The Deadly Arcade

“So seriously, is ‘The Doctor’ like a gamertag or something?”

The Doctor didn’t seem to hear him as he pulled a silver instrument with a blue node at the tip out of his coat with his teeth before pressing a button on the side causing it to light up and emit an alien whirring sound as he waved it around the room.

“Oh, cool!” Button exclaimed hopping in placing excitedly. “Is that some kind of alien probe you won from a tournament or something?”

“It’s a Thonic Thcrewdrivuh.” He replied through clenched teeth, trying to answer the young colt’s inquiries while keeping the Screwdriver steady between his teeth.

“Wow, that’s a pretty fancy name they gave for a flashlight…” Button commented. “So where did you get it from?”

“I built it.” The Doctor replied matter-of-factly.

“Wouldn’t it just be easier to hold it with your hoof? I mean, wouldn’t that hurt your teeth after a while with pressing down on something so hard like that?  I played the new ‘Pony Kombat’ game last week and it’s really fun, but the ‘Kombos’ are super hard to pull off…especially the ‘Brutalities’ and the final boss was super cheap so it took me three whole days to beat him and I never thought my hooves would stop hurting, but it was totally worth it when I told all my friends at school and Sweetie Belle was so impressed…”

The Doctor stopped walking and took the Screwdriver out of his mouth.

“Button, video games can be fun and a good way to relieve stress after a bad day, but there’s more to life than pixels on a screen.”

“Most new games on home consoles are cel-shaded.” Button replied, coolly.

“Look, you’re missing the point-all of the adventures you have in your games, fighting aliens, monsters, and giant robots-all of the far off places you can travel to in space and time, what if you could really experience all of this things in real life?”

“You sound like my Mom.” He deadpanned.

“What if I told you that there was a way that I could let experience all of those things?”

“Yeah, right….” Button cocked an eyebrow. “Wait a minute, how did you know something was wrong before you even got here?”

“I’m a Time Lord-I can feel these things in my bones.”

“And I’m just supposed to forget about finding my Mom and whatever is going on around this arcade just to go with you somewhere?” The colt challenged.

“No.” The Doctor walked over to a wall between to of the arcade machines. “Do you see this wall?”

“Yeah?”

The Doctor gave a few heavy knocks on it.

“It’s a fake but, it’s reinforced to keep people from stumbling through it which can only mean one of two things; either it was designed by someone very intelligent to build something like this and keep it hidden from the owner or a very powerful unicorn.”

“So you can’t get through it?” asked Button, disappointed.

“Not with the Sonic.” He replied, “But, there is another way…”

“What’s that?”

The Doctor merely looked at him and smiled.

“Follow me.”

As they left the arcade, Button’s anxiety grew as he realized that not only was it dark out, but Luna’s full moon was already high in the night sky bathing the streets of Ponyvillle with its silvery glow.

They turned to an alley between the arcade and the garage mechanic one of Sweetie Belle’s friends went to on occasion to get her scooter fixed.

Before them stood a wooden blue box with double door with a window pane on each and some kind of light on top of it, above the doors read; ‘POLICE PUBLIC CALL BOX’, below the pane on the left door had a note which read;

POLICE TELEPHONE

FREE

FOR USE OF

PUBLIC

ADVICE & ASSISTANCE OBTAINABLE IMMEDIATELY

OFFICERS & CARS RESPON TO ALL CALLS

PULL TO OPEN

And on the right was a large sticker with a symbol he didn’t recognize with words circling around it which read; ST. JOHN AMBULANCE.

It was easily the strangest thing Button had ever seen in his short life (and being a resident of Ponyville, that was saying a lot.)

He wasn’t exactly sure what it was, but he had seen and been in an outhouse at Sweet Apple Acres during cider season when he had severely overestimated the strength of his bladder after chugging down the sweet nectar of the Apple family’s labor-it was not a pleasant experience-it stunk worse than anything he ever could have imagined and the dry summer heat had only made the stench worse.

Maybe this was a special kind of outhouse from the Griffon Kingdom or something and The Doctor just considered it ‘special’ because it was foreign.

“Like it?” he asked, leaning up against it with a toothy grin.

“It’s an outhouse.”

“WHAT!?” The Doctor asked, completely flabbergasted by this response.

“It’s a small wooden box with doors on it with enough room to fit one, maybe two ponies inside it-it’s an outhouse…and I’ve had a bad experience with outhouses.” He replied, sitting back on his flank and crossing his arms.

“I swear you and Applejack…” He sighed before pushing the right door open to reveal a large room with a Coral desktop and what appeared to be a large tube in the center fill with what appeared to be some type of blue-green liquid or energy surrounded by a control panel covered in various buttons, knobs, gauges, and levers as well as what appeared to be some kind of bell with a small wooden mallet connected to it with a cord.

“It’s…” Button began as he stumbled inside, completely mesmerized by what he saw.

“Yes?” The Doctor pressed expectantly, waiting for his favorite comment from new visitors inside the TARDIS.

“Not an outhouse…”

Once again, The Doctor slapped a hoof to his face in exasperation.

“No,” he replied. “This is called a ‘TARDIS’ which is an acronym for ‘Time And Relative Dimensions In Space’, it is my home, time machine, ship and my ‘Sexy’ constant companion.”

“What?” asked the confused eight year-old.

“Never mind.” He sighed.

“So who took my Mom?” asked Button. “And why?”

“That,” The Doctor replied, operating one of the TARDIS’ levers. “Is what we are going to find out.”

The machine seemed to come to life as there was a sound which Button could only imagine what a key scraping against piano wire must have sounded like before there was the sound of a deafening thud.

“W-what happened?” he asked, as he desperately tried to stand with the jelly feeling in his legs fighting him.

“We’ve arrived.”

“Arrived where?”

“On the other side of the wall.” He then noticed Button struggling. “Don’t worry about that, it’s very common for the first trip-especially among smaller passengers-just give it a few minutes and that jelly feeling should go away.”

“But, uh…Doctor? How did we get on the other side of the wall?”

He stopped to look at him.

“What part of ‘spaceship time machine’ did you not understand?”