taxonomites | 1 [Holo] I know exactly where I am, it's everywhere else that's lost

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1 [Holo] I know exactly where I am, it's everywhere else that's lost

No sooner had the TARDIS come to a stop than the Doctor was throwing open the doors and dashing outside with a cheerful shout of "Come along, Ponds!", eager to see where they’d arrived this time. That was one of the fun things about connecting up the old randomiser every so often. Enter a few basic guidelines to avoid places that might end up with them all collapsing from something unfortunately terminal the moment the stepped outside or into the middle of a war zone (he’d been shot exiting the TARDIS once before, thank you very much, and had no desire to repeat the experience), then let the TARDIS do the rest. Guaranteed mystery the moment they opened the doors.

It was a little unfortunate then that it looked like 'mystery' in this case was...

"A white room with a sort of... thing on a pedestal. Not really what I'd call exciting but maybe there's something more out there. Like a ship or a space station or a..."

He trailed off, alerted by the silence even before he turned around to find no sign of the TARDIS or his companions. Just himself on a raised platform in an empty room in a place he wasn't familiar with. There was also something strange hanging overhead, and the Doctor frowned at it, his mind racing to fill in the blanks in what he knew.

"Some sort of teleporter maybe... I’ve been kidnapped?" The idea wasn't impossible, he knew for certain, since it had happened a few times before. But it had been a while since anyone had tried. "I suppose whoever’s behind this must be feeling pretty satisfied with themselves right now?"

His wrist felt odd, he realised. Well, he’d realised it earlier, in a vague sort of way, but it was only now that it persisted in feeling odd that he scratched at it and found what seemed to be a metal bracelet fused to his skin. "Did you go and tag me?" he asked the room incredulously. "Who goes around fusing jewellery onto people? ‘Oh, I know, he’d look so much better with a silver bracelet grafted to his skin’?"

The room remained silent, so obviously whoever had brought him here didn't feel like turning up to do the gloating bit. Which left him with the thing on the pedestal, the thing in the ceiling, and a door that proved to be locked when he tried opening it.

"If that's how you want to play it," he muttered, his hand delving into his pocket to produce his sonic screwdriver. It warbled reassuringly as he waved it in quick, apparently random patterns over the walls and door, but quickly escalated to a high-pitched shriek not unlike something in pain the moment he ventured too close to that thing hanging from the ceiling. Whatever it was didn’t want to be scanned in a hurry.

"Let's see what we've got then," the Doctor commented, extending the end of the sonic screwdriver with a practised flick of his wrist. Unfortunately, the answer turned out to be ‘not much of anything’, which really only left the device sitting on the pedestal. Snapping the sonic closed again and returning it to his pocket, the Time Lord wandered over to it curiously, taking his time looking it over before reaching out and picking it up. Whatever it was, it was active and had been recording and uploading information to somewhere the entire time.

"Hello," the Doctor said, shifting his hands on the tablet to get a better look at it. "Been having a good look at me, have you? Let’s see... text, holo seems to be active... visual, voice... Oh, maps! Yes, let’s start with that then. Always a handy thing to have, a map." His finger hovered over the icon for a moment as he paused in thought, his brow furrowing. "Not that I normally use them. But I’ve heard they’re handy if you get lost easily and don’t like the fun of finding your way back on your own. Personally I always think that’s the best bit, seeing where getting lost takes you, but I suppose some people might—Oh?"

Cutting himself off suddenly, the Doctor’s eyebrows shot up as the map loaded, revealing this to be a decent sized city apparently named Taxon. But the really interesting and surprising part was how the map displayed people’s names next to some of the glowing dots on the map. Or, more accurately, the surprising part was what some of those names were. "Martha Jones? Charlotte Pollard? Fitz Kreiner? That’s... No. It can’t be. It’s just not possible..."

For a moment there was the barest flicker of uncertainty in his face, before it was quickly hidden again and the Doctor addressed whatever unseen audience he had. "I think I need some answers."

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"Yeah. He brought it with him when he came here, too. We each get something from home. I got pictures and holograms, Conner brought Titans Tower."

She frowns and can't quite hide the concerned look on her face at the Doctor's question. "I don't know. General consensus is they end up back home but no one really knows for sure."

That must have been why he still had the sonic in his pocket when he arrived. The Doctor's 'something from home'. Well it could have been worse, second to the TARDIS itself, his sonic screwdriver was very useful.

The Doctor couldn't see any pixelisation or anything else to suggest they were in some sort of simulated environment (and his eyesight was very good), but that didn't necessarily mean anything. Well, it didn't mean anything other than the fact he was waving his hand around in random patterns for no reason. So he stopped.

"Hope for the best then," he said, directing a smile at her image. "But where are you going to go now if it's gone?"

"Yeah. Hoping is all we can do, at this point," she says. It hurts a little to think that Conner could be lost somewhere else in the multiverse instead of having gone back home to the friends and girlfriend he'd missed so terribly. But, like she said, what could she do about it? She was stuck here until the hamsters decided to send her home.

"I'm staying in the Sanctuary right now. That's the building everyone arrived in," she answers his question, grateful for the slight change in topic. "It's got rooms, no bigger than a college dorm room, for people to stay in until they find a place in the city. Taxon is full of empty buildings that are just waiting for one of us to claim 'em. I just haven't found one to move into yet."

"And you just pick a building and that's it?" the Doctor asked, his brow furrowing. He supposed if they were here as some sort of experiment, then that might make perfect sense to their captors, but it also seemed to highlight how boring this place could be. He'd likely have found it boring regardless, but people used to having some sort of work to buy things must think it doubly so.

"In essence, yeah. I haven't really had to do that, yet, though. A few days after I got here, Conner showed up and then he just left so." She shrugs. Kara's not really used to the whole job and earning money thing (thank you Bruce Wayne for buying her Kryptonian tech) but what's odd to her is the lack of anything... exciting. She's so used to seeing people zooming around, saving the citizens from the bad guy of the day that this almost peaceful atmosphere is really kind of bizarre. "This whole place is a little weird."

"Weird..." he mused, rolling the word over in his mouth as though the flavour of it would explain something.

"How else is it weird?" He smiled faintly. "Keeping in mind girls who can fly and bend steel and all kinds of things."

"Nothing ever happens here. Back home everything is kind of crazy most of the time and it seems like there's at least a city on Earth that's in danger, if not the whole planet. You'd think that getting away from everything and having some pace would be welcome, but. It's really strange not having to go and take the evil-doers off to jail or save kittens from trees. That was my thing, back on my Earth. I protected it. Here, there's not much to protect or really anything to protect from." Kara's trying to keep the wistful look off her face, because, really. Who actually wants that kind of stuff around?

Edited 2010-08-24 05:35 (UTC)

"Well, I like a bit of danger myself," the Doctor agreed with a small smile. "Keeps things interesting."

Of course, some people might argue that his idea of 'a bit of danger' wasn't the same as anyone else's.

"But there's the mystery aspect, isn't there? Trying to find out why we're here and how to leave again? That's something, isn't it?"

"I guess it is. I've never really been the mystery-solving sort, though. More the 'hit the giant, rampaging robot 'til it falls' type," Kara says with a small laugh.

"Besides," she continues, mood visibly taking a turn for the depressed side. "After what happened the last time I went looking for a way out, I'm not really keen on trying again right away."

"Well those are good too," he said. "...I've heard. Never really had much to do with people like that and not really a fan of violence myself. Sometimes useful, but it's almost always better to try and find a way to handle things without it."

He wasn't really sure if that was something that would make Kara feel better or worse, so the Doctor quickly switched to the other topic mentioned. "The last time you went looking for a way out? What happened?"

"Yeah," she admits. "But most of the people we deal with back home won't take negotiation for an answer. Plus, once a giant robot is set to rampage, there's no amount of diplomacy that can stop it."

"There was... it was a glitch of some kind. The weather and everything went haywire and we were losing oxygen and the barrier around the city dropped. This place is in a cave, you know, so there were all kinds of tunnels to explore. We thought we'd find a way out or, barring that, the hamsters. But... we didn't." Kara pauses and rubs a hand over her face with a sigh. "There's another city below us, almost exactly like Taxon with the kinds of buildings and the things people obviously brought from home. But what was different were the corpses. It was like war broke out and no one could stop it. I... found some people close to me down there. And my own corpse, which was really, really creepy.

"I don't think all of us have recovered from that quite yet."

"A city below this one..." The Doctor frowned and fell silent as Kara spoke, one hand coming up to tug at his lips absently as he thought. Another city, almost the same and filled with corpses was interesting. Definitely worth finding out more about, maybe even seeing if he could get down there himself and have a bit of a look around at some point. He always preferred to be a bit more hands on in his investigations, after all.

"You saw your own corpse?" he asked, watching Kara carefully. "I am sorry, that wouldn't have been easy for you. But can you tell me if you noticed anything especially unusual about the city and what you saw? Anything else that stood out?"

"Unusual? Not really. I mean... this whole place is pretty unusual and it looked like a replica or something. Just with corpses." Kara looks down as she can't help but remember everything that she saw down there.

And then her expression turns a little thoughtful, like there's something that was different, she just couldn't put her finger on it. "There... there was one thing that was really weird, I think. I didn't realize it then, but now. People have been here for months and months and it looks like this place was built on top of it so the bodies must have been down there for a while."

With a slightly startled look she turns back to the tablet. "But none of them were decomposing."

"Weren't they? Now that is interesting." He smiled at her, pleased with the information even if he wasn't sure what it meant just yet. Something that didn't make sense was always worth looking into further. ...unless something more pressing came up, but since the Doctor had nothing better to do right now that poke around about the two cities, that wasn't an issue.

"And you thought they'd died from fighting each other, Kara? Why was that?"

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1 [Holo] I know exactly where I am, it's everywhere else that's lost

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