Summary: The Doctor thought he could do no more harm to the universe. It takes a fresh perspective to show him he is dead wrong. Doctor Who meets Mass Effect.

Storm on the Horizon
Prologue

It was quiet again.

He hated when it was quiet. Bigger on the inside, sure, but that just meant that the emptiness was expanded with it. His home, his life, his other half sometimes, and it reflected – now, as always – what he was feeling within.

It didn't matter what happened, it didn't matter who he brought along with him.

I told her – I always said to her, time and time again – I said, get out. So this is me, getting out.

It didn't matter that it was the best parting of ways he'd had in a long time. Two hearts meant double the pain of leaving.

It was time to go. To move on, to see the wonders of the cosmos, of civilization at its best (and sometimes at its worst) (sometimes at the same time).

He flicked a switch and immediately knew something was wrong. There was a sound – a bad sound, one that distinctly shouldn't be there because he knew all the good sounds and that wasn't one of them – and then the universe went sideways.

He groaned and picked himself up off the floor, wishing for the ten thousandth time that he had installed some sort of safety device in his ship, something that would protect him from smacking his head against the cold metal flooring.

Cushions, maybe.

Cursing to himself in the vilest language of all the cosmos that he could recall, he went back to the control panels to find out what went wrong.

The universe was still sideways. He was right-side-up and the universe was sideways. There was something about that he couldn't quite put his finger on, mostly because if he tried then his finger would be at a distinct sideways angle to what he was looking at, and then where would that leave him? Still confused. This was wrong.

Thrusting his hand into the pockets of his jacket and sorting through the combined detritus of his adventures (always an interesting experience, never really quite remember all the things that are in there), he pulled out a pair of cardboard 3D-glasses – with the red and blue cellophane lenses still intact – and put them on.

"What?"

He took them off and shook them a bit, before putting them on again. These were the same glasses he used to detect the Void Stuff from travelling between dimensions, and it was possible they might be slightly a bit completely broken, but nevertheless –

"What!"

He rushed to the console, typing furiously at the computer to try to isolate what was going on. It couldn't be right, couldn't possibly be true. And yet, the readout confirmed what the glasses indicated.

Void Stuff. Completely permeating everything, so thick that it turned his view completely and impenetrably black. Which meant that he was currently in the Void Between Dimensions, the Veil of Time and Space, the Jammy Dodger of Frippery or whatever he had described it as last. That Which Must Not Be Opened had been, and he was passing through it once more against his will.

All of a sudden, the shaking stopped, the light above the door blinking once as it verified landing on some stable surface in some stable era. Peering through the glasses again, he saw the Void Stuff still swirling about, but dormant once more. He was through, and if he moved very quickly, he might be able to head back through the rift before it sealed again, stranding him here. All reason pointed towards him doing just that...

...except, if he did, he wouldn't get to see what sort of strange planet he was on. He'd never get to know why the TARDIS brought him here.

Before that thought had even had the idea of beginning to cross his mind, he was already at the door, unlatching it and peering outside—

"Alright, mister, hands where I can see them! Move it!"

—and stared directly into a face covered with both leathery plates and some sort of blue and white paint. In front of that face was the rather large gun which had an impressively detailed rifled barrel. He could appreciate the masterwork of this as he was staring directly into it.

Around Leatherface was a mixture of similarly-built individuals, interspersed with the occasional human. All were in matching blue body armor, though the humans forewent the face paint.

The Doctor dutifully put his hands above his head and allowed himself to be manhandled away. He stared up at the horizon, his eyes widening in surprise as there was none; the ground curved up into a ring, himself standing on the inside of the structure. Stretching off into the distance past the ring were five enormous plates, arranged around the ring, themselves covered in artificial geography and related structures. He took one last look at his beloved box, already fading into the distance, and summed up the entirety of his thoughts.

"What."