I keep getting this in my head. Don't ask me why. So I'm just trying to put it down into paper. The story will go on for about as long as I want it to. It's not like I'm paid for this.
Okay. Stock of the situation. There was smoke, men, and Guns. Guns with a capital G. Was that an anti-aircraft cannon…underground? Oh, and the men were Guards, also with a capital G, because there's guards who give the illusion of safety, and then there are Guards.
Guards. Guards with Guns. Lots of them. Oh, and body armor. This was a high-security facility, and if the Doctor was right, as he usually was, they were in the middle of America. Well, okay, it was the TARDIS that told the Doctor that. And the TARDIS was always right. Usually. And it was apparently the 1990s. What was a front-line equipped unit doing here, with heavy machine guns doing inside a room no bigger than a small conference hall? The response time to their landing was in mere seconds, not the minutes it normally to gear up that extensively. These were combat uniforms. Loaded weapons, not taken from the armory, but carried throughout the facility. They were ready for visitors, and well-armed for their arrival, too.
Had they… somehow pulled the TARDIS here? Or just set up bait, knowing the TARDIS now fed on rift energy? But the fact that the Guards had come running rather than been sitting and waiting told him that no. And they hadn't done their homework. These guns would certainly make a mess of anyone who stepped outside the TARDIS, but they didn't stand a chance of even scratching the metaphorical paint. So why bother? Hell, this place was a bunker. It had a thick glass observation chamber. Yes, something was expected to happen here.
He turned the periscope around. "Oh."
"Oh?" Rory asked, eyebrows furrowed. "What's 'oh?' As in, 'uh oh?'"
"No, it's 'oh,' as in 'ohhh nothing for us to worry about,'" the Doctor said, placing the handles together and pushing the periscope up. "Well, not unless one of us steps outside," the Doctor said, waltzing over towards the door. Rory stepped right in the way, however.
"We landed somewhere we shouldn't have, didn't we? You always do this, step outside right into somewhere dangerous, and we always end up with a lot of guns pointed at us, and one day it's going to get us killed. For all you know, someone on the other side of that door may have an itchy trigger finger, and I think you've forgotten that not everyone here can regenerate or be so cavalier about their lives."
The Doctor fixed Rory with a stare, as though Rory had grown two heads. "Rory, I've been travelling for centuries. Why do you keep lecturing me about how we travel?"
Rory didn't have an answer at first. Then: "I'm older than you!"
"Fine then. Let me spell it out for you, Rory. IF we engage the cloak, that won't really help, will it? I mean, they know we're here. We can't really talk to them from in here, and they're probably going to point guns at us, whether we step outside the TARDIS now or in five minutes from now. They won't exactly give us enough time to talk before pointing the guns at us. Again."
"Yes, but all we need to do is stay inside," Pond said. "We'll re-fuel and we can go again. I doubt they can come up with anything that will break the hull in that amount of time."
"Yeah, but that's BORING!" Exclaimed the doctor, ducking past Rory and pulling the door towards him.
