AN: I'M BACK! You all forgot I existed, didn't you? ;) Hello. Have a chapter. And remember, both reviews and love have the same molecular structure. They are also both catalysts in a reaction known as Faster Updates. (You're all stars!)

FIVE

The tunnels were getting narrower, and there was only room for two people to walk comfortably side-by-side. Amy found herself next to the Umbrella Doctor. "So, Amy, wasn't it? That's a Scottish accent I hear, hmm?"

The red-head grinned. "Yep! Scots girl through and through. So, what, did the Planet of the Time Lords have a Glasgow too?"

"No," he said, amused, "It doesn't. I never could work out why this regeneration has a different accent, but I rather like it. Besides, what's so brilliant about London, anyway?"

"Well, exactly," Amy laughed. "I think it's very dashing. So, where do you come then? Before my Doctor..."

"I do believe I must be the earliest model in this collection," he replied, "I don't know any of you. Except Ace, of course. I look forward to meeting you, Miss Pond."

"It was a pleasure," Amy said. Suddenly the pair in front of her - Leather Doctor and Donna - stopped walking and she almost catapulted into them. "Why've we stopped?" she called ahead, to her own Doctor who'd been leading the way.

"Well, two reasons. One," he called back, "there's two possible directions, and two..." he paused, waiting for the rest of the group to catch up, "we've found something."

Where the tunnel forked off to the right and to the left the space was wider. Amy and the others came forward to join their 'leader'. All eyes widened at the shape on the floor. Collapsed in a heap, skeleton holding what was left of the flesh suspended, was a body, sticky with its own blood. A jeweled crown lay on the floor in front of where the head had been and a splendid red cape lay spread out over its back.

Amy's Doctor crouched down beside it, scanning it with his sonic screwdriver. "Not been dead long," he said gravely. "From his clothes it looks like he was pretty important somewhere. I wonder-"

His speech was cut short by the sound of thundering footsteps drawing closer and the same earsplitting roar they'd heard before. It was coming from the left hand tunnel, behind them. Within seconds it was almost upon them, its gigantic form in silhouette - body of a giant, wide head with curved horns. The head of a bull.

"Everyone get back!" one of the Doctors whispered urgently, shoving his friends and various selves back the way they'd come.

"Is everyone here?" Leather asked, "Rose?"

"Right next to you."

"Amy?"

"I'm here."

"Donna?" Silence. "Ace?"

The sound of loud war-whooping and shouts of "Toro! Toro!" came from the tunnel outside. Donna and Ace were standing on opposite sides, holding between them the huge red cape torn from the back of the unfortunate victim. Hollering madly and jeering, they stood their ground as the monster stopped short in the tunnel's fork.

It turned its head in the direction of the Doctors and the others, sniffing hungrily, but Donna and Ace's shouts got louder and louder and they ran towards it. A mad look flared in its huge eyes and it launched itself at the red cape, which caught on its horns as it went careering off down the tunnel, blinded, in the opposite direction.

Ace and Donna breathed out twin sighs of relief and collapsed against their respective sides of the tunnel, laughing uproariously. "That...was...brilliant!" Donna managed. "Bet you couldn't have pulled that one off, Spaceman!"

The others joined them in the tunnel as the two women were high-fiving.

"Donna, you could have been killed!" Pinstripe exclaimed.

"It would have killed us all, Doctor," Ace reasoned, "It was just about to go for you when we distracted it."

"Your fault, anyway," said Donna, "you took me to see the bullfighting in ancient Sevilla. Learned me some toreador skills! Those horns, I just thought, that thing must have some bull in it somewhere! And the cape was so red, it was worth a try to see if it would charge and leave us alone."

"You know what they say about great minds," Ace added. "We both had the same idea. And I learnt some pretty good battle cries when we landed in the middle of the Zulu War, Professor."

"Evidently," said Umbrella. "Well done, Ace. Donna."

Bowtie clapped his hands, "Yes. Trust you two. Right! Onwards, shall we?"

They took the right-hand tunnel, the one the beast had come from. "He was fooled by two women waving a big red handkerchief, he's not the brightest of bright buttons," the Doctor in the pinstripe suit had reasoned. "Which means he's not the one who got us all here - teleport needs brains. Someone sent him."

"Who would build a place like this," Ace wondered, pressing a palm against the tunnel wall and feeling its warmth again, "and then send a crazy bull-man after the guests?"

"Well, that is the question-" Pinstripe began,

The Bowtie-Doctor, ahead of them, stopped suddenly. "Say that again. Ace. What did you just say?"

She looked at him quizzically.

"Bull-man, you called it a bull-man. Why?"

She shrugged. "It had the head of a bull. But it can run on its back legs, and it..." she frowned, replaying the close-up she'd gotten of the beast in her mind's eye, "...it had hands."

"What sort of hands?"

"Human hands. Big, and hairy, but human. Not hooves, like I guess you'd expect on a bull-type-thing."

"On a bovine life form, yeah. It's a big ol' universe, but you tend to see the same patterns. It's much rarer for nature to produce a mix-matched body, two parts so unsuited to each other - which means..."

"Someone created it. A mutation, then, an experiment," Pinstripe followed.

"But why the maze?" Donna piped up.

"Think, Donna," Leather joined in, "A terrifying creature, half man, half bull. A maze. Sounds like something out of..."

"Greek mythology," Amy piped up. "Like the Argonauts and Achilles and Pandora's Box. Love me a legend."

"Aren't we the expert," Donna mumbled, but grinned at her new friend.

"We've got ourselves a Minotaur!" the bowtie Doctor summed up, "And someone's called in Theseus. Four Theseuses, in fact. Or should that be Thesei?"

"And we're all overlooking what the Doctor discovered earlier," Ace put in, nodding towards her own Doctor. "Professor?"

"I'd hardly call it a discovery, Ace, more of a deduction," said the Umbrella Doctor, "But yes. Everyone put a hand on the wall."

They did so. "It's hot," Rose observed, well aware that she was stating the obvious here but feeling it had to be said.

"This maze is producing heat. Power." Umbrella continued, "What for? Teleportation, a TARDIS materialisation magnet, and a little biology experiment on the side. You said yourself, Doctor - or did I say yourself? - that beast is the product of mutation."

"Our King Minos, then, is a bit of a mastermind," said Bowtie. "A mad one. They're the best kind."

"So where is he?" Donna said critically. "Hiding? Are we a bit shy?" she called.

At first there was silence, except from her own echo. But then, "Not in the least." A deep, stony voice, untinged with any emotion. Amy looked around for a speaker, anything which could be relaying the sound, but there was nothing, nor did there seem to be a source. The voice was coming from everywhere.

Rose reached for the hand of the nearest Doctor, figuring they were all the same anyway.

"I am cautious, that is all. Many heroes have tried and failed, but you, Doctor, you have succeeded." A sound then which would have been a chuckle were it not completely free of mirth. "Look where you are."

What had once been a dingy tunnel was suddenly lit with a brilliant light, forcing Donna to shield her eyes. She noticed then that the place where they'd stopped to chat was in fact not a tunnel at all, but a rounded cave. The floor they were standing on was not the grey rock she'd become accustomed to, but a smooth, glossy surface, in the shape of a circle.

Just as she was noticing all this, a clear glass wall slid down, exactly the shape of the circle. With a mechanical 'click' it slid into place, and suddenly Donna's world was hurtling upwards.

"Can I offer you a lift?" said the voice.