Not With a Bang (3/??)
Title: Not With a Bang
Author: flamingo_bandit
Fandom: Warehouse 13/Doctor Who crossover
Genre: General, humor, sorta mystery or adventure or something.
Spoilers: through 1x07 “Burnout” to be on the safe side; the 1996 Doctor Who TV movie, if that counts as a spoiler
Ships: Well, none on purpose.
Rating: PG so far
Warnings: Language, implied gore, obvious lack of beta, bits of silly.
Summary: The Doctor lends a hand in hunting down the Artifact du Jour, but for the Warehouse 13 crew, the workday isn’t quite over. Part 3 of ??.
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter 3
“How do we know for sure that’s where it is again?” Myka asked.
“Do you remember the cat in the shop?” The Doctor still watched Pete, leaning on the console. The candlelight turned his hair to a red-gold halo, brought out the sharp lines of his cheekbones.
Pete winced, fingering the tears on his coat. “A bit.”
He nodded. “Right. Do you know what prompted it to attack you?”
His expression went dead. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
The Doctor smiled, raising the bear paw, and waved at him with it.
“Wait,” Myka interrupted, frowning. “You think the-the berserker . . . bear . . . thing affected a cat? Maybe you just annoyed it, Pete, ever think of that?”
“No, wait,” Pete said, raising his hand. “Because Mrs. Ericson was sure the cat was the nicest thing ever, she apologized all over herself when that happened. And, you know, everyone says the same thing about Daniel. Except for the cat part.”
“We found this in front of the antique store,” the Doctor pointed out, setting it down in front of him. “The cat was in the store, Daniel’s obviously connected. Who knows who’s next?”
“So we need to go talk to Mrs. Ericson again,” Pete said, straightening up. “Shouldn’t be a problem.”
+
Two hours later.
“So, that went well.”
Myka stared blankly at Pete, trying to summon the energy to glare, or even raise an eyebrow. She sat against a bookshelf on the Doctor’s hardwood floor, hair frizzing around her face in ways that seemed to defy gravity.
Pete faced her, half-slumped in a richly carved wooden chair. “Well, we got it,” he said defensively. Dirt smeared across his face, and he smelled strongly of gasoline. “So it could have gone worse.”
The bear pelt stretched over the console in the center of the room. It was largely rotted with age, and more of it had burned away in the last hour.
“It could have gone better, too,” she replied, fingers on the bridge of her nose. “For example, you could have not set the car on fire.”
Pete rubbed the back of his neck. “Always focusing on the negative,” he accused her, and she half-heartedly swatted his leg, the only thing she could reach without any effort on her part.
The Doctor burst into the room from the door in the back. “So,” he said brightly, looking no worse for wear. “That went well.”
Myka groaned, fell back against the shelf, and waited for the aspirin to kick in.
“Come on,” Pete said, shaking her arm. “We need to call Artie and have him pick us up or something.”
“This is your second car lost in this job,” Myka informed him thoughtfully, eyes closed. “How do you manage that? Anyway, you have the Farnsworth, you call him.”
“No, I don’t,” Pete said, and now her eyes popped open. “I thought you had it.”
Myka’s hand went to her pocket. “I don’t. Oh, sh-”
The Doctor cleared his throat, and when she looked, he held the Farnsworth towards her.
Myka froze. “How did you get that?” she demanded, patting down her coat to make sure it wasn’t there.
He smiled apologetically, palming the Farnsworth and making it vanish, then producing it again from his sleeve. “I needed it for a moment. I’m giving you a lift.”
“Oh, yeah? In your spaceship?” Myka reached for the Farnsworth.
“Yes, actually. Hold on, you’ll get this back in a moment. You see,” he said, and now he bound to the console in the middle, gently moving the bear pelt onto a nearby chair, “if I connect it here, the Tardis reads of the coordinate there.” He circled the console, flicking switches. “And then I press this and-”
There was a sharp jerk, like an elevator dropping down the shaft, and Pete fell out of his chair, narrowly avoiding a headlong crash into Myka. The Doctor would have fallen, too, had he not clung to the console; he grinned at them, not for any reason, while Myka straightened herself back up and Pete stood, trying to look like he’d intended to do that.
Absurdly, the books stayed on their shelves.
The Doctor waved a hand towards the door. “Go ahead,” he said, and when neither moved he shrugged and crossed to it himself.
He pushed the door open-not to the alley behind Mrs. Ericson’s shop, but the scrubby dead yard of the Warehouse.
+
“What the hell is that?” Artie wondered, and Claudia jumped to her sneakered feet, then froze when she heard it, too. Both stood stock still, listening as the groaning, wheezing sound grew to a roar and then faded into silence.
“I’ll check it out,” she said, but he caught up to her.
They emerged from the Warehouse to discover Myka and Pete, stepping out of what looked like a blue shed, disoriented, followed by a man in an old-fashioned coat explaining something with elaborate hand gestures. Somewhere behind them, the cow lowed forlornly, but otherwise didn’t seem impressed.
“So it’s true,” Artie said, circling the blue box, then looking up at the man. “This is the Tardis?”
The Doctor extended a hand. “Artie. Wonderful to meet you in person.”
Claudia folded her arms. “Artie’s reports didn’t mention how cute you were, for a guy in a waistcoat.” The Doctor’s eyebrows shot up, and she grinned cheekily. “Claudia,” she introduced herself, extending a hand. He took it in his cool fingers, smiling back. “What’s with the box?”
“It’s bigger on the inside,” piped in Pete, who looked a little shell-shocked.
Claudia wrinkled her nose. “Why do you smell like a gas station explosion?”
“We had a little . . . incident,” Pete said vaguely.
“Just be glad we didn’t borrow Artie’s car,” Myka added.
Artie turned a little pale at the thought, then shook his head. “So what happened?” he asked, and Claudia took a step towards what he’d called the Tardis.
Police Public Call Box, it said around the top; the door was just barely ajar, and she poked it tentatively. It swung open without a sound. Behind her, Pete and Myka interrupted each other with differing accounts of events, and Claudia hesitated. It’s a spaceship, she thought, and you only live once, and she took a step inside.
She’d meant to only take a peek, nothing more. But what she’d thought looked like an elaborate Victorian study was, in fact, a huge display of what she could only assume was alien technology. Almost in spite of herself she approached a low shelf, dotted with books in strange languages and what looked like an iPod, except for its gentle, pulsing orange glow. Beside it was what looked like a microwave mixed with an old-fashioned alarm clock, and precariously on top of that stood a narrow silver cone, with what looked like a marble balancing at its tip. It has to be attached, it just looks like it’s balanced. She raised her fingers to it-
“Shit!” The marble rolled off before she’d even touched it. She scrambled to catch it, picked it up, then tried to put it on top of the cone to no avail. “Oh, God, I broke his spaceship,” she muttered, and then she thrust it into her pocket, looking around wildly, then turning to go before she could break something else.
The Doctor stood calmly in the doorway, looking not at her but at the crowd behind him. “Hello, Claudia,” he said in his soft and lilting voice, turning to regard her with blue-green eyes, cool and sparkling as a calm sea.
“Um. I just wanted to look . . .”
“I understand,” he said, the corner of his mouth twitching.
“You’re not going to abduct me to the mother ship now, are you?” She followed him further into the room, still curious but now touching nothing.
“Not without a bite to eat, at least,” he replied, picking up something beside the console. “I’ve never been to any mother ship yet that could make a decent sandwich. Are you coming along to, ah, Leena’s?” He draped the bear pelt over his arm like a waiter’s cloth.
“Well, I live there, so that’s probably a yeah.”
“Wonderful. We’ll take care of this first. Artie,” he said, reaching the doors, the name sounding ridiculous in his accent. “What number of Warehouse did you say this was again? Twelve?”
“Thirteen,” he corrected, cocking a heavy eyebrow at Claudia as she exited the Tardis.
“It’s a spaceship,” she said defensively.
“Thirteen,” the Doctor repeated dreamily, striding confidently towards the doors as though he belonged there. Pete and Myka had left already, presumably in the direction of a shower and, in Pete’s case, hopefully nowhere near an open flame. “I visited Warehouse, what was it, Seven, I think. Just outside of Rome; the Pope would wander by once in a while-”
“Name-dropper,” Artie accused him under his breath, rushing ahead to open the door at the end of the hallway. Claudia suspected that, if he’d wanted to, the Doctor could have entered regardless of security codes and retina scans, but he was polite enough to wait. “You can just set that-” He shut the door after them.
And then the lights went out.
“-there,” Artie finished belatedly.
Claudia shed her sweatshirt to the floor and rolled up the sleeves of her T-shirt, ready to dive in and fix the problem. “This is weird,” she said, squinting futilely into the darkness.
“I have a flashlight, hold on.”
But the lights flickered back on for a moment, then off, then firmly back on.
“Does this sort of thing happen often?” the Doctor enquired, folding the bulky bearskin and setting it down.
“Only since recently,” Artie said, looking at Claudia, mouth drawn in a tight line.
“Man, you hack into a high-security government facility one time. Let it go, Artie.” She pushed her red hair from her eyes, still eyeing the electrical grid. “It could just be a fluke, you know.” She didn’t sound convincing to her own ears.
Artie didn’t respond, arms folded over his chest, surveying the room. “Could be.” He tapped his foot for a moment, frowning. “Claudia, why don’t you show the Doctor to Leena’s? I’ll join you soon, I just want to check some things out.” He approached his desk, face screwed up, eyes obscured by the computer reflection in his glasses.
The Doctor cleared his throat. “I could be of some assistance.” Already distracted, the other man shook his head. “Are you sure?”
“Come on,” Claudia said, nodding her head to the side. “It’s probably nothing. Really.” She led the Doctor towards the door. In a low voice, she admitted, “Artie’s probably right. It’s been weird ever since I-well, scrambled the works.”
The Doctor looked at her, brows striving for his hairline, then shrugged. “If you say so,” he said. “Lead on.”
Behind them, Artie hunched low over the computer, studying something on the screen. It wasn’t until later that Claudia realized that the computer had shut off with the power, and she couldn’t remember anyone logging back on.
Author: flamingo_bandit
Fandom: Warehouse 13/Doctor Who crossover
Genre: General, humor, sorta mystery or adventure or something.
Spoilers: through 1x07 “Burnout” to be on the safe side; the 1996 Doctor Who TV movie, if that counts as a spoiler
Ships: Well, none on purpose.
Rating: PG so far
Warnings: Language, implied gore, obvious lack of beta, bits of silly.
Summary: The Doctor lends a hand in hunting down the Artifact du Jour, but for the Warehouse 13 crew, the workday isn’t quite over. Part 3 of ??.
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter 3
“How do we know for sure that’s where it is again?” Myka asked.
“Do you remember the cat in the shop?” The Doctor still watched Pete, leaning on the console. The candlelight turned his hair to a red-gold halo, brought out the sharp lines of his cheekbones.
Pete winced, fingering the tears on his coat. “A bit.”
He nodded. “Right. Do you know what prompted it to attack you?”
His expression went dead. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
The Doctor smiled, raising the bear paw, and waved at him with it.
“Wait,” Myka interrupted, frowning. “You think the-the berserker . . . bear . . . thing affected a cat? Maybe you just annoyed it, Pete, ever think of that?”
“No, wait,” Pete said, raising his hand. “Because Mrs. Ericson was sure the cat was the nicest thing ever, she apologized all over herself when that happened. And, you know, everyone says the same thing about Daniel. Except for the cat part.”
“We found this in front of the antique store,” the Doctor pointed out, setting it down in front of him. “The cat was in the store, Daniel’s obviously connected. Who knows who’s next?”
“So we need to go talk to Mrs. Ericson again,” Pete said, straightening up. “Shouldn’t be a problem.”
+
Two hours later.
“So, that went well.”
Myka stared blankly at Pete, trying to summon the energy to glare, or even raise an eyebrow. She sat against a bookshelf on the Doctor’s hardwood floor, hair frizzing around her face in ways that seemed to defy gravity.
Pete faced her, half-slumped in a richly carved wooden chair. “Well, we got it,” he said defensively. Dirt smeared across his face, and he smelled strongly of gasoline. “So it could have gone worse.”
The bear pelt stretched over the console in the center of the room. It was largely rotted with age, and more of it had burned away in the last hour.
“It could have gone better, too,” she replied, fingers on the bridge of her nose. “For example, you could have not set the car on fire.”
Pete rubbed the back of his neck. “Always focusing on the negative,” he accused her, and she half-heartedly swatted his leg, the only thing she could reach without any effort on her part.
The Doctor burst into the room from the door in the back. “So,” he said brightly, looking no worse for wear. “That went well.”
Myka groaned, fell back against the shelf, and waited for the aspirin to kick in.
“Come on,” Pete said, shaking her arm. “We need to call Artie and have him pick us up or something.”
“This is your second car lost in this job,” Myka informed him thoughtfully, eyes closed. “How do you manage that? Anyway, you have the Farnsworth, you call him.”
“No, I don’t,” Pete said, and now her eyes popped open. “I thought you had it.”
Myka’s hand went to her pocket. “I don’t. Oh, sh-”
The Doctor cleared his throat, and when she looked, he held the Farnsworth towards her.
Myka froze. “How did you get that?” she demanded, patting down her coat to make sure it wasn’t there.
He smiled apologetically, palming the Farnsworth and making it vanish, then producing it again from his sleeve. “I needed it for a moment. I’m giving you a lift.”
“Oh, yeah? In your spaceship?” Myka reached for the Farnsworth.
“Yes, actually. Hold on, you’ll get this back in a moment. You see,” he said, and now he bound to the console in the middle, gently moving the bear pelt onto a nearby chair, “if I connect it here, the Tardis reads of the coordinate there.” He circled the console, flicking switches. “And then I press this and-”
There was a sharp jerk, like an elevator dropping down the shaft, and Pete fell out of his chair, narrowly avoiding a headlong crash into Myka. The Doctor would have fallen, too, had he not clung to the console; he grinned at them, not for any reason, while Myka straightened herself back up and Pete stood, trying to look like he’d intended to do that.
Absurdly, the books stayed on their shelves.
The Doctor waved a hand towards the door. “Go ahead,” he said, and when neither moved he shrugged and crossed to it himself.
He pushed the door open-not to the alley behind Mrs. Ericson’s shop, but the scrubby dead yard of the Warehouse.
+
“What the hell is that?” Artie wondered, and Claudia jumped to her sneakered feet, then froze when she heard it, too. Both stood stock still, listening as the groaning, wheezing sound grew to a roar and then faded into silence.
“I’ll check it out,” she said, but he caught up to her.
They emerged from the Warehouse to discover Myka and Pete, stepping out of what looked like a blue shed, disoriented, followed by a man in an old-fashioned coat explaining something with elaborate hand gestures. Somewhere behind them, the cow lowed forlornly, but otherwise didn’t seem impressed.
“So it’s true,” Artie said, circling the blue box, then looking up at the man. “This is the Tardis?”
The Doctor extended a hand. “Artie. Wonderful to meet you in person.”
Claudia folded her arms. “Artie’s reports didn’t mention how cute you were, for a guy in a waistcoat.” The Doctor’s eyebrows shot up, and she grinned cheekily. “Claudia,” she introduced herself, extending a hand. He took it in his cool fingers, smiling back. “What’s with the box?”
“It’s bigger on the inside,” piped in Pete, who looked a little shell-shocked.
Claudia wrinkled her nose. “Why do you smell like a gas station explosion?”
“We had a little . . . incident,” Pete said vaguely.
“Just be glad we didn’t borrow Artie’s car,” Myka added.
Artie turned a little pale at the thought, then shook his head. “So what happened?” he asked, and Claudia took a step towards what he’d called the Tardis.
Police Public Call Box, it said around the top; the door was just barely ajar, and she poked it tentatively. It swung open without a sound. Behind her, Pete and Myka interrupted each other with differing accounts of events, and Claudia hesitated. It’s a spaceship, she thought, and you only live once, and she took a step inside.
She’d meant to only take a peek, nothing more. But what she’d thought looked like an elaborate Victorian study was, in fact, a huge display of what she could only assume was alien technology. Almost in spite of herself she approached a low shelf, dotted with books in strange languages and what looked like an iPod, except for its gentle, pulsing orange glow. Beside it was what looked like a microwave mixed with an old-fashioned alarm clock, and precariously on top of that stood a narrow silver cone, with what looked like a marble balancing at its tip. It has to be attached, it just looks like it’s balanced. She raised her fingers to it-
“Shit!” The marble rolled off before she’d even touched it. She scrambled to catch it, picked it up, then tried to put it on top of the cone to no avail. “Oh, God, I broke his spaceship,” she muttered, and then she thrust it into her pocket, looking around wildly, then turning to go before she could break something else.
The Doctor stood calmly in the doorway, looking not at her but at the crowd behind him. “Hello, Claudia,” he said in his soft and lilting voice, turning to regard her with blue-green eyes, cool and sparkling as a calm sea.
“Um. I just wanted to look . . .”
“I understand,” he said, the corner of his mouth twitching.
“You’re not going to abduct me to the mother ship now, are you?” She followed him further into the room, still curious but now touching nothing.
“Not without a bite to eat, at least,” he replied, picking up something beside the console. “I’ve never been to any mother ship yet that could make a decent sandwich. Are you coming along to, ah, Leena’s?” He draped the bear pelt over his arm like a waiter’s cloth.
“Well, I live there, so that’s probably a yeah.”
“Wonderful. We’ll take care of this first. Artie,” he said, reaching the doors, the name sounding ridiculous in his accent. “What number of Warehouse did you say this was again? Twelve?”
“Thirteen,” he corrected, cocking a heavy eyebrow at Claudia as she exited the Tardis.
“It’s a spaceship,” she said defensively.
“Thirteen,” the Doctor repeated dreamily, striding confidently towards the doors as though he belonged there. Pete and Myka had left already, presumably in the direction of a shower and, in Pete’s case, hopefully nowhere near an open flame. “I visited Warehouse, what was it, Seven, I think. Just outside of Rome; the Pope would wander by once in a while-”
“Name-dropper,” Artie accused him under his breath, rushing ahead to open the door at the end of the hallway. Claudia suspected that, if he’d wanted to, the Doctor could have entered regardless of security codes and retina scans, but he was polite enough to wait. “You can just set that-” He shut the door after them.
And then the lights went out.
“-there,” Artie finished belatedly.
Claudia shed her sweatshirt to the floor and rolled up the sleeves of her T-shirt, ready to dive in and fix the problem. “This is weird,” she said, squinting futilely into the darkness.
“I have a flashlight, hold on.”
But the lights flickered back on for a moment, then off, then firmly back on.
“Does this sort of thing happen often?” the Doctor enquired, folding the bulky bearskin and setting it down.
“Only since recently,” Artie said, looking at Claudia, mouth drawn in a tight line.
“Man, you hack into a high-security government facility one time. Let it go, Artie.” She pushed her red hair from her eyes, still eyeing the electrical grid. “It could just be a fluke, you know.” She didn’t sound convincing to her own ears.
Artie didn’t respond, arms folded over his chest, surveying the room. “Could be.” He tapped his foot for a moment, frowning. “Claudia, why don’t you show the Doctor to Leena’s? I’ll join you soon, I just want to check some things out.” He approached his desk, face screwed up, eyes obscured by the computer reflection in his glasses.
The Doctor cleared his throat. “I could be of some assistance.” Already distracted, the other man shook his head. “Are you sure?”
“Come on,” Claudia said, nodding her head to the side. “It’s probably nothing. Really.” She led the Doctor towards the door. In a low voice, she admitted, “Artie’s probably right. It’s been weird ever since I-well, scrambled the works.”
The Doctor looked at her, brows striving for his hairline, then shrugged. “If you say so,” he said. “Lead on.”
Behind them, Artie hunched low over the computer, studying something on the screen. It wasn’t until later that Claudia realized that the computer had shut off with the power, and she couldn’t remember anyone logging back on.