It all started with a mare sniffing a stallion.
It took the stallion a few moments to realize what was happening, and by that time, she was already sniffing his neck and ears. He turned his head to look at the pony sniffing him.
The mare appeared to be a strange conglomerate of green goo and cybernetics in the rough shape of an anthropomorphic pony. She had both wings and a horn, signifying her status as one of the rare Alicorn breed of pony, yet no one had ever heard of a Goo Pony for countless years apart from vague references from thousands of years ago. One of her eyes looked more like a camera aperture while the other was a piercing red. The stallion was a rather unassuming dark-coated pegasus with a red and white mane with clear silver eyes.
The pegasus smelled strongly of onions and the alicorn blinked in confusion while the target of her nose did the same.
“Sorry, I’m…uh…new in town and…where I’m from, that’s how we greet ponies,” the Alicorn said, stepping back and looking down at the smaller pony curiously.
The pegasus simply smiled and nodded. “That’s alright. I’ve gotten stranger greetings before…” his voice trailed off as he took in her features. “Alicorn? Who was your mother, if you don’t mind my asking?”
The goo pony looked surprised for a moment then averted her eyes while mumbling something. At the pegasus’ confused glance, she muttered louder: “Luna, the Princess of the Moon, while she was in her Nightmare period.”
A comical look of alarm flashed over the darker pony’s face. “Oh…dear, not one of mine, I hope?”
Now it was time for a similar look of alarm to speed across the Goony’s face. “Wh-what? No, no it…w-was Discord.”
The pegasus relaxed and smiled sheepishly. “Ah, I’m glad to hear that. Luna’s scared me on more than one occasion with stories of children brought on by…er…well…” he trailed off awkwardly and smiled uneasily.
“Most of my friends call me Darkscratch, or Darkie, what’s your name?” the pony asked.
“I…lost my name a long time ago.”
Darkscratch tilted her head as her right eye’s opening widened then narrowed. “I’m not finding any matches of your coloration or Cutie Mark in the Equestrian census…except…” she frowned. “Well…there was one…nearly 500 years ago, known simply as “The Doctor.”
A grimace passed over the winged pony’s visage and he looked away. “That’s a title I haven’t worn in…eons,” he murmured, his face clouded.
Darkscratch peered at him, her myriad sensors noting his agitated state. “If it’s a sore subject…I didn’t mean to bring it up.” The Doctor shook his head and smiled.
“No, it’s alright. That name has…countless pleasant memories attached to it. For the sake of conversation, you may refer to me as ‘Doctor.’”
“Doctor who?” Darkscratch asked curiously.
He chuckled and shook his head. “Everything, as the case usually turns out to be. While I don’t excel in any one area, I’m very talented in dozens of professions.”
The Goony’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “You didn’t answer my question.”
The Doctor flinched and hesitated. “A friend of mine once said: ‘You’ve been asking a question. And it’s time someone told you you’ve been getting it wrong. His name…is the Doctor. All the name he needs. Everything you need to know about him.’” He spread his hooves and wobbled slightly as he balanced solely on his hind hooves despite his barrel being perpendicular to the ground. “That’s me: The Doctor.”
There was a sadness to his tone and Darkscratch gazed at him silently.
“You’re not a pony,” she declared suddenly. The Doctor looked at her, startled.
“You can’t be, not with the age you claim to be, at any rate, especially if you’re claiming to be Luna’s special somepony. Far as I know, she was with Discord for a couple hundred years at least.”
The Doctor nodded. “You’re right, I’m not a normal pony, I’m a Time Lord from the lost planet Gallifrey and this is one of my Regenerations, which, to put it simply, is a cheap way to cheat death.” He paused, then stared down at his small body forlornly. “Not sure what good I am as a Time Lord that’s smaller than a Dalek though.”
He trotted around the Goo pony curiously. “But…what exactly are you? In my three thousand and some odd years, I’ve never seen your kind…well…there were a few living goo greatures here and there, but nothing as…complex as you,” he murmured.
Darkscratch’s face heated up as the small pony examined her. “Well, I was born from an egg sired by Discord, mixed with Luna’s magic…that’s about it, really. Nothing really fancy,” she said with a shrug.
The Doctor raised a hoof and opened his mouth, then a strange expression, a mix of revulsion and amusement flickered over his face. He closed his mouth and rummaged through his saddlebags. After a few moments, he withdrew a simple bottle and took a swig from it.
Darkscratch watched him as he sighed, then jumped as he belched a small torrent of flame, if ‘the-size-of-one’s-own-body’ could be considered small.
“What…what was that?” she asked. The Doctor smiled and patted his belly.
“Merely the result of having twelve stomachs,” he said cheerfully. Darkscratch’s processors had trouble with that statement.
“Twe-!?” the words caught in her throat, her eyes widening. The Doctor nodded firmly.
“I am an impossibility. One day, I wake up without wings, sometimes I have three hearts. That's the problem when you're made from Equestrian magic, there's so many KINDS: Chaos, Alicorn, Unicorn, Earth, Pegasus, Changeling, Zebra, Griffon, Dragon, Crystal and many, many more. As long as there’s magic, I don’t think I’ll ever truly be able to die while I’m in this body.”
With a soft sigh, Darkscratch shook her head, placing a hand upon her eyes. “You and I are quite common on the magic part.” She paused for a moment, then both her eyes went wide and she giggled.
“You’re both my step-father and my step-brother, since you’re made from Discord’s magic, as well as being Luna’s special somepony!”
The Doctor appeared thoughtful before letting out an amused snort. “So it would seem,” he said quietly, his mind elsewhere.
Darkscratch’s eyes wandered over the Doctor’s small frame and settled on his Cutie Mark.
“What does your mark mean?” she asked, zooming in on the strange white sigil. The Doctor craned his neck and stared at it for a moment before shrugging.
“I have no idea. It was there when I was formed. There’s no similar mark in any Gallifreyan text, and no one I’ve asked has seen anything like it.”
His eyes wandered over Darkie’s body and settled on her curious mark. “And yours?”
It looked like a film reel, with different symbols on each gap.
Whilst she pointed to each symbol, she explained what they represented. “Music, programming, scriptwriting, nocturnal magic, 3D modeling…” She motioned to the entire thing. “…and animation.” She smiled slightly. “And yes, it does move depending on which I am currently doing.”
The Doctor nodded. “Very impressive. I like seeing people with multiple talents and being able to do them all without going insane.”
The winged Doctor looked over the rest of the mare’s body curiously. “So…how does the goo…stay on?” Darkscratch looked at him with a curious expression.
“The cybernetics are actually made of goo themselves, believe it or not. So, my body is made of 100% goo.”
The Doctor reached into his saddlebags again and removed a small silver and bronze tube. With a flick of his wing, the tip opened around a green crystal and lit up with a buzz. He traced it briefly over Darkscratch’s body and she recoiled from it, her cybernetics sparking.
Startled, the Doctor swiftly shut the Sonic Screwdriver off and stepped back. “Sorry, are you okay? What happened?” Darkscratch shook her head and blinked a few times.
“Please don’t do that again. It takes a lot of CPU power to block things like that…”
The Doctor looked at his screwdriver thoughtfully before stowing it away, his expression unreadable.
Darkscratch sat on the ground and looked at the stoic pony. She could see his hearts, two of them, beating faster and she knew he was reliving some memories where he had caused deaths with his scientific instrument and wasn’t proud of it.
“If you wanted, I could give you the blueprints to the technology part…” she said softly, drawing the Doctor’s attention. He was silent for a moment before he started walking towards the center of town. Darkscratch followed behind curiously, her mind whirling through things to say.
She pricked her ears as the Doctor spoke.
“I'm not a nice person; I've seen what I'm capable of if I...don't have someone to...remind me of why I chose to protect life.”
The mare took in a deep breath, her cheeks warm.
“Like family…?”
That brought the Doctor up short and Darkscratch had to do some fancy footwork to avoid tripping over him.
“...I've been married; four times, and I could only save one of them.”
With a deepened blush, she began to expand on that small idea. “What if…what if that family member didn’t need to be saved…what if they were immortal?”
The duo reached a street corner where a strange blue box rested. On top was a light, currently off, and around the top edge, lit from behind were the words "Police Public Call Box"
Under that were some opaque windows, glowing an inviting shade of white.
“I…” She sighed, her ears flat on her head. “This is probably the strangest question to ask, but…” Her voice trailed off before she could complete the sentence. The Doctor simply waited for her to gather her nerve.
“It’s fine if you don’t want to say it,” he said gently.
Her eyes widened immediately, her gaze darting back up. “No, I do! It’s just…it’s a little embarrassing to…ask to be…” she took a deep breath in, and said softly “...your daughter.” She looked down at the ground again, her face red.
The Doctor’s eyes widened slightly as the words registered and he went silent for a moment, his gaze turning inward.
Finally, he nodded. "Come along then, daughter of mine, we have places to explore!” He turned and opened the door to the Police box.
That last statement basically froze Darkscratch in place. Her eyes widened immediately, as she looked right up. “Y-you’re…”
The Doctor poked his head out of the box with a slightly irritated look on his face. "I wasn't aware I stuttered, and since I am your father, I do have the power to ground you."
She remained still, caught within the disbelief. But, within moments, she inched her way closer. “You’re not entirely my father just yet though…” she said indignantly.
The Doctor smiled cheekily. "Step-father, since you're the daughter of Nightmare Moon and Discord. Ever since you were born, actually."
“I mean, does this form really need to have a step-father?” she continued, a smirk across her lips. The Doctor arched an eyebrow and vanished into the box, his voice echoing from within.
"Of course; someone has to be the responsible adult on this ship." There then followed a series of crashes and bangs that ended up with the Doctor's voice calling out "I MEANT TO DO THAT."
Alarmed, the mare herself jumped inwards, observing the damage. “Clumsy, eh?” she asked with amusement. The Doctor was tangled in a mess of wires he had pulled out of the center console of the large central room and was busy freeing himself.
The entire room was bathed in a warm amber glow emanating from a series of lights around the room. From the door, a ramp led up to a modest-sized platform with a large pillar-like construct reaching towards the roof. Set in a clear tube were several rods, which glowed orange. Set around and attached to the tupe were no fewer than six consoles covered in all kinds of weird buttons, knobs and levers. Two monitors sat on rotating rings and extendable arms, each showing different scenes.
"Nonsense, this is going exactly as I planned," he grumbled. A roll of her eyes, whilst the mare trotted over, she began to assist him. Her goo spread upon the stallion’s body, whilst pulling the wires away. Within a few minutes, he was free, but covered in goo.
He stared at the strange substance and rotated his hoof, watching as the light played over the slime. "So...what is the nature of your goo?" he asked.
The alicorn cocked her head towards the side in a bit of confusion. “If you mean how edible it is, and what it’s effects are…it’s completely edible, and I can easily control what it would do…”
The Doctor stopped with his tongue inches from the goo. “I have a feeling you're trying to become something a little closer than my daughter, and I can't say I'm fond of having something that could possibly control me in my body that isn't under my control..."
A meep escaped her lips immediately. “Oh no no! I wouldn’t do anything that you wouldn’t ask for!”
With an amused grin, the Doctor raised his hoof to his lips. "Hm...nothing ventured nothing gained~allons~y!"
Strangely enough, despite it’s appearance, the mare’s goo didn’t taste terrible in any way. Rather, it’s flavor related a lot to…
"Hm...mint; been a while since I've tasted mint," he said, licking his lips.
She giggled in response, shaking her head. One thing she knew for certain was that any time spent in the company of the Doctor was going to be far from boring.
vinyldarkscratch
