As the golden light died down, the Professor quickly took a moment to check that everything about her was working after the regeneration.
“Legs, arms, head. Right, it’s all there. WHOA!” The entire console room shook, sparks flying from the console. The TARDIS hurdled through the vortex, a red phone box not far behind. As the Professor reached for the controls, a familiar, yet new face filled the display. The Professor stared at the intruding face for a few seconds, before a second shake brought her back to her senses. As she attempted to pilot the TARDIS, she muttered a single word at the face.
“Mistress.”
“Oh, Professor, how lovely it is to see you once again. Do you like my new face? I spent ages getting it exactly right,” The face replied in a cheerful tone.
“Yeah, yeah. Cut to the chase. What are you up to?” the Professor yelled as she tried to control her TARDIS. As she pulled a lever, the handle snapped off, leaving it useless. “Probably wasn’t important anyway,” she muttered, tossing it behind her.
“Why, what else than knocking you out of reality itself? I do hope you appreciate the work I’ve gone through to set this up. Setting it up so you’d be in the vortex anywhere near me was hard enough, but this has gone perfectly so far,” the Mistress chuckled, “Having you regenerate and botch up flying your TARDIS wasn’t even in the plan, but it’s just fantastic.”
“Uh-huh,” was the reply, as the Professor quickly adjusted several knobs and levers, before all of what the Mistress said registered. “Wait, knocking out of reality? How?”
“Well, I’m glad you asked. There just so happens to be a tiny crack, about 50 miles that way.” At this, she pointed in a seemingly random direction. “All I’m trying to do is knock you through that. Nothing to it.”
“Are you insane? That could destroy reality itself.”
“A risk I’m perfectly willing to take, thank you.”
“Oh, for the love of… righty-o, only one thing for it.”
“What are you doing, Professor?” the Mistress asked, a hint of nervousness entering her voice. At this, the Professor smiled slightly. Making her enemies nervous was always good. Unless they were the sort of enemy that got stronger when they got nervous. Then it wasn’t such a good thing.
“Materialising out of the vortex. What else would I be doing?” As she pulled the materialization lever, sparks went flying, and part of the control panel exploded, sending the Professor back into the flight couch. The Mistress saw this and cracked up laughing.
“Ah, Professor. Did you really think I didn’t think that you might think that? You’re going to have to try harder than that.” The Professor dived for another set of controls, but the Mistress just shook her head. “Professor, sorry to say this, but it’s too late. You can’t materialise, you can’t steer, and you’re heading straight for that crack. Bye!”
The Professor hung her head. The Mistress was right. There was no escape. However, she could bring the Mistress with her. That way at least one evil won’t plague this universe. Quickly diving for the correct controls, she started mashing seemingly random buttons. The Mistress seemed amused by this.
“I already told you. There’s no way out.”
“I’m not looking for a way out. I’m trying to bring you with me.” The Mistress hesitated.
“Huh? Mustn’t have heard you right. For a second, I thought you said you were trying to make me fall in through with you.”
The Professor didn’t reply. She just kept mashing buttons, twisting knobs and pulling levers, despite the fact several came off and a few blew up in her face. All set, she finally ran to a particularly large lever, placed right in front of the screen, and looked at the image of the Mistress’ new face, a smile firmly planted on the Professors own.
“Righty-o. Only one thing for it now.”
“You do realise what you’re doing right?”
“Of course. Why wouldn’t I?”
“Just checking.”
“Anyways, like I said. Only one thing for it. RIGHTY-O! LET’S GO!”
The Professor yanked the lever, snapping it off in the process. The screen cut to static as the entire control room shook. Several explosions went off, and sparks went flying. The Professor was thrown against the railing, and felt a sharp pain on the back of her head before everything went black.
Dusk Shine, personal student of Prince Solaris and resident librarian in Ponyville, and his number one assistant, Spines the dragoness, were currently headed towards the market. Dusk looked over to the sleeping dragoness on his back, and, sighing, gently nudged her with his magic.
“Spines. Wake up”
“Whu? What is it?” the groggy dragoness replied, yawning.
“What’s first on the list?”
“What list?” The unicorn rolled his eyes.
“The list we prepared this morning. You know, the one saying the things we have to do,” he said, shaking his head at his assistant’s forgetfulness.
“Oh. That list. Right,” Spines replied, as she reached for the long scroll trailing the duo. Reading off the top of the list, she said, “First on the list is-“
Before she could say what their first task was, an unusual sound was heard in the street. Dusk struggled to place it. To him, it sounded like a gust of wind being turned on and off with… something else. He couldn’t quite identify what. However, before she could attempt any further identification, the young purple dragoness spoke up.
“First on the list is check on what that sound was.” The lavender unicorn nodded his agreement, and started to walk towards where he thought the sound was. However, the sound soon stopped, being replaced by a short creaking sound, and a thud. Puzzled, Dusk quickly walked into the alley where the sounds came from, and was utterly puzzled by what he saw.
A tall blue wooden box rested in the alley. It looked too small to fit a pony in, unless they were standing on their hind legs. Several opaque windows covered the upper half, and a small white box with blue writing he couldn’t make out was on the right door. As he looked over the strange box, Spines nudged him and pointed to the ground.
“Look! Who’s that?”
An earth pony mare was sprawled on the ground. Her coat was a light brown, with an hourglass cutie mark, and her mess of a mane was a darker shade of brown. He walked over and lifted her up, a purple aura surrounding the strange mare.
“I don’t know Spines. Could you please walk beside me? We’ll bring her back to the library and ask her when we get there.”
“Okay Dusk.”
A red phone box crashed into yet another tree before landing on the ground. A dark grey unicorn stumbled out, followed by a cloud of black smoke that matched her mane perfectly. She tripped over a protruding root, and fell on her face. She got up and looked at her hooves, a puzzled expression coming over her face.
“Okay, I appear to be a horse. No, wait, not quite.” The strange mare stumbled over to a nearby pond and looked into her reflection. “A pony. A unicorn pony no less. Not the strangest thing, but close. Still beautiful as always, though.”
A rustling behind her caused her to spin around. Three strange creatures presented themselves in front of her. They looked something like dogs, except they were larger, bipedal and wearing some sort of metal armour. The mare raised her eyebrow as the dog in front of the three started to talk.
“Can you find gems?”
“Blunt, stupid, but strong. Perfect,” the mare muttered, before turning to the three creatures. As she spoke, her horn unconsciously lit up with a black aura, and a similar aura surrounded the three creature’s heads.
“I have a proposition to make.”
Chapter 1 - The Librarian and the Mailpony
The Professor came to with a splitting headache. Groaning, she turned on her side and ran her hoof through her mane. Shaking her head to clear any confusion out of it, she started to open her eyes, before snapping them open with realisation.
’Hoof? Mane? What?’
Getting straight up onto her legs… or hooves, as it were, she immediately looked around for some sort of reflective surface. She was in what looked to be a bedroom, as she had been sleeping on the bed. A desk sat on one of the walls, with a mirror and window above it. Bookshelves lined the rest of the room.
’A mirror. Perfect-o.’
She peered into the mirror and was startled to see a brown pony peer back. Muttering a comment about how she still wasn’t ginger, she looked over what appeared to be her new form. With a light brown coat, dark brown mane, blue eyes, and what appeared to be a picture of an hourglass on her behind, she wasn’t exactly in her normal form.
“Maybe I’ve regenerated again. Hold on… nope. Still me. Wait, it could be a form shift. That’s more likely. But what caused it? Transferring universes? I’ll have to look into that. Or maybe, since I was still early in the regeneration, I accidently shifted forms,” she started to babble to herself, “Wait, that voice sounds kind of funny, and quite young too. I swear all my regenerations are just getting younger every time. One of these days I’m going to wake up looking like a nine year old. Ooh, look, an hourglass. That’s... amazing! Why’s there an hourglass tattoo there? Not a normal place to put a tattoo, I imagine…”
Her constant babbling was cut short by a knocking at the door and a slightly hesitant, but distinctly male voice calling out,
“Good afternoon, miss. Are you awake?”
“Yeah, I’m reasonably certain I’m awake,” she replied
“…Reasonably certain?”
“Well, I’ve been wrong before.” She turned around as the door opened to allow a purple, no, wait, purplish unicorn to walk in. “Well, there’s something you don’t get to see every day,” she muttered.
“What was that?” The unicorn questioned.
“Nothing. Nothing at all. Sooooooo, what’s your name?” she quickly answered.
“Dusk Shine, librarian of the Books and Branches library of Ponyville. And you?”
’Ponyville? Dusk Shine? Odd names. Wonder what that’s about. Have to find out. Maybe a book or something. Good thing I’m apparently in a library. Hopefully the returns policy is rather lax,’ the Professor thought, before replying, “I’m the Professor.”
Dusk looked at the strange mare. She was standing a little oddly, as if she’d never stood before. The main thing that he was puzzled about, among an increasing pile of the things, was the name.
“Professor who? And of what?” he asked.
“Just the Professor, thank you. And as of what, well, uhhh, everything? Except for archaeology. Definitely not archaeology,” was her reply. She looked vaguely hopeful, as if she was hoping that he would just accept the answer. However, he wasn’t going to leave it at that.
“How can you be a professor at everything? That’s impossible.”
“Well, Dusk Shine, when you regularly do impossible things like me, the impossible becomes, well, possible. It’s a simple matter, really.”
“…Care to elaborate?”
“Not really. Anyways, is there something you wanted?”
“I was just checking to see if you were-“
Dusk was cut off by a loud, high pitched scream. The strange mare quickly swung here head towards the door. “Wait, hold on. Don’t think you can just-“ Dusk tried to say, before being cut off by the Professor darting past her and through the door, pausing for a second to ask, “Coming?” before continuing. Dusk stared at the empty doorframe for a few seconds longer, before racing after her.
Dusk ran towards the scream he had heard. He had left Spines back at the library, and was hoping that he’d run into one of his friends. Turning a corner, he found himself at what was presumably the scene of the crime. Not that there was much of a scene left. Long marks in the ground, as if a pony had been dragged, were all that remained. Dusk was about to set off in the direction of the drag marks when the odd mare from earlier, the ‘Professor’, came barrelling round a corner and crashed into him.
“Oooof! Hey! Watch it!” Dusk yelled.
“Sorry, sorry, just need to grab my soniiiiii… Ah,” she answered, a look of realisation that something might have not gone according to plan coming across her face.
“Your what?” Dusk asked, ever so slightly confused. You know, just slightly.
“Doesn’t matter, no point wasting valuable time. Righty-o, come on. A solution’s not going to fall out of the sky,” the madmare announced, before receiving an express air-mail package straight to the head, knocking her out cold.
The Professor bolted straight up, to find the purplish unicorn from earlier, Dusk Shine, joined by a grey stallion with wings, and a tattoo of several rising bubbles. The newcomers blond hai-mane was slightly unkempt, and his yellowish eyes were… well, his right eye was looking at the Professor. His left eye seemed to have found something very interesting in the sky.
“Sorry miss, I just don’t know what went wrong,” the grey pony offered a hoof with a brown package, “I’m Derpy Doo, mailpony. Here’s your mail Miss Professor.”
“Thanks, and it’s just the… Wait a minute. How do you,” at this, the Professor jabbed a hoof at the grey pony, “know what my name is? Did Dusk tell you? Have I met you before?”
“Nope! It’s on your mail. Special delivery on orders from Prince Artemis! Here you go,” Derpy handed, err, hoofed over the package and letter to the Time Lord, and saluted at this, and Dusk did a double take at the name.
“Prince Artemis! The Prince knows this pony? Sorry miss… Professor. I didn’t know. Please don’t make the Prince banish me,” Dusk started panicking, before the Professor interrupted him.
“It’s alright, haven’t met the bloke yet. Wonder what adventures we’ll get up to.” Ignoring anything said by the evidently confused Dusk Shine, and the slightly out-of-touch Derpy, the Professor began to open her package to find a letter and…
“A waistcoat! With pockets! That is AMAZING! Oooh, there’s stuff in the pockets.” Slipping on the waistcoat, she went through the pockets to find… “A screwdriver!” A grey distinctly-not-screwdriver stick with an orange crystal at the end, embedded. The chassis seemed to be made of some form of metal, but was smooth, save for a single button, “And slightly psychic paper!” A simple black wallet with a sheet of paper that held the words ‘Slightly Psychic Paper’ on them, “And a pack of jammy dodgers! Amazing! Let’s see what the letter says.”
She picked up the letter and began to read aloud…
Dear Professor,
At this point in time, you will not know what is going on, and it is not our my place to tell you. However, We I can tell you this; the two ponies you currently find yourself in the presence of are trustworthy. Take the librarian and the mailpony with you as your companions.
-Prince Artemis, Monarch of Equestria, Lunar God, Future friend
The Professor looked up from the note at the two ponies, looking at her with wide eyes.
“Hmm. Well, that cleared up a bit. Not much, but a bit. Anyways, screwdriver. Let’s figure something out, shall we?” the Professor asked, before immediately continuing, “Of course we shall.”
Before either of the stallions could react, she pulled out the Sonic with a hoof and pushed on the button, muttering a comment on not questioning the physically impossible. A high-pitched buzz came from the device.
“What are you doing? What’s that? Who ARE you?” Dusk asked, but had long since given up on expecting a straight answer.
“Just giving a quick scan of the-“ the Sonic gave a loud beep, and the Professor glanced in the direction it was pointing. The direction of the tracks. “Well, that was a bit obvious. Righty-o! Come on!”
The Time Lord dashed in the direction of the tracks, the mailpony and the librarian following her hoofsteps. Towards the Everfree Forest.
Author's Note
Here it is. Chapter 2. Also, on an unrelated note, Remembering the pronouns and proper names can get really annoying. Also, Butterscotch was originally going to appear, but I cut it due to not being sure how to write ~~her~~ him. See? Pronouns.
