A/N - Episode Three, woo! I love writing for the Weeping Angels cos they're just so creepy :') hope you enjoy!
Reviews 'n' stuff:
The10thDoctorRocks - yeah, I like doing Meanwhile in the TARDIS chapters cos you can just sort of write anything and it goes great, hahaha :') the story arc is going to be a little more obvious in Part Two, in the build up to Episode Eight! And I'm glad you like the sort of redesign I gave the series overview, haha :)
Now, on with the show!
The year 4134, the Space Vatican drifted through the skies above Earth, coming into orbit. It had been thirty-four years since the Space Vatican had last been in orbit of the planet it had left from. In the Pope's chambers, a disturbing message was being delivered.
"And you say it can't be moved?" he said, slowly. He was an old reptile, with bright blue scales and a long grey beard. A water tank on his back bubbled when he spoke.
"I'm afraid not, your Holiness. It's just there in the centre of the Elevated Chambers, covered in cracks and chips," replied the messenger.
"Take me to it."
"But, your Holiness, you are to reside here – doctor's orders."
"Nevertheless, you will do as I say, Father."
"As you command, sir."
The Elevated Chambers were seventeen floors above them, inside the Stone Tower atop the Stone Citadel in the West of the Vatican. The Pope's private teleport pad had taken them straight to the Chambers.
"The last of its kind?"
"Yes, your Holiness."
"And it can't be moved?"
"It cannot be moved, and it does not move. It appeared out of thin air around half an hour ago."
Upon his words, the dim lights in the Elevated Chambers began to flicker. The Pope took a step back and tried to keep his eyes on the Angel before him, but as the lights went out, it began to approach them, slowly looking more and more ferocious, its fangs baring and its arms outstretching. And then all the lights died and they were left in the dark. In the dark with the Weeping Angel.
Meanwhile, in a little blue box, hurtling through the time vortex...
"Culture!" the Doctor cried, rubbing his hands together gleefully. "That's what you two need! A little culture!"
"Culture?" Callum asked, sliding across the glass floor in his socks. "Are you in school trip mode today?"
"Oh, silly Callum! We're in a time machine – guaranteed to beat any school trip you've ever had!" He began to jump around the console, pushing buttons and flicking switches. "I'll show you culture!"
"This is his excuse to go to a museum," Amy warned, rolling her eyes.
"Exactly! We're going to the biggest museum in the Universe! You can literally wander for over a fortnight without stopping! Has a compressed time field in it to stop you from getting hungry, thirsty or tired. Stupendous!"
"What about if you need to pee?" Callum questioned. The Doctor frowned as he considered his response.
"I'm sure they'll have thought of that too."
"Please tell me we're not spending over a fortnight in a museum," Amy groaned. Callum nodded his agreement, sliding across the floor again.
"Well, alright," the Doctor conceded, "fine. Maybe we'll just stay for an hour or two."
"Oh, I'm dying with excitement," Callum said, sarcastically, sitting down on the seat and lacing up his Converse.
"Oh, come on, Callum, it'll be fun! I promise you - guaranteed trip of a lifetime!" the Doctor beamed, flicking a switch, causing the TARDIS to spin rapidly, as it soared through the time vortex, but of all a sudden, the lights in the TARDIS began to flash mauve, and the monitor began to flash wildly, an alarm whooping throughout the room.
"What's that?" Callum shouted over the fiasco.
"Oh no, no, no, no!" the Doctor cried, leaping around the console. "It's a Mauve Alert!"
"Mauve?" Amy asked, holding onto the railing as the TARDIS shook wildly.
"Yeah, Mauve Alert, looks like someone needs our help! Big, big trouble!"
"Shouldn't it be Red Alert?" Callum roared, as the whooping got louder.
"No, no, no!" the Doctor shouted back, reaching over the console for a lever. "In Universal standards, Red is camp!"
"Camp? As in tents?" Callum asked. The Doctor managed a smile.
"Oh, Callum, you're so inno-CENT!" The room had lurched and the three occupants had been thrown away from the console. The Doctor hopped up again and twisted the monitor around to face him. "Oh..."
"Oh?" Callum and Amy asked in unison, getting back on their feet.
"The Mauve Alert," the Doctor said, as sparks flew out of the console, "is coming from the Vatican."
"The Vatican?" Amy cried. The room shook again. Suddenly, a video opened up on the monitor. A stressed looking man with not very much hair, and a sort of army-camouflage band around his arm appeared onscreen. The whooping alarms stopped.
"Hello? Hello? This is Father Marcus, Head of Security in charge of the Five Citadels of the Vatican. We need your help! Hello?"
"Hello?" the Doctor cried. The man on screen couldn't seem to hear him.
"Our computers indicate you can hear us. Something terrible has happened here! We need your help, Doctor!" Marcus paused for breath, before the picture froze and he faded into static and white noise.
"I wonder what's happened," Callum pondered, as the mauve lights began to return to their normal colours. Unfortunately, the room still hadn't stopped shaking, and every few seconds, the floor would jolt. The Doctor was punching at the side of the monitor, and finally Father Marcus appeared on the screen again.
"We need your help, Doctor! The Pope has gone missing! I repeat, the Pope has gone missing!" The video cut out again and the Doctor turned to look at Callum and Amy, his eyes widening.
Father Marcus and a team of Clerics were already waiting in the Entrance Courtyard, outside the shimmering Golden Citadel, when the TARDIS materialised. The Doctor stepped out, followed by Amy and Callum – the latter shutting the door behind him.
"Bless you for coming, sir!" Father Marcus said, now dressed in a full soldier-style outfit. He bowed his head, and his Clerics followed suit.
"Um, you're welcome," the Doctor replied, awkwardly. "What happened?"
"Oh, of course," Father Marcus nodded, as he seemed to remember the purpose for the Doctor's visit. "Pope O'Klaxtaar the Fourth went to the Elevated Chambers to inspect something around three hours ago. The last recorded footage of him was standing in the Chambers, but suddenly the lights went out, and now the doors to the Stone Tower won't open, preventing us from getting into the Chambers. We figured that, after your experience, and your success at the crash of the Byzantium, that you would be able to help."
"No..." the Doctor said, quietly.
"Wh-what?" Father Marcus said, taken aback.
"No, no, it can't be..." the Doctor sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Tell me it's not a Weeping Angel."
"I'm afraid so, sir," Father Marcus replied. "But the Pope is still alive, so we need your help."
"How can you be sure?" Callum asked.
"We have extensive recordings on known allies and enemies of the Church. The Doctor has acted as both on occasion," Marcus explained. The Doctor looked a little embarrassed.
"No, I mean, how do you know the Pope is still alive?"
"Oh, the Pope is a Riptosian. He has to have a water system constantly operating to stop himself from drying out," Marcus replied. "If the water system were to stop, he would die, and if he were to die, the water system would stop. But we have sensors that indicate whether or not the water system is functioning correctly, and for the past three hours it has still been working."
Callum nodded. Then he noticed that Amy had been very quiet.
"You alright?" he murmured to her, as Marcus and the Doctor continued talking.
"Y-yeah," Amy sighed. "It's just... I've met the Weeping Angels before. Just the once. And I thought they were going to kill me..."
"What are they?" Callum asked, curiously.
"Ah, excellent question!" the Doctor interrupted, stepping back and putting an arm around their shoulders, facing Father Marcus and the Clerics. "The Weeping Angels are stone statue-like creatures, said to be from the dawn of time. Creatures that have the best defence mechanism in the Universe: quantum locks. They can only move when you can't see them - when you look at them, they stop moving!"
"And that which holds the image of an Angel becomes an Angel," Amy remembered. The Doctor nodded.
"Which is why you never look an Angel directly in the eyes, or an Angel will be stored in the vision receptors of your brain."
"What would it do if that happened?" Callum asked.
"It would climb out of your eyes," the Doctor said simply, before turning to Father Marcus. "Now! I suppose you'll be wanting to get into those Elevated Chambers? Fortunately for you all, I'm very good with locks."
"Ah, that's where the situation arises, Doctor. The doors into the Stone Tower are deadlock sealed."
"Oh, I should've known," the Doctor sighed, rolling his eyes and putting the sonic screwdriver back in his pocket.
"There is a way to get to the Chambers, but we need you and your TARDIS."
"Oh no, no, no. I'm not landing my TARDIS anywhere with a Weeping Angel in it! If an Angel got inside the TARDIS, it could be universally disastrous!" the Doctor cried.
"If you were to travel back in time and stop the doors from seali-"
"It's a lovely thought, but we're already involved in events now," the Doctor said. Marcus looked deflated.
"It's wibbly wobbly timey wimey, isn't it?" Callum asked.
"Exactly!" the Doctor said.
"But he's the Pope, Doctor! And that's a Weeping Angel."
"Yes, exactly! Which is reason numero uno I can't interfere with what's already happened. We will help get him back though."
"Father," cried a man's voice from the top of a set of stairs. A young man with a headset on ran down the stairs towards them. "The Weeping Angel has left the Chambers! It was last seen in the Stone Citadel. We've evacuated it and sealed it off – there's no-one inside."
"Very good, bless you for telling me, Cleric."
The man nodded and ran back up the stairs, disappearing down the corridor at the top of them.
"Where's the Stone Citadel?" the Doctor asked.
"I'll show you in a minute, sir." Marcus turned to his Clerics. "Clerics, I want you to make your way to the Stone Citadel straight away. The Doctor, his friends and I shall meet you there."
An echo of "Sir, yes, Sir"s echoed through the room before the Clerics ran off through an open doorway.
Marcus crossed over to a large screen on the wall and pushed several buttons on a panel beside it. It lit up, showing a map of the Vatican.
"So there's five different zones... North, East, South, West and Central," Callum read. "We're in the Central zone right now, in the Entrance Courtyard. There's another three Courtyards, oh, so there's four Courtyards in each zone. There's one Citadel in each zone as well, and then the Towers on top of the Citadels, with twenty floors in each Tower. So the Golden Citadel is that building right there." He pointed. "And there's the Stone Citadel in the West, the Steel Citadel in the South, the Glass Citadel in the East, and the Marble Citadel in the North."
"Excellent little mapreader, aren't you?" Amy joked. Callum pouted in response.
"So, we're heading to the West of the Vatican," the Doctor said, quietly.
"Looks like it," Callum replied, noticing his strange behaviour.
"Right then," the Doctor said, noticing Callum had noticed, and acting normally again, "we better get a move on!" He rubbed his hands together.
"We can take the teleport pad," Marcus said, beginning to walk up the stairs and gesturing for them to follow.
They walked up the staircase until they came to a long golden corridor, and a set of large double doors.
"Very Hogwarts," Amy murmured. Callum nodded in agreement. The doors swung open silently and Father Marcus lead them down a long, winding corridor. They finally came to a large glass box with a small brass panel on the side, covered in a multitude of glowing buttons.
"This is the teleport pad," Marcus said, "I'll just program it to take us to the Frozen Courtyard, outside the Stone Citadel."
"How come the Clerics didn't use it?" Callum asked.
"Because the teleport pad is only good for a maximum of five people, and it can only be used once every half hour," Marcus explained, fiddling about with the buttons.
"That's a bit stupid," the Doctor said. "What if there needs to be a mass evacuation?"
"We have protocols for that, Doctor. In this case, all registered life forms have been mass-transmatted out of the Stone Citadel. The only room it has no effect on is the Elevated Chambers, due to the presence of the unregistered Angel. The Vatican is now completely empty besides us, my Clerics, the Pope and the Angel."
"Ah," the Doctor replied.
"Right," Marcus said, opening the side of the glass box, "step in! The pad activates in thirty seconds."
They clambered into the glass box. Callum found himself having to crouch a little to stop himself from hitting his head off the top of the box. Marcus closed the side of the box behind him, and a strange vibrating sensation ran across Callum's spine, making his skin feel as if it were all trying to come off his body. It wasn't painful, just uncomfortably ticklish.
"Ugh, does it always feel like that?" Amy said, rubbing her arms.
"You get used to it," Marcus replied, looking at the small timer on the side of the glass box.
Finally, thirty seconds passed, and there was a flash of bright light, before Callum and Amy found themselves tumbling out of another identical box, while the Doctor and Marcus strode out casually.
"Okay, that wasn't the best experience ever," Amy said.
"I feel a little travelsick," Callum added.
"Like he said," the Doctor smiled, pointing at Marcus, "you get used to it. Maybe we can get used to the cold next."
They were standing in another Courtyard, covered in piles of snow. Ice sculptures were scattered across the Courtyard, with a large frozen pond in the middle. It was a large triangle shape, and Callum suddenly felt a strange throbbing sensation in his head. It was also absolutely freezing. Callum rubbed the back of his head until the throbbing went away, and out of the corner of his eye he noticed the Doctor frowning.
"Nice place," Amy commented. Callum rubbed his arms to try and heat himself up. He hadn't put a jacket on before leaving the TARDIS, and wasn't wearing anything over his T-shirt. "Could do with turning the heating up."
"Oh, once you've escaped Cybermen in the Arctic Circle, you get used to the cold," Amy replied, turning to look up at the Stone Citadel.
It was a massive structure, looming over them, living up to its name as it looked like it had been roughly cut out of a mountain. On top of the Citadel, there was a large Tower, which resembled a large rock needle atop the rough dome shaped building. The four of them gazed up at the foreboding building in silence, as an icy wind whistled. The sky above was a sort of blank grey, and it wrapped around the Citadel in a gloomy embrace.
"If we're in deep space, and this is a sort of floating city, shouldn't we just be seeing... space?" Callum asked.
"Nah," the Doctor replied, "it's a fake sky. Look." He took out the sonic screwdriver and buzzed it up at the sky. The air wobbled and began to part away to reveal an inky blackness, little white dots of stars glimmering in the distance.
"Woah!" Callum smiled. They gazed up, as a gentle snowfall began. Callum did his best to ignore the small flecks as they hit his bare arms.
The peaceful moment was disturbed by the large blue steel doors at the bottom of the Courtyard opening. Twelve Clerics ran up the path towards them.
"Right then, I suppose we better get started," Marcus said.
"Into the Citadel," the Doctor replied, striding up the small flight of stairs, up to the cavernous door. Amy and Callum followed, with Marcus and the Clerics proceeding in behind them.
A/N: Okay, you know the drill! Revieeeewwwww? :')