Chapter 1: The Discordant Toyroom
A mare and two stallions stood atop a rocky cliff ledge, a wind roaring through to simulate high altitude. One of the stallions, white with a dark red mane and red eyes, stepped forward to the edge. He pointed out over the abyss. “What! Is! That!”
“Oh, no!” shouted the mare, dark red with a black mane and red eyes, stepping up behind him. “It’s a green screen! They can put whatever they want onto that in post!” Instead of a sky, the cliff was in front of a green background with white plus marks placed at intervals in a grid pattern. “There’s no way to know how to react!”
“No wait, look!” shouted the other stallion, black with a white mane and red eyes, pointing at a white ball about ten feet away and above from them, attached on the end of a stick reaching in from the side. “I can see a marker! That must be important, shoot at it!”
“How can we do that!” replied the white first stallion, lifting up the black gunlike object hanging from a strap over his shoulder. “These things are just one-piece plastic props!”
The red mare knocked the gun down. “Don’t shoot at it, it might be friendly!”
The black stallion spoke up, “Why would it be friendly if it’s got that dramatic background music playing!” An ominously dramatic tune rolled in.
The white stallion stopped for a second before turning to the black stallion. “How come we can hear the background score but we can’t see what’s on the green screen!”
“I don’t know!” the black stallion called back.
“And why are we even shouting everything!” the white stallion shouted, turning in a circle to address a general direction.
“Will we make it out of this alive?” said the mare, staring at the ball on a stick, before turning towards the audience. “Tune in next week to find out.”
“Actually,” came a voice, “I’m not so sure that we will. This story has gotten a tad boring lately. It’s way too generic and clichéd, every episode is roughly the same, they’re far too predictable, and the whole thing is reeking of seasonal rot.”
The black stallion turned towards the figure sitting offstage and called, “Well maybe if you gave us an actual script once in a while instead of just making us improv—”
The figure raised his hand and snapped. In a flash of white light, the three ponies disappeared, replaced by a trio of plastic toys of the same color schemes where they’d been standing.
“The show was cancelled after that,” said Discord. He snapped his fingers again, and the dolls and filming set they were on disappeared in a white flash. “Maybe they’ll get a reboot someday.”
Discord stood up to stretch and the chair also disappeared. He was running out of good entertainment around here; he’d either have to make a new here or wait for someone else to stumble along. Well, maybe another look will stir up old interest again. Discord started floating and stepped forwards, drifting backwards in the process. He looked around the large room. It was supposed to be a room so white you couldn’t tell where the walls or floor were, but there was enough random clutter sitting around to get one’s bearings. He’d have to take care of that. Eventually.
“Mm-hm, m-m-hm, m-m-hm, m-m-hm, m-m-hm,” he hummed to distract himself as he looked, “m-m-hm, m-m-hm, m-m-hm, m-m-hm, m-m-hm, m-m-hm, hmm.” Some clown dolls, a set of playing cards, more dolls—no, no, none of this was worth it. “Discor-ord, I’m howlin’ at the Moon,” he mumbled in tune, “and sleepin’ in the middle of a summer afternoon. Discor-ord, what-ever did we do, to make you take our world awaaaay?”
“Buy my stuff!” shouted a recorded voice as a flashing blue parasprite-shaped notifier flew up to him with an envelope postmarked from a customer he’d codenamed ‘BuyMyStuff’. The note inside read, “Give us something to make the fans complain.” Eager to lend his services, he tossed one of his eagle talons on a string and fished a plastic figure of Princess Celestia out of the nearest pile.
“’Cause I am Discord,” he continued the medley in someone else’s deeper voice. “Yea-ah, I am Dis-coooord. Should harmony fail for you all…” He snapped his finger and Celestia’s white coat flashed to pink. “…be thankful I don’t take it all…” He chuckled and tossed the “new” toy across the room and into an open chute in the wall. Its cover slammed shut to reveal an angled square logo.
He spun and twisted through the air to survey behind the piles. “I will always be the God of Chaos till the end,” he sang on in another new voice, enthusiasm slowly growing. “I’ll never beeeeh-heheheeeeh-heheheeeeh-heheheeeeeend. I don’t need your silly light of day. I’m not evil, I just want my waaaaay.” Trick chairs, an apple pie, an infinity-sided die—getting warmer. “I’m the Spirit of Chaos, the Image of Evil, don’t denyyyy. Gonna turn your world around and then I’ll watch you cryyyy.” He scooped up a plastic figure from the pile: a magenta earth mare with a billowing purple and white mane and a propeller beanie. “Did I get lost along the way? Lose my mind for a new identity? I quite enjoy ruining your day, and I just want to cause a little entropy.”
“Hey, listen,” alerted the flashing parasprite as it returned with a new envelope, making Discord jolt to a stop and drop the figure. “Hey, listen. Hey, listen.”
“Rrrg,” he growled, reaching out to take the new envelope labeled ‘Proximity’, “remind me to remove that ringtone from the cycle.”
The parasprite registered his command and saw the ideal time to notify him of it. “Hey, listen. Hey, lis—”
Discord’s hand glowed and the parasprite turned black and disintegrated, the envelope falling into his hand. “Thanks for reminding me,” he grunted. As he read the note, however, he gained a sinister smile. “My intentions are clear, so just surrender your will. I’m like a predator, and I’m going in for the kill.”
A grinding pulse started up as a light flashed in midair, the shape of a tall blue box fading in beneath it. With a thud, the light and noise stopped, and the TARDIS was sitting solidly in the center of the floor. The doors opened and the Doctor, a pale brown earth stallion with a spiky brown mane and yellow hour glass cutie mark, stepped out into the totally white room, followed closely by two others: a navy blue stallion with a dust blue mane and a constellation Orion cutie mark and a light gray mare with a blonde mane and a cutie mark of bubbles, both pegasi.
“And you’re sure you didn’t tell the TARDIS to land,” said the navy stallion, Star Hunter.
“I never touched the controls,” replied the Doctor. “Maybe she’s decided she doesn’t like you on board anymore.”
“But nothing’s wrong with the anti-paradox field,” Star Hunter said, “I checked it myself.”
“Well wherever we are, we shouldn’t be,” the Doctor said, looking around with suspicion.
“Do you at least know where it is?” asked the gray mare, Derpy Hooves.
“Not exactly sure, no,” he replied, “but something about this place seems awfully familiar. I wonder if it’s Barnabillions, home of the fake demon clowns. Well, fake demons, real clowns, almost as scary. But I’d expect to find more evidence of fake demon cows if that were the case—real demons, fake cows—and I’m not seeing…”
As the Doctor rambled on, Derpy wandered off to investigate the piles of stuff strewn around the room. She came across an oddly shaped pink mass. Acting in the most careful and intelligent manner expected of a TARDIS companion, she nudged it with her hoof. With a series of whirs and moans, the mass unfolded itself into the form of a standing pink mare with a puffy dark pink mane. The pony swayed a bit and shook her head.
“Are you okay?” Derpy asked. “You don’t look too good. And why were you…like that?”
The pink pony looked to her with a smile and bounced back and forth slightly as she sang, “Though I’m rife with devastation, there’s a simple explanation. I’m the Toymaker’s creation, trapped inside a crystal ball.” She tossed up her tail and a crystal ball popped out of it, which she looped the end of her tail to catch as it came back down.
“The Toymaker?” Derpy asked, ready to take a step back.
The pink pony held the crystal ball over to her, and she cautiously looked into it. It was empty…no, wait, there was an image in there. It was…
A light blue pegasus ducked down to dodge a lighting bolt. “Augh—now, careful, Derpy.” She flew up to Derpy, absentmindedly bouncing on a storm cloud. “Don’t wanna do any more damage than you’ve already done,” she said, pointing to the Ponyville Town Hall before the damaged roof caved in.
Derpy’s heart sank from the memory. “Oh, um, that…yeah…thanks for the reminder…” Unnoticed by her, her misaligned eyes began pulsing various colors as her gaze dulled to a blank stare.
“Hey, who’s this?” Star Hunter asked as he walked up beside Derpy. Then he noticed the empty crystal ball in the pink pony’s tail…no, not empty, there was…
As a Germane bomb fell down towards an alien medical pod and a pair of ponies, a dark blue stallion and a beige mare with a red mane, a black space jet flew up behind it and caught the bomb in a tractor beam. Star Hunter teleported out onto it. “Doctor! The bomb’s already commenced detonation. I put it in stasis but it won’t last long.”
Star Hunter smiled proudly. “Well, yeah, that was a rather heroic moment for me, wasn’t it?” Unnoticed by him, his eyes also started pulsing colors. Waves slowly began drifting across both of them starting at their faces, draining them to duller colors.
Then the pink pony looked at the crystal ball, seeing in it a cave with a pond in it and a number of copies of herself running around. “Ooooo-ooo,” she said as her eyes became spinning green spirals.
Meanwhile, the Doctor had been continuing his rambling. “…unless, but that can’t be, which only leaves…” Realization dawning, he quickly looked over at his companions, seeing the waves of graying now reaching their shoulders.
“Woe is me,” moaned Derpy.
“Whoa is me,” declared Star Hunter.
“Noooo!” the Doctor said, rushing over. “Don’t look at that!” He jumped in between them and pushed them back from the blank crystal ball. No, in it there was…
In a shack in the middle of a desert, a scruffy stallion stood in front of a box pedestal with a golden stand on the top, on which sat a glowing red diamond serving as the weapon’s big red button—
The Doctor pulled out his sonic screwdriver and soniced what the crystal ball was showing into static. The graying waves on Derpy and Star Hunter reversed, and their eyes returned to normal. The pink pony’s eyes also went back to normal.
“Awww,” she sighed.
“Uhhg,” Derpy said, shaking her head. “What happened?”
“Don’t touch anything here,” the Doctor warned, “don’t even look. I just realized where we are.”
In a small white flash, the image of a tall and thin tan stained glass figure with a long snout appeared over the static of the crystal ball.
“Ruining my trick, are we?” the figure said. “Oh, you’re no fun.” Then he took a closer look at who was standing in front of the crystal ball. “Hmm? Wait a second…” The figure flashed out, and in another flash, he reappeared full size and in the flesh at the center of the room, standing inside a square drawn in chalk on the ground. His body looked like a mismatched hodgepodge of a dozen different animals.
“Ahh! He-llo, Doctor!” he said. “It’s so nice to meet you again, it’s been too long. I’m quite honored that you felt it courteous to pay me a visit when your TARDIS just so happened to pass close enough to my domain for me to reach out…and…grab it.” He grabbed at thin air as he said this.
“Eternity wouldn’t have been long enough, Discord,” said the Doctor.
“Ah, yes,” Discord replied, “I’d forgotten your elegant way with words.”
Derpy leaned over to the Doctor. “Doctor, you know where this is?”
Discord also leaned over into the group. “And when were you going to introduce me to your current array of pets—I mean, ‘companions’? Dodo, was it, and…?”
Star Hunter took a step back. “I’m Captain Star Hunter,” he said repulsively, “and what are you?”
“Weren’t you paying attention?” asked Discord, leaning back and crossing his arms.
“You never said any—”
“I’m the Discordant Toymaker,” Discord said, “‘Discord’ for short, or ‘The Toymaker’, or just ‘hey you’, if you can’t remember any of the others.”
“Watch it, Discord,” said the Doctor. “No taunting my friends.”
“Why, but Doctor, I’m just saying ‘hello’.”
“For you, that’s taunting.”
Derpy looked around the room and gasped. “D-doctor,” she stuttered, “th-the, it’s…” She pointed at the chalk outline on the floor where the TARDIS had arrived and where Discord was now standing. Seeing this, the Doctor scowled.
“Where is it, Discord?” the Doctor asked sternly.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Discord replied, looking away.
“The TARDIS.”
“TARDIS?” Discord said. “Which TARDIS? I have soooooo many of them, you’ll have to be a bit more specific.” He took out a wallet and opened it up. A chain of photos of countless slightly varying blue police boxes unfolded from it down to the ground, then kept unfolding across the floor, past the ponies, and over to the far wall. And then continued up the wall.
As the photo chain started crawling across the ceiling, Star Hunter flew up into Discord’s face.
“Now listen here,” said Star Hunter, “I’ve got half a mind and a whole temper to give you a few lessons on not messing with us, more specifically me.”
“I’m not the one who needs lessons,” Discord said simply. “Let me take a second to explain a few of the ground rules here.” Discord’s lion arm suddenly reached down from above, a finger pressing on Star Hunter’s head to push him back to the ground. “You existing is a fact of the Universe, Mr. Immortal,” Discord said, following his lion arm down from above. He leaned in closely. “We are not currently in the Universe,” he whispered, “so I’d watch myself if I were you.”
Star Hunter tried slipping out from under Discord’s finger. “If this isn’t the Universe, then where is it?”
Discord flashed out, then reappeared in front of Star Hunter. “It’s a place that’s really like my own personal sandbox world,” he said. “The Discordant Toyroom, I call it. I can do whatever I want to here. It really has the feel of a fairground, if I may. Would you care to try the Ferrous Wheel?” He presented a large rusted iron ring. “Three hundred sixty degrees of chaos.”
Star Hunter raised an eyebrow. “Kinda pushing it with that one, aren’t ya?”
Behind them, the pink pony chuckled.
“She likes it,” Discord said indignantly. He waved to her. “Laugh on, my little abomination.”
“Back to the point—,” started the Doctor.
“Ah, yes,” Discord said, flashing out and back in next to the chalk outline, now with yellow crime scene tape stretched around it. He was wearing a deerstalker hat and held up a note pad and magnifying glass. “I’ll get on the case straight away!”
“Discord…,” the Doctor said. Discord dropped his arms and his trinkets flashed out.
“Oh, you’re always rushing at things, you know?” Discord said, crossing his arms. “Though you’ve lost it in your face, your attitude betrays the crankiness of your age. But if you must cut to the chase, then listen close and listen well. If you want the chance to get your TARDIS back, you’ll have to play by house rules for a while. Everything here is a game or a puzzle, and only by winning can you hope for reward.” He turned to Derpy and Star Hunter. “A few friends of mine will be keeping you two occupied in a series of challenges while the Doctor and I spend a bit of quality time together as both parties take part in a desperate struggle to earn their freedom from my domain.”
The crystal ball in the pink pony’s tail flashed and a pair of numbers appeared in it.
“Oooo, digital,” she said.
Discord pointed at the Doctor and continued, “You’ll be playing an old favorite of mine you’ve probably heard of, Doctor, called the Trilogic Game, transferring stacks of pieces in a certain number of moves and such. As for you two, every challenge you win lets you try to get the TARDIS back. You have as many tries as you need, but your limit is when your friend finishes his game. When that lower number matches the top one at 1023, your time will be up, and if you don’t have your box back by then, or if he messes up along the way, you’ll all become more of my toys. Everyone ready? Everyone set? Yes? Good. On we go!”
“Hey just wait a—,” Star Hunter protested.
Discord snapped his fingers, and in a flash, Derpy and Star Hunter found themselves standing in a new, dark room without the Doctor or Discord.
“I already hate that guy,” said Star Hunter.
The room was as black as the first one had been white, even the floor was barely discernable, but though there was no visible light source, they could see each other perfectly fine. The pink pony was also with them, crystal ball in tail. The row of four zeros on the lower line changed to three zeros and a one.
“So are you here to…?” Derpy asked.
“Pinkie Pie,” the pony announced, “your chaperone and navigator! Consider me the tutorial and scorekeeper.”
“Pinkie Pie!?” Derpy said. “I thought you looked familiar, I know you from Ponyville! How did you get here, and why did you say the Toymaker created you—?”
“Hey!” Star Hunter shouted. “What happened to our wings?”
“Huh? Yaaah!” exclaimed Derpy, looking back to see that her wings were simply gone, as if she were an earth pony.
“Rule one: no unfair advantages,” Pinkie said. “Your pony race attributes will be shuffled around for each game to best fit the scenario.”
“Alright, you’ve got our attention,” Star Hunter said, Derpy still patting at her side where a wing used to be. “Let’s get this over with and get out, right, Derpy? Who are we facing?”
The sound of hooves came from the left, and two ponies dressed in clown outfits trotted over from nowhere. Though it was tough to tell below the silly outfits and white makeup, one was a red mare with a black mane, and the other a black stallion with a white mane, both earth ponies and with red eyes.
“Greetings and salutations!” called the mare in a mildly high pitched and squeaky sing-songy voice. “We’re the opposition!”
“Clowns?” Derpy said. “We’re facing clowns. Is it too late for this to end up being that Barnabillions place?”
The clowns trotted up to them. “I’m Calliope,” continued the red mare, “but you can call me Cali. And this is Jeer”—the black stallion waved—“but you can call him Jelly, or Jangle, or really whatever you like, because he can’t correct you.”
Jeer nodded while sounding a few horn honks and a whistle. Derpy and Star Hunter exchanged a look. Jeer was suddenly standing beside Star Hunter, head next to his, and made a few more honks and a bell chime before honking again.
Without looking at him, Star Hunter said, “I shot a clown once.”
Jeer went silent and slowly slid back away from him.
Pinkie strutted up between the two pairs.
“Okay, listen up,” she announced. “Your friend has 1,023 moves to complete the Trilogic Game, and you have until he finishes to clear as many challenges as you can face until you find the Turtle.”
“TARDIS,” Derpy corrected.
“—until you find the Tortoise,” Pinkie repeated. Star Hunter facehoofed. “Round One is an obstacle course. Observe the viewing globe.”
She raised the crystal ball up to the two groups, and the counter, now on twenty-three, was replaced by an image. Star Hunter warily stepped back for a second before leaning forward again to look. The black and white image showed an obstacle course: a starting spot on a platform with a rope hanging between it and another, followed by five stepping stones of various shapes, a stepladder up to another platform, a plank bridging the gap to another, and finally more steps down to a square tube leading to a finishing spot.
“Hmm…that doesn’t look so bad,” Derpy said. “It should be easy! It looks a bit like this ‘Hydras and Ladders’ board game I used to play, only life-sized.”
“I don’t know,” said Star Hunter. “I have a feeling that something’s up, here.”
“You run the course blindfolded,” Pinkie said.
“Right on cue,” Star Hunter said.
“Your partner will guide you through from inside a glass box using a horn,” Pinkie continued, “the number of honks coded to directions. Observe!”
Suddenly an array of spotlights came on to reveal that they were standing on the red starting space of a long and winding sequence of silver and red obstacles supported by metal scaffolding, most over water, with more spotlights shining around and a few spots spitting fire for decoration, the sky still as black as ever overhead. Derpy and Star Hunter stared at it open-mouthed.
“For the uninitiated,” Calliope said, “here’s a brief rundown of the course. Start here on Stage 1 with Piston Road, stepping across these spaced pistons, then up to the Giant Ring, swinging on the ring over to the other side to find the Silk Slider, holding the silk scarf to zipline down to the platform where you’ll continue over to the Jumping Spider, using the mini-tramp to propel yourself into the mouth of the tunnel, where you have to press against the side walls to move through, then get a running start for the Half-Pipe Attack, running up the curved wall and swinging on the rope to the skinny platform, then you have three tries to ascend the Warped Wall that curves back at you at the top, then run across the suspended balls of the Spinning Bridge, and finally it’s a rope swing into a cargo net for the Final Climb up to the buzzer, for all of which you have two minutes and five seconds.”
Derpy and Star Hunter were still staring at the course.
“Then on Stage 2,” Calliope continued, “hang on tight as you navigate through a series of hanging ropes in Rope Jungle, some of which are on sliders, dropping down to reach the Double Salmon Ladder, jumping a bar up a series of peg levels like a salmon up a river before jumping the bar to the other side for a few more levels, which immediately transitions into the Unstable Bridge, a pair of horizontally-suspended boards you have to shimmy across while holding onto from underneath, after which you get a running jump onto the suspended and spinning Butterfly Wall, jump and grab the rope on the other side to climb over another wall and face the Metal Spin, a jellyfish-like spinning wheel with hanging chains you must swing on to the other side and the Wall Lift, a sequence of three glass walls of increasing weight you must lift and slip under to reach the buzzer, again in only two-o-five.”
Derpy blinked.
“Once you get to Stage 3, grip strength is key, starting with Cannonball Incline, a series of suspended balls you must swing between and go directly into the Doorknob Grasper, an arch of spaced doorknobs leading to a brief rest before the Floating Boards, several boards suspended at one end that you must grab by one side to cross and reach the Ultimate Cliffhanger, a sheer cliff face with several broken strips of ledge about two inches deep that takes you to the Propeller Bar, a freely spinning horizontal propeller you must jump to to grab a rope and swing directly into the Hang Climb, a 45-degree inverted rock climbing wall that takes you to the Spider Flip, a backwards L-shaped structure you must use the thin edges of to crawl under and up before jumping to another across a gap, then down to the Flying Bar, jumping a bar between spaced holders to the finish, luckily with no time limit this time. And the final, the ultimate obstacle, Stage 4 is Mount Midoriyama, a 77-foot rope climb to a buzzer that, if completed in under 30 seconds, means you win the tournament, can try for you police box, and will be named an Equestrian Ninja Warrior!” She let this sink in for Derpy and Star Hunter before adding, “And one fall ends it all.”
“Wait,” said Derpy, pointing her hoof at various obstacles, “so we do what after the thing with the when?”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” shouted Star Hunter as his mind caught up, “that is not the same as the course you showed us a minute ago!”
“Whoops, you’re right,” Pinkie said, turning to the crystal ball and tapping on it. “Is this thing broken?”
“Oh, our fault,” said Calliope, “the course has undergone a few upgrades and we haven’t gotten around to changing the thumbnail in a while. Still blindfolded, though.”
“And pray tell,” Star Hunter continued, “what is this ‘grip strength’ of which you speak that half of the obstacles out there seem to be entirely based on? Have you forgotten what species you’re dealing with?” He held up a hoof. “And while blindfolded? This course is impossible even with full sight!”
Calliope let out an annoyed sigh. “Oh, alright, fine,” she huffed. “If you don’t think you’re old enough for the high dive, then we’ll just have to go to the kiddy pool.”
She nodded to Jeer, who whistled a giddy tune: wwh wwh whuh-whuh-whuh-whee-whuh-wha.
Derpy heard a slight rumbling, looking up to see a flat layer of water quickly falling down at them from the ceilin—splash!
Derpy lifted her wet mane to see Star Hunter equally soaked as her, but Calliope and Jeer perfectly dry, and Pinkie’s mane wet but her tail dry. Then she noticed something else. Not only were they now wearing thick padded vests and helmets, but…
“Hey, what gives?” said Star Hunter, turning to the clowns. “How come you’re both—”
“Outside?” Derpy completed.
Star Hunter looked around. The five of them were outside standing on a curved skinny green platform, the sun shining brightly in a clear blue sky above them. The platform was up on cylinder legs in the middle of a large blue pool in a grassy area with some trees and a line of sail-like banners a short distance off. Then he looked forward to see the crazy monstrous spinning padded contraption in front of them.
“Oh, I love this one!” Pinkie said. “Allow me. Welcome to your head-on collision with destiny, also known as…the Overdrive!”
The structure glittered in response to being named. It looked like a large horizontal light gray ring with a light gray X made of beams in it, the sides of which were blue, with one opposite pair of arcs missing from the ring to give it a jagged ‘8’ appearance, and spinning counterclockwise on a cone base above the water. A skinnier yellow X of bars just above it was spinning clockwise against it, a pair of horizontal yellow V’s mounted on skinny pillars swung back and forth just above them on the right side, and across from their own platform were a small red platform, a stiff yellow hammock, and a spinning green ball, beyond which was a larger red platform.
“Consider yourselves lucky here,” added Calliope. “There are no blindfolds or time limits, and you’re allowed unlimited falls! Plus, all four of us will be running this course at the same time—it’s more fun that way—and the first team to both finish wins.”
“Contestants begin on this ten-foot-high starting platform,” Pinkie explained as colored stick figure versions of the four runners were drawn in beside them on the platform. “Enter the spinning Steering Wheel on the green spot,” Calliope and Jeer’s figures jumped onto the green oval in the middle of one of the beam structure’s arcs as it passed by, “then work your way across the planks to the center and then over to the red spot,” directions the figures followed, reaching the red circle on the opposite arc, “where you exit across one of the three traffic light obstacles—the Unstable Table, Banana Hammock, or the Green Ball—onto the finishing platform,” which the figures did. Then Derpy and Star Hunter’s figures jumped onto the green spot. “But watch out, because there are four sweeper bars spinning in the opposite direction that can knock you off,” which they did to Derpy’s figure, “and you’ve got to go over them or else it’s back to the start. So just remember: enter on green, exit on red, don’t let the sweeper bar go over your head. If you get knocked off by them or the Windshield Wipers,” the V’s flinging Star Hunter’s figure into the water, “fall off anywhere, or go under a sweeper bar, you have to swim back to the start and try again.” Calliope and Jeer’s figures bounced in celebration as stick figure confetti was drawn in around them. “Two will win, but all will wipe out!”
“Can’t say I’m too fond of your illustration method,” Derpy said, looking at her stick figure floating upside down in the water. “My head is not that big.”
“And of course,” Calliope said, holding up a joystick controller and pressing buttons on the base to trigger things around the obstacle, “as always, you’ll need to watch out for water cannons, spraying foam, geysers, flying projectiles, and Bigfoot.” A yellow stick figure of Bigfoot, with a stick body and limbs, hairy head, long fingers, and big feet, stamped around on the sidelines and growled. It picked Star Hunter’s stick figure out of water and bit off its top half, its belly expanding.
Along the side of the pond to the left was a raised platform with a railing, on which stood a white stallion with a red mane waving at them.
“And what’s he going to be doing from over there?” Star Hunter asked.
The pony hurled a large sponge at them, hitting Star Hunter in the face.
“Oh, it’s Cirrus’s job to throw things at you,” Calliope responded giddily. “Remember what I said about flying projectiles?”
“Wonderful,” said Star Hunter. He snatched the obstacle remote from Calliope and gave it to Pinkie. “Then how about you be in control of all the water cannons and stuff, for our team.”
“Okie dokie lokie,” Pinkie replied with a salute. “Bigfoot, take me to that platform!”
The stick figure Bigfoot waded over, grabbing her up and setting her onto the platform beside Cirrus.
“It’s still bothering me what Pinkie Pie is even doing here,” Derpy said to Star Hunter. “I know she seems to do impossible things, but winding up here?”
“Worry about her later,” he said, “she’s probably just part of the illusion.”
Stepping away, Calliope added, “Oh and watch out for the Motivator.”
“The what?” Derpy said.
A pair of thick curved pipes with large flat pads on the ends swung up from behind the starting platform and bumped Derpy and Star Hunter off and into the water.
As their padded vests pulled them back to the surface, Calliope called down at them, “It keeps you from standing still for too long on the starting platform.” Then a loud horn blew. “And we’re off!” She jumped onto the green spot as it came up to the platform, going left around the arc and racing up the beam to the center. Jeer looked at them with a smile and made some amused honking noises before following Calliope.
“Laugh it up, clown boy,” Star Hunter threatened.
By the time they’d climbed back up to the starting platform, the clowns were already in the center, Calliope watching the rotations of the beams and sweeper bars, waiting for the right alignment.
“Welcome, everyone, to the Overdrive today,” Cirrus announced from the platform to no one in particular with his mischievous schoolboy voice. “Let’s hear it for the home team, Bells and Whistles. Three guesses what they’ve got all of.”
“But don’t forget our challengers, the Stargazers,” Pinkie joined in. “Keeeeep looking up!”
“Ah yes,” said Cirrus, “the ponies with their heads in the clouds.”
Derpy and Star Hunter paced back and forth on the starting platform to ward off the Motivator. As the green spot came around again, Derpy jumped on just after a sweeper bar had passed.
“Planning her way to the middle,” commentated Pinkie, “Eye Spy tries to eyeball it. Measure twice, cut once!”
Derpy went right along the arc, and as the next sweeper bar swung around, she prepared to jump over it, but it rammed into her, knocking her on her back. She tried holding onto the bar to hopefully muscle her way over it, but it slipped away, fully passing over her. “Those move faster than they look,” she said.
“No, no, did you forget the rhyme?” called Pinkie. “Enter on green, exit on red, don’t let the sweeper bar go over your head.” Derpy rolled off the plank and fell into the water to swim back to the starting platform again.
Jeer raced out along a beam to the red spot on the other arc, easily stepping over the sweeper bar and giving off excited jingles. Calliope facehoofed.
“Jeer, you blind idiot!” she shouted. “You’re on the opposite side as the exit platform, now you’ve got to stay out there the rest of the way around!”
Halting his celebration, Jeer watched as a smug Star Hunter slid by him from the starting platform, then looked over as the Windshield Wipers closed in. He jumped with a frightened honk, clearing the next sweeper bar. He scurried back to the edge of the arc as the starting platform left him behind, jumping the next sweeper bar, but the first looming Wiper swung out over him, and as he tried climbing over the next sweeper bar, the Wiper swung back and pinned him between itself and the bar. As the arc moved out from under him, the bar kept spinning back and dropped him into the space behind it, ringing and honking all the way down. Calliope huffed.
Cirrus chimed in, “And Whistles blows his whistles to tell the Windshield Wipers and sweeper bars, ‘bad touch’!”
“Too far,” Pinkie said, shaking her head at Cirrus.
As the green spot came back around, Star Hunter made his move and jumped on.
“How did that nursery rhyme go,” Cirrus mused, “make a wish on a star you tossed into a well?”
He hurled a foot-wide plush penny across the obstacle, hitting Star Hunter and distracting him as a sweeper bar swept him off the arc.
Seeing her opening, Calliope raced down the beam to the arc and onto the red spot, quickly jumping into the yellow Banana Hammock. Unfortunately, her momentum swung it up too far and it tipped her off backwards.
“If she wanted to jump over the moon,” Pinkie commented, “Bells needed to be more cowbell.”
And it continued, everypony getting only so far time and time again but falling for one reason or another.
“Reach for the Stars reaches for the stars!” Pinkie said as Star Hunter raced down the beam to the red spot, but a sweeper bar came too soon and knocked him off the edge, splashing down. “And misses and grabs the water instead.”
“Our Shooting Star even looked like a shooting star on his way down,” Cirrus added, “check this replay.”
As Star Hunter tried paddling back to the starting platform, time around him quickly rewound to him falling from the platform again before freezing. An orange and white shooting star outline right out of a breakfast cereal was drawn around him and his mid-flail limbs, before vanishing and letting him fall again.
Having seen the live instant replay, Jeer made amused honking noises at him from the red Unstable Table by the finishing platform.
Star Hunter grumbled as he floated in the water. “I will end you!” he called up at Jeer. Jeer continued honking, but the Unstable Table tilted and he slid off.
Calliope had reached the exit arc, jumping over a sweeper bar as she raced to the red spot, but she’d started her exit just a tad late, and the spot was already passing by the final exit obstacle. She reached it and turned on a dime, immediately leaping back at the spinning Green Ball, but she only caught the edge of it and the spinning slid her off and into the water.
Following just behind a sweeper bar, Star Hunter started up the left beam of the green spot’s arc, but a sudden burst from a hidden confetti cannon on the sidelines made him lose his balance and plummet.
“Huh?” Derpy said, sitting at the center of the obstacle. “That wasn’t something you said would be part of this.”
“Wasn’t me,” Calliope said innocently from the starting platform.
“Sorry! My idea,” came Pinkie.
“Remind me again whose side she’s supposed to be on,” Star Hunter said from the water.
Derpy raced out for the red spot as it was passing the Windshield Wipers, reaching the arc, but as she tried jumping over a sweeper bar, the second Wiper swung out and bunted her away to a splashdown. Resurfacing and spitting out some water, she called up to the commentator platform, “Hey, Pinkie, you’re supposed to be up there to even things out for us. Well, do something!”
Pinkie blinked. She tilted her eyes down and leaned a bit away from the railing, as if conflicted, but then she noticed Calliope jumping to the green spot again.
“By…by getting to the center of the Steering Wheel every time,” Pinkie said hesitantly, a semi-sinister grin appearing, “Bells is starting to make this thing look easy. Luckily,” she continued confidently, “we have just the solution.” She raised the obstacle remote.
As Calliope approached the center, a jet of foam sprayed up from the middle of the sweeper bars, quickly coating the area and covering Calliope as she slid into it. Wiping it off her face, she tried racing down the beam to the red spot, but her hooves instead slid the whole way across. Then a water cannon blasted at her from beside the Windshield Wipers, startling her into a jump over a sweeper bar that landed her on her stomach on the Unstable Table, sliding right off the front and ramming face-first into the (padded) side of the finishing platform before falling to the water.
“Ooh,” said Cirrus. “I’ll bet every time Bells’ head rings, she wishes she had wings.”
“I heard that, Cirrus!” Calliope called back.
Again back on the starting platform, Derpy exclaimed, “Yeah, that’s more like it!”
Cirrus threw a stuffed lion at her, but her left eye saw it coming and she ducked, the lion instead hitting Star Hunter as he reached the top of the platform’s ladder, knocking him off with an, “Oh, come on!” Splash.
Derpy tried not to chuckle, but the Motivator swung up and bumped her off the platform, too. Paddling back to the ladder, she saw Calliope also swimming over, but the look in her eyes made Derpy kick it up a gear.
Now fuming with frustration at losing an unfair advantage, Calliope sped back to the ladder. Derpy was desperately climbing ahead of her, but she quickly caught up, the two fighting for the same hoofholds as they each tried pulling ahead of the other. They shoved Star Hunter to the other end of the platform as they leapt to the passing green spot, Derpy getting a slim lead as they took the arc’s left beam up to the center, where they knocked off a startled Jeer who had gotten lost in the foam. They raced down the right beam to the red spot in the gap between sweeper bars, Derpy reaching the spot first and jumping to the Banana Hammock, swinging it towards the finishing platform. As it swung back away from the platform, she tried springing off, but the foam on her hooves made her slip and she fell straight down. Calliope leapt into the Hammock and rode it as it swung back, easily hopping off and onto the platform. She threw her head back and flipped the part of her mane hanging out from under her helmet with a whip crack sound effect.
“And finally we have a finisher!” Cirrus called as Calliope cantered down the walkway to a small raised stand for finishers. “With Bells now waiting for her Whistles, Team Starry Eyed has got to get a move on if they want to stay in this.”
“But all of that foam on the obstacle is being quite the whipped cream pie to the face to just about everyone,” Pinkie added. “Not even the clowns are immune, it seems.”
As she said this, Star Hunter tried making his way though the foam, but on the other side he stepped down where there was no beam and slid down the cone base of the Steering Wheel to the water.
Jeer joined Derpy back on the starting platform. As she waited for the green spot to come back around, she realized Jeer was trying to silently sneak past behind her to get to it first. She sidestepped left to keep him in second, but he honked and tried pushing past. She sped up and kept ahead of him all the way to the end of the platform, jerking to a stop, but he bumped into her, the two teetering on the edge.
Derpy glanced up to see the green spot just arriving, leaping to it as Jeer fell into the water. She didn’t even see that a sweeper bar was also just arriving until it plowed into her, but she instinctively grabbed onto it, getting swept off the green spot and out left off of the arc. She held on for dear life, muscling onto the bar and trying to scope out where she was going, but then the red spot drifted past below her as she passed the Green Ball exit obstacle. Without thinking, she dropped down onto the red spot and sprung to the Green Ball, landing on the top. Its spinning almost peeled her hooves off again, but she shoved off after what she hoped was a full rotation, shutting her eyes as she flew through the air…and touched down on a padded surface.
“What a move!” shouted Pinkie. “Thanks to Eye Spy, Team Stars in its Eyes might not be so star-crossed anymore!”
Derpy opened her eyes again. “I-I did it?” she said, looking down at the finishing platform she was standing on. “Whoa.”
“Don’t get too confident,” Calliope called over to her. “Your friend still has to finish after you, and that’s assuming Jeer doesn’t finish first.”
Jeer was again in the foam, but his hooves were slipping so much he couldn’t move forward, and a sweeper bar knocked him off the beam.
“You might want to get comfortable, though,” Calliope sighed, “this could take a while.”
Star Hunter tried navigating the foam himself, the mass slowly growing as more rained down from the foam jet at the center. Cirrus held up a hollow plastic airzooka drum and aimed it at Star Hunter as he stepped over a passing sweeper bar. He pulled on the plastic sheet at the back and let it go to shoot a punch of air that made a burst in the foam in front of Star Hunter, startling him to slip off.
“You’ll never clear out the foam at that rate,” Pinkie said to him, holding up the obstacle remote and switching off the foam jet. “Allow me.”
Jeer raced up a beam of the entrance arc, diving onto the center of the sweeper bars and making an array of happy rings and whistles. Then Pinkie hit another button. A geyser of water shot up from the center of the sweepers, deflecting off of him and spraying out to wash the foam off of the obstacle. The stunned Jeer just stood there. He blinked.
“I’m almost sorry I doubted you!” Star Hunter called as he raced up to the starting platform and got on on the next green spot pass. As he reached the center, Jeer shook his head and snapped back into it. As the rotation aligned, the two ran down opposite beams to the red spot, Jeer left and Star Hunter right, each hopping over a sweeper bar. They met at the red spot as it passed between the Unstable Table and Banana Hammock, a sweeper bar between them, and jumped.
Star Hunter went for the Unstable Table, but it tilted up at him and he rammed into it, quickly wrapping his hooves around the edges to keep from falling.
Jeer landed on the Banana Hammock, turning to honk at Star Hunter one last time.
“It’s all over!” Calliope exclaimed. “We win, we win!”
“It’s not over yet, clown,” Derpy said.
“Oh, please,” she said, “what could possibly happen now to stop us from winning? Welcome to the Toyroom, I look forward to beating you again for the Toymaker’s enjoyment soon.”
Jeer leapt at the finishing platform, but the Hammock swung a bit out from under him and he only managed to get his front hooves onto it, leaving him hanging off the edge.
“Ooh, no good yet!” Pinkie announced. “You need all four hooves on the finish platform or it doesn’t count!”
“Get up there, Jeer!” Calliope shouted over.
“Star Hunter!” Derpy called.
The Unstable Table tilted back up, Star Hunter scrambling to his hooves and leaping in what seemed to be slow motion as Jeer pulled himself up, bringing up a back hoof and reaching farther over the platform…
…only to be grabbed from behind by the stick figure Bigfoot and pulled clean off the platform as Star Hunter landed.
Pinkie waved at the contestants as she twirled the remote on her other hoof. “You didn’t forget about Bigfoot, did you?”
“Noooo—!” Calliope screeched, but in a flash, she was replaced by a small plastic pony figure with her coloring. Jeer was also replaced with a plastic figure, but Bigfoot tossed it into its mouth anyway and started chewing.
An array of spotlights turned to Derpy and Star Hunter, momentarily blinding them. The spotlights turned away and scattered a second later, leaving the two back in the original dark room with Pinkie. Neither Calliope nor Jeer, nor even Cirrus was anywhere to be seen, pony or figure.
“Let’s hope we don’t have to do that again,” Star Hunter said.
A holographic blue rectangle suddenly appeared in the air in front of them, showing the image of a blue police box. There were small transparent arrows pointing left and right beside it.
“It looks like this is how we’d avoid that,” said Derpy.
“Congratulations on winning on the Overdrive,” Pinkie said, walking up beside the projection, “now you have a chance to get the TARDIS back. Simply scroll through all umsquillion slightly varying options to select the correct one. You have one guess per chance, after which you’ll be told if you’re right or wrong. The Trilogic Game waits for nopony, so choose wisely but quickly.”
“You’ve been traveling longer,” Star Hunter said, “you’d know better.”
Derpy nodded and stepped up to the screen. She reached up to the right arrow, and a series of images scrolled by, each showing a TARDIS with slightly different height, width, window size, roof shape, light design, etc.
She stopped at one, taking a closer look. Something was surely familiar about this one. She glanced back at Star Hunter, who gestured at her. Turning back, she reached out and tapped the TARDIS image, and it solidified into a 3D police box sitting before them.
“Did I get it?” she asked.
A color palate menu appeared beside the blue box with a line pointing to its front. It displayed the detected color, before the display box flashed red.
“Whoops,” Pinkie said, “wrong shade of blue.”
Star Hunter stared at Derpy. She shrank back. “I-It was the lighting in this room,” she said, “I swear.”
A deep voice came echoing through the room. “Ooh, so sorry to hear that you made a wrong choice,” Discord said. “But, since I’m such a nice fellow and all…”
“As if,” Star Hunter muttered.
“Fine then,” Discord dismissed, “be that way. I was going to give you a clue as to how to solve the next game, but I guess that now…”
“Wait!” Derpy called.
“Well,” mused Discord, “I can see that at least one of you has your best interests in mind. Your clue is in the form of a riddle, because I can’t let myself be too helpful. A-hem:
Four legs, no feet,
Of arms no lack,
It carries no burden on its back.
Six deadly sisters,
Seven for choice,
Call the servants without voice.”
After a few seconds of silence, they realized Discord wasn’t going to add any more.
“Well what’s that mean?” Derpy said. “Are there going to be six opponents next time?”
“Step inside and find out,” Pinkie said, indicating the fake TARDIS. Its doors opened inward on their own, revealing an empty black void. “And you’d better hope you can decipher that clue quick,” she added, holding up her tail, “you’re eating into your time.” The display of the crystal ball flipped to the next move in the Doctor’s Trilogic Game: 415.
“Ahh,” Discord said, sitting back down across from the Doctor at the Trilogic Game table. “I’m glad they ultimately chose to run that course, it’s by far my favorite of the choices. The other ones all have too many rules to abide by, but that one’s just endless, senseless, ponies-getting-knocked-over fun! Wouldn’t you agree, Doctor?”
“There’s just one thing that I don’t get,” the Doctor said, tapping his hooves together. “You say that counter tracks my moves in the Trilogic Game, but…” He looked at the triangular game table with the top layer piece of a pyramid sitting on one of three spaces, the rest of them stacked properly on another, awaiting their friend: the final move, just as he’d found it. “I haven’t started playing.”
Discord smiled sinisterly.
Next Episode
A GAME OF THRONES
