A/N: Alrighty! Here is the final chapter. Enjoy. EDIT: not sure what went wrong, but some reason this chapter was coming up as an error, so I tried to add it again. Here goes...
When I squeezed the trigger of that gorgeous Tesla gun, it hummed with electricity before unleashing a massive bolt of lightning that cracked through the air and struck the thug square in the chest. His body shook violently as tendrils of electricity coiled around him. I released the trigger and the bolt of lightning vanished. I was speechless as I watched the man, now with a smoking burned hole in his chest, collapse twitching to the floor.
The other henchman looked down on us with a cold, expressionless stare and aimed his gun hand. "Shoot him!" Mike cried and shook my shoulder in excited panic. I aimed and pulled the trigger, watching in astonishment as the lightning gripped onto the thug's chest and jolted him down to the floor. I took my finger off the trigger and stared wide eyed at the Tesla gun.
"Woo hoo!" Mike shouted in excitement, which of course, shocked me out of my reverie of the wonderful antique weapon. He jumped to his feet and yanked me up to mine. Mike wore a wide, happy-to-be-alive grin and so did I. "I can't believe that worked!" he exclaimed as he wrapped his arms around me and I joined him in a happy dance of victory. "I told you this gun was real," I laughed.
We stopped dancing, took a step back, and cleared our throats. "Well, I guess I can't make fun of your steampunk crap anymore," he said with a smile. "It's ok," I said, "I can't make fun of your spy junk anymore either." We started laughing, only to be interrupted by a very British, very female voice calling out, "Oiy! You two!"
Mike and I looked over the crate we were still behind and saw the Doctor standing next the police box with an expectant look. Rose, who wasn't gagged anymore, stood next to him with the same expression. Mike rushed over to Rose and started working on the knots in the rope that held her wrists. I hurried to the Doctor and noticed the boss man was lying unconscious at their feet. The cattle prod rested some twenty feet away. Apparently they took our grand entrance as a good time to take that guy out.
"Allo, I'm the Doctor," he introduced himself in a cheery voice. "Thanks for the rescue. That was brilliant!" the Doctor continued, "Now, if you fetch my jacket from over there, I have something that'll take these right off." He shook his chains and motioned toward the office with a friendly smile. "Sure", I said and jogged off toward the office. I found myself pondering the strangeness of the Doctor. He was several inches taller than me and his spiky hair made him seem even taller. Confidence radiated off him almost as if it were a tangible substance, and his eyes set in his friendly face seemed to be…timeless.
In the office, the only jacket in the room was laying across a paper littered desk. The jacket was the same brown pinstripe as the Doctor's pants, so it had to be his. I ran back to the Doctor and saw Mike crouched next to the boss on the floor checking for a pulse. "Alive and out cold," he said with a grin turning glossy eyed as he looked at Rose, who was now untied. Thankfully, the Doctor seemed oblivious to that look and instead was rather happy to see his jacket.
"Hold it up there," he said to me. I did as he asked and he fished around an inside pocket, sticking his tongue out the corner of his mouth in concentration. His face brightened and he pulled out a large metal pen looking thing with an end that lit up with a blue light when he turned it on. He touched the glowing end to the cuffs on his wrists and they opened up. My mouth fell open as he shook off the wrist cuffs that clattered to the floor and bent over to take care of the ankle cuffs. "Ah, much better," the Doctor said with a satisfied smile kicking the chains away from him, took his jacket from my hands, and looked me over as if he were trying to figure me out.
"Say, is that a Tesla Electro-Stun gun?" he asked with curiosity and pointed to my coat pocket. I held up the Tesla gun and nodded with a proud smile. "Oh! That is a beauty," the Doctor said and focused on the gun in fascination, "I knew there were two of them, that old devil. He told me he made only one and I believed him since the other one is in a museum on Meridian Alpha, in this very year as we speak no less."
The Doctor spoke like he knew Tesla personally, and I stood silent a moment trying to make it fit into the world I thought I knew. "Nice choice, by the way," he continued, "using a gun like that on robots. Good thinking. The only thing I don't get is," he leaned toward me with a raised eyebrow and the kind of look a man that always gets what he wants, "who are you and what did you mean by 'your police box'?"
"Oh uhh well," I struggled for words when the Doctor's focus turned on me all the sudden, "I'm Brian Johnson and this is my best friend Mike Brewer," I said as I stuffed the Tesla gun in a pocket, "and I bought that police box at an antique store. These guys stole it, so I followed them here."
Rose came around and stood next the Doctor. "Thanks for helping us," she said in a sweet voice and a pretty smile. I could feel my face flush and all I could muster was a small smile. "Robots?" I managed as my eyes wandered over the boss man lying on the floor out cold.
"No, not him. He's an alien," the Doctor narrowed his eyes, "You didn't know his thugs were robots? Who are you again?"
I glanced at Mike, who had puppy eyes for Rose, which meant he was going to be useless from here on out. I raised my hands and said, "Brian. Look. Okay. There is clearly a lot of confusion here, so why don't I just tell you what happened and we can go from there?" Rose and the Doctor agreed and I told them my tale starting from when I bought the police box from the antique store. The Doctor's face was quite animated throughout my story and Rose pinched him quiet a couple of times when he wanted to interrupt to ask questions. I could tell that she had eyes only for him. Boy, is Mike going to look like an idiot later.
"So, we kick down the door with tasers ablazing and here we are," I finished.
"Wow," the Doctor said incredulously, "You really had to no idea what was really going on here, did you?" I shook my head. "That is just brilliant!" he exclaimed happily, "That's what I love about you humans, unpredictably and creatively brave."
"Well, umm, do I get to have an idea of what's going on?" I asked sheepishly at first but continued to blurt out, "I'd like to know why you talk like you're not human? Are you some sort of space traveler? But why did he call you a Time Lord? What does that mean? And why is that police box called a TARDIS?"
The Doctor puffed out his cheeks and ran his fingers through his hair with a look like he was deciding what exactly to tell me. "Oh, just tell him," Rose said, giving him a playful push on his shoulder.
"Alright," the Doctor said at last, "I'm an alien called a Time Lord. Rose here is human from London, uhh, here on Earth. And this," he gestured to the police box, "is my ship, a TARDIS. Not just a space ship but a time ship, and that's why Maroth there," he nodded toward the boss still out cold on the floor, "wanted it so badly. He's an alien too. Different species. See, Rose and I came to Seattle to see the sights, the Space Needle, Pikes Market, ride the Duck. You know, touristy stuff. Had no idea Maroth crashed his ship in the Sound back around New Year's. Surprised you didn't notice. The local news did do a story about seeing strange lights in the sky that night. Anyway, Maroth being a criminal around a few galaxies knew that if he stayed on one planet for long, he'd get caught. So, when he saw me, he knew my ship was close by. The rest I think you can figure out."
I nodded and mentally absorbed what I was hearing. Amazingly, I found that I could accept it pretty easily. After all, it did explain a lot of things about the world. "Well," the Doctor said as he tucked in his shirt and slipped into his jacket, "I'd like to thank you both again for the rescue. Brilliant, you know. You should be proud. But Rose and I have to be off to the Shadow Proclamation to drop this bloke off."
"What about the, er, robots?" I asked.
"Oh them?" the Doctor smiled mischievously, "Harmless. The military will probably cart them off to some secret base and be stumped over them for years. Gotta keep em on their toes." He pulled a key out of his pocket and unlocked the police box, though he didn't open the door all the way. He picked up Maroth by the arms and dragged him through the door, disappearing inside. I tried to see inside and caught a peek at something gold and glowing turquoise before the door closed.
Rose stayed outside and Mike was standing close to her asking her out for coffee for I think the fourth time. She, of course, refused as nicely as she could, but she did give him a peck kiss on the cheek in thanks for his help. That did it in for Mike, he was speechless. Didn't take long for him to look like an idiot, did it?
She walked up to me and took my hand in gentle handshake. "It was a pleasure meeting you, Brian," she said, "You never got to see inside that police box, did you?"
I shook my head, "The locksmith was coming out on Tuesday."
"Rose!" the Doctor called leaning half way out the box door and looked at his wrist even though he wasn't wearing a watch, "We gotta go."
She dashed over to him, grabbed the collar of his jacket pulling him close and whispered something in his ear. The Doctor smiled and nodded, then winked at us and disappeared back inside the blue box. Rose looked over her shoulder at us and said, "Stick around for a minute. You'll like this bit." With a smile, she stepped into the box and closed the door. Mike stood next to me and we kept on our eyes on the strange blue police box. The light on its roof flashed and there was a grinding swooshing noise that pulsed slowly from the box as right there before our very eyes, it vanished.
"I think I'm in love," Mike whispered.
"Me too," I spoke in awe, "that is the most extraordinary blue box I have ever seen." I was smacked across the shoulder and I looked at Mike in bewilderment.
"I was talking about Rose, you idiot," he said in frustration and stalked off to the exit of the warehouse.
.
.
A couple of hours later, Mike and I sat quietly on our sofa in our living room drinking a beer. The car ride back home was silent. So much happened that it was almost too much to mentally absorb. I held the Tesla gun in my lap and still could not believe that it actually worked.
"You think we'll ever see her again?" Mike asked me with a bit of sadness in his voice.
I shrugged my shoulder and shook my head, "I don't know, Mike." I could tell he was heartbroken, but I knew he'd get over it. He's done it before. As for me, I decided that I was going to write what happened down. Maybe spin it as a sci-fi adventure, or something.
Suddenly, there was breeze that came from nowhere and the room filled with a familiar grinding swooshing noise. We stared wide eyed as the blue police box materialized right there in the middle of our living room. The door opened and out stepped Rose, followed by the Doctor. "Hello," they said at the same time.
Mike jumped to his feet. "Rose!" he said with a stupid grin. I slowly stood up trying to figure out what to say as I watched the Doctor systematically examine pieces of my steampunk collection on the nearby shelf.
"We were thinking," Rose spoke, "that since you helped us out and you never got to see inside the TARDIS, we'd show you." The Doctor sat my steampunk modified table lamp back on the end table and stood in front of the TARDIS door with a wide smile.
My face lit up. I had been dying of curiosity. I nodded and I knew I had a stupid look on my face, but I didn't care. The Doctor's smile grew wider as he pushed the door in with his hand and stepped aside. I vaguely noticed Mike peeling his eyes off Rose and joining me in staring at the enormous impossible room that lay through that door.
Mike followed me inside and we were both amazed. It was beautiful. The most beautiful thing I had ever laid eyes on. "It's like something right out of Jules Verne," I whispered to Mike and he nodded. The Doctor skipped around us to a console in the center of the room covered in buttons and switches. Rose closed the door behind us and joined the Doctor waving us over.
Mike and I approached to the console and I was fascinated by the antique-looking, decidedly steampunk, controls of this alien space ship. "So, where do you wanna go?" the Doctor asked with a sparkle of adventure in his eye.
"You mean we get to come with you?" I asked sounding quite stupefied.
"Yes!" the Doctor beamed, "Anywhere and any when! You choose."
I thought about this a moment. "Can I meet Nikola Tesla?" The Doctor laughed and nodded vigorously as he turned a dial and pulled a lever.
And so began our adventure with the Doctor and Rose in the TARDIS. I'll have to write another story for sure. Wait. Did I say adventure? I really meant adventures. Plural.
End.
A/N: Thanks for reading this story. I hoped you enjoyed it. :)