The Reality War

Twilight Sparkle was sitting in the library late at night with Luna’s moon high in the sky reading the latest article from Astronomy Weekly and wondering just how they come up with some of this stuff. Alternate universes? What were they thinking? There’s no proof, no evidence to even remotely suggest such a theory. But here it was in one of the most respected articles in Equestria. Just as she was about to continue on with this ridiculous issue, she heard a knock at the door…

The Doctor was sitting in the TARDIS just staring out at the endless expanse of space through one of his many monitors when he heard the faintest of beeps. It started getting louder and louder with every passing second however until it became a blaring klaxon. “Well, that’s not good.” He said as he looked for what was going wrong. The most peculiar of things though, was that there didn’t seem to be anything wrong. All of a sudden the Doctor found himself tossing and turning about like a ship in a storm. This became unbearable to some of the TARDIS as instruments started ripping themselves from the wall and circuits went haywire. And just as soon and as violent as it came… it ended. The silence was deafening and calm was restless. The first thing the Doctor did was run a diagnostics report to see what damage had been caused.

“Moderate damage to the temporal compass, flux capacitor, external cameras are shot, and- oh bloody hell- could this get any worse? Severe damage to the pool and the giant bobbly thing I never figured out did with minor damage everywhere else. Hmm, I guess I’ll just have to wait for the auto repair to fix everything. Thank goodness I installed that backup generator and the time vortex is still contained.”

With that said, the Doctor stepped out of the TARDIS to take a look at his surroundings. It was nighttime but luckily the full moon lit everything up as if the sun was only just setting. The first thing he noticed was the tree house right in front of him. Literally, it was a tree house. How exciting! So the Doctor went up to it and knocked on the door. But before he could get a response, a bright light next to where he was standing blinded him…

Dr. Gordon Freeman was sitting in the ruins formerly Black Mesa East. He was there with a handful of other scientists trying to find out if maybe, perhaps, Freeman could open a small temporal rift, unnoticeable around all the larger ones the Combine used, to sneak into the Combine home universe and try to assassinate the people in charge- whoever they were. “Okay, Gordon, whenever you’re ready.” Magnusson called out from the viewing room. Gordon walked forward and pushed the artifact, donated so generously by their “friend” toward the center of the room, where the enormous Anti-Mass Spectrometer was waiting. Yes, that’s right; they’re intentionally trying to create a resonance cascade. The war with the Combine wasn’t going well, and desperate times call for desperate measures. As soon as he put it in the path of the Spectrometer, a massive white light filled the room, and when it vanished, Freeman was gone…

Commander Jane Shepard was standing at the Combat Information Center, wishing for a chair, when a familiar voice came over the intercom. “Message coming in from Admiral Hackett, commander. Patching it through.”

“Thanks, Joker.” Shepard responded.

“Shepard,” Hackett’s voice boomed through the CIC, “We need you to investigate a series of disappearances near the Hades-Gamma cluster. Apparently several merchant vessels have vanished around there, leaving no trace.”

“Do you think it’s the Reapers?”

“I don’t know what it is. But keep your eyes open, I’ve a bad feeling about this. Hackett out.”

“Joker, set a course for the site of the disappearances. EDI, red alert. Let’s be ready people!” As Shepard barked out orders, the klaxons blared and the unmistakable feeling of Mass Effect could be felt. As they passed through the Mass Relay and moved towards the location, Shepard couldn’t help but get the feeling that whatever was going to happen, it was going to be big. Shepard armed up and ran to the helm, where she could look out at the surrounding space. It was… weird to say the least, as while almost every inch of space had stars around it, there was this one space that had nothing. No light at all. The realization hit her immediately. “Joker, get us out of FTL speed.”

“I did that thirty seconds ago, commander.”

“Then why are we still moving at that speed?”

“I don’t know.” Just then, EDI’s avatar came up. “Commander, I am detecting high gravitational forces. If I’m correct, these can only be found in… black holes.”

The entire deck fell silent as everyone looked to Shepard for guidance. Shepard wasted no time. “Alright Joker, about face, give me everything you can. Tali, I need all power to the rear thrusters. We need to get outta her-“

Before she could finish a massive and violent motion overtook the ship, screaming was heard and lights went out…

Twilight Sparkle looked up from her book wondering who would be knocking at this un-Celestial hour. As she walked to the door she saw a bright flash of light from under the front door. When she swung the door open she saw a creature in the form of a weird, hairless, monkey. “Uh, what?” She looked over this being just wondering what it was when it spoke.

“Why hello there! Wow, that’s new. A unicorn, how fascinating. And what is that aura surrounding the door? It’s the same as your horn. I wonder…” He trailed off as he whipped out a long, metal, stick with a light at the end and proceeded to point it at the door and then at Twilight. “Amazing! I can’t get a reading. Whatever this is, it’s new. How exciting!”

“Uh, what?”

“Oh, excuse me. My name is the Doctor. Just call me Doctor. And you are…?”

“Uh, what?”

“Your name, what is your name?”

“Twilight Sparkle.” Twilight was a little apprehensive about this… doctor. She didn’t know what to think about this whole situation but decided to do the only rational thing: she started asking questions. “What are you?”

“I am a Time Lord. Lord of Time. Time of Lords. Wait, that doesn’t work… anyway, I seem to have crash landed here. Wherever here is.”

“Uh, you’re in Ponyville. Part of the country of Equestria. If I may ask, what was that light?”

“Oh that? That was my sonic screwdriver. It does everything an-“

“No not that. That giant flash of light.”

“Oh, I don’t know. I guess we should look.” Turning around the Doctor stopped in his tracks as not fifty yards away in two directions were two smoking craters. As the Doctor and Twilight ran up to the closest one, they heard moaning. Getting closer they saw a dark haired woman clad in battle armor with a whole armory on her back, struggling to stand up. As soon as she saw them she reached behind her and pulled out what looked like a rifle of some sorts. Aiming it between the two she demanded in a sharp tone, “Who are you? Where am I? And are you a… unicorn?”

The Doctor seemed visibly apprehensive toward the person in front of them but Twilight didn’t understand why. What made this other creature so dangerous?

“My name is the Doctor, and this is Twilight Sparkle. Why don’t you put the gun down and let’s talk about this like rational people?”

“I like my gun, thanks. I think I’ll hold on to it.” Shepard retorted. “My name is Commander Jane Shepard of the SR2 Normandy. So… Doctor and Twilight… Sparkle, what kind of names are those?”

“I’m proud of my name. And I’m sure the Doctor is a very good name wherever it is you two come from.”

“My bio-scanners indicate that this Doctor has two hearts. What are you?”

“I am a Time Lord. You are a human. You are a magical talking unicorn.” The Doctor pointed to everyone as he mentioned what they were.

“I am a regular pony. I don’t know what you are though.” As they started arguing amongst each other, the sound of a bullet being chambered caused the two non-ponies to turn their heads. Standing there in some sort of orange metal suit was a bearded man with a pair of dark rimmed glasses holding an assault rifle and carrying more guns than Shepard thought possible. He didn’t move his eyes from Shepard but you could tell he was paying close attention to the other two as well.

“So that’s who was in the second crater,” The Doctor said more to himself than anyone else. “And you might be…?” Freeman said nothing but pulled his old Black Mesa ID from a pocket and gave it to the Doctor, all the while not looking away from Shepard. “Dr. Gordon Freeman, Ph.D., theoretical physics? And you’re carrying weapons? Just what kind of doctor are you?”

Twilight brain had had enough of this and did what any other reasonable pony would do in her position; she fainted.

When Twilight came to she was in her own bed. “It was just a bizarre dream,” she said, sighing. Just then Spike burst through the door with the Doctor following in his stead. “Twilight! We’ve been overrun by these creatures.” Spike shouted.

“I thought we covered this, I’m a Time Lord, and the two in the room below are humans.”

“And they talk!”

“Agh, fine whatever, I’m here to talk to Twilight. Go and get the other two.”

Spike left- albeit cautiously- as he made his way down to the main room to retrieve the Commander and the other doctor who were currently performing weapon maintenance and systems checks on their suits.

“So…,” the Doctor started after Spike had left, “how are you holding up?”

“I’m uh, okay, I guess. I mean, I just met not one, but two different intelligent species’ and managed to look like a complete foal in front of them. So, yeah, just fine.”

“Oh, don’t beat yourself up over it. You’ll be fine. While you were out, we exchanged stories of where we were from. It’s amazing! We are all from different universes. Freeman is part of a rebellion against an oppressive inter-universe empire called the Combine. This was an attempt to go to their home universe and take them out. Shepard is the leader of an elite inter-species team trying to garner support for a war against these giant machines called the Reapers that appear in the Milky Way galaxy- their home galaxy- every so often and wipe out all life in it. But here’s the thing: no one believes they exist. And I’m just a traveler in a time machine who travels in another different universe just living life to the fullest. Just talk about exciting!”

Twilight was trying to wrap her mind around all of this. Alternate universes? Who knew? “But… how did you all get here?”

“That’s what I wanted Spike to get the other two for. I think I figured it out.” As that was being said the door opened and the two humans walked in.

“You mentioned something about figuring out how we got here?” Shepard asked.

“Yes, I figured it out…” He then descended into explaining the time vortex and how it’s self-contained and on and on about quantum mechanics and how Newton had no idea what he was talking about, when he noticed he was losing his audience. “So you see, there was a hole, of sorts, in the time vortex. My time vortex that I got sucked through. Somehow, just through astronomical odds I ended up here.” Twilight heard this and wondered if here attempt at a long distance retrieval spell had a hoof in this. She decided to keep her mouth shut though.

“But what does this have to do with us?” Shepard asked, clearly losing patience.

“You see, when you were sucked into that black hole, it really wasn’t a black hole but a worm hole. This hole transported you here. Now, because my TARDIS is basically the time vortex incarnate, it probably tried to connect the loop by connecting to the TARDIS’ time vortex. That’s why you ended up here. Freeman’s situation here is basically the same thing. My TARDIS was probably a much stronger receptacle for portals than whatever the Combine was using. That being said, that’s what probably caused the portal to deviate from its original destination. Think of it as deciding between two restaurants. You were going to go to one, but then you learned the other had better food so you went there instead.”

“I see,” Shepard said, “So do you know how to get us back?”

“Yyye- no,” The Doctor admitted. “But I’m working on it.”

“Grreeeaat. So the genius in all things time and space has no idea how to get us home. The Reapers are coming and I need to be there to stop them!”

“You’re not even in the same universe anymore. You’ve got to stop thinking as time linearly.”

“Whatever, I need to find the rest of my crew.” With that she made her way to the door.

“Wait!” Twilight teleported to the door to block anyone from leaving. “You can’t leave, you’ll cause mass panic among the pony populace.”

“I’m going out there and you’re not going to stop me.” Shepard responded.

“Please, you can’t. At the very least you’ve got to learn more about us.”

“Fine. I’ll wait. But just so I can learn a little more about these ponies. Where do we start?”

“Well…” Now it was Twilight’s turn to be the teacher. She started explaining how Equestria was founded and then descended into magic, the different types of ponies, pony history, Princess Celestia and Princess Luna, the Elements of Harmony, which finally led her to her friends. “…So that’s about it. Any questions?” Contrary to what one might think, all three of them found the lesson fascinating and thus paid attention. Now, these three had plenty of questions and the purple unicorn was more than happy to answer them al-

BUURP!

All four jumped at the sound as Spike belted forth a letter. Twilight quickly recovered and read it.
My Dearest Student Twilight Sparkle,

A rather interesting group of guests has arrived at the castle and I believe this would be something that you would be most interested in it. Do try to get to the castle as soon as possible please.

Your Mentor,

Princess Celestia

Twilight looked up from reading it and met eight curious eyes. She passed it to the Doctor and watched as he read it aloud. “Well Shepard," he said as he finished reading, "I do believe I’ve located your men.”