Hello, all! I'm back with Chapter four! I had a hilarious and fantastic time in the mountains: adventures include wrestling a calf into submission, climbing a fifty foot rock wall in twenty minutes (it may not sound so impressive to some of you, but my last record was twice that time, so I was pretty darn happy!), repelling down said rock wall and being hit by campers with sticks as though I were a piñata (by order of my boss), and partaking in an all-out war that ended in most of the campers and several counselors, myself included, getting thrown in the stock tank for the horses. Oh, and tons of horseback riding (my favorite)! But now I'm back and am writing once more!

And now, dear readers, I write to you from my dorm room at college where I am studying pre-med, so if future updates are few and far between I do apologize.

Disclaimer: Doctor Who does not belong to me… but God knows the man belongs with me ;) !

"A Monstrous Encounter"

Riddle was up early the next morning after her usual six hours of sleep, yellow and white hair mussed and eyes groggy. She looked around in confusion for a moment, one strip of hair turning bright orange, before she processed where she was, remembering the night before and realizing she was not in unfamiliar territory but exactly where she was supposed to be. The orange returned to white when she saw the Doctor, his eyes framed by glasses, sitting at the computer, clicking through the supposed eyewitness accounts of the mermaid. His eyes had been glued to the screen for the past hour, but when he heard Riddle shifting her position as she awoke, rustling the bed sheets with her motions, he looked away from the monitor and at his new companion. He saw her sleep riddled expression and her hair, prominently displaying her peace and contentment, and grinned. "Good morning."

The corners of her lips twitched as she rubbed the lingering sleep out of her eyes. "Morning."

"Sleep well?"

She considered his question, looking pleasantly surprised as she thought upon her slumber. "Yes… I did, actually."

That was no surprise to him, as he was primarily responsible for her peaceful sleep. He'd gotten in his typical three hours and awoken to Riddle's tearful whimpering as her usual nightmares prepared to replay, her hair slowly turning from white to black as though someone had poured a cup of ink onto her head and it was spreading. Partially because her screams would wake everyone on the floor of the hotel up but primarily because he hated to see her suffer when it was within his power to prevent it, he'd sought her temples with his hands, pressing his fingertips against them, and proceeded cautiously into her subconscious. He'd tiptoed around any awareness she may have had to ensure he would not be thrust unceremoniously from her mind, or even worse, jumpstart her terrible dreams.

Sorting through her dreams had been simple enough, as he was only interested in that which he had already seen (although he was dismayed to find so few happy thoughts among them). Once he'd located those memories which always set Riddle to screaming in her sleep, he created a maze and a series of doors, burying them in a labyrinth inside her subconscious. He left them untouched in her awareness, however – he wouldn't want to be responsible for locking the only memories she had of her home planet away from her, as horrific as they may be. He ensured she could access them as surface memory only. He'd locked each door behind him before pulling back into his own head, satisfied with his handiwork.

Riddle's hair was all white and yellow when he next looked, and there was a smile teasing at her lips. Too curious to restrain himself, he'd delved back into her head again to see what dreams now made her so happy. He'd seen a few brief flashes of himself, to his great surprise, before he realized he'd been too careless. Before he could shrink back into the unobserved corners of her mind, she'd thrust him out, although the defense must have been entirely unconscious, as her countenance in sleep had not changed. He'd been appalled by the fact that he was the cause for her good dreams at first, before he realized he was all the good she knew since her amnesia had taken root.

"Glad to hear it," the Doctor said pleasantly, pulling his glasses off and rubbing his eyes with his palms. "This mermaid business is beginning to drive me mad," he sighed. He stood and paced about the room for a moment, trying to process all the information he'd taken into his head in the last hour. Looking for a distraction, his eyes sought out Riddle, watching as she crawled out of the bed. He pointed at the chair over which a small bag had been slung. "I popped out to the TARDIS for some things. You'll find some of your clothes in there. Get dressed. We'll go to breakfast, and then we investigate."

Riddle nodded and turned her attention to the bag which he had indicated, staring skeptically at the size (about as big as your average briefcase). "That can't be big enough to hold much more than a few pens, maybe a book. How did you fit an entire set of clothes into that?"

"Bigger on the inside, of course," the Doctor said, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. "Go on, have a look."

Riddle raised an eyebrow at him. "I don't believe that."

"No, it's true," he urged her, jerking his head towards the chair. Hadn't she noticed Time Lords were rather fond of bigger-on-the-inside-technology? But now that he thought about it, she'd only ever seen the inside of the TARDIS. He didn't think she'd even glanced at the outside, as her first venture outside his ship had been rather distracting. She'd been far too mesmerized by the blue skies to look at his blue box. It would be rather entertaining when she got back into it, then.

It was rather amusing now, actually, to watch her open the bag and see her hair go entirely yellow with a gleeful sort of amazement and then the pink highlights growing as she realized she'd scoffed at the idea too soon. The bag was several feet deep, and she practically disappeared into it, giggling, as she fished out a set of clothes and disappeared into the bathroom to get dressed.

Breakfast was quite the affair. The food was all right, and Riddle kept the Doctor quite entertained as she tried foods she'd never tasted before, her hair changing color almost with everything she tried. She loved waffles and hard-boiled eggs (not so fond of the yolks, though), and refrained herself from spitting out a bite of hash browns with a look akin to agony on her face as she forced herself to swallow. A strip of her hair even went brown.

"What are those?" she asked after taking a few large gulps of milk, pointing her fork at the fried breakfast potatoes. "Those are disgusting. What are those?"

"Aw, come on," the Doctor teased, taking a bite of the food in question from her plate. "Everybody likes hash browns!"

"Not me," she replied immediately, grimacing at the potatoes before choosing another hard-boiled egg, removing the yolk and depositing it near the three others she'd detached from previous eggs, feasting on the white bit. "These are lovely, though."

"Well, I'm glad you're having fun at the very least. Eat up! We go hunting for that mermaid once we leave here!" The Doctor grinned across the table at her.

"Excuse me, Sir?"

The Doctor looked up to see who had addressed him, and Riddle followed suit. A young man wearing jeans and a t-shirt with blood-shot eyes who looked as though he hadn't shaved in a couple of days had approached their table, clutching a stack of papers in his arms and looking desperate.

"Hello," the Doctor greeted him. "Everything all right?"

The man was shaking. "I'm really sorry for eavesdropping, but I just… I couldn't ignore it when you said you were going looking for the mermaid."

"Oh, yeah. All in good fun, isn't it?" the Doctor asked cheerfully, masking the sense of foreboding this man was setting off.

Riddle wasn't making nearly as much effort. Worry was written all over her expression and in her hair, a few strips going ink-black. "Should we not go looking for it?"

"No!" the man exclaimed, his breaths short and expression going frantic. "Whatever you do, don't go looking for that monster!"

People were looking at them now. The Doctor needed to talk to this man now, but not here. "All right, calm down," he said in the most soothing voice he could. "Riddle, you done with breakfast?"

She nodded.

"All right." The Doctor stood, indicating Riddle should get up as well. Ever obedient, she got to her feet. "Let's go outside," the Doctor suggested. "You can tell us all about it."

"They took my wife," the man said, looking up at the Doctor and Riddle from his seat on a wooden bench, his audience standing before him and listening intently. He was fighting back tears, poor bloke. From the state of his eyes, it looked as though he'd been crying himself to sleep every night for the past few days. He passed the Doctor one of the papers in his grasp with an unsteady hand. It was a missing poster, featuring a picture and a reward for any information leading to the location of the missing woman, a pretty girl with blonde hair and green eyes framed by glasses. "We only just got married a week ago," he explained, his voice trembling. "We were here on our honeymoon. It was wonderful. And then… three days ago…" his voice faltered, and he let out a sob as he began rubbing his eyes with one hand. "Sorry," he apologized thickly. "It's so hard."

"It's all right," Riddle assured him sympathetically. Her hair was blue now, displaying the sorrow she felt for this poor man. "Take your time." She paused for a moment and asked, "What's your name?"

"D-David," the man choked out, taking several deep breaths to try to calm himself.

"David," she repeated. "My name's Riddle, and this is the Doctor. He can help."

"We can help," the Doctor accentuated, watching a strand of Riddle's hair go pink. "So, David. What happened three days ago?"

It took David a few short breaths before he pulled himself together enough to relay the events, and then he explained. "Laura and me, we were just out exploring the beach, looking around for somewhere secluded, you know," he let out a very short watery laugh before he fell back into his depression. "We found a spot. Great little place. She wanted to go swimming first and I really wasn't in the mood, so I just sat on the beach and watched her… and then… they came."

"They?" the Doctor inquired curiously. "More than one?"

"Several. Eight or nine of them. They looked human until you got to their waists. All female. Different colored tails, different colored hair. Beautiful. I didn't know what to do. They just… swam up to her. They smiled and laughed, looking at her, looking at me. But then they stopped. And then suddenly they weren't… human at all anymore. Their skin went all… grayish, practically blue, and their eyes… those terrible eyes… black and soulless… they grabbed her. They grabbed my Laura and pulled her under, and some even threw themselves on the beach, hissing at me, clawing at the sand with their terrible fingers trying to reach me, and I couldn't save her. I just yelled and ran…" A sob slipped past David's quivering lips and just like that, he fell apart." I was supposed to be able to protect her…"

The Doctor was rather appalled by this man's state. He'd met men before who'd gone through tragedy and they put on brave faces and kept on with a fiercely optimistic attitude. This poor bloke though, he was wearing his very heart on his sleeve.

The Doctor liked him. Riddle seemed to harbor very similar feelings, as she sat down on the bench next to him, her hair growing a deeper blue by the second, and tentatively reached out and patted David's shoulder. "Hey," she said quietly. "It's going to be fine. We can help." She looked up at the Doctor and bit her lip. "We can help, can't we?"

"Oh, yes," the Doctor nodded, running a hand through his perpetually untidy hair as his brain began to sort through every aqueous life form he'd ever met, seen from a distance, read about, or only heard mentioned in passing. There were too many. He'd need to see these creatures himself to make an accurate guess as to what they could be. "David, you sit tight and keep passing out those fliers, all right? Riddle!"

She leapt to her feet as though startled. "Yes, sir!"

Sir, the Doctor thought amusedly. Not often he was called sir by anyone, nonetheless his companions. Sometimes he used the title to introduce himself (after all, he had been knighted!) but the people he travelled with never used it unless they were kidding around. "We've got work to do," he grinned, and was satisfied to see several strands of her hair go yellow with excitement.

"Are you sure this is the best way to find these things?" Riddle asked an hour later, perched atop a rock some twenty feet from the shoreline and peering through the pair of binoculars hanging around her neck by a leather strap. "Let's just rent some of that Scooby equipment and go searching for those things ourselves."

"Scuba, Riddle, not Scooby. Scooby is an animated dog who solves mysteries," the Doctor corrected her, scanning the surface of the ocean as he looked through his own pair of binoculars. He was on the same rock as she was, though he was standing. "And I've found it best to have a mostly clear idea of what we're dealing with before we go barging in blind. If there's a way to gather information, take it. Trust me; it's better that way."

Riddle sighed and focused her attention back on the water. After a few moments, she asked, "What's a dog?"

The Doctor couldn't hold back the snort of laughter. Her hair went pink. "Sorry," he apologized. "Dogs are a popular animal companion on earth. You'll see some soon enough, trust me."

"And Scooby is a particularly enthusiastic dog?"

"Huh?"

"You said he was animated. Animals must be very intelligent on this planet if they can solve mysteries all on their own."

The Doctor had to try very, very hard not to laugh at her comment. He succeeded, but he feared he may have cracked a couple of ribs containing an amused outburst. "Um… no, it doesn't quite work like that. Scooby is a cartoon character on a television show and he works with cartoon humans who solve mysteries and…" he cut himself short when her hair went entirely orange. He'd lost her. "Oh, I'll show you later. I probably have a video of it somewhere on the TARDIS.

"Okay," Riddle shrugged. Her hair returned to mostly white with a few gray sections, displaying her boredom with their task. Granted, sitting on a rock looking at water through binoculars for a creature that only had a slight chance of showing up was not the most exciting thing to do, but it was necessary. "What do you think it could be?" she inquired after a few moments more. She wasn't fond of silence; she liked to fill the air with speech.

"A few things, actually. Some more likely than others. The Calicus, for one. Their planet is entirely water, but I've never heard of one with human form. I mean, they've got four arms and spikes growing out of their heads rather than hair. Could be the people of the Republic of Imbris on Hippurus – that's fun to say – but that doesn't quite sound like them either. They're shape shifters, so it matches what we're hunting for a bit better, but they're not fully aqueous… makes me wonder if what we're dealing with is something new."

"Is new good?"

"Exciting, for sure, but good… that's such an objective term, isn't it?"

Riddle made a noise of uncertainty. "Your reassurances are very calming, Doctor," she muttered sarcastically. A strip of her hair had gone black. She was afraid of what could be out there. And the problem was, the Doctor wasn't entirely certain she shouldn't be.

They sat on that rock a good four hours before hunger forced both of them back to the beach and to the hotel for lunch. Both asked around the dining room for people who had seen the mermaids, and Riddle called the Doctor over when she got a positive response from a little girl. By the time he'd made his way over, Riddle was already conversing with her, kneeling so she was at eye level with the child.

"I'm Riddle. What's your name?"

The girl looked back at her for a while before she seemed to deem that Riddle was trustworthy. "Emily."

"Emily. That's a pretty name. How old are you, Emily?"

"Eight and a half."

For someone who hadn't spent any time around humans before, the Doctor thought, Riddle was doing exceptionally well. "You're pretty old!" Riddle exclaimed, and Emily looked back at her proudly. "And you saw the mermaid?"

"Yup. She was so pretty. Her tail was red and she had long black hair."

"She does sound pretty. What was she doing?"

A woman raced up to Emily and Riddle with a suspicious gleam in her eyes. "Excuse me! What do you think you're doing with my daughter?"

The Doctor shushed her, listening intently to Emily's answer.

"She was swimming near the rocks a little away from the beach. I was by myself looking at rock pools and I heard her singing. So I looked and she was out in the ocean, looking at me and singing and smiling. Then she stopped singing and started asking me questions. Like my name and how old I was, and she asked me if I was a human and I said yes. She wanted me to go play with her. I was going to, but then I heard Mommy calling for me and she sounded mad, so I had to go back. I said sorry to the mermaid first, though. She looked mad, too." Emily looked sadly at Riddle and said embarrassedly, "I made the mermaid mad."

"Don't listen to her; she has such an active imagination," the woman said quickly, shaking her head. "I don't know where she comes up with it."

"No, no," the Doctor said contemplatively, his head brimming with this brand new information. A siren race. There were myths of sirens all across the globe, but he'd never ascertained the source. Maybe he was dealing with the origins of those stories. It made sense, after all. Sea dwelling creatures, half human and half monster, luring people into the water and dragging them down below the surface, never to be seen again. "It's quite all right. She's going to be an excellent story teller. The world needs good story tellers. Anyway, Riddle?"

Riddle straightened up and looked at him, an expression on her face that clearly meant What do we do now?

"I think we need to go looking for more information. Let's go." He pulled her away from the perplexed mother and her daughter and they left the hotel at a brisk pace, the Doctor's expression screwed up in concentration.

"Where are we going exactly?" Riddle asked, matching the Doctor's hurried pace with ease. She loved going fast. Which was quite an asset to the Doctor – a companion who loved running nearly as much as he did.

"TARDIS. She's got way more information in her storage reserves than I could ever hope to keep inside my head."

"Doctor," Riddle suddenly said, stopping short. But he didn't stop. He didn't even slow his pace.

"Keep up, Riddle, come on."

"But Doctor—"

"What is it, Riddle?"

"I really think you should look at this!" Riddle said breathily, a tremor to her voice. She sounded very scared. The Doctor turned around and regarded her hair, entirely jet black, and followed her gaze, which was upon the sea.

"Well, hello," he whistled, staring intently at the mermaid, perched upon the beach with her shimmering silver tail rising and falling into the ebb and flow of the tide, watching him and Riddle through bright green eyes with a smile on her lips.

"I saw you watching for us this morning," she called, pushing her dripping yellow hair over one shoulder to reveal a bare chest. Riddle's hair gained pink locks, her cheeks turning red, and she kept her gaze firmly upon the mermaid's head. "You and your girl. The one with the interesting hair."

Riddle sucked in a harsh gasp. "How did she know that? I've still got on the perception filter!"

"Some species have a keener ability for psychic technology than others," the Doctor explained briefly, his gaze never leaving the mermaid. "So, what are you, then? You and your sisters have been giving us a fair amount of trouble."

"I'm sorry," she apologized, offering the Doctor a simpering pout. She was being very flirtatious. "Did you want us to come out and play?"

"I wouldn't mind a chat, yeah."

"So speak. I have plenty of time," the mermaid invited.

The Doctor wasted no time in asking questions. "Who are you? Why are you here?"

She scoffed. "Not so fast. You can ask me anything you like… so long as you offer me the same information that I give up. Fair deal?"

The Doctor let out a long and slow breath. "Fine. Who are you?"

She lay down on the beach and rolled over, her chin resting in her palm and her elbow digging into the sand. "My name has such little meaning here on this planet," she sighed. "No Earth language could translate it properly. I suppose the closest I can give you is that my name is similar to Caede (Cai-aid-ay)."

The Doctor knew enough Latin to know that the name was very similar to the ancient language's word for blood, shed in slaughter. The blood of the murdered. If that wasn't foreboding, he didn't know what was.

"Your turn," the mermaid prompted, grinning wickedly.

"I'm the Doctor," he introduced himself unenthusiastically, unnerved by Caede's curious aura. An alluring and yet repulsing atmosphere surrounded her. There was a perception filter enshrouding her true form, but it was too strong; he couldn't see through it.

"A physician," she smiled. "I think you will find we need no such practices beneath the surface. We are not as fragile as the humans."

"Wonderful. What are you?"

She laughed. "Oh, an ancient race, dear Doctor. We were thriving long before this Earth was coming together. We call ourselves the Viragoama here. Not the most appealing of names, but closest to our language's word."

Virago: Warrior.

Acroama: Singer.

The Doctor ran through the Latin in his head again and came out with those two words. Very interesting. "I'm a Time Lord."

"Time Lord," Caede repeated with interest, sounding impressed. "We heard you all perished in the war. Along with those nasty Daleks."

"…They did. I survived."

"The last of the Time Lords," Caede breathed, running her tongue over her teeth. "What an honor."

"How many of you are there?" the Doctor demanded.

Caede pouted. "No fair! I already know the answer to that question in regard to you."

"And I will be happy to answer it again. How many?!"

"You're no fun," she griped, her tail flicking irritably. "About sixty. We were so many not long ago, but the humans have been poisoning our waters. I can't tell you how many times we've had to relocate. Sad, too –Atlantis was one of our greatest achievements yet, and we had to tear it down and move on."

"What are you doing here?" the Doctor asked, visibly frustrated.

Caede rolled her eyes. "My, you're impatient. We're gathering intelligence on the humans. Why are there so many of them? We're trying to duplicate their form, you see. Walking on land. Tails are very inconvenient on this planet. All the most fascinating things are on land, and we're confined to the water. And yourself, Doctor? Why did you come to Earth?"

"My companion and I were looking for a bit of a vacation. I suppose you could say you put a bit of a damper on that." His mind was reeling. Duplicating human form? How could they do that? "What happened to your planet?"

"It boiled. Thousands of years ago. The secondary sun expanded. The planet was cooking. Our seers saw a planet with a habitat compatible with ours, and so we traveled across the stars. Oh, it took hundreds of years. We only arrived on Earth some three thousand ago, in the middle of the coldest water we'd ever known. Several died on the journey to warmer seas. We built Atlantis on the floor of the ocean, in the middle of the Atlantic, hence the name, when we stopped, and there were only some eight hundred of us. My people lived there for centuries until war broke out between us. Such a tragedy. Some wanted to make our presence to the humans known, others were adamant about remaining secretive. Over half died in that war; the side favoring our continued concealment emerged the victor. And then the humans began dumping garbage into the seas. Oil is foul. More grew sick and perished, and we left our beloved city, destroying the evidence of it. It's everywhere; the human filth. All over our oceans. We finally found a pocket of water with a fairly cleansing current not far from here and built our new abode a few years ago. We knew we needed to walk on land but had no means to assimilate. So… we started the Project."

"Project? What project?!"

"Ah, ah, ah," she scolded teasingly. "Answer the question first. What of the planet of the Time Lords, hm? Tell me how it perished. Tell me the ending of the war. We left our planet while you were still in the midst of it, you see, and I'm ever so curious."

The Doctor was reluctant. He had wanted to tell Riddle about it eventually, but not today… not like this. How could he tell her Gallifrey burned all thanks to him? How could he make her understand, right in this moment, that it was necessary? That he hadn't wanted to, but he had been forced to?

"I'm waiting," the mermaid said in a sing-song voice, her tail rising and falling back into the water.

The Doctor cast a wary glance at Riddle and replied as duplicitously as he could, "It burned. All of it. My home, the Time Lords, the Daleks… they all died. And the Last Great Time War came to an end. I was the only one who survived."

Riddle's gasp twisted his hearts and the look of horror and sympathy on her face was nearly unbearable. No… not just sympathy. Empathy. Both of them, the last of their kinds – because there was no doubt that all of Riddle's people had perished, what with the great chasm of nothing swallowing her planet and the Daleks combined.

The mermaid looked delighted. "How interesting! Such a noble race, all gone… you must have been devastated."

The Doctor shook his head, not as a response, but as a refusal to acknowledge her statement. "Now, tell me about this project," he demanded severely, hardened in the face of the memory of his beloved Gallifrey gone up in flames.

Caede looked thoughtful for a few moments, teasing Riddle and the Doctor with her silence, before she made a noise of consideration and decided, "Hm… no. I'm tired of playing. We've already swapped five questions and I've grown bored. Let's spice things up a bit, hm, Doctor?" Grinning a wicked, toothy smile the mermaid turned to scan Riddle with an intense gaze.

Riddle screamed quite suddenly and fell over, moaning and clawing at empty air, begging an invisible attacker to stop hurting her. Her hair was black and brown and her shrieks of agony were worse than the Doctor had ever heard them as she was tortured by whatever nightmare Caede had imagined for her.

"Riddle!" the Doctor roared, leaping to grab her, but he wasn't quick enough. Caede had transformed into the monster David had described hours earlier, her skin scaly and dark gray with a lavender sheen to it, her eyes great and bottomless black orbs reflecting pinpricks of sunlight. Her nails had elongated and turned black, resembling claws, and her teeth were like needles, thin and deadly sharp. She heaved herself just enough further onto the beach to snatch Riddle into her clutches and slithered back to the water as quick as the briefest flash of lightening, disappearing beneath the surface and coming back up several feet from the shore, Riddle's expression slack. She had gone unconscious, her hair still black and brown.

The Doctor, enraged, lifted his screwdriver as a weapon and commanded her with all the fury and danger he had in his body, "Give her back! You give her back to me RIGHT NOW!"

"Not a chance, Time Lord! This one we must have," Caede hissed, her tail whipping around her. "The one with the changing hair color. If you're so determined… come and get her."

And the monstrous mermaid was gone, leaving the Doctor alone on the beach and more furious than he had been in long time. "RIDDLE!" he screamed, an exercise in futility. She was gone, Caede was gone, and now he had no choice but to do what he had been hoping to avoid: venture below the surface in pursuit of those monsters himself.

Sorry it took so long to get this out there! I'm a biochemistry major with an English writing minor, so obviously 90% of my time is devoted to homework. I have calculus, biology, and chemistry labs tomorrow, so pray for me, wish me luck, whatever it is that you may do, and I'll get chapter 5 out as soon as I can, which will still be much later than I'd like and far too late to satisfy your curiosity, and I apologize. Just know that I AM trying!

Love you all and thanks for reading!

Cantica, Out!