After a while, Spider-Colt’s map became useless.

There was simply a place on it that he hadn’t drawn, with the words Couldn’t confront the Mayor, Fearless Leader’s orders, good luck guys! scrawled on it. “I guess this must be the place then,” the Doctor said as I put the map back into my saddlebags.

As we ventured further, we began hearing sounds. Soft, humming sounds emanating from nearby machinery, hisses from nearby pipes, and the sound of magic pulsating through wires began to whisper to us. On the ceiling further down were lamps, finally casting some light in this silent catacomb.

But instead of any comfort, the light only added to the eeriness. It was a sickly, “bad moon rising” kind of yellow, and the metal floors beneath it were rusty. On the walls were switchboxes and pipes, most colored white while only a few were painted red. I’m not sure why this detail stuck out to me, but for some reason this coloring scheme was very… unnerving.

If this place were a body, we were nearing its heart.

Suddenly, a metal screech tore through the air. I looked to where the noise had originated to find a loudspeaker. As the static cleared, we were greeted by none other than the Mayor.

“So! Looks like y’all have busted inna my fortress-a-solid-shoes. I been et-speck-ting y’all fer centuries, y’know. Been rulin’ this place fer awhile now. Knew y’all would try ta show up an’ ruin ever-tang.”

I steeled myself. “This is your only chance, Chris. Give up! You’re not going to win this fight!”

A second or so of silence.

“When I got here at first,” he said, apparently ignoring me completely, “I thought y’all was just a cartoon. I thought I was gonna be happy here. Den all dat stuff happened, an—an y’all ruined me. Mocked me, made funna me.”

The Doctor snorted. “So some smart-aleck ponies played some mean-spirited pranks on you. That’s just life, Chris. That’s no reason to do this kind of thing to innocent ponies!”

The Mayor’s voice was hard to determine, since it was warbled even further by the static from the speakers, but it was delivered in a calm monotone. “I wasn’t finished! They put me through hell and messed up my internal clock” (I have not a clue what he meant by this) “and my emotional state—and even what dat damn Celestia did ta me. So I made a world where I could finally live in peace. Hmph.”

“At the expense of everypony else!” I shouted. At this point, the Doctor and I were moving down this hall, as there were several speaker-phones attached to the walls and ceilings, all clamoring simultaneously for our attention. “What about my friends? Why’d you have to kill them?!”

There was a very long silence.

I want to say that at this point, I began to finally piece together the mind of this stranger.

The reason for the Mayor’s behavior? He literally had no distinction between reality and fantasy or right and wrong. I suppose the fact that he had been selected by fate to be sucked into an unfamiliar world, apparently composed of something he previously thought was fiction, had further destroyed his perception of reality.

Furthermore, he had suddenly found himself possessing the ability to travel through time and space, an ability which in itself is unbelievable, even through most modern methods of magic.  He had been granted a godlike power while living in a totally alien world, and his mind had further begun to deteriorate as a result. His dementia had accumulated to the point in which his values had been placed in a self-centered, black-and-white worldview. In his eyes, anyone who obstructed his goals in any way was evil—no ifs, ands, or buts—and he had the power to destroy them now.

He was a spoiled child given the powers of a god.

“Space ’n time are mine now,” he drawled, his squeaky voice adopting a chilling tone. “I kin’ do anything I want. I kin’ go back in time, an’ start over. Or I could go a thousand years inta da future and find yer great-great-great grandkids. Maybe even go to anudder dimension. You can’t win, guys. Y’all damn, mocking bastards what shattered mah heart so long ago now… Y’all are gettin’ what’s, what’s comin’ to ya. I’m gonna beat you cuz I got God and Jesus on my side.”

I breathed quietly, a long and silent rasp leaving my lungs as slowly as it entered. This was it. This time-traveling child-god, the god I and the Doctor had created, was preparing for the final battle. The showdown had finally begun: a slow tango between a despot and his enemies, heavy in its finality, was about to commence.

So much was at stake, and so much more could be easily lost. This was not a battle the Doctor and I could afford to lose. For the world his actions had ruined, for every pony he made to suffer, for every life he carelessly destroyed, for the most selfish things he’d ever done…

… For my friends…

… For my brother…

… For you…

“This ends TONIGHT, Chris!”  

A gleeful cackle erupted over the speakers, painting the air around us in a flavor of fear and wickedness. “I’ll say it does!” countered the Child-God Elect, “Enjoy my fun little hallway!”

Several compartments in the walls opened up. There were sawblades moving about the floor and wall, waves of fire being blown down from the ceiling, and for some reason the floor opened up to reveal pits full of spikes.

I groaned at this mind-numbing display of gratuitous dimestore villainy. This was like in one of Rainbow Dash’s favorite action movies (the one about the undercover agent, “Smooth Stealth 007” or something), except even sillier. The Doctor shared my smirk.

I looked at him and concentrated. In a flash of magenta light, we were at the end of the hallway, past every danger in the hall. Suddenly, the Mayor’s laughter stopped. Our smirks grew into wide grins as we heard him make a sound like a motor boat.

“Dat’s—Dat’s CHEATING!!!” he yelled.

“You forgot I’m a unicorn,” I retorted. “I can teleport.”

Suddenly the floor below us gave way and we fell into a pool. Before I could think or scream, I plunged into a murky depth that was thick and stagnant. I fought my way back up for air, that cold air rank with the horrific stench from the ugly water, and saw the Doctor emerge next to me. The Mayor was laughing again. “Let’s see ya teleport out of a SHARK!” he cackled.

My eyes widened in fear as I looked around for anything I could teleport to, only to feel the Doctor poke my shoulder. I looked to him, his coltish face accented by an amusing facial expression. He pointed to several black lumps floating about in the pool…

“You DO know you’re supposed to FEED these things, right?” the Doctor called. “AND clean the tank?”

I put my forelegs around the Doctor and teleported back up to the hallway. I shook myself of the moribund water as the Mayor sputtered some more.  “But… but they were alive last Tuesday…” he whined.

The Doctor and I shared a laugh as we entered the next hallway. It was much better lit than the previous hallway, but still with that disgusting yellowish light. At first I thought some large animal had urinated all over the hall. (The smell of the place did nothing to dissuade this assumption.) It was also much longer than the previous hall.

The speakers all squealed again. “So you got past my death traps and killed my sharks.”

“We didn’t kill your sharks, you just neglected them,” I corrected.

“Whatever! I’m workin’ on it! I’M WORKIN ON IT!” A few seconds of silence passed. “Just lemme find dat stupid switch…”

“I think he left his mic on,” the Doctor chuckled. I couldn’t help but grin as we heard the Mayor struggling with something, mewl for a bit, then sigh. We continued our journey through the hallway. This one was, for some reason, a very long hallway; empty too. The whole place seemed so callously vacant, as if left to rot. The only visible things were gears lining some of the wall.

“Oh, DERE it is!”

Suddenly, a loud, metallic clench ripped the air. The sound of gears spinning madly filled my ears. I looked up to see the ceiling descend, spikes suddenly protruding through empty slots.

I focused my internal magic, focusing on teleporting myself and the Doctor to the other end of the hallway. My horn let out a few sparks, and after a pop and a crackle, I looked at my horn, embarrassed by my failure. My magic was being blocked or disrupted somehow.

“I-It isn’t working!” I gasped. “My magic is shot!”

I began to panic as the Doctor began to walk forward. I could still hear the rumble of the descending ceiling. The mayor cackled over the loudspeakers. “Looks like ya can’t just magic yerself outta THIS one! Now, DIIIIEEEEEE YEEEEEEEEWWWWWW!!!”

I bolted for the exit at the end of this (by the way, very long) hallway. I looked behind myself to see the Doctor merely walking forward as if he was going for a Sunday stroll. In fact, he stopped to pick up a bit he found on the ground. “What are you doing?!” I shouted. “Hurry up or we’ll get CRUSHED!”

“Twilight,” he said nonchalantly, “what’s the first thing we keep noticing about CWCville and its machinations and architecture?”

“Now’s not the time for lectures, Doctor!”

The Doctor smirked. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out the rubber ducky from before, and looked to the wall, watching the wobbling gears that were struggling to bring down the ceiling. He put the ducky between two relatively important gears (Since they were colored red like some of the objects in the previous hallways). They stuck almost immediately, sputtering and hissing.

“They aren’t designed very well,” he finished.

I had stopped running at this point, as the ceiling’s mechanisms were jammed and the ceiling itself stopped. However, there was the smell of smoke as the mechanism struggled and failed to lower the ceiling any further. By the time the Doctor and I exited the hallway, the Mayor had already tried “casting a curse” on us and hoped the ghost of his dog would haunt us. No joke.

So there we were, finding ourselves in a dark room. The whole place had a very thick and malodorous air to it—breathing became nearly a chore here. The Doctor choked a bit as we entered, and I began to sweat from the sweltering, stuffy temperature.

Before us was a flight of steps that led up to a command center full of screens and buttons and levers. In one corner was a small apartment that was lined with toys and other items you’d find in a child’s playroom. From the ceiling hung multiple cords, travelling almost weblike across the room. This was the operation room the Mayor was using to trigger the failed traps before. Only one thing was missing: the Mayor himself.

“Where do you think he went?” I asked. I looked to the Doctor to see him looking up, his eyes wide.

“I’m afraid I can’t answer that right now,” he said. “I am terrified beyond rational thought.”

I followed his gaze and gasped in horror.

Above us, the Mayor hung like a fat, box-shaped spider from his ceiling. The cords connecting to him were more of a mass of tentacles. It’s hard to describe what he had become, but the closest I could manage was that he had become some kind of mixture between a pony, whatever he had been before, and a machine. His body, in fact, seemed familiar to me… and then it clicked.

“Holy Mother of Unicorns,” I gasped, my eyes wide. “He’s melded with the TARDIS.”

The TARDIS door opened up and out popped the Mayor’s head, big enough to fill the front of the whole thing. It was a ghastly shade of purple—like a bruised corpse—and his eyes, one greener than the other, were bloated and puffy. He smiled. Right at that moment, I wished Dr. Chuckles were there, as his smile was actually much less scary.

“Never was mah intention,” he said, his voice as squealy and garbled as ever. “I was happy nuff just usin’ da dang ding ta hop from time ta time. But when dat DANG, DIRTY TROLL Celestia decided ta get me back fer killin’ Nightmare Moon, she—she cast a spell on me ta stick me to dis ding.”

He moved—I cannot call it walking, or slithering, or crawling; he merely moved unlike any living thing I had ever seen—from the ceiling to the floor. His bloated purple face contorted into his childish anger. “I don’t see what da big deal was. Nightmare Moon was a threat ta us both, annit was HER fault fer losing da Elements ta begin with.”

I wanted to form words, and argue. Nightmare Moon was a perversion of your sister. You had tried to use the Elements of Harmony you and your sister wielded, and failed, forced to send her to the moon for a thousand years… But instead, he…

The words never came out. I was too terrified to do much. The icy fear I felt that moment was something I could taste and smell and hear. It was like cold water in my mouth and eyes, and ashen snow covering my back. I took a step backward as he advanced on us.

“Yeah, just annutter ting your ‘innocent ponies’ did ta me!” he snarled. “NOOOO, it wasn’t enough ta play a prank on me, like dat one time she got me ta hump the TARDIS—”

“YOU!” shouted the Doctor, so suddenly it made both the Mayor and I jump. “YOU DID WHAT TO MY TARDIS?!”

“Sh-She made me do it. Anyway, so I took over an so on. Of course, dere’ve been several troll efforts ta shame me again an again, but I managed to get em all. So it ends here.”

Suddenly, down from the ceiling came several… Mayors. The ones based on his original appearance as a pony. Some were Pegasi, some were unicorns, some were earth ponies, and some were alicorns. (I even managed to spot the one from the presentation earlier.) Some were skinny, some were fat, some were muscular. Some wore the hobo-harlequin fashion line, others were sporting the Tomgirl look.  I suppose he simply couldn’t remember what exactly he looked like since nearly all of them seemed a tad off in their design either way.

The Doctor gulped. “Well, this was very unexpected,” he said.

“And now you will know HOW salty I am!” he cackled. His non-sequitor only muddled my emotions further: from fear to confusion to panic. “Chan-Bots, attack!!!”

They all moved in on us at once, pulling my mane and tail, dogpiling the Doctor, punching my face, biting my legs… My fear rose to greater levels as I tried to focus my failing magic, but could not. I closed my eyes and prayed to you, that at least I might meet my parents and friends very soon.

“Doctor!” I cried.

“Kinda busy at the moment, Twilight,” he said between throwing punches and taking them.

“In case I don’t make it out of here,” I said quickly as I tried bucking off some of the Chan-Bots, “I wanna say I’m glad I met you!”

“Not the kind of thing to say to a guy when you’re both about to be torn apart by evil clones answering to a giant Spider-Octopus-Chris-TARDIS, but thanks anyway! And I’m glad I got to know you too!”

After taking a few strong blows to the face, I finally focused some of my magic on projecting a small forcefield. The surprised look on the Chan-Bots intensified as I suddenly expanded the forcefield, throwing off my attackers and sending them into the nearby walls. The forcefield burst afterward. I collapsed, thoroughly exhausted.

My magic spent, my energy gone, I laid down my head and closed my eyes. The world around me began to spin as I saw the Chan-Bots get back up and run at me again. There were just too many of them, and at a time in which my magic had become weakest. “I’m sorry, Doctor,” I mumbled. “I’m sorry.”

Suddenly, like a single bolt of light striking through the bleak darkness, there came a voice. It was sqealy, sure. And it had that same Southern twang. But it was the morning sun come to vanquish the horrible night, nonetheless.

“Chan-Bots, I come being da bearer of greatly bad news.”

Suddenly, they all stopped to look up, as did I (drained as I was). There, near the door, was a tall, lank unicorn stallion. His dark brown mane was curly and stuck out at weird angles, while his pelt was a fine white chocolate hue. His general shape and facial features were quite handsome, and his bespectacled eyes were the color of brown honey. He wore a shirt that was as stripey as the shirts the Mayor wore back when he was still a pony, except it was brown-on-light-brown instead of the clownish red-white-blue.

He pointed to the Mayor and said, “Y’all just got trolled by dat no-good impostor, Ian Brandon Anderson.” Next Chapter: 22. Diabolus ex-Machina? Never Heard of It! Estimated time remaining: 1 Hour, 39 Minutes