It was the year of the slow invasion.

Having the Doctor as a houseguest had been far more trying than anybody might have predicted, as his incessant need for something interesting to do had turned him into a constant and demanding presence, rather like a child without an off switch. And that was how it was that morning. Rory, who had somehow managed to arrange for himself to be given extra shifts, possibly to avoid the increasingly annoying presence of a hyperactive Gallifreyan, was already at work. Amy was trying to wrangle the Doctor and breakfast at the same time. His need to be useful was combined with a tendency to not sleep. So Amy came downstairs to a very sweet smell... and discovered that her friend had made pancakes.

A lot of pancakes.

She stood in the kitchen door, not yet caffeinated, and stared at the state of her kitchen. Flour daubed most surfaces, and the trash bin was overflowing with eggshells. And the Time Lord just waved a frying ban and beamed.

"Morning, morning, morning, thought I'd make breakfast. A stack. Pancakes! Everybody likes pancakes! Do you like pancakes? Yes, you like pancakes. Not sure how many pancakes in a stack. Recipe book didn't specify so I thought it best to err on the side of caution. Is two hundred too many for a stack? Also, no maple syrup, so I improvised. Chutney. It's basically syrup with bits in, right?"

At that point, a pancake fell from the ceiling, and landed on the floor with a sad little splat.

"Ah. Tossing. Harder than it looks."

He bustled about to fetch her what was sure to be a goliath sized pile of pancakes, enough to give a cardiologist a fit of the vapours. Then he paused, frowned. "Wait a moment... woah!"

Somthing apparently grabbed his feet, and pulled him down behind the island counters in the kitchen. There was a very ominous red glow and swirling noise, and the smell was truly rank.

Out of sight, the Doctor called "Amy... AMY! Forget pancakes! Just... oh crikey! Help!"

Amy gave a Caledonian yelp of alarm, followed by another noise that might pass for a dainty, modern equivalent of a Pictish battle cry. "Oh no you don't!" With a start, she was round the other side of the cabinets, and had reached out to grab the Doctor's hand to try to yank him out of the grip of whatever it was that had pulled him over. The stink in her nostrils made her gag slightly. "Doctor, this thing honks! What's going on?"

If some alien entity had decided to invade her kitchen - and they just had a new freezer put in! - she was going to be excessively Scottish at them. Why couldn't they go and manifest in someone else's kitchen, just for a change?
This message was last edited by the player at 21:51, Fri 30 Sept 2022.

"Time rift!" The Doctor said, trying to hold onto those offered hands, but the nasty rift was not just red and black, baleful, and rancid... it was also quite slimy. In her attempts to save her friend, she was getting fairly well daubed with the gunge, and her hands were far too slippery to get a proper purchase.

He was already waist deep, and descending rapidly. He tried to give instructions, even as they struggled. "You need to get Rory, and Brian, and get into the TARDIS! You should be safe in there!" He tossed his sonic screwdriver out of his pocket, where it scuttered across the tiled kitchen floor. "The screwdriver! Use it to lock onto my time stream and bio-signs! The TARDIS can use them to hunt me down... Oh no!"

The vortex gave a huge jolt, and the Doctor was sucked right down into it! The thing gave a revoltingly flatulent sort of sound, sprayed more gunge around, and vanished.

"No!"

Amy lost her balance and fell over onto the gunge-spattered floor. She hammed her fist on the spot where her friend had been moments before. "You give him back right now! Right now, or so help me...!"

But she knew it would be fruitless. People did not go to such lengths to remove someone only to hand them back as soon as someone got cross with them. She snatched up the screwdriver, and a towel to try to wipe herself down, and raced out to the garden, where the TARDIS was currently standing, a highly incongruous alternative for a garden gnome. She went up to the door and tried it.

The TARDIS did not open. The door remained stuck. It looked entirely unsympathetic to her plight. And then... the little hum that emenanted from it at all times... died. The tiny little buzz against her hand ended, and it stood there, entirely devoid of life.

And behind her, a white swirling vortex appeared. It swooshed and glowed, in an ominous yet non-malevolent manner. And then it spoke. "'ere, what you doin' wiv that TARDIS? Blimey, luv, leave it aht! You start muckin' about inside there, and god knows what'll happen to you! We've got enough problems without someone blowin' up the Eye of 'Armony or sumfink!"

The voice had a truly terrible East London accent, and a degree of familiarity that was not remotely appropriate from a total stranger.

"Nah, you want to get the Doc back or not? We've got a bloody awful flap on here on Gallifrey, Time Lords runnin' about like 'eadless chickens! We're grabbin' some of 'is mates and makin' a team to do a rescue. You just pop into this portal, and we'll crack on, alright luv?"

Amy rattled the TARDIS door in frustration. "Oh no. No, no, no!" But she was steadfastly locked out. What was she going to do now? She had to get Rory back here right now...

And then a vortex appeared and spoke to her in the worst Dick van Dyke Mary Poppins accent she had ever heard...

"Gallifrey? Get him back? You know where he is! Right! Don't you move, I'm not going to stand for this sort of nonsense!" And she ran not into the vortex, but into the house. She emerged moments later with a large satchel bulging with all sorts of curious things. She had also put on a coat, and was carrying her shoes in her hand, her feet still clad only in socks. "You can fetch Rory right after you get me to Gallifrey!" She flipped a bit of foul goo from her sleeve. "He'll have a fit when he sees the kitchen!"

And she dived at the vortex. "Geronimo!"

It was like being teleported in a washing machine, but without the soap suds. That was the best analogy available. Swirly. But it took only a few heartbeats, and Amy was deposited in a room that was totally featureless, other than a single door. Pale, dull, greyish pink walls. Somewhere nearby there was a lot of food. And a harp was being played.

Amy, sadly, did not have the time to reflect on these facts. Her decision to dive into the vortex rather than step was not the best of her life. Owing to the laws of physics and other things, she maintained her momentum once she materialised at the end of her journey. This meant that she went crashing into the door, which opened, and she fell flat on her face in the room beyond.

OOC: Please go to IC: HQ Zero