I can't believe I'm getting back into this. It's been soooo long. (Sorry about that, by the way.)

Thought I might do a disclaimer as well: I only own Emily and Eliza and the Argatrions (well, I hope I'm the only person to come up with them).

The Doctor sent me back for the TARDIS with the instructions: pull the yellow lever on the third panel counterclockwise from the door, count to seven ("Seven Sontarans. I don't know why you humans even bother with Mississippis…"), then press the green button on the panel facing the door. He told us it would move the TARDIS closer to the mountain so we wouldn't have so far to run if something went wrong. "I've done a lot of running in my lifetime, and I've come to realize that sometimes you can't run very fast for very long," he said, handing me a key.

Emily bit her lip. "Do I get a key?"

The Doctor raised an eyebrow at her. "You get a key when you earn my respect."

Em blushed and looked down. I kind of felt bad for her, but she'd also made light of a serious situation.

He turned to me. "Remember the instructions?"

"Yellow lever, seven Sontarans, green button." I put the necklace chain around my neck and tucked the key into the front of my toga.

He nodded. "Then come find us. If you don't know where we are, then give a shout." He grinned and gave a lazy salute, then turned and started walking. Emily followed, just keeping up.

It wasn't too long a walk, but it was slightly awkward being alone and walking through an unfamiliar street. I got to the street vendor's stall and looked around for the TARDIS. It was too blue to miss, but somehow I wasn't seeing it. My stomach dropped to the ground.

"Please…" I muttered, walking the way I thought we'd come. "Please let it be invisible, and not just… gone."

I slowed my pace and shuffled around a bit where I thought it might be, but I wasn't hitting anything. The TARDIS was missing. I groaned. It was Pompeii all over again.

I turned back toward the mountain, sighed, then started power-walking. I had to save my running energy for later, but I really needed to catch back up to the Doctor.

I passed the temple, where a few people were gathered around the back wall, examining the crack, I assumed.

It wasn't long before I spotted Emily and the Doctor starting down into a dip in the ground. "Doctor!" I called.

He turned around and I waved an arm. He frowned when I caught up. "You didn't park very close," he said. "Are you sure you counted seven Sontarans?"

I gave myself a moment to catch my breath. Then I replied, "It's gone."

He looked confused. "What?"

"The TARDIS." My breathing started to slow. "It's gone."

"Ugh!" Emily exclaimed. "It's Pompeii all over again!"

I pointed a flat hand at her, still looking at the Doctor. "Exactly my thoughts."

The Doctor let out an agitated noise and messed up his hair with one hand, the other buried deep in his overcoat pocket. He sat in the grass for a bit, thinking. Emily and I took a seat on either side of him and tried to come up with our own plans.

"They must have it," he said, startling me. I wasn't expecting him to say anything so soon.

"Who?" Emily asked.

"The gods of Olympus." He stood up. "If they do have it, it'll make for a much shorter run."

Emily grinned. "Then we go ahead and—"

"Time Lord!" called a deep, slightly metallic voice.

"Argatrion," muttered the Doctor.

I followed his gaze to the source of the voice. An unusually tall and strangely shiny man stood on slightly higher ground—the beginning of the mountain—a scepter in his hand. He looked uncannily like the statue in the temple we'd searched. Zeus.

"What are you doing here?" the Doctor asked testily. "And where is my TARDIS? For heaven's sake, I only left it for maybe half an hour!"

"Calm yourself, Time Lord. It will be returned when certain… conditions are met." He looked curiously at me and Emily, but said nothing to or of us. Instead, he gestured that we follow him. He led us to a cavern under the mountain and used the end of his scepter as a light.

He stepped up onto a platform and invited us to do so as well. Emily and I looked at each other. Her eyes said what I was thinking: I don't trust this guy. But the Doctor readily stepped up, and we didn't want to go back by ourselves, so we followed.

"Don't move," Zeus said. The platform began to rise, startling Emily. When she nearly lost her balance, Zeus grabbed her arm to steady her. "I told you not to move," he said sternly.

It must have been quite an altitude change, I thought as we reached the top. It was a long trip on a slow… vehicle—if I could call it that—and every little while I had to pop my ears. The platform stopped moving, and Zeus led us to an empty room, instructing us to wait there.

When he'd gone, Emily turned to the Doctor. "What did you call him?"

"Argatrion. A being made entirely of living metal." He smirked a little. "You haven't seen any on your television set, have you?"

Emily shook her head. "No, they never showed anything like them—unless they're like… Cybermen."

The Doctor laughed and shook his head. "Oh, no! They have emotions; they're their own beings."

"So they're like metal Autons," I said, "but each with his own mind instead of them all sharing one."

He shrugged. "I suppose so. And an Argatrion's system is entirely flooded with electricity. It comes in handy in combat, or even when something needs a good jump-start."

Emily frowned. "But I didn't get shocked when he pulled me back on that platform thing."

"That's the thing though," the Doctor replied. "I don't think they can just throw it around willy-nilly. They need a conductor, or all that electricity stays inside them."

"And if they have a conductor?" I asked. "What else can they do?"

"Think about it," he said. "What do all the stories say?"

Emily was quicker on the draw. "Zeus threw lightning bolts."

The more I thought, the more I got confused. "...And Poseidon commanded the seas, but I'm not seeing how that, or anyone else's stories can be linked to electricity."

The Doctor gave a half-grimace. "Well, they can fly. That's plenty enough to convince the Greeks. They just needed to do a couple party tricks besides that, and the people invented the rest."

"And… where does the electricity come from?" I asked. "Do they create it, or do they just store it?"

The Doctor just looked at me for a moment before saying, "Actually… I don't know. I never really thought about it."

"Well," I said, leaning on a wall, "if they have to collect the energy somehow, then they probably crash-landed and can't get everything up and running because they can't get enough electricity. But if they create the energy, then they're here on purpose, and that's a completely different story."

The Doctor's eyes went out of focus, and his expression became intense. He was thinking.

After a long silence, I heard him mutter, "Right, 'cause that's the difference between a few harmless party tricks and—"

The door swung open, and a tall, willowy, metal woman stepped in, carrying a staff that was slightly taller than her. "Time Lord," she said. "We have need of your assistance."

Sorry for the cliffhanger, but I literally just finished this section and thought it was a perfect place for a break.

I'm very slowly developing a plot. My plans have changed maybe two or three times now, so we'll see how this goes.

Thanks for reading! If you want to keep up, please "follow" this fanfic!