A/N: As always, thanks to everyone who's reading! I hope you're enjoying it.
I noticed, writing this chapter, that there has been a conspicuous lack of good bad guys (if that makes sense) in my story thus far. There's trouble to be had, but bad guys? Not so frightening. So, that will be remedied (if all goes to plan) in the next story. (Not the next chapter, because that's the conclusion of this one – I think I've strayed into classic "Who" territory, where all the stories were multi-episode ones – but the chapter after that.)
Anyway, enjoy the chapter!
Disclaimer: "Doctor Who" isn't mine, and I am more than happy to give credit to the brilliant people behind it.
Entry #12
"Now, that's more like it!" the Doctor practically chirped, turning around to face Donna and me after poking his head out of the TARDIS door. He was grinning from ear to ear. "Guess where we are, Cate. Just guess."
"Um… Raxicoricofallipatorius?" I shrugged. I had absolutely no idea where we might be, to tell the truth, but "Raxicoricofallipatorius" is fun to say (once you get it down), so that seemed as good a guess as any.
"Nope, better than that," the Doctor responded, still grinning.
"Mars," Donna supplied, as more of a statement than a question. She flashed him a not-quite-innocent smile.
"No, not that either, thanks, Donna," the Doctor said. He rolled his eyes. "And for the umpteenth time, I'm not from Mars!"
"I know that," Donna answered, with a look that plainly said, "Duh." "But just because I know that, doesn't mean I can't tease you about it anyway."
The Doctor opened his mouth to retort, but I cut him off before the two of them could launch into another debate. "So where are we, really, Doctor?"
"Right!" The ear-to-ear grin was back in a flash. "As it happens, we are on a very lovely planet quite, quite far from Earth, where all of the cities are underwater, encased in super-strong glass bubbles…" He trailed off, and looked pointedly at me. It took me a couple of seconds to realize why.
"Wait, underwater cities in… Doctor, are we on Mancaterra?" I asked excitedly.
The Doctor nodded. "Yep! I decided to give it another go, and this time we actually got there!"
Donna raised an eyebrow. "What's this? Am I understanding that you meant to go here before, but… what, missed?"
"Actually, that's pretty much it," I told her. "My first-ever TARDIS trip was supposed to be here, but we wound up on a planet in our solar system that hasn't been discovered yet, in our time."
"I see," she said, then turned to the Doctor. "So, you missed?"
The Doctor gave me a betrayed look. "Thanks for the support, Cate," he said, while I put on my sweetest, most innocent smile. (It seemed to work.) "And I didn't 'miss,' Donna," the Doctor continued, turning to face her, "the TARDIS simply decided to go somewhere else."
"What, all on its own, then?" Donna asked, sarcastically. "Do spaceships and time machines think all of a sudden now?"
The Doctor just grinned at her and walked out the door, leaving it open for us to follow. I started after him, but Donna didn't move. I turned back to ask her if she was coming, but she spoke before I could.
"It's… The TARDIS thinks?" she asked, gazing around the control room. "It can't think. It just… can't." She looked at me. "Does it?"
I smiled at her. "I don't know exactly how the TARDIS works – sometimes I wonder if the Doctor knows exactly how the TARDIS works, really," I mused, "but I think the short, easy answer is, 'yes.'"
She stared at me, open-mouthed. "That… but… no, it's a…"
I chuckled. "Come on, Donna, let's go follow the Doctor before he leaves without us."
I turned to walk out the door, and heard Donna following behind me this time. I am also almost positive that I also heard her mutter, "Sorry if I insulted you," just before stepping out of the TARDIS.
As Donna and I walked over to the Doctor, I took in the surroundings. I was standing on the sandy sea floor of a bubbled-in city. I noticed that the TARDIS, for once, did not appear to be too out of place – the buildings in the city were made out of something that looked like coral, and came in every shape, size, and color imaginable (including TARDIS-blue). Beings who I figured must be the native people of Mancaterra, as they looked something like humanoid dolphins, were milling about the area. Possibly most impressive, though, was the view of the surrounding ocean: like the Doctor had mentioned, the city walls were made of glass, so all around me I could see oceanic creatures and plants the likes of which I had never seen before.
"This is amazing!" I said, beaming. "This – I mean, look at this! It's just…"
"Beautiful," Donna supplied for me. "Colorful, but still… gorgeous."
The Doctor grinned back at us. "You haven't even truly seen the planet yet! Imagine what you'll think after you experience everything the lovely planet of Mancaterra has to offer?" He started walking away, towards what looked to be the center of the city. "Let's find out, shall we?"
The Doctor knew of a nice little park not too far from where the TARDIS had materialized, so we headed over that way. Before we got there, however, Donna spotted a kiosk selling all sorts of strange-looking – but delicious-looking – treats.
"Come on, Doctor, let's just stop there for a second," she pleaded. "We can have snacks in the park; a right little picnic!" She looked to me for support, and I enthusiastically nodded my approval.
"Ah, well, I can't turn down a picnic," the Doctor smiled. He led Donna and I over to the kiosk, adding, "I wonder if they've got that biscuit-custard-thing I had the last time I was here, that was amazing…"
Before we could reach the stall, however, two very large and identically dressed Mancaterrans walked up to the three of us. They stopped directly in front of us, blocking our path. They both were looking directly at the Doctor – and they did not look friendly.
"You are the Time Lord known as 'the Doctor,' correct?" one of them asked.
"Erm, yes," the Doctor nodded, looking slightly puzzled. "The Doctor, that's me. Why do you ask?"
"Because we have a warrant to place the Doctor under arrest," the other Mancaterran answered.
"What!?" the Doctor asked, taken aback. "What did I do? And, you know, when? I've barely been here for ten minutes!"
But the Mancaterrans (police officers, so it seemed) were already handcuffing the Doctor. "Five years ago, you visited Mancaterra on holiday," the first officer explained. "When you learned that our President at the time was ill, you examined him, and found that he had, as you put it, 'a simple potassium deficiency.' You tried to help him by suggesting he consume some strange alien fruit."
"Yes, a banana!" the Doctor exclaimed. (Leave it to the Doctor to solve a problem with a banana.) "Bananas are hardly cause for arrest, you know! In fact, I tend to think that they're quite an enjoyable – "
The second officer jerked the handcuffs closed quite harshly, cutting the Doctor off. "The President's condition worsened mere hours after you left. It was a miracle that he lived at all."
The Doctor blinked. "Oh. Erm. I'm sorry, really sorry. Apparently, bananas weren't the answer, then. Mustn't have agreed with his digestive system. Or, maybe, they simply didn't have any effect at all, and he just needed to get worse before he got better. I hope that last one's the answer, really; I'd hate to be responsible for his discomfort, no matter how unwittingly I might have – "
"You will remain silent until further notice," the second officer interrupted once again. "You will be held in the city prison until your trial."
"Trial!?" the Doctor asked. "For what!? What is it, exactly, that I'm being accused of?"
"Once count of attempted murder, and one count of an attempted overthrow of the government," the first officer listed. "And if you don't shut up, we'll add a third count of resisting arrest!" And with that, the Doctor was dragged away by one of the two burly Mancaterrans.
"Oi!" Donna yelled after the officer escorting the Doctor. "You bring him back here! You bring him back here right now!" Realizing that this was having less than no effect, she turned to the officer that had stayed with us. "Well, what are you doing, then, still standing here? I sure hope you're gonna explain exactly what's going on, Mister, because we have a right to know! That man you just dragged away, he's our friend, and our guide! This isn't even our planet; without him, we're lost, so we deserve to know why we've not got him anymore!"
The remaining officer listened to Donna's rant without ever changing his facial expression. Once she'd finished, he stated simply, "I'm here to place the two of you under arrest."
"What!?" Donna and I said together. "Listen, Mister," Donna continued impassionedly, "we weren't even here five years back, when the Doctor did this whole thing with the banana."
"That I assure you he did not mean to do," I added.
"That too," Donna agreed. "Anyway, we weren't here, so what are you arresting us for?"
"You said that the Doctor is your friend and guide, yes?" the officer asked. I groaned quietly as Donna nodded – I knew where this was going. "Then you were aiding an enemy of the state," he said, taking out two pairs of handcuffs and fastening Donna's and my hands behind our backs. He led us away in the same direction the Doctor had gone.
Before long, we arrived at the jail. We were fingerprinted and photographed and the like, then escorted to cells in the basement of the prison. Neither Donna nor I saw the Doctor anywhere in the jail house – which meant that we were on our own in getting out.
"Well," I said to Donna with an attempt at cheerfulness, "at least we're in the minimum security section. We've probably just got… petty thieves for neighbors, or something, instead of murderers."
There was a sad-sounding chuckle from the cell across the walkway. "Not all thievery is petty, you know," the cell's Mancaterran inhabitant said.
"I'm… sorry?" I said to him, somewhat confused. I wasn't sure where he was going with this.
"S'alright," he shrugged. "I'm sitting in a jail cell. I don't expect anyone to think too highly of me."
"Yeah, well, we're sitting in a jail cell too, mate," Donna said kindly to him. "We're in the same boat."
"Guess so," he said, with another sad chuckle. "So, what'd you ladies do to get thrown in here? Don't see too much of your kind on Mancaterra often, and they certainly don't usually wind up in jail."
"Tell me about it," Donna replied with a half-hearted smile. "We were just traveling through, with a friend. But then he got thrown in here for…" She paused, seeming to think better of telling this man what the Doctor had actually done. "I don't even know, really," she lied, "but it was something that happened a while ago, long before Cate or I even knew him."
"And it was a complete and total accident," I interjected.
"It was," Donna agreed, nodding. "All the same, we weren't here for long before the police took him down, and then did the same to us because we were friends with him."
"I'm sorry about your bad luck, ladies," the man across the walkway said. "I should tell you, though, you'll get out pretty easily. Once it's proven that you didn't know this friend of yours when he committed his crime, and that you knew nothing about it until today, you'll get off scot-free."
"That's heartening," Donna started, "but how are we gonna prove it? I doubt they'd listen to us…"
"They've got ways of getting people to tell the truth," the man shrugged. He must have noticed the frightened looks that Donna and I sent each other, because he quickly added, "Oh, no, not like that! We've got extremely accurate lie detectors, that's all," he explained. "And, in really major cases, there's a plant that grows here on Mancaterra that works like a truth potion, pretty much. The person loses the ability to lie, or even adjust information. Everything they say is entirely truthful, with nothing left out."
"Oh! Well, that's alright, I guess," I said. "Doesn't sound too difficult." Our neighbor shook his head in agreement.
"So, what did you do, then, if you don't mind my asking?" Donna asked the man across the walkway. "And what's your name, by the way? I'm Donna, and this is Cate."
"Nice to meet you, Donna, Cate," he said, nodding to each of us in turn. "My name's Kalvor. And, as for what I did…" He sighed. "Well, like I said, not all thievery is petty. My family'd fallen on some hard times; my wife lost her job, and my hours were cut drastically a year or so back. We were making due for a while, but with four kids to take care of, it got tough." He paused, and looked off into space. "When I saw those four reams of paper just sitting there, unattended in the park that day a month ago…" He shook his head. "I know that I shouldn't have taken them, but my family had to eat. My children had to eat. I like to think that my reasons were honorable, even if my actions weren't."
"Course they were," Donna said supportively.
"Tell you what," I added, "I've got plenty of paper on the TARDIS, and I don't really need it. I'd be happy to drop some off for your family. I don't know how much paper constitutes a proper meal, but every little bit helps."
I expected Kalvor to look thankful, but instead, he looked confused. Then, a look of understanding came over his face. "Oh, no, I'm sorry, I mustn't have made myself clear," he started. "We don't eat paper – but, it's extremely valuable. See, we don't have a currency system on Mancaterra, we barter. Because trees don't grow well in our sandy soil, paper is one of the most valuable things someone can trade. That's why finding four full reams of paper was so amazing. That much paper would have cost me about six months' income – and I'm talking in terms of before my hours were cut."
"Oh," I said, embarrassed by my blunder. "Well, um, the point still stands, though. I'd be happy to drop some paper off for your family. I haven't got four reams of it, but I think I've got two."
"And I've got one, so that's three, total," Donna put it.
"I couldn't ask you two to do that," Kalvor said, wide-eyed. "You two could use that paper!"
"Yeah, but it's really easy to come by back on Earth," Donna explained. "We'll just buy more; it's cheap, so don't worry about it."
"No, I mean you could use it here!" Kalvor said. "With all that paper, you could easily pay your bail – both of yours, and your friend's, too! You'll have to convince the guards you've got it, but all that means is subjecting yourself to a lie-detector test."
"I hadn't even thought about that!" I exclaimed. "That's wonderful!"
"And I don't even think we'll need those lie detectors," Donna said, reaching into her pants pocket, "because I've got this." She pulled out a little notepad, with a small pencil stuck through the spiral part. "Now, see, I've been a temp for a while, and when you're a secretary, you learn that you never, ever go anywhere without a pencil and notepad. Not even an alien planet," she finished with a broad grin. "And if this can get one of us out of here, she can return with the three reams of paper – physical proof that we've got it." She looked at Kalvor. "What do you say, you think this might buy one of us a ticket out of here?"
He squinted from his vantage point across the walkway. "You know, I really think it might."
"Perfect!" Donna beamed and handed the notepad over to me. "You go. You know the TARDIS better than I do; you'll know where you might be able to rustle up some extra paper, if needed. Oh, and mine's in the top-left drawer of my desk."
"You sure?" I asked.
"Yes, I'm sure," she answered with an air of finality. "Now, we just need to wait for a guard to walk by – then we'll put our plan into action!"
