Manehattan, 400 years after the return of Princess Luna
Two ponies made their way to the Manehattan Police Department, grim looks on their faces.
"I don't get it. Why are we investigating this?" Derpy asked, a hint of uncertainty evident in her voice. "Isn't this something for the police to handle?"
"Now now, Derpy, if I let the police handle everything that looked less than important, Equestria would still be under the control of the Silence!" the Doctor exclaimed.
"The Silence? What's that?"
"...I can't quite seem to remember. Something bad, I'm sure."
The duo continued to walk, and soon the large shape of the police headquarters came into view. The building was mostly made of brick, with large windows dominating the front side. A sign in front of the building read 'Manehattan Police Headquarters- Each citizen's safety is our top priority!'
The pair made their way through the glass double doors. The inside of the building wasn't much nicer than the outside. Near the back of the large reception area was a long desk staffed by many tired looking ponies. The building was packed full of ponies, many of them wearing reporter hats and many more with sad looks on their faces.
The Doctor pushed his way through the crowd to get to the front desk, Derpy hovering above them with ease. When he made it to the desk, he waved a hoof to get on of the receptionist's attention. "Hello, I'm the Doctor! The princess sent me to help out around here, so if you could point me in the direction of whoever's in charge he, that'd be great," the brown colt said.
The receptionist looked at the Doctor and Derpy skeptically. "Can I see a badge, sir?" he finally asked after a few moments of silence. The Doctor merely nodded and pulled out that strange black case again, showing it to the receptionist, who nodded.
"You're going to want to speak to Sergeant Case. Take the stairs to your left," the receptionist said, pointing to the stairs in question.
The Doctor and Derpy made their way there. "What's that piece of paper you keep showing everypony?" Derpy asked.
"Oh, this?" the Doctor said, showing her the black case again. "Psychic paper. Shows them what I want them to see," he explained. "You've got to be careful with it, though. Sometimes it'll show things you don't really want to be shown. I'm not allowed on the planet of New Triton anymore," he admitted, sheepish.
They made their way up the tall staircase to the less-crowded level of the police station, where ponies in police hats and wearing badges on their saddlebags walked to and fro, a jumble of activity.
“Now, where would we find Sergeant Case?” the Doctor mused to himself, rubbing his chin. “A sergeant is a fairly high-ranking official... now where do we find high-ranking ponies? Aha!” He grabbed a pony as they were passing by, causing them to drop the stack of folders they were holding. The pony glared.
"Oh, terribly sorry about that!" the Doctor exclaimed, hastily picking up the folders and giving them back to their owner. "See, I was just looking for Sergeant Case. You wouldn't happen to know where the throne room is, do you?" Derpy giggled beside him.
The mare shot him a skeptical look. "Are you allowed to be up here?" she asked, advancing on him a bit. The doctor nodded enthusiastically.
"Oh yes, of course I am, see!" he responded, pulling out the psychic paper once again. "Official inspector for the princesses," he said. "I was sent here to speak with Sergeant Case about the recent disappearances, so if you could just point me in the direction of his throne..."
The mare sighed and facehoofed, clearly frustrated. "Sir, that's a coupon to Cheesy Crust's pizzeria down the street, not a royal inspector's badge." On cue, the Doctor's stomach grumbled.
"We never did get lunch..." Derpy muttered. The Doctor stepped back from the policemare with a laugh.
"Heh heh heh... we'll show ourselves out, then. Come along, Derpy!"
"That didn't work out very well," Derpy forlornly observed. "I told you we should have stopped for lunch on the way here."
"Evil never stops for lunch!" the Doctor scoffed, "and neither do I!"
"...Then what do we do when we get hungry?" Derpy asked as the Doctor started to observe the building.
"So there are two windows on the ground floor... but those will be locked. So we should enter through the top-floor windows!"
"Doctor?"
"No, no... those will be locked too. Damned planet has flying ponies, how silly is that? The sewers!"
"Doctor!"
"We'll swim through the sewers and emerge from the toilets! That's how we'll get in! Wait, is this before or after the Manehattan sewer incident? I don't fancy being bitten by another crocodile..."
"Doctor!" the Doctor felt himself getting pushed in the flank.
"Yes, Derpy?"
"I saw what was on one of those files the nice mare inside dropped. Somepony named Arclight Charge filed a complaint. Maybe it's related?"
The Doctor looked down, saddened. "Well, I was looking forward to breaking and entering, but I suppose it's as good a lead as any." He patted her on the back with a smile. "Good work, Derpy."
Back in the control room of the TARDIS, the pony and the time lord were looking over the records of one Arclight Charge, a small, yellow earth pony mare with a brilliant blue shock of a mane.
"Well, it says here she's twenty years old, a budding electrician, and if her criminal record's anything to go by, she went through a phase in her teenage years where she wasn't too fond of paying for things. She seems like your average mare to me, Derpy."
Derpy flew up to the console, bumping into the Doctor on her way there and knocking him away. She looked at the screen for a few moments and scrunched up her face. "If this machine gets this stuff from the future, why can't we just look at what happened to her after today? Then we'd know if we need to find her or not."
The Doctor shook his head. "Sorry, Derpy, it's not that easy. Information from the future can be misleading. Think about it- if we read what happens to her next and it says everything was fine, we wouldn't go to the trouble of helping her, right?"
Derpy hesitated, then nodded. "Right. Because she wouldn't be in trouble, and wouldn't need our help."
"But what if it only says everything was fine because we stepped in and helped make everything fine?"
Derpy scratched the back of her head. "So... if we didn't check on her, and she was in trouble, it would say something bad happened?"
"Precisely!"
"But... if we didn't check on her, and something bad happened, it would say something bad happened, so... if it said something bad happened, wouldn't we have checked on her and helped her?"
"Yep! Brave heroes, the two of us. We deserve a medal."
"...But if we helped her it would say nothing bad happened... and we... wouldn't help her?" The Doctor nodded.
Derpy sat down and rubbed her head. "This is confusing..."
The Doctor sat beside her and rubbed her back. "Welcome to time travel. Now, let's go avoid a paradox and check up on that filly, shall we?"
Meanwhile, in a small, two-story home in a suburban neighbourhood on the edge of Manehattan, a young mare sat, sobbing into her phone. Her face was streaked with tears, and a half-empty box of tissues lay beside her on the table that sat beside her white couch. The crumpled up remains of tissues were strewn all around her.
"I just... I just don't know where he could be!" she cried into her phone. "I called the police, and they said they'd l-look into it, but they said on the news that other ponies are-g-gone too, and they have no leads!" Arclight pulled another tissue out of the box and blew into it. "I just d-d-don't know what to do! And what will I tell mom when she gets back?"
The voice on the other line said something reassuring, hoping to soothe Arclight's nerves, but to no avail.
Vworp...
Vworp...
Vworp...
"We don't have the money to hire a private investigator, Ruby, and nopony would believe what I saw anyway. What if he's never found? What if- Ruby? Are you there?"
Arclight cut off mid-sentence as the phone line went dead. "What the..." she muttered, putting the phone down. She heard a door open and jumped up, running towards the sound.
"Sparky, is that you?! Sparky?!"
She kicked her front door open, and was greeted with the sight of a large blue box occupying the space a telephone pole had been previously. What was left of the pole was lying across her front lawn, having been pushed out of the ground. Two ponies were surveying the wreckage.
One of them, a stallion, turned to Arclight when he noticed she was there. He rubbed the back of his head and chuckled.
"Well, uh... it's alright, cell phones will be invented next year, anyway."