//------------------------------// // The Trance // Story: Doctor Whooves: Shadow Of A Ghost // by Scyphi //------------------------------// Outside the TARDIS, Flitter attempted to keep her eyes locked on anything but the mysterious blue box. She had decided that she wanted to keep her involvement with it to a minimum as possible, and would be greatly pleased to see it leave once this was all over. Assuming it even would end at all, because she still had her doubts about this Doctor character. He may have Spike and Rainbow wrapped around his hoof, but she was adamant not to fall for it because she apparently saw him as what they did not; a crazy pony from outer space that had brought trouble with him. “Would’ve been better off if he had never come,” she muttered to herself, pacing up and down the tree branch as she waited for the others to exit the box again. She didn’t know how they had all managed to fit into something so small, but again, she was trying not to think about it. Only problem she had then was that the box proved to be curiously eye-grabbing once your attention was brought to it. Flitter knew there was more to it than what met the eye, and that apparently made all the difference because she kept finding her attention drawn back to it. It didn’t help that whenever she turned her back to it, she felt the chill of something watching her. It was almost like the box was staring at her. Which was silly, of course, because boxes didn’t have eyes to stare with. But still… Flitter let out an aggravated and very horse-like snort, something that she knew wasn’t considered polite in pony culture, but she didn’t particularly care what others thought about her language at the moment. Marching back to the staircase, she gazed outside, trying to spy her home through the mass of swirling Dimenost that still encircled the tree. All she wanted was to go home. Go home, crawl back into bed, and pretend tonight had never happened. Was that really so much to ask for? But now she couldn’t even leave the besieged library thanks to the swarms of shadowy ghosts that surrounded it, blotting out the sky and everything else beyond the library. Glaring at the Dimenost, Flitter suddenly found her anger directing itself at them. “This is all your fault!” she exclaimed suddenly, jabbing a hoof out at the Dimenost. “You and your stupid…oh I don’t even know! All I know is that you show up, and now everything around here has gone completely to hay and…and…” She trailed off in mid-rant as she realized with a start she had managed to draw the attention of the Dimenost, and they were now silently sitting still and stared at her. For a fleeting moment Flitter felt a flare of panic and fear well up inside her. But then, just like that, she suddenly felt an unearthly but welcomed sense of calm wash over her like she had never felt before. Spike wasn’t really one to take interest in anything dealing with a wardrobe of clothes at all. Not unless it involved Rarity, and then it wasn’t so much the clothes but the mare that made them that he was interested in. It was mostly the same thing here as well. Spike actually wasn’t really interested in the TARDIS wardrobe at all except for the fact that it existed in such an impossibly small space. He still struggled to wrap his mind around the very idea of it, completely at a lost at how something so big and massive could fit into a box that was so small in comparison. He knew Twilight, if she were here (and knew she’d be extremely jealous if she knew what she was missing out on), would probably blow a gasket trying to puzzle it out herself. And seeing the TARDIS control room was shocking enough, but as Spike quickly saw as the Doctor led him through those glass double doors and into the corridors beyond the control room that was only the very tip of the iceberg. The TARDIS seemed simply filled with rooms upon rooms of varying shape and size, with some of the corridors that led to them seemingly to stretch on for miles. Spike was starting to wonder just how big this place actually was, so he asked the Doctor. “It’s complicated,” was his answer, casually ignoring most of all of TARDIS interior in search of the wardrobe. “The interior is extremely variable and flexible. I could tell you how big it is now, but it’ll probably be different later on as I add and subtract rooms over time.” Spike was struck by novelty of the idea of seemingly being able to just add or remove rooms to a structure as simply as the Doctor’s tone implied, but he pressed past it to focus on getting an answer to the question. “But…isn’t there like…I don’t know…a limit to how many rooms or whatever you can add?” “I suppose,” the Doctor admitted, looking to be considering the idea. “It depends on how much memory space the TARDIS has available.” “Which is…?” Spike prompted, hoping. But he was ultimately disappointed. “Haven’t the foggiest. That sort of information would be listed in the TARDIS operating manual, but I never could find the darn thing…I’ve never once maxed out said memory space in the whole time I’ve had her, though, so…” So it seemed Spike wasn’t going to get an answer to the question after all. But he soon forgot it as they passed by the various other rooms on their way to the wardrobe, all of which bore similar glass doors to the control room, thus enabling Spike to steal peeks inside. He was particularly wowed by the sizable swimming pool they passed, and was thinking Pinkie Pie would love to have at it when they finally arrived. “Here it is!” the Doctor proclaimed as he threw open the double glass doors to the wardrobe and marched inside without stopping to look around. Spike, however, was floored by the massive, warehouse-like, room. It was the simplest in terms of shape and decoration in comparison to the rest of the rooms in the TARDIS, being just a big box-like room filled with rows of shelves and racks, but those rows seemed to go out in all directions, all filled with what appeared to be every type of clothing imaginable. “Clothes for every occasion,” he muttered to himself with a chuckle, deciding this was the room Rarity would love to see. Nopony could probably ever get her to leave again. The Doctor, meanwhile, had his attention turned to the task at hoof, and was quickly stripping off the remaining tattered clothes he wore, throwing them aside dismissively. “Off with the old,” he muttered once he had completely stripped himself naked, “and on with the new!” He then proceeded to grab clothing at random off the shelves and racks, turning and holding them up to himself as he gazed in a nearby full-length mirror, before deciding against them and chucking them aside with a nonchalant “nah!” He was soon chucking clothes every which way, and Spike soon had to dodge articles of clothing as they were inadvertently thrown his way. Throwing off one shirt that managed to drape itself over his spines, he turned to the Doctor. “Don’t you know what you want to wear?” “Not a clue!” the Doctor replied brightly, pausing to compare two differently colored shirts. He turned to Spike. “What do you think, Mister Spike? Which goes with my mane better, red or blue?” Spike hesitated. He was never really that fashioned minded, so instead he defaulted to the advice he was always giving Twilight. “Why not just a plain white?” “White…good idea! Everything goes with white! Except maybe white! But that’s not a problem because I’m not white-colored!” The Doctor chucked the two shirts aside and turned to a rack of only white shirts. Sorting through one, he finally found one he liked because he proceeded to throw it over his shoulders. “I like it!” he declared. “But it needs something else…maybe a jacket or a vest…” he started to search through another set of shelves. “Don’t forget the hat,” Spike offered, remembering the stallion had mentioned he wanted one as he gathered the discarded clothes so they would be out of the way. “Oh! Yes! A hat!” the Doctor stopped to consider this for a moment. “What sort of hat should I wear? Hmm…OH! OH! OH!” he turned to Spike victoriously. “The fez! Now is my chance to wear a fez full time!” Spike frowned, puzzled. “What’s a fez?” “A red, conical shaped hat with a tassel dangling from the top,” the Doctor explained, pulling out a few other clothing accessories to examine. He pointed a hoof to the right side of the massive room. “Can you fetch it real quick? It’s two rows down, on your left, should be towards the end.” Spike nodded and went to find the appropriate aisle. His initial fear that he would be unable to find the right row despite the directions proved to be unnecessary for the row in question was hard to miss; it was the only one lined with hats, again of any variety like the rest of the wardrobe. The dragon then proceeded to examine through them, trying to determine which one was the hat the Doctor sought. Finally, though, there really was only one that matched the Doctor’s description of conical, red, and bearing a tassel. Spike wasn’t too impressed with it, but he grabbed it as requested and returned to the Doctor’s location. By that point in time the Doctor had settled upon a white shirt (though how he was ever going to button it up with his hooves Spike didn’t know) and a vest, both unbuttoned and hanging open at the moment, but otherwise being worn properly on the Doctor’s figure. He was now looking through an assortment of ties he had draped around his neck, but he stopped the moment Spike returned, fez in his claws. “Brilliant!” the Doctor said, very excited by the idea of the hat as he grabbed it from Spike. “Now I will wear a fez, all the time, and no one’s going to stop me!” Turning to face the mirror and wearing a big grin, he made a big show of placing it on his head and then studying his appearance in the mirror. His grin fell. “…only I don’t like the look of it on me anymore.” Angrily, he snatched the fez from off of his head. “Bah! I knew I should’ve stuck with the fez as a permanent item when I had the chance, despite what people said! I mean, I did it with the bow tie back in the day, and I got away with that!” He chucked the fez behind him in a dismissive matter, grumpily muttering something about a river for a few moments as he glared at the reflection of his hatless head. “So…no hat?” Spike asked, unsure as usual on what to make of the Doctor’s random ranting. “Oh I’m wearing a hat, Mister Spike,” the Doctor said determinedly. “The universe might fight me every step of the way, but I will be wearing a hat for this regeneration. Just have to figure out what.” Spike thought about the other hats he saw. “I have an idea, be right back!” he offered, hurrying back to the hat aisle. A moment later, he returned with a hat he thought was perfect for the Doctor. “What about this one?” The Doctor, who had gone back to narrowing down his selection of ties, glanced at the hat for a moment. “It’s classy,” he admitted a touch hesitantly. “But it seems a little…I don’t know…flashy and over-the-top.” “Exactly!” Spike declared brightly. “It’ll match you perfectly!” The Doctor gave the little dragon an amused look, catching on to what he was implying. “Touché. Guess I’ll have to try it now, won’t I?” He examined the two remaining ties he had left, and tossed one aside, settling on the other. “But first, can you help me with this tie? I haven’t the foggiest idea how to tie one with hooves.” There were stairs that led up onto the TARDIS control room’s balcony, but Rainbow chose instead to fly up to it and peek inside. But save for the glowing conical structure (which Rainbow suspected was part of some kind of power source), there really wasn’t much on the balcony except for seating, and cabinets next to the stairs like below. That and an excellent view, which Rainbow could appreciate of course, but she was actually kind of expecting more. Landing again and approaching the TARDIS control panel, Rainbow looked around the control room and saw that, while the room was still undeniably impressive, she had looked at just about everything there was to see. She had thought about stepping through the double glass doors to see more of the TARDIS, but upon seeing just how expansive the corridor beyond actually was, she worried that if she wandered off without a guide, she’d get lost (and that was saying something if she willingly admitted that), and with the Dimenost on the loose, now probably wasn’t the best of times to go and do that. “Speaking of the Dimenost,” Rainbow said to herself, and she turned to the control panel and examined the screen that had been flashing away since the Doctor had left it, to try and see if it would be finishing soon. What she saw though, was simply a mess of swirling circles and lines that didn’t really mean anything to her, but probably meant something to the Doctor. It didn’t seem like it had finished, though, so Rainbow assumed it had awhile to go still. It was taking longer than she thought it would, though…how much time did they have left before the Dimenost could try getting at them again? Rainbow rapped her hoof on the control panel for a few moments, debating, then turned and headed to the TARDIS doors, poking her head out. “Hey Flitter, how are things out here? Are the Dimenost…” she trailed off when, to her surprise, she noticed Flitter was no longer present at the TARDIS. Puzzled, she slipped out of the TARDIS to look for her. “Flitter? Where did you go?” “So why do you have to work out a whole new outfit?” Spike asked, sitting in a chair and poking at the leftover clothes while the Doctor finished changing behind a folding screen. “I mean, seeing we’re on the clock and everything, doesn’t it make more sense to just put something simple on to get by in until, you know, we’re not threatened by shadowy ghosts from another dimension or whatever?” “Two words, Mister Spike,” the Doctor said as he dressed. “First impressions. I want the image people first see of me to be the sort that is immediately recognizable, the kind of outfit that they just need to look at once and immediately be able to go “oh, that’s the Doctor!” Besides, that old outfit I was wearing before was all tattered and dirty. Not at all something I want to go presenting myself in. Besides, I don’t like the look of it anymore.” “Then why were you wearing it?” “Because I was a whole different person then, obviously! I had completely different tastes back then! Besides, I try and make it a point to do things a little differently with every new regeneration.” “You didn’t think that about the fez.” “The fez was different because I didn’t get to wear it all that often! Which was why I wanted to try it this time around.” Spike kicked at the fez where it lay on the ground after the Doctor had dismissed it. “Yeah, and that didn’t last.” “Still worth a try,” the Doctor said as he finally emerged from behind the folding screen and sat before Spike, forehooves outstretched. “Anyway, what do you think?” Spike regarded the Doctor for a moment. He was now dressed in a crisp, long-sleeved, button-up white shirt, wearing a dark blue vest lined with faint pinstripes over top of that and a red tie neatly tucked into it. He had also combed his bronze mane and tail, both now smoothed over, but still retaining the slight frazzle of before along the edges. Finally, placed neatly on his head at a slight tilt was a black, silken, top hat with a silver-blue hat band. The little dragon grinned. “You look pretty impressive, Doctor,” he admitted. “Very…distinct.” “Perfect!” the Doctor declared as he returned the grin and headed for the wardrobe exit. “Now let’s get a move on, Mister Spike. It’s time to go kick some Dimenost butt!” Rainbow returned to the staircase that had led up to the TARDIS’s tree branch in search of Flitter, but had thus far found no immediate sign of her pegasi neighbor. She was starting to get worried. She knew Flitter didn’t want to be here, but with so much danger being about, why would she wander off now? Had something happened to her? Rainbow stopped at a gap in the leafy growth of the library tree and peered out at the Dimenost still surrounding the structure. Other than the fact that had gone eerily still, they didn’t seem to be doing anything of harm, and were still being kept back like the Doctor had promised. Frowning, she turned away and continued looking for Flitter, and finally spied the blue-grey mare casually trotting back into the library, curiously traveling by hoof and not by wing. “Hey Flitter!” Rainbow called to her, but she didn’t respond. Thinking something was up, she quickly took flight and flapped down to land next to Flitter, following her into the library. “Flitter, where are you heading?” Flitter still didn’t respond. In fact, she acted like she wasn’t even aware Rainbow was there. Her ears didn’t even twitch in Rainbow’s direction to suggest she had even heard. “Flitter…” Rainbow said, moving to look the fellow pegasus in the eye. “Why are you—whoa.” Now that she could see Flitter’s face, she saw that Flitter was wearing the blankest expression she had ever seen, her eyes locked straight ahead, her pupils small. She looked like she was in a trance. “Fliiiiiitteeeer,” Rainbow called into Flitter’s ear while working to keep up with the mare as she relentlessly crossed Twilight’s study and proceeded for the stairs. Rainbow waved her hoof in front of Flitter’s eyes a few times, then poked her a couple times in varying places, all attempting to generate some kind of response out of her. To no avail. Flitter remained oblivious to her presence and continued pressing onward. “Flitter, will you stop?” Rainbow barked, flying around and dropping herself into Flitter’s path, trying to block her path. But Flitter didn’t stop, and instead pressed past Rainbow calmly and proceeded on downstairs to the library’s lobby. Rainbow stared after her for a moment, completely befuddled, before giving chase. “What the hay’s wrong with you?” The Doctor and Spike returned to the control room to find the console chirping loudly. The Doctor immediately went to it and examined the readouts on the screen. “Perfect, the TARDIS has finished plotting the course,” the Doctor said cheerfully, working with the controls. “Mister Spike, go grab Miss Filler and get her into the TARDIS. I don’t want to leave her behind, not while there’s Dimenost still about.” While Spike hurried off to do that, the Doctor brought up the TARDIS’s external sensors to check what the Dimenost were up to. He expected them to be still swirling around agitatedly like before, so he was surprised to find they were all keeping eerily still instead. “Now why are they doing that?” he asked aloud to himself, sensing something was amiss. “Flitter? Flitter!” Spike called outside of the TARDIS, but soon was returning without the distrusting mare. “She’s not out there,” he reported, looking worried by this new development. The Doctor looked up sharply. “She’s not?” he asked, further surprised, only to feel the weight of dread sink into his belly as he realized someone else was missing as well. “Where’s Miss Dash?” No matter what Rainbow did, Flitter persisted on through her calm walk through the library, finally heading for the front door and stepping outside. It left rainbow completely baffled as to why…until she realized that the direction Flitter was traveling in was straight towards the surrounding blockade of Dimenost. And that the Dimenost all appeared to be looking right at her…almost longingly. Rainbow realized with a start that the two had to be connected, and knew she had to stop this, now. “Flitter!” she cried, grabbing the other pegasus by the tail and digging her hooves into the ground, trying to stop her. “Snap out of it! You’re heading right for the Dimenost!” Rainbow only succeeded in slowing Flitter briefly before part of Flitter’s tail ripped out in Rainbow’s mouth and she lost her grip. Even though Flitter’s dock now had to be stinging from the hairs that had been torn out, Flitter still didn’t react and pressed ever closer to the Dimenost. Rainbow didn’t know what would happen if she reached them, but she figured it wouldn’t be anything good. Spitting out the hair from her mouth, she took to the air again and flapped over Flitter and dropped down in front of her, pushing her shoulder right up against Flitter’s body, trying to push her away. Flitter merely pushed back, gradually pushing Rainbow over the dirt walkway and pressed onward still. “Flitter!” Rainbow shouted, starting to get desperate as she continued to push against Flitter as hard as she could, anything to keep her back from the Dimenost. “C’mon! Snap out of it! Those Dimenost aren’t going to do anything nice to you! FLITTER!” “Miss Dash!” Rainbow suddenly heard the voice of the Doctor, and glanced up in time to see the Doctor, now sporting new clothes, arrive at the library balcony, Spike closely following. “Doc!” Rainbow called back, grunted as she threw her whole weight against Flitter, to little avail. “I can’t stop her!” “Hold on, I’ll be right there!” the Doctor instructed, he and Spike running into the library to hurry on down to the ground level. “Hurry!” Rainbow urged, before a blast of the Dimenost’s stun lightning suddenly lashed out from behind her, striking the ground dangerously close to her hind legs. Startled, she stumbled, and fell down onto her back. Now unobstructed, Flitter pressed onward in her dazed state, walking over Rainbow as she went, her left hind hoof stepping hard on Rainbow’s barrel and momentarily winding her. Rainbow rolled onto her front, trying to catch her breath, as she watched Flitter walk on towards the Dimenost. “No…” she wheezed. “Flitter!” But it was past the point of getting Flitter to snap out of it in time. She was getting too close to the Dimenost. Already she could see the crackle of energy as the nearest Dimenost charged up their stun lightning again, no doubt this time to hit their intended target. “No!” Rainbow cried again and forced herself up and into the air, surging for Flitter in one last ditch attempt to stop her. She heard the Doctor, just arriving at the library’s front door, shout in alarm. “Miss Dash, WAIT!” But Rainbow was already upon Flitter, roughly shoving her out of the way by slamming her body into Flitter’s barrel, knocking her to the ground. She did so just in time for a blast of stun lightning meant for Flitter to strike her instead. Immediately unconscious, Rainbow’s forward momentum carried her a few feet closer to the Dimenost before she hit ground and slid to a stop. It was close enough for the Dimenost to reach her, and the shadowy beings were upon her in a second, managing to grab her and pull her past the invisible barrier that held them back. “No!” the Doctor cried out, hurrying forward, like that alone would be enough to stop them. But he knew it was too late. The Dimenost had Rainbow Dash, and he saw now that they had slipped further into this universe, enough that now they could physically interact with the things around them, and therefore they could keep a firm grip on Rainbow, now hidden in the mass of shadowy beings that thronged around her. “You let her go!” Spike cried out, hurrying forward to join the Doctor. “The inhabitants are too late,” the Dimenost proclaimed suddenly, a note of victory in their tone. “The Dimenost have obtained what they want. You will soon no longer be a mystery to the Dimenost, Outsider. The Dimenost will have the answers they desire! The Dimenost will prevail!” And with that, taking Rainbow Dash with them, the Dimenost all at once began to retreat, surging backwards through the sky rapidly until they were merely a black speck against a night sky that not even it was dark enough from them to hide their blackness in. When they finally vanished, slipping back into the Fringe to do their deeds, a hauntingly familiar rumbling boom was heard in the distance.