Spring Cleaning, Round 2 [Backdated to just after podpop]

[fantastix]

Who: The Doctors, their assistants and friends, some visitors [Open], and the Master.
Where: The TARDIS, the blue police box located in the Hangar.
Summary: Somebody's made a mess of the old ship. The Doctors are very unhappy. Time to dig in and clean up! Also, there's some necessary hashing-out of titles and ownership between three men who happen to be the same person. And a bit of a problem arises...
Warnings: Possibly mild swearing on Nine's part.


The Doctor and his immediate successor with the long coat had run straight from the Observation Deck when they'd learned where the TARDIS was and gotten their bearings. They'd been whisked through the uncomfortable transport tubes, spilled into an arsenal of ships, and been left to search. Luckily, as diminished as their abilities were, they could still sense the old girl. It wasn't long before she was found.

They wasted no time in opening the door, winding up in a console room that could never fit inside the seemingly small exterior of the police box without some serious dimensional shifting. It was a wide space, well-lit, but definitely not the room the two new arrivals were used to.

Here, they'd finally find this other Doctor the other crew members have told them so much about. And with any luck, they'll have some answers too.

Comments

[makeherblue]

Fussy lot! Or fussy one out of two, because Ears apparently liked the idea and that was two against one. Basically. As much as two against one counted when it was yourself you were talking about!

"Professional's boring anyway," the Doctor flapped his hand at himself. He exchanged looks with Ears almost suspiciously, thinking that of course he agreed, he had a personal stake in this two with those...well! They were hardly aeroynamic, were they? The Doctor pointed at the Awkward One, then at Ears, and then at himself. "Nine, Ten, Eleven. Even a human can't get confused with nicknames like those."

Although they could try - he'd found that humans were almost painfully good at confusing themselves, to the point it was almost like an art form.

[lastgallifreyan]

"Sounds a bit artificial, though," protested the Doctor, unwilling to concede just yet. If he conceded at all. "A bit alien."

They were aliens, of course - at least from the perspective of a human from Earth - but that wasn't the point.

"They'll get confused. They always get confused. They'll probably forget what order we're supposed to go in."

And that was if they managed to accept that they were technically the same person in the first place.

[fantastix]

"And we'll correct 'em until they get it." To this Doctor's mind, it was a non-issue. Anyone worth his time would get it soon enough. "Give 'em more credit than that. They had to get the attention of these Daligig to get drafted here, yeah?"

Now that was an uncomfortable subject. Maybe they'd best avoid it.

[makeherblue]

"Ah, well, I suppose at that point we could just point at the...landmarks." The Doctor stared pointedly at the ears, then at his Awkward Self's...hair. It was very nice hair! He missed it sometimes. Like being a living rooster, if you couldn't actually be one. Not a terrible thing to have, rooster hair. Definitely one of the perks. "But humans need things easy and that's about as easy as it can get."

Not all the time, but most of it. Besides, Other Him had a point. There was usually a special Something to get drafted into this interdimensional little war, even if the draftee might not even know just yet what that Something was.

[lastgallifreyan]

"When it comes to land marks, some of us are a bit luckier than others."

The pointed glance at his hair was not lost on the younger incarnation of the Doctor, who preened a little, running a hand through his already tousled hair with a grin.

"Well, we know what humans are like. Indomitable. Who else would you want to fight beside you?"

[makeherblue]

The Doctor couldn't argue with himself on that one. He had a point (of course he did).

"Probably should drop in on a few of our humans once we've sorted all...this." This apparently entailing the Ohm and Other Nasty Stuff. And getting his past selves back where they belonged, which was already going to be a nightmare in itself, and by nightmare, he really meant an exciting challenge that hopefully shouldn't tear about the fabric of space time. That kind of exciting!

The Doctor played with one of the toggles on the console, more for something to do with his hands than that toggle needing to be toggled right this very second.

"I haven't been able to get a good look yet at the engines for Stacy. What makes her able to hop dimensions and time. I tried every snooping technique I know," he added defensively, sounded almost positively wounded. Unfortunately he couldn't tell Rooster Hair here anything about the ship that he hadn't found out for himself. That was the difficult thing about running into yourself and not some impressionable humans -- so much harder to impress another Doctor!

[lastgallifreyan]

"We won't have to go very far, since a lot of them are stuck here with us," the Doctor pointed out. That was both good and bad. He liked having his friends with him. Sometimes he needed to have his friends with them. But they also made him vulnerable. That was why he'd been travelling alone before he'd arrived here. It was harder, yes, but it was also safer.

"Well, between the three of us, we'll be able to manage something," he said, almost dismissively. Although he frequently bickered with himself, he was clever. If he hadn't been able to manage it, then he hadn't been able to manage it. And they'd work together to defeat an enemy that none of them could outwit on their own.

Think we could probably end this around here in a bit?

[makeherblue]

That only makes it convenient, in his opinion. Saves having to herd them later. The Doctor caught a look on Ten's face, peering at him with a little frown as if trying to sort out just when he was. He thinks he has an idea. Probably not one of his...better times, quite frankly, and he wishes he could tell him that yes, it will get better - after it gets worse and he dies and okay, so maybe that isn't entirely reassuring, come to think of it.

Awkward.

"I should hope so!" The Doctor said. "Three of us! Unfair odds, I'd think!"

Sounds good!

[lastgallifreyan]

The younger version of the Doctor came from one of the most precarious moments of his long life. He'd been about to set foot on Mars when he'd been ripped from their universe and, although he hadn't met Adelaide or made the fatal decision to change the events that had unfolded on Bowie Base One, the potential was there. The overconfidence and the dangerous belief that he was the one who had the power - the right - to shape the rest of the universe.

"I wouldn't bet on the Ohm."