I set the character categories based on which ones have been important in the three chapters I've written so fair, but my aim is to give everyone a far look in.

Cross posted on AO3

The TARDIS doors swung open as the group tumbled through. Spatters of pink slime sprayed though the doors after them and they quickly slammed them shut.

"Great, now I am going to be scrubbing slime out of my hair for ages," Rory commented.

"Nonsense! Just take a dry dissolvent bath." the Doctor said cheerfully. He had already raced up to the control panel and was flicking various switches and levers to send them into the time vortex.

"A what?" Rory asked.

"A dry dissolvent bath Rory! Don't you lot ever listen," he said.

"We don't have those in our time Doctor," Amy pointed out.

The Doctor looked up confused. "Well you should. You twenty-first century humans were obsessed with slime."

"No we're not." Amy said.

"Wait," the Doctor answered.

Well, that's ominous Amy thought.

"How about a trip to Noroxallyel V, the entire planet is a public bath house. They'll have dry dissolvent baths there. Also ten mile long swimming pools and zero gravity showers. The zero gravity showers are my favourite," the Doctor said. He rubbed his hands together in glee at the thought.

"And you're sure that there aren't evil robots lifeguards?" Amy asked.

"Or mind altering chemicals in the water?" Rory added.

"And it's not front for an intergalactic human trafficking ring?" Amy added.

"Yes, yes, yes," the Doctor answered, exasperation in his voice.

"Well then, let's go swimming," Amy said, satisfied.

The Doctor grinned and flicked a final lever- apparently he had already set the coordinates in anticipation- and then... and then the TARDIS shock violently, more violently than normal. Amy was thrown to the floor, and she was suddenly was aware of dozens of voices speaking, yelling or screaming all at once.

With a grown she tried to push herself up, but there was something on top of her- No, not something, someone. She turned her head around and saw two someones on top of her. Neither of them familiar. The one on the top of the pile disentangled herself from the others and stood up carefully as the TARDIS was still shaking badly. She reached back down and helped the other person up and then helped Amy.

Now she was on her feet Amy turned to look around the console room, and despite the prior audio evidence, she was shocked to see it full to the brim with strangers. There must be around fifty people in here. The TARDIS was bigger on the inside but not that big!

She turned back to the people who had fallen on top of her. They were both girls about her age. The one who helped her up had pale skin with a short brown bob and kind eyes, the other one was darker with long brown hair and space buns. Both had traces of pink slime on them from their collision with her.

"Ok, what is going on right now!?" Even shouting Amy could barely hear her own voice over all the people around her expressing similar sentiments.

"What?!" the friendly eyed one shouted back.

"Where is the Doctor?!" She thinks she hears space buns say, which is a sensible question. Hopefully he will have some answers to all this, and also hopefully everyone will shut up soon so she can hear herself speak.

She scanned the crowd again but she could see neither him nor Rory.

The TARDIS gave another particularly violent shake, and she nearly fell over again, but space buns grabbed her by the arm and steadied her. The stranger said something to her that she couldn't quite hear, but parts of it sounded suspiciously like 'should stay still' and 'avoid getting hurt'.

"Umm, hell no," Amy responded. "I've got to find the Doctor and Rory."

She shook off space bun's arm and tried to shove her through the crowd in the general direction of the centre console, were she had last seen the Doctor. It turned out to be a difficult endeavour, as it seemed many people were trying to do the exact same thing and as a result none of them were getting far, but eventually through expert shoving, and some small amounts of swearing, she managed to force herself through.

It's then that she becomes acutely aware of something she definitely should have noticed earlier. This is not the TARDIS. Or at least, it's not the TARDIS she knows. In awe, she stared up at the giant crystalline structures surrounding the control panel. As she did she saw a sort of ripple go through them which she did not like the look of at all. Time to stop taking in the scenery, she thought. She refocused her efforts on shoving her way further through the crowd.

She vaguely heard a voice drifting up from the ground shouting, "Oi! Move off, you're going to trample them!"

Amy looked for the source of the voice and gasped. A small brunette was sitting on the floor over an unconscious body.

"Doctor!" She rushed to kneel at their side.

"Oh thank god," Amy just about heard the brunette say to her. "You stay here, make sure no one steps on this one, I'll protect that one." She jerked her head and Amy followed the direction and saw a strange older man also lying unconscious nearby... and there was another with garish coat, and she thought she saw several more amongst the sea of legs. The small brunette- who had now run over to the old man- was right, anyone unconscious in these confused crowds was in real danger.

As she was fighting off approaching legs from walking on the Doctor, a person knelt down next to them. A person she actually recognised!

"River Song?!"

The mysterious, possibly future wife of the Doctor, looked at her, and there was something in her eyes as she took Amy in that looked almost like pain, but it was gone in a second so Amy dismissed it, thinking she must be imagining things.

"What is going on?!" She shouted.

"I don't know!" River shouted back. That worried Amy. She'd only met River once, but she had seemed like someone who should always know what was going on. Particularly when the TARDIS was involved.

Speaking of the TARDIS... the violent shaking was still a problem. But River could fly her! She was probably the only conscious person in the universe who could.

"River! Don't worry I've got him," she sneezed the Doctors shoulder. "You have to get the TARDIS under control!"

River nodded and with last lingering glance at the Doctor, she got up.

As Amy turned her attention back to the unconscious time lord, River shoved through to the control panel. She shook her head as she stared down at the controls. Seeing her mother again, after what had happened last time, and having her so clearly not know her, not really, was painful, even though she should be used to these cruel tricks of time by now.

But she had a job to do, so she shoved those emotions into a little box and turned her attention to the task at hand.

The controls were different from the ones she knew so well, but the TARDIS was the TARDIS and she always had an intuition for it.

A brunette in a flowing white dress pushed though the crowd near her and started fiddling with the controls. "What has he done to her! This is not an inbuilt desktop. He's made modifications!" she yelled, clearly discussed at the very idea.

"As much as I would love to roast the Doctor's mechanical skills, now may not be the best time!" River shouted back.

"But without a system standard layout, how do I know what does what! This makes the whole manual useless!"

River wonders if that was why the Doctor threw it into a supernova, but she suspects that his motive was less logical than that.

"Just use your instincts, if she wants to, the TARDIS will guide you," she told her.

"If she can!" Another voice shouted somewhere near her. River looked around to see a small girl- probably about 16- with short dark hair in regular 20th/21st century clothes, stumble up beside her. "I'm not sure the TARDIS is in much of a place to help anyone," the girl told them. "It is in distress. I can just feel it!"

The girl looked to be in some distress herself, though River had no idea what to do about that.

"I don't blame her," she yelled, focusing on the TARDIS. "This is a time ship, and its suddenly being filled with paradoxes!" She had not missed the fact that multiple versions of her husband were here, which while not unprecedented, is extremely dangerous and not something the TARDIS would be happy about.

"You can say that again!" shouted a third stranger, this one blonde, wearing a red coat and eyeing the lady in the white dress with an unreadable but significant expression.

For her part the lady in the white dress looked at the blonde with surprise and confusion. "Princess Astra?" She yelped. "But- but- how are you here! You are the sixth segment! And we were assembling it and then we were here! How can you be human again!"

The blonde stared at her, clearly horrified at what she'd said. "Oh Rassilon! You've come from when we we had the Key to Time? So by being here it's been left unprotected? This could be disastrous!"

The small girl looked like she was having a near mental breakdown by this point.

River had no clue what the two ladies were talking about but she didn't like the sound of it, and what she could surmise just confused her more, (who but a time lord would used Rassilon's name as a curse? But that wasn't possible... right?)

"Can we focus on one disaster at a time please?!" she yelled. She would never admit it but the stress was actually getting to her right now.

"Yes, gladly. If anyone has any idea where to even start I'll get on that right away!" the lady in the white dress shouted.

"You could start with ending these petty disputes of wit and actually working together!" the small girl shouted.

"You're quite right," the lady in the red coat responded. River nodded in agreement. The brunette stayed still but River was pretty sure she saw a flash of guilt on her face.

River quickly ran through everything that had happened in her head, then turned her attention to the small girl. "You said you could feel her distress? What did you mean by that?!" she asked. Even with her connection she couldn't pick up things like that.

"Well you see, I was top of my class in tests of telepathic potential."

River did not think just any old telepath would be able to form a connection with the TARDIS, but she knew those would have to be questions for another time.

"Can you try to look deeper? See if you can find out what's going on!" She yelled.

The girl looked doubtful. "The TARDIS's consciousnesses is not an easy thing to read."

"As long as it's not a danger to you, then try. We need everything we can get."

She turned back to the troublesome two. They were experimenting with TARDIS controls, the brunette, more hesitantly than the blonde. "Here, I think I've pulled up a manual interface," the blonde yelled.

The brunette peered over to looked at what the other had found. "But that's not right, it's gibberish!"

River ran round the console to stare at the tiny screen with the other two. Sure enough text was flitting across the screen but she could not see any logic in it.

Someone else pushed her aside to stick their own head in. River only now noticed that several other people can come to stand round the console.

"I can see patterns in it," the person- a young girl with a dark bob cut- said.

River glanced back at the screen over the girl's shoulder. "Really?" she yelled, doubtfully.

"Yes, I think it's some kind of code, though being alien it's not like any I've seen before! Still, code is code!" she shouted.

"Well what do you think it's trying to do?" asked the blonde.

"I don't know but whatever it is it does not appear to be working! It seems to be stuck in some kind of feedback loop!" the girl replied.

"No. It feels like the TARDIS is echoing. Everything I sense from it keeps getting multiplied and amplified until I can barely stand it and then it stops suddenly and builds up again." the young girl with the telepathic powers shouted.

The brunette lady looked up sharply. "Wait!" she yelled. "I read in TARDIS manual that you should never hook up the mainframes of two TARDIS of the same type because they may not recognise the other as a foreign entity, and then when one tries to execute an action, both will do the next command, and then both of them will respond to both of those commands, so it's doing everything four times over-"

"-and then the next action will be done eight times and so on and so on, until it can't take it anymore!" the blonde interrupted. She had come to stand right in the brunette's personal space, and was looking way too excited for the circumstances.

"At which point it crashes, all actions fail and the whole thing starts over again!" the brunette finished. She was looking at the blonde with curiosity and an intensely that was nether good nor bad, just intense.

The brunette broke her gaze away from the other girl first and turned to look at the other people around the control panel. The blonde followed her example.

"I'm sorry, but what does that mean?!" the telepathic girl asked. "You think there is another TARDIS somehow connected to this one?"

River looks around at the some of the unconscious figures she could just about see around the room. "Multiple Doctors, multiple TARDIS!" she said, more to herself then anything, as the understanding finally hit her.

"Exactly!" the brunette yelled. "But they're co existing in the same space and time!"

"Wait, how can there be multiple Doctors?" genius computer girl with the bob asked.

"We travel in time!" telepathic girl told her.

River took in the probable confirmation that all these people were past companions of the Doctor, and put it away to unpack later.

"Well I know that!" computer girl yelled, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Oh, you mean he's crossing his own timeline? Isn't that rather dangerous?!"

"Incredibly so!" the brunette lady shouted in frustration.

"Never mind that now. We have to move the TARDIS into it's fully manual mode!" the small blonde ordered.

River watched her get down beneath the console and removed a panel. The brunette and one of the people who had gathered around them- a woman with blonde hair and smart clothes- knelt on either side of her to pear into the inner workings of the control panel.

Despite being able to fly the TARDIS River had little to no knowledge of the mechanics, so she decided to talk to the young girls about the next steps and left the three ladies too it.

Romana stared at all the wires and circuits in the heart of the control panel. She tried to go through everything she'd read in the manual, but that had been awhile ago, and a lot had happened since, so she had to reluctantly admit that her memory was fuzzy. She hoped it was clearer for her past self.

"There! It's that circuit there!"

It wasn't her past self that had spoken, but the human on her other side, -well she was dressed like a human anyway, other than that it was hard to tell. So many species- including her own- had that apprentice.

"Are you sure?!" her past self asked.

"Yes! Inside it looks almost the same as the one I studied!"

The human(?) reached in and detached all the wires from the circuit.

"There, now you should be able to travel without any of the commands feeding through to mainframe!" she shouted.

"Thank you!" her past self told the human.

Romana nodded in agreement. "Yes, thank you," she said.

They all got up, and Romana waved at the lady with the crazy curls. Other than herself and her other self, she seemed to be the most experienced one here.

"It's done!" she shouted to her. It was still difficult to hear anyything over all the other people shouting, but she was glad to note it had quieted a little since they first got here.

Crazy curls and some of the other strangers gathered around her and her past self.

"We have to fly each version of the TARDIS out of their shared space and time. But with it being in a fully manual mode, there will be no chance of her correcting coordinates or flicking levers you missed, you have to get every singe thing 100% right and you're on your own." her past self yelled.

"Not entirely," said the probably time lord who had the strong telepathic bond with the TARDIS. "It's true all your actions have to be right, but the TARDIS consciousness is still in this room, even if it's confused and in pain, it can nudge your instincts in the right direction if you let it."

Romana was not good at using her instincts, she had got better at them this regeneration, but she was still a 'clear and precise instructions, with no room for error' kind of gal. Unfortunately it seemed that was not an option here, particularly with the unfamiliar desktop.

She pushed down her worries, knowing they would only hinder her.

"Who can fly a TARDIS?!" she asked of the gathered group.

There was a chorus of 'me' from her past self, curly hair and a bald egg like man, an 'I'm still training but sort of,' from telepathic bond time lord, and 'I have a passing knowledge' from another young strange girl, with fluffy brown hair. But all five followed their answer up with 'but I don't know this desktop.'

Romana tried her best not to feel too pessimistic at that. "Ok, I go first. Watch what I do. I'm going to try and land my TARDIS in the TARDIS, because if we go anywhere else we wouldn't be able to get back here to move any more than one version each. If I'm successful, then you take turns and copy what I did exactly, but move the coordinates ever so slightly. Romana goes after me, then curly hair, then bald head man, then the trainee, then passing knowledge. That way the less experienced get more of a chance to observe."

"And if you're not successful?" passing knowledge girl asked.

"If my TARDIS doesn't land in here and I end up lost in the vortex or in time, then you have the same order, but but do something different until one of you is successful!" she shouted.

Telepathic bond girl and egg head looked terrified, but they and all the strangers nodded. However Romana got the impression that her past self was about to insist that she should go first instead, which she didn't want to deal with right now, so she jumped into action before she could get the chance.

She faced the console and set the coordinates, pressed buttons and flicked switches. She used all the knowledge she had to inform her actions, and make logical guesses. She then told herself firmly not to second guess herself and pulled the dematerialisation lever.

As the familiar wheezing started, the crowds of strangers faded away, and the colour washed from the walls leaving just white.

Romana smiled at the familiar colour.

"Hello old girl, feeling better?" she said, incredibly relieved to be finally able to lower her voice.

The TARDIS hummed in response.

"Good, now I've got to go and make sure my past self is successfully freeing your past and future selves."

She flicked the switch that opened the doors, and rushed out.

Her senses were suddenly once again assaulted by fifty scared people stuffed into small confinement together. The people near where she had parked her TARDIS were staring at her with gobsmacked expressions.

"Who are you? What is going on?" a man in a blue suit yelled at her.

"Oi, That's the TARDIS! Where is the Doctor?!" a blonde girl shouted.

"Romanadvoratrelundar. Nothing good. Around," she yelled back and tried to shove her way towards the centre, but it was hard work.

Then she was stopped short when she found knife pointed at her chest. Her eyes followed the blade upwards and found a girl with reddish brown hair and dressed in a somewhat revealing outfit to be holding it.

Romana slowly raised her hands above her head. "Why are you pointing that at me?" she asked.

"Where is the Doctor?" knife girl asked.

Just then she heard the wheezing, and saw another TARDIS materialise next to hers. The doors opened and her past self stepped out.

"Ah, perfect landing!" she exclaimed. She then looked around and followed everyone's gazes to Romana and the knife wielding girl. "Oh," she said.

Her past self shoved Romana back and inserted herself between her and the knife, which Romana found both funny and annoying, as it would probably be worse for her if her past self got stabbed to regeneration before her time than her if present self did.

"Leela!" a girl with dark hair and space buns called out. The new stranger came to stand next to the knife wielder and gently pushed her arm down. "I said don't threaten people. Nobody here knows what's going on. We're all in this together," she shouted, but not in an angry way, just in a 'I'm in a room full of screaming people and have to make myself heard' way.

"But they just arrived here, and in the Doctor's ship," Leela yelled back.

Space buns frowned. "I'm sure they have a very good explanation," she shouted, and gave them a look.

"We do, but it's rather complicated and technical, but the important thing is we're trying to get the ship under control and we need to do it quickly before someone gets seriously hurt!" Romana shouted.

As if to hammer home her point, the TARDIS gave a particularly violent shudder, knocking half the people in the room to the ground.

Romana managed to catch herself, only to be hit by her past self falling backwards and ending with them both sprawled on the floor.

"Ok, I'm persuaded!" space buns said as they all righted themselves.

Leela shielded her knife, whether because she had decided to trust them, or because she realised how dangerous it was for her to be holding a sharp object in such an unstable place, Romana didn't know.

"Right, everything seems to be ok here. Please fix the TARDIS quickly you two. I'm going to go check on the angry girl with the probably explosives!" space buns shouted.

"The WHAT?!" someone shouted after her, but she'd already been swallowed by the crowds.

She then heard the sound of another TARDIS landing next to the first two, and out from it's doors the curly haired lady appeared.

"You two haven't got far," she yelled.

"There was a bit of a hold up!" Romana shouted back.

She turned around and saw that her past self was trying to shove her way through the crowds towards the central console. Curly hair joined her in her efforts but it looked like slow progress.

"Leela," she shouted, tapping the girl on shoulder. She looked at Romana with suspicion. "Can you- don't hurt anyone or use weapons- but can you clear a path from the TARDISes to the centre?! And keep it clear?!"

Leela considered her for a moment, then nodded determinedly, and leapt into the crowd. She parted them with much more ease than herself (both of them), and curly hair, probably because of her general intimidating appearance and demeanour.

"And the same for all of you that have been listening in! Clear the way, and tell other people to help!" Romana shouted.

All the people in her immediate vicinity startled at being called out, then after a moment's hesitation they started with their new assignment.

Romana strode confidently behind them, tapping on random peoples shoulders, pointing to the three TARDISes and the console, and telling them to clear the way to help them quickly get the ship stabilised.

They all would gape at her for a minute, but she could see it in their eyes that they were desperate for something to do, instead of just being confused and panicking, so without fail they all quickly decided to trust the random stranger telling them what to do.

With the new manpower, a path from the TARDISes to the console formed quickly and as people became aware that something was happening, Romana felt many eyes watching her with interest.

She arrived at the console just as the young probably time lord dematerialised.

She watched what 'passing knowledge' did with eagle eyes, whilst also mentality calculating the coordinates for her next flight.

After that, it all went fairly smoothly. They each did the flight one more time and once passing knowledge had docked her second ship, a stillness fell over the room, taking Romana quite by surprise after so long of constant turbulence.

For a moment everybody waited with baited breath to see if would suddenly spiral out of control again. When it became clear that that wasn't going happen, several people started cheering. It quickly caught on and soon the entire room was cheering for them.

Romana knew it they weren't out of the woods yet. She just knew trying to organise all these people was going to give her a major headache and they still had no idea how they had all got here, but they had solved one problem, and for that she allowed herself to breath a sigh of relief.

The kind eyed girl, and the space buns girl who fell on Amy were Sarah Jane and Yaz.

The girl who was crouching over 11 when Amy found him was Clara.

The girl who with a telepathic bond with the TARDIS was Susan. (so I may have taken a few liberties giving her that ability)

The girl who could see code in the manual interface was Zoe.

The human who helped set the TARDIS into manual mode was Liz.

The bald man and the fluffy haired girl who could fly the TARDIS were Nardole and Nyssa.

The man in the blue suit and the blonde girl who asked Romana II questions when she got out of the TARDIS were Harry and Rose.

The woman with the knife was Leela.

The space buns girl who talked Leela down was Yaz.