Right, Chapter 8. The height of the plot, I suppose. If you understand this then you've basically got the whole story in the bag. It's unlikely that you WILL understand, though. I'm useless at explaining. Heh. After this, you should finally see Doc and Rose as a pair, in every sense of the word, mashing the bad guys and being absoloutely invicible. As always, I hope you enjoy enough to leave a line or two.

CHAPTER 8

Rose put her hands on her hips. She ignored the commotion behind her as a few humans spontaneously fainted at the sight of the leader's killing machine, her mind entirely focused on buying her some time. She quickly stowed the screwdriver away. It was obviously not gonna be any use now, and might just get her out of a tricky escape situation. Like the Doctor said... it was very good at opening doors...

"So... tell me about this... weapon... thing."

Their leader beamed, delighted to have been asked. "Only one of it's kind in the universe. It has seven functions - slices, dices, explodes, mashers, castrates - he winced -, vaporises and turns you into a 3X3 foot cube - that's the large mallet atatchment. AND - as an added bonus - it contains my pet."

He opened the flame-hatch he had used earlier, and invited Rose to take a peek inside.

"Say hello... to Flamer." A little red dragon was concealed in the hach - when it saw Rose it winked one large yellow eye. The leader dangled a beef-steak through the hatch.

"Who's a good likkle dragon, eh?"

Rose rolled her eyes, entirely confused now. The alien invasion commander kept a pet in his machine gun? At that point, the commander decided he'd had enough playing. With one large claw, he pinned Rose to a tree and pointed his gun at her, all in one fluid movement.

"Hasta la vista, Earthling!" Rose closd her eyes in terror, knowing she was about to die.

It was then that she heard a roar behind her, and saw Harold, more furious than she had ever seen him, come charging at the mushroom-head leader with full force, a piece of twisted metal in his hand. Caught off guard, Rose saw the commander flinch. Harold ran at him and knocked the weapon out of his hands.

"Don't you DARE hurt her!" he roared.

Harold's action appeared to spark a reaction in all the people on the riverbank, and pretty soon all the politicians were fighting the aliens with whatever they could find - broken bottles, large poles, fishing nets. A furious brawl emerged as it appeared many of the alien guns had broken. The water from the Thames was apparantly fatal to alien hardware, and any that had come into contact with it were deadened immediately. Half the horde were left with large, black clubs instead of chainsaws. Loud battle cries of "Long live the Spectral army!" rang out through the field. OK, so they weren't mushroom-heads.

Rose was disappointed. She'd hoped for a little more banter so she could buy them a little time to think up a plan to save everyone, but it was too late. She realised that not everyone was gonna survive this, and ducked for cover.

A few metres away, Harold was having the time of his life. He was easily the best human fighter on the field, and he finally realised what he had been put on this Earth to do. All those weight-lifting sessions at the gym had finally paid off, he thought, clubbing his 10th alien, who promptly collapsed.

While Rose was staring at the situation, the Spectre leader had regained his weapon, and was now shooting at her. She ran for cover and ducked behind a bench, but too late - he had seen her. He vaporised the bench, and towered over her quivering form. He pointed the weapon at her for the last time. She swore she could smell Flamer's breath as the weapon leaned in closer.

That was when she heard it - that whirring sound - in her opinion, the most beautiful sound in the universe. While the Spctre was momentarily distracted, she kicked the weapon out of his claw and sprinted for the Tardis door. She had only just gotten inside the Tardis when the door was peppered with bullets. She leant against it, breathing hard at her narrow escape, when she saw the Doctor.

"Oh my God..."

She ran to his side straight away, staring at him. Before she could do anything, however, she heard a furious hammering from the Tardis door. It looked about to collapse under the strain. Pushing a chair in front of it, she called to the Tardis.

"Tardis? Can you hear me?"

The Tardis responded. "Of course."

"Erm... right, can you take me somewhere?"

The pounding increased, and Rose threw herself at the door in an attempt to keep it shut.

"Where do you want to go?"

"I don't know! Just... float in the Void or something."

Suddenly, she felt the Tardis jolt unexpectedly. The banging stopped immediately, and Rose felt herself slide across the Tardis floor as it tilted and collapse in the corner. She heard a thud and suddenly the unconscious Doctor came sliding into her. The two were wrapped in a tangle of limbs on the floor. Picking herself up, Rose examined the Doctor.

"Only one heartbeat, and that's sluggish. Tardis, what's wrong with him?"

"I cannot tell from here. Bring him to the medical bay." The old, echoey voice was like nothing she had ever heard before. Rose's mind was overflowing with questions, and as if she could read her thoughts, the Tardis blocked out Rose's mental link before she could say another word.

Rose carried the Doctor onto a hospital trolley, and wheeled it into the medical bay.

"Right, basic scans first..." she muttered, taking a rectangular scanner and running it over his brain, heart, lungs, liver and kidneys.

The results were not good. All major organs had shut down, with the exception of brain, heart and lungs, which were keeping him running - just about. Rose took a blood sample and inserted it into the Tardis for identification. The printout result was not good. Rose read aloud.

"Blood sample, Gallifreyan/Human male, B positive - that's my blood type! - Platlet count average, blah blah blah..."

Here followed a long list of factors. Rose skipped down to the end, with a category entitled: Foreign or Dangerous Toxic Substances, and read the one item on the list - it was apparantly an advanced form of Clostridium Boutilium, a potent Earth poison, that was triggered in organic matter upon atmospheric change.

She read this aloud to the Tardis, adding, "The change must've been when he left the planet!" She could fell the ship's shock and sorrow rebound across their mental link. She asked, "How bad is it?"

In a small voice the Tardis replied, "My dear child... he has less than ten minutes to live."

"WHAT? Oh my God. Doctor..." Rose brushed hair away from his eyes. There was so much she needed to tell him - how could she thank him for showing her the universe in five minutes? "Tardis... is there anything I can do?"

The Tardis hestitated before responding. " There is an antidote, of course, but Theta always was lax with precautions. He probably doesn't stock it on board - he knows exactly how to make it, but using my equipment, the process would take far more than ten minutes, I'm afraid."

Rose shook her head wordlessly and st down on the nearest stool, feeling her legs were about to give way. Her sobbing in complete despair rebounded through the Tardis, softening her ancient heart with true compassion for this little girl, a part of the Tardis, who she knew was so much more than just another human. While wondering if there was anyway to help Rose, and Theta, she suddenly remembered the old rhyme she had recited in the Genesis office.

"Together they travel, for upon her change, their futures are entwined for eternity..." She hadn't realised she was thinking aloud until Rose looked up. Ignoring her, the Tardis began to think like never before. Bo had said that part of her destiny was to unite the Healer and the Wolf, and the only way she could do that was through Rose. The only human ever to have a telepathic link with her. She was certain that to bring Theta back, those two had to do something unprecedented. Unifying them, using the greatest power available to her... Bad Wolf! Of course!

Marshalling her thoughts, she called Rose again and explained. "Rose, there's a lot you need to know but as we don't have time you're gonna have to put complete faith in me. Can you do that?"

After thinking about it, Rose responded in the affirmative. Satisfied, the Tardis asked her the one other thing she needed to know. "Are you prepared to risk your life for him?"

Rose looked at the person on the bed. Her hero, her friend. Her lover? She would never know if she didn't save him. But she did feel an amazing attatchment to him, even though he had left her. She always had. If she had to die for him she knew she would in an instant.

"Yes."

"Good. I'm doing this on a hunch - it's never been done before in history, so things could go either way, for you and him. Now, can you access Bad Wolf with your mind? Reach back into your subconscious... that's it..."

Rose found, to her astonishment, that even though the Vortex had been removed from her, Bad Wolf and the essence of the Vortex remained, and she was able to access the whole Vortex using that tiny fragment that remained. The power of the universe was at her disposal.

"Right, here's the plan. For the doctor to survive he needs an antidote. Now, the vortex has natural cleansing power, too strong for you humans to handle - it kills you, but the amount you have in your system SHOULD have strong healing properties on a half-Gallifreyan, with his advanced Time-Lord genes. The only thing is, Rose - you need to block your mind. The part of the vortex that is combined with Bad Wolf in you will try to pull the rest of the Vortex in, like glue. Access Bad Wolf, but keep a firm block on the rest of the Vortex. Too much and you both go through the roof.

We don't have any of the right equipment here, so we're going to use the simplest type of tube, so your blood's gonna mix, I'm afraid. Right, first things first, this drug should shut off the pain sensors in your brain, temporarily, so you can operate on yourself. They'll return as soon as the transfusion is over."

She proceeded to tell Rose the materials for the transfusion. She ran to grab the required drugs, syringes, tubes and machines for the entire experiment. Injecting herself, she felt a numbing sensation. Testing herself, she pricked her skin with a needle and watched it draw blood without her feeling any pain. She nodded to the Tardis.

"I'm ready."

The Tardis explained the method step by step as Rose dashed around preparing tubing and drugs. She watched as Rose inserted a small tube into a vein in her arm, then made an insertion in the Doctor's forearm and inserted the other end of the tube. She got another trolley so they were both lying side by side, Rose lower than the Doctor. With Bad Wolf in her blood, it had gained enough energy to travel against gravity into the Doctor's vein.

The Tardis kept urging her to hurry, the Doctor was running out of time, he had seconds left. At the last minute, Rose finished the job. She replied she was ready, and swallowed the pills that would shut down her mind so she could concentrate only on blocking out the rest of the Time Vortex, special ones that would stop working with the transfusion. All the Tardis could do now was wait, to see what would happen. Would the transfusion work? Would Bad Wolf cure the Doctor? Would Rose be able to use Bad Wolf but keep the Vortex at bay? The Tardis waited in absoloute anguish. She had never been so frightened in all the millenia of her existance.