Chapters Ditzy smiled at the Doctor over the light of the candle. “This is nice,” she said, taking another forkful of ravioli and blowing on it gently.
“Mm,” the Doctor agreed. “The pasta is delicious, dear.”
“Oh, your tomato sauce is good, too. The pasta, the atmosphere, the romance…” Ditzy said. “Really, it’s almost enough to make me forgive you for blowing out the fusebox.”
The tan stallion brightened. “Really?”
“Al~most,” Ditzy stressed, playfully waggling her fork at her husband. “You’ve still got a ways to go.”
The Doctor sighed, but he was grinning. “Would a nice evening out smooth things over? Maris? Barsaddlona? Reindeerdam? Perhaps the Centaur cities on Tyr, five thousand years in the future, or the ruins of Deerillium with its singing trees. Anywhere and anywhen, love.”
“Oh, you are sweet,” Ditzy said. “But not as sweet as the pie I had in the oven when you blew up the generator.”
“There’s still the TARDIS kitchen,” the Doctor pointed out. “It’s not like that isn’t on a separate power grid.”
“Point,” Ditzy said thoughtfully. “A distinct point. Alright, we’ll bake the pie in the TARDIS and then go visit some beautiful alien city, and then and only then will you be forgiven.”
The Doctor grinned. “Sounds good to me!”
“Shall we drink to it?”
“Oh, lets,” said the Doctor, raising his cider. The glasses met with a knock-knock-knock.
Ditzy paused. “Should we try that again?”
“Alright.” Glasses raised and met, knock-knock-knock.
“Hm,” said the Doctor. “Right, either we’ve come under attack from the Onomatopoeian Empire, or—”
“Somepony’s at the door,” Ditzy said.
“Oh, right, I suppose that could be it too,” the Doctor said with a grin, pushing away from the table. “Well, the sooner we see who it is, the sooner we can send them away so we can get back to our evening.”
Ditzy smirked, wrinkling her muzzle. “Or the sooner we can get drawn into some ridiculous alien plot to take over the world.”
“And the sooner we can defeat it!”
Ditzy laughed gaily as she fluttered to the cottage door. “Well, good even—”
She stopped as soon as she saw the miserable orang face on the other side. “—ing… Scootaloo? What are you doing here?”
“Can I… can I come in?”
Ditzy stood aside as Scootaloo rolled her scooter inside. The Doctor rose from the table. “What’s wrong?” he asked quietly.
“I… I just…” She took a deep, shuddering breath. “Can I use the TARDIS? I need to see something. It’s a long story.”
The Doctor looked at Ditzy. Ditzy looked at the Doctor. “...Right, okay,” said the tan Time Lord. “Where d’you need to go?”
“Past,” the orange mare said firmly. “Back along my… family history. I mean, I don’t know exactly where or when, but—”
“No fear,” the Doctor said, pushing in his chair. “Allons-y!”
He led the way out of the cottage, Ditzy pausing only to blow out the candle on the table. In a corner of the backyard, the TARDIS sat idly, waiting patiently for her passengers. A cool breeze had sprung up, and the moon was bright and massive and orange on the horizon. The Doctor gestured to the big blue doors with a mock bow. “Ladies first,” he said with a wink.
Ditzy poked her head in first, followed by Scootaloo. The orange mare gazed around in wonder for several seconds, barely even registering the bay stallion as he brushed by her. “I am never gonna get used to this,” she murmured.
The grey mare grinned at her. “I know, right? Not only does she break all known laws of physics, she’s also gorgeous.”
The console let out a garbled electronic purr of pleasure. Ditzy patted it lightly and then leaned in and kissed the woody surface lightly. Scootaloo coughed awkwardly. “So, uh, where did the Doctor go?”
“Here! Right here!” the Doctor called from underneath the floor. “Sorry, it’s been awhile since I’ve used this feature, needed to do a little test on it first. Just gimme—” There was a loud sizzling sound and a startled yelp, followed by the thud of flesh falling against metal. “It’s okay! I’m okay!”
Ditzy giggled quietly as the Doctor poked his head up over the edge. His mane was blown back in all directions, and his face was grey with soot. “Right, Scootaloo, there’s a sort of drawer underneath the navigation console.”
Scootaloo stared at the dizzying array of dials and switches. “Uh…”
“Mostly red, big screen on it?”
“Right.”
“Open it up.”
The pegasus squinted at the knob suspiciously, but grabbed it in her teeth and pulled. Slowly, a panel began to slide out. It was covered in holes filled with blue gel. “Okay, what’s this?”
“Psychic controls,” the Time Lord said. “Basically, it goes wherever it is that you’re thinking of. The gel is a sort of conduit for increasing the telepathic circuitry of the TARDIS. But you have to be careful not to let your mind wander, or you’ll end up… well, who knows where!”
“Right. Keep your eye on the ball,” Scootaloo said with a nod, thrusting her hooves into the blue jelly. “Ooh, it’s cool.”
“Okay, now think,” the Doctor urged. “Focus on everything you know about where you want us to go. Sights, sounds, smells, everything!”
Scootaloo clenched her eyes tight and willed herself to remember her Aunt’s story.
~I (said Aunt Holiday, if she could still be called that) am not your mother’s sister. No don’t interrupt— it’s a very complicated story, and you need to hear it all to understand.
It was a long, long time ago when your father and I first met. I was still living in Vanhoover. Do you remember Vanhoover, Eurus? No, I suppose you wouldn't. It wasn’t Canterlot. It wasn't even Manehattan. But it had a university, and that was what mattered to me.
(Ponyville didn't have a university, and Scootaloo had always had an ugly feeling in her chest about why that life had been abandoned. (But she didn't admit it, even to herself))
I wish I could have shown you the university, Scootie. It was beautiful and icy-cold, with pillars of sculpted stone, so white and shining that you could mistake it for the ancient kingdoms of the Pegasi. That was my subject there. Ancient Pegasus history. It was a good job, and I enjoyed it tremendously (She always loved talking about the things she loved
(She never talked about Scootaloo’s father)).
And then one day, he came into my life. A gorgeous pegasus, with his coat as dark as wine and his golden mane curled… I swear, he looked like one of the statues in my study brought to life
(When she was young, Scootaloo had read the story of the artist Pigment and his sculpture, Galilee. She never liked it much. The artist wanted the one thing that he could never have and ignored everything else. (That was the day they were Cutie Mark Crusader Art Thieves (Scootaloo took along a hammer))).
He had a jaw like rock and eyes like pools of starlight, shimmering and distant. Do you believe in love at first sight? No? Then you are wiser than I was. Some days I wish that I had never met him. That I had just stayed among my old statues and relics of ancient times, where it was safe. Maybe then I wouldn't have gotten so badly hurt… ~
There was a strange grumbling from deep within the TARDIS, like a dyspeptic old mare, followed up by a disgruntled wheezing. The Doctor frowned and tapped a monitor gently. “She's never made that sound before,” Ditzy said, furrowing her brow at the Time Rotor, which was sparking erratically. “Is she sick?”
The Doctor hissed through his teeth. “Hope not. If she is, then getting where we want is the least of our worries.”
“Wait, TARDISes can get sick? Really?”
“Sort of. It's quite nasty, really, especially if she needs to, ah, toss up. Some rooms. And possibly inhabitants.”
Ditzy paled. “Don't worry! I'm sure it isn't that. Mostly sure. Actually, I think the old girl seems… confused, more than anything. Check the coordinates over on the far console, read ‘em out.”
The pegasus nodded once, then dashed to a panel next to the concentrating orange mare. “Vanhoover, 991 Celestial Era,” she said.
“And this one purports to be… Skyzantium, 1273 Pre-Unification, only three years before the first Hearth’s Warming.”
“So which is it?” Ditzy asked, frowning.
There was a dull, oleaginous sputtering that died out after several seconds. “We’re about to find out,” the Doctor said quietly. “We’ve landed.”
Scootaloo gasped as she pulled back from the psychic goo panel. “Whoa. Okay. That was… a thing that happened.”
She glanced at the two older ponies. Ditzy looked anxiously back at her. The Doctor was unreadable, but his usual smile had been wiped from his face. “Scootaloo,” he said slowly, “Where exactly were you trying to go?”
The orange mare frowned, her brow clouding. “Vanhoover. Why, where are we? What's going on?”
“There was some kind of… glitch,” Ditzy said hesitantly. “We can try again!”
The Doctor hemmed at this. “Not right away,” he corrected. “The TARDIS needs a bit of time to recover. Old girl just tried to materialize in two different places and times at once, that's no good at all.”
Scootaloo stared, blank-faced and uncomprehending. Ditzy winced. “It's not your fault, Scoots. Well, mostly not your fault. Did you think about two things at the same time? Never mind. The point is, either we’re in Vanhoover or in an ancient pegasus city before unification.”
“We’re what?”
“Lost,” the Doctor replied shortly, pulling down on a lever. The faint humming of the impossible engines faded to a low gurgle. “And likely to stay that way, until the TARDIS gets herself fixed up. Which will be… well, it's going to be a while, to put things mildly. The mercury all but boiled in its chamber, and the navigation system’s knackered.”
“More so than usual?” Ditzy teased.
The Time Lord made a face. “ Yes, yes, ha ha. But yeah, I think I've started to recall just why I stopped using that interface.”
The two mares made eye contact that spoke volumes. The Doctor coughed awkwardly. “Anyway. I suppose the first thing we ought to do is take a peek outside, see where and when we are.” He pushed up on the switch that controlled the doors, and they promptly swung outwards. “Allons-y,” he chirped, trotting out the door.
“Wait,” Scootaloo said. “If we’re in a pegasus city, that means—”
She was interrupted by a loud yelp, and suddenly a brown tail swished downward as the Doctor tumbled through the clouds.
Rainbow raised her hoof for the third time in five minutes. For the third time, it fell back to the ground. The blue mare sighed deeply, then sat heavily down in the dirt, her eyes still fixed on the door in front of her.
What's the matter with me? I’m Rainbow Miriam freakin’ Danger Dash! I beat up monsters every week and defy death every day! This is NOT the most dangerous thing I’ve ever done!
Her shoulders slumped. You didn't get to have the Element of Honesty as a marefriend and not learn to recognize when you were lying to yourself. Applejack was about the best thing that had ever happened to her. Maybe not as good as her parents, but better than Tank. Scootaloo was up there, too. They were all in the Medal of Excellence acceptance speech she had written in case she ever needed it.
Anyway.
Dating Applejack was probably the best choice she had ever made. For one thing, there was the cider, but even that was a distant second to the emotional connection they had developed. Yeah, sometimes they fought. Sometimes they did stupid stuff. Sometimes they yelled loud enough to make apples fall off trees. But after the storm came the gentle rain, when all the noise and posturing and stubbornness had washed away and they could just talk. And sometimes cry.
Okay, usually cry. But mostly it was Applejack.
That was a lie.
She had told Applejack stuff that she hadn't ever told anypony else. Not Dad, or Fluttershy, not even Tank. Applejack took so much off Dash’s chest. She made her more thoughtful, more stable, more… well, honest.
But sometimes, Dash hated dating Applejack. Take now, for instance. The farmer had become part of her brain, like a second conscience, nagging at her with that disappointed look in her eyes that made the pegasus’s heart shrivel like a raisin. Ya gotta tell her, sugarcube. Tell her th’ truth.
Well. Too late for that now. But she had to do something. Probably something stupid, but what the Tartarus else was new. Dash picked up her hoof and rapped at the door. Silence. Rainbow’s brow creased. She knocked again, louder. There were lights on inside. Somepony had to be home. After what felt like an eternity, the door swung open.
The thing that struck Dash first was the eyes. Red and puffy, and even more wet and unfocused than usual, which was saying something. Her muzzle was coated in dried mucus. Her mane looked like it had been hit by a hurricane, even more so than usual. Obviously, Holiday was in a bad way. Dash quickly racked her brains for something comforting to say.
“Celes tia, Holiday, you look like horse apples.”
Nice one, Crash.
Scootaloo’s auntie, however, didn't seem terribly bothered. Or maybe she didn't notice. She was distracted even at the best of times, and she really didn't look to be at her most aware right now. “Oh… good evening, Rainbow. You're here about Scootaloo.”
Dash flinched. “Yeah. I… can I come in?”
The other hesitated. “I suppose so. We do need to talk, don't we…”
Dash waited for a long moment. Holiday didn't move. “Uh, hey? Holliday?”
“Oh! Excuse me,” she replied, quickly stepping away from the door.
Dash slowly trotted in, closing the door behind her. She took a deep breath, opened her mouth, and, “I’m sorry!”
Rainbow’s eyes shot open. Holliday was staring at her in bewilderment. “You’re what?” they asked simultaneously.
The Doctor scarcely had time to think. It was exactly like thinking that there was one more step on the stairs than there really was, that same sudden low, intestinal panic like a pit in the bottom of one’s stomach. Except his hoof was not about to hit the landing. He was about to splat on the ground, somewhere far below. Suddenly, however, there was a sharp pain, and he found himself hauled bodily back into the TARDIS, tail-first.
Ditzy sprawled head over hooves backward, her husband landing with a pained grunt on her chest. “Ow,” she said, gazing up at the ceiling.
“...Sorry,” the Doctor muttered, rising to his hooves. “Should have thought that one through.”
“Well, I guess that tells us where we are, anyway,” Scootaloo said, scuffing the tile floor with a hoof.
“Not what you were aiming for?” Ditzy guessed.
The Doctor wrinkled his muzzle up, rising to his hooves again. “But this is better, surely? I mean, Vanhoover is still around, you can go whenever you like, but a trip to a long-gone city, one of your aunt’s principal areas of expertise at that, I mean, that's brilliant.”
Scootaloo stared back, her eyes dead and grey. “Yeah. Sure. Great. Woo-hoo, go Skyzantine Empire.”
Ditzy studied the orange mare for a long moment. “Doctor. About how long will the TARDIS take to fix herself?”
The tan stallion frowned thoughtfully. “Twenty hours, at least. Maybe a bit more. Less, if you can find a bit of mercury at all, but that's pretty unlikely this high up, especially in this time period.”
“Mercury. Alright, anything else?”
“In Skyzantium? Doubt it. Very military society, took notes from Minotaur culture but with more emphasis on technology, very warlike and isolationist. They probably won't bother you too much if you say that you're from, uh, Thermoponi or something. They've a vague view of foreign ponies, and any faux pas you might make will be explained by that.”
Scootaloo nodded. “Thermoponi is kinda close, though. Roan might be better.”
“Alright,” Ditzy replied cheerfully. “Look for mercury, pretend to be from another city, try to keep out of trouble. Come on, Scootaloo, let's you and I go exploring.”
The Doctor frowned. “What about me?” he asked plaintively.
Ditzy cocked her head. “Oh, right. The pie is in the fridge, second shelf up, on the left. It's behind the cottage cheese. See you later, Pocket!” And with Scootaloo close at her tail, she sauntered out of the room and onto the clouds.
The Doctor stared after her with a vague smile on his face as the door closed. The console let out a gurgling wheeze. It sounded oddly like a chuckle. The Time Lord’s face twisted. “Oh, shut up,” he muttered, stomping off toward the engine room.
Once the doors had closed behind him, the console let out another noise. The chuckle was darker this time.
Sgt. Siege Warfare did not live up to his name. From the first, it was clear that he lacked any sense of patience or stoicism, a great shame for his father. Siege was constantly jittering and fidgeting, fiddling with bits of cloud and machinery. It was thought by many that the colt had no sense of the military mind. They would be only partly right. True, he had no idea of strategy, nor tactics. Neither was he very good at following orders, or even giving them. What he did have was a sense of camaraderie and very good instincts. Of that much, at least, his father was proud.
Right now, every instinct that he had was screaming the same thing that they had been screaming for the past two weeks; stay very still and don't call attention to yourself. Ever since the new scientific advisor had arrived, every single animal instinct he possessed had begun to plead with him to run and hide in a cloud bank for the next twenty years. He had done his very best to control his fidgeting ever since. It was terribly easy when you were too frightened to move.
The odd thing was, she really hadn't done anything to warrant the unbridled terror that had been aroused in him. She really hadn't done much of anything, full stop. Silver Pallas was, in fact, scrupulously orderly and totally dull. About the only unusual thing about her was the silver bracelet that she always wore on her left forehoof. Sure, she had an air of superiority to her, but then, what officer didn't? But there was more to it than just that. He knew it was a bad idea to annoy, for instance, Propraetor Cyclone. It was a terrible idea to annoy Commander Hurricane. To annoy Lieutenant Pallas, however, would be a fatal mistake.
“Warfare.”
Siege snapped to attention. Coprus. How long had she been asking for him? She still wasn't looking at him, but that was hardly an indicator. She was always focused only on her personal projects, such as the cloud tablet mold that she was currently etching. This was, of course, ordered by the war council, and should never be questioned, upon pain of reassignment to the frozen Central Station. Any soldier who attempted to confirm these orders had been met with sudden, unexpected reassignment to the capital. Oh, wait, he was meant to… “Yes, ma’am?”
The officer raised an eyebrow, but made no other gesture of censure. “We will be receiving inspection later today. See to it that our efforts are shown in the best possible light.”
“Ma’am. Would that include your…” he trailed off. “Affairs?”
The silver mare’s feathers ruffled ever so slightly. “That,” she snipped, “is not quite prepared yet. Soon, but not yet. Although…”
The sudden glint in her violet eyes made Siege take a step backwards. “Warfare. Be present at twenty-two hundred. There will be a living test tonight, and your assistance will be required.”
There was a sudden sensation like cessation of susurration. “Yes, ma’am,” Siege said dully. Slowly, he trotted from the room. It took him a few moments to realize what he was feeling. It was resignation.
“Silver Pallas” registered his departure in the same way that one might notice a leaf drifting by in the wind. She had far more pressing concerns. More interesting, too. Her expression was thoughtful and calm as she lifted the tablet to scrutinize it more closely. Though any soldier present would see only nonsensical raised lines and circles and things, a pony from the far-flung future would see something recognizable as the circuitry of a computer chip, but massive. The silver pegasus tapped it a few times and the cloud grew darker, hissing and crackling with pent-up electric fury. Watching the crude chip spit sparks, the technician did something that nopony, especially not Siege Warfare, would ever have expected.
The Rani smiled.
Scootaloo stopped in surprise as her hooves hit the clouds. “Huh.”
“What's wrong?”
“It's warmer than I thought it would be. Y’know, Windigoes and everything.”
The weather was indeed a bit chilly, though the sun beat fiercely overhead. The breeze through the streets was crisp, but not cutting, and it made the looser areas of ground disperse into fluff, drifting away through the bright blue sky. Ditzy breathed in for a long moment, filling her lungs with the cool, thin air. “I think it probably isn't winter yet. Late summer, early autumn, in which case it really is pretty chilly.” She fluttered her wings absently as she glanced around. The architecture, the passers by, the very atmosphere was impossibly entrancing.
Then she caught Scootaloo staring at her and quickly dropped back to the ground. “So, why are we here?”
The younger mare cocked her head. “TARDIS malfunction, remember? You were there.”
Ditzy shook her head. “The TARDIS was confused. Sentient time machines don't get confused. What were you thinking about, Scootaloo?”
The orange pegasus glanced away. “Aunt Holiday told me a story.”
Ditzy opened her mouth to press further, but the younger mare was already quickly striding down the street, and the mailmare had to gallop to keep her young charge from being lost in the crowd.
Neither of them noticed the silver-coated mare, her golden mane tied back in a knot, as her lilac eyes tracked them across the agora. Neither did they notice the violet stallion whose golden eyes stayed fixed on the TARDIS.
Targets acquired.
Dash sat uncomfortably on the sofa, making room as best she could among the old papers and books that covered every surface like a thick blanket of dust. Aunt Holiday had gone, as she had put it, to put the kettle on, leaving the athlete with Aunt Lofty in the midst of historic artifacts and out of her element. The walls, at least the small areas that were visible behind shelves full of old books and trinkets, were a dull shade of green. The carpet was a pale pink. Even Dash could tell that they clashed. The pile of books next to her tilted slightly, then collapsed into her lap.
Lofty sat up and dug Dash out of the pile, all apologies for the mess. Dash decided to stand after that and glance over the shelves. There had to be something to read that wasn't a total snoozefest. Lofty watched her, helpless, torn between speech and silence and feeling the weight of the awkwardness every bit as much as Dash was. “I’ll go see if Holly needs any help in the kitchen…”
Dash grunted and nodded as Lofty left. All the books looked totally boring. The statues were cool though, and the family pictures were kinda cute.
A small photo caught her eye. She looked closer and smiled. An orange pegasus filly grinned back, her mouth gummy and her eyes clear and sparkling. She was likely only a few months old, certainly less than a year. “Heh. Scoots was adorable,” Dash murmured.
Then, just as suddenly, she frowned and glanced around the room. Setting the picture down, she picked her way through the piles of dusty tomes and relics, inspecting every shelf. There were no other photographs of baby Scootaloo. There were, in fact, hardly any other photographs at all, and none showing Scootaloo under age ten. A cyan forehead furrowed as Dash’s brows knit in confusion. Holiday was a little lost in her work, sure, and Lofty was always out of town, but they were always a vital presence in Scootaloo’s childhood, and Scoots was a massive presence in their lives in general. There had to be some other photos somewhere, right? In a scrapbook, maybe? But then, why was that one photo left out?
Dash cantered back to the baby picture, her wings tucked tightly at her sides. Any breeze in here would be chaos, she knew.
She picked up the picture and stared at it intently. What was so special about it? Why was it the only moment of Scootaloo’s life that was worth preserving among all the rest of this history? Absently, she turned the frame over in her hooves. A sudden cry came from the door, and Dash’s head shot up. In the process, she fumbled the frame, and it promptly smashed open on the ground.
“Aw, geez, sorry…” Dash said, wincing at the sight of Holiday’s stricken face and Lofty’s nervous glances between her wife and her guest. She bent down to inspect the damage. “The glass is alright, it's just that the back fell… huh? Hey, what's this?”
Unnoticed by Dash, Lofty closed her eyes tight. “It's… a birth certificate,” she replied. "And a... a family tree."
“Oh, cool,” Dash said amiably, stuffing the papers back into the frame. Holiday’s lips twisted.
“No.”
Dash stopped. “Huh?”
Lofty looked at her wife, concerned. “Romane…”
Holiday took in a deep breath. “Take the family tree out and read it,” she said. “And then, I’ll explain everything.”
Dash raised a skeptical brow, a trick that she'd learned from AJ, but she took out the piece of paper and skimmed it. Then she read it again. Her eyes bulged. “I… you… Who?”
Holiday let out the breath that she hadn't realized she'd been holding. “Let me begin at the beginning,” she said quietly.
“I’ll pour,” Lofty said, taking the tea tray. “We’re all going to need a pick-me-up after this story."
~His name was Heat Wave, and he was perfect. I fell for him the moment I met him, but I was too embarrassed to say anything for two weeks. He was in Literature, you know, and I was in History. Well. You knew that part, obviously. Those two subjects tend to cross quite a lot, being in the equinities department, and we soon met properly at a staff function, and, well, we hit it off.
Not like that! Later, yes, sooner than was prudent, but not at first. He was… tempestuous, would be the word.
What's that, Dash? What’s ‘tempestuous’? Byronic would be close enough.
Mercurial, then?
Yes, like that.
Well, I was young and foolish and thought it was attractive. Anyway, let me give you an example. One night, we were out having dinner together. It wasn't exactly high-end dining, but it was a step up from where I usually ate.
Yes, like Garlic Orchard, if that's what you want to think of. I forget the name. I think it was Acacian cuisine… never mind. At any rate, Wave is sitting across from me, charm and elegance shining out like physical light, brightening my life.
It's not cheesy, Lofty.
Okay, it's a little cheesy. Pretty much everything else in that situation was cheesy, though, so I’ll just say it's setting the tone.
Anyway, we were at dinner. I had ordered tomato soup, but they brought me potato soup instead. I suppose the server must have misheard me. I was about to send it back when Heat Wave leapt to his hooves and started shouting, demanding compensation, lecturing about the laziness of youth. It was so utterly embarrassing that I just couldn’t look away. It was a depersonalizing moment, like I was watching a film. In the end, I got my tomato soup. He looked so proud, so smug, that I didn’t say anything. Not to mention, I was afraid that he would yell at me, too. I suppose that should have been the first warning sign.~
Lofty wrapped a sympathetic wing around her wife, whose cheeks were wet with tears again.
“Jeez,” said Dash. “He sounds awful.”
Holiday gave a long sigh. “In retrospect, certainly. At the moment, though, I was going through a rough patch. I’d just broken up with my long-term coltfriend and had a bit of a row with my mother. I was looking for something new, virile and powerful. Well, I found it.”
Rainbow was silent. She reached out a hoof and awkwardly patted the older mare on the back.
Holiday smiled slightly. “It was nearly twenty years ago, Dash, you don’t need to worry about it.”
“Uh-huh. Okay, Scoots’ dad was a jerk. That still doesn’t explain much of anything. Like the birth certificate? Why aren’t you...”
Holiday’s smile faded. “Yes… well. That was only the start of the story. It gets, I’m afraid, much worse. Let me go and refill the kettle, perhaps grab some cookies. We’re going to need them.”
Dash watched her go once more, then turned her attention to Lofty. “So, where do you come into all this?”
“At the end,” Lofty said, looking down at the table. “Long after I could do any good at all.” She fell into a reflective silence, and Dash did not break it again.
Scootaloo trotted down the thoroughfare, her hooves kicking up cloudstuff in her wake. Despite herself, she was rather impressed with the city. This era had some of the earliest known examples of cloud construction, the precursor to modern cloudhouses. It definitely wasn’t the same material that she was used to; it was fluffy, like cotton, and the structure tended to thin out in a stiff wind. Aunt Holiday had also told her that it was flammable.
She shook her head fiercely to loosen the intrusive memory, letting her mane toss in the breeze. “Scootaloo! Wait for me!”
The orange mare paused in midstride as Ditzy rushed to catch up. “We need to stick together. I know that you're upset, even if I don't know why, but you can't just run off half-flanked. Remember, this isn't just a different city, it's a different culture, a different time. If you get into trouble here, the Doctor and me are the only ones who can help you.”
Scootaloo grunted noncommittally. Ditzy sighed. “It really would help you to talk about whatever’s got you in such a mood,” she said, a hint of irritation tingeing her voice.
Scootaloo glanced around. “Do you have any money?” she asked.
The elder mare blinked at the non sequitur. “Well… no, none that anypony would take around here. Why?”
“Well, that makes going to the market kind of a stupid idea, doesn't it? We can't actually do anything but look at the stuff.”
Ditzy bridled a bit. “Well, where do you suggest we look for mercury, then?” she shot back.
“What's the rush? The TARDIS will get fixed either way, right?”
The grey pegasus hesitated. “Well… yeah.”
Scootaloo shrugged. “I’m not in any hurry to get back to the future. Meantime, we’re in this important ancient city. I say we go sightsee for a while, enjoy ourselves. I dunno, we can see the new Cloudiseum, the Hoofia Sofia, a bunch of places. I mean, we’re stuck here, may as well take in the sights, right?”
“I guess,” Ditzy agreed. “What part of the empire are we in, do you know?”
“Well, judging by the dome over there, I’m guessing Cantertinople, later known as Istable. Capital of Skyzantium, but right now it's just the biggest city in the East Roanan Empire.”
“Why did they change the name?”
“I don't know,” Scootaloo admitted. “But there should be some pretty cool stuff to see. Gladiators, military drills, displays of opulence… this is an era of culture and finery.”
Ditzy’s attention had already wandered to a message board covered with parchments and messages carved into the clouds. “It says there's going to be a spectacle in the Hippodrome. Wanna watch a stallion smash fruit with a giant axe?”
“Oh sweet Celestia, yes. For a second, I thought we were actually going to try and be cultured.”
The grey pegasus grinned. “Not a chance,” she said, draping a wing over the teenage mare. “Come on, it starts in half an hour.”
Some meters behind them, a violet mare glanced up from her conversation with a goldenrod stallion. Two sets of eyes fixed on the retreating tails of the two mares. Two sets of wings beat the air as the duo took off after their targets.
Commander Hurricane stood at attention as the pegasus before him closely inspected his stance and that of his aide-de-camp, Private Pansy. The politician, a former officer no less, cast her one good eye over them both for what felt like hours. Her bright golden gaze was nothing short of unnerving. At length, she nodded once. “At ease.”
Her chirpy voice and slight figure were very much at odds with the mare’s reputation. Propraetor, formerly praetor, even more formerly General Cyclone was considered by many to be one of the finest strategic minds alive, and even officers wondered if there was any truth behind the rumors of where her other eye was. The magenta stallion knew that tales of “General Cy’s Eyes,” roving eyeballs that could see anything were nothing short of fantastic, but even he had to wonder…
The golden eye flicked over him again. “I said, at ease,” Cyclone repeated.
“Um, permission to speak, ma’am?”
“You just did.”
Pansy squeaked. “Ma’am, yes, ma’am.”
Cyclone rolled her eye. “Say your piece, Private, that's why you're here.”
“Um, I just wanted to say that that's as close to ‘at ease’ as the Commander ever gets.”
The magistrate blinked. Possibly she winked. “This is ‘at ease’ for him? He looks exactly the same!”
Pansy shook her head. “Oh, no. He’s started blinking again, and breathing more than once every minute.”
Cyclone cocked her head. “Uh-huh. Private, are you confident that this officer is still alive?”
Pansy swallowed hard. “Uh… as much as he ever is, ma’am?” the powder-blue mare replied.
The grey mare grinned. “Good answer. Now, can he talk, or is the icicle jammed too far up his flank to allow speech?”
That was too much. “I assure you that no object is unduly interfering in my bodily functions, ma’am!”
Cyclone raised an eyebrow. “Mhm. Well, I suppose that's everything I needed to know about you. I trust you were briefed before your departure?”
“Ma’am, we were thoroughly briefed regarding the parameters of our mission here, specifically regarding the work of recent acquisition Silver Pallas with particular regard to her work in the fields of armaments, defense, and especially the project code named “Mercury”.”
The grey mare stared, jaw slightly agape. Obviously she was impressed with his powers of rote memorization. He swelled with pride duly, within acceptable parameters outlined in the Colt’s Book of Military Excellence , when suddenly he felt a sharp nudge in the flank.
Hurricane wheeled around. “Private Pansy!” he spat, face flushing. “Unauthorized contact upon a superior officer is an infraction punishable by stern lecture and possible loss of privileges! You will explain yourself here and now or in front of a court-martial.”
Wide blue eyes stared back at him. “You forgot the pass phrase,” Pansy whispered.
Hurricane’s face went slack. “Oh. Yes.” He coughed and turned to face the general. “I prefer boxers over briefs,” he said flatly.
“...Yes, quite,” Cyclone agreed at length. “Well, I suppose that tells me everything I needed to know. And more. Oh, I trust your trip from the new colony was uneventful? And the construction is going well?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Pansy replied with a bob of her head. “Expansion is ahead of schedule for Pegasopolis. Senator Pluto and his husband are funding the local government seat and the agora is nearly complete.”
“Hm. And you have an adequate military force to protect against any… problems?”
“The only ‘problems’ we have can’t even get off the ground,” Hurricane snorted. “The earth ponies and unicorns are running expeditionary forces at ground level. You’d think the ground-pounders would have learned to stay away from where they aren't wanted.”
The trio shuddered as an icy breeze suddenly sprung out of nowhere. “Well, quite,” Cyclone said. “Our examination isn't for another three hours. You are dismissed for lunch.”
Without another word, Hurricane saluted and flapped off toward the nearest barracks. Pansy looked at the general uncomfortably. “Um, any good restaurants?”
Cyclone grinned and flicked her tail. “Are you fraternizing with a superior?” she asked sweetly.
Pansy squeaked and shrunk away. The propraetor giggled. “Good. Come on, private. You’re off duty as of now. Let’s see what we can’t find in the market, shall we? Then, if we have time, perhaps we can visit the baths.”
As the two mares soared off, neither paid much attention to the stallion standing at attention next to an empty carriage. Silver eyes watched their flight path.
The room was cold and dark. No light, no life could conceivably exist here. This was a place beyond time, beyond reason, beyond anything other than ice and food, its inhabitants patiently waiting to be consumed.
Then the Doctor opened the fridge door, and the vast room lit up.
To be honest, referring to it as a fridge was nothing short of insulting, a bit on the scale of calling Olympus Mons a lump in the ground. Technically it was accurate, but the scale was nowhere near conveyed. The room was approximately the size of a supermarket, including shelves and signage, even tiled floors. The colossal larder contained leftovers from no fewer than five thousand dinners, and even that was a conservative estimate. Cake from pre-revolutionary France shared shelf space with hamburgers from the court of King Ronod of Frydon and the cheekiest Nandos that had ever existed, confiscated after the Master had tried to conquer the world with Anglophilia.
Right now, he was here for none of those delicacies. Ditzy had made a pie, she had asked for a pie, and she was going to get a pie. If he could recall where she had left it…
It would be somewhere near the front, wouldn't it? Let's see. Pease porridge (hot), pease porridge (cold), pease porridge (just right), no. Neptunian yoghurt, spinach flavor, no. Rock cakes, cupcakes, Wellington Boot cakes, definitely not. Empty shelf space, no.
Wait. Empty shelf space?
The Doctor frowned at the hole among the various foodstuffs. All that was on the shelf now was a few crumbs of pastry dough and scattered berries.
“That's not right,” he muttered. Everything on the shelves was kept in stasis for as long as the door was shut. There was no way that anything could have gotten in or out of here without being noticed. On the other hoof, he lived in a town that had Pinkie in it, so he couldn't really rule out anything.
He’d have to go and check the TARDIS logbook to see if any unusual activity had been recorded. Pausing only to pop a berry into his mouth, the Doctor spun around… and froze in his tracks.
There was… a figure… at the door. Vaguely equine in form, he could discern no other details other than its color, a dull, dead white. It was like a rough drawing transplanted in the middle of an oil painting. The very wrongness of its existence set the Time Lord’s teeth on edge. “No,” he muttered. “No, you can't be here. I’m fine. I’m not even a little bit dead. Just the opposite, generally speaking.”
The figure had no eyes, no mouth, no way to convey sentiment, and yet the Doctor could feel its unbridled contempt. Well. Self-loathing had always been something of an issue among regenerations.
The tan stallion stepped forward. “I’ve had my hand chopped off and my hearts broken. I’ve aged by millennia. I died in an alternate timeline. I absorbed an absolutely fatal dose of radiation. Hell, I got shot by a bleedin’ Dalek and all I did was regenerate into myself! Haven't you worked it out yet? I. Don't. Die.”
The pale figure said nothing, changed nothing. The Doctor could feel its nonexistent glare prickling at his face. He inclined his head sharply to one side. “Go on then, Watcher. Get away.”
The ghost of his next regeneration (was it a ghost? Could that word even be applied to the specter of a potential future?) bowed its head and backed out through the wide-open refrigerator doors. The Doctor smirked.
The Watcher’s head suddenly jerked up, and with a sudden, fluid motion, it made to slam the door closed. The Time Lord’s jaw dropped in incredulity as he was suddenly thrust into darkness.
The race had nearly run its course in both senses of the word. The greens were still leading, but only by a nose. The reds and whites, meanwhile, were throwing everything they had at one another. Every banana peel was countered with a graceful unified leap, and every attempt to swing over was beat back with sprays of champagne and custard pies. All three were on the last lap. Truly, it was anypony’s race. Ditzy found herself caught up in the wild abandon of the spectacle, cheering and calling as loudly as anypony in the crowd.
The remaining three carts rattled down the track, bumping and smashing up against one another. It was the final stretch, now, and the crowd’s noise was absolutely deafening. The whites formed into a beautiful, acrobatic crane shape, and swung about to smash into the reds. The red chariot tried to retaliate with a barrage of pies, but the pierrots pushed off against the tomato-colored chariot and forced the reds back, pushing themselves forward in the process. For a second, it looked like victory was certain for the graceful charioteers. But then the almost completely ignored greens crossed the finish line.
Silence reigned throughout the stadium. Even the other charioteers stood frozen, balanced in impossibly precarious positions.. Then, a few greens rose to the hooves, whooping and cheering. The noise echoed awkwardly, almost painfully, through the thick, all-consuming silence that suffocated the audience. Slowly, weakly, the cheering died away, replaced by angry mutters. The greens regarded one another sadly. Then, the two in front turned around and shoved their chariot back across the finish line, wings flapping quickly.
It was as if time had restarted. The red and white charioteers sprung back into life, warring for dominance in an acrobattle of skill and will. A spray of rose petals flew up dramatically as one of the white charioteers was knocked off kilter by a flying fish. The red rider that had thrown it cackled madly until the fish boomeranged back to smack her in the face. And then, driving up a roar from the crowd, the two competing chariots raced across the finish line as the greens sat sullenly on the sidelines. “A tie!” the grey general roared from her balcony, sweeping her hooves wide. “They have shown themselves equally worthy, and so shall receive equal glory.”
A mighty roar rang up at that. Ditzy sat silent, mouth hanging agape. “Did that…”
“Yeah,” Scootaloo said, grimacing. “You really don’t want to mess with that many angry sports fans. It’s about the most direct democracy there is.”
“That’s not even a little bit right.”
“No.”
Ditzy’s face was taut. “We should—”
“This is how history works, Dr. Doo,” Scootaloo said flatly. “Isn’t that what your husband alway says? We can’t change it, not one line. No matter how badly we want to…”
~I admired him from afar (said Holiday, wistful), and we never spoke. We could have spoken, undoubtedly. We were colleagues, after all, and our disciplines had more than a touch of overlap. But he was the Narcissus to my Echo. I could say nothing until I was spoken to. I was too afraid.
(Scootaloo remembered that story, too. There had been a nature spirit cursed by an angry alicorn to only be able to repeat what others said to her, and she’d fallen for a stallion so in love with himself he made Prince Blueblood seem almost normal. The spirit had wasted away (due, it was said, to a broken heart (Scootaloo wasn’t sure if it might not have something to do with not being able to ask for food if it wasn’t offered)) and Narcissus had fallen in love with his own reflection and turned into a flower.
(After the first time she’d read that story, Scootaloo had walked to Echo Peak with a picnic basket and spent all afternoon hoping that a thin, wasted spirit would turn up for lunch))
But then, one day, after a meeting of all the liberal arts departments, he came to me like Jupiter in the guise of a mortal. He wooed me softly, spoke sweet nothings in my ear. He promised me the world if I would only be his.
(Scootaloo never liked Jupiter, the King of the Sky. He was loud and brash and immortal, and he loved the ephemerals. But his love faded faster than even they did.(He had left Echo behind to the tender mercies of his jealous wife))
How could I refuse, Eurus? How could I ever refuse something so beautiful, so perfect? And so, we fell in love. I never doubted that fact, that he loved me as much as I loved him. Despite anything else that happened, he did once love me.~
“Scootaloo?”
The orange mare glanced up abstractedly. “Hrn?”
Ditzy had at some point risen to her hooves and begun to walk toward an exit. “I said, let’s go. I’d rather not watch another one, if it’s all the same to you.”
Scootaloo stared down at the track. The red and white charioteers were mugging for the audience, their battle still subtly continuing as each gladiator vied for dominant positions. “You can’t really blame them,” she said flatly. “They can only move up in the ranks if they’re popular.”
“So where does that leave the greens and blues?”
Scootaloo let her gaze wander over the pitch. “Hitting the showers, by the look of it.”
Indeed, the last of the greens were slouching into a set of doors set into the wall of the Hippodrome. From the look of it, the blues had already gone in. The crowd didn’t even afford them a second look. Scootaloo averted her gaze, but a brief sparkle caught her eye.
She squinted down at the field. One of the greens had been held up by a violet mare before entering the locker room, and the two were talking animatedly. Or at least the charioteer was. The purple pegasus seemed as stoic and collected as a statue. Scootaloo leaned closer. The purple mare settled a wing around the charioteer. Then, she squeezed.
The orange mare gasped as the green driver went limp. In a moment, Ditzy was at her side. “What? What’s wrong?”
Scootaloo’s eyes were glazed and strangely calm. “I think I just watched somepony get foalnapped.”
Commander Hurricane was in rather a good mood. He didn’t show it, of course. That was not the way for an officer to behave, not in public and certainly not in front of lower-ranked officers. Somehow, he had managed to attract hangers-on, a small collection of new initiates and guards all fascinated with him. This was not something which had been covered in his official officer’s manual. The closest article that he could think of was dealing with a mob of panicked civilians, and the commander rather doubted that such a thing was applicable in this situation. He knew full well that he was unpopular with his fellow officers. The only reason that he held this post was thanks to his ability to redeem the disaster at Bapheus Valley as a victory for intelligence and because he hadn’t been the one directly responsible for the well-being of that little blue abomination. He had to uphold his good name even under the most dire of circumstances.
So, he tolerated his inferiors. No more, no less. That was his ideal. When in doubt, go with cool, distant, and impersonal, and that will see you through. The mob didn’t seem to much care. They simply wished to remain in the presence of Hurricane, the great hero who rose up through the ranks like an arrow shot into the air. Much to his surprise, he actually found himself warming up to the idea. If he could inspire these recruits to greater prowess in battle, then certainly it was his duty, if not his privilege, to do so.
Therefore, he allowed himself to be plied with wine and pizza in exchange for tales of his heroics. It was for the good of the empire, really. “So,” he continued, downing another goblet in front of his rapt audience, “There I was, down to my last arrow and my last unicorn, and my arrow was broken. Fletching fell out, couldn’t make sure of a clean shot. She was closing in fast, and I was only still alive because she hadn’t noticed me yet behind. And so, I did the only thing which I could do. I plucked three of my own primaries and fitted them into the end of the arrow. The last thing that would have gone through her mind was the color of my wings.”
A murmur of shock and awe rose from the audience, a great wave of hubbub. Hurricane smiled a little smile and set down his goblet on the table. The little park bench was swarmed by admiring soldiers, faces alight with admiration. The fuchsia pegasus rose to his hooves, perhaps a tad unsteadily. Presently he was more drunk than he’d been in years, before he’d even risen as far as the soldiers that surrounded him. “They say the horn-heads were acting illegally, of course,” he sneered. “Princess Platinum and her retinue condemned them completely, of course. Hardly going to take credit for such a blatant attack, are they?”
That unsettled them, that was certain. Feathers ruffled uncomfortably, and even the nearby vendors looked to be paying closer attention. One had accidentally shoved his own lunch into a kiln.
“...Sir?” one particularly brave mare asked hesitantly. “Are you suggesting that the Princess… knew of the attack aforehoof?”
Hurricane snorted phlegmatically. “I’m suggesting that it seems awfully convenient that those renegade unicorns managed to steal all of that guard armor in their own sizes.” He stomped a hoof, sending up a puff of cloud. “Damnable horn-heads. Constantly interfering outside their domain. At least the ground-pounders know enough to leave us alone more oft than not.”
If the crowd was attentive before, they were absolutely rapt now. The pottery maker took a big bite of the cloud-clay pot in his hooves, chewing slowly and apparently not even taking notice of the taste. Hurricane snorted again, his eyes distant with thought and drink. “Meddlesome hussy… somepony ought to do something about her. Her father was alright.King Bullion. Hmp. He respected the Accord. He went out to help raise the sun every day himself, and to help set it every night. He could be respected. But that Princess never did a day’s work in her life.”
There were faint murmurs of agreement from the crowd. Hurricane continued to bluster, his face growing redder by the moment. “And now the griffons are at the gates in Roan! It seems that the pegasi are always under attack these days, from all corners. I should not be surprised if the earth ponies were to lead an army against us!”
There were aggravated murmurs from the crowd and Hurricane threw wide his wings. “They fought well at Bapheus, though we subdued them in time. Were they to take up arms against us again, it would prove greatly problematic.”
The mare from before let out a slight, nervous chuckle. “But they cannot even fly! What harm can they do us?”
The commander’s face darkened. “You ask that,” he said in a low growl. “You ask that now. You weren’t there. They have allies. Not many, but the few they have are powerful. I would sooner face an entire army of griffons than speak to that, that…”
A flash of blue caught the corner of his eye. Hurricane’s expression suddenly stiffened even more, if such a thing were possible. Slowly, he turned around. A wooden box, painted blue, stood in a place that he was certain that it hadn’t been before. “That box.”
“Sir?”
“It wasn’t there a moment ago.”
“...Sir.”
Hurricane stared at the box for a long moment. “Take it to the gaol,” he said abruptly. “You and you. Carry it. You, you, you, and you, guard them. Nopony must be allowed to stop you.”
The soldiers looked at one another, uncertain, but a glare from the commander sent them scurrying. The mood of conviviality had broken, leaving behind only uncertainty and concern. The pottery vendor let out a cry of dismay as he realized what had just happened to his lunch, lumps of cloud-made clay coming sputtering out of his mouth as his sandwich burned to ash in the kiln.
The trouble with shooting an arrow into the air, Hurricane knew, was that it would eventually fall just as quickly as it rose.
Rumble rattled the castle doors, and cursed quietly. Locked tight. They were never locked. They didn’t need to be when not one, but two magical prodigies and a pyrotechnics enthusiast with a hair-trigger lived inside. He glanced up. The windows were hanging wide open. He glanced back. He could see Applejack racing up the street, a few more ponies behind her. Well. He could fly in the window, open the door, and let them all in, and the sooner he could do that, the better.
There was a blinding flash of magenta just behind the crystal door and Rumble flinched. Better hurry. He flapped up to the nearest window and dove in.
The corridor was empty, though no less quiet for it. He could make out individual voices now, but only in bits and snatches.
“—it so FAST? Rainb—”
“Metal! Reflects spells!”
“Aim for—”
“TEACUP TEACUP TEACUP TEACUP”
“Watch out! The crystal—”
“—know about the refracting matrix, Twil—”
Rumble carefully peered over the balcony. He recognized Twilight and Sunset, blazing as they were with purple and orange coronas. Trixie was a little harder to spot, but he managed to trace back to the point from which most of the fireworks were being shot. As for what they were attacking… that was a separate concern.
It was silver. Not grey, not shiny grey, silver. Bright and metallic, like a mirror. It was shaped like a pegasus, more or less, but larger, heavier, and with a wingspan like a griffon. He watched, half shocked, half awed, as a burst of magic struck it on the flank and was sent ricocheting away into the wall, bouncing across the room like some kind of demented pinball, steadily shrinking upon each contact with the wall. It seemed that Trixie was having the strongest effect in attacking; at least her explosives actually exploded where they were meant to, though judging by the copious number of teacups strewn about the foyer, she’d had no more luck getting spells to stick. But they left almost no mark on the metal pegasus.
It was at this point that Sunset glanced up and stopped dead in her tracks. “Another one!” she shouted, gesturing towards Rumble. “Up there!”
The grey colt put his hooves up in surrender just a moment too late. Twin surges of magic were hurtling right towards him.
The Doctor stared at the bank of dumbwaiters set into the wall. They were transcendental, but not in the way that the TARDIS was. They were smaller on the inside, the interior dimensions of a box mapped onto the exterior dimensions of a lengthy, twisting shaft that reached through the TARDIS. The upshot of which was that one could put food in at one end, close the door, and when the dumbwaiter was opened on the other end, the food would already be waiting, without having to travel through the kilometers of tight tubing and tighter turns. The other upshot, of course, was that one could do what the Doctor was about to do, provided that one was sufficiently small. Adric, the Doctor recalled, had once tried to crawl through the box and had wound up stuck halfway through. Tegan had teased him mercilessly. However, though Adric may have been small, the Doctor was, at least presently, smaller.
He pulled open one of the doors on the wall at random and gave it an appraising eye. It would be a bit of a squish, certainly, but he ought to just about fit. He hauled himself up into the box, hooves scrabbling to find purchase on the wall. He was just about to haul his tail end in when a great, reverberating crash echoed down the aisle.
He froze. In the strange, ethereal light of stasis fields, the world seemed discolored, and the light they shed barely illuminated the corridors at all. Even the mildest of cheeses shone like ghosts in the night. There— movement in the darkness. His tongue flicked nervously over his lower lip. “Hello?”
The next moment, an explosion of laserfire opened on the wall. The Time Lord yelped, knocked off of his perch to the ground. Another blast singed his mane, and he was off like a rocket, dodging and leaping and jiving along the wall at random as blaster fire rained around him. Not blaster fire, he realized with a thrill of terror. Staser fire, a weapon of the Gallifreyan Chancellery Guard. One that was designed to do anything from stunning a Time Lord to outright killing them, sans regeneration. He hadn’t seen one used since— the memory was cut short when a lucky shot struck his flank. He let out a scream of pain, collapsing to the ground.
When he peeped an eye open, there it was. The Watcher. Watching. Watching him watching the watcher watch him. Watch no longer sounded like a proper word. In its hoof was a smoking staser. The Doctor let out a weak groan as the pale specter drew nearer. “No… no…” he moaned as its hoof reached for his chest.
And then, he sat up like a jack-in-the-box and walloped it upside the head. The figure stumbled backwards, as heavily dazed as a phantom could be, then crashed against a shelf. “Sorry, mate,” the tan stallion replied, breathing heavily. “But I’m not going anywhere.”
He hauled himself to his hooves slowly, wincing as he did so. The staserfire had got him right in the cutie mark. Fortunately, that particular area was mostly fat tissue, leaving his muscles relatively unharmed. Unfortunately, he wouldn’t be able to sit down for a week, at the least. All told, though, he’d gotten off lightly. The same couldn’t be said for the dumbwaiters. Several of them had been punctured by the staser blasts, disrupting the transcendental dimensions and turning them back into long, twisting chutes, impossible for virtually anypony to climb through. Even Rainbow Dash, small and athletic though she was, would be hard-pressed to wriggle through. With the level of destruction caused, it was almost as though…
“Almost as though it was trying to knock out the dumbwaiters,” the Doctor muttered. “Leaving me exactly one exit.”
Indeed, there was only one dumbwaiter still unharmed— the one second-to-farthest on the right, one marked with a little doodle of three brightly-colored flowers. “I don’t like this,” the Doctor said aloud, pausing expectantly. He glanced around. “Oh. Right. In it alone. ‘Course.”
He sighed deeply, then glanced at where the Watcher had once lain. The spot was devoid of anything but a staser pistol, now. He picked it up, examined it closely, set it to ‘stun’. Then, with a slight whimper of anticipatory pain, he turned to scale up the wall to the dumbwaiter.
Dash had taken to unconsciously preening, pulling her feathers through her teeth almost obsessively. “I… don’t get it,” she said. “I really don’t. So you were married to a jerk, why keep it from Scoots?”
"I dated him," Holiday said sharply. Then she sighed, leaning back on the sofa. “You saw the birth certificate,” she said quietly.
Dash froze for a second, then started preening with even more vigor than before. Lofty sighed. “Dash, it’s alright, really. We all know the truth, now.”
“Uh-huh, yeh, whi wnn’t t be light?” Dash muttered through her wing. She spat out the inconveniencing limb. “Sorry. Yeah, why wouldn’t it be alright? None of my business, right?” She stuffed the other wing into her mouth, picking and preening away
Lofty gazed at the blue mare. “We both know that’s not true,” she said quietly. “You care for her as much as either of us do, I can tell.” She hesitated. “Rainbow, why is it that you…”
“Half-adopted her?”
“...Yes, I suppose.”
The prismatic pegasus examined her left wing. It was cleaner and straighter than it had been in years. “Let’s just say I wasn’t always quite as awesome as I am today.”
Holiday and Lofty exchanged glances, then gazed at Rainbow in mute expectation. The orange pegasus was looking at the cyan mare with honest curiosity. Dash let out a sigh. “Fine. I watch out for the squirt because when she was a kid she reminded me of how I was at her age. Now that she’s all grown up… she can’t be. I don’t want her to turn out like me. Well, I mean, I do, but I…” She stopped, hanging her head low.
“She got lucky,” Dash said after a moment. “I guess your guy skipped out on you before she could even remember him, right?”
Lofty nodded. “We’ve always been the only parents she’s known.”
“Yeah. With me, it was my whole damn town. Getting into my head, scratching at me, trying to change me. Like, I had a cool childhood. My parents were always chill, I had friends, but man, you step a hoof out of line and all the old farts in the city act like you slapped Celestia’s butt.”
Lofty’s eyebrows rose. “Where in the world did you think of that metaphor?”
Dash smirked. “Long story. But, uh…” her face fell. “Not a lot of room in Cloudsdale for anyone that doesn’t fit. I got by alright because I kicked butt at flying and I didn’t let on about… y’know…”
“Liking mares,” Holiday concluded.
“Yeah. Even with all that, I got picked on a lot by the other kids, the teachers, y’know.”
“So…” Lofty rubbed her chin. “You took Scootaloo under your wing to protect her from the bullies, so she could have a nicer childhood than you.”
“Uh, I guess. Not really. She’s tough, and she’s got you guys to protect her. Scoots isn’t my little sister ‘cause of that.”
“Then why…”
“Because she dreams big. She dreams bigger than she can be. She’s got a goal, and everything’s against her, but she just knows she’s gonna get there—” Dash broke off, voice raw. “She knew she was gonna get there,” she corrected quietly.
“She will,” Holiday said, after a moment’s hesitation. “She won’t let this keep her down.”
Dash snorted. “Yeah? And how’s she gonna do that? This is it, Holiday. The dream is dead.”
“You could vouch for her,” the cream-coated mare pointed out, a note of desperation in her voice. “It’s all she’s ever dreamed of, Dash, you know that. You could get her a job on the Weather Patrol.”
Lofty looked at her wife with shocked indignation. “Holiday, you can’t possibly— you don’t know what—”
“I could,” Dash said flatly, cutting across Lofty, not meeting Holiday’s eye. “But I won’t. I can’t. I… I can see her wearing out up over the clouds, or over the Everfree. There aren’t any safety nets up there. You know how many pegasi die in weather work every year? You know how many weeks I spent in the hospital my first year in Ponyville? You study pegasus history, Holiday, but you don’t have wings. You don’t know the risks like I do!”
Holiday stared at the rainbow-maned mare. “You could keep her safe.”
“No. I couldn’t,” Dash said flatly. “I’m head weather coordinator. That means I’m responsible for every member of the team. I can’t spend all my time watching her, no matter how much I want to.”
“So why did you encourage her?” Holiday asked, her voice growing cold. “All that time you spent, was it just building her up for a fall?”
Lofty discreetly removed the tea tray. If things were going to start being thrown, hot tea and fragile china would be removed from the list first.
“What?” Dash spun around. “No! Not in a billion years!”
“Why, then? Why would you do this?” Holiday shouted, drawing closer to the younger mare. “Why would you lie?”
Dash’s face fell like a hailstone, and turned just as hard and cold. “I didn’t lie,” she said. “I thought she could do it. I knew she could, if anypony could. But I guess… I guess nopony can.”
Silence descended on the little cottage. “Where do you think she’d try to go?” Dash asked.
“Carousel Boutique, perhaps,” Holiday said, not looking up from the ground. “Or Sweet Apple Acres. Sweetie and Apple Bloom are still in town, after all.”
“Alright, let’s go check at Rarity’s. Better than sticking around here any longer.” Without waiting for a reply, Dash turned and stormed out of the room, making sure to overturn several piles of papers in the process.
Holiday looked at her wife. “Lofty? Did I just…”
Lofty’s mouth was a line. “We’ll talk about all of this later. As a family,” she promised, before following Dash out the door.
The Doctor’s breath was short and labored. The dumbwaiter was a claustrophobic proposition at the best of times, which these definitely weren’t. With a great deal of difficulty, he managed to contort himself into a position where he could grab the door with his teeth and, with a violent yank of his head, pull it shut behind him. As soon as he felt it click into place, he lashed out with his hind hooves, busting open the other door and leaving his tail end wiggling and bicycling frantically for purchase.
The last of the Time Lords, thousands of years old, the Ka Faraq Gati , fell flat on his tail, wheezing in pain. After a few moments, of quiet cursing in several languages, he managed to haul himself up to his hooves and glance around. It was just as he’d left it, all those years ago. He’d not come here too terribly often; the cricket dandy had been altogether too wrapped up in what was proper, and though the clownish one stood far less on such propriety, he was very mindful of Peri’s personal space.
Peri. A good and beautiful fairy from Persian mythology. Well, half-right, anyway. Good and beautiful. The smell of flowers still lingered in the air, though nothing had grown here for centuries. No dust had gathered. Everything was perfectly preserved like one of her own books of pressed flowers and leaves, a perfectly-rendered museum piece of something long dead.
In many ways it was a museum all on its own. Pressed flowers in picture frames lined every wall, each one labeled with a notecard mentioning the year collected and city, country, planet, and star system of its origin. There were shelves full of live specimens. Still alive, even after their collector… had left them behind.
That was what bothered him, more than anything else. Adric had died in flames. Kameleon had sacrificed himself. Tegan had simply grown tired of it all. But at least he knew what had become of them. Peri was a mystery for the ages. Was she dead, still in that nefarious lab? Was she wed to King Yrcanos, saved from living death by a great brute of a husband-to-be? Or perhaps the Time Lords had done as they always had with a captured companion, wiping Peri’s memories and returning her to Earth, condemning her to a life of hazy, barely-remembered adventures and barely being able to fit in?
He wasn’t sure which one he feared most. He ran a gentle hoof along the side of a vase which contained a group of bright pink flowers whose provenance even he couldn’t recall. Wherever she’d been sent, he hoped that she had a garden.
“One morn a Peri at the gate/Of Eden stood disconsolate,” he said to nobody. The flowers and trees and books and posters said nothing.
Then he turned to face a sealed glass jar which contained within it a single candy-striped tree. “Forgive me, Perpugilliam Brown,” he murmured, taking the plant from its shelf and tucking it under his forehoof. “But I need an advantage.”
With that, he pushed open the door to the hallway, and left the empty room behind. As the door slammed shut, a single petal spiraled off of one of the flowers, browning with age as it fell. By the time it hit the ground, only dust remained, and soon even that had disappeared under the mindful ministrations of the TARDIS self-cleaning system.
Rumble squeezed his eyes shut, preparing for the searing pain that was to come. Instead, he felt the wind rush from his lungs as he was knocked to one side, and a heavy body half-cradling him. His eyes popped open, and a pair of red eyes smiled back at him. “Bulk Biceps?”
The ripped pegasus winked. “It takes more than just these good looks to make it into the Wonderbolts reserves,” he rumbled. He leaned over the balcony. “YEAH! Hey! On your side! Don’t shoot us, okay?”
The next thing Rumble heard was a massive crash. That must’ve been the door, because the next thing he heard after that was, “Th’ cavalry has arrived, y’all. YEE-HAW!”
Bon Bon stared at Applejack’s flanks admiringly. “Dear sweet Luna I wish we’d recruited her for basic training back in the day,” she said.
Lyra nodded. “Yeah, I bet that kinda kick would’ve come in real handy.”
“Lyra. Stop trying to make ‘handy’ a thing. It’s not a thing, and it never will.”
“Uh-huh, sure. You know, the dragons use it, the minotaurs, the griffons— WAH! Bon Bon!”
The cream-colored mare rose from where she’d bodily tackled the mint unicorn to the ground. “Pay attention. You almost got hit by a sizable shard of crystal, and while my life would be much quieter without you, I’d much sooner not face that eventuality.”
“You love me really,” Lyra cooed, rolling over and rising to her hooves as well. She tossed her mane and created a pair of oversized golden hands from magic. They rubbed themselves together briskly, and flew out to snatch at the metal pegasus.
“You know, it’s saying things like that that makes ponies think we’re an item?” Bon Bon replied blandly before leaping into the fray.
“I— what— wait— is not!” Lyra shouted, but her friend was already lost in battle. She frowned. The hands briefly made a rude gesture, and then resumed their focus on catching the pegasus midflight.
Meanwhile, Applejack, Cheerilee, and Berry were hastily gathering up any large chunks of crystal they could find to buck at the attacker. It seemed to be having roughly the same effect as Trixie’s fireworks, but the metal thing would be more distracted. Romana had her screwdriver directed at the robot, scanning it for… something, while Ruby maintained a shield around them both. Even Diamond and Silver had taken a tapestry off the wall and were trying to catch the hippodroid in that.
For all their efforts, though, nothing seemed to be working. The fireworks and projectiles were slowing it down, sure, but they were barely even denting the metal. Twilight and Sunset’s spells were still bouncing off, for the most part, though one of them had managed to hit one of its leg joints, which was now smoking. Lyra’s hands almost caught the thing time and again, but it slipped out like a bar of soap. Romana had her sonic in her mouth, shaking it frantically, and Ruby’s jaw was set with the effort of maintaining the shield around them.
Diamond and Silver could barely even lift the tapestry, let alone catch the robot in it. “Ugh!” Diamond growled, dropping her end. “Whose idea was it to make these things so heavy? It’s cloth . It’s supposed to be light .”
As for Bon Bon, she had leapt up nimbly on a pile of shattered pillars. With almost catlike skill, she jumped from her perch right onto the back of the robot, grasping it around the neck. It bucked and flapped, but the confectioner held on doggedly, even as the metal pegasus did a barrel roll. She gripped tight with her hind legs and began jabbing at the join in its neck with her forehooves. The metal creature screamed its disfavor and dove toward the wall. Bon Bon tensed, then leapt off as the robot careened into the crystal. “Lyra, tapestry!”
The mint unicorn blinked, and then she got it. “Yoink!” she said, her golden hands yanking the heavy cloth from Diamond and Silver and tossing it over the disoriented pegasus-bot. It continued to shift under the tapestry, but the hail of projectiles kept it from rising. Twilight let out a long, shuddering breath, then fired off one last spell. The air chilled, and the robot, tapestry, and everything around them were frozen in a block of ice. There was a long silence. “Exactly why didn’t you do that in the first place?” Berry demanded.
Twilight waved a hoof. “Magic-resistant coating,” she panted. “Spell bounced off. Needed something else to stick it on.”
Romana let out a shout of triumph. “Hah! Got the frequency to shut it down,” she said, smiling. Ruby Pinch dropped the force field, her breathing slightly labored.
“Nice one, space case,” Diamond shot back. “Got it just after the nick of time.”
There was a faint groaning creak from the ice. White fracture lines began to spread. The pink mare paled and clutched at Silver Spoon. “Never mind, I take it back,” she whimpered, hiding her face in the grey mare’s coat.
“Okay,” Romana said, staring intently at the ice. “As soon as it shatters, I can do it.”
“How is it still moving?” Sunset growled. “OP as heck, I’m telling you.”
“Come again?” Applejack said, frowning.
Sunset rolled her shoulders. “Okay. Romana, get ready to nerf this guy.” She glowed bright orange, and the ice began to steam. There was a mighty bang as the iceberg exploded, and a very angry robot ripped through the tapestry like tissue. The sonic was knocked from Romana’s grasp. “Oh. Rassilon’s rod.”
Slowly but surely, the robot stalked forwards. “YEAH!”
A moment later, Bulk had become a one-pony dogpile on the robot’s back, Rumble close behind. The robot struggled for a moment, then gave up. Romana snatched her screwdriver up in her teeth and fired at the robot. There was a whirring, clanking noise. It shuddered, and then its head slumped to the ground.
Trixie coughed and held up a blue candy-striped rocket. “May Trixie?”
Bulk nodded. “...Yeah,” he said, rising from the inanimate robot.
The blue unicorn took in a deep breath, then let it out as a scream of fury as she fired the last firework at the robot. There was one last mighty blast, and then everything lay still. The metal pegasus was virtually undamaged in a damp, charred circle of ruined cloth.
Twilight let out a long, shuddering sigh. “Okay. Okay! Bulk, Applejack, help me get this down to the lab. We’re going to find out what the hay makes this thing tick.”
She turned and trotted with quick jerky movements from the room, after the manner of one who is walking on a carpet of slime. After a time, one by one, the occupants of the room followed the princess down into her basement lab.
It had taken Ditzy a few moments to wrap her mind around the concept presented. “...Foalnapped?” she repeated, as though the word felt foreign on her tongue. She blinked, then shook her head. “Scootaloo, I don’t think that’s likely. All this noise, you can’t have just seen somepony in the crowd get taken…”
“They weren’t in the crowd,” Scootaloo corrected. “It was one of the charioteers, off of the green team. This purple mare was talking to him, and she put a wing up to his neck, and he just collapsed!”
The grey mare paused, staring straight ahead, though her left eye drifted as usual. “Oh,” she said. “Well, that does sound kind of… foalnapping-y…”
Scootaloo glared flatly at the older pegasus. “Ya think? Come on, we’ve got to do something!”
“I agree,” Ditzy said, holding up a hoof to halt the young mare. “But we need to stay here, work out a plan. We can’t just go to the authorities here, we don’t have any ID or papers or anything at all.”
“I wasn’t planning on going to the authorities,” Scootaloo returned, fluttering her wings at much the same rate as a hummingbird.
“Scootaloo, we can’t go after them by ourselves, either,” Ditzy said, her voice turning sterner as she planted her tail back into the arena seating. “We aren’t police officers—”
“Police officers aren’t even really a thing right now,” Scootaloo protested. “Roan, Pegasopolis, and Skyzantium were all militarily run, with the emperor at the head.”
“Who would that be? Commander Hurricane?”
“No, not yet. I think we’re in the reign of Emperor Marcus Aurora Borealis.”
Ditzy furrowed her brow. “It’s been awhile since I took a history class… Was he the one that fiddled while Roan burned?”
“Look, this isn’t important,” Scootaloo said impatiently. “There’s a Tartarus-damn foalnapper on the loose, and she might be getting away with it as we speak! We’ve got to go after them!”
“We’ll get the Doctor,” Ditzy decided. “He’ll know what to do, or we can at least borrow his psychic paper to report this to the appropriate authorities.”
“But—”
“But nothing,” Ditzy said firmly. “We are going back to the TARDIS, we are not going to confront any potentially dangerous criminals, and you are going to return home in one piece, so help me Celestia. Dinky would never forgive me if I let you come to harm because of condition. Neither would Holiday and Lofty, and very likely I’d never be able to forgive myself.”
Scootaloo opened her mouth, then closed it with a sharp snap. Ditzy didn’t blink. “...not my mother…” the orange mare muttered.
“I may not be,” Ditzy said, a hint of anger in her voice now, “but if you think I won’t tell them about the way you’ve been acting…”
“You’d have to find her first,” Scootaloo bit out. She glared a moment longer, then turned and stormed toward the stairs. “Come on. You can go back to the TARDIS if you want. I'm going to get stuff done.”
Ditzy stared after her, mouth agape. “Scootaloo? Scootaloo, get back here! What are you talking about? Scootaloo!”
~We had been dating for some months now. It had gone beyond kissing, and I shall say no more than that. (Scootaloo wrinkled her muzzle in disgust. Nopony should have to hear this sort of stuff about their mother-figure.) In that time, I had learned surprisingly little about Heat Wave. I knew his opinions on a number of things, particularly literature and historical events, but I hardly knew anything about his past, his childhood, or even his family, if he had one. So, when I found one day that he had left behind his briefcase in my office, I took it upon myself to return it to his home personally. That was my first mistake.
(Second (Scootaloo thought) at minimum.)
He lived off-campus, in a suburban house on the ground. An unusual choice for a pegasus, but not unknown. It wasn’t exactly large by most standards, though it was bigger than most bachelor pads. It was better-kept as well. The walk was shoveled, and wind chimes hung on the porch. I knocked on the door. There was a brief pause, and then footsteps echoed down the hall. “Just a moment!” somepony called. A mare. I didn’t move. That was my second mistake, I believe.
(Third. (More than.))
The door swung open, and a yellow mare was standing there, staring at me, smiling mildly. “Yes?” she asked.
“I’m sorry, I think I have the wrong address. I’m looking for Professor Heat Wave.”
“You have the right address,” she assured me.
At this point, my stomach felt as though it were full of bubbling muck, painfully full and hot, almost molten. “But… you aren’t him.”
“No,” she confirmed. “I’m his wife.”
(... (...))
She smiled at me, eyes bright and shining. “Won’t you come in?”
And then I made possibly the biggest mistake of all. I entered her home.
“Scootaloo, get back here!” Ditzy shouted, racing down the stairwell after the smaller pegasus. “Scootaloo, we have to stick together!”
The little orange figure was already passing out the other end of the stairwell. Ditzy snorted in irritation, then dove down after her. Scootaloo was, out of all the Crusaders, simultaneously the most vulnerable and the most stubborn, a dangerous combination. She would go on fighting a battle long after she’d been stabbed in the barrel, and she’d finish a race after losing a leg if need be. It was nothing short of a miracle that she had survived her childhood, given her weak bones. Especially since she took hospital visits as less of a warning and more of a challenge.
The grey pegasus reached the end of the stairs and glanced around frantically. No sign of Scootaloo. Would she have gone left or right? Left would lead to the TARDIS. Right would lead… she glanced along the arched hallway. Merry throngs of pegasi crowded the space. Ditzy smacked a hoof into her face and rubbed at the bridge of her muzzle. Right it would be, then. She took off into the crowd. “Sorry!” “Excuse me!” “Coming through!” “Sorry, was that your wing?” “Oops!”
Quickly, the suddenly silent crowd pressed itself to the walls, all staring at the mare with shock and no little admiration. Quiet murmurs rose, but Ditzy had no time to stop and listen. She galloped along the circumference of the Hippodrome, ponies parting before her like a mane before a comb. And ahead of her, she saw a spiky, uncombed fuchsia tail slipping down a hall. The postmare grit her teeth and redoubled her speed, all but diving through the rainbow-curtained arch after the orange filly, leaving the quietly buzzing crowd behind her.
It took a moment for her eyes to readjust to the darkness, though she didn’t stop moving forwards until she slammed into a wall. “Ow,” she grumbled, pulling herself quickly to her hooves. Once again, she faced a dichotomy; two diverging paths. No sound, no motion came from either direction to suggest Scootaloo had gone in one direction or another. Well. There was, at least on a purely subconscious level, one solid way to choose, a method so basic and elementary that she and all other pegasi had learned it in grade school. She pointed down the left hall and recited, “Icky, sticky, who’s-a-gonna picky, snow white, sky blue, best one to choose is you!” Her hoof was now pointing down the righthoof corridor.
Right it would be, then, she thought, jogging off down the hallway. She dared not fly; her depth perception, poor even under the best circumstances, would be almost nonexistent in this level of darkness. She had to squint even to make out the walls, borders determined only by the flickering, rainbow-colored half-light filtered through the drapes. Soon enough, the first torches began to light the walls, the bright, electric, greenish luminescence of ball lightning lighting up every corner of the corridor. And yet, Scootaloo was nowhere to be seen. A prickle of unease ran down Ditzy’s spine as she hurried along the hallway, faster, faster, until she came out into an atrium. A locker room, perhaps; the line of rainclouds certainly seemed to indicate as much.
She wandered through, glancing this way and that. Nopony else was around, and the room contained four other doors aside from the one through which she had entered. She considered doing another counting rhyme, but then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw a flash of movement.
She spun, only to see a door swinging closed. “Scootaloo?” she called, stepping forward. “Scootaloo, is that you?”
No reply. “Scootaloo!” Ditzy, now rather nervous, flapped forwards and swung the door open. Nothing there. Slowly, she trotted into the hall, letting the door swing shut behind her.
There was almost no warning, just the faintest disturbance in the air. The grey mare had no time to defend herself, or even to register what was happening, before a hoof knocked her to the floor. “You will not struggle,” a cold, monotone, female voice said. “You will not scream. You will come to no harm if you cooperate.”
A rush of adrenaline overcame the grey mare. She felt frozen, stuck between fight and flight. The hoof lifted from her back. “Rise,” said a different voice. Male, this time, though it was equally cold and emotionless. The postmare did as she was told, her brain working overtime on how best to escape her captors— a hard buck to the face to the one behind her, and then away, or perhaps smash one into the other. She was no martial artist, but she’d watched at least a few films and thought she had kind of worked out the basics. She could at least surprise her captors enough to leave them off-balance.
All schemes flew right out of her head, however, when she saw, draped over the back of one of the pegasi, a little orange figure.
“Alright,” Ditzy said quietly, watching the slow rise and fall of Scootaloo’s chest. “Let’s go.”
The boutique was locked. So was the back door. All the lights inside were off. “Dammit,” Dash growled, swooping back down to the ground after tapping on Rarity’s bedroom window.
“I suppose she must be out,” Holiday said, gazing up at the darkened windows.
Lofty raised a brow. “And Spike? And Sweetie Belle?”
Dash shrugged. “Date night, I guess, and Sweetie could be staying with her folks.”
“We could check Sweet Apple Acres," Holiday suggested.
“Nah, I just came from there,” Dash replied. Neither one met the other’s eyes. “Could she have gone to Rumble’s place? He came back with her.”
“No, she wouldn't have taken her scooter if she was going to fly,” Summer reasoned. “That leaves Ditzy and Care Giver, if we're checking all the Crusaders’ houses.”
Dash nodded. “We’ll split up. I’ll check on Doc and Ditzy, you take gamermom. Lofty?”
“I’ll fly with you, Dash. Either Holiday or I should be there, as her official guardians.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Holiday said levelly. “We can meet back at mine.”
“Fine.”
“We’ll talk.”
“Fine.” Dash was increasingly aware of how like a grouchy teenager she sounded. “We can all have a nice long chat about Scootaloo’s ruined future.”
A+ job not sounding like a sulky idiot, Rainbow, she thought, flapping off, Lofty close behind her.
Holiday watched them go, silent. The future was a concern, to be sure. But she was still stuck in the past.
The house was clean; more than that, it was immaculate. Sterile. It felt almost criminal to walk in it, but the yellow unicorn trotted down the front hall like nopony’s business. She didn't fit with the house. It was too perfect, and she was only a mare. It was pale, a dead shadow compared to the sunshine that surrounded her. She was Psyche in the house of Eros. (The first fairytale Scootaloo had ever heard. The first fairy tale ever, from what her aunt had told her. It had lulled her to sleep as a child, but she was older now. She distrusted the God of Love, stealing away pretty fillies because he could and keeping them in a castle (and the whole diapered pegasus foal thing? Creepy. It was bad enough being hit on by fratty meathead dudebros or giggling braindead sorority chicks, let alone a kid that hasn't been toilet trained.))
She led me into the kitchen. There was no food on the counter. There were, however, rows of bottles, filled with little pills. She noticed my fascination with them, blushed a bit. “I know I shouldn't leave them out in the open, but there are so many that I need to take with food. I forget if they aren't right there, you know?”
“Yes,” I said. I didn't. I didn't even know then what she was talking about. I didn't know for a long time afterwards, not until it was too late. “I’m Romane Holiday,” I said. “Pegasus history and mythology.”
She beamed. “Solar Flare,” she said, extending a hoof. “Wavy told me so much about you!”
“Did he,” I managed to say. “All good things, I hope.”
“Oh, yes.” There was a long silence.
“He left his briefcase,” I said lamely, lifting it from the table where I had placed it, where she could plainly have seen it, where no further explanation was necessary. “Er. Is he… is he home?”
“Mhm!” she nodded, smiling. For the first time, I noticed the bags under her eyes. “I can call him down for you if you want to talk to him.”
“No!” I restrained myself. “I mean, thank you, but I just came to return the case. I must be going.”
“Flare?” a voice called. “Flare, who is that?”
She turned away to look toward the door. She didn’t see how my muzzle scrunched, how my ears went flat. But he did. He stood in the door, as frozen as I was, and almost as horrified. And then he thawed. He smiled at me, smiled at me! He knew I wouldn’t tell. He knew what that would do to my reputation, and he knew I knew what it would do to his wife. I wouldn’t stop seeing him. I couldn’t stop seeing him. (That was part of the fairy tale, too. The mare sees something she shouldn’t and is punished severely. (Not for the first time, Scootaloo reflected on just how similar Eros and Eris sounded.))
The Doctor wandered through the halls, the tree from Peri’s room balanced on his back. He thought he recognized this juncture, but everything seemed turned around. The TARDIS felt unfamiliar. Alien, even. The faint, ever-present background hum of machinery seemed to have gone dead. The Doctor shuddered. The silent hallways seemed unnatural, uncanny to him. It was like seeing an old friend’s corpse, or being lost in a corn maze at night while the Cyberman-upgraded farmers stalked along the pathways and Adric was trying to hide out in the chicken coop.
He shook his head. This was no time to reminisce on old adventures. The Watcher could be around any corner, and it probably was at that. He pushed open a door and found himself confronted with acres upon acres of rolling green hills spotted with trees. A false sun shone down from a bright blue sky overhead as clouds formed by block-transfer equations drifted lazily by. The Doctor frowned. “That’s odd. This should be the library.”
He stepped inside and rubbed his chin with a hoof, letting the door close slowly behind him. He could afford to rest awhile, get his bearings. He didn’t recognize the room. It was as though it were half-finished, empty of some vital components. He lowered himself to the ground, folding his legs under him. The grass tickled at his chest, and the sunshine warmed his back. The hills seemed to roll on forever, but he could, if he looked closely, see the opposite wall perhaps half a kilometer away. A faint smile flickered over his lips. “Ah. The butterfly room,” he murmured.
He’d been an avid collector, once. Thousands of species had been kept in this room, a multihued swirl of living stained glass. His smile faded as he ran a hoof through the grass. A spectrum of tiny scales, almost dust, covered the soil. There had been… a calamity, he knew. He was pretty sure Fitz had been there, and… Compassion? Anji, perhaps, or Sam? And the TARDIS had gone to sleep, and every living thing not in stasis was… gone.
He stood up abruptly. The warmth and comfort of the room had gone, suddenly. Anyway, if this was the butterfly room, he was in entirely the wrong corridor to get to the library. On the other hoof, he knew a shortcut to get to the console room from here. He turned around and strode out the door, scooping up the tree as he passed. He did not look back. If he had done so, he would have seen a pale figure crossing a not-so-distant rise. Though he didn’t see it, it certainly saw him.
The small group of townsfolk had stayed milling about Twilight’s lab, largely because they felt that they had no other place to go. They had, inextricably, gotten involved in matters, and there was no way that they could now go back to their beds. Twilight had, rightly enough, quickly gotten fed up with ponies staring at, asking about, and worst of all, touching her experiments. She shooed everypony out into the hall, save for Romana, Sunset, and Applejack, and with a quick plea that Trixie try to keep the peace, she slammed the door and locked it.
There was, for a long minute, absolute silence in the corridor. Then, Berry had announced that she was going to go and make some good, strong Saddle Arabian coffee, and they were all going to need it to keep awake. Bulk and Cheerilee had accompanied her. Then, Trixie had started to pester Bon Bon about where she had learned to fight like that, and they had wandered off, and then Lyra had started talking to Ruby about alien life forms. And just like that, Rumble was alone. Alone with them .
Diamond almost met his eyes, then looked away. Rumble, for his part, stared steadily at the wall. Silver looked at one, then the other, then sighed heavily. “Been awhile,” she droned, staring flatly at Diamond.
“Mm,” said the pink mare. “M-hm,”
Rumble said nothing.
Silver looked at Rumble. “So, I heard you’re at Cloudsdale Weather College these days.”
The stallion hesitated, then nodded once, sharply.
“Cool. I’m taking law. Diamond’s studying business.”
“Huh,” said Rumble. “Suits you.”
Silver’s teeth grit. “Thanks! I’m assuming that was a sincere compliment about our abilities and achievements, and not a veiled insult about how heartless we supposedly are based on actions performed in elementary school . To think otherwise would be ridiculous, because, of course, we are the bullies, and you the helpless victim, and nothing would ever happen to change that.”
“Are you implying something?” Rumble asked, turning to look at the pair of mares.
“Oh, the bit drops,” Silver said, waving a hoof. “After only about a decade, it finally sinks in that maybe, just maybe, we aren’t the same ponies we used to be? Maybe we have tried to change, if anypony would ever let us? Maybe we would be friends with you Crusaders if you hadn’t locked us out for life?”
Rumble glowered. “Why should we?” he asked.
Silver threw her hooves in the air. “Because! Isn’t that your thing? Making friends with ponies? You all made up with Babs, and she didn’t act any better than we did! You made Discord, Discord , an honorary member of your little gang. Like, half of you are related or mentored by one of the Elements of bucking Harmony, so you’d think you’d all be a little more ready to forgive us for what we did in school!”
Rumble’s expression changed not a whit. “You’ve been quiet, Diamond.”
The pink mare’s head jerked back. “Huh? Oh, right. Uh, what she said.”
Silver’s face went from ticked-off to deeply concerned in an instant. She turned to face her friend. “You doing ok, Di?” she asked, reaching out a hoof.
“Fine,” the pink mare said abruptly. “I’m fine. Listen, Rumble, I get that we said some really hurtful things back at school. We feel terrible about it, and we really do want to make it up to all of you guys somehow. But we can’t do that without your forgiveness.”
“Huh,” said the pegasus. “Well. Maybe. Maybe we could forgive you. I’m probably not the one you’d want to talk to about this. Button would probably work better, or Sweetie Belle. They’ve got soft hearts when it comes to this sort of stuff. Soft heads, too. But, fine. I can forgive you. But there’s something you need to do first.”
Silver nodded gamely. “Fine. What’s that?”
Rumble glared. “Figure it out,” he growled. “I’m getting coffee.” He flapped off down the corridor, leaving his former tormentors watching.
After a moment, Silver risked a glance back at her best friend. “How is he?” she asked quietly.
Diamond drew in a breath and let it out slowly. “Not good,” she said succinctly. “The doctors give him a year, but he says he’ll be alive to see my graduation from business school.”
“Which do you believe?”
Diamond looked at her best friend, then looked away. “Dad always keeps his promises,” she said firmly. “Always.”
Ditzy trotted alongside the thugs, her expression grim and drawn. Scootaloo was still unconscious on the back of a third grunt, though the grey mare could still see the gentle rise and fall of her sides as she breathed slowly but steadily. “Where are you taking us?” the postmare asked, almost hissing.
The guard to her left fixed an amethyst eye on her. It was intense, yet oddly passive, as though she was looking through the mare rather than at her. “You~ ar~e in-ter-lop-erzz~,” she said at length. “Tra~ve-lerzz~. She wishezz~ to see you~.”
Well, it was a start. At least somepony had said something. Ditzy pressed on. “Who will want to see us? And why?”
The thug’s pale purple eye blinked once, then flicked forward once more. Ditzy frowned. For a moment, it had seemed that her captor’s iris had flickered like a bad film projection. She dismissed the thought almost immediately. Obviously that was nonsense. More likely, her eyes were playing tricks on her again. She turned her attention to her surroundings, instead. The clouds were more grey here, like well-trodden sidewalks, a sign of contamination from dust and other debris.
A lot of pegasi must come here just after they've been on the ground, Ditzy reasoned. The dirt gets into the clouds and raindrops condense around the particles, like a more primitive version of the weather factory. I wonder why that doesn't usually happen in modern pegasus cities?
In addition to the grey color of her surroundings, the buildings here were more utilitarian than the grand architecture of the agora. The columns were irregularly spaced and often crooked, as though put up in a hurry or by an amateur construction worker. The buildings themselves were pressed together. The street they were currently walking down was almost an alley, barely able to fit four ponies walking abreast. In short, Ditzy was quite certain that this was not a great part of town. Pegasi trotted around with their heads down. Many of them looked fairly scrawny, particularly by the standards of the other citizens that Ditzy had encountered. Was this some sort of slum? A prison, perhaps? Or maybe these were simply those who were outcast from the warlike society.
A stallion, scarcely raising his head to apologize, pushed past the guards, a compact crossbow on his back. Down the street, a group of pegasi flew from a building, chased by a fireball moments later. Ditzy’s mouth suddenly dropped open. “This is R&D, isn't it. The science division.”
None of the grunts said anything, but Ditzy could already tell that she was right. The clamor, the chaos, the compact construction, it was all very telling of a college in a place where nopony cared all that much about learning. She herself had seen more than a few as a guest lecturer. She gnawed on her lower lip. Why were they being taken here? Hopefully not as subjects…
They all came to a sudden stop outside the columns of one particular building. It looked far more grey than those around it, and even more crooked. Whoever lived here, if anypony did, clearly wasn't much for aesthetics. The three toughs turned in unison to face the building, leaving Ditzy stumbling to follow suit as they marched forth into the ramshackle construction.
The corridors were as uninviting and grey as the exterior, if not more so. Ditzy could feel the dampness in the air, fancied she could feel the faint static charge that preceded a lightning discharge. Storm-level conditions were uncommon in structures in her time, but it could always happen. Too much dust buildup, too much damp, and suddenly all your stuff is charred and soaking.
They marched her down a side-corridor, mostly empty apart from a few doors on the right-hoof side and one on the left.
“Hey, hey, there's no need to push,” Ditzy protested as the left-hoof door was unceremoniously shoved open and she stumbled in, face-planting. Scootaloo’s prone body was dumped in on top of her, and the door was slammed in the grey mare’s face. “Celestia. What a bunch of jerks,” she muttered.
“They aren't quite perfect yet, I agree,” a cool female voice said. “Elegance has been suspended, regrettably, in the face of... necessary benchmarks.”
Ditzy spun around to see who had spoken, her mouth half open in a demand for answers. When she saw the mare, though, she stopped, her jaw still hanging wide. Her mane was the cold black of space, and her coat was silver moonlight. Her green eyes were reminiscent of bubbling beakers and mad scientists in a Hammer horror flick, a bright and toxic green in a piercingly clear gaze. When the mare walked, her model-thin legs moved with preposterous efficiency, and every move she made seemed to have been calculated and designed by a team of artists and scientists, right down to the unconscious flick of her tail against the pendulum cutie mark on her pert flank. To make a long story short, Ditzy’s brain short circuited so hard she couldn't speak.
Dear sweet Celestia, she's gorgeous.
She kidnapped you.
And I am so, so grateful.
She kidnapped Scootaloo, too.
Well, yeah…
You're married!
I can look… Oh, I can look.
She's an evil scientist!
I would gladly let her experiment on me.
...As your conscience, I have to tell you that that was the worst innuendo that I have ever heard.
The silver mare tilted her head. “Your nose is bleeding.”
Ditzy blinked quickly. “Uh? Oh! Oh no! Can I have—”
The mare silently produced a tissue and hoofed it to the mailmare. She watched with mild interest as Ditzy daubed at her muzzle in an attempt to stem the flow, then pulled out a piece of paper and pencil and jotted down a note. “I suppose that you're here to investigate me, then,” she said mildly, turning to sit down at a nearby table. “Is your husband here as well? I did expect him rather more than you, you know.”
Ditzy paused, blood trickling down her face. “How do you know who I am?”
The silver mare didn't raise a brow. However, without even a twitch of a facial muscle, her expression suddenly implied that an eyebrow might give the impression of rising upward in a few moments. “I’ve met you before, Ditzy Doo, further along in your timeline,” she said simply. “This, however, is the first time that you have met me. It's regrettably inefficient.” She scowled at nothing, a general, widespread disdain for the disorder of the universe as a whole. “Give me that power converter, please.”
Without even thinking, Ditzy picked up the black box on the table and hoofed it to the other mare. The scientist took it without even looking up. “Thank you.”
“You’re a time traveler, too, then? Another Time Lady.”
The beautiful mare didn't glance up from her work, or even nod, but Ditzy suddenly felt a faint sensation of approval from her. “You’re more clever than most of them are.”
“Who are you?”
This, at long last, caused the silver pegasus to turn her acidic green eyes on Ditzy once more. “I am known as the Rani, Ditzy Doo.” A faint smile, as of one who is unused to the expression, graced her lips. “I am pleased to meet you.”
The two guards set the box down in a small chamber, deep inside the cloud layer. Hurricane watched impassively from the doorway. “Open the doors,” he commanded.
Obediently, the pair of pegasi each took one handle and yanked for all they were worth. Hurricane could see the veins bulging in their necks as they strained, but the only result was that they were pulling the box closer toward the wall. “Stop,” he commanded. The duo gratefully released the box. “Dismissed,” the Commander added, almost as an afterthought.
He gazed at the big blue crate stoically as the two guards filed past, pressing to the wall to avoid brushing against him. He waited until they had vanished up the stairwell. He waited until he heard the closing of a door at the top. He waited for another three minutes, just to be on the safe side. Then, he stepped into the cell, shut the door, and locked it behind him. “This time,” he muttered. “This time, Doctor, there will be no escape for you. It ends today.”
Inside the TARDIS, meanwhile, the Doctor had finally reached the console room. He relaxed very slightly as he moved to the central console, setting the potted tree down on the floor beside him. The TARDIS was still distressingly silent, but when he ran a hoof over the levers and instruments, the panel vibrated gently at his touch. The Time Lord smiled slightly. “That’s a good old girl,” he murmured. “Now, I know you aren’t feeling up to travel, but you can help me out with a little something, can’t you?”
There was a moment of perfect stillness. Then the console vibrated again. The Doctor’s smile grew. “That’s the way. Now, I just need to get to the atmospheric controls…” he moved swiftly to a mostly-purple set of instruments and readouts, then gently lifted the panel, revealing tubes, wires, pipes, and more beside. He hefted the tree in one hoof and pulled out a length of hose with the other, balancing both on the console.
“Right,” the Doctor said levelly. “Hello, there. Or should I say, ‘wotcha, Watcher’? I know you can hear me, following me around like some kind of murderous fetch, a doppelganger wannabe.”
He turned around and smiled widely at the pale figure. “Ah, there you are. Hello, you! Now, look, it seems we may’ve gotten off on the wrong hoof. I’m the Doctor, this is my TARDIS, and I aim to keep it that way. You’ll get your turn in all due time. Now, I won’t go beating myself up about the whole attempted murder-suicide… whatever that was, so long as you leave me and mine alone from here on out. Deal?”
The drawn staser was a disappointment, but not a surprise. “See, now, I was hoping I could be reasonable about this,” the Doctor sighed, pulling out his own weapon. “Then I wouldn’t have to do…” he kicked the potted tree over, sending up a cloud of yellow haze as it skidded over the floor. “This.”
The pale figure paused, confused. “This,” the Doctor continued, “this stuff right here, which is currently getting very much in your eyes, is from the tree known as the Lorra-Wurra. Peri picked it up on a little backwater planet called Metabelis V, never got as much attention as the one with the giant spiders and psychic crystals, but that's not the main thing right now. It's a very interesting form of psychic pollen, one that erases most forms of hallucinations and visions to show what's really there. All it needs is a bit of a spark, and whoosh, there go the mental constructs, and there, save for a nasty taste in the air, go you.”
The Watcher’s staser dipped slightly. Then, seeming to strengthen its resolve, it fired. The Doctor was quicker on the mark, however, having the benefit of not really needing to aim. There was a sound like a metric ton of whipped cream imploding as the pollen lit up like a bottle rocket. The Doctor felt it singe his fur, and he closed his eyes as the pollen ate away at his own illusions. He boxed it round the ears and told it to bugger off. For just a moment, his whole body seemed to flicker, but it soon passed.
The Doctor breathed out. He opened his eyes. They glimmered for a moment in the light of the TARDIS, like blind, brilliant opals. And then they were brown once more. He flipped a switch in the atmospheric controls, and the soft roar of ventilation filled the room. A slow smile spread over his face. He almost certainly hadn't dispelled the Watcher completely; that would take far more power than the tree could provide. It would be enough to keep him away for a good while yet, though.
As he pushed up on the TARDIS door control to let the polluted air out faster, his brow creased as he registered that a little red light had activated on the console. “What—” he began to say.
He got no farther. The door banged open, and a fuschia stallion glared in from the doorway. “Professor Query,” he growled.
“Ah,” said the Doctor. “Commander Hurricane, hello, didn’t expect to see you—”
The armored stallion stuck him with a gimlet eye and stepped inside the box, kicking the door shut after him. “— here…” the Doctor finished weakly. That really was a very large sword he was carrying.
Dash swooped down onto Ditzy’s front stoop. The chilly fall air made her fluff up her feathers against the breeze before her hoof met the door three times in rapid succession.
No reply. She hammered on the door again. Still nothing. She backed up a little, and registered for the first time that none of the lights were on inside the house. “Luna,” Dash muttered. “Is everypony out having a date night?”
“Nothing wrong with having a night out,” Lofty said, squinting up to see if there were any lights in the windows.
For a second, the memory of her own date night flashed through Rainbow’s mind, and she felt a pang of guilt. She stifled it. Applejack would understand, had to understand. She’d do the same for Apple Bloom, right? She flew quickly up above the house to perch on the roof. The height would help clear her head.
The thatched roof wasn’t exactly comfortable. The straw was itchy and it rubbed unpleasantly. But it would suffice. She stared up at the half-visible moon and let out a long breath. This didn’t come naturally to her. She wanted, needed to take action. Indecision, however, left her stalled. Scootaloo had run away from the truth, and Dash knew she couldn’t go on telling the kid the same old lies. So what did that leave her?
Lofty landed beside her. “Quiet night, now that it’s all died down at the castle.”
“Yeah. What d’you think that was?”
Lofty shrugged. “Probably some new crime against nature gone horribly wrong.”
“Safe bet, yeah.”
Lofty sat back. “So,” she said. “What are you going to tell her?”
Dash winced. “Yeah, I guess I kind blew up at her back there, didn’t I? I’ll tell Holiday I—”
“Not Holiday,” Lofty corrected. “What are you going to tell Scootaloo?”
Dash lapsed into silence. “I’ll tell her,” she said slowly. “I’ll tell her that she will fly, someday. Even if I have to call in every favor I’ve ever been owed, even if it means getting the princesses and Discord to help, even if it means I—” She cut herself off abruptly. “Lofty? The moon is over there, right?” She pointed to the glowing satellite sitting in front and to the right of her.
“Well, yes,” Lofty said, uncertain as to where she was going with this.
“Then why is the house casting a shadow towards it?”
She turned, half expecting to see Princess Luna; all of this was starting to feel kind of dream-like. Her mouth popped open as her eyes struggled to register what was actually there. It was shaped like the TARDIS, and sitting in the same place the blue box could usually be found, but the TARDIS had never been the bright white color of cloudstuff. It looked like a hole, cut out of the world itself. Before she quite knew what was happening, she stood next to it, staring through it. She could see a city, old cloud buildings and pegasi milling about.
“Rainbow!” Lofty said, fluffing her feathers. “Come away from there! I don’t like the look of it.”
Fascinated, Dash reached out a hoof and tried to step through the portal, but she was stopped by some kind of invisible barrier. She peered closely at the image. Closer still. And then, suddenly, she saw something looking back at her.
A pegasus. Silver body, striated mane of purple and gold, eyes of violet. Cold, metallic eyes. It was looking at her. It was moving towards her. Dash wasn’t the sharpest thingy in the place, but there was nothing wrong with her instincts. She spread her wings, and burst skyward. “Go, go!” she yelled, and Lofty wasted no time obeying. But she could still feel those cold, unemotional eyes watching her flap frantically away from that hole in reality.
The Doctor stood very still as the Commander stormed towards him. The Time Lord’s mind was working furiously. The Commander wasn’t the most intelligent fellow, but he was steadfast, determined, and above all, skilled. He didn’t get the job done well, or quickly, but he always completed what he set out to do. And the Doctor knew that what Hurricane really wanted was for a certain Time Lord to face justice. The magenta pegasus drew up quite close to the Time Lord. “Where are they?” the military pegasus growled.
The Doctor blinked. “Sorry, what?”
“Take me to the Professor!” Hurricane demanded, voice rising. “Under legal code LXXIV of the Conquered Territories Decision, I demand to be taken to see your leader within five to seven business hours!”
The Doctor’s mouth opened and closed silently. “Um,” he said. Alright. Okay. Hurricane had no idea that the Doctor could regenerate. More to the point, he had no idea that the blue pegasus in the sweater-vest against whom he had sworn vengeance was the same being as the tan earth pony standing before him. “I think there must be some… misunderstanding,” he said slowly.
The Commander snorted. “I doubt that.”
“My name is Turner. Doctor Time Turner,” the Doctor continued levelly. “I’m the, er, ‘leader’ of this ship, I suppose. Also the only one aboard, but that’s neither here nor there. The main thing is, I’m the chap you want to talk to.”
The fuschia pegasus snarled and stepped forward. “You lie.”
“I don’t!” the Doctor replied, stepping backwards. “I know Query well enough. His ship and mine are quite similar, but they don’t look exactly the same. Mine’s taller, for a start, and more neatly painted. And the sign on the door is white, not blue.”
Commander Hurricane paused, considering this. “The roofs… are not identical,” he conceded.
“There you go, see? This isn’t the Professor’s TARDIS, and he isn’t aboard this one, either. Only me.”
The Commander cast a weather eye around the room. It was, he had to admit, completely different from the grim, vaulted chamber in which the Professor and his agitator associates had lived. However, a Commander of the Imperial Pegasus Army did not give up so easily. “Let us say that I accept your claim that the Professor is not on this… vessel,” he replied. “You still have confessed to knowing him. I demand you take me to him at once.”
The Doctor gave a strained smile. “I’d love to. Really. I really would love to see you knock the smug little grin off his face. Just one problem with that.”
“Problem?” the Commander raised a brow. “I see no problem. Either you take me to see the Professor, or I will see you thrown in prison.”
The Doctor paused. “Prison? In the clouds? How d’you intend for me to stay up there?”
“It is no concern of mine if you should happen to, quite by accident, fall through,” said Hurricane, a note of menace entering his tone.
“Ah,” said the Doctor. “If I could have leave to address the problem, then?”
“Speak on,” the pegasus said, wary.
The Doctor gestured to the control array. “I’ve crashed,” he said bluntly. “The TARDIS tried to do something quite impossible, and she’s not going to do a thing until I can fix her. That’s another…” he broke off, thinking. “Say, twenty-two hours before I can so much as hop down to the chemist’s, let alone chase after the most dangerously crafty one of us all.”
The pegasus flushed with anger, but the Doctor barrelled on. “On the other hoof, if I could be supplied with a decent cloudwalking charm, an assistant, and somewhere in the area of…” he glanced at the readouts on a very pink console. “Say, half a liter of mercury, I could cut that time down to around six hours.”
The Commander regarded him, indecisive. Then, he reached into the open console panel and pulled out a piece of machinery. “I am now going to have your box moved to a laboratory,” he said. “It would be unwise to try and take off with a broken… Tarr-diz.”
The Commander looked so triumphant that the Doctor didn’t quite have the hearts to tell him that all he’d managed to remove, in a nest of oxygen suppliers and gas controls, was the air conditioner. Instead, he said, “You will be sure to keep that part safe, won’t you? We’ll need that before we take off again.”
“Of course,” said Hurricane magnanimously, lifting his helmet and secreting the aircon beneath. “Your cloudwalking boots, lab and assistant, and mercury will be procured shortly, Doctor Turner. Roan thanks you for your aid in the capture of this dangerous criminal.”
“Yes. Capture. Quite,” said the Doctor drily. Fortunately, the Commander was immune to sarcasm.
“It is fortunate, I was only just now on my way to meet one of the Empire’s greatest scientific minds,” he said, a note of boasting sneaking into his voice. “I am certain that she will be able to easily comprehend the workings of this vessel.”
“Really? Well, I shouldn’t wonder,” the Doctor said. “What’s her name, then?”
“You will be working,” the Commander said, swelling with pride, “with Lieutenant Silver Pallas.” He cantered back out of the TARDIS, slamming the door shut in the process.
The Doctor stared. “Who?”
Twilight’s face was hidden behind a mask, the brilliant light of the oxyacetylene torch reflected in the small window of tinted glass. Sparks rained down on the armored form, which lay, dormant, on the operating table. At length, she flicked off the torch and raised her mask. The other three mares followed suit as the alicorn mopped her brow. “Ain’t ya broken through yet, Twi?” Applejack asked, squinting to see the cherry-red metal clearly.
“I’m afraid not,” said the princess glumly. “Whatever this metal is, it has a melting point higher than anything I’ve ever seen. This is a custom-made cutter, here. The gas is lit by dragonfire, which Spike supplied. Two minutes of superheated dragon’s flame would be enough to melt about a cubic meter of solid granite, let alone ten. But it just… isn’t melting.”
Sunset scratched her head. “If conventional study isn’t working, I could always try reading its mind,” she offered.
“You’re assuming it has anything like a mind,” Romana corrected. “Could you ever read a computer in that way? Particularly one that’s been switched off!”
“It’s worth a try,” the chaos spirit argued.
“Well, perhaps,” Romana conceded. “But I think that there’s another way of going about this.”
Twilight cocked her head. “Go on…”
“It reacted considerably more to being struck in its joints than anywhere covered with armor,” the Time Lady said, levitating up the leg which had gone ‘dead’ after first being hit. “If we tried to apply pressure there…”
“Then we might jes’ be able ta pull it apart,” Applejack said. “Alright, Ah’m game fer it.”
“Good,” Romana said with a slight smile. “Have any of you ever used a Christmas cracker? A Hearth’s Warming cracker, I mean.”
“Right,” said Romana, squinting a bit as she levitated the robot just a few centimeters above the table. “Are you two ready?”
Twilight nodded. “I think so,” Sunset agreed. “There was something similar on the other side of the mirror. Every Thanksgiving, after the feast, two people take the turkey’s wishbone and, uh, they snap it… and…” she glanced at Twilight, who was looking a little green. “You know what? Never mind. Let’s just pull this robot apart.”
“Yes please,” Twilight agreed quickly.
Applejack glanced first at one, then the other. “On yer marks, get set, GO!”
The metal pegasus’s forelimbs lit up, one in magenta, one in orange. The two mages reared back their heads and yanked . Fortunately, the spell-reflecting metal didn’t seem to cover the flexible joints, which appeared to be made of some sort of plastic, so it was possible to obtain a grip. They certainly needed it. Before too long, both magical prodigies were sweating, teeth grit and mouths grimacing. Sunset was quietly uttering human curse words under her breath, and Twilight had fallen flat on her flanks as she strained.
However, their efforts were not in vain. The black plastic of the joints began to stretch and turn white with the tension. “Keep it up,” Romana coached. “You’re almost there.”
Applejack, meanwhile, leaned closer to look at the joins. “Huh. Ah think there’s some kinda connecter under there,” she muttered, picking up a mallet. “Lessee what happens when Ah do this —”
The answer, as the quartet learned in the following instants, was that the arm at which Applejack had struck shot off like an arrow, catching Sunset square in the eye, while the bulk of the body was sent sprawling off more slowly in the other direction, crashing into Twilight.
“Oh,” said the farmer sheepishly, setting the mallet back on the table. “Sorry, there.”
“Flipping OW!” Sunset yelled, clutching at her face. “My fishing FACE!” she added, somewhat unnecessarily.
“Oh well, no harm done,” Twilight sighed, shoving the robot’s bulk off her.
“No harm done? No screaming harm done? Like YAY there’s no harm done!” Sunset shouted, really being a little whiner about the whole thing. “I think you blanking broke it! You broke my smiling face! You nearly took my pudding-damn eye out!”
“Well, at least now we can see inside the body,” Twilight said brightly. “What’s wrong, Romana? You look pale.”
The Time Lady was frozen, staring at the tableau. She quietly pointed at the table. Blood was splattered over it, and not all of it was from Sunset’s horrific injuries which stemmed from getting punched in the face with roughly the same force as a bullet.
“At least somebody can see I’m hurt,” Sunset muttered.
Injuries which she could easily repair using chaos magic.
She paused. “Oh. Right.” Her face exploded once, then reformed. Blinking with her newly-repaired eyes, she could now plainly see why the others had gone so very quiet. Dots of blood were sprayed over the operating table. They were thickest where Applejack had popped the robot’s arm, and tailed away after both body parts.
Slowly, Sunset lowered her gaze to the forehoof that still lay in her lap. A small red puddle was forming at the end. Her horn illuminated, and she pulled away the rubber coating of the joint. Out of the end of the metal, bone protruded out of bleeding muscle, thin silver circuitry cut into the flesh. “Oh,” said the draconequus quietly. “I see.”
She rose and carefully set the severed hoof on the table. “Excuse me, please,” she said with careful calm. “I think I'm going to be sick.” She stifled a sob, then vanished in a small explosion. Twilight remained staring at the body that she had shoved away from her, her face a tableau of blank horror.
I did not speak much for the rest of that meeting. I felt numb, as though I had been brushed by the hoof of King Midas, turned to solid gold. (A trophy. A prize won and then flaunted. Property.) I managed to excuse myself to the bathroom, and I plunged my head under the faucet. (That was how Midas had rid himself of the golden touch. He stood in a river and let the current wash it away. (It made a sort of sense; the river was too big, too fast to turn to gold, and the drops were too tiny.) (You can't stop running water by standing in it.))
I couldn't look in the mirror. I couldn't meet my own eyes, knowing what I did. Knowing what I had done. There was nopony I could tell, nopony who could know. If this got out, it would ruin both his career and mine. (Midas had had a later adventure, Scootaloo could remember. Given donkey ears by an angry god. (He could hide it, most of the time, with a big hat.) The only one he couldn’t hide it from was his barber) But how could I keep it in? How could I hide it, knowing what I did now? How could I leave Heat Wave without him spilling the beans? (The barber couldn’t keep it a secret forever (tragically, Midas had not had the foresight to evoke a Pinkie Promise from the man) and had dug a hole and whispered it into the earth. Reeds had grown up from the spot, all whispering in the wind “The king has asses’ ears, the king has asses’ ears.” Until the whole world knew. (Nothing spread faster than rumour (Gabby Gums had taught them that) especially if the rumour is true.))
It was then, with my face dripping and the sink running, that I heard the cry. A high wail, like a siren. (Twilight had faced sirens once. Their voices were hypnotic, compelling). I rose from the sink, as though entranced. (Classically, they fed on desire, lust even. (Scootaloo had always thought she’d be immune. Then Mom said, ‘oh look, it’s Rainbow Dash,’ and Scootaloo had whipped around, and they had both laughed…) but now they seemed to feed on animosity (which, Scootaloo supposed, were at least pretty connected).)
I walked into a little room, painted lilac. There was a little white wooden crib, and a mobile hanging overhead. (...)
Solar was already in there. The crying had stopped, or at least faded to a low whimper, and she was singing or hushing or murmuring, I can’t recall. And she was holding a baby. Maybe a year old, but certainly not much more. (...(What)...)
She turned and smiled at me. “Would you like to hold her?” she invited.
What could I do but nod? “What’s her name?” I whispered. (No)
“Our little Scootaloo.” (...)(!)
Scootaloo? Scootaloo, get back here! Scootaloo!
Scootaloo slowly blinked awake. “Wha,” she muttered.
“Oh, good,” said a familiar, chirpy voice, awash with relief. “You're awake.”
“Hrng,” Scootaloo muttered. The last thing she remembered was running into the changing rooms to confront the foalnapper, and then… “I haven't felt this bad since my first college party,” she remarked, gazing at the ceiling. “How long was I out?”
“Long enough to make me worry,” Ditzy said, her tone a note sharper.
“Nonsense,” said a new voice, cool and collected. “My pegasi were told only to incapacitate. They accounted for her condition as soon as they scanned for it, and as you yourself saw, Ms. Scootaloo, they are entirely capable of rendering a subject unconscious without leaving a mark.”
The orange pegasus sat bolt upright, wincing at the shower of fireworks that went off behind her eyes. “The Tartarus are you?” she asked, staring incredulously at the new mare.
“Scootaloo, this is the Rani,” Ditzy said, gesturing with a hoof. “She’s a Time Lady.”
“One of the Doctor’s people?” Scootaloo murmured, still dizzy.
The silver mare gazed at her dispassionately with painfully bright green eyes. “Much as it pains me to admit,” she muttered.
For the briefest moment, a frown flickered over Ditzy’s face, but it soon was gone. “She’s the one who brought us here,” the postmistress continued. “She detected us as anachronisms and decided she’d better take us in before we messed up the time stream.”
Scootaloo paused, processing this. “Do you mean take us in like, “here, have some tea and cookies,” or like, “take your swill and tack and go to the gulag?””
The Rani’s expression turned into a glower. “The answer may be dependent on how you choose to comport yourself,” she said coolly. “I have no desire to harm either of you, but I have no compunctions about locking you in one of the offices for an hour or so.”
“Well. You’re honest, at least,” Scootaloo said flatly.
The Rani made a noncommittal noise and turned to an alembic filled with bubbling silver liquid. “Also, you may be required to hide,” she added as an afterthought. “There are sufficient places for it. I am being…” her lip curled. “Inspected. By an oversight committee. In… perhaps half an hour. In the meantime, you mentioned tea. We have none, and the coffee is as bitter as calcium hydroxide. There is soda, if you would care for it.”
“Uh, yeah, sure. Sounds good,” Scootaloo said, slightly put off by the frankness.
“One for me, too,” Ditzy agreed.
The Rani opened a cabinet and pulled out a pair of bottles, not even glancing away from her experiment. She slid them down the counter with a flick of the wing.
Scootaloo opened hers cautiously. Ick. Grape. Still, she was pretty thirsty. She took a big swig and swallowed, making a face. Flat, too. Yech.
Ditzy nursed her soda, never once taking her eyes off the Rani. “Oversight committee, huh?”
The silver mare actually hesitated, her hooves resting on the knobs of the alchemical equipment. “Yes,” she said simply. “Your presence would draw… comments, at best. At worst, we might all be questioned. It is better for you simply to hide.”
Ditzy nodded. “Alright. Actually, we could probably just go back to the TARDIS. Could we borrow some mercury, actually? The fluid links—”
“Your TARDIS is being transported here even as we speak,” the Time Lady said in a measured tone. “My agents are spread all across the city. Apparently, Commander Hurricane has some manner of history with your husband.”
Ditzy went quite pale. “Fortunately,” the Rani soldiered on, “he does not seem inclined to act upon it, for now. The Doctor is safe enough.”
“Yeah, uh, hi,” Scootaloo cut in. “Still here. What exactly are these ‘agents’ of yours doing? ‘Cause, I’m pretty sure I saw them foalnap a guy. Where is he? What the Tartarus are you doing here, lady?”
The silver pegasus froze. “I,” she said flatly, “am serving my punishment here. Running a hospital, of sorts, under the cover of being a scientific advisor. That is all which I am prepared to say on the matter.”
“Punishment for what?” Scootaloo asked, suspicious.
The Rani tapped a hoof on the ground. “Show the mares to the side room,” she said coolly.
“Yes~,” buzzed a voice from behind Scootaloo. The orange pegasus jumped. She hadn’t even realized that the guards were still there. A golden stallion with silver eyes observed her with the air of one regarding a necessary piece of paperwork. “You will~ come wizz uz~,” he hummed.
Scootaloo grumbled under her breath, but rose to her hooves. “Alright, fine. But as soon as the TARDIS gets here, I want to stay in there.”
“Fine,” said the Rani, as the other two pegasi were escorted from the room. Dropping to a whisper, she continued, “The sooner you’re all out of my hair, the better.”
Rainbow peered doubtfully over the edge of her cloud. “You think we should head for the castle?” she hissed at Lofty.
The older mare gave her an incredulous look. “We’re running for our lives, and you want to head for the most noticeable thing in town?”
“The lights and sound stopped an hour ago,” Rainbow pointed out. “Twilight and the others might be hurt, in which case they need our help, or they might have beaten the robot, in which case we need theirs.”
“I really don’t know about this…”
“Look, we haven’t seen it at all since we left Ditzy’s house. We don’t even know if it made it through the portal. I think we can risk it.”
“Well…”
“Well, c’mon then!” Dash said. She spread her wings and soared for the glittering structure, not noticing how the moon reflected bright off her now-silver wings.
Romane Holiday trotted away from Tender Care’s house, head hung low. No, Scootaloo wasn’t hiding out with Button. No, neither of them had seen her at all. Yes, they’d certainly keep an eye out, but what was all this about? Holiday’s head sunk lower. She could feel the honey-beige mare’s worried eyes on her. Tender was always the sort to care deeply about this sort of thing. Holiday had always thought of the mare as a sort of mother to all things; not like Gaea, giving birth to all, but more a sort of modern Hestia, caring for all life, providing home and hearth for all whom she cared for.
A modern Hestia. What did that make Holiday herself? A modern Prometheus? Victoria Frankenstallion, pursued by a monster of her own making? She pursed her lips in a wan sort of pseudo-smile. Rambling again, Romane, she chided herself. Bad habit. Had she rambled on too long in the telling of her tale? Would it not have been better just to tell Scootaloo about her parentage? Not quite the truth, of course. It would have been enough, though. Enough to explain the truth.
Solar Flare was weak and ill. [Like Melanion, fated to die when a certain log in the fire burned to ash—[no, stop. You’re babbling again]] It was a sort of wasting disease, Romane had learned later. Something to do with the respiratory system. [She had learned more later, of course. When it became her responsibility. [Pegasus bones were hollow, made to house their excess lungs. They had to be tough to last. Scootaloo’s weren’t]]
It wasn’t contagious, of that she had been assured. But it was genetic. Scootaloo had the same disease. Neither mother nor daughter would ever be able to fly well, if at all. Their bones were brittle, and their lungs poor. It wasn’t fatal, not in and of itself, but it made the possibility of accidents far worse. [She’d nearly had a heart attack the first day Scootaloo came home from Crusading, all scrapes and bruises. They’d had to have a serious talk about safety pads and helmets after that. [But that was years ahead of the here and the now, [or the there and then.]]]
It had weakened her immune system, as well. There had been a nasty flu bug that year. She took supplements and medicines, a carefully-plotted schedule of care on hourly, daily, weekly frames. And still, despite it all, she smiled, bright and sunshiny, brimming over with kindness to all. Persephone in the Underworld, wed to a grim god, living in the realm of the dead. She was well into winter. Holiday knew it. Heat Wave knew it. Solar herself must certainly have known it, though she didn’t let on. Ultimately, she would never again pass into spring.
Twilight had begun to bustle around the lab again, picking up machines and devices only to set them down again, then pick them up again, then set them somewhere else. It was quite plainly a distraction tactic, but Applejack couldn’t blame her. Sunset and her, they might’ve been goddesses, or something dang near, but they’d never seen death quite like that before. Life on the farm was quite a different matter. It was a nasty shock, sure, and she was far from comfortable with the body lying on the table, but Applejack wasn’t a stranger to blood.
Romana, too, seemed remarkably collected. Applejack had to remind herself that the unicorn had been in a war, of course she’d seen blood, but it just didn’t click well with her worldview. The Time Lady had begun to pick over the corpse after she and Applejack had returned it to the table.
“We didn’t kill it,” she said with a detached air.
It took the other two mares a long moment to register what Romana had said. Twilight set down the machine she was holding. It was meant to let out a puff of smoke and then a brilliant flash of light. Instead, it let out a brilliant flash of light and then a puff of smoke. It was a disappointment. “Romana,” Twilight said kindly, though with a quiver in her tone. “I understand why you might want to say that, but we have to face the facts.”
“What’d’ya mean?” Applejack asked, leaning over the blue mare’s withers to peer at the body.
“He’s been dead for ages,” Romana said, a note of sadness in her voice. “Given a cursory inspection, I’d say there was some kind of toxin in his system. But the blood’s gone all congealed, and the muscles are… well, not in rigor mortis, exactly, some kind of lubricant’s seen to that. It’s the last word in ‘the lights are on, but nopony’s home.’ All his vital systems were being machine-run. Massively improved efficiency, of course, but he’s not been alive for some time, at least not by any definition I’d recognize.”
“Huh.” Applejack nodded. “Well, Ah’ll jes’ have ta take yer word fer it. Ah reckon you know more ‘bout this than me.”
Romana gave a grim little grin. “Yes, I think I just might,” she said ironically. “I’m afraid I can’t say how long he’s been dead. The corpse is the very definition of ‘disturbed’. But I can tell you for certain that he wasn’t alive when he attacked us earlier on.”
Twilight had gone pale. “But… if he wasn’t alive…”
“Why?” Applejack asked, frowning deeply. “Why would anypony do this to a body?”
Romana shrugged. “Could be any number of reasons, really. Might be some sort of misguided attempt to hold back death, or keep a loved one around… my bits, though, would be on the traditional ‘super-soldier’ standard. Converting flesh into metal, using machinery to keep vitals working…”
“That sounds incredible,” Twilight said, astonished. “That— it could revolutionize medicine, like some kind of… super-prosthetic!”
“Certainly,” said Romana. “The technology in this could have ramifications for virtually any injury; if it was applied correctly.”
Applejack rubbed at the metal exoskeleton. “Ah take it this ain’t a case of ‘correct’ medicine.”
“No,” Romana said. “It would have cured plenty, there’s no doubt there. But virtually none of the injuries or illness that it would help with are present. Obviously, I’d need much more study to tell for sure, but the muscles seem perfectly healthy, the bones are normal, even the air sacs seem utterly mundane.” She gestured to the revealed piece of pegasus bone at the end of the hoof. Inside of the hollow bone, one could just see the torn pieces of a respiratory system. Twilight felt an unpleasant heave in her stomach, but stifled it. “There are some toxin removal systems, from what I can detect, but they don’t seem to have done much good for the poor blighter.”
“Maybe they don’t cover whatever got ‘im,” Applejack suggested.
Romana flicked an ear, frowning. “Maybe. If I'm reading the symptoms correctly, it’s a very obscure poison, actually. I believe Celestia may even have suppressed knowledge of it. It would’ve been used quite a lot in ancient pegasus and unicorn courts, possibly by the earth pony tribes as well. But no, that doesn’t seem right. It should’ve filtered out the toxin regardless.”
She turned away and began to pace the length of the room. Twilight and Applejack fell into step behind her. “I don’t understand any of this,” Twilight said. “Why would anypony install so much unnecessary junk? Why would they come and attack my castle?”
“How did anything even get past all that armor ta kill him?” Applejack wondered. “Must be two centimeters thick! Come ta that, how’d we manage to shut him off? Ah wouldn't've put an off switch or nothin' on a life support system like that.”
Romana stopped dead in her tracks. “Ah,” she said. “I see.”
Twilight frowned. “See what?”
Applejack glanced back and gulped. “Uh, that, Ah bet.”
Twilight turned around. The creature was rising from the table on its three attached legs, slow but determined, wings outspread menacingly. “Okay,” she said, voice a few octaves higher than normal as she took a step backwards. “Time to leave.”
“I don’t think so,” Romana said grimly.
All three of them looked toward the door. The detached leg was standing there, quivering, sparks occasionally popping from the exposed innards. “Aw, shoot,” Applejack muttered.
“Hey, guys?” Twilight called, voice still pitchy. “Guys? We could really use some help in here~”
Her words, however, fell on no ears at all. The hallway outside the doors was long empty. The silver-armored cyborg observed them coldly from the table before taking a step forward and falling into a glide straight at the trio.
Commander Hurricane gave his subordinate a significant glare as she and the proconsul landed beside him in the research sector. “You’re tardy, Pansy,” he said curtly. “You were meant to arrive five minutes ago.”
The blue mare glanced at the blonde beside her, an imploring look in her eyes. “Apologies, Commander,” Cyclone said calmly. “Your aide-de-camp was helping me with a matter of my own. Our lateness is my fault, not hers.”
The commander’s tongue flapped in the air for purchase on a word, but failed. “Humph,” he said instead.
“Permission to speak, Commander Hurricane?” Pansy said, staring straight ahead.
The magenta stallion huffed. “Granted.”
“What is the nature of that box?”
Cyclone nodded. “Indeed. Is this the great development of our lead scientific advisor? If so, I find myself rather disappointed.”
Hurricane let out something that might have been a laugh, or possibly it was gas. “I wouldn’t be,” he said. “No. No, this is a new assignment for her. A small, personal matter, nothing with which I would trouble you, proconsul.”
Cyclone’s brows rose. “A personal matter? You, Hurricane? I didn’t expect it of you.”
He blushed, his face going even more pink and taut than was customary. “Yes, Proconsul. Awaiting disciplinary action, Proconsul.”
“I didn't say I would censure it,” Proconsul Cyclone said, raising a brow. “Merely that it seemed an uncustomary action.”
He stared blankly at her. Pansy nudged the proconsul gently. “You have to punish him. He’ll stand there all day if you don't.”
“Oh, very well,” Cyclone sighed. “Two hundred wing-ups, Hurricane, for… having a personal life?”
Pansy nodded once as the stallion fell to the ground and began his workout with a steady allegro cadence. “Thank you. It means a lot to him.”
Cyclone leaned in. “Exactly what is his problem?” she whispered. “Loyal soldiers are a great boon, but there is a limit…”
The blue mare made a moue with her lips. Cyclone smiled dopily at the adorable expression for the space of a moment before blinking back into focus. “It will go no further,” she promised.
Pansy smiled, slightly bitterly. “It already has,” she murmured. “Not all of it, and not all correct, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a soldier in Roan who didn't know why he’s so, um…”
“Anal-retentive?”
“Serious,” Pansy said smoothly. “It was Bapheus that did it to him.”
“Ah,” said Cyclone. That made a sort of sense. The lost battle with the earth ponies was a sore subject throughout the empire, and it had made her private talks with the advisors of the earth ponies and unicorns that much more awkward. Then, recalling further, she frowned. “Didn't that get him a promotion? He led the vast majority of the troops to safety.”
“It was…” Pansy paused delicately. “An awakening. To lose, and to then be rewarded for it. To fail, and get a promotion. Ever since, he’s been obsessed with it all. I think he thinks that if he relaxes too much, it’ll come down around his ears.”
“It broke the rules, to his mind,” the proconsul mused. “And so, he must follow them perfectly, or else somepony will realize he's not meant to be— mmph!”
Pansy had shoved an entire hoof into the grey mare’s mouth. She quickly removed it. “Sorry, Proconsul. But you mustn't say that where he can hear you.”
Cyclone wiped her mouth. “Yes, I see. Foolish of me. Still, let's have fifty wing-ups from you, Private. Can't go around striking higher-ranking officials.”
Pansy nodded once, then hurled herself to the ground. As she and the Commander continued with their punishment, Cyclone turned to peer down the street. A violet stallion stared back for a second before continuing onwards, turning into a nearby building. The proconsul’s forehead furrowed further as she reflected on the events of the day thus far. Her one eye flicked briefly toward the lab building. Things seemed unlikely to grow any less strange anytime soon.
The two pegasus mares sat side-by-side on the wall. “Are you alright?” Ditzy asked.
Scootaloo failed to respond, her eyes glazed. “Uh?”
“Okay, I’m taking that as a ‘no,’” Ditzy said, placing a hoof against the orange mare’s forehead. “You aren’t warm, but you might want to lie down, anyway. Your aunts—”
“So, what about this ‘Rani’?” Scootaloo interrupted. “Do you trust her?”
That stopped Ditzy short. “Well, I don’t really know,” she said. “She knows the Doctor. That should count for something.”
Scootaloo’s lip curled. “So did that ice thing that nearly dropped him and Dinky off a cloud. I don’t think ‘knowing the Doctor’ says much about anypony.”
“She knows the Doctor… and she hasn’t tried to kill us?” Ditzy tried.
The younger mare thought about that. “Okay, yeah, that’s a point her way,” she conceded. “Sweet Celestia. We actually use things like ‘they haven’t tried to kill us’ to determine whether we should trust somepony. What are our lives?”
Ditzy didn’t reply. Scootaloo glanced over and saw that the mare was crying. “Uh, Ditzy?”
“I worry about him,” Ditzy said quietly. “Or… them? He always seems to go for ‘him’ now, but he didn’t always, I think. And that's the thing. I don't really know what he is, or what he's seen or done beyond what he talks about which is… so little. He’s my best friend, and I don’t know a tenth of who he is, what he’s done. He talks and he talks, but sometimes it seems like he doesn't say anything at all. And maybe it's silly worrying about somepony that's literal centuries older than you, but I do.”
She took a deep breath. Scootaloo stared at her, silent. “Sometimes, when we're snuggled up in bed, I can see his dreams,” the grey mare murmured. “I don't remember much about them, but they're beautiful and terrible and sometimes I wake up smiling and laughing, and other times I’m so sad and afraid I can’t even open my eyes. And then I ask about it, and he just laughs it off, but…”
She let out a sigh of irritation. “I just want to help him,” she said plaintively. “But how can I, when he won't even admit there's a problem?”
Scootaloo worried at her lower lip. “I dunno,” she admitted. “Maybe this is just something he has to get through alone.”
The grey mare’s face scrunched into a scowl. “You're as bad as he is,” she said indignantly, crossing her hooves. “Problems only get lighter once you’ve shared them with somepony.”
“Ah, yes, but then you’ve just dumped a bunch of weight on another pony,” Scootaloo said, raising a hoof. “Not very nice.”
“I'm trying to have a serious conversation with you, Scootaloo!”
“Yeah, well I’m trying to subtly avoid it, and look at how well that's working out!” Scootaloo sprang to her hooves, wings buzzing, and glared at the older mare.
“I want to help you!”
“You wanna help the Doctor!”
“I want to help both of you! It's a metaphor or something!” Ditzy shouted.
There was a sharp rap at the door, and both pegasi turned. A gleaming silver eye gazed dispassionately back at them. “I think we’re being asked to pipe down,” Scootaloo muttered, sitting down once more.
“I think you’re right,” Ditzy agreed, calmer now. “That inspection team must have arrived.”
They sat in silence for a long moment.
“I will never be able to fly.”
Ditzy glanced at Scootaloo, but made no further comment. “There’s this… disease,” she went on. “You knew about that, yeah? My bones aren’t as hard as they should be, my wings are tiny , and my immune system is lousy. I thought I could beat it. I thought I would be the one. I was wrong. It killed my mom, and it’s grounded me for life.”
Ditzy frowned. “What are you talking about? Holiday and Lofty are both still alive.”
“Yeah.” Scootaloo didn’t look away from the door. “But my mom isn’t.”
The three soldiers regarded the mare with varying degrees of concern. Cyclone observed her with a weather eye, as if sizing up who might win in a fight. It might come to that. The possibility was remote, but present. Pansy eyed her warily. It had always been her fate to be a natural prey animal, and the scientist was throwing off alpha-predator vibes like ozone off a lightning strike. Hurricane was the only one, unusually enough, to greet the scientist with a grim, but honest, smile. “Lieutenant Pallas.”
“Sir.” Her bearing was as straight and polished as a pike as she gave a sharp salute.
“At ease.”
Her wing snapped back to her side with mechanical precision. With her silvered coat and unnaturally crystalline eyes, the propraetor briefly entertained the idea that there might be some truth to the old legends of pony-made warriors of metal. The bronze griffon giant Talons would be scarcely a stretch. “Propraetor. It is an honor to make your acquaintance at last.”
“Indeed.” Cyclone said no more, and the lieutenant turned her attention to the other mare.
“Which makes you Private Pansy.”
“Ma’am.”
Pallas might have lowered her head in recognition, or else she might have blinked. “Let us waste no more time,” she said, opening the door to her laboratory.
Cyclone raised her one visible brow and seemed ready to deliver a biting remark, but she stifled it at the last moment. “I do hope that what you have for us is impressive, Lieutenant,” she said instead.
“You need not worry, proconsul.” She paused, eyeing the big blue box appraisingly. “There are things in this lab which you never dreamed possible.”
“Lieutenant, about this box—”
“Leave it for now,” she said, turning away. “I will have my assistants bring it inside momentarily. The old fool’s run aground again, then.”
Hurricane’s mouth flapped for a moment before resealing into its usual grim, hard line. “It would appear so. You have met before, then?”
“You might say that,” Pallas said drily, trotting back into the building.
Hurricane made to follow her, but a hoof fell on his withers. He turned around to meet the propraetor’s sole golden eye. “Commander. I do not like having secrets kept from me. However, I will tolerate it on grounds that you swear to me that this box poses no threat to the safety of this city or its people.”
Hurricane nodded. “On my ancestors,” he said.
She knew what she had to say, for her people, for her city. That didn’t mean she had to like it. “On your rank , Commander.”
A beat. “I swear, Proconsul, that this box and its contents will not harm the empire.”
One golden eye scrutinized his face. “Very well, Commander. I will trust your judgement on this.”
“Thank you, Proconsul.”
She watched him trot inside. She prayed to Jupiter and Mars that her trust was not placed in vain.
The inside of the lab was much tidier than the streets outside. Proconsul Cyclone approved. She liked when things were neat and tidy. She watched with mild interest as the Lieutenant walked the three of them through prototypes of corrugated armor designed to be less brittle and lighter, as well as plans for mechanized projectile launchers. She demonstrated chemicals that could repel blood and resist corrosion. She explained her idea for a collapsible spear.
Cyclone glanced at her two companions to see what they thought of all this. Unsurprisingly, Pansy looked slightly terrified. Hurricane’s reaction was more than a little unexpected, though. The Commander looked impatient. Were he a little less rigid, he might even be scowling. “Commander,” Cyclone said sharply. “Have you a comment to make?”
“The box,” Hurricane said at last. “It is vital to the success of my mission that you help repair the box.”
Both of Pallas’ eyebrows shot up. “Vital to the success? Is that what he told you?” She let out a contemptuous laugh. “He wishes.”
Cyclone scowled. “Right. I want one or the other of you to tell me exactly—”
“Um, Lieutenant Pallas? I’m here for that test you mentioned…” Siege Warfare trailed off when he saw not only the Lieutenant, but also the Proconsul, Commander Hurricane, and some other soldier staring back at him. “Not a good time?” he guessed weakly.
The Lieutenant sighed, poisonous green eyes narrowing. “Wait for me in room twenty-three. I will arrive for the test with all due speed.”
Hurricane crinkled his muzzle. “You are to finish your demonstration of the present projects first, Lieutenant. After which, there is still the matter of the blue box…”
“What is this test?” Cyclone asked, frowning.
Silver Pallas frowned. “It is… a step forward in a process which is already well known. If it succeeds, that could be potentially interesting for science and useful for armorsmiths, but if it fails then it will be swept aside.”
“I should like to watch this test,” Cyclone said.
“That would be inadvisable.”
“Do you refuse your leader, Lieutenant?”
“Not at all, propraetor. I merely advise caution. You are, as you say, the leader of this city, and among the most influential pegasi alive today. I run the risk of serious injury or even death in this experiment. There is no reason for you to face those same risks, and I cannot in good conscience allow you to do so.”
Propraetor Cyclone started to speak but stopped herself. “I understand,” she said simply. “Very well, Lieutenant. Proceed with your demonstration, and once you have completed it, you are free to continue with your experiments in whatever order you see fit.”
“Thank you, Propraetor.”
And I, Cyclone thought to herself, will continue my observations in a less official capacity.
***
Ditzy narrowed her eyes at Scootaloo. She was a clever filly, and a worthy opponent in this game. It would take all of her guile to defeat her in this round. “I spy with my little eye,” she began, glancing around the room, “something beginning with ‘c’.”
Scootaloo didn’t even look up from where she lay on the floor, head resting on her forehooves. “Clouds.”
Ditzy smacked the ground. “Darn. You’re too good at this game.”
“There’s nothing here but clouds,” Scootaloo pointed out. “Clouds and a door. That’s literally it.”
“...That’s true,” Ditzy sighed, sitting back. “We could play ‘I’m going to Canterlot’.”
Scootaloo flopped over on her back and let out a loud, long, low groan.
There was a sharp rap at the door, and a guard glared in at them both. Ditzy raised a hoof, grinning sheepishly, and mouthed ‘sorry’. The robot guard turned away again.
“Look, we can either play games or talk about your feelings. You pick.”
“Can I just die instead?”
“No.”
“Ugh. I’ve told you everything I know, everything Aunt Holiday told me. There’s no more.”
“There’s no more that you were told,” Ditzy corrected. “But what about you? What did you take from all of this?”
Scootaloo squeezed her eyes shut. “Why did you run, Scootaloo?”
***
I couldn’t face them (Scootaloo said). Maybe it was stupid, or selfish, or both, but I had to do it.
(Medusa had betrayed the trust of her goddess (defiled her temple with a rival god, not Jupiter for a change, but his brother, Neptune).)
They had just told me that I had been living a lie, told me what my dad was really like, who my mom really was, and I just-- couldn’t take it. So I ran away, as far and as fast as I could.
(Medusa had snakes for a mane, and tusks like a boar, and a face that could turn any living thing to stone (Was that how Scootaloo looked now?) (It’s how she felt).)
And I came to you. And the Doctor. Because I wanted, I needed to go back. I needed to see it for myself, see the truth this time. (Make sure that it was the truth this time.)
(Reflection was a dangerous thing, be it through mirrors or the mind. The last thing Medusa would have seen was her own face, gruesome(ly surprised), staring back at her before a great big sword whacked it off.)
And I wanted to go and warn her, maybe, to not fall for him. I wanted to chase him out of town, show his wife the monster he really was.
(Medusa’s head had been raised up in front of a wicked king and his courtiers, who all were turned to stone. The hero saved his mother from the clutches of the king. (Medusa didn’t care. She was like, super dead))
But then I thought about Aunt Holiday and all the time she spent studying here, and how much she loved it here, and how she gave up so much to come to Ponyville and raise me instead of keeping her position at the university. How much more did she love me, then? What have I done?
(But out of Medusa’s body, two new lives were created; one was a seapony made of gold, and the other was Pegasus (who earned the capital letter and no shakes about it)(Did they ever weep over their mother’s death? Did they ever curse the name of he who slew her?(Did they ever get their revenge?)). Reflection can be a terrible thing, but it can also birth great wonders)
“And that’s what caused all of this,” Scootaloo said. “I got distracted and got us lost in time and space. So, uh, my bad.”
Ditzy nodded thoughtfully. “So, what now?”
“...I dunno,” Scootaloo admitted. “I love Aunt Holiday and Auntie Lofty, but knowing that they lied to me like this? I…” she broke off as the door opened.
A bronze mare entered, holding a long spear and a large rectangular shield. She gestured to indicate that the two mares should go sit in the corner.
Ditzy had to drag Scootaloo up on her hooves first, but both pegasi eventually did as they were told.
Then, four more soldiers entered, walking in a rectangular formation. Held aloft like a sedan chair by their combined efforts was the TARDIS, tipped on its back. The four bearers set it down, and all five hippodroids left abruptly.
Ditzy rushed to the TARDIS as soon as the cell door had slammed shut. “Doctor?” she asked, tapping frantically at the timeship. “Are you in there? Doctor, let us in, plea— WHOA!”
That last part came as the doors opened inwards, sending Ditzy falling through and sliding along the floor of the ship, gravity shifting as she fell. The Doctor ran over to her. “Ditzy! Are you alright? You haven’t been hurt, have you? How did Hurricane know you were involved with me?”
“I’m fine, thanks for asking,” Scootaloo called. She was too short to reach the TARDIS door, turned as it was on its back, and had to content herself with pulling herself up to the ledge and peering in as best she could. Ditzy hurried back over and hauled her inside. It was an odd sensation, like she was being pulled in four directions at once.
“We’re both fine,” Ditzy said. “A little… distressed, maybe, but fine.”
“Right. Thank heavens,” the Doctor said, relaxing slightly. “But, right, how did Hurricane know to bring you here?”
Scootaloo and Ditzy exchanged glances. “Hurricane who?” Scootaloo asked.
“Wait.” Ditzy said frowning. “Silver said you had some kind of beef with Commander Hurricane. Is that who you mean?”
“Well, it’s more he has a beef with me. I'll explain later.”
“Yes, you will,” Ditzy said, raising an eyebrow.
“Now, who exactly is this ‘Silver Pallas’? Hurricane mentioned them, but didn’t really specify.”
“Oh! That’s right!” Ditzy lit up. “Doctor, we met another Time Lord!”
“Time Lady,” Scootaloo corrected.
“Semantics,” the Doctor said, staring at Ditzy intently. “Least as far as us Gallifreyans are concerned. But Ditzy, you’re sure about this?”
“She told us herself! She said she knew you. Um, she doesn’t seem to like you much.”
“That really doesn’t narrow down the list at all,” the Doctor said flatly. “Well, not much.”
“She said her name was ‘the Rani,’” Scootaloo said. “What’s a Rani?”
The Doctor's face sagged. “Oh, you’ve got to be joking,” he said, running for the door.
“Doctor! Wait, remember the—”
“Clouds? Don’t worry, I’ve got cloud-walking boots now!" He wiggled his hooves at her. "C’mon, we’ve got to go stop the Rani! Allons— WAH!”
Ditzy winced. “Gravity. I was going to say, remember the gravity.”
“Ah,” said the Doctor, face buried in the clouds. “Thank you, Ditzy.”
The metal pegasus was closing in on them fast. Romana lit her horn and dove. A moment later, a wall of light slammed Applejack and Twilight to the ground. The armored assailant swept harmlessly overhead, turning to circle around for round two as Romana released the other two mares. “Scatter!” she shouted.
Scatter they did, Twilight to the left, Applejack to the right, Romana right back for the table. The leg hopped after Romana and the rest of the body soared for Twilight, apparently thinking to take out what they perceived as the biggest threats. However, in doing so, they left the door unguarded. Applejack doubled back and raced for the door, slamming down the button that controlled it. Slowly, the crystal door rolled upwards. “C’mon! Everypony out!” Applejack shouted.
Unfortunately, she was the only one in a position to escape. Twilight was backed up against a table of test tubes, and Romana was standing on the bloody dissection table, while the disembodied leg hopped around angrily. “You know, I’m not sure this thing actually has any capability to harm me,” she observed.
The dismembered limb lashed out at one of the table legs, making the whole thing quake and putting a dent in the metal. “I stand corrected!” Romana shouted.
Twilight grabbed a flask off the table and hurled it at the approaching robot. The pale blue liquid inside hissed and fizzed on contact with its shiny metal coat, but had no other effect. It slid over its body to the ground, mingling with the blood that was continuing to drip slowly from its leg socket.
Twilight bit her lip, grabbed a test tube, and splashed its contents up the gaping wound. The creatures eyes went bright, almost white with shock, and Twilight took the opportunity to push past it and make for the door. It stumbled after her. The leg, too, fell to the ground, writhing. Romana leaped over it and raced for the door. “Applejack, start closing it!” she yelled, picking up the leg in her aura and beating the robot over the head with it.
“Hey, why are you hitting yourself? Huh? Stop hitting yourself! Stop hitting—”
The robot reached up and grabbed it leg out of Romana’s control, sending her reeling. The sensation was akin to expecting another step at the top of the stairwell and finding an abyss instead. She recovered quickly, but it was all the advantage the metal pegasus needed. It was on her in a flash, sending her sprawling back against a table. It raised a hoof, ready to deliver the killing blow.
Suddenly, however, it found that it couldn’t move its forehoof. Romana looked past the hippodroid and saw Twilight sweating, straining to keep a grip on the creature’s joints. The Time Lady lit her own horn and grabbed on as well. “I'll push in, you pull out,” she said through gritted teeth.
Twilight winced, but nodded. There was a faint but visible shift in the patterns of light over the robot’s joints, and a faint creaking sound filled the room. It thrashed about, desperate to get away, but the two mares kept a firm grip. Applejack trotted up to it. She set down her hat and bowed her head. “Ah’m right sorry ‘bout this. But y’all are dead. It’s time you acted like it.”
So saying, she turned and delivered a debilitating kick to its core. Its torso popped out with a sickening noise, leaving its limbs hanging in the air like some sort of bizarre, disturbing puppet.
Twilight let them drop, shuddering deeply and breathing erratically. The head bounced off the ground, and the lights in its eyes went out. This time, it was for good. She turned away, her face pale and her skin clammy. Romana said nothing. In the end, what was there to say?
“Did you notice,” Twilight said with false brightness, “that the leg was disabled when I attacked the rest of it? That might be an important clue to how this being perceives—”
She was interrupted by a knock at the door. Three short raps. There was a moment, and it came again, louder this time. Knock knock knock.
Applejack glanced at the other two. “Ya don’t reckon…”
“Why not?” Minuette asked, voice hushed. “If one of them exists and can get in here, why not more?”
Knock knock knock.
“Do we open it?” Twilight whispered, staring at the door, transfixed. “I— I don’t know if I can do that again.”
Romana drew herself up. “We’ve got to,” she said. “After all, we aren’t the only ponies in this building. Any of them could come under attack next.”
Twilight grimaced, but nodded. She gestured to the door. Applejack hit the button, and it began to rise again. They formed a loose semicircle around the door, preparing to fight. As the door drew up into the ceiling, they could all see the form of a pony on the other side. The figure stepped through into the light, revealing a cream-colored coat and a blue and pink mane.
Bonbon scowled at them all. “Well, it’s about time you answered,” she snapped. “Come on, you’re going to need to see this.”
Holiday trudged her way back up the drive and up to her front door. The lights were out. She must be the first one back. She fumbled in her pocket for the key and unlocked the door. Inside, everything was dark. The shelves of books and artifacts blotted out much of the moonlight.
She patted the wall blindly, searching for the switch. When she finally flicked it on, there was a brief frisson of blue magic overhead. This was an old house, after all. Not everything worked the way it ought to. She lay back on the sofa, finally letting the exhaustion of the day wash over her. Her eyes fluttered. Perhaps she could get a little rest before Lofty and Rainbow returned. They could all work out their next step then. Yes. Just a little rest…
After the funeral, Holiday had thought that Heat Wave would— would what? Propose to her? Leave her alone? Repent his adultery? [She wasn’t sure, even now, which one she expected [if she expected anything at all]][She wasn’t sure if she ever believed it.] Instead, he became more unpredictable, more amorous, and more violent.
[Danaë was a princess, the daughter of a brutal king who desired only a son. He kept her locked away in a cell, fearing a prophecy that spelled his doom; one that said he would die by the hand of his daughter’s son.]
She had long since worked out that she was far from the only mare he dallied with, but the one time she’d threatened to leave him, to reveal him, he’d laughed and told her that she would be the one who was remembered as the mare who slept with a married stallion, seduced him away from his frail and dying wife. [She felt a spark of fury at that -- Solar had been among the kindest of mares, clever and caring, and Heat had simply discarded her. Treated her like property [as Holiday was slowly realizing he was doing to her.]] Nopony, he told her, would ever believe she hadn't known.
She kept her silence.
[Danaë spent many long months languishing in her cell beneath the earth. But Jupiter saw her, and he desired her. He came to her in the form of a shower of gold [the old pervert], and nine months later, she gave birth [alone, afraid] to a bouncing baby boy. She kept him quiet and content for days, weeks, Jove knows how long [or did he? Did he even remember Danaë by then?[Give evidence to support your claims]], but eventually, something had to slip out.]
Everything came to a head when she walked in to find him in bed with another mare [It is one thing to know, another to see with your own eyes]. She ran away, tears in her eyes. [Where could she run that he would not find her? Where could she hide that he had not seen? Where had she been where he had not kissed her, had not held her, had not caressed and possessed her?]]
[Danaë and her son, Perseus, were cast out to sea in a wooden chest, for the king would not sully his hands directly with their murder.] [He knew they would drown. [But it is one thing to know, another to see with your own eyes.]]
Not long after that, Heat left the university. Left town. [Holiday heard gossip about a mare who had slept around with a married stallion whose wife had just died. [She remembered thinking how easily it could have been her.]] But he left one thing behind [aside from a job, a house, and a string of broken hearts and shattered lives]; Scootaloo. Holiday couldn’t let the filly be lost in the foster care system. She deserved better than that. So she adopted the infant pegasus herself, and left the university not long after.
[She explained that she wanted to leave and build a family. She hadn’t been lying. But she also couldn’t face the truth of what had come before any longer. She had to leave the university behind.]
[When Danaë reached land at last, when she was taken in by King Dictys, could she ever look at the sky again? Could she ever hear thunder, see gold without being reminded of that short, torrid affair? [Small wonder she had reservations about marrying a king.]]
Holiday sat up with a jolt. Some electric sensation had swept the room. The lights flickered for a moment, then did nothing more. She looked around, confused, pushing aside a pile of pictures. She didn’t notice that there was a lot more silver, gold, bronze, and purple in those pictures than there ever had been before.
Propraetor Cyclone had bid Hurricane farewell after requesting and receiving the loan of his aide-de-camp for the rest of the afternoon. As she watched Private Pansy’s face go red and split open into a massive grin, she felt a twinge of regret about what she was about to do.
“So,” Pansy said as she fluttered after Cyclone. “Er, do you want to go off and be devoted companions?”
Cyclone clucked her tongue. “Pansy, you are sweet, but you lack poetry. Devoted companions indeed! I’ve heard that euphemism more times than you’ve had to practice formations.”
Pansy squeaked an apology and hid her face in her wing. “At any rate, no. Though, if the promise of going to bed later will help to persuade you…”
Pansy went white. “Or not,” Cyclone said quickly. “We can go to my private gardens and feed the birds, should you prefer it.”
“I’d like that,” Pansy said quietly.
“I am glad of that. We will sit together in my gardens, you and I, and look upon the glories of all the heavens. Under the stars, we shall lay looking upon the constellations. I shall perhaps put a wing around you, should you grow cold, and if you feel a chill still… ah, but that is later. This is now. And now, we are going to sneak around the back of the building and see exactly what our Lieutenant Pallas is hiding from us.”
Pansy stared at her, dazed by all the sudden, conflicting emotions. Finally, she settled on her default; terror. “You, you mean you want to spy on her?” she squeaked.
Cyclone glanced around, suddenly struck by terror herself. Powerful though she was, she had enemies. Enemies who wouldn’t be above hurling accusations of espionage at her. Enemies who would love nothing more than to put her out of power permanently. “I am going,” she said with a markedly more reserved tone, “to continue my scheduled observations of Silver Pallas’s progress, while taking precautions to protect my person against the risks she warned of. Do you understand me, Private?”
“I… think so, yes.”
“You think so?”
“I… Yes, Propraetor.” She saluted sharply.
“Excellent. Then let’s get back there, shall we?” She spread her wings and extended a hoof.
Pansy took her hoof. "Let's."
The Rani opened the door to her secret laboratory, which was cunningly disguised as a non-secret laboratory with nothing going on in it. She didn’t even keep the door locked. Remove all sense of mystery from something, and people will glance over it as though it weren’t there. For the same reason, she had hidden around the base a number of poorly-concealed safe-vaults containing baking soda volcanoes, potato clocks, and containers of dyed oil and water. She was quite satisfied with how her new security measures had turned out. Almost a dozen pegasi had broken into her science-fair-fare vaults and made off with delightful do-at-home experiments designed to teach children about density, electricity, or chemical reactions.
She derived no small amount of humor from the knowledge that a handful— she refused to use the colloquialism ‘hoofful’— of researchers were even now trying to design a vinegar-and-baking-soda-powered explosive to use against the unicorns. The faintest hint of a smile crossed her muzzle, but she made an effort to repress it. She was going to be speaking with an inferior, and smiling had no place in that sort of conversation.
She pulled on a lever, and immediately, the table burst into flames. She quickly flew up and smacked the cloud ceiling, sending down a cascade of water. “Why do we even have that lever?” she grumbled, pulling the lever that sat right next to the first.
The perception filter on the room flickered and faded, revealing a large box made of clouds, bronze, and iron, set with a pane of semi-reflective glass in the front. Siege Warfare stood beside it, his eyes hollow. “Report,” the Rani said, staring in through the glass.
“The, the subject is prepared, Lieutenant,” Warfare said, looking down at his hooves.
“And you have warmed up the machine?”
“I… yes, Lieutenant.”
“You have a question?”
“Lieutenant Pallas,” Warfare said, looking up at last, “I’ve never seen this machine before. I’ve never been in this room. So how did I know where to go and what to do? Why do I feel I’ve done this all before? Why—”
He stopped abruptly as the Rani took his head in both hooves and forced him to meet her gaze. “Forget about it,” she said shortly.
She released him as his eyes went foggy and he fell back to the ground. Psychological tricks were all well and good, but sometimes, the old-fashioned way was just what was called for.
The Rani leaned over the controls and spoke into a crude microphone. “Are you ready?” she asked.
There was a long pause. “Yes,” the answer came at last. “All ready.”
The Rani pressed a silver button inset on the console, and the machine rumbled to life. The light inside grew brighter, enabling the Time Lady to see for the first time who was inside. The green charioteer, his makeup smudged, squinted in the sudden brightness. Around him, the clouds began to swirl in odd patterns. The stallion threw his head back and screamed in agony as the nanites in the clouds swarmed over him. The Rani quickly turned off the receiving microphones. She didn’t want any loud noises or other distractions to prevent her from observing the transformation— the metamorphosis— the upgrade in full. It had nothing to do with the sound reawakening bad memories best left to scab over. Nothing at all to do with the War.
Patches of shiny bronze began to appear on his coat, forming what might, at a glance, have been mistaken for exceptionally well-fitting armor. Which in some ways, the Rani supposed, it was. His wings expanded into great, graceful limbs, more akin to those of a griffon. His tail was bound in purple-colored metal, and his mane soon matched. As the bronze worked over his face, he blinked once, twice, before his eyes were covered over with a mineral film. A bright golden glow illuminated the space on his face where his eyes had been. The Rani nodded once. To all appearances, at least to the extent that she could see from her current vantage, the test had been completely successful. She leaned over the microphone. “Subject, your conversion has been completed. Exit the machine and report.”
The metal pegasus nodded, a short, sharp motion, and made for the door. It wouldn’t open. The Rani frowned. Was the automatic door she’d installed malfunctioning? She hit the emergency override button. Still nothing.
“I wouldn’t waste my time,” a cold male voice said from behind her.
The Rani stiffened. “Doctor,” she said, turning to face him. “I wondered when you’d come back and start meddling aga—” her words died on her lips. The Doctor, as expected, stood before her, pompous and self-righteous as ever. She had expected that. She hadn’t expected that Scootaloo and Ditzy, looking respectively awestruck and horrified, would be standing right beside him.
“What are you up to this time, Rani?” the Doctor challenged, stepping forwards. There was a faint buzzing coming from right behind his left ear. “Sucking the life out of poor innocents? Turning them into your own personal army? Ditzy and Scootaloo told me how you kidnapped them and that poor charioteer in there. Give me a reason, one good reason, why I shouldn’t dissolve the floor right out from under us and let all your twisted work fall to the earth?”
The Rani blinked at him. “Well, for one, you don’t have wings,” she said. “Your young companion would also meet an unfortunate end, and in the process you would break apart all of my safety features, resulting in the uncontrolled spillage of nanites, unstable chemicals, and Time Lord technology across the landscape.”
That, she was pleased to see, shut him up quite nicely. “If you’ve quite finished making idle threats,” she said coldly, “perhaps you wouldn’t mind listening to what I’ve been doing here and why? You are part of the noblest and most respected Chapters on Gallifrey. You could at least attempt to appear civilized.”
“I,” said the Doctor. “Er.”
“I’ll take that as agreement,” the Rani replied. She pointed to a table. “Sit.”
Slightly cowed, the Doctor did as he was bade. Scootaloo followed suit, leaving only Ditzy glaring at the scientist. The Rani’s face softened. “Please sit,” she said. “I promise that I will explain everything, but only if you will listen to me.”
Ditzy kept up her glower for a few moments longer, but sat down as requested.
“Thank you,” said the Rani. “You may now begin describing your concerns. One at a time, please.”
“You blew out that poor pony’s mind!” Ditzy snapped.
The Rani blinked. “Who, Warfare?” She nudged him with a hoof, and he giggled, rolling over and batting at the air with his hooves. “Not at all. I merely hid his memories of this location and anything he may have witnessed here. A simple post-hypnotic command.”
“You didn’t need to do that,” the Doctor said, regaining some of his earlier coolness.
“Oh, I’m sorry, I forgot that this mockery of the Roman Empire has an internship program that specializes in the sciences,” the Rani shot back. “Sgt. Warfare is in many ways a useless assistant, but he was remarkably easy to train.”
“Well, why did you come here if you dislike it so much?” the Doctor demanded. “What sort of nasty experiment are you brewing this time, Ushas?”
“Do you really think I’d be here if I had the choice?” the Time Lady snapped, rounding on the Doctor. “Would I willing take a post, a military post no less, at the backwash of technological development if I had the option?”
The Doctor glowered. “You ran a bath house in rural England during the Luddite Rebellion to steal the ability to sleep from innocent people, and you destroyed them.”
“An unfortunate side effect, I agree,” the Rani.
“Side effect? Side effect? You killed them?”
“They turned into trees!" the Rani snapped. "Trees are technically still living, even if they are -- ugh -- plants . Anyway, that’s scarcely the point. I had my lab with me there, recording devices, computers, Zero Room. The most advanced technology here is smelted brass and whatever enables these creatures the ability to walk on clouds, which I can’t even properly investigate because as I may have mentioned, I have no equipment. ”
“Yet you managed to turn several pegasi into mindless drones.” You could have cut glass with Ditzy’s voice.
The Rani pursed her lips. “Fine. I correct myself, I have exactly enough equipment to do that . This isn’t a choice I made for myself. It was an… assignation.” The last four syllables left her mouth like spoiled goat milk.
“By whom?”
The Rani rolled her eyes and laid her hoof on the table, all but breaking the cloud counter. A bracelet, matching her silver coat, was wrapped around her hoof, though perhaps ‘bracelet’ was less accurate than ‘hoofcuff’. In the center of the accessory blinked a slow, angry red light. “Guess,” she snarled.
The Doctor went very pale. “Oh,” he said. “I see.”
It was a very familiar design. He’d worn that bracelet once himself, back at the end of his second regeneration, at the behest of the Time Lords. It was a sealed time ring, a sort of temporal trap that could be sent hurtling through space and time at the behest of its controller. Its controller was usually not the one wearing it. “They captured me some time ago,” the Rani continued, almost conversationally. “I blame you completely, of course.”
“What? I haven’t even seen you for a good few hundred years.”
The pegasus glowered at him. “You really are as much an imbecile as ever,” she bit out. “Clearly your wife is the brains of the family.”
The Doctor grinned. “Well, you say that, but you haven’t met my daughter yet.”
The Rani flinched. “You reproduced ? Menti Celesti.”
Ditzy looked from one Time Lord to the other and crossed her hooves. “I feel like I should be insulted, but I’m not sure who by,” she noted.
Scootaloo watched the two Time Lords, fascinated. "This is better than the movies."
The Doctor rolled his eyes at the Rani. “Yeah, yeah, you were saying?”
“You haven’t done anything to me. Yet. We’re out of order,” the Rani scowled. “Which means that, regardless of how gravely you irk me, I can’t kill you, nor the two others.”
Scootaloo’s eyes went wide. “Wait, hold on, when was killing us on the menu?”
The Doctor rolled his eyes. “Gosh, love you too, Ushas. Can’t think why we didn’t keep in touch after graduation.”
“As I was saying,” the Rani growled, “I can’t kill any of you. I don’t want to kill any of you, either. I was attempting to put you at ease.”
“Yeah, well, you didn’t, ” Scootaloo shouted.
The Rani took a deep breath and held it for several seconds. She let it out in a rush. “After the end of the War,” she said quietly, “I was one of the survivors.”
“Impossible,” the Doctor said. “The War ended with Gallifrey’s destruction. All the Daleks, all the Time Lords, snuffed out. I watched it happen, made it happen, twice over.”
The Rani gave him a long, level stare. “And I suppose in all the time since, you never met another Dalek or Time Lord,” she drawled.
“I— Well—” The Doctor huffed and sat back. "I'll admit, it got rather complicated..."
“As I was saying, after the War, the militaristic attitudes hung around. It was decided that Gallifreyan security needed to increase, and that the safest way to work on that would be in parallel universes. The aftermath of your stopping the Reality Bomb, closing the paths between universes, that gave us a nasty shock, but come now, Doctor. We’re Time Lords.”
“That doesn’t explain anything,” Scootaloo said.
The Doctor glanced over at her. "She means we, as a species, are stubborn bastards who aren't above blasting apart the fabric of the universe with dynamite when it gets in our way," he explained.
"Oh."
“I was, ahem , assigned to the task of creating a new type of body armor. A biological defence, designed to keep the body safe from the looming. It was based on the Cybermen, naturally. Potentially, it could even be modified for traditional birthing.”
“That’s monstrous,” the Doctor said, going pale. “To keep a person, a child, literally locked inside a suit of armor, divorced from the physical world—”
“Again, not my idea. I wanted it to be based on the ankylosaurus, all thick plates and clubs.”
“WHAT?”
Ditzy, meanwhile, had grown distracted. The robot that had once been the charioteer was standing at the glass panel in the machine, one hoof tapping gently at the barrier. Its mouth was moving, but she couldn’t hear more than a faint static. Ditzy reached for the microphone. “Hello? Are you alright in there?”
The robot stopped tapping. It said something, but Ditzy couldn’t hear it. “Hello? Hello, I can’t hear— hold on.” She turned a knob, and suddenly, a musical, mechanical voice rang out across the room. “Hell~o? Iz~ Lieu-ten-ant Pall-az~ there~? Can you let me out~, plea-ze~?”
The Doctor, the Rani, and Scootaloo all turned to stare at Ditzy. “That… doesn’t sound very robotic to me...” the Doctor said slowly.
The Rani glared. “As I've been trying to tell you, Doctor, I've turned over a new leaf. I'm not trying to control any minds or destroy lives. As a matter of fact, I would say that this process may be the best thing that the pegasi could ever have hoped for..."
Twilight hurried up the stairs, the others hot on her hooves. Bonbon had only just finished explaining that something had happened to Rumble and Bulk, and Rainbow and Lofty had arrived in a bad way, and the princess was off like a shot.
Bonbon was shouting something, trying to explain, but her voice was lost in the rush of cosmic sound echoing through Twilight’s brain. Stars danced on the edges of her vision. Friends were in danger. She could smell it, taste it, feel it prickling her flesh. She burst through onto the main floor at a gallop. “What’s wrong? What’s happened?” she demanded, glancing around wildly. Then her eyes fell on the two stallions, and she didn’t need to ask anymore.
Bulk’s wings had grown into gorgeous, majestic things suitable for his bodybuilder’s frame, and Rumble had swollen to a size that would rival Big Macintosh. Rainbow Dash was convulsing on the ground, Lofty trying to comfort her as she too was wracked with pain. But that wasn’t the most alarming change. Twilight sat back, gape-mouthed as she saw the metal covering their bodies piecemeal. No, she realized with a sick horror as Rumble turned to look at her. Not covering. Growing out of. A violet light shone out of Rumble’s left eye, or what remained of it. “Help,” he muttered. “Please, Twilight, it hurts .”
“I--” Twilight gasped. “I--” She couldn’t tear her eyes away. The metal was growing over them all. She could see the thin, spiderweb circuitry as it wrote itself in their flesh, watched the wires slowly weave along like vines. Her eyes rolled back in her head, and she fainted dead away.
Ditzy and Scootaloo sat up on the roof. “This sucks,” Scootaloo complained.
“Mm,” Ditzy agreed. “I can understand the Doctor wanting to talk to the-- to her in private, but did he really need to make us wait up here?”
Scootaloo rolled onto her back. “Hey, the stars are coming out.”
Ditzy looked up. “Oh, yeah.” She lay back as well.
“They look really bright tonight, don’t they?”
“You think? They look pretty normal to me.”
“Maybe it’s just ‘cause we’re so high up,” Scootaloo said, her voice distant. “So close we could almost touch them…”
Ditzy coughed. “So! Uh, we’re three years pre-Unification. All I really remember from history was the first Hearth’s Warming. What else was going on?”
“Shouldn’t that be ‘is going on’?” Scootaloo wondered.
“Dunno.”
“Huh. Well, the griffons are sacking Roan, for a given value of ‘sack’ and ‘Roan’,” Scootaloo said.
“...I don’t follow.”
“It’s a cloud city. They just keep moving it and leaving behind little buildings for the griffons to steal from.”
“Oh. That’s anticlimactic.”
“Well, for now,” Scootaloo replied. “The griffons don’t just want treasure, though. They want glory. Sooner or later, they’re going to force Roan into a direct confrontation and everypony knows it. They’re only delaying the inevitable in some ways.”
“They should stand and fight,” Ditzy said, disapproving. “They’re letting all their resources drain away, and their enemies are just getting stronger.”
“Yeah, but they can’t fight the griffons. Can’t fight ‘em and win, anyway. Right now, they’re attempting to work out a military alliance with the cows and yaks, but so far it’s no good.”
“What do you mean they can’t fight the griffons and win? Wasn’t Roan the greatest military--”
“Okay, fine. They could probably beat the griffons, but not without massive losses. They’d be sitting ducks for whatever army came along next. So, they’re stalling for time and looking for another way out, which will come up three years later after the Unification.”
“The griffons were that good?”
“The griffons were incredibly powerful, and Roan was, is, ridiculously decadent.”
“Huh,” Ditzy. “Hard to believe Griffonstan's going to fall so low in our time.”
Scootaloo shook her head helplessly. “I guess that’s just history for you. Nothing lasts forever. From what I hear, it might just be about to get shaken up again.”
“Huh, yeah, the riots,” Ditzy agreed. “Didn’t know you’d heard about them.”
“Gabby sends me and the others letters every now and again.”
“Oh, your honorary crusader friend? She was such an… energetic one, wasn’t she. And so sweet! How’s she doing these days?”
“Well, she’s one of the highest-ranked lieutenants in the cultural revolution. So she’s got that going for her.”
“Wow.” Ditzy rolled over. “You know, I still don’t think that evading the problem is a viable strategy.”
“Ugh.” Scootaloo threw a hoof over her eyes. “I’m not running away, Ditzy. I just need time to collect myself.”
“Scootaloo, it can’t have been easy for them--”
“And y’know what? They did the same exact thing. All these years, they never told me the first thing about my parents. They lied to me, Ditzy. They lied ‘cause it was easier than the truth. So don’t tell me about how hard it was for them, okay? Don’t tell me that they were trying to protect me, or they didn’t want to hurt me, or they were waiting until I was older. They never would’ve told me if I hadn’t asked them straight out. Maybe they would’ve thrown me a bone every now and again, a little chunk of information that meant basically nothing. But they ran away from this. Don’t act all high and moral when I do the same.”
Ditzy sat there, stunned. “I’m going inside,” Scootaloo said shortly. “If the Doctor has a problem with it, well, tough.”
She stormed back into the building and slammed the door behind her. Ditzy sat there, stunned, for a long moment.
“A difficult situation,” a voice mused quietly from the other side of the roof.
Ditzy froze. “Who’s there?” she demanded. “Show yourself!”
A shadowy hoof reached out of the darkness and slid up the shade of a dark lantern. And then Ditzy found herself looking at… herself.
Or, no, not herself. She didn’t generally sport an eyepatch and dark armor paired with a cape made from a deep violet velvet. The other mare was considerably older as well. Ditzy could only draw one conclusion. “Oh my Celestia, you’re me from the future!” she gasped.
The other mare frowned. “Oh your who now?”
Or, of course, she could be completely wrong. “Not my future self then,” she said, stepping back. “Who are you?”
“My name is Cyclone. Propraetor Cyclone of Skyzantium. I’ve been looking for you for some time now, you know.”
“Oh, have you?” Ditzy asked, continuing to scoot towards the door.
“Yes. Pansy, grab her.”
Ditzy didn’t even have time to register what her doppelganger had said before a pair of blue hooves grabbed her from behind. “I’m very sorry about this,” a voice said, “but I’m afraid you’re something of a threat to the Empire. We need to ask you a few questions.”
Ditzy sat very still as her double approached. Cyclone peered at her minutely, looking over her eyes, her ears, her mane, and more. “Incredible,” she observed. “A few differences, naturally. The cutie mark is altogether wrong, and she is a few years younger, but overall the resemblance is quite uncanny.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to-- um-- to do whatever it is that I did.”
“Do?” Cyclone chuckled. “Oh, very little. It alarmed some ponies to see a mare who they took for their leader to go tearing into the gladiatorial lockers, but as I was at the time busily seducing the fine young recruit currently holding you, and had a whole street’s worth of witnesses to support that, my reputation took little damage. And given that you didn’t even bother to wear an eyepatch, I very much doubt that you had mischief on your mind. I’m even inclined to believe that you didn’t even recognize the similarities between us. No, my dear, you did nothing wrong.”
“...So, what are you--”
“And yet,” Cyclone said, cutting ruthlessly through Ditzy’s question, “protocol would dictate that anypony impersonating a high-ranking official should be imprisoned and questioned at the very least. And if their answers should prove unsatisfactory, harsher methods ought to be used. Do I make myself understood?”
“...Yes,” Ditzy said, turning away. “What do you want from me?”
“You have been inside the building. You spoke of names unfamiliar to me. I want you to tell me everything that you know of Silver Pallas’ secret project. I attempted to observe it in progress, but could find no entrance, nor even a window through which to peer. I must know what she is hiding, for the safety of my empire and my people." She leaned in close, and Ditzy could feel the mare's hot breath on her face. "If you stand between me and that safety, I will rip you to shreds and throw you to the falcons.”
“Okay.”
“...That’s it? I was expecting more resistance, to be honest.”
“Why? I have no love for Silver Pallas. I can’t say that I know everything about her work, but I know enough. You may want to sit down, Propraetor. This might be something of a shock.”
Twilight stirred. “Wha’ happen’?” she slurred. She felt heavy and stiff. Probably had something to do with how she had passed out on a floor made completely out of crystal.
“Oh, thank Celestia, you’re awake!”
The next thing Twilight saw was a pair of metal hooves reaching for her. She screamed and blasted them with a force spell. The figure was launched halfway across the room. “Geez, Twi,” it said. “Overkill much?”
The machine sat up, a fringe of bronze and gold and silver and violet flopping over one of its glowing purple eyes. Twilight blinked. “Rainbow?”
“Yep! In the-- uh, not in the flesh. Anymore.” She coughed. “That hurt a lot.”
“Rainbow? Why are you metal?”
“Aheh. Funny thing, we were kinda hoping you could tell us.”
“We?”
“Every pegasus in Ponyville, yeah. We’re all metal now. I mean, it’s not all bad. Like, we can fly, and we’re all crazy stupid strong, and I smashed into the side of your castle and didn’t even feel it.”
“Oh.”
“And, uh. Romana told me all about the robot in the basement.”
“Oh.”
“Like, I don’t think I wanna attack anypony right now, but I’ll keep you updated.”
“That’s good.”
Rainbow stayed silent. “Rainbow? Is something else the matter?”
“What? No. No, no, no, no, no no no, no, no.” She pursed her metal lips as best she could. “Yes.”
“What is it?”
“I…” Dash grunted. “Look, there’s no good way to say this, so here goes.” She held aloft a mirror. Twilight stared into it.
A purple metal alicorn stared back.
“I still can’t believe this.”
“It was all rather banal, actually,” the Rani said with a wave of her hoof. “The bulk of the science was taken from the Cybermen.”
“You what? That’s a recipe for disaster if I ever heard one, converting one of this world’s greatest warrior cultures into mindless automata. I thought you were cleverer than that, Rani.”
“Don’t be stupid,” the Rani snapped, opening a door in the wall. The two of them walked into an icebox of a room, filled with massive lockers. A morgue. “I changed the programming to ensure they would register me as their leader and prevent them from performing conversions all on their own. Later, when I began to work on live subjects rather than reanimating corpses, I took the first of those commands out, to preserve free will. Isn’t that one of the things you’re always nattering on about, Doctor? You should be proud.”
“Proud? Of grave robbery and unethical experimentation?”
“There’s nothing unethical about it.”
“You kidnapped your latest subject!”
“Hi~. I’m zztill he~re~,” the charioteer said, unenthused.
The Doctor gesticulated at the pony wildly. “Kidnapped! Not ethical.”
“And when he got here, I gave him the choice to participate or be sent home with his mind wiped,” the Rani said shortly.
The Doctor’s mouth snapped shut. He looked at the charioteer for confirmation. “It’z true~.”
“And would you care to tell him why?” the Rani asked.
Silence. “Shall I tell him?”
“No~. I can do it~.” The charioteer took a deep breath. “I wazz dy~ing. Zzyphilizz~. I tried everything~. I hung fox~ tezz~ticles on my forehead~. I ate~ live~ toadz~. I even had~ a mercury enema~. Noz~zing worked~.”
The Doctor goggled at him. “Your physician recommended all that?”
“Phyz~zicianz~? Thoz~e quackz~? Not a chanz~e.”
“Ah. Naturally.”
“As for the dead, you can put any macabre thoughts about contract killing or grave robbing to rest. I advertised for volunteers to donate their bodies to science after their death of natural causes.”
“There was one with a knife still in him.”
“Blood loss is about the most natural cause of death there is around here. Anyway, it isn’t as if I had him killed, he died in the line of duty.”
“Soldier?”
“Unpopular politician. Every living subject I’ve processed has been a volunteer. Naturally, I have to keep all this a secret, so I can’t exactly advertise publicly.”
“So you get your ‘volunteers’ by kidnapping them.”
“Yes, and then offering them a choice between a life of pain or an experimental cure!” the Rani snapped. “You seem to be confusing me with Koschei, Theta. I’m not evil, no matter what you may think of me. If they refuse, I wipe their memories and let them return home, unaltered. The rest… well, let me show you.”
Twilight reacted better than Dash had expected. It only took eight minutes to get her to come out of her room, and only six more to actually get her into the hall with the others. All the time she was doing so, Dash told Twilight all about Scootaloo and her aunts and the portal in Ditzy’s backyard. Twilight was busily panicking through most of it, but she was good enough at multitasking to get the gist.
“So,” she said, struggling to regain some equanimity in the face of losing her equinity, “you looked through and saw clouds. Where do you think it was?”
“I dunno. It looked new, but old.”
Twilight stopped and gave Dash a Look. This was somewhat undermined by the fact that she hadn’t actually worked out how to make facial expressions yet, but it was a valiant effort.
“Okay, like, it looked like really old buildings. Y’know, columns and stuff, like ancient Roan. But they looked like they’d just been built.”
“I see,” Twilight considered this. “We’ll need to go investigate,” she decided.
“What? But that metal pegasus--”
“Dash,” Twilight said flatly. “Look in a mirror.”
“Oh. Heh-heh, yeah, I see what you mean.”
“Not to mention, we now outnumber it by, well, a lot.”
“Yeah, I guess. Look, we’re almost to the cutie map room, we can bring it up with everypony else there.”
“Alright,” Twilight said, pushing open the door. “So, how many--” She stopped. “Dash.”
“Yeah?”
“Is this… the entire pegasus population of Ponyville?”
“Um, pretty much, yeah.”
“All in the cutie map room.”
“Well, it’s not as though there isn’t enough space…” She trailed off, troubled.
This did not escape Twilight’s notice. “What’s wrong?”
“Scootaloo’s not here,” Dash said quietly. “And, uh… yeah, Ditzy’s missing too, but I bet she’s gone off in the TARDIS. But Scootaloo…”
Twilight frowned. “I see. That is concerning. On the upside, I think we can stop worrying about her being in any immediate danger, given that almost nothing should be able to get through these shells.”
“Unless she was hurt before the whole ‘turning into metal thing,’ Dash muttered, but Twilight had already moved on, trying to corral Cloudchaser and Raindrops away from hoofwrestling on the cutie map which was already beginning to crack .
Dash was torn. She hated feeling torn. Scootaloo was out there somewhere, maybe in terrible danger, and Dash knew that she needed to find the filly before the unthinkable happened. But she also knew that whatever the heck was going on here was also important, maybe even posing a threat to the town at large.
Rainbow didn’t know much about ancient pegasus mythology. {She had spent the lessons there, like a lot of the rest of her school days, doodling and thinking about flying.}
It had been one of the main subjects in her seventh grade history class, in a unit that took about six weeks to complete. {In comparison, the history of the unicorns and earth ponies had filled up about a week, total {the griffons, minotaurs, cows, and yaks got even less attention}.} The teacher was a pompous old windbag, always talking about ‘ noble pegasus heritage’ and the importance of tradition. Dash had labeled him a jerk while she was still in school {an epithet he shared with many of the other teachers}, but now she had a different name for him. Flight supremacist.
Oh, sure, he wasn’t as bad as some. There were some -- not many, not with the wrath of the princess prepared to smash them to dust if she caught wind of them, but some -- who did terrible, awful things to other ponies, just because they couldn’t fly. {Which, Dash guessed, was better than just saying terrible, awful things to other ponies just because they couldn’t fly.{Right? It’s gotta be a little better, right?}}
Anyway. She didn’t remember much from that class. One of the few things she could remember was the Odyssey. {She liked Odysseus. He kinda reminded her of Daring Do, now} {Her favorite part was when he got home and killed all the guys who were hitting on his wife because they wanted to take over as king. {Her second favorite part was when Circe turned all the sailors into flying pigs}} But what she was thinking of now was the problem of Scylla and Charybdis.
Odysseus had to pilot his cloud-ship through a pair of enormous mountains, too high to fly over, and too big to fly around. On one side lived Scylla, a monster with six snakey heads that would lash out and snatch sailors off the deck of the ship. On the other side lived Charybdis, which was a giant cyclone, sweeping up ships and dashing them to pieces on the mountain. Odysseus chose to take the Charybdis route, and lost his ship and all his soldiers.
Dash had to be careful. Could she afford to let Ponyville handle itself so she could protect Scootaloo? Or did she need to let Scootaloo go in order to protect the town?
And even if everything turned out fine this time, how much longer could she keep making this choice? How much longer could she keep protecting Scootaloo?
Dash felt a hoof rest on the back of her neck and tensed. But then the hoof began to rub in a gentle, familiar circle, and her legs turned to jelly. “Hey, AJ.”
“Hey yerself. How ya holding up?”
Dash thought about that. “Tell you later.”
Applejack clucked her tongue. “Ya know, you can be sensitive in public every now and again.”
“I know, I know. But not right now.”
A sigh. “No. Ah reckon not.”
There was a long silence. “I wouldn’t say no to a hug,” Dash said at last.
She could almost feel AJ’s smile. “Well, Ah don’t reckon Ah would, either. C’mere, you.”
She pulled Dash-- who was, both mares realized at the same time, now almost as large as Applejack herself-- into a warm embrace. Dash didn’t know how metal could feel the love and care that her marefriend was pouring into that hug, but she was glad that it could.
Wait a minute. Hold on.
“Hey, AJ? If you really want to make me feel better, I got a favor to ask you…”
The Rani opened another door, revealing a dimly-lit room with metal walls. “You’d better come as well,” she told the charioteer.
“Fin~ally, she deignz to re~mem~ber me~,” the robot drawled, trotting through. “Wait. What iz~ What iz thiz plaze~? The~ze picturez~ they move~?”
The Doctor followed them both in. “Viewscreens?” he asked.
On every screen, he could see cloud. Some were sculpted into buildings, others were mere wisps in the sky, and some were simply the ground under the camerapony’s hooves. Wait- there was one screen that didn’t have any clouds on it. It showed instead an array of monitors in a dimly-lit metal room. This room. The Doctor frowned, then waved his hoof in front of the charioteer’s face. “Oi!” the mechanical stallion spluttered.
On the screen filled with screens, a tan hoof juddered up and down in front of the image. “Cameras in the eyes?” the Doctor guessed. “What for?”
“I don’t have the space to keep all of my test subjects here,” the Rani replied. “The live subjects I take to the heart of the Empire, Roan itself. You’d be amazed what can go unnoticed there with a minor perception filter. However, I still need to keep an eye on them all. This was the most expedient solution.”
“Right,” the Doctor said. “Makes sense, I suppose.”
“So glad you approve,” the Rani said drily, beckoning them both back out through the morgue and into the main lab. Scootaloo sat there, aimlessly spinning an empty test tube around in her hooves.
“Scootaloo, I told you not to come inside until--”
“Do I look like I care?”
“Ah.” The Doctor bit his tongue. “I’ll go and fetch Ditzy, shall I?”
“A sensible idea at last. I suppose we’ll be seeing pigs fly on the morrow. In the meantime, I shall see to Commander Hurricane. I’ve left him waiting far too long. He’ll be growing suspicious.”
Inside the TARDIS, meanwhile, a little red light blinked on the console. The red light was not supposed to be blinking. The red light was not supposed to be on the console at all. There was a slow grinding noise, like the sound of the TARDIS materializing slowed down to a crawl.
A pale figure reached out a hoof and flicked a few switches on the atmospheric unit, and an unsettling hum filled the console room, followed by the sound of tiny little clicks. Individually, the noises would have been all but unnoticeable, quiet enough to make a pin dropping sound like a plate being smashed. There were enough, though, that a little tik-tik-tik-tik sound could be heard echoing through the TARDIS. The figure smiled. It was possible to look through it and see the console room on the other side.
When it spoke, its voice was cold and dry and husky. “I am no mere psychic projection, Doctor. I am your future, your present, and your past. I am you .”
And then, with a sound like the dematerialization of the TARDIS sped up to a ludicrous pace, the figure was gone again. The little red light blinked out of existence.
Commander Hurricane stood in the hall, legs locked, back stiff, neck straight. He had been standing like that for the past two hours. He didn’t mind that, terribly; it was good practice. However, that didn’t mean that he wasn’t going to tear Lieutenant Pallas’ hide for making him wait so long.
As soon as she opened the door, he snapped, “Pallas, report on your actions.”
She nodded, short, sharp, and efficient. “I have been discussing the repairs to the timeship with its captain. The damage is deep, but not extensive, and can be repaired in perhaps two hours.”
“The stallion said six.”
Pallas raised a brow. “That’s how long it would take him .”
“Ah. But together, you can do it in two?”
“Together, we’d be lucky to complete it by the end of the week,” the Rani replied. “I intend to keep him fully occupied elsewhere.”
“And it took you two hours to ascertain the depths of the damage?”
“No, sir. I also performed a test of my pet project; I informed you and the Propraetor of it during the inspection. One subject was satisfactorily processed, with two others prepared for testing. I have great hopes for the results of this experiment.”
“Mm.” He studied her minutely. “I will be leaving for the barrack refectory now, Lieutenant. I will return in two hours time. I expect results.”
“Naturally, Commander.”
She watched him go. “Pompous twit,” she muttered, then turned on a hoof and trotted back the way she had come.
Night had fallen on the research campus, but darkness and silence had not joined it. The windows of all the buildings were blazing with light, and the sound of hammering and clattering and occasional small explosions echoed through the pillars. Hurricane watched in approval as a stallion rolled a barrel of oil from building to building, filling up the lamps enough to keep the scientists working through the night. Hard work and selflessness was what Roan needed now, he thought. If he could find a way to stay awake and alert without the need for sleep, then by Jupiter, he would take that way and spread its glory across the empire.
Suddenly, he detected a shuffling, scuffling sound. He did not react or change his gait. The sound drew nearer, then stopped. Drew nearer, then stopped. He turned a corner, sparing a glance back the way he had come in the process. A figure. Not tall, but certainly not short, and fairly slender. He continued onward, then took to the air. A pause, followed by quick wingbeats. Hurricane smiled grimly, then spread wide his wings and flipped around. He plummeted like a falcon toward his pursuer. They lifted their hooves placatingly, but there was no arguing with gravity. He grabbed his pursuer and slammed them to the clouds below. “Surrender now!” he barked.
“Uncle!” the figure squeaked.
Hurricane blinked, nonplussed. “Pansy?”
“Commander.” A grey figure peeled itself out from the shadows. The single golden eye of Propraetor Cyclone froze him to the bone. She smiled. “We need to talk.”
Applejack set out from the castle, accompanied by Bonbon, Minuette, and Cheerilee. Cheerilee’s sister, Berry Punch, had pointed out that considering the rest of the team was composed of an Element of Harmony, a Time Lady, and a former secret agent, the teacher might be in over her head. Cheerilee had replied that Scootaloo was her former student, thank you, and Cheerilee would cheerfully buck in the face of anyone or anything endangering the pegasus’ well-being. So that was settled.
Romana squinted up at the sky. “Looks like a storm coming in,” she said.
“All the more reason to find her quickly,” Cheerilee said briskly. “There can’t be that many more places she’d try to hide.”
“Ah reckon the old CMC clubhouse would be as good a place as any to start,” Applejack said.
“But that’s so far out of the way!” Bonbon protested. “We should start an organized search pattern. Given that there are four of us, I recommend either the Compass Rotation or the Four Corners, preferably the former given how close we are to the center of town.”
“We need to search the Everfree,” Cheerilee insisted. “All the most dangerous areas of town. If she’s in any of those places, time is more urgent than if she’s hidden in the schoolhouse.”
“Look, Ah ain’t sayin’ there’s no place fer procedure, but we need t’ think about the way she thinks! The psychollergy of th’ individual--”
“The storm is coming in very fast,” Romana said quietly.
The other three looked up. Mere moments before, it had been an almost cloudless night. Now, they couldn’t see the stars…
“Romana, Ah don’t reckon you got some kinda fancy pony-tracker spell handy?”
“Spell? No. Machine? Yes, as it happens.”
“Well, why didn’t you say so?” Bonbon snapped.
“I just did. Look, it’s back in my rooms over the bar. I’ll go there and fetch it out. Meanwhile, I need you three to go to Scootaloo’s house and get a sample of her DNA. Some kind of manebrush, or even a toothbrush would be ideal. A pillow, perhaps.”
“Alright,” Cheerilee said, her heartrate speeding up. “We’ll meet you back at the bar, then?”
Romana flashed her a smile. “Sounds like a plan. Just hurry, won’t you?”
She looked up at the sky, her smile dimming. “Something tells me this is the last storm you’d want to get caught in, at best.”
Bonbon turned to go, but hesitated. “And at worst?”ever caught in.”
Hurricane listened thoughtfully as Cyclone and Pansy explained the situation to him. “So,” he said. “Lieutenant Pallas is designing a new form of armor that is all but impenetrable, enhances combat abilities, and can overcome any disease. Propraetor, permission to speak?”
“Granted.”
“Why exactly is this a problem?”
Pansy paused. “Er…”
“She can take control of the minds of the dead, she was keeping this work purposefully secret, and it has been revealed that she is a foreign agent,” Cyclone listed, counting off the problems on her feathers. “I don’t know who these… Time Lords… think they are, but if they believe that they can get away with using Roan’s resources to further their own researches without facing any repercussions, then they will soon meet harsh reality on the end of my sword.”
“I understand. But, of course, as our resources were used to discover this, would you not say that we have some claim on this project?”
Cyclone frowned. “Well, yes. I suppose--”
“Sir,” Pansy said warningly. “You once told me to tell you if you were about to do something phenomenally stupid that would cost you your rank.”
“I told you to tell me if my actions would threaten the Empire.”
“Same thing,” Pansy retorted. “We don’t understand this technology, sir. Anything might happen if we tried to use it.”
“Exactly my point, Private! With this technology, we could do anything!”
“That isn’t the same thing, sir!” She looked to Cyclone, pleading with her eyes. The Propraetor’s sole golden eye flicked between one and the other thoughtfully. “We will conduct a raid,” she decided. “We will leave the machinery unharmed, and have our top scientists inspect it. If they can understand how it works, then we will use it; if they cannot, we will have it destroyed.”
Hurricane didn’t react. Pansy nodded slowly. “That seems… fair,” she acknowledged.
“Then let us go,” Hurricane said, turning to face the lab. “This should be done quickly, before she has time to do anything further.”
“We should wait for backup,” Cyclone disagreed.
“We are three, while she is only one. Four,” he corrected. “I have a stallion on the inside.”
Cyclone hesitated. “A compelling point,” she admitted. “Very well. Let us see what may come of this.”
Pansy whimpered softly. “I’ve got a very bad feeling about this,” she murmured, following her superiors back to the lab.
An icy wind whipped the sky, chilling Applejack, Cheerilee, and Bonbon to the bone as they hurried for Scootaloo’s childhood home. “I hope somepony’s in,” Cheerilee said. “I’d hate to think we came here for nothing.”
Bonbon shrugged. “I can get in through the chimney and let you both in.”
“Or Ah could jes’ break a window,” Applejack pointed out.
“Or, hopefully, we can get what we came here for without breaking a number of laws!” Cheerilee said with false brightness.
“Heh. Guess so,” Applejack agreed.
“Please. As though I’d be caught,” Bonbon scoffed. “But it looks like there’s a light on, so I suppose you can have it your own way.”
“Thanks,” Cheerilee said sarcastically. She winced as a blast of icy wind scoured her coat. “C’mon, let’s get inside.”
Applejack knocked on the door. Silence. She frowned and tried the knob. It turned easily in her grasp. “Should we--” she began.
Another chilly blast made the decision for her, and all three mares hurried inside. “Lofty!” Cheerilee shouted. “Holiday? Are either of you home?”
“Cheerilee?” Holiday poked her head out from the parlor. “Oh. You’ve all heard, then.”
“Yep. We’re here to help bring her home.”
Holiday snorted, and the three mares noticed that her eyes were red and puffy. “Assuming she wants to come home,” she said.
Applejack looked startled. “It can’t be as bad as--”
“Whether she wants to come home or not, we need to find her,” Bonbon interrupted. “I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, Holiday, but there’s a storm coming in. If she’s caught outside in that, I don’t like her chances of survival.”
Holiday let out a strangled gasp. Cheerilee facehoofed. “Nice job, Miss Tactful,” she muttered. In a louder voice, she said, “Romana has a device that should be able to locate Scootaloo, but we need some of her genetic material. Does she have a manebrush, or a toothbrush, or anything like that we could use?”
“Her room is upstairs, first on the left,” Holiday said. “You can look there.”
Cheerilee nodded. “Applejack, Bonbon, you go and check it out. I’ll be down here talking with Holiday.”
Bonbon looked like she was going to object, but Applejack pulled her toward the stairs. “We’ll be quick,” she promised, hammering up the steps.
Cheerilee turned to Holiday. “Would you like to sit down?”
The other mare nodded briefly, gulping back a lump in her throat, and led the teacher into the sitting room.
Cheerilee walked her over to the sofa, pushing piles of parchment out of the way. The room felt more claustrophobic and musty than ever. She sat Holiday down. “Do you want to talk about it?” she asked gently.
“Talk, talk, talk,” Holiday bit out through the thickness in her throat. “That’s all I’ve done today, and look where it's got me!”
Cheerilee took her hooves gently and set them in her lap. “Have you gotten to the end of the story, yet?” she asked gently.
“I— no, not yet.”
“Why don’t you try?” Cheerilee suggested. “Just the end to go, now.”
Holiday smiled bitterly. “But will it be a happy one?”
Cheerilee faltered for a moment, but then smiled and squeezed Holiday’s hooves. “All right then. Not the ending. Just… a continuation.”
“Until next time, you mean?” Holiday blubbered out a half-laugh. “Okay. Going from when I took Scootaloo home…”
Meanwhile, on the other side of town, out at the Doctor’s house, Lofty was remembering the very same story. It was one of her very favorites, and she always liked to think on it whenever she was feeling worried. For instance, when she had been forcibly and painfully transformed into a robot and was even now flying toward the strange hole in time and space that Twilight suspected of causing all this chaos. That was just the sort of time when her spirits needed a little lift. And with the rain splashing against her crystal eyes, and her metal mane somehow ruffling in the wind, she cast her mind back, back to where the story of Her had ended, and the story of Them had begun.
Once upon a time (as all the best stories began), there was a caseworker. She didn’t particularly like her job, but she liked children and she liked to help ponies |indeed, thanks to some interspecies adoption legislation, it should be more correctly said that she liked to help everycreature|. So she kept on with it.
One day, the caseworker was sent to a little village |on the edge of the Everfree Forest. What the rut.| named Ponyville, to check up on a recent adoptee named Scootaloo. When she first saw the little cottage, all its lights turned low and smelling of musty old papers, she had feared the worst. |All she wanted was to see others being happy. |Sometimes, in her line of work, that wasn’t an option.||
When she got inside, however, what she found was a sickly, but well-fed and cared for child and a half-starved caretaker. That was the first time she met Holiday and Scootaloo. She took them both for lunch on the spot. |Partially because she feared for Holiday’s health, partly because she couldn’t stand the dim, dank, dusk of the little cottage.|
She explained to Holiday, gently as she could, that the filly couldn’t continue to live in such a way, and nor could she. Scootaloo would need to go back to foster care.
Holiday had been stricken, but she nodded, accepting the other mare’s words. |The caseworker liked to make everypony happy.|
But, said the caseworker.
But? Holiday asked.
It is not too late. I will show you what you must do to make your house a safe place to raise a child.
|Holiday told her that she must be sent from some higher power, some ancient, half-remembered deity; a gift in her hour of need.|
And they worked together for a time, and lived together for a time, cleaning that old house, making it possible for Holiday to support the growing filly, adjusting them to their new lives. Even after everything was perfect, a model home, she had visited often.
|She had been there when Holiday got her first book published, and they had popped open a bottle of cider to celebrate.|
|She had been there when Scootaloo said her first word |mama|, and she had been there for Holiday’s subsequent breakdown.|
|She had been there the first time Scootaloo had gone to the hospital, and she had held Holiday’s hoof tightly.|
|She had been there when Holiday had drawn her into an embrace and kissed her over a bottle of champagne, and she had never left again but briefly.|
She had, perhaps, come bearing more godly gifts than even Holiday had expected. A helmet of darkness to hide her from Heat Wave, should he ever return. A pair of winged sandals to help her escape her own past. A mirrored shield, so that she could see herself as she truly was; beautiful and kind, never a monster despite what she feared, deep down inside.
Holiday encouraged her to quit being a caseworker and follow her dreams, start working to teach little pegasi to fly. They had married, and Scootaloo was the most adorable little flower filly anypony had ever seen. And they all lived happily ever after.
|That was how all the best stories ended |And this was one of the best stories |Wasn’t it?|||
Lofty was taken out of her reverie when she bumped into the pegasus in front of her. “Hey!”
“Sorry,” Lofty said. “What’s the holdup?”
The other pegasus-- was that Clear Skies? turned around and looked at her. “Seriously?” He gestured to the sky.
Lofty looked up. “Oh.”
Storm clouds circled and swirled out of a blinding pillar of light, howling gusts of wind tearing the branches from the trees and the thatch from the eaves. And the whole thing was centered on Ditzy’s backyard. “Well, that might not be the best sign.”
Meanwhile, back in the parlor, Holiday had just finished telling Cheerilee the same story. She had calmed down now, though tears still streaked her cheeks. “‘M sorry,” she muttered, turning away. “You don’t want to see me like this.”
Cheerilee rubbed her forehooves gently. “Thank you for telling me all that,” she said.
Holiday didn’t say anything. “We’ll find her,” Cheerilee promised.
“I want to come with you.”
“Of course.”
Holiday shifted awkwardly on the sofa. “Dear Minerva, these scrolls! They get everywhere. You must think me such a slob.”
Cheerilee frowned. “Odd. I thought I pushed them all off the couch before we sat down.”
She pulled away and heard the rustle of parchment behind her. The whole couch was covered with scrolls. Cheerilee looked around. “Holiday, was this room always this cluttered?”
Holiday stared at the far wall, shocked. “I don’t remember it being this big .”
She rose and hurried over to one of the new shelves. “What in the world? An account of the Battle of Fillius Pass? The rise of the city-state of Crassus? Who in Jupiter’s name is Emperor Tragic XIV? There were only ever five Emperor Tragics!”
“Holiday,” Cheerilee said, holding up a picture. “You’d better come and see this.”
The scholar turned. There, inked on a parchment older than her nation, was an army of machines in flight. Below them, pictographic unicorns and earth ponies bowed their heads in deference. Holiday gulped back a sudden rush of terror. “Applejack! Bonbon! Grab a pillow and let’s go!”
The Rani returned to the lab to find Ditzy talking quietly with the charioteer, while the Doctor and Scootaloo sat silently at a table. The young mare was rolling a test tube between her hooves absent-mindedly, and the Doctor was watching her with every evidence of concern writ on his features. “Hurricane won’t be interrupting us anytime soon,” the Rani reported, trotting in.
“Oh?” the Doctor asked.
“I sent him off to dinner and told him to come back in two hours to see your repaired TARDIS.”
“What? There’s no way it could be done in--”
“Three liters of mercury, seven grams of gold, and twenty-seven milliliters of Zeiton-7.”
“I thought you didn’t have any equipment!”
“I told you I had enough to do my assignment. All of those components are important to the running of my modified Cyberconversion chamber.”
“And you would lend me some?”
“If it would get you out of my hair any faster, gladly.”
“Just going to ignore that part. Thanks, Rani.”
The Rani glanced over at Ditzy. The other mare caught her eye, then glanced away, embarrassed. The metal charioteer rested a hoof on hers, and Ditzy nodded. “Rani,” she said, rising from her chair, “I wanted to apologize for misjudging you. From the sound of it, you’ve saved Mr. Wheels here,” she gestured to the cyborg, “a lot of pain. Maybe even saved his life. I’m sorry that I didn’t trust you.”
“As am I,” said the Doctor, nodding. “I’m happy that you finally turned the corner, Ushas.”
The Rani smiled thinly. “Thank you, Theta ,” she replied. “And you as well, Ditzy. Now, knowing that it can correct all physical issues, would you or Scootaloo care to take a turn being upgraded?”
Ditzy blinked. “Sorry?”
Scootaloo looked up from where she was spinning the bottle around in her hooves. “What?”
“Your eyes, her wings,” the Rani went on. “Surely they must make your life more difficult?”
There was a long silence. Then Ditzy forced a laugh. “Well, maybe. Maybe so. But I kinda think that being turned into a robot might make my life even more difficult, in certain ways?”
“There’s no need to be coy,” the Rani said. “You already drank the catalyst. You should be prepared for a smooth conversion.”
Ditzy wasn’t smiling anymore. “What do you mean?”
“The soda I gave you earlier wasn’t soda,” the Rani explained. “It was a chemical compound that makes the conversion process go much more smoothly.”
She frowned. “Why are you all looking at me in that manner?”
Romana alternated between fine-tuning her rather primitive analog of a biodata scanner and checking out the plate-glass window for signs of life. “What can be taking them so long to find a single manebrush?” she wondered aloud, peering through the rain-spattered glass.
After perhaps ten more minutes, she saw a line of figures approaching at speed from up the road. Hurriedly, she made for the door, throwing it open. Four figures, all wet and shivering, ran in. “Holiday? What are you-- no, stupid question. You’ve got the stuff?”
Teeth chattering, Holiday reached into her saddlebags and pulled out a pillow from Scootaloo’s bed. Romana inspected it. “Good enough,” she decided. She took the scanner and ran it over the soft cloth surface, then pulled a switch. There was a long moment.
“Well?” Holiday demanded.
“Give it some time,” Romana scolded. “I took a piece of technology that this planet shouldn’t be able to make for another five millennia and recreated it using a pinball machine, a pocket watch, a desk lamp, and whatever technology I could borrow off the Doctor. I went for quality over speed, so sue me.”
There was a ping. Romana frowned. “Odd. Let’s try zooming out a little.”
Another wait, another ping. Romana’s frown deepened. “Right. Right . Holiday, when was the last time you saw Scootaloo?”
Holiday considered that. “Maybe… half-past five?”
“Right.” Romana twisted a knob, then pulled the switch one more time. This time, the map installed on the back of the scanner lit up. “Yes, there she is at your house,” Romana said, pointing. “Now, let’s track forward ten minutes.”
Another dot lit up a little ways away from the house. “And again,” Romana said.
The dot was a little farther away now. “The path she took on her scooter?” Cheerilee guessed.
“Almost certainly,” Romana replied. “And look where it ends up.”
Applejack squinted. “Is that…”
“Ditzy’s house,” Bonbon sighed, smacking her forehead. “Meaning Scootaloo is probably with her and the Doctor, Celestia-knows-where and Luna-knows-when.”
Romana sighed in relief. “Good.”
Cheerilee stared at her. “How is that good, exactly?”
“We know she’s with a responsible adult. And the Doctor, as well! She should be fine.”
Holiday was silent. Applejack turned to look at the mare. She was shaking. “Aw, shoot. Romana, pull out a brandy, or a warm blanket or summat.”
“She went to the Doctor’s house and left in the TARDIS,” Holiday said deliberately. “This would be the same TARDIS that’s currently left a hole in time and space in the Doctor’s backyard, would it?”
“Do you know of any others around?” Romana asked. “Because I would be in the market, actually--”
But Holiday was already out the door, the other mares hot on her hooves. The bit dropped. “Oh. Oh!” And then Romana was running as well.
“You gave us chemicals,” Ditzy said slowly, “and told us it was soda. You lied to us.”
“Well, would you have drunk it if you knew it was a chemical compound?”
“No! That’s literally the entire point! And now you’re saying we’re broken and you want to fix us?”
“I never said broken,” the Rani objected.
“You may as well have! Scootaloo and I aren’t broken, we aren’t wrong, and we don’t need or want your stupid Cyberconversion!”
“Um,” said Scootaloo.
“Your anger makes you radiant,” the Rani murmured.
Ditzy raised a brow. “Are you saying that I'm cute when I'm angry?”
“I think that's what she meant, unless she means that emotion literally is making you glow,” the Doctor said helpfully. “Which it isn’t, I think.”
The grey mare scowled. “Well. Get ready, because I'm about to be gorgeous ,” she snarled.
The Rani took a step back. “I… did not mean…”
“Like Tartarus you didn’t mean! I don’t want to be a robot, and neither does Scootaloo! Turn us back right now!”
“The process has not begun!” the Rani replied hotly. “Unless you choose otherwise, the serum will pass out of you harmlessly. It is only a catalyst in the procedure.”
“That doesn’t change the fact that you gave us a potion without our permission.”
The Rani glanced away. “It was prudent. The serum takes time to take effect. Only now would you be ready to take the next step.”
Ditzy looked ready to snap the other mare’s neck, but she was interrupted by a small voice from behind her.
“I can… you can cure me?” Scootaloo whispered, eyes wide. “You can do that?”
“Yes,” said the Rani, simply.
“But, Scootaloo,” Ditzy said, desperately. “Think about the effects. You won’t even be a pony anymore!”
"Ru~de," said the charioteer, scowling. "Doezz that make me lezz of a pony for not want~ing to die~? For not wanting to zzuffer~? For not want~ing to leave my wife a wid~ow~, or my zzon half an or~phan~?"
Ditzy looked helplessly between Scootaloo and the charioteer. "You'll be different," she said. "Changed."
“Yeah, I'll be different!” Scootaloo agreed, not once taking her eyes off the Rani. “I’ll be better. I won’t have to be afraid of breaking my bones. I won’t have to ever stop and catch my breath. I won’t have to live with my ‘condition’ anymore.”
She turned to Ditzy and the Doctor, eyes wide. “I could fly.”
Ditzy looked up at the Doctor, desperate. “Pocket—”
The Doctor gazed at the Rani for a long moment. “Her brain won’t be affected,” he said.
“No,” the Rani confirmed. “That part of the Cyberconversion process only takes place in the event of total mental failure. This is no different from getting a prosthesis, but on a larger scale.”
The Doctor nodded. “Then I say, it’s Scootaloo’s decision,” he said quietly.
Ditzy looked at all three of them, horrified. “But what about—”
“You told me you wanted to help me,” Scootaloo said coldly. “Back in that room. Did you mean it? Did you really mean that you wanted to see me happy?”
“I…” Ditzy faltered. “Yes. Yes, I did.”
“Then let me do this,” Scootaloo replied. "Let me fly. Rani, I'm in."
The Rani nodded and opened the door of the box. “There will be some pain,” she said. “However, the total procedure will take less than a minute.”
Scootaloo stepped forward, barely faltering as she trotted into the small, blindingly bright, space. The eyes of the others tracked her through the one-way glass. A wave of pressure washed over her as the Rani closed the door again. She stared at her reflection for a long moment and took a deep, shaking breath in. There was a crackle of static. “Are you ready?” the Rani asked.
Scootaloo took one last look at the mirror. “Yes.”
The Rani made no reply, but there was a clunk, followed by the hum of machinery. The light grew even brighter. The noise grew louder. Scootaloo leaned against the wall as her head began to swim. “What are you doing to her? Let her out right now, you monster!”
“It’s all part of the process. I did tell her it would hurt.”
“Rani, explain yourself,” the Doctor growled.
“Her mind is adjusting to her enhanced senses,” the Time Lady replied, voice clipped. “The dampers will kick in momentarily.”
Indeed, the light and noise was already fading to a more comfortable level. Scootaloo blinked once or twice, then straightened. “It’s fine,” she called. “I’m alright, real— AAARGH!”
“Rani!”
“Ushas!”
“Did you think that growing a metal exoskeleton would be a painless process?” the Rani snapped at last. “I told you all it would hurt, but she would not die. That is the truth, and nothing else!”
Scootaloo’s stomach churned. She could feel her heart beating against her rib cage, threatening to break free. Her skin crawled and her flesh felt cold, then numb, then not at all. Her wings tingled, sprouting longer and farther, thickening from husks into real, hard metal, fully capable of flight.
Her tongue felt cold and dead in her mouth. Tears ran over the polished bronze of her cheeks even as her eyes were converted into lenses. She opened her mouth and let out a modulated scream, flat and mechanical.
And then, like that, it was over. Scootaloo opened her eyes. The clouds looked slightly grainy, but nothing too noticeable. She glanced towards the mirror. For a moment, she thought that the one-way glass had stopped working, because she could see the three figures on the other side. Then she realized that what she was seeing was heat signatures. She tried to tune that part out, focusing instead on the reflection.
She was bronze. She opened and closed her mouth a few times just to see the metal plates move up and down. Her mane was shiny and violet. She ran a hoof through it, and was pleasantly surprised to find that it could still bend. The door clicked open, and she glanced over. The Rani peered back at her. “How do you feel?”
“Go~od,” Scootaloo replied. She put a hoof to her throat. “Izz that~ my voizze~?”
It was still clearly her own voice, but there was a sort of musical buzz to it, now. “That will wear off with time,” the Rani informed her. “If you could step out, please.”
Scootaloo did so. She felt light as air, but she could feel each and every one of her muscles tense and relax as she walked. As soon as she stepped out of the chamber, Ditzy pounced on her. “Scootaloo? Is that you in there? Are you alright?”
Scootaloo took a nervous step back. “Yezz~ I feel fi~ne.”
A small green box framed Ditzy’s face and helpfully labelled her ‘ally’. There was a bunch of other information, too, mostly biological, but Scootaloo ignored that. “A~ctually, I feel gr~eat!” She beat her wings once and took to the air. “I feel fantazz~tic~! I can fly~! I can fi~nally fly~!”
“I see you got the voice modulator from the Mondasian design,” the Doctor said neutrally.
“Mon~who now~?”
“Not important,” the Rani said. “How do you feel?”
“I can fly~! How do you think I feel~?”
“Physically.”
“Gre~at!” Scootaloo beat her wings, and in a few seconds, she was flapping around the ceiling like a moth round a candle.
Ditzy watched her fly, conflicted. Beside her, the Doctor was smiling. He wiped his eyes after a moment, and turned back to the Rani. “I…”
“Forget it,” she replied. “Take her outside, let her fly around while I clean up after your terrible driving. You can thank me by leaving quickly.”
His smile stretched into a grin. “Oh, same old Ushas. Alright, Scootaloo, let’s have a flap ‘round outside.”
“Yes!” Scootaloo zipped out the door and down the hall, the Doctor running after her. Ditzy hung back, gazing at the Rani.
“I don’t know whether I want to hug you or smack you,” she said quietly.
The Rani’s cuffed hoof rose to her cheek, but she quickly pulled it away. “Perhaps it would be best if we merely shook hooves.”
Ditzy nodded and extended her hoof. She gripped the Rani tightly. “Today, you made a sweet young mare’s dreams come true. That was good, and I thank you. But if you ever pull anything like that on me or my loved ones again, I’ll hunt you to the end of time.”
The Rani reeled from the intensity of her words. “I-- I understand.”
“Good.” Ditzy released her. “There are fresh muffins in the fridge if you get hungry while you work. Good-bye, Rani.”
“Until we meet again, Ditzy Doo.”
Ditzy stared at her. “...When pigs fly.”
The Rani’s eyes went wide “How did you know about-- you haven’t even-- hold on. That’s just one of your pony expressions, isn’t it?”
Ditzy didn’t say anything. She just shook her head and left. The Rani’s shoulders slumped, and she trotted over to the TARDIS. Of all the ships the Doctor could have stolen back on Gallifrey, it had to be the museum piece. She opened the door. Immediately, she was struck by a torrent of lashing rain and hail that buffeted her back across the lab. She raised a wing to protect herself, but all she could do was run for the door. Damn the Doctor, not telling her that the atmospheric controls had blown as well!
In the door of the TARDIS, the deluge made it difficult to see clearly. Something about it made the mind swim, as though what was being seen was no more than a mirage. In the center of the storm, though, a pale horse trotted out, reaching their hooves out for the Rani’s machine.
When Hurricane, Pansy, and Cyclone burst down the door to the lab some ten minutes later, they found little more than a broken pane of glass, water everywhere, overturned tables, and a large blue box. Cyclone gave Hurricane a sideways look. “No danger, hm?”
Hurricane stared, befuddled. “The box has no function that could cause anything like this.”
“Really? And what exactly are its ‘functions’?” Cyclone challenged. “Cards on the table, Hurricane, I want the truth.”
He straightened his neck and stared straight ahead. “Report. The box functions as a highly advanced teleport device, surpassing even unicorns in its speed and distance in moving. It can fly, though not smoothly, and the doors are impregnable when locked.”
“I see.” Cyclone looked it over. “ZZeems pretty small for a ship.”
“Its exterior is extremely deceptive in that regard.”
Pansy winced at a sudden pain in her side. “Um, excuse me.”
“Very well, Commander. Azzuming that the box had nothing to do with this carnage, what did?”
“It has defenzzes~,” Hurricane said. “Perhaps Lieutenant Pallazz was able to use it to detect our arrival and wrecked her work rather than let us have it~.”
“Excuse me~!” Pansy said, a little louder now.
“Plauzzible, perhapzz~,” Cyclone conceded. “But there is no proof of that~.”
“I can think of one way to dizzcover the truth~,” Hurricane said, gesturing to the doors of the TARDIS.
Cyclone considered. “Very well~.”
Pansy screamed and fell to the ground. The other two pegasi spun around, alarmed. Cyclone gasped. Metal was etching itself on the mare’s skin, turning flesh to plates of silver.
“Panzzy~!”
Cyclone had one last glimpse of the younger mare’s frightened eyes before they warped into bulging violet lenses. Hurricane made an effort to recover himself. “Excellent~!” he said. “The firzzt of a new breed of sol~dierzz~.”
“Panzzy~! Panzzy, wake up~!”
Slowly, the metal mare rose. Cyclone’s brow relaxed. “My dear, are you well?”
“Open~ the doorzz~” Pansy buzzed.
Cyclone’s face went slack. “...Panzzy~?”
Hurricane scowled. “Private Panzzy~! I am your zzuperior~, and I will not take any orderzz~ from you~!”
“Incorrect~” Pansy replied. “You are inferior. Zzoon, you will be like uzz~. Open the doorzz~”
Hurricane looked like he was about to object, but then his face contorted into something between a stifled sneeze and an expression of deep pain. “I~” he growled, and to Cyclone’s horror, she could see the metal forming on him as well. “I~ will open the doorzz~.”
And in that moment, Cyclone knew that if those doors were opened, it would be the end of everything she knew and loved. She threw herself in front of the doors. Hurricane, his flesh twisting into violet metal to the point where Cyclone didn’t know where his armor ended and he began, picked her up and threw her away again. The last thing Cyclone saw was a vast cloud-- no, a swarm-- rising before her eyes. Then her eyes became golden crystal and she knew no more.
Scootaloo gloried. She soared through the skies on wings of bronze, the night wind reaching out to lift her up like an old, old friend. Down below, she could see the Doctor looking up at her, and Ditzy flying desperately in an attempt to keep up. It was pointless, though. Scootaloo had studied all the theory, done all the exercises, dreamed of this day for years. Now she had the chance to put it all into practice, and she wasn’t planning to stop anytime soon. Over the sound of the wind whipping in her ears, she heard the cries from below. “--e careful!” “Don-- go --oo far!”
Too far? Too far!? Did Ditzy know what she was saying? She had years of flight to catch up on, casting her wings out into the stars, skimming her hooves across lakes, finally being able to practice maybe breaking the sound barrier. It would be months, years, that she could stay in the air, and it still wouldn’t be long enough. She could circle the globe, pass through every nation, every city, and still it wouldn’t be far enough. She could touch the moon with her own two hooves, and still it wouldn’t be high enough. She could hold the sun, let its rays kiss her back as she soared over the clouds, and it still wouldn’t be enough.
If she could have put a fraction of that sentiment into words, she would have explained it all to Ditzy. But instead, she just laughed and did another lap around the compound as she remembered another story from Roan’s rich mythology.
Icarus and his father, Daedalus, were imprisoned in a labyrinth of their own devising. The wicked minotaur king, Cretin, had heard that Daedalus was the most brilliant inventor in the world, and he wanted to use that genius for his own selfish ends.
So he clipped the wings of Daedalus and his son and kept them prisoner. Icarus despaired for his lost ability of flight, but his father told him not to worry, that everything would be alright and they would someday fly again.
(Which was worse? To fly, and have that power taken from you, or to never fly at all?
(Trick question. It’s actually listening to the jeers of those who could still fly, or from those who were never meant to.))
Daedalus worked long and hard to build two pairs of wing extenders, made from the feathers of seabirds and held together with wax. He wasn’t sure if he was ready to fly from the island yet, but his son was so desperate to escape, he yielded. (As parents so often do)
‘But,’ Daedalus warned Icarus, ‘my son, this is far from a perfect replacement. We must be very careful not to fly too near the sea, else the feathers will get wet, and we must not fly too near the sun, else the wax will melt. And we must land as quickly as we can!’ (Daedalus had little faith in his own work)
‘Yes, father,’ Icarus had said, bowing his head. (Icarus trusted his father completely. (He trusted his father’s work completely as well.))
Daedalus was satisfied, and they took off immediately.
It was a bright, sunny day. Daedalus didn’t like that. There were no clouds on which they could rest, and neither was there any land for leagues and leagues around. There was only open ocean below, and blazing sun above. (Only the glory of an open sky, bordered by eternity)
Icarus did not share his father’s fears. He was free, for the first time in years. He did loop-the-loops and barrel rolls, flew up and startled seagulls, and laughed and laughed and laughed.
And then, up above, he saw Helios driving along in his chariot, driving the sun, and he decided that he would go up and say hello. (Well, somepony had to do it before Celestia was around. You really think it was those idiot unicorns? (The Romanes certainly didn’t.)) In a flash, he was soaring up, up, up, waving hello to Mr. Sun.
And then the wax melted. And his wings were clipped again. And he was no longer free, only free-falling, going to say hello to Mr. Sea. (Scootaloo’s wings were not made of wax.)
And Daedalus saw him fall, and there was nothing he could do. (Scootaloo always thought it was weird that he never even tried.) There was a splash, and his son was swallowed up by the sea. And Daedalus flew on, alone. There was nothing else he could do. Nothing but regret.
(But Scootaloo flew on wings of bronze, which wouldn’t melt no matter how high she went.)
(And even if she did fall, there would always be somepony there to catch her, right?)
(Was this what Icarus thought, way back then?)
(Was this how he felt?)
(She was bronze and silver and gold and crystal.
She would not fall.
She would fly forever.)
Ditzy landed by her husband, defeated. “She’s impossible,” she grumbled.
“She’ll come down when she gets tired,” the Doctor said, reaching out a hoof. Ditzy gave a sigh, half-exasperated, but she snuggled into his side.
They watched Scootaloo fly for a little while. Then, Ditzy said, “You never answered my question.”
“Really, love? Which question was that?”
“What did you even do to Commander Hurricane that made him hate you so much?”
The Doctor pulled in a breath. “Ah. Well. I only saved his life, is all. Spared him from a massacre at the hooves of the earth ponies, that’s all. Kept him from an untimely demise as Centuriate Hurricane, and in the process ensuring that Hearth’s Warming would proceed as history needed it to, that’s all.”
Ditzy frowned. “I don’t follow.”
The Doctor didn’t meet her eyes. “There were, at the start, eighty-seven other soldiers alive in the century he was leading. Only nineteen made it out of that battle alive.” He breathed out slowly. “He felt, at the time, that it would have been more honorable to have died with glory in battle than to have been spared by the enemy, and I’m guessing that not a whole lot’s changed since then.”
“But that’s terrible! If you saved his life--”
“Doesn’t matter. Not to him, anyway. I insulted him terribly.”
Ditzy struggled. “But you saved his life!” she repeated.
“Yes, and I’d do it again,” the Doctor agreed. “Because I save people. But I don’t expect him to be grateful for it. That’s just not who he is, and I’ve had to learn to accept that.”
“But--” Ditzy stopped. “This is a metaphor, isn’t it?”
“Nope! True story,” the Doctor said. “‘Course, if you want it to be a metaphor, it could be that too.”
Ditzy watched as a little bronze figure far overhead glinted in the moonlight. “I want her to be happy,” she said sadly. “But I want Holiday and Lofty to be happy too, and I want Scootaloo to be safe. I’m worried about how they’ll react to this.”
“I think they’ll be happy that she’s happy,” the Doctor replied.
Ditzy sighed. “I hope so,” she said. “But metal pegasi? I don’t think anypony in Ponyville’s ever seen anything like that before.”
Twilight had managed, with no small difficulty, to wrap a series of sensors, meters, and flashing lights around the TARDIS-shaped hole in space. It wasn’t easy, because she felt obliged to stop every so often and rant about how stupidly impossible this was, wrapping things around a hole. But with some help from Thunderlane and Rainbow Dash, she managed to get everything on that she needed to. Then she flipped a few switches, and her bank of instruments lit up.
“Uh-huh,” she said. “Okay, that seems fine… That’s interesting, but probably doesn’t affect anything outside of that… hole. And… hm.”
“Translation, please?” Rainbow demanded.
“Well, it’s exactly what it looks like,” Twilight said. “A window-- yes, that’s much better than ‘a hole’-- a window into some kind of laboratory in the clouds. A completely wrecked laboratory, mind you, but a lab nonetheless. You said it looked different than it did before?"
“Yeah, it was sitting outside on a street,” Dash said. “What about the robots?”
Twilight shook her head. “None are in range of the scanners. On the bright side, the ‘window’ that the TARDIS left behind is completely solid and airtight. Not even atoms could pass through, judging by these readings. I suspect that if there's any way to alter that, it could only be using the TARDIS itself, which does make the appearance of an ancient Romane soldier here... well, never mind that now.”
“Okay, yeah, but what if somepony breaks the window?”
“It’s not actually a window, Dash. I don’t know what it’s made of. I could drag out an electron spectrometer and give it the once-over that way, but I don’t know if it would even fit inside the
Twilight blinked. “Zzorry~. What wazz I say~ing~?”
“You were~ tal~king about an e~lectric zzpectrum~ or zzomething~.”
“Right~.” Twilight shook her head, like she was getting some water out of her ear. “For the e~lectron~ zzpectrometor to function~, it needzz to be able to break~ off~ piecezz of the zzubzztance being examin~ed~.”
“Zzo what do we do~
~uh, do now~?” Dash asked.
Twilight frowned and poked her own body. “Rain~bow~,” she said. “Do you remem~ber being~… not a robot~?”
“Twi~light, what are you tal~king about~? I’ve al~wayzz been a Zzyber~mare~”
“No… Da~sh, I thing zzomething’zz wrong~”
Twilight looked at her array of devices and reeled with shock. “The per~meabil~ity of the portal izz increazzing~! Zzomething could come thr~
Bzzz.
Rebooting.
“Unit R-D45H~. Report~.”
“Per~meabil~ity of portal rizzing, Zzyber-leader. Ezztim~ated ti~me of inva~zzion T-minuzz twel~ve-point-three minutezz~.”
“Ex~cellent~!”
~~Twiberleader~~ incorrect designation The Cyberleader turned to face the army behind her. “Prepar~e yourselv~es~. Inva~zzion imminent~. The Zzyber-ponies will achieve victory~. For Empire~."
"For empire~," every pegasus present chorused.
The Doctor didn’t know how long he had sat there cuddled up with his wife, watching Scootaloo pull off the most unlikely aerial stunts. Well. He did, actually. His time sensitivity was counting it out, microspan by microspan. He made an effort to ignore it, lest it cheapen the moment.
Of course, the moment was quite ruined anyway when the Rani, furious and sopping wet, stormed over to them. “You might have told me that your atmospheric controls were malfunctioning,” she snarled.
The Doctor frowned. “What’re you talking about?”
“Don’t play games with me, Doctor! It’s raining inside your ship!”
“What?”
The Doctor let go of Ditzy and looked at the Rani with intense concern. “That wasn’t happening while I was in there.”
“Well, it’s happening now,” the Rani growled. “Come back and help me figure out that mess of spare parts you call a control panel.”
“Really? You’re asking for my help?”
“Don’t let it get to your head.”
The Doctor smirked, but it faded when he turned to look at Ditzy. “Do you want to--”
“I’ll stay here and look after Scootaloo,” Ditzy said, not turning to look at the Rani.
“Right. Alright. Be back in a jiff.”
The two Time Lords trotted away, leaving Ditzy alone, watching the little bronze figure dance through the sky above.
They walked in silence for a time. The Rani only spoke when they were out of Ditzy's hearing range.
“I don’t believe your wife likes me.”
“I suspect you’re right.”
“Why not? I tried to help her.”
“Yes, but you lied to her, you drugged her without asking permission, and you insulted her.”
“When did I insult her?” the Rani asked, alarmed.
The Doctor gave her an odd look. “Well, when you suggested that her eyes were something that needed to be fixed, for a start.”
The Rani looked at him blankly. “But they do. They negatively impact her vision.”
The Doctor sighed. “That doesn’t mean they need to be fixed. When you tell someone they need to be fixed, you’re saying that they’re broken. That they’re lesser. Ditzy feels happy and whole and gorgeous just the way she is. Her eyes are just a little quirk to her. A beautiful quirk.”
“By that logic, no-one should ever seek help for anything with their bodies,” the Rani argued.
“No,” the Doctor replied. “It just means that it should be their choice if they want to seek treatment or not. I appreciate your effort to turn over a new leaf, Ushas, but you’ve still got a long way to go.”
The Rani said nothing. “Why do you care all of a sudden anyway? Up ‘til now, you’ve considered my companions nuisances at best.”
“Perhaps I’ve changed. The War had a way of doing that.”
“True. But it was usually for the worse.”
The Rani lapsed into silence again. “Look, you don’t have to tell me,” the Doctor said. “I’d just like to kn--”
“I’m in love with your wife!”
The Doctor stopped dead in his tracks. His mouth hung open. The Rani reached out and shoved it closed, scowling. “I don’t know why I tell you anything,” she grumbled.
The Doctor blinked. “Well,” he said after a long moment. “I’ll tell you this, Rani. You’ve got excellent taste.”
“Bah.” The Rani stormed off in the direction of the lab again, leaving the Doctor jogging to catch up.
“I mean, I’m happy for you,” he said. “Well, kind of happy. Well, not really happy that it’s my wife you’ve fallen for. But, er, are you going to tell her?”
“Have I mentioned? She hates me,” the Rani ground out through gritted teeth.
“Well, yes, there is that aspect to consider.”
“Doctor?”
“Yes?”
“If you don’t stop talking, I’ll be forced to hurt you.”
“Right-o.”
They trudged back to the lab. The Rani frowned deeply. “The door is open.”
“Perhaps you left it ajar when you came out to look for me,” the Doctor suggested.
“No, I distinctly remember slamming every door that I went through.”
“Hm,” the Doctor said. “Shouldn’t we be seeing more of your undead guards?”
“‘Undead’ is not a scientific term,” the Rani replied. “I prefer ‘reanimated’. And I put them into storage. They still require a certain amount of time shut down to function properly.”
“Right.” The Doctor pushed the door all the way open. “Anypony in here? Olly-olly-oxen-free!”
The Rani all but tackled him. “What do you think you’re doing?” she hissed. “You’ve just alerted whatever’s in there to our presence!”
The Doctor raised a brow. “Better out here where we’ve got loads of places to run than once we’re in a maze of corridors and set to be ambushed from anywhere.”
“I hate you.”
“Because I’m right?”
“Because you’re a smug git.”
The Doctor grinned. “Well, nothing’s come running out yet. Time to go in.”
The Rani’s lip curled. “Fine. Come along, Doctor.”
Ditzy had been looking up at the sky for so long she’d gotten a crick in her neck. She took her head in her hooves and twisted gently, letting out a little sigh of euphoria at the little cracking sound.
Then she looked up again and jumped. Hovering right in front of her was Scootaloo, her violet eyes shining bright in the shadows of the night. “Where’d the Doc~tor go~?”
It took Ditzy a moment to recover herself. “He’s back at the lab. Miss Cleverhooves managed to make it start raining inside the TARDIS.”
“Really~?” Scootaloo burst into mechanical laughter. “I wan~na zzee, see that~!”
Ditzy managed a smile. It did sound rather funny, put like that. “Okay. Let’s go.”
She set off at a trot, Scootaloo flapping along beside her. “I wanted to apologize.”
“Oh~?”
“I haven’t been very supportive of you, I guess.”
“Gee~, really~?”
“If I could finish?”
“Zzorr~” Scootaloo paused, twisted up her mouth. “Sssorry~,” she pronounced carefully. “The wing~zz ar~e great~, but the voizze, voice , could uze zzome work~.”
“Anyway,” Ditzy said, a little forcefully, “I wanted to say that I’m happy for you, Scootaloo.”
“Thank~ you~.” Ditzy could swear that the young mare’s metal face went just a little pink, though perhaps it was just the light from her crystalline eyes. “Thizz meanzz a lot~ to me~.”
There was a long moment of silence. “Aren’t you going~ to as~k abou~t my auntzz again~?”
“Do you want to talk about them?”
The silence returned with a vengeance. Ditzy allowed it to continue for a minute. “So,” she said. “Think you could pull off a sonic rainboom like this?”
“Nah~.” Scootaloo said.
Ditzy had only a moment to register surprise at that before Scootaloo continued, “A zzonic Zzcootaboom~, now~, that’zz~ a diff~erent matter~.”
Ditzy giggled. “I can’t wait to see it.”
Scootaloo tilted her head. “Hey~, Dit~zy~.”
“Yes?”
“Can ro~botzz get cu~tie mark~z~?”
Romana and the four other mares sheltered inside a stairwell. It didn’t do a great job of keeping the weather out, as the wind seemed to blow straight up the stairs, bringing with it a modicum of misty drizzle. But at least the rain no longer felt like it was lashing the skin from their bones.
Romana was quite happy to stop and get out of the storm. She only had one objection. It was taking every ounce of energy she had not to strangle Holiday. She could understand familial loyalty. She approved of the mare’s desire to see her niece safe and well. But by the Asscheeks of Rassilon, she wasn’t going to do anyone any good if she drowned first!
“Haven’t we rested long enough?” she demanded.
“Frankly, no,” Romana replied. “Applejack’s still shaking water out of her ears, Cheerilee’s half-drowned, and I had to leave my sonic screwdriver back at the bar or it would’ve short-circuited. Knew I should’ve waterproofed. My point is, we’re not exactly in great shape to help anypony right now.”
“Scootaloo can’t take shelter.”
“Scootaloo has the TARDIS, Ditzy, and the Doctor with her, and if there’s one thing the Doctor’s good at other than running, it’s taking cover. And toppling dictatorships, I suppose. There are some other things as well, but I won’t go into all of them. My point is, she’s probably safer than we are right now.”
“But--”
“You fell in a puddle and almost drowned, stop arguing,” Bonbon said.
A flash of lightning split the sky, followed almost immediately by an earth-shaking roll of thunder. Applejack frowned and sat up straight. “What was that?”
“Lightning,” Romana replied. “I thought you would probably know that by now.”
“Nah, nah. That bolt lit up dang near the whole town. But Ah saw somethin’ out there. Somethin’ flyin’.”
“Flying? In this weather?” Romana trotted over to sit beside Applejack. “That would be impossible, or at least suicidal.”
Another flash. Applejack’s eyes went wide. “Tell that to them!”
For just a moment, Romana saw the same thing Applejack had moments ago. Pinwheeling in the sky overhead, pegasi. The light reflected off their metal bodies, bright and shining like beacons. In their hooves were spears, swords, pikes, nets, and more. “Oh,” said Romana. “That’s not good.”
“Gee, ya don’t say.”
Another flash-and-crack. Romana frowned. This time, the tableau captured showed the assembly of pegasi diving down into the center of their circle. Cheerilee sat up slowly. “Am I going crazy,” she asked froggily, “or is the storm getting closer?”
“What do you mean?” Romana asked.
“The flash and the crack are getting closer together,” Cheerilee explained. “So the lightning strikes must be getting closer to us, as we can derive from what we know about the speed of light and the speed of sound.”
“Speed,” Romana mouthed to herself as lightning struck again. In the same spot. Actually, the spot quite near where the Doctor’s house was…
“Time dilation.”
“Beg pardon?”
“We’ve got to get to the Doctor’s house. Now!”
“Oh, sure,” Holiday said. “Now that--”
“Holiday, you’re getting what you wanted, now shut the spack up and run!”
The Doctor walked into the lab. “Cor blimey! Maybe somepony really did break in here!”
“Gee, do you think so?” the Rani asked. Then she saw what had become of her Cyberconverter and her eyes bulged. “No! My project!”
“My TARDIS!” the Doctor gasped, and the Rani turned to look. The blue box was fading, becoming translucent. However, it wasn’t the other side of the lab that was visible through it. It was his backyard. The two Time Lords could see phantom images of machinery hooked up to the other side of the rift in spacetime.
“Doctor, what in Rassilon’s name did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything! I tried to let Scootaloo use the telepathic controls so we could locate her father, but she got distracted, tried to go there and here, and wound up here. Boom, crashed TARDIS!”
There was a frigid silence. “Doctor. Did you sleep through all our lectures on timeline navigation?”
“‘Course not!” the Doctor replied indignantly. “Don’t you remember? I was busy making paper vortex manipulators and materializing them across the classroom! Instructor Bunce barely even noticed.”
“Well, if you had been paying any sort of attention to anything outside of your childish amusements, you would have learned what happens when you try to materialize in two places at once!”
“Which is?”
“An enormous tear in the timelines! Alternate histories, rips in the fabric of spacetime, an-ach-ro-nisms . We had one basic lesson in that class Doctor, and it was ‘Don’t cross the streams!’”
“Oh,” said the Doctor. “You know, I think I actually remember learning that the hard way, back when I was all shouting and patchwork. Helped the British defeat the Daleks in the past, while I was still living one hundred years later. Nasty business, that Jubilee…”
“Your reminisces will have to wait for someone who cares, Doctor. Unlock the doors so we can fix this.”
“...Unlock?” the Doctor echoed, mystified.
The Rani jiggled the handle of the doors for emphasis. “Unlock!”
“Rani, you opened it up last, remember?”
She stopped dead. She looked at her broken Cyber-conversion chamber. She looked at the TARDIS doors. She peered up as best she could through the hole in space and time. She said a word that made the Doctor blanch.
“Rani!”
“Oh, and I suppose you’ve never said ‘Otherfuc--”
She cut herself off abruptly as the sound of a door slamming open echoed down the hall. She put a hoof to her lips. The Doctor nodded, then crept to one side of the door. The Rani spread her wings and hovered above it.
The door swung open. “Gotcha!” the Doctor cried, lunging.
“Ow! Doctor?”
He blinked. “Ditzy? I thought you were watching Scootaloo.”
“Look up.”
“Oh. Hello, Scootaloo.”
The Rani landed on the floor, her green eyes burning. “You need to leave.”
Ditzy frowned. “Excuse me?”
“I believe that you’re in terrible danger even as you stand here. Ditzy Doo, you need to run.”
“Why?”
“Run!”
“Not un~til you tell~ me why I should~!”
The Rani’s face dropped. “It’s too late.”
“What~zz~ too la~te?” Ditzy asked. Her eyes went wide and she clutched her throat. “My~ voi~zze!”
“Rani, what’s going on?”
“I improved on the existing Cyber-technology. They had Cybermats, Cybermites, pathetic. I created Cybermicrobes.”
“Nanites?” the Doctor asked, incredulous.
“Yes. And now that some idiot’s wrecked my machine, they’ve all gotten out.”
Ditzy screamed and fell to the ground, writhing. The Doctor made to move to her side, but the Rani blocked him with a wing. “They’ve also overridden my free will program.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning that isn’t your wife anymore. Come on, both of you!”
She hauled the Doctor back towards the mortuary, Scootaloo flitting nervously behind. The Doctor struggled, but couldn’t escape his former classmate’s grip. The last thing he saw before the doors of the morgue slammed behind them was a silver pegasus rising slowly from the ground. They locked gazes. Her eyes were straight.
Romana grit her teeth. She had managed to conjure up a sort of shield spell that worked rather like an umbrella, keeping out some of the storm. Unfortunately, she really wasn’t very practiced at magic. As Colgate, she’d always struggled even to light her horn. In retrospect, that probably had something to do with her botched attempt to conceal herself behind an artificially-constructed personality, but that didn’t really help the situation now. So, given that she’d only really ever vaguely studied magic over the last four years, she was straining to hold up a shield that would even keep out some of the rain and hail and howling wind.
She stopped, gritting her teeth against the wind. “What’s the problem, sugarcube?”
“I-- I can’t go on,” Romana said. “The spell and the wind and the walking, it’s just too much!”
“Ya need a break?”
Romana shut her eyes tight. She nodded. “But we can’t stop,” she groaned. “Fabric of space and time. Scootaloo. Robots. All very time-sensitive, I’ve found.”
Applejack considered this. “Alright, climb up.”
“Huh?”
“Ah’ll carry you. When Ah get tired, Bonbon can take over, then Cheerilee, then Holiday. That way, y’all jus’ gotta worry ‘bout the shield spell.”
“Are you sure you can--”
“For awhile.”
“Right.” Romana struggled to climb on Applejack’s back. Bonbon gave her a hoof up.
“Shouldn’t we be more worried about the lightning?” Holiday asked.
“Not really,” Cheerilee said. “They all seem to be striking in the Doctor’s backyard.”
“Which is where we’re all heading.”
“Well, yes.”
“Ah. I can see why we shouldn’t be bothered about it.”
The being that had been Ditzy Doo made its way over to the TARDIS and knocked on the door. It opened. Three other Cyberponies stood at the console, adjusting controls that would open fully the hole between one time period and another. The silver robot stepped inside, and the doors closed again. The TARDIS faded a little more, revealing the storm on the other side. The lab rumbled sympathetically, and the ceiling began to drip.
Author's Note
N.B.: The Jubilee that the Doctor is referencing is the Sixth Doctor audio story from Big Finish, Jubilee. It's by Rob Shearman, which for those of you unfamiliar with his work, means that you probably won't sleep for a week after finishing this story. But it also means that it's a really, really great story.
The Rani had led Scootaloo and dragged the suddenly unresisting Doctor out of the lab and into the monitoring station. “Whoa~,” said Scootaloo.
“No,” growled the Rani. She pulled out a remote and began flipping the screens from one viewpoint to another. Most of them were just pictures of normal clouds. Several were just black. “Sleeping,” she said by way of explanation.
Others, though, told a different story. Scootaloo saw Ponyville, rent by rain and hail and lightning and wind, an army of robots that she almost recognized circling like vultures over a bright, shining hole in space and time. An increasing number seemed to be of places she’d already seen today. The research campus, the agora, the Cloudiseum…
“Okay~, zzo what the heck~ izz going~ on~ he~re~?”
I had a swarm of self-replicating nanomachines stored in the clouds,” the Rani explained rapidly. “Some imbeciles came in here, reprogrammed them to turn pegasi into mechanical soldiers, and let them loose.”
“Righ~t. And Ponyvil~le?”
“Presently being replaced by an alternate future where all pegasi have been converted.”
“Oh~.” There was a tremor in Scootaloo’s metallic voice. “Zzo, ar~e we~--”
“No. You’ve already been converted by my nanites, and I programmed them only to work on pegasi, not Time Lords.”
“Zz-- So we’re safe~?”
“From the nanites? Yes. From the threat of Cyber-converted pegasi, an alternate future where Roan never fell, or the issue of two points in time meeting? Very much not.”
“Ditzy…”
The Rani turned to face the Doctor. “And, of course, there’s that to sort out as well.”
The Doctor was shaking, staring blindly into space. Shaking wasn't quite the right word, though. It was as though his whole body was writhing, rippling like a puddle. And just beneath that... "What izz that~?"
“This universe doesn’t take to deception as well as our home,” the Rani said. “It’s far more… flexible. Inclusive. Anything can be possible here. Wolves made of wood, cockatrices, electric insects…”
“What ar~e you saying~?”
“Time Lords are far more than mere flesh and bone,” the Rani said. “We're nth-dimensional causal events hiding behind a shell made of only four. Sometimes, when we're under stress, that slips out.”
Scootaloo looked at the Doctor. He seemed much larger than he had before, and in his eyes, she could see exploding stars. “I’m~ guezzing that’s bad~?”
“In his current state? It wouldn’t be good.”
“Can~ you tal~k to him~? Calm~ him down~?”
The Rani blinked. “Me?”
“You’r~e lik~e his oldest frien~d, right~?”
“‘Friend’ might be pushing the definition, and I'm not his 'oldest', but I suppose... largely, you are correct.”
“You know~ him better~ than me, then~.”
“Oh-- I suppose,” the Rani said reluctantly. She looked over to the stallion. “Doctor. I included a failsafe on the nanites. They can be deactivated, and your wife can be returned to you.”
The Doctor turned, and for just a moment, Scootaloo could see the birth of the universe reflected in his eyes. “How?” he demanded.
“I devised a large electromagnetic pulse generator, which should be capable of covering the city. If the nanites spread beyond the limits, then we may not be able to catch them all.”
The Doctor nodded. “How long?” he bit out.
“I estimate perhaps half an hour.”
“Fine. So what are we waiting for, then? Where’s this pulse generator?”
“We’re inside of it.”
The Doctor stopped. “Beg pardon?”
“This section of town, this research area. It’s a giant storm cloud. I managed to make use of the few supplies I was afforded and the unique abilities this form provides to ensure that one sufficiently large lightning bolt could knock out the entire city.”
“Gre~at!” Scootaloo said. “How do we ac~tivat~e it~?”
The Rani was silent. “Rani?” the Doctor probed.
“Look, I’m a biologist, not a rainmaker!” she snapped. “How would I know?”
The Doctor growled. “Luck~ily,” Scootaloo said, “I do know what to do~.”
The Time Lords looked at her. “You do?” the Rani asked.
“I’v~e been~ studying it for~ years~.” Scootaloo said. “I~ know~ how to ma~ke a ligh~tnin~g bolt~.”
“We only have one shot at this,” the Rani warned.
“Yeah, yeah, sur~e.”
“You could tell me what to do, and I could likely pull it off.”
“How~ are you~ at flying~?”
“Not very good.”
“I’ll~ do it~! It’s~ no problem~.”
The Rani closed her eyes tightly. “If you stay in here, you’ll be safe from the pulse. I insulated this room against it. If you go out there, then your nanites will perish as surely as all the others.”
“Righ~t, but you can~ re-do it, can’t you~?”
The Rani made a despairing gesture. “With what? All my nanites would be dead, I don’t have the support to make any more, and the ease with which this experiment went sour means that I’ll be unlikely to garner any of that support. If you go out there, you’ll lose everything you gained today.”
Scootaloo was silent for a long moment.
The Doctor seemed to have forced himself to calm down. Else, all of his anger had been transferred to Scootaloo. “Are you alright?”
Scootaloo opened her mouth and let out a long, pained, electric honk, a siren of sheer misery. She pummeled the wall with her hooves, over and over again. “Zztupid~, zztupid~ Zzcoo~taloo~!”
The Doctor rose to pull her away from the wall, but one of her metal wings caught him in the nose. He reeled back, stunned, but Scootaloo seemed either not to notice or not to care. She screamed her pain at the wall until it metaphorically blistered under her verbal assault and literally dented under her furious punches.
The blows came slower and slower, and the shouts grew quieter and quieter until all was silent. All, that is, except for soft, electronic sobs.
The Doctor reached out a hoof awkwardly. “Look,” he said. “You don’t have to--”
“Yes she does,” the Rani said.
He glared at her.
“She’zz rig~ht~,” Scootaloo said. Her voice sounded more staticky now. “I~’m the on~ly~ on~e who~zze a~ble to pull~ it off~.”
“There could still be another way,” the Doctor said desperately.
She rounded on him, purple eyes glowing like lasers. “Don~’t you~ DAR~E! No mo~re liezz~. No~t after~ all thizz~.”
She broke down into crackling static again. The Doctor looked around awkwardly. The Rani sighed and trotted over to Scootaloo. “Look at me,” she instructed.
After a moment, Scootaloo lifted her head and met the Rani’s eyes. “How long have you been unable to fly?”
“Uh~, zzince I wazz bor~n, I guezz~?”
“So if you lose the ability to fly again, you’ve only gone back to how things were before.”
“Yeah~.”
“Were things so terrible before you couldn’t fly?”
“I~" Schootaloo trailed off for a long moment. "I~ guezz not~. But I couldn’t~ get to do~ my dream~ job~.”
“That is unfortunate,” the Rani agreed.
“The~ only job~ I could do~ in weath~er managemen~t is me~teorologist~.”
“Hm. Well, I know one way that you can avoid going into meteorology.”
“How~?”
“Go into something else.”
Scootaloo looked up, uncomprehending.
The Rani sighed. “Look, what are you good at?”
“Er~. Rid~ing my zzcooter~... ma~th, I guezz…”
“Then why don’t you get a job doing something like that?”
“Becauzze it isn~’t flying~. And math izz la~me.”
“I used mathematics to create those nanites currently giving you the power to fly,” the Rani said.
Scootaloo shuffled her hooves slightly. "We~ll, I guezz~... But~ I~ can~’t... I~ can~'t do what ever~y other peg~asus can~.”
“And can every other pegasus ride your scooter as well as you? Are they as good at math? You are different, Scootaloo, but so is every other member of your species. Difference does not make you lesser. The things you can do, within the constraints of time and space and your own body, are far more important than the things you cannot.”
Scootaloo didn’t reply. “Answer me this, then,” the Rani instructed. “Is there any other pegasus who could save the world right now?”
Scootaloo let out a long, electronic hum. “I never said I would~n’t do it~.”
The Rani nodded brusquely. “You only have one shot. I suggest you make it count.”
“I will~.” She turned to the door. “On~ly one sho~t,” she repeated sadly. Then she trotted back out toward the lab.
“Meanwhile,” the Rani said, turning back to the Doctor, “you and I have business to attend to here.” She noticed the Doctor staring at her, slack-jawed. She sighed. “Now what?”
“How could you just-- tell her all that?”
“Oh yes, let's lie to her, I'm sure that will fix everything,” the Rani retorted. “There’s no use in sugarcoating it, Doctor. She can’t fly, and she’ll never be able to. But if she puts in the time and the effort, then she might rise higher than any of her peers in a different manner.”
The Doctor looked at the door, his eyes misty. “I’d say she already has.”
“Yes, yes, very touching. Now, about your TARDIS…”
“Nearly there!” Holiday shouted, peering through the sheets of rain. Moments later, another bolt of lightning split the sky.
“I felt that!” Cheerilee squeaked.
Bonbon took a deep breath. “Love the smell of ozone in the morning.”
“It’s a quarter to eleven at night,” Romana retorted.
Applejack rolled her eyes. “C’mon, let’s git.”
Overhead, they could all hear the sounds of mechanical warriors circling. The squeaking of joints, the clash of metal on metal, the flap of wings against the air all managed to overpower even the roar of the storm. It seemed to Bonbon that the noise was growing steadily louder, as well. She looked up, squinting through the sheets of water cascading over Romana’s shield spell.
Another flash of lightning showed the silhouettes that had been hidden. Dark images of diving pegasi were burned into Bonbon’s eyes. They were all holding aloft weapons. “Run!” she yelled.
The others obeyed without hesitation. “Romana, drop the umbrella! Applejack, be ready to kick in the door!"
In the next instant, all five mares were struck with gallons of water. Romana was swept off of Applejack’s back and fell to the ground, sputtering. Bonbon yanked her to her hooves, and the Time Lady stumbled quickly to catch up with the herd.
There was the sound of splintering wood from up ahead and the group ran, single file, into the relative safety of Ditzy’s house. “Make for the basement!” Romana shouted.
They all raced downstairs into the laboratory. Romana made a beeline for the table. “There must be something here,” she said frantically. “Something that’ll stop them getting in, to stop working…”
There was the sound of heavy thumping at the top of the stairs. Then, there was cracking.
“Romana?” Holiday asked, her voice higher than usual.
“Oh, brilliant, he kept this?” Romana shoved something on her hoof. “Grab on, ladies.”
Applejack, recognizing the vortex manipulator for what it was, took Romana’s right hoof and grabbed Cheerilee around the barrel. Bonbon did the same with Holiday and Romana’s left hoof. Romana had just enough time to deliver a smug grin to the soldiers breaking through the door before she activated the manipulator. There was a flash, and they were gone.
There was another flash. “Ha!” Romana said, dropping back to all fours. “That was a near miss, wasn’t it? I could almost smell their breath on my face. Do robots breathe?”
“Uh, Romana…”
“Yes?” The Time Lady looked around and registered where she was. Specifically, she was in the exact spot she’d just tried to dematerialize from. “Oh. S’pose I should’ve considered the massive hole in spacetime before I tried to pull that one.”
She held up her hooves as the pegasi approached. “Alright, it’s a fair cop. Take me to your leader.”
None of them moved. A sweat began to bead on Romana’s forehead. Then, there was a motion near the stairs. “Oh, is your leader coming to us? Brilliant, love it when that happens. Much less walking to… do…”
Applejack said an oath. All five mares stared in horror as the purple metal alicorn began to descend the stairs, the energy weapon placed dead center on her forehead glowing with subtle menace.
Scootaloo peered furtively out of the doors to the mortuary. Nopony around? Excellent. She slipped quietly into the hall. This was going to be difficult. Lightning bolts, in and of themselves, weren’t hard to make. Most rookie weather patrol recruits made them more often on accident than on purpose. Controlled lightning bolts were much more difficult, though, and the larger they were, the harder it was to keep them from going off too early. She could feel the cloud beneath her hooves. It was quietly humming with static as it was. She could feel it, all right there beneath her. But, as the Rani had suggested, there wouldn’t be enough for two lightning bolts of the required magnitude. She had no room for error. She began to mold the cloud beneath her hooves as she walked along, twisting up strands of vapor like candyfloss. She made her way into the hall and stopped dead. Right in front of her, two guards. They were facing away from her, apparently to stop anypony from entering the area rather than keeping anypony out.
Scootaloo considered her options. She couldn’t go down the hallway, or she’d disturb the guards.
… Other options?
Oh. Wait. She was surrounded by cloud. Quietly, she pushed through the wall and found herself on the street outside.
The street outside was surrounded by Cyberponies. They all turned to stare at her.
Er.
She pointed to the wall. “Wal~king through cloud~ has pro~ved more efficient than u~zzing doorzz.”
One by one, they all turned away again. Scootaloo made her way quickly down the street, putting a little extra bounce in her step as she did so. Electricity crackled under her hooves. She noticed one or two ponies staring as she walked by. She ignored them. Robots didn’t respond to other robots staring at them. Not even when it’s half the street. Not even when it’s the entire street. Not even when two of them are blocking the path forward, their wings outstretched.
“Uh, gree~tingzz. Izz zzomethin~g wrong?”
“Your com~munication u~nit has a fault~,” one buzzed. “Your min~d cannot~ be accezzed~. You will be re~paired~.”
“Ar~e you cer~tain of thizz~?” Scootaloo asked. Every instinct she had was telling her to bolt, but she held herself still with an ironclad force of will. “I can~ ac~cezz your~ min~d per~fectly~.”
“You~ will~ be repaired~. You~ will~ be like uzz~.”
Screw it. “You know what~?” she demanded, dropping the thick robot accent. “I won’t~! Be~cauze there’s nothin~g to fix~!”
Helpful numbers and lines appeared in her vision, showing her how to calculate just the right angle to jump. As the two heavies moved forward, she leapt, cracked their heads together, and flew like hell.
The Doctor and the Rani stepped out into the lab, much as Scootaloo had done only a few minutes before. The Doctor frowned at the TARDIS. “Alright, what exactly is the plan?”
“She’s your ship. You should be able to open her up,” the Rani replied.
“Okay, yes, got that part. Then what?”
“You lead the Cyberponies currently controlling your ship away, and I’ll go inside to effect repairs.”
The Doctor frowned. “Why don’t I fix the ship while you lead them off?”
“Because you can run faster than I can, and I’m considerably better at fixing these sorts of things than you are.”
The Doctor opened his mouth to object, then shut it again. “Fine,” he grumbled.
He made for the door while the Rani crouched behind a toppled table. He glanced back once, and the Rani gave a short, sharp nod. The Doctor pulled the handle. Or at least, he tried. His hoof went straight through the box, as though it weren’t even there. “Ah. I’m guessing that’s a bad sign,” he said.
The Rani stood up, but he waved her back down. “Stay low. I think I’ve got another way to open her up. A woman, name of River, showed me how to open a TARDIS with a snap of my fingers.”
With a look of intense concentration, he held out a hoof and glared at the door for a long minute. “Oh, wait. No fingers.”
The Rani stood up with a sigh. “Useless,” she grumbled.
“Oi!”
She trotted over to peer through the steadily fading box, studying the scene on the other side. “Do you see that, Doctor? The pegasi are circling. They’re ready to invade. As soon as they receive word from their commander, they’ll be through and we’ll be dead.”
“Regenerated--”
“Dead. You’ll be killed by your friends and neighbors, and they won’t even know it.”
“Oh, look, here comes the Lady President.”
The Doctor spun on his back hoof. Indeed, through the pouring rain, he could see Romana struggling in the hooves of a silver-maned pegasus. Not far behind, he could see Applejack, Cheerilee, Bonbon, and Holiday, all in the same predicament. “No,” he muttered.
“If you don’t do something, Doctor, then all of us will die!” the Rani growled.
The Doctor looked around the lab wildly, then threw another, desperate look at his imprisoned friends. Then, he saw it. A slow grin spread across his face. “Oh, brilliant.”
Romana wished that she could do more to help free herself and her friends from their predicament. Unfortunately, right now she found it a struggle to breathe with the cold metal hooves of her captor wrapped around her chest. “Where are you taking us?” she demanded of the Cyber-leader formerly known as Twilight.
“You~ shoul~d be grateful~,” she replied. “You~ wil~l be pre~zzent for~ our~ great re~birth~. Our~ Ren~aissan~ce~. I~ wil~l be the Leo~nardo~ da Hoov~esie~ of our~ reign~.”
Romana grit her teeth. “But we can’t stand on the clouds!”
“That~ izz~ the prob~lem~ of lesser~ beingzz~.”
“Twilight,” Applejack called. “Don’t do this! Ah’m yer friend, you don’t wanna hurt me! Applejack! The most honest and dependable of all ponies?”
“Applejack, I don’t think Twilight is at home right now,” Romana said.
“You honestly think that she'd force in a hist’ry reference if she was all machine? C’mon now, Twi! Think of Pinkie Pie! Rarity! Spike!”
The Cyberleader looked off-balance. “No~. I do not~ under~stand~.”
Romana's eyes widened. "Of course! The alternate history is still in flux! Some of their memories of the original time stream must still be accessible!"
“Zecora!” Holiday shouted.
“Lyra!” Bonbon supplied.
“Big Macintosh!” Cheerilee yelled.
“The Doctor!” Romana said.
Fortunately, among the chaotic shouting, none of the robots realized that Romana wasn’t just providing a name. She could see the Time Lord on the other side of the portal, jumping up and down, waving his hooves in the air like a lunatic. As soon as their eyes met, he gestured frantically to his right hoof.
Romana’s eyes flickered down to her own right hoof. The hoof where the vortex manipulator was still strapped tight. She looked back up at the Doctor. He mouthed something to her. She cocked her head.
He focused, then enunciated, “Preset Nine! Homing device! Into the TARDIS!”
Romana nodded, then strained to reach across her body and tap the manipulator’s controls. “Applejack, can you distract them any harder?”
Applejack glanced up at the Cyberpony holding her, a silver mare with a multi-striped mane and violet eyes. She smirked. “Ah reckon so.”
Tilting her head back and pushing up for all she was worth, she smooched robot-Rainbow Dash right on the chin. Violet eyes flickered, then grew brighter than ever as the Cybermare’s grip loosened. Applejack pushed her way out of the embrace and fell to the ground. The Cyberleader shook herself from her daze. “Seize her!”
Even as the other Cyberponies swarmed in, though, a others rose to protect the captives. The one holding Bonbon, who she was pretty sure was Rumble, dropped her and flew over to sock Cheerilee’s captor in the jaw. Lofty blocked Holiday from assault, holding her wings over her wife’s head. Fluttershy and Thunderlane pushed back against the swarm of attackers as the ponies gathered around Romana.
There was a confused jumble of hooves and manes and flesh and metal, followed by a blinding flash of light.
Fluttershy, Lofty, and the others backed together, forming an outward facing circle as the flock of pegasi drew nearer. “Y’know~,” Rumble said, “it’zz gre~at to hav~e my min~d back~. But I kin~da wish they’d~ taken uzz~ with them~.”
“Guyzz~? Where’d Twi~light and Rain~bow~ go~?”
Scootaloo buzzed along the street, kicking up cloudstuff as she went. She could hear the rest of the city closing in on her. Okay. She couldn’t outfly them all. Let’s try something else.
She dove to the street, holding her forehooves out in front of her, silently willing the clouds to part. She glanced to a nearby building and estimated the distance between it and her. Then she hit the ground and kept going, burrowing into the cloud and sealing it up behind her. A convenient readout showing her altitude helped her work out how far down she’d gone. She stopped for a moment, listening. Then, she heard the gentle paff of bodies hitting the clouds.
Scootaloo grinned. Perfect. There was maybe six inches of visibility down here. She could stay hidden like this for hours and not be found. Of course, that wasn’t what she was going to do. She turned toward the building she’d seen earlier, calculated the angle she’d need to travel at based on the Pythagorean Theorem, and flapped for all she was worth. After several seconds, she emerged in the moonlight again. She looked around. She’d come up only a few meters away from where she’d predicted. Not bad. She peered furtively out the window. The street was alive with pegasi kicking up the clouds, tearing the street apart searching for her.
Of course, all this was only stirring up the cloud more and more. She could feel a bolt building. But it wouldn’t be big enough. She couldn’t shape the clouds under her by hoof anymore, not quickly enough.
But if she could get more ponies going at the ground like these guys were, the entire city bouncing and digging and jumbling the cloud up… that might just work! But she’d have to act fast. With a bound, she took to the air, soaring up, up, up above the city in the clouds.
And then she could see it all below her. Not just the city. The world. She watched the patchwork landscape roll by, the clouds drifting over the fields and the forests and the towns… She wanted it to be like this forever.
But she knew it couldn’t. And it shouldn’t. So she scanned the city for massive populations of pegasi, mapping it all out in her mind. She saw it all, from where to strike first to the final blow. It would be only ten minutes before the nanites were too far away for the lightning to affect.
Scootaloo cracked her neck thoughtfully. Well. She’d just have to make those ten minutes count. She dove for the Cloudiseum.
There was a flash of light, and the mares landed on the floor of the console room. Four Cyberponies were busily working the controls, but they all turned to look at the new arrivals. Besides the five mares of flesh and blood, there was a confused-looking silver pegasus and a violet alicorn mare. “Oh no,” Cheerilee said. “We’re outnumbered!”
Romana looked between the old guard and the new. She raised her hooves. “Alright, guv’nors. It’s a fair cop, Cyberleader.”
“Ex~cel~lent~!”
“Ex~cel~lent~!”
Twilight and Propraetor Cyclone looked at one another. “Who~ ar~e you~?” Cyclone demanded.
“I~ am your~ zzup~er~ior~!” Twilight returned. “You~ dare~ to chal~lenge my rol~e as Cy~berleader~?”
“I chal~lenge noth~ing~. For you ar~e not the Cy~berleader~!”
They stared at each other for a long minute. Then, the two groups fell to fighting. Romana rushed for the control panel. “Everypony, try to stay out of their way!” she yelled, opening the door. The Doctor beamed at her, and a grey-- not silver-- pegasus ran in, her raven locks streaming out behind her. She uncorked a phial she held in one wing, being sure to open it away from her face. Romana approved. Anypony who could remember to use appropriate lab technique at a time like this was alright in her books.
The grey mare upended the vial into an exposed tube, and quicksilver ran out into the belly of the TARDIS. Then Propraetor Cyclone grabbed her from behind and yanked her away before she could do anything more.
But the Doctor was there to take over. He grabbed at the control panel, pulling levers and pressing buttons. “Romana! Can you cover me?”
“Right!” she shouted, casting her slightly wobbly shield once more, forming a bubble around the controls.
Holiday dove for cover as the two Cyberleaders pushed into the console near her. “Any time, Doctor!”
Romana winced as the three pegasi not currently grappling with each other or the Rani beat on her shield spell. “Yes-- I don’t know how long I can hold this!”
“Right!” the Doctor said. “Hold on tight!”
He grabbed onto an orange lever. Rainbow Dash grabbed onto the railing with her powerful metal hooves. Applejack grabbed onto Rainbow. Cheerilee grabbed onto Applejack. Bonbon grabbed hold of Holiday and one of the monitors. Romana just held onto the console for dear life.
The TARDIS shot into the air, right through the roof of the lab. The Doctor yanked another lever to deactivate the interior gravity, then spun the ship so that its doorway faced the clouds below. “Bombs away!” he shouted as the unsecured pegasus warriors suddenly found themselves knocked off their hooves.
And then he saw the furious face of the Rani falling down to the clouds as well. “Oh no. Ushas!”
Romana blinked. “Sorry? Ushas? As in, the Rani Ushas?”
“Do you know any others?” The Doctor reactivated the artificial gravity and went into a dive.
Romana clung on for dear life. “She’s a pegasus being carried by a pegasus! She’s hardly going to splat! We, on the other hoof--”
She was cut off when the Rani viciously elbowed CyberCyclone in the face and pushed off, hard. She soared up to the TARDIS, slamming the doors behind her. “Thank you,” she snapped. “So bloody much.”
“Oi. Did you die? No.”
The Rani folded her right wing into an incredibly rude gesture.
The others slowly, shakily regained their bearings. Holiday looked around. “Where’s Scootaloo?”
Scootaloo was quite unaware of all of this. She had been quite busy recently. Her journey could have been summarized as “Skyzantium Express Tour: All the Sights you Need to See in Under Ten Minutes.”
She’d hit up the Cloudisseum first. That had been easier than her frantic race through the streets had been. She’d gotten all of the chariots entangled before sending them and the whole crowd beside stirring up the cloud layer. After that, she’d visited the Hoofia Sofia, the Propraetor’s palace, the main drag… and now, as the time limit was ticking ever nearer, she was racing for the last place she could think of that might have a sizable population. The Rainbow Factory.
Skyzantium was justly famous for their production of rainbows. The factory had ended up creating where Rainbow Falls was in Scootaloo’s own time, and the Traders Exchange was an echo of the booming international trade the city had once enjoyed.
Of course, the secret of rainbow making had been jealously guarded by the kirin right up until a pair of pegasi disguised as sages had stolen it right out from their vast empire, but the tour guides didn’t often mention that.
(That’s not relevant) , she thought to herself.
I bet its relevant to the kirin , she replied.
(Shut up and fly.)
Y’know, it’s amazing how many stories from pegasus mythology are about rising and falling.
(Shut up.)
Like, there’s Icarus, and those two giant guys…
(Shut. Up.)
And Bellerophon!
(Shut, and I can’t possibly emphasize this enough, up.)
Bellerophon was--
(OH MY LUNA-- )
Bellerophon was an earth pony who befriended
(You know what? No.)
...Sorry?
(I said no. If we’re doing Bellerophon, we’re doing it my way. Capisce?)
All right, I guess. Does that mean I get to make the interjections?
(Fine, whatever. Bellerophon was an earth pony hero who befriended Pegasus.) You remember him? Capital-P Pegasus? Medusa’s son who sprang out of her severed neck?
(Pegasus was a great flier, but not much of a fighter, and Bellerophon was a great warrior who really wanted to fly. They got together, killed a chimera with molten lead, it was awesome.)
You know, I think there’s more to it than--
(Getting to the point! Bellerophon felt that he and Pegasus deserved to be placed among the gods.)
Were they in love? Scholars disagree.
(So they flew up to the heavens, and to punish them for being too awesome, the gods sent a horsefly to sting Pegasus on the butt.)
It wasn’t excessive awesomeness, it was hubris.
(Same thing. It just depends whose side you’re on.)
I mean--
(Anyway, Pegasus bucked like crazy, because horsefly stings are the worst. And Bellerophon fell to earth.)
It wouldn’t have been the first time, either. According to the work of Soorin Carrotketgaard, Pegasus bucked Bellerophon tried to go and woo a lady, which does give the suspicion of jealousy indicative--
(Hey. Keep it short.)
Sorry. I’m just saying, they were totally dating.
(Anyway, and this is the part I think you were driving at, this was a fall from higher than Bellerophon had ever gone before. And he landed in a pile of thorns, broke his back, and went blind.)
Yow.
(Yeah, yow. That’s gotta--)
GET DOWN!
Scootaloo dove. A pegasus zoomed over her head, missing her by inches. She risked a glance back. A platoon of soldiers was bearing down on her, fast. Only one way to go. She zipped into the Rainbow Factory, the cloud puffing around her.
She emerged in a cavernous space, full of enormous strainers, great vats of natural dyes, and huge rainbow sprayers. The machinery of the plant sat still and useless, for everypony required to run it had gone on a Scootaloo hunt.
She darted behind a vast vat of orange dye, pressing herself close against it. She heard puff after puff, signaling the arrival of more and more pegasi in the room. She held herself still until she could bear it no more. Then, she soared up over the edge of the vat. “All your fathers are bottoms!”
There are some silences that really are golden. The absolute shock and insult of a couple hundred robot pegasi that comes from having insulted their parentage is simply indescribable. Scootaloo, though, had no time to savor it. She dove for the clouds below as the silence was converted into a furious roar and the beating of wings.
She was about halfway down when a pegasus sprung up out of the clouds at her. Every instinct told her to veer. She elected to ignore those instincts and continued to barrel down directly into the stallion’s face. She saw him reel, and then she fell into the cloud.
From up above, she heard a heavy thump. She frowned at first, not knowing what it could be. Then, her vision went orange. The idiots had knocked over one of the vats of rainbow juice. The next thing she knew, a vast, flat surface struck her, and she was falling to earth, pressed against the inside of an enormous vat. Her first instinct was to try and fly back up with it, but she knew that even now she wasn’t strong enough to pull that off. Her second instinct was to try and fly faster than the vat was falling and make it out before she hit the ground, but she wasn’t fast enough for that.
So, option C it was. She flew down to nearer the rim and pushed for all she was worth. The vat began to rotate onto its side as she pushed up and out. It landed with a thud, the lip of its rim digging into the earth before it fell over onto its side. She zipped out of the top of the vat and soared up again, back to the clouds.
(And do you know what Bellerophon did after he fell?)
Er. Lived as a hermit until he died?
(Pfft. Nah. He was too awesome for that.)
But the myth says--
(It’s a myth. A lie. That’s what ‘myth’ means.)
Erm…
(He got up, got back on his horse boyfriend, and kept on fighting monsters. (Pegasus had to serve as his eyes from then on.) He was a hero, and that meant no surrender, no giving up.)
So, does that mean you’re cool with not being able to fly again?
(Rut no. You think Bellerophon was cool with thorns blinding him? No. But I’m not going to let some stupid ancient gods, or genetics, or anypony else tell me how I should live my life.)
She swooshed up through the enormous hole in the floor that the falling vat had created. “Is that all you got?” she shouted.
(Once upon a time, there was a mare named Scootaloo.)
She soared over the walkways like a falcon.
(She had to choose between everything she’d ever wanted and everything she’d ever loved.)
The pegasi gave chase, but she was defter, better at seeing the angles, and sent them sprawling into walls.
((Friends, family, her life…))
Another vat of dye was knocked over, and the wall was soaked purple.
(She chose to save the world and sacrifice herself.)
She circled around and around, soaring higher and higher until she could touch the dome.
(Her body, her dreams. Everything.)
She dove, butting through the throng, bracing for impact, closing her eyes tight. She hit the ground and everything exploded in a burst of light and sound and orange and purple and pain and exhilaration.
(And when it was done, she wouldn’t have done a thing differently.)
Scootaloo’s eyelids fluttered, the ash falling on her coat, mane and lashes. The image of the explosion was still burnt into her mind, the orange and purple lightning, the thunderclap that shook the soul. “Scoota...boom,” she murmured, before falling into a deep and dreamless sleep.
Author's Note
Soorin Carrotketgaard is a pun on Soren Kirkegaard which I borrowed from CrackedInkWell's fic The Philosophical Substitute: Discord . It's an excellent fic. I love it.
Also, when Scootaloo insulted the pegasi by saying all their fathers were bottoms, that is the closest thing I could get to a historical insult that actually made sense. The Romans had a serious mad-on about who had power over whom, including in bed. Especially in bed.
Scootaloo woke up to the sound of soft beeping. She blinked. The room was dim, but she could still clearly see the figures around her. Her aunts sat together on her right-hoof side, slumped over each other, their hooves entwined. On her left, Ditzy sat, faceplanted in Scootaloo’s mattress. At the foot of the bed, Dash had fallen asleep with her chin resting on the footboard.
Scootaloo looked down at herself, and for a moment she wasn’t sure why that simple action caused such a wave of disappointment. Then the events of the last several hours washed over her. She sat bolt upright, the paper sheets crinkling as she moved. She winced as the saline drip in her forehoof yanked her back, but did not cry out. Why was she in a hospital?
The shifting sheets must have disturbed Ditzy, because she stirred and rose, blinking.
“Scootaloo? You’re awake!” she said happily. Then her eyes went wide. “Scootaloo! You’re awake!”
That was enough to wake the others with a start. It was impressive, watching Rainbow go from zero to sixty faster than Scootaloo could blink. Almost immediately, the older mare was up in her face, almost shouting apologies, questions, and explanations. Scootaloo just sat there, clutching her sheets between her hooves, letting the incomprehensible stream of babble wash over her.
Her aunts woke slower, and sat more quietly. They just stared at her, eyes wet and lips tight, each mare’s hooves clasped in the other’s. They said nothing until Rainbow had stopped speaking, her breath coming in thick, short pants. “Well?”
“Well what?” Scootaloo said. “I don’t think I understood a word you just said.”
Rainbow smacked her forehead and muttered something under her breath. She looked up and said with forced calm, “Are you okay?”
“Uh, yeah. I think so.” She looked down at herself. “I think I made it out pretty OK, considering.”
“I-- No! I mean, are you okay here ?” She tapped her chest for emphasis.
For a second, Scootaloo considered inspecting her own chest and cracking wise, but looking at the concerned faces around her, she decided that wouldn’t go down well. “Where’s the Doctor?” she asked.
Ditzy coughed. “Taking care of a few loose ends.”
The Doctor hummed a little as he tried to tune the screwdriver. “You are sure you want me to take this off you?”
“Let me think,” the Rani said tonelessly. “Return to a prison sentence from the Time Lords, or escape to return to my studies. Decisions, decisions…”
“You won’t be able to travel much,” the Doctor pointed out. “And it’s no use trying to bum a lift with me, I’d be on the couch for a week.”
“Doctor. I would sooner bite down on a test tube of sulfuric acid than ask to ‘bum a lift’ from you.”
“Charming. Remind me why I’m helping you again?”
“I don’t believe you ever said. You just put Scootaloo in your medbay, and when you came back you offered to take my bracelet off.”
“Oh.” The Doctor lapsed into silence.
The Rani studied him, the way she would an unexpected bacterium under her microscope. “Why are you helping me?”
The Doctor looked up at her. “I don’t really know. Because it’s the right thing to do? Because it’s kind? Because we were friends?”
The Rani stifled a snort. “Were we?”
“Well. Frenemies, I suppose,” the Doctor allowed. “Or maybe it’s something else. Maybe it’s the way you turned up out of the blue. Maybe it’s the way you told me that Gallifrey stands, in some way or another.”
There was a last buzz from the screwdriver, and the time ring clicked apart. “Doesn’t matter, really. It’s done now.”
The Rani flexed her foreleg, considering. She slipped the ring from her hoof and stowed it in her saddlebag. “It will be useful for spare parts,” she said. There was a long pause. “...Thank you,” she said at last.
“You’re welcome.”
A stallion poked his head in. “It’s all ready, Lieutenant.”
The Rani made a face. “Never call me that again,” she ordered. “I’ve had it up to here with military life. I hope I never see this city again.”
The charioteer gave a sort of half-smile. “I plan to enjoy my time here, myself. What I’ve got left of it.”
The Rani’s face darkened, and the Doctor glanced away. She turned to him. “Leave us.”
“Right, brilliant. I’ll just be checking over the TARDIS’ inner workings, make sure she’s not been overworked.” He hurried into the blue box and slammed the door behind him.
The Rani turned to the charioteer. “I’m sorry.”
He gave her a tired smile. “Not your fault.”
“It was, actually,” she said.
“What, the disease? Letting those little pests out of their box? No. It was the will of the Gods.”
The Rani bit her tongue. She had very little patience even for Gallifreyan deities, let alone the religions of other worlds. But apparently, they represented something important in this culture. She would let the theological discussion slide today. “You were saying that it was ready?”
“Ah! Yes, Lieu-- Rani,” he corrected hastily. “The entire building has been separated from the city. Though, if I may ask--”
“No. You will see why soon enough.” The Rani turned away. “You may wish to leave now, if you value your life.”
He smiled, a sad, lopsided grin.“Not much left to value.”
“You said you had a family. A wife, a child.”
“Yes, I suppose that’s true.”
“It has been a long time since I had either,” the Rani said shortly. “Spend your time with them. After you’re gone, these days will be all they have.”
The charioteer--Rolling Wheels, she remembered suddenly, that was his name-- was no longer smiling. “I will.”
“Then go to them. I can do nothing more for you.”
“I will,” he repeated, turning to leave. At the door, though, he paused. “And Rani?”
She half-turned to face him. “Thank you,” he said.
And then he was gone.
The Rani stared at nothing, scowling. She felt weak. She hated feeling weak. Was this what trying to be a kinder person got you? Bah humbug, then.
But that last thanks echoed in her mind and stuck there. Perhaps it was something governing this universe that forced this saccharine sweetness on her. Perhaps it was something in the water. Or the air?
Well, she’d certainly have time to work it out. When she was certain that Wheels would have left, she pulled a lever on the wall. The center of the floor burst into flames. The clouds would be too dry to put it out, now that the storm Scootaloo had created knocked out all the water. That was okay. She didn’t intend to try.
The Rani flew up and knocked a hole in the roof. She hovered there, just long enough to watch the Doctor's TARDIS’ hostile action displacement system swing into action. It roared and wheezed into nothingness, and the Rani felt an odd pang of sadness watching it leave. Then she turned and flew away, back to the only thing of true importance; the pursuit of science.
The Doctor glanced up at the viewscreen as the TARDIS started to dematerialize. He frowned. “She might at least have said goodbye.”
Applejack glanced up from her side of the console. “Whatchoo talkin’ about?”
“Nothing, nothing. Shall we head home, then?”
“Yes, please,” Cheerilee said fervently. “I’d really like to go to bed.”
“How can you sleep after a night like that?” Bonbon asked.
“I don’t know, but I certainly intend to find out.”
The Doctor pushed a few levers up. “And… there!”
“Really?” Romana asked.
“Really.”
The unicorn peered at the monitor. “Not quite, I’m afraid. You’re actually about to land on Sweet Apple Acres…”
The Doctor gestured to Applejack. “Perfect, then.”
“...some three hundred years before Princess Luna’s banishment.”
“Ah.”
Romana gently pushed him aside and began working the controls herself. As she worked, Ditzy and Rainbow trotted in. Ditzy had one wing around Rainbow’s barrel, clearly supporting the younger mare. Applejack rushed over to help her marefriend to sit on the floor. For once, Rainbow didn’t seem to mind the PDA. The Doctor’s face fell as Ditzy trotted over to him. “How is she?” he asked.
“She wouldn’t say,” Ditzy admitted. “Not to us. Holiday and Lofty are still in there, Scootaloo told us that she needed to talk to them both in private.
The Doctor nodded. “She’ll be okay,” he said, turning back to the console. “She’s tough. She’ll be fine.”
“Are you telling that to me, or to yourself?”
The Doctor didn’t answer.
When the door to the medical wing closed behind Rainbow and Ditzy, Scootaloo and her aunts were left in silence. After what felt like an eternity, Lofty cleared her throat. “I’ll just flick on the light, shall I?”
Neither her wife nor her niece objected, though both of them winced when the room lit up. Lofty settled back into her seat and waited.
Eventually, Scootaloo found her voice. “I’m sorry,” she said.
Holiday nodded. “I judged you guys too hard,” Scootaloo continued. “You were trying to finally tell me the truth after all these years, and I shut you down. That was a stupid move, and it hurt you, and I’m sorry.”
“We forgive you,” Holiday said. “Now, will you forgive us?”
Scootaloo frowned. “Huh?”
“You’re certainly not the only one who needs to apologize,” Holiday said, slumping in on herself. “We shouldn’t have kept the truth from you for so long.”
“And we shouldn’t have beat around the bush so much when we did tell you,” Lofty said, side-eyeing her wife.
“Yes, yes, alright,” Holiday grumbled.
“And what’s this ‘we’ business, anyway? I always said we should tell her--”
“Well then, you shouldn’t have listened to me , should you?” Holiday took a breath and collected herself. “Well, that’s neither here nor there. The point is, we should have been more open with you about your past. Will you forgive us?”
Scootaloo nodded. “‘Course,” she said roughly. “Love you.”
Lofty smiled. “Now, isn’t this nice? C’mon, Holly, get around the other side. Time for a Scootaloo sandwich!”
“Ah! Auntie Lofty, no!” Scootaloo said, laughing. “I’m too old for that!”
“Too old for hugs? Nonsense,” her aunt said, climbing up on the right side of the bed and snuggling up to her niece. Scootaloo could feel Aunt Holiday’s weight fall on the left side and do the same. Scootaloo was squished, safe and warm, between her two loving, caring aunts. And in that moment, her cares and fears were lifted. She could just lie there, safe and loved and happy.
“Of course,” said Lofty casually, “now that’s over, we do still need to think of what degree you can switch to, now you’re out of weather control.”
“Oh, I’ve got some ideas,” Scootaloo said sleepily. “But they can wait.”
“Yes, be quiet, dear,” Holiday agreed. “Let us rest for awhile.”
Lofty murmured an indistinct apology, and slid into a doze. After a while, so did Holiday and Scootaloo.
Cyclone woke slowly. Everything felt oddly fluffy and far away. She blinked her one good eye open. She was inside of a cloud. Why was she inside of a cloud? She couldn’t remember much at the moment. The last thing she remembered was going to investigate Lieutenant Pallas. After that…
Attack
Obey
Upgrade
Metal
Her one eye went wide, and she shot out of the cloudbank, ready for action. In the process, she launched Sgt. Siege Warfare off his hooves, then into and through a nearby house. She winced slightly in sympathy, but relaxed when she saw him raise a hoof out of the rubble and wave it helplessly. Quite how he was the brother of Flash Magnus, she had no idea.
She tried to focus. What had caused this? The box had caused this. Commander Hurricane had insisted that the box was harmless. The memory of her earlier heart-to-heart with the commander came winging back to her, like an arrow from above. She winced. Truly, she did not wish to strip him of his rank, but there seemed no way to escape that action without going back on a threat. That would show weakness, and weakness could not be permitted.
First, though, she would have to find him. She looked around, and saw motion every which way. It would be an impossibility to find him in this mob of movement. “Propraetor! Propraetor, there you are!”
Cyclone struggled to keep her balance as Pansy bounded into her, shoved off course by the chaotic motions of the crowd. “Oh! I’m so sorry!”
“At ease, Private, at ease,” Cyclone said, regaining her composure. “Where is Hurricane? I must speak with him.”
“That may take some time, Propraetor.”
Cyclone perked up. “Is he injured?” Wounds sustained in battle might grant her the out she needed. Hurricane was a good Commander, and she feared the repercussions of stripping him of his rank.
“No, Propraetor.”
“Oh.” She deflated.
“He’s organizing the repairs and relief effort.”
“The…” Cyclone trailed off as the full impact of the crowd hit her for the first time. They were not milling about in confusion, nor were they panicking. They were calmly and collectively putting the city back together, cloud by cloud. The streets were almost smooth again, and the holes in the buildings were being repaired even as she watched.
“It was of course a great travesty that the storm caused Lt. Pallas’s lab to drift away,” Pansy continued. “All the work inside is lost now, including the Lieutenant herself.”
“A storm,” Cyclone repeated.
“Oh, yes. But thanks to your excellent leadership and the Commander’s skill at organizing tasks, the city suffered no casualties and only a few losses of property.”
“I see,” Cyclone mused, looking at Pansy more closely. Behind the mare’s wide blue eyes, something winked back at her. “And this was in no way related to… any boxes, for instance?”
“Boxes, Propraetor?”
“No. I thought not. In that case, I believe the Commander has earned himself a commendation, as have you.”
“I, Propraetor?”
“A private one, Private, if you wish.”
“That would be most good of you, Propraetor. Thank you for recognizing me.”
“Oh, I recognize more than you know,” Cyclone said. “Tell me, Pansy, have you ever considered a career in politics?”
“No, thank you. I prefer to remain out of the public eye.”
“I quite understand. But as an advisor, perhaps?”
“Officially, Propraetor, my duties require me to remain with Commander Hurricane at all times.”
“And unofficially?”
Pansy gave a shy smile. “We can discuss that later. Say, tomorrow in your private gardens, CM-hours?”
Cyclone smiled. “You realize you aren’t on duty, Private? VII tomorrow evening sounds fine.” She glanced around. “We may even have the city repaired by then.”
“Yes, ma’am. Would you care to join in?”
“Certainly. What areas need the most attention?”
Commander Hurricane watched from afar as his subordinate chatted up the most powerful mare in the city. He allowed his expression to unfreeze just enough to give a fraction of a smile. He supposed he rather approved of her moving up in the ranks. Perhaps it wouldn’t be quite so lonely at the top with a compatriot. Then he turned back to organizing Skyzantium’s full restoration.
Applejack sat on the floor of the TARDIS, holding Rainbow tight to her chest. “AJ?”
“Yeah?”
“Sorry about running out on you like that.”
“‘S okay. Ya needed to make things right. Ah respect that.”
“Yeah.”
There was silence for a few minutes. “I think I need to make things right with you, too.”
“Oh? How’s that?”
“I--” Dash huffed and muttered something unprintable. “Look, I’m coming out, alright?”
Applejack blinked a few times. “Sugarcube, Ah reckon Ah got th’ idea after the first few times you kissed me--”
“Not to you! To Ponyville!”
“Oh.” Applejack decided that, Archdeacon of Honesty or not, now might not be the most tactful time to mention that everypony in town already had a pretty good idea of their relationship. “What brought this on?”
Dash shifted awkwardly in Applejack’s hooves. The farmer let go, only for Dash to shove herself tighter against her barrel. “No, keep holding me. I like that. Being held is awesome.”
Applejack chuckled and ran a hoof through her marefriend’s mane. “You were sayin’?”
“Oh, yeah. Uh.” Dash cleared her throat again. “Look, Cloudsdale wasn’t exactly a good place to grow up… y’know. Not hetero.”
“Uh-huh?”
“So when I came into my mom's book club meeting, babbling about this real cute filly sitting next to me in class--”
“Point of order?”
“Uh?”
“What was her name?”
“Oh, it was Blossomforth.”
“Right. Carry on.”
“Uh, yeah, the other book club mares flipped. Told mom it was me being rebellious, and she should do something about that, and a bunch of other stuff. That was the last time mom had a book club. But the other mares... well, they loved some nice juicy gossip.”
Applejack’s grip got tighter. “Yeah, pretty much,” Dash said. “Mom and dad always supported me-- I mean, you met them, you know how they are. But they were basically the only ones in the city who were remotely chill.”
“Ah see. But when you talk about Cloudsdale, y’all always seem so--”
“Happy?” Dash shrugged. “Yeah. I had some good times there. Pretended to be straight, fit in. Like I said, mom and dad were always there for me. I made friends with some other cool pegasi. That’s where I met Thunderlane. Plus, you can get away with a lot more if you can fly well enough. Point of pride, or whatever.”
“So all this time you bin keepin’ it a secret because o’ that?” Applejack asked quietly. “Aw, Dash. Ah wish you’d’ve told me. Ah wouldn’t’ve pushed so hard--”
“No way,” Dash said. “I shoulda told everypony in town a long time ago. Ponyville isn’t Cloudsdale. It isn’t proud or vain like Cloudsdale is. It’s, like, a hundred times cooler than Cloudsdale ever was!”
“You think so?”
“Well, you live there, don’t you?”
Applejack paused. “Rainbow, Ah do believe that was the sweetest thing you ever said to me.”
“Really? Shoot, I’m losing my touch…”
Applejack hugged her tighter. “Ah like sweet talk.”
“Oh. Eheheh.” Dash went pink.
Romana leaned over to Bonbon. “How did she ever think they were keeping this a secret?”
Bonbon shrugged. “Celestia knows. Maybe this will correct the cosmic balance and Lyra will stop thinking that pet names and public displays of affection are appropriate roommate behavior.”
Silver Spoon poked her head out from under the Cutie Map table. “You think it’s over?”
“It sounds like it,” Diamond said, following her friend out. “Wonder how trashed Ponyville got this time?”
Silver trotted over to a window. “Can’t tell. It’s all fogged up outside.”
“Too bad. If we could look outside, we could go out when all the cleaning was already over.”
“Heh. Yeah.”
Diamond frowned. “Silver? What’s the matter?”
“Nothing, nothing. It’s stupid.”
“No, tell me!” Diamond insisted, trotting over to her friend’s side.
Silver shrugged. “I was just thinking about what Rumble said. About there being one thing we needed to do for him to forgive us.”
“Yeah?”
“You think it was… apologize?”
Diamond was silent for a long time. "Shit."
“Yeah, it was kinda obvious, wasn’t it?” Silver agreed. “So, should we go do that?”
“What, you think he’d forgive us now? After we didn’t even think to apologize when he all but laid it at our hooves?” She shook her head. “No. We just showed him how much we didn’t change.”
Silver sighed and looked at the foggy window again. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. Maybe it’s time we just moved on with our lives.”
“Can we do that?” Diamond mused. “Without being forgiven? It seems kinda hollow.”
Silver shrugged. “Maybe. But we don’t have any choice.”
Diamond sighed. “No, I guess you're right.” She looked up at the fogged glass. “When do we ever?”
Silver took her friend’s hoof and held it. “Don’t be like that. Like you said, your dad always keeps his promises.”
“Yeah,” Diamond agreed. “He always said breaking a promise to me would be the last thing he did.”
Rumble sat alone in Ditzy’s backyard. Every other pegasus had gone home, weary and not a little embarrassed about being part of what had nearly destroyed Ponyville this week.
When the Doctor had brought the TARDIS back to pick up Lofty, he’d offered the young stallion the chance to come in as well. Rumble had said no, of course. He wasn’t much good at bedside manner, and that was what Scootaloo probably needed. When she got out of the TARDIS, though, that would be a different story. So he would wait here as long as he needed to, under the fading clouds and the shining stars.
He was just starting to think about breakfast when he heard the wheeeze of the TARDIS arriving. He blinked the weariness from his eyes as he watched the big blue box fade into existence slowly.
The door burst open. “Hey Rumble! I’m dating Applejack!”
Rumble yawned. “That’s great, Dash.”
Dash gave a loopy grin. “Isn’t it? I’m gonna tell the whole town next!”
Cheerilee hurried out and put a hoof on Rainbow’s back. “Perhaps it might be a better idea to save that for later.”
“No! I’ve been holding onto this for actual years,” Rainbow whined.
“Then it can wait until the sun is actually up,” Cheerilee said firmly. “Bedtime.”
“Aww,” Dash sighed.
Ditzy trotted up. “Don’t worry, I’ll take her home. C’mon, Dashie.”
“Hey, Ditzy, did you know I’m dating Applejack?”
“Why, no I didn’t! Why don’t you tell me all about it while I fly you home?”
Applejack chuckled, looking up at her marefriend fly away, clumsy and punch-drunk on affection. “Well, Ah guess Ah’m glad she’s ready to spill th’ beans, now. Ah jes’ gotta keep her from talkin’ bout nothin’ else.”
Romana was the next out, followed by Bonbon. “Well, there’s nothing like escaping a group of deranged Cybermen to really guarantee a good night’s sleep,” Romana said. “Night, all.”
She went out through the back gate, and Bonbon and Cheerilee followed her out. Applejack was about to follow suit, when the Doctor poked his head out the TARDIS doors. “Applejack, could you give me a hoof for a mo’? I want your opinion on something.”
The farmer blinked, then shrugged. “Aw, what’s a few more minutes awake at this point? Alright Doc, show me what you need…”
Before she entered, she paused as Scootaloo and her aunts trotted out. Lofty was still asleep, draped over Holiday’s back like a blanket. “Hey,” Rumble said.
“Hey,” Scootaloo said back. She looked at Aunt Holiday. “I’ll catch up with you.”
Holiday hesitated, but eventually nodded. She gave Rumble a very weary smile, then headed off through the gate.
The two friends sat together under the fading stars. Rumble glanced at Scootaloo's flank. It was marked with an emblem of a wheel pursued by a blue lightning bolt. “So,” he said. “How’d it go?”
“Um,” said Scootaloo. “Okay, how much do you already know?”
“Nothing.”
“Then I’ll skip to the end.” Scootaloo looked up at the sky. “I got to fly.”
“Oh.”
“And now I’ll probably never fly again.”
“I see.”
“So I’m changing my plans for the future.”
“Okay.”
“I’m gonna be a stunt planner.”
“Wait. What?”
“Stunt planner. Never really thought about it before, but you know what the Wonderbolts need to pull off all their cool tricks? Math. Lots of math. Math to make sure they don’t die. And I managed to think my way out of a lot of problems on the fly tonight.”
“Well,” Rumble said, sitting back, “I’m glad. It sounds like you’ll be good at that.”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah.”
They sat in silence. Rumble nudged her. “You alright?”
“No, not really,” Scootaloo said. “Maybe I’ll never be alright. But you know what? Maybe I will be. And I’m definitely more alright than when I was hoping for a miracle. I’m taking my life back, Rumble. And you know what I think? I think that’s a start.”
“Good.” Another pause. “You wanna hug?”
“Yes, please.”
They sat like that for a few minutes, two friends just being there with each other and for each other under the dark curtain of night.
Inside the TARDIS, Applejack leaned against the railing of one of the catwalks. “So, uh, what didja want me ta look at, Doc?”
“Just a moment,” the Doctor said, peering intently at a monitor. “I need to find the right footage.”
Applejack rubbed her eyes while the Doctor rewound the footage. “Right. Now, I’m counting on your Countess of Honesty powers, here.”
“K.”
“I want you to watch this security cam footage and tell me what you see.”
Applejack squinted. “Looks kinda grainy.”
“No, it’s rainy,” the Doctor corrected.
“Oh. Ah see.” She squinted as a faint wheezing groan rose from the speakers. “Huh. Sounds like it’s movin’, but Ah don’t see th’ rotor goin’ up an’ down. Except--” she squinted. “It’s like Ah’m lookin at two pictures at once.”
She frowned. “An’ where’d that fella spring from? Is that another of yer faces?”
“Not one I’ve ever seen, no,” the Doctor said darkly. “So you can see it, then.”
“Ah can’t say Ah know what it is, but yes Ah do.”
“I see. Very helpful.”
“Ya don’t sound best pleased.”
“I’m not. I was hoping this was just some kind of trick with the footage. Would you be able to see through a camera trick like that?”
“Dunno. Ah’ve seen ‘em in cinemas, but Ah know they’re all lies anyhow afore Ah get there. Guess it might fool me.”
“Hm.”
“Doc, what exactly is it you’re trying ta ask me?”
“I’m not sure,” the Doctor said grimly. “All I know is, there’s something very wrong with my TARDIS. Thanks for trying, Applejack. I’ll let you go to bed, now.”
“Alright, Doc. Hope ya work it out soon.”
She trotted out and closed the door behind her. The Doctor looked back to the screen, where the pale figure was even now meddling with the controls. “Something wrong with the TARDIS,” he mused, “or something very wrong in the TARDIS.”
There was a clatter, and the Doctor jumped. But when he looked round, it was only a wrench that had fallen to the floor. He frowned at it. “Jumping at shadows,” he muttered, trotting out of the TARDIS to go to bed.
Behind him, the lights went out, one by one, as the TARDIS entered sleep mode. The last one, though, stayed on a long time. One last light, burning red like a beating heart, stayed on several minutes after all else had switched off. Then, with a flash, even that went out, leaving the console room in darkness.
Author's Note
Next Time On Doctor Whooves
Shining watched her go, and then turned to the object of his fear. A rectangular section of crystal, about the size of a large door, had recessed into the wall. The join had been so smooth that it might have remained undetected for another thousand years.
Into the threshold, one word was carved.
SOMBRA.
A whistling noise cut through the air, followed by a muffled hiss and crunch. The Doctor glanced up. His eyes went wide and he shoved Sweetie toward the safety of the archway. Five meters left.
For the Doctor, everything went white for a moment, a light that was bright and mercilessly cold. Then everything faded to a comforting, warm black.
In her tent, Luna’s head snapped up so fast she might well have gotten whiplash. She gasped, desperate for breath, for several long moments, before finally wheezing out, “Celestia!”
A placid sea of milky white, unnerving to watch, had been ripped away to reveal the fury that it had always been disguising. For years, now, the citizens of the Empire had been living under the iron hoof of their mad king, forced to obey his commands, forced out of their homes, their lives, their minds…
Skyzantium, Pre-Unification Era : It was not a dark and stormy night when the silver pegasus arrived. She had flown in on a cool and dry afternoon, introduced herself as a tactical advisor and weapons expert, and immediately locked herself in a lab. It had not been a dark and stormy night when the first body went missing, nor the second, nor any others. Dark, yes, but quite clear and crisp. Nor still could the weather conditions be described as either dark or stormy when she was promoted several ranks upward, as those who had been filling those ranks had been lost in a vicious skirmish with the unicorns. But now, she thought as she filled a very anachronistic syringe with a reflective purple liquid, it really should be a dark and stormy night. May as well fill the genre stereotypes. And then the Rani put such trivial concerns from her mind and focused back on the project at hand— or rather, hoof— the pursuit of science.
Cloudsdale College of Flight and Weather Management, Autumn of 9 BAT :“That will be all for the day,” Professor Swift said, turning to face her class as the bell rang. “Please remember to do your assigned reading and homework, as it will be due Monday… and have a good weekend.”
A low murmur arose from the crowd as the assembled pegasi rose to their hooves and made for the door. Professor Swift made to exit through a side door, but paused at the last moment. “Miss Scootaloo! A moment of your time?” she called, turning about abruptly.
The orange pegasus froze in her tracks. The grey stallion standing next to her gave her a quick, questioning look. She shook her head. “You go on ahead. I'll catch up.”
Scootaloo’s hoofsteps were faltering and slow as she trotted toward the maroon mare at the head of the room. The professor regarded her with solemn stoicism, though not without sympathy. “Is something wrong, Professor Swift? I didn't lose an assignment, did I?”
The teacher exhaled slowly. “No,” she said. “You’ve got all of your homework in, and your reports. That isn't the problem.”
”I didn't blow that last test, did I? I knew I should've focused more on the theory—”
“Your grasp of flight theory is not the issue,” Professor Swift interrupted. “In fact, it's precisely the opposite of that.”
Scootaloo's heart sunk. “What do you mean?” she stammered.
Scootaloo looked down at her hooves. Professor Swift rubbed at her cheek, her mouth half open. “Scootaloo. I’ve spoken with your advisor. He told me about your condition.”
The orange pegasus’s head jerked up. “He WHAT?”
The teacher continued as though Scootaloo hadn't said a word. “I cannot, in good conscience, allow you to continue on this career path.”
The younger mare bridled, flushing. “I don't see how that's any of your concern,” she snapped. “It's my life.”
“That's entirely my point of view. It's your life, and I won't let you throw it away, or, Celestia forbid, lose it in pursuit of this impossible dream!” She took in a deep breath. “I'm sorry. But weather management is not a viable option for you, nor is any other career requiring extensive time in flight.”
Scootaloo's expression had soured, and her eyes had gained a disturbing glimmer. “I can learn to fly.”
Professor Swift looked at her for a long moment. “You know that's not true. The medical reports clearly say—”
“Geld what the reports say!” Scootaloo shouted. “The medical reports said I’d never get off the ground! The medical reports said I'd never be able to run, let alone do all the crazy manure my friends and I got up to! The medical reports said I probably wouldn't live past age two! I've bucked the medical reports where the sun don't shine every day of my life, and I'm not going to stop until I'm dead.”
Professor Swift's jaw set. “This isn't a matter that's up for debate. The risk is too great. Your practical flight and weather classes have been dropped from your schedule, and you have an appointment next Monday with your advisor to determine a more… appropriate career path.”
“More appropriate,” Scootaloo parroted, her voice full of chili powder, dry and hot with emotion. “For instance?”
The elder mare coughed. “Well, off the top of my head… meteorologist?”
“Meteorologist?” Scootaloo echoed, disbelieving. “Meteorologist?! METEOROLOGIST?”
And then, it was as though all her strings had been cut. “Meteorologist,” she said quietly. “Right. I'll keep that in mind. That all?”
“I— yes. That will be all.”
With her wings, too small and weak to support her body, stuck firmly against her sides, Scootaloo trudged out of the classroom, her head hung low.
Rumble sat on the steps outside of the Weather Management building, hunched over his books like a gargoyle. He barely even flinched when the double doors flung open, ruffling his mane. Instead, he glanced up mildly at his friend. “Bad news?”
“Worst news. They’re changing up my classes ‘cause of my little ‘problem’. Is that discrimination? It feels like discrimination.”
“Probably,” Rumble replied, snapping his book closed. “But they’ve still got a point. You’ve been trying to fly for… how long?”
As long as she could trot. As long as she could see the clouds. As long as she could tell that there was a difference between her and everypony else. “A while.”
“Years.”
“Yeah. So?”
“Scoots…” he sighed. “I’m not saying that you should give up on dreaming about being with the Wonderbolts someday. I’m not saying you shouldn’t try to be like Rainbow Dash. But maybe, just maybe, you should focus a little more on the here and now. Set some… more attainable goals, that’s all. You know you’re not a strong flyer. You’ll basically never be a strong flyer, no matter what you do.”
The orange mare winced and glanced back at her wings. They were well-maintained, perhaps, but ultimately too weak to allow more than a hover. “I… it could happen,” she said weakly.
“Maybe it could. Maybe it will. Maybe there’s some kind of miracle cure that’s gonna get discovered tomorrow, Wing-gro or something, that’ll help you fly like Rainbow Dash. But you can’t bank on that.”
“...” Scootaloo sulked. “Alright then. What do you think I should do? ‘Cause I’m sure as Tartarus not being a meteorologist.”
“I don’t know,” Rumble admitted. “Something with math, maybe. You’re good at math.”
“Math,” Scootaloo scoffed. “What’s awesome that involves math? Nothing.”
Rumble started to object, but she cut him with a look. “No-thing,” she enunciated.
He held up a hoof in surrender. “Alright, alright, none of my business, I’m sure.”
“...Yeah,” Scootaloo said, drooping slightly. “All up to me.”
The sudden silence was louder than any noise. “I’m going to go visit Ponyville,” Scootaloo said abruptly.
Rumble said nothing. The orange mare nodded. “Yeah. Go talk to Dash or somepony. Maybe she’ll have some ideas on how I can get back into the practicals.” She trotted off purposefully, then paused. “Uh. Can you give me a lift?”
The grey pegasus smirked softly. “Alright. Let’s go see what’s up in Ponyville.” He grabbed his friend about the barrel and slowly lifted her off the cloud. “Jeez, Scoots, what’re you eating? Clouds? You’re about as heavy as a feather duster!”
“Gotta stay light if I want to get off the ground. Anyway, I’ve always been good at burning off calories.”
“Mhm,” Rumble’s brow was creased with concern. “You should weigh more than this, though. I can pick you up like a rag—”
“Hey, who are you, my auntie? Quit complaining that you don’t have to carry a heavier load, and get us to Ponyville.”
“Alright, alright. But seriously, Scoots, you have to eat more than this, it isn’t healthy…”
“Yeah, yeah, neither am I. Move your flank, flyboy, I wanna be home for dinner.”
Rumble rolled his eyes, but flapped off in the direction of Ponyville, the college in the clouds quickly fading away into the distant expanse of blue.
Scootaloo stared down, oddly quiet as she watched the hills and fields roll by, turning into forest and lake and back again. Occasionally, the odd settlement would rush by, and then just as quickly vanish again. The whole world was a patchwork quilt of green and blue from up here, something that most ponies never saw, never knew. From the ground, Gallopston couldn’t see Phoenix, but from up here they were so close you could almost reach out and touch both at once, picking them both up and wrapping the cozy green quilt of the world around your shoulders. Maybe you could see it from the TARDIS, too, or a hot air balloon, or a flying chariot, but it wasn’t the same. You couldn’t get the same motion, the same illusion, from them. You had to be flying, actually flying, to see the truth. To see that the whole world was connected.
“Hey. Scootaloo.”
“Hm?”
“We’ll be there in another five minutes.”
“Kay.”
Rumble looked down at his friend with his lips pressed together tightly and his forehead wrinkled in concern. Her moments of spaciness were rare, but when they struck, they hit hard.
They had been friends for nearly… Celestia, had it really been nine years? He remembered the day Scootaloo had suggested trying to hang glide. He remembered the time she’d convinced them all to try parasailing. He remembered Cutie Mark Crusader Hot Air Balloon Pilots, Aeronautical Engineers, Sky Pirates.
He remembered the day when Scootaloo had fallen in the middle of one of their Crusades, breaking her wing in three places. Pegasus bones were hollow, and more fragile than those of unicorns or earth ponies. Scootaloo’s bones were even more fragile than that, according to her mother.
Rumble remembered that afternoon, when Sweet Apple Acres was visited by a big white chariot all the way from Canterlot, a red cross marking it as emergency transit. He remembered the raw, open panic on Rainbow Dash’s face, and he remembered the drawn, worried faces of Holiday and Lofty.
He remembered that evening when Thunderlane had taken him aside after dinner and explained, over unusually large slices of cake, why Scootaloo would never be able to fly under her own power.
He remembered the next day at school, when Miss Cheerilee informed the class that Scootaloo would be out for the next week. He remembered Diamond Tiara puffing up like the odious pink toad she was, a snarky remark forming on her lips when Miss Cheerilee said, “She’s in the Canterlot Hospital.”
Diamond deflated like a balloon in the sun, and had been very quiet for the rest of the day. Everypony had.
He remembered the next week when Scootaloo had returned, so covered in bandages that she might have stepped straight out of a pyramid. She quietly went up to Cheerilee’s desk and set down a stack of papers, the homework that had been assigned in her absence.
That same afternoon, still looking for all the world like the lovechild of a ball of tape and a pharaoh, she arrived at the clubhouse and said, “So, I think maybe today we should try BASE jumping.”
Rumble glanced down at the orange mare again. Her brow was drawn and her eyes were focused on something invisible to the grey stallion. She was unstoppable, unyielding, unrelenting in her desire to reach her ultimate goal. Terrifying.
Far below, he saw Sweet Apple Acres rolling by. Almost unthinking, he went in for the gentle swoop down to the ground and the town. He felt Scootaloo flinch slightly, wriggling in surprise for the briefest of moments before falling still again. It was different now, though. The spell had been broken, and Rumble wasn’t sure how relieved or concerned that made him feel. How relieved or concerned it ought to make him feel.
Orange hooves touched down in Market Square, grey ones soon following suit. “Thanks for the lift, Rumble,” Scootaloo said, shaking off the last of the enchantment. “Sorry to drag you all this way.”
“No problem. I kinda wanted to bug Thunderlane anyway, and I know Cloudy will have some kind of cookie stash. Meet you here tomorrow at three?”
“Sounds good,” Scootaloo called over her shoulder. “See you then!”
Rumble watched her trot away, a small scowl on his face. Then, he turned tail and trotted in the opposite direction. He would see his brother and the twins eventually. First, though, there was somepony else he needed to see, and he knew just where to find her. Winding through the crowds, Rumble made his way back the way he had come. Back to Sweet Apple Acres.
Scootaloo took a deep breath as she stared at the door. Pasting a smile onto her face, she lifted up a hoof and knocked. From the other side, she could hear the familiar surprised rustle of papers. For a moment, her smile became much less plastic. Same old Aunt Holiday.
Then, the door flew open, revealing a peach mare with a carefully-kept orange mane, run through now with the occasional greying streak. “Scootaloo!” Aunt Holiday cried happily. “Is it spring break already?”
“No, Aunt Holiday. I just wanted to come home for the weekend.”
Romane Holiday, eminent historian and scholar of the Romane Empire, smiled at her, her magenta eyes gleaming like precious gems. “Well, it’s good to see you either way, dear. Come in, come in! I’ll fix us up some… mm…” she trailed off, frowning. “Sandwiches. No, hold on, I think we're out of bread.”
“Is that Scootaloo?” Auntie Lofty shouted. “I’ll put the kettle on!”
“Good idea, Lofty!” Holiday shouted back. “Put out those gingersnaps—” She cut herself off suddenly and squinted at her niece more closely. “Scootaloo Breeze Windfall, whatever is the matter?”
Rut it. “What do you mean?” she asked. Yeah, that’s it, play it cool.
Her aunt fixed her with a curious, expectant raised eyebrow. Scootaloo glanced away, but she could still feel its presence. It was burning into her, nagging her more sufficiently than words ever could. She had to say something. “What was my mom like?”
Her aunt blanched. Related question, why am I such a colossal tool? Scootaloo wondered, scrunching her eyes closed.
“What… brings this on all of a sudden?” Aunt Holiday asked slowly.
“You said my… problem… was genetic. You said dad could fly just fine, and so can Grammy and Gramps, so it must’ve been mom’s side, right?”
“Scootaloo, are you being bullied again? I swear, I will write a letter—”
“Aunt Holiday! No, it’s not like that.” She considered for a moment. “It’s mostly not like that. I just can’t do the coursework I need to do to get on the weather patrol. Is there something I can do to, like, make it less…”
“Oh, Eurus,” her aunt sighed, gently pulling her niece into a hug. “East wind, I wish there was something. If there was, don’t you think I would have told you by now? Don’t you think that I would have helped you every step of the way?”
Scootaloo groaned, but let her aunt embrace her and usher her inside.
“To answer your question…” Holiday exhaled. “Well, I suppose it’s about time I told you the whole truth about your parents. Come help me fix dinner, and I’ll tell you the story.”
A fragrant breeze blew out of the east as Rumble approached the farmhouse. Granny Smith was sitting on the porch, reading. She glanced up over the cover as she heard hoofsteps coming up the porch stairs. “Oh, evenin’ Mumble.”
“Good evening, Granny.”
“Bloom ain’t here, Ah fear, but iffin ya wanna wait inside, Ah don’ reckon she’ll be vurra long.”
“That’s okay, ma’am, I wasn’t here to see Bloom anyway. Uh, what’s that book?”
Granny grinned toothily, showing off her dentures. “Ooh, it’s just m’ book club novel. Get a few other sweet old biddies together over tea or cider, knit a bit, talk about books and gossip. Good, clean, innocent fun.”
“Sounds… interesting. What’s the book you’re all reading?”
“Sixty Shades o’ Puce.”
Rumble stopped to think about that, then immediately regretted it. “I’ll just be going to wait inside.”
The old mare waved him on. “Go, fix yerself a snack."
He trotted inside, shaking his head in a vain attempt to clear it of the mental image that had formed.
Granny let out a low, hissing chuckle, before returning to the book. The mare was about to shatter into a thousand pieces again, and that was one of the best parts.
Rumble trotted into the parlor, where a large red farmer was shuffling a deck of cards for another round of solitaire. “Hi, Mac.”
“Howdy.”
“I’m looking for Rainbow Dash?”
“Upstairs, in AJ’s room. Uh, knock first. RD likes ta think she’s bein’ stealthy-like, see?” He rolled his eyes. “Can’t imagine why she’s botherin’.”
“I can,” Rumble said flatly. “Ever been to Pegasopolis?”
Mac’s blank look was answer enough. “Really homophobic place. Everypony thinks that our ‘noble pegasus forbears’ would have frowned upon the… what was it? Wanton immorality, that’s it. Which is, apparently, embodied by you, Applejack, Dash, and myself, among others.”
Mac snorted. “Horseapples. They ever read Pony th’ Elder? Saddlecres? Sapphire Verse? Th’ ancients were a heckuva lot more open minded than most folk reckon. Look at the ancient Minoan civilizations! Heck, look at th’ modern Zebra, or Buffalo! Look at mosta th’ rest o’ Equestria!” Mac huffed, hooves firmly crossed.
Rumble stared. Never had he seen the large earth pony say so much in so short a time. “Uh… no argument here.”
“Eenope.”
“Pegasopolis is just crazy.”
“Eeyup.”
“Right, okay, good. Three goes on eight.”
Mac’s expression cleared as they laid down the next card. “Thank ya.”
Rumble trotted upstairs, his hooves loudly echoing down the hallway. “Now, where can Rainbow Dash be?” he asked, projecting as much as he could while trying and failing not to be too blatantly obvious.
A muffled flurry of curses and fluttering wings sprang up from behind a closed door, several of which were flavored with a distinctive Southern twang. Rumble sighed and rolled his eyes. After a few seconds, he knocked on Applejack’s door. “Rainbow Dash? Are you in there?”
“Uh… No?”
Rumble didn’t say a word. “Okay, yes. Just… hold on for like… two seconds, okay?”
“Why?”
There was a long silence. Applejack started to say something, but Dash cut across her. “No reason! Just, uh, I’m learning how to be more patient. Yeah. Applejack is teaching me.”
Rumble stifled a snicker. He could almost hear the eyebrow being raised.
The door, at length, swung open to reveal a very disheveled Rainbow Dash. “Hey, kid! Long time, no see! How’s college? How’s Scootaloo? How are classes, how’s Thunderlane, how are—”
“Howdy, Sugarcube.” A similarly unkempt Applejack waved from over on the bed. Her mane, freed from the bands that usually bound it, surrounded her head like a corona. “What’s new?”
“Oh, y’know, college. I’m doing pretty well for myself, and I’m pretty much set up for a degree in Climate Science.”
Applejack stared politely. “Pardon?”
“Basically the guys who make the clouds and rainbows and stuff,” Rumble clarified. "It could get me a job in the Weather Factory, or a nice managing position on a weather patrol."
“Ahah. Well, nice as it is of y’all ta visit, what seems ta be the problem?”
Rumble didn’t even ask how she knew. “Scootaloo.”
Applejack frowned. Rainbow nearly choked. “What? What’s happened? Is she alright? Is she hurt? Is she—”
“She’s okay,” Rumble said. Dash relaxed slightly. “Physically.” The tension immediately returned.
“She’s been taken out of the weather patrol program because of her disability,” Rumble said bluntly.
“Oh,” Dash said, sitting down. “Oh.”
“Then Professor Swift suggested she go into meteorology.”
Dash winced. “Ouch.”
Applejack looked between one pegasus and the other. “What, now?”
“Meteorology is basically the lowest rung on the ladder in terms of weather duties,” Dash said. “Basically… y’know how you think all your growth surveys are boring?”
Applejack rolled her eyes. “Mac says they’ll be useful, but Ah ain’t seein’ it.”
“Imagine doing that for every cloud in a ten-mile radius. Every day.”
The farmer blanched. “Ponies do that?”
“Usually as an internship in weather management,” Rumble said. “I did it for a month, and by the end of the first week I felt like punching something in the face.”
“Lousy work, lousy pay, lousy hours,” Dash listed, shaking her head. “I didn’t even last three days when I had to do it. Scoots could probably outlast me, but not by much, and definitely not forever.” She sighed. “This is my fault.”
“What? How?” Applejack asked.
“Like you always say, it’s better to be honest,” Dash said listlessly. “I wasn’t. There was never any way in Tartarus that she’d ever be able to fly, but I told her there was. This is— is—” She broke off, and with a sudden, strangled half-sob, took off through the open window into the darkening twilight.
“Dash!” Applejack called, rushing to the window. “Dash, get back here!”
She was already lost in the gentle orange glow of the setting sun. “Dagnabbit,” Applejack muttered. “C’mon. We better go see Twilight ‘bout this.”
The door to the little cottage burst open. “Scootaloo Easterly Breeze Windfall!” Auntie Lofty shouted. “You get back here right this minute!”
Scootaloo paused only for a moment, her cold expression softening for the space of a moment. Then, as soon as she laid eyes on her aunts’ panicked, angry faces, she scowled again, picked up her spare scooter from where it was parked, and zipped away from the house, her aunts, and the past.
Lofty’s face fell, and she turned to look at her wife. The historian turned back to look inside for a moment. She could talk about the past for hours on end, any era, any person, any place. Any history at all, save for her own. She remembered how Scootaloo’s father had come into her life, so strange and sudden and abrupt, and how he had left the same way. She had been left saddled with confusion, shock, and an infant she had never planned to care for.
Heat Wave had left town scot-free, leaving behind only the ruins of so many lives. Holiday’s in particular.
The Hippodrome was a massive, brightly-colored structure, its base elliptical and its colossal sides formed from graceful arches of cloud in all colors of the rainbow. Quite natural, really, given that liquid rainbow was used to dye the building. All told, it looked like a massive, gaudily tye-dyed, jaw-dropping round of swiss cheese, dwarfing the market stalls and small shops that surrounded it. From this vantage, one could see all the way to the Palazzo di Skyzanti, five miles away to the north, and the Hoofia Sofia, four miles to the west.
Ditzy was honestly rather impressed. “Wow. You never see anything like that in the history books.”
“Yeah,” Scootaloo agreed. She tried to keep her tone blase, but the gleam in her eyes belied her bored expression. “A lot of old buildings used to be really colorful, but the rainbows eventually faded away, and nopony replaced them. Now they’re just boring and white.”
“I wish that they’d stayed like this,” Ditzy said dreamily, running a hoof over a section of violet cloud. “So pretty…”
“...Yeah,” Scootaloo agreed after a long moment. “Yeah. I wish it could’ve stayed.” She stared silently at the brightly colored cloud for another moment before snapping back to her senses. “C’mon, let’s go inside.”
She trotted toward the main entrance, Ditzy hot on her hooves. “So, um, I notice that a lot of ponies are wearing red and white?”
It was true. Several mares and stallions wore togas and tunics in either white or red, and some had even gone so far as to dye their manes or coats. Here and there, ponies stumbled under the weight of enormous headdresses in one of the colors. Occasionally, one or two pegasi wore blue or green, but by and large the costumes were white or red.
“Yeah. The reds and the whites were the major sports teams of… well, this time. Chariot racers, y’know. The blues and the greens were also teams, but they were way less popular.”
Nearby, a pony wearing red bumped into another pony wearing white. The white supporter’s head whipped around, her expression full of fury. “Watch where you’re going,” she snarled.
“Watch where you’re standing!” the red teamster shot back.
There was a beat, and then they were at each other’s throats. Other reds and whites gathered around to cheer on their fellows. Ditzy winced at the violence. “Maybe we’d better head inside.”
“Yeah, we’d better grab our seats,” Scootaloo nodded. “Preferably in, I dunno, the yellow section?”
“As far from these guys as we can get,” Ditzy agreed fervently, turning to trot through one of the arches. As the duo walked into the main arena, they passed a golden statue of five ponies. There was nothing particularly noteworthy about it; the Hippodrome had several statues, taken from conquests and raids across the continent. This was one of the more famous of them. There was just one issue with it. There were only meant to be four statues.
Golden eyes in a golden head tracked the two mares as they made their way into the stadium.
Night had well and truly fallen in Ponyville as Applejack galloped down the main drag, leaving Rumble stumbling over the dirt ruts she left in her wake. On the horizon, shining in the last rays of sun and first hint of moonglow, the massive castle of Twilight Sparkle.
“Why are we going to see Twilight, exactly?” Rumble asked.
“Ah figger Dash went off ta sulk on a cloud somewhere. Ah gotta talk some sense into her somehow, an’ Ah can’t do that from down here.”
“Why does it have to be you specifically?”
“‘Cause Ah’m her—” she stumbled over first her words and then her hooves. “Ugh. Friend. Ah’m her friend.”
“You do realize that I, much like the rest of Ponyville, am fully aware that you two are dating.”
Applejack rolled her eyes. “She made me Pinkie Promise not ta tell nopony ‘til she’s ready.”
Rumble snorted, helping the mare to her hooves. “Must be annoying for you. Why do you put up with it?”
Applejack hesitated. What, after all, could she say? How could she honestly express the way Dash made her feel? It was like how she had always supposed flying must be like; freeing, boundless, infinite, and yet so terrifyingly fragile and delicate. It felt natural to love Dash, as natural as it did for her to buck trees, easy as apple pie. But if she deviated from the course that her emotions set, if she tried to change too much… well. That wasn't a crash she was sure that everypony could walk away from.
It wasn’t love, not entirely. Not in the storybook sense, where the heroes kiss and live happily, vapidly ever after in some sort of abstract emotion based on… what? Mutual attraction? Why in Sam Hill did Sleeping Beauty marry the guy who thought that kissing dead mares was an acceptable pastime? Her and Dash, they weren’t like that. She didn’t know what they were. They never spoke about it. Sometimes, it made her feel a little uncomfortable inside, like she had eaten something that didn’t agree with her. Like a pear. Well, maybe not quite as bad as that soft, pathetic mockery of an apple, but still pretty bad.
Where had she been going with this? Oh, right. She bit her lower lip. “Tell you th’ truth, sugarcube, Ah dunno,” she admitted. “Sometimes, when y’all are in love, ya gotta do stuff you wouldn’t usually do. Gotta compromise, git out of yer comfort zone.”
“Hm,” said Rumble, dubious.
Applejack raised a brow. “Alright, between us, who’s been in a relationship fer longer? Or at all?”
“Fair point,” Rumble conceded, fluffing out his feathers against the cold night air. “So, what, are you going to get Twilight to give you wings?”
“Nah, Ah’m gonna borrow that hot-air balloon she keeps. Ain’t like she ever uses it.”
“Why does she have a hot-air balloon?”
“Present from Celestia?”
“Huh.” Rumble stared at the towering structure of the local princess’s castle. “Seems pretty well-lit for this time of the evening. Think she’s got guests?”
Applejack rubbed her chin with a hoof, frowning thoughtfully. “Could be…” she muttered. “But wouldn’t she have told me about it?”
Rumble shrugged. “We may as well see.” He trotted forward, but froze when a loud crash echoed through the air.
Both ponies stood in silence as the street began to light up, citizens roused from their slumber flicking on lights and holding up lamps. “How much do you want to bet that that’s somehow related to Scootaloo?” Rumble said.
Applejack snorted as she took off at a gallop. “Ah don’t take bets there ain’t no chance o’ winnin’,” she said shortly.
The Doctor slammed his hooves against the fridge door for the fortieth time. Growling in irritation, he backed away from the vault-like door. “You know, I’m not sure what laws govern psychic projections of future regenerations, but I’m quite sure that this breaks them!” he called. He was reasonably sure that even if the Watcher could still hear him, it probably wasn’t listening.
“Hmph.” The Doctor trotted away from the door. Well, he certainly wouldn’t starve, he reflected, staring down the rows and rows of shelves. Unfortunately, he’d probably die of exposure before that became too much of an issue. “What a way to go,” he muttered. “Refrigerated to death in my own TARDIS, I’ve never heard of such nonsense.”
He wondered, vaguely, what had brought on the presence of the formless figure. Briefly, he thought back to his short adventure trying to get back to his home universe not long after crashing in his wife’s garden. For a time, he’d actually become the Watcher. Were the two events connected? It seemed unlikely. But then, so was being attacked by a phantom future.
More likely, the poor fellow had gotten tired of waiting his turn. After all, he had managed to cheat death rather more than his fair share over the years. That whole ‘regenerating into the same body’ trick he’d pulled on the stolen Earth must have been particularly galling.
Still, that was no excuse for assassination. Well, what was one more go at cheating death, after all? There was another way out somewhere in here, wasn’t there? He vaguely recalled… not another door… a dumbwaiter! There was a whole bank of them on the far wall, or there had been. That had been more than a few regenerations ago, back when he was as like to wear vegetables as eat them. The installation had been a tad complex, but worth it, given how many of his companions often refused to leave their rooms, preferring to sulk. Adric had been particularly notorious in that regard, he reflected as he started trotting through the shelves full of stasis-preserved food.
He passed by an entire wall of marshmallows, bordered on one side by cocoa powder and on another side by chocolate bars and graham crackers. In the darkness, the white of the marshmallows looked luminous under the faint blue glow of the stasis lights.
A few moments after the Time Lord trotted by, the white glow formed into a vaguely equine form. The Watcher stepped out of the shelf and gazed at the Doctor’s retreating tail. Though it lacked a face completely, the suggestion of a wicked grin crossed where its mouth ought to have been. On silent hooves, it cantered after the Doctor.
The hippodrome was packed tight with warm bodies, squished into seats made of colorful cloud. Ditzy and Scootaloo managed to find a pair of empty seats slightly nearer the arena than most in a balcony overlooking the track. “So, what do you think they’re showing before the fruit-smashing guy?” Ditzy whispered, a note of excitement in her voice.
“Dunno,” Scootaloo muttered back, gazing at the track. “They’ve got the chariots out, though.”
Indeed, several small wheeled carts had been placed on the track, each one just about large enough to hold two ponies if they were willing to be intimate. And yet as they watched, several pegasi from each of the four color groups trotted onto the pitch. Their faces were brightly painted, no two quite the same. The whites were almost identical with their almost completely solid-color faces. The only splash of non-white was a small black tear on the cheek. Their outfits were silvery, with large pompoms. They walked sedately, almost sorrowfully, onto the pitch.
The reds, in sharp contrast, flooded on in a mad rush, practically leaping over one another to reach the chariots. Large red noses and thick red lips adorned their faces. They had the occasional splash of orange or violet as well, be it as painted freckles or as rings around the eyes. They wore clashing outfits and oversized horseshoes that seemed to bounce off the ground.
The blues and the greens wore their colors as well, but had much less of a unified theme. The blues seemed to be more akin to the whites, and the greens closer to the reds, but they were as shadows. Small wonder that they weren’t as celebrated as their peppermint-colored cohorts. Still, they waved to the crowds, silent and ready to go on.
The crowd positively roared, making the cloud reverberate and rumble beneath them. The reds made a big show of pratfalling and rolling around, which only made the red supporters cheer harder. The greens attempted to do the same, all but flinging themselves to the ground, but it was obviously second-best.
Scootaloo tugged on Ditzy’s wing and pointed up towards the balcony that was situated in the center of the northern wall of the hippodrome. A figure stood upon it, overlooking the entire stadium. A blue mane whipped in the wind, contrasting against a pink coat. With a single hoofstrike, the cloud growled with thunder, silencing the crowd. “Salve Skyzantium! ” she bellowed, her high, clear voice echoing through the stands.
Ditzy blinked as the crowd broke into cheers once more. That mare. She looked and sounded oddly familiar. “Who’s that?” she hissed to Scootaloo.
“That’s just the quaestor. She runs the games. Kind of a big deal, but not, like, senator-level or anything,” the young mare muttered.
“Oh.” Ditzy studied the mare for a long moment. “She looks kinda like that one old Wonderbolt, doesn’t she? Firefly?”
“I guess. Only so many different coat and mane combination, though. Probably it’s just a coincidence.”
Meanwhile, the announcer had resumed speaking. “The first event of the day is to be the curriculum res inepta ! Participants, to your chariots!”
Two members of each team trotted toward the chariots and hooked one another in at the front of the vehicle. That left, at Ditzy’s count, ten members of each team. “Are they the pit crew?” she whispered.
Scootaloo shook her head. “Nah. You didn’t learn this in school? The Roanans originally called this a ‘circus,’ which is where we get the word—”
“Circus?” Ditzy guessed drily.
“Yeah. See that clown makeup?”
“...Yeah?”
“That’s not the only circus tradition we got. Look.”
The reds were all fighting to squish into their chariot, a mass of squabbling bodies and wiggling flanks. Several found themselves chucked out on their tails, only to rejoin the fray. The greens, having perhaps learned their lesson earlier, simply squeezed in one by one. The whites were climbing on top of one another, forming, to Ditzy’s amazement, an acrobatic equine pile, almost like a diamond. One pegasus sat at the bottom, supporting two pegasi above her. They supported three, then two, then one, with the last one perched at the very top.
The blues had attempted something similar, except they just had a massive pony tower. It was tall, but Ditzy very much doubted its stability. Apparently, nopony else shared her concerns. Either that, or they simply didn’t care. The general raised her wings, and the audience fell silent. Then, with a beat that echoes through the stadium once again, she dropped her wings to her sides.
A wild whoop went up from the audience as the four chariots thundered down the track. Eight pegasi ran flat out, their wings beating back the air to propel them forwards, not unlike the way in which Scootaloo propelled herself on the scooter. The blue team wobbled and swayed as their chariot blazed down the track, but they didn’t fall. In contrast, the white teamsters seemed to lean into every turn, always remaining perfectly perpendicular to the track. The red team was still tightly compressed into their chariot, howling and cheering. Some of them were stuck in there upside-down, and their legs were kicking frantically. And the green team… was in the lead, actually.
Wheels rumbled and rattled erratically over the cloud course, bumping and jostling one another, knocking the other chariots subtly off-course. And then, much to Ditzy’s shock, one of the blue riders pulled out a large comedy hammer and slammed it against the red chariot, sending it skidding wildly. The grey mare gasped, her wings snapping out, but Scootaloo had already grabbed her tail. “It’s alright, it’s all part of the race,” she said. “Look.”
Already the reds had recovered. One flailing leg had kicked over a lever, and the wheels suddenly shot out to either side, the axles extending three meters to either side, smashing into the side of the blue chariot. As Ditzy had half-known it would, the tower of pegasi teetered and tottered, and then collapsed in a pile of feathers and flapping bodies bouncing off the cloud.
“It’s like one of Button’s games,” Scootaloo observed. “Adventure Plumber Brothers and Friends Drive in Impossible Locations on Magic Karts. Guess those guys got blue-shelled.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Ditzy said.
Above the two mares, a violet stallion stared down at them with golden eyes.
Silver Pallas paused in her work. After the briefest of moments, she carefully set the lump of cloud with which she was working into a hollow in the wall. A spark lit up her face for a moment, but she did not flinch. She blinked slowly, lizard-like, and her eyes were silver. “Bring the time-travelers here, but do not harm them unduly,” she commanded. “If they resist, render them unconscious, but do not damage them permanently. I would speak to them.”
She blinked again, just as laconically. “No, don’t take them. They will come to you.”
One more blink, faster this time, and her eyes were once again acid-green. She snorted and shook her head to clear it. She selected another lump of carefully-crafted cloud to fit into the wall, but fumbled it at the last moment. Silver cursed quietly as the sculpted cloud deformed, releasing its stored lightning into the floor. The cloud around her grew just that much darker. The pegasus mare gazed, furious, at the deformed device. Then the rage drained away slowly, and she picked up the cloud. One way or another, she would get out of this. One way or another, she would return to her research.
The Castle of Friendship was in an uproar. Ponies filed out of their homes to watch the fireworks. “Scuse me! Pardon me!” Applejack shouted as she barged through the crowd. “Chairpony of Harmony comin’ through!”
Rumble had simply taken to the air, flapping ahead for all he was worth. The lights from the castle grew brighter and more frequent, hues of violet and orange and pink shining and refracting through the walls like some kind of weaponized Aurora Borealis. It was almost hypnotic the way the colors danced. He snapped awake just in time to dive out of the way of a straying burst. He quickly zipped down until he was just skimming over the heads of the ponies below.
Applejack growled. “Outta th’ way!” she shouted. Rumble was halfway to the castle, and she was scarcely closer than when she’d started running. She huffed and glanced around. The streets were packed full of clamoring ponies on the verge of panic. A stampede. She breathed in and let it out slowly. She could handle this. She planted her hooves, tossed her head back, and howled “HOOOOO-EE!”
Silence fell. Hundreds of eyes fell upon the apple farmer. She met the combined gaze. “Now Ah’ve got yer attention. Ah dunno what’s goin’ on up at th’ castle yet, but Ah don’t reckon gawpin’ at it all night’ll do us any good. So. Ah’m goin’ up there ta help. Either come on with me, or go th’ heck back ta bed!”
There was a moment of hostile silence. Applejack continued to stare at them all. One by one, ponies slunk back to their homes. Doors shut, lamps flickered out, and the street cleared. A few ponies remained outside, though. Applejack glowered at them all. “Ah thought Ah tol’ y’all ta git,” she said.
A silver-grey mare stepped forwards, adjusting her glasses. “Actually, you told us either to go back to bed or come with you. We want to help.”
Applejack raised a brow. Was this really the same Silver Spoon who’d helped send Apple Bloom home in tears time and again? Was that still really Diamond Tiara next to her, staring anywhere but up? She glanced at the rest of the crowd. Lyra shuffled her hooves next to a stalwart Bon Bon. Cheerilee, still wearing a nightcap, stood next to her sister, Berry Punch, and her niece, Ruby Pinch. Romana stood just behind them, her sonic screwdriver tucked behind her ear. Bulk Biceps pumped a hoof. “YEAH!” he agreed.
The farmer pursed her lips and glanced back at the castle. Rumble was nearly there, now. “Alright, fine. Just hurry up!” she said, galloping onwards. The sound of hooves behind her started up a startled moment later. Her ears flattened against her head. They weren’t the first ponies she’d choose in these circumstances, but they’d just have to tag along for now. And she’d just have to hope she wasn’t leading them to their doom.
