"Okay, figure it out, good idea," Rory said patiently, nodding to the Doctor. "And what's your plan for that?"
"Anachronisms," the Doctor said, pulling out his sonic screwdriver and fiddling with the settings. "Anomalies. Little things you can't quite explain. Tell me anything that's changed in the last month. Go on," he added impatiently, peering at the screwdriver.
"Well, if you'd give me a second…" Rory replied, but quickly gave up - the Doctor had never really done well with sarcasm. He sighed. "Well, it's fall now, for one. Nearly winter. I-"
"The seasons changing…" The Doctor paused, staring at him suspiciously. "Should they be doing that? Is that unusual?"
"Er, no," answered Rory, somewhat awkwardly, "I mean, it's a bit late this year, but season change, yeah." He paused, staring at the Doctor. "Shouldn't you know that?"
"I see a lot of planets, things get mixed up, sometimes," he answered absently, going back to the screwdriver. "Sometimes they change, sometimes they don't. I knew one, once, where they had well over eighty different seasons," he added, looking up with a bright smile. "Changed twice a day. On a good day, anyway."
"Right," Rory said, choosing to move on. "So, there's that. Um… The spiders. Came with the season, I guess," he added.
"Spiders. Yes," the Doctor muttered. "Got to look at those eventually. What else?"
"We got new neighbors," he offered. "Older couple, teenage daughter. Turner, the name is. They just moved in, I think last week? Lovely people. The woman, Marie, has all kinds of hip trouble."
"Aha!" the Doctor exclaimed. "Neighbors. New, lovely, perfectly normal neighbors move in next door, and suddenly things start to happen! Oh, I've seen it before, and I'll see it again." He dashed out of the living room, heading outside.
"Hold on - Doctor!" Rory called, jumping to his feet and hurrying after the Time Lord.
When he reached his backyard, the Doctor was nowhere to be found. He peered around uncertainly - it wasn't a large space, surely he couldn't have gone too far. Slowly, Rory walked over to the fence dividing the Pond yard from the Turner yard.
Mrs. Turner was on her knees in her flowerbed, planting bulbs for next spring. Their daughter - Rory couldn't think of her name - was curled up in a lawn chair, reading a magazine and enjoying the last of the warm weather. Rory was about to call out a hello when the Doctor suddenly appeared from a bush and yanked him down out of sight.
"Doctor, what are you-"
"Sshhh!" The Doctor cut him off, peering through the dark red slats of the fence. "If they know we're watching them, they'll act natural to throw us off," he whispered. "We've got to watch them while they think they're alone."
"Right." Rory glanced through the fence, watching the girl flip idly through the pages of her magazine. She looked nearly asleep. "Er… you're not actually suggesting our neighbors are aliens?"
"He's what?"
The Doctor and Rory turned around hastily to see Amy - one of them, at least - standing over them, hands on her hips. Rory stood up quickly, brushing off his hands, trying to look innocent.
"What are you two doing?" she demanded. "Hiding in a bush? And now you think the Turner's are aliens in disguise, yeah?" She sighed at the looks on their faces. "Doctor, just for once, can't something ever be normal?"
"I was trying to get him to stop," Rory protested. "I just mentioned that they'd moved in, that's all."
"Did he tell you about her hip problems?" Amy asked the Doctor, who only grinned in response. She shook her head, smiling in spite of herself. "Typical nurse."
"It's precautionary, that's all," the Doctor explained, pulling out the sonic screwdriver and bending over to peer through the fence again. "I just need to scan them. Any one will do." He pressed the button on the screwdriver, aiming it through the fence. "If I can just get close enough - oh!"
He'd put his eye up to the gap between the fence boards, then recoiled. On the other side of the fence, a very startled Marie Turner flung her tulip bulb in the air, showering dirt everywhere. Instantly, Rory was dashing to the gate and hurrying through to help the older lady up.
"Are you alright?" he asked, looking her over. "No visible injuries-"
"Yes, dear, I'm fine, thank you," she said, patting his arm. "Who was that nice-looking young man hiding in your bushes?"
"That's just the Doctor," Amy explained, coming through the gate as well. "Don't mind him. He's a bit… odd."
"Yeah, you could say that," Rory muttered.
"A doctor?" Mrs. Turner repeated, smiling. "Are you studying with him, Rory?"
"I suppose so, yeah," he answered awkwardly. "Amy is too. Right, Amy?"
"Yeah, sort of," Amy said - and didn't. She'd split off again, Rory saw with a sigh, one copy of her coming over to Mrs. Turner and talking with him, and the other going back around by the Doctor.
"What're you planting, Mrs. Turner?" he asked hastily, grabbing her gently by the shoulders and steering her away so she wouldn't see the second head of red hair disappearing behind the fence. Amy followed along behind, trying to be interested.
The other Amy, meanwhile, went back to the Doctor, who was still crouched in the bush. "What are you doing?" she hissed. He looked up.
"Investigating," he told her with a grin. "See?" To Amy's disgust, his outstretched hand contained a spider.
"Eurgh!" Amy recoiled, smacking his hand and knocking the spider to the ground. "Get it away!"
"Oi, watch it!" Amy watched in disbelief as the Doctor fell to his knees in the dirt, scrabbling after the spider. "I was looking at that."
He recovered the small arachnid, holding it cupped in his hands. He pulled out his sonic screwdriver with the other hand and pointed it at the spider. Amy watched with bated breath, waiting for it to curl up, dead, but nothing happened. The Doctor opened his hand and let the spider scuttle away, no doubt glad to be free.
"Okay," Amy said slowly, watching it crawl up the edge of a branch. "So what happened?"
"Nothing," the Doctor answered, frowning at the sonic. "Not a thing. It's perfectly fine." He looked suspiciously at the spider, poking it gently. "But it shouldn't be."
"So one of them died, one of them didn't. Bit weird. Does it matter?"
"My dear Amelia Pond, everything matters if you think about it long enough." He paused for a moment, thinking, then grinned at her, standing up with a bounce and smoothing down his jacket. "But as it is, I'm busy, and I've got some neighbors to meet. Come on!"
He dashed around the fence and right up to Mrs. Turner, beaming and shaking her hand. "Hello, hello, lovely to meet you! I'm the Doctor," he said brightly. "And you-" He stopped, noticing now the second Amy that stood with them. "Oh. I see."
"Yes, dear? What is it?" the old woman asked, oblivious for the moment to the extra Amy coming up behind the Doctor.
"Er, nothing," Rory said quickly. "Amy, why don't you head back inside?"
"Rory, no!" the Doctor cried, but he was too late. Each of the Amys split apart, both agreeing and disagreeing. Within seconds, four identical Amys stood in the neat backyard. "Don't ever give her a choice," he muttered, staring around at the spectacle.
Mrs. Turner blinked, stunned. "Is there- Did she- What's-"
"Don't worry about it, ma'am," Rory said kindly, taking her by the arm.
"But there's four of them!"
"I think you'd better come in out of the heat, Mrs. Turner," Rory told her, leading her gently into her house. "It does funny things to people sometimes."
"It's November!"
"But warm though, don't you think?" He steered her inside, glancing back at the Doctor over his shoulder, who shot him a look of thanks.
"What was that all about?" asked one of the Amys curiously - the Doctor genuinely wasn't sure which.
"Heatstroke," he said with a vague smile. He hurried away, ignoring the four identical looks of disbelief, and plopped himself down on the grass beside the Turner's teenage daughter. "Hello," he said brightly, looking up at her. "I'm the Doctor."
"Molly," the girl replied, not glancing up from her magazine. The Doctor eyed her curiously.
"Nice day, isn't it?"
"Yep."
"Are you enjoying it?"
"Yep."
"I'm an alien. I'm over nine hundred years old, and I've got two hearts."
"Cool." Still the girl showed no reaction whatsoever.
The Doctor glanced meaningfully at the Amys, pulling out his sonic screwdriver. "I'm just going to scan you with this, alright? Bit of alien tech, won't hurt a bit."
"Okay." Molly turned a page, still not paying him any attention. The magazine, he noticed suddenly, was the same one Amy had been reading. His suspicions growing, the Doctor held up the sonic screwdriver and scanned the girl top to toe as she reclined in her lawn chair.
"So what's going on?" an Amy asked.
"Nothing," the Doctor replied quietly. "At least, not enough. Lowered brain waves, lowered heartbeat… by rights she should be in a coma. See, I knew something wasn't right!"
"I'd call that a bit more than 'not right," another Amy said dryly. "So what're you going to do?"
"Everyone always assumes I'm going to do something," he muttered, though good-naturedly. "What if one day I decided just not to help, eh? What then?"
"You wouldn't be able to do it," she told him decidedly. "You'd see one child crying and have to give in."
The Doctor looked at her for one long moment, then turned back to Molly, who hadn't moved at all during the exchange. Suddenly, however, after turning a page, she seemed to come to life.
"Ooh, a scratch and sniff!" she exclaimed. The Doctor blinked at her in bewildered astonishment.
"I'm sorry, what?"
"Here." Molly held out her magazine, pointing to a little patch on a perfume ad. "See? It's so you can smell what the perfume will be like." She scratched the spot with one manicured nail, then held it up to her nose, breathing deeply. With a sigh of pleasure, she sank back into her chair, seemingly comatose once more.
The Doctor looked at the Amys curiously, then asked Molly, "Can I have a go?"
"No." She held up her magazine again, all interest in the strange man lost. The Doctor stood up, groaning slightly at moving his stiff knees.
"Celebrity Scope," he muttered, glancing at the front page. "Hmm. Come along, Pond," he said, starting briskly back towards their house. "We've got a magazine to look at."
A.N: Hello, dears! I missed you, and I hope you missed me a bit. Another chapter done - I think this story is going to turn out to be rather shorter than expected, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, as I have lots of other things to do (my agenda is posted on my profile, if you're curious). I'm greatly enjoying writing this story though - there's a lot of humor in it, I think, especially for Sherlock fans in this chapter, if you're paying close attention. I amuse myself greatly, even if I don't amuse you.
Anyway, thank you for the views! I had hoped to double them, and we very nearly tripled, which is awesome. Let's see if we can triple reviews, too, eh? That would be incredible. Reviews are my lifeblood, and are definitely tied directly to how fast this story gets updated... In any case, I thank you very much for reading. I love to see you all!
-Forever the Optimist