A/N: Last time on From the Pandorica to Utopia! The Doctor and Rose went to Naples in 1860..except it was 1869...and Cardiff...whoops. Kaullus showed up again and got in Rose's personal space - by that I mean he hugged her - which she didn't respond to. Kaullus is sad, very sad, that they don't seem to recognise him, but covers up pretty well. They see ghosts, zombies, and Charles Dickens who's a bit of a Scrooge but at the end we like him! Woohoo! And they meet this strange girl who can see the past and future because she lived on a rift in time and space...wonder what they'd sell that place for? Doesn't matter 'cos to stop them, strange girl blows up her house and herself with it. That's one way to avoid payment tax I guess. Everyone's a bit sad, and its revealed Tahkaullus is fifteen thousand years old...bloody hell how is he still sane?!
And so they go off in their big blue box again, after Kaullus decides that they need a dose of Jackie Tyler after the evening he's had.
So you know what's going to happen next don't you! We're of to see the Mother! The scary mother of Rose!
Right then.
Disclaimer! Don't own Doctor Who. If I did, then Kaullus would be in it, Doomsday wouldn't have ever happened, or alternatively Journey's End would have a satisfying conclusion, Ten wouldn't have been a suicidal wreck by the end of his life, and I wouldn't be crying every time I see that ruddy beach!
I do own this story. I do own Tahkaullus Neuvo, the Underworld, the Elite Corps and everything else that isn't Doctor Who related. Anyone who tries to take that away from me will be EX-TER-MIN-ATE-ED!

Chapter 12

Oops…

Five o' clock…

Kaullus pinched his nose again, wiping away the grainy sleep in his eyes, nearly blinding himself in the process, before hurriedly putting his sunglasses back on. Would someone please tell him why, in the name of the seven Gods of the Gerinalta clans, was he up and staring at blazing white screens with information on them that had all bled into each other, at five o' clock, Greenwich meantime, in the bloody morning?! His whole body was aching for sleep that was being constantly denied him as new reports the world over came flooding into the Eye installation of the Elite Corps barracks in the London Underworld.

It had all started a few days ago when they'd finally made their move regarding to the Underworld's deep space program. Over thirty years ago, NASA had launched their then-state-of-the-art space probe Pioneer 10 into space in correspondence with the Goddard Space Flight Centre's proposal to send a probe up to collect subliminal data on the asteroid belt and then go on to visit Jupiter. What the techies in America had been completely unaware of though was that the Underworld had been listening in and making plans of their own. One thing, their military division had noted time and again, alien incursion after alien incursion, was the planet's lack of some form of early warning system that could at least make them aware of an incoming possible threat to their world. Clearly the surfacers weren't going to do anything about it, despite UNIT doing their best to keep things orderly – that institution had gone to the dogs once Lethbridge Stewart resigned – for good this time, he'd insisted – so it fell to the Underworld to devise their own strategy to keep tabs on the wellbeing of planet Earth from space. Their answer came in the Jupiter Probe proposal.

Sending in their best science-and-engineering infiltration units, they had taken the probe designated Pioneer F and gone over the schematics as well as its response range. After a few quick calculations they concluded that, once launched, it would eventually fall out of contact with NASA at some point early on in the new millennium. Once that had been concluded, they set about adding on their own bits to the Pioneer probe – communications arrays small enough to go unnoticed, additional thrust controls which the Underworld ground team would be able to control on Earth, and, most important of all, a stop command that would be transmitted once it was reported that NASA had finally given up on their little Jupiter Probe.

Something that had finally happened a few weeks prior, the Eye in Florida had received reports from the moles in NASA that Pioneer 10 was now considered unreachable by the surfacers' ground teams. Two hours later the stop command was initiated in the UWSA headquarters in St Helena, bringing the probe to a halt eighty-nine astronomical units away from Earth. From that position, the Pioneer activated its hidden sensor arrays, transmitting both inwards towards the planet and outwards into space.

When they got the first ping back from their new warning system, the ground crew had been jubilant, flying flags, patting each other on the back and just all around considering their thirty year wait well spent. Everyone was all set to go down to the nearest pub, let the next team take over for the night…until one attentive worker spotted something unusual in their readings. From that point on the evening had grown tense as every worker checked their posts, reread their reports, they even contacted the technicians who installed the technology on the probe more than three decades ago just to make sure that there was nothing wrong, hoping desperately that there was. Because if what Pioneer was showing them was true, then they had visitors on the planet already.

There had been nothing wrong, and soon every Eye in every city of the Underworld was corresponding, sending and receiving information from each other as they tried to pin down what Pioneer had detected. It was subtle, just a blip. Like an aftershock of an explosion…or the afterburners of an engine. The fact that it was so hard to trace indicated something very alarming: The signal was degrading, which meant that whatever they were looking for had been here for quite some time doing who knows what on the planet.

The Committee had gotten so worried that they'd pressed for an emergency sanction – placing all of the Underworld's military divisions, Elite Corps included, on yellow alert, ready to move into mauve at a second's notice. Kaullus had violently contested this decision but the terrified representatives of the Underworld's species were strictly set in their decision and wouldn't be budged, forcing him to abandon his own observation area – the Powell Estate – and return to London to supervise a full sweep of the entire city. A job that was incredibly taxing, on him and the Eye operatives who were also groaning in exhaustion around him.

And if matters weren't bad enough, three days ago, when they'd finally managed to narrow down the search to the North Sea the damn trace just vanished, as if it had never been there in the first place! Pioneer wasn't picking up any energy emissions and no one still out in the field could say they'd seen or heard anything of note.

Piling up on all that: The Doctor was still MIA, and so was Rose – it was the twenty-seventh of March, 2006, and there had been no sign of them. Just a brief glimpse of them in the city, standing around before going down to a local chippie before disappearing off the face of the Earth. Jackie was going stir crazy, putting up missing posters, going to the police eight times – five of which Mickey was hauled in for questioning. Poor boy couldn't even answer any of the important questions like where he'd last seen her, what had they been doing, had there been any altercations between them in the last few weeks. That last one got a rise out of him, nearly giving his interrogators something to go on before an infiltrator stepped in, saving his bacon.

Guess that's one good reason to keep infiltrating the world's organisations. Kaullus thought to himself ruefully, downing his forth cuppa that morning. The heat did him some good, but all he was drinking was tea. If he was going to really want to wake up he was going to have to get himself a coffee. But then he'd be hyper for the rest of the morning and he didn't want to cause his poor staff any more pain.

Sighing again, he rubbed his eyes a bit before clearing his throat. He hated to do this to them but at least it would be quick. "Okay," He said briskly, wincing as he saw and heard them all snarl in frustration, "let's get this over with quickly and then we can all take a nap. Jacob! The latest balance figures on the British Loans Funds?"

"Assets are at Eighty-three thousand million, Net Liabilities look to be pushing four-hundred-and-eighty million." Jacob's scaly head looked up at him, all four red eyes pleading him not to go further.

He couldn't afford that though, however he lowered his tone and asked simply, "Cashflow?"

The man's head slammed back onto his desk, moaning quietly before sighing and looking back up, "Net cashflow is at thirteen thousand million. Now can I please go to sleep?"

Kaullus smiled gently and nodded at the exit. Before the operator had even gotten out of his chair, he was back to it. "Dex! How're things up at MI5?"

"Odd." Was the one worded reply.

"Elaborate."

"Well, Margaret Blaine showed up, saying something about requiring access to the Prime Minister."

That was odd, MI5 dealt in information regarding exterior events, not interior. "I thought MI6 handled protection of the persons in government?"

"Not her it seems." Dex replied, shrugging a little, "Shame really, this is gonna ruin her career. If I was a surfacer, I'd vote her in as Lord Mayor for Cardi…what the hell?!"

"What's wrong?" He stepped away from the centre and knelt down beside the operator.

"They just gave her clearance." He leaned back in his chair, a look of complete bamboozlement on his face as he turned to Kaullus, "You think this could be connected to the you-know-what?" The signal that Pioneer had picked up was now taboo to speak. Too many people were tired to properly think straight.

In response, Kaullus just shrugged, "Send the information over to Shadow, he'll need to know to watch out for her if she shows up." Elite Corps Agent Designation Shadow was their plant in 10 Downing Street, his job simple and easy: Shadow the cabinet meetings, report on all their activities and nothing more. A job he'd been doing rather well now for the past eight months – his first mission on his own.

Anyway, Dex nodded back to him before patching his comm systems into Shadow's frequency. Knowing that he'd be gone by the time he looked back around, Kaullus got back to work. "Jess! Are the Russians behaving yet?"

"Nope," she replied faux-cheerfully, "intel from the Eye in Russia says there's been no change in their attitude. Ukraine still has no gas power." She sniffed a bit in disdain, "Bunch of greedy bastards, the lot of them. What do they even do all day anyway?"

"Got me." Kaullus hadn't been back to Russia since he slipped the plans of the nuclear bomb to the Soviet Union, which incidentally kicked off the Cold War. That…hadn't been one of his shining moments, it has to be said, but it did serve to get the surfacers to look the other way whilst the Underworld worked on getting a better presence in Australia. "Well enough about that," he shook off the thoughts of the Cuban Missile Crisis and returned to business "Jax! What's going on with our lovely armed forces?"

"General Asquith's been called into London on some odd matter," he replied, "probably because they finally picked up our dear depressant."

"Took them long enough." Was all he said in reply with a snort for good measure. Though he generally liked the man, Asquith wasn't exactly the sort of person you wanted running a country. He was a soldier, born and bred to be sure…but he wasn't a leader. Granted Blair wasn't exactly doing any better these days but at least he started out good…sort of…if you liked the Labour Party. That David Cameron bloke though…they might have to watch him.

Nevertheless, he got back to work, calling the operators by name and getting their various reports. After they had told him everything they could, or just given him the basic rundown of what they had, he let them go. It went on like this for a little while longer until it was just him and Nina again. Feeling there was no need for him to shout, Kaullus wandered over and sat down beside her. "Still nothing, I'm guessing?"

"Not so much as a leather jacket or a pink hoodie." She muttered back, pushing back and visibly fighting the urge to rub her eyes.

Rubbing her back in understanding and apology, Kaullus leaned over and turned off her screen. "You've been putting in a lot of hours lately." He noted, a bit of his concern over her slipping into his tone. "Longer than most of the others with this job."

He could've sworn he detected a blush there but said nothing of it as she quickly recovered, "I just want to make sure they didn't miss anything." She claimed, gathering a few discarded possessions of hers which she tucked into a pocket on her jacket. "They are your friends after all."

"So are you." Ah, there it was again, that timid little blush on a woman that he knew for a fact didn't play for his team. Chuckling a little bit, and admittedly feeling a bit chuffed, Kaullus led her towards the exit, "Go home Nina, get some sleep, have some fun with Kathrin." The squeak at the mention of her girlfriend nearly had him laughing, "And no more of these late nights until you're good and rested."

They stepped out of the Eye together, the door, which now had an Eye of Providence painted on it, shutting behind them. Looking at it, Kaullus winced a bit. "Whose idea was it to use a Christian symbol this time?"

"I think it was Phil," Nina responded, looking at the eye herself "down in robotics." She shrugged a bit, not all that bothered. "Why? Don't you like it?"

"You know my stance on Christians." He reminded her as they walked through the barracks together.

She sighed in response, "Are you ever going to forgive the Catholic Church for the Crusades?"

"Are you saying I've forgiven the Protestants for Cromwell?" He returned.

Nina didn't bother to give him an answer, likely knowing that there was nothing she could say to change his mind about the Christian religion. But then did she expect him to? Christianity had been one of the things that had spurred the Underworld project onwards – being discovered by those zealot puritans would have meant death for all of them – responsible for the hardening of their hearts that had only just recently begun to soften again. Before that there had been the Crusades, and Kaullus didn't care what anyone said or tried to justify them as, they had been bloodbaths – simply because the people they were killing didn't worship the same god…or rather, they worshipped a similar god that wasn't theirs. And don't even get him started on the Spanish Inquisition, he'd seen that for what it really was and had been appalled, had seriously considered waging a one man war on the Vatican for that until he met the Priory of Scion. After that he limited his actions to just the Inquisitors.

So basically, he didn't like the church, would never like the church, and was very careful when it came to ferrying Christian refugees to the Underworld.

As for Nina, she just went along with it. She didn't have any sort of religion, but wasn't one to persecute those with a certain faith. He liked that about her. It sort of reminded him of Rose…Rose who was still missing.

Sighing, knowing that, now that he was thinking about it, he wouldn't be able to stop, he halted at a corner. Noting that he'd stopped, Nina turned around and looked at him quizzically. He just pointed down the corridor on his right. "I'm gonna take a spin." He told her shortly.

"Are you joking?" She scoffed walking back up to him, "You can hardly stand upright, all you've had is tea!"

But he just waved her off unconcerned, "I've been in road accidents before," he reminded her, yawning a little bit, "this'll be nothing new. Besides, I'll be taking my Aston, you know what that means."

Rolling her eyes at him, she just nodded as she realised exactly what that meant. "Of course," she muttered in exasperation, "your on-board coffee station. Who did you pay to install that?"

"You know money has no value here, Nina."

"Then how the hell did you get your own coffee blender, that actually makes coffee," she asked, growing a bit annoyed with him as her own tiredness began to show, "as well as a fully automated massage system in that car of yours?!"

He just laughed again, rolling his shoulders a bit to get the blood pumping again, "It's a matter of luck, Nin'" he told her, affecting an air of snobbishness as he went on, "and also, my dear, when it comes to you and me, I have a certain advantage that all of us men have over young ladies like yourself."

"Oh yes?" She asked back, hands on hips, looking up at him sharply, "And what might that be?"

"Charm." Kaullus went so far as to give her a very slight bow, along with an airy flourish, all the while keeping his superior smirk in place that so infuriated many a person. The Doctor wasn't the only one it worked on after all.

But when it came to people who'd known him long enough, like an Elite, or weirdly enough the Doctor as well when they got the timelines right, or an Underworld Eye Operative, they just scoffed and went about their business. This is what Nina did, with an added eye-roll, and she turned her back on him and walked off, muttering under her breath about 'bosses with egos too big the barracks to house.' Smiling after her, Kaullus called out, "Say hi to Kat for me!"

She just flipped him the bird.

Now properly laughing, he walked off down the corridor towards Ground Tactical Resources. Weapons testing was still as noisy as ever (they'd come across a fault in their Dalek weaponry remodifications – now all the damn thing did was fry anything within a five metre radius), experimental designs however was steaming along (the Sontaran armour weave they'd extracted from a downed ship a few months back had pushed their new infantry armour designs forward) and quantum defence was still its hectic self (they were still unsure if developing something that created a paradox on demand was a good idea and were now looking into alternate methods). So basically another day at the office for that lot. They were about the only people not running ragged thanks to Pioneer's discovery.

The Aston was there waiting for him, just having got herself refitted to include a new Nitros system that was being installed on all vehicles. Despite the name, it didn't use a Nitrogen-oxide engine boost. That would just be dull and unimaginative. What it did do was create a temporary subspace field around the object, controlled by nano-computers built into the body of the vehicle that allowed it to enter a sort of warp speed. Sadly however the drive didn't take the object out of the established plain of existence, it just speed things up a bit; as such any driver would require super-human skills to use it and not crash their vehicle into a wall that previously they wouldn't have turned away from for at least another few minutes. Thankfully, any standard Underworld vehicle had this wonderful little thing called autopilot.

Once he was over his usual little bit of appreciative admiring of his rebuilt baby, Kaullus set about the usual exit protocols; name, designation, rank etcetera. When he was given the green light, he hit the throttle and blasted his way out of the Underworld and onto what everyone now liked to call the UH1, destination set for the Powell Estate.

Putting on the autopilot, Kaullus then proceeded to take care of the most important bit of the day. He pressed a switch on the dashboard and the passenger seat retracted back, folding up and away to admit room for, just as Nina had said, his own personal coffee station. Reserved only to use in emergencies, he'd only ever had to use it once: The day after he realised that Rose and the Doctor hadn't been seen for over a month…there was a spit take if ever there was one.

Ah there we go. He smiled to himself contently as the small plastic cup was filled with what had better be espresso coffee, and then got itself topped with a thin layer of foamy milk. Cappuccino, the only way to wake up a groggy immortal.

There was a part of him though, that was really hoping that the Doctor and Rose would turn up soon. Why? Because it meant Jackie Tyler would go to town on the big-eared bastard. The man may be impressive, but he had to admit it was nice to watch him taken down a peg or two every once in a while, especially the latest one he'd run into, with his sulking that was played over with arrogance, and not to mention his superiority complex the size of a planet! If he didn't know that the Doctor was so scared of Rose's mother, Kaullus would be tempted to take the man down himself…

No wait, He corrected himself as he gulped down his coffee, screw that. He was going to take that man down a peg the next time he saw him. Twelve months without a single pop in, from either of them? He'd had to go in twice because he had, admittedly, been caught skulking around the Estate. It was easy enough to get out of though, calling himself Special Detective Thomas Hylan, inspecting the disappearance of her daughter, but that wasn't the problem. It was the Tyler Inquisition. How did she do it?! All those questions and not stopping once! Oh the Doctor deserved whatever he got when they decided to show up.

So when the Aston's built in BB Alarm setting went off, his half-drank coffee nearly found itself all over the dashboard.

And they were…there!

"Right," The Doctor said proudly, grinning over at Rose on the other side of the console, "here it is, Powell Estate, London, England, Earth and its March the twenty-seventh." He stepped away from the scanner and folded his arms. No could've done it better. There was no one to do it better. And yet the sceptical look on her face had his smiled wilting away until it was a frown. "What?"

"Naples, you said." She reminded him.

"Oi!" He snapped, blimey this one was cheeky. "You don't believe me, have a look out there." He pointed at the police box doors, daring her to prove him wrong. And he wasn't wrong, it was right this time. Of course it was right! He'd made this trip a thousand and two times! A thousand and three now.

She was still giving him that disbelieving eye though as she walked past him, and not the good one, not the oh-my-god-how-the-hell-am-I-here one. It was the other one, the one he didn't like because it meant that he'd screwed up one too many times. The one Susan used to give him when he blundered on his words around Ian and Barbara before he'd left her behind. That look, the just-remember-you've-done-it-before-and-I-still-remember-it look, he could do without.

And so he was pleased to hear an astonished, and at the same time pleased, gasp from Rose as she took in her surroundings. Grinning in satisfaction again, the Doctor ambled his way down the ramp and out the TARDIS' door, closing it behind him and leaning against it. The Powell Estate, in all its blocky, dreary, boring, not able to fly across the stars, magnificence, lay out before them and Rose was taking it all in. How odd was that? Taking in something that you'd seen all your life?

Seemingly pleased to see familiar surroundings, Rose turned back to him quickly, "How long've I been gone?" She asked him cautiously.

A quick check of his watch later, he replied easily, "About twelve hours…give or take a few minutes."

She gave him that patented stunned look again before suddenly bursting out laughing, the whole bizarreness of this life coming full circle. Thinking about it, it was pretty funny and he indulged himself in a bit of a chuckle himself. To the year five billion and back for chips, then all the way to 1869 with Charles Dickens, ghosts and that persistent bugger who kept showing up. Fantastic!

Once she'd calmed down, Rose turned off in the direction of a set of flats he remembered wandering up and down looking for a plastic hand. "Right!" She told him, "Won't be long, just gonna check on my mum."

Frowning curiously, he asked "What're you gonna tell her?"

She stopped and looked back at him, looking as if she hadn't thought that over herself, "I dunno…that I've just been off to the year five billion and was only gone, what, twelve hours?" Well when she put it like that it did sound rather odd.

Humans, he thought to himself, snorting a bit, always assuming time has to go just one way. They wouldn't have lasted a day in the academy.

Rose was scoffing too, though for different reasons and just started off again, "No, I'll just tell her I spent the night at Shireen's. See you later. Oh!" Turning back, but still walking backwards towards the flats, she pointed a finger at him, "Don't you disappear." She told him, sort-of-sternly but not quite making it.

He just humoured her with a smile and turned back to rest against his brilliant blue box. As if he'd just up and swan of like some insensitive teenager, Time Lord's didn't do insensitive. Though quite frankly he wasn't exactly sure why he was bothering taking her back to her mother's. The TARDIS had more than enough clothes to sate her girly pleasure until the end of time, though where it had picked them all up over the years still baffled him. Surely he hadn't had that many people travelling with him as to stock that many clothes…had he? Nine hundred years of phone box travel, he was bound to forget a few things. But still, where had it all come from? You'd think the TARDIS had gone on its own shopping spree when he hadn't been looking!

Still, she'd insisted, and for some reason he'd complied. So here he stood while she ran off to chat with her mother about outlandish things such as gossip mags and Eastenders. How incredibly exciting! The normal day life of March twenty-seventh! Ooh, the drama!

Come on! What's takin' her? He checked his watch, Bloody heck, she's been gone five minutes! Five minutes that could be spent exploring moons two galaxies over, or running up and down space stations. He impatiently kicked a nearby scrap of litter, he didn't see what – an empty water bottle? – and looked for something that he could fiddle with. Somewhere about, he could make out the faint sound of a car engine but blocked it out, probably some sad bloke who'd gotten up late and was just getting out to work.

Ah! There she is! No wait that wasn't her; wasn't even in the right direction either, now that he thought about it, the flat was the other way, behind him. No wait, she's there! No just a wall again…and another wall…and more walls. Finally having enough of all the multiple Roses wandering about, the Doctor made his way over to the first thing that he thought had been Rose. She wasn't a model was she? No, she'd been working at a shop, a clothes shop. So why so many takes of her? Fed-up-ness replaced by curiosity, the Doctor only got halfway there before he was stopped in the loudest and noisiest possible way.

The car engine he'd heard had gotten louder and, if the Doctor had been paying attention, he would've noticed that the sound had been heading towards the estate rather than away from it towards the city. Before he got to the picture of Rose, a sleek black Aston Martin suddenly blasted into the courtyard, nearly running him over as it drove straight towards him. The Doctor leapt away just in time, pressing himself against the TARDIS as the car came to a halt between him and the picture.

On the far side of the car, the door was pushed open by whatever mad man was driving…

And the Doctor let out a suppressed groan as his eyes were greeted with red hair and black leather as Tahkaullus Neuvo stepped out onto the courtyard, slamming the door behind him. For the moment though he seemed to be ignoring him as he too went to inspect the piece of paper that was flopping over and tore it off the wall it had been stuck to.

Irritation at having run into this man, again, building up in him, the Doctor couldn't help commenting. "You going to start your usual thing then, Mr Poet?" The man's long ears pricked up, as if just realising that he wasn't alone, and Tahkaullus turned to stare at him. "Finally notice me then?" He asked, frankly a bit annoyed that the man had just tried to flatten him with his big and impressive car. Tahkaullus might say he wasn't human but he certainly acted like it, always going for the flashiest thing he could afford, anything to look cool.

But Tahkaullus hadn't answered, in fact he hadn't said a word. The moment he saw the Doctor, it was as if he'd gone mute, which was a nice change from the way that he usually adored butting in with his unwanted bits of information that he could've gotten by himself. In silence, he walked around his Aston, not once taking his eyes off the Doctor, until he stood right in front of him. Folding up the piece of paper he'd nicked, he stuck it inside his pocket.

The event that took place in the next few moments is talked about in space bars amongst the seedy and the greedy in twelve different galaxies, and even a universe over. It was so significant that when Dorium Maldovar was cornered by the Silence, he warned Madame Kovarian of what Tahkaullus would do to her, once the Doctor was through with her, first.

At last, the Doctor got fed up with the silent treatment. "Well?" He asked, "Are you gonna say anything or do I have to sta-?"

And then it happened. Tahkaullus balled his left hand into a fist, pulled back, and let fly right into the Doctor's right cheek. The crack that reverberated from that collision of flesh and bone is said to have been felt by telepathic races four million light-years away as the Doctor's mind let out a roar of pain. There had been so much force behind that blow that he was sent flying backwards, through the TARDIS's unlocked doors, landing sprawled on the grating. For a moment he just lay there, completely dazed and uncomprehending what just happened…someone had punched him. Tahkaullus had gone and punched him right in the face! His mind was still trying to come to terms with that as the man in question came storming into the TARDIS, leather duster billowing out behind him, giving him a bit of a demonic appearance when the green glow of the TARDIS was added into the equation.

Before the Doctor could get back to his feet, which he found were still rebelling against the idea of being anywhere near useful, and demand an explanation as to what just happened, Tahkaullus shouted, seemingly making the whole ship quiver "WHERE THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN?!"

"Wha'?" Still a bit mussed up, the Doctor was barely sitting up when something was thrust into his chest. Looking down, he saw it was the piece of paper that he'd torn off the wall and pocketed. He looked up at Tahkaullus in askance, but he just glared at him and indicated the paper. Not knowing what the hell he was on about, the Doctor rolled his eyes, wincing as the eyeball touched the bruised muscle around his cheek – gods that was going to leave a mark! What did he do in his spare time? Weight-lift bulls? – and unfolded the paper. After a cursory glance over at what he had in front of him, the Doctor's eyebrows lifted away from his eyes and tried to make contact with his hairline, whilst his jaw dropped flat open.

That can't be right! He was holding a Police Appeal for Assistance in his hand, with a picture of Rose and her details on it, saying she'd been missing from home since the twenty-sixth of March 2005. But that didn't make any sense!

Jumping to his feet, the Doctor rushed over to the console and checked the TARDIS' readouts again…

Ah. Twenty-seventh of March…2006…

"Well?!" In his shock, he'd forgotten he wasn't alone as he turned back to face the irate Tahkaullus Neuvo who was cracking his knuckles and looked like he was preparing to make a dent in the other side of his face. "Where is she?!" He demanded, looking around the console room.

Where is who?! The Doctor almost asked back before catching himself, remembering the way a younger version of this man had fawned over Rose. He had been fast to her defence, and even faster to anger when she was in danger…which explained the very, very furious look on his face a lot faster than anything else that he could currently think of. "She's not here." He told Tahkaullus, who was stalking around the room now, heading for the corridor to Rose's room. His words halted him though, and the redhead turned back to stare at him, flaring blue eyes demanding to know, right now, where the hell she was.

Gulping involuntarily, the Doctor quickly carried on, "Rose said she was going to check in with her…" he suddenly paled, remembering exactly where she'd gone, "to check in with her mother."

Any thoughts of further discourse left his mind and he was suddenly barrelling out of the TARDIS, Tahkaullus only seconds behind him as he ran for the block of flats Rose had just entered.

How could he have gotten it so wrong? That was incredibly bad! The TARDIS had never been this far off course when it came to things like this, not with unimportant stuff like this! So what the hell had happened? He'd put in the coordinates right, had hit all the right things in the correct order, didn't even use the mallet this time so why had they come this far out? Well quite frankly it didn't matter now – it had happened, and Tahkaullus swooping into the estate with his expensive car, as well as cracking his head open, prevented any possibility of getting Rose out of there and preventing these events from becoming set! Now all he could do was hopefully catch up to her and smooth things out before Rose's mother…saw her. Somewhere a china mug shattered.

He and Tahkaullus came off the stairs and ran across the flat to a door that was still wide open, where he could hear a woman's relieved sobbing. Mentally sighing, realising just how domestic things were about to become, the Doctor rushed into the apartment to find Rose swamped by her mother, staring at a pile of similar missing posters as the one that had been thrown at her.

Gulping again, the Doctor stuck his head in. "It's not twelve hours…" he informed her nervously, noting the questioning look in her eyes as well as the 'who the hell is this' look her mother sent his and Rose's way. "It's twelve months." Trying his best to stay as far away from the older woman as he could, the Doctor tried for a tentative smile. "Sorry."

Before either woman could speak, Tahkaullus entered the building. "Hi Rose!" He greeted, faux-cheerfully. "You don't call. You don't write. I've missed you two this last year!"

A/N: Okay Murray! That's your cue!
Anyway, Kaullus has a probe in space, the Slitheen are on the move, and the Doctor's a year out...whoops.
And to everyone who was waiting for it, how did I do? Did it send the right tone? Should I have Kaullus take another swing at him in future? The answer to that one is yes by the way.
I would also like to take this oppurtunity that Kaullus' views on Christianity do not mirror my own. I think its perfectly alright to believe in whatever faith you believe in. But Kaullus built the Underworld to hide his people from the Puritans so he's bound to have misgivings when it comes to the church.
Anyway, here we go - 'Aliens in London' is on the way.
Poll. Vote. Hurry.