The ride in the TARDIS was mostly chaotic as Spike got tossed around the spacious control room that didn’t seem nearly as spacious now due to how many times Spike kept running into things before he finally secured himself a firm clawhold. But thankfully it didn’t last before the TARDIS finally started to stabilize and went into a much smoother flight, so much so that, in comparison to before, it felt like the TARDIS wasn’t even moving anymore.
Spike hesitantly looked around the suddenly still TARDIS. Meanwhile, the Doctor continued to work with the control panel, still whirring away, stopping only to briefly adjust his top hat. He had somehow had kept it securely on his head during the whole flight.
“…are we there yet?” Spike found himself asking finally, making an inward wince at the cliché phrase he used without meaning to.
The Doctor, like everything he did, took it in stride. “Not yet,” he explained. “We’re only halfway at best. Have to make a few final calibrations before we make the final jump into the Dimenost’s spectrum of reality. Think of it as a pit stop.”
Spike heaved a heavy sigh of relief. “I could use one after all of that,” he remarked.
“Yeah, sorry about that, hit a lot of temporal turbulence. Not uncommon for this kind of trip, but I tried to minimize it as much as I could.”
Spike walked over to the control panel and poked his head up so to watch the Doctor work. “So…temporal turbulence…” he began. “I know temporal means time, so…does that mean we traveled through time?”
“Sort of,” the Doctor admitted. “It’s more along the lines that we’ve entered a spot in the fabric of the universe where time flows differently, to the point that, for you and me, it’s not moving at all.” He stopped to flip a few switches with one hoof while he rubbed his chin thoughtfully with the other. “Though I suppose that, counting the technicalities, yeah we did, so congrats Mister Spike. You’re a time traveler now.”
Spike, suddenly feeling put on the spot for what seemed to him what should be a momentous occasion, sheepishly glanced around. “It doesn’t feel any different.”
“Cool, isn’t it? Unfortunately, this next bit isn’t going to be quite as pleasant.” The Doctor gripped the control panel tightly before flipping one last switch. “Better brace for a dimensional jump!”
“Brace for a what?”
The TARDIS suddenly began to vibrate, and then without warning, light suddenly started to behave funny as the spectrum of color seemed to shatter and distort. For a brief moment Spike started to see two or three of everything, feeling a sensation of alienness wash over him as the very air suddenly felt like it was being altered, changing texture and feel. Then, as suddenly as it started, it stopped, and space snapped back into its usual appearance, though a little fuzzy along the edges. The Doctor simply shook himself once, like he had stepped through of a cold shower, but Spike, momentarily feeling fine, was suddenly struck with acute vertigo as the room abruptly seemed to spin. He toppled over as he lost his balance and felt his stomach clench up, the ice sapphires he had eaten earlier in the evening threatening to make a return trip.
“Ooh, I don’t feel too good,” he moaned, beginning to hyperventilate.
“Don’t worry, you’re just suffering from some extradimensional illness. That always happens when one jumps spacial dimensions, it’s perfectly natural, though it takes a little getting used to. It’s brought on by the body attempting to adapt to the shift in its perception in reality, and it can mess it up a little for a few brief moments. Symptoms can include nausea, vertigo, light-headedness, borborygmus, and in semi-rare cases, an intense rash with those with sensitive skin. Though I doubt a dragon ever has sensitive skin with those scales.”
Spike barely heard as he clutched his rumbling stomach and fought to keep his late-night snack down where it belonged, belching an unpleasantly bile-laced burp. “Not helping, Doctor,” he groaned.
“It’s just temporary, it’ll pass,” the Doctor reassured as he continued to work with the controls, seemingly unbothered by the illness like Spike was. “Just relax and breathe through your nose. That should help.”
Spike took the advice, forcing himself to relax and took deep calming breaths through his snout. True to the Doctor’s word, it helped, and gradually Spike’s stomach started to settle down and the room seemed to spin less. Meanwhile, the Doctor kept working at the controls before the TARDIS made a cheery ding and he grinned.
“All right, the jump is complete,” he noted, scanning the readouts. “We’re in position to progress forward, and the TARDIS properly attuned to minimize detection. I’m positive the Dimenost won’t see us coming. Expect us, probably. But actually see us, no. Not until I say so.” He resumed working with the controls. “We just need to find that darn tear…shouldn’t be too hard, given the Dimenost will undoubtedly be forcing it open somehow…however they’re doing it must be producing a massive amount of energy, energy that should be easy to detect from our current position.”
Starting to feel better, though still a little queasy, Spike slowly sat up. “And then?” he asked.
“Then we get Miss Dash back, Mister Spike.” The Doctor’s determined tone suggested that failure on this task was not an option.
Spike was quiet for a moment. “What do you think they’re doing to her?” he asked finally, unable to resist any longer.
The Doctor paused, and sighed. “Searching her mind for data, most likely,” he said. “Then, probably use her for bait to lure me in, because by then they’ll have no doubt figured out I’m a Time Lord, and they’ve encountered Time Lords before, or heard of Dimenost who have, so they know what we’re capable of. While they wait, they’ll probably no doubt use Miss Dash to share what she knows with other Dimenost through repeated telepathic links with her mind.”
Spike’s eyes widened, remembering what the Doctor had said before on this subject. “But you said that could—”
“Yeah. I did.” A morbid moment of silence fell then the Doctor continued. “Therefore we need to act quickly. We rescue Miss Dash soon and she shouldn’t suffer any lasting damage.”
Spike frowned. “Yeah,” he said dejectedly. “Like the trauma of it all isn’t damaging enough.”
The Doctor paused then turned approached Spike, placing a comforting khaki hoof on the dragon’s shoulder. “Hey,” he said softly. “Miss Dash is strong. She’ll pull through. You just watch.”
“Yeah, I know,” Spike said, forcing a weak grin. It quickly faded again. “It’s just…I’m starting to get…put off…by all of this danger stuff that hanging around you seems to come with.”
“Well, it’s not all danger,” the Doctor promised. “Besides, some of the things you see in a life like mine, Mister Spike…” he sucked in his breath and closed his eyes, recalling the astounding things he had seen in his long life. “It puts new perspective on reality. Makes you cherish it and what’s around you all that much more. And to me…that’s worth it.” He grinned then patted the dragon before heading for the TARDIS doors. “C’mere,” he said, motioning for Spike to follow. “I think you’ll like to see this, if you’re up to it.”
Spike tested his balance, saw he was over the worst of the extradimensional sickness, and walked after the Doctor. “See what?”
“The view,” the Doctor replied, and threw open the TARDIS doors.
What Spike saw beyond the doors was a mindboggling display of stars, more bunched into one sky than he had ever seen before, some so massed together that they looked more like glowing wisps of blue-white energy than stars. The sky behind it seemed aglow with a mist of deep midnight blue-like color, and Spike realized it was because there were even more stars sitting behind the foremost behind it, enough that it made it seem like the whole sky was alight, with not a single corner of it unlit in some manner. The massiveness of it all was staggering.
“What is this?” Spike breathed, in awe.
“That, Mister Spike,” the Doctor said, slow and deliberate, “is your universe.”
Spike’s jaw dropped as he realized the sense of massiveness he was seeing was not exaggerated. “That’s the universe?” he whispered. “All of it?”
The Doctor nodded. “Right now we’re right on the very tippy edge of it, looking back in, right on the boundary line dividing it from the Fringe. Well, relatively speaking, the dimensional jump complicates one’s exact location a little but…that’s complicated.”
Spike stared at the humbling sight nonetheless. “So that’s literally all of it? The whole universe? All of the stars and-and-and planets, and…everything?”
“Well, everything in this universe, yes,” the Doctor confirmed. “To truly see everything in the whole of reality in one view would require a vantage point I haven’t found yet, but I’m working on it. A little side project of mine, if you will.”
Spike glanced at him, a little surprised at how casually the stallion spoke of it. “You must see this sort of thing a lot,” he guessed.
The Doctor winked and didn’t answer. Instead, he silently returned to the control panel to keep working.
“So that must be quite a life, doing what you do,” Spike went on, gazing back out at his universe again, astounded he was actually getting to see it like he was.
“Well,” the Doctor said, his tone turning somewhat solemn as he focused on his work. “Sometimes it gets a little lonely.”
“I guess there wouldn’t be much point in seeing all of this if you didn’t have someone to share it with, huh?”
The Doctor remained silent. Fortunately, the TARDIS saved him from having to answer by beeping at him. The Doctor glanced at the corresponding readout. “Ah, there’s that pesky tear.”
He flipped a few controls and the TARDIS began to gently move again, slowly pivoting around. Spike watched from the open doors as the universe slid slowly to one side and out of view just to be gradually replaced with a stretch of mostly inky blackness, broken only by a few straggling stars and a few wisps of unknown energy. Spike realized this was literally the edge of the universe he was looking at. But as the TARDIS ended its pivot and started to gently move towards this intimidating barrier, Spike noticed a small purple smudge in the blackness that looked something like a literal crack in the universe.
“I think I see it!” Spike announced, squinting his eyes at the tear.
“Well, it’s going to get a whole lot closer,” the Doctor announced, nudging a lever to make the TARDIS travel faster.
The TARDIS picked up speed, and the tear slowly started to become bigger. It was soon clear to Spike that it only looked so small because it was still so far away, relatively speaking. Up close it was quite massive, more than enough to swallow up the whole of the TARDIS, even if it wasn’t smaller on the outside. And it looked to be growing even bigger still as Spike gazed at it.
“Holy guacamole, it really did get bigger,” Spike said once he realized just how big it actually was.
“And I think I know how they did it,” the Doctor said, staring at a readout.
Spike, closing the TARDIS doors, joined him at the control panel and looked at the readout too, even if he couldn’t understand the circular writing displayed upon it. “How did they do it, then?”
“Quite simply, actually, I kind of want to kick myself for not realizing it sooner,” the Doctor explained. “But those Dimenost, they’re a clever bunch. Clever, clever, clever. Basically, Mister Spike, they simply took some Fringe-matter they had lying around, arranged it so they could have Dimenost in position to keep it continually supercharged with their stun lightning—only its more potent in the Fringe—and then used all of that as a kind of wedge to drive into the tear and try and force it to open wider rather than close back up like it would naturally. It’s the simplest idea in the universe, and that’s the beauty of it.” He stared at the readouts for a moment. “Pity it’s causing harm, then. It really is a clever idea, this wedge thing, but it can’t stay.”
Spike thought about it for a moment. “So…if we forced their wedge back out of the tear and kept them from using it, would the tear just close up like it’s supposed to?”
The Doctor nodded, and ruffled the dragon’s spines with one hoof. “Now you’re catching on,” he praised. “But first things first. We still have to get into the Fringe without them noticing.”
But it wouldn’t be long before they found out, for the TARDIS was coming very close to the tear. So close that from the outside, one could see the Dimenost firing their stun lighting into the semi-solid “Fringe-matter”—as the Doctor had called it—that made up their wedge. It wasn’t shaped like any wedge Spike knew of, but he assumed that if he asked, the Doctor would say the reasons why were “complicated,” so he didn’t comment on it. Finally, they reached the threshold of the tear, and with the TARDIS shuddering slightly, slipped right on through without much event.
“We’re in,” the Doctor announced, keeping his voice down almost like he was afraid he’d be overheard by the Dimenost if he spoke too loudly. He checked the readings. “And we haven’t been noticed. Perfect. Now, let’s do a scan for some lifeforms, shall we?” New readouts started to turn up on the screen as the Doctor worked the controls before turning up a rough picture of their surroundings with dots marking the locations of all the life in the area. “Let’s see here, Dimenost, Dimenost, Dimenost, Dimenost, Dimenost, ah ha!” He jabbed a hoof at one point on the screen and grinned. “There you are, Miss Dash.”
The Fringe became much more active after the Dimenost’s announcement of the Doctor’s coming, and soon it was alive with whole swarms of the shadowy creatures zooming back and form, carrying out who knew what to prepare. Rainbow, however, had other things to worry about, because this had led to a mass gathering of Dimenost around her. Each one of which would, almost in passing, swoop in, probe her memories, and then swoop off before another would immediately take its place. Eventually, Rainbow realized that just because one had found out the information they needed, didn’t mean all the others knew it too. They were just “sharing” it now, by allowing them all to come in and take a glimpse for themselves at their leisure.
Unfortunately, the strain of such continued mental probing was starting to become too much for Rainbow and it all started to blur together into a haze of fractured memories, revived emotions, and mental strain.
“Stop it, just stop it!” she found herself beginning to plea. Part of her hated herself for having broken down to such a state already, having always wanted to think of herself being better than this, but it was simply getting to be too much. Even when she knew what to expect, the whole effect of the mental probing was too jarring and stressful on her, her body, and her mind, and it didn’t help it was now coming as a near nonstop onslaught of abuse.
And what made it worse was that the Dimenost didn’t even seem to care.
So on and on it went, until suddenly the Dimenost stopped. Rainbow didn’t notice at first, too busy trying to shore up her strength for the next probing, but even once she had, she almost didn’t care, relieved to have a reprieve of any length so to regain her strength with. But gradually she realized the Dimenost weren’t paying attention to her anymore, and had all stopped and were looking around their realm, as if puzzled.
“There is something amiss,” one of them deduced, sounding actually concerned.
It was then that Rainbow heard a click echo out, followed by the screech of what sounded like a megaphone.
“You bet your wispy behinds there’s something amiss!” a familiar and amplified voice exclaimed.
Rainbow’s eyes widened, first with surprise, then with relief. “Doc,” she whispered.
“You know, the funny thing about rips and tears in space-time,” the voice of the Doctor continued while the Dimenost all attempted to pinpoint its source, “is that while they can certainly let something out, they can also let something in. But you Dimenost didn’t stop to think about that, oh no, you’re all too almighty, so who could possibly reach you? Well, here’s the answer: me. Me, who does not take your scheming lightly. Me, who will not tolerate the abuse of the innocent! Me, who will go to any lengths to stop you, and not only can I bring the fight to the Fringe, I can, and will, STOP you, right here, right now!”
Suddenly a familiar noise started to fade into hearing range within the expanse of mists.
Whirr…whirr…whirr…
And then the TARDIS emerged from within the purple-blue mists, having slipped past all the Dimenost and now hung near the surface Rainbow was restrained to, floating behind her head so she had to twist around to see it. Panic arose among the Dimenost and they surrounded the device.
The Doctor either didn’t notice or didn’t care. “Oh, you Dimenost are in trouble now,” he said through whatever it was he was using to amplify his voice.
The doors of the TARDIS suddenly burst open, and there he stood, outlined by the comparatively brighter interior that provided a brilliant backlight with shirt, vest, top hat, and all was the stallion himself.
The Doctor grinned at the Dimenost. “Because I’m here to make a house call.”