The Music of Harmony

The next day, a police box materialized out of thin air in Ponyville. This was not a normal occurrence, and it would have greatly confused any pony who had seen it. Except, of course, for the ones inside it, who were completely used to the strangeness. The two passengers stepped out, and looked at their surroundings. One of them was a coffee brown earth pony with an hourglass as a cutie mark, and the other was a grey pegasus with crossed eyes and bubbles as a cutie mark. They were talking to each other quite loudly, but no pony could understand what they were saying, so it didn't matter.

"So you see, Derpy," said the brown earth pony who called himself The Doctor. "If we calculate this logically, the number of planets with life must be finite, and the number of total planets is infinite, so the finite number divided by the infinite number is essentially zero. That means that the population of the universe comes out to zero. Isn't that fascinating?"

"Yeah, sure," said Derpy, whose attention was clearly focused on a strange leaf on the ground.

"Of course, that doesn't explain you and me here right now. Maybe life is just an illusion. That would be an interesting theory."

Derpy soon became bored of the leaf. She set it down.

"I forgot. Why are we in Ponyville?" she asked.

The Doctor sighed. "We've already been over this. You had the dream too, you know. We need to help the Princess. That's why we came back."

"Oh, right. Still, I don't get it. Why would Celestia turn evil? I thought she loved her sister."

"That's the perplexing part. We'll have to wait to figure that one out. We should probably stay in Ponyville while we're waiting."

"Thank goodness. That time machine was making me time-sick. Not to mention the fact that we ran out of muffins. I'm gonna have to make some more."

"Well, I guess you can go have fun if you want. Just be careful."

"Thanks, Doctor!" Derpy exclaimed.

She spread her wings and flew off at a speed that would have made the Wonderbolts jealous; humming to herself all the while.

Octavia stepped outside of her small house. She decided to take Vinyl's advice and enjoy herself. Although it was hard, considering that she would have to save Equestria in a couple of days. She took a deep breath and pushed that to the back of her mind. She pulled out her shopping list. There was a lot to buy. It would keep her busy for a while. First, she needed new quills for writing. She put away her list and headed in the general direction of Quills and Sofas, which was not far.

Octavia stopped. Something didn't seem right. She looked up just in time to see an out of control cross-eyed pegasus flying straight at her. She yelped, but it was too late to do anything else.

It was a painful collision. Octavia groaned and picked herself back off the ground. "Seriously?" she shouted at the dazed pegasus. "Who taught you how to fly? Shouldn't you watch where...?"

She quit shouting when she saw who it was. Her anger was replaced by wonder.

"Derpy? Is that you?" she asked. "Wow! I haven't seen you in so long. Not since you went on those adventures with The Doctor. We have so much to catch up on."

Derpy got up and steadied herself.

"Hi, Octavia," she said brightly. "Sorry about the crash. How are you?"

"I'm fine. I was just going out shopping. Do you want to come with me? We could talk about your adventures."

"As long as we can go get some muffins on the way."

Octavia picked up a dozen muffins from the Ponyville Coffee Shop, and they munched on them while they did their shopping.

"So why did you pick now to return to Ponyville?" Octavia asked. "What made you turn around all of a sudden?"

"Oh, that's an easy one. We ran out of muffins, of course. Traveling through time makes you hungry," Derpy said.

"Is that all?"

"Well, we also had dreams with Princess Luna in them. She said she needed our help to save Celestia because she turned evil."

Octavia didn't expect to hear that. Derpy and The Doctor had the dreams as well; this meant that they would all be part of Luna's plan together.

"Luna was in your dreams too?" she asked. "It was the same for me and Vinyl Scratch! What do you think the Princess wants us to do?"

"Gosh, I don't know. I tried to ask The Doctor but he explained it all confusingly and it made my head hurt."

"I think the four of us need to get together and talk about this. It's a really big deal, you know. If we fail, Luna will die and there will be nopony left to keep her from doing whatever she wants. If she isn't stopped, who knows what she'll do with Equestria?"

Derpy thought about this for a moment. They walked in silence until she finally spoke.

"That's really depressing. I guess we should talk about it. I don't know where The Doctor is, though."

"I'm sure we'll find him. He couldn't have gone very far."

"He did say he was going to stay here, in Canterlot."

"This is Ponyville, Derpy," Octavia said as nicely as possible.

Derpy hit herself on the head.

"Oh, right! Clumsy me. I'm always forgetting things," she said with a smile.

"Don't worry about it. You go find The Doctor. I'll get Vinyl Scratch and we'll meet up."

"Okie-dokie, Octavia. See you soon."

The two ponies went their separate ways. Octavia went back to her house to get Vinyl. She wasn't hard to find when she was practicing, as she was now. All anypony would have to do is follow the sound of the bass. She came in through the door, making sure she had her earplugs in.

Vinyl looked up from her system. Seeing her there, she shut it off. Octavia took out her earplugs.

"Hey, Octavia. How does it sound? I'm practicing for the Gala."

"It's great, Vinyl," she said. "But you need to put down your headphones and come with me for a minute."

Vinyl shook her head in frustration.

"Well then. First, you get on my case about not practicing, and now you want me to stop just as soon as I start. I was on the verge of a chart-topping hit too."

"You can finish later. Right now, we need to go."

"I don't see why we need to be in such a rush."

"I promised a couple of ponies that we would meet them soon. We need to discuss the dream. They said they had it too."

She sighed. "Oh, right. That dream. Well, I guess we kinda have to go then."

Octavia gave her a playful shove. "Don't say it so sarcastically. This is super important stuff we're getting into. The fate of Equestria rests on our shoulders; don't you think you can just cooperate for five minutes?"

"OK, fine. Let's get this over with."

She smiled. "I knew you would warm up eventually."

They headed out of the house and started looking around Ponyville for Derpy. Octavia knew better than to ask Derpy where they would meet, because she would always be somewhere else. After a long time of searching, they found nothing.

"Octavia," Vinyl whined. "My hooves are hurting. We must have searched every building in Ponyville by now. Can't we just go home?"

"No. We have to keep looking."

She pulled out a checklist of buildings they visited. Vinyl silently rolled her eyes at Octavia's organization.

"We have been to every place I can think of. That is, except for... Oh no. We need to hurry."

"Why? What place did we miss?" She asked with curiosity.

"The Ponyville bar. Come on, we can't waste any more time."

Vinyl allowed herself to smile.

"Finally! Things are getting interesting."