The door to the room where travelers had arrived opened, silently and on supple hinges.

Through the door there was a similar glow to that inside the room. It was possible to see several couches, tables, a large cheeseplant in a pot and a fountain that bubbled away quietly. There was the aroma of roses, despite none being present. The walls sported vast inset roundels, many feet high, stretching up to a ceiling that was easily sixty feet or more above the floor.

Everything was in the same pinkish-grey white that the other rooms had displayed.

One table was vast. It spanned almost the entire length of one wall. It was heavily laden with food. Plates of fruit and bowls of salad. Several trays of cream cakes. A few vats of hot food - some form of vegetarian chick pea stew, a hot curry, and a third containing chicken soup. There were cold meats, quiches, and some pastries of sweet and savoury varieties. There were napkins, silver cutlery items, and finger bowls. And drinks. Teas, coffees, water, fruit juices ...

What was lacking was any sign of people.
This message was last edited by the GM at 19:56, Sat 01 Oct 2022.

"Home again," Susan murmured as she stepped through the vortex into the...wherever she was lacked anything resembling charm but the smell of food was tantalising and reminded her she was rather peckish given her dinner plans had been sunk by the universe deciding to undo her.

She walked out and looked around before heading for the table. She would have waited for others to join her but she had no idea who was coming, when they would arrive, or what would happen next so she figured it would be better to find out with a full stomach. She piled a fair amount of food on her plate, grabbed some cutlery, found a table that gave her a commanding view of the room, sat down and began to tuck in whilst waiting for others to arrive.
This message was last edited by the player at 00:22, Sun 02 Oct 2022.

Amy crashed through the door to the little cupboard she had arrived in, and collapsed on the floor in a tangle of coat, legs, and indignation. She scrambled to her feet, shoes still held tightly, and brushed hair off her face. She got a grip on herself, and took a deep breath, trying to salvagee some dignity. And took stock of the room.

A huge buffet, comfy seating, and a woman having a meal. This was about as far from her expectations as possible. So far, Gallifrey was looking like a slightly upmarket motorway service station, and not the seat of power of almost omnipotent Time Lords.

She said, trying to control herself from ranting about things, "Are you in charge here?" She took a few steps towards Susan, and said, in a very Scottish accent, "Have you got any idea what is going on? They told me it was urgent. It doesn't look it!" She moved to the food and took a napkin, and set about removing gunge from her clothing. "Where are we anyway?"

Victoria arrived, in her slightly old-fashioned skirt and blouse and clutching a paper bag to her bosom as if she were afraid someone would take it away, stepping through the doorway.  She looked around, her long hair floating about her shoulders as she looked at the table, the food, and everything else.  Her eyes were wide with fright, or as much fright as a teen girl could manage.

"But... But where ever is the Doctor?" she stated in her very educated and somewhat accented London accent.  "He said he would be here?  And... and..."

She looked at the other two women.  "And... who are you, if one may ask?  This is most... irregular, even more so than normal."

At no time did she let go her bag.

Susan looked up at the sound of a rather dramatic entrance and looked up again when the young woman spoke. "Inverness, yes? Lovely place, really. Am I in charge? Not so much, no. I am a Time Lord and this is my home but it's been many years, both objective and subjective since I was last here but what does time matter to one such as myself? To answer your question I am not in charge though I daresay I may know the most of what's happening at the moment which is entirely relative since I know very little save that this curry is delightful."

Susan stopped talking and looked surprised at the word salad she had just uttered. "Too much time with my grandfather and all of it is coming back to me now."

She indicated a seat. "Please, feel free to join me."

She went back to eating her curry but stopped when someone else popped in.

"The Doctor has been removed from time so the Time Lords are gathering people who know him to help solve this situation. I'm Susan Foreman, by the way. The Doctor is my grandfather."

Victoria immediately looked confused.  "Your... your grandfather?  But..."  She took a breath.  "The Doctor I knew was a funny little man, with bushy dark hair and loved playing a recorder.  And had pockets of unusual things.  And he hardly looked old enough to have a granddaughter, although I am no judge of such things, I fear.  But he was an odd man, traveling with a Scottish lad named Jamie McCrimmon.  And he a funny blue box that said police on it, and he called it a Tardis.  I saw it for the first time when I was kidnapped by Daleks."

She took another deep breath.  "Forgive me, I... I am quite nervous.  My name is Miss Victoria Waterfield."

Amy spoke! "Well, I am Amy Pond, and I... hold the phone!" She stared at Susan in a combination of disbelief, horror, and utter bafflement. "No, that's not possible! I would know, he'd tell me!"

She looked at Susan very carefully indeed, but saw no family resmeblance at all. But then, would there be any? Time Lords regenerated, she knew that much. But if she was his grandaughter then... and he had married River... and River was her daughter...

Amy dropped her shoes onto a chair and tried to get her brain working. She knew that the future could still contain marvels, but did this mean this woman was her great-grandaughter? The notion that the Doctor might have had a different wife, different possible children, that never occured to her. Why would it? He hadn't told her about any other children, after all. And for all her good nature, Amy did have a considerable streak of arrogance.

She decided not to mention it yet. Maybe Susan would recognise her name?

So, instead she went to the food table. Her own outfit - mini skirt, stockings, and socks but no shoes, and a very nice palid shirt in red and white, this was suitable for her current career as an ex-model turned travel writer. She had a dark brown leather jacket over it. And was exposing possibly even more leg than Victoria's schoolfriends might consider seemly.

She started loading food onto a plate. After all, she hadn't even got to eat any of the epic mountain of pancakes the Doctor had cooked. "Well, Susan Foreman, I think your being here makes perfect sense. I expect the Time Lords will tell us what is going on sooner or later, they made it sound important. But if this is a crisis, there's only one thing we can do right now!" She turned and held a plate and rather nice bone china cup out to Victoria. "Bacon sandwich and a cup of tea! There's nothing we can't solve with a decent cup of tea inside us! Miss Victoria Waterfield, we'll get this sorted out and be back home before you know it! And of course he traveled with a Scottish lad! Without a proper Scot in the TARDIS, he'd always end up in trouble!" She then paused. "Well, he usually does anyway, but we get out of it through good Scottish common sense and a firm boot to the backside!"

She really was excessively Scottish.

Leela blinked her eyes slowly to steady herself and took a moment to recover her balance. She had seen many strange things since she started travelling with the Doctor, but she still wasn't used to this kind of thing. She preferred having her feet on the ground
"I thought you said the doctor was in danger? This doesn't look dangerous" she said to K-9 when they arrived, but it seemed her friend had vanished. The tough warrior girl was loathe to admit it, but between the nice music, the smell of the food and the lack of fear gas and imminent death, things were actually rather pleasant. At least until she looked at the door, struggled with the straightjacket for a moment and realized she was being defeated by a piece of clothing and a piece of wood. Annoyed, she kicked the door a few times, but not hard enough to break it down. See? She was learning manners.

Victoria took the cup, but not the plate.  "A nice cucumber sandwich is much nicer, I think.  Why would anyone want to eat all this?  A proper house would be more civilized, with nice courses, soup and then a salad, then appertifes, then 5 or 6 more courses.  To lay all about on a table seems... vulgar.  And as for the Scots, I loved Jamie.  He was a right Highlander.  I think that even he would be confused by all of this.  And..."

She paused.  "She is truly the Grandaughter?  But... my doctor was not that old.  He had dark hair.  He was caprisious and silly.  And when needed, he could face down any villian.  Daleks, Cybermen, even that evil Salamander.  He was capable, even when making me scream.  A dear fellow.  He took me in when the Daleks killed my father, then he took me all over the galaxy."

She paused.  "Is that the door?"  Innocent and naive, she walked over to open the door, then saw the bound young woman.  "Oh, mercy!" she exclaimed, reaching to help her inside.

"We're not in Inverness, London, or anywhere you're familiar with, Miss Victoria Wakefield so I suggest you take advantage of the bounty presented you and not worry over the lack of proper courses or servants to seat and bring you plates, hmm?"

Realising how that must have sounded, Susan frowned and put her fork down. "Apologies, that was a bit more harsh than it should have been but the sentiment remains the same: we are on Gallifrey so expect things to be rather different."

She took another bite before saying anything else. "Did the Doctor ever tell you anything about our physiology? Specifically anything about Regeneration? Or our lifespans and Regeneration?"
This message was last edited by the player at 23:57, Sun 02 Oct 2022.

Frowning, Victoria regarded Susan.  "It is Waterfield.  And no, he never mentioned this regeneration, or whatever you said.  I do not need servants, I was just making an observation."

She turned back to Leela. "You poor dear, did someone bind you?  How awful.  Let me get you loose."

And as she helped her into the room, she looked at the many clasps and hooks.  What horrible person bound her in such a way?  "You poor dear.  Let me get you loose.  I cannot imagine how the Doctor would summon such a poor creature. Let me help you."

"I am sorry for sounding so harsh. Before coming back here I was informed that my husband was erased from the timeline as a result of the Doctor's removal. To return my husband we need to find and restore my grandfather and all this before the universe removes every single person he's ever touched over the course of his life, including us but no pressure."

She sighed, looked up and watched as Victoria fussed over the woman in a straitjacket? How on earth (all of them) had her grandfather ever come across someone who would be in such a situation as that woman?

"I wonder if my bedroom was left as is in the TARDIS?" She said to no one in particular as she watched and ate.

A door that had been very cleverly concealed in the wall slid open, and a man stumbled through it, as if he had just been shoved out by some other occupant. He was not looking where he was going however, as he was staring into a fragment of mirror at the time. He was muttering to himself as he came, prodding his face with a finger. His voice was awful, something terrible and Cockney, mixed with who knows what from other worlds.

"'ere, no need to go shovin' people, is there? Bloomin' cheek I..hrm. Nice nose. I am definitely likin' the nose. Bad ears though. Is this the best I get? That's rich! All this time an' I still end up with goofy lugs. As fer the eyes..." He waggled them at the mirror. "Them's ladykiller eyes, old son. Goin' to break a few hearts before you're done. 'course, there may not be any left to break..."

He stopped and slowly looked up over the mirror, then jerked back when he realised he was not alone. He shoved the mirror into his rather tatty blue overalls.

"'ere, what you doin' here already? They gone and brought you in 'ere earlier than I thought. You're meant to be in mission briefin' or summat. They put you in the wrong place! Didn't tell me though. That's nice!" He turned and glared back to where the door had been. "I said, that's nice! Talk about a diabolical liberty with my own personal timeline! There are laws about this you know. 'course you do. I s'pose."

He examined the occupants and recognised some of them, at least. "Awright, Miss Waterfield. At least you got 'ere in one piece. And the Pond girl, good good." He turned back and peered at Susan for a long moment. "So, you must be the Gallifreyan. All right then." Next, he looked at Leela, in her difficult position. "So which one are you then, eh? Wos yer name?" He took a grubby list and stump of pencil from his pocket, licked the pencil tip, and hovered over the list, waiting for some response.

Amy placed the bacon sandwich aside, and started to load a plate with food for herself. "I doubt the TARDIS is much like you remember. From what the Doctor said, it's remodelled itself inside a fair few times. I am not sure what makes the TARDIS choose how it looks, but I love it. It's very retro but spacey."

She went and sat with Susan, as she had kindly offered the place. But even as she tried the currey - and it was good - someone shows up. She knew that voice, all right, and he looked as untrustworthy as he had sounded. But she had learned not to judge merely on appearances. His words, though...

"Well, that's just great! Only just arrived and the Time Lords have messed us up! At least we might get some answers now!"

She then spoke rather quietly to Susan. "My husband got erased from time as well. But we got him back! We'll get yours, too! Actually!" She turned to glare at Drax. "Aren't you meant to be bringing Rory? Where is he then?"
This message was last edited by the player at 23:41, Mon 03 Oct 2022.

Leela was uncharicaresiticaly embarrassed as Victoria helped her. "During a fight, I fell into the hands of the Doctor's enemies. I will have vengeance for it" she said. "But my friend K-9 said the Doctor was in trouble, and brought me here."

She was mostly confused by the newcomer's blizzard of words. "I am Leela of the Sevateem." she said proudly. "You are not K-9. Where is he?" she asked Drax. Rescuing two friends would make this more difficult.

One moment Harry was elsewhere, in the scientific elite bunker trying to stop the birth of the Daleks, about which he knew vanishingly little--and for that matter, he only half-knew what he knew anyways. He was waiting for some bad fate--or, he hoped, not at all a bad fate, it sounded like it would all be fine if he got through...whatever was about to happen.

Then he was here, looking down at tea and coffee. This wasn't what he expected. He spun about, looking for whoever might have been the source of the voice that called him in here. He held the hat in his hand, and said, "Er, hello? What is going on?"

Having removed the detestable item from Leela, Victoria could only be a little taken aback by the reference to 'vengeance.'  But it was all the other discussions, the strange man's arrival, and the arrival of another man.  How many people were going to be here.  She backed away from everyone for a moment, wondering if she should perhaps find a place to sit.

"Yes, I am in one piece, sir.  I do not know about briefings and such, I fear.  I had hoped to see the Doctor, or perhaps even Jamie, but neither are here.  What is this place?  Who are these people?  We are we all together?"  Indeed, she was on the verge of becoming irritated.  A proper girl didn't show that, but many things about being proper had been put aside, both with the Doctor, then later in the 20th Century.

"All right all right! You got a hundred questions, like, so I will try to answer 'em all." Drax held his hands up in surrender. "First off, K-9 is runnin' probability analysis and is kind of busy right now, but the little bugger is here all right. Gives me some right lip if I try to disturb 'im, so best let him get on with it. And you must be Sullivan, I recognise you from yer picture." He ticked off the list again. "But as for your husband... Williams, innit? Yeah. We kinda hit a snag, like. Coz one second he's alive, the next he's dead, or never existed, or isn't human, or is human but ancient... like, how many times has he died and come back to life, anyway? We can't get no temporal lock on him, can we? His timeline looks like a bloody kite left in a cupboard fer a few years. All tangled and not obeyin' physical laws. Honest, if we tried to nab him before we sorted it all out, Rassilon knows what might 'appen to him! Best wait until we got it all figured out. He's died so often he might as well be a bleedin' Time Lord!"

In fairness, Rory on his own was a complex time/space event. For such a mild mannered and unassuming man, he really did schnarf up the laws of physics.

"Look, I ain't responsible for all of this, I'm not. Don't shoot the messenger! Grab a plate and I'll tell yer all about it, so far as I know. Just regenerated so I ain't totally clear in me head, but they don't have nobody else free at the moment. It's a bit wonky on Gallifrey. Pork pie!"

The last comment was him being distracted by a large piece of that said substance. He shoveled it into his mouth with no grace and finesse, and continued talking as soon as he had swallowed.

"Right, look, Theet, what is what you call the Doctor, right? Anyway, someone has gone and taken him out of existence, right? Poof! Gone. Nah, we didn't do it. Honest we didn't. But with him gone, well. Think about it. He's done a lot of things for a lot of people. If he never existed at all, just imagine what could happen. Frankly, it'd be a bloomin' mess, and no mistake. You can well imagine the havoc that's going on right now. Slowly, the universe is starting to notice he has never existed, and it is changing to reflect that. Cor, think of it! It won't be long until it reaches the point where we can't fix things. And then ... well. Boom, basically. Or splat. Maybe splat. I don't want to think of either, innit?"

He picked up an eclair and started to eat it with very little demonstration of table manners. "The Boss, he thought if we found people close to the Doc, we might be able to use you to sort of work out what happened. Coz you know how he thinks, and your sort of quantum entangled, right? Now we're goin' to try to get more of you, but the five of you is enough to send you out to do a bit of investigating...ing...ing." He gronfed down more cake like his very life depended on it. "We are goin' to try to get more. That McCrimmon bloke might be handy, and there's this Brown girl, but she's kind of in witness protection, and some bloke from Trion. Boss really wants to find that one! But fer now, you got some useful skills and can probably make a start. Like, Miss Waterfield, you got good empathy, and tend to bring out the best in people. Good for the softly softly approach, and stuff. Leela here... well. I think we all got an idea what she is very good at, so she can probs keep you safe in a fight. Sullivan here's a doctor hisself, so he can probably make sure you all stay in once piece. Miss Susan, she's a Gallifreyan, obviously, and her knowledge of science will be very valuable, as well as her bein' seriously telepathic. And she knows her gramps real well, and that might be most valuable thing of all. And Miss Pond... well. She's creative, forceful, and very good at out of the box plans. You'll need that, to be flexible, coz the whole universe is goin' mental. The five of you should be able to handle anyfink you come across."

He stuck a finger in his ear and wiggled it absently as he talked. "So. The Doctor has been pinched. Nicked. Swiped. If you wants the proper legal terminology, he's been nabbed. No, I do not know who did it, and no, I do not know where he is. Or we'd just have gone and got him. But we got a few leads. We're goin' to send you out to investigate 'em. You should get a pretty good idea of who is responsible, and prob'ly a fair bit of nouce about how they did it, too. With all that, we can get the Doc back. Save the universe, none of you lot will vanish, and you can all go back to yer lives safe and sound. Lovely jubbly!"

He beamed broadly. As if he had not just dumped universal armageddon onto their laps like a puppy on Christmas morning.

Having put her foot firmly in her mouth once already Susan listened, ate, and didn't speak until Drax explained what was happening and what they needed to do. She finished her curry, got up and got a butty, chips, and a...in for a penny, why not? chip butty. A nice cup of mayo rounded out this trip to the table. She sat down, took a bite, sighed and looked at the others.

"Any ideas who it was that nicked him, Drax? The Master? Daleks? Cybermen? Any one of hundreds of enemies he's made over centuries. Davros? Weeping Angels? The Silence?"

So many to choose from, there were. That tended to happen when one was a nigh-omnipotent, nigh-immortal, time traveling member of a superior race who believed themselves to be masters of Time and Space.

"Will we use a TARDIS for this? What number are we on, by the way? 90-something or other, right?"

"That's ma boy!" Amy sound, oddly proud of her husband's excessively complicated temporal situation. "Keep trying to get him, though. He might look a bit normal, but he's the bravest and most tenacious man in the universe!" She teased him constantly, but her deep, unbreakable love for Rory was the very heart of her own firey self.

"Oh! TARDIS!" She suddenly remembered, and stopped with a fork halfway to her mouth. "I couldn't get into it. It just... shut down. It felt almost dead. Is that part of this?"


Even as she ate and listened, she was sizing up what seemed to be her new adventure party. The Leela girl looked like a savage, and Miss Waterfield appeared extremely nervous. She could see how they both had their merits, but feared that if they were placed out of their depth, they might lead to misunderstandings, just as she knew she had borked things up when she was all at sea, and more than once. Still, the doctor person looked as much like a square-jawed action hero from the movies of the black and white era as anybody could. And Susan... she was still utterly stunned by the fact that the Doctor had children, and even more so that he never told her. But so far she had asked a lot of very relevant questions, and having another Time Lord along was definitely going to be a major bonus. She didn't look as tough as River, but then, hardly anybody was. But she would be able to explain all the timey-wimey stuff, as the Doctor would have put it. They did seem to have a lot of useful abilities between them. A Swiss Army Knife adventure party!

"Thank you" Leela said to Victoria as she stretched, glad to be free. After Drax mentioned that K-9 was all right, she went over to the food table. She took whatever the sharpest knife was-no fighting weapon, but better than nothing- then picked up and ate whatever looked good. Still, she was listening.

"I am a huntress, that will help" she said. Although, she had never tracked something across time and space before. But she had done tracking inside the Doctor's brain, so it wasn't as though she couldn't handle the unexpected "We will find him, that is a promise."

She listened to Susan's list of possible suspects. "The Doctor talks very much, but I do not think silence would actually hurt him"

It was soon after he had first spoken up and spotted this strange fellow with food that Harry first began to collect food onto a little plate of his own. It occurred to him that he had not eaten in quite some time, so he thought to listen and eat a little bit.

Throughout Drax's second big explanation, Harry paid close attention and ate slowly and politely, taking small mouthfuls. Here and there--like when the fellow told them all that this Susan was a Timelord and telepathic--Harry gave pause, and looked around to take matters in anew.

Most shocking to him, perhaps, was the list of the Doctor's enemies, many of whom he had neither encountered nor heard about. He picked up the hat in silent contemplation of that man, that demigod known as the Doctor. Harry thought that the Doctor must have been the most stubborn individual he had ever met, and probably the most stubborn individual the Doctor had ever met, to boot.

"I had no idea the Doctor had that many enemies. I've only known him for a time. But yes, excuse me, my name is Harry Sullivan--thank you for the introduction, old fellow. What, er, what is your name, after all?"

He straightened his appearance out, and looked around the room.

"As for the Doctor...I can verify that he's been...kidnapped? I was with him when it happened. It was a great whirling vortex, dark and reddish, and...slimy."

He held the hat up, and said, "It left behind only his silly, old hat."

Harry looked positively crestfallen.

Still, he had a mind to get to know his fellow companions.

He turned to Leela first, saying, "You are a huntress, you say? Big game?"

"Not silence, dear Leela - The Silence and they are deadly. You may well have encountered them and not remember for that is their ability: they are forgotten the instant you turn away from them. You're aware as long as you see them but after..."

Dreadful creatures. Deadly. Certainly capable of killing a Time Lord but removing one from the Timeline? She wasn't so sure.

As he spoke on, Drax fixed himself a cup of tea, with fourteen sugars. It was questionable as to whether drinking it would result in instant diabetes. "Nah, no TARDIS, not even them fancy Type Hundred Alpha battle TARDISes! You'd be nuts to try usin' one right now, they're all going haywire! High Council sent a few out to try to fix things when they first spotted the problem. They came back. The people who went out in 'em were still there. Just in... bits. You know. All the parts present, not all of 'em connected. So no... but we got other ways to get you around. We'll get to that in a bit."

He sat back down, poured tea into his saucer, and slirped at it. "Ah! Say what you like about Earth, they invented tea, and by 'eck it's the best bloody beverage in the universe! Where was I? Ah, right. Villains Well... it ain't a lie, there's problies a huge list of people who want to do old Theet in. The Doc, he's not made many friends with his dashin' about thwarthing evil plans. You lot have seen it, you've been there. Plenty of times people try to kill him as soon as look at him. But you got to keep in mind, most of 'em don't even have time technology. And them what does have it, they ain't able to pull this off. It's seriously difficult. Only a few things in the universe COULD do this, and when you make a list of who can, and who wants to, you end up with only a couple of names."

He pulled a little poointer device from his grubby overalls and pointed it at the wall, which shimmered into a translucent viewscreen. An image appeared - one of a bearded face with dark, cold eyes. One known all too well to some of those present. "First up, we got a renegade Time Lord. Now, we was all at school together. But he was a bad egg an' no mistake. Give 'imself a poncey name - The Master. What sort of ego does that? Berk. Anyways, he has always been after universal power, an' him an' Theet have been messing with one another's plans fer centuries. He has motive to mess up the Doctor, trust me. An' the brains. He's a genius, a killer, an' probably the most dangerous fella you will ever meet. So watch yerselves."

The next face appeared - an artist's impression of a Hooded, eyeless creature with awful fangs. "Trickster. He's an Eternal, one of the Pantheon of Chaos. Eternals sorta exist outside of time an' space an' amuse themselves by playing with mortals like toys. A bunch of them set themselves up as mischievous Gods, but this one, he broke even their inexplicable rules. So he got banished. Since then he has revelled in carnage and chaos. Destroying the universe is just his sort of fun, an' he really hates the Doctor. But he usually works through puppets, so you'll have trouble findin' him. He's a slippery character."

Finally, several faces appeared. "However, this is the most likely culprit. Out of everyone who we know who can manipulate and corrupt time, this bloke is the absolute best. He's a genius at breakin' the laws of time. Now, when we were all together at the Academy, all in our little secret society, he went by the name of Mortimus. But he never uses that name these days. He changes names as much as he changes identities. His trick is to infiltrate a culture, gain a position of authority and respect, then use that to change a significant historical event, re-writing the timelines. If anyone could manage to erase someone from time, he could. An' if he ain't done it, I bet he knows how it could be done. He likes to pose as ecclesiastical figures especially. Monks are popular with him. Time Meddlers - they're the very worst type of people, an' really dangerous. The Boss reckons that this fella is the place t' start."

He reached for a an eclair, dunked it in his tea, and munched on it. "I'm called Drax, yeah. But I won't always be in 'ere to guide you. If it ain't me, it'll be that tin dog, or Ro...Romd.. Roanyv... Some time lord bint with a dumb name. Always will be someone around you can check in with for advice and to give us updates."

Amy shivered at mention of the Silence. "We cleaned them off Earth, eventually. The Silence. The Doctor turned their power against them." She laid her fork down then, her appetite waning in the revelations. But she did lean to place a hand on Harry's arm. "I saw it too, when they took him. I've almost never seen him that scared. We'll get him back!"

She processed all that they were being told. "So, we just track down this Mortimus fella, and shake him until he gives up the goods? Fine by me! I'm in the mood for some shaking. Yuck!"


She located another blob of the gunge on her clothes, and used a napkin to scrape it off. She dropped it on the table. "You Time Lords can take that off and look at it! Maybe it's a clue!"
This message was last edited by the player at 21:42, Thu 06 Oct 2022.

Victoria had sat herself at the table and removed her sandwich from her paper bag and unwrapped it from its wax paper cover.  She left her thermos of tea inside, she wanted to save it, so she served herself a cup from the table.  She listened as the Drax fellow blathered about the Doctor's enemies.  Truly, didn't he have many?  As he finished however, she looked up.

"The Doctor once mentioned the monk, called Mortimus.  It was quite some time before I was with him, but he was very smart and a very devious character.  The Doctor called him a Time Meddler, and related how this fellow had his own Tardis.  The Doctor removed something from it, I do not recall what it was, but it made Mortimus' Tardis not work, and so he was stranded there. In..."  She had to think.  "It was on Earth... oh! I do remember! It was the Battle of Hastings!" Her eyes lit up as she recalled the story. "One Thousand and Sixty Six, as I remember.  He was chuckling as he told us the tale, his eyes lighting up as they often did, like a schoolboy as he was remembering how cross this Mortimus was to find he was stranded!"

Drax nodded at Victoria's tale. "That ain't the only time they crossed paths. There was some business in Constantinople that really got 'em both worked up, and after the whole business with the Daleks..." He broke off and looked at Susan carefully. "Actually, let's not get into that. You know how it is. I can't tell yer about yer future actions without schnarfing the whole thing up. If we get out of this mess, you got that to look forwards to! Anyway, Mortimus really, really hates the Doctor these days. Blames him about the death of someone he cared for. He's wrong about that, but old Morty never was one fer clarity of thinking. He even took over the Doc's timeline for 'isself one time! Cor, that caused some trouble, and no mistake! And when it comes to manipulatin' time lines and stuff, I don't think there's ever been anyone better. Not from Gallifrey, leastways. If he didn't do it personally, you can bet he can give you an idea how it was done. 'Course, you got to persuade him to tell yer. I doubt he'll be willing to play along. But then, you got all sorts of skills in that regard. If gentle persuasion doesn't work, offer the bugger a biff up the hooter. He always was a coward, even when we was all at school together."

He picked up the napkin and looked at it with some disgust. "Great. Stinking doom mucus. Aren't I a lucky boy?"

Susan had to concentrate to make out most of what Drax was saying given how awful his accent was. SHe'd heard some bad ones over the years but he took the cake, ate it, burned down the house with the candles, then nicked the birthday presents before scarpering off without so much as a "by your leave!"

She ate her butty and chips as she mulled over the new info from Drax. They had somewhere to start but what wasn't sure was how they were going to get there.

"So no TARDIS. How are we going to get when and where we need to go for this particular mission, hmm? I don't fancy the idea of walking across time and space."

Drax lifted his tea and slurped rather awfully, then laid it aside. "Yer, quite right, we do 'appen to 'ave some gadgets you need. Hang on 'arf a mo!" He stabbed buttons on the remote several times, and nothing happened. He jiggled it. And eventually, walloped it on a table. A drawer in the table slid open. He dropped the remote aside and sighed. "Entropy is gettin' into everyfink. I just hope this little lot will work long enough fer you to get the job done."

He first held up a large bracelet, with a triskel sort of ornament on it. It was too large to really wear comfortably, or unobtrusively. "First up, we 'ave what is commonly called a time ring. I reckon you know all about 'em, Miss Susan. And the doctor Harry 'ere, must know about 'em by now if you were around daleks on Skaro. Well! How it works is, when you are all finished up in whatever place you get sent to, you get hold of it, and tell it where to take you next. Like, if you wanted to go find the Master, just tell it to do that. But you all have to hang on to it together, or some will get left behind, and there'll be all sorts of paperwork! So, don't do that!" He looked over the very varied party and frowned, and eventually handed it to Amy. "You better take this and stuff it in that bag you got there. It's too big fer pockets, and you don't want to get caught wearin' it. Or accidentally tell it to do somefink and it does it coz you forgot it was on yer wrist."

The next thing he held up was a small device, no larger than a cellphone, and with a fair bit of flashy button and light decoration on it. "Temporal scanner. This little gadget will lock onto any nearby sources of artron energy, and if you calibrate it right, you can even scan someone. If they're from Gallifrey, it'll tell you. Not sure how. Probably goes ping, or somefink. Might take a while to figure out how to use it, and I got no clue. I did 'ave one, but never got it working. The chronostat was bust." He passed it to Susan. "This seems mostly in your line, bein' all Time Lordy and stuff. I bet you can get it doin' all sorts of fancy stuff in time. Hur! No pun intended!"

Next up was what looked like a wrist watch. A fancy one, at that. "This is a temporal communicator. It's already set up so yer can speak direct to this room. There'll always be someone 'ere, so any time you fink you need a chat with us, just press the windy thing, and you'll get through. If there's anybody left alive over 'ere, and entropy don't knacker the thing first." He passed that to Victoria, and gave a smile that was meant to be reassuring, but was a little let down by the fact he had a bit of pork pie in his teeth. "You keep an eye on it. You lot get into too much trouble, let us know. Not sure if we'll be able to send anybody out to lend a 'and, but we can advise!"

He took up the last item. "Nah, I'm quite proud of this. I worked it out with the tin dog. It's a portable HADS. 'cept it is not automatic." It was a small box, the size of a cufflink or ear-ring box. With a single big red button on it. "If you end up in mortal, and I mean like die in the next five seconds, peril, give this a wallop! It'll displace you to somewhere very safe - as much as anywhere is safe with the universe doin' an impression of a soufflé in an airing cupboard. But if you're in different places, you might get sent to different places, too. It'll move all of yer, in one big jump, no matter where yer are in relation to each other. Might be a problem gettin' you all back together, but it'll keep you alive."

That was passed to Harry. "For the love of Rassilon, don't press it by accident! Or lose it! Some local yokel finds it and presses it, they could end up sendin' you all to the far side of the universe by accident! And! It'll only work the once. So... use it only in dire emergency, innit?"

He finally looked at Leela. Her outfit was a bit distracting, but so was her manner, and the rather professional way she had handle the carving knife she had appropriated. "I am 'fraid I ain't got a gadget for you, but it ain't like you're very endowed with pockets. You keep everybody safe and alive."

He narrowed his eyes and regarded them all, his eyes intelligent, even shrewd, for all his ludicrous accent and over the top Cockney mannerisms. "You might be the last chance the universe has for survival. I wish we could give you more, but the Boss is bustin' a blood vessel just keepin' the universe running. This will be dangerous. You'll have to survive with your wits, your insight, and most of all, your courage.  You've all traveled in time, and that will keep you insulated from the universal collapse better than most. But if you don't get the Doctor back, it's just a matter of time before we all get wiped out."

He was deathly silent for a moment, then beamed and became animated again. "So, that's a lark, innit? Right, you lot got any more questions? We need to get you off to wherever you are goin' first. Got time for one question each!"

When Amy leaned over to him, he smiled a little uncertainly and nodded.

"Of all the possibilities in that moment, none of them involved what actually happened. To see the Doctor like that--someone capable of making so many enemies...it was not pleasant, and it was even less pleasant to find myself there with this silly hat. It got knocked off his head every few moments but he always picked it back up."

Harry did not complete his thought--that the Doctor might not pick up that hat, after all. And then what would happen was...well, he listened to this fellow, who he would shortly learn was named Drax. It seemed as if the Doctor was the glue keeping everything together, almost.

And maybe not even almost.

He took the button in hand, and as it was explained to him he quickly stopped gently rubbing the top of the button and went white. He almost seemed about to interrupt with a question, but instead he made a face and said, "Better not to have to use it at all, don't you think?"

At the end of it all, he asked the most obvious, perhaps even idiotic question he could have:

"Well, if it's not this Morty fellow, do you have an idea where we'd be going next?"

Leela inspected the Doctor's hat, hoping for some clue that might help them. "Big, small, I hunted whatever the tribe needed" she told Harry.

"I have met a person or two like that, but I do not think they were Silence, just dull" she said of the Silence and their ability to be forgotten instantly. She did not relish the idea of fighting a timelord. When killed the simply regenerated, and she did not like to repeat herself.

Leela nodded sagely as though she understood what Drax was talking about. "I could use a better knife... this is not a real fighting knife. And a few jadis thorns." That was gadgetry enough for her. She frowned a little at his remark about her outfit. It had been well regarded on Pluto.

Amy examined her new acquisition carefully. "Time ring. Is there a time fascinator to go with it?" She tried it on, then gave a satisfied harumph, and stuffed it into her satchel. She looked at Harry's sole remaining part of the Doctor. "You can tell that's his. My boy loves a silly hat!" her intense familiarity when it came to referring to the missing Time lord probably seemed extremely inappropriate to some of his other friends, but in her world, he was a young man, with a very silly streak in his personality, that let itself out in his ridiculous choice of head and neckwear. And she wouldn't change it for the world.

And something did occur to her. "What if we run into the Doctor and we don't know it's him? He's regenerated like a dozen times by the time he meets me. And I don't have a clue what they all look like. I'm pretty sure that everyone here will know the Doctor they've met, but we can't know every face he's ever had. Is there some way we can get a look at them all, just in case?" It was extremely unlikely they would run into him by chance, but Amy had one overwhelming characteristic that pretty much dominated her approach to life. Faith. Faith it would all work out well, and faith that the Doctor would arrange it. If he'd been taken out of time, she knew that wherever he ended up, he'd be fighting to get back, and would pop up at the last possible moment to save them all, with his usual sense of timing.

That's what he did. Why would this be any different?

"I imagine I'll be able to tell it's him when we find him. If not then he'll recognise me when we meet again as I haven't regenerated at all so I look as I did when last we saw each other. Benefits of aging very slowly, you know?"

Susan gave Amy a smile before she turned back to Drax. "Thank you for this but I require one more thing before I go gallivanting across time and space yet again. The one item no Time Lord should ever be without and the one thing I demand for this. I require...a Sonic Screwdriver."

Probably the most useful items in any Time Lord's arsenal which was something the Doctor had demonstrated countless times over their travels together. She had no need of weapons with one of those in her hands as they could be weapon, shield, armour, and all-around handy damn thing to have no matter the time or place they found themselves in.

Amy grinned at Susan. "That's good enough for me. I am sure he'll recognise some of us no matter what. Hang on!"

She rummaged on the satchel and pulled out... the sonic screwdriver her Doctor had thrown at her seconds before the floor swallowed him whole. Of course, it looked a great deal different to the one he might have had when he was much younger. Larger, more flashy, and with a lot more buttons. But then, that's what men did in a midlife crisis - get souped up gadgets and flash them around. "One sonic screwdriver! You know, I've never seen him use it on screws? He helped us put up an IKEA bookcase last week, and he never even thought to use it." She pressed a few buttons and it flashed and burbled away. "He wouldn't have given it to me unless he thought I might need it to help find him. Even as he was being sucked into the ground, he was making plans."


OOC: I wouldn't normally jump in so fast and skip other people posting, but this seemed like a good thing to do given Susan's request!

Drax fidgeted uncomfortably. Leela made him nervous. Of course, he might know more about her future than she does at this stage of her timeline, and he would be right to be afraid. Leela had a lot of power, where he came from... "Well, the Boss ain't goin' to let me give you a weapon, but I reckon you'll have a lot of good ones to choose from where you're likely to be goin'. A whole range of interesting things to hit people with. And Doctor Harry... well, we'll portal you to find Mortimus, and the time ring already got programmed to hunt down the largest temporal fissure near the Master that it can, so that's already worked out. Once you talked to them two, I reckon you'll have some more clues to follow, if they ain't responsible. You call us up, and we'll program yer next destinations. So don't lose that time watch, miss!" He nodded to Victoria.

Susan, however, was given a big smile. It was not reassuring. He was intrinsically untrustworthy looking. "Got that right, the Doc would know you in a flash, so if you spot him, chances are you'll know, but you can always call us up to verify if yer need to. But the screwdriver... well, that's the Doc's own invention, we don't really use 'em here on Gallifrey. But looks like you got one there already. Actually, this is a point... whatever yer do, don't leave these gadgets behind when yer jump out. Any one of 'em could cause havoc in the timelines what are already fractured. I mean, can you image what might happen if someone like Napoleon got hold of 'em? Genghis Khan? Adolf Hitler? Lawd 'elp us, Magnus Greel? You hang on to 'em real tight! All right then! Any more questions?"

Victoria looked up, having finished her cucumber sandwich, and enjoying a sweet with her tea.  "Oh, the sonic screwdriver?  He used that, with that nasty sea creature.  Oh, horrible!  Those awful weed creatures!  Oh! I shiver thinking of them!"

She took a sip of her tea.  "Forgive me, I just remember those awful things.  And then the Doctor and that thing that looked nothing like one would use to drive a screw!  Funny noises!"

She looked at her companions.  "Forgive me again, I suppose I am not in the same time as some of you.  My doctor was such a roly-poly fellow, so curious, so funny!  Him and his funny little recorder.  And Jamie... Oh, he was such a dear.  Scot, you know.  But so very serious and yet still a boy.  I miss him dearly.  Would I see him, perhaps?  If anyone could find my ragamuffin Doctor, it would be him!"

The young woman seemed oblivious about much of what they were speaking.  Then again, she was just a Victorian girl, dropped into the Tardis, then dropped again into the 20th Century.  A funny thing indeed.

Harry's eyebrows went up, and he thought. "No, Amy, you're right--why, I remember that when I met the Doctor, he didn't remember Sarah or the Brigadier whatsoever." He leaned back and took a bite of his food, continuing again with, "He also tied me up with a skipping rope, so if we see the Doctor and he manages not to recognize us, we should expect him to try something quite mad if he thinks we're trying to catch him."

He returned to eating and nodded when necessary, putting on a face of mild surprise when Drax started listing the various dead tyrants. He genuinely hadn't considered the possibility--after all, he had not planned on losing any of these things, and he was sure everyone else had also been planning not to lose anything. He was certainly worried about losing everything now, though. And he was especially worried about that last name.

Oh, no, actually, that was confusion. "Now, hold on Drax, just who is this Magnus Greel? I've never heard of any Magnus Greel. I'm not even sure it sounds like a real name. Where is he from, Scotland? I think I would have heard of a Scottish tyrant."

"He does like hats" Leela said in agreement with Amy. It was good to know some things never changed. "I wore his hat once"

She was disappointed at the news that she would not be getting a new weapon. Leela blinked a few times as Drax recited the names of historical figures. She had heard one or two, but the Sevateem's culture had drifted a long way and the context was hardly helpful; a Napoleon was a short but warlike spirit, a bit like an angry leprechaun. But she brightened at Harry's question, happy to know the answer. "Magnus Greel! He is a very bad man. Was a very bad man. Will be. From not too long before my time, I think, but too long for me to meet him then. If I did, he would not have troubled the Doctor and I later. He travelled through time himself, so we may have to watch for him"

She examined Amy's new sonic screwdriver. "That is his sonic? It does not look the same" The Doctor would no doubt insist it was not magic, but she certainly didn't know how it worked. Still, it made her thoughtful for a moment. "Which of us is... furthest along? Has the oldest Doctor?"

Victoria examined the 'wrist watch' that she was given.  Of course, there was no such thing from her time, but she had seen both men and women wearing them in the  20th Century.  She decided the 'windie thing' was the small knob on the side, which would be like a pocket watch winder.  She put it on her wrist, being careful not to touch the winder.

She glanced over at Amy.  "No, that does not look like my Doctor's screwdriver at all.  His looked much rougher than than one, as if he had perhaps designed it recently?  Of course, everything in his Tardis was harem scarem, with funny repairs and such.  He never knew where he was going.  He truly was funny that way."

She looked at Harry with a look of puzzlement.  "Brigadier?  As in a General?  I do not remember him mentioning one.  Oh, there was one military gentleman we met, Colonel... oh dear..."  She thought a moment, then brightened.  "Oh! I remember!  Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart!  A stodgy fellow, very military.  We met him in the Underground train tunnels."

Amy considered the screwdriver closely. "Well, he's always adding bits to it. I'm surprised he let me take it, under the circumstances. Well, we'll find the best use for it."

The discussion made her ponder for a moment, and she returned to her food. Who knows, it might have been the last decent meal they got. "Lethbridge-Stewart? Of UNIT? I've heard the stories, the Doctor had a lot of time for him. Usually. But as to who knows the oldest... it might be me? He says he has had eleven faces. And he's at least twelve hundred years old, but he can't really remember. It's a lot of time to deal with, and he keeps jumping back and forth and the Time War probably messed a lot of that up so..." She broke off helplessly. "Sometimes he looks like he's twenty. Sometimes like he's twenty times twenty times... god knows how much. He's god the oldest soul with the youngest face. And we are going to bring him back because if we don't what's the point of anything?"

She broke off, getting a little too emotional. Tension was running high. She had too much to do to be able to break down because of it all. Same old story.

Victoria moved over to place a placating hand on Amy's arm.  "You know, you truly do remind me of Jamie.  So very Scottish.  A highlander bagpiper, you know.  He was so very dear, and protective.  And my Doctor was so very boy-like.  But I think he was different from other... Doctors.  He remembered Aztecs, and Marco Polo.  He said he saw the Daleks on their home planet.  And on occasion mentioned others, such as Ian, and Vicki, and... and..."  She looked over.  "And Susan."  She bit her lip.  "And he had a Five-Hundred-Year diary.  How unusual is that?"

She gave Amy a hug.  "Do not worry.  We shall find him.  I know we will.  As you say, what good is anything without him?  And if that is so, then we must make sure that it is... why... everything!"

Susan's face lit up as she saw the familiar (more or less) and requested implement held up. "Brilliant! May I?" She held her hand out.

"So we have a time and place to start. This should prove interesting and by that I mean somewhat terrifying. Never done the timey-wimey thing sans a TARDIS before but not going is not an option what with the universe undoing us and all."

She took one more bite of her sandwich, a last handful of chips, washed it all down with a tall glass of water, and stood up.

"Right! Shall we be on our way? The universe needs saving yet again and won't do it itself, will it?"

"As it 'appens, luv," Drax said, for Victoria's benefit, "we are tryin' to find that McCrimmon bloke, but it's a bit tricky. He's already had his time line mucked up a bit, so there's some jiggery pokery needed, but if we get it sorted, we'll pop 'im along after yer all." Presuming he even existed, of course.

"And don't you fret, you ain't goin' to see Greel where you are off to. Let's 'ave a shufties, shall we?" He whacked the remote control a few times, and pulled up some information on the screen. "All right then! Hmm. Earth, no bleedin' surprise there, it always is, innit? But we can't really narrow it down, what with the timelines all bein' in flux. Best I can offer yer is... post Industrial era. And pre-Dalek invasion. So any time from the Nineteenth to the Twenty-Second centuries. Not too bad, couple of hundred years. Language shouldn't 'ave changed that much. And we will be translatin' for yer, but it'll take a bit longer than in a TARDIS. Might be the odd hiccup along the way. Still, it's good to start somewhere more or less familiar to most of yer."

He jabbed the control again, and in the middle of an empty spot in the room, another swirly white vortex appeared. "Right, so. This will drop yer all near where yer need to be to find this Mortimus bloke, but not so close yer get into trouble before yer even get yer breath back. Close enough that yer can set up the temporal scanner to look for the strongest artron signal. Problies that'll be the TARDIS he uses.Then all yer got to do is sneak up, grab 'im, and get the little bleeder to confess all 'is myriad sins, innit? Bit of luck, yer'll be back home in time for supper!"

He was clearly being overly optimistic. It was never that easy.

Amy returned the hug fiercely, and when released, she set her jaw with determination. "Right!"

She passed the sonic to Susan. "Just don't lose it. He'll never let me hear the end of it if that happens. He sulked for a week when Rory lost his favourite yo-yo." That said, she moved to the table and started stuffing all the easily portable, and not too messy, foods into her satchel along with the first aid supplies. Pork pie, Scotch egg, bottles of whatever the fluid that definitely was not water but was not anything else she could identify... and fruit, too. She was a seasoned time traveler. She knew all too well how meals could end up being skipped when flitting between time zones.

And with that, she turned and looked at the portal. "So, two centuries. Who knows, if we get lucky, some of us could even pop home for a cup of tea. Geronimo!"

She stepped forcefully through the portal to... whatever fate had in store!

OOC: As and when you step into the portal, please move to the thread IC: No Man's Land.

Seeing what Amy did, Victoria took a few pieces of fruit and added them to her lunch bag.  Then, she stood, smoothed her skirt, made sure she had the ring, then looked at the swirling thingie.

"Well, if Mr. McCrimmon is there, then I shall at least have an old friend to meet.  After all, he was born before I was!"  She hesitated a moment, wondering who Geronimo was... a friend of the Doctors?  Then she stepped forward.

"As the Doctor would say, 'Let us see what is out there!'"  And with that, she stepped forward, closing her eyes as she did.

Susan pocketed the tool and grabbed some food and drinks as the others had - first rule of Time Travel: eat when you can.

She gave Drax a small smile, followed that with a small sigh, and stepped through the portal into the kind of adventure she thought she had left behind for good when she left the TARDIS.