CHAPTER 22

I do not own Doctor Who or the Wizard of Oz, and I am making no profit off of this.

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Things in Pease Pottage had been getting worse and worse lately, and Anna Korvus had no idea why. Life here used to be boring and ordinary. Nothing unusual of any kind had ever happened here or seemed like that it ever would.

Then it seemed like everything just started to go wrong out of the blue for some reason. It had all started the day that Melanie Bush had returned. She had lived her once a long time ago when Anna was a kid, and then she just disappeared. Suddenly she reappeared a few days ago after having been gone most of Anna's life, and everything started coming apart.

People who she had known all of her life were suddenly acting crazy, and now she kept getting weird stares from certain people in her neighborhood. It had reached a breaking point yesterday when her best friend suddenly started acting coldly toward her and ordered her out of her house when she came to visit her. It had happened right after Anna had looked at her in shock because just for a second she had sworn that she had seen a giant spider on her back!

That was when she had called someone named Martha Jones at UNIT. She had never heard of UNIT or Martha Jones before, but a mysterious woman had given her the number once and told her to call it if she ever needed any help. She still didn't know who she had been. She had blonde hair and had dressed all in pink.

Martha Jones had told her that other people in her little village had already called and had told her similar stories to hers. She said that she was sending help as soon as she could and not to worry. It was easy for her to say. She didn't have to live here right in the middle of it all. Anna was worried. She didn't what was going on and why she was being ostracized like she was. She also didn't know why she wasn't being affected by it. It worried her that she might be next soon.

She kept waiting on Martha's help to come, but she still hadn't seen anyone arrive yet. She wasn't sure exactly how that she would know them if they did come. She had asked Martha about that, and all that she had said was that Anna couldn't miss them. Whatever that meant!

Then she finally understood exactly what she had meant when she heard a strange wheezing groaning sound coming from the middle of her living room! She looked on with complete disbelief at the large copier that suddenly appeared out of nowhere right next to her couch.

Anna was still standing there staring without blinking when a red headed woman somehow emerged from inside of the copier. She looked at Anna in concern for a minute and said, "Sorry if I scared you. I tend to forget how seeing a TARDIS in action for the first time can affect people. I'm Donna. Donna Noble."

Anna still kept staring ahead without moving as her mind couldn't quite process what she was seeing yet. Donna smiled sympathetically at her and said, "That's okay. You just talk when you feel like it. I'll just be over here talking with my team when you're ready."

Now even more people started coming out of the copier, and Anna's mind went into overload. She started to see black spots before her eyes as she began to pass out. Luckily she was caught before her head hit the floor by Donna.

"Whoa! We don't need to have you getting hurt before we've even started. There will be plenty of time for me to worry about you getting hurt later when we run into the Metabelis spiders," Donna said with a chuckle.

"Metabelis?" Anna said as she spoke for the first time since Donna had arrived.

"It speaks," Dorothy said with a smile.

"Stop it, Tornado Girl. You know how traumatic this can all be for the first time," Donna said with a frown.

"Yeah, I do. That's why I was trying to make her laugh," Dorothy said with a serious face.

Donna looked at Anna, and it seemed as if Dorothy's remark had had the desired effect on her because she was smiling at them. She seemed to be greatly amused by them for some reason.

"Do you find us funny?" Donna asked her grinning.

"Some strange people turn up out of nowhere from inside a copier in my living room and start arguing. There's nothing funny about that. No. It happens all of the time!" Anna said sarcastically.

"It does actually. More than you might think. Let's not concentrate on that right now though. We'll concentrate on one reality shattering moment at a time. So you say that you saw a giant spider on your best friend's back?" Donna asked her.

"I think so. I might have imagined it. It was there, and then it wasn't. Maybe I'm just going crazy. Things like that just can't be real," Anna said shaking her head.

"You want to bet, Disbelieving Girl? I've had something on my back before that was very similar to that. It was very real!" Donna said with a shiver.

Anna looked at Donna with surprise and said, "You mean they're real? I didn't just dream it up? With all of the weird things going on around here lately, I thought that I just made it up. I've been worried that I'm cracking up."

"No. They're real. A friend of mine saw them once before, and I've seen something just like them," Donna reassured her.

"Do you think that someone brought them here? All of this started when this woman named Melanie Bush who hasn't lived here in years came back recently. She always seems to be everywhere I go lately too. I think that she's out to get me. She must be working with the spiders," Anna told them.

"That's not true. Doughnut would never do such a thing. She's probably been trying to protect you, and that's the gratitude that she gets for it," Dorothy said in a sudden bad mood.

"You know her?" Anna asked.

"Yes, she's a friend of mine. I can vouch for her that she's not working with anybody," Dorothy said.

Anna looked skeptical but said nothing further. Dorothy decided that she was going to find Mel and help her to fight these things just because Anna had to make that uncalled for remark.

Anna was surprised when even more people got out of the copier. It was getting ridiculous. How could so many people fit in there? It made clown cars look tiny in comparison!

"I never got to ask you, Michelle. How are things going in the mirror verse? Are the Shadow Kitties causing you any headaches?" Donna asked.

"No, not too many. The only problem I have is Alina. She keeps screaming at me because she's in there alone with them. They keep trying to eat her," Michelle said with a grin.

"That's good enough for her. Now she knows what it feels like to feel helpless and alone against a monster that's trying to kill you," Donna said with a smile.

Anna looked at them in shock. What on Earth were they talking about? Had they left someone to die somewhere?

"She's a vampire not a living person," Donna explained as she saw Anna's expression.

"There are real vampires?" Anna asked in disbelief.

"Yes, there certainly are, Disbelieving Girl. You're looking at some of them right now," Donna said with a chuckle.

Anna looked at the pale faces of Ileana and Katherine and shuddered as she realized just who Donna had been referring to. She unconsciously put a hand to her neck as if to protect it.

"Don't worry, we don't bite," Ileana said with a grin.

"Not humans anyway," Katherine said.

"Mum's harmless," Amanda added.

"Mum?" Anna said in shock and disgust.

"We're getting off topic here, Anna. We need to focus on the spiders, remember?" Donna said as she quickly changed the topic. She really didn't want to argue with this woman about the ethics of a vampire raising a child.

Anna let it go for now and said, "Okay. Well, I guess I can start by leading you to my best friend, Kara, first. She's the reason I called. I don't want anything to happen to her. She's like my sister. Help her!"

"We will. Where does she live?" Donna said with a comforting tone.

"She lives next door to me. She's in the house on the left," Anna said.

The Wolves went to Kara's house and knocked on the door. There was silence for a moment, and then they heard the sounds of struggling as if two people were involved in a fight with each other. They could hear things being knocked over and broken at first, then they heard shouting. Finally, a very loud scream came through the door that Dorothy recognized as Mel's immediately!

"We have to get in there!" Dorothy shouted.

"Allow me to help," Abraham said as he kicked the front door down.

"I love it when you do that," Ileana said as she gave him a quick peck on the lips.

"That's why I do it," Abraham admitted with a grin.

"Do you two ever stop flirting with each other?" Donna asked with a chuckle.

"No. Why would we want to?" Ileana asked mischievously.

They all rushed inside to find Mel being strangled by a woman who they assumed must be Kara. Kara was holding Mel up off of the ground with one hand that was wrapped firmly around her neck and cutting off her air supply. Mel looked like she was close to passing out at any second.

"Let her go, Kara. Why are you doing this?" Anna said to her with worry and concern in her voice.

Kara turned and looked at her as if she were a stranger and not her life-long friend. Anna felt a searing pain in her heart as she now feared that she had lost her friend forever.

Kara blasted Anna with a beam of energy that came from her free hand, and she screamed in pain.

Donna pulled out her sonic screwdriver and started bombarding Kara with a psychic disruption wave that instantly severed the connection between her and the spider on her back. Donna had added that setting on the way over because she knew that she would inevitably have to wind up using it on someone.

Kara screamed out in pain, and the now visible spider fell off of her back and hit the floor unconscious. Kara was now nowhere near strong enough to lift up Mel without the spider's help, and she let go of her instantly. Mel hit the floor with a loud thump and groaned in pain.

Kara swiftly came back to her senses and saw Anna lying on the floor shaking. She suddenly remembered what had happened to her, and a look of guilt spread all over her features. She ran to Anna and said, "I'm sorry. It wasn't me. Please don't be dying."

"She's going to be fine. I stopped you before you could do any permanent damage to her," Donna said.

"How did you do that? I didn't think that I would ever be free of that horrible thing. I tried so hard to fight it, but I just couldn't. It was too strong for me," Kara said.

"I have a handy little tool that helps me break their mental connection," Donna explained as she briefly showed the sonic screwdriver to Kara.

"You're going to need to use it a lot. I remember what the spider knew. There are so many more of them here. They have control of over two hundred of the people here, and they are adding more and more of us to their little army all the time," Kara told her.

"What do they want?" Donna asked her.

"They want to take over the Earth," Mel said as she got up off of the ground.

"Doughnut, are you okay?" Dorothy asked her in concern.

"Ace?" Mel asked as she looked at her oddly. She was much older now and looked different, but Mel was sure that it was her.

"That's what they used to call me. Now, it's just Dorothy," Dorothy said with a smile.

Mel rushed forward and tightly hugged her. Dorothy smiled as it helped to reassure her that maybe Mel hadn't left the Doctor because of her after all.

"I worried about you. About leaving you all alone with the Doctor I mean. I had to leave though. I felt a mental tugging, and I had to follow it. Glitz was there and volunteering to take me to where I needed to go because he felt that tugging too. It was like we were both being called somewhere," Mel said.

"It wasn't me then," Dorothy said as she sighed in relief.

"What? Of course not! Why would you think that?" Mel asked in surprise.

"I thought since you left right after I decided to travel with the Doctor that it might be me. That maybe you didn't want to travel with me for some reason," Dorothy said.

Mel hugged her again as she said, "No, of course not. Don't be silly. It never had anything to do with you. I was being called to help an old friend of the Doctor's. I became to him what I was to the Doctor. I'm his friend, his companion, and kind of his protégé. He's taught me so much about what he knows about life, the universe, and just about everything else. He's a very wise man. His name is K'anpo Rimpoche."

"He's the Doctor's mentor. He taught him so much. He basically helped to make him the man that he is now," Donna said.

"Now I know who to blame. I need to have a word with him," Dorothy said with a chuckle.

"You'll love him, Ace. He's just like the Doctor except not as frustrating," Mel said with a grin.

"He's beginning to sound better to me already. Please call me Dorothy, Mel," Dorothy said.

"I thought that you hated that name," Mel said.

"I did but that was before I met Rose. I've grown to accept myself and my past now," Dorothy said.

"It sounds like you found a mentor too," Mel said.

"Yeah, I did. Someone who sounds a lot like yours," Dorothy said.

"This is all very nice that you two are getting to catch up with each other, but we need to find the spiders and stop them before they get any further," Donna reminded them.

"That is very true for if we do not stop them now we may never stop them. They will soon be the masters of mankind," a voice said ominously from the doorway behind them.

"K'anpo, what are you doing here? I told you that this would be too dangerous. You're on the last legs of this incarnation as it is. You need to take better care of yourself. You only have two more lives left you know, and you're not getting any younger. Are you drinking that carrot juice and exercising like I asked you to do?" Mel said.

"No, I'm not because I don't like either one of them. Meditation will do wonders for my body and is much better for a Time Lord than either of those. Mind over matter you know. The mind is the master of the body when you know how to use it," K'anpo said indignantly.

"You're incorrigible, you know that?" Mel said as she smiled and shook her head at him.

"I thought you said that he was less frustrating," Dorothy joked.

The white haired old man wearing Tibetan robes smiled at her. K'anpo liked this woman already because she wasn't afraid to speak her mind.

"Do you have any ideas of what we can do to stop them?" Donna asked K'anpo.

Before K'anpo could respond to her, he was violently attacked from behind by a blast of energy that left him crumpled on the floor. His attacker was soon revealed to be Sabalom Glitz, the good hearted con man who had assisted the Doctor and Mel before in the past.

"Glitz, what are you doing?" Mel asked him in outrage.

"He serves a new master now. He serves the Eight-Legs," a strange new voice said as it came out of Glitz's mouth.

Glitz then began to start shooting blasts of energy out of his hands at them and caused them to all start running for cover.

"Not here even half an hour, I'm already fighting for my life. I missed this so much," Dorothy said with a grin.

"You people are all crazy!" Anna shouted as she hid behind a table.

Donna just laughed at her remark. She thought the same thing about the Doctor when she first met him, and now someone was saying that about her. If they were crazy, it was probably a good thing she thought to herself. Someone had to protect this planet; and if you had to be crazy in order to do that, then she could live with that. It was the good kind of crazy after all.

Next: The Wolves go on the offensive against the spiders and take the battle to them.