Metabolis 1, Germany 1927, all three moons of Krexol, the Doctor looked and looked and looked. Wherever he went as usual some problem arising, but no matter where he went, not a sign of a third Oswin Oswald. He leaned against the bars, thinking. Maybe he had to think a little outside of the box. Maybe he could go back and ask Victorian Clara? No, she was a curious little girl, but she definitely didn't know him when they met the first time round.
He travelled galaxies and into areas unreachable by mere means of space travel by now, so maybe just out of the box wasn't enough. Better try out of the universe, that wasn't impossible either. It had happened quite often, so why not?
His choices were just limited. The TARDIS can't operate in any universe where the overall entropy was too strong, so most universes were out. But there were still a few left. There was that completely different one, with the colourful, talking, short-headed horses, but usually when going there, he had to use the Chameleon arch to turn into a Timehorse again and he had to read up on most of the basic laws that worked within it, before thinking about going back, so visiting Equestria again was a choice too, but it involved a lot of boring and painful stuff to do, so if it was to visit them and spend some time adventuring in their own universe, it was good, but better not if it's only for a quick look.
One universe though had the same laws of physics as his own, but populated by all sorts of bipedal animal people, all distantly genetically related to each other. There was no problem travelling to it, if you had the necessary equipment. Who knows, maybe he could even give the people he met there last time a visit in-between. He could have sworn there was a Clara there, after all. But again she died, and back in the day, he just brushed her aside as one of the many echoes their universe had of his own. Maybe her having the exact same name and voice and her making soufflés too was more than a mere echo after all.
But to reach safely, he needed something. Getting it a second time might require a bit less adventurous spirit than last time. Maybe no big undercover action this time. He knew exactly where he had to go after all. The Grand Chapel of Chorixia 5, a space station orbiting a rather cold water planet. Before actually flying into the chapel though, he went down to the cupboards to get a baseball bat he got as a present from the Mutuals in 1863. This was a good opportunity for a little show to use the bat for after all.
After sliding it into his pocket, he took the actual steps. He steered the TARDIS through the time vortex and materialized it in the radiant vault, a sanctum in the very heart of the chapel. Before anyone could get into his assigned way though, he set up the force field to block off anything that was going to try and interfere.
When he left, there were already people firing against it or punching the tunnel-shaped shield he had set up. It was exactly set up to protect the TARDIS, as well as a tube leading to a remotely sustained shield around the class cube he was walking up to. As he tread through it, he noticed a specified alarm had already been set off, with a too familiar female voice automatically repeating the sentence: "The timelord has entered the chapel. The timelord has entered the chapel." It was annoying, but he didn't care at this point. He had done this by less careful means and they hadn't stopped him back then either.
Once there, he smashed the glass encompassing it. The golden apple. A golden orb with a cross crudely attached to it in a seemingly recent time, which he just ripped off and tossed it aside. By now, more and more of the clerics came banging their fists against the shield as well as screaming and sometimes even firing shots at it in the thoughtless hopes of getting a shot through the invisible wall. "Sorry, d'love to stay, but I got somewhere to go, you know, stuff." He really wasn't in the mood for the big entries he usually made when it was about the church.
Back in the TARDIS, he materialized it out of there, just to be sure, to then attach the shiny sphere to the wiring of his console. Last time, Amy activated it accidentally just by 'wishing' it to work. So it was psychic.
He made sure it was wired in, and then took a deep breath. He had to do this right. What he actually wanted, was to find another Clara, but that thing wasn't a Clara-detector, it was a vortex-generator. All it could do was to bring the TARDIS back and forth between this universe, and that of these animal people through a tunnel in the void. But the definition of entering a universe as a whole involved all of space and time in all dimensions. So in preference, what he wanted, was what he always went to. Adventures. He wanted to be where he was needed. Where he could help.
And upon thinking that, the Orb started to radiate it's yellow, warm glow, before the surroundings started to rumble and tremble. Wherever he was going to arrive, he was going to be prepared to act immediately. He held tight on the bars behind him and whispered quietly to himself: "Geronimo"
The moonlight reflected the outlines of her forty-five caliber and her one-handed blaster, as she stood around a corner, carefully listening,her pursuers' steel boots smash on the ground as they ran from street to street looking for her. Where was Dash? One of the masked ponies was heading to the corner Applejack was hiding in. There was still so much to soak in, but the life-threat the masked ponies were posing were too imminent to think of what she had seen right now. She had discarded the communicator she had taken from that masked pony in the slums, so there was no calling Rainbow Dash to ask what she was doing.
She only had what she had on her. Two firearms, a stolen robe and mask and her usual clothes and gear belt beneath. She pressed herself against the wall, as she inched closer to it's end, taking a wider peek at the surroundings. At some point, from seeing where the hooded figure was not and hearing where it was, she backed off the wall, readied her arms, stuck out her head and her arms to only aim at the pony chasing her with one eye. She had to pull back though, as her adversary spotted her faster than she expected.
When the opposite mare, now shouting and drawing her crescent blade, came towards her, Applejack had to make a trade if she wanted to escape. Once her enemy was in sight, she held up her blaster protectively to have the blade cut into it, and then pulled her right arm away, throwing away both the now wrecked weapon and the charged blade it had stopped. This was her chance. The other two would catch on to her, as they must have heard this one calling out, if not even calling into a running voice channel, but this one pursuer she could get rid of.
These ponies were endurant, and they could wield both swords and guns, but this here earth pony lifted, ran, jumped, kept herself in shape in all body-muscle-related disciplines. And she didn't intend to waste these assets. Within the same movement she had forced away the now startled pony's weapon, she stretched out her left leg, sweeping away both of her enemy with her steel-clad hoof. And before the scared equine could get up, Applejack ripped off her mask with one hand, while the other pressed her conventional firearm onto this heavily beathing head and greeted it's surface with the merciful kiss of death. If what she had seen, they saw every day and didn't flinch, it would have made them more monstrous than Applejack could imagine.
As she ran off, already hearing the back-up, she stuffed the mask into one of the robe's several wide side-pockets. These things sure were intended for use on all occasions. They were made of some very sturdy material, the nature of which she couldn't make out, and had inner bags and pockets that could fit all sorts of equipment. These ponies sure weren't just some sick, deranged cult, they were people meaning serious business. For someone who always acts in groups, they sure weren't fans of sticking together, though. Always splitting up, trying to cover wider areas. Well, all to Applejack's advantage as long as they did.
The alleyways were growing more and more narrow. It got more and more difficult to run a straight path while not having to evade into the white streets and become an easy target. They were still chasing her. When she passed by in the high-speed pod, she saw one big residential district. This place didn't seem like that at all though. She even had run past some wide landing areas here, so she must have been in some logistics centre right here. As she heard a gunshot synchronous with one of her turns, she knew this couldn't go on forever.
On the next proper opportunity, she pulled up the fabric and made another sprint across the street into an open, dark warehouse. While she went up the stairs in a pitch-black corner, she was not just catching her breath, but felt some hope arise. She didn't hear them run after her into the warehouse. But when she arrived at the top and climbed out of a window or rather a broken part of the wall that no-one had bothered to fix onto the flat ceiling, only to see her hope shattered to pieces right away again.
It seemed these ponies didn't care about their robes. Neither her nor them were all that fast, but they were climbing up one of the nearby walls like it was nothing and were about to arrive at her height right after she did. She had to use the seconds she had. Except for the one adjacent building her chasers were climbing up, none was close enough for a normal safe jump. She hurried around the corner of the rooftop's inner compartment to have a few more moments without a line of sight, to flip the switches on her boots, open her robe and flip the one on her chestpiece too.
Before the masked ponies had made it into a clear shot, Applejack managed to get a bit of a start-up and then jump right across the wide street. She couldn't close her eyes, no she had to keep them wide open to coordinate the fall, the Gravity reduction present but thank Celestia the old pieces were still not fluctuating. She could make a safe jump into some good distance. As she kept running on the rooftop, things took another good turn, as she finally saw Dash's rented recreation shuttle pass by in just a few yards height above.
This was it, she was finally escaping this nightmare. But she was wrong. This wasn't the end. Another two of them crawling up the wall right where she was passing by, brought an ill omen with them, as they pulled out their guns and started firing. Provided with the speed the athletic mare was running at, they weren't anywhere near close enough to hit her head on, but among all the shots fired, two actually hit an unprotected area on her back as she arrived at the open hatch. Despite tumbling, she could grab hold of the hatch and pull herself up far enough that she was inside, when it closed and the ship left for the orbit, but the damage was done.
Rainbow Dash instantly left the cockpit and knelt down to tend to her injured friend, took off the mask, tossed it aside and turned around her friend's body to see the wounds. "Oh, Applejack..." she groaned in desperation. "This is bad."
Jack appreciated her friend being so concerned, but consideration wasn't going to get her patched up. She might have thought clearly. She could have. She could have thought of calling Flutters. She was just a vet, but a doctor's a doctor when it comes down to it, or not? She could have thought all this, but she didn't. Because right now, she was in physical stress, there was this burning pain, both figuratively and literally tearing it's way through her flesh, so there was no time to waste on careful steps. As the pressure from the bullet increased, her entire body flinched and she gritted her teeth. "Nrgghh!"
Her cerulean friend being so concerned to ask yet again what to do was really not helping. "Go on! Pilot! Call a Doctor." From the cockpit next door, the board computer responded in it's usual calm, female, royal-tongue tone: "There are two hundred and seventy-three currently available medical doctors accessible in the public phone..."
"Ah really dun' care right now. Any of 'em - argh!" She turned around again to have the bullet wounds on the lower side to avoid them digging around any more. "Ah dun' know! Any of 'em! All of em! Call 'em all!"
Her desperate friend was about to say something again, but she was at a loss too. One of her best friends, at the time maybe her one very best friend of all time was slowly dying right before her eyes, and other than fetching some first-aid with no chance of fixing this, there was nothing she could do.
Once Applejack had to yet again interrupt the simple voice command computer, with how she didn't care, it simply remained in it's neutral, proclaiming tone: "Calling all doctors."
Unusual, but then they didn't know, how quickly which doctor would arrive, and every second counted at this point. And Rainbow Dash didn't want things to go this way, she closed her eyes, sobbed and looked into Apple's eyes with her tear-ridden own ones. "Please don't do this to me. Please don..."
She was already outright crying, as the ship was still making it's way out of the atmosphere. Before she could go on though, she heard a strange noise, louder than the noise from the air resistance. Almost like a repetitive humming, including the noise as if...as if a metal bar was being dragged up and down along a giant screw. As the noise grew louder and louder, she looked up from her heavily breathing companion and saw...something.
Out of nothing, within the narrow confines of a locked, ship, an edgy, blue escape pod just materialized right in front of her. It turned less and less transparent, with a lamp above it shining with every wave of it seeming to become more real. And with a thud, it was there. A large blue box, with things written on it that didn't make much sense at first sight. Above the doors with small windows at the top, was a thin black board reading "Police public call box". Was it the police? Police they would need soon...or have to avoid soon, depending on how things played out, what they needed now was a doctor.
As if a spontaneously materializing unshapely escape pod with confusing captions wasn't enough, the door opened and what was looking through was no pony at all. It had a mane, but a much too flat head and the nose was a tiny, yet pointy speck, completely separated from the mouth. It completely lacked fur and it's eyes were aligned in one direction. "'Ello. You need any help here?"
When Applejack saw this though, she was less confused than falling back into her slurs. "Whatever yer up to here, we don't need no Sapians, hangin' out, I need medical treatment."
"For a start, I'm not a Sapian, but you know what, okay. I'll be just sitting in my box then."
Was he serious? Rainbow was really not grasping the situation. And was Applejack serious? At this point, any sort of help might turn out handy and she just snubs the first person that seems to show up. Even if it was somehow camouflaged he showed himself right now, didn't he? And then he just went back into his one-man box. She couldn't help it, this was the only shot at help she had. She stretched out her index finger once, telling Applejack what she was doing 'wasn't cool', before going back to that box.
She tried opening it, which did work, and wanted to start asking what was going on. "Look, are you just gonna hang out in your little esca...woah." The door opened to her touch and before her was not a narrow space with a man standing alone in it, but behind the door, it was as if the ship just went on. While the box itself was practically ending at the doorframe, the dimly lit, grey walls of this one just went on, making a large room with an upper treadable ring with railings on the outside, and in the centre, she was standing on a bridge, leading to a six-sided console with the Sapian from before seemingly using it. Above him towered something that looked like a statid dril that bore circular symbols, just turning around in the grey, blue-lit room.
"Yes, soak it in, bigger on the inside..." The man in the brown tweed jacked had already moved up to her. "...Your friend wasn't she in trouble?"
Under other circumstances, she would have just stood there in wonder, thinking about what was possible, but she was already feeling like she was going to burn from the inside. The man was right. Whoever it was.
They hasted outside.
She was confused, as to what to do. Just letting Ayjay make a rash decision like this wasn't much of a good idea. In hindsight, calling all available doctors might have been the worst possible mistake. Right now, the worries weren't just avoiding a permanent residue from the injury. There were three bullets in her friend's body, moving to who-knows-which-part of it. It was a matter of life and death, she was going to lose her if things went bad. A lot of people knowing where they were, meant also the hooded ponies knew where they were.
They were going to be found, and killed in the long run, but this box had convinced them it wasn't there for two days of constant use. Or it really just turned up when it looked like it did.
Either way, sitting here in the ship instead of following this doctor into his box was was a lose under all circumstances, so she obliged as he asked her to carry the struggling earth pony inside. Or rather drag her inside, as she grabbed hold of the doorframe with her hands, trying to pull back outside. She wasn't going to listen to her complaining, she was armed after all. In the worst case, she could just shoot the Sapian and take his illogical ship, right?
"Just what in Equestria are you doin' Rainbow? Let go! C'mon, you know the saying. A mane, no fur, no trus..." Once she looked back at Rainbow Dash, into the wide ranging insides, much larger than the scarce little shuttle they had come here with, she was dumbstruck, and fortunately let go and fell silent, to the other two's relief.
Once the doors were shut, they put her down and stood back up. "So if you're a doctor, you can fix her, right? She's been shot. You can make her better, right? Deep down inside, she knew it wasn't that simple, but one could always hope. The noisy box showing up was enough of a miracle, Dash was ready to believe anything.
While the mysterious man, clothed in a tweed jacket and a bow tie, peered out what looked a bit like a non-extended royal staff but with a glowy bit at the end and pointed it at Applejack while it made a high-pitched wheezing sound, he asked: "Yes, yes I usually don't do this, I'm not actually a medical doctor - stop! Listen!"
The furious pilot had already drawn her weapon and pointed it at the man, slowly unlocking it as she took a step closer to Applejack for a better position to protect her. "Listen, I'm not a medical doctor, but might be able to fix up your friend here. So." He clapped into his hands and started moving around the console, handling the incomprehensible controls. "First of all, you're gonna want me to call you Rainbow Dash right? And yellow mane, orange fur, she's gonna be Applejack."
"Who are you? How do you.."
"Long story, other universe, been visiting it for almost all of my life, it has a lot of parallels with my own one. By the way, that's my standing to this universe too, except for the all-of-my-life-bit."
Applejack had her eyes closed by now, she must have faded. And Dash was all the more furious, taking another step towards the restless man. "Get to the point!"
"Yes, uh so. What methods do you have?"
"What?"
"What medical methods. Just repeat whatever name rings a bell, laser surgery, proteic recovery boost, stem foam treatment..."
The last one did ring a bell. She pointed at the doctor pointing out that was it. "Stem foam, we got that."
Again, the man clapped in his hands. "Good, now transportation. Magnetic hover-craft, Quantum-relative fix, gravity diffusion..."
"G-Diffusion."
He clapped his hands for a third time. "Wonderful, that's all I'm gonna need. One moment!" He made some more adjustments on the console, followed by a sudden short rumble and the perplexed pony hearing this loud noise from before, whereafter the doctor ran down the stairs on the opposite side, disappeared through a doorframe and came back with a carriable stretcher. "Come on, help me here."
They heaved Applejack on the stretcher, before the doctor flipped a switch on it's side, causing her to suddenly grow a lot lighter. This allowed for a lot faster carriage. As they ran through the corridors, avoiding banging on the walls, Dash was still processing all the questions that went through her head. What was all this? Where were they going? What was with the questions? But she didn't have the focus to start asking away and keeping up.
All of this could still have been a lot. She finally put aside her initial theory the clothes suggested of him just being a crazy Sapian with a box, as the box was obviously at a ridiculous technological advantage. He could have also been a first, attending them for some reason. Maybe for experimentation, maybe to just attend patients in need, who knew. In respect of Jack's blood loss, Dash wasn't intending in passing up the chance to save her. It had to be some sort of miracle. It just had to. She wasn't being herself just following up on all this. It was different, it felt like she knew all this somehow. The retractive, glowy staff, the blue box and it's noise, the lack of knowledge on how this all could possibly work. It had a faint familiar feel to it.
Before she could grasp what it was, they arrived in something that did resemble a medical surgery. It had a lot of electronics stacked on shelves around another console on the wall, with screens attached to them with wires and the electronics again having wires of which some didn't lead anywhere. In the middle stood a barrow with a wide, flat machine above it, held up by a crane at the side. The man pulled out the barrow, shoved Applejack on it before taking off the robe and pushing the barrow back below the machine. It looked a bit like an all-round scanning device, but it had a big lens in the centre.
Rainbow Dash grew more and more scared. She couldn't bear the thought of what would happen if things didn't work out. She was so desperate, she didn't hesitate making these possibly stupid decisions. She just had to keep trying to tell herself it was going to be fine. "Is she gonna be alright?"
"Not guaranteeing anything, but I'd be lying if I said if people in worse conditions haven't survived." After pulling a few switches, he just went to fetch a large contraption with a hose attached to it, pushed the scanning device up out of the way, making the beeping from the ECG come to a sudden stop, turned around Applejack and went back to the consoles to pull a trigger. The tearing sounds felt excrusciating for Dash as drops of blood spilled out, but at least with a faint klonking, the bullets were forcibly torn out of her friend's body, before the doctor went back to turn on that other contraption and pour a red-orange foam deep into the wounds.
"We're gonna have to keep her lying on the stomach, to keep the foam inside, I had it precisely filled, no empty spaces in the flesh, but now it's all up to the coordination. We can speed it up. You lot have nanogenes? Oh right, why am I asking, no use using the foam without it." He pulled the flat machine back down and centered it with the lense looking right at the area the wounds were in causing slight specs of light appearing from it and moving downwards onto their patient. The beeping was was a bit less frequent. Actually, it was dying down.
"No! No! Applejack!" She grabbed her friend's arm. She was sobbing loudly. Not holding back her tears. She couldn't even if she tried. Life was ending. What worth was life going to have after this.
"Oh, stop it, not like you lot could reconstruct an electrocardial restart, even if I gave you the chance." He flipped a switch, and suddenly, the heartbeat didn't just start, but with a sudden twitch, Applejack awoke and took a deep, wheezing breath. "Calm down, most crucial bit is done already."
"Ya really put me under the knife of some hairless ape?" With a flip of another switch, her slightly lifted head fell back on the fabric of the cushion again.
"That's it, suspended in a coma until I sort things out. Right, you then. First Rainbow girl, breathe in, everything's gonna be fine now." A light at the end of the tunnel. Maybe. If what he said was true. He had initiated a full rebuild on stem foam. Ridiculously expensive procedure, but Dash didn't care about spending her life working off a credit, if it meant Jack would live. Besides, if this really wasn't what this doctor ususally does, maybe he wasn't even an approved doctor, giving her some liberties on his charge.
He was just standing in front of her, waiting for Dash to recollect herself. To process her suppressed culture shock. Or maybe it was just an extreme surprise mixed with a faint hint of familiarity. After a few seconds of just standing there, the man remarked: "Oh boy, you really have no idea who I am. Guessed it'd occur to you after a few seconds, but I guess I'm only known in the Kingdom." He went through the back door to fetch two chairs and give Rainbow Dash a seat.
"So. Any first questions you'd like to get out there?"
"We're gonna be followed, shouldn't we get outta here? We've been here for a while, with the mess we caused, we're surrounded."
"If someone was chasing you, then they are going to find that little ship of yours. But not this one.", he simply responded, stroking the side of the console. And he was stroking it really awkwardly, Dash thought. Before she could dig further into that, he calmed her down though. "Don't worry, they won't get anywhere near where we are for a long time. But now, it's my turn. Who is it that's after you? Getting that horse hit with three bullets like these, they were shooting to kill."
He picked up one of the long, golden rounds. "Doesn't seem like they intend for whoever they shoot to live - wait." He turned around the bullet to take a look at it's back side. "There's something complicated engraved on the back." He picked out a magnifying glass which couldn't possibly have fit into his seemingly empty pocket. "I know this from my own universe." He got up to walk small circles while talking. "It's the crest of Cheshire, but this is not right. Wrong place, wrong time, wrong universe. First planet Cardiff and now thi..oh right, blue and orange horse."
"Where'd you know my name?"
"What? Oh right, the name. I was just guessing from the looks. What are your names anyway?"
"You guessed right."
"Oh come on, it'll be the same thing as with me having fiction centered around me here, so I guess you have a book or film you're cosplaying as..."
The pilot was getting realy angry now. This man was just trying to maneuver the discussion past him coming here knowing who they were from an anonymous distress call. "We're not cosplaying, don't skip it, where'd you know my name?"
He took a few steps back stretching his hands out, still with the bullet and the magnifying glass. "Calm down and listen. Even if you were who you claim you are, what's with the names? I've been at places, people have normal fore- and surnames. Don't tell me all your relatives are called 'Dash'."
"No, we're different. Ponies choose their names, when they come of age."
"You choose yo.. wait, you choose your names? Why that? Where'd that come from."
"Dunno, tradition, I guess." Rainbow Dash lifted her shoulders and tilted her head aside, looking down at the floor. She never thinks about this kinda stuff really.
"Okay, let's just put this aside and believe you for a minute. I take it the colours are hair dye. Still the same universe, animal people and same laws of physics as at home, unlike Equestria..."
This was getting ridiculous. "'Unlike' Equestria...talk of universes and our names and our colours, what're you talking about?"
"All right, all right. Short version: There's another universe I regularly visit too. Completely different laws of physics, includes magic, unicorns, pegasi, and most of the people you meet are horses. Not these long horse heads like you two have, but still, they have hooves. And other than you..." He pointed at her arms. "they don't have hands." A bold story to tell, but he didn't stop with this. Instead, he took a determined step forward, asking her: "Different universe, different laws, everything separate, but the same people."
Up until this point, she thought he was just being completely crazy. But right now he was making it personal. "Say what?"
"Rainbow Dash, Applejack? With the same colours on fur and mane, even with the same voices? Come on, go ahead and - if you lot are real - tell me there's a purple one called Twilight Sparkle too."
Unsettling that he knew her too, but then again, Dash had long given up trying to see any logic to this. "Yep, got one."
"Rarity, white, purple mane?"
"Yep."
"Fluttershy, yellow, doesn't talk an awful lot."
"Yep."
"Pinkie Pie? Pink, curly hair, very hyperactive, and a very cool taste." He smiled and straightened his bow tie with the last one.
"Are we going anywhere with this? So you know all of us with all your strange talk..." He was gone. Just left, and for longer than before.
After a full minute, he returned with a shelf bearing a television along with some playback devices for different types of data storage. He opened a small cupboard at the bottom, peering out a box of discs bearing the name 'Which Doctor' With a big 'WD' for a logo and placed one of the discs into one of the devices before turning on the television and dimming the light.
"There's still people coming for us."
"Trust me, I can guess how far your sciencey things are and this ship's doors opening is not gonna happen."
He then placed his chair next to her's and just shushed her when she wanted to ask what this was about. It appeared to be a disc from some RBC tv show, both the menu and the opening of what ever they were going to look at had a monotonous yet somehow slightly catchy four-beat sound to it.
By now, she thought what ever it was this incredible spaceship had in store, the doctor knew there was someone after them, and didn't even bother insisting on asking who, any more. There must have been some reason why he wasn't going to at least check if they were safe, so she just stuck to staying near Applejack what ever happened.
The program they were watching was a full-length live-action episode with the title 'The last second', about a strange Sapian doctor, refusing to state his name, but crashing with an escape pod much like the one they were in, a little fox girl trying to make him something he would agree on eating, but the story went all the way to just jumping from one scene to the next in a pretty confusing plot about a shapeshifting lesser eel, that was intelligent enough to talk despite it's appearance, slowly introducing a lot of things about this doctor.
And the Doctor was the strangest thing about it. He had the same face, the same voice. This man starting off in a torn blue shirt saving the world in twenty minutes with an old laptop and a firetruck, and in the end, changing his attire to exactly what the man next to her was wearing. And the things he said were a bit of an abstract concept to her. She knew of such fantasy stories, from 'Solar Struggles', 'Galaxy Travel', all the way to really nerdy stuff like 'Dragonfly'. But she this didn't say much to her. 'Which Doctor', this episode, the TARDIS, space- and time travel, genetically unrelated aliens, it all had the same distantly familiar aftertaste to her, as this TARDIS-ripoff.
Once it was over, she had completely forgotten the time. On the other hand, did it matter? By now, if there was any sort of danger, it would have already arrived. Space travel through warp-gates was a matter of seconds, and they hadn't gone that far into this escape pod. The similarities between this video she had watched fascinated her. But all he had shown her might still be possible somehow. As he just stood there, smiling, and asking "Well?", she couldn't just accept it all. Even if only for the sake of not looking so desperate any more. "So, lemme guess. You're some rich dude, who somehow got his hands on this 'bigger-on-the-inside-technology' and had some cosmetic surgery on his face and lungs to look like the character from a tv show?"
"Provided your universe has bigger-on-the-inside and advanced custom lung remodeling. What? You think I went after some long-dead actor and exchanged vocal chords with him? Well you know what? We could just go back that one century and ask him if I did that. Or, or you come with me back to the control room and sugges..."
Oh no he wasn't. At once, she got up and drew her blaster, aiming it at him. She wasn't going to leave Ayjay here, while who knows who else would come along and take her away."I'm not leaving Applejack alone, and you're not making me!"
Something about this made him click. His look changed into a more annoyed one, and he answered with a note of sarcasm about as subtle as a brick in the face. "Oh, pointing a gun at me after all this are we, eh? So tough, isn't she tough?" Possibly, the ape was going to reveal his true intentions any moment.
"All right, I'll be in the control room if you need me. Snacks and water second door across the hall from here, see you when you change your mind.", he snorted while leaving in the same direction they had come here, still grumbling on the way.
Or he was just going to be offended and go away. She was still worked up, but after getting up and walking around for a while, she just sat down. Things grew silent. She'd just look at Applejack to see if something changed about her, but she seemed stable.
She sometimes checked her movement sensor app on her communicator, but the screen displayed something very confusing. Usually, when there was something in the direct surroundings moving in relation to her, it would register that and display it as a yellow dot on the display. But the entire display was yellow. it was like everything was in constant, extremely fast movement, even herself.
Time was not running, it was crawling. Eventually, she just sat there, playing minigames on her wrist communicator. Slicing fruit and firing round pig heads with angry faces on birds. Eventually, another hour had passed with nothing happening, and she had grown bored of all the games she had installed. And there was no downloading new ones, because something was wrong with her subspace network connection. To be precise, the connection itself seemed to work, but the entire network was gone. All the sites she tried to connect with weren't there, all the networking apps she had didn't work, there was nothing.
If it was an old, conventional satellite network she didn't reach, it could have been just due to some jammer in the ship. But Subspace was different. You can't just block the subspace network, that doesn't happen. It connects you directly to what ever you want to reach, no satellites, mainframes, servers or spacial stretches where it could be interrupted.
She shook her head again to cast out the thoughts about food, feeling her mane drop on her neck's other side. She had faint thoughts about it, but this time, she couldn't resist at least taking a look from inside this operating room. It was visible from here, decorated with a sign she couldn't read from the angle she was standing in. If she leaned out, still holding the inner side of the doorframe with her hand, she might have been able to read what it said.
Any other thought about this was interrrupted though by footsteps heavy enough for her to feel them, despite the solid walls they were in. "No, no, no, no, no! Out of the way!" The Doctor pushed her aside, paced past her to the controls. "Ah, good, no visible by far not, phew."
"What's going on now?"
"Time..." He placed his arms on his knees, catching his breath. "How much time does your watch show?"
"Half past eleven?"
"No, no, how much time has passed, since I went away last time?"
"Umm about an hour?"
He clapped his hands in relief. "Ha! No harm done!" He turned around to the console, but before doing anything, leaned on it and stroked it's surface, purring: "Oh, good girl, thank you." This man really must have been very lonely.
"I increased the amount of time in your direct surroundings, but I'd forgotten to turn on the decontamination. Minor mistake, could happen to anyone." He paused. "Except a medical doctor."
"Which you are not...?"
"No I'm not." After pushing more buttons, flipping switches, and hitting a bell with a hammer, he turned around and folded his arms, lifting the fold of his right eye. "No packages, no crumbs, not even a drop of water. You been sitting here for a full hour, all by yourself? What about the curiosity for this place? Where's the desire for adventure I can clearly see in your eyes?"
Dash turned around her comm, showing the Doctor the feed from her movement detectors. "What's this? Everything's moving, but I can't see it moving."
"Oh, these are just other rooms, phased out, oscillating in the same coordinates as us within the first three dimensions, but at a completely different place in another one." So much gibberish, and she didn't understand a word of it. And she could've sworn he knew that. Why was she telling her this? Was it just lies to confuse her? Possible on one hand, on the other hand, the readings didn't seem physically possible to her in the first place, so if the readings seem like random shenanigans, who was she to claim it needed an explanation for it, other than what seems like random shenanigans? She didn't even respond. She just silently stood there, giving him a questioning look.
After a few moments, the Sapian sighed. "Still not trusting me, eh? Okay, you know what? If you really think all the rooms here are just shifting and I'm sneaking past you somehow, how about this?" grabbed in his jacket's left pocket, took out a pair of handcuffs, and locked one hand of both of them in one cuff each before giving her the key to them. "Here's the key, we're attached now. Means if I go into a room, other than you'd expect me to, so do you. See?"
He went through the empty doorframe, stopping barely on the other side. "See? Still here." He was still there. She looked back on her comm. Still everything aglow. And she hadn't heard anyone else walk around in all the time she was here. Then again, if what he said was true, and he somehow made more time pass on her end, for all she knew he could have been gone for five minutes. But that again would require him having told the truth before. And that would mean time really was relative in this place. And the glowing on her movement sensor was just a room separate in a non-space dimension. And this entire ship was a TARDIS after all. Which meant if he was lying, he was telling the truth before, and if he wasn't, he was telling the truth, too.
The blue mare felt dizzy. She was getting tired of sitting back, playing it safe, not taking the risk. This wasn't her. She used to be different. Where was her old life gone? Come to think of it, where was the life all of her old friends gone? She didn't have much contact with all of them anymore, save for Applejack. They all used to be so close, backing Dash up. Giving her confidence. Instead, here she was, sitting here. Not moving an inch because any far-fetched scenario could be happening. Completely ignoring for all she equally knew, one of these 'parallel rooms' might materialize and slice her apart any time.
She decided to take the step. She started taking into account what this Doctor's point of view might have looked like all this time. He really seemed to be trying, so she could at least try and move in his direction for once, rather than struggling. She took a deap breath, took a look at the doorsill, and gulped. She was sweating, and couldn't help breathing a lot more than she would have, were she calm. She knew she was taking a huge risk. But what was life other than to take one leap after the other, hoping you never jumped too shortly or too deeply? She closed her eyes, lifted her left foot and stepped across, then following with the other.
When she opened her eyes, she was still holding the doorframe. The Doctor had taken a step back to make space, and she was in the same corridor, still seeing Applejack when looking back in. Fixing Applejack in in the centre of her view, she let go of the frame. But she was still there, her chest slowly rising and falling in the rythm of a relaxed, calm breath.
It was done, she was out of the room and Applejack was still there. Rainbow Dash even went back in and out once, just to test if it was some optical illusion, but it seemed it was all real. These rooms were not moving around, they were a solid structure.
"Easy, Dash, easy."
"Hey, that's racist!" She smashed her fist against his shoulder.
"Oi, not so hard, you're a horse after all aren't you?", he asked while they set off to walk down the corridor.
"Pony. And not a lesser one either. That kinda thing you say when you ride a lesser."
They stopped in front of that door Rainbow Dash had been thinking of and eventually looking at for quite some time now. She looked back to still see the same operating room through the trapeze-shaped frame. The door in front of them was closed, but there was a pushable compartment in the doorframe. It bore a sign reading 'Human cuisine'.
Upon pressing in the button, the door slid aside, revealing what seemed like a very long, human kitchen. And she wasn't given very much time to inspect it from outside, as she was soon dragged along by her cuffed hand. "Here we are, ingredients from any place you could imagine, I assume you ponies only eat plants?"
She was starting to get her head around of his intrusive way of going about things but it was still hard to get used to the pace things took most of the time he was present. They were still pacing through the kitchen, that seemed to after turning around a corner, just went on, with one broad aisle following the other. All of them laid out with cooking equipment of all sorts, shelves and cupboards bearing ingredients and cuisine ware.
"I'll just take that as a no. Any preferences? Apples?, Grain? Pears? Mango?"
"Mango?"
"If you never tried one here's your chance." They came to a stop three rows later, as the Doctor pulled a lever on a fridge and then opened it, picking out and handing over to her thee unshapely green fruits. "Mildly sweet stone fruit, very popular in the middle e..." He hasitated, apparently remembering something, but then waving it aside. "Parts of the Royal colonies, I don't know."
"...I think we'll go with some oranges"
"Okay, not in the mood for trying out new tastes then, are we?" He stuffed two of the mangoes back into the fridge and pushed it's lever back up, before leading her two rows further into the kitchen. "I'm not eating them though, only take as many as you're gonna eat. I hate it when stuff has bits in them."
After picking up some oranges from another of those tight-locked fridges, they headed back through the narrow path that connected all the aisles, right back through the corridor into the operating room, the orange-dyed pony now, still in there, thank Celestia, in less of a coma, but rather sleeping like an angel.
At least until the Doctor pulled back to the consoles and flipped some switches. "All right, wakey wakey, can't be sleeping all day all night."
This time though, she woke up a lot more smoothly. "Wai..wha...what?" She opened her eyes, directly looking at her blue friend, with her hand chained to the simian stranger she had seen before. And as expected, her one visible eye stiffened in an angry look, and at the tip of her head, her mouth formed a visible, questioning frown. "What in tarnation is goin' on here? And what is this here fancy contraption?", she asked before looking at the roughly body-shaped flat white all-round monitoring device above her.
"Well so much for equine gratitude." The Doctor folded up his arms, observing Dash as she tried to talk some sense into her friend.
She took the other mare's hand in her own, speaking up. "Jack, he saved your life. Could we please be a little sensible here?"
Which wasn't very helpful, as it only aggravated the earth pony even further. "We've been over this, Rainbow Dash! You seen the news, you know what ah'm talking about. Monkeys are all drugs, and integration problems and whatnot. I.."
She was at once silenced, as Dash placed the length of her index finger on the angry mare's mouth. "You're right. We've been over it. All over it. I know what you went through, I was there. But we really could do with some help right now, and he saved your life. So why not see what this guy can do for us?"
"Who says we need help?"
The Doctor chuckled,before turning around to pick up one of the bullets and blurt out: "Oh please, first I arrive in your crammy ship with Tomcolt right here scared and desperate to the brink of crying, you mortally wounded with oversized, custom-made high-quality bullets stuck in your tum. You disguising in ominous cloaks and masks. This isn't some little kitty cat child's play here you're in it's serious trouble so you better stop gobbing out slurs and start telling me what I need to know to help!"
He stood there motionless gazing the earth pony directly in her eye. Moments passed by one by one, second by second, with just the left eye on an angry horse's head and the eyes of a Sapian face, staring at each other. And the rare sight that he was did look alien enough to be really creepy, with these wide-open eyeballs just buried into crevaces in this round head. Sure you did see other animals from time to time, but living in Equestria, you met them so rarely it was hard to get used to their looks. And even at that, Rainbow Dash was one of the people who tended to have more contact with foreigners than a lot of others. Most people who just live and work in their own districts of the many urban worlds surrounding Canterlot, had practically no contact with the outside world whatsoever. She wasn't sure, if it was even worse in the rural areas.
In the end, the farmpony sighed, closing her eye, and then opening it to slightly turn to face Dash. "You sure he really saved mah life? Not some fancy-shmancy light show or sumthin?"
Dash leaned across the console, tilting her head to evenly face her sceptic friend. "Ayjay...he didn't just pick us up..."
She realized she only now had time to think of what happened. In the heat of the moment, and the necessity of immediate action, she could just look at everything with a a sentiment as cold as possible. But now she came to really realize it. Only now, that she had to think of it. That she had to, in order to say it out loud, she came to realize what before almost had happened, and what did happen eventually. And what it had meant if it stayed like that.
She couldn't even just calmly say it like this. But she had to. If they were going to go anywhere any time soon, she had to tell her what this man had done for them. She tried to fight it. Stay the Rainbow Dash everypony from the old times knew. But she couldn't. Her nose began to run, and she could feel first tears emerging from her eyes. "Ayjay!" She stepped past the console, not caring about pulling the stranger after her with every movement, to the bed to wrap her left around her almost-gone friend. "We're so lucky he showed up."
At first, the orange pony flinched because of the pain the sudden movement caused her a lot of pain, with the wide open wound still there on her back. "Dash, what's..."
Laying the side of her head on that of Applejack, she paused for a while, just crying. Crying! She hadn't let herself cry for so long. Always remembering how she grew up to learn not to. Crying was weak. And under the sun of Celestia, no pegasus could allow himself to be weak. But the unwritten rules among Pegasi didn't matter to her any more. This was just - it was just too much. Her last really close friend, the last person she could turn to when looking for support in her life. And she was so close to being gone, never to come back again. Coming to think of it, she was so happy all this was never going to happen.
Eventually she got herself together to mutter what she needed to say "I just...the blood loss...you...it was too much, you would have..." She tried as hard as she could, but she couldn't muster the nerve to pronounce it.
"Well it seems ah didn't...", the earth pony responded in ignorance, tapping the blue mare's shoulder with her hand.
"You did! You did, and him..." She sniffed while pointing at the man next to her with the hand that was still cuffed. "...this Doctor guy he did something some electrostart thing, and you were back." She hugged her friend even tighter. This time making her really understand.
"That musta been the sudden - everything ah felt when ah first woke up here. Oh Rainbow Dash!" It was only this point, at which Jack understood the gravity of what they just had been through, and returned the hug, pulling her friend closer to run the side of her head against that of her concerned friend. "I'm sorry. I didn't know. This was all a mistake. Ah shouldn'ta gone takin' that job in the first place. There there, I'm right here."
The Doctor waited patiently, as the minutes went by, until Dash finally got herself back together. Once her sobs died down, she stood back up, wiped away one last tear before coming to terms with the truth. "You know, actually, he earned our trust long before I realized it."
Her friend sighed, but at last, she gave in. "All right, guess if ah'm stuck right here, might as well go all the way."
And while the Doctor asked for the key and after undoing the cuffs, went to operate the machine with the hose again, to pour more foam into the now less deep wound, Rainbow Dash told Applejack what she had seen. About the illogically aligned corridors, about the proportionally impossible kitchen, about the Doctor's hint on how time worked in here, all of it.
By the time the Doctor had made some calibrations on the console he fetched the chairs and handed one of them to the pegasus to sit on. Once they were all comfortable, he leaned his elbows against the corner of the bed and put his hands together. "Now, Applejack, tell me what happened. Who were the ones after you and why were you after them?"
"I swear to ya ah have no idea who these fellas were. They never take their masks off and half of 'em dun' even do anything but stand and occasionally follow orders. The latter ones dun' even say a word."
"Okay, obviously a lot of secrecy around this, so why the secrecy and why were you there in the first place?"
"Assignment. Whenever ah can, I take jobs hunting criminals an' such. There's these weird ones too, with an anonymous employer. Not much a fan of personal contact, but he's reliable and pays pretty darn well. This time ah just bit off more than ah could chew."
The Doctor just shook his head and ran his palm across his face. "This isn't going anywhere. Listen. I need you to tell me the whole story. Every detail is important. Think back, were there things even a little different? Somehow not following the patterns you recognize? Anything? Think back of it and tell me the whole thing from scratch."
"Hmph. All right. Just gimme a sec..." She paused for a few seconds, and then continued. "All right. Listen up."
This sorta thing dun' happen every day ya know, ah get this e-mail, ah get inta the booth an...
"Stop." The Doctor stretched out his open hand, almost putting it on the horse's muzzle.
"What is it?"
"We're not doing it like that. I know you can do better, so when you tell us this, please speak clearly. Properly. Every word is important, so make it easy to take notes to keep all the possibly important details audible. Including how things went on when you thought about doing this, what caused you to decide to go where, where did you go when, everything. A bit like a..."
"Like a Police report?", Dash added.
The Doctor clapped his hands pointed at her in approval. "Exactly. Imagine someone reading this. They wouldn't want to read it the same way you talk to fellow farmponies, would they?"
Applejack grunted, but then resumed recalling the events.
This sorta thing doesn't happen every day, but when it does, there's a chance to pick it up or not, all at one point. It always starts with an e-mail with no real sender. It only arrives if you're checking on your mail in that very moment and it deletes any trace of itself after ten minutes. Believe me, I know this computer geek Micro Chip, and he tried everything to find some fragment on my hard drives. No chance. Whoever is behind it is doing their job pretty darn well.
Every time, if I respond to it, it then responds with another mail with a specific public terminal that I ought to go to on a specific time on the next day. And here I was again. Ginger Bread Ave 89 on Cloudsdale M twelve. The terminal I was supposed to visit, was one of the publicly available surfing booths. I payed the bits to use it for a few hours just to be sure, and got inside.
And this is the point, where this chat client shows up, it's all beige and rocky in the background, the outline's corners aren't smooth like with anything else on these operating systems and all of it just looks terribly outta place. And then it just starts sending you messages and you return them. Nothing. No Avatar or picture of them, just the name 'SEB' and that's it. And that's pretty much it. That's where I get these assignments briefed.
The assignments themselves tend to be pretty random. Be armed and ready at location A, keep your eyes out for area B, corner and catch C if you find them in B. Often there wouldn't even be much happening, and when there was, it was just someone smuggling something or delivering a message you have to interrupt. They always seem to be part of some bigger scheme going on in the background, up to the point, where I ran into a bounty hunter in on the exact same assignment but kept separate from me when briefed.
In the beginning, it really was all standing around, guarding something without being a notable policepony of sorts, and you got a part of your payment for participating. As the months went on, there were actual stirrings. Descriped ponies showed up, I got them, job done, payment received. It was pretty reliable money. But at one point, it changed.
And this time, they even wrote 'This one's a doozie.' Maybe shoulda taken that as a hint and let it go. I affirmed his question if I was game, and got myself ready for some bigger stuff. I had to go to Cloudsdale O twenty-two, get under cover in the slums of 'Pillargrounds' and spend the next tuesday night looking for suspiscious activities regarding incidencts, where locals contacted the cops on intruders abducting people on a regular schedule. It's already been on the news that crime rates had been reaching a high in the recent months, but who am I to complain? All non-registered private venture you can lable 'crime' or 'illegal', it often just comes down to taxation and stuff. And something else in the news was the decline of average Equestrian poverty over the last full year, so I thought it all makes sense somehow. Besides, I dunno how clean the work I do is myself.
Point is, the cops put that aside as migration. You know, economy grows, pony gets a job and leaves the slums, rinse and repeat. But they insisted that was not the case and they were disappearing. And it seems they found their way to whoever this SEB guy is so it was my job to look into what was going on.
So I did my thing, got Rainbow Dash here in on it so she could fly me there and pick me up if something happened. I just dressed up as usual and bought some sloppily made, wide piece of cloth that didn't even look like it was tailored for a pony, more like a buffalo or sorts, mudded it in dirt for a bit and that was that.
When it was time, we parked in an unused garage just outside the district and turned the engine off, with Dash waiting for me there with more stuff in case I needed it. I used the bit of time the sunlight indicated to walk around and scour the area to see where to best stay. Eventually, I noted where the center was, picked some alleyway just outside of it, and sat down, the only things showing being the cloth, my muzzle, and my old hat. I leaned against an improvised, wooden wall, both legs lying elbows-up so nopony could see the boots and waited. It did take a while, but this business is mostly about patience and being ready when the droppings get real. At about quarter past ten, a little freighter arrived and landed in the center of the square-like area with full force, even crushing a cart with dirty, but maybe not inedible bananas.
By the time they landed, I got close enough to stay in a shadow and pick up anything that was happening around there, and adjusted myself to move should I catch attention but kept watching. The hatch in the back opened and out came four ponies. The entirety of their bodies were covered in wide robes in four dark colors who moved out in four directions, then all faced each other and nodded. Not one word said. I can swear, I hear stuff from that distance. Each one picked out a set of pony-sized anti-grav carriages, unfolded and turned them on, and moved out, dragging the carriages with them. They then all set out, apparently to split up. One of them not in my direction, but pretty close by. Not even sure if he really registered me leaning there.
Like all the other ponies, this one was wearing a shiny mask, only emanating a slight glint from the moonlights and torches here and there. It was either of some solid metal, or just coated, but it was anything but simplistic. It bore the drawn face of a pony, but with an open mouth, spiky teeth on the inside and the mouth was torn to an unnaturally wide smile.
As I slowly sneaked after him from corner to corner, I slid an unlocked window to the side to see why nothing was going on. You'd think if someone landed a ship in the middle of - well not no-where but no-where where anything worth visiting could be, people would get worked up. Leave their houses to see what's going on. But here? Nope. And I wanted to know why. Inside what was barely more than a hut, were an adult mare and a stallion, snuggled together. But they didn't look comfortable at all. They were shivering. One of em even flinched when they heard me. I just closed it right away, to be sure and went on to following the covered pony, past and around one corner after the other, until they stopped in front of another hut's door.
By then, apart from moonlight, everything had gone dark. Any torches in the vicinity were put out. The pony paused to slide out the arm with their communicator, guess to check for messages or their location, then they just kicked the door in. All I heard were desperate begs not to take them away, mentioning they had no other place to go. When I gave another quick look, the hooded pony hadn't done anything. It just went to the next door and kicked that one in.
They ignored the screams of terror, coming from anyone inside and just went to one door or curtain after the other. Until once, I heard more screams, not just from grown ups, but two children one just holding one shrill, soon silenced note, the other one already crying in a shattered voice. With a suppressed gunshot, they all died down. One at a time. Hearing more mutterings from the huts I ran past, I closed in on him, turned on my chestplate's barrier generator to catch one or two shots from him and the moment she was carrying one of the corpses outta the house, I pulled down that hood of her's and gave her head a round of my old forty-five-er.
When I looked through what ever she had with her, it seemed the mare that did all this was nothing different at all. A pony like you and me. But still murdering innocent people at random for some reason. At this point, I could have taken his communicator someplace else, looked through his data and then decided what to do. At that point, I shoulda done that, I understand that now. Cause that was exactly what I didn't do. Instead, I wanted to show what I can do. I wanted to show I can go all-in and take spoils of a full victory. You know, find some undeniable proof of what's going on. Along with finding out what's going on of course.
So instead of that, I just found some hiding place within the hut, dug a hole below what was supposed to be a table and buried my own communicator in there before sending Dash it's exact location and a description where to find it. Instead, I took the guy's one as well as some ID cards he was carrying, along with his robe and mask. The mask was uncomfortable to buckle around your head, but it fit.
Telling from what the people there were like, and from how calmly the masked ponies went about what they did, they were sure as heck not expecting someone with any money, let alone someone with a camera. So if the masks were to conceal themselves from somepony, it was to hide the faces from each other. And if they were several and could afford fancy custom made robes and masks, chances were their little freighter has a Warp Gate device too. The little ship would barely fit em in with all these bodies, so hiding wasn't an option either. Only way to get inside was in plain sight.
So I put on his robe and mask, put up the hood and dragged these bodies on the floating carriages. There was no saving them, after all. Best thing to do is to use them to get inside to give em some purpose. Four bodies, four empty carriages. When I walked back, the others gradually arrived too, walking inside one after the other. We arranged the bodies over each other to fit everything into the narrow space and then all got in ourselves. It was like I expected. Silence. No word spoken, no mask or hood removed, just waiting until we reached our destination. We couldn't even see the cockpit.
When we arrived, things went on pretty fast. The same one that had moved first when they left the ship back in the slums, and when we got inside, went ahead, pulling all the tied-together beds bearing people, formerly live people, and just tossed them into some cold storage room. On the way were dark halls. Faintly dark-red walls. Hard to see, it was barely lit at all. In all the hallways stood other masked people on both sides. Not ponies or horses for that matter. Flat heads but just stood firm. No motion. No word, nothing. And they were dressed differently to the ponies. Suits with fancy shirts and ties, all black and with black coats over them. The faces painted on their masks didn't look all too equine either. Whiskers, slitted eyes, lot more like cats or something, but still with the crescent, unnaturally wide smile bearing white teeth within.
We eventually got back to the entrance, where I finally got a glimpse of where I was. I could slightly raise my head to look through the one-way transparent lenses and far above us on the building's outer wall, see a brand with it's logo, a twisted rainbow with the name 'Stickles' and the catch phrase 'A taste of the Rainbow' underlining it. This place coulda been a lot, but Stickles are a chocolate treat. Dash here knows, she may be a show pilot, she got this brand on her fighter. I see it every day. What ever was going on in there, it was not what the outside proclaimed it to be.
The masked ponies and I then went through a different set of hallways taking one turn after the other. I knew I was gonna witness some shady meeting or some weird ritual I shouldn't be seeing, so at this point, I silently memorized every turn we took, just to be sure, until we ascended up a railing and stood in line as we watched some factory workers run the machines. Down straps moving on a rail hung cattle carcasses, and one by one were fed into a set of grinding cylinders with spikes, the remains of it only to be smashed by heavy machiery, sewn apart and squashed again. Wouldn'ta thought much of what was going on beyond it being a slaughterhouse, if it weren't for what these ponies just had done before.
A slaughterhouse in Equestria was nothing special. The cattle we raise even if only for milk products alone doesn't last forever and has gotta be brought somewhere eventually, also, the big game farmers' gotta make money of it somehow. But I've seen quite a few now, and they're normal, open factories. Not scarcely-lit catacombs run by weird cult ponies.
I was already having a darn bad feeling. A suspiscion that seemed mad. Crazy. But in the context of where we were and what we had gone to fetch, it was the only sensible connection. Poor ponies that have nothing to offer. And dead ones at that. Sure it was something big under the radar, but it couldn'ta been selling them into slavery. Dead slaves don't do a lot of work.
And I was right.
Among the cattle that was carried inside were ponies. And not lessers. Highers. Not the ones I brought em, but sure as heck here under similar circumstances. It was sick. I felt sick. And all the more, when first the hands, then the center including the head, and then the rest of a young pony were gradually grinded and broken into bits within the machine. I was about to through up. And I would have, had I kept looking. Maybe I shoulda just closed my eyes. But I was scared. I didn't want to stay, I couldn't. Not for all intel in the world would I stand by and watch this.
I reached under the robe to turn my barrier generator back on, and then headed back and ran. They didn't get what was up at first, but that soon changed. Once they wrapped their head arounded, one of em shouted "Seize the running one!" I didn't gain any real pursuers among the masked ponies, nor did even one fire a shot, but the other people with masks seemed to come to life. They produced some horrible noise. I dunno how to describe it. It sounded a bit like a drowned hiss, but different. I don't know how, just different. When I made my way outside, I noticed they weren't running either. They all just took their gloves and kinda walked towards me with their black hands stretched out after me.
Back on the landing area, I noticed the freighter was gone. I ran past the entire space instead and got into one of the personal transport pods. I had no idea where they'd take me, but any head start towards ponies that might be flying after me was welcome. When inside, I quickly took the communicator from the masked mare I'd taken out back in the slums, sent Dash my location along with the message that I'm being chased and wouldn't keep the comm, and then charged my blaster to fry it.
Soon after it arrived at some harbor-like city, the ponies after me were already being dropped off nearby by a little carrier. And this time they were different. They were armed. I unlocked both my weapons, kept them unlocked and slid them out of my robe. At one point, one of them saw me. I could take him out, but he had gotten me by surprise and hit a few shots on me. So then, I couldn't count on my built-in barrier generator to keep me alive. After a while of sneaking around the rest, eventually, one of them found me. The last one I could take out with his own gun, absorbing his shots on the way to him with my shield, but this time, I couldn't do that. Low battery. Self-recharging, but this one's a built-in component, not specialized high-quality tech. I had to fire my own gun. And that, the others heard easily.
They chased me, beyond anything I could do to escape. These guys were good. So good, they found time to fire at me while running after me. At that point, Rainbow Dash finally arrived, but before I really got inside, I took some bigger, fully hitting rounds.
"Ah guess that's the point where you showed your face.", she finished her recollection of the past events with.
