A Very Special Shell
by Ulquiorra9000
Chapter 1
"... someone. P-please... help me... can anyone hear me?"
Clara froze as she sipped her margerita on the Bahamas beach, her eyes suddenly alert behind her plastic-frame shades. She set down the glass on the small table beside her lounge chair and glanced around. "Huh?"
She only saw happy beach-goers, families and groups of friends on vacation, laughing and playing volleyball and kids splashing in the shallow water. Warm sunlight bathed the scene in gold light as white clouds drifted overhead.
Who needed help here?
"... please. Can anyone hear me? I need... help..."
Clara got a funny feeling in her stomach, and she found herself getting to her feet, her toes digging into the warm sand. "Hello?" she called out. Nearby, a well-built young man smiled and waved back, but he clearly didn't need help.
"Uh... hi," Clara said awkwardly as she waved back. Then she whirled around on the spot, eyes sweeping the idyllic beach for the troubled person. That voice... was it a child's voice? Maybe a disembodied voice?
Couldn't she just have one sane vacation?!
The voice went quiet, but Clara's ears were still on alert. She stomped across the beach to where an older man relaxed on a lounge chair under a tarp, his nose buried in a 51st century textbook on astrophysics.
The Doctor's idea of "light reading".
"Doctor." Clara towered over the Time Lord, arms folded over her red one-piece bathing suit, her sunglasses perched on top of her head.
The Doctor reluctantly lowered his book, his face in a bothered scowl. "Now, Clara, I thought you wanted 'time away from it all'. That's what I would like, as well. Just me, and the works of Dr..." He checked the book's cover. "Oh, I can't even pronounce that."
Clara winced. "Sorry to interrupt." Then something occured to her. "Hey, that book's way out of place here! Won't someone find it odd to find a book from the future here in summer 2016?"
The Doctor shrugged. "I can really blend into a crowd if I wish. No one will be bothered to see my extra-temporal reading material."
"Sure, sure." Then Clara pursed her lips. "Look, I heard... uh..."
The Doctor's impatient eyes bored into his companion.
"...a voice," Clara finished. "But I can't see who's saying it. No one's in trouble, and the life guards aren't doing anything. It was a... child's voice, I think."
The Doctor's eyes took on a concerned edge. "A disembodied voice? You're sure of that, Clara?"
Clara swallowed. "I'm not certain where it came from. That's all I can say."
"Oh, mercy me." The Doctor stood and gently set aside his book. He didn't look very Time Lord-ish in shorts, a Hawaiian shirt, and leather sandals, but the time-weary, cunning look on his face was unmistakable. A breeze toyed with his graying hair. "Lead the way, Clara."
Clara started. "Lead the way? But I can't tell where it's coming fr-"
"... someone help me! Please? Won't anyone help me?"
Clara felt a chill. "I just heard it again!" she hissed.
The Doctor smoothed his shirt and reached into his left pocket. Clara knew what was in there.
"You're not going to wave around the sonic screwdriver at a place like this, are you?" Clara muttered as the voice once again begged for help.
"What, wave it around like a magical fairy? Please, I'm more subtle than that. Usually. Sometimes. Well..." All the same, the Doctor's arm tensed, and Clara heard the muffled buzz of its scanner from the pocket.
The Doctor sniffed the air and looked this way and that. "Hmmmmm... how about that."
Clara tensed. "How about what?"
"Hush." The Doctor did a slow 360, his screwdriver scanning the whole time. Then he faced Clara again and pointed past her on her right. He squinted in the sun. "That way. I'd say about twenty-five meters, give or take a bit. Subtly, now."
Clara swallowed and strode across the beach with the Doctor right behind her, praying that no one could see her tension. With luck, others would simply think she was here with her wacky old uncle, nothing to worry about...
"... won't anyone help me? Please, anyone!"
Clara muttered over her shoulder, "Please tell me you heard that?"
"Nothing," the Doctor murmured back. "Keep going."
Clara kept walking, her bare feet kicking up sand. She nervously smiled back at a few beach hunks who waved or smiled. Ordinarily, she'd be a bit flattered. But once disembodied voices entered the picture, she was back in adventurer mode.
A tiny part of her seemed to positively crave the adventure, though.
"... can anyone help me? Please? I need... help!"
Now the voice was very close, and still, no one seemed to hear it, even the Doctor. It was like an invisible 5-year-old, probably a boy, stood a few feet away, begging for help.
Then Clara saw it: a gorgeous conch shell, the biggest shell in sight, and the voice came from its general area.
...What?
"That shell!" Clara jogged over asnd crouched by the conch shell. Sure enough, once the young boy's voice piped up again, it came from the shell's inside. "It's one thing to hear the ocean in a seashell..." Clara noted dryly.
"What is it? Is it the conch shell?" the Doctor asked tensely. His Hawaiian shirt flapped in the breeze.
"Yeah." Clara tentatively reached for it. Then she realized that earlier, she had found and held this shell in her hands, admiring its natural beauty. Then she had tossed it here and moved on.
If it didn't hurt her the first time...
Clara held her breath and quickly snatched up the shell.
"... lady. You came back for me! Please... help!"
Clara gasped. "It remembers me! Quick, scan it!" She handed it to the Doctor.
Looking flabbergasted, the Doctor held the shell to his chest, turned away from the other beach-goers, and gave it a scan from his screwdriver.
Clara nervously clasped her hands under her chin. "It's not... hurt, is it?"
"Frightened. Lost," the Doctor explained, once he got a look at the screwdriver's readings. He handed the shell back. "There's definitely a conscious mind in that shell."
Clara held the shell in awe in her hands. "A mind? What, of the crab or whatever that lived inside?"
The Doctor scoffed. "When have you ever seen a talking crab, Clara?"
Clara scowled. "We've both seen weirder things! Even Danny has seen a few!"
Like that blasted robot that had snuck into her high school's campus!
The Doctor humphed, then checked his screwdriver's readings again. "No arthropod has thoughts like these. This..." His eyes widened in shock. "This shell has a human mind in it! Or one similar to it! It's a little hazy..."
Clara nearly dropped it. "What?!"
"There's a protective field imbued in the shell," the Doctor said in a rush. "I can do little more than identify the mind's general nature. A young child, yes, a boy... displaced through space and time. There's residue of the vortex. But I can't pinpoint its origins, or genetic line. I believe that the field is censoring that information."
Something popped into Clara's mind. "Like someone wants to keep this child anonymous. For his protection, or ours?"
"An excellent question," the Doctor said. "You can hear him, can't you? It's a long shot, but I don't suppose you could interview him?"
Clara glanced over her shoulder again; no one would hear her. Feeling both nervous and silly, Clara held the shell to her lips like a microphone. "It's me. I won't hurt you, okay?"
"... lady! Please do something, anything! I need your help!"
"What's your name? My name is Clara Oswald."
"... help me, please!"
Clara raised her voice slightly. "Can you tell me your name? Don't be shy."
"... can you help me? Please, lady?"
"Wait a minute," the Doctor said. He leaned over and swept the shell with his eyes. "This pattern... no sea creature in this part of the world... or anywhere on Earth, has this pattern or particular formation of ridges. Someone planted it here, hoping that no one would know the difference."
Clara definitely heard self-satisfaction in the Doctor's tone.
She gently ran a finger along the shell's surface. "Why are you here? Are you hiding from someone? The Doctor and I will protect you. But you have to tell us about yourself, okay?"
The shell fell silent.
The Doctor gave Clara an impatient look. "Anything new?"
"N... no." Clara felt a new drop of sweat roll down her forehead. "It won't talk anymore."
Then the shell twitched in her hands.
"Hide!" the boy's voice shouted.
*o*o*o*o*
Fifteen minutes earlier...
"We command you to stop at once!"
The woman piloting the Starscreamer Mark VII freighter snarled at the comm screen as she roared past a gas giant's crater-spotted moon. "I told you bastards to screw off!" Her hands were sweating in her flight gloves, her lips dry from panting in fear. But she didn't dare show it on her face.
Bright blue laser bolts flickered around the freighter, each intending to shoot it down. The woman snarled again and tugged hard on her joysticks, and she felt the gees kick in as the freighter served away at an odd angle. Warning lights popped up on the dashboard.
"I do not recommend this level of strain on the Mark VII," said "Bilbo" the robot, named after some ancient book character. Bilbo's copper plating creaked as he pointed a warning finger at the pilot. "This is reckless."
The woman sighed. "Bilbo, you know I love you, but right now, I need you to shut up!"
More blue lasers stuttered in the star-filled space in her viewscreen as the pilot forced her Starscreamer along a course to shake off the County of Red Wine's police ships. The stupid Count, trying so hard to undo her great work! What the hell did he know about raising a child? Nothing! Not even the Countess could appreciate what she -
"NO!"
The pilot shrieked as a few lasers struck home. She gasped as the Starscreamer's engines went dead, and the freighter became unresponsive as further lasers wrecked her navigation systems. Finally, an intertia-dampening energy net snared the Starscreamer freighter's hull, and with a defeated hum, the ship drifted to a halt. The gas giant's moons watched from nearby, hanging silently in space.
"This seems rather bad," Bilbo commented. He couldn't make facial expressions, but his tone certainly made up for it.
The woman unstrapped herself from the pilot's seat. "We're gonna get boarded any second now by the Count's police goons. You know that leaves us two options, what with our ship dead in space."
Bilbo groaned. "I hate it when you say that."
The pilot prepared her laser rifle. "And I hate it when I'm forced to say it."
As expected, the Starscreamer Mark VII shuddered when the Count's police officers latched on a boarding module, and the pilot tensed as she heard heavy, booted footsteps echo through its halls.
The door to the spacious cockpit blew open.
The pilot roared, and Bilbo cowered, as she opened fire. Sizzling red laser beams arced through the air, but they only bounced off the reflective surfaces of the four officers' riot shields. The pilot didn't care. She kept shooting.
Until, that is, one officer reached out from behind his shield and fired a stunner.
A white energy net swallowed up the pilot and administered a shock that sent her rifle tumbling out of her slack grip. She collapsed against the dashboard, her clothes smoking. Only the dashboard kept her propped up.
One officer took up his position by Bilbo while the other three surrounded the pilot. "Charlotte Garuda," one of them said. "Master thief, and thorn in Count Xendair's side. I can't even say how happy this makes me."
Charlotte snorted. "Didn't think you meatheads were capable of processing emotion."
"Enough games," another officer snapped. "Hand over the child's shell. Now." He held out a gloved hand.
Charlotte wanted to spit in the man's face, but her face was too slack. "Sorry. I've got other ideas. Bilbo!"
Faster than anyone expected, Bilbo tossed over Charlotte's (stolen) vortex manipulator. It was low on power... but it could serve one function.
"What the -" an officer blurted as Charlotte fired up the manipulator.
Charlotte didn't have time to check the device's time or space setting. She barely had the milliseconds needed in order to draw the conch shell from her vest pocket, sync it with the manipulator, and press the button. In a flash of bluish-white light, the shell vanished.
Depleted of power, the useless manipulator clanked on the metal grate floor.
"You'll never get it," Charlotte said smugly as the officers cuffed her and Bilbo.
"The Count will see to that," the first officer said flatly.
"You underestimate me," Charlotte panted as she was escorted away with Bilbo behind her. "The Count doesn't understand a mother's love. My child is safe at last."