A Hunting We Will Go...

A Hunting We Will Go...

A Fourth Doctor and Leela piece of silliness by,

Clive May (clive@cj4386.demon.co.uk)

Inspired by a troll posting to alt.drwho.creative some time ago.

This was meant to be the February posting in my "one a month" schedule of
new stories. This intention was over-set by a family bereavement.
Therefore, this story is dedicated to the memory of:

Ann Elizabeth May,30 November 1919 - 24 February 2001.

A lady who had not a single offensive bone in her body. Her raison d'etre
was the cherishing and protection of her family; and though she was by no
means a courageous person, she would have marched blithely into the jaws of
Hell itself to give the Devil a piece of her mind if he'd been foolish enough
to threaten her family. She really was a SUPERMUM, and will be greatly
missed by all who knew her.

Dr Who is the copyrighted property of the BBC. This story was written for
fun; no money has changed hands; and there is no intent to deliberately
infringe the copyright owner's rights.

Brad Willis, Gray Woodland and Paul Gadzikowski are referenced in this story
for which temerity I apologise in advance.

"Oh, a hunting we will goooo. A hunting we will goooo," chanted the Doctor
as he crashed through the clustering thickets of the Newsgroups in the
Cyberland Woods. Clouds of articles of multifarious contents, colours and
kinds, rose around him like a swarm of bright butterflies. They swirled and
fluttered in the air, before settling to their properly appointed newsgroups,
where they resumed their happy, chatty, chirping and chirruping. The Doctor
grinned good-naturedly at the multitudes as they swarmed about him, disturbed
by his passage through the thickets. Occasionally, he had to pause to brush
an errant posting from his face, or untangle one from his long scarf. A
computer mouse rolled away right-clicking in panic from under his feet.

Over one shoulder, he carried an improbably large Killfile. An ostentatious
deer stalker was crammed down over his riot of curly hair. He was making a
terrible racket as he blundered after Leela, who was ghosting through the
crowding thickets, silent as mist.

Her expression was set in a grim scowl at the Doctor's attitude to the
serious business of hunting. They were never going to surprise the Turgid
Troll who was terrorising the alt.creative newsgroups lately if he wasn't a
bit quieter. She was just about to have one last go at getting him to take
this hunt seriously, when a sound alerted her to danger. She stopped so
suddenly, dropping into a crouch, that the Doctor nearly fell over her.

"Do be quiet," she hissed at him. "And do get down! There's something over
there in those alt.creative thickets."

He merely smiled, nodded and grinned. He drew in a deep lung-full of air and
prepared to launch into another chorus.

Leela gritted her teeth in exasperation. She rose in a blur of speed, and
drawing her knife, lashed it across the Doctor's throat, severing....

....the thongs of the deer-stalker, tied under his chin. She lifted one
ear-flap and hissed in his ear: "Do be quiet. We've reached the alt.creative
newsgroups; and there's something up ahead in those thickets."

"Where?" the Doctor demanded in a loud voice, unslinging the improbably large
Killfile and waving it around.

Leela put a finger to her lips and made agitated shushing noises. "There,"
she exclaimed in a whisper and pointed to the dense thicket of alt.creative
newsgroups.

The Doctor flung a hand to his brow, shading his eyes. He began peering
round with melodramatic exaggeration. "I see no Troll!" he pronounced. "Are
you sure? We're nowhere near the Data.Stream.Bridge?"

The Thickets ahead thrashed; something growled unpleasantly. Leela crouched.
"Get down, Doctor!" she ordered, trying to drag him into cover behind the
clump of alt.binaries.erotica groups.

The Doctor took one look at the subject headers and pulled a face. "I'm not
hiding in there," he declared, scandalised; "I do HAVE my reputation to
think..." Leela rolled eyes heavenwards, grabbed his scarf and yanked.
"...Aaaaggghhhhh!" He gargled, as he folded up in an untidy heap beside her.

"You're not taking this hunt seriously." she accused. The Doctor looked
hurt. Leela bobbed up to peer around at the dense groves of alt, uk and sci
newsgroups crowding in around them. Here and there, the odd rec.arts group
rambled over the floor of the Cyber Woods. Ducking down again, she drew her
knife.

"It's there, Doctor," she assured him. "I'm going to circle around and flush
it in your direction. Be ready with that Killfile."

The Doctor put the improbably large Killfile to his shoulder and sighted
experimentally along the wicked weapon. Leela ducked aside as the business
end tracked across her chest.

"Doctor!" she hissed. "Be careful with that. Look! Perhaps you should go
and flush it out and I'll handle the Killfile?"

"Nonsense!" huffed the Doctor. "I'll have you know I was handling one of
these mark II models before your grandfather got eaten by the Tentacus
Plant."

"My grandfather? He never got eaten?..." Leela began, perplexed, then broke
off to eye the Doctor dubiously. At length she shook her head resignedly and
slipped out of sight among a bank of low growing alt.cooking newsgroups.
They gave of the delicious aroma of freshly baked bread, mixed with roast
beef, as some of the recipe postings took fright.

Behind his screen of alt.binaries. erotica, the Doctor waited, fingering the
Killfile. He felt somewhat aggrieved. Of course he could use a Killfile. Wy,
hadn't he led the great hunt for the Phantom Flamer who plagued the
rec.arts.drwho (moderated) group way back when - and bagged the bounder too?
And?...

There was a sudden commotion in the newsgroups ahead of him. Leela began
shouting: "There he goes! Doctor! Get him!"

The Stand of alt.creative newsgroups, fifty feet away, thrashed violently and
something dark, macabre, grim, twisted and howling like a banshee with a
terminal dose of Alabama, rocketed into view. It spotted the Doctor
and began cackling with malicious glee. The Doctor swung up the Killfile and
let fly, bringing an enraged scream from the rocketing posting. A moment
later he was ducking for cover as a hail of semi-automatic fire ripped
through the air all around him.

A hundred yards away, startled by the sudden commotion, a mysterious figure
straightened from a cunningly set trap. The black garbed figure peered
around, saw the Doctor face down in the dirt, with his hands clasped over his
Deer Stalker, and grinned wickedly. Absent-mindedly, the figure gave a twist
of strong wrists and strangled the article just removed from the trap. The
pitiful scrap was casually discarded into a bit bucket. Then the formidable
figure reached up and withdrew a lethal looking nine inch hat pin from the
tall black hat stenciled with bright red letters. The grin grew malicious as
a fat finger tested the point.

The Doctor was just wondering whether it would be safe to put his head up for
a look round when a pair of leather buskins scuffed into view. He looked up
a pair of long legs which vanished under a leather kilt. Looking a little
higher, he espied a flair of leather covered hips, each with a hand planted
on the bones in an attitude of considerable consternation.

The Doctor grinned sheepishly up at Leela from under the askew deer stalker.
He scrambled up and peered around. "Did I get him?" he asked.

"Thankfully - No."

"That wasn't the troll. Did you see what it was? It was all dark and grim
and twisted yet it did look somewhat familiar."

"A B K Willis posting, I think. Possibly of the Badlands variety?"

"Not the Turgid Troll then?"

"Pretty ferocious...But not the Troll."

The Doctor began brushing himself down. "Right, then. Let's get on shall
we. And this time I think we should try the old bridge over the Data.Stream.
It's a well known fact that Trolls live under bridges, you know. I think the
Data.Stream's over that way." Shouldering the Killfile, he clumped off
through the clustering thickets.

Leela shook her head. This troll hunt was turning into a farce. She could
not understand how it was she had allowed the Doctor to talk her into this.
Still, trolls had to be dealt with.

"Doctor?" she called out to the Time Lord who was fast-disappearing through
the undergrowth of clary.newsgroups. "Doctor! The bridge is over this way."
She pointed off in the opposite direction.

Off in the thickets, there was a loud crash, and an inarticulate shout. The
Killfile boomed; and a steamy something, trailing a memory of flapping blue
shirt tails, flickered in teasing glimpses as it dashed away. The
half-dressed, half-seen posting reminded Leela of nothing so much as a silk
under-slip as it went jigging away like a demented butterfly on speed. It
jazzed away over Leela's head among the lofty Sci.anthropology Newsgroups to
something golden and lively out of old New Orleans. A girlish giggling
trailed after it. A heady perfume of excited girlish bodies coloured the
air. As It vanished from sight, a forlorn stocking floated down to settle
over a bush next to Leela.

She picked it up, and fingered the silken flimsy. "Hmmm?" she mused. "That
looked like a Gray Woodland of the species Erotica - now that's a very rare
posting indeed."

She'd better hurry up and catch the Doctor before he accidentally despatched
all the wildly amusing, downright funny, interesting, tricky, delicious and
delightful good bad or ugly news postings which thrived in the Newsgroup
Hierarchies of Cyberland. They none of then deserved the Doctor running amok
with a Killfile. They all had a right to be posted - only the damned Turgid
Troll was persona non-grata here.

Another shout, and the Killfile boomed. A slightly risque Gadzikowski
slubbed away through a snarbing of lettiforms and vanished in a scurrilimpish
of strubles, swispering and smurgling in panic.

Leela increased her pace. She had almost caught up to him, when a sudden and
furious swarm of angry spams erupted around her. Hissing and squealing, they
darkened the air, splitting and re-splitting and dashing in all directions.
In moments the newsgroups all about were being smothered by the hoards of the
things. They clustered indiscriminately all over the groups, like a pack of
leeches. The newsgroups began to sag and sway under the sheer weight of the
smothering multitudes of spams.

"Xoanan!" she swore. The Doctor had just stumbled into a nest of spammers
and cross-posters. In choking clouds the spams began to settle on the Doctor
and Leela. It was suddenly hard to breath. As fast as one was pulled off,
four more settled on their faces. In trying to get a gap big enough to get a
breath, they neither of them noticed a lofty uk.sci.philosophy news group
groaning under the weight of crossies settling on it. The stricken group
creaked and swayed and then with a despairing shriek it toppled down right
upon the pair.

Warned by her hunter's instincts, Leela grabbed the Doctor and flung them
both clear at the last instant.

Quickly, they got back to back for mutual protection. Leela carved away with
her knife, slicing the flying hoards in to shreds, while the Doctor stood
like a hero out of some Sword and Sorcery saga, hacking away with the
Killfile. Between them, they exacted a terrible carnage on the multiplying
spams; but it was not enough, not nearly enough. In moments they were
clothed, head to foot, with smothering spams. More and more were splitting
off. All sight of the sky was lost to view, crowded out by the whirling
clouds. Nearby, another newsgroup swayed under the loading of inappropriate
posts, and crashed to ruin.

"Quick! Doctor!" Leela yelled over the howling of the spams and the roaring
of the Killfile. "Set the Killfile to Spam Block setting - it's our only
chance."

The Doctor nodded. He pried a bunch of sex spams from the control panel and
flipped the setting knob. Hefting the weapon once more, he hosed about him,
burning great holes in the billowing clouds of spam. In seconds, there were
ragged rents torn in the crowding flock. A few seconds later, the rents had
turned into open sky, with chaotic clumps of postings whirring frantically
back and forth. Moments later, they were all gone. The Doctor breathed a
sigh of relief.

"That was close," he said. "Too close. Now what's that sound?"

Leela cocked an ear, listening. The air was alive with a high pitched
whistling, pipping, chinking and chirping stream of sound. It teased the
ears right at the edge of hearing. It sounded like an electronic stream
might sound as it rilled and bubbled over chips of silicon in its bed.

"That's the Data.Stream." said Leela.

A mighty roar shivered the shaken newsgroups. A ghastly thunder of polemical
invective filled the air, drowning out the pleasant sound of the Data.Stream.

"And that...Unless I'm much mistaken," observed the Doctor calmly; "must be
the Turgid Troll."

Off in the direction of the Data.Stream, A bloated blob hove into view among
the newsgroups. As the monstrosity slobbered towards them, crushing down the
news groups in its path, it brandished on high a club shaped like a gigantic
keyboard. Spotting the pair, the Turgid Troll let out another great roar of
polemical invective, and increased its pace, bearing down on the hapless pair
like an e-mail storm on an inadequate server. In only moments, the beast was
looming over them, raising on high the qwerty-club, intent upon smashing them
into bytes with one mighty blow.

With an uncooth grunt of effort, and a blast of hot air, the club swung down.

In the nick of time, they both ducked under the clumsy blow. The
keyboard-club whooshed inches over their heads, cutting a terrible swath of
carnage through the newsgroups. An entire de.heirarchy collapsed in ruins.
In a panic, a cloud of dislodged articles dashed in all directions.

"Time to make a strategic withdrawal, I think," the Doctor observed.

Leela was a little more direct. "RUN!" she yelled, and took off like a
gazelle. Putting a hand over his deer stalker, the Doctor legged it after
her. They dashed pell mell through the Cyber Woods, their strategic
withdrawal covered by the clouds of flying articles.

They did not get far. Panicked articles got between their legs, bringing
them down. As they scrambled to get up, the Troll was upon them once more.
Grinning like a demoniac clown on LSD, It raised on high the giant keyboard.
There could be no escape this time.

The dreadful qwerty-club reached the top of its arc, paused a moment, then
thundered down.

"Doctooooorrrr!" Leela screamed, and buried her face in the ruffles of the
Doctor's shirt.

They were done for.

Then the strangest thing happened.

As the giant keyboard club thundered down, the Turgid Troll, terror of the
newsgroups, jerked as though shot. The rambling rant of polemical invective
attenuated into a ridiculous squeak of surprise. Then the Troll clapped off
a thunderous fart, filling the woods with a foetid miasma of hot air. Upon
the instant, the terrible Turgid Troll began to deflate like a punctured
balloon. In seconds, it had shrivelled to a tiny, inconsequential little
worm, cowering on the ground.

Looming over it was the substantial figure of a formidable lady. She had a
round friendly face, with bright button eyes, twinkling out from folds of
cheerfully crinkled flesh. Wisps of grey hair were escaping from under a
tall, black hat with the legend:

Auntie Spamm - Official Net Administrator

Stenciled on it in large friendly letters.

At her heel a pack of savage looking Netiquette Hounds were straining
on a hair trigger, eager for the word of command to fall upon the worm and
tear it to pieces. They were eyeing the cringing little worm with a lively
speculation.

the Doctor and Leela sat up, still gagging on the foul, hot air.

"You don't want to get the wind up over them little beggars, you know,"
Auntie Spamm said, beaming at them. "They's mostly just bags of hot air,
stretched over a frame-work of inflated ego. All you really needs to deal
with them pesky blighters is a nice sharp hat-pin. Never without one, when
I'm tending my spam-traps." The formidable lady gestured at them with the
afore-mentioned hat-pin.

"Hey! Be careful with that," Leela cautioned as Auntie Spamm almost had
her eye out with it.

"Just need to stick the troublesome little beggars in the backside with one
of these and pooof!"

"poooooffff?" questioned the Doctor.

"That's right....Pooooffff! Lets all the hot air out you see."

"I see," said the Doctor scrambling up and helping Leela to her feet.
"I'm the Doctor. And this is my friend, Leela," the Doctor did the
introductions with his usual casual aplomb.

"Delighted my boy." Auntie Spamm shot out a hand and pumped the Doctor's with
vigor, then did the same for Leela. "Spamm's the name," she boomed. "Auntie
Spamm, to my friends." Was over there a-ways seeing to me spam traps when I
sees you were having a bit of trouble with that there pesky Troll." She broke
off to point the pin at the worm crawling on the ground whining piteously.
It cringed and scuttled around in a panic. So I strolled over and stuck the
blighter where it hurts the most. Hope yer don't mind me poking m'nose in?"

"Not at all, dear lady," assured the Doctor graciously. "Not at all." He got
down on his knees to inspect the anonymous cringing little pipsqueak cowering
on the ground. "Is that all they are really?"

"Fraid so. Miserable little critters really, when you've let all the hot air
out."

"That's a shame," said the Doctor.

"A shame?" Leela echoed puzzled.

"I was rather hoping to have it stuffed and mounted over the bar at the TTR.
Can't possibly have this little pipsqueak as a trophy, it'd just look
ridiculous. Everyone would laugh."

At mention of the words "stuffed and mounted" the anonymous little wretch
began to run around in panic, screaming in terror, before crawling under a
nearby rock.

"Well. That's the last we'll see of that pesky little fella," announced
Auntie Spamm. She straightened up and beamed at the Doctor. "Now what do you
say to a nice stroll back to the Round where I'll allow you to press me to a
sweet sherry." She paused to twinkle side-long at the Doctor. "I may even
allow you to press me to a second."

"Delighted, Ma'am," said the Doctor sweeping off his deer stalker and bowing
grandly. He set it back at a rakish angle and offered an arm.

"Splendid!" exclaimed Auntie Spamm. She flourished the nine inch pin
dramatically before bayonetting her hat. Linking one arm with the Doctor,
the other with Leela, she steered the intrepid hunters towards a nearby plot
hole that led directly to the TTR car park.

The End