Prologue
It was a warm summer’s evening in New York City. The sun’s waning light enveloped Manhattan’s tall buildings in a warm glow.
As Daniel rounded a corner, the glare from the light hit his eyes, and he put up his arm to block it away. He was headed back to the hotel he was staying at during his visit to the city.
All in all, this trip to New York had been underwhelming. The city was pretty much just like any other one he had been to; loud, overcrowded, and filled with rude and obnoxious people. He wasn’t sure why he’d even come to the city in the first place. Then he remembered; Jake. That two-bit friend of his who always thought it was a brilliant idea to travel from place to place every other month.
At first, Daniel had thought it a great idea as well, until it became apparent that Jake had the intention of visiting every boring place imaginable. That twit had taken him to Los Angeles, Chicago, and God knows where else, and all it had done was put him into debt.
He finally got to the hotel, and he headed straight up to his room. Once he got there, he was greeted by blissful silence that let him know that Jake wasn’t there yet. While Daniel liked Jake, the man could make quite an ass of himself with the way he acted all the time.
And yet, when it came to who was the more charming of them, Jake oddly had the upper hand. There was something about the guy that drew people to him, particularly women. Jake had never had a shortage of female callers, while Daniel had never even had one name to call. Sure, he had plenty of friends that were girls, but they were just that: friends. They had never shown any interest towards Daniel, nor had he shown any towards them.
Daniel was about to dwell on his sorrows a bit longer, when the door to the room burst open, and there stood a very happy and very drunk Jake, accompanied by what seemed to be an unconscious girl wrapped around his torso.
“Yo yo! Danny boy!!!” Jake slurred loudly. “What’s good my homie?!”
“The silence, Jake,” huffed Daniel, “the silence is, or at least was, good. And then you come along like the damn World’s Fair is going on.”
As drunk as Jake was, he could quite easily pick up on his friend’s anger. “C’mon mang, don’t be like that! Look, I even brought us a little party favor!” He held up the girl so Daniel could see her, and he could quite clearly see that she was even drunker than Jake was, seeing how bright her cheeks were.
Daniel was disgusted. “Dude, you CANNOT be serious right now. You go out bright and early in the day, don’t give me a frickin’ clue as to where you are, I come back from trying to enjoy myself, and then you come busting in, smelling worse than a moonshine brewery, with a girl that I don’t know or want to know, and you want me to cheer up because she’ll be your cheap bang for the night?!”
Jake stared at him for a moment, then hiccupped, “YE-ah!”
Daniel facepalmed, and moved to get his jacket. “Alright then, man. You wanna keep making stupid decisions, you do just that. I’m outta here.”
“Du- (hic) -uude!” Jake called out. “Don’t be such a stickler! Live a little man! Ya never know where it might get’cha!”
”Jake, I know exactly where this-” he gestured towards his friend and the girl, “-is gonna get me. In deep shit. Have fun dealing with her in the morning, I’ll see you tomorrow. Or not. I don’t even flipping care anymore.” And with that, Daniel stormed out of the room, slamming the door closed behind him.
Daniel was still fuming as he walked out of the hotel’s lobby. He had just walked out into the street, when a man in dark clothing slammed into him, sending the two tumbling. Daniel took a few seconds to recover from his daze, and when he looked up, he saw the man starting to get up himself, and he took off running again.
“Hey!! You!!” Daniel shouted at the man. “The hell d’you think you’re doing?!” The man didn’t reply, he simply kept on running. But Daniel wasn’t in the mood to forgive and forget. He got up and began to chase the man along the street. The chase didn’t go on long, as the man rounded a corner into an alleyway.
“Dumb chump,” Daniel chuckled to himself. “He’s got nowhere to run now.” He raced into the alley, hoping to get the drop on the man, when he saw that the guy was nowhere to be seen.
Daniel stood at the start of the alley, stunned. The alley only had some garbage bags and a large, battered blue box. He ran over to it, and saw that it said “Police Box” across the top on its four sides. It was shut and heavy though, and when he put his ear up to the door, he couldn’t hear anything. He continued to look further down the alley, now obsessed with finding the man who had run into him.
Quite suddenly, Daniel heard a strange whooshing, groaning noise from behind him, He started to turn, when he suddenly felt a wave of disorientation hit him. It only lasted a few seconds, but it felt like ages. At last, his orientation returned, and Daniel turned around to find the source of the noise, when he noticed that he was clearly no longer in the alleyway.
Daniel tried to take a step forward, and ended up falling flat on his face. He reached his hand up to rub his head, when something hard and solid collided with his face instead. He shook off the feeling of pain, and looked at what he could have been holding that hit him. He was met with the sight of a light grey hoof, covered with dark grey fur.
Daniel blinked a few times to make sure his eyes weren’t playing tricks on him. He waggled what should have been his hand, and saw the hoof waggle instead. He gingerly brought up his other hand to feel the hoof, and found instead a second hoof in his hand’s place again. Daniel began to panic, flailing his new limbs around, and finding them to be quite different than he remembered them. He now had four legs, all covered in dark grey fur.
Daniel noticed a pond a few meters away, and he scrambled to reach it. It wasn’t an easy feat, as his changed limbs did not move in the way they originally did, and he found them rather hard to control. He ended up inching slowly to the pond, before he was finally able to look into its reflection. Daniel did not like what he saw.
Staring back at him with intense hazel eyes, was the dark face of a horse. As he went onto inspect himself further, he found that his entire body was that of a horse, complete with his new four legs and a tail. His face was longer, his entire body was covered in the grey fur, and his hair appeared to be jet black.
“I-I-I-I… I’m a freaking horse!” Daniel recognized the voice to be his own, and it definitely came out of that new muzzle of his. This brought a yelp of fright from him, and another one he saw his reflection again.
Before he could react again, Daniel heard the same whooshing, groaning noise that he had heard back in the alley. He turned around, and did a double-take at what he saw. Just behind him, that battered blue police box that he had seen seemed to be… fading into existence. There was no other word for it; there were moments during its arrival when Daniel swore he could see through it, but then it began to take on full form and became a solid object.
After it had finished arriving, the blue box simply stood there in front of Daniel, unmoving and silent. Daniel gaped wordlessly at it, when after almost a minute, the doors to the box opened up slightly, and out stepped a tall white horse, wearing what seemed to be a black leather jacket.
“Ah, hello there, my boy,” said the horse. “Looks to me as though you’ve just arrived. Should’ve been here to meet you earlier, but the usual business and timey-wimey stuff came into play.” The horse stared at Daniel with a cheery look on his face, while Daniel stared back at it with a look of mild horror on his face. Like him, this horse had just talked out loud. Daniel had been around horses before. Sure, they had made the usual sounds that horses made, but as far as he knew, horses did not possess the capabilities to actually talk.
It took Daniel a few moments to finally recover from the shock, and he began to find his own voice at last. “Wh-wh-who the hell are you? W-what the hell are you?!”
“Simple questions, so simple answers then,” replied the horse. “Very well then. I’m the Doctor, my boy. And as for what I am, I am what you are. An outsider from this universe, now in the form of a talking pony.”
Daniel was now shuddering with mixed feelings of anger, fear, and confusion surging through him. He took a look at his new body once more before he tried to talk to the horse again, still in shock that the two of them could do so.
“Th-the Doctor. Doctor… who?”
