Chapter One: Regeneration
The Doctor was running through the Everfree Forest on December 21, 2012. Panting and bleeding, he ran from a cockatrice that had just turned Twilight Sparkle into stone and destroyed her final resting place. Every now and then with his eyes closed, he sent off a blast of his sonic screwdriver, hoping it would hit the cockatrice.
Only a few feet away from the TARDIS, fate decided that it was time for him to regenerate.
He started to glow in a way it looked as if he was on fire.
"No, I'm not ready! I need more time!" The Doctor spoke his thoughts as if there was someone to speak to.
He reached for the TARDIS door and went inside the abnormally large police box interior. With the little time he had, he quickly sent the time traveler off to an unknown place and time, for he could not see what he was doing.The light coming from his body shined brighter and he was in severe pain. The fact that he had no clue of where he was going only made things worse for him. The TARDIS came to a sudden stop and sent him flying to the floor. After a few more seconds of regenerating and pain, his body had come to rest.
"Ah, finally, some peace. Now let's see what my stallion body looks like next!" The Doctor stood up, eyes closed and walked up to the next thing the pony thought was reflective in the TARDIS. "That's strange, my voice sounds as if it was for a mare. Oh well. I'm sure it will fix itself in a few minutes." The Doctor opened his eyes. "Ah!" He screamed jumping backwards almost knocking into a wall. "I'm a, I'm a, I'm a mare!" She squealed. "And why is my eyesight so...messed up?" The newly made mare tried to see her reflections properly.
"Wait, I know this pony. I've seen her before. How did I become somepony that already exists?" She was a light gray pegasus with light blonde hair, eyes of a spectrum of colors from yellow to orange, and had a cutie mark of bubbles. The Doctor had become Derpy, the mail carrier.
"I'll think of something later."
She walked, unbalanced, to the TARDIS door and let herself through. Her strange walk was the result of her new body and strange eye fixture. When she walked out of the time machine, she found herself inside a dentist office with no one inside the room at the current time. The Doctor looked around the room. The calendar showed that it was December third, 2010. She looked at the clock, it was five twenty-three in the morning. No wonder no-pony's here, it's way too early for work! She thought.
She tried to walk through the room's door leading to the hallway, but instead, because of her eyes, hit a lamp and fell to the floor. The mare rubbed her forehead, hoping it would help the pain. She got back on her hooves and tried again.
And she, again, fell on the floor.
This may be the quickest regeneration ever - death by eyesight!
It took five or six more tries, but the Doctor made it to the hallway. "Now I need a new companion, somepony who has intelligence and strength." She thought out loud. "I could always just fetch Twilight again, right before I had seen her first. Wait, no. That would create a ripple in time. If I got her now, old me wouldn't be able to get her, which would mean we'd never meet the cockatrice, which would mean current me would disappear and never be here, which would mean-"
"Derpy, what are you doing here? Your appointment isn't until ten thirty." She had knocked into a unicorn mare that had blue fur and dark, blue-white mane. Her eyes were a spectrum of white to dark purple, and her cutie mark of an hourglass. "And besides, you never wake up this early. I always have to wrench you out of bed for your appointments."
"I think I've found my new companion. Allow me to introduce myself - I am the Doctor. Before you ask me anything, no, I go by the Doctor and nothing else. Also, I am a Time Lord. Second, I am not your friend. I mean, I could be your friend, I'm just not...Derpy. See, I have to regenerate my body when I am about to die so I can keep living on as I travel time and space, saving Equestria. How I became your friend, I don't know, for I never turn into somepony that already exists. I hope to find out how this happened before I need to regenerate again. Anyway, I am asking you to be my companion on this journey of time and space, fighting the evils of Equestria. Do you accept my task?" The unicorn's jaw dropped.
"Oh! Where are my manners? Feel free to introduce yourself."
"Um, I'm, uh, I'm...I'm - I'm Colgate. I’m the boss of this place, and I'm also the lead dentist. I am still very confused about the whole...Time Lord thing, so I'll say it's a maybe. If you want you can stay at my house until I've come to my decision, but for now I'm not very sure I can trust you." The cross-eyed mare's smile brightened.
"Great! That gives me time to figure out how to make these eyes actually give me a sense of sight, and how to work these wings." The Doctor's stomach grumbled. "For now, you got any food?"
"Uh, yeah. break room is over there. Follow me." Colgate motioned to the Doctor and trotted happily to the room. "Let's see, the food stock hasn't come in for the day, so all we have are day-old muffins." She levitated a tray of muffins from a counter in the corner of the room to the round wooden table in the middle of the room. “But, um, Doctor - why me?”
"Those look good." The Doctor licked her lips and tossed one in her mouth. "A bit stale, but these are acceptable. Now, if you like, I'll show you where all the time travel magic happens. But first I need to scarf down all these muffins. And why you? I don’t know why, I only know who. But these are really, really good...”
Chapter Two: History and Facts
The gray mare led Colgate to the office with the blue box in it and opened the door.
“I thought you said you had a time machine. Where is it?” Colgate questioned. “All that’s in here are seats and a telephone box. Why is that here?”
“That’s because it is the time machine.” The Doctor opened the TARDIS door and left the blue mare gaping.
“What is all of this?” Colgate asked. “How does all of this fit into a small blue telephone box? What does all of this do? How does it work?” She kept asking about all of the things she saw until she ran out of things to ask.
“Calm down, young mare. While we travel I’ll-”
“Did you just call me a young mare?”
“Well, yes. Compared to me, you are. See, this is really awkward to say in the body I’m in, but I am from the past, and I am 907 years old. You're free to differ, but you’ll soon see that I’m telling the truth.”
“Okay then. Tell me where you’re from, why you’re here, and how you’re here if you’re 907.”
“Okay then. Have a seat and make yourself comfortable. This is going to be a long story.”
The Doctor walked Colgate to a set of glass stairs leading to a small balcony and sat down on one of the first few steps. “I am 907 year old Time Lord, which means I can control this machine that travels time and space. It is called the TARDIS which stands for “Time And Relative Dimension In Space”. I am from Gallifre-hay, a world far from here. Like I said before, I regenerate my body to keep living, so I’m 907 right now. I’m here because I was trying to travel in space while I regenerated and I couldn’t see because my body glows when I do, and it was so bright that I couldn't see. I glow when I regenerate because the things I use to regenerate which are called nanogenes give off this glowing affect. I am here in Equestria because I save dimensions in the world from falling apart because of the evils in the world. I do this because I want to help all ponies from different dimensions and worlds and I also have nothing else to do because, again, I am the only Time Lord left in the universe. Any questions?” The Doctor looked at Colgate, waiting for a response.
“Uh, yes. Why are you the only Time Lord left? How did they die?” She asked the gray mare.
“Oh, that.” The Doctor slouched and looked a little less cheerful. “There are these robots, and somehow we got in a war (which I can’t remember how we got in to), and they exterminated my kind. I have a picture of one of them if you’d like to see it.”
“Sure. I’d like to see it so I’d get a good idea of their kind.”
They got up and walked toward the center of the TARDIS, which looked like a table melted to the ceiling and floor. It had many buttons and levers on it. The Doctor searched through some items and pulled out a photograph. She then gave it to Colgate to see. The robot was a rounded blue robot. The robot’s body became steeper and more triangular towards the bottom. It had halves of black spheres attached to the lower portion of the body. It had a black ring around itself a little bit above the middle of it. The robot had what looked like a plunger for its right arm, and a sprinkler for its left. On top of that was a taller black ring around the robot which had gray metal bars going horizontally and vertically. It looked similarly to a cage around the black. Its head looked like half of a blue sphere with a long, thin flashlight that was emitting a yellow light. There was a thick blue ring close to the light end of the flashlight. Finally, it had white cylinders sticking out of the top of the robot.
“Do these robots have a name?” Colgate asked.
“They’re called Daleks,” The gray pegasus responded, still searching through papers and small objects.
“What are you looking for?”
“A screwdriver.”
“I have one in the janitor’s closet if you want to borrow it.”
“No, this is a special screwdriver. This screwdriver has powers. It can explode things, set fire to things, open electric doors, unlock electronic locks, fuse shut a sliding door, detect time traces...I could go on, but I don’t want to bore you. Well, that’s what my screwdriver does, at least. I’m looking for one for you, if you choose to join me.”
“What does mine do?”
“So far, it can slow the descent of a fall, fix light bulbs, be used to communicate with me, and a couple of other things, which I will tell tell you later.”
“What do you mean by ‘communicate with me’?”
“Well, let’s say that you’re lost and cannot find me. Once I teach you how to do all the tricks of the screwdriver, you’ll be able to contact me through the screwdriver as if it were a microphone. Ah, here it is! Your own screwdriver, if you join me.”
She held up what looked like a large semi-rusted screw that had the top torn off and replaced with a metal cylinder with what looked like a robot head connected to the other side of the cylinder by its neck. It had a transparent cap at the top that was tinted dark blue and looked like it could light up. There was a rectangular brown button attached to one side, inches away from the head. Parallel from that was what looked like a key you’d find on a windup toy with one circular hole at the top of the key larger than the other, attached with the bottom end of the key at the end of the cylinder closest to the robot head. That looks very peculiar. I’m having second thoughts about this colt - mare - whatever, Colgate thought.
“Where’s yours?” She asked.
“Mine’s right here.” The Doctor grabbed her sonic screwdriver from the misshapen table and gave it to Colgate to browse.
The top of the screwdriver looked like a small metal hand grasping onto the top part of a green glowing pacifier with gold vertical lines forming a pattern of gold as every other space. There was then a gold ring, then a black grip caving in towards the center. Then there was another gold ring that was thinner than the first, then a white cylinder that has straight lines instead of being rounded. There was then what looked like a small, stubby, gold power plant connected to half of another small, stubby, gold, power plant that was even stubbier.
The Doctor walked next to Colgate. She opened the top tiny power plant and showed what was to be a red circular button that was elevated up higher in the plant.
“Is that how you control this...machine?” Colgate asked.
“That is correct. Now, are you starting to near a decision on if you’re going to join me. Or do you already have a decision?” The gray pegasus asked.
“I’m still not sure if I should come with you. But we better get this -TARDIS, did you call it? - we better get it somewhere nopony can see it. I think some of my dentists are starting to check in.”
Author's Note
Sorry if it's hard to follow the descriptions at times, it was fairly hard for me to write all the descriptions of the sonics and Dalek, make it so it was how Colgate saw it, and make sure it was authentic by straining my eyes, staring at a picture I found off of Google. Also, sorry if it's faced paced. I had this awesome master plan in my head but I can't really describe it, what I was thinking of is more of an animation type of thing.