Effie (A Rewrite of Series One and Two)

A Doctor Who Fanfiction

Disclaimer: I still don't own Doctor Who or anything that has to do with it. Although I may wish otherwise. I do, however, own Effie and the Arisminse. And I don't own any other things that you may recognize. Jeeze, do I have to do this every chapter?

Episode Two: Twenty Thousand Years Later

Part 2.

Effie had absolutely no choice in the matter when the Arisminse that had poked her with their daggers and their pointy weapons threw her into what she guessed was the Chamber. She landed with a loud "OOF!" on the sandly floor. When she whirled around to see if she could bargin with her Arisminse captors, the aliens were pushing a rock in front of the enterance to whatever the Chamber was - the place where Effie was now trapped in.

When the rock was in place of the door, and all the light from outside had gone, Effie sat down on her backside and let out a slow breath. Maybe this was how she would die. The Doctor was getting ready for his execution, and she was trapped inside a cave called the Chamber. But there was one thing that Effie knew if she knew anything.

No matter what, Effie Tanner was never trapped for good.

As the young woman in her early twenties arose from the floor, she spotted a dim light in the back of the cave. Accompanied by this, Effie could swear that she heard music playing. Not the music of today, with all that rap and swaring and crap. But some of that old music, like the ones you could still find on a record player.

Starting with a couple of shaky steps, Effie slowly began to stride along the walls of the Chamber, what looked like a cave. She was soon in the place where gas lamps were lit dimly around the room, and a record player was humming in the centre of it. As a fan of older music herself, Effie immeidately recognized Johnny Cash's "Walk the Line". She couldn't help herself - Effie soon began to humn along with Johnny Cash's inevitably catchy tune.

"Who's there?" came a shrill voice from the darkest corner.

"Uh, my name's Effie Tanner!" Effie shouted back. "Who are you?" she didn't want to be rude, but if she was going to try and stop the Doctor's execution - though she didn't doubt he could help himself, she was sure he would need a bit of backup - she needed to act fast.

Another voice, not the shrill one, but the voice of almost a stuttering computer nerd, arose from the darkest corner as well. "G-Go away. We're not home."

"You stupid idiot!" the shrill, now recognizably female, voice came from the dark corner again. Effie had now stopped in her tracks and was listening to the voice. "Of course we're home! What does she think this is, a recording?"

"You never know..." muttered the geeky voice, which was followed by what sounded like a slap.

"Thank you Elliot," came the shrill voice again, which had now lower to a sort of voice Effie would expect a con artist to have. "Marko never knows when to shut up." the voice paused. "Wheel me over so that I can see this creature."

By creature, Effie thought that the voice meant her. And "wheel me"? Was she still in a wheelchair in 22,000?

As if to answer her question, the owner of the shrill con artist voice was wheeled out into the gas lamp lit room. The owner of the voice was a trampoline. Literally. It was a large piece of skin stretched and attached along a frame, which had wheels on the bottom. Oh. Hence the "wheel". In the middle of the skin was the most distrubing thing. It was a face. It had eyes, nose, and ruby red lips. The lips were stretched into a estranged smile.

"Hello darling," the skin woman said with a drawn out "darling". "I'm Cassandra O'Brien. Human. Yourself?"

"E-Effie Tanner," Effie stumbled. It was one thing to be chased by plastic mannequins, or see a living plastic blob, or be brought into a camp with a lack of originality by tall green aliens. Seeing a talking face upon a skin attached to a frame was something different all together.

The face, Cassandra O'Brien, laughed. "I mean your species, darling. I know your name."

She was snappy. Effie could automatically tell that she wasn't going to be the nicest person in the whole wide world. "I'm human. Unlike you, I'm not flat and..." she paused. "How-how did you become like this?"

Cassandra laughed again. "I've had more than 700 surgeries. Kept alive."

Effie's eyebrows went up. What?

"Moisturize me," Cassandra snapped, and before Effie could ask what the trampoline woman meant, the geeky looking guy in the lab coat, whom Cassandra had called Marko pulled a sort of spray bottle out of his over-large pockets and sprayed water right on Cassandra's stretch of skin. "Get dry and pasty sometimes," Cassandra sighed as Marko sprayed her. "Moisturization helps out heaps. So, Effie, is it? What kind of name is that?"

To this, Effie had to idea. Here she was, Effie Tanner, standing before a stretch of skin. And she couldn't answer why she was named what she was.

"Never mind," grumbled Cassandra. "These are my boys: the geeky one is Marko. The bodybuilder one is Elliot. And the one that looks like he's in the military is James."

Elliot remained motionless, James sort of waved, and Marko adjusted his glasses.

"H-Hi," Effie stuttered, wondering what the Doctor would do if he were in her place. Probably be charming and sharp like he was with her. "Are they human?"

Marko nodded. "Yep, we're human. That is, except for Elliot. He's a human/Arisminse hybrid. Illegal, may I add. James and I were thrown in here because we were too smart to be slaves. Elliot was thrown in here because he's illegal. The father is a Arisminse and the mother was a human. That's why Elliot looks so-"

"MARKO!" roared the bodybuilder, whom Effie assumed was Elliot. "YOU'RE RAMBLING AGAIN!"

The geeky human shook in his hiking book. "S-S-Sorry, E-Elliot," he muttered, and then sat down at one of the multiple desks in the room and worked on a notebook.

"Sorry about Marko," Elliot apologized, walking over to Effie and taking her hand, kissing in on the top. "He's such a science geek."

Effie already didn't like him. "Well I happen to like science geeks," she retorted. "And how in hell are we going to get out of here?"


The Doctor was desperately trying to get his sonic screwdriver out of the top pocket of his leather jacket when he heard shuffling behind him. The Time Lord turned on the spot with his backside and looked at his cellmate. It was an Arisminse, he could tell, from the shiny green skin and the scruffy, inhuman black hair. The Doctor, deciding to make conversation, started cheerfully, "Hello. I'm the Doctor. What's your name?"

"You'll learn my name when I get executed," the Arisminse said glumly. The Doctor could understand why.

"Well, what 'ere you thrown in here for?" the Doctor inquired. That was him, always asking questions.

The imprisoned Arisminse paused for a moment, then replied softly in a rich male voice that would make most females quiver, "I betrayed my race."

This was unusual. The Doctor knew that the Arisminse didn't usually execute their own kind unless it was deadly serious. Like that Arisminse had killed off an entire tribe of Arisminse, or had endangered the entire race. If any of these things were true about the Arisminse sitting beside him, the Doctor didn't want to partner up with him, even if it meant escaping. Someone like that wasn't on the Doctor's list of people to save; even though the Doctor sometimes tried giving people a second chance. Being somewhat a killer himself, he knew how hard it was. So many people had given him a second chance, and a third, and a fourth. Maybe he needed to stop being so cold.

"How, then?"

The Ariminse paused again before answering. This signaled to the Doctor had he was unsure of himself. "The humans. I felt bad for them. It was their planet before it was ours. So I let them free. I made a deal with them. One night, I unshackled them and set them all free. Years ago, we had thousands of human slaves. Now we have only hundreds. Because of me. One night, I set them all free from chains. But somehow, the others caught us. They arrested me, and they shot and killed a lot of the humans. Those they couldn't kill they captured. Only about twenty escaped. They were injured, so I don't even know if at least twenty made it. But what's left of the escaped humans are what the Arisminse tribes call the Central Collection. The humans are fighting back against the Arisminse. They've gained independance. And it's all my fault."

The Doctor stared. This guy wasn't bad in the least! He was on the human's side, which was on the Doctor's side.

Just then, one of the Arisminse pulled open the curtain of the tent and peered within. "It's time," he said in a low voice, and both the Arisminse beside the Doctor and the Doctor himself knew what that meant.

Before they lifted him away, the Doctor caught the sleeve of his shirt. This one seemed to be the only Arisminse wearing a shirt. "I'm so sorry," the Doctor said.

"I know," replied the Arisminse, and they pulled him away.


Next chapter: the Arisminse on the side of the humans' execution; James, Elliot, Marko, Cassandra, and Effie try and get out; and the Central Collection is further introduced! PLEASE REVIEW! the more you review, the faster I write!