The Doctor glowered at the inanimate structure, as he marched down the road towards the Hawkins Laboratory. One would say he was being idiotic, walking straight up to a guarded government installation with little more than a sonic screwdriver and his wits.

But he wanted to get caught.

The Doctor didn't count himself as a cruel man, but he wanted the humans in charge of the place to know they were in deep trouble before the authorities broke down their doors. Authorities that were already on the way, in fact.

The Doctor glared at the building, as he marched up to the gate. An MP (That's Military Police, not Member of Parliament) was in the booth out in front of the gate, hand hovering over his gun as the Doctor approached.

"Howdy." The Doctor greeted, as he walked up.

The MP looked the Doctor up and down suspiciously. "Can I help you?"

"Yes, in fact." The Doctor turned, nodding at the building. "I need to get inside."

"Sorry, sir, but the launchpad's in Florida." The MP retorted, trying to be funny, as he rebuked the Doctor.

"I don't think you understand." The Doctor stated, not in the mood for games. Oh, this new body was quite scary when dealing with the bad guys, wasn't it? The Doctor reached down onto the harness, flashing the Psychic Paper.

The MP paled. "S-Sorry, sir." He apologized, hitting the button to allow the Doctor access. "Right this way."

"Thanks." The Doctor offered, continuing to walk along. "And send word to your boss!" He ordered, not looking back. "I want to talk to him…" He growled, walking up to the front entrance like he owned the place.

The boots of the Doctor's spacesuit thudded against the tile, the Time Lord turning heads as he proceeded into the building. A couple of the soldiers inside glared at him, trying to intimidate him. The Doctor glared right back, every one of them shrinking in fear at the outwardly meek man.

Before long, the Doctor was faced with the head of the facility. Martin Brenner.

Even as far away from her as she was, the Doctor could feel El stiffen.

"Excuse me, hello." Brenner held out a hand to shake. The Doctor ignored it. "Forgive me, but we weren't expecting a visit."

"I need to see it." The Doctor stated.

Brenner looked confused for a moment. Just a moment, before the mask slipped back on. "See what?"

"You know what." The Doctor growled.

"I wasn't aware UNIT had become aware of the situation." Brenner remarked, he and his men leading the Doctor through the hallways of the Laboratory.

"UNIT has eyes everywhere." The Doctor responded. That much was true. For better or for worse, the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce kept tabs on every country on the planet. When one of them got too far into tampering with anything extraterrestrial, UNIT swiftly came in to control the situation. And since the US had been a signatory of the UNIT charter, they too were bound by it. "You made a mistake."

Brenner tilted his head, hindered slightly by his hazmat suit, as the Doctor was led through the lower levels of the building. "A mistake?"

"You messed with forces beyond your comprehension." The Doctor bitterly stated, as they came into an observation room. "And now, someone's going to have to clean up your mess." He clenched his fist, as he looked at the huge, pulsating hole in the wall. It looked organic, a mucus-like substance covering the entrance.

Just looking at the thing messed with the Doctor's senses in all the worst ways. He counted the humans lucky, in that regard. They were so primitive they didn't have the capacity to be put off by it.

"I'm going inside." The Doctor proclaimed, pushing away his discomfort, beginning to walk forward.

"Hold on, you can't-!" Another scientist tried to intervene.

Brenner held up his hand, looking at the Doctor all the while. "If he wishes to volunteer… so be it."

The Doctor glanced at Brenner, staring at the man, before turning to the rift, pushing his way through.

El looked at the TARDIS's screen in curiosity, yet also revulsion, as the Doctor pushed through the rift in the lab.

On the other side was an exact mirror of everything, covered with dark, fleshy vines. As the Doctor got to the surface, however, things proved to be worse. Everything, from the trees to the grass was dead and decaying, covered in a black, blood-like substance.

El tried to keep her breathing steady. The whole place looked about ready to kill.

A warm gust of air brushed around her, and El could feel the TARDIS gently brush against her mind.

Everything was going to be alright, she just had to wait.

The Doctor fought to control his breathing as he walked down the gore-covered streets of the alternate Earth. Something horrible had happened here. He would've been inclined to stop and explore, try and even piece together what went down, but he had to find Will, fast.

The environment was reading toxic.

"I imagine if Tumblr was an actual environment people can walk around in, it's something like this." The Doctor remarked aloud, before remembering that even if El understood the joke, she couldn't respond, and he sighed.

The sonic screwdriver in his hands buzzed as he set it to lock on to the nearest human life-signs.

Something far in the distance roared, and the Doctor grimaced, as a spike of pain drove into his head. A portal had been opened.

The Doctor broke out into a sprint, directly towards Will's life-sign.

Even distance in the alternate Hawkins wasn't strictly linear. The Doctor had been running, and though on the actual Earth it would've taken him at least fifteen minutes to get where he was going, from the time the Doctor heard the screech and felt the portal forming, to the time he'd gotten to Will, only a minute had passed.

The Time Lord could hear banging as he ran up to the house.

"Mom!" The Byers boy screamed, banging on the wall. He looked to his left, not noticing the Doctor's approach, but hearing the growl of the same monster that had took him. "Mom, it's coming!"

"Ah, hello!" The Doctor shouted, Will whipping around. The Time Lord held up his hands, "Don't worry, don't worry, I'm friendly!" The Time Lord's eyes locked on the fleshy aperture forming in the wall. "Ah, looks like that crack's been widened. Hello Joyce!" He greeted the woman on the other side. "Told you I'd find your son!"

"Where are you!?" Joyce shouted, trying to bang on the wall.

"Alternate hellworld version of Hawkins, long story!" The Doctor looked the hole up and down. The edges seemed to be growing back. "That's not ideal…"

"What!?" Joyce shouted, "What!?"

"Hurry up!" Will screeched. "It's coming!"

"The forces are beginning to invert!" The Doctor pointed the sonic screwdriver at the tear. "I can invert the forces back, hold it open long enough to get someone through! Will," He turned to the child, "Ready to go home?"

The monster roared, and Will began nodding vehemently.

"Right, it'll only stay open long enough to get one person through before it snaps itself shut. Stand here." The Doctor ordered, placing Will directly in front of the aperture. "And brace yourself for a fall."

"What?" Will fearfully questioned, as the Doctor pressed down the button on the sonic screwdriver.

The rip in the wall stopped closing, opening wider ever-so-slightly, as the pink, flesh-like barrier visibly grew weaker. The monster roared as it came charging in towards the woods, and the Doctor shoved Will through, the portal snapping shut completely a moment later, as the monster lunged for the Doctor.

The Doctor ducked, one of the monster's clawed hands embedding itself into the wall. The Doctor shot one last glance at it, and took off running, back the way he had come.

The Doctor's boots thumped against the ground as he ran back towards the mirrored version of the lab, feet carrying the Time Lord as fast as they could. The wind was kicking up now, red lightning sparking in the sky.

He'd made a mistake. A big boo-boo. A massive tactical error, so to speak. The monster hadn't been the only inhabitant of what the Doctor had suddenly decided to term 'Hell Earth.' No, there was a much bigger, much more sinister thing that called this place home.

And, either reacting to the Doctor's mental presence, or his interfering with the littler monster, the Time Lord had somehow caught it's attention, and it was making a beeline straight from wherever it had been before, to the portal in the alternate lab.

Running through the corridors of the alternate lab, walls of shadow were tearing their way through the place, all in pursuit of the Doctor, as he sprinted towards the tear.

As he jumped into it, and as the shadow beast followed, the Doctor felt like a right git.

The first thing that greeted the Doctor on the other side was screaming, and gunfire. None of it directed at him, thankfully. The local UNIT contingent (The Doctor had to call the Brigadier back in good old England, and he had to call in so many favors it was ridiculous) had arrived on-scene to arrest the people of the lab for breaking the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as it pertained to El, and for punching holes in space-time without the proper precautions. What? You thought UNIT was just alien hunters? Well, they were mainly alien hunters, but they were also the attack dogs. A tiny little military sent in when no one nation would be able to. And being the whole organization's Chief Scientific Advisor had its perks.

But now, the UNIT soldiers of the American contingent had found themselves in ground zero of an alien invasion hub. Bullets flew like hail, dark tendrils retaliating by piercing the soldiers. Brenner had already been arrested, it seemed.

Good. That meant the Doctor would get to see the look on his face when Brenner was thrown in the UNIT supermax for the rest of time.

Eventually, the shadow evidently grew bored of the human soldiers in the lab, escaping via the vents of the building. It was going outside, it seemed.

Very well, the Doctor could do that, too.

The Doctor shrugged off the impractical spacesuit on his way up to the roof. He needed to own the stage, and the Doctor couldn't do that while looking like a colorful astronaut.

…never mind the fact that his 'normal' clothes made him look like a young college professor, at best.

Still, the Doctor pressed forward, towards the roof. The beast wouldn't get its non-corporeal tentacles on Earth, not today.

But the Doctor needed to give it a chance to surrender first. That way, whatever fate befell it… the Doctor could rest at least somewhat easy.

The Time Lord stared up, at the colossal tornado-like entity blotting out the sun.

"Oi, you!" The Doctor yelled, trying to be as loud as possible. "According to Convention 15 of the Shadow Proclamation, I demand an audience!"

The tornado stopped spinning, as it formed into a spider-like body, a single massive head at one end. The Doctor felt it probe his mind, and he dropped his defenses, only slightly.

"Well, come on then!" The Doctor called, throwing his arms out. "The Doctor will see you now!"

The shadow growled, bringing its 'head' down to the Doctor's level. Momentarily, the Time Lord could feel it try to probe deeper.

"You…" The Shadow growled. "Are not of this world."

"No." The Doctor admitted. "But I've put a lot of work into it." The Doctor looked down at his wrist, to the watch face looking back up at him. 'I wonder how long this is going to take. I promised El I'd be back soon.' "I dunno," He posed aloud to the shadow, "What do you think?"

"This world will be food." The Shadow proclaimed.

"Food?" The Doctor huffed. "This is a fully-established, level five planet. And you're going to try and eat it? Don't make me laugh. All that carbon dioxide alone's going to give you horrible indigestion."

"Is this world important?" The Shadow questioned.

"Important!?" The Doctor repeated incredulously. "What's that mean 'important?' Six billion people live here-is that important!?" The Time Lord shook his head. He felt the shadow trying to probe deeper into his mind again and sighed. "Here's a better question; is this world a threat to your being? Well, come on, I'm giving you everything I have in here about the Earth. Is this world a threat?"

Images of humanity's countless weapons flashed in the Doctor's mind.

"No." The Shadow stated.

"Are the peoples of this world guilty of any crimes by the laws of your people, whatever they may be?"

A different set of images, the human race's countless wars against themselves, again flashed.

"No." The Shadow repeated.

"Okay…" The Doctor nodded, satisfied. "One more question, just one;"

The Shadow bristled.

"Is this world protected?" The Doctor questioned. He dropped the defenses around his mind just a little bit more, letting a small about of information leak to the shadow. Information about the Doctor. "Cause, you're not the first lot to have come here, oh there have been so many." The Doctor regaled it, as images of the Daleks filling the skies of London, Cybermen smashing their way into defenseless homes, Sea Devils rising out of the oceans, the Racnoss Queen snarling as her ship attacked, and so many more filled the mind of the Doctor, and by extension, the shadow.

"Now, what you've got to ask is; what happened to them?" The Doctor posited, as a new series of images began crossing his mind, images of different men from all across the ages, and he began to count. 'I give it ten seconds before it realizes just who its dealing with.

One.'

A long, white-haired elderly gentleman holding a cane…

'Two.'

…a cosmic hobo wearing an almost comically large bow tie and sporting a Beatles haircut…

'Three.'

…a dapper, dashing older man with curly silver hair in a velvet suit, fighting his enemies with a long-lost martial art…

'Four.'

…a rather bohemian fellow, with a scarf too long to be practical, and a giant set of teeth…

'Five.'

…a younger man, wearing an Edwardian-style cricketing uniform, a stick of celery affixed to one lapel…

'Six.'

…an abrasive, curly-haired blonde, wearing a multicolored patchwork coat…

'Seven.'

…a shorter man holding an umbrella with a question-mark handle, looking harmless to everyone, but his eyes speaking of ancient wisdom and machinations…

'Eight.'

…a handsome man with long brown, almost auburn hair, wearing stolen, fancy Edwardian dress…

'Nine.'

…a short-haired man, wearing a leather jacket and a green jumper, as he looked on at something in the distance…

'Ten.'

…and a spiky-haired man in a brown pinstriped suit, a swirly-patterned tie around his neck, as he stared on, unmoving.

'…Eleven.' The Doctor finished. "Hello." He said aloud to the Shadow, feeling the entity's sheer, uncontrollable terror upon realizing just who it had unwittingly decided to mess with registered in its mind. "I'm the Doctor." He smiled slightly. "Basically…" The smile dropped, and the Doctor stood there, glaring at the shadow. "Run."

Red lightning sparked, as the tiny motes of dust that made up the shadow's 'body' all shot up at once, twisting and churning like a tornado, as the shadow scrambled to get away from Earth, into space as fast as it could.

And during all of this, the Doctor looked on, satisfied, as his favorite planet was once again safe.

'One second off. Oh, well, we can't all be perfect.'