[Fonk]

Wow… breath taking. Please continue!

That's high praise indeed, thanks very much! I swear that the fourth part is in the pipeline; it's just a matter of working out the fine details. :-[

[Fonk]

NOTES

1) These characters are not mine. They were created by Sydney Newman, C. E. Webber, Donald Wilson, Russell T. Davies and many others.

2) It's up to you whether you want to imagine that it's the Ninth Doctor or the Tenth Doctor now. I started off writing it with enough ambiguity for it to be either (although, in my mind, it's the Tenth Doctor).

3) Still no title for this. I expect one will come to me a year after the story's finished.

4) While writing this story, I was mostly listening to my MP3 playlist, which contains all sorts of gubbins.

Doctor Who Fan-Fiction Part 4

Rose felt her senses being assaulted a hundred different ways at once upon stepping cautiously out of the building. She detected several scents on the air, as well as a new surface under her feet and millions of new sights, and was just trying to make sense of them all when a loud clang sent her scurrying for cover. She ran full pelt to a clump of trees straight ahead, majestic muscles moving with a surprisingly fluid grace and a speed that broke interplanetary records. Once Rose decided she was safely hidden, she peeked out between the trees to locate the source of the noise. After a few seconds of quick glancing, the Amazon managed to piece together what must have happened. The cave she had just come from had been subject to some sort of avalanche: it had been completely sealed off. Rose frowned. In point of fact, it was almost impossible for her to tell where the cave had been. Had she not known that there had been some sort of opening there, she would surely not have realised that one was meant to exist.

Presently she realised that the clanging must have been as a result of the rockfall. Shrugging to herself – rippling shoulders, humongous pecs and bulging breasts moving in a devastating symphony of raw and carnal enery throughout the simple motion – the musclewoman swiftly turned on her heel. Adopting a semi-crouching stance, the epitome of sleek yet explosive power, Rose moved further into the trees, having elected to follow the scent of a particularly malodorous beast. She was getting hungry.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

The Doctor was thankful that his shoes made no sound as he tiptoed cautiously through the seemingly deserted complex. After a couple of minutes of exploration, poking his head carefully through doors and quietly nipping around corners in the endless, featureless white corridors, the Time Lord had come to the slightly worrying conclusion he was in a sort of reverse hospital. Instead of making people well and healthy again, this place seemed to specialise in taking perfectly fit people and changing them in a variety of horrific ways. There had been one room like a perverted dentist's room, with a massive drill dominating its centre, and a frightening chair – in so much as chairs could be frightening – underneath it. Another room had contained what for all the world looked like a human-sized refrigerator. When the Doctor opened the door, he found a variety of body parts, human and otherwise. Other rooms had held different and worse horrors. The ancient alien had yet to find the room in which Rose had been changed. If she had been around, the Doctor would have rounded off his conclusions on the place by making some sort of joke about it all being "sick", but she was not. Just as he was pondering what he had seen happen to his companion, a thought hit him with all the force of a comet.

"The TARDIS key!" he breathed, unable to contain the sickening thought in his mind. Rose had a copy of the key to the Doctor's fantastic time machine. Reasoning that his friend had probably not kept it in her thin underwear, it must still be amongst the piles of rags that had been her clothes mere moments ago. The Doctor leaned against the nearest wall, closed his eyes and raised his head toward the ceiling. Locating the key had to become a top priority – there was no way to enter the TARDIS without one. In turn, there was no way that the Time Lord could allow the Fertanians to enter it. Given the level of technology he had already seen, the Doctor knew that they were perfectly capable of stripping it of its secrets once they were inside.

Giving them the ability to travel through time would irrevocably change the course of known history. The Doctor's eyes snapped open and an expression of grim determination hardened onto his face. He set off purposefully down the disconcerting corridor.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

A sound. Run. Hide. Cover. Watch. Assess. Calculate. Wait for the moment.

Leap.

Strike. Strike! STRIKE!

A wayward and frantic claw wrenched into Rose's gargantuan right calf. She screamed in pain and bubbling anger. Four red streaks lined the veiny muscle. Thick scarlet liquid oozed from the wounds, staining the ground beneath her. The rage inside Rose exploded into life.

Turn.

Strike. Again. And again. And again. Rip. Tear. Crush. Bite. Any advantage. See the life leaving the creature. Satisfaction.

Pause.

Breathe. Breathe.

Pause.

Need fire.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Quietly the Doctor rounded another corner. He was holding the sonic screwdriver aloft and staring at it intently. The Time Lord was by now quite convinced that there was no-one else around in the whole complex. The thought bothered him, but he had had to place at the back of his mind; besides, caution was always prudent in Fertanian territory. The stories were horrible. The screwdriver was emitting a series of beeps which grew louder and closer together when the alien got closer to Rose's TARDIS key, a little like a Geiger counter. The search was proving very frustrating for the ancient alien: every time he had a fix on where he thought the key must be, it moved out of his reach to a seemingly entirely new location. After hundreds of years of adventuring, the Doctor's instincts were shouting the word "trap" at him as loudly as they possibly could, but his natural curiosity had gotten the better of him and he had decided to follow this trail to the end. He had passed through corridor after nondescript corridor, chasing the beeping that died and moved away every time.

The Doctor concentrated his efforts. The screwdriver's beeping was the loudest and most insistent it had been since he began the search, which had lead him to a door in an unusually grimy section of the compound. Taking a deep breath, the Time Lord pushed open the door. There, standing in front of him – and though he could not explain it, wearing the expression of a confused puppy – was the TARDIS.

"What?" the Doctor exclaimed. And then someone stepped out of the shadows.

"Looking for this?" she asked, dangling something that reflected the light and looked very much like the TARDIS key the Time Lord had given Rose. It was Sophia. The Doctor's deeper instincts had been right all along. Instantly his face set in a grim expression.

"It must be important to you," she said, dangling it enticingly just out of the Time Lord's reach. "Very, very important." The Doctor swallowed.

"Why do you say that?" he asked. Sophia smiled. Evidently this man's intellect was not quite as good as she had previously believed.

"Why, it's very simple, smarty-pants," she crowed, closing her fist around the key, concealing it from sight. "You abandoned the search for your… friend to find it." The Doctor was momentarily taken aback with the truth of the situation. "We had this box towed here by some of our grunts as soon as you left it. I suppose this key opens it?" she inquired softly, opening her hand to display it on her palm. Deciding this was no time to play games, the Doctor gave the simplest response.

"Yes."

"Then let's see what's in here that's so special." With that, the Queen turned to the TARDIS and slipped the key into the lock. Without even looking through the door, she stepped inside. The Doctor followed. Once on the inside, Sophia looked around in awe for a few moments. She ran, showing all the excitement of a young boy surrounded by Christmas presents, to the central console. Experimentally she pressed a few buttons and flicked a few levers. The Doctor took careful note of what she had done, so that he could put it back to rights later on. With a madly gleeful expression, the Time Lord's unwanted house guest turned back to face him.

"It's bigger on the inside!"

"You'd be surprised how often I get that," the Doctor retorted glibly.

"What did I just do?" she asked.

"You moved the internal dampeners out of alignment, fiddled with the thermostat and set the toaster to 'extra-crispy'." Sophia gave him a withering look. "Well, if it's not got black bits, it's not toast, if you ask me," the Doctor sniffed.

"What does it do?"

"The toaster? Waffles, toast – of course, can't have a toaster that doesn't do toast – baguettes, bagels, croissants… ooh, and I tried to adapt it recently so it'll let us do paninis. I've not tried it yet, though. Would you like one?" The Doctor made a move for the central console, but Sophia stepped into his path.

"Your pretence of stupidity is masterly, Doctor. One would almost think that you were a child. Do not move towards the controls. Just tell me what it does."

"It can only teleport," he said. "I use it to roam around the universe. I'm a bit of hobo, really, just moving from place to place." The bluff worked. Sophia's face fell as she turned away from the Time Lord. She moved away to the console and leaned against it, studying the vast array of controls.

"I had hoped…" she began, and faltered. The Doctor used the moment to move closer to her.

"What had you hoped?" he whispered kindly. To his utter amazement and not a little fear, a tear was making its way down her cheek.

"I had hoped that it might be a time machine of some kind," she said, righting herself. "There are some mistakes in Earth's past that I wish to rectify." The Doctor turned his head slightly and studied the Queen thoughtfully.

"Mistakes?" Sophia's face turned to ice.

"We did not kill men when we had the chance," she hissed, wiping the tear from her cold face. Something clicked inside the Doctor's mind. "The technology has existed for us to be able to continue the human race without men since the twenty-first century," she continued crisply, all emotion now in check. "Why we did not choose to get rid of the vermin when we had the chance is a constant source of fascination to me."

The Doctor looked at her with a curious mixture of sympathy and revulsion.

"To hate your own kind," he began. "It must take a special kind of mind to be able to do that." The anger visibly rose to Sophia's face.

"Men are not my kind," she spat. "You are not my kind." The Doctor simply smiled indulgently.

"You don't know the half of it," he said, keeping his expression carefully mild in the face of her venom. Sophia drew herself up to her full height and glowered at him.

"It is of no importance," she stated. "You have outlived your usefulness. Prepare to die." She slid the remote control device from her trouser pocket and before the Time Lord could move, the Fertanian Queen shot him with it. Long, arcing lines of comic-book electricity shot from the small object, zipping and sizzling up and down the Doctor's body. He didn't even scream; the alien simply hit the floor of the TARDIS with a soft thud.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

The creature that had once been Rose Tyler sat in a beautiful clearing. It was idyllic: sunlight glittered through the trees, birds chorused. Once in a while one of the forest's larger denizens padded by. Had you been there, you would have been able to feel the sheer amount of nature going on. Particularly if you had seen the creature that had called itself "Rose". She was, all by herself, an exceedingly large amount of nature. The bronzed muscles of her awe-inspiring body were, at the moment, relaxed. Even so, they jutted at all sorts of inhuman, impossible angles from her wide, tall frame. She was clad in the hide of one of the less fortunate of the forest's wolf-creatures: it had been fashioned into a sort of fur bikini. There was a clump of bones next to the tree stump on which the unbelievable woman was sitting. As she chewed all the meat from the last of her kill's legs, another few bones joined the pile.

The Neanderthal stood up, stretching. Instantly her muscles sprang to life, breaking out in stark relief from her arms and chest. She winced when she put weight on her injured leg. Looking down, the woman saw the scars that her kill had inflicted and swore to herself that she would never get hurt again. She looked around, picked up the thick branch she had decided would make a good weapon, and moved off through the trees.

— To Be Continued —

[Fonk]

NOTES

1) Characters are not mine. They were created by Sydney Newman, C. E. Webber, Donald Wilson, Russell T. Davies and many others.

Doctor Who Fan-Fiction Part 5

The Doctor opened his eyes onto another white room. It seemed oddly familiar.

"I wasn't prepared!" he shouted, blinking as his eyes adjusted to the light. "That was not enough preparation time!" But there was no-one there to hear his cries. The Gallifreyan cautiously checked himself to make sure that he hadn't regenerated, but no, he had the same old teeth.

"I call that one-nil Doctor," he grinned.

The first thing of note was that the Time Lord had been bound to a black chair set at a roughly forty-five degree angle. He was splayed out on it like one of the iterations of Leonardo da Vinci's classic painting The Vitruvian Man, although he was still fully clothed. The Doctor systematically pulled at each of his bonds, but they were thick metal clamps and as such didn't budge an inch. The exasperated alien gave a long sigh.

"Can't even get at my screwdriver," he announced to no-one in particular, flailing ineffectually a good few inches away from the relevant pocket with both hands. Searching for anything he might be able to turn to his advantage later, the Doctor looked around the room. He realised with growing horror that it was the same chamber in which Rose had been turned into her current form: the same set of instruments lay on a table nearby and the awful alteration device hung threateningly from the ceiling, emitting a low hum.

"This is the exact opposite of what you might call 'good'," the Doctor muttered to himself, eying the device carefully.

"That would be what you might call 'bad', then," hissed a voice from the shadows behind the chair. He recognised it instantly and so there was no surprise when Sophia walked round the seat and stood in front of him. Her black eyes burned with anger and her lips were fixed in a vicious, victorious pout. Her hands rested lightly on her hips, pushing the material of her lab coat in.

"Yes, yes indeed," the Doctor gabbled, not even looking at his captor. "I would certainly call it 'bad'. Or, at least, 'not good'. Maybe even 'worrying'. I think…" he paused, waving his head from side to side as if weighing up options, before continuing, "…I would just stop short of 'terrifying', though." Sophia rolled her eyes at him and was about to speak when the Doctor got in ahead of her.

"Unless I were you," he finished, flicking his eyes straight at hers. There was a tiny glimmer of fear which the Time Lord just registered before the more usual cold steel returned. It was a clue, of sorts. Sophia took a step towards the prone Gallifreyan and thrust her face next to his.

"You are in no position to make threats," she whispered, looking from eye to eye. "In fact, you are in no position at all." She stepped back, flashing him a cold smile.

"I've got through worse scrapes," the Doctor replied in a jolly manner. "And I know you're bluffing, too, which helps." Sophia's face turned to shock. "You see, I recognise that machine up there," the Time Lord nodded towards the cannon attached to the ceiling. "It performs DNA grafts. Am I right?" Sophia nodded, looking away. "I assume I'm strapped here so that you can threaten me with it. Now, I happen to have picked up a few things about DNA grafting on my travels. First of all, it's one hundred per cent illegal according to several galactic laws. Secondly, you can't use it on me because I'm not human and you can only do DNA grafts on humans. You're just keeping me prisoner until you decide what to do with me, and trying to frighten me into the bargain." There was a long pause whilst the Doctor let the extent of his knowledge – mostly supposition, really – sink into the Queen's brain. He had the grim satisfaction of seeing light dawn in her eyes. "That being the case," he finished, "you might as well get me out of this chair. It's really uncomfortable."

"Who are you?" she breathed, looking at him with a cautious mixture of awe and loathing, taking a step towards him. The Time Lord looked straight into her eyes for meaning.

"I am the Doctor, and I can help you."

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

The Amazon who had once been Rose Tyler searched for the word in her fractured, shapeless mind as she walked through the forest. The sun was slowly creeping up over the horizon, bathing her surroundings in warm orange and red glows. The superwoman had just awoken from a deep sleep. She felt invigorated, energised; alive. The trees brushed her deep-tanned skin, bending but not breaking as she passed. Her brain was searching for the name of a feeling, she thought. She felt it at that moment, more than she ever had before. Before? What had come before this? When had life been different than it was now? She wrestled with the thought for a moment, and then, as she had so many others recently, let it go. In the meantime, her brain had been working on the name of that feeling and presented its results. Freedom! That was it! She felt free.

She looked down at her hard, strong and yet feminine body with pride. Casually she flexed her biceps, bringing forth muscles about as big as her head. She hit her iron-hard stomach with the flat of her hand, enjoying the fact that even those great arm muscles couldn't make a dent in her mid-section. She looked down at the smooth action of her great leg muscles, powering her down the track she was following towards the scent of breakfast. A great smile adorned the leviathan's lips. She dragged her impromptu club on the path, making great grooves in the forest floor. She abruptly stopped mid-stride, expression freezing. A dull ache had begun to throb inside her.

It wasn't coming from the wounds on her calf, which had healed over now, leaving four identical scars. No, this was something awful coming from deep inside the pit of her stomach. The hurt radiated outwards from her core, spreading over the rest of her gargantuan frame in pulses. Rose leaned against a nearby tree and tried to catch her breath, to stifle her scream. The pain was intensifying: great crashing waves of it began to wrack her from head to foot, disorienting and sickening. The Amazon looked down at herself and registered with absolute fear that her body was changing.

Parts of her were growing, but other areas seemed to be shrinking, and the effect was shifting rapidly and randomly from place to place all over her body. It was a very odd spectacle, seeing her muscles alternately shrink and swell. It looked like she was running through a Hall of Mirrors at a funfair, but actually being her reflection as its shape altered wildly. Rose was becoming queasy and unsteady on her feet as she reached the point of agony. Within seconds of the pain starting to sear through her, the leviathan fell to all fours and was physically ill. The acrid stench of her vomit brought forth another round, at which point the statuesque figure fell sideways, unconscious.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

It was a few minutes later. The Doctor was working the stiffness out of his arms and legs, flexing and unflexing them to get his circulation going again. Sophia slouched uncomfortably against a wall, arms folded, wearing the look of a teenager embarrassed by an unfortunate parent's attempt to be cool in front of her friends. After a few seconds, the Doctor's body was back into what he felt was working order and turned to address the Queen.

"So!" he said chirpily. "You can start by telling me why there's only you left here." Sophia scowled.

"Nothing escapes your attention, does it?" she said viciously.

"I've got some really good scanning equipment on my ship," the Time Lord admitted, "which I got a chance to look at when we visited it. And I can only help you if you want to be helped," he continued, a stern, school teacher-like edge to his voice. Sophia sighed.

"Alright, alright. The rules here on Fertania are very strict and, accordingly, the punishments are very severe. In the past ten years, ordinary women on the planet began to rebel against the way we were treating what we call the Grunts: the women who live in the planet's forests that have been changed into men. So more and more of our kind became Grunts as punishment. Eventually our numbers dwindled. The last woman to be turned into a Grunt brought you in here, as it happens. And that left me in control of the entire planet," she said, waving her arms out wide to indicate the immaculate surroundings. "Such as it is. Any other humanoids you might have seen during your stroll around the complex are actually robots." The Doctor shook his head.

"I saw no-one else. I did wonder how you keep this place going without any staff." He paused, thinking. After a couple of moments, he addressed Sophia again. "Y'know, if history teaches us one thing, it's that civilisations formed with negativity at their heart are doomed to failure. Why did you think you would be different?"

"They didn't need us any more!" she shouted, as if it were some kind of secret that had been weighing heavily on her heart.

"Who?"

"Men!" the reply came back, quickly and with venom. "Disgusting, dirty, depraved, degenerate men. The human race had at last reached the stars. It was a whole new age, an age of awe, wonder and discovery. And men turned it, surprise surprise, into an age of interplanetary sex. The filthy oafs humped their way through the galaxies, leaving the women behind and ignoring them. After all, what more could they do with us? We were boring compared to the treasures that other planets offered, a used little toy that they had grown bored of. So some of us left Earth and swore to live our lives without men. Arrogant, sexist pigs, the lot of you. Fertania was supposed to be a kind of feminist utopia, but over the years the original goal was lost. Philosophy changed and we became violent towards males. And ever since, we have destroyed ourselves."

"Ah," the ancient alien said. "That means… oh. Urgh." He made a face.

"What?" Sophia demanded, cooling a little from her earlier rage.

"Oh, never mind," the Doctor said. "I'll tell you later. Anyway, first things first: we are going to get Rose back. One of the many things I know about DNA grafting is that it's reversible up to forty-eight hours after the operation. It's not been that long since you did the operation on Rose, so I want you to find her and return her to me." Sophia nodded.

"There could be a problem with that," she said. "Maybe. In ten per cent of cases, the graft doesn't take. An individual's body may reject it, in which case their bodies tear themselves apart at a sub-molecular level." The Doctor frowned.

"They kept that little nugget out of the official file!" he exclaimed, his eyes widening. "We have to find her. Let's go!" He strode purposefully out of the room. Sophia rolled her eyes and followed.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

The sun was blazingly high in the sky when the Amazon Rose awoke. Mercifully her body was no longer changing. Cautiously deciding that she was fine now, the behemoth slowly got to her feet. Miraculously, none of the forest's denizens had found her in that prone state and taken advantage of the free meal. Once upright, Rose checked herself: flexing and moving her body around to make sure that she was in a fit state to hunt. Huge, veiny muscles erupted and subsided all over her inhuman frame. Everything seemed normal.

Although she vaguely wondered what had caused her body to shift like that, Rose did not want to dwell on it for too long. Her stomach was rumbling in a good way and she could smell that the forest was full of things to kill and eat. The giantess bent down to pick up her club, which had fallen a little way away. She grasped the branch tightly and lifted it, but it did not come. Frowning, Rose tried again. Still nothing. She looked down her muscly arm to her hand and got the surprise of her life. It was fading away, simply ceasing to exist, like a cheap special effect in an 80s film. The Amazon's eyes went wide with fear as she sank to her knees.

It was at this point that something of the Londoner's previous life flashed through her broken memory. A man. He reminded her of comfort, of safety, in spite of terrible trials and pains. The memory gave her a glimmer of warmth; if she could only find this person, Rose sensed, everything would be all right. She decided to yell for him.

"Dock Tar!"

— To Be Concluded —

[JimmyDimples]

Now you've got MY attention… very good writing!  Can hardly wait to see the big finish (pun!).

[blah8884]

Now you've got MY attention… very good writing!  Can hardly wait to see the big finish (pun!).

Wooo!!! I can't wait either.  😀

[Fonk]

NOTES

1) Characters are not mine. They were created by Sydney Newman, C. E. Webber, Donald Wilson, Russell T. Davies and many others.

Doctor Who Fan-Fiction Part 6

"What's that?" The Doctor looked at the vehicle with disgust and impatience.

"It's called a Land Cruiser," Sophia explained. "Runs on solar power. It's got quite a turn of speed, despite its, er, humble appearance." She shut her eyes as the Doctor shouted his response.

"It looks like a golf cart crossed with a dodgems car!"

In reality, it most closely resembled an original Mini Cooper with the roof removed. The buggy's exterior was mostly sparklingly white, even the wheels, which were made of some kind of tough plastic material. The exception was the back of the car, which was taken up by a massive solar panel, the typical purple colour of solar panels everywhere. Everything inside was black: seats, of which there were two; steering wheel; arm-rests and, inevitably if not incongruously, cup holders. The whole thing looked light enough to blow away in a stiff breeze. There appeared to be no gadgets of any kind – the steering wheel was the only thing protruding from the dashboard. The only other visible controls were two pedals casting weird shadows in the footwell under the wheel, which the Doctor correctly assumed were the brakes and accelerator. Having recovered his calm, the Time Lord slid into the passenger seat.

"Let's be off, then!" he called. Sophia pressed a button mounted onto the wall of the vehicle storage bay. The wall which the buggy was facing slid up into the roof, casting strong daylight into the chamber. Sophia chastely rounded the vehicle and stepped into the passenger seat. When she grasped the wheel, the engine started up. The Doctor raised his eyebrows, impressed. The Queen caught sight of this and grinned at him, possibly for the first time.

"Built with economy of purpose, not to make up for a small penis," she jibed.

"Nice!" the Doctor laughed. "Nice and crude." Sophia nodded once slowly, smiling. She pressed her foot hard on the accelerator and the buggy moved off with welcome smoothness.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Still. Stay still. Don't scream. Don't do anything.

Rose was lying on the track, curled into a ball. The sunlight was sending strange shadows onto the forest floor through the canopy of trees. The huge woman was disoriented, nauseous, and above all frightened out of her meagre wits. A single thick tear slid softly down her cheek, catching the light from time to time. She had decided to stay as still as possible, reasoning that the less she moved, the less the strange malady would affect her.

The leviathan's body was still disappearing. Both of her hands had completely gone, faded away into nothingness, turning her thick arms into thick stumps. Rose's forearms were starting to fade too, the disease progressing in the same agonisingly slow way as her hands. Even as she lay there, the Amazon felt her legs start to go numb. Death was upon her, she felt it for certain now. Even if her body didn't complete its bizarre disappearing act, she felt sure that some of the planet's fiercer inhabitants would make a meal of her before too long.

Again the memory of that person came to her: a quick flash of a brown-haired man with shiny brown eyes grinning widely, holding a small metallic object with a strange blue light at the end. As quickly as it had come into her mind, the image disappeared. He was not there to protect her.

Rose Tyler burst into tears.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

The buggy shot through the forest. The Doctor's face was bruising up nicely where branches had smacked him as they passed. However, the Time Lord was getting very adept at spotting the upcoming trees and dodging out of the way. As the driver, Sophia had been able to make sure that she was never hit. These facts had not contributed to the Doctor's good humour.

"She could be anywhere by now!" the Doctor cried, exasperated, as they rounded another corner on the forest trail with no sign of Rose.

"We will find her," Sophia soothed. "Duck!" The Doctor did as he was told and a branch whipped over his head, brushing a few hairs out of place. He glared at Sophia, who gave a pleased half-smile. The Gallifreyan brushed himself down.

"I swear that you're doing that on purpose," he muttered. "Anyway, if you hadn't changed Rose, we wouldn't be in this mess in the first place. Why did you do it?" Sophia frowned at him, briefly taking her eyes off the track.

"You can't work it out, even with all your great intellect?" The Time Lord shook his head. "It's about power. The use of power. I'm Queen of this planet, and I've had nobody to exercise my power over for months now. That's why I kept you alive so long, you know." The Doctor was shaking his head.

"Power," he spat. "It's always about power, isn't it? Y'know, just for once, I – THERE SHE IS!" Sophia reeled away when the Doctor shouted, turning the buggy into a skid. For his part, the ancient alien had stood up in the buggy to point out his stricken companion and so was knocked clear of the vehicle. After years of the TARDIS throwing this kind of stunt, the Doctor was well-versed in crash procedures and prepared himself. Sophia turned into the skid and managed to right the buggy before bringing it to a halt a few feet away from Rose's body. The Doctor rolled to a halt just behind her. Quickly he righted himself and brushed his clothes down.

"Any landing you can walk away from is a good one," he said. Sophia shot him a slightly annoyed frown before shaking her head. "Come on," he continued, "she looks hurt."

The pair walked over to the fallen Amazon. She was unconscious when the Doctor squatted down next to her. As he peered more closely, fear etched itself onto his face.

"Look at her," he breathed, pointing at the stumps that were Rose's arms. They stopped just after her elbow joints now, and as the Doctor watched, layers of cells simply floated away from her body. Sophia joined him.

"I'm sorry," she said. The Doctor closed his eyes. Sophia let the moment of fear play itself out before she finished. "If we can get her back to the compound, we might be able to save her." The Time Lord's sigh of relief was brief. An ugly thought crossed his mind.

"How are we going to get her on the buggy?" he wondered aloud. Sophia smiled at him.

"Easy." she stated simply. The Queen brought the remote control device from her pocket, aimed it at the vehicle and pushed a few buttons. As the Doctor watched, the plastic of the buggy's exterior remoulded itself and formed a large flat space at the back to act as a temporary stretcher, complete with restraints. The Time Lord observed this and then turned to Sophia, clearly impressed. "Economy of purpose, like I said," she smiled. Then her business-like demeanour returned. "We may not have much time. Let's get her back."

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Rose woke up. She was tied down at an angle in a blindingly white room, with something metallic glowing on the ceiling. Any other detail was beyond her. A hand touched what was left of her veiny right bicep. She turned to see a man standing next to her, smiling winningly. Rose recognised him through the fog of pain and nausea. It was the Doctor. She opened her mouth to speak to him.

"Shhh," the Doctor said. "Don't say anything. The less you exert yourself, the easier this is going to be." He wiped the sweat from her forehead and soothed her brow as Rose settled into the chair, trying to make what was left of her body comfortable. Her elbows had gone, leaving weird stumps of thick muscle. Her legs were missing from just below the knee. It should have been a terrifying situation for the Amazon, but she felt oddly relaxed.

Sophia came in through the door and nodded at the Doctor. The Time Lord returned the nod and so the Queen removed the remote control device and pushed a button on it. The same fine white beam of light sizzled from the barrel of the ceiling-mounted cannon, though this time it traced its path up Rose's body, from pelvis to forehead. As the beam dissipated and he checked that Rose was unhurt, the Doctor addressed Sophia.

"What happens now?

"Now," she sighed, "we wait." Rose gurgled and fell unconscious again.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

It was an hour before Rose Tyler, the real Rose Tyler, recovered enough to be released from the chair. The Doctor was all smiles when he saw that his companion was going to be perfectly fine after her ordeal. Dressed in a white flannel dressing gown, Rose leaned against the black chair. Sophia leaned against a wall with her arms folded, a vague smile on her face simply from watching the joy of the two friends.

"What was it like, being that big and strong?" the Doctor was asking. Rose shook her head, as if trying to get the thoughts out of her mind.

"It was like… well, I felt like I was invincible, like nothing could ever beat me, y'know?" The Doctor nodded thoughtfully.

"And now?" he asked quietly, looking over her face concernedly.

"Now?" she repeated. "Well, now, I know I'm safe," Rose replied, grinning widely. The Doctor hugged her. When he opened his eyes again, the Time Lord caught sight of the scars on Rose's calf. He held the puzzled Londoner tightly on the shoulders.

"Your calf. How did that happen?" Rose looked down.

"Oh. Got into a fight." The Doctor did not let go; in fact, his eyes were widening. "It's… nothing, really. Doesn't even hurt anymore." The Time Lord looked beyond her to where the guilty-looking Sophia was standing.

"Sophia!" the Doctor shouted. "Are you ready?" The Queen seemed to tremble slightly before nodding her acquiescence. "Good!" the Gallifreyan roared. "Hop on." Rose frowned as Sophia meekly made her way to the chair. She began to look very dubious when the Doctor started to strap the other woman onto the chair.

"Er," she said, tapping the Doctor on the shoulder, "d'you two want to be alone?" The Time Lord smiled wryly.

"Not at all," he said, forcing brightness into his voice. He addressed Sophia. "Where is it?" The woman nodded towards her left trouser pocket. Beads of sweat were starting to line up across her forehead.

"There," she said. The ancient alien fished around in the woman's pocket and withdrew the sleek, sinister-looking remote control. Smiling politely, the Doctor stood back from the chair until he hit the wall, bringing Rose along with him. Then he aimed the remote at the cannon on the ceiling and pushed a button. A thin white beam of light traced a route down Sophia's body from forehead to pelvis. The Doctor brandished the control at Sophia, dropped it and then crushed it under his shoe. Sophia looked around at them. She was smiling happily, as if her greatest wish had just been granted.

"Thank you, Doctor," she said. "I believe you can find your way to your ship." The Doctor nodded.

"Indeed I can," he said, bowing slightly to her. "Come on, Rose." The pair left the room, Rose a few paces behind her companion, trying to make sense of what she had just seen. When they were around ten metres down the spotless white corridor on their way to the TARDIS, Rose heard a terrible scream. She caught up to the Doctor and tugged his arm urgently.

"What did you do to her?" she said, fear and worry in her voice. The Doctor didn't slow down, but set a grim expression on his face.

"The same thing she did to you," he said. Rose stopped. She could hear the sounds of stitching ripping and more anguished howling. The Doctor stopped too.

"But she might die!" The Doctor whirled around to face her.

"There's a ten per cent chance, yes, according to her own statistics," he stated calmly. "We were just lucky that there was enough of you left to save." Rose's eyes widened in horror.

"That's not right, Doctor," she said strongly. The Time Lord took a step towards his friend.

"It's what she wanted," he whispered. Rose's brow crinkled in incomprehension. The defiance drained out of her stance and she glumly walked toward the Doctor. He put an arm around Rose and lead her towards their ship.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

The new Sophia got to her feet. She stood, ramrod straight, turning quickly on her heel to get a good understanding of her surroundings. As she span, her thick black hair whirled around, tangling itself in knots and draping over her gigantic breasts. After satisfying herself that there were no potential threats in the area, the gargantuan woman visibly relaxed. She stood stock still for a few moments, eyes shut, enjoying the feeling of the new-found strength flowing through her. She threw a double-biceps pose and opened her eyes. They widened in awe at her superhuman physique.

Each bicep was a dense and thickly-layered mountain of strength. Sophia flexed her arms repeatedly, squeezing more and more growth out of her mammoth muscles. Eventually they peaked, both heads neatly displayed, at just above her wrists. The superwoman smiled happily.

Life was good.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Back inside the TARDIS, the Doctor walked up to the central console and deftly returned the settings that Sophia had altered to normal. He looked up at Rose, who had been silent all the way back. He frowned unhappily when he saw that she was crying. He rounded the central column and held her gently.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"I came so – so close – " she faltered, "to losing you." The Doctor held her tightly in his arms as she cried.

"It'll take more than that to separate us," he said. Rose nodded into his shoulder. The Doctor broke the hug and looked into Rose's eyes. "You OK?" She nodded. The Time Lord smiled happily. "Then I'm OK too." She smiled back. The Doctor bounded back round to the TARDIS' controls.

"OK!" he said enthusiastically. "Where to next?"

— The End —

[Cowprobe]

I was seriously worried that Queen Sophia was going to end up being an android.

This poetic mutation finale is quite fitting. Here's hoping that fictional regina gets to enjoy her primitive life to the fullest.

Good stuff Fonk and nicely self contained. The scar on Rose's calf is a nice cosmetic marker to stories in your fan-fiction corridor.

I can really feel the commercial breaks and story beats of a televised episode.

Thank you for sharing this.  8)

[peirrotlunaire]

Really fun story!  If only the Doctor had been able to restore Rose's mind and keep her new body :o.  That would have been perfect. 

[Author]

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