Kyon was flung to the floor, head smacking against the glass panel with enough force to leave a nasty bruise.

Scrambling to his feet, Kyon collided with the Doctor as the TARDIS lurched sideways.

"Get the lever down!" yelled the Doctor, face fixed in an agitated scowl

Despite his transfixed grimace, the Doctor flailed his body around wildly, flinging switches and levers with panicked fever. Kyon just barely made it to his designated lever, before he was thrown back again the second he threw it down.

There was a tremendous sound of mechanical scraping, loud enough to partially deafen Kyon. The Doctor continued, manipulating several widgets at once from his side of the console.

"Do the third sequence!" he commanded. "You have ten seconds before we fry!"

Kyon leapt forward, furiously scrambling at the controls; he punched the 9-digit code into a keypad in precise sequence, he flipped the position of several switches, and finally, with two seconds to spare, pressed down the tiny red button that actually did something.

Kyon's ears were suddenly spared the agonising sounds as the TARDIS suddenly stopped shaking.

The Doctor, now more frustrated than ever, threw himself back into the nearest chair.

"And that makes seven." he sighed, legs crossed, hand rubbing his brow. "Seventh time in a row we've tried... just about got her into the area they're being held when she hit a kinetic barrier - slid along it like a bit of wood against a linisher. if you hadn't hit that button the TARDIS woulda gotten a lot smoother a lot faster."

So, here we are; defeated, utterly, or else something very close.

A whole week, stuck in this TARDIS with the Doctor, trying the same thing over and over again, and the novelty of being in this situation is wearing off.

Somehow - we don't know how - the 'Discord Paradise' were able to seal off years from us; the moment the TARDIS left the school again we were thrown a hundred years into the future, away from Japan, landing somewhere in the south Pacific.

"What's the year count up to now?" I asked, glancing at the rotatable screen that displayed alien text.

The Doctor leant over slightly to look at it, then threw his arms down dejectedly.

"1996 to 2013," he proclaimed. "Seventeen year's worth of time we can't even access now."

The time lock started, and ended, on Christmas day; at seemingly random intervals, the time lock was getting larger.

I was starting to feel like this was a problem the Doctor could never solve - after all, he only had one idea (namely, throw ourselves at the target until it gets fixed), and after trying that seven times, it was clear it wasn't going to work the next seven times either.

If only we had someone to call for assistance.

"There's nobody out there that can deal with this," the Doctor stated. "Unless we can somehow find a weakness in the time lock, the only way to find your friends would be to take the slower path."

Ah, the slower path.

I've been along that route before - although, to be fair I was unconscious (with Miss Asahina at my side) for the entire two year span of it.

We had discussed, after the third attempt at brute forcing our way through the problem, the possibility of one or both of us going to Japan before the time lock started and simply waiting it out; i had to reject this proposal, as I don't really want to explain to my family how I could possibly grow a few decades older in a single night.

Of course, my rejection of the 'slow path' idea was entirely dependent on the fact that I was going to see my family again.

I pushed those depressing ideas out of my mind; for the moment, we need answers, not more deliberation over the same thing once again.

"How's the time dampener doing?" he asked me. "Still green?"

I looked down at my shirt; attached to it was a small device, held in place with a safety pin, that emitted a gentle green glow. This was a small device linking me to the current time of the TARDIS; as long as I wore this, I was immune to the temporal feedback loops I had been exposed to.

"Still looks green from my end," I said. "What's it look like to you?"

"Slightly orange, leaning towards the not-so-pink end. You're drifting a few picoseconds out of sync relative to everyone else; as long as it looks green to you, you'll be fine."

The Doctor sprang to his feet, face now full of less anger and more mild curiosity. He began fiddling pointlessly with a few of the TARDIS' controls.

"C'mon, Kyon, think of something; all that wisdom crammed into your head, you'll come up with something."

Seems he forgot that he had to lock away those memories he accidentally gave me.
"I'm not talking about those ones," he replied. "The ones you gained from experience; after everything you said you've clearly got real potential - hey, you didn't give up after Haruhi disappeared, right?"

"No, I guess I didn't, but Nagato was the one that put everything in place-"

"What about the summer time loops?" he continued, spinning round as he flipped a lever wildly. "I saw that, actually - would've stepped in around the 16,000th loop but, hey, you found the solution all on your own!"

Wait, he was aware of the endless recursions of time? How long has he been monitoring us? Did he see it by chance, or-

Wait a damn picosecond there.

Mikuru is a time traveller, meaning she has access to a form of time (and possibly space) travel; I don't know the details, but she's part of some agency that has a whole bunch of time travellers.

Nagato also hinted that there are many forms of time travel; she could outright freeze time if she needed to.

If the TARDIS' 'materialisation' form of time travel doesn't work, could another form work?

The moment I finished saying this to the Doctor, his phone rang.

A cautious look on both our faces, he carefully picked up the corded phone.

"...This is the Doctor speaking."

There was an unsettlingly long pause; the Doctor glanced at me halfway through the silence.

"He's with me... yeah, I patched that, he's stable now."

I tilted my head slightly in confusion. The Doctor held up his finger and mouthed the words 'one minute'.

The Doctor lowered his voice, seemingly angered.

"You do realise the problem is expanding, right? If you're wrong any one of us could get stranded in a different time and place."

There was another long pause. The Doctor's face went through a wide range of emotions in a short space of time, channelling giddiness, unease, and a subtle hint of glee.

After about a minute of him not saying anything, the Doctor lowered the phone.

"So, you were saying about your friends?" he said warmly as he strode around the console.

"Doctor... could alternative forms of time travel work? Are the 'alternative' forms really different enough for it?"

The Doctor smiled at me from across the console, hand hovering above a lever.

"Guess what?" he smiled.

Somehow, I dreaded his response.

"Your friend just rang," he continued. "We're going to find out if you're right or not."

The Doctor pulled the lever sharply; the TARDIS began moving in for a landing.

"We've got a date with Mikuru Asahina!"

What?!

When?!

"December Second!" the Doctor proclaimed. "Nishinomiya, Japan!"

Wha-?

"Nineteen-ninety six!"

"That's right on the edge of the time lock! Why do we have to meet up at such a highly dangerous... time?"

The Doctor laughed.

The TARDIS suddenly plunged downwards, lifting both of us off our feet a few inches.

"Cause you said so!" he yelled. "Geronimo-!"

"You idiot-!"

And with that, we crashed once again.