The Return of Doctor Whooves

Ponyville: Present Day

Rainbow’s first thought was, naturally, to go to Twilight’s to get the books she needed on researching just what exactly was making the Bloody Mary legend come to life. Then she remembered, Twilight had shut her doors entirely to anypony and everypony. Rainbow blinked back tears. Here she was, solving a case that never should have come up in the first place unless somepony was fooling around with spells and not spending time with her marefriend like she should have been! Rainbow faltered for a moment as she realized what she had just thought of.

“Wait a moment… Somepony is fooling around with spells! That’s gotta be the only explanation! But what kinds of spells? And why is Bloody Mary targeting these specific ponies? I may not know much about police work or mystery solving in general, but I do know this, there’s always a connection between murders. It’s never random with serial killers. It’s always something small, unnoticeable unless you really look hard enough. Wait a moment, Magic Winds!” Rainbow realized as she flashbacked to when she was investigating Magic Wind’s bedroom.

There was also a portrait of Magic and a mare, white with a green mane on his bedside table. Rainbow then noticed something, a box that was just peeking out under the bed, hidden away just enough not to be seen unless you were looking for something out of the ordinary.

"Hmm, bet this is probably where he keeps his porn stash, and although I'm always in the mood for that, I really want a lead here." Rainbow mused to herself and dragged out the small wooden box and opened it. Inside was not porn, but a pregnancy test. Rainbow's eyes widened when she saw what it read.

"Huh, looks like Magic boinked his marefriend a little too hard. Gotta be careful these days. Celestia above... I really hate to break it to his marefriend that her child's going to grow up without a father." Rainbow mused to herself, a tear slipping from her eye and she wiped it away. "Okay, this is interesting, but I don't think it relates to the case. There's just gotta be something I'm missing here..."

“He was keeping his marefriend’s pregnancy a secret from his parents! I’m willing to bet all of my Daring Do merchandise and Wonderbolts memorabilia that Twist was keeping a secret as well! Problem is, what’s the secret? I’m going to do have to a little asking around…” Rainbow mused and then ran off towards the direction of Sweet Apple Acres…

With the Doctor and Derpy...

The Doctor was not happy. Not happy at all. More often than not, he liked his legends to stay just that, legends. He was a skeptic at heart. He was always looking for a real-world solution to things. He wanted the Slendermane to be just a hallucination brought on by someone drugging the whole area of Whitetail Woods. He wanted the whole legend to be just bunk stirred up by someone trying to use it for some sinister purpose and just kidnapping children to molest them, as horrible as that was. But that just couldn’t be it, could it? Noooo, the Slendermane had to be the real bloody deal. This flew in every scientific fact he knew of in his over 900 years of being alive. Not just that, it came right back to him and slapped him in the face and then mooned him to add to the humiliation of it all. The Doctor groaned to himself, he was really beginning to hate Equestria’s myths and legends and magic in general. It never spelled anything good for him whenever he was around. Cybermen, or Cyberponies he could deal with. Just give them an emotional overload and have their heads explode. Weeping Angels, okay, just grab Celestia and have her burn them to nothing but ashes. Daleks, blow them up with magical explosives. Sontarans, aim for the back of the neck. The Vashta Nerada? Stay out of the shadows. But the Slenderpony? Run, just run. Mind you, it wasn’t like he wasn’t used to running. Hell, he started off his entire adventures through Time and Space just by stealing a Type-Forty TARDIS and running for it along with his granddaughter.

Speaking of family, he was very curious as to what the Slenderpony meant by Derpy being an unfit parent. From what he’d gathered around town just by gossip—which by the way was something he also hated, as gossipers generally had nothing better to do with their time besides talk—Derpy was considered to be one of the best parents in Ponyville even if she had to raise her daughter alone. But then again, everyone has skeletons in their closets. You could never tell what someone was like unless you met them for yourself. But that was the issue wasn’t it? He’d met Derpy, and she seemed genuinely scared for the welfare of her daughter. Nopony got that teary eyed over someone unless they actually cared for them. It niggled and nagged at his brain. It was a complete contradiction between what the Slendermane said and Derpy’s demeanor. Still, it was best he double checked, just in case he was wrong. He’d been wrong before about things after all, as today proved.

“Doctor, you alright?” Derpy asked in concern as she waved a hoof in front of his face in order to snap him back to reality.

“Yeah… Yeah. I’m fine. Just lost in thought for a moment there.” The Doctor replied before he rushed out the door.

“Doctor, where are you going?” Derpy asked in fear, hoping to Faust above the Doctor just wasn’t giving up on her. “Doctor… Please! I need your help!” She shouted desperately. The Doctor gave her a smile and placed a hoof on her shoulder.

“Don’t worry, I’ll be back. I just need to check on a few things to confirm a theory of mine.”

Next thing Derpy heard was a distinct wheezing and groaning sound and sunk to the floor in despair and hopelessness, her hooves covering her eyes while she sobbed quietly to herself. The Doctor was giving up on her after all. She wasn’t getting her daughter back…

But that’s where Derpy was wrong. The Doctor traveled to a few days before this incident, to an area near Derpy’s household and he quickly ducked behind a tree as his and Celestia’s past selves walked by, with Celestia under a disguise that hid her wings and made her multicolored mane just a solid pink, making her look like a regular, if frankly rather oversized unicorn. The Doctor smiled to himself. He remembered this.

“You know, it’s nice to just be a regular mare for once. No nobles complaining their asses off, and no ponies who treat you like a goddess.” Celestia commented, before blushing as she realized she’d used a curse word in public, and ponies expected her to be all prim and proper.

“Excuse my language Doctor. I… I just needed to vent for a moment. It’s just... I’m expected to be all perfect and not like normal ponies, with normal problems. I’m supposed to be a role model for them to look up to.”

Past Pony-Ten only chuckled to himself.

“What’s so funny, Doctor?”

“Except you’re not Celestia right now are you? You’re Bright Star, not a Princess, so you’re free to act however you want and just enjoy the day. Hell, you could even go down to the local pub the Prancing Pony and get stone-dead drunk if you so desired.”

“No offence Doctor, but I much prefer my vintage malt, and the smell of half of those stallions does tend to offend one’s nose.” Celestia remarked with a teasing smile. The Doctor couldn’t help himself and just burst out laughing.

“Yes, quite. It really is quite horrid down there is it not?” Past Pony-Ten said taking on a mock high class accent and causing Celestia to laugh at how bad it was. The present time Doctor smiled as his past self remarked “Come along “Bright Star”, got lots of places to see yet!” before as he and Past Celestia continued their walk and ran towards Derpy’s household and looked in the window. Derpy was merrily cooking breakfast, smelled like muffins before she took them out of the oven and clapped her hooves together in joy.

“Chocolate chip muffins for breakfast? Well, who am I to judge?” The Doctor thought to himself as a small pinkish unicorn filly with a yellow mane trotted down the stairs cheerfully. “Aah, and that must be Dinky. Have to admit, she is pretty cute. So far, so good. I can’t really see any parenting troubles here.”

He continued to watch for the next hour and a half unseen as Dinky and Derpy went about their day. Nothing untowards happened, and the Doctor could safely say that all was well in this household. But just as he was walking away from the home, he heard the sound of china shattering and went back to the window and saw Dinky looking at the floor where a shattered vase with a guilty look as Derpy looked at her angrily.

“I’m… I’m sorry mom! I was just trying to practice my magic!”

“Go to your room…” Derpy muttered. That had been her mother’s favorite vase, passed down from parent to child and now it was broken. “JUST GO TO YOUR ROOM!”

Dinky ran off sobbing and then the Doctor heard a hissing, guttural sound and saw a tall black figure in the treeline for just a moment before he vanished into the shadows.

“Okay, so that explains that. He must have thought Derpy was abusing her own child. Everyone makes mistakes. But the Slendermane has supposedly been kidnapping foals and fillies for a while now. So, what about them?”

So the Doctor took a trip to Town Hall, careful not to run into his past self and searched through the Mayor’s files of missing children. It went back decades. Then he saw something. A picture of a younger version of Mayor Mare, with the word “MISSING” stamped below it in big red letters.

“So, the Slendermane took the Mayor back when she was a child and then she escaped, or was let go when she was old enough. Can’t tell yet. Need more information.”

So he took another trip through time to Mayor Mare’s childhood. He quickly found her house, as he’d gotten ahold of where she grew up from her files and sneaked inside the house, being careful enough to be as silent as possible. Then he heard shouting.

“You! You worthless piece of shit! I can’t believe I’m stuck raising you! It’s your own fault your mother’s dead!” A male voice said and the Doctor heard a hoof smacking against flesh and a body hitting the wooden floors of the house and sobbing following that. He let out a growl. Child abuse was about as low as you could get in his book. Hell, if he didn’t have a feeling as to what was about to happen, he would have stepped in and changed the timeline himself and raised Mayor Mare as his own kid. But he wasn’t disappointed, as then he peeked around the corner and saw the Slendermane teleport in and grab Mayor Mare’s father by the neck with a tendril and with a sickening SNAP! Mayor Mare’s father’s head was twisted to the right. The Slendermane extended a hoof, and hesitantly, the future Mayor of Ponyville took it and both were teleported away in the blink of an eye.

“So that’s it… I was right! That’s what the Slendermane is. He’s not a monster, he just wants to give kids the childhood they deserve and not the ones they end up with if he doesn’t step in. Can’t believe I’m saying this, but I actually have to admire the stallion.” The Doctor mused before he rushed for his TARDIS…

Ponyville: Present Day

“Alright, I’ve had enough of this. There’s only one way I’m going to get the help I need to solve this case, and it’s in Twilight’s library. I don’t care if she doesn’t want anypony with her and she’s gone all goth and broody and dressing herself up in black make up and all that crap, these murders need to stop here and now!” Rainbow Dash growled to herself mentally as she kicked in the door of the Golden Oaks Library. She’d just got some information that confirmed her own theory about the Bloody Mary. Just a half hour ago, she’d spoken to the Cutie Mark Crusaders at their clubhouse.

“So, any of you think Twist was acting a bit off? Anypony?” Rainbow questioned the trio of Cutie Mark-less fillies.

“What do you mean, off?” Apple Bloom asked in confusion, an eyebrow quirked.

“Well, keeping secrets. I think the Bloody Mary’s going after ponies who have secrets and are keeping those secrets to themselves.”

“Wait, hold up!” Scootaloo put in. “Where’d you get this theory?”

“I… I did a little bit of digging.” Rainbow said quickly, not wanting to have to explain to these fillies the birds and the bees just yet. It’d lead to some rather embarrassing questions before long if word ever got back to these three’s relatives that they’d learned about sex a tad bit too early.

“Well…” Apple Bloom answered, putting a hoof to her chin in thought. Now that ya mention it, Twist was acting awfully strange whenever Ah was around. She kept blushing red for some odd reason whenever Ah looked or spoke to her.”

Rainbow chuckled. “Ah, young love…” She said to herself before saying “Thanks, gotta dash!” and flying out the Clubhouse window leaving three very confused little fillies.

“...Well, that was odd.” Scootaloo remarked.

“R-Rainbow! What are you doing here?” Twilight asked in shock and took a step back as she saw Rainbow looking down at her from an upper balcony with an annoyed expression on her face.

“What, no teleporting up to greet me with a passionate kiss or drag me into bed for a passionate night of sex?” Rainbow teased before her face became more serious.

“Two reasons. One, this crap of yours needs to stop. I know you’re in grief, Tartarus, we all are, but you need to get out of your home! Ponyville needs you! It’s not healthy for you to stay cooped up in here with just your thoughts running wild about what you could have done or should have done and just your memories of Spike! Plus, Winter Wrap Up’s coming up soon and we need your organizational skills, also ponies do really want to get into the library to borrow books to read! Secondly…” Rainbow began, not even giving Twilight a chance to speak. “I need your help on finding information on how a fictional being can come into being.”

“Wh… What? I don’t know what you’re talking about…” Twilight stuttered out in confusion.

“See, that’s exactly what I’m talking about! You stay cooped up in here like a hermit, you miss things, like for example the Bloody Mary coming to life and over the course of the damn day, murdering two ponies, one of which was just a little filly! I need your help Twilight! I need to know how to stop it so nopony else dies today!”

“Then go to the Doctor! This is his type of shit, not mine! I’m done! You hear me, done with it all! I can stay in here as long as I damn well please! I’ve got my books to keep me company!”

“And what about me? Huh? What about that?” Rainbow snapped. “I love you Twilight, I… I miss your companionship, Tartarus, even your eggheady tendency to spout off boring facts that nopony cares about!”

“You’d better stay away from me Rainbow, everypony close to me just ends up dead in the end! Who’s to say you’re not next, huh?” Twilight sobbed/shouted. Rainbow snarled and lunged at Twilight and pinned her to the floor, at look of pure fury on her face at the sheer indifference Twilight was showing. This wasn’t the mare she knew, Twilight would give a damn about these ponies’ lives, and she needed some sense knocked back into her.

“I’ve had enough of your bull, Twi. Ponies are dying left and right and you won’t lift a hoof to help me stop it! If you don’t help, you’re just as much responsible for their deaths as they are!” Rainbow shouted, and Twilight looked as if she’d been punched in the gut. But Rainbow wasn’t finished in her tirade. “Now act like the mare I know and GET THE BUCK TO WORK ON A SOLUTION FOR THIS!” Rainbow roared, grabbing Twilight’s chest fur with her hooves before releasing her. Twilight, quite scared of Rainbow right now, rushed over to her many bookshelves and began pulling books off of them like a mare possessed. Eventually, she found what she was looking for.

“Ah, here we go. This might be it.” Twilight said, slamming a book down on a nearby table and flipping to a page marked “Tulpa.” and began reading the information off the page.

“Belgian-Prench explorer, spiritualist, and Buddhist Alexandra David-Néel observed these mystical practices in early Neighasian countries. She reported tulpas are "magic golems or formations created by a powerful concentration of thought by an accomplished mind." David-Néel wrote that "An accomplished Bodhisattva is capable of effecting many kinds of magic creations, up to ten, or maybe even more, as I can report. The power of producing magic constructions, like say, tulkus or less lasting and materialized and well constructed tulpas, does not, however, belong exclusively to such mystic exalted beings. Anypony, divine or demoniac being may be possessed of it. The only difference comes from the degree of power, and this depends on the strength of the concentration and the quality of the mind itself. David-Néel wrote of the tulpa's ability to develop a mind of its own: “Once the tulpa is endowed with enough vitality to be capable of playing the part of a real being, it tends to free itself from its maker's control. This, say Tibetan occultists, happens nearly mechanically, just as the child, when his body is completed and able to live apart, leaves its mother's womb. David-Néel claimed to have created a tulpa in the image of a jolly Friar Tuck-like monk which later developed a life of its own and had to be destroyed. David-Néel raised the possibility that her experience was illusory: "I may have created my own hallucination," though she reports that others could see the thoughtforms that have been created.”

“...In regular Equestrian Twi?” Rainbow deadpanned. Twilight sighed and rolled her eyes.

“Basically, we have a powerful unicorn creating a Tulpa, ie, the Bloody Mary and bringing it to life for some unknown purpose.”

“Great, how do I gank it?”

“Well, the Bloody Mary must travel from mirror to mirror, but it had to originate from somewhere, and as the Bloody Mary is an old legend, I would have to say you would be looking for a very old mirror with a symbol drawn on the back of it. Destroy that mirror, and you should “Gank” the Tulpa.” Twilight explained.

Rainbow quickly realized where this old mirror had to be. There was this antique shop down on a street in one of the older sections of town, and it was filled with all kinds of stuff. Chances were, that’s where that mirror was. Rainbow smirked and flew out the door, smashing it to splinters and destroying the spell on it in the process. If she had stayed a little longer, she might have noticed Twilight picking up a book that read “Crossroads Deals for Dummies”...

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Meanwhile, Rainbow flew as fast as she could to this district, the Green Leaves district. On either side of the street, were various shops. One of them was a guitar store, the Guitar Station owned by Grape Vine where he sold guitars and taught lessons on how to use them. She smirked when she saw Grape Vine’s bandmate, Lucky Clover shoved into an alleyway by the mare Lovestruck and soon moaning and groaning sounds of pleasure and the sounds of fur and flesh slapping against each other began emanating from the alleyway. She’d always wondered when Lovestruck would realize Lucky liked her. On the other side of the street, was a restaurant that had changed hooves throughout the years, with each owner changing its theme from Jamareican, to a bar themed around the Haywaiian islands of the seas to what was now a Saddle Arabian themed restaurant. But soon Rainbow’s eyes narrowed in on the antique shop she was looking for, which was located right next to the Guitar Station.

“Alright, time to end this.” Rainbow growled and entered the darkened and musty store before coughing at the sheer dust level on everything. She sighed to herself when she looked around. There were so many mirrors it was going to be almost impossible to find which one had the Tulpa symbol on it. Almost. Then, she spotted it. Tucked away in a corner was a golden mirror with ancient writing drawn on the back of it.

“There you are.” Rainbow smirked and swallowed as she stepped to the mirror. She had a secret of her own. Back when she and Twilight first got together, she hadn’t told her marefriend she was in heat at the time and the guilt was still nagging away at her. With trepidation, Rainbow whispered those fateful words.

“Bloody Mary… Bloody Mary… Bloody Mary…”

Sure enough, out of the mirror came an old and decrepit unicorn mare. Rainbow snarled at her.

“So you’re the infamous Bloody Mary, huh? Don’t look so tough to me. You know what, I think even a filly could take you on. Guess what, I don’t believe in you and I never have. You’re just a bad old bedtime story passed around at slumber parties. So do us all a favor, and DIE!” Rainbow snarled before she with a flying kick, smashed the mirror’s glass and the Bloody Mary screeched as she went out in a pillar of flames.

“Well, that wasn’t so hard was it?” Rainbow smirked in a cocky way. “Yeah, that was awesome.”

With the Doctor and Derpy…

The Doctor rushed back to Derpy’s home as fast as he could. Panting, he opened the door, and Derpy’s face lit up in joy and she embraced him in a hug, eyes sparkling with tears of joy.

“I… I thought you’d given up!”

“No, I never give up on anything. And now I know exactly why the Slendermane is kidnapping foals and fillies. Weeeeeellll, kidnapping wouldn’t be the right word. More like rescuing them from abusive parents.”

“B-But I would never be abusive to my little Muffin, never!” Derpy stammered.

“Yes, I know. But you did yell at her for breaking your mother’s favorite vase a few days back did you not? The Slendermane… He misunderstood. He can’t tell the difference between discipline and abuse. We have to make him understand.”

“But… But that means…” Derpy squeaked.

“Yes, we’re going back into Whitetail Woods. Time to go face to face with Slendy… again.”

And so they once more took a little walk in the woods, Derpy trembling all the while in fear of whom they knew they would meet. The misty gloom seemed to wrap around them like it had a life of it it’s own. At this point, the Doctor wouldn’t be particularly surprised if it did. It didn’t take long before the Slendermane showed up again, teleporting in front of them with a look of incalculable rage upon his face. The Doctor swallowed nervously as the sightless creature somehow managed to stare them down.

“I thought I told you never to come back here. Especially you, Ms Hooves.” He growled out.

“There’s… There’s been a slight misunderstanding.” Derpy replied, mustering up her courage.

“Okay, big misunderstanding.” The Doctor put in.

“I would never, and I mean NEVER abuse my daughter! That was just a spur of the moment in anger! I never even laid a hoof on her!”

“But you yelled at her!” The Slendermane growled and a tendril pinned her to a tree and began choking her.

“There’s a difference between punishment and abuse! You need to understand that! I understand what you’ve been doing all these years, saving foals and fillies from ponies who don’t even deserve life, but you were wrong in this case!” The Doctor pleaded, hoping to make the Slendermane understand. “Look into those eyes, the fear, the heartbreak and the concern for her daughter! Does Derpy look like the kind of mare who would ever hurt a child?”

And so the Slendermane did as he was asked, and he saw what truly lay in Derpy’s heart. He had scared somepony and kidnapped their child, when they didn’t deserve it. He felt ashamed and disgusted with himself and released her. And then, from out of the forest came Dinky, rushing into her mother’s arms.

“I promise my little Muffin, I won’t let anything happen to you ever again, and I’m sorry for yelling at you. I… I lost my temper, and I promise, that’ll never happen again.” Derpy whispered comfortingly and then glared at the Slendermane, her normally crossed eyes staring boring into his soul.

“And as for you, if you ever pull a stunt like this again, I will come for you, understand?”

The Slendermane nodded, and then walked slowly away into the gloom, but not before the Doctor had one last thing to say.

“Before you go, I just want to say how sorry I truly am. You never should have gone through what you did as a child. And I really have to thank you for what you’ve been doing all these years. It’s something to admire. Keep on doing it. But, and only but, if you analyze the situation first. Because if you don’t, Derpy or I will come back for you.” He said in a warning tone.

Then, the Slendermane vanished and Derpy turned to the Doctor.

“Think he’ll uphold his end of the bargain?”

“...To be honest, I don’t know.” The Doctor answered before a thought struck Derpy.

“What do you mean you were truly sorry for what he’d gone through?”

“Well, think about it. Pony like that, how would you think his parents would have reacted? It’s not always a nice world out there. There are ponies that hide themselves behind a cloak of kindliness, but behind closed doors they can be as monstrous as one can imagine.”

And on that ominous thought, he said no more.

The TARDIS: Present Day

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The Doctor sighed to himself. That adventure was the last time he felt he truly helped somepony. No death, nothing of the sort that usually followed him. Everypony lived in that adventure for once, and then the cycle resumed. He brought death and chaos wherever he ran. And now it was time to stop.

“I’d be better off in here, spending the rest of my days with my things, never lending a hoof to anypony and sowing death and destruction in their lives. Twilight, that was my biggest mistake. Ever since I attached myself to her and her family, nothing but ruin’s come into it. First Cherry Berry, then Spike… Who next?” He asked himself. Then a familiar voice butted in as a white flash lit up the room.

“Now, that’s not the Doctor I know. You keep focusing on the bad, My Little Pony, and never on the good you’ve done. You saved an entire village, remember that? You’ve saved Equestria many times over, but all you think about is what you lose in the process and not what you gain.” Celestia said as she and Derpy teleported into the TARDIS.

“But that’s what I am. I don’t have any long lasting companions. That title belongs to death and death alone. I’d be better off joining her. And Twilight… Faust above, every future I travel to, she and her friends hate me. All because of a simple mistake I MADE!”

Then, a hoof firmly slapped him across the face. Celestia glared harshly at him.

“DOCTOR! This isn’t you and you know it! I’ve seen things, stars going out, I’ve seen the Daleks! They’re coming Doctor, and we need you! And that’s not counting who knows what lays in Equestria’s future. Maybe you’ll make some mistakes, everypony does, even you, but there are plenty of good things. And as for those futures, you can change them. You don’t let anypony dictate the rules, so why should you now?” Celestia asked. “And you’re not alone. Derpy here, she doesn’t hate you. She actually wants to travel with you, and I’ve talked to Rainbow and Shining Armor. They don’t hate you either, so pick yourself off the floor and do what you do best. Save the world, and be the Madman that you are.”

The Doctor slowly got up off the floor. He knew Celestia was right. With a quick dash up the stairs, he quickly grabbed a new suit, a plum one and pulled on his bow-tie as the TARDIS generated a new Sonic for him, one laid in silver and had a green glowing tip and it launched into the air and the Doctor grabbed it and caught it in his mouth before pocketing it. With a smile, he turned to Derpy.

“All of time and space; everywhere and anywhere, everything that ever happened or ever was. Where or when do you want to start?” He asked and Derpy shrugged and the Doctor gained his old mad grin again. The Madman in his Box was back, and it showed when he grabbed Celestia and kissed her, leaving her in a blush before she smiled at him. No words needed to be said. As Celestia teleported out and the Doctor threw a switch and pressed some buttons, he remembered the future Celestia and what he said to her.

“Celestia, watch me run.”

END