Hello everyone! I hope all of you are alright!
So here comes chapter 33, with a bit more changes. I hope you'll like it :)
Turtle: I'm glad we can talk now!
This author's note is short, but Doctor Who is on telly! ;)
Anyway, enjoy!
Melody - x.
Chapter 33
As Doctor Simeon was working at his desk in his sumptuous office, the globe filled with swirling snow spoke up in a deep but ethereal voice.
"Danger. Danger."
"What's wrong?" asked Simeon, looking up and walking to the globe.
"There is danger here. An intelligence. An intelligence beyond anything else in this time and place."
"Doctor Simeon, sir!" cut in a servant bursting into the office. "There's someone demanding to see you."
"No callers, not in here, not ever. Did he leave his name?" said Simeon, not even looking at the man.
"Sir... it's Sherlock Holmes!" the servant replied, looking amazed and excited.
As soon as he had said those words, just as if it was all planned like in a play, a young man with bright green eyes entered the office, wearing a deerstalker hat, a cape and carrying a cane while holding an unlit Meerschaum pipe.
"Oh, nice office!" exclaimed the Doctor Sherlock. "Big globey thing. Now, shut up, don't tell me! I see from your collar stud you have an apple tree and a wife with a limp. Am I right?" he asked, pointing his cane to Simeon.
"No."
"Do you have a wife?"
"No." Simeon answered again with no emotions except from his constant disdain on his face.
"Bit of a tree? Bit of a wife? Some apples?" asked the Doctor in his terrible impersonation of Sherlock Holmes. "Come on, work with me here."
"I enjoy The Strand magazine as much as the next man, but I am perfectly aware that Sherlock Holmes is a fictional character. Get out!" said Simeon, walking up to the impostor.
"Do you have a goldfish named Colin?" he suddenly asked, pointing his cane to the servant.
Still impressed, the servant took the time to think before answering a no.
"Thought not." the Time Lord said with mischievousness painted all over his face. Then he looked at the desk behind him and took a piece of paper. "Now, ooh. I see this is one of your business cards. It says so on the front."
"Who are you, and what are you doing here?"
Looking at how Simeon was becoming less and less patient, the Doctor's face became more serious.
"This." And running towards the globe, he shouted: "Wakey, wakey!"
He hit the globe repeatedly with his cane until Simeon stopped him, by grabbing his cane.
"That is highly valuable equipment. You must step away now!"
"We are the Intelligence." cut in the voice emanating from the globe.
"Oooh. Talking snow. I love new things." said the Doctor, excited.
"You are not of this world."
"Takes one to snow one." he said, laughing at his own joke, right at Simeon's face. As his face was still not showing any emotions, as if made of unalterable ice, the Doctor became serious again, getting away from him and walking around the globe. "Right, let's see. Multi-nucleate crystalline organism with the ability to mimic and mirror what it finds. It looks like snow. It isn't snow." he deduced, hitting the globe to support his point.
"You must leave here now." said Simeon.
"Shut up, I'm making deductions. It's very exciting." he spat out, this time impersonating Sherlock perfectly without even doing it on purpose. "Now, what are you, eh? A flock of space crystals? A swarm?" he tried to guess while Simeon was summoning his servants. "The snowmen are foot soldiers, mindless predators. But you, you're the clever one. You're Moriarty. So, you turn up on a planet, you generate a telepathic field to learn what you can, and when you've learnt enough, what do you do?" he continued, sonicking over his shoulder, the doors locking to prevent the servants coming in and throwing him out. "You can't conquer the world using snowmen. Snowmen are rubbish in July. You'll have to be better than that. You'll have to evolve!" he concluded just as Simeon's men were trying to get through the doors.
"Sir, it appears to be stuck!" they said behind the wooden doors
"What have you done? Have you locked the doors?" asked Simeon, trying to open them, finally showing some worry as he was losing control over the situation.
"You need to translate yourself into something more, well, human."
"Kick it down!" he ordered to his men.
"To do that you'd need a perfect duplicate of human DNA in ice form and one in a living form to learn how to heal yourself when damaged. Where do you find... that?" he asked slowly, looking around the room. His eyes laid on Simeon's desk and found what he was searching for. He ran to it and took a journal. "Now, let's see. Most opened file, most viewed page." The Doctor tossed the journal filled with handwritten pages, plans, and newspaper articles in the air and hit the page that opened when it landed with his cane. It was an newspaper article talking about the tragedy at Darkover House. "You know, you really should delete your history. Governess frozen in pond. Gotcha!"
"Got the masterkey, sir!" the servant said.
"Take him downstairs!" Simeon ordered as his men burst into his office.
But seeing the confused looked on his servants' face, he turned around to see there was nobody left in the office. The Doctor had escaped, leaving one of the windows opened, the curtain floating in the winter breeze.
"Body frozen in a pond. The snow gets a good long look at a human being, like a… full body scan. Almost everything they need to evolve." the Doctor said, walking around the frozen pond at the Darkover House. "Pond… Good point Clara…" A soft smile came across his lips before noticing someone came behind him. Turning around, he comes face to face with Strax. "What are you doing here?"
"Madam Vastra wondered if you needed any grenades." said the Sontaran with his strong accent.
"Grenades?"
Realising that maybe he went a bit too far, Strax corrected:
"She might have said help."
"Help for what?"
"Well. Your investigation!"
"Investigation? Who says I'm investigating? Do you think I'm going to start investigating just because some bird smiles at me? Who do you think I am?" the Doctor said, turning around to escape Strax's look, knowing fully that it was absolutely not convincing, even for that potato.
"Sherlock Holmes."
Dammit.
That was clever. He struggled to find something clever to answer to that.
"Don't be clever Strax, it doesn't suit you."
"Sorry sir."
"I'm the clever one, you're the potato one." the Doctor said, tapping the Sontaran's forehead.
"Yes sir."
"Now go away."
"Yes… Mister Holmes." Strax said, walking away laughing as the Doctor, tried to defend himself, sounding more like a child in a playground than an age old Time Lord:
"Oi! Shut up! You're not clever or funny and you've got tiny little legs!"
As he was looking at the pond again, soft rays of light fell on the pond and him. Looking up, he saw the curtains of a window were opened and that a feminine figure was standing there, looking down.
Narrowing his eyes a little, he recognized Clara in her governess dress, waving shyly at him, a small smile on her delicate face.
Suddenly feeling nervous, he waved back to her, uneasy.
As she waved him to come up, he turned around, more nervous, talking to himself.
"Okay, just tell her you're leaving, you're not going up. You're leaving, you're not going up."
Facing the house again, he told her using his hands he will be up in five minutes. As soon as she drew the curtains back, he facepalmed himself, looking angrily at his hand, even biting his thumb.
"Five minutes! Where did that come from? You…"
"Am I going to have the nightmares tonight?" asked Francesca in her bed as Clara was putting her brother, Digby, in his own bed, next to Francesca's. Clara sat on the edge of the girl's bed, stroking her cheek.
"Definitely not."
"How do you know?"
"Because someone's coming to help."
"Who?"
The governess smiled and patted her hand on the bed next to her to gesture Digby to sit here.
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you." she said.
"Is it one of your stories?" asked Francesca. "The definitely true ones."
"Ah!" she exclaimed, faking being offended. "All my stories are true."
"Like how you were born behind the clock face of Big Ben?" asked Digby.
"Accounting for my acute sense of time."
"And you invented fish?" asked the girl.
"Because I dislike swimming alone."
"So what's this one?" asked the boy, curious.
Clara smiled and started to tell her story:
"There is a man called the Doctor. He lives on a cloud in the sky, and all he does, all day, everyday, is to stop all the children in the world ever having bad dreams."
"I've been having bad dreams." stated Francesca.
"He has been on holiday." retorted Clara. "But I'm confident he has now returned to work, and as a matter of fact, he's right here." she said, seeing the candle light flicker as the door is slowly opened. "Aren't you Doctor?"
But instead of the tall figure wearing a top hat, a woman made of ice appeared, her pointy and icy teeth terrifying as she said:
"The children have been very naughty!"
Clara, Digby and Francesca screamed in terror, the young woman exclaiming with her real accent:
"Bloomin' hell!" as she placed the children behind her, protecting them. "Get back!"
"You're doing your other voice!" said Digby.
"Yes love, did you notice?" she answered sarcastically. "Run!"
As the children managed to get out of the room, the ice lady gripped on Clara's arm and dragged her away from the door, towards the window. Clara tried to fight, to picture her melted, to hit her, but there was nothing that could be done: the ice was unbreakable and she was far too strong for her.
"Miss Montagu!" the children called her, coming back for her.
"Get out!"
The ice lady broke the window with her icy fist and, holding Clara very tight, she then transformed Clara and herself into a swarm of snowflakes, flying away in the winter night.
Tell me what you think and don't hesitate to share your theories with me! :)