Dr. Whooves- Parallel Complications

Events began to unfold. So many universes had felt the touch of Chaos, and soon all of them would. Chaos placed an obstacle in the Doctor’s way, one that even for him would be difficult to overcome. While the Doctor was trapped, Chaos prepared more and more, nearly ready to rip apart the fabric of time and space and pull all of existence into his realm.

Those that could feel the hints of Chaos’ effect on the universe prepared for the worst, as I am preparing now. I must tell the story of the end of all things before my time is up.

The winds of fate blew this way and that, the stepping stones being put in to place. The Doctor, Paige, Minuette, Jack, all trapped. There was a possibility of escape, but there is tragedy that comes with our existence.

We can’t always save everyone.

***

“YOU ARE BEING HELD WHILE WE ANALYZE OUR CURRENT LOCATION. ONCE LOCATION AND TIME IS CONFIRMED YOU WILL BE ANALYZED FOR COMPATIBILITY WITH BEING UPGRADED. THERE IS NO NEED FOR FEAR. FEAR WILL SOON BE IRRELEVANT.”

The cyberman walked away from the energy field, his metal footsteps ringing through the corridor. The Doctor inhaled deeply. He hadn’t dealt with this stage of cyberman much. When he did, he barely escaped alive. The only way to defeat them was to either catch them by surprise before they could adapt to the situation, or blow up everything with a powerful blast, a blast that will likely take you with it.

They were being held in a lower priority zone of the ship; there were no cybermen around besides the one that showed up for a brief moment, nor could the Doctor see much in the way of computer systems outside. Surveillance would be low at the start, but they’d have to move quickly. The Doctor continued to scan outside, seeing what the ship looked like. There was no external damage whatsoever, and from the small amount his ears could pick up with countless years being on space ships, no problems with internal engines either.

“This ship is in a lot better shape than the dalek ship we encountered,” the Doctor said. “But they just revealed by talking to us that they still sustained some slight damage from the teleport, which is our one advantage right now. Their scanners are slow to collect information, otherwise they’d already know exactly where they are and who I am. And they probably wouldn’t have allowed us to keep our weapons.”

“So let’s blast them to pieces,” Jack said, stepping forward. “Shoot our way out of here, find what they did with the TARDIS.”

“These aren’t the cybermen you know, Jack,” the Doctor replied. “It would be a possible yet crazy idea to shoot our way to the unknown location of my TARDIS were they the cybermen you’re used to, but these are new and improved. They move faster, hit stronger, and can adapt and upgrade so that they become immune to whatever you’re hitting them with.”

“So is it impossible to get out of here?” Minuette asked.

The Doctor began to pace back and forth, letting his thoughts flow freely. “Not completely. As I said, surprise is still our current advantage. Cybermen use the same parts in themselves that they do on all their ships, which means if their information analysis is down, it’s possible that being brought to this universe also slowed their individual ability to analyze and adapt to information. Which means…” The Doctor paused in both step and speech, bringing all of his focus to coming up with a plan.

“Could you improve our sonic blasters with your screwdriver, now that they’re already put together?” Paige asked. She had calmed herself from the sudden imprisonment, now focusing on the task at hand.

“Yes, that’s where my mind was starting to go,” the Doctor said. “Everybody, hold up your blaster one by one. I’m going to make some adjustments.”

The Doctor got to work, spending a couple minutes improving each blaster. He couldn’t improve the power much, but as he worked he explained that he was randomizing the frequency that the blaster fired at, so every time the damage would be slightly different. With the randomization of the blasters and the supposed damage to analysis systems, their blasters would last a while.

“That still doesn’t help us from how powerful they are, however, we need to be careful,” the Doctor said. “These cybermen don’t trudge around one step at a time. They can be a hundred feet away and be on you in a flash. Surprise is our only hope of making it out of here alive.”

***

Chaos began to chuckle to himself as the moment of truth arrived. His power had reached full potential. He had built up his power slowly, performing an act that brought disorder to somewhere, expending energy, then recharging to a higher level. Now, he was fully reconnected with the universe energies outside of the void, and would no longer need to recharge. With the Doctor out of the way, he could continue working.

Why not have a bit more fun, Chaos thought to himself. I think I’ll give the Doctor something else to worry about if he ever gets away from the cybermen alive.

***

The Doctor took a deep breath when he finished his work on the blasters. “Alright everyone, we have to assume the worst because right now it just about is. We have no idea where the TARDIS is, we have no backup, and we have very little time to fight once we break out of this prison. Stick together everyone. Oh, and if you wouldn’t mind, thoughts on how in the world I’m going to defeat Chaos when we get out of here would be great.”

“This feels like the night when Rose made me… what I am today,” Jack said. He charged up his blaster, fiddling with it for a moment to make sure it was on his foreleg straight. “Except the daleks are at the top of the station and we’re the ones trying to get up.”

“We don’t have a choice,” Minuette said. “Let’s go.”

Everyone stepped back from the energy shield, pressing all the way against the back wall. The Doctor activated his screwdriver to begin tampering with the energy shield slightly, making it shimmer and buzz. Everyone else raised their blaster, putting all their individual fears away, focusing on who was to their left and who was to their right.

Simultaneously, everyone fired, and the energy shield sparked then buzzed out to nothingness. Immediately, a cyberman appeared in the entryway as if from nowhere, showing Minuette, Paige, and Jack for the first time just how quick these modern monstrosities could be. However, the cyberman was met with a quick second blast from all three of the Doctor’s companions, after which sparks fluttered for a moment, the cyberman shook and buzzed loudly, then fell to the ground.

The Doctor quickly jumped over the now still cyberman body, looking both ways after exiting the prison. He saw more prisons just like the one they were in; they were likely also upgrade chambers with all the mechanics hidden behind the walls, that way they could analyze species taken, given their expansion from purely human targets, and perform an upgrade after.

“That cyberman must have been on guard, there’s nothing else out here. Let’s go!”

Everyone else jumped over the cyberman and joined the Doctor in the hallway, beginning to run. They all knew time was short before they’d be discovered, if it hadn’t already happened.

The Doctor had no clue where to start. He relied on his instincts, turning at the end of the hallway they had found themselves in. When he turned, he stopped for a moment to take in the scenery.

The travelers stood with a window on their left, showing the empty space outside. To their right a silver pole traveled from one end of the hall to the next, a thin glass pane underneath, forming a railing. On the other side of the railing was a one floor drop, where they could see cybermen pushing around large, metal crates in a wide, open room. The floors were a pale white, and some automatic cranes aided the cybermen with vertical lifting of crates. Some crates were closed, others had open tops, showing miscellaneous parts of machinery.

“It’s a cargo bay,” the Doctor whispered, not wanting to alert the cybermen below to their presence. “I don’t see the TARDIS.”

“Look.” Minuette pointed to a number on one of the walls of the floor below. “3. Perhaps there’s more than one cargo bay. This ship may still be the one holding your TARDIS.”

“Cybermen like to prioritize,” the Doctor said. “My guess is that since they found the TARDIS but think that they haven’t found the Doctor they’re pretty curious as to what happened. It will be in cargo bay 1.”

“So we have to get through two cargo bays and who knows what else to get to it,” Jack said, looking down through the glass.

“If that’s all we have to go through. I don’t know the layout of this ship.”

“Doctor, look outside.”

Paige’s gaze was stuck at the window, looking out at something in the open space. The Doctor turned from his analysis of the cargo bay and looked out.

Not only had Chaos sent a ship into this universe in better shape than before, he had sent an entire fleet of cyber ships. Half a dozen showed themselves through the window. And that wasn’t the worst of their problems.

Below the ships floated a planet, orbiting some unknown star that wasn’t visible through this window. The ships were in orbit of the planet, and the Doctor knew what would come next when the cybermen finished repairs.

“We’ve been caught in a full on war,” the Doctor said. “If I can’t get to my TARDIS and find a way to destroy these ships in time, they’ll repair, be able to adapt, and I’ll no longer have any way of stopping them.”

“Doctor, we need to get this war started,” Jack said, raising his voice above a whisper now. “There’s a cyberman up here!”

In a split second, a cyberman from the other end of the platform arrived right in front of the travelers, grabbing Jack by the throat. He lifted him up and threw him, sending him crashing to the cargo bay below.

***

The Doctor’s Universe
21st Century
Earth
UNIT Headquarters

“We need answers!”

Colonel Hutchinson slammed his hand down on the table. He had no idea what was coming, he only knew that something drastic was about to occur. He couldn’t protect the world from something he didn’t know how to prepare for. He sat at a long, thin conference table in a room of UNIT that only about three dozen people had the security clearance to enter. Five were currently in the room now; himself, a lieutenant Colonel, two scientists from the labs, and Martha Jones. The room was dimly lit, and all the windows that showed the outside hallway were blacked out for the duration of the meeting.

“I’m sorry sir, but we’re just lost in the lab,” Dr. Henderson explained. “We keep getting these strange energy readings, on earth, light years away from earth, all over the place! But we don’t know what they mean!”

“It is clear now that when the Doctor arrived he did not come of his own free will,” Dr. Presnell continued. “The energy readings are similar to the ones we detected when the Doctor arrived on the planet in his new form.”

“The Doctor spoke about every parallel universe in existence being in danger,” Martha said, also present at the meeting. “We don’t know if he’s made any progress on that end. It could be signs of the fabric of space and time continuing to tear apart.”

“Is there any word from the Doctor?” the Colonel asked.

“No, to be honest I don’t even know if he made it back to the other universe alive,” Martha replied. “The scientists are still running tests on all the changes he made, trying to make sure they understand it before using it. Right now I’m just… putting my faith in him, that he’s alive, and fighting.”

“Faith may be all we have,” Hutchinson sighed, leaning back in his chair. He rolled his shoulders, trying to ease the pain in his back. This week had been long.

“Unless there can be more discovered in the lab, all we can do is keep UNIT on red alert and press on,” Lieutenant Colonel Godlewski said, letting out a sigh.

Martha rubbed her temples, trying to soothe her headache. They needed answers, but they didn’t have the technology to do it. They needed more advanced knowledge of what was going on, or more advanced machinery, or…

An idea struck her.

Martha stood up. “Colonel, I know your first response is going to be that you can’t risk it without conclusive tests, so I’m going to start by saying I don’t care. I need to make a universe jump.”

“Dr. Jones, calm yourself,” the colonel said, raising a hand. “You took the words out of my mouth. We don’t even know if the Doctor successfully made the jump-“

“I’m putting my faith in him,” Martha replied. “He believed he had the machine perfectly ready for a jump, and I have no reason to doubt him. I’ve taken bigger risks than this.”

***

The Pony Universe

The cyberman flailed about as its circuits fried due to Minuette blasting it in the chest. The Doctor jumped up on the railing and jumped up again, pushing in to the cyberman’s head and causing him to fall over to the ground as it shut down. Cybermen below looked up and began shooting towards the railing, causing the three still on the upper level to duck instinctively.

“We have to get out of here! Either we stay up here or jump down, we need to make a choice!” the Doctor shouted.

“What about Jack?” Paige yelled back.

“Don’t forget the stories I told you, he’ll be fine. But we need to get down to him!”

The Doctor looked down through the glass, luckily since it was built by the cybermen it was holding up to the attack from below. He found where Jack landed; his body rested in a corner behind several crates, unmoving, lifeless.

Ignoring the chaos around him, the Doctor focused, working out a plan. He needed to get to Jack safely. There were too many cybermen and the drop was too far. He had two companions to help him, and when he looked at the cranes again, an idea struck him.

“Paige, we need to spread out their fire. Run down to the other edge of the rail!”

Paige obliged and ran down to the other end of the platform. Some of the cybermen turned, directing their fire towards her.

“Minuette, I need cover fire. Be careful.”

Minuette nodded, and inched closer to the railing. The Doctor let his breath slow, waiting for the timing to be just right. When a crane retracted to the ceiling, the Doctor tensed. It then moved closer to the platform, getting within range for a jump.

The Doctor ran forward, leaping on to the railing and getting one final push, soaring into the air. He slammed onto the crane, using the joints in his forelegs as grip. Minuette rose to her hind legs, placing her front hooves over the railing. She let off several shots, two missing but one managing to land square on a cyberman’s chest. Seeing that they were currently unable to upgrade and resist the sonic blasters, the cybermen moved, changing positions beffore firing again.

Minuette ducked her head, and the moment she ducked Paige rose, adding her fire to the support. With an offensive now coming from the railing, the cybermen were ignoring the pony hanging from the ceiling.

The Doctor flailed his hind legs about, struggling to hold on. He kept his grip until the crane began to lower, and dropped down into an open crate of parts. He scrambled onto his hooves and jumped out of the crate, landing next to Jack.

“Jack!” the Doctor shouted above the sound of blasts. “Wake up!”

Jack’s body jerked, and he gasped for breath. The Doctor held him, and helped him roll over as he coughed and sputtered. “That freakin robot snapped my spine!” he yelled. “What’s the situation now?”

“Lots of cybermen between us and the door, it hasn’t changed.”

Jack ran to the edge of the crate and peeked around, seeing the cybermen shooting up at Minuette and Paige, who were taking turns shooting back. He brought his head back behind the crate. “They’re ignoring us because we’re not a current threat, if we start shooting back they’ll do their little speed run and be on us in seconds.”

The Doctor peaked around the corner, and groaned. “We’re so close!” he said. “We just need a little more firepower…”

Jack shook his head. “We’re not going to get it, we’ll have to shoot fast and make do.” Jack didn’t hesitate anymore. He popped out from behind the crate, and fired off three shots, landing two of them on two different cybermen. Afterwards, some fire began going towards him and the Doctor. Jack ducked behind cover again, waiting for the right moment to shoot again.

Suddenly, the Doctor heard a noise amidst the shooting from the other end of the room. He peaked out his head from the other side of their cover, which was near the wall, not allowing him to see much. He did notice a large door opening, however.

Paige and Minuette had a better view. The large double doors at the end of the cargo bay were opening, on the other side, two dozen more cybermen came through.

Jack leaned out to let off some more shots, but didn’t get the chance to. Two dozen focused shots went straight for him. He avoided most of them, but one nicked his head on his way back behind cover, and he collapsed to the ground.

The Doctor’s heart sank. Had they been able to rush through this room, things may have been fine. But they got stuck too long, and now these reinforcements were too much.

Minuette saw the look on the Doctor’s face, and desperately looked around for a way to get to him. She had no cover to use the crane idea, and couldn’t perform a teleport spell. If she or Paige couldn’t get to him, he’d be dead.

“YOUR OPTIONS ARE OUT. GIVE UP YOUR WEAPONS OR BE DELETED.” One cyberman bellowed over the volume of the blasts. The Doctor looked at Jack’s dead body, seeing that there was no way out.

All of the shots suddenly stopped when an alarm began to sound on the ship. The lighting blinked between white and red, and the cybermen looked around, not knowing the reason for the alarm.

“WARNING,” a robotic voice similar to that of the cybermen echoed through the room. “SHIP DETECTED ON COLLISION COURSE WITH CARGGO BAY 3. ALERT. COLLISION IMMINENT.”

Everyone’s ears shattered from the screeching of metal grinding on metal as a small ship blasted through the wall of the cargo bay and skidded across the floor, flattening cybermen in its path and busting open crates full of parts. The vacuum of space began to pull, and all the random parts that had spilled out were instantly sucked out in to space.

Some cybermen activated an ability that magnetized their bodies to the floor, but others were not quick enough. Half of the cybermen left after the ship destroyed some flew out as well, beginning to float aimlessly.

The Doctor and Jack were lucky to be behind two large crates. The Doctor was pulled against the crate but wasn’t moving, merely feeling the pressure of air rapidly leaving the bay. Jack awoke, but couldn’t manage to gasp in a breath as he usually did. He quickly spread his hooves out on the crate, his eyes wide in panic.

Minuette was up against the glass, but Paige had been leaning over to fire. She had spun around, and was only barely hanging on to the rail with her hooves. She screamed, feeling her grip begin to loosen.

“Paige! Hold on!” Minuette screamed, reaching out a hoof.

Paige struggled with all her might, and let out another gasp of fear when one of her hooves lost its grip. Now all she had keeping her from flying into space was one hoof folded over the rail.

“I can’t hold on!” Paige flailed her free front hoof around, desperately trying to grab the railing again. Her hoof inched closer and closer to losing its grip.

“Paige, I can’t hold on to you with magic, the pull is too strong! You have to hang on!”

Paige’s hoof lost grip, and she screamed again, her body now headed for the hole in the ship.

“POWER TO AUTOMATIC SEALING RESTORED. ACTIVATING.”

An energy field appeared over the hole, and the bay pressurized again. Unlike when Jack fell, Minuette was able to react this time, and quickly grabbed Paige with her magic, preventing her from slamming in to the energy field. She gasped for air as she focused on levitating Paige to the cover that the Doctor and Jack were behind.

None of the cybermen cared about Paige, all were staring at the small ship that had blown a hole in their vessel. It was some sort of shuttle craft, probably only big enough for a crew of two or three. There was one door in the back, and it slowly began to open.

“DELETE THE PILOT.” One cyberman commanded. Two cybermen shifted to the back of the ship, their arms pointed at the opening door.

Before either cyberman saw what was inside, each was greeted with a blast much more powerful than the ones coming from the sonic blasters. The cybermen’s circuits didn’t just fry, they were knocked back about ten feet. Two figures came out from the ship, blasting away the cybermen that came to investigate.

One figure moved to either side of the ship, quickly and skillfully taking down all the remaining cybermen in the room with what looked like highly advanced rifles. Minuette watched in awe from above, while Jack, the Doctor, and Paige began to peek out from behind cover, hearing the shots and discovering it wasn’t the cybermen that won.

When only the sound of smoke and sparks filled the room, the three travelers behind the crates walked out slowly, and the Doctor couldn’t believe his eyes. The figure wasn’t facing him, but he knew who it was. He’d recognize that hair anywhere.

River turned around, looked down at the three ponies, and smiled slyly when she looked at the Doctor. “Hello, sweetie.”