Rainbow Dash, after a while, had stopped gibbering and had decided it was best to curl up into a foetal position and pass out. She wasn't quite sure how long she'd been out, but she could hear things.
"Smfshnlrfmnsl so yer sayin' smghysfurltchri..."

Her mind decided to claw out of the prison that her own body had placed upon her for the time being as the sounds continued to echo through her body's ear sockets into her mind.
"Smrhfhflal Faust aajabfbshsbsbhsys Wootton shrmrlrhsfssjgbwbshsxuwh..."
Her mind tried to get a better listen in. It was like being in a swimming pool, underwater. Everything was echoey and muffled in her head. She wasn't sure whether that was implying she was big-headed or empty-headed, but either way she found that her body was being quite insulting.

"Bafsrsmgspmemly buy one of these goosnargh amsnrsnsygb schshennntfjcb..."
"Mfwdmsjchsnshcunwb five dollars fmsjshnxhxunw..."
"Pleasure doin' business with ya. Guess not all freaky-deaky aliens like you wanna do experiments on farmers like me like my Pa always used to say."
"Um...thanks?"

Rainbow Dash sat up. The Doctor dabbed her forehead lightly with a cold, wet cloth.
"How are you?" he asked. The girl leant over the desk.
"She okay?"
"She okay," the Doctor responded, playfully, as Dash got up. Then she stood straight up.

"You!" she pointed to the girl. "What's going on here?"
"Calm it, Dash, she explained everythin' to me," Applejack interrupted, the still agitated Dash shaking.
"We'd best be getting back to the TARDIS," the Doctor suggested. Dash looked over to Derpy. She nodded.

"So you're saying that, on this planet, Equestria is like some kind of...book, or something? About ponies? And that there are stallions that like to watch this show?"
"Well, the girl was very nice," Applejack replied, in her southern drawl. "She said that here they have this thing called a 'teller-fisher', or somethin' like that, that can send pictures over miles and miles – further and faster than you can travel in a day."

"Whoa," Dash said, rubbing her head. She'd bashed it on the way down. It hurt.
"Basically, for some reason, on this planet, and on this tellerfisher thing, there's this...show, like a play, kinda, that has ponies, like us, as the characters, and, well, it's actually made for little fillies, but, fer some reason, stallions like to watch it as well."

"A show for little fillies, and stallions watch it?" Dash replied, holding back laughter. "This planet sure is weird."
"Not planet," the Doctor cut in, finally, looking at the TARDIS screen. He had a grave look on his face. "No, not planet. I'm not even sure if this planet exists. To us, anyway. Maybe. I don't know."

"What are you talking about, Doctor?" Derpy asked, eating a blueberry muffin she had chanced upon at a stand in the big hall. If only it were chocolate chip, although blueberry was just fine. Though the blueberries tasted different here. Sweeter...no, sourer. Both?
"It's not that we're not on the right planet," the Doctor said, looking at some readings that only made sense to him, "We're not even in the right Universe."

"What?" asked Derpy. "But that's crazy! There's only one Universe! Everypony knows that!"
"Don't they teach you anything in schools these days?" the Doctor asked, indignantly. "Just minor differences, tiny ones, can have catastrophic effect. Maybe an electron hits something it isn't supposed to, maybe a blade of grass gets cut just a nanosecond early, maybe a butterfly dies at the wrong time...chaos theory," the Doctor said, the word 'chaos' sending shivers down the spines of the other three. "But in any case, time is not linear. It's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey...stuff, you see? They call it the Whole Sort of General Mish-Mash in some parts. And in any case, we're in the wrong sliver of it."

"Is that why we're..." Dash looked at her hands. "...like this?"
"Yes. Must be some kind of temporal bleed-over. Perhaps when you were broadcast through the TARDIS it saw fit to apply its own chameleon circuit to your genetic code..."
"So you're saying this thing turned me into this weird-looking...thing, because a talking pony is just too weird for these people?"

"Yes," the Doctor said, flatly. "But none of this explains why the TARDIS hasn't gone dead. In these situations the TARDIS is supposed to die. It can't function in other universes, very minute changes in the physical laws render it useless."
The Doctor bit his thumb for a moment.

"Unless..."
He stopped for a moment. "...unless, it's still got some sort of connection with Pinkie Pie..."
He did a few calculations in his head. He got a manic smile. "Of course," he muttered, pressing buttons and pulling levers. "I hope to the stars that this works..."

"Doctor, are you sure this is a good idea?" Derpy asked.
"No," the Doctor said, succinctly. "But we'll find out if it is when we get there."
Before anyone could stop him, the Doctor pulled the TARDIS dematerialisation lever, and the column moved up and down with an unholy grinding noise.

People watched with amazement as the TARDIS disappeared. Thankfully, a few minutes later the establishment apologised for the lousy special effect of the disappearing TARDIS and redirected people to see some producers give interviews. The incident was never spoken of again, which really says a lot about human nature, don't you think?

The concert within the caves of Polaris V had got a lot crazier. For starters, about halfway through, DJ Pon-3 had suddenly backed down from the stage for no good reason and been replaced by a band nobody had ever heard of, then she'd come back on stage and played half a song before backing down again, and then the stage had exploded into flames, been put out, and rebuilt, by which time another band had come on for no good reason, before fighting the previous band in perhaps the most musically-complex version of "Dueling Banjos" the Galaxy would ever know.

Not that Rarity particularly cared. She'd happened upon a table of refreshments and had spent a long time stuffing her face with food. She'd tried lifting things telekinetically with her horn, and found she couldn't, deciding it was probably just malnourishment that was causing her magic to fail.

She didn't even care that she was getting her hooves dirty. She was starved. She wasn't even certain whether or not what she was eating was digestible by her stomach, but decided to try it anyway. She continued eating and eating. Curiously enough, she found that she couldn't get full off of this food. It seemed to turn her stomach into a bottomless pit.

DJ Pon-3 came up one final time.
"Oh boy, this is the big one!" Pinkie Pie shouted, holding her tape recorder out even higher. Spike groaned and put his fingers in his flap-like ears. This was going to sting, but feel so good at the same time.

The song started out quite mellowly, with charming lyrics about romantic topics such as orphanages burning down and the inevitability of death, with a light, metronome-like beat. Spike even found himself nodding his head to it. It wasn't bad. But then the beat started to speed up. Oh boy, he thought, here it comes.

Spike flinched. Nothing came. He sighed in relief for a moment.
But no, the bass had other plans and quickly saw to pasting his body to the wall. Some hard, sharp gems dug into his back. He had never been more thankful for inch-thick skin in all his life. The groaning, booming bass rose and dived over and over, and within the space of about twenty seconds everyone had collapsed in a ball of ecstasy.

This was where things got a bit weird. You see, Spike couldn't figure out whether his fragile reptilian brain had gone, "You know what, forget you, forget all this," and spammed every other part of his brain with a massive dose of DMT, or DJ Pon-3 really had just turned into a rubber duck and exploded into a pile of confetti while the entire audience turned into rainbow-coloured serpents that quickly dissolved into what looked like an array of marching hammers and prisms showing the spectra. Yes, his brain was definitely on DMT overload. Joy.

He rubbed his eyes in confusion and looked at his claws. Yes, as he suspected, they had both turned into sparrows. No, wait, they were parrots, now.
"Who's a pretty boy, then?" his right claw squawked. "Pretty Polly, pretty Polly."
"Who names a boy parrot Polly?" Spike asked the parrot.

"I dunno," the parrot responded, proceeding to expire alarmingly quickly. Well that was interesting, Spike thought. He turned to his left claw. "So, er, your friend's just died."
"No he hasn't," his left claw said. "He's just pining for the fjords."
Spike would have put his face in his palm, but one of them was rapidly decomposing and the other threatened to peck his eyes out if he did.

He wondered how silly he must look to the others. He glanced over to Rarity, who had for some reason become a stopwatch from which ants were currently bursting and crawling up the walls.
"You okay, Rarity?" he asked.
".-.-.- -.-- .-. .-. --- ... / .-.-.- - .----. -. ... .. / - .. / .-.. .-.. . .-- / .-.-.- . --. .- ... ... . -- / - . .-. -.-. . ... / .- / ... .- .-- / ... .. .... - / - .... --. ..- --- .... - / ..- --- -.-- / - . -... / .-.. .-.. .----. .." she replied.
"Good to know," Spike said, ironically.

Spike then had an unpleasant sensation, like he was fading away from the caves. The caves seemed to disappear before him and be replaced by a massive room in their place. He wondered if this was what the afterlife looked like. He blearily looked around him, vaguely making out a few familiar shapes, finding himself dribbling on his belly catatonically. One of the shapes turned to look at him.
"What in the hay?" it said.

Fluttershy had been living with the Ruler of the Universe for a couple of weeks now, and she was really getting used to it. He was a nice man. He spent most of his time pondering the meanings of things and, having found somebody who would actually sit down and listen to his nonsensical ramblings, seemed quite cheerful.

Pinkie Pie, on the other hand, was not. She'd got bored of complaining about how bad life was and complaining about complaining about how bad life was, and had resorted to complaining about everything else she could possibly find to complain about. She'd engaged in quite a spectacularly well-spoken, politically-charged rant about employing an old man to rule the entire Universe that went on for two hours a few days ago, and all the while Fluttershy and the Ruler of the Universe had listened politely and carefully, decided it was best she got some sleep, and when she refused, they strapped her back down to the bed again, where she was currently staring at the ceiling, mumbling miserable little songs to herself. Well, at least she hadn't lost her creative panache.

But Fluttershy was growing bored, and ever more anxious. It had occurred to her in recent days that, even though the Ruler of the Universe was a lovely man, Pinkie Pie no longer had her saddlebag with her. There was no way she could possibly get out of here. She was slowly beginning to come to terms with the fact that she was inevitably going to die out here.

As she sat and thought about this, the Ruler of the Universe, who had been having a staring contest with a rolling-pin up until that point, suddenly piped up.
"You know," he said, with a slight chuckle in his voice. "They'd say it's very odd that you're here, Ms. Fluttershy."

Fluttershy turned. "Why would that be?" she asked.
"Well, you see, every time they come 'round and give me these things to look at, they're always going on about 'improbability fields' and such. From that I can gather that you shouldn't be here. I hear the only people who can be here have this device that can take them here. You don't have one of those, do you?"

Fluttershy shook her head.
"Do you exist?" the man asked.
Fluttershy nodded her head.
"But can I be sure of that?" he said in an anxious tone. Fluttershy put a hoof to her mouth. That was a very good question. She was beginning to wonder if she was a figment of his imagination as well.

"I...don't know..." she responded.
The two sat in silence for a long time.
Eventually, the man spoke again.
"How's your friend?" he asked. "You have a friend, right? I didn't imagine her?"

Fluttershy stood up and left the room. She decided to check on Pinkie Pie. Of course, this being a shack, there were only about two rooms, divided by bits of cardboard and medium-density fibreboard. Still, it didn't hurt to check. She peeked into the room, gently. The chronically-depressed Pinkie Pie lay in bed. To Fluttershy's surprise, it looked as though she was sleeping.

But sure enough, Pinkie Pie sat up bolt-upright in a way that equine creatures should not be able too as soon as Fluttershy took another step.
"What do you want?" she said.
"Um, I just wanted to see how you were doing."
"Terrible," Pinkie Pie snorted. "I wish you'd left me in that ditch to get trench-hoof."

Fluttershy felt saddened by this. "But surely there's something you have to live for?"
"No. My home's gone, the majority of my friends are probably dead, I'm living in a godless, uncaring universe, and my back legs hurt."
"Well, ponies aren't supposed to sit up like that."

"Maybe not, but I don't really care, anyway, because death's inevitable and every minute brings me closer to it."
Fluttershy felt the best thing to do was leave her alone. She spent a few moments tying the depressed pan-dimensional pony back down, then nodded pleasantly and left her alone.

Fluttershy sat back down next to the Ruler of the Universe. She mumbled, "I miss my friends," and then fell into a dreamless sleep.

"What in the hay?" Applejack cried. She said this for two reasons. One of the reasons was that she was rather surprised to find her orange fur back as it was and her four legs back on the ground again, but also because a rather delirious-looking Spike the Dragon had suddenly appeared out of nowhere, along with a Rarity and a Pinkie Pie who looked to be in quite the same condition.

Rarity looked to be halfway between consciousness and unconsciousness, and her head kept lolling about. She was in no way to talk to anyone. Derpy put a hoof to her back in an effort to try and help her out.
"Leave her," the Doctor said. "There's always one. She'll be back to normal soon."

Rainbow Dash was quite relieved to find her wings back as they were. "I missed you," she said to the wings on her back, which seemed to respond by springing out momentarily before folding back in.
"Spike? Spike, can ya hear me?" Applejack asked, shaking the small purple dragon lightly.

"Bluhhhh," Spike responded, burping out a little bit of green flame. "Five more minutes, mommy."
"Well, look who the Sub-Etha dragged in," the Doctor said, cheerfully, not least because he was a pony again. He glanced back at his hourglass-shaped cutie mark. He gagged a bit. "I never can get used to the feel of new teeth."

Pinkie Pie looked around, "Oh, hi, guys, glad you're not dead!" she said to Applejack and Rainbow Dash, cheerfully.
"Dead? Why would we be dead, sugarcube?" Applejack asked.
"Well – " Pinkie began, just as Spike broke out of his delirium and ran over.
"Pinkie, don't!" he cried.

"What's wrong, Spike?" Rainbow Dash asked. Spike shifted on to his toes, and then back on to his heels a few times, fiddling with his claws.
"Uh...uh..." he said.
"Do you think he's a little time-sick?" Derpy asked the Doctor, who, naturally, noticed something was wrong.

"Um..." he said. "...Spike, is it? The dragon?"
"Yes," Spike managed to force out.
"Something's happened, hasn't it?"
"Yes," he pushed out, slowly.

"Well what is it?" Rainbow Dash asked, impatiently.
"Come on, sugarcube, what is it?" Applejack lilted. "You can tell us anything."
"Um, well, I don't know how to put this, but – "
The sound of sobbing suddenly emanated from where Rarity was sitting.

"Rarity?" Rainbow Dash asked. "Rarity? You there? What's wrong?"
Rarity was trying to speak over crying hiccups. She pointed lazily to Pinkie Pie, who, still grinning wildly, was now paying no attention to the situation at hand, instead finding compartments to leap into and hang from.

"Pinkie Pie?" Applejack asked. "What's she done?"
Pinkie Pie turned at the sound of her name. "Whee!" she shouted, with an unsettling amount of happiness in her voice.
"Uh, Pinkie Pie, you feelin' okay?"

"Sure am, AJ! How are you?"
"You seem different, hun."
"Nope, same as always!"
Dash cut in. "But, Pinkie, you seemed so serious back in Equestria, when the clock went off."
"Well yeah, Dashie, the world was ending."

The drop. Rarity sobbed slightly louder. Spike backed up, and the Doctor, Derpy, Applejack and Rainbow Dash's mouths fell agape.
"What..." the Doctor said. "What do you mean by...ending?"
"As in, the world ended! It just blew up! Everything! Like, boom!"

Applejack and Rainbow Dash turned to each other.
"You mean..." Applejack said. "The whole world just, exploded? Like that? And everypony..." She struggled over the word. "...died?"
"That's what I'm saying, AJ!"

It took all of Applejack's strength to stop Rainbow Dash hitting Pinkie.
"There's something very wrong here," the Doctor pointed out, obviously.. Derpy stood in a state of shock. "Doctor," she said. "Doctor, how can...how can an entire planet..."
"Are you telling the truth, Pinkie?" the Doctor asked, calmly.

"Yup!"
"Yes, you're telling the truth about that, but...here's my question, Pinkie Pie...are you really Pinkie Pie?"
"Uh, yeah, I think so."

"Doctor, this is no time for word games, our homes...our families..." Applejack stifled her grief, "...they're gone!"
"I'm not playing word games," The Doctor said. "You're not from Equestria, are you, Pinkie Pie?"
"No!" she said. "I'm made of sub-sandwich wavy-mat stuff."
"Well, yeah, we gathered that, sorta," Rainbow Dash said, with surprising confidence, considering she knew that her home was now destroyed.

"Ah, yes," the Doctor said. "I know that. Sub-particulate wave-matter, is that correct?"
"Um, yeah," Pinkie Pie responded.
"And, tell me, Pinkie Pie, isn't a Sub-Etha transmitter used to transmit matter?"
"Yeppity-do!"

"Then, Pinkie Pie, I have reason to believe that you aren't all yourself...literally."
"No no, no, silly, I'm Pinkie Pie!"
"Yes, you are," the Doctor said. "But where's your other half, Pinkie Pie?"
"Other...half?" the smile wavered momentarily.

"Yes. The half that comes out when everything goes wrong, when things are bad, when life gets too rough. Where's she? What's her name, Pinkie? What's her name?"
"Doctor, stop," Derpy urged, but it was no use.
"P...Pinkamina," the Pinkie Pie before them stammered. "I...can't find her...and I'm just so happy about that!"
"Of course you are," the Doctor said.

"What the heck's goin' on, Doc?" Applejack interrupted.
"Well, you see, life formed from sub-particulate wave matter can take on any physical properties it wishes, to the point of distorting reality itself, because, strictly speaking of course, it doesn't exist. But sub-particulate wave matter-based life ignores the rules associated with DNA, with aging, with death. If she so wished, Pinkie Pie could live forever."

Pinkie Pie nodded cheerfully, hanging from the coral-like rafters of the TARDIS.
"But you see, Pinkie Pie – or the thing that was to become Pinkie Pie – based its form on Equestrian life. But it was also completely alien to it. Don't you see? She's a facsimile, and by doing that, she's totally misinterpreted how Equestrian psychology works."

"Cut the fancy talk," Rainbow Dash said. "What's really going on here?"
"Well, unlike most ponies, who have one intricate and complex personality which develops naturally over time, Pinkie Pie has two simpler and less intricate personalities which she developed at the moment she created herself."

"So you're saying..." Spike said.
"Yes, we've only got one half of the Pinkie Pie you know. The cheerful, playful, happy-go-lucky half. The half of her that you see every day, taken to its furthest logical extreme. She literally does not understand seriousness, or sadness, or anger, at all."

"Well, we gotta find her other half, then!" Applejack said.
"What if her other half is a psycho killer?" Spike asked, once again remembering a book he read that Twilight told him not to. Oh, Twilight...

"Spike!" scolded Applejack. "Don't talk like that. We gotta find this...Pinkamina, who knows where she is, otherwise we'll only have five and a half Elements of Harmony!"
Which is when it hit everyone.
There was a long pause.

"Where's Fluttershy?" Rarity asked, finally.
"Where's Twilight?" Spike followed.
The Doctor saw this as a call to action. He pushed buttons on the TARDIS controls. He had to forget this whole Equestria situation for the moment. He hoped the others would too. If what Pinkie Pie was saying was true, if Equestria, his favourite planet in the whole Galaxy, truly was dead, then he had to save those who were left.

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