"Go, go, go, go!" He yelled, passing her at a dead run. The blonde girl took one look at what pursued him and leaped after her companion.
"What, you couldn't disable the drive quietly?" She groused as they increased the lead on their pursuers. "Did you have to invite the whole crew for tea?"
"Less talking, more running!" He snapped grumpily. "It's not as simple as pulling off a distributor cap, you know!"
"A what?" She asked as she passed him. Angry growls from behind him inspired the man to catch up to his companion.
"You know—motor cars? Don't you know anything about engines?" He gasped. "Here! In here." He grabbed her arm and forcefully spun her through the door. Skidding to a stop he slapped the switch and watched as the hatch slide shut in the bulbous green faces of their many pursuers. The largest screamed in rage. The man hastily shorted out the door switch with an instrument drawn from his pocket.
"Ha!" The man shouted in triumph. "Try getting through that you half-witted—"
A tremendous blow from the other side caused a huge dent to appear in the metal hatch. Another followed in rapid succession.
"Ah. Yes. That's not good."
He spun around, running toward his impatient companion who was standing beside a blue wooden box.
"You really shouldn't taunt the monsters, Doctor." She said, grinning.
"Right. Don't want to overstay our welcome. We'll just be off then, shall we?" He said, fishing a key from his waistcoat pocket. He opened the door to the blue box and they scrambled inside.
The girl paused in the doorway, one hand ready to slam it shut. She calmly watched a massively clawed green fist punch completely through the battered metal hatch, then rip it free and hurl it aside with a deafening clang. An eight foot tall nightmare stepped through the opening and glared at her with large expressionless black eyes.
"Old fat spider, sitting in a tree! Attercop, attercop, can't catch me!"
Laughing she slammed the wooden door and threw the latch. Then she calmly walked down the ramp to join her companion at the large console that dominated the thirty foot round chamber they stood in.
"I thought you said not to taunt the monsters, Rose." His eyes were twinkling.
"I just couldn't resist." She answered, laughing.
"Fun, isn't it?" The man was throwing switches, moving around the console with haste but not panic.
"Now, let's put a little distance between us and our large angry hosts. Then I'll put a call into Raxacoricofallapatorius to collect our friends and we're done and dusted."
"It still blows my mind. This bunch are Slitheen, just like that lot in London." The blonde girl said, leaning back against the console.
"Yeah, so?" Her companion asked distractedly as he pumped what looked like a bicycle pump mounted to the console. In fact, she knew it was a bicycle pump.
"Well, they were the last of the Slitheen, right? And then Mickey blew them sky high with that missile—along with Downing Street, yet here we are now with this lot and you tell me they're the parents or grandparents of the berks we clobbered in London—and they don't know us from Adam."
"Time machine." He said, smirking. Then he frowned and kicked the console. "Come on old girl, don't be stubborn. Ah!"
The column in the console's middle started to rise and fall and the distinctive growling groan of the TARDIS taking off made the two of them relax.
"Ok, here we go…" He busied himself typing a message on the laptop almost organically fastened haphazardly to the console. With a flourish, he hit the Enter key and drummed his fingers, waiting. It didn't take long, and he grinned when he read it.
"Right. That's sorted then." The Doctor said happily. "Message sent and acknowledged; the Raxacoricofallapatorians are sending a pair of police corvettes to collect the Slitheen. Be here in a couple of weeks."
"So! Where to now?" He beamed at the girl.
"Hang on, a couple of weeks? What's to keep these bloody nutters from doing a runner while the coppers are having a nice cuppa?" Rose protested.
"This." The Doctor pulled a large gleaming crystal and silver ball from his pockets. Wires trailed from it forlornly.
"What's that then?" She demanded quirking an eyebrow.
"It's their dimensional instability transduction coil." The Doctor said proudly. Rose looked at him in blank incomprehension.
He rolled his eyes. "It's their distributor cap."
"Riiighhtt." Rose droned. "So you flummoxed their warp drive, what about their impulse engines?"
He looked at her, clearly annoyed. "The Slitheen use a hyperdrive Rose. Completely different principle. And they aren't impulse engines they're reactionless thrusters. Where did you learn about spaceships anyway?"
"Star Trek." She said. "So why can't they leg it with these reactionless thruster thingies?"
"Strictly local stuff. Sure, they could get to Mars maybe, or try to hide in the asteroid belt, but they're stuck in the Solar system, and they don't dare go back to Earth, not with those trigger-happy lunatics royally pissed off and ready to blast anything remotely alien. Those corvettes won't have any trouble nabbing 'em."
"Serves 'em right. The Slitheen were trying to blow up Earth. Again. Wait, is it "again" when this is the first go-round?" Rose crinkled her forehead in puzzlement.
"Close enough." The Doctor said off-handedly. "English really isn't suited for time travel. And speaking of, right about now old Skon should be waking up to the pickle we've put him in."
"Well, you did give him a chance to run." Rose pointed out. "Maybe someday an alien menace will actually listen to you."
"I wouldn't count—"
"This is Skon Lor-Kip Almarka-Bar Slitheen. I would speak with the Doctor."
"Right on time." The Doctor thumbed a switch made from an antique brass doorknob.
"Skon, my old monster. What can I do for you?"
"You can return the Slitheen property you stole from us." The gravelly voice said angrily. "You have already ruined our business dealings in this sector, return the transduction coil and we will leave peacefully."
"I'm afraid I can't do that, Skon." The Doctor turned serious. "There are two shiploads of police on their way here and I'd hate to tell them you were rude enough to vanish after they traveled all this way. They'd be so disappointed."
"How dare you! We are the Slitheen! No one mocks us and lives!"
"Well, seeing as how your hyperdrive is so much modern art sculpture, at the moment I don't see what you think you can do about it."
The Doctor's voice darkened.
"I warned you Skon. I told you I'd stop you if you didn't leave Earth alone. You didn't. I don't do second chances anymore. Of course Earth might forgive you if you groveled a bit. No, a lot. Hang on—nope, on second thought I don't think groveling will actually help at all."
"Is that your final word, Doctor? You condemn us to death with a mere quip?"
"Pretty much, yeah. See, you made your own choices, Skon. You chose to come to Earth, you chose to try blowing up the planet and killing billions of innocent people, and you chose to ignore the chance I gave you to run. So, in the end, you chose to die."
"No, Doctor, I choose to live." The Slitheen's laughter echoed through the TARDIS control room. "You offer me two choices that lead only to death. But I choose a third option! It may also lead to the death of the Slitheen, but if so we will go down proudly. And take you with us, Doctor!"
The Slitheen laughed again, the mockery edged with mad desperation. The Doctor's expression changed. He suddenly remembered something about the Slitheen hyperdrive that he sincerely hoped Skon hadn't…
"What does he mean, Doctor?" Rose asked, all humor forgotten as she saw his expression.
"He wouldn't." The Doctor raced to a different side of the console, staring at an old oscilloscope. "He is—no, no, no! Imbecile! Cretin! You stupid green git!" The Doctor yelled over the open com channel. "Skon, you'll kill us both! It won't work, you bloody tosser."
"You spoke of choices, Doctor." The alien voice grated. "This is my choice. Goodbye, egg-stealer!"
The TARDIS tilted to one side suddenly, throwing Rose and the Doctor off their feet, skidding away from the console. There was a loud bang and smoke started pouring from the column, which seemed to be trying to seize up. The steady hum of the TARDIS was replaced with a fingernails-on-chalkboard screeching noise, and a bone-jarring vibration that made Rose's skin crawl.
"What's happening, Doctor?" She yelled.
"He's trying to use the TARDIS vortex field to jump start his hyperdrive!" The Doctor shouted back as he clawed up the steep slope toward the console. "But it can't work! The Slitheen's hyperdrive isn't compatible with the space-time vortex! Even if the hyperdrive fires, he'll be torn to shreds by the Spiral—and so will we!"
He began to frantically manipulate the controls. "I've got to shut down the TARDIS and force us to materialize without—oh bloody hell."
A deep toned bell began to ring. The sound was profound and somehow just as ominous as the harsh buzzing of every part of the TARDIS. Rose could tell the bell meant big trouble by the way the Doctor's face went gray and slack.
He turned to her and the look on his face scared her worse than the bell or the infernal screeching.
"I'm so sorry, Rose. I've killed us both." He said, just before a blinding light filled her eyes and she fell into blackness.