“I am in a story. Hurrah, I am in a story, Nibs.” [Complete]

[sga1sheppard]

Location: Everywhere! All over Aternaville! But starts out in John's bathroom. Nekkid. *grins*
Time: I suppose it begins on Thursday, the 4th of January, the 5th being John's 40th. The scene below takes place first thing in the morning, about 8am (so I don't know why Rodney's so chipper), and then the thread will move from there
Characters:

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[tehdoctor]

The Doctor didn't sleep. Or, if he did, no one ever saw him, so no one could say otherwise. Instead, most of his time was spent tinkering with the controls and odds and ends of the TARDIS. For one thing, the old girl was almost always in a state of disarray. The rest of the time, he was just fiddling, attempting, perhaps, to get just a bit more power from the TARDIS.

So it was no surprise that on this sunny morning in Aternaville, the Doctor could be found down inside the floor of the TARDIS console, sonic screwdriver in hand. He wasn't sure exactly what he was attempting to do this time, but he was staring at a jumble of wires when it hit him. At first he thought the TARDIS had given a great lurch, but they were on the ground. His head was spinning and it was rather disconcerting. He didn't get dizzy. Dizziness was a petty human problem. Which seemed to have crossed over the species line

[teh_bad_wolf]

The first clue that something was wrong was that Rose fell out of bed. She woke up with a start, lying on the floor staring at the side of her bed.

"Ouch," she said aloud. She frowned and cleared her throat. "Ouch," she repeated, but it still sounded the same. She scrambled to her feet, horrified to find the little t-shirt she had gone to bed in was now hanging almost to her knees.

"What's he done now?" she asked, staring at her little toes. She knew she should probably be a bit more worried, but she was in the TARDIS, so it couldn't be too bad. Probably a wonky circuit or something. The Doctor would set it right.

She let her too big shorts fall to the floor, counting on her t-shirt to keep her covered up as she left the room.

"Doctor!" she shouted. "Whaddya do now?"

[tehdoctor]

For a moment, the Doctor just stared at the child in the mirror, trying to figure out just how they'd gotten into the TARDIS. It was only when he reached forward to poke them that he realized that it was, in fact, still a mirror. And unless the child was very good at mimicking the Doctor's movements, it was still just a normal mirror. He frowned, leaning closer, staring into the brown eyes that stared back. He ran a small hand through the disheveled brown mop atop his head, and his eyes widened.

Taking a surprised step back, he stared with wide eyes at the mirror, where a child version of his current self stared back. What was happened? How had whatever happened, happened? He was a child. A child of his current form, at that. He was over 900 bloody years old, and he looked like he was all of eight in human years

[teh_bad_wolf]

The corridors of the TARDIS seemed even more vast and confusing to someone accoustomed to being an average sized adult. Now it all seemed endless and more than a bit scary.

"Rose!"

She nearly stopped dead in her tracks, actually stumbling when she heard the shouted reply. She turned a corner to find a child sprinting towards her. This time, she did stop, her hand coming to her mouth as she held in a laugh that was bound to turn hysterical should she let it out. It was the Doctor sure enough, right down to the little suit and coat.

"Oh, this is just brilliant," she said, her eyes taking in his current form. "Please tell me you know what happened and how to fix it."

[baker19]

Peter woke up sometime after the sun had staged its morning attack to the feeling that something small but very strong was bouncing around inside his skull with a set of jack-hammers and a nasty expression on its face. He groaned, rolled, and then rolled back off of the empty bottle of rum that had been keeping him company in bed. He didn't actually remember the rum, though he was mostly sure that he was the one who'd gone and gotten it, unless fairies had taken to delivering booze instead of making off with teeth

[cheapie_shamus]

Marlowe was rifling through his desk when the little band of children came in. Damned fine time to run out of smokes. He was fairly certain that there were laws against selling them to minors now. He'd tried a shot of whiskey to calm his nerves, but it tasted wrong. Could whiskey go bad? It had been fine the night before.

The door opened, and a small voice interrupted Marlowe's search. He climbed down off the chair and went around to the front of the desk. The leader of the little band looked entirely different, with curly blonde hair, but the suit and ridiculous upper-class accent assured him that it was Psmith. The girl must have been Lulu, and he had some vague sense of recognition of the little one. "No, you've brought the infantry. I don't see any horses. Who's the other one? Jones?"

[peasmith]

"You are correct, it is that man of action... lad of action, I suppose... and I'm afraid we couldn't convince the horses to try the stairs," Psmith said.

[morethancoffee]

Ianto bowed, inclining his head.

[cheapie_shamus]

Marlowe nodded at Jones and then remembered what had made him think to call Psmith in the first place, and reached up to the desk (it took a little jump to reach the middle) and got the little revolver, breaking it open to show Psmith it was loaded and handing it over. He reached into his coat pocket and gave the boy a handful of cartridges he'd found rolling around in the bottom of the drawer.

"I thought we might need to be armed," he explained to Lulu and Jones. "I'd've gotten one for you too, but these are all the pocket guns I have." He thought for a moment. "Say, has anybody tried calling Sheppard? Maybe he'll be able to help. If he's not affected as well. If nothing else he could make us some sandwiches."

at the Tam house

[wantsthetruth]

River Tam awoke in her own bed, slowly sitting up. Her arms stretched over her head, yawning. At first, something felt wrong. Still, she couldn't put her finger on it. She just knew something was wrong. Climbing out of bed, she realized that her feet were further from the floor than before. And smaller. Much smaller than normal.

"Size does not compute. Shrinkage may have occured, though not supposed to happen until much later in the life span."

With hesitant steps, she made her way over to the mirror, looking into the mirror. Her eyes widened, seeing something she hadn't seen in a long, long time. It was her, but from much younger in life. She was a child!

"SIMON!"

Re: at the Tam house

[the_other_tam]

'River?

Simon came awake suddnely and twisted to hit the floor running to see what was wrong with River. Somehow, this didn't quite happen the way it should have. It should have been any other response to any other nightmare and he should already be at River's bedside, soothing her.

He was actually on the floor, smarting rather soundly from having smacked his head quite hard when he couldn't get untangled from his bedsheets. Simon fought the urge to cry. He never cried. This was ridiculous.

Simon yelled, "River! I'm coming, just give me a minute to---get myself together."

Simon raised a hand to his forehead to see if he was bleeding and stared in awe. His hand was tiny. And strange. He cautiously called again, "River?"

His voice. He sounded young and painfully uncertain. Simon had been able to hide painful uncertainty for years with a calm, quiet voice that carried a wealth of knowledge far beyond his already meager number of years for his advanced status in the surgical community. Now? Now he sounded youngNo

Re: at the Tam house

[wantsthetruth]

"Simon!"

River ran out of her room, down the hall to his, rushing into the door. She had to know if he was ok. She had to know if he was young, as she was. From the sounds she was hearing, it was her belief that yes, he was young too. They were both children again. Unlike Simon, who was probably very worried, this fascinated her.

"Simon! You're young! I'm young! We're young again!"

She ran up to the bed, with only her nightshirt on, draped down to her ankles and then some, fighting to roll up her sleeves. Her eyes were wide, taking in his state of undress and wrapping with the bedsheets.

"Simon? Look..." She extended her tiny hand to him.

Re: at the Tam house

[the_other_tam]

Simon reached for River's hand with his own and was almost ludicrously relieved to find that his still covered hers even if it was ridiculously smaller than he was used to. He pulled her down into the nest of his bedding and held her tight for his own comfort if not hers.

"Did you wake up this way? How long has this been going on? The clock says it's still early morning, but what day is it? Do you have any ideas?"

Simon pressed her and realized that she was likely as clueless as he was and he was being a ninny.

Then he pouted because she was likely to call him a ninny for the way he was practically hyperventilating on her.

Simon didn't remember feeling quite this alive with energy when he was a child. When had he lost that hyper energy? When had all that enthusiasm turned into tension and anxiety? Simon wasn't sure that he could pinpoint an exact date, but he thought it was long before River had gone to the Academy. He thought that his own growing up was most likely to be linked to his enrollment in the MedAcad program, following