As the Nosferatu II neared Lotacam, Mel asked if she could see the TARDIS again. Although he hesitated, the Time Lord eventually agreed. When she first entered the familiar console room, Melanie succumbed to a tidal wave of nostalgia, failing to notice her companion walk past and into the rest of the ship. This TARDIS contained so many memories; even now she could imagine The Doctor as she first knew him, confidently steering them towards a destination other than the one he had chosen, with his multicolored outfits which she pretended to dislike, and his complaints about the carrot juice she encouraged him to drink. His second form came to mind just as readily, he would be bumbling around the console, mixing his sayings, and trying to make sure she enjoyed herself even as they stumbled into another adventure.
Lost in memories, Melanie failed to notice when The Doctor rejoined her until the man spoke, "Carrot juice?" She saw he held a glass of orange liquid.
"Yes, thank you, I haven't been able to find any since I left." She grinned at him, taking the glass. When she sipped the juice, Mel discovered a taste not quite as wonderful as she remembered. However, she hid any such thoughts rather well, instead steering the conversation in another direction. "I see you've redecorated."
"Have I?" he asked as if teasing her.
"I don't remember there being so much grey, just white as far as the eye could see." Quickly she drank more juice.
"Hm, the old girl went through a pronounced gothic phase during my last incarnation."
"Gothic? No! What did your Companion think of that?"
"Most of them didn't know the TARDIS could appear any other way."
Melanie finished off the drink in her hand. "Did Ace travel with you long?"
Clara held up her hand with an imperial gesture to interrupt The Doctor, "Was Ace the one with the oversized black coat covered with patches and pins?"
"Yes, I didn't realize you knew about Ace."
"You told me about her before you changed, when we spent a week trapped in the Norou orbital correction facility. Don't you remember?"
"Of course I remember."
"Anyway, I'm assuming Namm- ee-al-us," Clara worked to speak the right order of syllables in the Companion's name," is about to walk in."
"About to walk in? No, I talked with Mel for a few hours."
Giving him her best Strict Schoolteacher expression, Clara exasperatedly instructed, "Doctor, keep to the point."
When Namialus and Elocin entered the TARDIS, they startled the two people talking by the console.
"We're in orbit above Lotecam," announced Nam.
"If the TARDIS does all that the commander told me it did I'm not sure why we had to fly out here in the Nosferatu II, couldn't we have left at once?"
The man in the leather coat looked just the slightest bit impressed as he answered, "An astute question," he wanted to verify her name, "Elocin, I believe?"
"Yes sir," she replied at once, noticing his slight recoil at the word 'sir.'
"There is some Dalek activity nearby. The shorter our jump, the smaller the likelihood of our attracting their attention." He looked over the pair a final time before engaging the engines. Dressed in a navy blue shirt and trousers with black boots and a sword at his left side, Namialus also sported a pair of wrist guards. Leather straps ran across the young man's chest like a pair of bandoliers, and a short, bulky, and large, black blaster mounted to them behind his right shoulder. Standing to Namialus's right, Elocine wore black. The woman's jacket clearly belonged originally to someone much taller than her petite frame, a man judging from the garment's style. The black leather garment's sleeves had been rolled up to the correct length, and the right shoulder featured a leather pad studded with tarnished brass bits along the edges, which acted as a cushion for the slender and excessively long rifle she slung across her back with a strap. On each hip a small blaster pistol nestled in a quick draw holster and he could see the handle of some sort of knife rising from the top of both her boots. Unlike at the meeting, Elocin now wore her brown hair tightly braided down her back. "I'll land right outside the barrier surrounding the temple." Turning to Melanie, he asked, "Will you be joining us?"
For a moment he thought she would give her assent, but Mel only said, "No, I think I'll wait for you here if you don't mind."
"As you wish."
"Be careful you two," Mel cautioned Namialus and Elocin.
"You know we will," assured Namialus.
"Right," replied the Commander briskly, "I'll see you see you all soon." She walked out of the machine without a backward glance.
Elocin seemed disappointed the journey took so little time. Still, she hurried to the pair of doors leading to Lotecam and pulled them open as soon as they landed. "Doctor," she seemed puzzled, "I don't see any structures."
Namialus joined her and looked over her shoulder, "She's right."
"That's odd," replied the man with his distinctive voice, "We're barely one hundred meters from the Temple of Linmer. Even through the forest it should be visible." Pushing past them, he studied the sky, "Oh, I seem to have parked us facing away from Linmer's Temple." He stepped to the left and turned around, "Yes, there it is."
Namialus did not have to push past the woman standing in front of him, she moved before he so much as lifted a foot. Disappointingly, his first glimpse of the temple hardly impressed him. Built from stones of a dull brown color, it rose from the forest floor but did not rise taller than the trees. "I was expecting… I don't know what I expected it to look like, but not this," he complained while trying to sound like he was voicing a complaint.
"If you had taken closer notice during our briefing, you would know most of the structure is underground. Now come on, Namialus," Elocin grinned back at him before confidently striding off. "We'll be back as soon as we can, Doctor," she called over her shoulder, "but it'll probably take us at least six hours."
"The TARDIS and I will be waiting for you right here."
Namialus jogged to catch up with his partner. Soon they began to climb the stair-structured building. "I don't know why they built the entrance into the top of the temple," pulling himself up unto the penultimate ledge he continued to quietly rant, "that seems like a stupid design to me." He gave Elocin a hand up. "Almost as dumb as these increasingly tall levels, the tallest steps should be at the base of a structure, not increasing in size the closer you get to the top."
"Oh shut up and give me a boost," ordered Elocin, who stood at the base of the last level needing to be climbed, which rose above her fully raised right hand.
"Sure," Namialus held out his hands as a footrest, "up you go," he grunted as he lifted her.
Seconds later, Elocin scrambled over the top, and Namialus followed her, leaping up and grabbing the top edge with his fingertips. Once he regained his footing, Nam spotted the trapdoor leading down into the temple. Quickly he whipped out a silvery card and slid it into a slot beside the entrance. Immediately, the door soundlessly slid open. "Here we go," he muttered as he slowly lowered himself down.
"Expedition Log 7, Namialus speaking. We've now been down here for almost three hours. Currently, the Leftenant and I are camped out beside a vat of acid. According to the blueprints provided to us by our client, the basin briefly empties every sixty-three minutes when the liquid is pumped through a series of pipes and acts as coolant for an engine of some sort on the floor below. Or something. I honestly got sort of confused when Leftenant Teneb explained it to me. Anyway, we don't know how many minutes we'll have to wait before the acid temporarily drains away and we can cross. Namialus out."
For a few minutes the two sat in silence. Elocin ate a nutrient bar, offering him one wordlessly, but Namialus refused. Finally, she asked, "If you had to live in a story, where do you think you would fit in?"
"What?" Namialus could not even begin to imagine what prompted such an inquiry.
"Imagine you had to move into a fictional world, where would you belong?" rephrased Elocin.
"I—that is the weirdest question anyone has ever asked me in all my life," exclaimed Nam as Elocin giggled. Namialus was not entirely certain twenty-seven years old people were still supposed to engage in such behavior as giggling, but women generally seemed to think it was perfectly normal. "I don't know," he decided to take the easy way out, "where do you think I would fit in?"
"The Commander has a bunch of data chips full of books from Earth, from before it became Ravalox. I've read them all over the years, and I think I would place you in Camelot. You would make a wonderful knight errant."
"A what?" Namialus began to feel increasingly left out of the loop.
"A roving warrior who fights on behalf of the wronged and weak. I don't know that I'd call you a soldier, but you are certainly a warrior, Nam. Very honorable."
"And how about you?" he spun her own question back, "where would Elocin Teneb fit in?"
"Oh, I would be one of Robin Hood's merry men." Seeing his confusion, she elaborated, "They were a group of outlaws fighting a corrupt system and a usurping prince. They hid in the forest and stole from those with dishonest wealth to redistribute it among the downtrodden. And most of them were quite good at fighting with at least one of the weapon types of their day. But the best part, the best part is that they survive and conquer by stealth and guile rather than brute force."
"You're right, you would be happy there." Hearing a slurping noise, Namialus raised a hand, "We need to be ready to move."
"Right."