Rose didn't bother mentioning the call, or its abrupt ending, as the Doctor shoved the phone so far into his pocket that his arm disappeared up to his elbow. She hadn't heard Harriet's side of it, but she could make a pretty good guess, based on the Doctor's replies.
The problem was, both sides had a point. The Doctor had made a point of telling the sycorax that Earth was defended, but he was rarely here; what good was saying it was defended when said defender was six million light years away in another galaxy?
(She had a gold-tinged flash of Harriet Jones on the telly, begging for the Doctor to help them. That Harriet was probably lucky that one or more of the other versions of the Doctor hadn't turned up; that might have been rather more Doctor than she'd have planned for – or wanted.)
On the other hand, asking for help and then working around or undermining said help like a child trying to prove they were 'grown up' was a bit pointless. Why ask for help in the first place if you were going to place conditions on it?
"Come on," the Doctor urged. "Even with what you did, Sandshoes isn't going to stay put forever, and I'd much rather we found the heart of the ship before he does."
Rose rolled her eyes. "Have any of you ever thought of working with each other?" she asked. "Surely you don't have to argue all the time?"
The Doctor sniffed, haughtily. "The rest of me deserve it," he said. "But… I reckon it's a form of Time Lord defence. If we know we aren't going to get on then we'll try our best not to run into each other. That way we won't bugger up the timeline."
"Are the other Time Lords like this?" wondered Rose.
"To be honest, most don't ever leave Gallifrey," the Doctor admitted. "So it rarely came up. The exception was the Time War, and all rules were suspended for that. No time to be fighting each other when we were fighting daleks or neverweres." He frowned in consideration. "The Master is the only other one I know of that regularly left, and I have no idea whether he ever met himself. Romana travelled with me for a while, but she didn't."
"Guess you're just special then." Rose grinned at him.
He smiled back, then peered around the next corner. "I'll tell you what I am," he said, ducking back. "Lucky; that's what I am. Know what I can see around that corner? Flight controls. On the other hand, they're guarded by two sycorax, so maybe unlucky as well…"
"Talkative," added Rose. "At all the wrong times." She raised her eyebrows at the corner pointedly. "What do we do?"
"Well, we could–" He ducked back further, pressing Rose safely behind him, as one of the sycorax guards turned and strode off down the hall that their current hiding place connected to. "Wait for them to do that," the Doctor finished, risking another quick glance around the corner at the other sycorax. Who, sadly, showed no signs of going to join his compatriot.
Pity.
Hoping that his Venusian aikido wasn't too rusty – he hadn't used it since before the Time War, and even that had been a bit hit and miss as he'd barely remembered learning it in the first place – he darted around the corner before Rose could say anything and jabbed the sycorax in the weak spot just under its collarbone.
The sycorax crumpled to the ground without a sound, and the Doctor turned to beckon Rose forward, giving her a proud grin as he did so.
"What was that?" Rose wanted to know as she joined him.
"Venusian aikido," he said, absently, glancing over the flight controls. It'd been a while since he'd dealt with a system like this, and he had to be careful; he didn't want to set them on a one-way fast-track to the sycorax home world, for instance. "I could teach you, if you want. It really works best with five arms and five legs, but I reckon Bad Wolf could easily work around that…"
Rose made an odd noise. "I… don't think I want to know, ta," she said. "If I've gotta be that close to someone, might as well just slap 'em."
The Doctor paused for a moment at that, wondering at the possibility of perhaps somehow turning Jackie's slap into an actual weapon – because Rassilon knows, it practically was already – but shook the thought off. Perhaps he'd come back to it later. "Well, if you ever change your mind," he said. "Sarah Jane and Jo both managed it, so it's not as if you'd need Bad Wolf."
"Sarah Jane?" Rose repeated, and the Doctor abruptly remembered that Rose had already fallen asleep by the time he'd mentioned her.
"Previous companion," he said. "We should run into her fairly soon, provided we don't muck things up too drastically. You'll like her," he promised, then remembered their original meeting. "Eventually," he added in a mutter, and then remembered just how he'd found Rose and Sarah Jane getting on, and frowned in consideration. "Hmm, perhaps you shouldn't," he decided. "Terrible idea, forget I said anything." He turned his attention back to the controls in front of him.
"Hmm," Rose hummed, and the Doctor internally cringed, because now that he'd said that, it was almost guaranteed that Rose would become 'besties' with Sarah Jane. Although at least it would be the other him's problem. "What are you looking for?" Rose continued, and he leapt on the change of subject.
"For anything that indicates whether or not the sycorax meant to be heading towards Earth, or if they were just on a routine scouting mission," he informed her. Something shifted in his mind, and he frowned as he realised what it was. "Hmm, Sandshoes apparently got impatient," he said. "He's just left the TARDIS."
"Doctor?" said Rose.
He waved a hand. "Don't worry, Mickey's fine. He's still safely where I put him," he grumbled. "Sandshoes is… Oh, never mind, he just ran into the sycorax." He rolled his eyes, even though Rose couldn't see him.
"Doctor!" Rose said, again, more insistently.
"Oh, relax." The Doctor scrolled rapidly through what he thought might be the equivalent of a captain's log, but didn't see anything that would help them. "He'll be fine. Believe me, I'd be the first one to know if he's not."
There was an annoyed grunt from behind him. "Doctor!" Rose yelped.
"What?! Oh–" He turned around to discover that apparently his Venusian aikido had been more rusty than he thought. Either that or it just didn't work as well against sycorax, because the guard he'd knocked out was now up on its feet again and had its arm wrapped firmly around Rose's neck, some kind of blaster pointed directly at her temple. He sighed in resignation and put his hands in the air. "Well, then, I suppose you'd better take me to your leader, hadn't you," he said.
The sycorax took them to its leader.
The Doctor had just finished running his new mouth off to what was apparently the sycorax leader when there was a commotion off to the side, and another sycorax pushed Rose and his older self forward to join him. He scowled at himself. So much for protecting Rose!
His older self sniffed, as if hearing him, and raised a pointed eyebrow back at him. Well, the eyebrow was raised pointedly, the eyebrow wasn't actually pointed… although, it could be; there was a lot of eyebrow there, Rassilon only knew what it could be hiding…
"Ahem," Rose coughed. The Doctor's gaze shot to hers – thankfully back to her normal brown – and then over to the surrounding sycorax when she pointedly – ha! – jerked her eyes in their direction. Oh, right…
"If you have quite finished," the sycorax leader growled, "you will tell us just who you are. We know him; he is the owner of the blue box. So now we will know… who you are."
The Doctor groaned and let his head drop back in exasperation. "I've already told you," he complained. "I'm the Doctor, but I don't know who I am yet; I'm still too new. Come back and ask me in, ooh, another three hundred years or so…?"
"You'd never last that long," he vaguely heard his older self mutter, but he ignored that, and so did the sycorax.
"But what I want to know," he carried on, "is how am I going to react when I see that?" He pointed, and everyone turned to look at the machinery that was balanced precariously on a small rocky dais. It was topped by a big red button.
Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of Rose turning to his older self and raising her eyebrows. His older self shrugged, sheepishly, at her. She glanced at the machinery, then turned back to scowl at him and shake her head. His older self nodded. Rose outright glared at him. His older self made an aborted movement with his shoulders, and his hands – still spread out in the air – twitched, as he nodded towards the Doctor. Rose huffed, and turned away.
The Doctor had absolutely no idea what that had been about, but he was much more preoccupied with the machinery. He was pretty certain that he knew what it was, and what it did, and what he'd have to do to disconnect it. But more than that, it was– "A great big threatening button!" he crowed, nimbly swerving around the sycorax leader to head straight towards the machine. None of the other sycorax attempted to stop him, either. "A great big red threatening button that must never be pressed, am I right?" He gave the sycorax a manic grin as he reached the dais and spun around. "I'll tell you what I do know about myself - I know I want to do this!" And he slammed his hand down on the big red button.
There was a remarkable lack of reaction to this.
"Oh, come on!" he said, disappointed. "Not even a little oopsie?"
"It wasn't activated yet," his older self said, dryly.
Oh. "Really?" he whined. "That's just not fair!" No wonder they hadn't moved to stop him. No doubt the leader had already realised that he wouldn't get a chance to activate it with the older version of the Doctor already aboard their ship.
The sycorax leader snarled at them all. Or perhaps just at the room in general. Or maybe it was a smile – it was a bit hard to tell with sycorax. "It doesn't matter," it informed them. "We don't need it; we will just summon the armada and take the planet by force!"
"Not while I'm here, you won't!" barked the older Doctor, scowling at them fiercely. Blimey, those eyebrows really were ready to go on the attack, weren't they?
"You could, I suppose," mused the Doctor, ruffling the hair on the back of his head as he skipped down off the dais and began to wander back towards the sycorax leader. "But why, though? Just consider humanity's potential! They can make something unexpected, something sharp, something new. Sure, it's not symmetrical or perfect, but it's beautiful and it's–" He paused, frowning at himself. "No, wait, hang on, that's from Encanto…"
("What's encanto?" Rose whispered to the Doctor beside her.
"It's an animated Disney film from 2021," he muttered back. "Don't ask me how he knows it. Last time round, we quoted the Lion King – still have no idea how I knew that, either."
Rose raised her eyebrows at him, and he shrugged in return.)
"The point stands, though!" the Doctor was continuing. "Leave them alone!"
The sycorax leader leant forward, and the Doctor had to prevent himself from recoiling backwards. Cor, its breath didn't half stink. "Or what?" it growled.
"Oh, no," his older self said, and lurched forward. The sycorax behind him made a grab for him, but missed. "No, not this time!"
The Doctor raised an eyebrow at the other version of him. Ooh, he could do that now! He'd always wanted to be able to… "Why not?" he asked.
"Because surely there's a better way than fighting some krallak pelle dalla sheestok–" The older Doctor suddenly paused and glanced around at the suddenly roaring sycorax crowd. "Oops," he said. He hurriedly stepped back until he was closer to Rose again, who lowered a hand enough to smack him on the shoulder.
"You are rubbish," she hissed at him.
"It just slipped out!" the older Doctor protested. "It's mostly how I've thought of it for the last couple of thousand years; I was too busy trying to prevent a fight to censor my language!"
The sycorax leader howled, and thrust a staff that it'd picked up from somewhere into the air. "Combat!" it bellowed. "For the planet!"
"For the planet!" the rest of the sycorax howled back.
The Doctor glared at his older self.
The Doctor winced as the gleefully bloodthirsty cries of the sycorax echoed all around them. What must be will come to be, Bad Wolf had said when she'd sent him to sleep the previous night. But he hadn't thought it'd come via his slip of the tongue.
Mind you, last time he'd used the phrase deliberately to provoke the combat when the sycorax leader had appeared hesitant to accept. That obviously wasn't the case this time, as the leader threw the staff aside and withdrew his sword with a flourish. The sycorax cheered even louder at the display.
"I really hope you've got a plan now!" Rose gasped.
"Sword fight, obviously," the Doctor told her, shrugging. "Worked well enough last time; now there's two of me. I just need a sword…" There was one stuck out of a rock, but his younger self would be– ah, yep, there he went to grab it. The Doctor shot a quick glance around but couldn't see any others standing about handily waiting for him, so he turned to the nearest sycorax. "Excuse me, mind if I borrow that?" he asked, but didn't wait for a reply one way or the other before drawing the sword attached to the sycorax's hip.
Judging by the roar it let out as he stepped away from it, it did mind, but it wasn't like he was going to give it back now.
He gave the sword a practice twirl. "Hmm, a bit rusty," he declared out loud. "Mind if we have a bit of a practice spar, first?"
The sycorax leader hefted his sword in the air, roared, and charged.
Guess he does mind…