The Stupid Decisions of Melforia and Bob

LCR

Disclaimer: Right, like I own Doctor Who. As lovely as Tennant and Smith are, we'd still be on Nine if I was in charge.

A/N: This idea's been jumping about my head for months now. Six stupid Academy dropouts that stole a parent's TARDIS and went gallivanting about the alternate universes never to be seen again. I could use it as a fixit for Doomsday and have shenanigans along the way! So I did and it was glorious.

Story is best-read on either 3/4 or 1/2 story width. Font size is up to you.

-/-

Melforia first met Boblitilarvistagnorrica at the tender young age of 7. She complimented his rather unfortunate haircut (it looked like someone had put a large bowl on his head and cut around the edges) and he punched her square in the jaw. She returned the favor by pushing him off a balcony into a decorative pond.

They were thick as thieves for the next thousand years.

Along the way to the beginning of our story, of course, the two gained more friends. There was Grandal, who was rather rude and had shockingly blond hair. Selmathida, who was rather shy and demure until you questioned her driving skills. Andis was twenty years older than the rest of them, but somehow managed to be the slowest Time Lord anyone had ever met. There was also Biff, but he was a bit on the odd side.

Those are our intrepid heroes.

Well, they're intrepid.

Well.

-/-

-/-

"Shut up, you useless lump!" Melforia whacked Bob in the stomach with her Gallifreyan equivalent of a torch, making his tone-deaf whistling come to a sudden halt. All five of them were crouched in a vague group in the middle of an open field of tall red grass, the sky above them an inky blackness shot through by belts of stars and beautifully colored pinpoints of light that were far-off nebulae. As the unfortunate Time Lord nearly toppled over Grandal caught him by the back of his collar and hauled him upright.

"Do you possess even the smallest iota of an idea as to how much trouble we'll get into if we're apprehended?" the blond hissed. His nearly white hair was pulled up under a black cap and he looked a bit absurd in his all-black clothing in the middle of a bright red field.

Bob nodded silently and mimed buttoning his lips shut. The five Time Lord adolescents continued their crouching advance towards a rather large country home. The outer décor spoke of opulence, with modern sculpture in the tended gardens and a mathematical perfection to the architecture that ascended into several extra dimensions in places. Without any further incident the five managed to make their way to a long line of bay windows that overlooked the valley of long red grass and sparse silver trees they had just crawled through.

"Selma had better get down here fast- I'm not very keen on the thought of being charged with breaking and entering the home of a member of the High Council," Biff hissed. His absurdly long hair, the result of an unfortunate mishap with a Develidian follicle stimulator, was tied into a high ponytail that was at extreme odds with his very strong jaw and prominent cheekbones. He'd pulled it up about halfway into their journey after it had gotten into his eyes one too many times.

"She disabled the perimeter alarms, didn't she?" Bob hissed back. Melforia whacked him with her torch again and he fell silent. It wasn't long afterward that one of the windows hissed aside and a darkened figure appeared. Selmathida beckoned them into the well-appointed Gallifreyan equivalent of a sitting room and then on through several doors.

"We're gonna be caught," Andis chanted under his breath. Melforia silenced him with a heavy look, but he still looked like he was ready to bolt.

"We have to be back before father leaves for the Council meeting in the morning. Relatively we have forever, but if the TARDIS isn't back in its place in five hours we're pretty much done for." Selmathida was quiet as she spoke, opening doors and beckoning her friends through before closing them behind her.

"And what if we aren't?" The other five Time Lords turned nearly in unison to look at Biff as though he had lost his mind.

"We'll most likely be held back in the Academy, punished to the full extent of the law and grounded until we're all in quadruple digits, that's what." Melforia looked cross as she spoke, though for the past three hours she had looked nothing but. "Do you want to be charged with Grand Theft TARDIS? I will gladly implicate you if you do."

Biff was silent.

"That's what I thought," Melforia finished.

"Everyone in!" Selmathida had the door of the Type-237 TARDIS open, and she stroked the sleek frame with one hand as she beckoned with the other. One-by one the motley crew of rather delinquent Time Lords and two Ladies filed into the ship and closed the door behind them.

Only a few moments later it slid without a sound into the Vortex.

-/-

-/-

It only took them three hundred years and seven thousand nine hundred and twenty four alternate universes to realize that they were horribly lost. By then Biff had managed to trip over a brick and smash his head into a sharp rock, putting him in a brand new face that rather looked like an early 21st Century British Prime Minister. He was great fun at parties in the correct universes, and made a killing doing stupid impressions of the man. Andis grew a beard and accidentally got a religion started around him when he used dimensional transcendence to feed a mob of hungry pilgrims. Bob, at one point, got misplaced in the TARDIS and they couldn't find him for ten years. Melforia got shot by a Gorvalian with a phase rifle and came out of it looking like Audrey Hepburn.

On the subject of TARDISes, the Type-237 has a fantastic operating quirk. It's a bit like all-wheel drive in Earth cars, actually. They're outfitted for jumping the Void and easily adaptable to any version of the Time Vortex. When not attached to the Eye of Harmony it feeds from the Rift and the Void. It makes the ship as a whole rather tetchy, though, so it's really not advisable to do it for long periods of time.

Speaking of which, Selmathida and her ship weren't on speaking terms. Melforia had to learn to work the main console.

-/-

-/-

"That is not a banana," Grandal hissed. "That is a lemon. I have bad biochemical reactions to lemons."

"You're allergic to citrus, Granny. Big words don't make it any more serious." Biff snarked over his coffee mug. Grandal summarily ignored the rather odd Time Lord and kept his attention on the basket of fruit on one of the pilot seats. Specifically his pilot seat.

"I told Selma to get bananas. Bananas were seriously the only thing I asked for. She must be going crazy." Grandal picked up one of the ovular yellow things, tossing it up and down in one hand.

"Bananas evolved differently on this version of Earth," Biff supplied helpfully. Grandal once again ignored him. He'd learned to do so after the last time had ended with his death by anaphylaxis and a brand new face that looked like a man they had ended up running afoul of in the Pegasus galaxy three universes later. He had yet to forgive the other Time Lord for landing him with such unruly hair.

"It's… She's trying to kill me. That has to be it," jaw set, Grandal dropped the offending object back into the basket.

"Or maybe she just really, really likes you," Biff once again supplied in what he figured was a helpful tone.

Grandal picked up one of the yellow not-bananas and chucked it at Biff's head.

-/-

-/-

Melforia elbowed Bob in the ribs and gestured for him to put his hands up. He did so reluctantly, shaking long wavy hair out of his eyes and adjusting his rather dated rose-tinted sunglasses with one finger in the process. The four rhino-headed Judoon that surrounded the TARDIS continued to point large muskets at them. The Judoon in charge (as evidenced by the number of spangly things on his epaulets and the monocle wedged over one of his eyes) stepped forward, raising his gun out of the way in order to speak to them.

"I say! Gave us quite a scare, you did. Nearly shot the lot of you right as you started your materialization loop!" At the cultured and somewhat stereotypical English accent the Judoon leader spoke in, Melforia and Bob both gave pause and furrowed eyebrows. The other three Judoon lowered and shouldered their weapons, taking up casual stances and adjusting their pith helmets to avoid the harsh light of the open dry plain. "Sir Benedict Kithbridge-Ledword the third. A pleasure indeed to make your acquaintances!" The first Judoon introduced himself with a bit of a bow.

"That is uncanny," Bob finally said. Melforia elbowed him in the ribs again, and he doubled over in pain. The four Judoon laughed uproariously at the sight.

"Madam, forgive me for my assumption if you will- you do know you've landed your ship in the middle of a protected hunting safari?" Another of the Judoon, this one with wiry hair all around the sides of his chin like muttonchops, asked.

"No, we didn't. I do appreciate the polite warning, however. We'll move," Melforia offered. The four Judoon harrumphed in a manner that was very upper-crust. The Time Lady turned just in time to smack into Andis, who was staring over her shoulder with barely-disguised wonder.

"Judoon in jodhpurs!" he remarked, instead of making any indication that Melforia had just run into him nearly full-tilt. At his remark the four rhino-faced hunters un-shouldered their weapons and aimed them at the doors of the TARDIS.

"I say- repeat that, you blaggard!" Sir Kithbridge-Ledword barked. Melforia and Bob both ducked musket blasts and shoved Andis through the doors, slamming them shut behind them. Several more blasts hit the doors behind them.

Bob punched Andis in the shoulder. He whined unhappily and rubbed his afflicted extremity, but looked properly chastised.

-/-

-/-

"Now that is just plain uncanny," Grandal began. Biff punched him in the shoulder and Selmathida gave them both stern looks across the food court table. All around them busy Welsh humans bustled through their busy Welsh human lives in their busy Cardiff mall. On the tiny Formica table in front of the two Time Lords the blond Time Lady had sat a DVD box set she had recently purchased.

"I have a double in this universe. We all have doubles in every universe, Selma," Biff rationalized. "Apparently mine is an actor in this one."

"Marginally famous one," Selma added. She pulled another DVD box from her bag and sat it next to the first. "Gran is rather recognizable too. Isn't this just fascinating? I mean, imagine the odds-"

"I don't quite want to, thank you very much," Grandal snapped. Selma shut up and looked a bit hurt at his harsh tone. He immediately looked apologetic, but didn't express the feeling otherwise. A slightly awkward silence fell between the three, and Biff picked up the DVD set with his doppelganger on it and flipped it over to read the back.

"You're mooning again," he said conversationally. The two Time Lords immediately reached out and swatted at the hovering menace that was their co-pilot and occasional friend. He evaded them and nearly toppled his chair over, making the table full of teenagers in track suits behind him curse and throw him dirty looks. He returned the look and they quieted down, turning back to their fast food with muted grumbles.

"I also found this-" Selma offered. She pulled another DVD set from her bag- this one was blue- and sat it on the table; back-up so that the summary could be read. Grandal perused a few lines with disinterest before snatching the set up and reading through the rest with rapt concentration. Finished, he lowered the box to look at Selmathida with a look that quite plainly said seriously? Biff snatched the set from him and read through it as well, the rather disturbingly creepy grin his current face could accomplish painting his features in a manner that was rather disconcerting.

"That's not- that can't be,"Grandal started. Selma shrugged her dainty shoulders and shook the bag next to her on the food court floor.

"Got every single series, we can see if it's really the case," she supplied. Biff's grin got worse, and she made a show of scooting her chair a little further away from him. Biff scooted closer to her, and Grandal shoved him away when he deemed he had gotten too close. The two punched at each other several more times before quieting down and pretending as though nothing had happened.

"Where's Andis and Bob?" Grandal finally broke the silence that had fallen between the three Gallifreyans, looking around at the throngs of humans that crowded the food court. Selma and Biff both shrugged, Selma taking a sip of the smoothie she had procured before joining her two co-pilots and presenting her findings to them.

That, of course, was about when the screaming started.

Several loud roars cut the air above the screams. That, of course, triggered more screams.

With screams that were most certainly manly, Andis and Bob booked it past the table their co-pilots sat at without so much as a by-your-leave.

The three Velociraptors chasing them, however, had time to stay and chat. Selma, Biff and Grandal did not.

-/-

-/-

"I hate you all." Boblitilarvistagnorrica was not a happy Time Lord. "I hate Biff being so unsettlingly happy all the time, I hate Selma's passive-aggressiveness, I hate how Andis does stupid things that nearly get us killed on a regular basis, I hate that Grandal never actually steers when he's supposed to, but most of all-"

Melforia slapped him across the face hard enough that he reeled backwards and into the TARDIS console. The rather angry ship pushed him right back, sending him to the tile floor with a squeal and a shower of sparks.

"I hate that you keep slapping me," Bob's cute Northern burr grumbled into the grout.

"Done?" Melforia asked. The Time Lord in question shook his head and pushed himself up off the floor, banging his shoulder on a pilot seat in the process. Once he was on his feet he dusted off his striped trousers and straightened his thin black tie. Content with his appearance, he gestured to his face.

"I am on my-" Bob paused and counted on his fingers for a moment before resuming his rant. "Fifth face. Unless I haven't been notified of a major High Council decision, we don't have an infinite number of these things!"

"So don't get killed as often!" Biff chimed in, in what he assumed was a helpful tone. Bob sneered at him and turned back around to look at Melforia.

"We ought to go home," he said. The Time Lord's current face had a bit of cuteness to it around the shaggy hairstyle, and it made his pleading look all the more effective. "We can backtrack our way through the parallels and end up exactly where we were when we left. It'll take a little while, yeah, but is it really so bad as compared to staying lost for the rest of our lives?"

"The logs only go back five thousand jumps," Selmathida said glumly. She was slouched in her pilot's seat, the very picture of a hopeless Time Lady. Her lank blond hair hid parts of her face behind a pale curtain, and only one wide blue eye was visible as she addressed the other Gallifreyans in the console room. "We can't go back. We can only go forwards, and hope we someday make it full circle."

"Well that's just brilliant," Bob spat. One of his fists thudded into the nearest jump seat, and then he turned and stormed off into the depths of the TARDIS.

"There's no such thing as full circle in an infinite fractal, Selma," Melforia sighed. She sounded resigned, and she let out another deep sigh as she collapsed into her seat at the console.

"There is if we start calculating degrees of universal change from our original position," Selma's voice was light and airy as she spoke, and both Melforia and Biff snapped their attention to the third Gallifreyan in the room.

"We can do that?" Biff asked.

-/-

-/-

"When was the last time you took TARDIS Maintenance courses you stupid-" Grandal chucked a sonic spanner at Andis's head. His aim wasn't quite true and it glanced off the Time Lord's shoulder, but it still made the unfortunate Gallifreyan yelp and swear in surprise.

"I'm not the one that burnt out the Chameleon Circuit!" Andis protested. He guarded his soft and fleshy bits with his hands, diving behind one of the pilot seats for cover.

"Neither am I, but I'm not the one that nearly blew out the main couplings for the Temporal Grace engine trying to fix it!" Again Grandal picked up a tool to throw, but Andis ducked out of sight with a yelp and the seventh-dimensional ratchet clattered across the floor harmlessly. "Did you seriously try to hotwire the fragment links? Did you learn maintenance on a Type 40 or something?"

Andis was suspiciously quiet, and Grandal seriously considered bashing his head on the console in front of him. The TARDIS gave a warning grumble at that train of thought.

"It's not so bad!" Andis tried to offer. Grandal threw a wire stripper at him, but it bounced off the seat he'd hid himself behind and hit the console instead. The TARDIS let out an ear-splitting shriek and a spray of sparks nearly hit Grandal full in the face.

"This infernal abusive menace of a machine looks like an old Chevy van!" Grandal yelled as he patted out the smoldering parts of his shirt, hopping away from the console to put distance between himself and anything that could do him more harm. "It's got parking passes for Woodstock in the back windows! An acid trip gone horribly wrong is finger painted on the side!" Seemingly at a loss for words at the moment, he paused and took a deep breath. "I may as well grow my hair out now and start learning how to play the guitar, because we are now gallivanting about the universe in a horror from the depths of the nineteen seventies! This TARDIS is demented!"

A cord, seemingly of its own volition, wrapped itself around Grandal's ankle and pulled tight. He screamed loudly and shrilly as he toppled down the console access stairs behind him. The last thing he saw was the brightly-patterned floor rushing up to meet him.

He woke up three hours later looking like a young George Clooney. He was, however, a mildly calmer and generally nicer person.

-/-

-/-

There was a bomb set to go off in twenty seven seconds, three politicians were dead, what had once been a mighty dictatorship was in shambles all around the ears of the remaining bureaucrats, a young girl was crying over the body of her father and the six Gallifreyans in the room suddenly felt very alone in their own minds. They could hear each other, and they could feel the TARDIS in the backs of their heads, but everything else was silent.

The feeling was eerie.

"That's not normal, right?" Biff was the first to speak. He tapped the side of his head a few times as though he was trying to dislodge water from his ear, but it did no good.

"It sort of is, yeah," Melforia said. She shook her head once and went back to pulling the wires from the bomb, stopping the timer dead at ten seconds. Her job finished, she rocked back on her heels and stowed the wire clippers she had been using in the back pocket of her jeans. With a bit of a jump she was on her feet and surveying the room. "We haven't actually been able to hear the rest of Gallifrey since we took that first jump across the Void. One of us just now noticed it, and the realization fed to the rest of us through the psychic link."

"So why haven't we noticed before now, then?" Grandal asked from his post by the door. In one hand he held a local stunner at the ready, his attention divided between guarding the door and the topic at hand. "I mean, we're a smart bunch. Brilliant, really, but that's not the point- how the hell did we manage to not notice an entire planet's worth of people just missing from our minds?"

"Self-preservation," Selmathida chimed in. She was situated in front of a bay of computers, attempting to locate the TARDIS in a local impound lot. "We were young when we left- if we had suddenly been cut out of a psychic network we'd never been away from before in our lives we probably would have gone mad."

The sound of breaking glass cut through the room, and all eyes shot to the source of the noise. Andis stood in the corner, the remains of a vase and a few wilted flowers at his feet. Bob and Grandal sighed loudly, but nobody bothered to throw anything at the Time Lord.

"I'd tell you to find a broom, Andis, but we're sort of in the middle of a hostage situation here," Melforia grumbled. She turned to the window of the large corner government office they occupied just in time to duck as several bullets peppered the glass. "Selma, please tell me you have good news," she snapped as she dove behind a large desk.

"Found it!" the blond Time Lady yelled. She quickly scanned the information on the screen in front of her and then ducked out of sight as several bullets punched through the computer system.

"Alright, let's get the hell out of here!" Bob immediately took charge, grabbing the young girl still sniffling over the prone form of the power-mad dictator. She squealed in fright but didn't fight him, instead clinging for dear life as he ran for the entrance that Grandal guarded. Melforia and Selmathida followed right behind him, followed by Andis.

They didn't stop running until they got to the TARDIS, and by then the little girl was pretty much coming along anyway. The ship seemed to like her, anyhow.

-/-

-/-

The console room of the TARDIS, it seemed, was quickly becoming one of the really nasty circles of Dante's hell. Hellfire and damnation and mud and horrid things like that, only without the mud but with a good deal of frantic tolling from the Cloister Bell.

"Would you shut up already?" Biff whirled around in his seat to shout in the general direction of the sound.

"Eyes on the road you dumbass!" Melforia yelled. She rocked back in her pilot seat and used a combination of her foot and her body mass to kick a stubborn lever into place. The console screeched at her actions and a spray of sparks flew out of the base of the Time Rotor in a rather worrying fashion.

"The hell is all this for anyway?" Grandal yelled above the noise. He pitched forward as the TARDIS bucked, nearly putting his eye out on a sharp instrument. He swore loudly as the ship leveled out, grabbing at the navigational controls to attempt to keep them all on-course. Again the ship pitched, and next to him Selmathida didn't catch herself in time and smacked her forehead right into the console. She fell back reeling and clutching at her forehead, where a trickle of blood and a decent-sized bruise was already beginning to form.

"Lizzie, help Selma!" Bob snapped. "We've got a critical Bad Wolf error in the magnavariant compression coils!" he added as an afterthought. His attention was on the circles flashing across the screen in front of him, but the woman he'd called to nodded and dove across the console platform to where Selmathida sat. She steadied the Time Lady in her seat and then began assisting with the controls on that portion of the console.

"There's something wrong with this universe," Andis said. His tone was oddly calm as he did so, but everyone present usually chalked his cool demeanor under pressure to his slightly diminished mental capacity. Melforia spared enough energy to reach to her right and punch him in the arm as an admonishment.

"Less talking, more steering, yeah?" The Time Lord nodded sullenly at that, but went back to his temporal mechanics without any fuss. After a few tense moments and a good deal of groaning and shrieking the TARDIS stilled with a thump that sent Biff to the floor with a yell. He picked himself up with a muted grumble, holding one elbow with a pained expression.

"Let's never come here again, yeah? Service is terrible," he groused. Selma and Lizzie gave muted chuckles at the quip, but the blond Time Lady winced and clutched at her forehead suddenly and her human companion pried her fingers away in order to look at the damage done.

"Lemme see-" she grumbled, fighting away inquisitive fingers as she gently pulled blond hair away from the wound. The bruise was roughly the size and shape of the main Rift Trajectory Stabilization Nodule control, and it was bleeding from a small cut in the center. "You're fine," Lizzie tutted.

"Don't feel like it," Selma groaned, but pushed to her feet and moved away from the console with tottering steps. She stumbled as a groan and a rumble shook the floor beneath the feet of the six Gallifreyans and single human, and Grandal wasted no time in rushing across the console platform and scooping up the smaller Time Lady in his arms.

"Everyone out, now!" he yelled, heading for the doors. He kicked them open and ran out into the sunlight just in time for a belch of smoke to follow him out. Melforia came next, spitting out the acrid taste of the smoke with vehemence. Andis and Biff followed her, Andis tugging Lizzie along by the hand. Bob appeared last, spraying a 75th Century fire extinguisher into the console room with seriousness not unlike Rambo.

"The hell was that?" Melforia whirled around to stare down Grandal. Her hair was frazzled, she had soot on her face and she was missing one earring. She looked a sight, and so did everyone else. Behind her, the TARDIS still belched smoke.

"The power fluctuations overloaded the Vortex Comprehender, which rerouted power to the Void Transducer, which kicked in when it wasn't supposed to, and so the magnavariant compression coils tried to take the strain and it all jumped through the nav system in time to turn the whole damn TARDIS on its head and melt the fragment links into acrid puddles of slag. That's what the hell that was, Mel," Grandal snapped. He still held Selmathida against his chest, though she didn't seem to be minding too much, and he gestured ineffectually at the open sliding door on the side of the garishly-painted van they had all piled out of.

"So where the hell did the power fluctuations come from then, Granny?" Melforia snapped back. Grandal opened his mouth to retort, even gestured vaguely with one of his occupied arms, but he sank back without an answer. Bob slammed the door of the TARDIS shut and threw his fire extinguisher to the ground, kicking at the back tire of the timeship with a good amount of vehemence.

"Soon as the TARDIS resets we're outta this universe and never coming back. All agreed?" Bob snapped. The motley crew of the Type-237 all nodded, varying shades of grim expression gracing their faces. Biff gave a sudden jump and a yelp, whirling around to see who had tapped him several times on the shoulder. Immediately the entire group swiveled around to look at the woman that had snuck up behind them. In one arm she held a bag of groceries, and in the other she held a ring of keys on a lanyard.

"This universe is sealed off from the rest. The walls between this one and the next have been shut. 's probably where your power fluctuations came from," the woman said. The look on her face was reminiscent of a kicked puppy, and the utterly downtrodden expression was only enhanced by the sheer amount of eye makeup the woman was wearing.

"You're from the one next door, then?" Selma struggled against Grandal's arms as she spoke, getting him to set her down on the pavement. The woman nodded, and shifted her grip on her groceries.

"Yeah," she sighed. She seemed to convey a good amount of hopelessness with that one sigh, her shoulders sagging and her arms drooping a little lower from where she held them. With those kicked-puppy brown eyes she took in the garishly-painted door of the TARDIS, and then took in the rather ominous-looking black smoke still leaking out of it. She sighed again, and then turned to walk up the stairs of the nearest flat.

"'m Rose," she introduced herself as she fitted the key into the lock and opened the door. "Y'should probably come in while your TARDIS fixes itself."

-/-

-/-

"Gallifrey… is gone?" The six Time Lords and a human stuffed around Rose's small kitchen table made the whole flat seem much smaller. From behind the kitchen island she nodded, leaning on the countertop over a forgotten cup of tea. Melforia sat back in her chair, brow furrowed in thought. "Gone like loose change in the couch or gone like Alderaan?" she asked after a moment.

"…what?" Rose looked nonplussed as she tried to suss out what the Time Lady had said.

"Has it been misplaced, or is it an asteroid field?" Bob clarified.

"Yeah, I get that part thanks. 'm trying to get my mind around misplacin' an entire planet still. You Time Lords do that on a regular basis, then?" Rose asked. She took a gulp of her tea and shifted her stance against the countertop. In the two hours since she had invited six Gallifreyans and a human from another universe into her flat she'd gotten much brighter, stepping out of the depressed outer shell like a coat.

"Yeah, regularly. For mitzvahs and Presidential elections, mostly, but on occasion some cheeky sod just turns to the guy next to him and says 'Hey, fancy hiding the planet today?'" Biff snapped. Grandal punched him hard enough that he fell out of his chair, quite nearly taking Lizzie to the floor with him. "Take a bloody joke, why don't you?" the Time Lord yelled from the floor.

"Both of you stoppit, or I swear I'll come over there," Rose ordered. Sharing silent glares, the Time Lords did as they were told. Biff righted his chair and sat back down, scooting a scant few inches away from his assailant. Picking up her teacup again, Rose pondered the drink inside for a moment before shifting uncomfortably a few times where she stood. "'s a Time Lock… 's that more towards the 'misplaced' side of the spectrum or the 'Alderaan' side?"

"'s rather middling, why?" Andis asked. Bob gave the other Time Lord a look that Rose recognized as being rather like the one her first Doctor used to give particularly thick people. Also her second Doctor, now that she thought about it. It was a rather rude look that implied that the person had just dribbled on their shirt.

Melforia and Bob reached out and cuffed Andis on opposite sides of the head just as the egg timer on the kitchen table went off with a very loud ding.

The TARDIS, it seemed, was done cooking. So to speak.

-/-

-/-

They'd landed in Cardiff.

Wales.

Cardiff bloody Wales.

Melforia and Selmathida shivered in the lightly-misting drizzle next to the garishly-painted side of the TARDIS. Between them Lizzie held an umbrella, but it wasn't big enough to cover all three of them and with a little mental math Selma figured that if they had been human they'd be seeing their breath by then. As if to emphasize the observation, Lizzie let out a great sigh of a breath in a column of mist.

Out of the late-night fog came the ever-so-slightly enigmatic Rose Tyler. In one hand she had a cardboard tray of coffees from the nearest café, and in the other she held a newspaper. The four women distributed their coffee and Rose cracked open the paper to get a look at what was going on in the world. The bleary Cardiff sky continued to drizzle in the dark night, silence reigning over the four women as they sipped coffee and waited.

They might have been waiting for the rain to let up. They could have been waiting for the boys to get back from wherever it was they had run off to. They may have been waiting for the TARDIS to let them back in because it was being a petulant child and locking them out.

Mostly they were waiting for the most magical sound in the universe.

"I can't believe he drives with his brakes on. I'll bet he has trouble finding third gear, too," Selmathida muttered around the lid of her coffee cup. In front of the four women a large blue box began to flicker in and out of existence, finally becoming solid with a loud thump. It wasn't but a few seconds before the doors banged open so fast that they bounced back, exposing a rail-thin man in a suit with a look on his face that could put a kicked puppy to shame. That look fixed on Melforia, then Selmathida, then the garishly-painted 1974 Chevrolet van behind them, and then on Rose. The smile he broke out into as he looked at her was heart-wrenchingly full of wonder and joy and a melancholic sweetness that really just sort of defied words.

Melforia mimed a retching motion to Lizzie and Selma.

"Oi! That was rude! I'm trying to have a hearts-wrenching reunion here, you know!" the Time Lord turned and snapped at them. Melforia made a face that was partly a smug smile and partly an expression of confusion, and took a sip of her coffee.

"Drama queen," she said. The musical notes of Gallifreyan seemed to make the air a little lighter and the world seem a little less like Wales at eleven at night.

The Doctor broke out into that watery smile again.

-/-

Okay, so once upon a time I thought to myself "God, I'd be happy if the Gallifreyan equivalent of college dropouts in a VW bus with the Green Man on the side picked me up. It wouldn't even have to be the Doctor". Then I wrote the fascinating story of Melforia and Boblitilarvistagnorrica and their friends getting lost on the road of life. Don't bother asking me how to pronounce 'Boblitilarvistagnorrica', either, because I don't even know.

So anyway. Please, by all means, review and tell me every little thing I wrote that contradicts canon. I'd love to fix it. I like to think I have a good grasp of canon though, so hopefully all I get for this little bit of fiction is a few admonishing remarks about the premise and execution. I'd post this on whofic, but I don't want them to think I'm an idiot you see.

I positively love Tennant's facial expressions. That kicked puppy expression of his- he overuses it, yeah, but oh my goodness it just makes me die inside. I'll leave you with that, then.