A/N: Thank you to my two reviewers ~ Harlequin Shadow and Qwerty!

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Chapter Four

The Doctor pulled a lever and all of a sudden they were twisted and pulled in odd directions, and landed five minutes later with a bump. Rory unclenched her hand from the bar she had been so tightly gripping. Her drink was all over the floor although it vanished through the holes within seconds. Lorelai picked herself from up off the floor and stood unsteadly. The Doctor grinned at both of them. He strolled to the door and opened it wide. Bright sunshine beamed in and he looked up at the buildings that surrounded the Tardis.

The Doctor led the two women outside and said, " Welcome to Cardiff."

" This is Cardiff?" Rory asked him, looking at the rough water ahead of them, the men in extra sharp suits marching past and the car zooming past in mid air. " Are you sure?"

" I didn't say it was still 2003." He told them brightly. The two Gilmore Girls looked around them with shock.

" What year is it?"

The Doctor strolled over to a street vendor and paid for a newspaper. He read the date and walked back to them holding it out to Rory.

" You're kidding me? 2084? That is so cool. Okay, you have officially proved me wrong." Rory was amazed. She had thought it wasn't possible, and she had been shown it was. The first person that jumped into her head was Jess. He would have loved this. She thought he would adapt easily to time travelling, just as she was about to. People with extensive imaginations should be able to anyway, no problems. Too bad he'd left without a trace. Too bad they didn't talk at all anymore. Just too bad. She also wondered if someone had written a futuristic book like 1984 but for this very year.

" Well, my group of friends minus Captain Jack will all be gone by now. Unless they're all over a hundred years old and still working in the same place."

" Why minus your friend Captain Jack?" Lorelai asked him.

" Ah, I told you he was an alien, right?" He asked them, and after receiving nods from both he continued, " Well, Jack doesn't age. He's not able to. Even if he had wanted to."

" That's kind of sad. What if he had fallen in love?"

" He has, many times over. But he was never able to stay with them for very long. I can't age either."

" That's really very sad then. Have you ever fallen in love?"

" I have. Right, no more depressing conversation. Let's explore!" He told them, locking the Tardis behind them and strolling ahead, knowing exactly where he was going. He had known where that conversation had been going. If it had gone any further, he would have thought of Rose and his double who would undoubtably be in an alernate universe right now and may not be still alive. He didn't want to even think about it. He loved her, but couldn't have her. The ultimate Romeo and Juliet, alien style.

The Doctor took them further towards the harbour and towards where the entrance to the Torchwood vault was eighty odd years before. Things really had changed, but the entrance probably would not have. It was a secret entrance, nobody had known about it and probably still didn't. Flying cars may be all the rage now but he didn't think the contact with alien life had really happened fully as yet.

" I know we're refueling here, but will this be our only trip into the future?" Rory asked him.

" Not if you don't want it to be. We could travel for years and still get you back in 2003 on time."

" That is very cool." Lorelai told him. Scary too, she thought. It would be very strange to go back to the same time after years of travelling, being seen again by Sookie and Luke as only having been away for a month or so, whereas they would have really been away for years. She realised that as much as she would love to travel back and forth like this for years, she would miss those two too much. Even if she did have Rory with her. At least that was a big plus.

Years were a long time to Rory too. Imagine going two years without seeing Lane or Sookie or Luke or Grandma and Grandpa or Star's Hollow as a whole. And she would love to see Jess again, just to ask if that had really been him on the phone at graduation and also to ask why he left so suddenly. She just wanted to know. She and her mum had kind of skipped over the whole subject of Jess. Her mother never liked him, so she couldn't say any positive things about him. She didn't know why she was thinking about him so suddenly today. She had had so much to distract her in the past month or so just by exploring Europe. Maybe it was because her mother had mentioned him earlier by having a girls name. Earlier. Wow, that was mentioned something that was said eighty-one years ago in the past. Quite a long time ago!

" Right," The Doctor was saying, " The entrance was just around here. You would stand in a specific place and just disappear into the hidden vault below us. Now where was it... Right, I have an idea, wander around and if one of us suddenly disappears, we'll know where the entrance is. Just watch out where everyone else is as you go."

" Great idea," Rory thought. " If I suddenly go missing and nobody sees me, then I'm gone forever." She said this and suddenly her world went black.

Lorelai turned around to see that her daughter had indeed disappeared. She screamed for the Doctor and together they scanned the area where she had last been for the hidden entrance.

It wasn't an intense sort of black. Not the never ending black. She was definitely still awake and floating down an invisible lift towards a light at the bottom. The door pinged and swung open at the bottom to show an open room, with a stairway going up one side and a set of computers at the other. She stepped forward into the room, and as her foot touched the floor, the lights came on as bright as ever and an alarm sounded loudly. Rory covered her ears and watched as three men stepped towards her with guns of a kind she'd never seen before.

" I'm unarmed!" She screamed at them through the alarm. " And I'm with the Doctor!" She thought this might help, one of these men must be the Captain Jack that the Doctor had mentioned only minutes before.

And as if that were some sort of charm, one of the men clicked his fingers, and the alarm stopped. One of them stepped towards her, still armed.

" If you know the Doctor, where is he?"

Rory decided that to not answer him would not be an advantage to her. " He's up on the ground, up there somewhere, most likely trying to discover where I disappeared to."

Suddenly, the alarms sounded again as a second lift to her right opened and out stepped the Doctor and a very worried looking Lorelai. She spotted her daughter and smiled.

" Hey there sweetie." Her mum said, before looking at the men with the guns and started to look worried again.

The Doctor headed towards the three men, shook the hand of one of them, and they put their guns away. They apologised to the Doctor and the women for the guns, they were only a precaution as they hadn't had unexpected visitors in many years.

" Security must be tight then." Lorelai quipped, seeing as there were only three of them and not an entire military unit down here.

" It is, very tight. And you are..." The man who had shook the Doctors hand asked her.

" Lorelai Gilmore, from 2003, at your service." She thought that she might just pop that bit of information in, as if it mattered.

" Well, thank you Lorelai. My name is Captain Jack, from many different years. I can't really remember all of them." Jack was extremely handsome, with a charming, winning smile. He definitely won her over at once. Pity he was an alien and didn't age. He turned towards Rory, and asked her the same question.

" Rory Gilmore, of the same year."

" Doctor, you've picked yourself up a team of sisters. Very nice." Lorelai and Rory looked at him and chuckled.

" Did I say something wrong?" He asked.

" No, nothing at all." Rory told him. " Except that Lorelai is my mother."

" You are kidding me. There is no way you two are... unless..."

" And he's got it." Lorelai told Rory.

" Undoubtably. Now, we've introduced ourselves, are these two your bodyguards or something?" Rory asked Jack.

" Nope. This is Kwan and this is Jacob. They work here with me. Computer technicians. And very advanced at that." Jack boasted.

" I would expect so, seeing as I haven't a computer or the internet in over eighty years supposedly." Rory told him.

" You'll get used to that time jump. It takes a while, but you'll catch up fine."

" I hope so."

" So, catch me up on what you've been doing since I last saw you." The Doctor asked.

" I saw you only a couple of years ago, but you might not have reached that yet. Jumping over time does that to you, " he told Lorelai, who was looking confused.

" Still, bring me up to speed."

" It's been a bit dull without the Dalek's to lighten things up, but we're had our fair share of bad guys and we've saved the planet almost every week. It's a tough job but someone's got to do it."

" And that's you?" Rory asked Jack.

" That's us, that is, when the Doctor's not around. He's very good at finding trouble and clearing it up. That'll make your trip to Cardiff exciting at the very least, won't it"
Kwan answered for him.

" I'm sure it will." Rory replied.

" Do you want to see our array of eclectic beings down in our zoo?" Jacob asked her. He was young, not much older than her and seemed to be taking a definite shine to her. He was kind of cute too, she thought, in that modern futuristic kind of way that was starting to appeal to her.

" Do you two also want the guided tour?" Jack asked the Doctor and Lorelai. Lorelai said she's see it another time and let Rory have some alone time with someone her own age. Not one hour in a new place and her mum was trying to set her up with some bloke. Bloke, she liked that word, very British. Goes with bloody and skint too.

" Eh, okay." Rory told him.

Rory was led down two sets of stairs where Jacob unlocked a thick metal door with an old looking key. In the first room she was led into there were masks and suits and boxes of food.

" This is also our storage unit. So Rory, is this your first time in the future? You seem to be pretty okay with it."

" First time. Started only today. I think it was today anyway."

" It does get confusing. I haven't done it that much, not a lot of opportunities now. But I'm happy where I am."

" So are you from this future or another one?"

" I've travelled, but I was born in 2061, how about you?"

" 1985, I'm afraid. I think that makes me a bit older than you than I'd imagined." She joked.

" Funny." He told her as he led her down more steps. " Not long now."

" Okay," he said, having reached the bottom and was opening another door. " This is an Ood." He said pointing to a white, almost skeltal creature with a large oval head, big eyes and who was holding a red bulb in his hand. " That is his communicator. If the bulb was white, he would be good. But it's red, so he's a bit dangerous."

" So is he in a sort of prison?"

" Yes, he'll eventually be set free when he's done his time, but he'll be placed back on his own planet and won't be allowed to leave there. No chance of him returning to earth, you see."

" Okay. This is all very new to me. The Doctor has certainly proved me wrong more than once today."

" What were you wrong about?"

" Time travel being possible and aliens existing on earth." Rory told him.

" Happy with the results?"

" Yeah, it's not bad."

Meanwhile, upstairs, Lorelai was drinking some sort of futuristic liquid almost like coffee, good enough anyway, and listening to the Doctor and Captain Jack reminice about their mutual aquaintances and travelling companions of the past few years.

" Donna was very straight forward and straight talking. We had such a laugh. She was such a good person. It was a shame I had to leave her like that." He had just finished telling Lorelai about the Doctor Donna combination and all about Donna. She thought it was such a pity but hoped that Donna was okay now without the Doctor by her side.

" I saw her for only a few minutes after she changed back to what she was before, gossipy and loud." He gave them a grim smile at the memory as he remembered what her grandpa had said about her relationship with the Doctor... 'She's better with you...'

Rory had been downstairs in the dungeon like corridor with Jacob now for about ten minutes, and she had already seen many disgusting looking creatures that she never would have imagined and a few which she was sure would give her nightmares in the future. Jacob noticed Rory's look of distaste.

" Had enough?" Rory nodded, and Jacob led her through another door, where there was a lift back upstairs to the base.

" More than enough, " She finally replied as she followed him into the lift.

" You'll probably see more creatures like these on your trip with the Doctor. It all depends what year you end up in."

" Where did you go travelling?" Rory asked him.

" To the past actually, with Captain Jack. We were testing out a time machine we found. It was pretty cool. We went back about four hundred years, to the Jacobite era,
where a man named Charles Edward Stewart needed a bit of help with the king of that time. Nothing a little alien magic couldn't help."

" That's cool. But I thought you weren't allowed to change the past, in case of changing the future."

" We didn't. Apparently that was to happen all along, the history books just changed it a little and said that a woman helped him. I don't think Captain Jack liked being compared to a woman."

" Probably not." They had reached the base again, where Rory was welcomed back with a cup of coffee. Just what she needed.

" So where's a good place to get something to eat around here?" Rory asked the men.

" Good point. We were going to have dinner after the show, but then we never made it to the show, did we?" Rory and her mother discussed this together.

" So you're hungry?" Jack asked them. " I guess we could go above ground to a cafe somewhere."

" I could totally go for blueberry pancakes without the fruit." Lorelai mused.

" Is that even possible?" The Doctor asked her.

" It is if you know where to look." Rory told him. Already her mouth was watering at the prospect of pancakes, as she was really very hungry.

Captain Jack led them to the back door, and out another elevator. Although this time it was really quite visible where they came out as their elevator stopped in a building's elevator shaft, bumping another empty elevator to move a floor up.

" Clever." Rory commented.

" So what are you in a mood for, apart from pancakes I mean?" Captain Jack asked them. " Food hasn't really changed in the past eighty years or so, there's just a lot more variations of the same things."

" We have very large appetites for women of our size, or so we've been told." Rory told him.

" How do you mean?" Kwon asked. He was a very shy guy, but he had his moments of curiousity.

" Like ordering one of everything off a menu and eating half of it." Lorelai replied shortly.

" Depends on the size of the menu too." Rory chimed in.

" How about that cafe there?" Lorelai asked. She had just spotted a sign outside that said 'Buffet'.

" All you can eat buffet? I'm totally in!" Her daughter answered. The girls headed towards the cafe, followed by the men.

After a full Welsh breakfast among other things, the girls were finally energised and had full, contented stomachs.

" I say we remember this place for when we're hungry again." Rory said. " If we have to come back to Cardiff again that is."

" Are you ready for an adventure now?" The Doctor asked the young women. " We've refueled the Tardis, our stomachs and our caffeine supply. I think it's time to go."

Captain Jack stepped forward first and shook the hands of everyone. " It was great to see you again, Doctor, and girls, it was my pleasure having you."

" Well thanks very much. If we have time, we'll try to pop back before out flight back to the states. Although you might not know us in 2003." Lorelai said, not unkindly.

Kwon and Jacob both kissed the hands of Rory and Lorelai. I guess chivalry's not dead yet, Rory thought, and smiled.

Lorelai wrote their Star's Hollow address down on a napkin from the cafe and told them that they should come and visit any time. After summer 2003 though, she told them,
as otherwise they would still be strangers.

The Doctor, Lorelai and Rory hopped into the Tardis, and shut the door, still waving goodbyes.

" So, past or future?" He asked them, as he pulled a lever and the Tardis jumped into life. Soon, the Tardis disappeared from the Cardiff docks and to the past.

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