Chapter 2 - Spectacular
Louise thought for a moment, she smiled and said, "Doctor, take me somewhere spectacular."
The Doctor knew the perfect place! He had never been to this particular planet, but he had been to others near by and had heard amazing things. He set the coordinates, pulled a giant lever, and away they flew! The Tardis shook and rumbled, causing Louise to grasp onto the console for dear life, not expecting it to jostle around so much. Soon, the shaking calmed and the two on board could feel the ship land safely. Louise turned to the doctor, excitement shining in her bright blue eyes.
"What's out there?" Louise asked, already walking towards the doors. The Doctor followed, grinning all the time. By far, one of the best parts of traveling with people is seeing their faces when they first step foot onto a different planet. Louise opened the door and gasped aloud. Tentatively she stepped outside and onto the plush grassy field. The Doctor leaned against the Tardis doorway and watched as Louise walked out further and slowly spun, taking in the sights surrounding them. All around them were massive red flowers peeking up from around the tall aquamarine colored grass. The sky was a clear lavender and the sun shown down on the land with soft, sparkling white light. In the distance, there were dark purple mountains topped with swirling white clouds surrounding the entire valley. Tiny sparks of soft white light rose up out of the grass and fluttered around Louise like fireflies. In the distance, just at the top of the hill, there was a massive dark red tree made of what appeared to be swirling vines. Finally, after many long moments of admiring the beauty surrounding them and softly laughing to herself, her eyes finally returned to the Doctor. She grinned at him and asked, "am I...are we on a different planet? I've never seen anything like this! This is incredible!"
The Doctor nodded excitedly, "We are standing on planet khun, on the opposite side of the Milky Way galaxy, in the year 400,029. You asked for spectacular, here, Louise, is spectacular!" The Doctor gestured around them with a wide sweeping arm. "C'mon, let's explore," he said, gesturing for Louise to follow. The pair began walking towards the vine tree at the top of the nearest hill, but the Doctor couldn't help but feel that something was off…
"So, if there is plant-life here, is there any intelligent life? Are there aliens here? What do we do if we meet an alien? Will they look like us? Or will they be, like, green, or something? Do you think they'd speak english? What kinds of things do aliens eat? Do aliens even need to eat?..." Louise rattled off her questions as soon as they entered her mind, she was still admiring her surroundings and not really paying attention to where she was going. The doctor only chuckled slightly, happy that this girl was so curious. He found it oddly endearing how she was acting like a puppy or young child at the moment. He had intended on answering at least a few of her questions as soon as she paused to finally take a breath, but was interrupted by the ground beneath them shaking violently. The two grabbed each other's forearms and steadied themselves during the khun-quake. Once it settled, the Doctor looked around to survey the area.
"This planet has never experienced tectonic shift, it doesn't even have a magmatic core..." the Doctor looked Louise in the eye, "so then what was that...?" The Doctor grinned at the prospect of another adventure, Louise returned the gesture with wide eyes and a shaky smile.
"Are we in danger?" Louise asked, unsure if they were safe here, but the Doctor shook his head slightly, "I don't know," he replied, "isn't this fun!" His excitement prompted a small giggle to escape past Louise's lips. The Doctor clapped his hands once and motioned for them to continue, "allons-y!"
The Doctor managed to walk forward a few paces before Louise had to stop him, "Doctor! Doctor come back, I can't move. Something has got my foot!" The tall man could see that she was trying to walk towards him, trying to fight against whatever her foot was stuck in, but it wouldn't move. He maneuvered back over to her and crouched by her foot to examine the situation. Her caught boot shifted slightly as she stopped trying to pull it away and the doctor could see almost exactly what had happened.
He looked up to the dark haired girl, "Louise, you stepped on one of the flowers, you have a vine wrapped around your boot. Stay calm for a quick minute, ok?" Louise nodded back at him, snapping her mouth shut. The doctor gently touched the deep red vine, but it immediately contracted even tighter around Louise's ankle. She gasped in pain at how tight the alien vine gripped her. He quickly pulled his sonic screwdriver out of his coat pocket and tried to analyze the strange vine.
Almost as soon as the sonic started whirring, the vine quickly pulled away from the Doctor, almost as if in pain. Unfortunately, this caused Louise to lose her balance and she collapsed onto her bottom right next to the Doctor. He laughed sheepishly and apologised. He moved over to where the vine now was, wondering what the heck it was. He could see that the vine was quickly growing and creeping up Louise's leg. Louise could both see and feel this and panicked, "Doctor! Get this thing off of me!" She shook her leg, trying to dislodge the red, stem-like vine. The Doctor tried to reach out to calm her, he tried to tell her to stop, but it was no use. Louise was quickly being pulled away on her stomach towards the tall vine tree up the hill. She reached out to his swiftly retreating form, yelling after him, "Doctor! Help!"
The Doctor chased after the poor girl's body being dragged across the cerulean field. As they neared the top of the hill, a membranous doorway opened into the dark, cavernous inside of the tree. The vines pulled Louise inside the darkness and sealed themselves as soon as he reached them. He could hear Louise's last high pitched scream, from inside, before it was abruptly cut off.
The doctor's hearts were racing. He pounded on the membranous barrier, injuring his hand in the process. He hadn't expected it to be so hard and sticky. He wiped the door slime off on his pant leg and retrieved his handy dandy sonic screwdriver again, hoping that the door would recoil like the vine did earlier. He pointed it at the door, like a magic wand, and send an energy pulse through the door. There was an extremely high pitched wail, almost like a dog whistle, and the door slip up, recoiling from the foreign energy. The doctor ducked inside the cavern, which was surprisingly well lit by bioluminescent fungus and those tiny firefly-like bugs from outside. He noticed that there was a single corridor that wound far down into the depths of the planet. So, he walked, as slowly and quietly as he could, not wanting to disturb the walls of vines that surrounded him on all sides. As the Doctor walked down the path, he noticed that there human sized lumps, completely cocooned in thick red vines, projecting outwards from the otherwise flat walls. Curious, he used his sonic screwdriver to send a micropulse of energy that would normally go completely undetected. But that pulse was just enough to cause the vines to shift, revealing a humanoid head with emerald green skin. It appeared to be a man in his early forties in a completely comatose state. The doctor used his sonic to evaluate the person's condition and found that this body had no brainwave activity, but that he also wasn't completely dead either, just mostly dead. It was like the body was an empty shell.
A cold shiver shot down the Doctor's spine, he felt like he was being watched. He elected in that moment to get moving again so that he could try to find Louise. As he continued down the path, he noticed that there were more and more people in vine cocoons, now barely two inches of space between one another. He also noticed that the light was different the further down he went. There were fewer and fewer patches of glowing fungus, and more and more white fireflies. Eventually, the passage was lit exclusively by the little buggers. His mind was searching for a connection between the vines, the people, and the bugs. Why were there so many bugs so far underground? The Doctor quickened his pace until he came across a glowing wall of fireflies. He tried to think of a way to get past them and slowly raised a hand to try to touch the wall. His finger ever so delicately brushed across a few of them, causing them to scatter and flutter in circles around him. He'd be lying if he said it wasn't absolutely magical. It only lasted a moment, though, and as they all flew even further down the pathway and lined the now flat walls, a partially cocooned Louise was revealed. The doctor rushed to her side.
Louise seemed to be almost completely covered in thick red vines, with only her chest and head exposed. Her eyes were closed and she didn't seem to be breathing. The Doctor immediately whipped out his sonic and scanned her body for any signs of life and brain activity. What he saw was alarming, her pulse was dangerously low and she seemed to be in an extremely deep sleep. But she was alive. The doctor bent at the waist until he was face to face with her and cupped his hands around her cold, pale cheeks.
"Hey, Louise, can you hear me? Hang on, don't die, ok? I'm going to get you out-" He started worriedly before she suddenly interrupted him.
"Doctor...don't...go down...the heart...it's the heart...we'll all...be...free..." Her eyes never opened, but her brainwaves spiked every time she spoke. The Doctor was about to say something about getting her out right then, but the vines quickly covered the rest of her body. As the vines covered her face, a shining dark blue dot formed on her forehead and a little blue firefly flew into the doctor's hair just as the vines covered where it formed from.
The little blue bug flew in front of the Doctor's face and circled his head once before darting in front of him further down the passageway. The Doctor had no choice but to follow the bug, suspecting that it was somehow Louise. Jogging through the downward spiraling path, it didn't take Long for him to reach a massive red glowing chamber. There were seven protrusions from the walls, which looked exactly like the innumerable protrusions lining the walls of the structure, but if these were people...then they had to be at least eight feet tall. The Doctor couldn't think about that now, though, Louise's firefly was circling his head again to get his attention. Once it succeeded, it zipped to a glowing, pulsating mound of vines and landed delicately atop of it.
"Is this the heart?" The Doctor asked. As if answering, the blue firefly floated over to him and handed softly on his chest. The Doctor approached the mound and aimed his screwdriver at it. He clicked the button and sent a small electric pulse into the vines, as he did before. Like before, the vines seemed to recoil and revealed a large, pulsating red crystal. Louise's firefly gently landed on the crystal, then flew and landed softly on the Doctor's hand, indicating that he should pick it up. The Doctor gingerly lifted the crystal out of its pit and stared into it's hypnotic light for just a moment. The light seemed to fill the room, and was only broken by the little blue bug on his hand and a few white bugs that had just flown into the room. There was suddenly loud cracking noises as the vines surrounding the giant cocooned figures dried and fell apart, revealing people in regal robes and ancient finery. The little white fireflies that flew into the room a moment ago each darted into the foreheads of the figures and disappeared in a flash of white. The little blue firefly began circling around the Doctor's head again and seemed to almost pull him back towards the way they came in. He followed the bug back up the path, watching as the fireflies that lined the walls scattered up the path. When the Doctor reached Louise's cocoon, the vines again began to unravel and break apart, slowly revealing her unconscious body. When her face was cleared off enough, the little blue bug flew into her forehead and vanished in a flash of light. The rest of the vines fell from her body and she collapsed forward, right into the Doctor's waiting arms
"Doctor?" Louise asked for him and slowly opened her eyes, only to find the doctor grinning down at her, "Doctor! Oh, you brilliant man! Thank you! You've saved us all!" She quickly hugged him around the waist, "c'mon, i'll explain when we get out of here, but first we have to wake everybody else up!"
The Doctor nodded at her and followed her through the spiraling corridor, red light bathing every wall and cocoon as the seven regal figures from before followed in silence. They all walked in silence slowly up the path, letting the light touch everything and release the place from whatever spell it was under. By the time they reached the membranous entrance from before, there were hundreds of people following them, eager to see the late afternoon sunlight. As the last person stepped into the light, the tree of deep red vines turned brown and brittle, shattering into dust under it's own weight. The Doctor and Louise stood side by side and watched the native peoples cheer and embrace. Families were found and regrouped and friends embraced in sheer joy. Apart from the crowd, the seven 8 foot tall leaders approached the duo. They observed the pair with intensely bright white eyes the size golfballs. One stepped forward from the group and gestured for the Doctor to return the crystal. Once it had the crystal, the other six each pressed a single finger to the red crystal. The red seemed to evaporate out of the crystal until it was completely clear and glowed bright white. The group of seven once again turned to Louise and the Doctor and bowed deeply before turning to address their newly freed people.
Louise turned to the Doctor, smiling widely, "c'mon Doctor, let's go back." The Doctor and Louise turned back to walk towards the Tardis. Louise couldn't help but notice that all of the red flowers in the field had wilted. The Doctor couldn't help but feel a bit uncomfortable that he just apparently saved another planet and still had not idea what was going on. Well, Louise did say that she would explain later, and later could be right then, so it couldn't've hurt to ask.
"Louise, what...exactly just happened?" He asked, rubbing his ear lobe. He felt awkward asking his new companion about what had just happened, but it couldn't be helped, he had to know.
Louise smiled back at him and replied, "those people, they're the Khun. When I was in that...cocoon...thing, I could hear everybody talking. I know they were speaking a different language, but it was like I could understand them! It must've been some sort of telepathic field...and I think the Tardis somehow translated it for me" she trailed off, eyes dulling for a split second. the doctor confirmed her suspicions, though he had no idea how she could know about the Tardis's language filter, and prompted her to continue. "Anyways, they told me about who they are, they said that something terrible happened long ago. Something that would've wiped out all sentient life on Khun. So, they grew a safehouse. With the energy in that crystal acting like a kind of seed, that vine tree grew, only, once everyone thought they were safe inside and ready to wait out the danger, it became parasitic. The vines wrapped them up to preserve their bodies and use them as food and energy, but they knew how to transport their consciousnesses into a different form, hence, all of the white fireflies. The vines wanted to use me as energy too, but while it was trying to cover me, I could hear them trying to tell me how to do it too. I think that's when you came along...but then it was dark. And suddenly I could see everything differently, it was all hazy, but the people were telling me what to do, so I got you to pick up the crystal and...well, you know the rest," she finished with a light chuckle.
The Doctor smiled at Louise, finally understanding the situation. He couldn't help but feel a smidge of pride well up in his chest. "Why Louise, I think you just saved an entire species! Funny thing, the Khun mysteriously vanished about four hundred years ago, and suddenly reappeared, as if by magic; just picking up right where they left off!"
Louise giggled, "That must mean i'm magic, then!"
He laughed and smiled down at her, "Must be! One thing that I found interesting, though. All of those people's bugs were white, but yours was blue! What do you make of that?" He had a fairly good idea as to why that might be, but he wanted to see how she would respond.
She seemed to ponder it a bit, her dark eyebrows furrowed, she bit her bottom lip, and grabbed one of her twin braids in her hand. "Well," she began, "it could be that i'm different, to them i'm an alien. They have green skin, after all, we must look pretty strange to them!" The doctor smiled at that, but she continued, "but I think it's something different. I noticed that every one of them has pure white eyes, and they all have white bugs. I have blue eyes, and therefore a blue bug," Louise concluded.
As the two reached the Tardis, the doctor unlocked the door for them. He turned his head to her, "You think that's what it is?"
They entered the console room and Louise smiled, shrugged, and said, "Could be, you know what they say, Doctor, the eyes are the windows to the soul." And with that final thought, Louise let the Tardis door drift closed behind her.