The Doctor Is In

"What's going on here?" whispered Ember, switching her confused sapphire eyes between the to bodies that lay before them. Flair said nothing, but walked cautiously towards the un-moving female's body. She had a young face. Rounded and pale except for her rosy cheeks which seemed to glow in the soft green light from the core. Her features were framed by her relatively messy blonde hair, which was spread out behind her head like a pool of yellow liquid, seeping through the small holed in the metal grid which was the floor.

She wore a tight purple top underneath a blue and light purple jacket. Her flared blue jeans covered half of her black boots, the top of which Flair could see through her jeans, which rose to just above her knees. Her chest was slowly rising and falling, the only indication that she wasn't deceased.

"They're alive..." he stated sounding surprised, "Unconscious... but alive."

"They must've been injured when this thing landed... If you can call it a landing...," said Ember, stepping carefully over them both to kneel beside the male body, "This guy definitely isn't a human... though his image would suggest different. I take it, from your reaction, that this kind of thing doesn't happen every day in your world?"

"No... no it doesn't... but this isn't my world anymore, is it?" It was a rhetorical question, but Flair had the feeling that Ember would probably answer.

"It might be. I mean, when time travel is involved, who knows?"

Flair payed no attention, seemingly lost in his own train of thought.

"Have you ever seen technology like this before?" asked Ember, checking the pulse of the un-identifiable male. His face was fairly angular and ghostly pale in the light of the core. His dark brown hair was ruffled and untidy. His fringe curled down to his right eyebrow and his neatly cut sideburns ended just below his ears. He wore a white dress shirt and a dark tie, covered by a neat brown, narrowly pinstriped, suit.

"No," he chuckled, " it looks like who-ever built this thing used jumbled bits and pieces of any device they could get their hands on... and messily stuck them together with whatever they could find."

"Well, any idea on what it does?" asked Ember, standing back up and scratching the back of her head as she looked around again.

"At a guess? This is one giant coffee maker," he replied, a hint of humour in her voice.

Ember looked at him with a mixture of annoyance, humour and confusion.

"Well, it's a guess...," said Flair, glancing up at her with a childish smugness.

"Gimme a hand would you?" She asked, lifting the upper half of the girl.

"Sure," replied Flair, and lifted her lower half.

"Put her down over there," instructed Ember, shuffling in unison with Flair as they made their way to the chairs.

"Erm... Ember? I think she's waking up...," warned Flair, nodding towards the face of the body.

The girls eyelids were flickering. She looked like she was having a hard time opening them, but if she managed to open her eyes,

"Would she panic?"

This though flew through Embers head at the exact same time as the girl's eyes groggily opened. Her brown eyes, for a moment, assumed a blank looks as she tried to figure out where she was, but upon seeing the purple scaled thing that was holding her feet, a look of panic consumed her instantly. She yelped and kicked her left leg free of it's grasp, struggling furiously for her freedom. Her breathing became frantic and It was then she noticed the two pink claws either side of her, supporting her upper half. This was all she could take, and she screamed.

"DOCTOR!"

"No, wait!" tried Ember as she spun herself to the floor.

"DOCTOR!!"

Flair gave Ember a confused look as they both watched her scramble away from them.

She backed towards the console and slowly made her way around to the other side, never taking her fearful eyes of them.

"What planet are you from?! Answer me! What are you?!" she yelled, hysteric.

It was then that she noticed the other man (presumably this 'Doctor' she was talking about) lying on the floor, not moving.

Her face fell and her eyes widened, "Oh my God...what've you done to him!?" she screamed at them, "I said WHAT'VE YOU DONE TO HIM!?"

"Calm down! We didn't do anything, we just-," but Ember didn't have the chance to say anymore, because she was cut off again.

"Have you killed him!? Is he dead?! FOR GOD'S SAKE, ANSWER ME!!"

"HEY! Calm down!" attempted Flair, taking a step closer to her.

"STAY BACK!"

"We're not going to-,"

"I SAID STAY BACK!"

"Please listen to us-," Ember tried again. She was cut off, not by the frantic girl, but by a powerful, aggressive voice,

"KEEP AWAY FROM HER!"

Ember and Flair spun around. The man was propped up on one elbow, his other arm pointing straight at them in a commanding fashion and his face contorted in a furious expression.

He quickly jumped to his feet and bounded over to his companion.

"I thought you were dead...," she told him, the relief evident in her voice.

"Takes more then a crash to get rid of me," he winked at her before returning his attention to the pair of intruders. Behind him, the young girl smiled slightly as she composed herself.

"Doctor... what are they? How did they get inside? Isn't there supposed to be some kind of... lock... thing that keeps people from getting in?" she asked quietly.

Ember folded her arms and looked at them in confusion. Flair just stayed perfectly still, surveying them with a mix of curiosity and aggression.

"How did you get inside?" the man asked calmly, glaring at Flair with an eyebrow raised.

"Through the door?" scoffed Flair, one of his claws reaching slowly for his weapon.

"What are you?" he asked, still amazingly calm. Ember looked at him with a searching look. His eyes looked incredibly old, as if he'd read a thousand books.

"What are you?" asked Ember, still searching his eyes.

"I asked first," he stated, nodding slightly and still examining both of them, "and that's not a good idea," he continued, directing his attention to Flair, who'd now partially removed his gun from it's holster.

Ember glanced at Flair, and then back at the man, who was reaching into the inside pocket of his jacket. He slowly withdrew a long, pen-like gadget which he extended an inch or two and held loosely in his hand, almost daring Flair to make a move.

"Flair... no..," whispered Ember, not wishing for any of them to die.

Flair whipped his gun up and aimed it at the male's forehead. At almost the exact same time, the male raised the instrument that he held in his hand and pointed it at the purple creature's weapon. The tip of the device lit up with a strong blue glow and emitted a sharp buzzing.

Flair pulled the trigger and after a faint metallic click, the gun fell to pieces in his hand. Flair's jaw dropped, and he looked from the remains of his firearm to the man who'd caused it's demise.

"But... what?...How...?" he stuttered, unable to think of something to say.

The man raised his eyebrow and smiled, returning his gizmo to his pocket. The girl next to him grinned, and bit her lip as she continued to watch the scene before her.

"Told you," he grinned, "Now, what are you?"

Ember gave Flair a disapproving look.

"My name's Ember... this is Flair," she said, indicating to herself, then Flair.

"I'm the Doctor, this is Rose," he said, indicating to himself, then the girl behind him who waved upon the mention of her name, "Now, what are you?"

"We're Dragons. Well, I'm a Dragon... Flair's a...well...,"

"BIDras," finished Flair.

"Yeah... we didn't mean any harm, sorry for his behaviour, he get's a little aggressive sometimes," added Ember.

"Where are they from?" whispered Rose, nudging her partner slightly.

"They don't exist... at least, not in the dimension we're from anyway," informed the Doctor, still not removing his attention from the Dragon and the BIDras.

"So they're lying?" suggested Rose.

"Either that... or... they're from another dimension... one where they do exist," the Doctor muttered, more to himself then to Rose.

"I don't trust them," informed Flair, eyeing the Doctor with distaste.

"Bear in mind that you just tried to shoot one of them, I doubt they trust us either...," scolded Ember, shooting an angry look at her ally.

"What if they're hostile?" asked Flair, "Have you considered that?"

"Yes, and considering that the device he used to disarm you is sonic, I doubt they'd be much of a threat," Ember told him.

"Veeeery clever! You have a relative degree of intelligence then? You figured out that it was sonic, which wouldn't be the first conclusion of an idiot," he smiled as he made his way around the console towards them, stuffing his hands in his pockets.

"Erm... I wouldn't say intelligent... more like well-read," smiled Ember.

"And I wouldn't say that I'm not much of a threat...," added the Doctor, now standing in front of her, staring her directly in the eyes.

"Beautiful...," he murmured, examining her up close, "what did you say you were again? Dragon, wasn't it?"

"Erm... excuse me?" she answered in confusion.

He strolled calmly around her, his eyes wandering from her head, to her wings, to her tail.

"Awww, you even have a tail!" he grinned from ear to ear, "Unlike you," he said, moving his attention to Flair, "You haven't got anything definite... it's all been removed? Genetically modified?"

"Yep, BIDras. Bio-Engineered Dragons," Flair told him, still watching him closely.

"Interesting... and you don't need to worry, I'm not going to hurt either of you," he told Flair.

"So what are you?" asked both Ember and Flair simultaneously.

He grinned again before replying, "I'm a Time Lord."

"Never hear of them," Flair said, frowning.

"Of course you haven't...," and it was then that Ember saw, in the Doctor's shiny brown eyes, a faint loss... a distant sadness as he continued, "I'm the last one."

Ember's mouth dropped open slightly, and her brow furrowed.

"But... how?" she asked him.

"Ah, it's a boring story," he said, suddenly becoming enthusiastic again, "it's a boring story, and besides, we need to find out where we are."

"What do you mean?" asked Rose, who'd been standing behind the console still, apprehensive to approach.

"We were pulled out of the temporal stream by some sort of distortion. That's why we crashed," Explained the Doctor, looking at Rose with raised eyebrows.

"Wait, that's happened before has'n it? When Mickey landed us in London with the Cybermen, remember?" Rose asked.

"Pff, how could I forget," he beamed, "Mickey the idiot... Of course, we weren't pulled out of the vortex that time, we dropped out. That button he held set the temporal orbit system to stand-by. When he released it, the engines dis-engaged-,"

"Which dropped us out?" finished Rose, looking hopeful.

"Exactly," smiled the Doctor, "You're getting better at this."

"Wait, Temporal? As in, time travel?" Ember cut in.

"Yup," he said, turning to her.

"You guys are time-travellers then?" asked Flair.

"Yep," answered Rose.

"And this machine...," began Ember.

"It's called the TARDIS," informed Rose.

"Time And Relative Dimension In Space, TARDIS," finished the Doctor.

"So it's a time-machine?" asked Ember, nodding in the direction of the console.

"Yep," the Doctor answered.

"But bigger," added Flair.

"Whaddya mean 'bigger'?" the Doctor asked, seemingly insulted.

"Well, Ember has one, and it's not this big," Flair indicated to Ember's wrist.

"Oh... that's interesting," muttered the Doctor, lifting the device on Ember's wrist to eye level. He took the sonic device from his pocket again and directed it at the wrist mounted time-device.

Ember quickly whipped it away from him, not wanting it to be destroyed.

"Oi! There's nothing to worry about, it doesn't just break things!" the Doctor told her, defending his sonic gadget.

"How do I know you don't want to strand us by destroying this?" she asked, covering the device with her hand.

"Because I don't want to?" he replied, smiling slightly.

Ember's expression remained anxious, but she removed the device and handed it to him.

"Are you insane?" Flair exclaimed.

"You're certainly not one for trusting people," muttered the Doctor.

"I have my reasons,"

"And I have mine," replied the Doctor, analysing the time-device.

"This isn't possible...," the Doctor spoke more to himself then the small crowd around him, "Mind you, with the amount of times I say that and the amount of times I've been proven wrong, you'd think I'd have stopped saying that things are impossible," he smiled again.

Rose smiled to herself, and gazed distantly at the floor.

"Where did you get this?" asked the Doctor, flipping the gizmo over in his hands.

"I built it," shrugged Ember in response.

"But that's Imposs-...never mind. You're more then fairly intelligent then?" the Doctor asked her, his mouth hanging open slightly as he looked at her.

"Well, I read a fair bit... and there was this professor I knew that had built things like this before," Ember explained.

"He must've been a genius...,"

"He was... but he was killed...," Ember added, staring solemnly at the floor.

"Yeah, that usually comes with being a genius...," the Doctor said, not really to anyone else, but more to himself again.

"So you can get through time with that thing?" asked Rose, giving it a look of curiosity.

"Yes, but it needs time to re-charge after each use," informed Ember.

"This takes a phenomenal amount of power though... masses of energy being pulled into such a small place... it would need some sort of containment that had the capacity to store the temporal radiation," the Doctor stated, holding the sonic pen-like thing up to the device.

"Yeah, it uses a light gem as containment," Ember replied.

Both Rose and the Doctor looked up.

"Light what?" he asked.

"Light gem," repeated Flair, "They we're used ages ago to store sections of magical energy. Dragons used to collect them for their value, both aesthetic value and magical value."

"Okaay, well, lets ignore the fact that I've never heard of them. Do you know how much energy this thing has stored? A device like this is only good for one temporal jump judging by the technology that it was made with. How many jumps has it done?" asked the Doctor.

"Two...,"

"In that case, there's a high chance that right now, inside this little fella, there's an entire temporal storm brewing, ready to go thermonuclear the first chance it gets. Y'see, the circuits can only take so much of the back-lash from the time-stream before they start to burn out. The connections to the storage device have probably been fried which means that the energy is seeping through the light-..thingamywhatsit that you mentioned-," he began explaining.

"Thingamywatsit?" asked Rose, grinning at him.

"Rose, don't interrupt, this is a very technical conversation," He replied.

"Thingamywatsit?" she said again in a lower voice.

"Shush," he smiled at her.

"Anyway, the energy is being stored inside the device itself, not the gem-thing," he continued.

Rose chuckled to herself at his use of another 'technical' term.

"So using it again would be a bad idea, basically," finished Rose.

Ember bit her lip and surveyed the device.

"How are we going to get back?"asked Ember, "If we can't use that, how do we get anywhere?"

"Whaddya think Rose," he turned to his companion and beamed, "should we lend the a hand?"

"I think we should, captain," she smiled, and did a mock salute.

"Alrighty then! Ember, Flair, would you kindly tell us where we are?" asked the Doctor, hopping up the TARDIS's controls and beginning to hit and twist a multitude of dials and switches.

"We're not sure...," answered Flair, watching the Doctor's concentration filled face as he started into the gently fizzing screen in front of him.

"Ah... that's helpful," the Doctor stated sarcastically, "Rose, third panel on the left, please, if you remember what to do."

"Tell me If I get it wrong, I'm still not too good at this," Rose told him, a nervous smile playing across her features.

"Nah, you'll do fine," he smiled.

"Doctor?" she asked.

"Yup?"

"When you said we were pulled into another dimension... can we get back?"

"Well... the TARDIS hasn't died on us this time... and we can use some of the energy from Ember's little time-hopper here to power the engines so It's looking good at the moment,"

"But... we don't know where we are...,"

"Easy way to find out," replied the Doctor, flipping a few levers and picking up a small mallet, which he then proceeded to use to bash the console repeatedly.

"That's not going to do much good!" Ember exclaimed over the noise of the pounding.

"Don't worry, he does it al the time and he hasn't hurt himself yet," beamed Rose, glancing at the Doctor, who simply smiled back and hit a few more controls.

"That's not what I meant...," grumbled Ember, leaning back against an unusual pillar behind her.

"AHAH!" yelled the Doctor suddenly, making Flair and Ember jump.

"So where are we?" asked Flair.

"We are... in the future of a drastically altered timeline...," he said, scratching the back of his head.

"Huh?" asked Flair.

"We're in your dimension, from the look of these images... but your future's been changed by something in the past..." he informed.

"So we're in my time, but a different history..." Flair told himself.

"Exactly,"

"So what happened?" asked Rose, looking from the Doctor, to Ember, then to Flair.

Ember's eyes darkened, and she let her body sink to the floor.

"Ember?" asked Rose.

"I came here to stop something from happening in the past...," she said, her voice remaining calm, but there was an obvious pain in her tone.

"So you went to the future?" asked the Doctor, his face looking confused.

"Some one went back and changed the past... then they came here... I followed him...,"

"And you're going to stop him... how?" asked the Doctor, his face remaining blank.

Ember said nothing. She just stared blankly at the Doctor, her eyes empty, having lost that little sparkle of life.

"You're going to kill them... aren't you," asked the Doctor, staring into her cold eyes, reading her like a book.

"If you could stop the man who erased you species from existence... would you?" asked Ember, still devoid of emotion.

"It was no man who destroyed my kind... and if I could go back and stop it... I wouldn't," he told her.

"Why?" she asked him.

"Because it's not allowed...," Rose said, looking at her companion with an apologetic sadness in her eyes.

"Once a solid, natural timeline has been formed, changing it's forbidden," explained the Doctor.

"Then why would you help us?" asked Ember.

"Because your time was changed by a traveller who didn't know that rule. It's not a solid time-line, thus it can be changed."

"So there is a chance that I can get my life back?" asked Flair, hopefully.

"Yup," said the Doctor, smiling at him.

"And you can get him back, too. The one you lost...," he continued, before returning to his console.

Ember said nothing, and looked over at Flair who smiled back with a combination of re-assurance and hope. Ember smiled back, weakly. Running through her head were so many things. So much pain... and a longing like nothing she'd never felt before Evil had screwed with time.

"Evil...,"

"God help you..."

Once more, my apologies for the length of time it took me to write this. I hope you are still enjoying it and that you are able to leave a good review. We are getting close to the finale now, along with the M rated bit (which will be my biggest challenge).

I'd just like to add another BIG thanks to Lithe, for letting me use 'Flair' (once again, I apologise if I got him wrong), also to Spyro's Bud, for your enthusiastic, encouraging comments and finally to fans of this story who's reviews have made writing this story worth it.

Shouldn't be too long until my next chapter... mind you, I've said that before...