Equestria and the Time Lord Episode 10: The White Plaque
Prologue: Escape to Danger
=The Carrier 9, Docking Bay 1, 3222 C.E. =
Trixie and Puzzlehunt stared with feigned boredom at their new surroundings. But really, they were in awe at the land around them. It wasn't very impressive to the Doctor, though. The place was gray and dirty, not very nice. It was a large room, and in the place of one of the walls was a window with a glow surrounding it. Behind the TARDIS were about 12 entrances to escape pods lining the walls next to them. Besides that, the room was empty. They were alone.
They looked out the window. "Well you've certainly brought us somewhere, but I'm dubious as to whether or not we've actually traveled in time." Puzzlehunt said cynically.
"No, I'm pretty sure we're in a different time period this time around." The Doctor said. "Do you want to see where we are? I rather want to look around."
"I suppose I'll allow that. This place seems to be somewhat unimpressive though." Trixie said.
The Doctor knew they were lying, but didn't say anything about it for now. He just smirked and walked toward the exit to the room, which he guessed was a docking bay. Wait a minute, he thought. If it was a docking bay, why was the place so completely empty?
And they walked to the door an out of the docking bay, and into whatever was out beyond the door.
And it was just a hallway. The Doctor had grown a bit tired of hallways by now. There wasn't even anything interesting about this hallway. It appeared to be a light gray color with the pattern of stone, and it was well lit so the color wouldn't make the corridor seem depressing, in which it failed.
Another thing about it was that there were no sounds. So quiet it was eerie simply because there weren't any engine sounds that gave you any hint that there was something alive on this ship (which, from experience, there certainly was.) yet the lights didn't seem to be nonfunctional in anyway. Maybe the engines didn't give off any sound.
And then they heard something. There was somebody coughing somewhere. And there appeared to be a large smear of blood covering a part of the wall with green bubbling in it. And they refused to look at the old body at the bottom of the smear.
"I'm starting to miss the quiet." Puzzlehunt said to himself.
"Wow, really? How inquisitive. I never would've thought of that." Trixie said sarcastically.
Puzzlehunt rolled his eyes as they continued walking through the corridor.
The corridor was mercifully short. A few steps away from the body, they came to a door. And so, they went through it (Although they didn't really have another choice at the moment) and went into the room on the other side.
It was a large room with the walls decorated the same way. There was another large window lining one whole wall, although this looked into a chamber. And in that chamber was a stallion lying on his side, and he was the source of the coughing they had heard earlier.
And another stallion walked into the room. He was very odd looking. He has a white coat, a ragged white mane, pale eyes that were nearly white, sunken facial features, and around most of his body was a white harness with wires coming from the door he had just walked through. He walked over to the chamber, not noticing them standing there as he pressed a button on the wall. "You need to stand up." He said to the stallion in the chamber.
And slowly and groggily, although the Doctor would never know how, the stallion managed to stand up. Based on how deteriorated the stallion's body looked, The Doctor was sure that he had some kind of plaque. He looked very similar to the stallion that had just walked into the room. His coat and mane were slightly more colorful though.
"Now, everything appears to be in place. We will administer the first test immediately." The white stallion said.
"Mystery was all black. This one is all white. Can't we get a little more diversity here?" Puzzlehunt asked sarcastically.
The white stallion didn't appear to hear them. "I'm setting the proper settings." He said to himself. The communicators weren't engaged, so the stallion in the chamber didn't hear anything he said except the first sentence.
And whatever the experiment was, whatever they were testing, began at that moment. The white stallion quickly put on goggles.
They all watched as a white gas seemed to make the image in the chamber slightly more fogged. It became harder to see the stallion in the chamber, but you could tell what he was doing. He coughed profusely on the white gas for a tense minute.
And then he stopped coughing on it. In fact, it looked like he was finding it difficult to breathe at all. He tried to take breaths, but they didn't seem to absorb enough. He continued his attempts, but his lungs wouldn't accept the white gas into his body, and he seemed terrified by it. Obviously whatever he expected the experiment to be about, this was not it at all, and he ran around, trying to make his lungs breathe in, but they wouldn't do it.
And in one second, it happened. The white gas turned into a white flash that stayed for only a split second before subsiding. They stallion collapsed. He was dead, nearly charred to the bone. The white vapor was gone without any trace, and you could see the grim sight crystal clear.
The stallion's body slid slightly, leaving a small smear of blood across the floor. The sight was indistinguishable from the body that was in the hallway.
There were even small green bubbles rising in the small growing pool of blood. But they soon all popped, and the blood was a pure grim red.
The Doctor, Puzzlehunt, and Trixie all watched in shock, still nearly blinded from the white flash, although that was wearing off now.
The white stallion took off his goggles. He craned his neck forward. From his position, he examined the body quite closely. And when he saw the color of the blood, he gave a very satisfied grin that only he understood. "And it works perfectly." He mused to himself as he left the dead body behind impassively, without a care as to the living being it had been originally.