This is it, folks – what will this hideous apparition turn out to be? Well, it's...
CHAPTER SEVEN
"Please no!" moaned Karen.
A cluster of girls of ages ranging from twelve to twenty had gathered around the TARDIS, chattering in excitement. One of them spied the group.
"There he is!" she squealed, her finger pointing to Matt.
Every single one of them screamed and started running towards them.
"Run!" yelled Matt, and they did.
All nine people departed from the scene as quickly as they possibly could, but numbers were against them, in that they couldn't run as fast down the alleyway as fast as they could have done on their own. Alex realised this fact.
"The real deal, go on ahead, along with Steven. The actors and actress, with me."
Alex, Arthur, Karen and Matt peeled off, disappearing down a side alley and pressing into the nearside wall. The fangirls sped past, one of them screaming, "I only want a photo!"
The stampede receded into the distance, and there was a collective sigh from everybody.
Taking a moment to catch her breath, Karen spoke up. "Don't you think we should help them?" she asked. "After all, they've saved our butts before in their world. It's the least we can do to keep them from being…" She trailed off.
"Eaten alive by rampaging fangirls?" finished Matt.
She nodded.
"Yeah, we probably should. But how? If we get seen together, there'll be an uproar."
Karen smirked. "I have an idea. You got Steven's mobile number?"
Alex handed her a mobile, and Karen scrolled down to find Steven's number. She pressed the green button and put the phone to her ear.
"Listen up," she said to the phone and her colleagues, "and I'll explain the plan."
"Got it," said Steven, and hung up. There was a light film of perspiration on his forehead from all the running. He wished now that he hadn't given the Doctor and Amy such exhausting episodes in their lives, now that he had to experience them himself. Why not invent a nice relaxed episode on a beach somewhere that there weren't any aliens, wars, plots, battles or bombs?
Because our viewer ratings would drop even more, said a little voice in the back of his mind. Make them suffer!
Shoving the thought from his mind, he relayed the instructions to the Doctor, Amy, River and Rory. The Doctor threw his hands up into the air.
"Well if that's our only salvation, then I might as well start the regeneration cycle now!"
"Don't talk rot, dear," said River. "They're only fangirls!"
"Fangirls and fanboys, I think you'll find," remarked Steven between pants. Sure enough, a few boys had joined the pack as well. What was amazing was that the fans were gaining steadily.
"We've got to give them time to set up, remember?" said Amy. "We can't give up now."
"Quite right too!" exclaimed the Doctor, and it gave them a new burst of speed.
They rounded several corners and there, in front of them, stood a youth club, and their salvation, for in front of it was a freestanding sign that read 'Doctor Who Free Autographs From The Cast'.
Without pausing for thought, they burst inside and vaulted over a couple of tables with promotional material strewn over them. They made a beeline for a door at the far end and let themselves outside once again. Behind them, the group of fans, now having swelled to roughly fifty, rushed inside as well.
"They're not here!" moaned one of the girls.
Then, they got the shock of their lives, for the door crashed shut behind them, and they heard a scraping sound. Every one of them started pounding on the door to be let out, but to no avail.
Outside, Arthur tied the final knot in the shoelace used to attach the sign to the door handle, stopping it from going down and so releasing the fans.
"There," he said, "Perfect."
Amy was the first round the corner, swiftly followed by the Doctor. They surveyed the locking mechanism.
"Isn't that illegal?" asked Amy.
"Probably," said Alex, "but if they complain and press charges at us, we'll press charges for harassment."
"Well, I suggest we leave before they pull out their mobiles and call the rozzers," said Rory.
"Yeah. Good idea," said the Doctor weakly, "If I can remember where we left the TARDIS."
After a long and gruelling search for the aforementioned elusive time capsule, all nine people eventually made it back to this time capsule. Locking the doors with a slight flourish, the Doctor made it clear to everybody that he was going to work on the control nodules and that he was not to be disturbed until tomorrow.
More specifically, he said, "I'm going to work on the control nodules, and I'm not to be disturbed until tomorrow. You got that?"
Everybody got that.
So, as a result, Arthur and Rory decided that enough was enough, and that they were going to get some rest. They therefore slunk off to their respective bedrooms and deadlocked shut the doors.
Steven took himself and the TARDIS manual to the library, and he also deadlocked shut the doors.
Alex and River, since they were the only duplicates who hadn't had a chance to chat, began chatting, and, much to her surprise, River was actually warming to her namesake.
Matt, to his delight, discovered that the TARDIS had a flight simulation suite buried deep in the catacombs of corridors, so was busying himself there pretending to fly the TARDIS.
That just left Amy and Karen, then.
Amy had excused herself about twenty minutes ago, and Karen had been waiting patiently since then, but now reckoned that something might be up. She went over to the TARDIS monitor.
"Um…hello?" she ventured.
A thought popped into her head. "Hello, Karen."
Wow, thought Karen, that's an eerie feeling.
Another thought appeared. "Don't worry, you get used to it eventually. Now, how can I help you?"
Shrugging the weird feelings aside, Karen proceeded to conduct the whole conversation in her head. "I was wondering where Amy is? Is she all right?"
"She's in her room," said the TARDIS, "and gave me explicit instructions not to allow anyone to enter. And that means you as well, I'm afraid."
"You didn't answer the other question. Is she all right?"
There was only silence.
"Well?"
"No, not really," admitted the TARDIS. "She's…well, she's a bit…disorientated, I suppose you might describe it."
"Disorientated? How do you mean?"
"Well, I may be telepathic, but she's special. She's managed to block me out, which is an ability I have never seen outside of Time Lords. However, what I can tell you is how I felt."
"Huh?" Karen was confused.
"How I felt. You know, when I did the preliminary scans of the BBC building and found the other TARDIS."
"And how did you feel?"
"Do you really want to know?" asked the TARDIS.
"Yeah."
"It scared the zark out of me."
Karen laughed out loud, not just in her head. "Now that's sad. Using a Douglas Adams swearword."
"It's Gallifreyan, originally," defended the TARDIS, "and I shouldn't really be using such coarse language. My data core heats up every time I say it."
In spite of the TARDIS's dire warnings, Karen knocked on Amy's door.
"Go away," came a muffled reply.
Karen entered anyway, and Amy was lying on her bed with her face buried in the pillow.
"I said, go away!" she screamed into the pillow.
"Amy, it's me, Karen," said Karen.
Amy half turned. "Yeah, I know, so go away!"
"What's wrong, Amy? This isn't you."
Amy sat up angrily. "How would you know? How the heck would you know? You're just an actress who's paid to act like me!" She spat out the last words with venom.
Karen could feel herself rising to the conflict. "Well, don't you think that, after nearly two years of studying scripts and acting like you, I mightn't have picked up a tiny bit of your personality?"
"To be quite honest, no!"
That did it. "True, true, considering you don't have a personality."
"Who do you think you are, my mother?"
The red mist fully engulfed Karen as she delivered the killer blow. "Maybe getting eaten by a crack in the wall was a mercy for the mother of a stripper!"
Amy screamed and launched herself across the bed at Karen, her hands closing around Karen's neck. They both fell to the ground and rolled around, each trying to gain the upper hand. Karen kneed Amy in the solar plexus, and the vice-like grip relaxed as Amy doubled over in pain.
Then, the final blow of the match came before anybody could work out what happened.
Amy's hand grasped the lampstand beside her bed and slammed it straight into Karen's temple. The actress crumpled to the ground. A trickle of blood seeped from her head and soaked into the carpet. She lay still.
Please review to let me know what you think. Plus, don't worry about the attack – everything always turns out OK in the end in Doctor Who...doesn't it?