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Rise of the Racnoss
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Author's Note: Now, before you read the quote below (which inspired me to write this), freak out and never read it... please understand that while this story was originally designed to be short, and exist purely to creep people out... it grew, and it evolved. I all but forgot the basic concept I had started with, and instead I started wondering what would happen to everyone else, if the Racnoss weren't wiped out when they were in canon. It's now much more about everyone else than it is about the Doctor, really. Mostly. The original concept's still in there, but I should probably point out the fact that I'm actually arachnophobic, and this didn't bother me to write it, so... yeah. Does that say bad things about the way my mind works? I'm pretty sure that it does.
And for the record, it says on the Doctor Who Wiki site that Runaway Bride happened after most of series one of Torchwood.
"I think the Empress of the Racnoss liked being around the Doctor. She's a girl, y'know. She hasn't seen anyone for years. He's a good-looking bloke. There's a bit of a size-difference, obviously, but you can get over that. But I think she fancied him, so I think they had a kinda little flirty banter going, there. Well, at least in her head they did, anyway."
-Sarah Parish (Empress of the Racnoss), in 'Doctor Who Greatest Moments 3; The Enemies'.
This is entirely her fault!
Disclaimer: I own nothing, especially not the characters/worlds I'm playing with. Also, this should be obvious but some people have made it apparent I need to say it; characters' opinions and beliefs are not a reflection of the author's.
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Chapter 1
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The Doctor groaned in pain as he woke. His head hurt, and he was in a cold and damp room, and his head hurt. And he knew he'd thought about his head hurting twice in that short list.
Slowly, he fought to recall exactly how he came to be in this predicament, and then immediately wished he could forget again. He had been in the process of threatening the Empress of the Racnoss, but she clearly wasn't afraid of him, because she had interrupted him and must have knocked him out.
Which means...
"Well, finally, you're awake!" Donna's harsh voice interrupted his train of thought, and he actually looked up.
They were in what looked like a typical prison, bars and all, although the walls were whitewashed instead of the usual sort of dank. Donna was in one cell, the Doctor in another. He then looked UP, and saw that above them the roof of their prison was open, blocked only by a web instead of bars, and there were Racnoss skittering around overhead. Thousands of them.
"Oh no." the Doctor said, awed and horrified at the same time, "This is not good."
"Ya think?!" Donna snarled, "What happened to this plan of stopping the Arachno-whatsits?"
"Racnoss." the Doctor corrected. Though he did appreciate the parallel she drew to Earth linguistics. "Uh... I was trying to give her a choice."
"And she chose to take advantage of your stalling, genius." Donna sniped.
The Doctor sighed, sitting up and looking around him. "Why are we still alive?" he wondered, aloud.
"What?!" Donna demanded.
"The Racnoss don't take prisoners. If it's living and not their own, it's food. That's their nature."
"Well I'm glad they're being unnatural, then." Donna snarked, wrapping her arms more tightly around her knees. She was still wearing her wedding dress, and his jacket around her shoulders. "So what do we do now, then?"
"I don't know..." the Doctor said quietly, staring up at the swarming Racnoss, with absolutely no clue what to do about them.
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Lucy watched the television reports, as vast hordes of spider-like creatures skittered out from the buildings surrounding the Thames.
She had listened when her fiancé had phoned in the order to take out the spaceship that, apparently, was associated with this attack. Now she sat with him and watched the disaster unfold with undisguised fascination.
And a fair amount of revulsion. Spiders were just disgusting, made her skin crawl just thinking about them.
They were both silent for a moment, before her fiancé stood up quickly, and stalking from the room. Lucy glanced once more at the television, then followed behind him, appearing for all intents and purposes docile and obedient. She did love him, but she also feared and loathed, and envied, his power.
She loved the sight of it, the mysterious blue box that had shown her the true futility of life itself. It had taken her to the end of the universe, and now he was turning it into something greater, something that would turn them both into gods.
"It's far too early. I can't bring them all." he murmured, frowning, as he stepped into the box, with Lucy close behind him. "But one swarm of monsters deserves another, don't you think, my dear?"
x x x
Jack Harkness wasn't surprised when the call came from UNIT. They needed all the help they could get, right now. Torchwood were all already on their way. Everyone with any extraterrestrial experience was to converge on the threat in London. This was pure military, and Jack actually had to answer to the UNIT commanders.
When they arrived at the UNIT base, he saluted the General, and then turned to greet his counterpart.
"Jack."
"Archie."
"Drop dead." Archie said with a bright grin.
"Not today." This was their way of saying hello... Archie's idea, a way to avoid the flirting, so he'd claimed.
Archibald Hicks was- for want of a more insulting description- a ginger twat, who ran Torchwood Two in Glasgow. In his mid-fifties, and looking like he had never heard of the concept of bathing (though he didn't smell offensively of anything but whiskey), he had a coarse Scot's accent, and most people mistook him for a tramp at first glance.
Both Torchwood departments had to be flown in. Torchwood One would usually deal with this sort of thing, but since Canary Wharf... well.
"We've got two major alien invasions in progress, can we please stop with the insults?" one of Torchwood Two's operatives asked hopefully. He was a younger man with fair hair tied back in a ponytail, and an American accent that in absolutely no way resembled Jack's own.
Archie nodded, and glanced at Jack, who slowly nodded as well. "Aye, let's make some shite happen for them, instead."
Jack turned to the UNIT commander on-site, one Captain Erisa Magambo. She didn't exactly seem like the type to take any nonsense from Torchwood, so Jack decided to behave for now, asking, "What's the plan?"
"We've created a perimeter, but they've taken most of the city already." she explained briskly, "We need experienced field operatives like Torchwood to go in and rescue the survivors."
"You're sending me an' Cap'n Scarlet in, 'cause he's cannon fodder an' I'm undesirable, eh?"
"Call me that again, Goat-boy." Jack said coldly, his hand moving idly towards his gun. Archie grinned, but backed down from the confrontation.
"What's that make us?" Tosh sniped.
"Cannon fodder's girlfriend?" Archie suggested.
"Not her, Archie." Jack said idly, scanning the computer screen in the middle of their meeting table, "There's only five locations with survivors?"
"That's right." A sharp nod, "Five locations, each with at least a handful of people holed up. We need you to safely extract them, before the Arachnids get in."
"Are we calling them that, officially?" Owen asked, looking around at the others for their opinion.
"Unless they introduce themselves politely." Jack said, shrugging.
"You'd love that, wouldn' ya?" Archie asked snidely.
"Just because I'm not arachnophobic..." Jack muttered under his breath, "You reckon that'd even be physically possible?"
"Anything's possible, I always say." Archie said brightly.
"Tell that to the goats." Jack sniped.
Ianto cleared his throat pointedly, and everyone looked at him, "Aliens invading. Bit of perspective, please?"
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It felt like ages since the Doctor had woken up, and Donna wished she'd worn a watch, so she could measure just how long the interminable chatterbox had actually succeeded in remaining silent, "This is officially worse than hell." the Doctor finally announced, "And I've been there, met the devil. I speak from experience."
Donna snorted derisively, "Tell me something I don't know."
The Doctor took that suggestion a bit too literally, in Donna's opinion, as he immediately began to talk about arachnophobia at great length, encompassing movie references, Greek mythology, and a selection of aliens, other than the Racnoss, which apparently also had eight legs.
It conveniently wasted a significant amount of time, before the monologue was interrupted by the hissing spitting voice of the Empress, "Doctor!" she snarled, appearing above their prison, peering down through the web.
"Yes?" the Doctor asked, looking up at her. She was a flippin' giant spider, but by the tone in his voice you'd think he was just talking to any old normal person. The look on his face was a bit hostile, but that didn't account for him sounding perfectly polite.
"You will accompany me." the Empress hissed.
The bars of the Doctor's cell opened, and he glanced at them briefly, before looking up at her again, "What for?"
"I wish to speak with you, alone." the Empress answered.
The Doctor folded his arms, staring up at her defiantly, "What do we have to talk about?"
"You will do as I command, or your human will die." she snarled.
"Oi! I'm not his property!" Donna snapped.
"You are my responsibility." the Doctor observed, taking a step towards the doors, to obey the Empress' command.
"Just where d'you think you're taking him, anyway?!" Donna yelled up at the Empress.
"The bride will be silent, or she will be made silent." the Empress snarled.
"Don't you go telling me-" Donna started.
"Donna!" the Doctor interrupted, "Shush!"
"But I-"
"Shush!" the Doctor repeated, almost begged.
Donna frowned, and sat back down, against the wall of her cell, pouting and feeling decidedly sulky about this entire situation.
"Follow me, little Doctor." the Empress hissed, climbing down to the ground outside the cells.
He stepped out of the cells, nodding... somehow showing compliance without deference. The Doctor might be an annoying stick in a suit, but Donna had grown to quite like him. At least he had kept her company, and boy could he talk for hours about nothing.
She watched sadly as he walked away, leaving her all alone in the dark, with only the skittering sound of the spiders to listen to.
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The Master, aka Harold Saxon, had been run out of his home by the Racnoss. He had only just succeeded in dragging a petrified Lucy with him. Silly little girl was, apparently, deathly afraid of spiders. He must remember to get a pet tarantula, if they survived this.
He finally snapped her out of it, once they had escaped into the open street by yelling at her, "Would you rather run away from them or get eaten by them?!"
Lucy squeaked, and began to run away under her own power, following very close behind him as he led her through the streets.
For the most part, the Racnoss were too busy feeding to notice them as the Master led the terrified little human past them. Either that, or he was just really good at avoiding detection. He chose to believe the latter, but you could never be too paranoid.
He knew where he was going, of course. Sure, he could make for the government safe house that he knew had been constructed in case of alien invasion, during the reign of Harriet Jones. It would be the smart thing to do under any other circumstances. But loathe the idea as he might, he needed to find and... rescue- ugh, he hated that word!- Martha Jones.
Without her, he wouldn't be here, now. One great big time paradox was quite enough to be getting on with, and he certainly didn't want to have to deal with one that he didn't have control over, as well.
He had already ordered the Toclafane to, "Start killing everything you see with eight legs." when he had first unleashed his own paradox. But apparently that was taking some time. There were tens of thousands of Racnoss, and only about twelve hundred Toclafane. It was pathetic, he had been so certain that the paradox would have been strong enough to pull through at least ten thousand.
On the bright side, at least they couldn't be caught by the Racnoss, so in theory they would just take a while to wipe the bugs out, without any casualties to the Toclafane themselves.
He hurried towards the hospital, where he knew the girl was training to be a doctor herself. Lucy tripped over pieces of rubble every few feet, but was generally coping with the situation better than he had expected. Until...
He turned a corner, and came face-to-face with one of the Racnoss. It snarled, and approached him ominously. He turned to run the other way, but a piece of building fell in his path. "That's just not fair." he protested, as Lucy cringed and backed as far up against the wall as she could, trying to disappear so that the monster couldn't get her.
The Racnoss hissed and snarled in his general direction, and he rolled his eyes, "I don't suppose you're willing to negotiate?" he asked, certain that if it could speak an intelligible language the answer would be a resounding 'no'.
He backed away from it slowly, watching its movement carefully. Insects and arachnids in general work better in smaller sizes. Gravity seems not to apply so well to flies and spiders. At this size, the Racnoss had to be a great deal stronger than any other life-form of a comparable size, in order to compensate for its shape and bulk.
In other words, even an idiot should know better than to fight it based purely on physical strength. And the Master was unarmed. Oh, he had a half-finished working model of his newest weapon-design, back on the TARDIS... but seeing as it was half-finished, and generally non-functional, there had been no point in bringing the laser screwdriver with him. He hadn't even had time to grab his gun, when he had fled his home!
Without warning, the Racnoss charged at him, throwing its full weight at him and knocking him down. Most people would be stunned by the impact, and he only survived the next strike because he was not most people. It brought one sharp leg down where his head would have been an instant ago if he hadn't dodged to the side.
It snarled in rage, and he kicked up at its underbelly, as hard as he could, hoping to stun it. It seemed to at least hurt the creature, and he took the opportunity to roll out from underneath, catching one of its legs as he did so. He pulled with both hands, as hard as he could, and succeeded in twisting the leg to an obviously wrong angle.
He began to understand the appeal human children felt for pulling the legs off insects. That could be a very therapeutic activity to indulge in when this was over.
But now the creature turned back to face him, lashing out with its sharp arms. It seemed like those arms would be mandibles on a normal arachnid, a deviation resulting from the humanoid mutation of their evolution. Part of his brain made a mental note that a lack of opposable digits might somehow be useable against them.
He concentrated on avoiding its arms, and failed to notice until it was too late, when the Racnoss shot a web at him. His superior reflexes were all that saved him from being hit in the face by the web, which instead latched onto the arm he had thrown up to shield himself.
He tried to pull the web off his arm, but only succeeded in getting his other hand stuck as well. Swearing in at least seven different alien dialects, he fought to break the web as it reeled him in. But it got him close enough to hook those clawed arms around behind his back to stop him from fleeing even if he could break the web.
It made a hissing/shrieking noise, which made him think of a victory cry- or possibly gloating- as it bared its sharp teeth at him. He continued to struggle, trying not to think about the fact that its teeth were literally inches from his neck.
But then, at the very last second, he heard the distinctive sound of a single gunshot.
The Racnoss fell to the ground with a loud and heavy thump, letting him go as it did so, leaving him standing there with the web stuck to his arm, staring at its corpse in surprise and relief. Then he turned to face his rescuer... and barely resisted the instinct to vomit.
Captain Jack bloody Harkness.
With the Captain were two other humans. A young-looking Asian woman with some bit of technology that looked like an Arcturian universal scanner, and a man in a suit neat enough to rival the Master's own... well, on a good day. This was not a good day. This was a very very bad day, and he thought he might have preferred the Racnoss, rather than having to deal with the freak here.
"Mr Saxon." Harkness said, with a curt nod in way of greeting. The Master had to remind himself that the freak still hadn't met him yet.
"Yes." he said quickly, "Ah..." he put on a show of having to think of the name, allowing the stress he felt to show in his voice, to add to the illusion that he was human, "Captain Harkness?"
The freak nodded, "We've been sent here by UNIT to rescue the survivors." he said quickly, as the man in the suit approached. The Master flinched instinctively, when the other man pulled a knife, but relaxed again when all that he did was cut the web away from the Master's hands.
Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth- where did that turn of phrase come from, anyway?- the Master asked, "Are there any other survivors?" trying to sound as if he was actually concerned for the survivors in question.
"According to our scans, there are still human life-signs in a Tesco's to the north of here, the Winchester pub on the far side of the city, and Royal Hope Hospital." the young woman answered efficiently.
"Royal Hope isn't far from here." the Master observed, "We won't slow you down, if you wanted to head there now, instead of escorting us out." He quickly turned to Lucy, who was pale as a sheet but looked determined nonetheless, "Come on, dear." He put an arm around her shoulder, and led her over to the other humans.
Harkness frowned slightly, "You know someone there?" The Master nodded. "As long as you don't do anything reckless..." the freak warned.
"Wouldn't dream of it."
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