“Wrong lever Twilight!” the brown earth pony yelled as the constant noise of machine and mechanisms made it hard to hear. With everything that happened in-literally the last ten minutes, Twilight could hardly blame herself for screwing up; her mind was focused on…recent events.
Her thoughts were interrupted when an explosion of sparks bursted from the console, reminding her of the task at hoof. Pushing all thoughts aside, the alicorn used her magic to raise the “wrong” lever as the earth pony called it, and lift the correct one as he instructed her to. With the recent shower of sparks, there was no way she was going anywhere near that thing!
“There you go Twilight!” Time Turn…no…he said himself that wasn’t his real name…said the Doctor. Although with what little time she was with him, she was sure he had no experience in the medical field whatsoever! “Now, do me a favor,” the Doctor continued, “go over there and turn that dial over there countercloc-no no no, not that one! The other one on your left!”
“You said that you can fly this, this thing by yourself! Why do you suddenly need me to help you?” Twilight said with a hint of annoyance.
“Oi! Watch what you say! And it’s not that I need help, I just thought that a smart mare like you would relish at the chance to fly a time machine!”
“This certainly doesn’t seem like a one-pony job!” Twilight retorted.
“Well, you’d be right about that, it takes eight to fly the Tardis!”
There it was again, that strange word, Tardis; it was one thing to find a time machine, and another for it to have such an abnormal name, it seemed otherworldly.
“So you’re meaning to tell me,” Rainbow Dash yelled, breaking Twilight’s train of thought, “that it takes EIGHT ponies to fly this thing!” Rarity added in, “And you didn’t think to tell us this!”
If it hadn’t been for Dash’s comment, Twilight would have completely forgotten that her friends were with her. Taking a glance, she saw Rainbow Dash up above, as to avoid the sparks and the occasional tumble the Tardis gave out. Meanwhile, Fluttershy and Rarity were holding on to the railings as if their lives depended on it, and honestly, if the Doctor hadn’t asked her to help out, she would have been right with them. Applejack had one hoof on the railing, but more so of a precautionary measure, her face conveying both fear and fascination at the same time. Lastly, (but certainly not the least in ANY way,) Pinkie Pie was bouncing about with delight, as if this was the time of her life. Sometimes, Twilight worried about Pinkie, this was definitely one of those times.
“If I told you about that, would you have really come with me?” the Doctor replied, actually making a valid point for once. At that moment, the Tardis was flooded by red light and, unsurprisingly, more sparks. “No, no no no no no!” the Doctor cried, tweaking various buttons and levers and oddly enough, hitting a bell with a rubber mallet. Applejack shouted, the sirens blaring out making it even harder to hear, “Um, Doctor? Is this all supposed to be happening?” There was a tone of uneasiness in her voice, which was perfectly acceptable with everything going on at the moment.
“Don’t panic, I have everything under control!” the Doctor said, not sounding too convincing. “I just need to stabilize the Tardis; she’s tumbling through the time vortex!”
“The time what?” Twilight asked, though she wouldn’t get an answer.
The Doctor cringed, as he held what looked like to be a piece of a lever ripped in half, “Well, I have good news and bad news everypony. The good news: we are landing shortly, the bad news, it’s going to be a crash landing!”
“In other words,” Rainbow Dash replied, “we’re dead.”
The Tardis started to shake violently, as the sounds of machines and screams filled the air.
Twilight Sparkle had a smile on her face as she trotted along the roads of Ponyville. While much had happened in the last couple of months, things like Tirek, her duties as the princess of friendship, and the fiasco at Canterlot High, it felt good for things to finally be normal, well, as normal as things get in Ponyville anyways. There was still Twilight’s new castle, most of it still unexplored, but that would have to wait for another day, for now, she had full day planned out with her friends. As she made her way to Sugarcube corner, she made a mental checklist of the activities for the day. That would be the last thing to happen before the storm happened.
Storm was the best word to describe it; in fact it was the only word relatable! At the moment, the sky turned dark, and thunder could be heard from a distance. Twilight thought that at first, an unexpected storm was taking place. As soon as she thought that, she was immediately proven wrong when the sky started to rain meteors. While everypony else went into full-on panic mode, Twilight was in shock. Why was this happening, she thought to herself. It was impossible for this to be of natural occurrences, as far as she knew, there weren’t any meteor showers expected, especially none of this magnitude! This left only one other option; this was a spell, a powerful one at that. A spell of this extent could only be cast by an alicorn.
“WATCH OUT!!” a voice from afar cried out.
Suddenly, Twilight’s vision became blurred as she was pushed by an unseen figure. As they tumbled to the ground, she had a look at the culprit: he was a brown earth pony, with an hourglass for a cutie mark. “Time Turner,” Twilight scolded, “what was that for?”
“Well, excuse me for saving your life!” the earth pony replied.
“I-I had everything under control!” the alicorn lied, taking a look at where she previously stood, realizing Time Turner was right. Only a few feet away, a meteor was settled, parts of it still on fire from reentry. Had the earth pony not pushed her, just the heat alone from the meteor would have taken a number on her, or worse…
“Sure you did,” Time Turner continued, “and, another thing, please stop calling me Time Turner! Quite frankly I am starting to get really annoyed now!”
“Why? Isn’t that your name?”
Time Turner sighed, “Look I have a lot to tell you, and we only have a little time, you need to come with me right now!”
“Look, I know you just saved my life, and I sincerely thank you for that, but I can take care of myself. I need to see if my frie-“
Time Turner didn’t let Twilight finish, “Of course, it’s always you and your friends! Look, Twilight, I know that your care for your friends, you’re the princess of friendship! But this wasn’t supposed to happen!”
“Of course this wasn’t supposed to happen! I’ve studied astronomy for years, this is scientifically impossible!”
The earth pony sighed, “You don’t understand, how do I explain this, the hail of meteors literally should not have come down. Today should have been normal.”
Time Tuner motioned to Twilight to follow him. Curious as to what the earth pony had to say, she decided to follow him, for now. He went on to explain that the events that happened today would start a chain reaction of even more tragedies. He had come to Ponyville to find the source, and in a way, he did.
“If you knew this was going to happen, why didn’t you warn anypony?”
“If I did, who knows what would have happened! For all we know, even worse things could have happened! Whatever this is, it expands throughout the entire universe. I came here because I need to find out who is doing this, the fact that this all starts in Equestria is so far the only thing I know about all of this is that it starts here!”
By the time the earth pony finished talking, they arrived at the edge of the Everfree forest. Twilight wondered what they were doing there, when Time Turner produced what seemed to look like a silver rod. When he activated it, a faint buzzing nose could be heard, along with the illumination of a blue light. Suddenly, a fairly sized wooden cabin materialized in front of the earth pony.
She was flabbergasted, “Wha- how did you do that!”
Time Turner responded with a sly grin in his face, “Well, not everyone has magic you Twilight, I just had to improvise.” He entered the cabin; Twilight went after him.
Inside was an incalculable amount of information. All around the alicorn, data was being processed, various machined hummed, giving the occasional noise or two. What little space that was not taken by machines was plastered with charts, some in a language unknown to Twilight. To gather all these figures, she thought to herself, it would have taken a long time, even for her. Maybe this crazy earth pony wasn’t so crazy after all.
“Chameleon circuitry,” Time Turner said, breaking Twilight’s thoughts, “kept any stray pony from accidently getting in here. I thought that if I came here, before…the storm, maybe I could have stopped it, but here we are.”
His face conveyed a melancholy mood, Twilight saw that his emotions were genuine, that he wasn’t a mad pony, she saw a colt who tried his best, but failed, something that she could relate. But his eyes…they were the eyes of a pony who’s seen too much suffering, the only time she saw those eyes until this point were the rare occasions when she caught Princess Celestia off guard. Those eyes were old, too old for him.
“Who are you?” Twilight asked, feeling that this question was long overdue.
The earth pony trotted towards a blue box that she hadn’t noticed until now. The words POLICE BOX glowed, though Twilight had no clue what those words meant.
“I'm the Doctor,” he said, looking at the glowing box, and then back at her, “I'm a Time Lord. I'm from the planet Gallifrey in the constellation of Kasterborous. I'm nine hundred and one years old, and I’m going to stop the destruction of life as we know it, but I need your help, I need you to come with me Twilight.”
Twilight was alarmed, but as she put the pieces together, it all started to make sense. The name Time Turner, he was a…she forgot what he said, Time Lord, or something similar. It would explain his cutie mark, and everything time related he did at Ponyville. It also explained whenever she saw him; he always seemed to be in a mind of his own, muttering things to himself. The only questions she had in mind now were why and how.
“Truth is Twilight, you are smart,” the Time Lord said, “well, not as smart as me, but you get the point.” If it weren’t for their current situation, she would have found an opportunity for a rebuttal, but for now that would have to wait for later. “What I’m trying to say is, with everything you’ve read, you know more about Equestria then probably anyone. I haven’t been here for long, so I’ve only read what I could find. If we’re going to stop the thing that did this, I need to know at the very least what we’re up against. So far I’ve come up with nothing, and that’s very rare. With your talents, we have a fighting chance. So what do you say? Will you come with me?”
“What you’re saying is inspiring,” Twilight responded, desperately trying to get back to reality. “But if you haven’t noticed, this is all we have, how are we going to stop…whatever this thing is, if the only data we have is in here!”
The Doctor sighed, putting a hoof to his head, “And here I thought that we were having a moment!” He thumped the wooden box labeled POLICE, “You see this, she’s my TARIDS, short for Time and Relative Dimensions in space. How did you think I got here? My point is, as the name says, the Tardis can move anywhere in space and time. Once we stop the pony that did this, none of this would have ever happened, gone just like that. And I know that you’re feeling a bit reluctant, with you just being pronounced princess of friendship and all, you don’t want to abandon your subjects. I assume you know the basics of time travel, even though Equestiankind hasn’t achieved it yet…if we leave, it would be like if you never left!”
He was right, to a point; she was worried about her role as the princess of friendship, but not as much as her friends. “This…this is a lot to take in Ti- I mean Doctor, but I don’t think I can help you. From the start, my friends have always been with me, and I don’t feel-“
The Time Lord sighed, “And here I thought we were having a moment!” He looked at the blue box, giving a “Why do I even bother?” look at it, then turned back to Twilight, “I never said you couldn’t bring your friends, in fact the more the merrier! Just don’t take too long retrieving them, if they’re still alive that is.”
The thought sickened Twilight, but the moment had been prepared for. In the days when she was alone, even from Spike, the alicorn thought of a spell, one similar to her fail-safe spell, only it would safely bring all of her friends to her. She never thought she would ever need to use it, so she stopped progress on the spell on a very early stage. The question wasn’t if it could be cast, but rather, would it work?
There was another problem though, one the Doctor seemingly hasn’t caught on to; if they were all to leave in the Tardis, how would they fit? The box seemed only big enough for two. It stumped Twilight how there could even be room for all the technology it must take to achieve time travel! When she mentioned this to the Doctor, he seemed confounded, if only for a second. Immediately after, he told Twilight just to “trust him.” She was sure there was something he wasn’t telling her, but for now, she wouldn’t think too hard on it, right now her main priority was casting her spell.
She trotted a few steps away from the Doctor and his box, she had to have a clear mind in order for this to work, and ever since she met the earth pony, she knew that there was no way that would happen if she stayed near him. Twilight exhaled, and began to concentrate, with enough effort, this might work. Mere seconds now felt like minutes as she put her all into the spell. With a grunt of effort, Twilight felt the spell beginning. Even with her eyes closed, she felt her horn glowing, pulsating with magic as the spell was being generating, a noise now beginning to drown out any other noise that she might have heard.
Finally, after what felt like hours for Twilight, the spell’s immense need for energy had been met. There was a brilliant flash of light, which, unfortunately for the Doctor, whom had been oblivious to Twilight’s spell casting until this moment, caught him off guard, letting out a cry of surprise as he was temporarily blinded.
Twilight heard several thuds and different variations of “Ouch!” along with “Huh?” and one, “I take a nap for ONE SECOND!!!!”. A smile formed in Twilight’s face, even though her eyes were closed, she knew her spell succeeded. When she opened her eyes however, she didn’t receive the warm welcome she was anticipating, nor expected.
It was true, by casting this spell, Twilight was being greedy, she took them away from their family, or anything else in that manner. When Twilight tried to explain herself, the Doctor cut in, “Well, a little warning next time before you blind me! Good! Your friends are here!”
“Hold on a minute Twilight,” Applejack said, breaking the ice between them, “Exactly what are you doing with Time Turner?”
Twilight began to explain, but once again, the Doctor cut her off, “I remember you, Applejack was it? Yes, the cider competition you had with the Flim-Flam brothers! I helped keep the time, and sabotaged their machine.” While saying this, he produced the same tool used to bring out the shed when Twilight first met him.
“What was that last part again, sugarcube?”
“Erm-nothing!” at this time, he put the metallic stick back into his tie.)
“I’m glad everypony is alright,” Twilight said glad that the Doctor didn’t interrupt her “I know that things seem bleak with the meteor storm, but-”
“You think that was bad!” Rainbow Dash abruptly spoke, interrupting Twilight yet again. “How long have you been in here with this creep? (She managed to get a brief “Oi!” from the Doctor.) Haven’t you noticed the massive army attacking us?”
“Army?” The Doctor and Twilight said in unison.
As if right on cue, a loud thud could be heard outside, as if somepony deliberately rammed into the roof. Immediately afterwards, the figure broke through, letting the sun into the dim cabin, momentarily blinding Twilight. At first glance, the solder didn't seem to impose much of a threat. Had her friends not have said that they were being invaded, Twilight would have thought him as one of the royal guards.
However, those are whereby similarities ended. While it's true that the invaders looked like guardsponies, they certainly didn't act like them. Baring thier fangs, the Doctor pulled out his metal device, the blue light flickered to life, creating a buzzing noise.
The guards trotted back a few steps, as if they were dazed by the light the stick produced. Thier image started to flicker, until thier form became translucent, all of them now the same purple color of thier armor.
"How...how did you do that??" Rarity asked.
"My sonic screwdriver," the Doctor replied, looking quite proud of himself, "nifty little thing isn't it? I'm getting off topic, we need to get going, everyone follow me into the Tardis!”
The earth pony turned around and headed towards the blue TARDIS box.
Rainbow Dash let out the obvious, "How are we all gonna fit there? And whats a Tardis!!!"
The doors to the Tardis opening, out popping the Doctor’s head, “Just get in!!”
With the ghost guards closing in on Twilight and there friends, they didn’t have much of a choice. However, she was in for a surprise as for when she entered, instead of the cramped space she was expecting within the relatively small box, there was an abundance of room. A green light emanated from the center of the surprisingly large room, that and the array of circles in the walls seemed to be the only source of light. The center of the room seemed to be a control panel of sorts, how it worked, Twilight had no clue, there were so many contraptions that even with all the time in the world, she doubted she could ever fully understand it. The most surprising part about all of this was that-
“It’s bigger on the inside!” Pinkie took the words from her thoughts. She then went on to
explain how this was like the balloons she uses: both were small at first then were huge later on. The Tardis… it kept on surprising Twilight, apparently it could travel trough time and space, and now it was bigger on the inside! The machine seemed as mysterious as the owner himself.
“So we locked ourselves in here,” Rainbow Dash said, cutting Twilight’s train of thought, “and now we are sitting ducks until those guard ponies bust in here!”
“Trust me Rainbow Dash,” the Doctor said, looking at his surroundings with a gleam of excitement in his eyes, as if he were a foal in a candy store. “There is no way they can get inside, I should know, the Romans, try as they might, couldn’t get inside here, I doubt those ponies can!”
“The what?”
“Never mind, the point is, we’re safe. And those guards, they weren’t normal.”
Twilight could already sense the sarcastic reply Rainbow Dash would soon come up with.
However, the Doctor continued before the pegasus could let loose, “When I used the sonic on them, (He then brought up the silver rod, which he seemingly got from nowhere.) They showed their true form. They weren't natural. Thier form was composed of solid light."
"How can somepony do that?" Rarity added in, "I've never seen anything like that!"
"Isn't that the question of the day? The light was being kept together by magic, doing that alone takes a toll on a unicorn. Then to have them go about destroying the town...that's something only an alicorn can do."
The Doctor's last words sent a shiver down Twilight's spine. While she had guessed it, there was now definite proof that an alicorn had caused this. The only unicorn that also had this much magical reserves was Starswirl the Bearded, but that was only under a numerous amount of circumstances. Besides, Starswirl was long gone by now, so there only was three culprits.
The Tardis shook, as if a small earthquake had started, throwing everypony off balance. When Applejack asked what was happening, the Doctor replied, "That's them trying to get in!"
He continued, "We have to go, now! Everypony sit down and hold on, except for you Twilight, you're going to help me fly her!"
"What!"
"You heard me right! Now get on here, it's simple really, just do as I say and we'll be fine!"
Twilight approached the console with a sense of uneasiness, looking at the various levers and gears, The Doctor's task seemed easier said then done. Thought Twilight tried to think positive, she had always wanted to time travel, and now here was the opportunity. Well, that was if the Doctor wasn't a psychotic pony who just made this Time Lord stuff up. She thought to herself, what's the worse that could happen?
Twilight started to regret her thought she made only a couple of minutes ago. While they did survive, Twilight and her friends looked how she felt: awful. Even Pinkie Pie, whom Twilight thought up until this point was enjoying the ride, was lying flat on the ground. The Doctor however seemed totally unphased by the events that just happened.
"Whew!" He exclaimed! "Hadn't had that rush in a while! That was exciting"
"What...what just happened?" Fluttershy asked, looking the worst out of all of them.
"We moved silly! Right, I forgot to tell you all. We're in a time machine! With this baby, we can no anywhere in time and space!"
"Really?" Rarity asked, her hair in a mess "This dosen't look like a time machine to me."
"Oi!" The Doctor sharply replied, "What do you mean by that!"
"Nothing darling," She replied, a grin now on her face, now knowing that she was offending the Time Lord."It's just that, this wasn't how I imagined a time machine to look like, no offense (clearly a lie, probably just to get at the Doctor for ruining her hair...) but this...just looks like a heap of junk!)
The Doctor's face was grim, as if Rarity's words were targeting him rather then his machine. "Do we have to take her?" He asked Twilight, nodding to the unicorn.
"Yes." Twilight said sternly.
"Moving on," The Doctor continued, clearly still stung by Rarity's comment, "Can any of you guess how the Tardis is bigger on the inside? This is my favorite part."
Rarity raised her hoof.
"No, not you."
She put down her hoof and pouted.
Twilight thought for a logical explanation for this. Now that they were safe...for the most part, she could contemplate on how the Tine Lord's machine worked.
Her thoughts were dismissed when she heard s omepony speak, "The room here and the box on the outside are different dimensions, you just found a way to combine the two into one object."
"Right you are Applejack!" The Doctor gleefully said. "Remind me to give you a star later on! I wouldn't have guessed you would have known about transdimensional engineering!"
Applejack replied with a sense of pride, "I've read my fair share of science fiction sugarcube."
"Well, you said this was a time machine, so where are we?" Fluttershy questioned.
"Well, why don't you go outside and see for yourself."
Pinkie was the closest to the door, carefully, she pushed the door open, stuck her head outside, let out an enthusiastic "Oooo!" And leaped out of the Tardis. Her friends soon followed suit. Twilight was the last to leave, but before she moved one step, the Doctor stuck a helmet into her head.
"Hey!" She cried, "What's this for!"
"Sorry, just this one thing and we'll be set!" While saying this, the Doctor toggled various switches on the helmet. "I promise this won't hurt!"
Right after the earth pony finished saying that sentence, what felt like a jolt of electricity buzzed through Twilight's head, making her cry a yelp of pain.
"I lied." The Doctor's said, and took off the helmet from Twilight. When she asked what the helmet was for, he explained, besides him and Twilight's friends she'll appear as a normal unicorn to everyone else. As they were in the past, they couldn't give away future events, which was odd because besides her wings, this was exactly what they were doing. While the Doctor did reveal that they traveled to the past, the only thing he revealed when she asked where did they land was a chuckle.
Twilight opened the door with caution, although she knew her friends were just outside, she was still nervous, she had always pondered on the thought of time travel, and even read about it, but now that it was a door away, she was nervous, what if she did something that threw off the course of history. Then again, if the likes of the Doctor have time traveled, and Equestria hadn't fallen into chaos, she was sure that she couldn't mess up that badly. Taking a deep breath, she opened the doors and took a look at her surroundings.
Twilight was confident that she would be able to know where she was in time, but she honestly had no clue. From the looks of it, they seemed to be in a castle, the masonry revealing that the castle had only been standing for a few years. However, when Twilight looked for her friends, they were nowhere to be found. When she called for them, the only response the alicorn received was silence. She galloped to the corridor nearest her and followed it's trail, going through the maze of brick and glass, desperately searching for a hint of where her friends might be. Twilight was caught off guard when she crashed into something, when she heard a grunt, she realized she crashed into somepony.
As she got up, Twilight saw that she bumped into a castle guard. While he didn't look like the light guardsponies that invaded Ponyville, he kept thier attitude: rough and gruff. Looking behind him, Twilight was relived to see her friends, but took it back when she saw that they were treated as hostile, other guardsponies using thier magic to keep thier lances affixed at them. Applejack and Rainbow Dash grunted back at the ponies who grunted at them, while Rarity was more interested in the gems encrusted within the weapons. Fluttershy was as low as the guards would allow her to, quivering with fear. All in all, her friends weren't excatly in the brightest if moods, except for Pinkie, who was the only one to wave hello to Twilight.
The pony whom Twilight crashed into spoke with a raspy tone fit for a captain, which Twilight figured he was. "Hmph, looks like we found another stray, guards! Take her in with the rest of them!"
Twilight cried out in suprise when she found herself being lifted out the ground, the unicorns levitated Twilight to where her friends were. When she thought about it, this was actually a really smart tactic, this way, she couldn't run off. She admired it as much as she hated it.
She was with her friends, that took care of one problem, now she had to find a way to get out of thier current situation.
"Look...erm, sir" Twilight said, not knowing the captain's name, "We are not your enemy, actually, in fact-"
"Let me guess," The captain cut Twilight off, letting out a rough laugh, "You and your buddies over there wield the power of the Elements of Harmony" His tone almost sarcastic. Twilight was flabbergasted, how did he he know? He continued, "The rainbow one already tried that! It dosen't take a dummy to know that the actual Elements of Harmony are safely locked up, away from the likes of you ponies." (Rarity then crime out, "And what does that mean!!" Though the captain ignored her.)
Twilight then gave a deathglare to Rainbow Dash, who then let out an unconvincing laugh, "At least we now know we're in the past!"
As much as Twilight wanted to yell off at the Pegasus then and there, she had a point. Because of her blunder, they knew the Elements of Harmony were in this castle. Which only meant one thing: Princess Celestia and Luna were here too.
