Geronimo
The Doctor stared out amongst the controls of his TARDIS, his one consistent companion, as it hurdled towards the ground. His most recent regeneration was very troubling, and it appeared that this time, he turned into an Earth Pony. Drats, he thought, I'd enjoyed the flying thing. Other than that, his appearance was nearly identical to his previous incarnation. He even had the same Cutie Mark: an hourglass. But of course he did. Ponies like him always had the same cutie mark. Time Ponies, that is, all had the same mark. Their collective talent was time, of course. They could see it, they could change it, if time obliged, and with their wonderful noise generating TARDIS's, they could move around in it.
And when it didn't oblige, he'd just have to trick it. Tricking it was quite fun. The Doctor loved tricking time. It could be quite the killjoy if it wanted to be, and these were his chances to get back at it.
And that's what he did now. He knew from his last trip his time was running out. He was going to die, at least his last regeneration was going to. He was going to die from the crash. Or maybe before the crash, nothing was specific, they only knew the TARDIS went down and nobody appeared to come up.
That's why he decided jump out before it hit the ground. He knew he would need a parachute one day, so he bought one from the little shop. Octavia had called him crazy for buying that, even though she knew he loved little shops.
The straps were tough to get fastened. He'd never done then by himself. Actually, now that he considered it, he'd never done it before at all. 903 years, he's never used a parachute. 903 years, that's a lie. I don't know how old I am. Does anyone? How could they know? Too late to find out now, he thought, finishing off attaching the backpack.
He didn't appreciate that the TARDIS clearly wasn't designed for one pony, and didn't appear to be designed for hooves. How does one pull a lever, especially a wibbly one, with a hoof? Even if he could hold things in it, the levers were a bit big for his preference, just a bit hard to grasp. It was a nice thing, he supposed, being able to hold things in his hooves. "Time Ponies, sometimes we fly, sometimes we get magic, and sometimes we don't get anything fun, but, at least we can hold things." Of course, after they realized that eventually, all ponies would be able to hold things, they felt less special. Time travel, things being bigger on the inside, a small device that can be used for most anything…But holding things, they held that dear. The straps were still hard, though, just a tad bit slippery for his preference.
He missed Octavia, but he knew that after what had happened, she couldn't come with him anymore. She couldn't even know he existed. That meant everypony she knew had to lie to her each and every day, to protect her. Until the Doctor could think up of some way to keep her from going crazy with what she knew, she had to be unaware of their adventures. Safety was more important that nostaligia. Powerful enemies, the Doctor had far too many of those, and some worse than others, much, much worse.
But that didn't matter now. The TARDIS was falling. He had to jump at just the right time to ensure that the events he knew would happen would happen. If not, he'd die, forever this time, a death that not even the regeneration energy that flowed through him still from his recent trauma could undo. He wasn't sure how that worked, but he didn't know how a lot of things worked, really. He was just sort of rolling with it all the time, but that was okay with him.
The Doctor opened the doors of the TARDIS, waved goodbye, promised that he'd be back soon, and jumped.
He hadn't predicted the difficulty he would have getting his hoof into the ripcord of the parachute. "Aw, come on, it's even shaped the same," the Doctor screamed to no avail, the sounds of the wind ripping past him muting all the sound he could perceive. But someone had heard, and she didn't know to move out of the way.
Derpy had been having an overall mediocre day up until that point. Not many people in Ponyville needed mail delivered anymore after the invention of the Ponynet. Sure, Princess Celestia still used letters, but only with her newest apprentice, and she had a special dragon for that. They didn't call her Trollestia for nothing.
It's not like they'd want Derpy to deliver their mail if they had any. She had eye problems due to not being shown enough light as a child. By the point she had reached a healthy amount of light, her eyes had already been messed up enough that she'd have to deal with it for her entire life. One was just a little bit lower aimed than the other, causing a large loss of depth perception and, unfortunately, many people to think she was a bit slow.
To make matters even worse, her parents disappeared right after she was born, and she was put in an orphanage. By the time she got adopted, her eye condition had developed, and her adoptive parents gave her what they felt was an appropriate name: Derpy Hooves.
She'd have to deal with that name for the rest of her life, and after Dinky Hooves, the child of her adoptive parents, was born, she decided that they must simply be awful at naming children in general. She did, however, find comfort in how much Dinky looked like her, although she always got uncomfortable when people asked if it was her daughter. "Of course not," she would say every time they were together, often to the same people she had already told, "I'm barely out of fillyhood, and, besides, I'm a Pegasus, she's a unicorn."
They'd always look at her funny after that, at least, she thought they looked at her funny. It was always difficult for her to tell.
There was only 3 days until the Summer Sun Festival, and that year it was in Derpy's home town, Ponyville. She lived there knowing that she wouldn't have any serious issues there on the ground, and it was close enough to Cloudsdale that she could pop in for a visit. And so that day, she did.
She flew through the air, and through other things, quite a lot of clouds mixed in, and at least 2 displeased pegasi slept atop those clouds. One was especially feisty, she was blue and had a mane and tail that had all the colors of the rainbow. "Well, your language certainly suits your mane," Derpy yelled behind her after the verbal assault she'd been given after what was obviously an accident.
She heard a whoosh from the sky, and a voice complaining about something hoof-shaped. Derpy assumed that it was just another Pegasus in a hurry, until she noticed one important thing: that pony has no wings.
The Doctor was thoroughly displeased at his situation. Sure, he'd probably survive the fall, not even face permanent injuries, but he'd have to wait even longer to get back to his precious, almost certainly broken TARDIS.
Then, suddenly, he was caught by a Pegasus, mid-air, no less, and now he was bringing down two ponies.
She readjusted. Still falling fast, but controllably now, the Doctor and his relative savior landed on a patch of soft grass.
The Doctor stumbled to his feet, took a breath, and checked the condition of the Pegasus.
"Hello, I'm the Doctor, are you okay?" he asked, confused greatly by recent events.
"Doctor? Doctor who?" Derpy replied, her eyes somewhere far away. Somewhere in her mind she vaguely recognized the voice she heard, but the world seemed to be spinning a bit faster than usual.
"Doctor Whooves, actually. That's what the kids call me these days," the Doctor said.
And with that, Derpy fell unconscious.
Derpy awoke to the strangest sound she'd ever heard. She couldn't decide if it was wonderful or annoying, so she placed it in the middle: strange. The Doctor looked up to see that she was awake, and a smile crept along his face.
"Good, my sonic wasn't picking up much, I could only hope you were still, ah, alive," the Doctor said, a tad bit embarrassed.
"Your…sonic? Great, I catch a man falling out of the sky on my way to a party, and he's insane. It's just that sort of day," Derpy murmured disappointedly. Somewhere in the back of her mind there was a thought that she knew this pony, but that probably wasn't true. That was almost certainly the concussion talking, and concussions say the darnedest things.
"It's a sonic screwdriver, it's nothing special, really. Were you really heading to a party?"
"Well, no, but…You're still a madman!"
"Please, little Pegasus, you haven't even seen my box yet."
"I'm not little! And it's been a while since I was, I'll have you know! And my name is Derpy."
"Yes and I'm the Doctor, but I think you might already know that. In case not, I'm still the Doctor! And, if I remember correctly, my TARDIS should be over," the Doctor trailed off in his speech, spinning around and fiddling with his sonic screwdriver, finally deciding on a direction, "there!"
The Doctor dashed in that direction, then slowed down, and ran even faster than before. "That's the problem with tricking time, you see, you never know when you're not supposed to be there!" he yelled back to the bewildered Derpy.
Derpy flew off after the Doctor, and found herself unsure, once again, of whether or not he was wonderful or annoying. She decided he was most certainly one, but was chasing after him much too fast to determine which.
The Doctor slowed down again, and turned to see Derpy. A bit surprised, he said, "Well, at least I don't have to walk alone. You see, it crashed what should be a mile away, but the search parties will be going a 2 mile radius around the crash, so we'll have to be a bit…sneaky."
"What on Equestria is a TARDIS?" Derpy asked after a while of thought, the Doctor's dash-crawl-dash cycles becoming more predictable, and by extension, less prominent in her thoughts.
"Not on Equestria…Well, it is right now, but it's not from there…Oh, wait, I mean, here. It's from Gallopfrey, just like me."
"Gallopfrey? I've never heard of a place called Gallopfrey. Is that near Fillydelphia?"
"Oh no! It's another planet! You could fly for a million million years and you wouldn't make it half way, although, if you were dedicated enough that you tried flying for a million million years, I might give you a lift."
"Another planet? But Celestia says we haven't found any aliens yet!"
"You haven't, yet," the Doctor said, chuckling nostalgically, "And boy, will it be fun when you do! I think you've only got a few more years," he said, checking his watch. He realized a moment later that he shouldn't have been, because watches wouldn't have calendars on them on this planet until after they found aliens.
"You say that like you were there!" Derpy said, aggravated.
"I was there! Well…I guess for you, I will be there," he responded mischievously. "And it was a wonderful party, by the way. Will be a wonderful party, I suppose."
"You are so…confusing!"
"Ha! They always say that! They even make that face, except," the Doctor turned around, and walked directly into Derpy's face, "their eyes aren't like that. How do you do that? I don't think I can do that. Can I?" The Doctor looked for a reflective surface to make sure that there wasn't another fun trick he could use. So far, his search proved fruitless.
Derpy did her very best to give him a look that fully translated to "I won't even go there" but feared it was more like "Okay, so I was at this crazy party, and a future version of you was there," but, luckily, the Doctor's response told her that even her silly eyes couldn't screw-up a stare like that.
"Perhaps another time, then," the Doctor nervously stated. Hundreds of years, thousands of armies against only him, and he was afraid of a look a wild-eyed Pegasus gave him. "Maybe I am getting old," he muttered to himself.
He stopped caring about his age excitedly when he saw the TARDIS. Nothing could make him stop caring about anything quite like the TARDIS could. The TARDIS was about to make him start caring about something else, but that would be a little while.
"Oh, dear, that's not good! It looks like the crash and my regeneration made it a bit jumpy, and if it doesn't move again soon, it might disappear on me," he said.
"Oh," Derpy said, a bit of disappointment in her voice, "When will you be back?"
"No time at all! It is a time machine, you know! I promise, back in five minutes," the Doctor replied, his voice gaining more and more excitement with each passing syllable, as though he lived his life exclusively for this purpose, and the last 20 minutes was the only thing that stood in his way. "Maybe back five minutes ago. Things get weird."
He dashed over to the blue box, shut the door, and it disappeared from existence, once again, with that beautiful noise.
Even Derpy, in all of her indecision of that day, had to admit, it was definitely wonderful.
The Doctor pushed buttons, twisted knobs, and pulled levers, excitedly heading towards another adventure, hopefully with a new cross-eyed friend. He always did like having new friends. He looked forward to her doing the TARDIS dance, when, upon discovering that it is bigger on the inside, every companion he took with him has always ran around the entire TARDIS, sometimes dragging themselves along the walls, trying to figure out how he did it. Even other Time Ponies did it, though usually they were young and had never entered a TARDIS before.
Some accused him of sorcery, others of illusion, and a special few of being only a character in a dream, but they all knew it was true when they walked in that door in one place, and walked out that door into another. Well, except for one, but the Doctor doesn't care much for that companion. He was quite mean, after all, that one.
Then came the second question: "Well, why's it a police box?" He didn't like that one much. He hated admitting that he broke the chameleon circuit, preventing him from changing the look of the TARDIS. Of course, he didn't care, he loved it either way. Sometimes he thinks it could be a giant candy cane, and it would eventually grow on him. It would be quite sugary, at the least.
And lastly, they asked him why he looked like a regular pony, and then he'd have to explain that Time Ponies are millions of years old, predating, some say, even Celestia, and that they gained their regeneration abilities by exposure to the Time Vortex, where all of time existed, all at once. He then explained, always, that he could be a Earth Pony one regeneration, and a unicorn the next, and that nearly all Time Ponies, in either their first or last incarnation, become an Alicorn, breaking the rule that all Alicorns are female. There is also a race of shape shifters that break this rule, but ponies try to avoid that subject.
Nopony ever asked how many times he got to cheat death, or why they'd never seen a Time Pony before, and he was good enough at judging good companions that he rarely was asked to change history for their gain, although usually he'd do it anyway as a sort of thank you for fighting his loneliness.
Finally, the TARDIS landed, in the same spot as before, and the Doctor rushed out the door of the TARDIS to meet with Derpy and find himself a small corner in time and space he'd yet to see, confident that even a Time Pony can't experience it all.
He opened the door to find a house on a hill, and behind that hill was Ponyville. He looked at the mailbox, and it said "The Hooves'." The Doctor figured that it had to be Derpy's house, because he recalled her last name being Hooves. He decided to pay her a visit. Then he realized that this wouldn't be a visit, but more of a personalized invitation.
The Doctor realized that his terminology was slipping.
"Note to self: become ever-wittier," he said to himself as he trotted up the hill to the Hooves' home.
The Doctor was surprised to find a party in full swing there.
"I wasn't aware that Pinkie Pie did house calls on such short notice. Hmm."
It was wild. It was so wild, in fact, that he found the presence of a young Derpy Hooves twice as disturbing as it should have been. It was already quite disturbing, because he had accidentally bumped into the bubbly pony.
"Oh dear! Are you okay?"
Her eyes rolled around in her head. An affliction she would have for the rest of her life had just developed, probably.
"Yeah, I guess I'm…fine…"
"I really do mess everything up, don't I?"
"Huh? Oh, no, the eyes have always been like that. Don't worry. Just a bit of a…headache," the young pegasus said.
"Well then, I guess this has been pointless."
"Who are you?"
"I'd best be going. Sorry about the head."
And with that tangential adventure, the Doctor was off, and went back to the TARDIS, setting it to five minutes after he had last bumped into Derpy.
He noticed with a small amount of terror that every time he had seen the pony in her entire life, he was injuring her in some way. That wasn't good. He hoped to break that habit shortly.
He opened the door to find Derpy, but it was night, and she was highly displeased.
"5 minutes, eh? It's been 3 days since you went, and Nightmare Moon cast away the sun, and Celestia's missing!" she screamed, loud enough to scare away the birds that hung around the spot.
"You waited here for 3 days?" the Doctor asked, a little bit flattered by the action.
"No, of course I didn't sit here for 3 days and wait for you! I left after I fell asleep waiting, and then I came back when I saw Nightmare's return," Derpy said, a small fraction less angry than she was before.
"That's why they didn't find me, I suppose…Sorry for that, the engines must've ran a bit off, took me too far. At least it wasn't a few years, the last time that happened was a disaster," the Doctor explained, hoping to regain a shred of trust or companionship. He neglected to mention his trip to the past, but he was still quite embarrassed from the whole ordeal. "Anyway, I think it is time you and I visited Everfree Forest," the Doctor said, a tad bit disappointed that his new friend didn't wait for him for the small amount of time he was gone. He was unsure as to whether or not the amount of time he was away was actually small.
"Why that boring old forest? There's nothing there that could help us defeat Nightmare Moon," Derpy said, regaining that small fraction of irritation towards the Doctor, her curiosity building even faster.
A cocky smile grew across the Doctor's face as he said, "It's not us who's going to defeat Nightmare Moon, that'll happen anyway. I just think that you have earned an adventure, and the TARDIS needs a while to cool off before I can take you anywhere else." He suspected that regardless of his statement, it would, in fact, still be his and Derpy's efforts that led to the defeat of Nightmare Moon. He just had a way about him, after all, that led to getting tangled up into just about everything.
"Like I'd ride in that tiny blue box with you," Derpy said, more mischievous than angry now.
"Oh boy, I'm going to love the look on your face," the Doctor whispered to himself as he headed towards the forest.
Derpy flew ahead of him nervously, remembering the scary tales she'd heard of the place in her youth. She couldn't tell if the mention of her future facial expression was an insult or not. The Doctor was just that sort of pony. From that high vantage point, she saw six other ponies heading into the forest, and informed the Doctor of her finding.
"They'll be fine, as a matter of fact," the Doctor trailed off again, looking at his watch, highly skilled in walking with only 3 legs by this point, "They're perfectly on time! Let's just hope they don't do what they're doing too fast, otherwise we won't get to have much fun with monsters!"
Derpy hadn't appreciated the enthusiasm in his voice as he said "fun with monsters." She'd done a lot of crazy things in her life, even fought against a few things you could call monsters, but never once could she honestly say she, or anyone else involved, had fun with them. Although, there was once when she had met a shape shifter…But she doesn't like to talk about that anymore.
"So, why are your clothes so ragged?" Derpy asked.
"Well," the Doctor said, drawing out the word while thinking of how to explain it best, a trait he'd used a lot back in his last incarnation, "I kind of cheated death, twice. I didn't have much time to change out of my old clothes. Besides, my wardrobe must be completely redone. I must be, at least, 3 inches taller."
Derpy landed on the path beside the Doctor, and moved her head a bit to portray that she understood what he had just said. She couldn't have told him directly, though. Her parents had raised her to not lie.
"I'll tell you all about it later, I swear," the Doctor said disinterestedly, looking for something to battle or a villain to outsmart, having resorted to using his sonic to try to find something out of the ordinary. "A-ha!" he exclaimed, finding a very large footprint.
"Dragons don't live in this area, which means that Nightmare Moon must've sent one after the others, and if I remember, they don't see anything like a dragon, so…I do believe we have our adventure! Or, at the very least, I'll get to boast and brag and scare the dragon away. I'm fine with whatever happens!"
"You sound like you've fought a dragon before."
"Nope, not even once. I hope it'll be fun!"
Derpy would've run away right then if it hadn't been for how fascinating the Doctor was. Confidence on that level, to where he believes he can fight a dragon by himself, takes either a very ignorant unicorn, or someone who could actually do something as crazy as fighting a dragon, and she didn't see anything resembling a horn on his head.
She didn't like unicorns much. They always showed off with all of that accursed magic. There was one unicorn, which spoke in the third person, and proclaimed herself GREAT and POWERFUL!
The Doctor was nothing like her. He didn't seem like one to wear a wizard's hat.
"Nice hair, though," she mumbled as she continued after the Doctor, her heart pounding with the excitement of seeing a pony like the Doctor in action.
"So, is this sort of thing average for you, or is it kind of a great quest?" Derpy asked, the Doctor having lost sight of footprints and using his sonic screwdriver to find a trail the dragon might have flown in.
"The best way I can explain it would probably be," the Doctor stopped, requiring all of his mental power to think of a good way to portray his long, complex life, "let's say this is a new game I've begun, the eleventh game in a series, a long series, and since the first game, the quests have been getting progressively harder."
He hoped to himself deeply that ponies had figured out video games already. If this was the time period that he thought it was, he was about to spend a lot of time in it, and he would get awfully bored without video games.
"So this is your hardest quest?"
"Oh, most certainly not. This is more of the tutorial quest where I learn all the skills I knew from all the other games. Much easier," the Doctor said that last statement carefully, stopping before he could finish his thought out loud, not wanting the details of his last adventure come to the surface. He liked Derpy too much to let her run away, which is most certainly what she'd do if she knew.
"Do you think you'll find a sword along the way, maybe kill a few creatures so you can level up?"
The Doctor stopped dead in his tracks. "That is not the way I deal with things," he said, understanding that Derpy had meant the question as a joke, continuing his sort of joke about games. Other times violence was suggested, he would go on about his ethics and explain that he is the Doctor, and the Doctor makes sure everyone lives, even the bad guy, unless they really pushed him into a corner through their behavior. He was something along the lines of the team dad in that respect.
"I can certainly see that making things harder," Derpy said, a small part of her regretting the joke, but most of her admired the Doctor for being more mature with his personal behavior than most ponies she'd met. If she had one gold bit for every time someone yelled at her for not getting a letter on time…
"You have no idea," the Doctor responded quietly, sadness in his voice. If he had one gold bit for every time he had to fight a creature with a glaringly obvious physical weakness that he could've exploited to remove it from the universe's equation permanently…
He continued along the path, the dragon's tracks once again on the ground, until he saw a decrepit castle, attached to the rest of the forest by a bridge. He slowly looked over, until he found a cave.
"It can't be, it's too obvious!" he exclaimed.
The Doctor dashed towards the cave, his hearts beating so hard he almost told them to pipe down.
"Pipe down, will you?"
They didn't.
Derpy flew after him, impressed by his speed. Most ponies would feel overworked from that amount of running, considering that he simply wasn't there for 3 days.
Wasn't there, Derpy thought, he wasn't just gone, he wasn't even anywhere. The idea bothered her, the thought that, for those 3 agonizing days without the Doctor's presence, he neither stood her up nor was he preoccupied, he simply wasn't there. What got to her more, though, was the idea of where he was when he was gone. Where does one go when they travel through time and space? Do they just cease to exist, and continue existence in their destination, or do they actually go through something to get from Time 1 in Point A to Time 2 in Point B?
Her head hurt even more than usual with that idea. Ever since this one party, she's had a bit of a perpetual headache that makes it a bit hard to think…
"Would it hurt to slow down, just a little bit? You've got a time machine!" Derpy yelled, even her flying over the disgusting muck on the ground was becoming tiring and the trees weren't looking any less like they might suddenly rip out of the ground and try to kill them. She had heard stories of things like that happening before, but nopony can gossip quite like Derpy's friends from neigh school.
Why did they name everything so that it was involved with ponies? Derpy always wondered this…
"Where's the fun in that?" the Doctor asked.
"Maybe the part where I can catch up with a pony on the ground running through mud and, who even wants to know what else, by flying. You know, Earth Ponies are supposed to be slower than Pegasi!"
"How would I not know that? I just was one!"
Derpy could hardly comprehend that statement, but she came to the conclusion that a time traveler with a device in his hooves that could do anything, and a blue box that can go anywhere, anytime you want to be there, except, of course, when engine phases come into play, perhaps being a Pegasus one day and a Earth Pony the next wasn't all that surprising.
"You get stranger and stranger with each passing step, Doctor!"
"Oh, just you wait! It gets better," the Doctor said, remembering the little dance, still excited. It was like a birthday for him, except, when you travel through time and space, it gets a little hard to properly keep track of birthdays. So, it was a bit more like the Summer Sun Celebration or, rather, a Summer Sun Celebration when he doesn't have to save the world, not that he really minds that part, of course, as long as it's at least a bit of a challenge.
"I don't land on holidays enough. Or maybe there aren't enough holidays. Oh, well," the Doctor whispered to himself.
Then the Doctor noticed that the castle was in horrible disrepair, and wondered why it was so decrepit. And, then, he realized the precise reason that Celestia and her guards looked for him.
"Oh, no, now I'm a vandal!"
"What?" Derpy asked, flabbergasted at this new statement that came out of the blue.
"My TARDIS, it must've, well…Crashed right through the castle," the Doctor revealed, and then said, "Which means that it must have been a large castle at one point."
"Then where is the debris?"
"I don't think you understand just how fast I was going."
Derpy continued to be amazed by this pony's speed.
"A-ha! There's that dragon's lair!" the Doctor excitedly yelled, right before the most revealing portion of the cave's homeowner, a huge puff of smoke that must've been trailing out for a full minute rolled out.
The smoke was barely even smoke, however. It was closer in color and consistency to a fog, but the smell gave it away. Of course, it likely had no smell, and the Doctor just smelled whatever it was that must be burning to give off smoke like that.
"Who dares awaken the great and powerful Dragonous Rex?" the dragon boomed from deep within the cave, his voice tearing through the air as though it was a very non-filly friendly knife running through a piece of paper.
"Original name for the win, I suppose," the Doctor said to Derpy, chuckling a bit as his joke, realizing, too late, that that particular phrase wouldn't become popular on Equestria for at least a few more years, and so he quickly followed up by responding to the dragon, "It is I, Sir Doctor of the TARDIS, here to prevent thee from disturbing my princess's friends from their duty!"
"Liar! She stopped knighting fools like you centuries ago!" Dragonous furiously screamed, fire oozing from within the cave, forcing the Doctor to step back or get burned.
"True! But what is not a lie is that I am, in fact, the Doctor, and you are not supposed to be here. Leave, now."
"No! You are the one who shall leave, and I shall destroy the criminal unicorn who leads those silly ponies of Celestia, for she has enslaved my son, Spike!"
"You do realize that you had to voluntarily give his egg away for that to happen, don't you?"
"Regardless! This is a grotesque and unimaginable reversal of the way the world should work! Us dragons, we are powerful beyond words, we fly faster than your silly feathered Pegasi, and we live for centuries longer than you pathetic excuses for life," Dragonous ranted, knowing somewhere that he was going in a silly and useless direction, and then added, "We also don't specifically breed females. Using magic to change such things is despicable!"
The Doctor knew, of course, that Dragonous was wrong, and that ponies simply had a tendency to have female children, but decided not to vocalize it for free of making the furious creature even more angered.
"Maybe you don't understand who I am. I am the Doctor, and you will leave this place, or I will make you leave."
"I care not for your silly pony names! I seek only the rights that the superior dragons have earned by birth!"
The Doctor hoped that, maybe one day, revealing his name to be the Doctor would strike the fear into the hearts of his enemies as he has always intended for it to. He let out a small sigh.
"I am no simple pony of Equestria. I am a Time Pony of the lost planet of Gallopfrey. You will leave this forest and return to your home elsewhere, or I will make absolutely sure that you never would have had the opportunity to have come here."
"What will you do, then, go back in time and stop me there? Stupid pony!"
"That is precisely what I will do. You know what Time Ponies do, right? Control time. I'm the only one left. Imagine what it would take to be the only one left of a species that controls time. And I've definitely done just that. What do dragons do other than fly? They breathe fire. Pretty useful, but I ask you: what do you think fire can do to the pony that taught dragons how to use it?"
The Doctor took a breath, and finished, "If I could do that, imagine what I could do to you when you were an egg."
The dragon did not even try to leave from the exit, the Doctor's presence too powerful there. It instead flew directly through the roof of the cave, and very quickly shot through the sky, as far away from the Doctor as it could. Luckily, it had too thick of a skull to damage its brain, but it probably barely had much of one, anyway.
"Would you really have done that?" Derpy asked.
"No, of course not, I would've just stalled him until they finished getting the Elements of Harmony, and then I would've left. But that works even better!" the Doctor said, happy that his plan worked far better than he could've hoped. Maybe his life was getting a bit easier.
Or maybe this time, something far worse than a big demon or a dragon awaited him at the end of his journey. He wondered what could possibly be worse than what had happened to him previously, but knew that the universe had a special way of making him find out everything he needed to know, one way or another.
"Alright, Derpy, let's head back to the TARDIS. I've got something I think you'll want to see."
The Doctor hoped really hard that eye problems wouldn't stop his own little holiday.
The Doctor and Derpy had been walking for quite a while, when they finally found the edge of Everfree Forest and left. Right as they did so, the sun rose up through the darkness, and even from there they could hear the delighted reaction of the ponies of Ponyville.
The Doctor realized now, a bit too late, that Celestia must be in the forest, meaning that Celestia was very close.
"C'mon Derpy, we've gotta go!" the Doctor said very anxiously, making a dash for the TARDIS.
Derpy decided to wing it, her pun-filled way of saying she was going to fly, and followed the Doctor.
There was a small noise, like a large pony had just hit the ground from a short height, and the Doctor had stopped.
"Doctor, please, why are you running? After we found the TARDIS, we could only hope you were okay. You see, we were about to send you to the moon…" the Pony said, her body, several feet taller than the Doctor's was cast to shadows by the bright sun, which the Doctor had remembered being dimmer.
"The moon, why would you want to send me there?" the Doctor asked, his eyes adjusting to the bright light, as he begun to make out the shape of a large unicorn…with wings.
"The ponies of Equestria been wondering for the longest time what Equestria looks like from the moon, and I haven't been able to go there since I imprisoned Nightmare Moon there, so I was wondering if you could go there, in your TARDIS, and take a few pictures for us," Celestia said, her presence now undeniable.
"You know about the TARDIS, my TARDIS? How do you know about the TARDIS?"
"Did you really think that you would exist all this time and nopony would notice?"
The Doctor actually had thought that. Apparently, even regeneration leaves an obvious trail.
"Well…If Derpy's up for it, then just give me a camera, and we'll be on our way," the Doctor said, motioning towards Derpy to agree. She would've said yes regardless, the chance to go to the moon was something even she couldn't pass up on.
"That sounds like a wonderful idea," Derpy answered.
"So, it's settled then! Where is that camera?" the Doctor asked, trying his best to politely let Celestia know that she had no chance of riding in the TARDIS today.
"It's already in your TARDIS. After the crash, I sent a few guards to look for you, and then I looked inside. It took an awful lot of work to bring it off of its side, but once we were finished, I placed a camera on the console, and left. You really should lock it up next time."
The Doctor could hardly believe somepony else had just stumbled into his TARDIS without permission, and then tell him he should lock up when he's finished crashing. Those fillies with the Trollestia posters must not be kidding.
Celestia laughed a bit, and the Doctor realized the locking up part was a joke. Still, he did not approve of sneaking into his TARDIS.
Then, he realized Derpy still didn't know the most interesting thing about the TARDIS, and so he excused himself and Derpy and ran over to the TARDIS.
Celestia rolled her eyes, and flew away. She had seen this part before, many times…
He stopped in front of the doors, and turned around to look at Derpy, and said, "Now, you're going to like this," and then opened the doors.
The Doctor stepped aside, and Derpy walked into the TARDIS, slowly realizing that it was bigger on the inside.
"Neat!" she said, and went to fiddle with controls. She loved fiddling with controls.
"Neat? Just neat? I have a time machine that's made of wood that's bigger on the inside, and you call it neat?" the Doctor asked, hardly believing her statement.
"Yeah, it's pretty neat."
"Nice choice of words; most ponies just call it cool. Now," the Doctor said as he walked over to a coat rack, beneath which was a box (which Derpy had a sneaking suspicion may also be bigger on the inside) that housed all his other clothes, and he turned around and finished his question, "what do you think: a red bowtie or a blue one?"
Derpy did her best to roll her eyes, which the Doctor thought was, by far, the coolest thing any pony had ever done with just their eyes, and answered, "Bowties, really? Are you late for your job as a math professor?"
"Bow ties are cool," the Doctor said.
"The blue one is harder to see, so I'd say red."
The Doctor finished tying his bowtie and walked over to the main console of the TARDIS, and picked up the camera Celestia had placed in her invasion. Then, he set up the coordinates, both in time and space, for the moon.
"If you don't love this, then there is definitely something very wrong with your eyes, Ms. Derpy."
"My last name is Hooves, actually. Derpy Derpy would be a bit too much to handle."
The Doctor wondered how he had known that earlier as he pulled the lever, excitedly heading toward an adventure on the moon. He then wondered why he had forgotten just then. Philosophical questions could wait, because he had a lunar quest waiting for him.
Tune in Saturday for the next exciting adventure, Night of the Moon!