This is my contribution to the 2017 Marvel Big Bang over on Livejournal and Dreamwith - go over and check out all the other amazing stories!

My many thanks to my betas ShadowObsessor01 and Dlldarkwolf, you guys were a great help!

Also, thank you to candream on livejournal for the wonderful art she made to accompany this story. This includes the cover image, but also a few other pieces you can find on the journal 'fandream', just look under the tag 'art for bigbang'.

In the MCU, this story takes place after Captain America: Civil War and is AU to Spiderman: Homecoming. In Doctor Who, it takes place in some nebulous time in Series 10, before episode 5: Oxygen. Also, Disclaimer: I don't own either of these franchises, just a coffeemaker and an imagination.

Warning: Nonsensical science ahead! Seriously, though, this is Doctor Who and Marvel and if you stick those two things in a blender you end up reversing the polarity of the neutron flow and get radiation that gives you superpowers instead of a slow and painful death. What else are you expecting from this? Also, I'm playing a bit fast and loose with Kang the Conqueror's backstory, partially because like many recurring comic book characters, his actual backstory is very long and very complicated, and partially to fit him into Doctor Who cannon and what we know of Earth's future in it. Oh, and there's also some language and violence in this.

The TARDIS was unusually silent, but the air inside didn't feel abandoned. It almost never felt abandoned. Lonely occasionally, but never abandoned. Anticipation perpetually hung in the air, the space waiting for a grand, hurried, excited entrance, for the next adventure, the next wonder.

Or perhaps, it was waiting for someone to return for the small wooden box left forgotten on the console.

The doors to the TARDIS swung open and Bill hurried awkwardly through, long tendrils of an orange and pink robe trailing behind her, her posture carefully straight to keep the massive, colourful Mardi Gras float sitting atop her head from sliding down. It was a massive orange, yellow and blue monstrosity that looked a bit like a bowl of fruit sitting on top of slab of fluffy marshmallow clouds with weeds growing out of it. There were also tiny silver bells that jingled lightly as she moved.

Her wooden sandals clunked loudly as she hurried down the steps and aimed directly for the console.

"Box, box, where would I be if I was a box?" she muttered to herself as her eyes skimmed the cluttered console. "Not left behind because someone forgot to mention to someone else that they needed to bring it with–aha!"

In her excitement, Bill moved her head just a bit too abruptly and the headpiece began to tilt dangerously to the left. She immediately froze as both her hands shot up to hold it steady. Carefully straightening her posture again, she adjusted it slightly until it was once again balanced on top of her head, barely breathing the entire time. Then she released it and oh so slowly pulled her hands away. The headpiece remained balanced.

Bill breathed a very small sigh of relief. "I am never agreeing to wear anything before I've seen it ever again," she vowed.

Crisis averted, Bill then clacked her way around the console and grabbed the wooden box. Her eyes narrowed thoughtfully, gleaming with curiosity as she wondered at what could be inside that was so important she'd had to come back for it. With the Doctor, almost anything was possible after all.

A few moments later, she mentally shook herself out of her thoughts. The Doctor would begin to wonder where she'd gotten to soon. Or else get distracted with something new and forget he'd sent her back to the TARDIS for the box he'd forgotten to tell her she need to take with them in the first place. Which meant he was also likely to wander off without bothering to leave her a message or some sort of directions and then she'd have to look for him on an alien planet, in the middle of their Spring something something festival...

Bill hurried to the entrance to the TARDIS. She was half-way up the steps when a phone rang.

She froze.

It rang again, a shrill sound that was familiar, and so almost-nostalgic that it felt alien even inside the TARDIS. Especially inside the TARDIS. Or perhaps not. The Doctor was, after all, a collector of odds and ends. A rotary phone wouldn't be the strangest thing she'd seen here.

It rang again.

Caution warring with curiosity, Bill descended back down the steps and then slowly approached the console once more. She was ready for the next ring and able to immediately pin-point its origin on one of the sides to the right of the door.

Sitting nestled innocently in a gap in the TARDIS console was a black phone, not a digital piece anywhere near it.

She stared at it. "I'd swear that wasn't there this morning," she said out loud even as she wondered what sort of person would even have the number.

The phone rang, making Bill jump despite having expected the sound. Mentally berating herself for making a phone – of all the silly things – push her so off-kilter, Bill finally picked up the receiver and cautiously brought it to her ear.

"Uh, hello?" she said.

There was a pause on the other end of the phone. And then a woman's voice with a slight Scottish lilt said: "You're not the Doctor."

"No, I'm not," Bill replied, relieved that the dialing through to the TARDIS was at least intentional. "I'm Bill. The Doctor's not here right now." She paused and bit her lip. "Do you need me to fetch him?"

"Ah, no, I don't have time for that. Just tell him that Amy called. Amy Pond. Tell him he needs to get to New York on the 3rd of August in the year 2017. There's a time traveller named Kang trying to take over the world in order to change the future. Have you got that?"

Bill felt her eyes widen in horror. "New York, August 3rd, 2017. Time-traveller trying to take over the world and change the future."

"Good. Oh, and Bill? Also make sure you tell the Doctor that there's a crack across the sky."

"Uh, I'm not sure–"

"–He'll know what that means."

"Right, good then. I'll pass on the message."

"Thanks Bill. I'm sure I'll see you soon."

"Yeah, see you, uh, Amy."

All Bill heard next was a dial tone. Stunned, she stared at the phone in her hand for a few seconds, questions upon questions spinning around in her head. Her hand closed around the box in her hand and she took a deep breath, banishing the questions away until later, once she had the chance to ask them. If she ever got that chance.

Maybe she could ask this mysterious Amy once they met. Assuming they met. As Bill hurried back up the TARDIS steps, she decided then and there that she wouldn't let the Doctor weasel out of explaining who this Amy was and why she had the phone number to the TARDIS.

And, while he was at it, why he hadn't given Bill the number.

When Bill exited the TARDIS, she was nearly bowled over by a rushing, screaming crowd. She stepped to the side only just able to keep her elaborate headpiece on her head. Looking up above the crowd, she saw smoke billowing up to the sky from several places that weren't the city centre with its large, official bonfire.

"Seriously?" she exclaimed to the universe at large. "I was barely gone ten minutes!"

Bracing herself for the onslaught of people, Bill ran forward, pushing her way through the colourful, panicked crowd towards where she'd left the Doctor. Her journey stalled slightly as one of the curlier weeds in her headdress got caught in another woman's bright red curly streamers. After a minute's worth of futile attempts to gently untangle the two headdresses, Bill finally just reached up and grabbed her weed, tearing it off with a frustrated yank. Then she continued on her quest to locate the Doctor.

Thankfully, he hadn't gone far and the single white-haired man standing on top of an abandoned stall one hand touching the side of his large sunglasses as he looked towards the billowing smoke was fairly easy to spot even in the chaos.

"Doctor, what's going on?" Bill asked when she reached him.

"Ah, Bill," he said, barely sparing her a glance. "You're here. Good. Have you got the box?"

She blinked up at him. "The box? Yeah, I've got the box. Does it have anything to do with this?"

The Doctor paused. "Well, no, not really. However we shall need it after we've dealt with this little interloper. Parisian truffles are difficult to find in this part of the galaxy, thus making the perfect gift for the Head Priest. Unless of course the temple gets caught up in the destruction in which case more for us."

A loud crash in the distance caught Bill's attention. A quick scan of her immediate area revealed a wide barrel standing next to a pile of sacks a few feet away. Bill carefully placed the headpiece onto the ground and then awkwardly climbed up onto the barrel – the wooden sandals she was wearing were clearly not designed for climbing (they were, in fact, barely designed for walking). From her new vantage point, Bill could see several partially-demolished houses in the distance and several bright pink tentacles pulling a large bulbous body over another one, which was already beginning to crumble in the creature's grip.

"Bloody hell! What is that, Doctor?!" Bill paused as sunlight hit the creature's skin. She gaped. "And... is-is it sparkling?!"

"Well, technically speaking, the light's refracting off the carbon-based crystals that have grown on its skin from mineral and water deposits during its decade-long hibernation in the caves that run beneath this city. The blic'taquess is a fascinating creature, you see–"

He was interrupted by another loud crash as a house in another part of the town broke apart and a second set of tentacles erupted out of its broken corpse, these every bit as pink as the first set and even more sparkly.

"But we can call it sparkling if you prefer," the Doctor interrupted himself. Raising an eyebrow, he then looked towards the newly-arrived creature and slid his left finger along the top of his Raybans. "Oh, now that is interesting," he said with barely-concealed glee. He jumped down from the stall. "Come along, Bill, I need to take a closer look."

Bill rolled her eyes. "Of course you do," she said before awkwardly climbing down from her barrel perch.

Once on the ground, she took off after the Doctor, leaving her elaborate headdress behind without a single thought.