Ghost of Black Dahlia

January 15th, 1947....

Elizabeth Short, known by Beth to her friends, walked down the side walk of a rainy street in Leiment Park, Los Angelas, California. The rain smacked the top of the concrete as it plummeted down from the Columbus clouds hovering above the city. The light posts surrounding the side walk loomed over Elizabeth as she passed under them, the light they gave giving her temporary visibility to the world around her. Then, suddenly a noise behind her grabbed her attention, the sound of a twig snapping beneath the shoe of a man. Elizabeth froze, her eyes growing wide, her heart beginning to beat outside of her chest and up through her throat. Swallowing, Elizabeth quickly spun around, "Who's there?!" she cried, her eyes meeting nothing but darkness in front of her, her eyebrows rose in relief as she sighed and turned back around. Immediately she met a tall, dark figure, completely black until a grin appeared through the darkness of the night.

The teeth shined through the grin as one hand reached out to Elizabeth, who screamed and jetted down the ditch to her left, nearly hitting the light pole. Suddenly she stopped dead in her tracks, her hands immediately reaching down to her mid section as she gasped, "Ugh.." she whispered before collapsing. Her body splitting into two pieces as it fell to the muddy, morass, grass beneath her. The figure eyed the scene for a moment before the grin disappeared and along with it, the figure all together. The next morning the police arrive to the scene, very little evidence is collected...several suspects are named..but no arrests are ever made....a mystery...a legend..is created in the midst of blood and rain.

January 15th, 2014....

The Doctor sat on a park bench, a bench located in the center of Leiment Park, his eyes locked onto the newspaper he held in front of him, the brainy specs reflecting off of its surface what he was reading. 67th Anniversary of the Dark Dahlia..mystery still continues to this day. Reports from eye witnesses convinced the ghost of Dahlia still resides in her former home Read the top of the newspaper article, The Doctor folded the paper once finishing reading the title, "Wonder why it hasn't been solved" he mumbled to himself before his eyes caught sight of a strange man, hovering over a light pole. Getting up, The Doctor rose an eyebrow and set down the newspaper, "Excuse me, sorry, isn't this the exact place where Short was found dea-" he proclaimed out to the man but stopped in mid sentence.

The man turned around to face The Doctor, his eyes the same as his, his smile the same, his face...the exact same. The Doctor froze, the man grinned menacingly, "It always is..." the man hissed before the image of the time vortex flashed on the lamp post as though it were a portal. The man turned and strode into it, where it immediately closed after he entered. The Doctor stood there frozen, completely bewildered by the incident that had just occurred, "What!" he finally hissed.

Shauna kept her distance from any human beings, anyone that would recognize her, she lowered her head as she walked down the lane into the center of Leiment Park. She was not looking where she was wandering and she felt herself hit into someone's arm and her eyes widened and she looked up at the man. "Oh I am so sorry!" She proclaimed as she looked to him with nervous and shy eyes, her hands were in her pockets and her hood was shading her face.

"I am so so so sorry! I should've been looking where I was going! I am so sorry, sir!" She said quickly before lowering her head so her red eyes were covered from the man's view. She had a strange vibe off of him, a very familiar one to be exact, it was a familiar vibe to suggest she knew him... but she didn't know this man. Well, she didn't think she did. "Who is this man and why do I feel like I know him?" She asked herself inside her head.

Braxien coughed, sitting himself down at a park bench. It had been a while since he had come down with anything. It was nothing but a terrible case of a sore throat.

RING RING!

"Braxien speaking--no…wait where?" Braxien abruptly got up and started running, taking off his glasses in caution of them not falling off. "Look, I'm on my…shut it! My teleportation device is working fine, no I just wanted to have a healthier lifestyle, now who are you on about?"

Braxien ran past and bumped into a man in a brown trench coat and a woman with a hood pulled tightly over her head. He would have said sorry but something big was happening at the agency he volunteered at.

He paused and waited, reorienting himself and then rolling his eyes and headed in the other direction, back towards the man and woman.

The Doctor paused, scrutinizing the woman to the side of him carefully with a squint as he turned to face her, "No..no, it's fine" he finally said, shaking his head and waving it off with his hand before he placed both into his pockets. "Hold on" The Doctor suddenly added, raising an eyebrow as he looked at the woman once more, "Do i know you?" he asked rhetorically, both to himself and to the woman, "Feel like i should..well..or at least recognize your face..well...complexion more prominently. Amazingly pale for a person...sorry if i insult you, it just seems to me that you---aaahhh!! ahh! aaah!! Hot, hot hot!" he suddenly exclaimed. Reaching into his breast pocket, The Doctor flipped out his psychic paper with both hands as he waved them to relief them of the burning sensation they got from holding the hot pamphlet, "Psychic paper...sometimes over heats when it gets a long message..well..that or from a long distance" he mumbled under his breath.

Reading over the psychic paper quickly, The Doctor peered back up and over to the woman standing in front of him, "Sorry..emm..gotta dash" he stuttered, placing the paper back into his breast pocket of his suit as he took a few steps back, pointing behind him as he spoke, "Got..things...complicated..things to take care of. Just a bit of allons-y is all. Nothing to worry about. Anyways, nice meeting you". Without another word, The Doctor spun around and bolted in the opposite direction, even shouting the last four words over his shoulder as he was already running away from the woman. With his eyes and direction set on the TARDIS, which was parked nicely behind a tree, The Doctor's mind pondered the meaning of the psychic paper message that gave him coordinates. Coordinates to what, he wouldn't know until he put them in to his control console.

Shauna looked to The Doctor and blinked, she recognized him but she didn't know why, "I am The Blood, it is nice to meet you." She said with a smile which showed her fangs a little. "I recognize you too but I-" She was cut off as The Doctor exclaimed about something burning. She looked to him with some worry and then realized it was just some psychic paper. She then blinked, "Wait. Psychic paper?" Her eyes then widened and she watched as he dashed off, she shook her head and ran after him, she then shouted, "Doctor!" Towards him to see if he would stop and she saw what he was running towards, it was the TARDIS, this confirmed her assumption of who he was; he was definitely The Doctor.

"Ah ah ah..." The Doctor pointed his sonic screwdriver over the park. "Don't start misbehaving on me now!" He rapidly tapped the screwdriver against his hand, screwing up his face as he tried to get the setting to work. He was being stared at by a few people sitting on a bench, and who wouldn't stare at a man dressed in a blue suit and a brown trenchcoat, wearing white and red converse, and with a red and blue tie hanging over his shoulders. His hair was mussed up, and he looked like he had literally rolled out of bed. He looked up at the old man staring at him, and offered in explanation, "The screwdriver isn't working!", before going right back to him, unconcerned with how strange he looked. Then it turned back on, and he went down the street, letting it lead him.

What was leading him, he wasn't completely sure. His equipment back at home base, or his apartment, had picked up a strange disturbance. Some kind of temporal disturbance, which meant either his TARDIS, no the Doctor's, had landed close by, or there was something new. And it had to be VERY close, and he didn't usually pick up his TARDIS without hearing it first. He sniffed the air, running his tongue across his teeth as he tasted the air. There was a certain metallic tang in the air, but it was something he couldn't identify. Possibly this human body, it did have its disadvantages at times. Like making him short of breath as he came to a street light. He leaned against it as he panted, his screwdriver dangling from his hand. He could hear a slight hum in the air, which meant that the TARDIS was close by, but he chose not to run to it right now. It wasn't his anymore, after all. But he clicked his screwdriver again, and he frowned. It was displaying a really strange reading, like someone had opened a time vortex right beneath the earth. Or maybe...he moved of the street light and began slowly walking, buzzing the sidewalk with his screwdriver. The readings were strongest when pointed at the next street light, and there was no TARDIS nearby. His eyebrow raised as he began circling it, completely unaware of his duplicate and the female running down the street. He looked up as he spotted another man nearby, and pointed at him.

"You there, have you seen anything strange going on?" he called to Brax. "I don't know, shimmering air, anything funny?" He made a hopeful face as he silenced the screwdriver.

Braxien wheeled around, pointing comedically to himself. He began shaking his head but stopped as the air shimmered behind the man, who looked similar to the Doctor. But from his experiences on Earth, there were a lot of 'cosplayers' who dressed up to look like the Doctor.

"Shimmering air, huh?" Braxien said, implying something was happening behind the man. "Well, if that's not filled my day."

Braxien pushed his glasses back up his nose bridge and patted the man on the chest, walking past to inspect the air behind. It increased in it's shimmering and Braxien stood back a bit.

RING RING!

Braxien sighed loudly before pulling out his phone, checking the number and throwing the phone behind him. "I'm Braxien Lythis, you?"

"I'm the Doctor, nice to meet you," the Metacrisis Doctor said as he extended his hand to give Brax's a firm shake. "Well," he continued as his eyes rolled up slightly. "If you've seen a funny sort of blue box, the other one." He didn't explain that, simply held his screwdriver up to his eyes as he examined the readings on his screwdriver. "Now that's weird, it's almost like there's a crack here, but there's not. Definitely traces of one though..." He turned around to point it at the ground, then stepped back as he too noticed the slight shimmering in the air. "Stay back, that shimmer could be anything. Could be what you'd call a portal, some sort of door, or could be the remains of a door. Or could be two worlds colliding again. You touch it and your molecules could be completely zapped and spread out across time. Or you could end up lost..." He pointed his screwdriver at the shimmer again, moving it up and down as it scanned the anomaly and obtained readings. And then the shimmer seemed to disappear on its own, leaving the Doctor standing there with a puzzled expression.

The Doctor halted his running for a brief moment as he turned around to face whoever called him from behind, "Sorry, bit busy!" he shouted back to The Blood, as he now knew her, running backwards before spinning back around and continuing his dash back to his TARDIS. Extending his arm, The Doctor snapped his fingers, causing the doors to creak open and welcome him in as he ran up the ramp and tossed his trench coat onto one of the supporting coral columns surrounding the sides of the control console. Glancing behind him, The Doctor nearly closed the doors with another snap of his fingers but upon seeing The Blood bolting after him and directly towards the TARDIS, he instead glanced back down to the control console and smirked, "Best, allons-y if you want to come in" he called out to her.

Placing his psychic paper on the control console, The Doctor hooked it up to the scanner using a series of wires before yanking the scanner over to him, "Don't usually have to connect the psychic paper up to the TARDIS matrix but something tells me....this isn't just some message" he mumbled, mostly to himself.

She heard The Doctor tell her to allons-y... well, that was new to her anyways. She ran a little quicker as she noticed a man with a shotgun walking around, her eyes widened as she caught eye contact with him, the man shouted: "It's The Blood!" And he went to grab his shotgun. Shauna ran into the TARDIS and quickly shut the TARDIS doors behind her, she looked to The Doctor, "I hate Humans sometimes." She groaned a little in annoyance before walking up the ramp and towards the console.

"Hello sweetie." She said gently to the TARDIS as she petted the TARDIS and Shauna smiled happily as the TARDIS made a groaning sound at her. She giggled a little before speaking, "I see you remember me huh?" She said with a big grin and her fangs were visible again. She looked to The Doctor, "Where have you been?" She asked curiously, tilting her head as she heared his mumbling which made her feel like she needed to fall asleep, but she was intent on hearing what he had been doing since they last met.

The Doctor glanced over to The Blood as she entered his TARDIS, his eyes catching the image of several people chasing after her before the shutting doors blocked his view. "And i'm guessing they know you too" He commented, gesturing towards the doors with his head with a growing smirk before shaking the thought off and turning his attention back to the scanner, "Oh you know...this and that..saving planets, causing trouble..well..running from it. Still, same old life" he finally replied to her. Glancing over to her for a moment then looking back, The Doctor continued, "Hard to remember you actually...like there's something in the way, telling me not to remember you...like it's not time..." he paused before sniffing and standing up straight, "Still. Live of a time traveler...never exactly goes in order".

"Guessing from the way you speak to my TARDIS and..well..knowing my name then you've met me before" The Doctor concluded, eyeing her up then down as he rubbed the back of his head and began to pace around the control console, "Question is, how do you know me and why exactly have you come here? I mean..i know why i am here.".

Shauna looked to The Doctor and sighed, shaking her head as he commented about the people knowing her. She looked to him, "Well, that is the life of a time traveler... but still Doctor, last time I saw you... I was older than you." She smirked slightly. "I am 2,001 years old." She smiled, her fangs showing to The Doctor.

"What do you mean it's hard to remember me? Damn... you've said it once before..." She groaned a little in annoyance, it was hard enough for her to convince the 8th incarnation that he knew her because she really knew him. She sat on the chair near the console and she sighed, looking to The Doctor. "I know you from when you had the crazy scarf and that fedora that you gave me." She grinned happily a she took out his fedora from her hoodie's pocket and she put her hood down to show her full face before she plopped the fedora on top of her head. She grinned at The Doctor but it faded a little, "I-I just came here... like every normal traveler does... living for 2,000 years can be quite boring if you stay in the same place..."