Potay-to, Potah-to

Prompt: "what if Donna got stuck in a potato and the doctor had to get her out"

From: guest

Words: 1215

Author's note at the end.

One second, the Doctor had been walking, talking with Donna as they were eating chips, and the next she'd been gone. Of course, there'd been a flash of light in between the seconds, because people didn't disappear into thin air, but even that small courtesy wasn't enough. Donna was gone (and so were his chips, but Donna was more important).

The Doctor looked around. The biggest chippy this side of the Lesser Magellanic Cloud was just as busy as it had been. Everything seemed normal—and that was the last time he said those words.

"Excuse me!" the Doctor waved to a man and started running over to him. In spite of the loud greeting, the man walked to him, and they met halfway. "Hello."

"Hello," the man answered quickly. He had a kind, open face, and didn't look at all intimidated by the Doctor's large personality.

The Doctor expectantly looked at the man, but the man wasn't looking at him. He was looking around, searching, and doing it discreetly out of politeness for the man who had called him over. The Doctor waited, and still the man did not say anything, and he frowned—he usually got more of a reaction than that!

"What's your name?" he asked. The man stared. "I'm the Doctor, Oncoming Storm and all that. There's Donna, too, but she's gone. What are you searching for?"

"I'm Kim," the man replied to the Doctor's questioning squint, still only slightly fazed. "I'm searching for my daughter, Violet. She was here, and now she's just . . ."

"Gone," the Doctor finished. "Vanished, disappeared into thin air."

Kim nodded. Under his courteous smile and casual speech, the Doctor saw the beginning of turmoil, of bring back my daughter or I swear . . . But they weren't at that point yet, and would never get to that point if he had his way.

The Doctor twirled around and rubbed his hands together. He began walking, not waiting for Kim, who he knew was going to follow.

"We were just walking along," he rambled. "And she said how good the chips were, and I waited just a second because I was swallowing—you never talk with your mouth full, Kim, it's just not polite—and then there was a light, and she was gone."

"Violet was telling me how she wanted to bring the family here," Kim stood back when they neared the police box, but it was so inviting, and the Doctor didn't stop walking or tell him to go away, and he was still talking to the man so it would make sense for him to follow, even if it would be a bit cramped.

Or not.

"It's bigger on the inside," Kim whispered.

"And it can track Donna's biological signature!"

Somewhere, a cat meowed. Kim wanted to be more surprised, but this man would either get his daughter back, or he was the reason she was gone.

The Doctor popped up in front of him. "Tea?"

The kettle hadn't even finished boiling when the Doctor snatched Kim up by the hand and pulled him to the computer, which was now showing a map of the park. The Doctor pointed to a green dot. "That's her."

Kim stared at the dot. He didn't know how the Doctor knew, but he knew. Kim knew that Violet wasn't there, knew it because how could she be? The Doctor, in the meantime, was angrily squinting at the computer and pressing various buttons. About a minute later, Kim didn't know how or why, they moved.

"Follow, if you want to," the Doctor said, his voice low, before running out. By the time Kim joined him, the Doctor's face was clear, but he was looking around with obvious puzzlement, the squint back on his face. Kim wondered if he should offer the Doctor a pair of eyeglasses.

He shrugged and turned away when the Doctor looked at him questioningly. There were no humans in sight, probably not for miles, but the computer had said that this Donna person was here. Kim was glad he wasn't the Doctor's enemy. He swallowed audibly, partly from fear and partly because he never got to drink down the saltiness of the disappeared chips.

He took a step backward, to the comfort of the miraculous blue ship, before tripping over something. He yelped as he dropped to the ground.

"Are you alright?" the Doctor asked, bending down to join him.

"Yes, I—"

Oh. The Doctor wasn't talking to him, Kim realized as he picked himself up and began to walk away. The man was mad, there was no way he knew where Violet was, no way he could get to her. There was no way he knew that Violet's disappearance wasn't a publicity stunt. And yet . . .

". . . are you okay?" the Doctor was saying again to something in his hands. A potato, Kim saw if he looked closer.

Yes, definitely mad.

And then both he and the potato were being dragged back onto the ship, and it was moving again, just a bit more violently than the previous time.

"Wha—"

"They're in here!" the Doctor waved the potato, then glanced at it. "Sorry."

"They're in there?" Kim ran the information over in his head. His daughter and this man's wife—sister, mother, girlfriend, daughter?—were inside a potato?

"You couldn't hear them when you trod on them?" the Doctor led the way outside again, clutching the potato like their lives depended on it. He frowned. "Humans. I'll never understand how you live like this. Almost completely deaf."

He was ether insane or brilliant, and the large army of green dwarves waiting for them when they entered the clearing at the center of the park indicated the latter. People, suddenly without their chips just like he and the Doctor had been, were looking angrily at the army, and at the large pile of potatoes behind them.

"Um?" Kim eloquently questioned into the Doctor's ear.

"Bubbas," he replied with a sigh. "Farm aliens, make their money by selling potatoes, a native crop, to the Chip Shop Corporation."

"What about the weapons?"

"Wannabe warriors," the Doctor glared and turned his attention to the aliens. "Leave."

The tallest Bubba, the one with the most armor, stepped forward. He clicked angrily at the Doctor, moving what seemed to be his nose.

"Now that's just rude," the Doctor commented at a vicious twitch-wiggle-twist. "There's no need to get like that. Just give back our people, and go home."

More clicks.

"No," the Doctor shook his head to emphasize the point. "You're the childish ones. The Corporation is what's keeping your planet alive. You've got nothing but potatoes, it's not theft. Besides, you're just a fringe group, don't act like you're here on behalf of your people. I know your people, and you're not. Now I repeat—and I do this only once, because you've taken something very dear to me—go home and give us our people back."

There was a pause, then some more clicks, these ones ferocious and high-pitched. After a second, a flash just like when Violet had disappeared, everything was back to normal. The Doctor, from beneath a bushy mane of red, grinned.

"Where were we?"

Right. Well, sorry for disappearing for over a month. As of today, I am five chapters behind on this story, and I will do my best to catch up sometime in the next few weeks (without ignoring regular updates). I don't really know if this chapter is written well, or if it even makes sense, because I wrote about half of it a month ago and the rest now. But, never fear, the writer's block has been (mostly) defeated, and I am back.

I hope that you stuck around despite the hiatus (please don't shy away from telling me that you did), so feel free to say hello and to tell me what you thought!