In the ensuing awed hush, Eloise turns to the eighth Doctor’s red-haired companion… “You complained of something hurting just before this happened. Any idea why? Any suggestions on how to get out of here?”
The red-head looks at the hostess. “Oh, I know…” A thoughtful expression crosses her face. “For want of a better explanation…”
“Compassion…” her Doctor says warningly.
“I know, Doctor.” She turns to Eloise. “I am linked in to the telepathic field your TARDIS generates. I can feel …her? Yes, it’s a her… her fear. Her pain at being dragged unwillingly several thousand light-years across time and space.” There is a trace of irony to her voice. “Her fear and love for the timelines, and for the people who are currently inside her. She reminds me of your Type 40, in certain ways…”
The eighth Doctor winces.
The red-head looks thoughtful. “There is a way to get back. Assuming your TARDIS is still in working order, we should be able to pilot her – Oh. Oh.”
“Compassion?” the eighth Doctor asks nervously, and some of those within earshot realise that this must be the red-head’s name.
Compassion’s grey eyes fix on the troll’s. “A safety lock has activated on your TARDIS, preventing her from leaving. I would imagine the Time Lords built it in at some point, possibly as part of a trap.”
“Oh no…” Eloise and the Doctors whisper.
“I should be able to break it… if I can download the information from the Matrix.”
“You don’t know how to do it yourself?” Eloise asks.
“I’m good, but I’m not that good,” Compassion explains. “It’s something only certain Time Lords are taught…” Her ironic look fixes on the Doctors. “And the Doctor wasn’t one of them.”
Eloise sits down with a thump. “Oh dear. And it looked like it was going to be such a nice hoedown, too…” A massive grins spreads across her face. “Unless…” She pulls herself to her feet, and draws herself up to her not unimpressive height. “Could I have your attention please?” she shouts to the audience.
“Due to circumstances beyond our control,” she continues when all is quiet, “we’ve found ourselves on Gallifrey, and it may take some time before we can leave.”
Worried muttering from the audience.
“Ssshh. Quiet. But… I’ve decided that so long as we’re here, we can celebrate the first Gallifreyan Pro-Fun Troll Hoedown. So… we’re going to take it outside!”
With a massive cheer, the crowd leaves the barn-TARDIS.
Several things happen at once:
As the partygoers swarm out of the TARDIS, trying (unsuccessfully) to be quiet, their hostess finds herself entangled in Tom Baker’s famous scarf.
Just as the TARDIS doors shut with a quiet thhhhwwwip behind them, alarms sound throughout the Citadel, followed by the rather nasty shouting of Gallifreyan guards. This, in turn, sends alarms and shouts throughout the crowd of guests. Eloise thanks her guardian gods that her guests are reacting to the danger much as a herd of sheep would: by sticking together with the cohesion of water molecules. If they scattered through the corridors of the Citadel, she fears she’d never find all of them again.
After disentangling herself from the massive amounts of wool, she spits the fuzz out of her mouth, and tries to inform Thomas, Alryssa, Chas, and the few others (who, luckily, have not gone far) of the situation as quickly as possible. It’s not easy above the din.
Alryssa looks at her husband after a minute or two, and shrugs. “I think she means we’re all in big doo-doo. This isn’t Cleveland, you know.” Thomas nods slowly.
Scraping her bow across the strings of her fiddle, Eloise produces a sound that is a close cousin to fingernails on a blackboard. After that, there’s only the sound of the alarms and the guards (alarmingly close) to contend with. “Right,” she announces, with as much authority as she can muster (which isn’t easy without her microphone, stage and home ground), “what we need is a plan.” Several Doctors agree, and immediately start arguing with each other.
She finds Compassion. “May I speak with you,” she asks, “alone?” ‘Alone’, she knows, is a highly relative term in the current circumstances, and right now only means away from the eighth Doctor, whose presence seems to squelch Compassion’s willingness to speak freely. He is now busy arguing with his sixth, third, and first selves about what exactly the “plan” should be. The fourth Doctor is trying to explain (again) to his friend Tom exactly what the situation is. (Eloise smiles briefly to herself at the differences between the real Doctor, and the actor who played him, the least of which is the latter’s current mop of silver hair.) The second and fifth Doctors are busy trying to calm a huddle of uneasy lurkers. The seventh Doctor is nowhere in sight. That can only mean trouble.
But Eloise can’t worry about that, right this instant, and brings her mind back to the question she wanted to ask Compassion. “You – You didn’t decide to pilot us here, did you?” she asks worriedly.
“Certainly not!” Compassion looks hurt by the suggestion.
“Well, then, who did?”
Until that moment, Eloise had no idea that bio-mechanical creatures could blush.
“Erm.” Compassion pauses, her blush deepening. “I think a couple of your guests are inside me.”
“Well, for Gods’ sakes, let them out,” the troll says, exasperated, “before they cause any more trouble! Or at least,” she adds, “lock down your controls so they can’t cause any more trouble until we get home.”
“Ahhh… normally, that would be no problem, but this time…”
‘This time’? Eloise doesn’t like the sound of that… Right at this moment, she’s wishing she’d ordered a Pepto Bismal instead of a Millennium Special.
“One of them is a snark,” Compassion explains, “and the other is a goddess – Eris. I’m very much in control of myself, most of the time, but even I’m no match for divine intervention.”
Divine intervention… it’s all so clear, now. It is just the Goddess’s style to play a game with time like this. “‘The best laid plans of mice and men’,” the troll murmurs to herself. “Let’s just hope She’s on our side, this time…”
“Oh no…” says the eighth Doctor, who overheard after all.
“What is it, m’ boy?” the first Doctor asks.
“I’ve just realised why Eris is in my TARDIS… Whatever we do, we cannot afford to let Rassilon near her.”
“All well and good,” the sixth Doctor says, “but what happened to our TARDIS?”
Deep grief is etched on the eighth’s face. “Telling you would break the laws of Time. Do any of you believe you wouldn’t try to stop it? Try to prevent the loss of our oldest companion? In the end, it was her own decision… Would you take that away from her?”
He blinks suddenly. “That’s odd…” He turns to the others. “Do any of you know a Charlotte Pollard?”
Meanwhile, within the dim confines of the shifting, soft-walled console room, Snarky studies the controls for a few minutes, then, hopefully, tentatively reaches out his hand to the most likely-looking switch… presses it… and within a few moments, hears… Buddy Holly???
“Oh, well, this should kill some… time… I guess,” he mutters. “Wish I could get back to the Hoedown, though…”
The Mother of All Terran Life merely smiles mysteriously…
Compassion winces. “Oh, brilliant. They’ve found the audio player.”
Fitz starts looking interested. “You have an audio player? How come you never told me?”
“Would you really have been able to resist the temptation to play ‘Killer Queen’?”
Three squads of Gallifreyan guards converge on the room, surrounding the bewildered crowd, weapons drawn. For an instant, they all look as astonished and bewildered by this motley gathering as the unfortunate guests. Eventually, one of the captains finds his voice: “In the name of High President Rassilon,” he bellows, “you are all under arrest.”
Before anyone has time to react, there is a coughing from behind the group of guards, and a tall, gangly figure in an electric purple cloak (with a lime motif) pushes his way through. “Now then, Captain, what’s all this shouting about, we’ll have no trouble here, this is a Local Capitol, for Local People – we’ll have no trouble here!”
“Well, my Lord Gallifrijan, these strangers just appeared and–”
“Oh, do be quiet, Captain. Now then, let me see…” Turning to face the worried revellers, the man identified as Lord Gallifrijan smiles at the sight of the avocado-green troll. “Why, my Lady Capriuni! To what do we owe the pleasure of your company?”
“Thomas Michael Kelly!” Alryssa yells across the sudden quiet, “Put that down right now!”
The eighth Doctor lookalike turns, blue eyes wide, with the object in his hands, holding it up for all to see.
“What, this old thing?”
Someone screams…