The Fringe
With the trance she had been put into now broken, Flitter slowly came to again. The first thing that struck her was a sharp stinging in her tail that caused her to hiss in pain briefly. This was quickly followed by a wave of disorientation as she realized she was now no longer where she last clearly remembered being and that the space of time separating then and now was nothing but a muddled blur she couldn’t quite make out. She sat up, breathing heavily as she rubbed at her eyes with her hooves.
She then looked up and saw the Doctor was standing before her, glaring at her.
“I asked you to do one thing,” he stated sternly the moment he saw he had her attention. “And you didn’t DO IT!”
Flitter, intimidated by the display of anger, cowered under the stallion’s berating. “D-d-do what?” she stuttered.
“Don’t stare at the Dimenost!” The Doctor snapped. “I warned you that they had telepathic capabilities, and that staring at them, letting them know you were watching them with unprotected eyes and an open, easily influential mind was a bad idea, but you went and did it anyway!”
“What—what are you talking about?”
“They mind controlled you, Miss Flitter! Put you in a trace! Made you their little puppet to control as they wanted, and tried to make you just give yourself up to them!”
“They can do that? Then why the hay didn’t you say that’s what would happen when you stare at them?”
“I shouldn’t have HAD to! Wasn’t warning you not to do it warning enough!?”
Flitter opened her mouth to respond, but no words came out. After a moment, she closed her mouth and hung her head.
“That’s what I thought,” the Doctor said, and calmed down some. It was clear he still was not happy with her though. “So I hope you’re happy with yourself, Miss Flitter.”
Flitter glanced around, seeing she was lying outside the library, not far from its front door, and that only the Doctor and a shell-shocked Spike were present save herself. “Why?” she asked, almost dreading the response. “What happened?”
The Doctor sighed. “Because you had gotten yourself in danger, Miss Dash attempted to intervene,” he explained. “So now she’s taken the place that was meant for you trying to save your butt. The Dimenost have Miss Dash.”
Flitter felt her throat choke. “What?” she breathed. For a long moment, she simply sat there in silence. Then, without warning, she felt a flood of anger wash over her as she locked eyes with the Doctor. “This is all YOUR fault!” she snapped. “If you hadn’t turned up, none of this would’ve happened, and don’t you DARE deny it!”
“I’m not!” The Doctor said, turning on her again suddenly, but just as quickly turned gentle as it became clear what truly bugged him about this mess. “I know this this all happened because of me. Don’t think I don’t feel badly for it, that I don’t blame myself for this anymore than you blame me. But I was trying to set things right before something like this happened. And in order for that to have happened, I needed you to listen to me! Because I think it’s safe to say that I’m the only person here who knows enough about the Dimenost to try and pick a fight with them and win.”
“And that, Doctor, is what sets you apart from the others, at least for me!” Flitter argued back. “Maybe you do know more about what’s going on, but that doesn’t mean I can accept that you’re really the one who knows what’s best to solve it!”
The Doctor regarded her for a long moment. “You don’t trust me.”
Flitter was silent for a moment, averting eye contact. “No,” she admitted finally. “And I never did.”
The Doctor nodded to himself for a few moments. He adjusted the top hat he wore. “Well,” he said finally. “I’m glad we settled that.” He turned and started a determined walk towards the library.
“Where are you going now?” Flitter asked him.
“I’m taking the fight to the Dimenost,” he responded, glancing back at her without slowing.
Flitter stared after him. “You just don’t give up, do you?”
“No, I don’t, Miss Flitter,” the Doctor responded, stopping in the door of the library. Flitter realized suddenly he had been abruptly getting her name right, and it was quite deliberate. “I’m not one who just gives up when the going gets tough and let the malicious win and walk all over me, because that means innocent beings get hurt in the process who have done nothing to deserve it. And I’m not about to start now. Besides, someone is going to have to get Miss Dash back.” The Doctor stared at her for a moment. “Seeing she wound up in this position helping you, I would think you’d want to help.”
Flitter immediately took a step back at this. “No, I’ve had enough of all of this,” she said, deciding. “I’m not risking my life trying to fix your mess. This is where I put my hoof down, Doctor. I didn’t ask to have any part of this, so now I won’t. I’m going home.”
“Then you had better hope I succeed,” the Doctor stated firmly, pointing a hoof at her. “Or there won’t be a home for you to return to before long.” He turned to the little dragon that had been standing to one side watching, in silence, the two ponies argue. “Are you coming Mister Spike?”
Spike turned to the Doctor and grinned, moving to join him. “Try and stop me, Doctor.”
“Thatta boy,” the Doctor said and urged the dragon on into the library. He turned back to Flitter and the two stared at each other for a long moment.
Flitter shook her head. “You’re crazy.”
“You’re distrustful.”
“You haven’t given me much reason to trust you!”
The Doctor stared at her for a moment. “And that, Miss Flitter, is what sets you apart from the others.”
And with that, he slipped into the library and shut the door behind him without looking back. He and Spike proceeded to head back to the TARDIS by going through the library as they had done before, the Doctor stopping only long enough to retrieve his sonic screwdriver from where he had left it powering the now mostly unneeded barrier to keep the Dimenost back. Arriving back on the balcony, though, they both stopped to watch as they saw Flitter flying off, away from the library and back to her home. Like the Doctor when he turned her back to the pegasus, she did not look back.
The Doctor watched her for a moment, then turned and headed up the staircase. “Let’s get a move on, Mister Spike,” he urged softly.
Spike hung around to watch Flitter leave for a moment longer before heaving a disappointed sigh and following.
As Rainbow slowly regained consciousness, she was immediately aware that something was wrong.
First thing she noticed was that the air seemed off. It was still plenty breathable, but it had a taint to it that made it seem…foreign. It also felt wrong, like it didn’t feel quite like how air ought to feel.
Gravity also seemed off. Instead of pulling at her just one direction like normal, it felt like it was pulling at her from all angles at once and yet not at all altogether. Like it was there and not there at the same time. For a pegasus, who was instinctually very reliant on that feel of gravity, the effect was very disorienting.
And this was all before she opened her eyes. Eyes that she was now inclined to keep closed a little longer, for fear of what she might see. But ultimately, she opened them anyway. And was immediately startled by what she saw staring back.
“Holy horseapples!” she swore aloud, pulling her face back from the ghastly creature gazing down at her.
It bore a pointed, black face with faintly glowing white eyes that were simply white, bearing no sort of pupil or iris of any sort. It also had a large mouth filled with a frightening array of dangerous, pointed, teeth, bared in what seemed to be a perpetual grimace. It had arms, but not a consistent number of them and they did not seem to be properly mounted to the creature’s body, instead moving about freely, moving around the thing’s form. Save for the arms, though, the creature had no other limbs on its body, said body simply narrowing down to form a floaty tail and giving it an overall teardrop-like shape. But even its body seemed bizarre, as it seemed to be made of solid, fluid, and wispy substances all at the same time. And as Rainbow looked around, she saw it wasn’t alone; more creatures just like it surrounded her in a sort of circle, and she caught sight of more wandering around in the distance.
Almost like shadowy ghosts.
With another start, Rainbow realized they were Dimenost, in their true appearance.
She also realized she wasn’t anywhere near home anymore, for the horizon she saw was not Equestria’s, but instead an eerie world that was nothing more than miles of swirling, purple-blue mist stretching in all directions for as far as she could see, and seemed to have no true up or down. With a third start, Rainbow realized there was only one place she could be at the moment, and that was the Fringe the Doctor had spoken of.
She tried to move, to do something to get away, but found she was bound down by her hooves to a flat, table-like surface in a spread-eagle position, her belly facing upwards. The table seemed to be like the Dimenost, not quite solid but not quite mist, but despite this, it held strong like no material Rainbow knew of to compare it to. So finally, she stopped and returned to glaring up at the Dimenost that hovered over her.
“The inhabitant will submit,” it instructed in its unearthly voice when it saw Rainbow relax her attempts to escape.
“And if I say no?” Rainbow challenged back, her voice sounding weird in the Fringe.
“It will be futile.”
The Dimenost suddenly ran one of its bizarre claws across Rainbow’s temple, its touch surprisingly gentle, physically. But the moment the claw made contact, an electric jolt shot through Rainbow, and she found her memories burst open in her mind against her control. By the time the Dimenost removed its claw again, Rainbow had already relived the entire events of the past night in one intense, emotional, blur, leaving her very jarred and her heart racing. The Dimenost’s toothy grin grew at the sight of her negative reaction to this, now reaching to grab Rainbow’s head with two sets of claws.
“The Dimenost will have the answers they desire.”
“So what’s the plan?” Spike asked as the Doctor led the way back into the TARDIS.
“We slip in the Fringe, grab Miss Dash, stop whatever it is the Dimenost are doing to force open the tear and send them back where they belong, and be back in time for breakfast,” the Doctor summarized quickly as he hurried around the TARDIS’s control panel, flipping switches and pulling levers.
“Simple and straightforward,” Spike summarized as he joined the Doctor at the control panel. “I like it!”
The Doctor grinned. “I thought you might.” He continued working with the controls. “The trick is going to get into the Fringe without the Dimenost noticing and stopping us from even getting close to wherever they’re keeping Miss Dash. Time Vortex residue tends to stand out more than usual in places like the Fringe…”
“What’s the Time Vortex?”
“Uh…oh how do I explain this? It’s sort of another plane of existence beyond the fabric of space-time that enables a craft to travel anywhere, anywhen, enabling it to move without moving in the traditional sense.” The Doctor noticed the blank look Spike was giving him by this point, and changed his approach. “It’s what the TARDIS goes through to travel through time and space.”
“Oh!” Spike declared, understanding. Then his face went blank again. “Wait…time and space?”
“Yeah, I travel through time too,” the Doctor added casually. “I did mention that, right?”
“Uh…no…no you didn’t.” Spike gaped at him. “You actually get to travel through time? Like…skipping ahead a year sort of time travel? You actually can do that?”
“Well guess what? Now you get to too!” the Doctor declared as he suddenly threw a lever on the console.
The TARDIS suddenly jolted sharply as it began to work, making its distinct whirring noise, feeling like the world outside the box had suddenly vanished and was now falling haphazardly through nothing. Spike quickly grabbed one of the control room’s supporting pillars to keep from getting flung around, yelling as he tried to adjust to the jarring experience.
The Doctor, however, seemed to enjoy it. His excited face was lit up by a scrolling bar of light that ran up and down the metal bar in the control panel’s glass column while he flipped controls. It rose and fell in time with the whirring the craft produced. “Woohoo!” he crowed as he piloted the impossible craft through time and space. “Tally hooooooo!”
The flight stabilized some, enough that Spike felt able to be able to make a wobbly walk towards the Doctor. “It’s a lot rougher than I expected!” he admitted, shouting to be heard over the rattling and whirring the TARDIS made as it flew.
“Really? It’s going a lot smoother than I had anticipated!” The Doctor suddenly slapped his hoof on a few buttons and flipped another lever. “Hard left!”
The room lurched suddenly to one side and Spike was sent skidding away before he had a chance to retaliate.
“—But it did! A different kind of—with you and falling off of cliffs—I saw that thing slam into your house—Isn’t that a might dangerous—Tally ho—Aww yeah—something of a traveler—clear this sky in ten seconds flat—Just call me the Doctor, Miss Dash—any new moves in your tricktionary—got a problem with that—Like hay I do—totally twenty percent—Did you break in—Oatmeal? Are you crazy—are you going to do, Rainbow Crash—Ponyville just got a little less peaceful—Hairity, Rainbow Crash, Spitty Pie—little place you’ve probably never heard of called Gallifr—”
Rainbow suddenly snapped back into reality as the Dimenost removed its claws from her face, the onslaught of memories racing through her head suddenly ceasing. But for several seconds she was barely aware of it as she tried to get her body and mind to calm back down under the surge of emotions that was still pulsing through her. The…sorting through her mind the Dimenost had done was intense as well as physically and mentally draining yet it couldn’t have taken more than a minute at most. She scarcely could even recall all the details it was so fast, but judging from the rawness of her throat, she had been driven to the point of screaming at least more than once.
As shaken as she was, though, she could help but watch as the Dimenost that had mentally assaulted her rose up and seemed to draw the attention of the other Dimenost that hovered nearby, watching the proceedings.
“The inhabitant has yielded!” it declared. “The Dimenost have the answers! The Dimenost have identified the Outsider! The Dimenost know of the Doctor!”
The other Dimenost began to stir and murmur at this news. It seemed it was all they needed to know the full depth of the situation, and it seemed it was not good news to them.
“The Dimenost must prepare!” the Dimenost continued. “The Time Lord is coming!”
Stats
Page generated in 0.019 seconds
Total duration
822 users online
644,439 hits today, 2,782,760 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
The Doctor really needs to take the handbrake off
4023809 Actually, I figure that by this point in time, those brakes are practically gone anyway, and it's not like there's a TARDIS service station he can go to to get them fixed, so he might as well leave them on all the time.
My theory is that the word handbrake is the nearest translation for the Gallifreyan name of some safety feature standard on all models of TARDIS, and that only River Song would be nuts enough to turn it off.
Before, I was just teasing. Some people just can't handle things like this, and that's nothing to be ashamed of. But here? Flitter has officially earned the Zoidberg title. Well, to be more specific, here:
She is a coward.
Oooh, neat!
Very nice, creepy design. I was picturing them as Pac-Man ghosts.
And more points for your description of telepathy.
I hate Flitter
She’s awful!