Seven had a really bad headache. He groaned as he sat up.
"Ace?" he asked.
"Donna," a voice said. Seven opened his eyes and saw the young red-haired companion that travelled with his Tenth self.
"Are you okay?" she asked. "You've been unconscious for about an hour now."
"I suspect that that was my fault," Seven recognized this voice as his Second self's.
"Yes, I think it was," Seven agreed. "Is there anybody else here?"
"Me," Tegan answered. Seven spun around.
"They got you?" he asked, feeling a little bit guilty.
"How about a song?" Two offered, pulling out his recorder.
"No!" both girls yelled. Both Doctors looked down.
"Is my playing really that bad?" Seven asked. "No matter! I can disguise his noise with my spoons!"
"Stop it!" commanded Tegan. "We've got to figure out where we are and what's happened to us!"
"Oh, we are," Two said.
"I think better with music," added Seven. With that, the two began to play their respective instruments, and the companions moved as far away as possible. When they decided that they were far away enough, they began to think.
"What do you suppose happened?" Donna said.
"Dunno. How did you get here?" Tegan replied. Donna thought for a moment.
"I was sitting on a chair, talking to the Doctor- well, one of them, when all of a sudden, this great black ooze appeared. It circled around me, and I couldn't run, because my ankle was sprained. Funny, now it's not hurting.
"Anyway, the ooze just rose up around me, and I was here. You and the question-mark covered Doctor arrived a second later, and finally the recorder Doctor," Donna ended her story, and covered her face with her hands. "What about my grandfather? He'll be worried sick. And my Mum…" she took a breath and looked back up to Tegan. "What about you?"
"We went into a maze, and these wacky hedges began to grow. Me and the Doctor I arrived with got separated from the others, and we heard this awful sound, so we ran away. We reached a fork, and I took one side and the Doctor took the other in an effort to divide and conquer, I guess. But that didn't work, and I think that you know the rest."
The girls fell into silence, listening to the very bad recorder and the somewhat better spoons. Then, Two took his recorder away from his mouth.
"I've got it!" he proclaimed. The companions ran back to the Doctor and the Doctor, and Seven stopped his playing to listen.
"What?" they asked him.
"Well, I haven't got everything figured out, but I'm getting an idea," Two warned.
"Just get on with it!" Tegan prodded.
"The Time Lords!" he burst with excitement. "It's the Time Lords!"
"Hurry up, Professor! You too, Amy!" Ace called. Her companions, the First Doctor and Amy Pond, were far behind her.
"Slow down, child!" One said.
"Yes, please," Amy muttered. Ever since Ace had blown up that image, she had been in denial. Enough so that Amy had to convince One to help her convince Ace that what had happened to the Seventh Doctor was real and not some illusion. Now Ace was desperately trying to find out what had happened, even to the point of racing around in circles calling for her Doctor. They had even encountered a small dragon, though it didn't seem to notice them.
Ace's energy was about to get them in trouble again. She shot down the corridor as fast as she could. Out of nothing, a creature, half woman, half lion appeared. It grabbed her arm.
"Oi! Get off of me!" Ace tried to squirm out of its grip, but it was futile. Hearing Ace shouting, One and Amy picked up their pace. By the time they reached her, Ace and the sphinx were engaged in a shouting match.
"Get off!"
"Riddles!"
"Get off!"
"Riddles!"
"Shut up!" Amy yelled at them. They both obeyed. "Release her!" she commanded. The sphinx let Ace go.
"Thanks-" Ace started.
"Shh!" Amy interrupted. "Now, what is it you want, lion lady?"
"Riddles!" the sphinx growled in a raspy voice.
"Riddles?" chuckled One. "Do you want us to tell you, or you to tell us?"
"Both!" it squealed. "Game, game! Sphinx like game!"
"And then can we go?" Ace asked it.
"No, no! You win, you go!" the sphinx giggled. "I win, eats! Eats for me!"
All color drained from Amy's face. "Are… are we the eats?"
"Yes, of course, dear girl! Who else would it eat?" One said. "Now, proper introductions are in order. You should know who you might be eating, and we should know who might eat us! This is Ace," he gestured to her. "And Amy-"
"Hello."
"And I'm the Doctor."
"Doctor… who?" the Sphinx looked confused.
"Yes. Now why don't we start? No time like the present! Or the past, if you're looking at it in the future, relative to this time. Or the future, if you're looking at it in the relative past! Hm, hmm! Why don't you start?"
"Now?" the sphinx was completely befuddled now. The Doctor's little speech seemed to have done it in.
"Yes! You start, he said," Amy prompted. The sphinx cleared her throat.
"What walks on-" she started.
"Four feet in the morning, two in the afternoon, and three in the evening?" Amy finished. The sphinx blinked. Her mouth dropped open in an astounded gape.
"Think of something a bit more original," Amy sassed. "Anyway, it's a man. My turn," she thought for a moment. "Forwards I'm heavy, backwards I'm not. What am I?"
"Ton!" screeched the sphinx. "Me turn! A boy and father get into accident and are taken to two separate room to heal. Doctor come into boy's room and say, 'I cannot operate. The boy is my son! How is this possible?"
"It's his mum," Ace replied. "What gets blacker as it gets cleaner?"
"A blackboard," sang the sphinx. "What has hands but cannot clap?"
"A clock," both companions chorused at once. Amy was getting ready to take her turn when the Doctor spoke instead.
"This statement is false," he said. "So is it true?"
The sphinx stared at him. "It must be!"
"But it said that it was false! If it's true, then it must be false!" the Doctor insisted.
"Then it's not true!" screamed the sphinx.
"Then it is true, because saying that it is false while it says too that it is false makes it true!"
The sphinx growled and stepped menacingly forward. "Figure… out… riddle!" But as it said that, the strain of trying to puzzle out the paradox the Doctor created dissolved the creature into nothing.
Ace and Amy stood in silence for a moment.
"Ace, Professor! That was wicked!" Ace was in total awe.
"I try," the Doctor replied. "Now come on- we've got a Me to rescue!"
"What does that mean, Doctor?" Ian Chesterton asked the Eleventh Doctor, some miles away. "'In danger of being dead?'"
"Something's happened in the past that was never supposed to happen," the Doctor explained.
"Isn't that what's happening now?" Barbara chimed in.
"Yes- but this just sped it up. The walls of the universe were already starting to crumble, but now they're starting to collapse even faster. And there's something else, too."
"What?"
"Eight sent out a telepathic distress cry, and Five answered. Five also reached out to every other self, and I know most of me answered. Funny thing is, it didn't work. We should have been able to talk together, in the Matrix, but we couldn't. My consciousness kept circling back here instead."
"And that means…?" Ian prompted.
"Someone's been interfering with the Matrix. Again," Eleven's face evolved into an expression that the Doctor never was- terrified. "It can't be him," he whispered.
Five and company hurried down the corridor in front of them. They had decided to get to the center of the maze, or at the very least, out of it. Anything to find out what had happened to Tegan. Adric had run further, looking down corridors and declaring them dead ends or forks. If they were forks, he'd assign ine heads and the other tails and flip his coin to decide which one to go down.
"Dead end! Fork… left side! Fork… left side! Dead end! TARDIS!"
"Say again, Adric?" Five called.
"The TARDIS. It's here!" Adric sounded perplexed. The rest of his group caught up to him. There was the TARDIS, standing in the middle of the corridor in all of its majestic blue glory.
"Come on," Five said, striding forward and taking out his key.
"Doctor," Nyssa warned, but Five had already opened the doors and walked in. His companions hurried in after him.
The sight inside was weird. The Tenth, Eighth, Sixth, and Third Doctors were in the console room with their companions. Susan noticed that the red-haired girl was absent. The two groups surveyed each other for a moment.
"And this is when 'complicated' becomes an understatement," Six noted.