Chapters Derpy and Lyra trotted through the streets of Ponyville, about a body’s length behind the Doctor himself. The Doctor was searching for a store that would sell him some blue paint that matched the color of the TARDIS exterior. The sun was beginning to set, and night was quickly approaching. As a result, many storefronts were packing up, and shops began to close down.
“Doctor, I think it’s a bit late, you’ll have to try again tomorrow!” Derpy called up to him.
“Not too much of a problem, considering,” he said, “but since I’ve taken the time to come all the way out here I’d like to get this done and over with now.”
He found a shop that had not yet closed, and entered inside. Derpy and Lyra followed.
They were inside a hobby shop, with small model kits and plastic vehicles on display. The place had a very colorful feel to it, though it was dimly lit as half the lights were shut off. There was nopony at the counter, but the Doctor went about searching in the paints section anyways.
“I used to have one of these,” Lyra remarked, picking up a cardboard box. The front displayed a drawing of a metallic warship, marked with Gryphon insignia. The model was of a Gryphon warship from decades prior, still popular among naval model enthusiasts.
“It looks like the one in the pictures from the Daring Do books,” Derpy noted. She glanced over her shoulder toward the Doctor, who was frowning.
“Something the matter, Doctor?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he said, “these paints are pitifully small.”
He held up a small glass jar in his hoof, which contained barely enough paint to cover a single letter on the side of the TARDIS.
“Y’know,” Lyra said, “If you’re trying to paint wood, you’d be better off with wood paint from the hardware store.”
“Maybe,” the Doctor said. He placed the item back on the shelf, and paced in front of the paint shelf.
From somewhere behind the counter came a thudding noise, and a brief flash of light from under the crack of the door. Derpy recognized it as a similar light to the one she had seen in the Mayor’s office.
The door opened, and a middle-aged looking mare trotted out. She had very wide eyes, and an almost zombie-like stare. She shifted her head from side to side, taking in all three of the ponies on the other side of the store counter.
“We’re closed!” she growled to the closest pony, who was Lyra.
“Oh,” replied Lyra, “You still had the flag up outside though...”
“It’s a mistake, now get out!” the mare ordered, her stare twitching.
The Doctor positioned himself in front of the counter, drawing the mare’s attention. The two stared at each other, in a battle between the sharp perceptive stare of the Doctor and the mare’s creepy blank stare. The mare lost, blinking repeatedly and becoming angry when the three didn’t leave her store.
“I told you to get lost!” she yelled, shooing the three ponies out the door and slamming it shut behind them. The glass door clicked, and shortly after a blind closed.
Lyra, the Doctor, and Derpy stood outside, perplexedly blinking at each other.
****
By the time the three were heading back toward Carrot Top’s cottage, the sun had set in the sky completely. A faint orange glow on the horizon was all that remained, guiding them on the dirt path to the cottage.
“I’ll just pop forward a day and get the paint, get it done in tomorrow’s daylight and then come back this evening,” the Doctor said, “then we’re all set to go.”
Derpy paused, standing at the threshold of the cottage. Lyra had already gone inside before her.
“If it’s all the same to you, Doctor, I think I owe Carrot Top some of my time and attention,” she said, “If it’s all the same to you, I’ll just hook up with you in the morning.”
The Doctor nodded slowly. He stepped forward, shaking Derpy’s hoof quickly.
“Alright then,” he said, “Tell your friend Lyra that she’s got to be ready in the morning if she wants to go travelling and all.”
“I will,” Derpy said, “See you tomorrow, Doctor!”
She closed the door and went inside, leaving the Doctor to round the back side of the cottage off in the direction of his TARDIS.
Carrot Top sat atop a pillow in her sitting room, listening to the radio warbling an orchestral tune while she knit. Derpy took a seat as well, smiling to her tired-looking friend.
“How are you doing?” she asked.
“Better than earlier,” Carrot Top admitted, “I took a little nap, and I’m feeling a lot better.”
There was a pause. Derpy didn’t know if she should speak next or not, but it was Carrot Top that continued the conversation.
“Derpy, I just want to say that I’m sorry for freaking out at that stallion earlier,” she said, “I was... I was stressed out. I’ve been stressed out all week and...”
“and?”
“And I’m just really glad that you’re safe, that’s all,” Carrot Top concluded, smiling back to Derpy, “I saw the blue box thing when he showed it to Lyra and... it’s.... I can’t even believe it.”
Derpy nodded. She wanted to broach the subject of her and Lyra both going about travelling with the Doctor in the morning, but decided against it. Not now, at least.
Carrot Top switched out the yarn she was using for another color, at the same time that the music ended. A newer song started up soon after it, a swing piece with a faster tempo and driving brass. Carrot Top’s head bobbed to the beat of the music, and her knitting needles worked themselves in a sort of tempo.
It was then that the Doctor burst into the room, breathless and upset-looking.
“Oh..... hello Doctor,” Carrot Top said with a frown, “Is something the matter?”
“You bet something’s the matter,” he fumed, “The TARDIS is gone.”
Carrot Top, Derpy, and Lyra all followed in the Doctor’s trail this time as he set about circling the cottage, looking in every sizable space and every corner for the TARDIS. With every corner he turned that did not contain the blue box he grew angrier.
“You said it was a... a spaceship, right?” Carrot Top suggested, “Maybe you forgot to park it right and it just zoomed off on it’s own?”
The Doctor shook his head. He gave her credit for trying to be helpful, but she was totally clueless. Finding no trace of the TARDIS in the pony’s back yard, he withdrew his own key and the sonic screwdriver from his coat pockets.
“What’s that?” Lyra asked.
“Screwdriver, but sonic,” he said, pressing down on the side of it and holding the lit blue end at the head of the TARDIS key, “Kind of a multi-function tool really. I packed it full of all sorts of little gadgets and functions.”
The key glowed bright gold for a moment, but then faded gradually. The Doctor held the key aloft in front of himself, waiting for it to glow again. It did so very slowly.
“Here Derpy, take a key. Lyra, you share one with Carrot Top, hold onto it carefully,” the Doctor said, “They’re connected to the TARDIS, and I’ve got them homing in on it’s signal. See the glowing bit there, how it pulsates slowly?”
Derpy held her key up to her face, watching it glow with a bright golden light out of the creeping darkness.
“That’ll get faster the closer we get to the TARDIS.”
“Like a metal detector?” Lyra suggested, holding the key she had been given in front of Carrot Top’s face.
“I suppose,” he said, “Let’s get started.”
The four walked along the dirt road outside the cottage, along the edge of the woodlands. The key seemed to pulsate a very slight amount quicker, but it still seemed sluggish and distant. As they trotted along the road, the key began to lead them on a direction away from the village of Ponyville, and closer to the forests.
They stopped on the edge of a tangled and overgrown section of the forests: the Everfree. The Everfree Forests were notorious for being dangerous and unruly, and as a general rule ponies avoided going in there.
Derpy remembered childhood stories of foals that ventured into the woods, only to never be seen again. The prospect of going in there was daunting, and one she was not looking forward too.
“Doctor, I’m not sure about this,” Carrot Top said, shying away from the forest’s edge, “If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather go back to my cottage.”
The Doctor looked back to her, raising an eyebrow. He took a moment to glance at the others, noticing Derpy’s uncomfortable expression. Sighing, he took his companion aside for a moment.
“Listen,” he said in a low voice that the others couldn’t hear, “If you really don’t want to go into the Everfree Forests, I understand.”
“You do?”
“Yeah,” he said, “So I’ll tell you what- why don’t you keep your friend Carrot Top company while Lyra and I press on. We’ll find the TARDIS soon enough, and pop back to the cottage in no time. Sound fair enough?”
Derpy nodded. The Doctor patted her on the back, and several moments later he and Lyra saw Derpy and Carrot Top walking back up the road in the direction of the cottage. The two then continued to the edge of the Everfree, walking in as the key’s pulsation guided them deeper into the woods.
“So Lyra, you ever been in these woods before?” the Doctor asked, stepping over a rotted log lying over the forest floor.
“No,” Lyra admitted, “But I believe the stories. Well, some of them.”
“Which ones?” he asked.
“Well, there’s one about a manticore living somewhere in here. Another story has it that there’s a scaly monster that turns ponies into stone statues, but it gets confused with tales of a mystical dragon living in a system of caves,” she rattled off, ducking through the ever-thickening tree coverage and low hanging branches.
“It doesn’t bother you any?” asked the Doctor, “You’re not scared of them?”
“Strange monsters and creatures are one of my hobbies, Doctor,” she admitted, “Yeah they’re supposedly dangerous, but I think it’d be cool to see one for myself.”
They stopped in the center of a small clearing on the forest floor. Ferns and brambles grew up to neck height all around them, leaving the two craning their heads to see what lie ahead in any direction.
The key was pulsing much quicker now, with a steady rhythm that increased the deeper they plunged into the dark woods. The flat grassy clearing led to thicker tangles of bushes and shrubs, and branches that formed a tough-to-navigate thicket. Twigs cracked beneath the pair’s hooves, and they began to make their way up a rocky incline.
Somewhere nearby, a stream gurgled. The Doctor and Lyra were now atop a rocky hillside, facing a waterfall and a semi-deep pool. The key’s flashing seemed to be drawing them toward that waterfall, and as they neared it it began to pulsate in the quickest succession yet.
“We’re getting close,” the Doctor said, “Hope you don’t mind getting wet.”
The Doctor led the way through the waterfall, which had covered a tight crevice in the rocky hillside. The inside was dark, and barely wide enough for them to fit through. The Doctor gave the key over to Lyra, and clutched the sonic screwdriver in his teeth, holding down the button so that the bright blue end acted as a flashlight of sorts.
Inside the crevice was a cavern of sorts, with jagged rock faces and low ceilings. It wasn’t the type of place one could find bats, but the floor was wet and a stream ran through it. This forced the Doctor and Lyra to wade in water less than a few centimeters deep in some places, but in others all the way up to their stomachs.
Lyra was a bit uncomfortable in the cramped cavern. She felt jagged rocks scraping against her sides, and at one point she hit her head rather forcefully on a jutting stalactite, after which she held her head low and was wary of every protrusion. At one point, she felt something underwater scuttle by her hooves.
“I felt something on my hooves,” she told the Doctor, “what is it?”
“I felt them too,” he replied, “It’s probably crayfish.”
“Crayfish?”
“Yeah,” he said, “Like miniature lobsters, they are. Too bad you lot are all herbivores, I’ve heard they’re quite tasty.”
“That’s gross,” Lyra said, “You eat meat? What are you, part gryphon?”
“No, I’m a Timelord,” the Doctor replied, ducking beneath a rather large stalactite, “We resembled ponies, but our internal organs and physiology is much different. I’ve got two hearts.”
“You’re joking.”
“Am not!” the Doctor protested. He stopped himself, as they had come to section where the water fell from somewhere above. There was a dead end ahead, but a hole above them that allowed water to flow down existed, though with barely enough room for one of them to squeeze through at a time.
The Doctor lifted Lyra up onto his back so she could go through the hole first, allowing her to climb up and help lift him up from the surface up higher.
They were now in a more spacious cave of some kind, and in the dim light from the screwdriver the Doctor could see organic greenish material coating the floor of the cave, and head of it piled up among rocks and boulders. The material was sticky and clung to their hooves as they walked over it.
“Eew, what is this stuff?” Lyra said, trying to scrape the greenish material off her hooves and legs, “It’s sticking to me all over.”
“Looks like a mucus of some kind, definitely from an animal rather than plant fibers,” the Doctor guessed. He had taken the key back from Lyra by this point, and held it aloft. It was flashing very rapidly now; they were close to the TARDIS.
“So, if this stuff all over the place is mucus,” wondered Lyra, “Does that mean we’re in something’s belly?”
The Doctor snorted, and kicked at the ground beneath him to demonstrate a point.
“Feel the ground? That’s solid rock, that is. I’m guessing that if this were something’s digestive tract, you wouldn’t see solid rock and this greenish stuff,” he explained, “Does the skin under your fur burn?”
“No....?”
“So that stuff’s not acidic. That is to stay, it isn’t here to break down matter. Whatever this stuff is, it’s likely been deposited in this cave by another creature, or a group of them.”
They stopped walking as the key ceased blinking entirely, instead glowing brightly. The Doctor dug at the gravel and sand beneath his hooves, frowning.
“That’s odd,” he said, “According to this we should be right on top of the TARDIS...”
He looked about anxiously, pointing the sonic to illuminate the empty corners and hoping to see a large blue box. Lyra paced around the spot, eyes following the light created by the whizzing end of the sonic screwdriver. She then got an idea, and drew her attention to the roof of the ceiling.
Hung from the roof were clusters of greenish pods, similar to the cocoons built by caterpillars. The rocky ceiling was totally covered in very large cocoons, and right above the spot on which they stood was the largest cocoon of them all, containing a blue police box inside.
The Doctor followed Lyra’s gaze and whistled, impressed.
“That’s not something you see everyday.”
The scarlet scarf wrapped around Derpy’s neck a bit loosely, and draped down to her hooves on each side. She removed it and re-wrapped it again, bringing it twice around her neck to shorten the ends out, and observed herself in the mirror.
“It’s nice,” she commented.
Carrot Top smiled, glad that Derpy admired her work.
“It’s yours,” she said, “I figure... y’know, it must get cold in outer space and all.”
“A bit, yeah,” Derpy said, seating herself on a pillow once again, “It’s funny, a day or so back we were back in the time of Starswirl the bearded, and-”
“Who’s that again?” Carrot Top interrupted, raising an eyebrow. Her history wasn’t the best.
“Somepony from before Equestria,” explained Derpy, “You know in those pageants how it got all snowy and the three tribes had to bond together and get over their bickering?”
“Yeah,”
“Well, we were around that time, and it was freezing ,” she continued, “I picked up a coat that was stashed away in a wardrobe of sorts real quick, I didn’t really get to see it until I was outside. It looked hideous! Kept me warm a bit, but it was like somepony cut up half a dozen overcoats of every color and pattern and sewed them back together like Frankenstein.”
Carrot Top blinked, trying to imagine the sight of Derpy waltzing about looking like a clown while trying to save the world. It was fitting to the pony’s slightly klutzy demeanour, if totally irreverent toward important historical events. It was also incredibly amusing to picture.
The gardener pony walked back into her kitchen briefly, returning with a pitcher full of tea and a couple of ceramic cups bouncing on her withers. She set the pitcher down, dropped the cups carefully next to Derpy, and proceeded to pour each of them a glass.
“So the mayor election is the day after next,” Carrot Top reminded Derpy between blowing on the hot tea to cool it down, “are you planning on sticking around to vote?”
Derpy considered this. She had been so engaged and excited with her travels through time and space that she hadn’t considered who to vote for. She knew of Mayor Bowler the incumbent, but had forgotten all about the opposition.
Come to think of it, even before leaving she hadn’t heard much support for an opponent.
“Who’s running against Bowler?” she voiced, “I don’t remember.”
“Miss Gavel, I believe,” Carrot Top replied, “though now that you mention it, I haven’t heard much campaigning out of her. It’s like she’s not really trying; no banners, no speeches, nothing! I passed her in the street the other day while I was buying a basket of apples from the Apple family and she just gave me a blank stare.”
That reminded Derpy of the odd mare in the hobby shop who had stared at them and acted funny, which in turn reminded her of the green flashes of light in the hobby shop and in the mayor’s office. They all seemed connected somehow, and she began to realize that these odd events were significant and secret.
“Carrot Top,” she began, “Have you noticed anypony else acting strange? Odd flashes of green light?”
She nodded, taking a moment to sip her tea and then placing the cup back down on a nearby cork coaster.
“This past Tuesday I went to the library, and I wanted to check out the next edition of a novel series I’ve been working on. You know how the stairs goes up to the place where whoever the current librarian is resides, right?”
“Yeah,” Derpy responded, “I don’t know how the old pony manages it.”
“Well he wasn’t at the desk, so I called up and made a bit of noise. The lights started flickering up there, I think it was greenish... and then he came down, wide-eyed and a bit flustered.”
Derpy’s heart sank. There was definitely something going on, and she didn’t like the sound of it. She really wished the Doctor would hurry up and come back.
****
“Alright Doctor, give me a boost!”
Lyra stood on the Doctor’s back, standing on the back hooves and trying to touch the bottom of the cocoon enveloping the TARDIS. It seemed less than a meter away from the tip of her hooves if she stretched them up above her head all the way, but that wasn’t doing them any good.
“What’re you gonna do if..... that thing busts open and..... you’ve got a TARDIS landing right on top of you?” grunted the Doctor, “I can’t arch my back any higher than that, I’m sorry.”
Sighing, Lyra jumped down off the Doctor’s back and landed on all four hooves.
“So....” she said, “How does a time machine end up inside an underground rock cave inside a cocoon anyways? You’d think it’d be too heavy to move, let alone stick to the ceiling.”
The Doctor took a moment to catch his breath, taking a small metal flask out of his jacket pocket and chugging some water. He then stretched a hoof out to Lyra, offering a sip. She shook her head, and he pocketed the item again.
“I’ve been wondering the same thing,” he admitted. His eyes scanned the ceiling away from the cocoon containing the TARDIS and toward the other ones. They were much more numerous, and much smaller. He couldn’t see the contents in the darkness, so he drew the sonic screwdriver once more and flicked it on with the highest available brightness setting.
What he saw was chilling. Each and every cocoon contained a different pony, suspended in some kind of material with closed eyes as if asleep. Lyra gasped, noticing even more pods piled up about the cave containing unconscious ponies.
“What happened to them?” she cried as she recoiled in disgust, “Why are they all stuck inside cocoons?!”
The Doctor’s expression hardened, and his ever-present smile melted into a frown. He recognized this work all too well, as he had encountered this species during his fifth incarnation centuries prior. He hadn’t expected to find them here, or now.
“Changelings,” he answered, “These ponies are being kept- preserved if you will- inside these cocoons by changeling. They capture you, and knock you out, then you’re inside a cocoon until they need you. In the meantime they’re out there swanning about pretending to be you.”
Lyra frowned. She hadn’t ever heard of a changeling before, and odd creatures was one of her interests.
“Why do they need to do that?” she asked. The question was answered by a reverberating low voice from the corner, unseen in the darkness up to now.
“Because,” the voice said, “we needed to infiltrate this society.”
The Doctor lit his screwdriver’s point, illuminating the corner and revealing a blackish pony with wide, blue eyes and legs that were full of holes. It was flanked by another two darkish ponies, wings spread.
The first changeling leaped ahead, striking the Doctor as the other two attacked Lyra. The sonic screwdriver fell to the ground out of the Doctor’s hooves, and the cave was plunged into total darkness.
****
The night rolled on, and when neither the Doctor nor Lyra showed up, Derpy grew more worried. Carrot Top eventually grew tired of listening to the radio, and so contented herself to reading a novel quietly.
Derpy looked at the clock. It was 8:55 at night, an hour and a half after they had left Lyra and the Doctor. Trying to occupy herself, she picked up a book at random off the bookshelf that sat against the wall. It was Daring Do and the Curse of the Lost Tomb , one of the books she had already read.
She flipped it open to chapter one, and started to read.
8:57
She had made it past the first page, but hadn’t actually absorbed any of the information. She tried flipping the page back again, starting over from the first word.
8:58
She still wasn’t able to focus on the words. With a groan, she returned the book to it’s shelf and contented herself to lay down on the pillow, burying her face in it and waiting. The only sounds were the ticking of the clock, and the occasional turn of the page as Carrot Top read to herself.
9:00 arrived with the chiming of a cuckoo clock, and Derpy could no longer take it.
“That’s all I can take, and I can’t take no more!” Derpy cried, standing herself up and pacing, “They’ve been gone for too long, something awful must have happened!”
Carrot Top rolled her eyes.
“Derpy,” she said, “They’ve got a time machine, right? If it brought you back here a week later than you wanted, what’s a couple of hours?”
Derpy disagreed. Something felt... off . She remembered the TARDIS key hanging around her neck, and decided to gallop out the cottage’s front doors and into the middle of the dirt path. She held the key aloft, watching and waiting.
It pulsed for a moment, slowly.
“The TARDIS is still out there, see that?!” she yelled back to Carrot Top from outside, “I’m going to go after them to see what’s taking so long.”
“Derpy, no!” cried Carrot Top, darting outside and grasping Derpy’s back hooves, trying to physically tug the pony back inside the cottage.
“You don’t know what’s in that forest,” she worried, “If something bad got them, it could get you too! You could vanish into the darkness of the night without so much as a trace, and we’d never know what happened.”
Derpy slunk back inside. Carrot Top was right, as much as she was eager to find the Doctor and Lyra, she didn’t want to trap herself as well. Besides, perhaps the pulsating key didn’t mean the TARDIS was still materialized at that moment. The Doctor hadn’t specified what would happen to the keys once the TARDIS was up and running once more.
She’d have to wait until morning to go looking if they still weren’t there.
A beam of light had found it’s way into the cave through a very small crack in the wall, illuminating the cocoons stacked on the floor and suspended from the ceiling. The shaft of sunlight focused on a particular spot on the floor of the cave, running over a fresh cocoon and penetrating the outer skin enough to illuminate the closed eye of the pony contained within.
Sensing the bright light source against his eyelid, the Doctor’s eyes snapped open. He gazed out through a thick fluid, mind churning while his senses came back to him.
He and Lyra had been trapped inside cocoons by the changelings inside the cave. In the back of his mind he wondered why he had regained consciousness, though it probably had something to do with his Timelord physiology. He tried moving about, reaching with a hoof and pressing against the side of the cocoon. Unable to puncture the side, he began shifting his weight.
The cocoon shifted a few centimeters on the floor of the cave. The Doctor tried again, throwing more of his weight against the side of the cocoon. It rolled over more, and he now found himself upside down and facing away from the light source. He tried standing up inside the cocoon unsuccessfully, but managed to place himself in the right position to roll it a bit more.
The cocoon had rolled on top of an object on the floor of the cave. The Doctor flipped himself to face the ground once more, feeling the indentation in the cocoon’s edge caused by the object. Cylindrical and small, it created a spot of blue light when pressed against with a hoof.
He had rolled over the sonic screwdriver.
The Doctor pressed the sonic’s button again, trying to shift it into a specific function. Immediately, the bright end grew brighter and hot, burning a hole through the side of the cocoon pressed against it. The hole reached the sac of fluid, causing it to drain out onto the floor.
The Doctor’s lungs began to work once more. Why had they stopped while he was suspended inside the cocoon? It wasn’t particularly important now. Taking a deep breath, the Doctor stretched his legs and threw the remnants of the cocoon off from himself. Wiping the remains of the fluids off his leather coat, he scooped up the sonic screwdriver and got to work on Lyra’s cocoon.
The glowing end of the sonic burned a hole in her cocoon in no time at all, and as soon as the fluids drained from the pod Lyra was coughing and sputtering, slowly regaining her consciousness.
“Doctor.... where... where am I?” she groaned, trying to stand up on wobbly legs and peel the remnants of the cocoon away.
“Still in the cave, I think,” he replied, lending a hoof to extricate her, “A couple of dodgy creatures attacked us... changelings I think they were....”
Lyra shook her mane, retching at her own smell and the slimy material stuck to her. She found the wall of the cave in the dim lighting and rubbed her sides against it in an unsuccessful attempt to scrape the ick off.
“What’s a changeling?” she finally asked. She had regained most of her senses ny now, and stood near the small crack in the wall through which light poured in.
“Small black creature, full of holes and capable of mimicking other creatures’ appearance,” answered the Doctor, “They’re kind of like what ponies would be like if they were insectoid instead of mammalian. These cocoons are meant to preserve the ponies they’ve replaced... maybe I told you that bit already, I don’t remember. My memory’s a bit foggy at the moment while I’m waking up. Let’s see.... what year is it?”
“1999,” Lyra said, “and....wait for it.... I think it’s election day. Depends on how long we’ve been asleep.”
“Can’t be that long, with memory coming back as fast as that,” the Doctor noted, “More than a few day’s worth of hibernation would take hours to recover from, not minutes.”
He took the sonic screwdriver out again, and used the blue light to search the unlit corners of the cave, searching for more changelings. When he found none, his attention shifted to the crack in the wall.
“How’s your geology, Lyra?”
“Middling,” she said with a shrug, “Why?”
“Caves on this planet.. what’d you say they’re made out of?”
“Uhh.... limestone?”
The Doctor nodded. Sedimentary rock, made up of long-dead marine organisms. Since it was formed in layers, this would be relatively easy.
“Watch out then,” he said, waiting for Lyra to back herself up against the opposite wall away from the crack.
The Doctor then used the screwdriver against the wall, running the tip both up the side of the wall and then across it again and again. The warbling sound changed pitch at a few points, which the Doctor focused on and changed settings to try to manipulate the rock layers. After a few minutes of this type of activity, the rock wall began to crack in places, and chunks of limestone fell away. The Doctor turned himself around, kicking at the weakened rocks and widening a hole in the side of the cave wall until it was large enough for him to duck through. Lyra herself followed after a moment, crawling through the hole and stepping out into blindingly bright morning sunlight.
“That was cool.... almost like magic!” she remarked, shielding her still-adjusting eyes from the sun.
“No magic involved, just a bit of using science to one’s advantage, it’s a good thing I had the sonic or else we’d be stuck without chisels and wedges,” he joked.
The pair quickly found themselves not far from the edge of the Everfree Forest, and from there they came upon a dirt path leading toward Ponyville. The Doctor had an idea of how to free the TARDIS from it’s own cocoon back in the caves, but it would involve either finding Derpy or borrowing a ladder to reach it.
More troubling was the number of ponies contained within cocoons still. As he walked along the path with Lyra he did the math- he had noticed that there were between fifty and seventy-five ponies trapped in that one cave. Judging by what he had seen of the town so far, it was probably less than 10% of the total population, but he had a nagging fear that there were more hiding places yet undiscovered, and they could be looking at nearly a quarter of the town’s population being changelings if there were.
That didn’t seem like an isolated incident or a small band of changeling raiders, that was a deliberate incursion.
“Doctor,” Lyra said, interrupting his thoughts, “The path branches here, and this way leads to the hospital.”
“Are you sick?” he asked.
“No... but they’ll have showers. I still feel kinda gross from that stuff, I need to be clean before I go into town itself.”
The Doctor conceded, and they started down the path toward Ponyville Hospital.
****
Derpy stood in a crowd of ponies, gathered in front of town hall awaiting the Mayor’s speech. Despite Carrot Top’s best efforts she remained uneasy and worried about the Doctor and Lyra after they had not shown up in the morning.
Regardless, she had agreed to go to town hall and listen to the Mayor’s speech, as well as the speech of the opposing candidate. At the moment, the opposition was wrapping up her speech and Mayor Bowler stood to the side, reading over his notes and removing his hat briefly to wipe his sweaty brow.
“I dunno about her,” Carrot Top quietly admitted, “She’s talked an awful lot about building a new dam for hydroelectric power, but hasn’t said a word about agriculture and health care.”
Derpy wasn’t listening. She was too busy scanning the crowd for a bluish pony with a buzzcut mane and a leather coat. The ponies around her began stomping their hooves on the ground in applause as the greenish mare -the opposition- bowed her head and took a seat to the side. Not long after Mayor Bowler himself stepped up to the podium, sporting his trademark grey bowler hat.
The Mayor was a taller stallion, and his coat was a peachy orange color. His mane had at one point been a reddish brown, but had faded to a greyish color by this point in his life. As the applause died down, he spoke into the microphone at the podium.
“Thank you, citizens of Ponyville,” he began, “As I reminisce about the past four years and all that we’ve accomplished together, I got around to thinking about just what a tight-knit community stands before me today. Ponyville has to be one of the most love-filled communities I’ve ever had the privilege of residing in, and I thank you for that. Every morning when I awake, I feel energized by the love and care that each member of this community holds for their fellow pony.”
“We are on the verge of a major change,” he continued, “It would be imprudent of me not to note that there are only a few months left in the 20th century. Those years behind us have been both good and bad, and this community has felt firsthoof the hardships as well as the successes of this past 100 years. Our small town sprung up in that much time from a small apple-farming operation to a sprawling township, complete with hospitals and bowling alleys and little shops selling novelty quills. Overall, this has been a century of progress and growth for Ponyville, and as we look toward the 21st century we must carry that tradition forward to the future generations....”
“That sounded a bit rushed,” Carrot Top whispered, “I wonder if he wrote this script last night...”
Derpy hadn’t been paying attention. She tried listening to what the mayor was saying now with some difficulty.
“... the recent wave of illnesses has taken us all by surprise. Nopony could have seen Malus Lupus coming, but this town has done incredible work these past few days in combating the virus....”
“What’s he talking about?” Derpy asked, whispering to Carrot Top.
“Oh, it’s this virus thing that’s started spreading around this past week. Not fatal, but if you catch it you’re likely to be bedridden, and you need somepony to care for you the whole time,” she said, “Sparkler got it on Tuesday, and I had to watch over her for that day and Wednesday. She was absolutely helpless until she recovered.”
****
Lyra and the Doctor walked through the Employee’s entrance of the hospital, walking carefully and keeping a low profile. Lyra was first to sneak into the employee restroom to use the shower, leaving the Doctor to keep guard.
He hadn’t stood in the hallway for more than two minutes when he was approached by a wide-eyed stallion.
“Sir, why are you back here?” he asked in a stern voice, “this is supposed to be employees only.”
The Doctor smiled a toothy grin, producing his psychic paper and holding it open with a hoof for the stallion to see.
“This is my identification, I hope it’s sufficient,” he said.
The stallion peered at it carefully, and after a moment nodded in approval.
“Sorry to hold you up like this, inspector. I’ll let you get back to your work.”
The stallion turned to leave, but hadn’t gotten more than a few steps down the hallway before he turned and faced the Doctor again, ready to ask a question.
“If I may, inspector,” he asked, “what should I be doing about visitors?”
“Come again?”
“Well,” he began, “We’ve been swamped by victims of the Malus Lupus virus of late, and when family or friends come to visit they don’t leave. They’ll stay there the entire night, and it’s getting out of hoof.”
“Don’t you have some kind of rule against that?” the Doctor asked, “Visiting hours or something?”
“Yes, but if a patient requests and extension for their visitors they’re required to be given it. These particular patients are demanding it, every one of them. Half the hospital is infected with Malus Lupus , and each one of them wants their loved ones to be with them the entire time. It’s ridiculous and obscene.”
The Doctor’s smile turned into a frown.
“What’s the name of that virus again?” he asked.
“Malus Lupus ,” the stallion said, “Surely you’ve heard of it this past week.”
“The Bad Wolf virus,” muttered the Doctor, “That’s an interesting name..."
Lyra exited the restroom with a wet mane, but was looking refreshed and much cleaner than she had been before. At first she seemed confused by the other stallion with the Doctor, but before she could say anything the Doctor chimed in again.
“Oi! There you are, did you inspect the employee facilities?” he said.
“Oh... um... yes. Quite thoroughly,” replied Lyra.
“Fantastic,” the Doctor said, “Tell you what, I'm suddenly becoming quite interested in tomorrow's election. When does the mayor give a speech?"
Before Lyra could answer, the hospital employee responded.
"Right now, you can listen to his speech on the radio in the lobby if you're interested."
*****
“... the recent wave of illnesses has taken us all by surprise. Nopony could have seen Malus Lupus coming, but this town has done incredible work these past few days in combating the virus. Your love and dedication is hard at work caring for the sick as we speak, and I commend the citizens of this great town for all of their hard work.”
The Doctor listened to the mayor’s words over the radio with growing concern. The situation in this town was like a puzzle to him, and now that he had begun to fit the pieces together he was beginning to see the complete picture.
And what an ugly picture it was.
A new patient was being wheeled past, and as he made eye contact with the Doctor there was a glimmer of recognition in the supposedly sick pony’s eyes. He had seen the Doctor before, and he didn't like him. The Doctor connected the dots. Changelings- creatures that feed on love and attention- were replacing ponies in Ponyville. Suddenly, everypony starts getting bedridden and sick, which requires extra attention from loved ones.
That’s when an idea occurred to the Doctor. Leaving Lyra sitting in the lobby, he quietly began to follow the nurse and the sick pony on a cart down a side hallway as she took him to his room. While doing so, he withdrew the sonic screwdriver from his jacket’s pocket.
He waited as he was brought into the room and tended to by the nurse, leaning his side up against the outside wall and tapping the sonic against his hoof to the beat of a waltz tune running through his head at the moment. Minutes passed, and soon the nurse left the room and proceeded down the hallway with an empty cart.
At this point, the Doctor went to the door of the room, peering in through a grated window at the pony resting in his bed within. He held up the sonic screwdriver, and fiddled with the settings in order to make the whirring sound as intense as possible. He flicked it on, and at that moment the pony in the bed transformed with a flash of green into a changeling.
The Doctor pressed himself against the wall, disengaging the sonic and waiting a few moments. His hypothesis had been confirmed- the sick pony had indeed been a changeling in disguise, and he think he knew why.
He made his way toward the front desk, where a receptionist scribbled on a notepad with a pen suspended by a magic field. The Doctor waited on the other side of the glass for her to notice him.
“Can I help you, sir?” she asked sweetly, smiling at the Doctor. He nodded, holding up the psychic paper against the glass for her to see.
“I just need to pop in there and check a few things, I hope it doesn’t interfere with your work too much,” he said, “I promise it’ll take only a second.”
“Of course inspector,” she said, moving her chair aside. The Doctor rounded the corner and entered the small booth, going right toward the phone and picking it up. He pressed a button that was labeled ‘INTERCOM’, and placed the tip of the sonic screwdriver against it.
What followed was an ear-splitting sound that echoed throughout the entire hospital in every room and on every floor, causing ponies everywhere to clasp their heads in agony and each changeling to unwillingly transform back into their original form. When he had finished, he was struck by the receptionist and thrown violently from the booth.
“You crazy maniac!” she yelled, “You should be ashamed of yourself! What about all of the...”
Alarms began to go off, and around the exits heavy metal doors began to close. The sudden appearance of changelings all over the place had caused the hospital to plunge into the highest level of alert, and the system was designed to seal the exits in case of an outside attack.
“Lyra!” the Doctor cried, grabbing her under her leg and dashing toward the closing door, “Under there now!”
Lyra slid underneath the closing metal door, followed by the Doctor himself as he rolled under with barely enough space. He landed in a heap with Lyra outside on a slab of concrete as the large door slid shut entirely, sealing them both outside the Hospital.
“Come on,” he said, “We’ve got to move fast!”
****
“I’ve said this time and time again,” the Mayor continued, moving into the twentieth minute of his speech, “The fact that Equestria, despite having a figurehead monarchy has chosen to allow democracy to prevail on the local level is a unique system, and I hope that in the coming election tomorrow you will all make the correct choice.”
A sound in the distance caught Derpy’s attention: the groaning of the TARDIS engines. She tried standing on her back hooves, craning her head to see where the Doctor and Lyra were coming from, but at that moment a collective gasp rose from everypony as the Doctor rounded the corner and bumped into the Mayor himself, knocking the venerable pony onto the ground in a cloud of dust.
“Young sir, explain yourself!” Bowler cried, bringing himself to his legs and dusting off, “This is absolutely absurd!”
“I’ll tell you what’s absurd!” the Doctor retaliated, grabbing the mic and speaking to all of the ponies in the crowd, “Citizens of Ponyville, it is my pleasure to introduce to you a fantastic individual, a true master of deception. Please give a warm Ponyville welcome to the real Mayor Bowler!”
He pointed the sonic screwdriver at the mayor, turning it’s loudest setting on once more and forcing him to change. A pillar of greenish fire erupted from that spot, and the bowler hat wearing stallion vanished, replaced by a taller still changeling.
The changeling was markedly different from the others. Aside from being taller, he sported a jagged horn and a pair of insectoid wings marked with holes and ragged ends. The mustache that had been one of the Mayor’s trademarks had vanished, and in place of a bowler hat a crown now sat atop the stallion’s crooked black head.
The Changeling king glared at the Doctor, while the crowd of ponies began to churn. Some screamed and started to run away in absolute terror, others stood their ground, paralysed by shock.
“Alright!” he growled, “You’ve got me, I’m not Mayor Bowler.”
The king grabbed at the mic, addressing the terrorized crowd as a whole.
“I am King Metamorphosis, your new ruler. If I can’t take this place by stealth, I’ll have to do it by force!”
A swarm of changelings began to appear, some descending from the sky, others from the buildings and the woodline. They called to each other with clicking vocalizations, descending upon the ponies of ponyville with the voracity of an ant colony that had found it’s next meal.
In the sudden confusion, Lyra lost sight of the Doctor. A changeling had found her, pinning her down on the ground and gnashing its teeth. She struck out at it’s chin, knocking it off from herself and dashed away as another changeling picked her out as a target.
The entire square, which had been quiet and attentive only moments before was now alight with an intense fray as ponies defended themselves from the attacking changelings. A young red stallion kicked at an attacking changeling that had been trying to tussle his younger sister, who sat on top of a cart loaded with apples. Once freeing the orange filly, they bumped hooves and took on the next wave of attacking changelings together.
Derpy kicked at a changeling that had snapped at her wing, striking its chest and knocking it to the ground in a heap next to Carrot Top, who screamed and recoiled from the beast. Derpy wheeled about, and came face to face with a familiar blue stallion.
“Doctor, I’m so glad you’re here!” she exclaimed, reaching out to hug him. Instead of receiving her hug, the Doctor struck her down, smiling antagonistically and towering over the pegasus.
Derpy’s eyes widened, and she cowered on the ground helplessly. The Doctor reared back to stomp his hooves on her face, right before another blue stallion tackled him down to the ground, rolling over and smashing it’s face into the soil repeatedly.
The first blue stallion flashed green, reverting back into a changeling right as the Doctor struck at it once more, knocking him senseless. The real Doctor then turned about, grabbing Derpy in a firm but quick hug or reassurance.
“Are you hurt?” he asked. She shook her head.
“It’s a changeling, they take the form of other ponies and...”
He was struck from the side with a bolt of green magic, knocking him to the ground and singing the edges of his fur and hair. The towering Changeling King stood over him, glaring.
“Who are you,” the king growled, kicking at the Doctor’s face, “and how did you find out about us?”
He kicked at the Doctor again, bloodying the timelord’s nose. The Doctor sprang back up upon the next attempted kick, grasping the outstretched leg and throwing the king over his own shoulder with a loud kiai. The king was slammed forcefully against the ground by the Doctor’s attack, and the timelord leaned in to speak to him.
“Don’t try to take on a master of venusian aikido, just a word of advice,” he said, “Now, if you’ll observe the edge of the forest, you’ll notice more and more ponies coming in to join in the fray. These are the ponies you’ve captured, freed from their cocoons by myself and told of your treachery. Trust me, they’re very angry.”
The king groaned.
“You’re outnumbered now by four-to-one, and that’s no basis for a hostile takeover.”
The Doctor reached into his pocket and produced something round and metallic, brandishing it to show to the fallen changeling king. It was an ominous looking red button, which reflected Metamorphosis’ face in the surface.
“I give you a choice,” the Doctor continued, “Call off the attack and return to your own world, and you'll be allowed to live in peace. But if you don’t...”
They sat still for a moment as the battle raged around them, neither the Doctor nor the changeling king saying a word.
“Who are you?” he finally asked, breaking the silence.
“I’m the Doctor,” he said, “and you’re out of time.” He went to press the red button, but the king cried out suddenly.
“No!” he cried, “No! Don’t do that! I’ll concede to your terms!”
“Very well,” the Doctor replied, smiling, “Thanks for your cooperation.”
Derpy and Lyra sat outside Carrot Top’s cottage. The sun was starting to lower, and they had finished saying their goodbyes by now. The Doctor was painting over the words “Bad Wolf” with blue paint that matched the shade of the TARDIS.
“Doctor,” Derpy asked, “Earlier you did this thing, when you cornered the Mayor...”
“Changeling King,” he corrected, “But go on.”
“Well... you had a red button.”
“Oh, this thing?” he said with a chuckle. He reached into his pocket and took the red button out, placing it on the grass at his side and pressed it down. Lyra and Derpy both jumped, expecting something bad to happen but instead a group of tinny recorded voices began shouting.
“PANIC! PANIC! RED ALERT! RED ALERT!”
The Doctor laughed, tossing the button up to Derpy.
“It’s a panic button,” he said, “Found it in a novelty shop. Pretty cool, huh?”
Lyra clapped a hoof to her face, and Derpy went cross-eyed. She pressed the button herself, and it repeated it’s ridiculous phrase.
“You stopped a changeling attack with a toy you picked up from the party shop?!”
“My bluffs don’t always work,” he said, picking the paint brush back up and covering the graffiti with a second coat, “But you’d be surprised what items I’ve been able to save the world with before.”
“Where do you keep all this random junk?” Lyra asked, “are your pockets bigger on the inside like the TARDIS?”
The Doctor only smiled back. The paint job was now finished, and so he placed the bucket next to Carrot Top’s garden shed and returned to unlock the door. He wasn’t concerned about the fallout from this morning’s events- Celestia was now in town and he was sure that they would take extra measures to protect against future changeling attacks. Besides, he didn’t like to stick around for cleanup.
“Right, first things first,” he said, unlocking the TARDIS and escorting both Lyra and Derpy inside. He went over to the console, and produced a pair of small keys on lengths of string tied together in a loop. He placed one over Derpy’s head first, and then over Lyra’s. The keys hung loosely around their necks like necklaces.
“TARDIS keys,” he said, leaning against the console “If you want to come with me, then I should warn you- you’re gonna see all sorts of things. It won’t be quiet, it won’t be safe, and it won’t be calm. But I’ll tell you what it will be: the trip of a lifetime. And it’ll be totally fantastic . Are you in?”
Lyra nodded.
“I’m in.”
The Doctor smiled, and set to work on the TARDIS controls. He typed with his hooves on a beat-up looking keyboard, and punched a few buttons quickly. He jumped over around the other side and pumped a lever, and the TARDIS engines began to groan once more.
****
In the distant lands of the Changeling Kingdom, Metamorphosis regarded his reflection in a shallow pool with disgust. He had held that disguise for four years , secretly working to make the little town of Ponyville open to such an incursion. When he had, it hadn't lasted more than a week's time.
He growled to himself, splashing the reflection angrily and turning away. A craggy peak marked the entrance to his home; the seat of the Changeling monarchy.
Once inside, he called up to his daughter.
"Princess! We have much to discuss!"
Down the stairs glided a slender changeling mare, meeting her father at the base and following him into a side chamber, where cocoon upon cocoon lined the ceiling and walls. The room was cast in a dim greenish glow by occasional stirring and bursts of magic from the hibernating brood.
"Daughter, my conquest of Equestria's heartland has been a failure," Metamorphosis said plainly, "It was at the hooves of one stallion... a pony by the name of The Doctor."
"I've heard as much," Chrysalis replied, "but I think you'll be pleased to know that I've gained us an ally, one who vows that he will be able to help us strike back at this 'Doctor'. He seems to know him."
The King smiled for the first time that day. Retribution was an idea he could get behind, the Doctor hadn't seen the last of him!
"This stallion you speak of... is he here? What's his name?"
Chrysalis smiled, her fangs jutting out in front of her bottom lip and lower set of teeth.
"He's on his way now," she said, "And he calls himself the Bad Wolf."
The day was no different than any other in the past week for Carrot Top. Ever since she had returned from gardening over a week ago, she hadn’t seen sight of her friend and cottage-mate Derpy Hooves. Ever since then she had been growing more and more frantic, worrying about what had happened. She had written letters, put up posters, talked to friends and relatives in nearly every town in Equestria, but had not been able to tell where Derpy had gone to.
Carrot Top stood in her modest kitchen, slicing vegetables she had harvested from the garden and preparing a stew for herself. The day was nearly out, and Celestia’s sun was beginning to set in the west.
A knock sounded on her cottage door, surprising her and causing her to slice a cucumber far too thick and haphazardly. Placing the knife down, Carrot Top tended to the door, secretly hoping that the pony on the other side would be Derpy, or would at least bring news of her friend’s whereabouts.
She was surprised to see Lyra standing at her door, laden with a duffel bag slung over her withers and a suitcase. Lyra spit the strap to the suitcase out, speaking first and posing a question to Carrot Top.
“Mind if I stay here for a night or two?” she asked, “I’d really appreciate it.”
“Your Dad kicked you out?”
“Not so much kicked me out as acting like such an..... well, I decided enough was enough, I needed to get away for a few days,” Lyra answered.
“Derpy’s room is upstairs, she..... she isn’t using it,” Carrot Top muttered, pointing Lyra in the right direction and returning to her work slicing up vegetables. With an extra mouth to feed, she’d have to double everything .
Lyra dragged her luggage up the stairs of Carrot Top’s cottage, finding the door marked “Derpy’s Room” with bold stickers. Upon entering the room, she was stunned to find the middle of it blocked by a tall blue box with windows. The box appeared wooden, was marked with a sign declaring that it was a “Police Box”, and had spray painted-on graffiti that read “Bad Wolf” on its side.
Lyra’s mouth sagged open. She recognized this, it was the Doctor’s spaceship, the one she had looked up through the Crypto Club! The one urban legend nearly all members of the club rejected, she was facing right before her very eyes.
The door opened and out flew Derpy, smashing head first into her own bed and laying there dazed. Behind her was another figure, a blue stallion with a somewhat bony face and a very short mane cut, clad in a leather jacket.
“Sweet Celestia...” stammered Lyra, pointing at the figure, “You’re.... you’re.... you’re...”
“I’m the Doctor,” he finished, taking Lyra’s hoof she was using to point with in shock and shaking it vigorously.
“If my coordinates are correct we should have landed somewhere near Carrot Top’s cottage... though you don’t look much like a Carrot top to me. Could you tell me where we are, Miss....”
“Heartstrings,” she replied, “I’m Lyra Heartstrings, and this is Derpy’s bedroom. There’s a big blue box in here which I’m guessing is a spaceship, and there’s a stallion calling himself ‘The Doctor’.”
“I know, fantastic isn’t it?”
Derpy and Lyra breathlessly trotted down the stairs, standing around the corner from the kitchen so as not to be seen by Carrot Top. Lyra was in a state between utter exuberance over encountering the Doctor and wanting to help her friend Carrot Top by ensuring her that Derpy was safe. At the moment, her exuberance was getting the better of her.
“Oh Derpy, that’s sooooo exciting! So what do you and him do, huh? You travel around in time? Where and when? Did you meet anyone famous? Do ponies in the future have teleporters? Did you see a space alien? I’ve always wanted to meet a space alien, how about you? Did you see flying carriages? Do-”
“Lyra!” Derpy snapped in a whisper, “time and place! I have to focus on what to tell Carrot Top.”
“Derp, like seriously, she’s been freaking out about you being gone. She’s even gotten the Mayor himself conducting searches,” Lyra said.
“How long have I been away? I thought the Doctor was going to bring me back as if I had never left,” Derpy asked, her heart sinking. Hearing how badly Carrot Top really had taken her absence made her feel absolutely horrible.
“A week, give or take,” Lyra replied, “Are you gonna tell her the truth? About traveling with the Doctor and all that?”
“Yeah,” Derpy said with a nod, “I don’t want to lie to her. Plus, it’s not like I can’t prove my story: the Doctor’s gonna park his TARDIS right outside the cottage right about now.”
From the other room, Derpy and Lyra could hear the door inside the kitchen open, and Carrot Top’s slicing ceased. The two mares fell silent.
“Who are you, and what do you think you’re doing? ” came the sound of Carrot Top.
“I’m the Doctor, and I can explain!” cried the Doctor. Derpy and Lyra heard a shuffling, and a loud clang.
“Why are you in my house?!”
“M’am, calm down for a moment, I can...”
“This is a private home!” Carrot Top cried, and there was a second clang, and a scuffle.
“I know where Derpy is!” the Doctor sputtered out.
Another clang. Carrot Top had dropped a frying pan on the kitchen floor. She and the Doctor panted for a moment, and then it was her turn to speak.
“Oh... Okay.... where is she?”
Silently, Derpy and Lyra slipped out from around the corner, into Carrot Top’s line of sight. She took in the sight of Derpy with a show of relief and a surge of joy. Derpy was quick to dart over and embrace her cottage-mate and friend, a motion which Carrot Top returned. Afterwards, Derpy backed off. Carrot Top’s initial relief was waning, replacing itself with frustration and anger.
“Where have you BEEN?” she ranted, “I come home and you’re nowhere. NOWHERE! No note, no message, just poof and gone. I thought for sure it was one of those freakish abductions. An entire week you’ve been gone, and I’ve been frantic! ”
“She’s not lying,” interjected Lyra, before being shut up by a death glare from Carrot Top.
“So again I ask, Where have you been?”
Derpy paced the length of the kitchen carefully, thinking of how to phrase her answer. She didn’t think Carrot Top would react well to her saying ‘oh, I’ve been wandering aimlessly through time and space with an alien’ , but at the same time she didn’t want to tell a lie. As a valued friend who was very close to Derpy, she deserved to know.
It was the Doctor who answered first, taking Derpy’s uncomfortable silence as permission to interject.
“Actually, It’s sort of my fault about that,” he said, leaning against a wooden cabinet and folding his front hooves and jacket sleeves across his chest, “I sort of helped Derpy escape from the abductors, and we went traveling. You could say she and I are companions.”
“Companions?” Carrot Top mouthed. She looked incredibly saddened.
“Derpy, you really ran away with some stallion boyfriend and left me here wondering if you were dead or alive?” she asked.
“No, he’s not my boyfriend, and we were actually on our way back here right after the incident with the weird carriages and got.... erm, sidetracked,” Derpy said, “Honestly, I didn’t mean to leave you hanging this long waiting for me. I meant to come back that same day...”
She and the Doctor exchanged glances.
“....and the reason I couldn’t was a complete accident,” Derpy continued, “because.... er.... the time machine got the wrong day. And yes, I am completely serious. I’ve been traveling in time with the Doctor.”
The room fell silent. Carrot Top rubbed the sides of her head, letting out a deep sigh.
“I’ve got a headache, I’m going to need a few minutes,” she admitted, “Derpy, please go to town hall and tell the Mayor to call off the search.”
“Alright,”
“Do you need to be alone for a bit?” asked Lyra, “The Doctor and I can just pop outside.”
“I need an aspirin and some quiet,” Carrot Top said, “Take a few bits from the hutch and get yourselves something to eat. I’m not making everybody extra dinner.”
****
Derpy flew through the town quickly, not wanting to slow for ponies to gawk at as she passed by. She didn’t like this one bit; she wouldn’t be able to show her face at all without somepony saying ‘oh, you’re that Derpy mare, right? The one that went missing?’ or ‘what happened to you last week? Carrot Top was worried sick!’
She really just wished the mix-up had never happened, and they had just arrived on time.
Derpy struck a low-hanging banner without warning, crashing to the ground in a heap of plastic and dust. She coughed and waved her hoof to clear the air, and a passing couple came over to help her out of the banner.
“Are you alright?” the stallion asked, trying to unravel the plastic, “You really took a digger there!”
“I’m fine, thanks,” Derpy said, shaking her head and stepping out of the wrecked banner.
“Knocked down the Mayor’s campaign poster, you did,” the unicorn mare noted, “He had a team working all morning trying to set that one up.”
“I’ll apoligize myself, I was on my way to see him right now,” Derpy said, thanking the couple once again and zipping off down the street.
The stallion and the mare glanced at each other.
“I wonder what she was in such a hurry about.”
****
“This is it then?” Lyra asked.
She and the Doctor stood outside the cottage, where the TARDIS stood near the garden shed. The box still appeared a bit dirty and beaten-up from the crash landing in Starswirl’s time, and the white graffiti was clearly displayed on the side right of the double doors.
“Yes, the TARDIS,” he answered jovially, “Time and Relative Dimensions in Space.”
“It says ‘Bad Wolf’ on the side here,” Lyra pointed, “I haven’t seen it with those words on it before. How come?”
“Oi, how’d you know about the TARDIS?” asked the Doctor, putting his snout in front of Lyra’s face sternly, “Don’t tell me I’ve gone mainstream now.”
She pranced around all sides of the box, giddy as a foal. Truth be told, she was one of the last ponies who actually bothered looking up anything about the Doctor in the Crypto Club, let alone actually believe any of the stories.
“I’m part of a club that likes to talk about urban legends,” she admitted, “Y’know, like hydras in bogs, sea serpents in forest rivers. Stuff that most ponies think is a load of bogus.”
“This isn’t part of that LINDA lot, is it?”
“Oh no, I actually don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m the only one of the bunch who’s done serious looking into the legend of “The Doctor”. Mind you, not a lot of publication to follow, you’ve tidied up well.”
The Doctor was speechless.
“So,” broached Lyra, “I’d like to offer my help in any way I can.”
“As in....?”
“Well,” Lyra said, “It travels in time, right? I’m guessing that since you and Derpy travel together, there might be room for one more.”
The Doctor blinked for a moment, and smiled.
“Don’t get ahead of yourself, now.”
****
Derpy entered town hall, gazing at political posters and banners hung up on the walls. Most were for the current mayor, Mayor Bowler, who was up for re-election in just over a week.
Well Derpy thought, Make that only a few days .
Approaching the wooden desk outside of his office, she noted that there was no clerk to greet her. She waited for a few moments before trying the door of the Mayor’s office itself, rapping on the surface with her hoof. From inside came the sounds of a scuffle.
“Who is it?” an irritated-sounding voice asked, “I’m busy right now!”
“It’ll only take a second!” Derpy insisted. From within the room came an odd sound, and she swore she saw a flash of green appear from the crack of the door near the floorboards.
The door creaked open, and the orange face of the Mayor himself appeared pressed into the crack of the door.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“It’s me, sir,” she replied, “Derpy Hooves. I just wanted to let you know you can call off the search for me.”
“That’s nice, thanks for letting me know,” he rattled off, shutting the door swiftly.
Derpy stood outside the door for a few moments, curious. She must have caught him doing something secretive, for he did not want to allow her to see what was inside his office, nor did he really want to see her in the first place.
Shrugging, Derpy chalked it up to some kind of business to do with the campaign and exited the building, taking off back toward Carrot Top’s cottage.
****
Lyra’s mouth gaped open as she stepped inside the TARDIS. The huge bronze ceiling lined with roundels, the coral-like support beams, everything seemed so massive . As usual, the Doctor leaned against the console, folding his front legs and smiling.
“It’s... it’s huge!” she sputtered. Lyra backed herself outside the box and walked around the entire exterior. It was blue-painted wood, only a few second before she was back at the door. She walked inside again.
“the inside’s bigger than the outside,” she commented, “How does that even work?”
“Aha!” the Doctor cried, jumping down and circling Lyra, “Turns out you don’t even begin to know about me. This is a separate dimension of sorts. Dimensionally transcendental.”
“and you said it travels in time?” she eagerly said, “I’m sorry if I seem pushy and all, but this is just so cool !Can you demonstrate?”
“No,” the Doctor said, “Not right now. I’ve got a few errands to run.”
He and Lyra exited the TARDIS, and the Doctor shut the doors behind him. He glanced up to the window, noticing that the curtain ruffled quickly. Carrot Top had been watching them the whole time.
“What errands?” Derpy asked, appearing from around the corner.
“For starters, paint,” the Doctor said, “I’ve got to get rid of that ugly graffiti.”
