Chapters The best place in a story to start is the beginning. Bon-Bon's story went like this.
"Take these. Go there. Put these here."
Bon-Bon's monotonous way of life was work, work, work. Every day she would carry, find, stack. Excruciating and incessant toil was her reward.
She worked at a general store called Area 25. Odd name, she and her friend Lyra agreed, but it paid well. Bon-Bon was a fun-loving pony, and if one word could describe her, it would be bombastic. She was a tan mare with a loud, bouncy purple and pink mane. Her friend Lyra was the exact opposite. Sensible was the word for her. A green pony with a white and mint mane, the only thing that stood out, the only form of defiance from her personality were the sunglasses she always wore.
Yes, Bon-Bon's life was work every day--until closing time in the store. That was when Bon-Bon headed over to The Dropout, the only fast-food resturant to hold parties after 11:00 in the vicinity. Brilliant, she would always say afterwards. Lyra, with scalding wit, would always reply, "Pay more attention and stop daydreaming." She was fondly recalling this, when…
"Wake up! You aren't paid to daydream." The cruel irony in that statement was a wake-up call for Bon-Bon. "Take these to Cranky," her manager continued. "He's downstairs, I think. Lyra, you go too." She gave Lyra and Bon-Bon each a stack of clothes to put in the basement.
"This would be a great place for a party," Bon-Bon remarked, once down in the basement, fondly known by the employees as ‘the dungeon’. All it needs is a disco ball, lights..."
Lyra was about to say, "Put a horseshoe in it," when a creaking noise sounded behind them.
"PONY LIFEFORM DETECTED," a voice from behind the two mares said. Not taking it seriously, Bon-Bon said, "Aww. Someone already reserved this spot."
Then the thing, shrouded in a dark red XXL sweater, swiped at Bon-Bon's neck. Lyra, fearing for her friend, tried to tackle the thing, but with a resounding clang, she only managed to knock off the veil of crimson.
The thing was a metal pony, with a silver body, hollow metal eye sockets, rigid 'cheekbones', and an insignia on the underbelly. A charge of electricity ran up its hooves towards Bon-Bon.
Bzeeeep!
The metal pony collapsed and dissassembled. A brownish pony dropped from the ceiling.
"See, I told you it was a good party site," said Bon-Bon, still not quite getting that this was life-threatening.
"You were ALMOST KILLED!" Lyra raged.
"Was I?" Bon-Bon asked, oblivious.
"Uhm--yes," The stallion broke in, and continued: "I'm the Doctor. You lot?"
"Bon-Bon," the bouncy mare said, "And Lyra," she said, pointing to Lyra.
"So...you're the Doctor. But--Doctor Who?" Lyra asked.
"Let's save that for another time. Let's go, before it wakes up!" the strange brown stallion said.
Bon-Bon took a good look at this mysterious pony. His tan coat was ruffled and smudged. His brown mane was burnt and choppy. He had an oddity of a Cutie Mark: an hourglass, with deep brown ends and a little bit of sand on either side. He had a brown overcoat on, and a queer stick in one hoof.
"Why do you look like that?" Lyra said as they ran.
"Like what?" the Doctor inquired.
"...Burnt. Frazzled."
"Blame the TARDIS."
"The what?" Lyra looked thoroughly confused.
"Never mind. Just keep running--"
The Doctor stopped short. They had reached the end. Looking over the edge only served to elaborate on how grave the situation was. The entire city of Sarasoatsa was full of metal ponies. "Cyberponies," the Doctor almost affectionately remarked. They weren't just on the bottom of the city either--one had managed to sneak up behind Lyra and nab her. The only thing that had tipped the other two off was a scream.
"Well? Come on!" the Doctor said, but was stopped by Bon-Bon.
"Doctor...how do I know I can trust you?"
"Others...did." The Doctor had a look of urgency on his face.
"You traveled with others?" Bon-Bon asked.
"Yes, and they trusted me with their lives."
"Well, are they all alive now?"
Grinning, the Doctor said, "You bet they're alive! Although," he added, "Jamie might be drunk." They nodded and took off.
They found Lyra in the shop's basement, which was strange considering that they had just been there. It didn't shock them. What did shock them was Lyra, encased in metal over every part of her body except her head. Lyra looked helplessly at Bon-Bon, the sea-green mare renowned for such coolness in life itself finally losing her cool. "I'm sorry..." she said. “I couldn't help it, they trapped me." Even as she said that, the Doctor and Bon-Bon saw the two halves of a Cybermask close around her face and snout.
Clank. Bon-Bon's hoof was lodged in there firmly, the crack between the two halves widening slightly to accompany their obstacle. Hard eyes stared Lyra straight in the face, and she nearly broke down. "Not letting this happen," Bon-Bon said unwaveringly.
"Bon-Bon. Cyber-conversion wipes all traces of anypony it used to be. She's going to walk like metal, talk like metal--oh, and she'll even have this little 'You will be deleted' thing going on," said the Doctor.
Hearing this, a tear fell from Lyra's eye. A grinding noise came from the mask, as well as some yelps of pain from Bon-Bon.
"Take it out," the Doctor and Lyra both urged. There were some more grinds and some more shouts. Finally Bon-Bon couldn't stand it.
"Goodbye," were Lyra's last words.
All at once, though, the metal fell off Lyra, just like an automatic car door opening back up as if there was one too many passengers wedged into the doorway. The ponies gawked. Bon-Bon's hoof had even jammed the electronics in Cyber-conversion!
Their moment of triumph was short-lived when they saw half a dozen Cyberponies in the door. Terrified, the Doctor's new companions backed behind him. The Cyberponies each raised a hoof, sparking with electricity.
A dozen luminescent squares descended from a niche in the wall behind the Cyberponies, and the floor below them for about 10 feet was gone. Soon, so were the sparking remains of the Cyberponies. A blue pony with a blackish mane appeared from the niche, sporting a handsome jacket and watch. "Go!" was the only thing he said, until he saw that the two mares were still terrified. "Yes, you two. The adorable mares in the candy coats."
Author's Note
My first Doctor Whooves story online! It makes me giddy.
The four ponies made their way out of the building as fast as they could. "What are you?" Lyra asked, even though she was still a bit in shock. She caught her breath up to speed while he talked, having left it back in the basement.
"Captain Jack Harness, Time Agent. I guess that makes you the companion of the Doctor?" he replied.
"Companion?" Lyra said, a bit riled that he couldn't use her name as well.
"Lighten up," Bon-Bon cajoled.
"How did you know that?" the Doctor asked, having caught up with the mysterious Time Agent.
"Let's just say I've been there and done that. Remember the time you were with Roseluck saving royalty? Well, that royalty founded Torchwood, and Torchwood hired me, to make a long story short. In fact, I've been in Equestria for, oh, about 370 years, 256 days, 15 minutes, and 17 seconds."
The Doctor got an idiotic grin on his face. "Oh, you're immortal, aren't you! I should have my good friend Twilight run some tests later, she'd get a kick out of that!"
"Um, no. No tests, please. All you need to know is that I'm Jack Harness, this is my Squareness Gun, and this--" he pointed to his watch--"is my Vortex..."
The ponies were alarmed to, well, not see Jack for a moment. He soon popped back into view. "My Vortex Manipulator," he finished. "Still quite broken."
"Allow me," the Doctor said, standing near a blue box that said something like "Police Public Call Box" on it. Taking Jack's hoof, he pointed the buzzy stick, or "Sonic Screwdriver", as he said, at the watch. It made a (rather annoying) high-pitched noise, and then the Doctor let go. "Should work right proper now." Jack came into focus more, while the Doctor trotted into his strange blue box. "Well? Aren't you lot coming?"
Lyra, Bon-Bon, and Jack Harness trotted into the blue box. First Jack, then the mares.
Lyra found her way in. Then, she found her way out. She paced around the outside of the box, stuck her head back in, and looked around from the inside.
The TARDIS, as the Doctor had called it, was bigger on the inside!
Either oblivious or used to it, Jack had struck up a conversation with the Doctor. Bon-Bon caught the words 'New Equestria'. The Doctor grinned, pulled on his tie, and said, "Pull the wibbly lever, Jack!"
"Wibbly, huh?" Bon-Bon said, almost grinning at her befuddled friend's face, as if she was saying, Not you, too.
Jack pulled what the mares assumed was this so-called 'wibbly lever', and the entire room shook. Lyra grabbed onto the rails, not thinking it could get any worse in the strangest way possible. Bon-Bon fell into a chair. Jack and the Doctor were grinning like maniacs.
“Here we go!” the Doctor beamed. The space in the TARDIS shook. Jack cantered over to the mares of the group.
“It’s called the TARDIS: Time And Relative Dimensions In Space. It’s a police box because the Chameleon Circuit broke, which would cloak the TARDIS to fit its surroundings. It can go anywhere in space-time, and—obviously—it’s bigger on the inside.”
“Oh, Celestia. You don’t honestly expect me to believe…” Lyra had opened the door. Staring outside, she found outer space.
“…that. You know what, now I’m having psychological trouble.” Her face was ashen as she said that. She closed the door.
“We’ve arrived!” the Doctor said gleefully soon afterwards. “Welcome to Abrigadelphia!”
And here there was a quickening of time, or so it seemed, and time flew. Abrigadelphia was a small planet, full of small creatures with small houses, and small roads leading small cars onwards while small birds flew through a small sky. There was, in fact, not a substantial amount of anything. After that, they enjoyed no end of planets, each one with a variety of experiences. Then, time slowed.
The TARDIS jolted. It hit a bump, to be exact. Lyra and Bon-Bon fell to the side. Even the Doctor and Jack had trouble standing. Just as fast, the TARDIS resumed its normal course, but no sooner had the Doctor dismissed it as turbulence than they hit another jolt.
“Are you sure it’s turbulence?” Bon-Bon asked, raising her voice a little.
“No!” the Doctor said concernedly. Bon-Bon groaned, and, as if the turbulence had a mind of its own, was thrown against the bars near the main control panel. The doors swung open when her flailing hoof hit a lever.
Everypony noticed that they were getting close to a sinister-looking planet’s surface. Everypony but Jack noticed that Jack himself was near falling out the doors. Then Jack slid out.
Upon closer inspection, Jack was barely hanging on by his hooves. The Doctor held out his own as if to let Jack climb up more easily, but Jack could hardly grab them without dragging them both down. Another jolt shook the TARDIS.
It’s amazing how easily accidents can happen. Lyra was a perpetrator, and Jack was a victim. In that jolt of turbulence Lyra lost her footing, and tumbled into the Doctor. The Doctor landed on his front hooves, near Jack’s. Too near. Jack’s hooves were just pushed off the TARDIS.
If anypony hadn’t been looking away, they might’ve seen the blue flashes of a Vortex Manipulator.
In a fit of rage, the Doctor shouted, “Lyra! You—I—“ and could hardly manage a decent fragment. Bon-Bon tried to calm him down, and over time it worked. The frenzied Doctor relaxed visibly, and the nearly cowering Lyra got herself to stand. The TARDIS came to a rest herself, and the Doctor, with his companions, down to two, showed themselves into the sinister-looking planet.
There was a steady THRUM-THRUM emanating from the planet’s surface.
It was like some strong mental signal, or heartbeat. The ponies kept having to fight it for what seemed like the premises of their brain. Lyra said, “On a scariness scale of one through ten, this is a ten, with ten being really scary."
“Unnerving, but we can’t let it control us,” the Doctor said. He began to hum a cheerful tune, then glanced over his shoulder at Lyra and Bon-Bon. “What; aren’t you two going to ignore it?”
A facehoof was in order. “Shouldn’t we just leave?” Bon-Bon said.
The Doctor’s expression saddened. For a split second Bon-Bon thought she saw years of sadness in his eyes, but he interrupted her. “Look, in all my eight hundred years of living, I thought you Equestrians had a sense of when a burial is in order.”
With the open ground proving to be fruitless, the Doctor and his company sought the advice of a native. “You haven’t seen anything falling around here, have you?” (Lyra noted that he was rather taking it lightly; when she asked the Doctor, he explained that you couldn’t exactly tell him Oh, my friend just fell out of the sky and died. Have you seen him? )
The native kept walking. No response.
The Doctor repeated the question, this time with: “Blackish-brown jacket, night-sky blue eyes.”
The native kept walking. He looked just like an ordinary pony, which helped with the culture shock to Lyra and Bon-Bon. They could see something off about him, though, something really off.
“Doctor?” Lyra said. She’d fitted too many shirts and jackets on ponies who visited the shops not to know that ponies’ hearts beat. This native’s heart was moving about as much as a rock moves in regular old summer weather.
The outside THRUM-THRUM kept on going.
“It’s okay, I’m a doctor, I can help,” the Doctor said.
No response.
“Right, then.” The Doctor wheeled around to face his companions. He grabbed the native in a neck hug. “We need to find out what stopped Beatie here’s heart—and what’s keeping him going. You lot game?”
A puzzled and bewildered expression was apparently how they took the word yes on the Doctor’s home planet. “Come along then!”
They ducked into the nearest building. Another odd quirk from his alma mater planet? Perhaps.
The basement of said building had a lot of spacecraft in it. The Doctor picked a part of one up.
“Interstellar radiation emitter? Rubbish! Though I can’t blame them, it’s the latest model of the time…Horizontal Sontaran detector? Never worked! The microemulator for intergalactic transport? Outdated—“
“You may say so, pony of war…Doctor…”
A yellow-, brittle-hooved figure drew the Doctor’s attention. The most noticeable feature was under the round eyes, a variety of different ‘roots’, with a large taproot in the center. That was all the threesome got to see before three other pairs of hooves closed over their mouths and pulled them into the shadows.
Their captors were, respectively, a freckle-faced, curly-maned stallion that could only be described as a nerd, a dark young mare, and a nervous-looking stallion with remarkably pointy ears. The mare was about to say something when the Doctor sprang to his hooves, whispering furiously, “What are you doing?!” Lyra and Bon-Bon’s gazes echoed him.
“Oh, you’ll want to stay away from him,” the curly one said, referring to the figure. “No good, he is.”
“What—that’s an Ood. They’re fairly harmless, as long as you don’t provoke ‘em,” the Doctor said with the air of an expert.
“End the world, he will,” interjected the curly one.
“Stop talking nonsense,” the mare said. “Anyway, harmless creatures don’t enslave ponykind. Name’s Reeda. This is Hoofie, and that’s Pointy.” Reeda pointed to Hoofie, the curly one, and Pointy, the pointy-eared one.
“I’m the Doctor—“ the Doctor said.
“Just the Doctor?” Reeda asked confusedly.
“—that’s Lyra, and that’s Bon-Bon. Why do you ponies always get hung up on the Doctor? It’s not hard to say.”
“Pointy?” Lyra asked. Pointy waved.
After that, they stayed out of sight of the Ood. One day or another, though, being bumped into was inevitable. Not even a week later, they were at a standoff.
“You have evaded me, Doctor…”
Hoofie and Pointy shrank behind the Doctor, who said nervously: “Yes, about that…” In a low mutter, he said, “This fellow certainly wants to get to business.”
The Ood repeated his earlier statement, obviously in no hurry. The Doctor grinned, saying: “You want to know why, don’t you? Look at me, so clever right now.”
Lyra and Bon-Bon looked at the other three, who had explained earlier what had happened. To be concise, everything was going just perfectly in their planet until almost everypony had been found vanished. The next thing Hoofie, Pointy, and Reeda knew, everything was going just perfectly. Except for the part where everypony got turned into a zombie. Besides that the ‘zombies’ took orders from the Ood, they didn’t know much else.
The Doctor continued. “Ha! Perception filters off, please and thank you.” The Doctor pointed his sonic screwdriver at the Ood, who seemed to fall right apart. “The Ood,” the Doctor said, “are personally much nicer to me.”
In its place was a humming (or rather, THRUM-THRUMing machine.) Malice was painted on its side.
“Yes! Thank you, that’s Malice. Malice, world. World, malice.” The Doctor spoke with the air of an infant who has just solved their first multiplication problem, very excitedly.
“Reeda, Hoofie, Pointy; what happened on your planet was this. Some time ago, someone thought it would be a good idea to make your race do its bidding. Well, they built this, and you know what that THRUMing is? That registers as a distress signal for any ship that comes by this planet. It sucks ‘em in and never lets ‘em out. Works on cars, too. Ever notice a lot of cars coming this way?” Reeda nodded.
“What happened to the chap who built it?” said Pointy.
“He was the first victim,” the Doctor said solemnly.
“Machine—Ood—gone—sonic,” Hoofie stuttered. “Amazing!”
“What?” the Doctor deadpanned.
Meanwhile, back in the TARDIS, an explanation of the Doctor was in order.
Author's Note
Finally got around to writing this chapter. And by that last line in the story I mean all the yet-unexplained remarks about the Doctor.
