TOTFATWBSAEO: 1.1 - Suck and Blow
Jun. 2nd, 2008 10:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
luchiaVader, I am so so so so sorry. SO sorry. You'll get more, I swear you will, but your birthday was a cruel mistress and I can't write Doctor Who fic for the life of me, so this is PART ONE of CHAPTER ONE. How pathetic is that. ANYWAY, for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
invderlava's birthday! *Makes grabby hands at Jebby*
And this isn't getting posted anywhere else 'till it's done. PLUS THIS MAKES UP FOR MY MASSIVE AMOUNT OF FAIL - SNEAK PREVIEW
Title: That One Time Fiction And Truth Were Both Strange And Each Other
Rating: PG!
Pairing: GEN! GEN FOR NOW. Except for the UST between DeMilo/Donna's Hair.
Warnings: Doctor Who/Tin Man crossover! That means it is full of wtf. Also, DeMilo. He's a warning just because I don't have any real warnings and that feels STRANGE.
Summary: "Reverse Pulsing" goes in reverse, meaning it goes from blow -> suck. And it sucked up some pretty interesting stuff.
Thispart of a chapter: No Donna, it is not, in fact, Oz. And for the love of pete, do NOT encourage DeMilo.
That One Time Fiction And Truth Were Both Strange And Each Other
1.1 - Suck and Blow
“Um…your majesty?”
Glitch’s voice (or was it Ambrose?) fractured the peace and happiness that surrounded the peak of Azkadellia’s Tower. Raw had moved to the side to look out the balcony, and it took Cain a moment to realize he was using Glitch as a crutch because of his shoulder. “Ambrose?” Cain asked, frowning, and only received a nervous look from the Royal Advisor.
“Your majesty, we need to destroy the tower, and we need to do it fast,” Glitch finally said, words finally loud enough that the hugging royal family turned towards him.
“Glitch? What do you mean, what’s wrong?” DG asked immediately, and when Glitch moved towards her with wide, scared eyes, Cain nearly fell off of him, barely catching himself on the striped shirt. “Cain! What happened?”
“Shot,” Raw said simply, eyes moving from the restored O.Z. to Glitch and then back. The Viewer wasn’t smiling, either. At all. “You sense it too.”
Glitch winced at the sentence and shook his head. “No, I invented it. I know what reverse pulsing does.”
“It…it melted the Witch. It stopped the eternal eclipse,” DG said cautiously, weighing her words as she looked at him. Glitch didn’t look happy. At all. “Glitch, what does reverse pulsing do?”
“You know what a vacuum is? You know, carpet cleaning and stuff?” DG nodded. “Well, vacuums suck up the dirt. The original Sun Seeder would have been kind of…ejecting the equivalent of really thin dirt. We’re talking really, really thin. The Anti-Sun Seeder, however, was pushing out nothing but power and magic.”
The Queen finally stepped forward, looking at Glitch as he spoke. “Ambrose, skip the technical information and go for the part that makes you look like the world’s going to end.”
Glitch let out a short, nervous laugh at that. “Politely blunt as ever, your majesty! I remember when-”
“Ambrose.”
“I turned it to suck. It’s sucking in the most powerful things it can find on the Otherside,” Glitch said quickly.
While there was a resounding chorus of “WHAT?!”, Cain just stared at him. Which was why Glitch said “What” too.
“Why didn’t you just tell me the code to turn it off, Glitch.”
He looked practically scandalized. “Wouldn’t have sucked up the Witch! You know how much magic the Anti-Sun Seeder’s got stored up from absorbing that hag? A ton of magic. She was practically evil turned corporeal, which means we have pure evil in the middle of the thing! If that isn’t powerful I don’t know what is.”
DG’s eyebrows rose very, very high. “So you sucked pure evil into a machine, and now it’s sucking more stuff up from Earth.”
Every single pair of eyes turned to look at her with that statement, looking a bit stunned.
“…DG, our Otherside, it’s.” Ahamo hesitated. “The Otherside we both know is Earth. But that’s only the closest Otherside world to the O.Z., that’s the one most connected to us, easiest to access.”
“So when you say Outer Zone, you mean-”
“Outside of everything!” Glitch beamed at her. “An external all-consuming pocket dimension in the multiverse! If it slips out of everything, it ends up here, the pan-dimensional catch-all.” He paused. “Well that used to be how it went until this puppy snapped into reverse. Now it’s gonna just be sucking up power stuff all…willy-nilly, so we need to destroy it.”
“Could it have possibly already pulled something in?” the Queen asked, eyes wide with worry.
“Probably a few things. I’m thinking Jeb’s still got some explosives, right?” Glitch looked over at Cain, who nodded back. “Great! We rig the tower, run for it, and…deal with. Things.”
“Things,” Cain repeated.
Glitch glared at him. “What, you think I know what a dimension’s most powerful person place or thing is gonna be? For all I know it could come smashing down on us-”
Which was when a very big something shot down through the sky, twisting and shedding fiery layer after layer, and smashed into the lake next to Central City. A wave crashed over the city like a massive rainstorm, and it looked like half the lake had been drained. Whatever had landed there was glowing a blue-green color, and it looked very, very pokey.
“Like that,” Glitch said a bit feebly.
DG swallowed the lump that had formed in her throat. “So we blow up the tower. Sounds good.”
With a unanimous decision, they evacuated as quickly as they could. Jeb set to rigging explosives, Cain set to griping about his injuries not needing that much treatment until Raw cleaned him up while teaching Kalm how to do the same during the process, Ahamo and DG slowly helped Azkadellia creep out of the emotional shell she’d formed, and the Queen and her ex-Advisor chatted away about apocalyptic capabilities as if the only thing they were missing was a good tea service.
That was the start of life in the O.Z. in the new days, though. Weird and weirder.
They didn’t know it then, but it was also about to start involving an awful lot of running, too.
---
“Oh come on Donna!”
She gaped at him. “That wasn’t fun! We were chased by sand pirates from the minute we stepped out of this stupid box! How the bloody hell is that fun?!”
He was still grinning. “Aww, don’t be shy now. I saw that smile.”
“It was…it was endorphins or something!” Donna defended. “I go off adventuring with you and I barely escape death every time, and if that doesn’t get your adrenaline pumping I don’t know what would!”
“You liked it,” the Doctor said, still rocking back and forth on his trainers with a wide smile, the tip of his tongue trapped behind his bottom row of teeth as he started speaking in a sing-songy tone of voice. “Donna likes adventure-”
“Adventure yes, mortal peril? No!” She stomped her foot down and immediately felt like a child for it, but the Doctor was acting like he was six already, so she didn’t pay it much mind for very long. “You! You are going to take me somewhere nice and tropical and full of people that don’t want to kill us.”
He paused, side of his mouth scrunching up as he thought. “…well, they wouldn’t recognize me anymore on Jatolcarix so I suppose the bounty would be off my head. New head, after all-” The Doctor cut himself off, face freezing as he started looking around the TARDIS, from the…pump-thing to the console, even going far enough to get the hammer thing and start bashing on the…other thing. “What?! No no no no no this isn’t possible!” He looked down at the console. “STOP!”
“Doctor?” Donna asked, wondering if he’d gone mad. When he just kept turning cranks and slamming things and cranking other things, she cleared her throat. “DOCTOR!”
“DONNA!” The Doctor mimicked, dropping to the grating and sliding under the console.
“What the bloody hell is going on?!” She spread her arms wide. “We’re not even doing anything!”
He slid back out with the sonic screwdriver between his teeth. “Thaph’s the prophlem!” The Doctor grabbed it with his left, diving back under. “We’re moving, and we’re doing it very, very fast, Donna. And the TARDIS isn’t doing it.”
“So something’s…towing us.”
“Well, sort of. Good enough for now. I just-”
The TARDIS hit something, and Donna went sprawling against the (thankfully) padded portion of the railing, shrieking just a bit as it didn’t stop. It was almost like they were rolling-
“Got it!” The Doctor shouted, and they screeched to a halt.
Donna grimaced, a hand going to her stomach as her eyes widened. Oh god, she was going to vomit. Throwing up wasn’t something she was going to do in the TARDIS. Definitely not something she’d do in there, so she trotted down to the doors, flinging them open and taking the required five steps to the right to vomit, only to stop, staring.
“Oh. My. God.”
“Donna!” The Doctor was out the door right behind her, eyes wide and cautious. “Donna, what…we don’t know what’s going on! We don’t even know where we are – the only clue I have is the binary star system with two moons-”
“We’re in Oz,” Donna said, nausea gone and replaced with awe, shock, and a bit of fear.
“Oz?” The Doctor frowned, eyebrows scrunching together. “Wicked Witch of The West, Yellow Brick…Road.”
Donna simply stretched her arms out on either side, the dull yellow bricks behind her making her hair look even more red than normal. “Oz.”
The Doctor continued to stare at the road, finally following it further onwards to where a city sat next to a lake that currently had a smoking something-or-other that was green and pokey sitting in it. “Do you want to say the cliché or should I do the honors?” The Doctor asked, voice a bit higher than usual.
“But I’ve never even been to Kansas,” Donna frowned.
“It’s why you say London, or England, or Earth or something instead.” Donna gave him a bland look. “Oh come on! You’re a human, you should love this stuff! It’s Oz! I thought everyone wanted to go over the rainbow.”
“Has a different meaning now, over the rainbow,” Donna said, only rolling her eyes a little. “Well.” She looked up at the Doctor, who grinned and held out his arm. With a smile, she linked up with him. “Off to see the wizard it is.”
“Mind if we ignore the singing and skipping bit?”
“Can’t skip for the life of me,” Donna sighed. “And I don’t want to even try to hear you sing-” The Doctor had stopped, head twisting towards something that looked like a wrecked black tower. “Doctor?”
“I thought…” He paused, and then smiled. “Never mind. Come on then, Donna Noble, off to venture into fiction.”
“Not so fictitious anymore.” Donna smiled back at him, and just for the hell of it managed to get a few skips in before stumbling and nearly falling onto her face. The Doctor had an awfully good time laughing at her, but when she looked back at the yellow bricks behind her, she decided it had been completely worth it.
------
There, and then not.
She still had tears. Gold flitted from her fingertips, out of her nails and into the air of the piece of emptiness that was full. He wasn’t there, but she was. She knew where he was. Knew where all of him were, and would be, and wouldn’t be when. Part of her just like everything else was.
The forest didn’t burn. It had more life to go through. Everything had more life to go through, even the dead. Everything.
It hurt, but it only hurt then, and there was so much more to feel, so much more to achieve before return and completion and the end of her beginning.
She stepped out of the trees, eyes golden, and moved towards where she was supposed to be with each passing second. Her feet went where they went at that time, and she felt her own existence as it tainted everything she could feel.
---
Donna stared at the outside of what should have been the Emerald City. They’d followed a yellow brick road, they’d seen a landscape that could pass for Oz, but this… “This is not Oz.”
“The place recently had a meteor crash next to it. A very strange and mostly harmless meteor that makes me wonder if it’s actually a meteor at all, but that’d make any city look…less green. And wet.”
Donna stared at him, and finally gestured at the city in question. It had impressive architecture, sure, but it also had water dripping off dirty walls and pooled in city streets, nearly flooding the place. A sign calling it ‘Central City’ were big, stone, and standing boldly in front of the gates.
“Why is it that everywhere you end up taking me, we end up at the wrong time with the wrong people and nothing but trouble?” Donna sighed.
The Doctor paused, raising an eyebrow. “…more interesting that way?”
And really, she couldn’t argue with that.
“Besides! Oz isn’t supposed to exist, and since I didn’t even think it did this has to be worth the trip. Even if it’s just for the novelty of being somewhere that isn’t real.”
“Maybe the movie was based off of here, but changed for children,” Donna suggested, nodding to the landscape. Even with a huge pokey not-meteor in the lake and the city flooding, it was breathtaking. “Before that thing crashed, I bet it was beautiful.”
The Doctor nodded. “It just makes me wonder how someone could get from a place I’ve never heard of and back to Earth to make a movie.”
Donna rolled her eyes. “You can’t be the only time traveler in the universe.”
“I never said I was!” The Doctor protested, turning away from the non-emerald city at the sound of a hissing, struggling steam engine making its way down another path. “I think we know where all the color went,” he quipped, and Donna simply nodded as the truck putted its way towards them, lurching until it finally broke down in front of them.
An older woman hopped out of the driver’s seat, makeup caked onto her face as she scowled at the engine. She looked at it for only a few seconds without letting out an angry hiss and kicking the thing.
“Don’t even start, Ma, you know this thing-” a man sighed, stepping out of the back of the truck, dressed just as brightly as his truck.
“You let them steal it! We had to go all the way to the Northern Island to get your stupid-”
“I said don’t start!” the man snapped. “It’s my place of business, as you know, and I ain’t getting another one when people know this wagon for being my wagon-”
“I’m sorry but where are we?” Donna finally snapped, earning a surprised blink from everyone, including the Doctor. She frowned at him. “If there’s someone to ask, I’m going to. Hasn’t been anything like this since you put the TARDIS on random-”
The man gave her one of the sleaziest grins Donna had ever seen, which was saying quite a bit. “Name’s Antoine DeMilo, purveyor of-”
“Yes, that’s all well and good and I’m very happy for you and your wagon, but where are we?” Donna snapped, and DeMilo glared at her.
“You outta your mind, lady? It’s the O.Z. Always has been, always will be.” The woman grumbled some more, and climbed back into the driver’s seat of the wagon while DeMilo walked over towards them. “Don’t tell me we got some more Slippers. If you’re Slippers, I don’t want no part in whatever quests you may have or sneaking you may be doing, ait?”
Donna glanced over at the Doctor, who looked just about as confused as she was. “You think I know what a slipper is? I barely understand ‘ait,’ let alone slipper, aside from the shoes of course but I doubt he’s saying we’re shoes.”
“Naah, really?” Donna scowled at him. “Could have sworn you were a stiletto.”
“Technically not a slipper-”
“I ain’t dealing with this again,” DeMilo snapped out, and pointed straight at them. “You leave me alone, I don’t get none of this trouble again.” The finger went straight towards the still-crumbling-apart black tower. “Go over there, and you’ll find people that can deal with you types. Just look for either the people with freakish accents like you have or a really nasty son-of-a-bitch named Wyatt Cain. Man seems fond enough of Slippers he might not shoot you.” He rubbed at his earlobes almost protectively, muttering under his breath.
“It’d be faster if you drove us,” Donna pointed out, and got a scathing laugh for it.
“Listen, sweet-cheeks, the engine’s barely gonna make it into Sin District, I doubt it’s gonna make it to what’s left of the Sorceress’ Tower.” DeMilo leaned back, looking at her. “Like your hair. You ever thought about-”
“I can fix up the engine if you’ll drive us and stop that right now,” the Doctor said lightly, already heading for the hood and pulling out the screwdriver. DeMilo blinked at him, but finally nodded. He beamed at DeMilo. “Good! Now, can you try to explain where we are again?”
---
invderlava's birthday! And this isn't getting posted anywhere else 'till it's done. PLUS THIS MAKES UP FOR MY MASSIVE AMOUNT OF FAIL - SNEAK PREVIEW
Title: That One Time Fiction And Truth Were Both Strange And Each Other
Rating: PG!
Pairing: GEN! GEN FOR NOW. Except for the UST between DeMilo/Donna's Hair.
Warnings: Doctor Who/Tin Man crossover! That means it is full of wtf. Also, DeMilo. He's a warning just because I don't have any real warnings and that feels STRANGE.
Summary: "Reverse Pulsing" goes in reverse, meaning it goes from blow -> suck. And it sucked up some pretty interesting stuff.
This
1.1 - Suck and Blow
“Um…your majesty?”
Glitch’s voice (or was it Ambrose?) fractured the peace and happiness that surrounded the peak of Azkadellia’s Tower. Raw had moved to the side to look out the balcony, and it took Cain a moment to realize he was using Glitch as a crutch because of his shoulder. “Ambrose?” Cain asked, frowning, and only received a nervous look from the Royal Advisor.
“Your majesty, we need to destroy the tower, and we need to do it fast,” Glitch finally said, words finally loud enough that the hugging royal family turned towards him.
“Glitch? What do you mean, what’s wrong?” DG asked immediately, and when Glitch moved towards her with wide, scared eyes, Cain nearly fell off of him, barely catching himself on the striped shirt. “Cain! What happened?”
“Shot,” Raw said simply, eyes moving from the restored O.Z. to Glitch and then back. The Viewer wasn’t smiling, either. At all. “You sense it too.”
Glitch winced at the sentence and shook his head. “No, I invented it. I know what reverse pulsing does.”
“It…it melted the Witch. It stopped the eternal eclipse,” DG said cautiously, weighing her words as she looked at him. Glitch didn’t look happy. At all. “Glitch, what does reverse pulsing do?”
“You know what a vacuum is? You know, carpet cleaning and stuff?” DG nodded. “Well, vacuums suck up the dirt. The original Sun Seeder would have been kind of…ejecting the equivalent of really thin dirt. We’re talking really, really thin. The Anti-Sun Seeder, however, was pushing out nothing but power and magic.”
The Queen finally stepped forward, looking at Glitch as he spoke. “Ambrose, skip the technical information and go for the part that makes you look like the world’s going to end.”
Glitch let out a short, nervous laugh at that. “Politely blunt as ever, your majesty! I remember when-”
“Ambrose.”
“I turned it to suck. It’s sucking in the most powerful things it can find on the Otherside,” Glitch said quickly.
While there was a resounding chorus of “WHAT?!”, Cain just stared at him. Which was why Glitch said “What” too.
“Why didn’t you just tell me the code to turn it off, Glitch.”
He looked practically scandalized. “Wouldn’t have sucked up the Witch! You know how much magic the Anti-Sun Seeder’s got stored up from absorbing that hag? A ton of magic. She was practically evil turned corporeal, which means we have pure evil in the middle of the thing! If that isn’t powerful I don’t know what is.”
DG’s eyebrows rose very, very high. “So you sucked pure evil into a machine, and now it’s sucking more stuff up from Earth.”
Every single pair of eyes turned to look at her with that statement, looking a bit stunned.
“…DG, our Otherside, it’s.” Ahamo hesitated. “The Otherside we both know is Earth. But that’s only the closest Otherside world to the O.Z., that’s the one most connected to us, easiest to access.”
“So when you say Outer Zone, you mean-”
“Outside of everything!” Glitch beamed at her. “An external all-consuming pocket dimension in the multiverse! If it slips out of everything, it ends up here, the pan-dimensional catch-all.” He paused. “Well that used to be how it went until this puppy snapped into reverse. Now it’s gonna just be sucking up power stuff all…willy-nilly, so we need to destroy it.”
“Could it have possibly already pulled something in?” the Queen asked, eyes wide with worry.
“Probably a few things. I’m thinking Jeb’s still got some explosives, right?” Glitch looked over at Cain, who nodded back. “Great! We rig the tower, run for it, and…deal with. Things.”
“Things,” Cain repeated.
Glitch glared at him. “What, you think I know what a dimension’s most powerful person place or thing is gonna be? For all I know it could come smashing down on us-”
Which was when a very big something shot down through the sky, twisting and shedding fiery layer after layer, and smashed into the lake next to Central City. A wave crashed over the city like a massive rainstorm, and it looked like half the lake had been drained. Whatever had landed there was glowing a blue-green color, and it looked very, very pokey.
“Like that,” Glitch said a bit feebly.
DG swallowed the lump that had formed in her throat. “So we blow up the tower. Sounds good.”
With a unanimous decision, they evacuated as quickly as they could. Jeb set to rigging explosives, Cain set to griping about his injuries not needing that much treatment until Raw cleaned him up while teaching Kalm how to do the same during the process, Ahamo and DG slowly helped Azkadellia creep out of the emotional shell she’d formed, and the Queen and her ex-Advisor chatted away about apocalyptic capabilities as if the only thing they were missing was a good tea service.
That was the start of life in the O.Z. in the new days, though. Weird and weirder.
They didn’t know it then, but it was also about to start involving an awful lot of running, too.
---
“Oh come on Donna!”
She gaped at him. “That wasn’t fun! We were chased by sand pirates from the minute we stepped out of this stupid box! How the bloody hell is that fun?!”
He was still grinning. “Aww, don’t be shy now. I saw that smile.”
“It was…it was endorphins or something!” Donna defended. “I go off adventuring with you and I barely escape death every time, and if that doesn’t get your adrenaline pumping I don’t know what would!”
“You liked it,” the Doctor said, still rocking back and forth on his trainers with a wide smile, the tip of his tongue trapped behind his bottom row of teeth as he started speaking in a sing-songy tone of voice. “Donna likes adventure-”
“Adventure yes, mortal peril? No!” She stomped her foot down and immediately felt like a child for it, but the Doctor was acting like he was six already, so she didn’t pay it much mind for very long. “You! You are going to take me somewhere nice and tropical and full of people that don’t want to kill us.”
He paused, side of his mouth scrunching up as he thought. “…well, they wouldn’t recognize me anymore on Jatolcarix so I suppose the bounty would be off my head. New head, after all-” The Doctor cut himself off, face freezing as he started looking around the TARDIS, from the…pump-thing to the console, even going far enough to get the hammer thing and start bashing on the…other thing. “What?! No no no no no this isn’t possible!” He looked down at the console. “STOP!”
“Doctor?” Donna asked, wondering if he’d gone mad. When he just kept turning cranks and slamming things and cranking other things, she cleared her throat. “DOCTOR!”
“DONNA!” The Doctor mimicked, dropping to the grating and sliding under the console.
“What the bloody hell is going on?!” She spread her arms wide. “We’re not even doing anything!”
He slid back out with the sonic screwdriver between his teeth. “Thaph’s the prophlem!” The Doctor grabbed it with his left, diving back under. “We’re moving, and we’re doing it very, very fast, Donna. And the TARDIS isn’t doing it.”
“So something’s…towing us.”
“Well, sort of. Good enough for now. I just-”
The TARDIS hit something, and Donna went sprawling against the (thankfully) padded portion of the railing, shrieking just a bit as it didn’t stop. It was almost like they were rolling-
“Got it!” The Doctor shouted, and they screeched to a halt.
Donna grimaced, a hand going to her stomach as her eyes widened. Oh god, she was going to vomit. Throwing up wasn’t something she was going to do in the TARDIS. Definitely not something she’d do in there, so she trotted down to the doors, flinging them open and taking the required five steps to the right to vomit, only to stop, staring.
“Oh. My. God.”
“Donna!” The Doctor was out the door right behind her, eyes wide and cautious. “Donna, what…we don’t know what’s going on! We don’t even know where we are – the only clue I have is the binary star system with two moons-”
“We’re in Oz,” Donna said, nausea gone and replaced with awe, shock, and a bit of fear.
“Oz?” The Doctor frowned, eyebrows scrunching together. “Wicked Witch of The West, Yellow Brick…Road.”
Donna simply stretched her arms out on either side, the dull yellow bricks behind her making her hair look even more red than normal. “Oz.”
The Doctor continued to stare at the road, finally following it further onwards to where a city sat next to a lake that currently had a smoking something-or-other that was green and pokey sitting in it. “Do you want to say the cliché or should I do the honors?” The Doctor asked, voice a bit higher than usual.
“But I’ve never even been to Kansas,” Donna frowned.
“It’s why you say London, or England, or Earth or something instead.” Donna gave him a bland look. “Oh come on! You’re a human, you should love this stuff! It’s Oz! I thought everyone wanted to go over the rainbow.”
“Has a different meaning now, over the rainbow,” Donna said, only rolling her eyes a little. “Well.” She looked up at the Doctor, who grinned and held out his arm. With a smile, she linked up with him. “Off to see the wizard it is.”
“Mind if we ignore the singing and skipping bit?”
“Can’t skip for the life of me,” Donna sighed. “And I don’t want to even try to hear you sing-” The Doctor had stopped, head twisting towards something that looked like a wrecked black tower. “Doctor?”
“I thought…” He paused, and then smiled. “Never mind. Come on then, Donna Noble, off to venture into fiction.”
“Not so fictitious anymore.” Donna smiled back at him, and just for the hell of it managed to get a few skips in before stumbling and nearly falling onto her face. The Doctor had an awfully good time laughing at her, but when she looked back at the yellow bricks behind her, she decided it had been completely worth it.
------
There, and then not.
She still had tears. Gold flitted from her fingertips, out of her nails and into the air of the piece of emptiness that was full. He wasn’t there, but she was. She knew where he was. Knew where all of him were, and would be, and wouldn’t be when. Part of her just like everything else was.
The forest didn’t burn. It had more life to go through. Everything had more life to go through, even the dead. Everything.
It hurt, but it only hurt then, and there was so much more to feel, so much more to achieve before return and completion and the end of her beginning.
She stepped out of the trees, eyes golden, and moved towards where she was supposed to be with each passing second. Her feet went where they went at that time, and she felt her own existence as it tainted everything she could feel.
---
Donna stared at the outside of what should have been the Emerald City. They’d followed a yellow brick road, they’d seen a landscape that could pass for Oz, but this… “This is not Oz.”
“The place recently had a meteor crash next to it. A very strange and mostly harmless meteor that makes me wonder if it’s actually a meteor at all, but that’d make any city look…less green. And wet.”
Donna stared at him, and finally gestured at the city in question. It had impressive architecture, sure, but it also had water dripping off dirty walls and pooled in city streets, nearly flooding the place. A sign calling it ‘Central City’ were big, stone, and standing boldly in front of the gates.
“Why is it that everywhere you end up taking me, we end up at the wrong time with the wrong people and nothing but trouble?” Donna sighed.
The Doctor paused, raising an eyebrow. “…more interesting that way?”
And really, she couldn’t argue with that.
“Besides! Oz isn’t supposed to exist, and since I didn’t even think it did this has to be worth the trip. Even if it’s just for the novelty of being somewhere that isn’t real.”
“Maybe the movie was based off of here, but changed for children,” Donna suggested, nodding to the landscape. Even with a huge pokey not-meteor in the lake and the city flooding, it was breathtaking. “Before that thing crashed, I bet it was beautiful.”
The Doctor nodded. “It just makes me wonder how someone could get from a place I’ve never heard of and back to Earth to make a movie.”
Donna rolled her eyes. “You can’t be the only time traveler in the universe.”
“I never said I was!” The Doctor protested, turning away from the non-emerald city at the sound of a hissing, struggling steam engine making its way down another path. “I think we know where all the color went,” he quipped, and Donna simply nodded as the truck putted its way towards them, lurching until it finally broke down in front of them.
An older woman hopped out of the driver’s seat, makeup caked onto her face as she scowled at the engine. She looked at it for only a few seconds without letting out an angry hiss and kicking the thing.
“Don’t even start, Ma, you know this thing-” a man sighed, stepping out of the back of the truck, dressed just as brightly as his truck.
“You let them steal it! We had to go all the way to the Northern Island to get your stupid-”
“I said don’t start!” the man snapped. “It’s my place of business, as you know, and I ain’t getting another one when people know this wagon for being my wagon-”
“I’m sorry but where are we?” Donna finally snapped, earning a surprised blink from everyone, including the Doctor. She frowned at him. “If there’s someone to ask, I’m going to. Hasn’t been anything like this since you put the TARDIS on random-”
The man gave her one of the sleaziest grins Donna had ever seen, which was saying quite a bit. “Name’s Antoine DeMilo, purveyor of-”
“Yes, that’s all well and good and I’m very happy for you and your wagon, but where are we?” Donna snapped, and DeMilo glared at her.
“You outta your mind, lady? It’s the O.Z. Always has been, always will be.” The woman grumbled some more, and climbed back into the driver’s seat of the wagon while DeMilo walked over towards them. “Don’t tell me we got some more Slippers. If you’re Slippers, I don’t want no part in whatever quests you may have or sneaking you may be doing, ait?”
Donna glanced over at the Doctor, who looked just about as confused as she was. “You think I know what a slipper is? I barely understand ‘ait,’ let alone slipper, aside from the shoes of course but I doubt he’s saying we’re shoes.”
“Naah, really?” Donna scowled at him. “Could have sworn you were a stiletto.”
“Technically not a slipper-”
“I ain’t dealing with this again,” DeMilo snapped out, and pointed straight at them. “You leave me alone, I don’t get none of this trouble again.” The finger went straight towards the still-crumbling-apart black tower. “Go over there, and you’ll find people that can deal with you types. Just look for either the people with freakish accents like you have or a really nasty son-of-a-bitch named Wyatt Cain. Man seems fond enough of Slippers he might not shoot you.” He rubbed at his earlobes almost protectively, muttering under his breath.
“It’d be faster if you drove us,” Donna pointed out, and got a scathing laugh for it.
“Listen, sweet-cheeks, the engine’s barely gonna make it into Sin District, I doubt it’s gonna make it to what’s left of the Sorceress’ Tower.” DeMilo leaned back, looking at her. “Like your hair. You ever thought about-”
“I can fix up the engine if you’ll drive us and stop that right now,” the Doctor said lightly, already heading for the hood and pulling out the screwdriver. DeMilo blinked at him, but finally nodded. He beamed at DeMilo. “Good! Now, can you try to explain where we are again?”
---
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-03 05:51 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-03 03:19 pm (UTC)I will be taking a nap. I will shut the office door, grab a blanket, and headdesk hard enough that I fall asleep. THIS IS MY PLAN.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-03 05:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-03 05:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-03 06:06 pm (UTC)Can I get you some espresso? Or perhaps some smut from the fandom of your choice?
(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-03 06:10 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-03 06:31 pm (UTC)Until the WoW servers come back and I can check my auction house listings.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-04 08:20 pm (UTC)Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
Hippopotamus.
NOOOO! YOU MUST RHYYYME!! *melts*
(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-05 07:47 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-03 05:57 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-03 03:21 pm (UTC)Also thank you again for looking over it! ♥ ♥ ♥
(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-03 05:46 pm (UTC)And it was my pleasure doll.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-04 08:18 pm (UTC)I'M NOT GOOD ENOUGH FOR MY DOMINATRIX ANYMORE? YOU HAVE TO RESORT TO INANIMATE OBJECTS NOW?
(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-05 07:45 am (UTC)And yes, that icon was intentional.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-03 06:13 am (UTC)i'm going to take a moment here away from your awesome depictions of DoctorDonna, and huggle your DeMilo. *huggles Demilo*
(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-03 03:24 pm (UTC)Also? EVEN NOW I'm flipping out and going "DOCTOR AND DONNA ARE NOT GOOD ENOUGH! D: D: D:" even if you all approve. I think I'm too obsessive over them.
Also I'm trying to convince myself that having Donna sleep with Az is a bad idea. It's not working.(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-03 05:44 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-04 08:08 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-04 07:54 pm (UTC)cuz if i don't i'll only encourage you to do it. actually, i'm going to encourage you anyway. DO IT!(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-04 08:16 pm (UTC)I CAN'T PICK WHICH DONNA!!! D:(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-05 01:25 am (UTC)*laughs at your plight*(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-03 11:49 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-03 03:26 pm (UTC)AND I HAVEN'T EVEN ADDED THE SECOND DONNA IN YET. OR MOST OF THE PLOT. Or The Creator since I'm feeling blasphemous and Ambrose's ego really was that big.HAPPY BIRTHDAY~! Or day after! Whatever! Also I am typing like a madwoman so I can get the full chapter for you whenever you come back. When do you come back btw? :D :D :D
(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-03 01:35 pm (UTC)But yes, I agree with what everyone is saying, this is lovely and you're doing fine! I haven't watched any of this season of Who yet but I adore your Doctor 'n Donna dynamic (DDD? wow I need coffee), and I'd bring up my glee at DeMilo but that's another D and I need to show some restraint. In short: YAYNESS!
(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-03 03:30 pm (UTC)WAATCH IT. You need to see Jenny and the hilarity of Partners in Crime and The Fires of Pompeii and...and Donna is totally my favorite companion. There is no UST which means they are just TEAM AWESOME and I am a very happy camper.
In fact, everyone thinks they're married due to their BFF-ness sans UST. It's funny.And the whole chapter will be out soon! I'm excited for it because GLIMBROSE gets to do my much-beloved "WHAT?"-ness a'la Doctor season finales.