[Written for the dw-straybunnies Twelve Prompts of Christmas <>. Prompt 5, "Eleven finds the Care Bears are trying to kill him", plus nods to a couple of the other prompts.] "Unbearable" ~~~~~~~~~~~~ Baby River lined her gun up on the target. With her tongue slightly out to aid concentration, she squinted through its sights. "Got you," she murmured, and pulled the trigger. There was a twang of a spring, a rush of air, and a 'plop'. The sucker-tipped dart hit the advancing figure in the centre of its furry green forehead, and fell off. "It doesn't work!" she wailed. "My gun doesn't hurt them!" "Out of the way!" Baby Rory swung his plastic sword at the looming, growling shape. The teddy bear, easily the height of the toddlers and twice as broad, toppled over backwards, but this was obviously no more than a temporary setback to it. Unhurriedly, it climbed back to its feet. "Nothing's working!" Baby Amy called, ducking behind the overturned table, one of a set that served as their improvised fortress. Rainbow-coloured beams of light clipped the edge of the table and passed over her head, gouging craters high in the wall behind her. "What's got into them?" River scooped up a tiny, snarling ball of fur that had somehow got past their defences, and hurled it back into the room. Amy shrugged. "I suppose they're just fed up with being chewed and dribbled on and being used to hit people with." She peered over the edge of the table. "Doctor, those Care Bears are past the paddling pool! They'll be here in minutes!" "Have you got a plan, Doctor?" River asked. A green, shaggy paw gripped the edge of the table next to her, and she brought her gun down on it, hard. The paw retreated. "Because we need one, really quickly." The little Doctor looked around. "Oh, Ponds," he said. "Isn't it obvious?" Offhandedly, he batted away a rag doll with his toy sonic screwdriver. "We need a grown-up." "Sorry," Rory said. "We what?" "Everybody knows that when toys come to life, they turn back into toys when a grown-up sees them. Like Weeping Angels." The rag doll made another attempt at the barricade, and received a second poke from the screwdriver. "Sorry, Lola." River nodded. "That makes sense." "But if a grown-up comes, won't they be cross?" Rory asked. He waved his arms, the gesture encompassing the overturned tables and the wider chaos beyond them. "We'll get into trouble." "You mean you'll get into trouble," Amy said. "Me?" Amy looked as smug as only a toddler can. "You were the one who wished all the toys would come alive." "I didn't mean like this! It's all that Spaf-- Spaffy--" "Spathanian Wishing Fairy," the Doctor said. "They take your wishes and make them come true in a way you don't like." "Well, I wish-- eep!" A pale blue-green beam of light, looking remarkably similar to a Dalek extermination ray, sliced through the table behind him, and removed the blade of his sword. "What was /that/?" he demanded, throwing the useless hilt away. "I think it was Wish Bear," Amy said. "Doctor, if we need a grown-up, how do we make one come? What if we all scream for Miss Izzy?" "She'd have heard by now if she was going to," River said. She pointed at the cupboard on the far side of the room; on top of it, little Victoria and Mel were keeping up a devastating sonic barrage even as they beat back a force of toy giraffes, whose necks had extended until their heads almost reached the ceiling. Elsewhere, crashes, detonations and shouts of 'Creag an Tuire!' marked the position of another unseen bastion of resistance. "Maybe she's gone to sleep," Amy said. "We need to find her and wake her up." Rory boggled. "What, go out there with all those monsters?" "It's the only way." The Doctor nodded. "Right. Ponds, I need a bucket of water, a feather duster and an electric lamp. River, watch my back. When I say 'run', run. One. Two. Three!" He threw his weight against the nearest table. It fell flat, coincidentally trapping the large green bear and several of his minions beneath it, and revealing the chaotic state of the nursery beyond. From several improvised redoubts, groups of trapped toddlers hurled bouncy balls, paintbrushes, and (in the case of the gang containing baby Ace) home-made Molotov cocktails. Brightly-coloured and sequinned beanbag frogs leapt about, distracting the eye from the lumbering groups of stuffed bears, pandas, dolls, badgers and Adipose. A toy dog on wheels rolled about the floor at high speed, attempting to herd those children who hadn't made it to comparative safety with a volley of barks and growls. "Run!" the Doctor shouted. The group of toddlers set out in the direction he indicated, at the best run they could manage. The animated stuffed toys weren't particularly fast or agile; but then again, neither were the Doctor's party. "Is that Jack?" Rory wondered. Sure enough, a dark-haired tot dressed in an RAF-styled romper suit was rolling across the floor, locked in what appeared to be a wrestling hold with a pink Care Bear. Blasts of coloured light played over him, to no apparent effect. "Love-a-Lot Bear," River said. "It would be. We'd better leave him to it." "Get me down!" a voice called from another part of the room. They turned, to see little Tegan in mid-air, surrounded by the red coils of what had, until recently, been a snake-shaped draught excluder. Now, the snake was turning her this way and that, bringing her closer to its mouth. "Oh, you'll get down all right, love," it said, in a horrifyingly cheerful Yorkshire accent. "Right down my throat and into my tummy." "No! Get off! Help me!" River caught Rory as he began to set off to the rescue. "You can't help her like that. We've got to get a grown-up, like the Doctor said. Go and find a feather duster." "Ach, take that, ye wee beastie!" Jamie's voice shouted in triumph from the far side of the room. Amy swung round, to see him clinging to the back of a large stuffed unicorn as it careered across the room, trying to shake him off its back. His hands reached down to its belly, struggling with something Amy couldn't make out; then, as the creature collapsed to the ground in a shower of plastic pellets, she realised he'd managed to empty it of stuffing. He pushed himself to his feet and kicked the empty skin. "Ye'll no be doing any more o' that, will ye?" As if swept up by a gust of wind, the outer fabric of the unicorn whirled into the air, and wrapped itself around him. Fighting it off, he flung it to one side and hurried over to join the Doctor's party. "Doctor, what are we tae do with these things?" he demanded. "Kill them and they jist come back as rugs." "The Doctor says we need to get a grown-up," River said. "Oh, aye? Well, he'd better hurry." He gestured at the wardrobe, where the now rather battered giraffes had been joined by a detachment of rubber spiders. The screams of the girls on top redoubled. "We need to find Miss Izzy," Rory added. "Do you know where she is?" "I couldnae say. Not here, that's for certain." "The Doctor needs a bucket of water," Amy said. "And a nelectric light." "Oh, aye. Well, we can get the water in the kitchen. Come wi' me, and I'll see none o' they wee beasties make your head explode wi' the power of love." "Now there's something that won't end well," River said, pointing. The Doctor followed the direction of her outstretched finger. Marching across the floor, with perfect discipline, was a squad of animated Teletubbies. And, running towards them on an intercept course, was little Johnnie Master. "My tubbies!" he called out to them. "Join me! Togevver we can rule the universe. I promise I won't stab you in the back with my laser screwdriver the moment we've crushed all opposition! Who's wiv me?" River shook her head. "He's completely mad, isn't he?" "Some people say he looked into the Untempered Schism at the age of eight," the Doctor said thoughtfully, "and it drove him mad. But since none of us is any older than three, I think that explanation leaves something to be desired." "Join with me!" the Master shouted, as he reached the Teletubbies. "Tubby hug!" the creatures responded, surrounding him. "Big hug! Squash! Squash!" River turned away. "That's horrible. What a way to go." "He'll be fine," the Doctor said, ignoring the sound of crunching bones and the pool of blood that was now spreading around the Teletubbies' feet. "He's come back from worse." "I got a duster," Rory said, hurrying up. "Watch this. Have at you, foul fuzzy monster! Take that and that and that!" He thrust the featherless end of the stick at a stuffed badger as it lumbered towards him. Its plush jaws closed around the end, and bit. Drawing back the stump, Rory stared in horror at the clean cut. "How does it /do/ that?" he asked. "No idea, but try not to get too close to it, or you might find out." River dragged him back, and rolled a ball with a bell in it across the floor. The badger's eyes flared, its head snapped round, and it darted after its new prey. "We've got the water," Amy announced, staggering up with a bucket. "It wasn't easy." "Don't tell me," River said. "There was an octopus in the sink." Amy beamed in triumph. "Wrong! It was a squid. I counted all the tentacles, and there were ten hundred thousand million." "You can't count past six anyway." "What did you do with it?" the Doctor asked. "Jamie poured orange juice in the sink until it stopped moving," Amy said proudly. Rory winced. "Miss Izzy's going to be really angry when she finds out. And there won't be any juice for us to drink." "And Jamie found where there's a lamp. It was on a table. But he thinks if he pulls the wire hard enough--" There was a distant crash and a sound of smashing crockery. A few moments later, a triumphant Baby Jamie joined them, a battered-looking lamp slung over his shoulder by its flex. "I heard breaking plates," River said. "What was that?" "They shouldnae have left them up there," Jamie said firmly. "It was asking for trouble." Rory facepalmed. "We'll be on the Naughty Step for /weeks./" "Jamie," the Doctor said. "What happened to the plug?" "What plug?" "The white thing, where the wire goes into the wall. It's part of the lamp." "Och, that. It wouldnae come loose. So I pulled the wire really hard--" "Yes, I see." The Doctor gave the wires protruding from the ragged end of the flex a dubious look. "Well, we'll just have to make the best of it. Let's go." Burdened as they were, progress across the floor was slow. But they didn't encounter serious resistance until they reached the entrance doorway. Whatever malevolent force was animating the toys seemed to have some grasp of strategy; the way out was blocked by a plush, chair-sized, cuddly green frog, its tongue flickering at its lips. Experimentally, the Doctor rolled a ball in the direction of the door. The frog's tongue lashed out, snapped up the ball, and conveyed it to the creature's mouth -- a mouth easily large enough to accommodate a toddler or two. With a satisfied croak, the frog gulped down what it had clearly decided was a treat. "We'll never get past that," River said slowly. "Then what do we do? Try the window?" Amy looked across the room, which looked rather less easy to traverse than the Berlin Wall. "We'd never get near it." "Well, we've got to do something, mummy dearest. Because right now, we're stuck here." "Stuck," the Doctor repeated thoughtfully. "I wonder... River, do you see that bottle of glue on the shelf up there? Could you get it for me?" "And how am I supposed to do that, sweetie?" "I don't know. You're an archaeologist: don't you have a bullwhip or something?" River stuck her nose in the air. "That would just be stereotypical. Real archaeologists have tape measures." She pulled one from the pocket of her romper suit. "Watch and learn." She pulled a length of tape from the reel, tied it in a hasty knot, and whirled it around her head, lassoo-style. On the first throw, it caught on the glue bottle and pulled it down; the toddlers jumped back as the contents spilled out on the floor. Hastily, the Doctor retrieved the bottle. "It's all right," he said. "There's still enough here. Right, let's give Mr. Frog his dinner." He aimed the bottle at the area before the door and squeezed, creating a second puddle of glue exactly where the ball had been whipped up by the frog's tongue. Then, scooping up a beanbag, he tossed it into the centre of the puddle. The tongue lashed out again. This time it hit the beanbag, and remained there, stuck fast. "Yon's verra sticky glue," Jamie said, as they edged their way past the glue and the trapped frog. "Nothing like the stuff Miss Izzy lets us use when we're making things. I wonder why it was there?" "Just in case," the Doctor said. "You never know when something like that'll come in handy." "Oh, aye. Like that time wee Zoe was looking for squirty snow and found yon quick-setting plastic." "Well, that wasn't /quite/ the sort of occasion I was thinking of." The Doctor looked around the hallway they were now standing in. "Does anyone think they know where Miss Izzy could be?" "I think she's in there," River said, pointing at a nearby door, which was uncompromisingly closed. "But we're not allowed in there unless she takes us in with her," Rory protested. "And we can't reach the door handle anyway." "We've got worse problems than that," Jamie muttered, and pointed at the base of the door. The white, fluffy, cuddly shape of a rabbit could be seen hopping this way and that. Rory sighed. "Don't tell me. 'Yon's no ordinary rabbit. That's the most foul, cruel, and bad-tempered rodent you ever set-- Ow!" He rubbed his head. "Amy, that hurt!" "That's for trying to do a Scottish accent," Amy said smugly. "And this--" the Doctor bopped him with the sonic screwdriver "--is for saying rabbits are rodents." "Leave my daddy alone!" River protested. "Anyway, rabbits /are/ rodents." The Doctor shook his head. "They're order lagomorpha. So there." "I hate you!" "No, you don't." He turned his attention to the rabbit, which gazed warily back at them through beady glass eyes. "Now, what are we going to do about Mopsy here?" "I ken what tae do wi' beasties like yon," Jamie said firmly. "One rabbit stew coming up." "Jamie, don't!" River protested. "It'll eat you up!" "Och, it's jist a wee thing. What harm can it do?" "He's really asking for it," Rory said, as the fearless Highlander toddled towards his foe. "Any minute now, it'll jump right at his froat and-- ow! River, stop it!" "Don't be negative," little River said. She thought for a bit. "But you're right. He's toast." "Come here," Jamie called to the rabbit. "Don't be so shy." The rabbit leapt at Jamie, who caught hold of it in both hands and tugged with all his might. With a sound of rending fabric, the toy's head came away, spilling foam across the linoleum of the hallway. The creature's legs kicked twice, then went limp. "That.. wasn't what I was expecting," Amy said. She shook herself. "Now all we've got to do is get the door open." "Don't worry." The Doctor held up his trusty sonic. "Watch this." He toddled over to the door. By standing on tiptoe and stretching, he was able to reach the door handle with his sonic and push it upward. With a click, the door swung open. The toddlers hurried through, to be greeted by the welcome sight of the adult they sought. Izzy S lay full-length on the floor, immobile save for her regular breathing. "Now what?" River asked. "Now we burn the feathers under her nose," the Doctor said. "Plug the lamp in and stick the feathers next to the bulb." There was a momentary delay, caused by the fact that the wall sockets had been fitted with child-proof covers. Fortunately, from the toddlers' point of view, these were of a design that any child could bypass in seconds -- in this case, by inserting paperclips into various gaps in the cover. Within less than a minute, two chains of sparking paperclips linked the bare end of the lamp's flex to the socket, and the bulb glowed into welcome life. At the Doctor's direction, Amy stood by the socket, ready to switch it off when directed. "Doctor," Jamie called from the doorway. "There's some more of those beasties out there. Bears again." "Then try not to antagonise them, Jamie. Can you close the door?" "No, it's too heavy for me." "River, can you help him?" Together, the toddlers managed to push the door closed. It latched with a click, but shortly afterwards a glowing dot appeared on its surface, swiftly darkened to black, and began to move upward. "They're cutting their way in, sweetie," River said. "Aren't those feathers burning yet?" "Give them time," the Doctor called back. The toddlers paced nervously, as the black line on the door moved slowly up, across, and down, tracing out an area approximately the size of a catflap. As the shape was completed, a sizzling from the lamp proclaimed that the feathers were, at the least, smouldering. Foul-smelling fumes swirled around the party, but from the slumbering Izzy there was no reaction. "It isn't working!" Amy protested, from her station by the wall socket. "Rory, pull her hair." Rory took a handful of Izzy's locks and tugged. She failed to react in the slightest. The panel in the door fell forward. Through it could be seen the malevolent silhouettes of stuffed bears, their eyes glinting. Jamie and River took up positions on either side of the flap, ready to throw themselves on the first bear to enter. "We're all going to die, aren't we?" Rory moaned. "We're going to be eated by bears." "No, we're not," River said firmly. "The Doctor's going to save us. He's my Sweet Babboo." The shade of the table lamp burst into flames, redoubling the sizzling and the stink of burning. The Doctor, briefly distracted from the situation at the door, waved at Amy to switch the socket off. Then he turned back to River. "I'm /not/ your Sweet Babboo!" By way of emphasis, he waved his hand. It happened to be the hand that was holding his sonic screwdriver, the end of which sent the bucket of water flying. A significant proportion of the contents landed on the burning lamp; the remainder hit the sleeping Izzy full in the face. For a few seconds, the lamp crackled and flared; then, the fire was extinguished, and a pall of black smoke rose from the scorched remains. The Care Bears marched into the room like a conquering army, Tenderheart Bear at their head. Each bear turned to face one of the toddlers, the symbols on their chests glowing as they built to lethal power. Izzy groaned, and her eyelids flickered. The bears, instantly rigid, collapsed onto the floor with soft thuds. Izzy raised her head slightly, and managed to get her eyes open. The sight that she thus perceived was enough to propel her to her feet as though she had swallowed a jar of peppercorns. She pushed her dripping hair back, and surveyed the scene: the charred remains of the table lamp, the hole cut in the door, the spreading pool of water, the scattered Care Bears, and five toddlers with the least convincing expressions of innocence she'd ever seen. "You had better have a /very/ good explanation for this," she said, trying to ignore the cold water as it trickled down the back of her T-shirt. * "It's no' fair," Jamie protested. "We told her the truth. What did she want tae stick us on the Naughty Step for?" "That's what grown-ups do," River said. "And you did pull the head off that rabbit." The Doctor looked round, as Izzy approached, a red-faced Tegan in her arms. "No, you stay where you are," she said. "Here's another little wrecker. Somehow she's managed to rip Sid the Snake in half. I can't leave you children for five minutes." "It was the Mara!" Tegan protested. "It eated me! It only broke because I was inside its tummy when it changed back!" "I don't have the time to argue." Izzy deposited her on the ground. "One more peep out of any of you and I'm going to telephone your parents. Now I've got to go and get Mel and Victoria cleaned up. How those two managed to get cobwebs all over them... Let alone why Johnnie Master's started levitating and throwing fireballs from his ears. You children keep finding new ways to irritate me." She turned on her heel, and left. "It isn't fair," Tegan said. "The Mara did eat me. You all saw. I wish--" "Don't wish!" the Doctor broke in. "That bad fairy might still be around." "Bad fairy?" Tegan repeated. "Aye," Jamie explained. "It makes all your wishes come true, only in a way you don't like." "And Rory wished the toys would come alive." Amy clenched her little fists. "It was a stupid wish. If I was making wishes I'd wish for something sensible." "Like what?" Rory muttered. "Like all the candyfloss I could eat." There was a brief, pink implosion. Where Amy had been, there was now a glistening candyfloss cocoon, with her head protruding from one end and her feet from the other. Unable to move, she toppled slowly over and burst into tears. The Doctor, Rory, River, Jamie and Tegan exchanged worried glances. River gave voice to the consensus view. "Miss Izzy's /really/ not going to like this..." [ "Doctor Who" characters belong to the BBC. The Care Bears were created by American Greetings Corp. This Time Round was created by Tyler Dion, Look Who's Talking by Imran Inayat.] -- John Elliott Thinks: This is what a nice clean life leads to. Hmm, why did I ever lead one? -- Bluebottle, in the Goon Show