A Tale of Two Doctors

John Smith recounted his tale loss and betrayal from the Changelings failed assault on Canterlot to the point where Twilight attacked them outside of the library.

“My heart is bleeding.” Rainbow Dash muttered dryly with a look of apathy plastered across her face.

“I still can’t believe you gave it a name…” Twilight murmured.

“Twilight,” The Doctor sighed. “This is the kind of kneejerk reaction I’ve come to expect of Rainbow Dash, but you’re supposed to be more patient and open-minded…I thought you’d be more reasonable than this.”

“I am reasonable,” she insisted. “To a point; despite you coming here with a vicious monster, against my better judgment I let you two inside and this…thing feeds us some wild sob story filled with crocodile tears-so credit where it’s due-and now, you actually expect us to help it?”

“Why do you hate me so much?” The Changeling asked under his breath.

“Why? WHY!?” Twilight repeated incredulously. “I don’t know, let’s see-you’ve attacked my brother and sister-in-law, your Queen tried to murder Princess Celestia, and during your siege on Canterlot you’ve racked up more fatalities and crippling injuries than any war in recent Pony history and you’re standing here asking me why I don’t trust you?”

“Right, stupid question.” He muttered in defeat.

“Why can’t you just give him a chance?” The Doctor demanded.

“Because he hasn’t earned it!” Twilight countered.

“And Discord has?”

“That wasn’t our decision!” Twilight snapped. “Princess Celestia ordered us to try and reform Discord because she thought his magic would benefit others…but, none of us aside from Fluttershy actually believe that he can or is even willing to be reformed!”

“So in other words; if I brought you written letter from Celestia ordering you to give him a chance you would do as she asks?” he pressed.

“Do you?” she challenged.

“No, but that’s not the point-if I had a letter from her with those specific instructions-would you follow them?”

She seemed to think about it for a minute before offering her reply.

“No.”

“No?” The Doctor and Rainbow Dash repeated simultaneously in shock.

“That’s right.” Twilight replied. “I have all of the respect in the world for Princess Celestia-but, she admitted herself that she’s not perfect-and I’m convinced that she’s wrong about Discord and that she’d be wrong about this, too.”

Rainbow Dash’s jaw dropped open at Twilight’s words, while she did agree with her on both counts it was difficult for her to comprehend Twilight Sparkle-the biggest teacher’s pet she had ever known of all ponies-to say, let alone think things like this about her mentor.

But, then again-she had been quite vocal about her opinion when Celestia brought Discord back to Ponyville with her…

Dash shook her head, all of this thinking was making her head hurt-she was a world class athlete-not one of those eggheads that thought about weird stuff all the time.

She then began to fly upstairs, she needed to lie down.

The Doctor then turned back to John Smith.

“Go wait for me in the TARDIS, I think it would be best if Twilight and I spoke in private for a moment.”

“Okay,” he readily agreed, wishing that The Doctor would have let him do that in the first place to avoid all of this unnecessary drama.

But, perhaps that was one thing about ponies he’d never understand.

Changelings occasionally required companionship with each other as well as there food source, they were social creatures after all, but this obsession with friendship that these ponies seemed to have with their misplaced trust in one another is what he found the most disturbing.

For as long as any Changeling could remember, his species had focused solely on parasitism and mutual parasitism where two or more Changelings would become acquainted long enough to suit their own physical needs and then be on their way without any distractions of ‘love’ or ‘loyalty’ to any other but the Queen.

Twilight watched the Changeling carefully as it exited the library before turning to face The Doctor.

“Look,” she sighed. “I know you think that you’re doing the right thing…and maybe you’re right…but, I just want you to keep in mind that he is still a Changeling and it is in their nature to be deceptive-that’s how they’ve survived here in Equestria for so long.”

“I am aware.”

“It’s just…I almost lost my brother to them…and I know that makes me a little bias, but I don’t want to lose a friend because of this, so I won’t fight you anymore on this…just promise me you’ll be careful, okay?”

“I’m over nine hundred years old, I think I’m more than capable of taking care of myself.” He chuckled.

Twilight’s concerned expression was still there.

“Alright,” he sighed. “I promise I’ll be careful-scout’s honor.”

He gave a salute which seemed to relieve her.

“Good.”

The Doctor then began heading upstairs to Twilight’s room, which was quite large with a few windows, a balcony with a telescope on it surrounded by a few books on astronomy as well as a bed with a spread covered in various constellations that he recognized.

Lying on top of it was Rainbow Dash with her eyes screwed shut and a hoof placed over her forehead, giving the impression that she was suffering some form of severe migraine.

“Rainbow Dash?” he asked.

“Whaaat?” she replied in annoyed tone.

“I met a mare earlier…a Pegasus, actually who was delivering the mail…she said her name was Derpy Hooves and that she went to flight school with you-”

Suddenly, she shot up to the point where she was sitting straight.

“Derpy?” she repeated.

“Yeah, she said that she went to flight school with you and Fluttershy.”

“Yeah,” Dash put her hooves behind her head as she lay back down.

“I kinda felt bad for her-jerks always picked on me because my stunts didn’t always work out-they started calling me ‘Rainbow Crash’.”

“Ouch.”

She shrugged.

“It was annoying, but it didn’t really hurt that much…but, Fluttershy and Derpy were always sensitive…even as fillies.”

“There were these three guys in particular; Dumb-Bell who liked to be called Billy for obvious reasons, I can’t seem to remember the name of the other one but, he had some kind of food for his Cutie Mark, and then there was Hoops; the ringleader and my arch-rival throughout flight school.”

“And these were the bullies that picked on you three?”

“Well, Fluttershy and Derpy mostly because they were easy targets; Fluttershy started off as a pretty weak flier which is why they started calling her ‘Klutzershy’ and once she got decent enough at it, they began picking on her for being so quiet all the time.”

“But, you stood up for her?”

“Whenever I could, yeah.”

“What does that mean?”

“During our teenage years I wasn’t in flight school anymore,” she narrowed her gaze at The Doctor before he could ask the question. “I DIDN’T get kicked out.”

“So you graduated early, then?”

“No…” her cheeks flushed red as she averted her gaze.

“Then you dropped out.”

“Uh…yeah!” she added quickly. “I figured they couldn’t teach me anything else I hadn’t already figured out myself, so I didn’t really need them anymore and staying would’ve just been a waste of time.”

The Doctor gave her a suspicious look as a few droplets of sweat ran down her forehead.

“Is it hot in here to you?” she chuckled nervously. “Because it is HOT!”

She was obviously lying, as even if that had been the case her loyalty wouldn’t have allowed her to abandon her friends for anything, especially when she knew that they were going through such great emotional turmoil.

But, he decided to let it go-he wasn’t her to interrogate her about the reason she had gotten kicked out of flight school (although, undoubtedly it had something to do with a discipline problem given her temper and what he’d heard about these bullies)-it wasn’t hard to put two and two together.

“What were saying about Derpy?” The Doctor prompted.

“Huh? Oh yeah, she got the worst of it…when we were kids people thought she was either stupid or blind…sometimes both and it didn’t help much that like Fluttershy she was also a bit of a clumsy flier at first.”

“That’s terrible.”

“Oh, it gets worse-stupid parents wanted to take their kids out of school, like they thought she had some kind of disease or something that they could catch, some prudes even demanding that she be banned from the school because they found her too ‘offensive’ for anyone in their ‘perfect world’ to look at.”

She stopped to see the horrified look on The Doctor’s face.

“They didn’t do it, of course-they were actually cool for once and said that they supported an ‘equal rights learning environment for all students willing to learn regardless of age, race, or sexual orientation as long as they were willing to learn, follow the rules, and blah, blah, blah.”

“I’m sensing there’s a ‘but’ in here somewhere, though.” He cut in.

“But,” she sighed. “That wasn’t good enough for them and they threatened to take it all the way up to Celestia, who pretty much said the same thing and told them they could shove it.”

“She did not say that.”

Dash shrugged.

“In my version she did.”

“Anyway, if you know teenagers then you could probably guess the teasing only got worse through high school when they began calling her ‘retard’ and other things like that, at one point she began crying and they chased her down to ground level as she tried hiding in a tree.”

“What happened?”

“They landed and surrounded it, which was around the point I came around when I saw them chuck a hoofball at her which bounced of her head as she began trembling like she was about to fall of the branch she was clinging onto…and that’s when I just lost it.”

“What did you do?”

“Well, anyone else would probably say that I just lost my temper but, actually that didn’t even come close to how angry I was…I hated those guys at that moment…I probably would’ve killed them if I hadn’t blacked out.”

“Blacked out?” he repeated.

“Yeah, you know how someone will say that when they get angry they’ll ‘only see red’? Well, it was kind of like seeing things through a haze of blood…or maybe I just popped a blood vessel in one of my eyes or something-either way, all of the adrenaline rushing through me must’ve dulled the pain-it probably wasn’t very smart attacking when they had me outnumbered three-to-one, but I didn’t really care at that point…it’s really all just a blur after that.”

“And when you came to?”

“I woke up in a bed in the Ponyville Hospital covered in bandages and bruises with a broken wing, broken nose, and a broken arm with the mother of all shiners and my two best friends sitting next to me…Derpy pretty much threw her arms around me with tears in her eyes…which really hurt, by the way-she seemed totally fine and Fluttershy told me that she found us after I passed out and those three jerks took off, but from the looks of them I put a real number on them before everything went dark.”

“It sounds like the three of you were really close.”

“We still are and we still hang out sometimes, it’s just that Derpy doesn’t hang around us as much because she wants to prove that she can take care of herself now, which I totally get but, Fluttershy still tries to baby her sometimes before I tell her to knock it off…”

“Why would they run away from Fluttershy?”

“Well, they weren’t running away from her specifically-they were probably afraid that whoever she got help from would report them to the principal or something and they’d get kicked out of flight school and off the hoofball team well, they’d be really embarrassed if word got around that they got beat up by a girl, ‘Rainbow Crash’ of all ponies…again.”

“Again?” The Doctor pried.

“It was back when we were kids, never mind…it’s not important…don’t you have a thing you’re supposed to be doing?”

“Oh!” he’d been so wrapped up in Dash’s story and so keen to learn more about Derpy that he’d forgotten all about John Smith, The Changelings, and Queen Chrysalis.

He had turned to leave before Dash’s voice stopped him.

“Doctor?”

He turned back around to face her.

“I don’t know what you’re planning with Derpy…but, I wanted you to know that I don’t care even if you are some sort of all-powerful ‘Time King’ or whatever…if you hurt her in ANY way I’ll find you and you’ll be sorry.”

“That’s ‘Time Lord’” he corrected. “And I’ll be sure to keep that in mind.”