"I know that things look bad right now. You're scared and you don't know what's going on. That's natural, and to be frank, it's not going to be the last time. But right now, I promise: you. are. safe."

Sunset stared up at the screen, slouched into a small black chair and trying to wrap her head around the last few minutes.

First of all, the blue box was bigger on the inside. In fact, it was HUGE. The doors led into a huge control room on a raised metal platform. Everything looked to be made of polished steel and glass except for the bookshelves on the floor above. At the center was a huge octagonal control panel, with a column of glass and glowing lights rising out of the center and into the ceiling.

Once they'd stopped gawking, the Doctor had asked Missy for help carrying Penn out of the room, which she and the other Ghostricks had been happy to provide. Sunset had tried to follow, but Clara had pulled her aside and forced her to sit down (not a difficult feat, considering the night she'd had).

"As you probably figured out by now, The Doctor and Clara are time travelers. This is the TARDIS, their time machine. I'm sure you're dying to figure out how it's bigger on the inside, but we both know that there's more important things going on right now. That means that, for us, meeting them happens a little out of order. From your perspective, this is the first time you've seen them, but for THEM, their first time meeting you happened a while ago."

"Wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey!" Missy had popped into frame, as well, now, smiling and happy and soaking wet in a black swimsuit.

Time travelers. They were time travelers. At this point, she was willing to believe anything.

After all, it was one of the very few explanations for why she was now watching a recording of herself that she didn't remember filming. In the video, she was standing on what looked like a beach and addressing the camera directly.

"Hi, past Sunset! Say hi to past Missy for me!" she shouted with a wave before ducking out of frame again.

The Sunset in the recording smiled and shook her head. "You know, as time goes on, you're going to be grateful for the things that never change."

"Yeah, great... How's this supposed to comfort me, again?" Sunset muttered, glancing down at her feet and wondering why she was staying put here when Penn's life was in danger.

Sunset's head snapped back up to look at the screen, where her future self was grinning smugly, both arms folded over her chest and a single eyebrow cocked.

"It pays to remember when I was the one sitting in that seat. Listen, do you remember when you were getting ready to go stop the daleks, and Penn asked if he could paint the flying box blue? THIS is what he was talking about. The Doctor is the one who's stopped the daleks over and over, along with lots of other awful things. He'll deny it, but he's a hero. Clara, too. The Doctor is probably the only person in the multiverse who knows more than Penn, at least as far as I've seen. He's like... Penn times a thousand. Or maybe Penn... times Isis... squared." She thought for a moment before bushing aside the train of thought. "I could tell you a hundred times over with absolute confidence that he couldn't be in better hands. Still, I know me, and I know that when we're scared, we don't always trust who we should or make the best decisions, so..."

"If it'll help you feel better, then I guess we can tell you a little bit about the future, right?" she motioned to someone offscreen. Sunset's eyes widened as Penn stepped into the frame. He was dressed in one of his typical eye-bleeding tropical shirts and red-and-white cap, and smiling wide to the camera.

"Heya, Sunny- oof!" He was cut off by Sunset's elbow jamming itself into his ribs. "What was THAT for?"

"Oh hush, you've survived worse, you wimp..." Sunset's future self smiled and jutted her thumb towards Penn. "You see? THIS is why you should feel better. Penn's fine. Still alive, still in one piece."

"Though it IS gonna be touch and go now and then- OW!" Penn muttered, earning himself another jab in the ribs. Penn finally seemed to lose his temper, and slapped her on the back of the head in return. This, of course, spurred a cry of indignation and a punch in the arm as a counter. In spite of herself, Sunset chuckled at the display.

"Is this what it's like seeing us from the outside?" she whispered, watching as they descended into a mess of slapping and fussing.

Sunset's heart skipped a beat when another voice joined them. A pair of hands worked their way into the center of the fight and pushed the two of them apart. Her hands involuntarily clapped over her mouth to hold back a cry of joy as Applejack emerged, eyes rolling as she kept one hand pressed on each of their chests to hold them back.

"I swear, if y'all could spend as much time looking for our friends as you do arguing, we'd be home by now!"

"But it really wouldn't be half as fun!" another voice added. A second later, Rainbow Dash was leaning on Applejack's shoulder with a grin. She'd run in so fast, the camera has barely picked her up as more than a blur. "Face it, the day these two stop arguing with each other is gonna be the REAL end of the world!"

"Um, darlings? I believe that we've gotten a bit off-track..." Rarity's voice said, clearly behind the camera.

"Right, right..." the Sunset in the video pushed her way back into the center of the frame. "See? The future's bright, Sunset. You're in a dark place right now, and I can't promise that things are going to get easier any time soon, but... You'll be okay. You can trust Clara and the Doctor.

"But don't consider this permission to get sloppy!" Penn chided. "Time CAN be rewritten! Even seeing this, it could be a parallel timeline that splits off in the future, or a second universe we exist in-"

"I'm just saying! You've got a bad habit of acting like you're invincible if you think you know what's going on!"

"EXCUSE ME?" Sunset jumped to her feet to point an accusatory finger at the screen. "WHO is the one who acts invincible, again?"

Soon, everyone else had marched out of frame, leaving Sunset alone with herself again. She took a deep breath to calm herself down again before looking directly into the camera. Sunset felt a chill run down her spine as her own eyes seemed to bore into her. For an instant, she caught a glimpse of something she'd never seen in those eyes before: Time. Wisdom. Tiredness. She was happy, yes, but it had clearly been earned in the hardest ways.

"We both know I hate to say it, but he's right. Knowing our luck, this message reaching you STILL doesn't mean anything's set in stone. But right now, you need hope more than anything."

"The one thing Penn never is going to know is his limits, Sunset. You're going to have to fight to keep him from dropping off the deep end, or else it'll be Mount Ebott all over again. And next time, there isn't going to be a reset button or a dying monster nearby to hold onto his soul for you. You had it right, that night you both talked around the campfire..." She shook her head wistfully, as if the mention had brought up fond memories. "It feels like an eternity ago for me by this point, but you each are going to fight for each other, because you're both... impossibly headstrong." She winked to the camera. "In other words, you're gonna have to constantly one-up each other's stubbornness if you want to keep the other one safe and sound!"

She stepped closer to the camera, her eyes once again feeling like they were boring into Sunset's soul.

"Please... make it HERE. This far, to this future. This journey has been... amazing beyond words. Don't EVER give up."

The future Sunset turned to walk away from the camera, only to stop and turn back as something else sprang to mind.

"Oh, and don't show this to Penn. He will drive himself NUTS looking for secret messages from himself that aren't here. What you see is what you get."

With that, Sunset's double walked out of the camera's view, leaving only the empty beach. A few seconds later, the video came to an end, and the screen switched itself off.

"It's freaky, huh? Seeing yourself in another time and place you don't know..." Clara muttered. She'd taken another seat a short distance away, waiting while Sunset was filled in by herself.

Sunset leaned back in the seat as best she could, looking up at the ceiling as thoughts and questions churned in her head. "Not as bad as you might think. I've dealt with time dilation, time loops, wormholes, spaceships and aliens... time travel's really not too hard to wrap my head around, if I really think about it."

"Wow, already?" Clara whistled softly. "I knew that the early days of your trip were rough, but you never really went into detail about it..."

Sunset took a deep breath. Something about the message was nagging at her, despite her future self's denial of any hidden meanings. "Yeah, it hasn't been easy lately."

"Well, the TARDIS is the safest place in the universe. You can take your time and get some rest-"

Clara seemed surprised, also standing up and holding her hands up in a placating motion. "Hey, you heard yourself, he's safe here! Why don't you get some rest?"

"Because I'm not so sure..." Sunset sidestepped her and began to walk towards the door that the rest of their party had left through. "'What you see is what you get.' She had a perfect response when I grumbled under my breath, but when I asked her if Penn was going to be okay, and she dodged the question." Sunset felt her heart beginning to pound again as worry set in. She stopped at the threshold as she saw that the logic-defying space broke off into narrow hallways. "Future me would never forget how scared I am right now. She knew how much I need to hear that he's going to be okay, and she didn't say it.."

"But you saw him, didn't you?" Clara asked as she ran to catch up with her. In spite of her objections, Clara took the lead, turning left and down the hallway as Sunset followed.

"Penn likes to talk in codes and references, I'm a bit more straightforward than that... If he's going to be okay but future me refuses to say it, then she doesn't want me to just relax and leave it be." She reached down to her belt and felt for her saber, only to remember that it had short-circuited in the fight with Bendy. She resisted the urge to curse under her breath.

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"There. Should be all set!" The Doctor said to no one in particular as he stepped away from his patient. He'd taken the liberty of laying Penn out face-down on a medical table, allowing him to freely examine the peculiar injury on his back.

Missy took a moment to turn and give her friends a grateful smile. "Thanks, guys, none of us could carry him like this ourselves..."

Stein and Warwolf both gave her brief salutes, each cast a worried look at the table, and vanished as they were transported back home. With a sigh, she turned back to face the rest of the room. Everything in the room was hazy and the walls glowed a pinkish-gray, and it smelled faintly like roses. She could feel something in the air, as well. It was quiet, almost to the point of being unsettling, and she could sense that it was a place more removed from the rest of the world than the rest of the areas they'd passed through.

"Zero Room." The Doctor declared as he produced a small magnifier and affixed it over one of his eyes. Missy waited for an explanation, but he seemed to have already devoted his attention completely to the inky gashes in Penn's flesh.

The Doctor jumped slightly and gave her a disbelieving look. "You're still here?"

"Well, make yourself useful and go get me a towel or something for all this ink."

"You're excused." The Doctor made a shooing motion with his hand as he returned to examining Penn's injury.

The Doctor sighed, pulling away the magnifier and giving her a tired look. "Look, do you want me to help your friend or not?"

"Then shush!" He pressed a finger to his lips to illustrate before reaching into his pocket and retrieving a pair of black sunglasses. He put them on and they began to buzz loudly. "Fascinating... I've never seen anything like it..."

Missy wanted to pick the argument back up, but the point had been made clear: keep quiet and let him work. With no other recourse, she huffed and floated over to the far side of the room, where she slumped against the wall to wait. It was only a matter of minutes before she'd drifted off to sleep, the adrenaline having finally run out.

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"Ugggggggh..." the groan was less of a complaint and more of an involuntary sound of his body starting up again. Groans of pain were starting to become his equivalent of the THX sound, always there before he could get to anything important.

Penn's vision was blurred and murky, like a black fog swirling across his eyeballs, but he could make out a white room and a face... a face he knew. A face that raised a million questions, first and foremost being:

"Dreaming? No. In fact, you're just waking up." The Doctor turned back to a display on the wall, examining it closely. "Not that you should be... by all accounts, there shouldn't be any way for your body to be functioning right now, it's fascinating!"

Right... Peter Capaldi. Twelfth Doctor. Not great when it comes to bedside manner...

"How... did I get here?" Just talking required much more effort than it should have. Even a few words were enough to leave him exhausted. If it weren't for some invisible force holding him up in a standing position, he would already have collapsed ages ago.

"Well, somehow, Sunset Shimmer came knocking on my door again with the second-biggest teary eyes I've ever seen. I never stood a chance."

"Fine, she's just fine!" The Doctor waved his worries away as he continued taking measurements. "The only danger she's in is that she's going to worry herself into an early grave over YOU!"

"Doesn't think... I'm real." He was beginning to drop the non-essential words to save energy. "Tried to... trade me... to an angel."

"AND? We would have been ripped apart! Dissected and stripped for parts! She almost abandoned us- CONDEMNED US!" Reason screamed in the back of his mind.

"Ah, that explains it. You haven't been at this for very long, still learning to get our feet under you!" He stepped up and ran a finger along the back of Penn's ear, taking a moment to note with surprise that it came back slick with black ink. "You're still wet behind the ears, literally!" He used his other hand to withdraw a pair of black sunglasses and tap the bridge between the lenses while staring intently at the black substance. "Does Sunset really matter so little to you that a paltry thing like betraying you would make a difference?"

"Sonic shades... I never liked the... sonic shades..." the thought slipped out without him intending to. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew that the filters between his brain and his mouth were rapidly failing. "Sonic screwdriver... was better."

"Oh, everybody's a critic..." he muttered before removing the glasses and wiping the ink on a handkerchief. "Do you know when the last time I saw you two was?"

Penn did his best to shake his head, only managing a slight tilt back and forth towards each shoulder.

"The two of you had been friends for YEARS, and that bond was unshakable." He tapped the display on the wall, and the light in the room shifted from a rosy white to a more blueish tinge. "I've watched the two of you dive into the gates of Hell itself, just to save the other! The Rainbooms were a name known across the multiverse, loved by their friends and feared by their enemies..." he stopped for a moment, as if considering his next words carefully. "And you two were the type of friends who pushed each other beyond rationality, beyond sense... and beyond what should and shouldn't be possible." He turned around, and Penn could see that the Doctor's face was one of grim determination. "Life and death, time and space, fiction and reality, good and evil... your friendship will go beyond them all, for better and for worse." He stepped closer. until their faces were nearly touching. Penn couldn't have pulled his eyes away from that blazing gaze if he had wanted to. "So don't try to tell me that YOU, of all people, have doubts!" He pointed to the entrance of the room. "If Sunset Shimmer walked through that door right now and told you that she was sorry, that she wanted to keep moving forward together, what would you tell her? That you don't want her back in your car? That you're finished with your adventure? That you're NOT going to go out and find the Rainbooms together? All because she made a mistake?"

"O-Of course not!" Penn shook his head more vehemently, managing slightly more of a rotation. "She's my friend... That'd be cruel..."

"Well, there you have it!" The Doctor smiled and gave him a pat on the shoulder. "All's right in the world again!" He turned back to the display. "Well, aside from the fact that your body's slowly melting into a puddle of ink from the inside out, that is."

The black clouds in his vision began to swirl and grow darker. His heart didn't seem to have gotten the memo that he was supposed to be exhausted, because it had settled into an all-out sprint in his chest so frantic that it was becoming painful. He tried to form words to ask a question, but the words all fell to alphabet soup in his mind before he could craft a sentence. As the darkness began to outgrow the light, he could see malevolent shapes in the darkness, wide grins of even teeth, pie-cut eyes, all against the backdrop of a vast circulatory system of pulsing black pipes. His blood was rushing in his ears, but he could pick out a few other sounds, mostly alarms of some kind beeping and ringing at a high pitch. The Doctor was shouting something, but he seemed to be as able to understand words as he could speak them.

"Th-The... There's- That..." his mouth fumbled and sputtered, unable to put anything together. It was like he was stumbling in the dark, in every sense of the word. He couldn't see, couldn't think, couldn't speak... He was being pulled in. Into the dark, whatever was consuming him was finally overtaking his mind... and he could finally tell what it was. What was happening to him. He understood.

But he couldn't speak it. It was like being in a nightmare. Everything was spinning and going dark and he couldn't so much as whisper to try and save himself.

"You need something you don't have to think about. Something pre-made, already put together. An SOS!" Reason urged.

His brain was moving through soup, diving deeper and deeper to find something he could turn to, something so deeply embedded in his soul that he could grab hold of it in this state.

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It was like a scream jumbled and mixed with the roar of an animal. Sunset's heart skipped a beat as the roar echoed down the halls of the TARDIS's interior. Clara came to a dead stop, eyes wide with fear. The two looked at each other, confirming that they were both thinking the same thing before taking off at a sprint.

Sunset stayed just behind Clara as they ran down the mazelike system of metal hallways and rooms in the direction of the screaming. It wasn't long before they'd arrived, and it still felt like too much time. When they burst into the blue-tinged room, the scene awaiting them was like something out of a nightmare.

The Doctor had been flung across the room, his clothes slick with a splattering of ink as he was slumped unconscious in the corner. Missy was in the air, but not of her own volition. She was being held and shaken violently by her shoulders by Penn... who was clearly the one responsible.

"DOCTOR!" Clara cried, rushing to his side. Sunset didn't move, transfixed on Penn's transformation.

His skin had settled into a stark pallor as the sepia-colored splotch completely overtook his skin. His veins were bulging and dark, like an infection spreading over his body. The entire lower half of his face had been colored black by the ink flowing from his eyes, nose, and mouth, completely covering his chin and staining the front of his shirt in a deep v-shape.

Penn didn't seem to hear her, pulling her closer to his face. "THE INK! THE INK IS THE RING! THE INK IS THE RING!"

"HEY!" Sunset rushed forward, not sparing a thought as she sprung into action trying to pry his hands off. "Let her go, Penn! You're hurting her!"

His eyes flickered to her for a second, revealing the terrifying sight of the ink mingling with the whites, like drops of food coloring that had yet to be dispersed. Faster than her eyes could see, one of his hands let go of Missy and wrapped around her throat, lifting her off of the ground. Sunset felt her eyes threatening to pop out of her skull from the pressure as his hand squeezed tighter and tighter on her windpipe. The black in his eyes grew, filling the whites in completely and beginning to erode at his blue irises, and his mouth curled up into a wicked smile of recognition.

"Well, here we are again..." he growled, his teeth lengthening into mismatched fangs as his smile grew wide enough to nearly split his face in half. Sunset's blood turned to ice as a sense of familiarity slammed into her in a flash: the battle with the ink demon. He'd had her in this same position, by the throat and unable to free herself. "It's always such a pleasure..."

"N-No..." she wheezed. "Y-You're not... You can't be..." Penn pulled her closer to his face, mouth opening wider and wider until it seemed ready to swallow her head whole. Fortunately, even if the positions were the same, Penn was lacking a certain advantage that the ink demon had possessed in Joey Drew Studios: his arms were MUCH shorter.

"Let... me... GO!" Sunset croaked, bringing up both of her feet and slamming them against his chest. The force she thrust herself back with was enough to pull herself out of his grip and send him reeling back until he collided with the wall. The shock was enough to loosen his grip, but he pulled Missy close before she could escape completely.

"The ink is the ring... Missy, the ink is the ring!" his voice returned to normal for a moment before he violently threw her back and away. Sunset hardly had time to even brace herself before Missy's body collided with hers, sending them both sliding back out the doorway of the room.

"What's HAPPENING?" Clara asked, half-supporting the Doctor on her shoulders as they limped their way out into the hallway after them, leaving Penn by himself in the room. Just as he pushed himself up to his feet, she slammed her hand on a button by the door, causing it to slam shut. The Doctor followed it up with a tap on the same button, and a hiss of pressurized air made it clear that Penn had been sealed inside. "Why does he keep shouting that?"

"He's been shouting nonsense since he was attacked, I don't think it means anything..." Sunset shook her head. "But... he never focused on someone like that."

Sunset looked down at Missy. "'The ink is a ring...' does that mean anything, Missy?"

"Not 'A ring.' 'THE ring.'" The Doctor held up a finger as he pulled away from Clara and stood on his own again. "Definite article."

"No, I don't wear any-" Missy's eyes widened as she seemed to come to a realization. The color drained from her face, and Sunset felt a shiver run through her small body. "Oh. Oh no... please don't tell me that's what he meant. PLEASE tell me he wasn't talking about..." She floated up into the air, beginning to pace anxiously back and forth. "But if he meant that message for me, is there anything else he could be referring to?"

Missy cast an anxious look towards the door. "Can he get out of there? Is there any other way out?"

"No, the door's deadlocked." The Doctor shook his head. "Quarantine procedure. No signals, particulate, radiation, nothing. That's why it's called the Zero Room."

Everyone jumped as a heavy thud came from the door, sending reverberations through the floor. Everyone looked at one another as the anxiety built.

"Well, you generally don't have to worry about a sick person being strong enough to break out of the hospital... I don't know."

"Why?" Sunset pushed herself up to her feet. "Missy, what's happening to Penn, what did he mean?"

"Well, this is a bit of a stretch, but... There's a set of artifacts associated with duel spirits called the 'Millennium items.' There's the puzzle, eye, necklace, rod, scales, key... and the ring. They all have mystical powers, but the Millennium Ring is especially notable for having a malevolent spirit trapped inside..." she looked back at the door, eyes wide with fear. "A spirit that either destroys or possesses anyone who wears it."

Sunset felt a chill run through her soul as her earlier suspicions were all but confirmed. "You mean... Penn's been possessed by the ink demon?"

There was another earth-shattering bang from the Zero Room. Everyone turned to look at the door. As a perfect silence settled, Sunset felt a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach and she pushed herself to her feet. She stepped up to the door, forcing herself to look through the small glass porthole.

The room was empty, aside from a large puddle and several streaks of ink... and a large pentagram rune drawn on the wall, just like back at the animation studio.

The Multiverse in a Nutshell

by Pennington Inkwell

Time And Relative Dimensions Ink Space