There was a crack in my wall.
Fairy Hills dormitories was well maintained, and well built, so there was no way this crack could have just appeared out of nowhere. I studied it, frowning as I tried to think of what could be the cause.
A fault in the plaster? A cutting charm in my sleep? What caused this?
"Fae, what are you staring at?"
My room-mate asked, poking her head in. Wendy had already put her hair up in pigtails for the day, likely assisted by Carla since her hair was a bit much for a ten year old to handle.
"The wall." And the crack in it.
Wendy looked bemused.
"I know you can be entertained by just about anything, but alright. You can stare at the wall. We have a job at the hospital at noon though."
"I remember."
But something was itching me about this crack. There was something different about it...My magic was humming in agitation that it was more than it seemed so... Wendy was about to withdraw from my room, but she paused and sniffed, looking around.
"Someone didn't try to come into your room last night, did they?" I blinked at her in confusion and she elaborated. "Something smells off about the air. Did you have your window open?"
"In this weather?"
Snow was rare in Fiore, especially near Magnolia. But the temperatures had yet to rise above freezing this week so I hadn't even cracked my window.
"I didn't think so, but it smells weird anyway."
This made me ponder for a bit longer as I stared at the crack. The resident mother hen called from outside my door.
"Faerun, don't forget to wrap up before you leave!"
Carla was a package deal with Wendy, and sometimes her warnings were needed. Other times they were just silly.
It's so cold, what kind of a crazy person would I be to go out in this weather without warm clothing?...Unless I could make a Gray totem-
Carla's voice was sharp and sliced through the air and all thoughts of that plan.
"Faerun, you will not follow through with that plan!"
-Darn Carla and her precognitive abilities...
"Fine, fine! I'll test it some other time."
She knew she wasn't going to get much more than that, so Carla left with Wendy without any further warnings to me.
Ok. So I didn't have my window open, but Wendy still says there's a weird smell. My gut says there's something up with this crack...So maybe it's not just a crack in the wall-
G2.0's voice was quiet and matter of fact.
It's a crack in time and space reaching all across the multiverse. The Doctor accidentally caused it. It goes everywhere, and some beings can use them to observe distant places or even to travel. The only being with access and ability to do so is Prisoner Zero, the maximum security prisoner of an advanced alien race.
The connection G2.0 gave me was all I needed.
That is, all I needed to become absolutely terrified.
My mind, guided by the history aspect of my magic, flitted through the various crimes Prisoner Zero had committed. I had to halt G2.0's outpouring after five minutes because it was summarized, stripped of most details and still wasn't getting any more palatable. I was just getting more and more scared by the second.
Prisoner Zero was a shapeshifter. A terrifyingly good one, down to the last detail. But unlike Gemini, he didn't have a fixed time limit on how long he could use one form.
The things he could do with that power...
And G2.0 also went over exactly what his wardens would do to capture him again. That was actually the truly scary part...I stared at the seemingly innocent crack in my wall in absolute horror. It had only been there for a day, and I could tell nothing had come through it. But...
I need to make a call...
My Story magic said there was someone powerful enough to make the Atraxi stand down, and he would be willing to help! The Doctor was always willing to help! I just had to get a hold of...him... And phones didn't exist here. And I could already tell at a glance in my mental simulator that lacrima wasn't going to cut it.
I grabbed my emergency bag and booked it for the door. Most of my tools were in a side room in the guild hall, and I had a mock phone to build and a really long, complicated story to delve.
Someone did manage to call him! So the number has to be in there and magic can BS the rest.
At least, I really, really hoped it could!
-vVv-
It occurred to me as I frantically locked myself into my most productive mindspace, that I could very well be imagining the whole thing. There were some disadvantages to having as active an imagination as I did as well as the magic to turn it into a living nightmare.
Did I just make it up? Was it a bad dream and a weird string of coincidences?
Loke was visiting in his human guise today, and he was chatting with Lucy about some of the more bizarre things he had seen in his lifetime. He mentioned something that caught my attention and I paused in my work to listen.
"Speaking as the Zodiac of Light, yeah I can totally understand human's fear of the dark."
"I can't decide if that's just you humoring me, or if you're being serious."
Lucy had just admitted to being frightened by darkness.
"Completely serious." Loke said, and he looked it too. "Once, about 700 years ago, I got trapped in a place like the Lost Woods in Fae's stories. No matter where I went, I just couldn't find my way out. My summoner at the time didn't have a spirit like Pyxis on contract, so we were pretty much stuck. When I'm summoned via key, I keep a lot of my senses that humans can't . It makes my summoners more comfortable with the idea of having me around. But I could hear something grinding in the shadows around us. I'd never heard a sound like that before, or since."
Lucy groaned, shivers running down her spine.
"Loke, it's too early in the day for ghost stories."
"It's not a story, Luce and it isn't over either. While we were going along, trying to find our way out, my instincts were going crazy, demanding that I get out, ASAP. But I couldn't leave my summoner, so I just warned him to be careful and we kept going forward, just trying to get out. I was making plenty of light to try and see. And out of nowhere, pitch darkness and something was eating me alive! I lost most of my legs and an arm before the wizard got my gate closed and he used his stop gap to warp away. My summoner thought I had tripped some kind of ward, but I'd never encountered anything like that and haven't since. And good thing, it took me years to recover..."
"As if. You're just telling me this as an excuse to flex." Lucy accused, though I could tell she was trying to hold onto her composure. Lucy had a very good head on her shoulders and was creative on top of that. This meant she had enough imagination to speculate all kinds of things about what could have consumed the avatar of a powerful Celestial Spirit like Loke. And was smart enough to compare to what such a thing might have done to a human.
"Fae curse me with bad hair for a year if I lie." Loke said, hand raised in oath. "Princess, a little verification?"
I turned and focused on him.
Can I get a fact check on that?
He was attacked by a swarm of Vashta Nerada.
...Oh hell. That really is a crack in Space and Time in my wall.
Yes it is. The Face Tendril known as Prisoner Zero hasn't looked through the gap yet. Time until he does: 23 hours, 30 minutes.
"He's telling the truth."
I said abruptly, turning back to my suddenly much more important project and mentally estimating how much caffeine I could get away with consuming under adult supervision to power me through this. It was almost noon now and it had taken me all morning to conceptualize and draft a wire that could transmit the human voice. (My society being based off of magic and ethernano was really biting me right now.) In short, I still hadn't found a way to build a working phone. I barely had enough to transmit morse code. I had to invent the telephone, upgrade it to wireless, and expand its range to encompass all of time and space. And even when I had managed that, I had to find a way to contact the Doctor. And I didn't even know if he was hanging out in this section of the universe, let alone at the right time. The TARDIS's number was mentioned in the story. Once. Briefly. In passing.
And I had one day to do all of this or...We as a planet would be firebombed to such an extent that the only one with a prayer of surviving would be Natsu.
Ladies and Gentlemen, it's crunch time.
-vVv-
Objectively, I didn't have very much evidence that prisoner Zero would be aggressive. But the story had implied he was a prisoner for a reason. And the Atraxi, his jailers, were more than willing to take down the planet around him if it meant he wasn't free.
How many laws can you break that they're that desperate to get you, dead or alive?
G2.0 provided the number I had requested, tapping the tentative connection to the correct universe to read that answer. It involved something going to the 42nd power, so I concluded two things:
First: The Atraxi had a crap ton of laws.
Second: It would be much better for the planet in the long run if Prisoner Zero never got the chance to try and hide in Earthland. If he did decide to flee here, I wouldn't know until he was already here, and I didn't have the same reputation as the Doctor to get the Atraxi to back off.
Ok, adding 'threat of alien invasion' to my list of things to plan for. It suddenly has become much more likely.
-vVv-
The ringing of a telephone made what looked like a man drop what he was holding and stare at the door of his home. He moved mechanically, too stunned to do anything but push open the door and reach out for the phone fixed to the outside of a blue police box. He didn't put it to his ear right away, he looked it over instead.
"That's never happened before..." The door swung behind him, smacking him and encouraging him to answer already. "Fine, fine, no need to be pushy..." He put the phone to his ear. "Congratulations, you've already surprised me."
"...I think I've reached the wrong Doctor."
A little girl's voice sounded on the other end. She sounded...tired.
"And how do you know that?"
He heard a small intake of breath on the other end of the line.
"I'm looking for the Doctor that likes bowties and funny hats. You sound like the one with the ears from the North."
The Doctor looked affronted, a hand reaching up reflexively to touch his ears.
"OI! Lot's of places have a North!"
"I know. But if I reached you, that means I somehow managed to reach you a bit early and I've only got...2 more hours until the Face Tendril comes through my wall."
Now his attention had already been piqued, but that definitely caught his attention.
"A Face Tendril? What system are you from? Those are only-"
"-found on a nameless moon of the third star of the constellation, Gemini, as seen from Earth, I know. This one isn't there. And I don't even know how to start explaining this, let alone condense it enough to not give any major spoilers...Actually, probably better if I just hang up and try again. Who knows how many time loops I could cause if I ramble. And I am very sleep deprived by now, so it will be rambling..."
The Doctor was momentarily speechless and he gaped into the phone. He found his voice again to ask the only question he reasonably could.
"Who are you?"
"A very sleepy little fairy. Listen, I'll hang up and try to find the right doctor. Thanks Doctor! Talk to you hopefully soon from my standpoint!"
And with a click, the still nameless girl hung up on an absolutely baffled Timelord. He stared at the phone in his hand for about five minutes. The only thing that felt really appropriate to say.
"What?"
-vVv-
"Doctor, you said you didn't have a mobile!"
Donna's voice made the Doctor look up from where he was fiddling with the TARDIS console.
"I don't!"
"Then what's ringing?"
"Well it is a police box, it's got a phone on the outside." He sprang for the door. "Oh, I've been waiting for this...!" He swung the door open and grabbed the phone from it's stand. "Hello, the Doctor is in!"
The line was silent for a moment...
"Ok...How long has it been since I first called? One new face or two?"
The same girl's voice asked hesitantly.
"Just one." Well she's at least a well informed prank caller... "How soon did you call again, it's been years."
"...Maybe twenty minutes while I rechecked the time-stamp portion of my network."
"Oh that can be really tricky. Do you know what time you're trying to reach?"
"Not really, I just know I'm trying to call you, but a future you. And your timeline is kind of hard to follow, I've already hit more than a hundred overlaps where there were three of you somewhen at the same time."
"Yeah, it's really busy being me. Quick question before you hang up and try for another me: When do I ever give out the number for this line?"
"Not yet."
And with that extraordinarily helpful yet uninformative answer, she hung up and the Doctor went back to his tinkering until the next call.
-vVv-
"Please say this is your eleventh face..."
"Nope. You overshot by one."
"Dangit-!"
The white haired Scotsman hung up. The lights in the TARDIS flickered reproachfully.
"She'll find the right me eventually, I'm busy!" The lights pulsed again, and this time the console hummed. "Oh come on, as if you don't like her calling all the time!"
-vVv-
"Sorry, can't talk right now! There's some exploding hens I've got to take care of! You're early as it is!"
-vVv-
"...Well, I'm causing a time loop, but I have to ask: Who looks at celery and thinks 'this will make a great accessory'?"
"...What?"
-vVv-
"EXTERMINA-"
"Hogeezwrongnumber! Hangup, hangup, hangup...!"
-vVv-
The Doctor wasn't sure what he was expecting when the phone rang again. He was used to the only person constantly calling. A little girl that was named Fae and who needed help keeping a Face Tendril from coming to her planet.
"If this is still about the Face Tendril-"
He was very abruptly cut off by the sound of someone losing the last bit of their temper.
"TARDIS, I know you can hear me! Stop playing phone tag with yourself and let me talk to Eleven already! You know why I need him!" She actually sounded angry this time. "This isn't just a normal Face Tendril, it's Prisoner Zero! There's-"
The usual hum of the Time Vortex stilled for a second...then the call dropped as abruptly as it started.
"You've been bouncing a little girl's call around when she was trying to call for help? Shame on you! There's a time and a place for that sort of thing."
-vVv-
"There's only one other person who's called this number." The Doctor said very gravely into the phone, wearing the old monk's robes and huddled in the dark under the monastery. "I don't know how she got it, and I don't know where you got it!"
"From the woman in the shop. She said it's the best help line that there is."
Then there came a soft beep...
"Hang on, I'm getting another call..." The Doctor squinted at a tiny panel next to the keypad. "...From a very distant timezone. Oh, I've been waiting for this call for ages..."
"Ok, I can hold."
Pressing a button made the call transfer, and Fae's voice rang over the line in an angry rant.
"-only 20 minutes left before he looks through the crack in my apartment, and a disturbingly high probability that he'll choose to come here instead of Earth like he's supposed to! Once he does that, the timelines will split, the Butterfly Effect comes in, and everything on my planet starts to deteriorate because we're out of sync with the main plot and caught in an unstable crossover! TARDIS, you know what happens when you overlay incompatible universes! I don't care how far away you are, I will paint your walls with peanut butter, set gremlins in your air conditioning, and scatter Legos on all your floors, and don't test me on that, if you don't-!"
"This is the Doctor, hello Faerun. You've got the right one this time. I've got a few minutes, I'll pop over to fix that crack in your wall before Prisoner Zero gets any closer."
-vVv-
I woke up abruptly, still holding onto the phone I had made the day before.
I had been awake for about 30 hours, and six of those, even after I had worked out how to make a semi functional phone, were spent trying to find the right Doctor to fix the crack.
Speaking of...
I rolled and ran my hand over the wall. My brain tow as too fried to care if something tried to bite my hand off or worse if there was still something wrong. But the wall was as smooth as it had always been. Not a sign of the crack, anywhere. G2.0 confirmed there had once been a crack there but it was now closed. Only once I verified that did I breathe a sigh of relief, falling back on my bed with a sigh.
Normally, I wouldn't mind the chance to talk to the Doctor. Especially not multiple faces of him. But given the circumstances, and given that I had burned myself out for...two days calling across time and space to reach him? I'd give myself a week before I tried again.
My magic hummed happily and I turned my head to look towards the door, where I kept my emergency bag. There was a small package sitting by it, wrapped in cheerful yellow paper and a dark blue ribbon.
What?
I got up, wincing as my body complained about its empty belly and painfully low magic reserves. But I limped over to the box and picked it up. It was only about the size of my hand, so when I unwrapped it, my eyes told me a conflicting message. It was small enough to hold in one hand but the play of light on the interior told me a very different message-
It's bigger on the inside.
He didn't...
I pulled out a small flip badge with a blank piece of paper on the inside that felt...weird.
Psychic paper.
A pair of glasses?
Brainy specs.
And then, there was a metal rod with a few knobs and a dial on one side. It was about twice as long as my hand, and I could tell it had been sized for me when I was grown. It looked like an unusually thick pen, but there was a blue gem like material at one end, and my name was engraved on the hilt in a circular alphabet. Something G2.0 effortlessly translated for me as soon as I saw it.
Sonic screwdriver.
The realization that the language barrier was a hurdle I could laugh at was not nearly as important as the fact that-
Holy freaking crap, it's a real sonic screwdriver...
Under all of these items there was a card.
I picked it up with shaking hands and opened it.
-vVv-
Dear Faerun
Congratulations on saving your first planet! I did the hard part, but good on you for not giving up until you got ahold of me! (The right me, at least) And you did it when you were nine, without causing any significant time loops with spoilers or universal fractures! As a congratulations the TARDIS and I put together a few basics to help you keep going.
(And yes, the glasses are important! They're cool, and if you look cool, people listen to you. Hope you like the frame style!)
See you in the stars!
The Doctor