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BRUNETTE, JON/DOCTOR WHO AND THE SONTARAN MENACE/
Doctor Who And The Sontaran Menace
By: Jon Brunette
"I must inform you that the alien that you, your home world, and their home world, too, I suppose, has dubbed Sontaran has landed inside, and, I suppose, outside, the city of London," Sarah Jane said. "Their soldier plans to destroy the city and hold all of London captive." Her brittle voice trembled and quivered before the comfortable presence of the Time Lord. "Oh, Doctor, I, and everyone inside London, need you more now than I, and the capital of all of England, has ever needed you."
Her round face offered the concern for humanity that her friend had always enjoyed in his companionship. He had dubbed his spaceship, TARDIS, and it would, and could, as she had discovered through many years with him, travel through Time and Space.
Sarah had learned by the mysterious man named The Doctor that his TARDIS had been made by aliens named Time Lords from the planet Gallifrey; their home world had planned for their machines, named Time And Relative Dimension In Space, to travel in Time and Space, and therefore, The Doctor had informed her, this unusual name had come.
For reasons that had made his bouncy-haired head smile, she had never understood why it had this name, though, in time, Sarah Jane had ceased in her attempts to find it; it would and could travel through Time and Space, and, for this reason alone, she had assumed that his home-world had offered them with their moniker.
Before Sarah had delivered her final line to her friend, the steel-headed alien that had been named Sontaran stepped before her, in the manner of boys who played football and had hoped to join Manchester United, inside the lane that lined her major metropolis. Sarah Jane Smith, and millions of men, women, and children, might be required to offer their survival with the favorite food of the Time Lord, jelly babies, if he himself survived.
The reason why her wonderful friend enjoyed that simple confection had always seemed beyond her, but, inside the TARDIS, she rarely questioned him. His consumption of that chubby fruit-flavored snack made him more mysterious, and, for reasons that she never told him, made him more adorable, as well. Sarah Jane, like readers of Agatha Christie, whom she had always been, would feel their spines tingle and their hairs pulled like soldiers off the battlefields of Europe when they read them; like them, she also adored puzzles beyond her imagination. And, the Time Lord always seemed like a puzzle for everyone inside his personal hemisphere.
"The Sontaran," said The Doctor; his face lighted with optimism, and pure joy. "Why, Sarah, I adore Sontarans!" His enthusiasm never overpowered his intelligence and loyal sense of duty. "I do love a good Sontaran!"
"Doctor," said Sarah, her tone mixed fear and adrenaline, "you must help this wonderful home of mine—you must!" His words oozed into her brain. "Oh, I do love London." She bowed her head. Her voice whispered words that her friend seemed unable to hear. "I simply adore London."
His smile became as wide as the Grand Canyon, in America; it seemed like one more place that she wouldn't have seen without him. "I always do, Sarah," he said. His voice filled with earnest enthusiasm. "And, you know, I always will, too." He smiled broadly.
Sarah breathed relief. Her lithe body became lighter; her shoulders discarded millions of pounds of pressure that had landed before she jogged towards that famous and powerful man.
The Sontaran noticed the man before him. His striped scarf and fluffy brown hair had become famous throughout the Milky Way; he had been named as the man that had outlived the doomed destruction of Gallifrey. The enormous hand gripped the metal electrostatic vaporizer off his belt, inside his three beefy fingers, and aimed its pointy arrow in the direction of the Time Lord. Like his identical race always did, he hissed through tightly held teeth, his tongue jumping like the forked protrusions of a foul cobra. "I will, finally, cease the life inside the man named Doctor"—he paused for a small inhale of breath—"as, in all of Sontaran travels through this universe, no man has defeated the powerful Sontaran. We come from the home of a proud race. I shall enjoy your defeat." He aimed his final words for dramatic effect.
The effect died inside the shaggy-jacketed man that stood like the mightiest of mountains.
His toothy smile seemed to instill heat inside the thick body of that lone warrior, so, of course, he bellowed tales of himself. His race had practiced their mighty bellows; heady talk could diminish foes and cause insecurity in opponents before battles would begin. Sarah had learned similar truths inside the TARDIS. "Since the universe had burned, the Sontaran has aimed to cease that horrible mistake. I will cease you, Doctor, as you defeated my ally, Styre." His hissed the name of his friend.
"You should have learned, Sontaran," bellowed The Doctor, below the rumble of fluffy black-headed thunderclouds, his regenerated eyes lined, concerned for every member of Mankind, "that I will always help those fragile humans, their animal friends, and all life in the universe, from all threats that dare oppose them."
He held his sonic, inside his tattered jacket, inside the muscles of his hand. His striped scarf wrapped tightly around him, his eyes widened, though, for reasons unknown to Sarah Jane Smith, who could only stare, his sonic slipped off his oily hand; perspiration had moistened his hands, his fluffy hair, and his three-hundred year-old attire, in equal measures.
The plastic end of the vaporizer jumped inside his humungous palm, and lightning nailed the muddy grass beneath the well-worn boots of the Time Lord. He didn't jump, but held his ground; he pulled his sonic off the thick mud that squished beneath him, and jammed his hand into the small button on the bottom. The sound from his metal wand became louder, and louder, and louder.
Sarah held her head inside her hands, and waited for the unavoidable. She prayed that would mean that her friend would be victorious, but she would not surmise, for, if she assumed incorrectly, London, and everyone inside it, would perish like thousands of other worlds that had feared the name of those powerfully massive warriors.
At that instant, it did appear as if he would not prevail; this thought pounded her mind like the worst migraine that any human might have had. It seemed that she could never feel so much intense pain in her minor yet very important life.
While the sonic inside his stiff hand chimed as rhythmically as the bells inside their mythic monument, Big Ben, the massive Sontaran, his head below his metal helmet, his ribbed boots like jackhammers, mashing shattered cobblestones and heated tarred alleyways, toppled backward. His body dropped with the heaviest crack that Sarah had heard in her life; his helmet, vibrating like the loosened lid of a nearby manhole, spun off his bald head, off the lane, and below a stone monolith of a man on a horse. Sarah couldn't help but laugh; so many monuments around her city offered important men immortalized in bronze and their mounts.
"Why, Sarah," said The Doctor, his grin wide, his body still, and his voice filled with the gruff timbre that she easily enjoyed, "I do enjoy your wonderful London; that lovely home of Sarah Jane Smith might learn, in two thousand years, of the horrible Sontaran"—his tone filled with delicious joy—"who has never been defeated."
"Or, so, they had assumed." His hand flipped airily.
"Sarah, I do enjoy hand-to-hand chess games. I must show you the game sometime." Sarah smiled. The Doctor bragged in similar fashion as the Sontaran had. "They have never defeated me, you know, in hand-to-hand combat, my lovely Sarah Jane," he admitted, "at least, not yet." He smiled in his usual insane manner.
"I will prevail, if and when their powerfully mad soldiers pound their boots on this wonderful land of yours. Oh, you know, Sarah, I always will prevail, in the end." He held her head. His hands cupped. Then, he placed his metal sonic inside his tattered jacket, patted his pocket in the manner that fathers would pat their newborn babies, and slid her tears off her beautiful and youthful face.
"Of course," said Sarah, her voice jittery, the wind inside her lungs had disappeared from fear.
"Though, you know, Sarah," he said, his teeth like humungous bric-a-brac, "I do wonder why that powerful menace possesses so little in the mind"—he flipped his hand around his striped scarf—"when one considers their powerful brawn."
His jaunty smile seemed similar to that magical cat inside that fairy tale that Sarah had always enjoyed since childhood.
"I suppose," Sarah said, "London will repay you." She added, "in one manner or another."
Her beautiful eyes squinted; she peered around the mirror-like buildings that stood beside their time-honored brick-and-mortar monuments that had meant equal importance. With more fear and adrenaline than she had felt in her whole life, she asked, "I do wonder what has become of that friend of mine: the proud and powerful Harry?" Tilting her head, she giggled, and added a minor sigh of relief.
"I should say, our friend Harry will appear in time, and in the proper time, too, if I do know that friend of mine; and, Sarah," he smiled, "I do know that friend of mine."
Her eyes found the warmth of his granite-jawed face that shone like the jewels that stood above the head of their beloved Queen. Sarah, with equal portions joy and relief, addressed him. "I only mean that I must pay Harry fifty quid that he and I had placed on the head of, well, you, Doctor." Her feminine body couldn't help itself; she could only bow before the highly important man that would always earn his name.
The Doctor smiled toothily and laughed in the manner of the justly. He had always enjoyed the fact that life hung off him on a daily basis. He had the name, The Doctor, and, Sarah had learned this of their human friend, a proud member of the English board of medicine, would have understood.
The Doctor and his friend joined jittery hands. Their eyes glanced around the musty rain-filled land that had felt another alien threat, and glanced around for their companion. Though he had not always enjoyed their journeys through Time and Space, Sarah had, and, she had promised him, that earlier face that she had adored, that she would always stand beside his faithful, curly head for years, and years, and all the years that could still lay ahead.
And, it seemed likely, for so more years beyond those years, and many more that could come in a future that he and he alone could understand.
She had found through her journeys through Time and Space that no one could foretell the future and still make that future as unpredictable as her friend would. The Time Lord had found a name that held all of the reason that any name had stood and for all the reasons that any name would need to stand. Her friend had come from that mythical form of life that had the name Time Lord, who had outlived his doomed planet, Gallifrey, and that meant that he had survived in order to save all forms of life from any and all harm that might arise in the past, present, and future.
And he always would.
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