An Old Whooves Tale.

“Curious, you figure the police or royal guards would have this place on lockdown considering it’s a crime scene.”

“Maybe they’re counting on people not wanting to go inside- ow!” Derpy said as she hit the invisible wall surrounding the house. “What the heck?” She questioned as she held her hoof up against the wall.

“Oh, interesting. It seems that they put some sort of protective spell around the house, very interesting.” The Doctor pulled out his sonic screwdriver and pointed at the wall. He circled it trying to get it to open, however after whirring for a minute the wall would not budge.

“Well this is curious, I can’t seem to get us in there, figures tricky magic.”

The Doctor stood back and put his hoof up to his chin and thought for a moment. A few birds in the trees nearby distracted Derpy and she flew up to see them. The Doctor continued thinking and then looked at Derpy playing with the birds. Just then an idea popped into his head.

“That’s it! Derpy?”

“Yes Doctor?” She responded not looking away from the nest.

“I thought I better come clean now, but it wasn’t the fall that crushed your muffins.” Derpy turned around concerned now.

“What do you mean?”

“Well when we crashed into PonyVille, the fall didn’t crumble your muffins. It was me.”

“What?” Derpy said a bit in shock.

“Yes you see there were too many muffins to eat this morning and I couldn’t finish them all so I crushed the remainder of them and snuck them into your pocket when you weren’t looking so I didn’t have to eat them.”

“Doctor! Wha- ba- shka-“ Derpy stuttered in rage. She wound her wings up and charged at the Doctor full speed, “You could have saved them for later!” she yelled.

Just before Derpy met with the Doctor on impact, he ducked out of the way and she flew past him. Derpy tried to adjust herself mid flight, but she ended up hitting the invisible wall with her bottom, which caused it to shatter. Derpy landed in front of the door and the Doctor trotted past her.

“Very good work using your rump as always Derpy, and honestly; you should know by now that I wouldn’t do that to your muffins!” Derpy’s eyes circled around her head and she took a moment to readjust herself.

The Doctor approached the door and inspected it closely. There didn’t appear to be any forced entry as the doorknob and doorframe were completely intact. The Doctor pointed his sonic screwdriver at the lock and then looked at it for a moment. He proceeded up the stairs and into the abandoned bedroom.

Dust had gathered rather quickly covering nearly everything in the room from the covers of the bed to the books on the shelves. The Doctor looked around pointing his sonic screwdriver all over . Derpy finally joined him in the bedroom and asked, “Doctor what are you-“ But he interrupted her.

“Please hold all questions until the end of the tour thank you!” Derpy closed her mouth and started to look around the room herself. She noticed a telescope by the window standing up pointed at the ground. Derpy walked over and put her eye through it and discovered she could see part of the Everfree forest.

“Interesting,” the doctor said in the background.

“What is?”

“Everything! Everything here is interesting, because look around. It’s a crime scene yet nothings amiss. Nothing’s appears to be different. Just some poor house keeping.” Derpy looked around and said,

“You’re right. It’s like the owners just got up and left. Leaving everything behind.”

“Exactly, and I don’t know any sane pony that would do that, but…look at this!” The Doctor raced downstairs, and Derpy followed him. He got to the door and pulled it so that it was slightly ajar.

“I don’t get it.” Derpy said.

“Right, it looks like nopony has even touched the door. However, do me a favor and look through the keyhole.” Derpy did as she was instructed and noticed that she could see the light coming from the outside straight through the keyhole, and after a moment the Doctor’s eye appeared.

“It’s completely hollow!” Derpy exclaimed.

“Righto Ms. Hooves. It is completely hollow! If this was a regular keyhole then we should not be able to look right through it, because there would be all sorts of gears and springs and mechanisms filling it up!”

“That’s so strange, why would anybody buy a hollow lock?”

“Unless it didn’t come that way.” Derpy looked at the Doctor and the Doctor smiled back racing upstairs once more back to the bedroom.

“Now take a look at this!” He called as he pulled the covers of the bed back and stared at the floor it was covering.

“So what?” Derpy asked.

“Don’t you see it?” he replied back.

“It’s a dip in the wood on the floor.”

“No it’s not just a dip in the wood! Look closer!” Derpy moved her head closer to the wood and still only saw a slight dip in the straight wood plank.

“Nope sorry still nothing.” Derpy said.

“Look at the planks next to it. The edges of them are smoothed out, now don’t try to tell me some contractor pony took so much detail into building this house that he accounted for a slight dip in the wood to make sure and smooth out the sides of the wood planks adjacent to it, so that it was seamless!” Derpy was surprised, but still she was confused.

“Okay, so the woods slightly warped, what does that have to do with anything?”

“When I did a scan with my sonic screwdriver it gave me no readings from the past couple of days.” The Doctor said getting excited.

“Okay?” Derpy responded.

“It’s telling me that at some point nothing ever existed here! Nothing. No air particles, no dust molecules, nothing…not a single atom was in its place! Like something just sucked them up”

“What does that mean?”

“I…have no idea, but isn’t that just something!” The Doctor got up again and walked around looking at his sonic screwdriver. “So, did you find anything?”

“Actually yes I did, look at his Doctor.” Derpy pointed at the telescope and the Doctor stood beside her.

“Ah yes the telescope, one of Lippershey’s greatest inventions, but I guess here he’d be called Lippershay!” The Doctor chuckled and Derpy gave a blank expression.

“Focus Doctor!”

“Right sorry, so telescope yes?”

“Yes, now whoever this pony was she had a telescope”

Yeah so they could look at the stars and planets above, same reason anyone- pony get’s a telescope”

“Right, but that pony before said that most ponies were scared of the night. So what if she didn’t get the telescope just to look at the stars, but to keep an eye out for whatever the thing was that took her.”

“Oh that’s brilliant Derpy, good catch!”

“There’s one other thing. Look through the telescope.” The Doctor moved up and put his eye against the lens.

“Oh I see, it’s pointed right at the Everfree Forest!” The Doctor exclaimed.

“Right, I think this pony was trying to leave us a clue.”

“Well then let’s follow the clues Ms Hooves, advante! Oh did you hear that I just rhymed, oh that was fun we should do this whole thing by rhym…” The Doctor rambled on as the two left the house in the direction of the Everfree forest.