A strong wind was blowing Romana's hair all over her face so fast that she was hardly able to brush it off again, and she was having difficulty maintaining her icy-cool poise – especially considering she was standing on a thin black disc of magical energy several hundred feet above the city's tarmac streets, hurtling through the air at great speed under the direction of a morose teenage witch. Romana was pretty open to new experiences, but there were several things she wasn't entirely comfortable with about this one.
Just after she, Starfire and Raven had departed on their mission, she had seen the Doctor and the others zooming off in the T-Car, the Doctor obviously having a whale of a time, leaning out of the passenger window with his hat clasped to his head for dear life and his scarf streaming out for several metres behind. A much more civilised way to travel, Romana thought enviously; and she wasn't usually a fan of ground cars.
They soon landed in the secure courtyard of the Kronodyne Laboratories complex. A huge hole had been blasted in the wall of the main building. Romana, Raven and Starfire entered through it into the network of corridors and workshops inside. The place seemed deserted; presumably all the staff had fled.
"We may have arrived too late to apprehend the thieves," said Starfire, "I fear they may already have absconded with what they came for."
"Oh well, you rarely catch a tafelshrew on Otherstide, as they say," said Romana philosophically, giving the quotation in the original Standard Gallifreyan.
"What did you say?" asked Starfire, looking at her in puzzlement.
"Oh, nothing. Just an old joke in the language of my world. I doubt you would've got it," smiled Romana – whereat Starfire's eyes narrowed a little.
Romana prided herself that her aristocratic hauteur, the ice-cool composure which she had learned in the very best Time Lord finishing schools, never failed in even the most lethal and mind-boggling circumstances. But it nearly deserted her when, without the slightest warning, Starfire landed in front of her, grabbed her, and gave her a long, firm kiss on the lips.
"She does that," Raven commented dryly, remembering the time she had been absorbed in a mystical text and accidentally said good morning to Starfire in Sanskrit.
Romana's self-possession was hanging by a thread as she disentangled herself from Starfire's embrace.
"Starfire," she said, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear nervously, "I think we should get something clear. Of course I'm very flattered – you're a beautiful girl, probably – but there is the difference in our ages to be considered – I'm nearly a hundred and fifty, whereas you're about fifteen or so..."
"You misunderstand! The reason why we touched faces was so that I could comprehend the joke that you made," said Starfire in fluent Standard Gallifreyan. "But you were right: I do not get it," she added.
"It was funny because it actually is Otherstide today, relatively speaking; but I don't understand what kissing me has got to do with... hang on, what language were you just speaking?"
"It was not a kiss; it was a genetic transfer, through which I was able to learn your language."
"I'm sorry, Starfire, but that's preposterous!" snapped Romana, fed up with the way this reality kept thrusting Clarke's Law so rudely into her face (literally, in this instance). But Starfire just giggled and flew away.
"Come on," said Raven, "let's search this place."
# # # #
Across town, in the bunker outside the city limits, the other Teen Titans were grappling with a problem that the Doctor had become all too familiar with in seven hundred years of adventuring.
"How are we supposed to find the secret bad-guy hideout in this place?" demanded Beast Boy. "These corridors all look the same! We might be going round in circles and we wouldn't know it. And it's dark!"
"I'm reading energy field activity, but nothing I can home in on," Cyborg said, looking at his personal sensors. "The machinery could be shielded. In a place like this, I wouldn't be surprised if the shielding's built in."
"Ahm nt hffing mch lk eever," said the Doctor, who was juggling an etheric beam locator and a neutrino tube, so had transferred the sonic screwdriver to between his teeth.
"We'll have to split up," decided Robin. "Go separate ways, and if any of you finds the source of the disturbances, contact the others. Doctor, just temporarily, here's a spare communicator: you can reach any of us on it."
"Fank oo."
So they went off four separate ways. The Doctor selected a corridor and strode down it, stuffing scientific implements back into his pockets as he went. After several twists and turns he became aware that the air was starting to get colder. Walking a little more cautiously, he continued. Soon, in the near-darkness of the bunker, his keen eyes detected a glow that pulsed with the regularity of a heartbeat. It was emanating from somewhere up ahead. He proceeded down the corridor, following the pulsating lights, aware as he did so that the light which was leading him could be a deliberate lure into something very nasty.
"Come into my garden, said the octopus to the fly..." the Doctor mused. But there was no help for it: whatever was going on here had to be stopped, and that meant finding it... even if it wanted to be found.
The light grew brighter and brighter, until the Doctor reached an open door. It led to some kind of workshop, from which a humming and a bleeping emanated. He peeked round the frame of the door. There was no-one in sight, but the room was full of promising-looking machinery.
"Ah-ha. The octopus's garden."
Tucking his scarf back over his shoulder, the Doctor sidled cautiously into the workshop, keeping an eye out for eldritch tentacles (or other more prosaic perils), and giving the machinery the once-over as he did so.
In the centre of the room stood a large array of twisted metal tubing, underneath which was a box full of wires and blinking flashing lights: the source of the glow that had led him here. Up close, there was something strangely disturbing about the lights, and the weird pattern of their flashing had a faintly nightmarish quality. The Doctor recognised the characteristic sensory and emotional disturbance, and unmistakable psychic signature, associated with primal-vortex energies. He started to move towards the array for a closer look, but was brought up short by a cultured, sneering voice from behind him.
"Take a good look, my friend – it will undoubtedly be your last!"
# # # #
Romana, Starfire and Raven did the sensible thing and decided not to split up. Together they made their way through a lot of also-quite-samey corridors, moving deeper and deeper underground as they continued into the complex, encountering no-one at all. But eventually they came out onto a balcony overlooking a large vault, the floor of which thronged with activity. They quickly ducked behind cover to avoid being seen by those below.
They peeked carefully over the balcony wall down into the vault. It was full of masked figures, wearing all-over metallic light armour in a style reminiscent of ninjas. They were gathered in front of an interior door which obviously led to a further, more secure vault. Two of them were operating a machine covered with aerials pointing at the selfsame door.
"We were not too late after all," breathed Starfire. "We have arrived just in time."
"Whatever's in that vault is obviously what they're after," whispered Romana. "We need to get in there first. We'll have to distract them somehow, draw them off."
"There's no time for that," said Raven. "We'll just have to go through them."
"But there are about twenty of them, and only three of us!"
"Correction: two of us," said Raven. "You stay here. This is our department."
"Um, are you quite sure about this? They're quite big... and that looks like power-armoured battledress."
Raven took off, swiftly followed by Starfire. Immediately the sound of gunshots, energy blasts and things crashing into other things filled the vault. Romana covered her eyes in despair.
"I can't watch," she lamented.
Even with her hands over her eyes, she could see green and (somehow) black lights flashing violently. Unable to resist, she peeked through her spread fingers. About ten of the ninjas were strewn around the floor, unconscious. Most of the rest were firing laser pistols into the air, trying and failing to hit the coruscating green flare that was zooming around above their heads hurling starbolts. The others were shooting ineffectively at a black shell of energy, which, as Romana watched, suddenly flew out at them in a wall, sending them all flying like skittles at a bowling alley. As the shell of black energy dissipated, Raven stood revealed inside. Her eyes met Romana's.
"Almost done," she said.
Romana grinned weakly and gave her a half-hearted wave.
As the fight continued, Romana saw a path clear through to the inner door. She made a break for it, picking her way through the debris and bodies. About halfway across, one of the masked ninjas suddenly landed in front of her, and she skidded to a halt. The ninja's eyes narrowed, and he thrust his laser pistol into Romana's face.
"I surrender!" Romana shouted, putting her hands up really high. The ninja paused, confused. A split second later, a large piece of metal swathed in dark energy crashed into him from the side and knocked him sprawling.
Romana looked sideways. Raven was standing there, the glow of power fading from her eyes. Starfire landed next to her with a style and grace that would have won full marks in any gymnastics floor exercise. They were both totally unruffled. Behind them, piles of unconscious enemy warriors could be glimpsed through the drifting smoke.
"Nice going," said Raven. "Pretending to surrender like that kept him busy long enough for me to come and finish him off."
"Yes, indeed – ahem," coughed Romana, who was now feeling slightly ruffled herself. "Thank you. Well done."
"Don't mention it," said Raven. "Now let's get into that vault."
"Leave it to me!" said Romana stoutly. She brought her sonic screwdriver to bear on the locking mechanism, and after a few seconds, the thick blast door creaked open.
"I could have opened that for you in half the time with magic," said Raven.
"Would it not have been simpler for me to tear the door off its hinges?" enquired Starfire with a puzzled frown.
Romana closed her eyes and counted to ten million very quickly.
"Yes. Either of those would have been quicker," she agreed.
Then, just to make the day even more frustrating, the booby-traps exploded.
# # # #
The voice came from a rather short man who was clad from head to foot in metallic armour, complete with a mask that was dramatically coloured to give the illusion that half his face was permanently in shadow. He was standing on a gantry overlooking the room with his hands behind his back, gazing down arrogantly at the Doctor. About a dozen similarly masked and armoured henchmen wielding laser pistols stood at his heels, awaiting his order to kill. The Doctor gazed arrogantly right back up at him.
"Ah," he said, "you must be the chap who's nursing an unhealthy obsession with giant celestial octopuses... or should I say octopi? Octopodes?" He thought for a second. "No, octopuses."
"Octopus," corrected the masked villain. "Singular. The Ragnaroctopus, to be precise. Summoning that glorious creature will be the greatest act of magick ever performed in the history of sentient life."
"I quite agree. Makes it rather a shame that there'll be no-one left alive to celebrate it with occasional verses, half-holidays, Ragnaroctopus Day parades, and all that sort of thing, doesn't it?" said the Doctor, thinking that just for once it might be worthwhile pointing out the obvious flaw in the villain's plan.
But, as he had suspected would happen, his interlocutor ignored him.
"I must admit," he continued, looking the Doctor up and down, "when the intruder alert went off, I was expecting a team of daring young superheroes, not a down-at-heel sideshow clown... but no matter. Whoever you are, you signed your own death warrant when you stumbled across my project. Destroy him, my minions!"
As the heavily-armed thugs advanced menacingly on him, the Doctor could barely suppress a grin of excitement. Crumbs, he thought, perhaps I've really had it this time!
It was exactly the same type of situation he got himself into every week – roughly every twenty to twenty-five minutes, in fact. Yet somehow, it never got any less thrilling...
TO BE CONTINUED...