Chapter Four

Meanwhile, the children were getting acquainted. They were quite happy to play together, while Rory watched them. The Doctor trusted him to look after the little girl, very much in the same way that he trusted the Doctor to look after Amy. He also suspected that if he didn't look after the little girl, the Doctor would treat him in the same way he treated the Doctor regarding Amy.

If either girl got into trouble, Amy, Robyn, or even Princess Rilara, someone, either him or the Doctor, would get into deep trouble themselves.

So, there he was, watching two little girls, almost twins, getting aquainted. It could've been worse, he supposed. Right now, they could've been in the middle of a war zone on some far off planet, instead of on the Orient Express (in Space!) trying to find an Egyptian Goddess who was due to cause trouble at some stage of the trip.

He leaned against the wall, listening to the two little girls talking. At least there wasn't any Egyptian Goddesses running around right now.

'Your Papa's the Doctor, the one that Grandmama Erimem traveled with?'

'Yeah,' Robyn replied. 'He is. But I wasn't with him then.'

'Oh.'

Rilara sighed. 'I'm bored.'

'Me too,' Robyn replied. Then she got an idea. 'Hey, why don't we explore the train?' she suggested, which piqued Rory's interest.

He'd get into trouble if those two wandered off on their own. Two little girls wandering about on a space-faring train was not, in his mind, a particularly good idea. Not when the Doctor was probably doing some poking around of his own.

'I don't know... what about Rory?'

Robyn frowned. 'What about Rory?'

'We can't go anywhere without him, can we?'

'Why not?' Robyn countered. 'My dad goes exploring on his own all the time.'

'Of course he does,' Rory thought to himself. 'He goes off exploring on his own, and then gets into trouble, so me and Amy have to keep bailing him out.' He frowned a little. 'Or we get into trouble, so he has to come and save us.' Which wasn't such an odd thing to happen either.

"Well...maybe...' Rilara paused, then smiled. 'Why don't I show you my costume for my birthday party instead!' She grinned evilly. 'I've got an idea of something fun we can do too.'

'What?'

'I've got two costumes. Identical. We could both wear them! We're already twins already, so why not dress like it?'

Robyn slowly started to smile. Get to dress like the princess? That would be so cool! Why not? What harm could it do? 'Yeah! That sounds like a great idea...' She grinned, getting an idea herself. 'And we can swap places, and make everyone think I'm you, and you're me! We can even try fooling my dad!'

Rory chuckled, rolling his eyes at the suggestion. 'Like the Doctor could be fooled by something like that,' he muttered to himself. 'He's clever. He'd be able to tell which was which, wouldn't he? He'd know his daughter on sight, or there'd be some strange Time Lord-y way he'd know without thinking about it, wouldn't there?'

Rilara grinned and nodded. 'Yeah! We can do that!'

'They're going to get into trouble,' Rory muttered to himself. 'It's inevitable.' He sighed. 'And if the Doctor isn't around to get them out of it, it's good old Uncle Rory to rescue, isn't it?' He frowned again. No, don't call yourself old, Rory. Not yet, anyway.

And so, the two girls, under Rory's watchful eye (who knew exactly what they were plotting, and intended to tell the Doctor the next time they saw each other), decided that they would dress the same for the princess's birthday party, and pretend to be each other for the duration of said birthday party.

But neither of them knew how bad that would be in the long run. Of course, they didn't think about the threats to the princess's life, because they didn't know.

And neither of them knew their little charade would put one of them in grave danger.

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"Now...cargohold...which way?" the Doctor mused.

He'd been walking for a while now, still following the corridor along the train. He wasn't yet aware of Dr. Thompson following him however, but he had a feeling that someone was behind him. Soon he came to the end of the corridor, to a tall door. There was nothing overly remarkable about the door, just that it was tall.

Well, that, and the fact that it was locked. Not that it'd be locked for very long, once he was done with it.

"Ah, let's see where this leads," he murmured to himself. He quickly used the sonic on the lock, and pulled the door open slowly, revealing the boxes and crates behind it.

The Doctor grinned. "Cargohold. Brilliant."

He entered the cargohold carefully, picking through the boxes, and scanning their contents with the sonic. "Hmm, not important. As I thought." He scratched his head. "The Seventh Obelisk, where would it be? It's /got/ to be here, I mean, how can you miss a bloody great thing like that?"

He sighed, and continued working his way through the boxes.

Dr. Thompson, as he watched the young man working through the cargohold, was becoming increasingly worried. If he found the Seventh Obelisk, he'd take it, and her away from him. He couldn't allow that to happen. Not at all. Not ever. He loved his goddess. He couldn't stand to have her taken from him. Especially not by this 'Doctor'. There was something not right about this 'Doctor', he mused. He was certain there was something bad about him, but what?

"Have to get rid of this 'Doctor'," Dr. Thompson muttered to himself, climbing up onto a stack of boxes. From his higher vantage point, he watched carefully as the Doctor headed further into the cargohold, unknowingly coming closer and closer to the Seventh Obelisk, and his own demise.

"Hello, what have we got here?" the Doctor asked himself, as he came closer and closer to a very tall object covered with a tarpaulin. "Well...we're cooking now..." He pulled the tarpaulin from the object, and smirked to himself. "The Seventh Obelisk. Here you are. Beautiful, as expected. And deadly, also expected. You have something inside you," he went on, addressing the Obelisk. "Something that should never be allowed to get out. Hmm. I wonder. What's the chance you've already managed to get out? Even just a little bit? Using your power to influence some poor human into doing your will? Seen that before. Another of your kind, too. But that was a fair few bodies ago, and not important right now. Or is it? Hmm. Maybe it is? Or only half is?"

The Doctor stepped back a little, admiring the hieroglyphics. "Yes. Osiran. And not a good one. Nepthys. I fought our husband, you know. Well. Your Consort, Sutekh. Beat him too."

He's encountered others like my beloved? That isn't good, Dr. Thompson thought to himself. He knows too much already. He needs to die. How though? Dr. Thompson looked around carefully. He could knock him out and throw him from the train, but that might result in too many witnesses. Particularly that Miss Pond. If she saw anything, she'd have to die to. And again, if she too went missing, and suddenly turned up dead, that would arouse suspicion.

He paused in his thoughts, and looked around him. However, if this Doctor were to have an accident while in the cargohold, that wouldn't garner too much suspicion, would it? Accidents happened on trains, didn't they? Particularly in the cargohold where lots of crates and boxes could fall off each other, couldn't they? Yes. That could work. Would it work from here? Yes, it might. Better to get closer though. Push a tower of boxes over, and try to catch the Doctor in the line of fire. Yes. That would definitely work.

Dr. Thompson climbed down from his perch, and slowly worked his way towards the Doctor, and the Obelisk. He sized up a tall stack of boxes, gauging the amount of force he'd need to use to make them topple over, then waited for his moment to push. Close to the Obelisk as he was, he could already hear his beloved's voice in his head, encouraging him to fulfill his task.

"Anyway. I need to make sure you're sealed up tight, Nepthys, and make sure you're never free to wreck havoc again. Sorry, dear." The Doctor raised the sonic, then paused. "I know this should really be done during the prayer meeting, but I haven't got time to organise it. Emergencies and all that."

Before he could say another word, he heard a shifting and scraping noise coming from his left, and he turned, just in time to see the stack of boxes bearing down on him.

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Amy Pond was bored.

Not that was Dr. Winthrop wasn't pleasant company (he was, but he seemed to drone on and on about subjects that no matter how interesting he tried to make them, just... weren't), but he talked, non-stop, about his work, which compared to the things she'd seen with the Doctor, were about as interesting as a rainy day back in Leadworth.

She'd tried, for the entire time she spent with him in the dining car, to direct the conversation to the Seventh Obelisk. She wanted to know what it was, and what the story about the Egyptian Goddess entailed. She knew from what she'd gleaned from the Doctor's phone call, that the Goddess had been sealed inside the Obelisk, and was, at least at the time of the phone call, running around the Orient Express (in Space! Couldn't forget that part).

"Oh, you don't want to know about that old thing, do you?"

Amy nodded. "I do, Dr. Winthrop, honestly." She smiled demurely. "Please? Tell me about it?"

Dr. Winthrop considered for a moment. The story wasn't one of the most pleasant things to talk about, but the delightful girl (young lady, he corrected in his head) was incredibly interested, and he supposed he could reward her for being so attentive even when he could tell she was getting bored.

"All right," he said at last, straightening his tie nervously. "I'll tell you, but be warned, it isn't exactly the nicest of tales. Then again, history isn't always a pleasant thing to talk about. Particularly personal history, but we're not talking about that now, are we?"

Amy shook her head. "Oh no, of course not."

Her own personal history wasn't something she'd want to share with the kind professor anyway. Besides, what could she tell him? Casually mention that the Doctor she travelled with was a time traveling alien? That he'd rebooted the universe, erased himself, then implanted a story in her head designed as a way for her to bring him back through the power of her memory? That her husband was once a man made of plastic, and spent nearly two thousand years guarding her near dead body in a giant box? Best case scenario was that he would believe her implictly, without question. Worst case scenario was that he wouldn't believe her, think her insane, and get her commited.

She didn't want to risk getting commited, so she smiled, keeping her mouth shut.

Dr. Winthrop smiled back, then leaned back in his seat. "Now, the Seventh Obelisk is still a bit of a mystery. It was a miracle, in my opinion, that we even found it."

"Where did you find it?" asked Amy. "In Egypt?"

"No, not in Egypt, although, you'd expect it would be, wouldn't you?" The professor shook his head. "Anyway, we found the Obelisk on a planet far from here, I..." He paused. "I can't recall the name, but I can tell you, I was astonished to find it in the first place. The Seventh Obelisk had been all but considered a fairytale, so no one, or very few, ever endevoured to look for it." He frowned, thinking about Dr. Thompson. "Then one day, my comrade, Dr. Thompson came to me babbling about a dream he'd had, where he'd been shown the exact location of the Obelisk. So we set out as soon as we could, setting up a dig exactly where he'd been shown in his dream." He paused again, scratching his beard. "And it turned out that he was right. The Obelisk was exactly where we'd started digging. It took a while, but eventually, we got it out, and had it all packed up for transport on this very train."

Amy looked at him curiously. "Is there a legend or anything about the Obelisk?" she asked, hoping her line of questioning wasn't making him suspicious. "Any stories, or legends?"

Dr. Winthrop nodded. "Oh, plenty of stories and legends, my dear," he replied. "So many, that it's difficult to tell what's true, and what's made up."

Amy leaned forward in her seat, resting her chin in her hands. "Could you tell me some?"

"Well, there are a few legends about a Goddess supposedly being sealed inside. A form of punishment, I believe, for either a great crime, or evil, she'd commited, or just for being a general nuisence."

"I'd like to hear more about this Goddess," said Amy, smiling brightly. Now she was getting somewhere. "I love legends. Pandora's Box was my favorite story as a little girl."

Dr. Winthrop smiled, then scratched his beard again, deep in thought. "Well, let me see. The Goddess was supposedly Nepthys, the consort of Set, or Seth, or Suteck..."

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