Compassion had an odd expression on her face. “Erm… I feel funny.” she said. Then her face blurred.
And reformed into Alryssa’s features.
“All right, Gods… That’s not funny!” Alryssa screamed.
Compassion winced.
“It’s not my fault!” she shot back.
Thomas sidled up to the eighth Doctor. “Er… anything you want to tell me?” he asked, all innocence.
It was Compassion who replied. “Eris’ presence within me is… disrupting my systems. It started with the telepathic circuits, then the doors, then my Randomiser… and now, it’s affecting my chameleon circuit…” She hiccuped.
And morphed again. This time, into Mel.
Alden appeared on the scene as if by magic. Compassion yelped, and leapt behind the bar.
There was a strange coughing noise, and Compassion shot back up, this time wearing the face of Adric. Everyone screamed.
“We have to do something, now!”
Alryssa held her aching head, burying it in the velvet of Thomas’s frock coat. “Birthday parties are now banned…” she muttered.
“We need that artifact!” yelled the eighth Doctor above the din. “And we need to know what it is, and we need a way to handle it safely!”
From the edge of the crowd, John suddenly piped up again. “I think I might be able to help with that…well, half of it, anyway.”
“You know what the artifact is?!” asked the fifth Doctor, incredulous.
“Well, why didn’t you say something before, man?!” asked his successor, rather typically exasperated.
“No, no… I meant the other half,” said John.
“You don’t know what the object is–” began the second Doctor, looking a tad confused.
“Nope, no idea. Wait… I heard something about a Wombles album? And/or a weapon?”
“Something like that,” the fourth Doctor agreed, waving a hand vaguely.
“You have no idea what this artifact is…” the eighth Doctor tried again.
“Yet you think you know how it might safely be handled, my boy?” finished the original Doctor, aghast.
“That’s preposterous!” added the third.
“I’m a writer,” John replied calmly. “My ideas don’t have to make sense. Especially on Rad-wah. Even more especially where you’re involved, Doctor. And extra-especially when several of your incarnations are involved at once.”
“That’s true…” the seventh Doctor agreed thoughtfully. “So just how do you propose the artifact be handled?”
“With music, Doctor.”
“Music?!” chorused all eight Doctors.
John nodded. “Hey, it soothes the savage beast, right?”
“Yes… but we’ve no evidence that this artifact is a beast of any kind,” the fifth Doctor pointed out politely.
“Well, actually…” the eighth Doctor said, “I think – or I thought – it was a sucker of the Christmas Squid…”
“The what?” asked the seventh.
The eighth shuddered. “Don’t ask. Just don’t ask…”
“Doesn’t matter, anyway,” John said. “I told you… I’m a writer, and this is a multi-Doctor anniversary special type thing! Please leave all your logic at the door!”
The seventh Doctor nodded, pulling a pair of spoons from his jacket pocket with an inevitably impish grin. “Right! Let’s jam, Doctors!”
“This is going to be such fun!” the second observed, flourishing his recorder like a magic wand.
The eighth whipped out his kazoo. “I’ve been waiting for this…”
“Oh Gaawwwddd…” Fitz groaned, but prepared his guitar.
The fourth Doctor got the bullroarer out. “Not quite a yoyo, but it’ll have to do…”
The third harrumphed, but managed to find a flute.
John turned to the other Doctors. “Come on… all of you!”
“Oh, all right,” the sixth Doctor grumbled. And produced a set of wind-chimes. He looked at the others, daring them to laugh. “I acquired a taste for them after Deva Loka.”
The first had… what appeared to be a viola. With a few twists.
“And that leaves me as the singer,” the fifth concluded.
The Doctors went over to the Videophone to bring the other Imran, Alryssa, and Donald up to date.
Alryssa sighed, and drank the rest of her pint. Hopefully, between that and the “Special Herbal Remedie”, she would fall unconscious and wake up not remembering this mess…
“Alryssa!” said Imran. “This is not the time to get drunk!”
“You’ve gone technobabbly, I have a splitting headache, and my timeline keeps fracturing. I think that entitles me to get out of my head for once!”
“Listen…” Imran managed to get out, before Alryssa walked over him on her trip to the bar for a refill. “I think I have an idea… Don’t know whether or not it’ll work… Oh, and take this.” He gave her a small pill.
She examined it, then popped it in her mouth. And blinked. “My headache’s gone…” She waved a hand in front of her eyes. “And it passed the first test – I didn’t go blind!”
Imran grinned. “Just created an anti-headache pill. Little trick I can use in Adwc… Now…” He turned to a patch of air next to their table, where a holographic image of the Doctors had just appeared. (Useful coincidence: another little trick a writer can use in Adwc.) “Guys… I think I know how we can save Cyberspace, Gallifrey, and history as we know it. And put Alryssa’s timeline back, while we’re at it. And I think that Alryssa’s problem may be the solution…” He suddenly looked blank. “Damn. I knew what the answer was a moment ago…”
Alryssa reached over and hit him, just for practice. “In the absence of Fitz, take that!”
(Somewhere in This Time Round, Fitz cowered.)
“It’s all right, Imran. I think we have an answer. I’m getting the team together as we speak.”
Imran saw, behind the sixth Doctor, the motley crew that had assembled.
“Oh, no…”
“It’s a great team!” said the sixth Doctor indignantly.
“Good luck…”
The Doctors switched off the Videophone as, not bothering with niceties such as “Excuse me”, and “Can we have some quiet please?”, Eloise once more took bow to fiddle and screeched for their attention.
“Sorry, dear,” she said to Alryssa, who was near tears. “But desperate times call for desperate – put that cream puff down, Fitz! Save your ammunition for the Valeyard. We can’t afford to turn against each other right now.”
Compassion hiccuped again. There was a scream.
Imran frowned. “Still, I wish I could remember what my plan was. Damn. Anyone got a mnemonic crystal?”
“Hey! Catch!”
Imran’s hand instinctively shot out, to catch the mnemonic crystal that had been thrown in his direction.
He blinked, and looked at Izzy, who had thrown the crystal to him as he was having a ginger beer. “Why did you do that? My Adwc alter-ego’s a git! Why help me?”
Izzy grinned. “Well, you’re even geekier than I am… And besides, you’re the only author I know who writes fanfic about me… You need a small break…”
“So do I…” she added, almost to herself.
Alryssa poked Imran. “Hey… Who’s that? And what’s that?”
“Izzy S,” Imran murmured. “aka Isabelle Somebody. She’s one of the eighth Doctor’s companions from DWM, and a complete fangrrl…” He snapped out of the funk. “And this is a mnemonic crystal, also from DWM. It’s supposed to refresh and store old memories, while making space for new ones. With it, I can remember what that plan was…”
“Then get on with it,” Alryssa said.
Imran concentrated on the vague wisp of memory he’d had about the plan.