Fic: Pinstripes & Jacquard ‘Verse, Chapter 3: A Desperate Hour
Title: Pinstripes & Jacquard ‘Verse, Chapter 3: A Desperate Hour
Author: psyfi_geekgirl
BetaBabe: akkajemo
Characters/Pairings: Twelfth Doctor, Tenth Doctor
Rating: PG-13
Excerpt: The Doctors’ eyes grew wide with fear. This was something they had never seen before. No one had ever seen this before; there were no witnesses-for nobody had ever lived through one.
Word count: 2,683
Disclaimer: Until she’s Jossed, Twelve is mine-but of course, based entirely on stuff that ain’t mine… All hail Auntie Beeb!
A/N: Continuing Part II of my previous ‘verse, Girl in the Mirror! Which, if you haven’t read yet, will give you important backstory and character details which are essential to this ‘verse (the link to the GitM masterlist is provided below). Consider this new series of entries as Season Two. Also started before the end of DW season 6, so some details have gone AU.
Part I: Girl in the Mirror ‘Verse Masterlist
Part II: Pinstripes & Jacquard 'Verse:
Chapter 1 Chapter 2
It was more than a little humbling.
Every hair stood up on end as the valley crosswinds swept through the enormous sculpture of brass bells. The two Doctors stood at the top of the hill, transfixed by a sound that coiled around their Timelord DNA…
VVWOOOORP! VVWOOOORP! VVWOOOORP! VVWOOOORP!
It was so loud it was impossible to talk over it. All they could do was stand in awe and listen. The sound echoed throughout the valley, battering the cliffside around them and reverberating off of every stone and boulder of the alien desert landscape.
Indeed, it seemed that the entire planet resonated with the sound that, for the Doctors, stirred feelings of infinite possibility-and of home.
As the Twelfth Doctor listened to the call that would bring them to the planet, she wondered at the TARDIS and why she had brought them early. Why had they arrived prematurely, and why were they needed?
And just what was this Emergence thing and what did it have to do with her?
In her experience, the process of atonement for ones past sins was never clean, pleasant or without mess.
She thought once again of the prophesy of Gallifrey: “The favourite son of Gallifrey, a son no more-an unnatural child-brings a song of chaos and redemption, and will make the ultimate sacrifice for the good of all...”
What were they all in for?
Standing there, listening to the sound their lives had revolved around for so many years and regenerations, the Twelfth Doctor closed her eyes and let the sound that represented liberty, joy and wonder-and home-wash over her.
She let go of any lingering petty resentments about things not turning out as she’d wanted.
As the winds died down and the structure stopped singing, she wiped a tear from the corner of her eye.
Ten tried to act like he hadn’t noticed.
Once the bells stopped, Marette turned to them. “And now you’re here.”
“It’s true we were called,” said Ten, “but we don’t really know for what.”
Movement below them caught their eye.
“Looks like the arrival of more bells,” said Marette. “We’re supposed to finish tonight. The Installation ceremony is at midnight when the valley winds pick up again.”
“Look Marette,” said Twelve, threading her sparkly nails through her hair, righting the part in her hair from the winds. “You’re the only one who knows we’re here. We’d hate to disrupt the Installation-you guys have worked so hard. So why don’t we keep our appearance to ourselves and you and your townspeople can have the celebration you’ve planned for years.”
“Yeah, just tell us where to go to stay out of the way until we’re needed.”
Marette pointed down to the area in front of the structure where a small dais had been built in front of several rows of chairs. “Down there,” she said. “The foundry workers will finish hanging the last of the bells and then everybody’ll come here and watch.”
“The whole village will turn out?”
She nodded. “Everybody. I told you-we’ve heard the stories since we were kids.”
“All the more reason to let things proceed as planned, eh? We’ll stay out of sight until the party starts.”
Marette agreed and the Doctors thanked her, retreating away from the top of the staircase to sit on the hill and watch the foundry workers for a bit before heading downhill to the audience section.
They watched Marette’s yellow shirt disappear into the line of workers bringing up the last-minute bells.
“I’m sorry,” said Ten after they’d been sitting silently for a bit.
The shock in her voice was evident. “For what?” she asked.
He shrugged, picking at a bit of grit on his suit jacket, clearly at a loss of how to continue with a conversation he barely intended to begin, even if it was with himself…
Twelve sighed and picked at her nails. “No. I’m sorry. I’ve been a bloody idiot today… That Trevor thing…” she trailed off.
“I deserved it,” he said, shuffling the dirt with a cream trainered toe.
“For what?” she repeated, “Showing up unannounced?”
He gave her a half smile and raised his eyebrows indicating, yeah, don’t ya think?
She shook her head. “Not your fault. I’m the one that strapped that GENIE onto my head without thinking it through properly-or bothering to figure out precisely what bit of kit I was attaching to my bean in the first place.”
“Y’could’ve died…” Ten looked sideways at Twelve. “I know you wanted to…”
She didn’t meet his eyes for a moment, choosing to focus on the dangerous climb of the foundry workers, who were attempting to put the finishing touches on a device that had unknowingly already worked, but had taken them years to build. “People need their symbols, don’t they?” she asked, indicating the workers.
Ten grunted, reconciling his assumption that she wasn’t going to answer him.
“Funny thing, that,” she continued. “Cos look at them-working away, oblivious to the fact that they don’t need to. But it’s about the mystique. We know… Take this moment away from them, this thing they’ve worked so long and hard on, what they’ve put all their beliefs into, and they’re sunk. People need their symbols and their beliefs-despite the fact that sometimes they’re useless, or pan out in ways that they haven’t anticipated…” she turned to look at him. “Even us.”
He met her glance.
“Yes, it’s true I was ready to die,” she stated evenly, surprising him by answering his question. “I was fragmenting-ripping apart-couldn’t think straight. I was losing. And instead of sitting around waiting for something to happen I did what I… we--” she corrected “always do-“
“You met it head-on,” he finished.
“And it worked,” she laughed quietly, “despite my best efforts…”
“Or maybe, because of?”
She waved him off, “Whatever. The point is I didn’t anticipate your reanimation. And I won’t pretend that I don’t have mixed feelings about it.” She sighed. “I did this whole thing to rid myself of the bio-data and start anew-actually, that’s not accurate-just a plain old start would be better. I’ve never had my time. I never properly got off the ground. I had so many other residual personalities jammed into my head, I never got to be me.”
He tried to reassure her, “Awww, sure you can! You can do all that now.”
“S’not really the same though, is it? Cos…well…” she hesitated, not wanting to put too fine a point on it.
“Cos now here I am,” he said, his raised hands twinning in a TaDaaa gesture.
“Yeah, now here you are,” she agreed, putting a foot up on a boulder in front of them. “But you needn’t be sorry,” she said, pausing before continuing. “I was talking about symbols earlier,” she reminded him. “And you’re one of mine.”
Puzzled, he stared at her.
“As you, I was more human than ever before-or at least more so than in a very long time. I got to be happy for a while. I got to fall in love. Got my hearts broken, too. But as you I made some wonderful friends and I was pushed further than I might have thought I could go-“
“You got a little carried away towards the end,” he needled.
“And that’s where you went wrong,” she reminded him. “We don’t do well without a companion. We need one.”
“As long as we don’t ruin them in the process.”
“Look: We’re selfish and cruel; tyrannical and overbearing; horribly smug and evilly egotistical. We can be right bastards,” she said and he laughed. “Right?” He nodded his agreement. “But I liked being you,” she winked at him.
He pointed at himself. “So, I’m your Doctor?”
She nodded.
“I think you’ll remember I said to him, ‘I loved being you…’”
“Oh, all right, I loved being you…” she kicked his shin halfheartedly. “And I meant what I said before; you were the only one who didn’t want to go. I’m glad you get the ‘more’ you wanted. I just don’t know what kind of reward it’s gonna be.”
“We’re a pretty big symbol.”
“We’re a fairytale.” She nodded, her face suddenly sad. Her eyes welled up. “Better with two...”
The worry lines etched a little deeper on Ten’s face as he struggled to not be affected by those words.
Twelve glanced at him as he sat, grimfaced. She wrapped her arm around his shoulders. “Don’t you dare sit there pretending to be fine,” she said quietly. “Who knows you more than me?”
He pulled her into a hug.
******
Once the tower was complete the townspeople began to file in with lit torches to light up the tiny valley. Once the speeches began, the Doctors decided to stay up in the shadows and keep out of the way. Twelve looked up at the sky, knowing the time for the Time of Emergence was close, even if she had no idea what that meant.
The speeches were pretty boring. Even though they couldn’t hear it all, they could tell from the rebounding echoes of the amplified voices that came off the rocks in waves, that it was all pretty mystical and heavily steeped in their oral traditions-pretty much just a longer version of what Marette had already told them. The origins of their colony were recited again; the Gem of Salvation falling to the ground; the escape to a new world; the Time of Emergence; the transgressions of their people… yada, yada, yada…
Twelve nudged the Tenth Doctor as he yawned. “Time of Boredom, more like,” he joked dryly. “Let’s count funny hats?”
Before she could answer, the tedious speech was interrupted by the piercing crack of thunder.
“Ohhh, thank goodness! Tiresome speech called on the count of monsoon!”
“Except you told me earlier that monsoon season was over…”
Suddenly the winds picked up and there was another deep rumbling overhead.
The Doctors could smell it before they could see it.
Knowing instantly what was coming next, they stared at each other, showing themselves a mirror of their horror.
Launching off their perch, they ran pell-mell downhill, wildly waving their arms around while the crumbling earth below their feet filled their trainers with pebbles.
“WATCH OUT! LOOK OUT!! MOVE!! EVERYBODY TAKE COVER!!!”
Except nobody heard them.
The Installation had begun to sing…
VVWOOOORP! VVWOOOORP! VVWOOOORP! VVWOOOORP!
The noise was deafening; and to the Doctors, what was a comforting cuddle of reception earlier was now a terrible wail of anguish. It was precognition. It was the cry of impending annihilation…
As they reached the side of the audience, still screaming and waving their hands, the assault began.
With an awesome tearing and trembling of the atoms in the air, the sky opened up and a shaft of light surged violently down towards the ground.
Except this was no lightning.
It landed in the top corner of the crowd, wrenching chairs and people into it.
“IT’S A DIMENSION PORTAL!!” screamed Ten.
Nobody heard him.
A dimension portal had ruptured through to the planet’s surface-a rip in the fabric of space and time-a hungry tempest that sucked up everything that came in contact with it just like a tornado on Earth. And also like those tornadoes on Earth, once you were sucked up into one of these there was no magical transport to another munchkin world, no helpful wormhole ride to an Alternate Universe.
They were also much more devastating than just a regular time rift. There would be no returns or exchanges. No flotsam or jetsam here. This was a one-way trip. It was a ravenous, ferocious beast of an anomaly that devoured whatever was in its path.
And regular, unprotected human beings could not withstand the significant G-forces inside the plasma whirlwind…
Once you were sucked up, you were dead, evaporated--the forces of the winds unraveled your DNA and scattered you into the stardust of time.
Those closest to the portal saw their friends and relatives ripped to energy shreds like sparks off flash paper within the circumference of the plasma beam. Like being caught in a high-powered blender they were obliterated as their genetic ghosts were pulled into an unknown dimension.
Their terrified shrieks were blotted out by the noise of the Installation and the violence of the stripping of the atmosphere.
People backed away from the dimension portal, horrorstruck, yet unable to tear themselves away.
Until another one opened.
And another.
And still the Installation sang.
It blotted out all the screaming.
However, once they saw the raw power of the portals-and that they were exponentially increasing in number-all hell broke loose among the townspeople. People launched themselves over chairs and up the hillside. Like an ant nest in a rainstorm, the panicked citizens were reduced to pandemonium and hysteria.
It became evident what this Time of Emergence was all about to the Doctors. This was not just a simple dimension portal. It was the Death Winds. Terrifying, all consuming, planet-wide attacks of countless and ravenous dimension portals.
The Doctors’ eyes grew wide with fear. This was something they had never seen before. No one had ever seen this before; there were no witnesses-for nobody had ever lived through one.
Talk about mysticism and symbols, they were in the middle of a scientific hypothesis being proven before their eyes! The raw power of the universe that was slicing into the humanity around them was still just a theory in textbooks and university! Timelords themselves had never observed one. It would be like Stephen Hawking traveling through a black hole himself and blogging about it once he returned!
The Doctors managed their fright and buffeted the crowd, attempting to be heard-The Tenth Doctor even screaming, “I’M THE DOCTOR! I’M HERE TO HELP!” But nobody heard him.
Finally, the midnight crosswinds died down and the Installation sang no more. What had only taken a matter of minutes had felt like hours in the chaos.
But it hardly mattered. The Death Winds were still churning, and people were still dying.
Ten looked around.
He couldn’t find Twelve in the crush.
Suddenly, the piercingly sharp whine of electrical feedback assaulted the air.
“HELLO TRANSBOOLIANS!” shouted Twelve over the din of the Death Winds. “I AM THE DOCTOR! I HEARD YOUR CALL!!”
The Tenth Doctor stopped dead in his tracks at her voice. Good on you, he thought.
“GO UNDERGROUND!!” she pleaded, “IT’S THE ONLY WAY TO SURVIVE!! DO YOU HEAR ME?? TAKE EVERY LAST MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD AND HEAD UNDERGROUND!!”
A yellow blur moved past the Tenth Doctor’s field of vision.
“MARETTE!” he yelled, pulling the frightened girl towards him. “Are you ok?”
She nodded vaguely, her eyes huge.
This was clearly not what they had waited for since childhood.
“Where can you go underground??” asked Ten. “You told me about the caves-about the Cave of Mysteries where the Gem of Salvation is-“
“They’re on the north side of the settlement,” she replied shakily. “On the opposite side of the hill!! It’s several kilometers away! We’ll never make it!”
Ten snapped his face to hers, all hedgehog hair and wild eyes, pulling her close, “WELL, WE HAVE TO TRY! C’MON!” he ordered and, grabbing her by the hand, pulled her towards the dais where Twelve was still shouting directions.
Like before, he smelled the portal opening before he saw it.
Letting Marette go, he flung himself up over the small stage and tackled Twelve, throwing them both clear of the portal that opened up directly where she had once stood. He hit her so hard that while both of them were thrown clear, he lost her in the press. But he knew she was alive. He screamed for her and tossed chairs clearing space, but he couldn’t find her.
He did find the microphone, but amplifying his desperate calls for her didn’t work, either. Remembering himself, he turned back to the mayhem of the colonists and shouted for them all to run for the caves on the north side of the settlement.
And yet more portals began to open…
To be continued in Chapter 4: Fixed In Time….
Author: psyfi_geekgirl
BetaBabe: akkajemo
Characters/Pairings: Twelfth Doctor, Tenth Doctor
Rating: PG-13
Excerpt: The Doctors’ eyes grew wide with fear. This was something they had never seen before. No one had ever seen this before; there were no witnesses-for nobody had ever lived through one.
Word count: 2,683
Disclaimer: Until she’s Jossed, Twelve is mine-but of course, based entirely on stuff that ain’t mine… All hail Auntie Beeb!
A/N: Continuing Part II of my previous ‘verse, Girl in the Mirror! Which, if you haven’t read yet, will give you important backstory and character details which are essential to this ‘verse (the link to the GitM masterlist is provided below). Consider this new series of entries as Season Two. Also started before the end of DW season 6, so some details have gone AU.
Part I: Girl in the Mirror ‘Verse Masterlist
Part II: Pinstripes & Jacquard 'Verse:
Chapter 1 Chapter 2
It was more than a little humbling.
Every hair stood up on end as the valley crosswinds swept through the enormous sculpture of brass bells. The two Doctors stood at the top of the hill, transfixed by a sound that coiled around their Timelord DNA…
VVWOOOORP! VVWOOOORP! VVWOOOORP! VVWOOOORP!
It was so loud it was impossible to talk over it. All they could do was stand in awe and listen. The sound echoed throughout the valley, battering the cliffside around them and reverberating off of every stone and boulder of the alien desert landscape.
Indeed, it seemed that the entire planet resonated with the sound that, for the Doctors, stirred feelings of infinite possibility-and of home.
As the Twelfth Doctor listened to the call that would bring them to the planet, she wondered at the TARDIS and why she had brought them early. Why had they arrived prematurely, and why were they needed?
And just what was this Emergence thing and what did it have to do with her?
In her experience, the process of atonement for ones past sins was never clean, pleasant or without mess.
She thought once again of the prophesy of Gallifrey: “The favourite son of Gallifrey, a son no more-an unnatural child-brings a song of chaos and redemption, and will make the ultimate sacrifice for the good of all...”
What were they all in for?
Standing there, listening to the sound their lives had revolved around for so many years and regenerations, the Twelfth Doctor closed her eyes and let the sound that represented liberty, joy and wonder-and home-wash over her.
She let go of any lingering petty resentments about things not turning out as she’d wanted.
As the winds died down and the structure stopped singing, she wiped a tear from the corner of her eye.
Ten tried to act like he hadn’t noticed.
Once the bells stopped, Marette turned to them. “And now you’re here.”
“It’s true we were called,” said Ten, “but we don’t really know for what.”
Movement below them caught their eye.
“Looks like the arrival of more bells,” said Marette. “We’re supposed to finish tonight. The Installation ceremony is at midnight when the valley winds pick up again.”
“Look Marette,” said Twelve, threading her sparkly nails through her hair, righting the part in her hair from the winds. “You’re the only one who knows we’re here. We’d hate to disrupt the Installation-you guys have worked so hard. So why don’t we keep our appearance to ourselves and you and your townspeople can have the celebration you’ve planned for years.”
“Yeah, just tell us where to go to stay out of the way until we’re needed.”
Marette pointed down to the area in front of the structure where a small dais had been built in front of several rows of chairs. “Down there,” she said. “The foundry workers will finish hanging the last of the bells and then everybody’ll come here and watch.”
“The whole village will turn out?”
She nodded. “Everybody. I told you-we’ve heard the stories since we were kids.”
“All the more reason to let things proceed as planned, eh? We’ll stay out of sight until the party starts.”
Marette agreed and the Doctors thanked her, retreating away from the top of the staircase to sit on the hill and watch the foundry workers for a bit before heading downhill to the audience section.
They watched Marette’s yellow shirt disappear into the line of workers bringing up the last-minute bells.
“I’m sorry,” said Ten after they’d been sitting silently for a bit.
The shock in her voice was evident. “For what?” she asked.
He shrugged, picking at a bit of grit on his suit jacket, clearly at a loss of how to continue with a conversation he barely intended to begin, even if it was with himself…
Twelve sighed and picked at her nails. “No. I’m sorry. I’ve been a bloody idiot today… That Trevor thing…” she trailed off.
“I deserved it,” he said, shuffling the dirt with a cream trainered toe.
“For what?” she repeated, “Showing up unannounced?”
He gave her a half smile and raised his eyebrows indicating, yeah, don’t ya think?
She shook her head. “Not your fault. I’m the one that strapped that GENIE onto my head without thinking it through properly-or bothering to figure out precisely what bit of kit I was attaching to my bean in the first place.”
“Y’could’ve died…” Ten looked sideways at Twelve. “I know you wanted to…”
She didn’t meet his eyes for a moment, choosing to focus on the dangerous climb of the foundry workers, who were attempting to put the finishing touches on a device that had unknowingly already worked, but had taken them years to build. “People need their symbols, don’t they?” she asked, indicating the workers.
Ten grunted, reconciling his assumption that she wasn’t going to answer him.
“Funny thing, that,” she continued. “Cos look at them-working away, oblivious to the fact that they don’t need to. But it’s about the mystique. We know… Take this moment away from them, this thing they’ve worked so long and hard on, what they’ve put all their beliefs into, and they’re sunk. People need their symbols and their beliefs-despite the fact that sometimes they’re useless, or pan out in ways that they haven’t anticipated…” she turned to look at him. “Even us.”
He met her glance.
“Yes, it’s true I was ready to die,” she stated evenly, surprising him by answering his question. “I was fragmenting-ripping apart-couldn’t think straight. I was losing. And instead of sitting around waiting for something to happen I did what I… we--” she corrected “always do-“
“You met it head-on,” he finished.
“And it worked,” she laughed quietly, “despite my best efforts…”
“Or maybe, because of?”
She waved him off, “Whatever. The point is I didn’t anticipate your reanimation. And I won’t pretend that I don’t have mixed feelings about it.” She sighed. “I did this whole thing to rid myself of the bio-data and start anew-actually, that’s not accurate-just a plain old start would be better. I’ve never had my time. I never properly got off the ground. I had so many other residual personalities jammed into my head, I never got to be me.”
He tried to reassure her, “Awww, sure you can! You can do all that now.”
“S’not really the same though, is it? Cos…well…” she hesitated, not wanting to put too fine a point on it.
“Cos now here I am,” he said, his raised hands twinning in a TaDaaa gesture.
“Yeah, now here you are,” she agreed, putting a foot up on a boulder in front of them. “But you needn’t be sorry,” she said, pausing before continuing. “I was talking about symbols earlier,” she reminded him. “And you’re one of mine.”
Puzzled, he stared at her.
“As you, I was more human than ever before-or at least more so than in a very long time. I got to be happy for a while. I got to fall in love. Got my hearts broken, too. But as you I made some wonderful friends and I was pushed further than I might have thought I could go-“
“You got a little carried away towards the end,” he needled.
“And that’s where you went wrong,” she reminded him. “We don’t do well without a companion. We need one.”
“As long as we don’t ruin them in the process.”
“Look: We’re selfish and cruel; tyrannical and overbearing; horribly smug and evilly egotistical. We can be right bastards,” she said and he laughed. “Right?” He nodded his agreement. “But I liked being you,” she winked at him.
He pointed at himself. “So, I’m your Doctor?”
She nodded.
“I think you’ll remember I said to him, ‘I loved being you…’”
“Oh, all right, I loved being you…” she kicked his shin halfheartedly. “And I meant what I said before; you were the only one who didn’t want to go. I’m glad you get the ‘more’ you wanted. I just don’t know what kind of reward it’s gonna be.”
“We’re a pretty big symbol.”
“We’re a fairytale.” She nodded, her face suddenly sad. Her eyes welled up. “Better with two...”
The worry lines etched a little deeper on Ten’s face as he struggled to not be affected by those words.
Twelve glanced at him as he sat, grimfaced. She wrapped her arm around his shoulders. “Don’t you dare sit there pretending to be fine,” she said quietly. “Who knows you more than me?”
He pulled her into a hug.
******
Once the tower was complete the townspeople began to file in with lit torches to light up the tiny valley. Once the speeches began, the Doctors decided to stay up in the shadows and keep out of the way. Twelve looked up at the sky, knowing the time for the Time of Emergence was close, even if she had no idea what that meant.
The speeches were pretty boring. Even though they couldn’t hear it all, they could tell from the rebounding echoes of the amplified voices that came off the rocks in waves, that it was all pretty mystical and heavily steeped in their oral traditions-pretty much just a longer version of what Marette had already told them. The origins of their colony were recited again; the Gem of Salvation falling to the ground; the escape to a new world; the Time of Emergence; the transgressions of their people… yada, yada, yada…
Twelve nudged the Tenth Doctor as he yawned. “Time of Boredom, more like,” he joked dryly. “Let’s count funny hats?”
Before she could answer, the tedious speech was interrupted by the piercing crack of thunder.
“Ohhh, thank goodness! Tiresome speech called on the count of monsoon!”
“Except you told me earlier that monsoon season was over…”
Suddenly the winds picked up and there was another deep rumbling overhead.
The Doctors could smell it before they could see it.
Knowing instantly what was coming next, they stared at each other, showing themselves a mirror of their horror.
Launching off their perch, they ran pell-mell downhill, wildly waving their arms around while the crumbling earth below their feet filled their trainers with pebbles.
“WATCH OUT! LOOK OUT!! MOVE!! EVERYBODY TAKE COVER!!!”
Except nobody heard them.
The Installation had begun to sing…
VVWOOOORP! VVWOOOORP! VVWOOOORP! VVWOOOORP!
The noise was deafening; and to the Doctors, what was a comforting cuddle of reception earlier was now a terrible wail of anguish. It was precognition. It was the cry of impending annihilation…
As they reached the side of the audience, still screaming and waving their hands, the assault began.
With an awesome tearing and trembling of the atoms in the air, the sky opened up and a shaft of light surged violently down towards the ground.
Except this was no lightning.
It landed in the top corner of the crowd, wrenching chairs and people into it.
“IT’S A DIMENSION PORTAL!!” screamed Ten.
Nobody heard him.
A dimension portal had ruptured through to the planet’s surface-a rip in the fabric of space and time-a hungry tempest that sucked up everything that came in contact with it just like a tornado on Earth. And also like those tornadoes on Earth, once you were sucked up into one of these there was no magical transport to another munchkin world, no helpful wormhole ride to an Alternate Universe.
They were also much more devastating than just a regular time rift. There would be no returns or exchanges. No flotsam or jetsam here. This was a one-way trip. It was a ravenous, ferocious beast of an anomaly that devoured whatever was in its path.
And regular, unprotected human beings could not withstand the significant G-forces inside the plasma whirlwind…
Once you were sucked up, you were dead, evaporated--the forces of the winds unraveled your DNA and scattered you into the stardust of time.
Those closest to the portal saw their friends and relatives ripped to energy shreds like sparks off flash paper within the circumference of the plasma beam. Like being caught in a high-powered blender they were obliterated as their genetic ghosts were pulled into an unknown dimension.
Their terrified shrieks were blotted out by the noise of the Installation and the violence of the stripping of the atmosphere.
People backed away from the dimension portal, horrorstruck, yet unable to tear themselves away.
Until another one opened.
And another.
And still the Installation sang.
It blotted out all the screaming.
However, once they saw the raw power of the portals-and that they were exponentially increasing in number-all hell broke loose among the townspeople. People launched themselves over chairs and up the hillside. Like an ant nest in a rainstorm, the panicked citizens were reduced to pandemonium and hysteria.
It became evident what this Time of Emergence was all about to the Doctors. This was not just a simple dimension portal. It was the Death Winds. Terrifying, all consuming, planet-wide attacks of countless and ravenous dimension portals.
The Doctors’ eyes grew wide with fear. This was something they had never seen before. No one had ever seen this before; there were no witnesses-for nobody had ever lived through one.
Talk about mysticism and symbols, they were in the middle of a scientific hypothesis being proven before their eyes! The raw power of the universe that was slicing into the humanity around them was still just a theory in textbooks and university! Timelords themselves had never observed one. It would be like Stephen Hawking traveling through a black hole himself and blogging about it once he returned!
The Doctors managed their fright and buffeted the crowd, attempting to be heard-The Tenth Doctor even screaming, “I’M THE DOCTOR! I’M HERE TO HELP!” But nobody heard him.
Finally, the midnight crosswinds died down and the Installation sang no more. What had only taken a matter of minutes had felt like hours in the chaos.
But it hardly mattered. The Death Winds were still churning, and people were still dying.
Ten looked around.
He couldn’t find Twelve in the crush.
Suddenly, the piercingly sharp whine of electrical feedback assaulted the air.
“HELLO TRANSBOOLIANS!” shouted Twelve over the din of the Death Winds. “I AM THE DOCTOR! I HEARD YOUR CALL!!”
The Tenth Doctor stopped dead in his tracks at her voice. Good on you, he thought.
“GO UNDERGROUND!!” she pleaded, “IT’S THE ONLY WAY TO SURVIVE!! DO YOU HEAR ME?? TAKE EVERY LAST MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD AND HEAD UNDERGROUND!!”
A yellow blur moved past the Tenth Doctor’s field of vision.
“MARETTE!” he yelled, pulling the frightened girl towards him. “Are you ok?”
She nodded vaguely, her eyes huge.
This was clearly not what they had waited for since childhood.
“Where can you go underground??” asked Ten. “You told me about the caves-about the Cave of Mysteries where the Gem of Salvation is-“
“They’re on the north side of the settlement,” she replied shakily. “On the opposite side of the hill!! It’s several kilometers away! We’ll never make it!”
Ten snapped his face to hers, all hedgehog hair and wild eyes, pulling her close, “WELL, WE HAVE TO TRY! C’MON!” he ordered and, grabbing her by the hand, pulled her towards the dais where Twelve was still shouting directions.
Like before, he smelled the portal opening before he saw it.
Letting Marette go, he flung himself up over the small stage and tackled Twelve, throwing them both clear of the portal that opened up directly where she had once stood. He hit her so hard that while both of them were thrown clear, he lost her in the press. But he knew she was alive. He screamed for her and tossed chairs clearing space, but he couldn’t find her.
He did find the microphone, but amplifying his desperate calls for her didn’t work, either. Remembering himself, he turned back to the mayhem of the colonists and shouted for them all to run for the caves on the north side of the settlement.
And yet more portals began to open…
To be continued in Chapter 4: Fixed In Time….