, haven't we all seen this thing befor—?”

“Carrot Top!”

“Huh?” The earth pony looked skyward, and saw a familiar gray-coated wall-eyed pegasus waving to her. She remembered what had been shouted earlier just before the object crashed. “Oh! Derpy! What’s going on?”

“It wasn’t my fault! Honest!” the pegasus insisted, fidgeting with her hooves anxiously. "A big blue box was falling from the sky and making all these noises, and it almost hit me! A-and then it almost squished somepony!” Derpy cringed. “…N-nopony got squished, right?”

“Uhh…” Carrot Top looked over the scene of destruction one more time, and frowned with uncertainty. “I don’t think so…”

Derpy Hooves flew down to the earth pony’s side, tucking in her wings as she landed. “I was so scared! I thought somepony was gonna get hurt!” she exclaimed, one eye focused on Carrot Top while the other wandered over in the box’s direction. “It was such a quiet day, and I like quiet days, but then all of a sudden… Oh, hi Colgate!”

“Hey there Derpy,” Colgate said as she approached the two, and then focused on Carrot Top. “Uh, hey? Carrot? Don’t you notice anything… strange about that blue box?”

“Besides the fact that it wrecked the fountain?” the earth pony replied flatly. “Well, for one thing, it’s way too blue for my tastes." She looked up at Colgate and bit her lip nervously. "N-no offense, Colgate.”

“None taken… But, that’s not what I meant.” The unicorn cast a quick glance left and right, and lowered her voice. “Doesn’t there just seem to be… something about it that… calls out to you?”

Carrot Top gave her a bizarre stare. “Uh… no? It just looks like a really weird UFO or something. I don’t hear it saying anything, if that’s what you’re getting at…”

Colgate remained silent. ‘Is it really just me, then?’ she thought, throwing a nervous glance to the smoking blue box. ‘Am I the only one who can hear it…?’

Suddenly, the front end of the blue box swung wide open, and a cloud of thick white smoke spewed forth. Most ponies that had been attracted by curiosity leapt back, startled by the sudden breach. Carrot Top and Colgate, by contrast, were now paying extra close attention. Derpy hid behind her friend Carrot, only occasionally poking her head out to peek at the open box, and then retreating again.

Colgate was just thinking about asking out loud if somepony was inside the box, when her own question was answered before it could even be asked. A chestnut-brown earth pony with a dark brown mane slowly stepped out of the depths of the box. And he did it so casually, as if this was an everyday occurrence.

A few ponies were quick to comment on the rather dapper vest and tie the stallion wore. But the thing that snagged Colgate’s attention was the symbol on the pony’s flank. It was… an hourglass! Just like hers! Exactly like hers, even! What could that mean?

Meanwhile, the pony that had just stepped out of the box was dusting off his coat and vest, and muttering something under his breath. “That's the last time I leave the TARDIS door open in the middle of a bug hive. Me, the Doctor, leaving the door open—oh, the idiocy of it all! That’s rather abnormal of me. Ah, guess I’ve always been a bit absentminded. Even more so this time around! Oh well. Quite miraculous that I got off without a scratch. These cartoonized laws of physics are simply fascinating!”

Carrot Top stared at the newcomer pony with a brief bit of confusion, and then sighed. "Oh, never mind everpony, it's just the Doc…" It was that 'Doctor' that lurked around town from time to time. Carrot Top hadn't seen him in a long while, but she knew about his 'oddities'. "Oh, way to scare everypony in town again…”

“He’s such a silly-head, crashing his thing like that!” Derpy exclaimed with a giggle, coming out from her hiding place upon realizing there was no threat. Her expression then darkened slightly. “Wait’ll I give him a piece of my mind about nearly crashing into me…”

“Oh, do you have any of that to spare?” Carrot quipped, casting a mischievous look towards the mailmare. She often poked friendly jabs at her friend’s mental capacity, though the pegasus was smarter than she appeared.

“Sure I do!” Derpy replied, not quite catching on to the earth pony’s little joke. “My mind is like a batch of muffins; I bake some more every day!”

Carrot Top raised a perplexed eyebrow at the pegasus’s odd (and rather nonsensical) metaphor, but thought better of it and shrugged it off. Then again, Derpy wasn’t always the head of her class back in school, so…

The Doctor soon took notice of the crowd watching him, and tilted his head wonderingly. “What? Haven’t you ever seen a pony crash his time machine into a fountain before?” he inquired, and then caught himself. “Ah, actually, no, I suppose that they wouldn’t have… A natural curiosity to this sort of thing is always inevitable. Hm? I say…”

He caught sight of the blonde-maned pegasus beside Carrot Top, and brightened up. “Oh, hello! Good morning, Miss Hooves! Oh, and you too, Miss… Top!” The Doctor paused to contemplate. “…It is morning isn’t it?”

“Yep!” the pegasus responded with a silly grin. “Silly Doctor, always forgetting what time of day it is. Oh, and by the way, I'm absolutely furious with you for almost crashing into me!” Her perky tone didn't seem to support her words, but the Doctor knew well enough to trust them.

“…Ah, right, yes, of course. So sorry about that, Miss Hooves. Steering was havoc to get under control you see. It'll happen. Again, sincerest apologies. So, uh... Right then.” He cleared his throat, and adjusted his tie again. “Now then, back to business. Has anyone here seen Miss Twili—?”

“THERE YOU ARE!” a voice from beyond the crowd called out. A pair of stallions stepped aside, and a very irate purple unicorn mare stomped past them and straight up to the Doctor. She looked extremely irritated for some reason. “You’ve been gone for a whole week! Where have you gone!?”

The Doctor looked genuinely shocked. “A week?! Well, blast it. The date parameter coils on the TARDIS must have gone bad again; I’ll have to check those as soon as conveniently possible and fix—”

“I’M NOT DONE TALKING!” Twilight shouted, interrupting the Doctor’s train of thought. “You told me that you’d be leaving 'to get rid of the Changeling problem’, and then poof! You disappear for a whole week!”

“Well, I believe I told you that I would back within the hour but I suppose—”

“And then a week goes by! Do you have any idea how hard it was to explain to Princess Celestia that you, a crazy pony that treats time and space as a plaything, were gone and unsupervised for a week?!”

“I can imagine that it would be difficult, yes, but—”

“What ‘problem’ was there even to be had, anyway? All the changelings were gone already by the time you left!”

“Ah, I would agree to disagree—”

“The Royal Guards already did an investigatory sweep of the whole countryside, and they haven’t found one! You are seriously grasping at straws here!” Twilight turned to look at the crowd of ponies gathering around them. “AND WHY IS EVERYPONY ELSE STILL HERE?!”

Slowly, under the undue ferocity of the purple unicorn’s glare, the crowd began to disperse and go about their business. Carrot Top and Derpy Hooves surmised that it would be best to leave them be, but Colgate was still interested. How had she not seen that ‘Doctor’ before? She continued to eavesdrop on them from afar…

“Miss Twilight, as I was trying to say, those changelings weren’t found in Equestria simply because they are not from Equestria! They came from a planet just beyond the Foal Nebula: Changeoid-9!”

Twilight's mouth hung open in disbelief. “…Are you seriously suggesting… that the changelings are ALIENS?!”

“I’m not just suggesting it; it’s a fact! One of them even stowed aboard the TARDIS and nearly had its way with me! Just look what that insect did to my vest! But never fear, it’s all taken care of. I blew up their home planet.”

Twilight was more than a little taken aback. “You… blew up… an entire planet?!”

“Yes, it’s rather quite interesting! There was a geothermal power plant built into the core, by an ancient and long-since-forgotten civilization I presume, so all I had to do was—”

“I-I don’t want to know how you did it!" the unicorn interrupted, sputtering her words with utter disbelief. "That’s just… crazy! Even for you, Doctor!”

“What can I say? I am the Doctor, after all.”

“You use that excuse for everything! Just what reason could you possibly have to destroy an entire celestial body?!" Twlight groaned, and facehoofed. "Ugh, there's going to hay to pay when I break this to the princess...!”

The Doctor's expression darkened. “Excuse me, but I think you’re failing to realize something, Miss Sparkle. The changelings left, yes, but who’s to say that they wouldn’t come back? They might… or they might not. But I never take chances. Ever. So, I went up there and made absolute sure that they wouldn’t come back—not as long as the Doctor is protecting this planet. You see, leaving is good. Never coming back? That’s better.”

”…” Twilight released a drawn-out sigh. “Fine. Whatever. I’m just so exhausted right now, and I’m a bit cranky, okay? I haven't slept in days. As long as you came back, and nothing else is wrong… then fine. I'll just tell Celestia later that you were getting an ice cream on Canis-12 or something…” She looked around the crater that the TARDIS rested in. “And could you please move your machine somewhere before somepony else does? Sheesh…”

“Ah, see, well…” The Doctor nervously tugged at the collar of his vest. “That will be a slight problem. A lot of the control consoles are broken because of the Drone that infiltrated the TARDIS, so several of her systems are down right now. I barely managed to navigate her through the Vortex because of it.”

Twilight facehoofed, once again. “Ugh, if it’s broken, just… fix it! It’s your time machine; you should know how to fix it!”

“Time machine…?” Colgate repeated to herself, awed by the sight of such a thing. That big blue box was a time machine? As in, could go into the future, and past, and stuff? But… how was that possible? She'd only thought such things were the realm of myths and legends… She was aware of spells that could manipulate time, but only to limited degrees…

“But it will take time! A bit ironic, I know, since it’s a time machine and all, but that TARDIS isn’t going anywhere without proper maintenance! I won’t let her!”

The unicorn huffed. “Well, then at least move it somewhere so it’s not in the middle of the market square—wait… ‘her’?”

“The TARDIS, of course! She is capable of semi-sentience you know.” As if to bring home the point, the Doctor stroked a hoof across the side of the box in a gentle, tender fashion. "There there girl, you're a good TARDIS, yes you are…"

“Your machine is a…” Twilight paused, a dumbfounded expression plastered on her features, and shook her head vigorously to banish the thought. “Never mind. If you won't move it until it's fixed, then I’ll just have to fix it myself, then.”

“Ah… er… Miss Twilight, I don’t think that will be necessary—”

The Doctor was rudely ignored as Twilight pushed him aside, and she walked straight into the still-smoking void that led inside the box. Still stammering minor objections, the Time Lord followed the purple unicorn inside as well, and vanished behind the curtain of smoke.

Colgate was shocked, amazed, and completely bewildered all at the same time. Did those two just walk into a blue box that had just crash-landed here not even three minutes ago? Wasn’t that… well… not so safe? And how could those two possibly fit in there?! It’s barely wide enough for a single pony, let alone two!

“Hey! Colgate! What are you doing over there still?” the voice of Carrot Top called out from behind her. “The Doc and Twilight can handle whatever it is. Come on, me and Derpy are gonna go get some lunch! Wanna come with?”

“…Uh, yeah, coming!” Colgate called out in reply, though she didn’t avert her eyes from the blue box and the mysterious vanishing ponies. ‘Time machine… Can it really be possible? That Doctor… So, there are other ponies that can control time…?’

The blue unicorn shook her head, and turned away to follow Carrot Top and Derpy. But still, there was that nagging feeling that was tugging at the corner of her mind…