When the adventurers emerge from a portal out of the prison/storage pocket dimension, they behold trouble in paradise. They are near a ledge leading off into the sky. There is a roof above them that is angled away from this corner of the floating pyramid shaped city and thus accounting for the overall shape of this place. The immediate area looks like a garden which has a bunch of ponies who should be enjoying themselves, but are instead sprinting about in panic. Looking about further, the adventurers can eventually spot why. There are some pony corpses nearby. Some look dead for no reason and others have suffered more obvious and gruesome deaths.

“Welcome to the Jungle,” Daring says under her breath then asks more aloud, “Where are the Daleks and their pets?”

“Spread out,” the Commander answers, still on Margret’s holo-screen. “The Daleks have . . . You know what? It would be easier just to show you.”

A new virtual button flashes on Margret’s holo-window screen. When she activates it, it shows a simplified and transparent layout of the city they are in. Bright red dots are visible on it along with many other much dimmer blue dots. There are also some figures on the display that actually look like Daleks. Notably there are two groups of three of those and they are diverging in different directions. One such group is actually flying outside of the city. Some of the red dots are traveling with them and others are scattering. One of them vanishes from one spot and maybe appears in another.

“Pony feathers! What do we do?!” Derpy asks in fright. “There are so many innocent ponies up here and the baddies are spreading apart!”

“To more efficiently search for the Transmission Tower is my guess,” Doctor Kelly proposes. “Or, at least, the Daleks are. The chaos beasts don’t seem intelligent enough to follow orders like that, so I think they are being scattered to go on a killing spree.”

“Which is the other priority of the Daleks,” Stern Wing concludes grimly.

“The ponies up here aren’t accustomed to threats of any kind,” the Commander warns on the holo-screen. “When they first engaged the Daleks and chaos beasts here, they did so curiously until the Daleks started shooting and the beasts ripped the ponies apart. After that, it still took the ponies a few more seconds to fully register the danger then panic.”

“I have a few things I can try,” Margret brings up.

“You, my military personnel, and every scout I sent out in the past has some idea how to hoofle this,” the Commander points out. “Everypony else here does not.”

“We have to quickly figure out the best way to utilize our resources,” says Stern Wing then she looks at Daring. “Daring . . . what do we do?”

Daring’s eyes glitter with emotion as she maintains a deeply troubled and thoughtful expression. She briefly glances at Stern when the large brown pegasus addresses the dungeon-delving pony directly. After that Daring looks forward again at nothing as she continues to think before finally asking, “Well . . . I think we need to know a few things first.” She looks at Margret’s holo-window. “Commander, just where is the Transmission Tower exactly?”

“Basically near the heart of the pyramid structure,” the Commander answers, then has a portion of the city flash on Margret’s screen. As promised, it is near but below the center of the city. “There are other parts of this structure that are attached to this system, but the location I’ve pointed out is where one can directly interact with it. Plenty of systems we have up here can access it remotely, but only in the location I specified can anypony use it directly.”

“Then we go there,” Stern decides as she points at it. “Since we know that that is where they are going, we can intercept them and-”

“No. Bad idea,” Daring rejects as she shakes her head. “The Daleks don’t know where the Transmission Tower is right now. The longer they stay ignorant of that fact, the better.”

“I agree,” mentions the Commander in the virtual window. “If the Daleks see us all consolidate our forces to one spot and they know that we know what they are seeking, then they’ll assume we’re trying to guard that which they are seeking.”

“Then what do we do?” Stern asks impatiently and urgently. “We have to help these ponies out, and fast!”

Daring Do looks behind her at the portal that is still open which leads into the prison/warehouse. She nods at that then looks forward again as she announces, “We keep monitoring the progress of the Daleks just in case they start getting closer to their target. If we do, we’ll eventually consolidate our efforts against them.

“But, until then, we spread out and do whatever we can to lead other innocent ponies here,” she taps her right forehoof on the ground she’s standing on, “then through the portal behind us. If they go there, the ponies will be trapped but also safer inside because we have the means to close that portal at any time we want.”

“But if we do that, we can’t send anypony else through it,” Margret reminds.

“We’ll have to take out the nearby chaos beast, or beasts, first,” Daring announces. “Once we do that, we can re-open the portal and keep sending more in.”

Stern Wing lifts a hoof in objection as she asks, “Spread out? Are you serious? The first time we engaged a chaos beast-”

“I soloed and defeated it,” Daring reminds. “I’ll admit, I did have some help, but it proves that it's still possible. We only needed a group to defeat it after Trouble augmented it.”

“Right,” Stern recalls as she thinks back on the incident.

“We have to do this,” Daring insists. “The alternative is for all of us to consolidate to one area and rescue the ponies there while abandoning the rest. Those Above would suffer far more casualties that way.”

“In that case, before you split up, I have something to offer you all,” Doctor Kelly mentions then lifts a purple crystal. It flashes for a second. After that, light sinks into it that at first isn’t visible, but then light spreads from it again in various cracks that spread across the crystal. Moments later it falls apart in many various shards. Doctor Kelly picks up some of those shards with her magic and spreads it apart. Each of her friends receive one shard per pony.

“Keep that,” Doctor Kelly instructs. “If you do, I’ll be able to monitor your health status, and location, from a distance as well as being able to communicate with you all. I can even create a holo-window near you.”

“Perfect!” Daring cries triumphantly. “In that case, I want you to stay here and guard the portal,” she says directly to Doctor Kelly. “Keep your hoof on the shut-off button for the portal. Also monitor our status, the chaos beasts, and the Daleks. From here, you can give us all tactical advice.”

“I’ll also quickly read up on more information about the chaos beasts and the Daleks,” Doctor Kelly adds. “In addition, I’ll heal anypony here who suffers an injury. I can also teleport you or others.”

“Right, but stay away from the Daleks,” Daring instructs the doctor. “I don’t want you suffering another panic attack near them. You’ll be more useful far away from the front lines anyway.”

“Again, agreed,” says the Commander. “The last pony we should send to the front lines is our primary healer. For as long as she remains uninjured, she can eventually restore the health of the rest of us.”

“Should I go too?” Derpy asks with worry. “I’m not much of a fighter of any sort.”

“Yes, because we can cover more ground that way,” Daring answers. “The threats have spread out so we have to do that too, and remember . . . actually fighting the chaos beasts isn’t our priority here. The rescue of the innocent ponies is. You can distract the chaos beasts while telling everypony else where to flee.

“Use your best judgment, though. Not every fight is worth jumping into.” Daring applies a hoof to Derpy’s shoulder as she adds, “You stepped into the TARDIS and are well aware of what that entails by now. Don’t let your courage fail now. These ponies need us.”

“I’ll help too but I’ll do it from a different position,” the Commander announces in the holo-window. “With this ship, I can participate in rescue ops while going on the offense against the chaos beasts at the same time. I’ll primarily focus wherever the rest of you aren’t unless we get information that one of you critically needs some backup. In that case, I’ll send whatever I can spare.”

“Here, Margret. Take this,” Doctor Kelly offers something extra to the yellow unicorn. It is some kind of stone with runic symbols on it.

“What’s this?” Margret asks as she examines it.

“A warp stone,” Doctor Kelly answers. “With it, you can create a teleportation circle on a flat surface beneath you. Once it is created, the Circle will need some magic from you. If it receives it, any object or creature within the circle at that moment will teleport to another Circle as long as you visualize the unique runes that another Circle has. I’ll provide that information to you too later remotely.”

“Oh. Neat,” Margret says in a tone of acceptance. “I think I can hoofle that. I’ve used something like this before.”

“More important than that is precisely where you set it,” Doctor Kelly adds. “I want you to set it near, but not at, the Transmission Tower. Don’t be obvious about your path towards it too unless you are sure you’re not being monitored or followed by any of the antagonistic forces here.” She nods once. “In the meantime, I’ll set up another teleportation circle near here. That way, if and when the Daleks do start getting closer to the Transmission Tower, we have a short cut to cut them off.”

“And Margret here can get there the fastest with her flying disk thing-y,” Stern adds in approval.

“Better than that,” Margret chimes in. “Thanks to that, I can make other kinds of short cuts along the way.”

“Just make sure you leave no trace of it along your path,” Doctor Kelly presses.

Margret thinks about that for a moment then nods confidently as she says, “Sure. I can do that.”

“Guide Derpy to an area with the thinnest enemy forces,” Daring instructs Doctor Kelly. “Or an area that has none at all yet but soon will. She can warn the ponies there to evacuate here before they get attacked.”

“I was thinking the same thing,” Doctor Kelly agrees with Daring Do.

“Good,” Stern says with a firm nod. “Then the rest of us will concentrate on more dangerous zones.”

“In that case, send me to one of the areas with the thickest amount of danger,” Feather Wind nervously but also bravely requests. “I think I have the most resources to bear against the enemy forces, especially considering the fact that my magic regenerates especially fast in this era. I can also bring the weather against them and also defend the ponies, and if need be . . . I can also get away the fastest. As a matter of fact, send me to one of the two groups of Daleks directly.”

“The lot of you keeps on proposing strategically sound moves,” the Commander compliments, “Because Feather can also create an energy barrier. Mind you, however, the firepower of the Daleks is pretty strong. Don’t count on your energy shields to block more than one shot at a time. You’ll have to re-cast the spell again to either recreate a shield that shattered or reinforce a shield you created before if it got struck even once. Since our magic replenishes much faster here anyway, you can spare that energy and that’s much better than being hit by those blasts since they are designed to be fatal. Sometimes those blasts can even explode with the force of an average grenade. In many battles I’ve seen against the Daleks before, they sweeped a stream of explosions across the battlefield as if each blast was like a raindrop in a harsh thunderstorm.”

Hearing this causes Feather and Derpy to gulp nervously.

“You should probably focus more on evasive maneuvers,” Stern recommends to her small blue friend. “You trained as a Wonderbolt cadet so I know you have it in you. Rely on your energy shields only as a backup or to protect other ponies who can’t dodge fast enough.”

Feather nods at Stern.

“Well, they can fly, obviously,” Feather mentions to the image of Doctor Kelly off to the right side of his head while he flies toward the group of three Daleks who are flying outside the city and seem to be assessing it. Feather is in no hurry to intercept them since they aren’t doing anything too hostile yet. Instead of that, he figures it is better to wait while he listens to more tactical information from his friend. “My question is how fast. Can they keep up with me if I go full out?”

“You once crossed a large portion of your world in . . . what? A few minutes?” Doctor Kelly asks on the other side of the holo-window. “Based on the information I am seeing here, the answer is no. No by a long shot.

“I’ll tell you what they can do, though. Those things they are riding in are not just miniature tanks, they are environmental suits. Those suits are so good, they can survive in the vacuum of space.

“According to what I am reading here, the ability to fly wasn’t always a thing for them either, though. Hilariously it says here that it actually used to be a thing to escape the Daleks simply by trotting up some stairs.

“Oh!”

Whatever the doctor read next, it spooks her.

“What?” Feather asks in rising alarm.

“The exterior shell of those things are pretty tough, but it says here that, ever since somewhere in the middle of the Time War, they started getting equipped with energy shields too, and they do regenerate as well,” Doctor Kelly reports.

“Perfect,” Feather says sarcastically as he floats to a stop and creates a small cloud beneath his hooves as a platform to stand on and hide behind while he continues to observe the trio of Daleks ahead. “How strong are those shields?”

Doctor Kelly shakes her head as she answers, “Probably unknown exactly. I’m reading some conflicting information here. Maybe the strength of it changed over time. Perhaps not all of them are equipped with the latest and greatest either, but these guys are the late survivors of the exhausting war. Chances are it might be towards the upper end.

“The advice I am reading here to penetrate their shields is either to hit them with a single overwhelming blast, or a continuous barrage of shots that batter away their defenses faster than it can regenerate. If that limit can be broken, their shields will remain down for a while to recover and reboot.

“Additional notes I am reading here is that, since their shields are entirely technology based, it does not benefit from the enhanced harmonic energy of this place and era. Nor is it hindered.”

“That’s good to know,” Feather says with a slight cheer.

“Additional information I am reading is the rate of fire of their arm cannons. It seems each one needs a few seconds to recharge between each shot, but the exact time it takes depends how much energy they devote to each shot. It says here that the energy can be weak enough to stun the target, but they don’t often do that. The far more observed setting evokes a lethal system shock to the target. If, however, they pump even more energy into it, their shots can be downright explosive. The Commander already mentioned how strong.”

“Right,” Feather recalls.

“Their vision can zoom and gives a number of logistical data,” Doctor Kelly reads on.

“Will mist block it?” Feather checks.

“Um . . .” She pauses a moment as she reads on then eventually shakes her head. “It doesn’t say here, at least not directly, but based on what I am seeing here, my guess is yes, except . . . they have been able to locate targets around barriers like walls on occasion. It might be that they can switch to infrared or something equivalent.”

“Mist has moisture, though. Even if they switch to infrared, the cool clouds might be able to obscure whatever is behind it,” Feather guesses. “Can they be electrocuted?”

Doctor Kelly is quiet for a moment until she answers ten seconds later, “Not only can they be, but they seem almost vulnerable to it,” she answers. “Their shields, however, will block that while they are up.” She shrugs. “I guess they faced that problem often enough to build some kind of compensation for that weakness.”

“Anything else I need to know before I engage them?” Feather checks one more time.

“Probably a lot more,” Doctor Kelly answers. “I have loads of data here, but they’ll probably attack somepony long before I can read it all even though I can read very fast with high comprehension.”

“Keep reading whatever you can,” Feather invites. “In the meantime, shut off this window but keep recording anything you hear. I don’t want it obvious, to them, that I’m communicating with anypony else.”

“Will do,” Doctor Kelly replies and the window shuts off the next second.

Feather Wind takes a deep breath, holds it, then releases it slowly before he dives on towards the Daleks. They seem to notice him shortly before he arrives even though they weren’t initially looking in his direction. That indicates they have some kind of alert system for them other than sight. It might be sound, but Feather was pretty quiet with his approach. Maybe a motion sensor instead?

As Feather nears them, they turn in mid-air to Feather. When he nears them, Feather floats to a halt as his tactics shift from wind power to telekinetically holding up his body by his hooves (his least ticklish spots unless they are rubbed the wrong way) and keeping his body weight very light. Using his forehooves, he lifts them up in a gesture of surrender while wondering if they will understand or respect the gesture even if they do understand. Just in case they don’t understand the gesture, he also says upon arrival, “Hold your fire. I’m not here to fight you. I just want to talk.”

“Pony wishes to communicate with us?” one of the Daleks asks him. “Then you will cooperate with us or be ex-terminated.”

“Ex-terminated,” the other two repeat in apparent agreement. Feather is quickly gathering that might be their favorite phrase.

“Yes. I do wish to talk,” Feather replies as he keeps his hooves up. “Your race is obviously very powerful and dangerous, so I think it would be in our best interests if we became friends rather than enemies.”

“You are not a Dalek so you must be ex-terminated,” speaks the leader with that ever crackling voice box.

“Ex-terminated,” the other two repeat again.

“If you wish to delay this fate, then you must oh-bay us.”

“You must oh-bay,” the lackeys agree as they simultaneously nod their nose-cameras.

Feather’s yellow eyes look across them as he assesses them very carefully during this pause in action. He notices that they all look, sound, and act the same. If it weren’t for the fact that one of them was designated as the primary speaker in this conversation then he would have no way to tell them apart. He is glad that Doctor Kelly is listening to this conversation as well because this encounter can give her a psychological base-line to help her understand these creatures' thinking even further.

In the meantime, just in case, Feather keeps his energy ready to raise a magic shield at any moment. In addition, he is creating a vacuum in the air between them but closer to the front. Within that vacuum, he continues to suck the air out of a tight spot approximately the size of a beach ball. The more he does so, the more pressure builds in that one area.

While Feather is giving this attempt at peaceful negotiation a chance, he’s still aware that he is clearly dealing with a group of dangerous creatures that have already indiscriminately started killing the very moment they escaped their earlier prison. The fact they keep on repeating words like “extermination” before or assisted in the creation of deadly, even downright sinister, creatures before speaks volumes about their general mindset. As a result, while he is trying to keep an open mind and give them a serious chance for peace, he isn’t dumb enough to do so without preparing a backup plan.

Aside from that, even if these negotiations completely fail, he can at least delay them for a short time and gather more information on them at the same time.

“That would seem to be the case. Obeying you all seems to be the most prudent course of action if I wish to avert, or at least delay, extermination,” Feather pretends to agree. “In that case, tell me what you want. What service can I do for you to help me avoid extermination?”

“Pony will guide us to the Transmission Tower,” the lead Dalek demands. “You will oh-bay or be ex-terminated.”

“Ex-terminated!”

“I can do that,” Feather agrees honestly with a nod. “And if I do, what will you do with it?”

“That is irrelevant for you,” the lead Dalek immediately insists. “You will oh-bay or be ex-terminated.”

“Ex-terminated!”

Feather droops his eyes halfway as he realizes this conversation is starting to get repetitive, but it is not useless yet.

“The reason I need to know what you will do with the Transmission Tower is because I might be able to help you access it faster and more efficiently,” Feather downright lies at this point. “Depending on what your purpose is, I might be able to smooth things out for you in advance.”

“IRRELEVANT! IRRELEVANT!” the leader complains in outrage. “Do not stall us, you inferior, non-Dalek species! You will oh-bay us immediately or be ex-terminated!”

“Ex-terminated!”

“Hold your fire, please!” Feather requests urgently while he continues to build a pressure bomb between them. “I certainly don’t want to be exterminated. Rather, I had rather hoped we could settle things between us peacefully. That way we can all-”

“IRRELEVANT! IRRELEVANT!” the leader chants again. “Inferior, de-scusting pony has delayed us long enough! Since you have not guided us to the Transmission Tower, you must be ex-terminated!”

“Ex-ter-”

Feather did not wait for the lackeys to finish repeating their favorite rhetoric again because he can already tell that they are serious about carrying forward with their threat this time. They already lifted and aimed their arm cannons and were about to fire. Telegraphing their attack, which seems to be a psychological tick for them right now, is the only reason they haven’t fired already.

Before that happens, Feather releases his hold on his pressure bomb that he was building between them. Doing so allows air to rush back into the intense pressure vacuum he created. That, in turn, causes a sonic-boom explosion. Feather also spreads his own Mist Cloak in order to catch that shockwave which propels him to burst away from them at a sudden high speed.

Because of the Dalek’s energy shields, however, they are not even slightly nudged. Their shields simply cancel the entire inertia against them from that explosion, but the shields are momentarily damaged for a moment by taking the brunt. By itself, it isn’t enough to overwhelm their shields and it quickly starts to regenerate seconds later.

One of the things that Feather did manage to accomplish, though, is momentarily confuse the Daleks. One moment they were talking with a mysterious small blue pony and the next that pony shoots away like a speeding bullet. They have no idea what happened and that catches them off guard. They even glance at each other with their nose cameras to see if any of them figures this out first. All in all, this momentary confusion delays them for a few extra seconds.

The other thing Feather manages to accomplish with that explosion is to propel himself away at high speed, albeit very painfully. If he had been concentrating on any spell at that moment then the odds are high he would have lost that concentration. Fortunately his air and weather influence does not strictly rely upon that. Instead it is more about communion and intention.

“So much for peaceful negotiation,” Doctor Kelly says on her end of the line. “At least you managed to delay them for a few moments and gathered some useful intel. For instance, we have verified the fact that they are seeking the Transmission Tower.”

“I’m not stupid. I knew engaging them like that was risky,” Feather mentions back. “But I had to give them an honest chance. I’m not just going to blindly accept the words of potentially prejudiced Time Lords who claim that all chances of peace with them is impossible. Instead, in good conscience, I had to verify that fact for myself.”

“And?” Doctor Kelly checks with interest.

Feather shakes his head as he says, “I have never met another species, or individuals, as inflexible as them. They absolutely do have very rigid thinking and that likely is by design. In so many ways, they are the exact opposite of me. I find that dark reflection to be very unsettling.”

“I can well imagine,” Doctor Kelly agrees. “Well, even if they can’t adapt that well, you can. That’s among the traits you have that is the opposite of them. Accordingly, learn from this lesson well.”

“I haven’t given up all hope that I might find an exception among their kind,” Feather confesses. “But that said, it appears there is a very good reason why an exception among them would be exceptionally rare. Something would have to go wrong with the equipment that created them or they get damaged or something that frees them from the very strict, inside-the-box thinking that they are trapped in.

“Even then, it is likely they’d keep on blasting out of sheer habit. They’d need to suffer amnesia or something really out of the ordinary for any of them to be different. Until then, I noticed how their behavior was identical and, again, probably by design.

“I also get a strong feeling none of them have personal names. They are removed from absolutely everything that would give them a personal identity aside from their own individual experience, and even then I get the feeling their experiences are filtered and limited somehow.”

“Whoever designed them had a very specific purpose in mind and a great deal of time to perfect it,” Doctor Kelly assures on her end. “With that in mind, please don’t do that again anytime soon.”

Doctor Kelly takes and releases a deep breath then says, “Be that as it may, we’ve established a few important things about them as well as delayed them a bit. More importantly, they are not even attempting to give chase. My guess is they have already determined they have no way to keep up with you and they have higher priorities besides.”

“Are they on the move?” Feather checks.

“Yes,” Doctor Kelly answers. “They have resumed their course. By the looks of it, they are resuming their grid-like search pattern. As I expect from them, based on the feedback I’ve gained on them so far, they are being very logical and systematic. They might as well be robots.

“On the plus side, Margret has reached her destination without incident and she’s even established the teleportation circle on her end, so that’s ready.”

“Good,” Feather says with relief. “How are the others doing?”

“Welllll . . .”

“THAT WAY, EVERYPONY! GO THAT WAY!” Daring Do frantically calls to a large crowd of panicked ponies who are, for the most part, not cooperating. The reason why that is true is well understandable to her, for even now she is currently engaging with two chaos beasts.

One of them looks a lot like a prehistoric armadillo. It is as large as a cow and stands on four clawed limbs. Its head is a bit small and its tail ends with a hammer-like bulge. She already knows it is very hard to penetrate its hide. It might as well have a brick wall on its back.

Most terrifying and disturbing of all is the swarm of insects that occasionally crawls out of its back then zips this way and that. Each insect has four wings flapping on both sides and the wings are razor sharp. It doesn’t seem like the insects eat or drink anything. Their only purpose is to fly past anything organic and cause tiny cuts as they pass. Each cut is painful but hardly deadly on their own unless it leads to excessive blood loss, but with a whole swarm of those little buggers, it is literally death by a thousand cuts.

In fact, she has already seen the horrific sight of an entire pony herds being shredded to the bone in seconds by those little buggers. Worse yet is they can fly and hone in on their prey. Dodging them once doesn’t matter for long because they keep on chasing their victim and curving about in mid-air if that’s what it takes.

If that isn’t enough, Daring is having to dodge a second chaos beast that sort of looks like a lizard with a hard brown shell on its back, but nowhere near as thick as its companion. This creature often stands up on two legs, but if it does, it doesn’t move from that spot much. This creature seems to have highly stretchable and morphic qualities. The forelimbs it throws not only stretch an impressive distance from its body, but grows to immense size mid-swing. All by itself, this creature is punching large holes through entire buildings which eventually collapses due to too much loss of structural integrity.

Then, to top it all off, there is the chaos of a bunch of panicked ponies galloping about every which way. Everywhere Daring turns, she sees criss-cross of fleeing ponies and some of them get crushed by falling debris thanks to the enlarging and stretching lizard-creature thing.

All of this makes her situation super hard to think calmly and rationally. Even for a veteran like her, this is pushing her limits. She’s not a heartless pony and every injury and death she is observing is a blow to her conscience.

On top of all that, they are not listening to her. She can barely hear herself among the crowd, and even if they did hear her, why should they trust her? They don’t know her and they barely recognize authority of any kind.

She has multiple problems right now and she struggles to organize and prioritize them in her head. She leaps down and slides along the ground to avoid a giant fist that punches through a large wall she was standing beside. A dust and cracked bits rain upon her which causes her to sneeze. Outside she can hear the haunting buzzings of probably millions of clustered insects flying every which way. Wherever they go, they quickly silence a group of screams after sickening cracks and splashing sounds.

Due to her adrenaline, time briefly slows down for Daring Do. She looks over her shoulder as she sees the large fist that punched through the wall slowly withdraw and shrink along its way back. By now she knows that this creature has to pull that limb all the way back before it can “reload” for another swing. That’s one of its weaknesses.

Also, while it does have a hard shell back, its white belly-side looks far easier to penetrate. On the other hand, when she made an attempt to strike that side earlier, it curled up like a rolly polly. In that form, it can also roll itself wherever it wants and temporarily grow in size. In that form, it might as well be a giant steamroller. Somehow it knows where it is going and can even hop over some obstacles if need be.

By now she knows pleading with the crowd to guide them to safety is useless. There’s no way they’ll be able to hear her over all these screams, buzzing, and sounds of destruction. Even if they did, there’s no reason they should trust her. They are in a panicked state, too, so that again weakens their comprehension.

To win their trust and make things quieter, she’ll need to take out the local threats. Both of these creatures are super hard for different reasons. The armadillo creature is slow but it has tough armor and can call upon a very deadly swarm of insects that can be remarkably persistent once they lock onto a target.

The other threat is far more mobile except when it swings its forarms and fists. Every trick and tool in her arsenal doesn’t seem effective against these creatures except maybe her dynamite. She can’t rely on that trick too often, though. She doesn’t have that many left.

Then it occurred to her to use one threat against the other. Maybe she can’t take them out, but they can.

Getting an idea, she scoops up a piece of broken rubble around her with her left wing then zips through the hole that was recently made. With it, she chucks it at the large lizard creature which bounces off its armored back but also seizes its attention. She tries to call out, “HEY! OVER HERE, LIZARD BRAIN!” to it but, once again, her voice is lost in the crowd. She resorts to waving her forelimbs and wings instead again. In response, she sees it gives a sinister smile and stands up straight.

Realizing she has its focus again, Daring Do leaps up and flies over the rest of the crowd. She knows she can’t fly too high because the swarm of razor insects is up there. For now, they are primarily targeting any local other pegasi and unicorns zooming about on floating disks.

Daring keeps an eye at the lizard creature as it turns to face her new trajectory. It seems to hold back its own attacks until it doesn’t need to turn anymore. So, not only is it rooted to one spot during its attacks, it can’t even turn to face a new direction either. It has to lock on to some target pretty much straight ahead of it before it attacks.

Daring holds her course and even slows down some to encourage the lizard to attack her, which it finally does. When it does, Daring zips ahead then curves to her right to dodge behind the armadillo-like creature. The stretching and enlarging fist of the lizard course corrects its swing a bit in mid-flight in an attempt to hit Daring. In the end, though, it hits the armadillo thing instead and it does it hard enough to actually crack its thick back shell.

“Why are you hitting yourselves?” Daring taunts under her breath as she’s otherwise breathing raggedly.

Then she notices the panicked noise of the ponies around her lowers a few decibels as they notice this new turn of events with surprise. They never expected anypony to attempt to stand up to these creatures let alone do so with any degree of success.

Enraged, the injured armadillo creature gets back up and notices its partner snickering a bit without a hint of remorse. The armadillo lifts up its head and roars. In response, the swarm of insects above suddenly change their course and fly down to attack the other lizard creature. Noticing that approach, the lizard predictably rolls up into a ball again.

“EVERYPONY, THIS WAY!” Daring calls out to the crowd again during the momentary pause of silence. This is so hard to do when she can barely catch her breath. “SAFETY IS OVER-”

“Actually, it’s not,” Doctor Kelly interrupts and corrects. “Several more chaos beasts are between here and where I am located. Too many to say the path in between is safe. Stern Wing is currently engaging one of them. Some octopus-like creature that can swing on a web that it shoots and has electrical tentacle limbs.”

“Oh sweet Celestia!” Daring exclaims. “Give me a break! How many of these things are there? And what about the Daleks themselves?”

“You don’t want to know,” Doctor Kelly replies cautiously.

Daring lands and balances herself on a broken pillar. From there, she gazes out and notices the two local chaos beasts are still engaging each other. If their Dalek masters were here they might have been able to break up this fight and redirect their target, but without them, they are really aggressive and stupid beasts. She’s beginning to see why these chaos beasts often hunt alone. That’s exactly how most of them were captured.

“Oh no!” Doctor Kelly groans on her end.

“What now?” Daring asks wearily.

“I think another chaos beast has arrived at your position,” Doctor Kelly grimly reports. “It’s the teleporting one.”

“Blast it!” Daring groans as she looks about more carefully. On top of everything else she is going through right now, this new obstacle threatens to overwhelm her.

On the other hand, that target would be very useful to remove. That was how the Dalek’s initially escaped their prison. If she can take this one out, they can’t use that trick again.

“Where is it?” Daring asks as she keeps searching.

“Hard to say,” Doctor Kelly reports honestly. “It just keeps popping in and out of various positions. For now it seems focused in your general vicinity. You must have a lot of innocent civilians in your area.”

“I do,” Daring confirms.

“Yeah. I can see that,” Doctor Kelly agrees from her end.

“In that case, I’m going to take to the air,” Daring decides as she lifts her wings. “If I can get an aerial reconnaissance, I’m more likely to spot this thing. Besides, the two other chaos beasts I got engaging each other here both can’t fly. The insects one of them summons can, but they tend to stay close to their mother-hive.”

“You got them to fight each other?” Doctor Kelly asks in an impressed tone. “You must be a descendant of Clover the Clever.”

Daring Do grins as she takes off into the air. That compliment honestly does tickle her giddy inwardly. That’s just the kind of levity she needed to help focus her too in this moment.

Ascending to about five hundred feet into the air, Daring looks down to see if she can find her newest threat. As she keeps scanning, she occasionally spots it but only briefly. Each time she spots it, it isn’t there for even a full second. It appears then blinks away so fast she almost has to question if it was her imagination. The only evidence she tends to see that it was, indeed, once there is the fact it leaves behind a pony corpse in its wake.

For instance she spots only the back torso and hind legs of a stallion as it collapses onto the ground and quickly spreads a pool of blood on the ground. The forward half of him seemed to have just disappeared along with the chaos beast when it appeared, touched him, then teleported away along with the upper half of his body.

“Confirmed. The little bugger is around here,” Daring assures in a voice that is far more unsteady than she expected. “I can’t lock eyes on it, though. It just keeps appearing and disappearing so fast. I don’t know of a way to lure its attention either, and even if I did, this thing could probably kill me in an instant.”

There are other fliers in the air too, she eventually notices. By whatever means is at their disposal (whether it is natural to their body or not), the reason they are here seems clear to her. They are avoiding the ground because that is where the other two chaos beasts are tussling. They can’t stay up here forever but, for now, they don’t know what else to do.

Then Daring Do blinks, startled, when she notices some deaths are occuring up here too. For the first time, she catches sight of the teleporting chaos beast because it didn’t blink away as fast this time. Because of that, she notices the fact that it looks like a giant flying squirrel. Emphasis on the flying part, too. Like a flying squirrel, this creature can stretch its limbs and the skin in between stretches with it. As a result, it can glide through the air in a very similar way that Feather Wind does with his Mist Cloak except this creature can glide naturally and it can teleport to artificially and suddenly gain more altitude. As a result, it can stay in the air for as long as it wants.

Based on Daring’s assessment of this new creature, the reason it did not immediately go into another raid of attacks is it got busy doing some assessment of its own. She can imagine what it is like for the creature to teleport back and forth so quickly all the time. That causes sudden shifts in its environment and if it does it quickly, it barely has any time to scan for more targets itself. That’s why it teleported into the air then visually scanned below it to select more targets. In the process, it notices there are a few up in the air with it as well. There is a wicked gleam in its beady little eye for a second before it vanishes and Daring starts to hear screams of terror up here as well, but not from this creature's direct victims. They didn’t have enough time to scream.

Daring’s shoulders sag. This is so daunting to her. This new threat appears and disappears so fast. There is no warning for its victims. One moment they might be screaming in terror and, in the next, they are suddenly dead as some critical part of their body is missing.

At that moment, her mind flashes back to something Feather Wind once said about the chaos beasts. He once hypothesized that Trouble was innocent of the creation of these creatures because she wouldn’t go for instant kills like this. This really is more of the Dalek’s style except the one that attacked The Village breaks this pattern. That one wanted its victims to suffer longer. It even selected Doctor Kelly as its last victim just because she had the ability to heal the others and thus preserve its targets longer.

Then her mind strays to another topic. When she first emerged from the cave where the TARDIS took off, she saw the scenery of paradise beyond anything she could imagine. There are some areas she has explored in the past that approach that level of magnificence in various ways, but that was the first time she saw it all come together like that.

If she could travel back in time and tell her past self of the horror she would face on this day despite being in such overwhelmingly hospitable territory, her past self likely would be slow to believe her future self. At the very least, past Daring would probably demand some kind of evidence.

Daring shakes her head to clear it but she’s still at a loss. She can’t think of an adequate strategy to counter a threat this great. Even if she could dive into a swimming pool full of jello, it would slow her down too just as much as the other creature, and unlike her, it can teleport back out of the trap whenever it wanted.

Until that day, she never realized how scary teleportation can be when it is used offensively. Even without that, it can be a scary tool in the possession of a stalker.

The best thing she can think of to counter this threat is to use magic of some kind, but that is not her speciality. If only she could lure it into some kind of zone that negates dimensional travel.

Maybe . . . ?

Daring was about to ask Doctor Kelly to relay a message to Commander Viraxis on suggestions on how to handle this beast. After all, dimensional travel is something the Time Lords specialize in. Add to that, he had captured it before and that gave him a prolonged chance to study it too.

Before she has a chance to ask, she gets startled when another pegasus collapses into her. At first Daring thought that was an accident, but this pegasus clings to Daring’s body so tightly that she doesn’t have a chance to flap her wings.

“Hey! What gives?” Daring asks as the both of them end up diving back into the ground of the flying city. “Do you mind?”

“Shh. Just let it happen,” the other pegasus says with a voice that sounds somewhat artificial, like it is spoken through an intercom. Despite that, she can at least tell that this other voice sounds feminine.

During their fall, Daring peers over her shoulder. Doing so causes her to notice that this other pegasus, probably a mare, is wearing what Daring can only assume is some kind of spacesuit. It covers this other mare from the top of her head to the tip of her hind hooves. Even the wings and tail are covered which is really strange to look at. This means the other pegasus has to flap with a suit that conforms to the shape of her wings, but that also means the feathers of the wings can’t contact the air directly.

There are no gaps in this suit whatsoever. If it is, indeed, a spacesuit then that actually makes sense. Having any holes in it would defeat the purpose that it was designed for.

Why would such a pony be here, though? Especially at this moment? This kind of innovation is not beyond the means of Those Above, but this is still a very unexpected encounter right now nonetheless.

Daring struggles to free herself, particularly when they get close to crashing. She opens her mouth to give a scream but then she feels a lunge back. The other pegasus spreads her wings and slows their descent despite the fact that the wings are covered too. Only after they land does the other pegasus release Daring.

“What’s your problem?” Daring asks in confusion as she stands back up.

“I’m trying to save your life, so you’re welcome,” the other pegasus says.

All of the sudden Daring realizes that this new mare is a bit familiar. She’s encountered her sometime before, but where? When?

“Good. We finally caught up with you,” announces another mare nearby and, again, her voice sounds artificial too over the spacesuit’s helmet intercom. Daring turns her head enough to notice that, not just one, but two other ponies are approaching her. Like the first, they are all wearing spacesuits. What really catches Daring’s eyes a moment later is an Hourglass symbol fade into view on the left upper part of one of the pony’s forelegs near the shoulder.

“Wait. Your whole spacesuit is made of psychic paper?” Daring realizes questioningly with a start.

“That comes in hoofy when we want to disguise ourselves,” one of the two ponies says to her. The female one. Maybe they all are.

“All three of you are Knights of the Hourglass!” Daring realizes with another start.

For some reason the third pony scoffs at that, but that pony doesn’t otherwise reject that proposal. Instead, that pony finds the prospect true but distasteful.

“Indeed,” says one of the ponies who looks like an earth pony. Come to think of it, both of those who approach Daring now appear to be earth ponies. The one that speaks is the shortest of the three and she sounds relatively young.

Daring widens her eyes as she suddenly recalls when she last encountered these three, and the shortest earth pony mare in particular. Back then she didn’t engage much with the other two but she was aware that they were there. They wore spacesuits back then too. It seems to be a way to hide their true identities on purpose because now both of these encounters didn’t occur in outer space.

“It’s you!” Daring cries with recognition. “You’re back!”

“Aye,” the short earth pony agrees.

“I delivered your letter,” Daring assures the short earth pony. “I don’t know what it is, but the Doctor has received it. He said something about a flash drive?” she asks with a questioning tilt to her head.

The short earth pony lifts a hoof as she says assuringly, “I know he received it. That’s not why we are here right now. Instead, we have come to assist you with your current predicament.”

“Speak for yourself,” scoffs the last earth pony in a tone of disgust. “I’ll help with this, but I’ll do it my way and for my own reasons.” She turns about. “Excuse me.”

“Why you . . .!” the pegasus mare in the spacesuit cries in outrage and almost lunges at the one who is about to take off. Based on the words and actions Daring is observing, it seems to her that this isn’t the first time the tall mare gave this dismissive attitude and the pegasus seems tired of it. Daring also notices how the tall mare pauses and turns her helmeted head about to look back at the pegasus. Although Daring cannot see any of their faces, she can feel this daring grin on the face of the tall mare as if welcoming the pegasus to cause some trouble.

It takes Daring a moment to realize that the small mare holds up a hoof to the chest of the pegasus and this blocks that mare's further advancement. In turn, the helmeted head of that pegasus looks down at the smaller mare and Daring gets a, “Are you sure about this?” kind of feeling.

“Yes. Let her go,” the smaller mare answers the pegasus’s unspoken question. Then she looks at the tall mare as she says to her, “If you’re going to go, then go. We’ll meet you later.”

At first the other tall mare remains still and quiet for a second before turning her head forward again and resumes her pace away.

“You can’t let her keep doing this,” the pegasus urges the smaller mare who seems to be the leader of the three based on Daring’s observation.

“It’s wise to pick my battles carefully, and I have bigger daisies to fry,” the leader assures. “Let her go. She’ll come in hoofy in her own way, and remember . . . only I have the key to my TARDIS.”

The spacesuited pegasus grunts in frustration then says, “Fine! But I’m still getting sick of her attitude.”

“That’s your prerogative,” the leader accepts nonchalantly as she finally lowers her hoof from the other mare’s chest. “In the meantime, let's take care of these other problems here. For that, I want you to create a crystal sanctuary nearby then lure as many innocent ponies there.

“As for you,” the leader goes on to Daring presumably. “I want you to take a look at this.” The small mare lifts a tiny scroll. “Open it and look at it. Moreover, call Doctor Kelly on your holo-window and make sure she takes a look at it.”

“What is it?” Daring asks as she accepts the note with a wing then uses her other wing to pull it open. What she sees is a runic circle with a bunch of other arcane runes along the two most outer layers. She widens her eyes in recognition of this. These are the codes for a teleportation circle. A unique teleportation circle.

“Oh wow!” Daring marvels then looks at the leader. “You have one of these too?”

“Indeed,” the leader confirms. “And when Doctor Kelly sees and takes a picture of it, she’ll be able to teleport to that circle too.”

“I guess this becomes more of a thing with the Doctor’s future companions?” Daring asks as she taps the crystal shard on a string around her neck as a signal to communicate with Doctor Kelly.

“No need to signal for me,” announces the voice of Doctor Kelly. “I’ve been monitoring your progress all along, and I have taken a picture of those teleportation runes. I can already tell you that it is a set I didn’t have before now.”

“Now you do. At least the codes for one of our warp stones,” the leader announces. “With that, you can teleport other ponies to the shelter my other pegasus friend is about to create. You don’t have to warp any pony there but you can. I figured we can give these ponies a third option for safety around here. That way they don’t have to travel on hoof towards either of you two. They can just go to whichever sanctuary happens to be the closest, and we only need to localize these shelters in the areas that are attacked today.

“And speaking of attacks, let’s take care of your teleporting beast problem. With that beast out of the way, the Daleks will lose a substantial tactical advantage. Likely one far more useful than even they realize.”

“How?” Daring asks in bewilderment. “That beast can teleport so fast, there is no warning where or when it’s going to strike.”

“Leave that to me,” the leader assures confidently. “In the meantime, come with me. We need to act as bait to lure the creature. For now, the best place for that is where there is a thick number of other ponies. That is where the beast itself will focus its efforts.”

Doctor Kelly Saddler sits in an invisible tunnel full of holographic window screens while sitting on a wedged force sphere. She props her right elbow up on the arm of her wedged sphere and uses her right hoof to lift up her head as she gazes at one of the windows which displays the visual information as well as digital information from the crystal shard Daring is wearing. She lifts her eyebrows curiously as she watches this new mysterious spacesuited companion deal with the warp chaos beast with curious ease. Part of the doctor already expected these results, though. That spacesuited mare sounded way too confident in herself, but not overconfident either. It’s as if she knew she would win in advance. Like she could see the future.

And speaking of which, that seemed to be how she handled the beast too. The mysterious mare stood in a ready battle stance with the poise of a very well trained martial artist. From there, she only moved when it was the perfect moment to do so. Doctor Kelly actually froze one image of the small mare punching at the chaos beast just as it appeared then rewound the footage then played it forward again frame by frame. She soon comes to the conclusion that this mare punched out towards empty air and the warping chaos beast just happened to materialize there in time to get punched in that direction. Creeping the images forward and zooming in, the doctor soon realizes it is more than just a mere punch. This small mare aimed at a very precise point of the chaos beast’s body and twisted her punch just when it connected.

Doctor Kelly then leans forward and collects her hooves in front of her muzzle when she realizes that what she is seeing is a pressure point technique. A pressure point to, as far as she can tell, a totally unique creature. How could the mare in the image even get the chance to study the anatomy of a creature that might truly be one of a kind?

The doctor settles back in her seat as she realizes this information is very strange and noteworthy. Just who is this mysterious mare?

“Excuse me? Um . . . Miss?” calls a stallion beyond and through her holographic windows. Doctor Kelly focuses her vision through her windows to behold a green unicorn stallion with a frazzled mane. By the looks of him, he is struggling to keep things together and doing a decent job under the circumstances, but clearly with a lot of effort. She continues to watch him as he asks, “Are you sure we’ll be safe on the other side of that portal? And just where does it lead to?”

“A place your attackers cannot follow, especially now,” Doctor Kelly assures him and anyone else who happens to be listening nearby. “Just proceed through and you’ll be safe. If any of those creatures make it out here, I have the means to delay them and close the portal if necessary. Furthermore, I have a pair of drones beyond who can scan and then heal the most critically injured here, so have no fears and please proceed.”

“Thank you!” the stallion expresses with great relief. Even his mane sinks down as if he was holding a breath before that moment and seems to greatly relax during the exhale. Feeling reassured, he waves for the rest of his nearby family to follow and they soon proceed through the portal.

“Just what are those awful things?” a fairly young pink unicorn filly asks Doctor Kelly but a filly old enough to pronounce her sentences clearly.

“Those questions shall be answered shortly,” Doctor Kelly assures the young filly then her eyes flick in alarm towards a window which displays Feather Wind’s health status. The red flashing screen gives strong indication that he is no longer in sound health. She needs to do something about this immediately.

“What is it?” the pink filly asks in rising alarm.

“Something I need to take care of,” Doctor Kelly answers as her “chair” floats back down to the ground. Along the way down, she reads more details about Feather Wind’s status. What she takes especially close note of is his exact coordinates. As long as she has that, she has the means to teleport to him.

She focuses back at the filly and gives a reassuring smile as she says soothingly, “Don’t worry. I’ll hoofle this problem. In the meantime, continue your way through the portal. I shall be back shortly.”

With that, Doctor Kelly channels magic to one of her maji stones worn on her white labcoat. When that spell activates, she visualizes the coordinates she saw on her window screen. With that done, she teleports away to Feather’s new position. Since other spells she had cast earlier caused all the holo-windows around her, they teleport to her new position too.

Feather Wind screams as he tumbles out of the sky in pain. His condition gets somewhat worse when he hits the ground. His body weight is still pretty low, and that helps, but he came to the ground with tremendous speed then tumbled further upon impact.

All of that pales in comparison to the wound that he got inflicted with up in the sky which is a large gash from his upper left shoulder to across the barrel of his abdomen. As a matter of fact, he has never been injured like this before. Not even close. He might have felt like a prisoner in his father’s mansion at times, but they had guards there and plenty of other forms of security, including magical security. His family has been trained wizards for many generations, after all.

Because of all of that, injury of this kind has never happened to him before. As a result, its effects are greatly magnified for him. His brain simply doesn’t know how to process all of this. All he does know is it’s impossible for him to concentrate on his spells now and he can barely keep in touch with any of his surroundings.

While still tumbling on the ground and screaming in sheer agony, Feather thought back to many of the puffball games he watched his filly friend play as they grew up. Despite the fact that the entire sport takes place in the air, it can get rough sometimes. Collisions happen. That’s not the point of the sport. The point is to toss the cloud ball through the cloud rings in a certain sequence. Because it is a cloud ball, it is very hard to toss far. It’s like trying to toss a ball underwater.

Many times, he remembered Stern Wing gritting and baring the agony of her injuries with quiet dignity. Sometimes she would wince or request her doctors not to touch her wings that hard, or wherever she happened to feel her pain at the time.

But then she’d look up at her coldfriend then twist her wings to the side and lift a single feather as a signal to assure him that she will be fine. She can endure this pain and she felt confident it won’t keep her down for long.

That is not idle boasting either. Very often she got back on her hooves as quickly as she promised. Many times he recalled marveling at her and wondered how she did it. It seems especially at odds with his own standards. Even the tiniest cuts could cause him to scream in agony.

In the early days of their foalhood, one of the greatest injuries she had suffered, and indeed ones great enough to keep her in the hospital for many days, is also the day she got her cutie mark awakening. On that day she defended a farm full of ponies from rampaging goblins. That was a true attack that was meant to inflict great injury and potentially even death, but she spread her wings and insisted that the goblins can not pass her. Indeed, she did everything she could to keep the others out of harm's way.

Everything . . . and that determination had cost her.

To this very day, it hurts Feather’s heart to recall how injured and bandaged she was in the hospital, but there was a radiant proud smile on her face. There she was, facing the greatest injuries of her life yet she smiled like she was on cloud nine. When he asked why, she explained that she got her cutie mark while not realizing her parents already told him before he had a chance to see her. She went on to describe how inwardly fulfilling it was to finally know who she truly was. She could lift her head with pride knowing that she successfully defended the lives of those ponies on the farm that day. Because she did that, every day they lived since was a gift she gave them. She overflowed with pride and joy to know that they had received such a precious gift. That act would echo on to every future generation of that family too. They wouldn’t be there, or even exist in the first place, if it wasn’t for her heroic sacrifice.

Feather’s pain starts to ebb as he reflects on the irony over the fact that that is exactly what happened to him now. Up in the sky, he was doing a decent job hindering any antagonistic forces that he could observe. He even handled multiple of them at once and did a good job of it. He took out seven of them so far which is far better than he initially expected, especially considering he did all of this solo. They are not even dead either. Just unconscious so they are no threat to anyone else right now and he doesn’t have to deal with the guilt of their deaths either.

The problem was he wasn’t the only one in the sky. In a curious twist of fate, a young and brash blue pegasus, (which curiously reminds Feather of a younger version of Sky Dancer, which is Stern Wing’s cousin and one of Feather’s earliest flying mentors) flew up at him with the intention to help. No pony else in this society did that. This is a society not accustomed to any threats whatsoever. Psychologically they couldn’t possibly be less prepared for this, yet along comes this brave young soul who had an unusual determination to help. Because he did that, he was there to be a target to one of the other chaos beasts in the sky and, unfortunately, the young stallion did not see this one coming.

Feather Wind did see it coming, though. When that moment came, Feather acted without thinking. He dove down and pushed the other stallion away using his own body and the wind.

In retrospect, using the wind was far more effective. Feather’s body weight was nearly that of a feather at the time so pushing the other stallion personally was like being pushed by a feather. Since that stallion needed the wind to remain aloft, however, trying to remain up in the sky during that moment was like trying to swim up a waterfall. That pretty much forced the other pony down and, more importantly, got him out of the way of the chaos beast's razor sharp edges of its wings. Unfortunately, that blow connected with Feather Wind instead.

Feather marvels and smiles when he thinks back to Stern Wing’s smile in the hospital shortly after she got her cutie mark. Finally, after all these years, he realizes what she must have felt on that day. In a curious way, this moment seems to solidify the fact that he and Stern definitely have an entwined destiny together, for both of them are naturally heroes regardless of their social backgrounds. What he had just done wasn’t his smartest move, but it still felt right. It felt good to his soul.

He smiles, despite his pain, because he, too, more fully realizes who he is at the core of his being.

Nearby cries of alarm shakes him out of his reverie and quickly reminds him of two very important things. One; he’s still in danger as well as others around him. Two; he’s still injured and that pain came back with a vengeance.

This time, however, he struggles to contain his pain as he searches around to locate the source of the nearby cries. He soon spots it behind his hind hooves. The chaos beast that had successfully hit him had landed but the eagle/lion-like creature, kind of similar to a griffon actually, crawls down from the roof of a pagoda and faces towards what appears to be a mother and two foals. They shrivel in fear within the pagoda as they cower away from the creature as far as the structure around them will allow. Here, however, they are also trapped because the chaos beast is approaching them from the only exit of this structure. That, in turn, provides it with very easy targets.

“Hey!” Feather Wind cries out with as much force as he can muster. He tries to focus his magic near his horn and blast it with a hornbeam but it turns out the pain of his current injury is too strong to concentrate on any other spell.

Feeling desperate, Feather searches around him for any object he can throw. Nearby he does locate a bed of stones in a tight little square. It isn’t in immediate reach but he manages, with extreme effort because of his pain, to crawl over to it, touch one of the stones, then toss it at the back of this chaos beast. Along the way, he also smears a trail of blood along the ground and probably also dirties the wound.

With the stone in hoof, he tosses it at the chaos beast. It bounces off the creature’s back near its spiky spines which is the one feature about it that’s very different from a standard griffon. That attack didn’t hurt it at all, but it did lure its attention away from the other trapped ponies.

“Over here, you bucking monster!” Feather cries out desperately using language that likely both of his parents would have frowned upon, but they might give him a pass this time considering the extenuating circumstances.

The creature growls at Feather hatefully then continues to crawl down to the ground towards Feather Wind. Aside from the fact that Feather is only one target, he’s about as easy, or possibly easier to get at, than the trapped ponies in the pagoda because Feather is injured and this creature can smell it. There is also no cover or structure, like the pagoda, to protect Feather Wind from this creature.

Feather Wind looks past this creature and notices the fact the other ponies crawl out of the pagoda while the beast is distracted, but then he also sees them hesitate to flee because now Feather is in danger.

“Just go!” Feather whispers then sends the message through the wind to their ears. “Go!” he repeats and sends that more forceful message.

The method by which they received the message surprised them but they received it nonetheless. They nod then make their way off.

With great effort, Feather tries to crawl away from this creature and into a small hallway nearby. Since he still has his body weight light, that helps. He made tiny, almost anti-gravity jumps towards his destination using gentle nudges along the ground.

Noticing this, the creature pauses because what it is observing is very odd. It has never seen another creature move in such a weird way. Fifteen seconds later it gets over its surprise and decides that its course hasn’t changed. Every instinct it has insists that all life forms must be exterminated.

Despite being as gentle as he could be, the pain of Feather’s injury momentarily drives him out of his mind. He has to struggle through the intense haze of pain and focus back at the threat below him. He sees the moment the creature crawls into the hallway with him. A line of shadow crawls down the creature's face then eventually the rest of its body.

“That’s it,” Feather invites as he narrows his eyes at the creature. “A free meal, here. Come and get me!”

The creature screeches in a very eagle-like fashion as it crouches down before launching forward with a burst of speed. Along its way, Feather fights through his haze of pain enough to concentrate on his magic. This time he succeeds and he uses it to create a force shield, but he uses it in an unconventional way. He creates it on the floor where the creature eventually steps on it. When it does, Feather telekinetically lifts the shield both forward and upward. Since one of its eagle talons was still on that shield, it forced that left hind leg upward and forward. That, in turn, flipsthe creature so that its backside was facing towards the floor.

Before it could fully fall to the ground, Feather uses the wind to strongly smash it against the wall to his left side then he reversed the current to smash it to the wall to his right. After that he keeps the creature dizzy by spinning it in a whirling cyclone. He concentrates on his magic again and telekinetically crushes its throat closed. That alone could eventually kill it, but he finishes it off as a strong gust of wind shoots it straight up where it snaps its neck against the ceiling. From there he finally relents as he releases his hold on his powers. The creature collapses to the ground in a heap.

In a sudden moment of silence that follows afterward, he wonders to himself if that is his first kill ever.

Feather Wind jolts, startled, and gives a horse whinny when Doctor Kelly suddenly teleports nearby him just beyond the hallway he is in.

“Oh good! You’re still conscious,” Doctor Kelly expresses with relief then regards the corpse of the chaos beast wearily. “Um, is it . . .?”

“It won’t trouble you any more, doctor,” Feather assures her with a hint of a haunted and guilty expression.

“Oh? Well . . . good. Let me take care of you, then,” Doctor Kelly decides. “I’ll get you back on your hooves in no time.”

“Please do,” Feather welcomes with a haggard breath and many beads of sweat pouring down him. “I need to get back into the fight quickly. The others still need me.”

“Report,” Daring Do requests on the holographic screen on Doctor Kelly’s end. “What’s the situation so far? How is everypony doing?”

“A little busy at the moment,” Doctor Kelly answers with strained calmness as she concentrates on a spell that keeps a wall of force stable ahead of her in order to block what seems to be a crossbreed between a dog and a dragon from clawing through. The vast majority of this creature has the shape of a dog except it has about three times the average size and girth of a full grown pony. As for its dragon aspect, that is mainly noticeable as its head, ridged scales along its spine, and sharp bony claws. So far, the most notable trick and feature of this creature is its fiery breath weapon, of which the Doctor is also restraining with her force field.

All around her, the ponies that are in her vicinity either rush through the still open portal or flee further away depending how close they initially were when this attack showed up.

“What?!” Daring asks in alarm on her end.

Suddenly a new transparent, holographic window ignites near Doctor Kelly while she’s busy concentrating on her spell. The image and voice from this window announces himself as, “This is Commander Viraxis. I have detected a chaos beast near your vicinity.”

“Really?” Doctor Kelly asks sarcastically as she struggles to keep her focus. “I hadn’t noticed.”

“Do you need assistance?” the Commander offers urgently and ultra seriously. “Repeat; do you need assistance?”

“Yes. Do you?” Daring reflects with equal concern to her friend. “I can rush there in a hot minute if necessary.”

“Nah, you two. I got this,” Doctor Kelly assures as she changes the shape of the force field ahead of her to wrap around the dragon/dog chaos beast. In turn, it doesn’t notice this until it is too late. By then it looks around and notices it is now encased in a white glowing spherical force field. Shortly later she has that glowing ball lift and hover three feet off the ground.

After the initial shock of this discovery settles, the chaos beast snaps its gaze at Doctor Kelly with a renewed flare of anger then opens its mouth to blast a jet of fire forward. Unfortunately for the creature, the fire does not penetrate the spherical force field and, in fact, its own attack literally backfires on itself. Noticing this with alarm, the creature quickly cuts off its own attack. Besides being slightly singed, and that only because of its quasi-draconic fire resistance, it had just burned up about forty percent of the oxygen it is trapped with and the air within the bubble has jumped up over two-hundred degrees within just four seconds.

“Chill out, dude,” Doctor Kelly encourages the creature. “And don’t worry. I’ll let you out.” When she looks up at the creature, the rim of her floating holographic glasses gleams with a sinister edge as she says with a slightly wicked tone, “When I do, it won’t hurt a bit.”

In fury and desperation, the creature tries clawing at its spherical prison but only ends up slipping and sliding back and forth in the attempt since the force field is about as smooth as slick glass.

In the next moment, Doctor Kelly concentrates on a new spell then both she and the creature teleport someplace else. The force field, which she originally used to trap the creature, is left behind which pops out of existence after its creator leaves.

At their new location, the doctor is in front of one of the barred cages inside the dimensional warehouse again and the creature is once again inside one. It blinks as it looks around, startled by the sudden transition, and soon realizes this new location is a bit familiar.

The creature takes a moment to crouch down then leaps forward at the doctor despite the fact that the bars are still in the way, and the bars on this cage haven’t been damaged by the Daleks before because no chaos beast was in here before.

In mid-air, though, it suddenly freezes in time when she activates the function of this prison, of which she had the access codes for ever since Commander Viraxis gave them to her earlier. As a result, she does have more precise control of this place this time.

“Stay. Staaaaaaaay,” Doctor Kelly encourages the time frozen chaos beast as if it were a mere pet dog. She grows satisfied to note that it remains suspended in mid-air. Not even the tiniest molecules within the cage are moving now. “Good boy,” she declares in satisfaction then teleports herself back to the surface near the portal on Those Above’s floating home city.

“Nicely done,” the Commander commends the doctor over the holo-vid. “As for the rest, we’re starting to root them out.”

“I know. That’s why I called,” Daring Do confirms. “I have no more chaos beasts near my vicinity that I can tell so I grew concerned if they got diverted someplace else. If that is the case, maybe the best location to direct these ponies to sanctuary has changed too so I wanted to check on that, or should I keep them here? There doesn’t seem to be a problem here for the moment other than the understandably frantic ponies nearby.”

“I’m actually closing in closer to the position of the rest of you,” the Commander reports, “because I ran out of targets in my vicinity.”

“Did you capture them again, or . . .?” Daring Do leaves that question hanging.

“I wasn’t so merciful this time due to the urgency of the situation,” the Commander answers. “I have captured a few. After all, that is another resource I can utilize from here, but I have deployed and used the ship's more lethal armaments too. Basically I was doing anything I could to thin their numbers as fast as possible. Point being I have succeeded somewhat so I’m closing in on the position of the rest of you to finish off other remaining targets and rescue injured or trapped ponies too. I do have a medical facility on my ship as well, after all. It has a limited capacity, but still. That’s better than nothing.”

“Good to know,” Doctor Kelly says with approval.

“What about the Daleks?” Daring checks.

“Now that is the bad news,” the Commander answers. “They have consolidated their forces within the city and they seem to be on their way to the Transmission Tower. I don’t know how, but it seems like they might have learned of the Tower’s location and they are on their way to it.”

“Then we need to intercept them,” Daring decides firmly and grimly. “In that case, I’ll make my way over to you, doctor, in order to utilize your teleportation circle to get a shortcut to Margret’s position.”

“Actually, you might want to re-think that,” Doctor Kelly discourages. “Whoever those other Knights of the Hourglass agents are, they set up another base, and a more secure one I might add, that’s actually closer to your current position, and they have a warp stone located there as well . . . or so they claim at least.”

“Would it do them any good?” Daring asks with doubt. “Those agents didn’t have one unicorn among them so how can they charge the teleportation circle?”

“The warp stones have at least one charge in them if they are anything like mine,” Doctor Kelly answers. “After all, they’d need that charge to function at all. Plus, I know they are surrounded by Those Above within their sanctuary and the vast majority of them are basically unicorns.” She shrugs. “If push comes to shove, I can make my way over to them and help you all to get to Margret. Don’t forget, I have a teleportation circle here too and they recently gave me the runic codes for theirs. Failing all of that, I can just teleport myself to them on my own since I also have their coordinates.”

“It never fails to impress me how useful the Doctor’s companions and former companions can be,” the Commander commends again. “It goes to show there is something useful about his unconventional tactics after all.”

“Well, in any case, I guess I’ll make my way to their base, then,” Daring decides. “I could use some guidance, though.”

They are all silenced when something very unexpected happens. A sonic buzzing sound initiates seemingly everywhere within the city. It sounds very much like the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver, or perhaps the devices that the Daleks are similarly equipped with.

“What was that?!” Daring asks in confusion and alarm.

“A sonic device,” the Commander answers. “Probably more like a signal. That transmission occurred from the Transmission Tower itself of all places. From there, somepony or something hacked their way into our system and used our own city’s intercom to transmit that signal.”

“Was it the Daleks?!” Daring asks with rising horror.

“Maybe because it is having an effect on the remaining chaos beasts,” the Commander reports. “It seems they are abandoning whatever they were doing before and now they are all consolidating somewhere. Most likely they are making their way to their Dalek masters,”

“Now hold on,” Doctor Kelly prompts. “This doesn’t add up. If the Daleks sent that signal then they wouldn’t need to make their way to the Transmission Tower anymore. If they hacked into the system of this city sufficiently enough to send that signal then doesn’t it mean they could also send a signal to the rest of their kind too?”

“Possibly,” the Commander admits in confusion. “You’re right. That is odd. If that was the case, why are they still trying to make their way to the Transmission Tower right now?”

“Is there something else of strategic value to them along the way?” Doctor Kelly checks.

“Not that I can think of,” the Commander muses. “Unless they are trying to make their way to the city’s main power station. If they succeeded in contacting the rest of their brethren then I suppose their next objective would be to create a shortcut for their reinforcements. I don’t know exactly how they can do it on their own, but utilizing the main power of the city could theoretically certainly help with that objective.”

“I guess, even after all these years of your conflict with them, a race as predictable as the Daleks can still surprise you,” Doctor Kelly figures to the Commander.

The Commander grunts in irritation then says, “Be that as it may, we may have a bigger problem on our hooves now. If they successfully sent the signal to the rest of their kind then a bigger invasion will soon be on its way. If they create a portal for them then they’ll be able to storm this world as early as today. From their perspective, I can see why they’d want to call upon their remaining chaos beasts to help them out.”

“There is one advantage I can think of for us,” Doctor Kelly brings up. “In a way it's a good thing for all the Daleks and chaos beasts to consolidate to one spot. That might combine their strength but it also means we have only one target now. If we can think of a way to take them out then we have the chance to sweep them all off the board all at once.”

“Then all we’d have to do is do something about the potential signal they already sent,” Daring adds. “Maybe we can send another signal that is something equivalent to, ‘Nope. Nevermind. False alarm. My bad.’”

Doctor Kelly grins as she says, “As amusing as that sounds, that might actually be our best bet.”

“In that case, let’s consolidate our forces too,” the Commander decides. “Daring, make your way to the other Knight’s base after all, and Doctor Saddler, send a signal to the rest of your friends and tell them to meet us there as well. When we’re all gathered together, we’ll compare notes then come up with the best strategy with our combined resources.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Daring agrees. “Then I’ll make my way over there now. Over and out.”

Stern Wing sits panting on a small cloud. Her forehooves are between her hind legs as she sits on her haunches. In addition to being winded, she is beat up in multiple ways. Despite it all, she is looking down below her very proudly.

“STERN WING! THERE YOU ARE!” Feather cries out to her as he flies towards her. He then speaks in a more normal volume as he draws closer. “C’mon! I’ll give you a boost as we regroup with the rest of our friends.”

“Hold on a minute,” Stern bids. “Here.” She pats the cloud beside her. “Pull up a cloud. I want to show you something.”

“But . . . they told us we need to reconvene right now!” Feather reminds. “The Daleks are already making their way to the Transmission Tower as we speak, and the chaos beasts are regrouping with them most likely.”

Stern Wing pats the cloud beside her again as she insists, “C’mon! It’ll just take a few seconds.”

“Gah. Fine,” Feather accepts as he swoops in. When he nears the cloud, he quickly shifts from being wind-blown to his telekinetic magic to help avoid blowing wind into the cloud she is sitting on. Instead, he uses his communion to expand the shape of the cloud so there is more room for him to sit on. As a result, the cloud changes from being thick to thin but more spread out. He lands beside her and peers down a bit anxiously as he asks, “Now then, what is it you wanted me to see?”

“Do you remember the first chaos beast we encountered? The worm-like one with the fierce regeneration?” Stern asks her friend in an almost giddy way.

“Uh . . yeah,” Feather answers as he keeps searching down below to see if he can spot her point. Before she speaks next, he does spot it. That creature is down there and pinned under a collapsed column.

“Well I recently soloed it!” Stern brags proudly as she sits up straight enough to apply her forehooves to her hips in a bold, heroic stance. “I did it all by myself.”

“Still alive, I see,” Feather notes as he regards it.

“Well, it is pretty darn difficult to kill,” Stern reminds. “Maybe it would be more accurate to say I defeated and/or neutralized it from being a continued threat. That wasn’t easy, but I did it.”

“Congratulations,” Feather expresses with a warm and proud look to his friend beside him.

“And I also took out four . . . Count it . . . four other chaos beasts and, again, I did it by myself!” Stern brags proudly again.

Hearing that, Feather decides to remain quiet about how many he took out to avoid belittling his friend’s accomplishment. He also is actually very proud and fond of her. Considering all that she did using only her own strengths and under these circumstances, he thinks she really does have a lot to be proud of.

“I’m very proud of you,” Feather expresses again warmly. “You definitely found your calling out here.”

“So did you, I think,” Stern expresses as she shares a smile right back at her friend.

The two of them get lost in each other’s eyes for a moment until more activity sparks down below them which nabs their attention. With alarm, they notice another chaos beast has entered the area. This one looks like a giant spider. Curiously, the first thing it does is attack the pinned worm with what looks like an acidic web.

“What the . . .?!” Stern exclaims in shock.

Then yet another chaos beast enters the area. This one looks like a giant praying mantis. It flings its own scythe-like claws at the spider which spins in the air like a whirling boomerang. It slices off a few legs of the spider before returning to the one who initially threw it. Again, just like a boomerang. The spider responds by shooting web back at the mantis who dodges by ducking behind some rubble in front of it.

“What is going on here?!” Stern asks in astonishment.

To their great bewilderment, more and more chaos beasts gather in this one area then do nothing else but attack each other until each of them dies.

“This is unreal!” Feather exclaims in astonishment as he beholds this with a puzzled and deeply analytical expression.

“Well . . . at least they are only attacking each other,” Stern expresses more softly.

“Exactly,” Feather agrees. “Right now that seems to be the point.”

“Should we, um . . . do anything about this?” Stern wonders.

Feather is silent for another thoughtful moment then shakes his head as he declares, “We need to regroup with the others, as planned, only now we have something extra to add to our report.”

“Should one of us stay and continue to monitor the situation?” Stern offers.

Feather shakes his head as he stands up on the cloud, then says, “No. We both go. C’mon.” He hops in the air and tucks his legs into the four corners of his Mist Cloak again. “I’ll give you a boost as we speed our way to our friends.”

This time Stern does stand up. She leaps off the edge of the cloud and simply spreads her wide and large wings in time to catch Feather’s summoned wind draft which quickly accelerates their pace in the sky.

It looks to Stern and Feather that they are the last to arrive. Daring Do and Doctor Kelly are already there. Commander Viraxis is standing among them as well, and this time in the flesh instead of through a holo-screen. In addition, two more mysterious mares wearing silver spacesuits are standing among the group.

Even from a distance, something else that they spot that is very notable about this area is a giant structure that is made of crisscross ruby crystal spikes. So many of them are crossed at the top that there is no opening above. Down below, there appears to be one entrance and exit.

“Holy cloud!” Stern exclaims in shock. “What is that?!”

“The makeshift, newly created shelter, I assume,” Feather guesses as he beholds this in awe.

“Are you sure King Sombra didn’t create it instead?” Stern teases as she nudges her friend’s right rib cage with the wrist of her left forehoof. “Or Crystal Sage or whatever else he calls himself these days.”

Feather Wind looks off to his right at Stern Wing with bewilderment mixed with realized awe as it dawns on him that what she meant as a joke seriously does look correct. Quickly erecting crystalline structure like this really is up that pony’s alley. In this case it’s more likely to be Crystal Sage rather than King Sombra. If Sombra had done this then that crystal palace would more likely be made of corrupted black crystal.

Noticing his look, Stern’s mood shifts to bewildered as she asks, “What? Is it something I said?”

“Um . . . nevermind. It’s nothing,” Feather dismisses while shaking his head as he decides to file this mystery for later. They have enough on their plate right now. “C’mon. Let’s rejoin the others.”

“Uh . . . sure,” Stern agrees in a bit of a spooked manner. She wonders what her boyfriend might have realized.

“There you are,” announces Daring when the two land nearby the rest of them. “I was wondering where you two were.”

Feather Wind opens his mouth to explain the situation but shifts his focus to Stern when she beats him to the punch. When she does, it becomes clear to him that her priorities are a little different for the moment.

“Before we say anything about that, who are these two?” Stern asks cautiously while regarding the two new spacesuited mares.

“Fellow Knights of the Hourglass, apparently,” Daring announces. “And very useful ponies, I might add. They were a lot of help around here.”

“Okay, but . . . why are they wearing spacesuits down here?” Stern wonders aloud with a curious lift of an eyebrow.

“To hide our identities,” the shorter mare admits that Daring, who personally labeled as the leader between the two, speaks up through her helmet's intercom. “And we’re doing that to avoid corruption to the timeline, as you might otherwise recognize us as present or future companions of the Doctor.”

“That makes sense,” Doctor Kelly accepts with a casual shrug. “In that case, I’d offer you two a lollipop but there doesn’t seem to be a point with those helmets in the way.”

“I think we can move on to more critical matters right now,” Commander Viraxis broaches. “We need to decide what we’re going to do next.”

Feather Wind lifts a hoof as he announces, “Before we get into that, I have something important to announce. Before Stern and I got here, we actually encountered a gathering of the rest of the chaos beasts.”

The Commander’s eyes, which includes his red glowing prosthetic one, widens in surprise as he asks Feather, “Where? What were your coordinates at the time?”

“Hold on,” Feather bids as he lowers his hoof back down. “There’s more. What I need to tell you all is that the chaos beasts unexpectedly started attacking each other when they arrived back there. They seem to be their only targets, too. They utterly ignored everything else.”

“What?!” Daring exclaims in shock. “They attacked each other?! Are you sure?”

Feather nods as he says, “I’m positive, but I’m not sure why they did that.”

“Maybe that was the orders the Daleks gave them earlier,” Doctor Kelly muses aloud. “Because, to the Daleks, even the chaos beasts are an abomination simply because they aren’t fellow Daleks. If I’m right, that means the Daleks are using the chaos beasts only until they deem their usefulness is at an end.”

“That’s cruel,” Stern says with a wince of disapproval but then shrugs as she adds, “But I suppose it isn’t out of character for the Daleks based on what I have heard of them so far.”

“That may also indicate they feel even more confident that the beasts are no longer needed,” Feather figures. “Because they are about to summon a whole fleet of other Daleks.” He looks at the Commander. “Right?”

“That’s their usual modus operandi,” the Commander partially agrees. “But remember, I told you that they have been starving for resources too. Whatever reinforcements they will send to this planet will only be what they deem necessary to succeed and what they can spare. They’d prefer to overkill the situation but lately that’s been harder on them. If they devoted all of their forces to blitzkrieging one planet then that means abandoning their efforts on fifteen other planets in as much as fifteen separate timelines.”

“I don’t envy you for the war you had to endure,” Stern expresses sympathetically to the Commander.

“Neither do I,” he agrees with Stern. “But I do what must be done. All life in existence may very well be at stake.”

“Given this new information, does this alter any of our plans?” Daring asks aloud to put the conversation back on track.

“Hold on,” Doctor Kelly objects as she lifts a hoof. “Before we get into any of that, I want to know what you two have to say,” she says directly to the two new mares in the spacesuits. “When Feather announced that the chaos beasts were attacking each other, you two suddenly gave each other meaningful looks. It’s harder to tell because your faces are concealed by your helmets, but I still picked up on your subtle body language.” The same hoof she lifted up earlier in objection now lowers to point back and forth between both mares. “That tells me that you two know something about that situation.”

“Very astute of you, doctor,” the leader commends. “You’re a credit to your profession.”

“So the answer is yes?” the Commander checks as he asks with his robotic, prosthetic voice box. “You two do know something?”

“If we do, and I’m not saying for sure that we do,” announces the pegasus, “we can’t elaborate on it because it involves future stuff. Stuff that is ahead of your timelines.”

“But I will say this,” the leader resumes where her companion left off. “If we’re right about what we suspect, the Daleks won’t trouble you for much longer. Instead of that, I think you should focus your efforts more on your one missing companion.”

“What?!” Feather exclaims as the entire group grows suddenly alarmed at that comment. They then look about to identify who is missing. Feather even asks, “Who is . . . ?” He widens his eyes in greater alarm as he exclaims, “Derpy! Derpy is missing!” He then focuses on Doctor Kelly as he asks her, “You did say you successfully contacted us all to get us to meet here, correct? That included Derpy?”

“Correct. I had successfully contacted you all,” Doctor Kelly confirms as she ignites a holo-window screen and reads the information on it. While doing that, she goes on to say, “That was seven minutes and thirty-nine seconds ago. Derpy answered and told us she would rendezvous with us here.”

“Was she far?” Daring checks. “Or was her local situation especially complicated?”

“No,” Doctor Kelly denies as she shakes her head. “And right now that is troubling. She wasn’t dealing with any chaos beasts. I sent her to the safest but also important spot as you requested. She didn’t seem to have too much trouble there either until the path between me and her occasionally got hairy. I eventually had to . . .”

Doctor Kelly trails off and grows suddenly silent while her eyes widen in alarm at her window screen. Seeing that horrified the others.

“What?” Stern Wing asks Doctor Kelly in growing dread.

“I can’t detect her life signs,” Doctor Kelly reports as she rubs the bottom of her chin and gives her holo-screen a piercing, deeply thoughtful, and disturbed look. “Nor can I contact her.” The window screen vanishes and she looks across the others. “That either means she’s either in a location that can’t transmit her information to me, or somepony has stolen the crystal shard I gave her.”

“Maybe I can come up with something then,” the Commander announces as he ignites a holo-window screen of his own. “What were her last known coordinates?”

“I’ll digitally transmit them to you,” Doctor Kelly replies then proceeds to do so.

“Got it,” the Commander confirms as he studies the information he has on his screen. While he does that, he asks the two new mares without looking at them, “In the meantime, I’d like you two to tell me whatever you can about why you’re so convinced that the Daleks soon won’t be a problem.”

The leader shakes her head as she replies, “If I’m right, I don’t have to. You’ll soon find out for yourselves,” she answers mysteriously. “For now, stay on the course of tracking down Derpy. That will lead to some partial answers at least.”

“Rodger. I’ll be there,” announced Derpy eight minutes ago as she gave a cute salute to the holo-window screen displaying the image of Doctor Kelly. At first her expression was firm but then she realized something which then shifted her expression to embarrassment then she shyly asked, “Um . . . which way is it again?”

Doctor Kelly sighed in exasperation but there was also a fond grin on her face as she shook her head at Derpy. Then she said, “You know what? I’ll do you one better.”

Something changed on Derpy’s holo-window. The image of Doctor Kelly shrank and a new window within the window showed up. This one was simply a 3-D arrow. Numbers were also displayed off to the side of it which indicated the distance Derpy would have to travel.

“Just follow the arrow,” Doctor Kelly instructs the gray wall eyed mare. “It will lead you to the others, myself included.”

“Couldn’t you just teleport to me and take me there that way?” Derpy wondered aloud as she looked cornerwise up and tapped her bottom lip with her right hoof.

“Yes, I could, but you’re the closest to the coordinates I gave you aside from Daring Do,” Doctor Kelly counters. “There are no chaos beasts or Daleks along the way either, and you can fly, for goodness sake.”

“Okay-okay-okay!” Derpy accepted as she waved her hoof in front of her face back and forth. “I got it. I’m going. I'll meet you there.”

“Good,” Doctor Kelly accepted with a satisfied nod. “See you there soon, then.”

With that, Doctor Kelly closed the image of herself on Derpy’s window screen. This, in turn, allowed the virtual arrow on Derpy’s window to take up even more space.

Derpy looked down with a sigh as she privately berated herself. She felt so stupid and childish to request a direct teleportation to the destination. She could easily fly herself there. It was not that far and she was blessed to be a pegasus besides. Not every race could do what she could do.

After she reflected on it, she soon realized that the only reason she had asked for a dimensional transport was because she was scared. In fact, this mission bothered her a long time ago when the party first decided they wanted to split up in order to cover more ground. Superficially, she understood and agreed with the reason from a moral and logical front but, deep down, her heart complained ever since then.

Derpy then closed her eyes and bonked her head with her left hoof three times. During that time she privately berated herself again that she needed to just grow up and do as ordered. Besides, she liked the idea of what would result if she followed the orders this time. After all, the point of these orders was for everyone to get back together again. For that at least, Derpy privately cheered.

Before she took off, she looked to her left and right. The coast was clear. Every pony who was there she guided to safety quite a while ago. She was just checking one last time to make sure there was no danger in sight or another pony in hiding who would need help, but nope.

Feeling satisfied, she crouched down and spread her wings in preparation to take off.

“Derrrrrrrrrpy!” announced a spooky, echo-y, but also strangely familiar voice. “Derrrrrrrrrpy! Come to me, my faithful companion!”

“What?!” exclaimed the startled mare as she frantically looked about. “Who's there?”

“Come,” the mysterious voice said.

Looking about, she tilted her head quizzically at the shadow of a very mysterious figure. Whoever it was, that person was pretty tall, though the shadow distorted that image quite a bit further. According to the shadow, it was someone wearing a thick coat. What was more mysterious was this person walked upright on two legs. He gave a come hither gesture using the shadow then retreated off somewhere.

“Wait!” Derpy exclaimed. “WAAAAAAIT!”

Derpy flew off to chase down this mysterious man. In the process, she was ignoring her virtual arrow Doctor Kelly provided for her. If she had been paying attention, she would have noticed she was definitely going the wrong way. Alas for the poor mare, overlooking important details was very often a theme of her life.

Mysteriously and eerily, she had a hard time keeping up with this mysterious man who walked upright. Every time she rounded a new corner, somehow he would end up at the end of the hall. From there, he either laughed at her merrily (which also gave that same eerie echo) or gestured for her to continue to follow him from up ahead.

While she traveled, Derpy could not explain why she felt so determined to follow him but there was something about him that felt familiar and important to her. Despite that, she eventually started to grow frustrated at this chase and wondered if she’d ever catch up.

Strangely enough, that’s precisely when she had run into the mysterious man.

“Ooof!” Derpy exclaimed as she bounced backward and was about to fall down, but whomever this suave man was, managed to catch her by the hoof before she could fall down.

“Well careful there, Derpy,” said the man to her while he grasped her hoof with his . . . was that a hand, she wondered?

Derpy then more carefully assessed this new stranger. It looks like he towered about two additional feet above her if she was standing up straight. He had soft brown hair that curved up a bit at the front with a cowlick. He wore a brown coat that trailed as low as his ankles. Beneath that he wore what looked like another coat but it was blue this time, and beneath that was a white color shirt with a red tie. His skin was white, his eyes were brown, and his face was a bit angular. When he spoke, he had an accent to him that she couldn’t quite put her hoof down on.

Despite all of that, he still seemed strangely familiar. It was more by instinct than anything else when she asked him, “Doctor? Is that you?”

The mysterious man, probably a human according to what she had heard, smiled fondly down at her as he verified, “Indeed, my little muffin-mare. I am the Doctor.” He bowed to her and applied his other hand to his stomach while his first continued to hold her from fully falling down. “At your service.”

“It . . . it really is you?” Derpy asks with rising delight.

“Indeed, my marshmallow sugar-muffin,” he confirmed again with a smirk. “Now then. Fancy this! Are you just going to continue to stand there at this odd angle or am I going to have to-”

The mysterious man jolted, startled, when Derpy suddenly launched into his chest and hugged him tightly with both forehooves and wings. She soon soaked his white shirt with tears.

“It’s you!” Derpy cried out in ecstatic delight but it was also edged with pain. “It’s really-really you!”

“‘ang on? What’s this on abou’, love?” asked the suddenly bewildered man.

“I . . . I missed you so badly,” Derpy cried into the man's chest. “It’s been such a long time for me since I last saw you. Too long, if you ask me.”

“Oh go on!” the man said in playful dismissiveness. “Enough of that, love. We got a job to do.”

Derpy sniffed and tried to compose herself before looking up at the man with tear-stained cheeks and puffy eyes as she asked, “A job? You need me for something?”

“Right!” the man confirmed with a bright smile at her. “‘ow about juz you and me like the good ol’ days, eh love? Come on! Where are those Bright Eyes? Let me see that bright smile?”

Despite the fact that she was still choking up on severe emotion, Derpy cooperated. She gave him a bright smile because he requested it and it was such a delight for her to see her beloved Doctor again.

“There we go! That’s the spirit!” the man cheered. “Now come along,” he bids as he pulls her away.

“Where are we going?” Derpy asked as she stumbled along. “What are we going to do now, Doctor?”

“What we always do together!” the man cried out cheerfully. “Save the day, of course!” He flashes a cunning smile back to her. “An’ I got just the plan to do it, but I’m going to need your help. Can I count on you, my sweet little pony?”

Derpy closes her eyes as she cries out cheerfully, “Of course! Anything for you, Doctor!”

“That’s the spirit!” the man cheers again. “Adventure awaits us, my faithful companion. Tally-ho and all that.”

“Yay!” Derpy cried out in heartfelt glee.

As the mysterious man continued to pull her along, he deftly concealed the crystal shard Doctor Kelly had given her earlier. That was why the holo-window had disappeared during her conversation with him, unbeknownst to the unobservant walleye mare.

The pace of Derpy and the mysterious human man got greatly accelerated when they stepped on and used a force floating platform much akin to the one Margret has. Ever since then, they zoomed through a dizzying array of turns and sometimes flew right through some apparently solid walls.

All of this was interesting to Derpy but she didn’t question it much because she was with her beloved Doctor. He requested for her to join him personally and that flared her heart with more joy than he would likely ever know. The fears and insecurity she once had that he was losing interest in her melted away in that moment like taking a fresh breath of air. He chose her! Her for this mission, whatever it was. No matter what he requested of her, she vowed she would do it gladly just to prove to him she was worth keeping around.

Never once did she question him until they came to a sudden stop in a tunnel-like hallway and not far ahead of them were six Daleks.

“Intruder alert! Intruder alert!” cried out one of the apparently startled Daleks. “Identify yourself! Identify yourself or be ex-terminated!”

“Ex-terminated,” agrees the other five as they nod their little nose cameras.

“Oh, little ol’ me?” the man brashly asked as he spread his arms apart in a grand gesture. “Oh, nothing much. Just the Oncoming Storm!” He lowered one arm but used the other to straighten up his necktie as he added, “But perhaps you might be more familiar with another quaint little name of mine. There are many in my travels who call me . . .” He pauses as he narrows his eyes at them then finally said, “. . . the Doctor.”

“Doc . . . tar?” the lead Dalek asked in apparent disbelief, but it was a bit hard to tell with that scratchy synthetic voice box they use. “Doc . . . tar.”

“That’s right,” the man agrees. “Pleased to meet ‘cha, ye ol’ rust buckets. Out busy exterminating more species I take it, yes? Oh but of course you are!” he teases with a dismissive wave.

“Doc . . . tar. Doc . . . tar. DOC . . . tar! Doc-tar! DOC-TAR!” the lead Dalek chanted with rising fury and soon the others joined in that same chant.

“Yes-yes, and all that jazz,” the man said with another dismissive wave. “That’s my name. Don’t wear it out.

“Oh, speaking of which, have you met my little companion here?”

“Doctor!” Derpy complained behind him as she shuddered in fear. She still trusted him, but these were Daleks and six of them at that. They were among the most feared race the Doctor had ever encountered and, at that point, he wanted to draw their attention to her? For the first time since her happy reunion with him, she finally found herself questioning his judgment.

But what else was new? This was exactly how many of her past adventures went with him, too. First he’d do something apparently stupid and it always turned out to be a genius strategy in the end. Over time, she eventually gave up trying to figure him out and instead decided to blindly trust him instead. It always worked out in the past when she did that while simultaneously making her journey a bit less scary.

“Have courage, my faithful companion. I am with you,” the man reassures the mare.

Derpy closed her eyes and swallowed hard. When she next opened her eyes, it was filled with as much resolve and determination as she could muster. With that, she asked him as bravely as she could, “What do you want me to do, Doctor? Tell me anything and I’ll do it.”

The man smiled at her when she said that which, in turn, lit up her own innocent soul.

“I want you to sing, my adorable little pony,” the man coaxed as he gently brushed a hand through her mane which almost made her swoon on the spot. Then she looked into his eyes and got transfixed by them. There was an intensity to the way he stared into her eyes that was unlike anything she had ever seen from him before. It actually appeared a tad predatory but also very attractive and more than a little enchanting. She found herself lost in those eyes.

“Sing!” the man commands her as a devilish gleam sunk deeper into his eyes. “Sing, my Angel of Music.”

Derpy was beyond all thought at that point. The angry chants of the Daleks melted away. There was nothing left in her universe except her and him, and he was everything to her! He asked her to sing, so there was only one thing her mind could think about anymore.

She must sing for him! Sing her shining heart out.

“What is this? What is this noise?” complained the lead Dalek. “Desist. Desist! You shall oh-bay or be ex-terminated!”

“Oh, exterminated, you say?” the man who claimed to be the Doctor asked as he looked back at the group of Daleks with very wicked glee. Now that Derpy’s mind was lost in his trance, he saw no further point pretending anymore. He could drop the act in front of them with no further relevant consequences. So much the better to reveal his true sinister intentions against them. “Oh, I think you got it all backwards.” He spread his arms dramatically. “Behold my medicine, you rusty buckets of bolts.” He then slamshis hands down hard on the virtual computer console in front of him that is only made real because of force field energy. From there, he leans hard forward which raises his shoulders in a deeply predatory fashion. His eyes blaze with sinister cunning and explosive fury. Fury that could only be born from a person who had suffered very deep personal injury by their hands, or plungers in this case.

“Fry, you miserable pile of bolts!” the man cried out to them in very heated emotion. “Fry in hell and taste my revenge! I’ll gladly piss on your rotted, rusty corpses till the end of days!”

“Desist! DESIST!” the Daleks cried out together and they spun about chaotically and started shooting in random directions. During that time, their minds got bombarded with music too pure, sweet and innocent for their minds to process. In fact they had a built-in system that specifically prevented them from being influenced by experiences like this. The problem with that system was it was being overworked at that moment and that, in turn, was overloading their minds and frying their circuitry.

The man knew this would happen and he orchestrated this event intentionally. He savored their pain as he continued to watch.

“MERCY!” the Daleks all pleaded out simultaneously. “MERRRRRRRRCYYYYYYY!!!!”

“Sorry,” the man said with a snide expression as he stood up straight and straightened his tie one more time, then he shook his head as he said without a shred of pity, “All out of mercy.”

The Daleks screamed in pain one last time until explosions started rocking their tank bodies back and forth. Sparks burst from them and rained down in twinkling sparkles. This continued on for ten solid seconds as they gave off their last agonizing cry then finally they all grew still and silent.

The man grew a satisfied, sinister smirk then shifted his attention back to his singing mare as he proclaimed, “Now then. Let’s move on and deal with you, my sweet little poppet.”

He reached a hand forward and snapped his fingers beside her head. In doing so, it snapped her out of her trance. When that happened, her song suddenly stopped too. She blinked as she looked around, bewildered, and asked, “Huh? What happened?”

“You did it, my faithful companion!” the man cheered at Derpy. “These Daleks shall not threaten you or your friends again.”

“Um . . . what happened to them?” she asked as she blinked at their still forms.

“Oh don’t worry about them,” he said to her as he gave them a dismissive wave but kept his gaze fixed on her. “They’ll be fine. You just knocked them unconscious,” the man outright lied to Derpy.

“Oh! Well, um . . . I suppose that’s okay then,” Derpy said with uncertain acceptance.

“And now for your reward!” the man said gleefully as he took a bold step into her personal space. This, in turn, provoked her to attempt to take a step backwards but her butt collided with the force back rail of the disk they were on.

“Doctor!” Derpy exclaimed, feeling startled. “You-you-”

“Shhh.” The man applied a finger to Derpy’s lips to shush her. She gazed up at him, still feeling a little threatened, but she still trusted him deeply so she kept watching him to see what he ordered her to do next.

The man leaned forward and whispered into her ear, “You did well, my faithful companion. Your Master is proud of you.”

Derpy suddenly blushed very deep crimson as she stuttered, “Mah-mah-master?”

“Shh.” he repeated to her. “That’s right. Your Master is proud of you. You did well, my precious little thing!”

“D-d-d-doctor, I . . . I . . .” Derpy continued to stutter while her consciousness started to fade away. All of this recent craziness has started to overwhelm her.

To shut her up once and for all, the man leaned in to deeply and pretty invasively kiss her. That pushed her mind and emotions over the brink. Her wings actually straightened so much that they became stiff. Seconds later she fainted in his arms. Once that happened, as he had planned, he gently lowered her unconscious body to the force field ground. From there, he gently stroked her cheeks.

Now that she was unconscious, and now that the Daleks were dead as well, there was nobody left for the psychic paper that the mare wore on her silver spacesuit to fool anymore. As a result, she seemed to have returned to her original form which, in actuality, she never left.

“Good night, Sweet-Cheeks,” the mare in the silver spacesuit cooed gently. Her voice sounded a bit synthetic because of her helmet’s intercom. “You really are a useful little tool. I can see, now, why the Doctor keeps you around. We’ll have to do this again sometime.”

With that, she stands up straight then daintily hopped over Derpy’s unconscious legs. From there, she made her way to the front virtual console and pushed a few buttons. As she did so, she whistled a song casually that, as far as she could tell, doesn’t exist in this pony universe. A song known where she came from as, “Time Is On My Side.”

With that, the floating disk lifted upwards then quickly zoomed down the tunnel hallway. As they sped away, the haunting tune that the mare whistled echoed and faded away. This left behind the smoking husks of dead Daleks.

Author's Note

Yeah. This is a long chapter and there is plenty of opportunities I could have broken it up into separate chapters. There is a lot of scene breaks here where it switches to a different pony, after all.

But this chapter is the primary climax of the entire arc so I decided to push this one longer. As a result, it ended up the longest chapter of the entire story so far. That's still true.

Also, just in case it wasn't clear from my description, here is an example of the form the mare in the silver suit pretended to be. Basically what Derpy thought she heard and saw.