Timeless

The Doctor was becoming increasingly worried with every passing second. The TARDIS was throwing something akin to a tantrum, and was completely refusing to work. Of course, it would have been helpful if he knew what was actually going on, but as it was he was forced to guess. There was some sort of temporal anomaly that was doing some considerable damage to time and space, and it had come out of absolutely nowhere.

The hooves weren't helping either. Throughout his life - all 1000 or so years of it - The Doctor had taken a decidedly human shape. There were some key differences, like the two hearts and the time machine shaped like a blue police box, but he still walked on two legs and had hands. But something went wrong, and now, for whatever reason, he was a pony. He'd adapted well enough, he'd even found a land full of talking ponies that needed saving so he could blend in, but there was no way of getting round the fact that the TARDIS wasn't designed for quadrepeds, let alone talking ponies.

Still, he coped. But now he was trying to press tiny buttons and move levers at very precise intervals with hooves, and that just wasn't working. There were a few hundred warning lights flashing on the console and throughout the entire TARDIS, and a siren was blaring far too loudly to inform the Doctor of the incoming danger, whatever it was.

"Oh for goodness sake! Will you just stop already? Nobody...uh, nopony deserves this!" He narrowly avoided a large volume of water crashing down from the swimming pool when the TARDIS rolled sideways. Crashing unceremoniously on the doors, he let out a small sigh, which became a scream when the doors were flung open, throwing him out and sending him tumbling to the ground.

Luckily, the TARDIS was inside a small room, and so the ground was barely a few feet away. The Doctor groaned, and pushed himself up on to four hooves, just in time to see the TARDIS dematerializing, and eventually fading away.

He ran towards where the TARDIS was, on the off chance that he could catch it, but it disappeared before he could reach it. "Oh no! Oh no, no no no! Don't go now!" Collapsing to the ground, he shouted in annoyance. He was stuck here - wherever here was - until the TARDIS returned, and who knew how long that would be?

"Do you intend to stay there for much longer?" He looked up to see a grey earth pony standing over him. She wore a pink bow around her neck, and her mane was styled neatly - well, neater than most manes The Doctor had seen. He stood up and faced her. Now that he could see her properly, she looked quite familiar. He eyed her up and down, and gasped lightly when he realized who she was. She raised an eyebrow quizzically, and raised the other one when The Doctor threw his hooves round her. He'd seen her face on the TARDIS' console when it went in to meltdown, alongside two other ponies and some other creature that he ecognised as Discord. He'd been there when he was imprisoned in stone, after all.

"Is there something wrong? And, more importantly, why did a blue box just teleport in to my room and drop you out of it? Are you perhaps connected to this time nonsense? Also, what in Equestria is your name? My name is Octavia, thank you for asking. Are you an assassin? Normal ponies don't just drop in like that, you know. I'm assuming you're not a normal pony?" The Doctor put a hoof to her lips to silence her, and she narrowed her eyes.

"No there's nothing wrong, I just recognized you from somewhere, the blue box is a time machine, and you were on it's console. It threw me in to your room because it was throwing a tantrum. What time nonsense are you talking about? I've seen a lot of time nonsense. My name is the Doctor - Doctor Whooves, as some ponies call me, nice to meet you Octavia. No, I'm not an assaassin, and before you ask, no I'm not a doctor - that's just my name. And no, I'm not a normal pony, I'm a Time Lord, a race of beings who can travel through time. Does that answer your questions?" Normally the Doctor lied to avoid having the awkward questions that tended to come with the truth, but he wasn't in the mood to make anything up. Besides, he was interested in what 'time nonsense' she was talking about.

"Hm. You know most ponies would be laughing at you right now in disbelief. But I suppose I'm not most ponies. Well then, Doctor, you say you're a time traveller?" He nodded his head. "But your time machine is gone for an indeterminate amount of time?" He nodded again. "Well, if you're going to be here for a while, I suppose I should inform you of this time nonsense. It's quite a long story, so you may want to sit down. The Doctor smiled and walked over to a cushion, sitting down on it. He was used to long stories, and it seemed that this mare was quite well versed with time nonsense, so he was sure that this would be an interesting story.

Octavia told him about the morning that she awoke to find her cello floating in the air, and the madness that led to her being dragged through time with Chronus. A few hours later she awoke to find herself here; which just so happened to be about a thousand years in her past. She'd managed to convince the Princess of her predicament, and had been granted a room in Canterlot Castle to stay in while the Princess and her current protégé - or former, to Octavia - Star Swirl, who hadn't grown his eponymous beard yet, figured out a spell to send her back to her time. Octavia had been stuck in the past for almost two years, and there was still no progress on the time travel spell, which she supposed made sense. After all, if it had been made, she would have known about it in the future. Octavia hated the laws of time travel.

Still, she supposed, it could have been worse. The ponies here had been nice enough to her, and she didn't have to deal with Chronus or Rainbow Dash while she was here. But she couldn't deny that she missed her own time, even with all the insanity it seemed to bring her.

When she had finished telling her story, the Doctor frowned. "Chronus? Can't say I recognise the name, but there have been some disturbances in the flow of time lately. Guess I know what caused the TARDIS to throw a tantrum. She can't have liked this Chronus guy freezing time on an entire planet and then throwing you backwards by a thousand years. Hopefully she'll return soon. You might want to pack your things,"

"Why?"

"Because when the TARDIS returns we have to go back to the future. Well, your future. Someone elses past. You know the time travel drill," The Doctor smiled, before getting up from the cushion and wandering around Octavia's room.

"We can really return to my time? You're not lying?" Octavia was tempted to burst in to tears of joy right then and there, but her previous experiences with time travel had made her rather cynical. The Doctor nodded while looking around the bedroom. Octavia was hesitant to believe him, but the fact that he had burst in to her room from a teleporting blue box and his knowledge of time travel gave some credence to his story, so she grabbed a suitcase from underneath her bed and began furiously packing, taking everything she thought she'd need. She didn't take any clothes or essentials, as she had enough of those in her house in the future - or was it present? Instead she took her large collection of mementos that she had accrued during her two years of living in Canterlot Castle. Perhaps she would return some day, but she doubted it. Though considering her previous experiences, she wasn't saying that it would be impossible.

"Aha!" Octavia looked over and saw The Doctor grinning widely, before she heard a 'whirring sound', and saw patches of blue begin to materialize in the corner.

"You ready Octavia?" He gestured to the box that had appeared. She took a last look around her room. One day she would return to say her goodbyes, but right now she had a future... present to save. She nodded, and stepped in to the box after The Doctor, not even flinching when she realized that it was larger on the inside.

She had time to kill - literally. Chronus was not going to be surviving when she was done with him.

When the TARDIS crashed through the ceiling, quite a few things happened simultaneously. Everypony reacted differently, and there were varying levels of confusion on everyponies faces.

Chronus didn't have much time to do anything, as he found himself crushed underneath the blue box, which seemed to be radiating a large amount of time energy.

Applejack promptly ran up to the box and kicked it as hard as she could; not wanting to take any chances with mysterious objects by this point. All she got from this was a slightly more injured leg and a confused glance from Chronus, who looked up at her from underneath the box.

Rainbow Dash attempted to fly away, but then she remembered that her wing was slightly injured, so she settled with a slightly cool pose and hover instead.

Discord smirked in glee at all the chaos. A mysterious blue box coming out of nowhere and crushing the villain was certainly one of the more unique things he'd seen, and he had to applaud whoever came up with the idea.

The Doctor and Octavia burst out of the doors of the TARDIS, and The Doctor ran to the back of the blue box to find Chronus crushed underneath it, while Octavia stood with a small smile on her face, only just realising how much she'd missed all this insanity, despite all the silliness and danger.

Then all of them realised what had just happened. They looked at Octavia and The Doctor in confusion, and Octavia couldn't blame them for it. Even with all the madness of that day, this still wasn't a normal thing to happen. She quickly rushed over to them, grinning, and began excitedly telling them her story. She wasn't even bothered by Rainbow Dash, which surprised her. Perhaps two years in the past had changed her more than she thought.

The Doctor, meanwhile, strolled over to Chronus, and looked down at him.

"Go ahead, gloat. I know who you are, I've felt you messing around in the timestreams. What are you going to do, destroy me? You can't destroy a creature made of time, genius. Can't lock me up either, I'll just escape. I almost pity your incapability," Chronus glared at The Doctor, who grinned and called over the small group who were talking excitedly on the other side of the hall.

"Oh, but I can defeat you, quite easily in fact," he laughed, ushering Octavia and her friends in to the TARDIS.

"And how do you intend to do that exactly?" Chronus asked.

"You'll find out in the future. Or will it be the past?" The Doctor waved one last time, and stepped in to the TARDIS, a plan in his mind.

He was going to cause a time paradox.