Hello, everyone! Yes, it has been a long, long time, but I am back! This will be a full-length epic crossover, going from Rose until partway through Series 4, with elements of other Arrowverse shows and maybe a dash of DC comics. I hope to continue it after that as well. A few points:
1: This is Barry at twenty years old-as such, he does not yet have the Speed Force. He will be getting it sooner than in canon. When? How? That's for me to know, and you to find out.
B. No, 2: I don't have a beta reader; if anyone is interested, please PM me.
3, or C: Thanks to Nimbus Llewelyn for advice and encouragement. He's fantastic. Once you're done here, go read his masterpiece Child of the Storm.
And, finally, coming in a very low 4, or D, or that little iv thing people use in footnotes: Enjoy!
All in all, this had not been one of Rose Tyler's better days. After getting attacked by plastic shop-window dummies, having her workplace blown up, meeting a nutty conspiracy theorist, and then watching her boyfriend's head get pulled clean off, she had pretty much reached her limit. Apparently, though, others hadn't, because Not-Mickey's head just grinned at the Doctor from under his arm.
"Don't think that's gonna stop me."
"How about this?" asked a voice, and the replica of her boyfriend staggered backwards as someone swung a chair into his side. It was a young man, maybe a year or two older than her, with brunette hair and a quick grin. As Not-Mickey, whatever the hell it was, staggered, the young man threw the chair, knocking him into a nearby table.
"Oh my God," he breathed, looking at Rose's friend. "You're the Doctor, aren't you? Can I have your autograph?"
"Not now!" the Doctor snapped as Rose lunged and pulled the fire alarm, yelling for everyone to get out. "With me!"
Cradling the head under his arm, they raced through the kitchens and out the back, where the other guy stopped in awe.
"Yeah, it's an old police box, come on!" Rose yelled as she turned towards the gates, but her friend didn't follow. Instead, he turned to the Doctor.
"You're…you really are the Doctor."
"Yep, that's me. Hello," he waved, heading towards the box.
"We need to get out of here! Use your tube thing!" she called. How could they be so casual?
"Sonic screwdriver," the Doctor said as he unlocked the phone booth.
"Use it!"
"Nah. Tell you what, let's go in here."
"Come on!" the other guy called, beaming like someone told him Christmas had come early. "This is gonna be amazing!"
"You can't hide inside a wooden box! Doctor!" Rose yelled irritably. She tried the gates one more time, and when that still failed, as Not-Mickey began to pound through the metal door, she ran inside the box.
Inside, the other guy was babbling away at a million miles an hour: "…And I've been looking around throughout history, and I joined this fan group of yours, too, can I have your autograph?"
"Maybe later," the Doctor promised, looking beyond him to Rose, who was gazing around in awe. "And don't worry about the duplicate; the assembled hordes of Genghis Khan couldn't get through those doors, and believe me, they tried. I can use the head to track the signal back to the source. Now. Where do you wanna start?"
"Um…the inside's bigger than the outside," Rose began.
"Yes."
"It's alien."
"Yup."
"Are you alien?"
"Yes."
"It's called the TARDIS," the other guy said, almost jumping up and down with excitement. "T-A-R-D-I-S. Stands for Time and Relative Dimensions in Space."
"Dimension," the Doctor corrected him.
"Really? I thought it was dimensions."
The man crossed his arms. "'Scuse me, whose ship is this?"
"Sorry."
"Okay. Just who are you?" Rose asked.
"Sorry. My name's Barry. Barry Allen."
"Rose Tyler. Nice to meet you." They shook hands, and she blinked, sniffled, shook her head. "So how do you know him?"
"I've been interested in the impossible since I was a kid," he explained, and she noticed that he sounded somewhat American. "You investigate the impossible long enough, sooner or later everyone finds him."
The Doctor shrugged. "Sounds about right. Wait, Barry Allen? Did you say Barry Allen?"
He leaned forward, shoulders hunched. "Yeah, why?"
The Doctor produced his sonic screwdriver and ran it up and down Barry's body, then examined the results closely. "Oh, no reason. Just, ah, just checkin' to make sure you're not another duplicate. Can never be too careful."
"Did they kill him?" Rose turned to the older man. "Mickey. Did-did they kill Mickey? Is he dead?"
"Oh," the Doctor said, startled. "I hadn't thought of that."
"He's my boyfriend," Rose yelled. "You-you pulled off his head. They copied him, and you didn't even think. And now you're just gonna let him melt!"
"Melt?" the Doctor asked, and spun around to see that the plastic head was indeed shrinking away.
"No, no, no!" he cried, and rushed to the console, yelling that he had to follow the signal before it disappeared entirely. The central column moved up and down and a wheezing, groaning noise filled the air before he ran out again.
"You can't go out there, it's not safe!" Rose yelled, but he ignored her.
"This is an alien spaceship," Barry explained to her, running a hand along the console. "I don't think we're in the same place anymore."
He peeked his head out, then turned to grin at her. "Nope! We're safe. Come on!"
Rose followed him out, noting that they'd moved to the north bank of the Thames.
"What about that headless thing?" she asked the Doctor. "It's still on the loose."
"Melted with the head."
"And the original? I mean, her boyfriend?" Barry asked, jamming his hands in his pockets as he looked around.
"Not sure. They might have needed him alive to maintain the copy."
"Might?" Rose exploded. The Doctor sighed.
"Okay, probably. Now come on, we need to find that transmitter."
He wandered off, and Rose and Barry followed behind.
"So what's your story?" she asked.
Barry shrugged. "Not much to tell, really. I live in the States, came over here to study abroad at St Cedd's in Cambridge for a year. I went out to the restaurant, and I saw that plastic guy, I mean your boyfriend, I mean the plastic copy of your boyfriend…anyway, yeah. There we are. You?"
"I met him when he blew up my shop," she told him, and Barry winced sympathetically.
"So what's a police public call box?" she asked the Doctor, brushing the outside of the…ship? It vibrated, not unpleasantly, under her touch.
"It's a telephone box from the 1950s," he explained. "It's a disguise."
"Actually, it's always like that," Barry blurted. "Look through history, you'll find it all over the place. Tapestries, engraving, cave paintings…"
"Yeah, I know," she cut him off. "I met this guy called Clive. Anyway," she addressed the Doctor. "How come you sound like you're from the North?"
"Lots of planets have a north!" he replied, sounding offended.
"Is that why you used to be Scottish?" Barry asked.
"What?"
"Yeah, I read this account. England, 1651. A tall, dapper Scotsman named the Doctor closed a portal to Hell and saved a man from the gallows."
The Doctor looked at him blankly. "Nope, doesn't ring a bell. Maybe I haven't done it yet."
"Anyway!" Rose interjected. "Listen, this, this living plastic. What's it got against us?"
"Nothing," the Doctor shrugged, explaining that all of the toxins and dioxins in the air made Earth a perfect feeding ground…which would be a problem if he didn't have some kind of "anti-plastic." Barry looked like he was bursting with questions, but the Doctor waved a hand and started going on about finding a transmitter.
"What does it look like?" Rose asked.
"Like a transmitter," the Doctor said, unhelpfully. "Round and massive, somewhere slap bang in the middle of London," he continued as he led the way to the bank of the Thames. He turned back to face them, the London Eye lighting up the night behind him. "A huge circular metal structure, like a dish, like a wheel."
Barry raised his eyebrows at Rose, who nodded back at him.
"Radial," the Doctor continued obliviously. "Close to where we're standing. Must be completely invisible."
"Must be," Barry said sarcastically as Rose nodded towards the Doctor.
"What?"
She nodded again, and he turned to look over his shoulder, and then back at them. "What?"
He threw another look over his shoulder.
"What is it, what?"
Rose sighed, and Barry pointed. The Doctor spun around once more, then looked back at them.
"Oh," he grinned. "Fantastic!"
Together, the three of them ran across Westminster Bridge, as the Doctor mused that everything plastic in the world was just waiting to become a weapon.
"Didn't it invade Earth before?" Barry asked. "Back in the '70s or so?"
"Something like that," the Doctor agreed.
Without much trouble, they found where the Consciousness was hidden, and entered. Below was a sight Barry knew he would never forget: A massive vat of an orange-yellow thing, like liquid plastic, which rippled and flowed like a pool of angry lava. As the Doctor approached and began negotiations, Barry followed Rose down to where a young black man, apparently Rose's boyfriend Mickey, crouched and whimpered. After a round of introductions, they watched the Doctor try and get the Nestenes to, as he put it, "shunt off," but it failed when they discovered the anti-plastic and the TARDIS. It panicked, and began the invasion, blue-white energy flickering and crackling across its surface. Rose, Mickey, and Barry ran over to the TARDIS, but it was locked.
"We've got to do something!" Barry shouted, looking down at the shop window dummies holding the Doctor. "Rose, Mickey, either of you guys got something?"
Rose exhaled. "I've got no A-Levels, no job, no future…"
She grabbed an axe.
"But I tell you what I have got. Jericho Street Junior School under 7s gymnastic team. I've got the bronze!"
She broke a chain away from the wall and swung on it, knocking the two dummies off the catwalk. The anti-plastic fell out of the second's hand, and the vial tumbled down into the Consciousness, which howled and began to turn blue as the anti-plastic did its work.
"Now we're in trouble," the Doctor said as everything started to explode. He and Rose ran back up to them, and the Doctor unlocked the door. Barry pushed Mickey and Rose into the TARDIS, then followed himself as a fireball roared up behind him and debris began to rain down.
"Fat lot of good you were," Rose chided her boyfriend affectionately as they staggered out of the TARDIS. Barry followed her more slowly.
"Nestene Consciousness? Easy," the Doctor snapped his fingers, smiling.
"You were useless in there," Rose pointed out. "You'd be dead if it wasn't for me."
"Yes, I would. Thank you," the alien admitted. He paused. "You could, you know…come with me."
"Oh, yeah! Please! Thank you, thank you, thank you!" Barry almost yelled, and all but ran into the TARDIS. Grinning, the Doctor winked at him, then turned to Rose and raised an eyebrow.
"Yeah, I can't," she shook her head, holding onto Mickey.
"Okay," the Doctor said. "See you around."
"Bye then," she waved. The Doctor nodded sharply, pulled the TARDIS door shut, and with a grinding of ancient engines, the ship disappeared into thin air, bound for new adventures.
Please leave a review! Let me know what you liked, what you didn't, and so on. Do note, however, that flames will be ignored, as will reviews that consist of nothing but "please do this or that!" Questions, comments, even thoughtful suggestions are always appreciated.
Oh, yes, and Rose won't be traveling with the Doctor. He now has a companion, so he has no particular desire to go back for her. She'll just be another one in a long line of potential might-have-beens, along with Jago and Litefoot, Sally Sparrow, Madame de Pompadour, Bruce Wayne, etc. Also, I severely dislike her so-called "character development" in Series 2, but without going into a rant, suffice to say she will NOT be appearing.
