"Nngh…" El groaned, shaking her head as she got up from the floor. The TARDIS had finally settled, becoming stable.
Looking over to the door, the girl gasped, and ran over.
The Doctor was out there, floating, waving his arms to catch her attention, as little blue mites ran up and down his body.
"Dad!" El shouted, reaching out. He was too far away to grab with her arm, and though she tried, she couldn't move him with her powers.
The Doctor began moving his mouth.
"I can't hear you!" El gestured. "Can you talk louder?"
The Doctor pointed to his throat.
"Right, no air, no talking…" El inhaled. Tapping her head to try to get the Doctor to communicate telepathically, the Time Lord shook his head.
All of his mental faculties were obviously being devoted to making sure he didn't suffocate.
"Umm…" El tapped her hands together, looking between the console and the Doctor. "What do I do? How do I fix this!?"
The Doctor looked lost in thought, before he held up two fingers.
"Oh, great, we're both terrible at charades!" El frustratedly shook her head. "Okay, two words. First word… hurry up!"
The Doctor held up a hand to his ear and began pounding his chest.
"Sounds like…. you, the Doctor…" El's eyebrows knit together. "Hearts, two hearts, monkey, gorilla, King Kong? Tarzan? Ribs? Chest?"
The Doctor suddenly nodded, pointing insistently.
"Chest? Chest!" El nodded. "Sounds like chest… best? Guest? …Press?"
The Doctor nodded again.
"Chest doesn't rhyme with press!" El scowled.
The Doctor shook his head and held up his hand again.
"Okay, second word…" El looked closely. "Sounds like face? Hair? Head?" The Doctor nodded. "Head! Sounds like head… Dead… bed… red?"
The Doctor gave a thumbs up.
"'Press red.'" El nodded, turning to look at the console. "…Which red!? There's lots of red!"
The Doctor shrugged, throwing his arms out.
'I believe that means 'all of the red things.'' The TARDIS whispered to El.
"Right, okay!" El ran up to the console, pushing the red lever up.
Moving around the console, El pressed the red buttons, twisted the red knobs, flicked the red switched, and pushed up the other red lever.
Triggered by her inputs, the console began flickered and began to glow, mechanisms moving within it once more.
"Um… It's doing something!" El called to the Doctor. "It looks like it's coming back on!"
'Here, little one.' The monitor on the console spun around to face her, switching on, showing the Doctor as he put something in his ear.
"King Kong!?" The Doctor incredulously demanded. "Why would I tell you to press King Kong!? Oh, never mind, I'm just glad I can breathe again… The reset of the TARDIS has automatically extended the air shell. So, here's the thing, we've fallen into a riptide of the time vortex. We're stuck in one of the pockets and we don't have long until the TARDIS gets dragged to the next one."
"Okay, well, let me pull you in." El replied.
The Doctor shook his head. "Either your powers have gone dead like an empty battery from using them so much in the GSO station, or something about the riptide's causing them to fail. You're going to have to solve this mechanically. You'll have to find something you can use to power the tractor beam and attach it to the console..."
"Okay," El looked to the screen expectantly. "What do I use?"
"You should be able to find something suitable in the drawing room…" The Doctor answered. "Hurry! If the TARDIS gets dragged away, I'll be stuck here forever!"
"But how do I find the drawing room?" El inquired. "I haven't been there before!"
"Don't worry, it's very simple." The Doctor replied. "Take the corridor for about half a mile, turn left, then right, then right again, and then it's your third next right. Go past the weird swirly thing, left then another left. through the sunroom -careful not to trip over the sun lounger- then you'll see a green door -don't go in there- go right, follow the wall until it gets a bit slimy, then take the lift to the third floor. Drawing room's straight ahead, you can't miss it. Easy peasy."
El shook her head. Some days, the TARDIS really was too big to navigate.
"Now, that is my private study!" The Doctor told her. "Go poking around for what you need but come straight back! And don't sit in my chair! I've been working on the groove in that for the past half-millennium. Good luck." He wished.
El sighed, and stepped back from the monitor, turning around. Walking up the steps, she proceeded into the hexagonal corridor, following the singular pathway around the bend, before frowning. The Doctor didn't mention stairs.
Walking down the steps, El recoiled slightly, as she emerged back in the console room.
"Weird…" El frowned, turning to walk back up the steps. This time, it didn't even offer the premise of a corridor as she walked up the stairs on the other side of the console room onto the platform. "What-?"
'The riptide is interfering with my internal dimensions as well.' The TARDIS informed the girl. 'Move to the panel to the right of the one by the steps leading to the door.'
The girl nodded, trusting the living ship, as she moved to that position.
'Ensure that every lever on this panel is pointing directly up.' The TARDIS instructed. 'I would simply do it myself, but it takes a great deal of effort to manipulate the controls on my own.'
El nodded, and did as the TARDIS instructed, pointing the wibbly lever straight up first, then the two on the front of the panel, before lifting the one at the very back.
'Very good.' The TARDIS complimented, as air began to flow through the console room better. 'Perhaps when this is done, I shall give you proper piloting instruction.'
El smiled, and walked back up the steps, following the Doctor's directions.
After following the Doctor's guidance, El came to a set of two heavy mahogany doors. Pushing them open, El came into a room filled with ticking clocks, various bits of junk, and a lot of books. On the wall across the way, above a perpetually burning fire, hung a painting of a man El had never seen. An Edwardian gentleman with curly hair wearing a green velvet long coat, a double-breasted silver waistcoat, a grey cravat around his neck, with a copper sonic screwdriver with a blue crystal emitter in his hand looked out at her from the painting.
Despite the fact she'd never seen the man, something told her it was the Doctor… Hmm, he had her hair. And eyes… Even though the Eleventh Doctor looked nothing like her except for having similar-colored hair, this Doctor looked like he could actually be El's biological father.
'Eighth.' The TARDIS told El. 'The romantic. Such a love for living… undeserving of the fate that befell him.'
El frowned, looking around. Even though there was a whole bunch of old clutter, there seemed to be -dare she say it- a system to it all.
Still, there had to be something she could use as a tractor beam around here somewhere.
El began walking around, examining anything and everything she could.
The first object that caught her attention was a really, very long scarf hanging from a coat rack.
'That scarf belonged to the Fourth Doctor.' The TARDIS explained. 'Madame Nostradamus knit it for him back when he was in his second face.'
El blinked at it. It looked like whoever wore it would be swallowed by it. Moving down the shelves, El spotted another object that caught her eye, shaped kind of like a gun.
Odd. The Doctor didn't use guns, did he?
'Sonic blaster.' The TARDIS exposited. 'The Doctor keeps it around for River in the future, but it originally belonged to Captain Jack Harkness.'
"Ah." El nodded, "What's that?" She pointed to the red ball.
'A cricket ball. The Fifth Doctor used it to save his own life once.'
El tilted her head. "How did he save his life with a ball?"
'Very, very carefully.'
El huffed, still looking around, poking a semi-transparent glass ball. 'What about this?"
'An Ood translator sphere. The species was enslaved by humankind in the far future. Not tractor beam material, I'm afraid.'
El frowned. "Then what? All of this stuff is just old bits of junk."
The TARDIS suddenly shook, and El staggered, trying to keep her balance, as one of the clocks on the wall suddenly swung out, revealing a hidden compartment.
'Sorry about that.' The TARDIS apologized. 'But there is your answer.'
El narrowed her eyes, reaching into the compartment, pulling out a device not unlike the sonic screwdriver, with three barrels on the end. "A sonic screwdriver?"
'Laser screwdriver.' The TARDIS corrected. 'Be very careful with it.'
El nodded, and prepared to go back to the console room, when the TARDIS shook again. As the shaking continued, a vase on the inside of the same compartment as the laser screwdriver fell out, and smashed against the floor, shattering into a thousand pieces.
'That wasn't my doing this time.' The TARDIS said, once the shaking had ceased. 'You must hurry back to the control room.'
"Right." El nodded, moving back to the control room.
Unbeknownst to El, and not pointed out by the TARDIS, a glowing orange spherical entity materialized over the broken vase, before vanishing into the fireplace, into the energy conduits of the TARDIS.
"Dad," El spoke, walking down the steps to the console. "I found this… laser screwdriver thingy, will that work?"
"Ah, brilliant, yes!" The Doctor responded, looking a bit rough on the monitor. "Just plug it into the slot on the fabrication panel, that's the little circular hole on the panel closest to the door."
"Okay." El nodded, moving around to the panel. Reaching up, El plugged it into the slot on the console, the device lighting up a moment later. "Now what?"
"Now, the little telescope emitter on the console, do you see it?"
The girl looked to the bit of technology just above the slot. "Yes."
"Fiddle around with the controls on that panel until it's pointed towards me." The Doctor explained. "The panel should've automatically changed modes when you plugged the screwdriver in."
"Okay." El grabbed onto the little gear shift, the zig-zag-plotter the Doctor had called it once, moving the emitter clockwise to face the door. Spinning the little winder on the front of the panel, the emitter pivoted down.
Checking to make sure it was aimed, El pressed the button, and watched as a blue funnel of energy was projected out, striking the Doctor in the chest, pulling him in.
"Ah, that's a relief!" The Doctor breathed the moment his boots hit the floor. "Those little blue bugs crawling on me out there? Chronomites. Four-dimensional creatures that live in the void. Harmless, but blimey o'reily they're itchy." The Time Lord smiled approvingly. "You did good, El."
"Thanks." The girl smiled.
"Seriously!" The Doctor insisted. "You maintained a level-head under pressure and presumably worked out what to use as a power source for the tractor beam as well!"
El tilted her head. "Why did we need the laser screwdriver?"
"The tractor beam's disconnected from the console power so it doesn't accidentally activate mid-flight." The Doctor answered. "All it needs is a secondary power source to plug in, which isn't hard to come by, but inconvenient if you happen to be free-floating out in the void."
"Yeah… It was a bit hard to find." El admitted. "Your drawing room is messy… Oh, and I think I broke your thingy of aftershave."
"Aftershave?" The Doctor repeated, shaking his head. "I don't keep aftershave in the-"
The TARDIS suddenly rocked as if it had been hit, as a deep ringing, like that of a church bell, echoed throughout the ship.
"We're being dragged into the next pocket!" The Doctor hollered, trying to maintain his balance.
"What's that!?" El asked, grabbing the console.
"That's the Cloister Bell!" The Doctor replied, fearfully looking around. "It means that something is very seriously wrong, we could all die because of it, and I don't know how to fix-" The console room suddenly settled, and the Doctor turned to the console.
El was gone, nowhere to be seen.
"…it."
El shook her head, and looked up, eyebrows furrowing in confusion. The TARDIS looked… different. The structure of the console room was the same, sure, but everything was dark… cold, dim blue lighting replacing the warm orange ambience.
"Oh…" El looked around. "Dad!" She called. "Dad, are you there?"
No response came.
"Okay, it's okay…" El said to herself. "I'm in the TARDIS, I'm safe."
El felt something zap the air behind her, and whipped around, just barely catching a glimpse of an orange, floating sphere.
She didn't know it… but she was in colossal trouble.
The Doctor walked up the steps to the console, rubbing his chin in thought. "The internal timekeeping systems must have fallen out of sync. El's lost somewhere in the TARDIS's past or future… Or maybe I'm the one who's lost." He snorted. "That'd be rubbish." He absently bobbed on his feet. Since he wasn't bouncing around all over the console room's timeline, that meant the internal systems had already fixed themselves, but El still wasn't there.
Like if you took a sheet of paper, with two dots on one end, brought both ends together, and pulled the ends apart, but one dot had been stuck on the other side.
"I need to figure out whenabouts in time I am and see how much power is left." The Doctor muttered to himself.
The first thing he did was walk around to the flip clock between two of the panels, looking at it. The clock was wildly flipping back and forth between two times every second.
"Make your mind up." The Doctor frustratedly spoke. "Am I here or a thousand years in my future? Here? Future? Here? Future?" He shook his head, and stood up, moving around to the other side.
The needles of all four ammeters were stuck bouncing back and forth, humming.
"It's caught between two possibilities… That's not good." The Doctor frowned. "Okay, so, internal time has desynchronized, El's stuck in the TARDIS a thousand years in the future relative to now, I'm stuck here… I can fix it by setting off a reverse tachyon feedback loop from both directions at once!" He snapped his fingers, coming to an idea. "That should desynchronize the time systems in both time periods, and when the TARDIS stabilizes again, she'll be back here again! Hm…" The Time Lord rubbed the back of his head. "Tricky. But not impossible for a clever old chap like me. The parts I need should be in the drawing room." He recalled, beginning the trek there. "I'll need something to keep track of time, and something to focus the time energies into place."
The Doctor huffed, shaking his head.
"Talking to myself already. That's a new record."
Entering the drawing room, the Doctor's eyes were drawn to the broken vase on the floor, and he immediately sprinted over.
"No, no, no…" The Doctor crouched in front of the shards, and the small puddle on the floor. "That's impossible! It had a triple-deadlocked forcefield!"
The Doctor gulped, looking up.
"That means the Entity has escaped…" Quickly dashing into action, figuring that since the ancient Time Lord criminal wasn't there with the Doctor, they had been sent into the future with El.
And unless he did something, fast, he'd never get to see El again.
"Okay, fob watch." He grabbed the golden watch with Gallifreyan etchings off the fireplace mantle. "It's a watch, so, that's timekeeping naturally sorted. Now, something to focus the time energies…"
The Doctor frantically looked around, spotting the chronon blocker he'd built for El in Kalaann.
Taking the Kontron crystal out, the Doctor began making his way back to the console room.
"This should do the trick just nicely…" The Doctor muttered to himself, as he put all the components into place.
It wasn't as simple as 'wrap wire around crystal and attach to coil' but the Doctor had got it done just as quickly, turning the fob watch into a jury-rigged space-time focusing device.
"Now, El needs to use this as well, but there's a thousand years between us…" The Doctor frowned. "If I just left it lying around any potential future passengers could get their hands on it and wind up here." He looked around the console, snapping his fingers. "This should do the trick."
The Doctor bent down, placing the focusing device into the dispenser under the console.
"Now, to add a little bit of security…" The Doctor moved the scanner around, and hit a button on the front, his own face appearing on the screen, with a blinking red dot in the corner.
"El, it's me!" The Doctor began. "Well, a recording of me…"
