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?"