The Doctor ran. As fast as his four hooves could carry him, away from the filly who had narrowly escaped having her very innocence taken from her, away from the scientist and guards. The streets were beginning to darken once again, as the first few drops of rain fell upon the eerily empty streets, making the paving slick under-hoof.

Romanadvoratrelundar, his old companion from so long ago, had survived.

He had no idea how she managed it, escaping the time-lock that had held Gallifrey, but how in the nine dimensions had she ended up here? The only way that he could think of, was that she had fallen through a rift around the same time as him, but that would mean that the rift itself would have to have existed within the time-lock.

The Doctor veered right, the TARDIS now in view, just as he heard the clatter of shod hooves hitting wet stone cobbles. The rain had once again begun to pound the city, and the wind had made Duke almost mess up his landing - his cast-silver horse shoes giving off sparks as he landed on the ground with a skid.

“Wait for me!” the voice of Duke called, slightly behind the running earth pony.

The Doctor crashed into the door of his TARDIS, stopping quickly enough to unlock the door and turn back to the armoured knight, panting and out of breath.

“I’m just getting something, I’ll be back in a moment.” he said, backing inside, slowly.

“Oh,” Duke responded, “Alright?”

“Wait, you believe that? You actually believe that I’m going back inside for my coat?”

“Why wouldn’t I? The rain’s started again.”

“Uhm...” The Doctor said as he looked around, before closing the door in Duke’s face and making a mental note not to perform that specific trick should they meet again before this particular point in the good Commander’s time-line. Dashing around the console, he began mashing buttons, trying to lock onto the energy signature. The TARDIS whirred into life, and outside, Duke cursed to himself as he realised that the Doctor had pulled the wool over his eyes.

The TARDIS tumbled through the time vortex for what felt like hours, before suddenly, the power cut off. There was an almighty crash, and the Doctor found himself flung out of the door, into a brightly lit room. As his eyes slowly adjusted, he began to recognise books on a shelf. Laying on the ground, made of particularly hard wooden floorboards, the Doctor realised that he was in some sort of library, built into the trunk of a massive tree. Something underneath him wriggled;

“MMPH! MMM MM MMMPH!” came a muffled voice from under him. Putting a hoof up, the Doctor pulled himself up from the ground, knocking several books off of the shelf, and discovering that he had landed on a small orange pegasus.

The child looked up at him, scowling, her tiny wings flared as she tried to make herself look bigger.

“Why don’t you watch where you’re going, jerk!”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I just sort of... well, fell.”

“Riiight. I’m getting Twilight. She’ll come and tell you off! You’re lucky Rainbow Dash isn’t here!”

The Doctor swallowed, awkwardly. He obviously hadn’t meant to crush the poor filly, and the idea of having to deal with more ponies whilst tracking down Romana would be wasting time - time in which she could easily kill again. The filly ran off, presumably looking for “Twilight”, whoever she was. The Doctor shuddered as he remembered reading a series of books by the same name that Amy had lent him last time she was aboard the TARDIS, books filled with phrases like ‘Porcelain Adonis’.

It wasn’t so much the fact that the characters were bland and slightly irritating, it was more that The Doctor had actually met Adonis, or rather, the gentleman who the mythical character was based upon, and he was actually more of a swarthy leathery brown, not the sparkling alabaster white described in Ms. Meyer’s “self-insert vampire fan-fiction”, as Rory had called it.

Moving on, the Doctor found himself staring at the covers of some of the books he had knocked over whilst getting off of the ground; the writing on them was little more than simple hoof-marks - obviously the translation matrix of the TARDIS was on the blink again. A hoot over-head made the Doctor glance down the aisle, to see an adult, purple unicorn trotting down towards him with a stern look on her face - just as the cloister bell of the TARDIS gave one massive toll.

Dropping the books where they were, he stepped inside again, and the centre console lit up as the TARDIS began it’s usual whirring - fading from Twilight and Scootaloo’s view.

“It just appeared, out of nowhere?” Twilight asked, looking at the little pegasus next to her.

“Yeah, and then he jumped on me! Well, more like, he was thrown out of that thing and tripped over me.”

“Do you think he wanted to borrow a book?”

“I don’t know?” Scootaloo replied, shrugging before suddenly sneezing, bracing herself against the pile of books on the floor.

Twilight levitated the top book from the pile, and blew the dust off of it. Looking inside the front cover, she saw that it hadn’t been borrowed in at least ten years, and should probably be rotated into the storage stack soon, a cavernous basement to the library proper where the old books were repaired and stored once new books filled the shelves.

“The On... Oncom...” Scootaloo said, struggling to read the title.

“Oncoming.”

“The Oncoming Stork?”

“Almost, it’s called ‘The Oncoming Storm’. I don’t think I’ve ever actually read this one before,” Twilight said, rotating the book in front of her and reading the blurb on the back, “Written by Strawberry Fields, based on a true story.”

“Isn’t she that crazy old mare from near Applebloom’s farm?” Scootaloo asked, wrinkling her nose to try and avoid sneezing from the dust.

“I think so, yeah. Weird, I never thought she’d be a horror writer...”

“Whoa! Horror? Twilight, I’ve got a book report due soon, could I borrow that?”

“Well, it’s not on the list of books that I can’t lend to minors, so I don’t see why not. I’ll get it stamped and put in a bag for you... then I think I need to transfer some of these old books downstairs for Spike to repair.”

Finally home, and clutching her saddlebag, Scootaloo trotted up to her room, and started reading the story of a monster and his cavernous blue box.