Summary:
the Doctor and his companions arrive in the strangest of places where, in order to survive, they need to play a life size tile matching puzzle game. Is this the end for the Doctor?
A fanfiction featuring: the 12th Doctor, Madame Vastra, Jenny Flint, Jo Grant, Sarah Jane Smith and Rory Williams.
Note & disclaimer:
this is a tribute to the game ‘Doctor Who: Legacy’, and to the people behind it, Susan and Lee Cummings, the teams of Tiny Rebel Games and Seed Studio.
No financial or material profit is generated from this story and no copyright infringement was intended.
Doctor Who: Legacy – I’ll keep you safe
(by my standards)
The Tardis shook violently as it went through another temporal anomaly. The Doctor, eyebrows frowning in concentration, was focusing on stabilizing his ship, while his companions were clinging on anything they could find to keep their balance.
‘How do you do it?’ Jo Grant shouted over the rumbling sound the Tardis was making.
‘How do I do what?’ The Time Lord shouted back.
‘Not falling down when it’s shaking and rocking like this. It doesn’t make sense!’
Sarah Jane Smith smiled at her:
‘He’s probably going to tell you that it’s because the polarity is reversed where he is standing.’
‘I had to reverse the polarity of the stabilization field around the console to allow…’
He paused, realizing that he had basically been repeating the journalist’s words.
‘Alright, this should work. Brace yourselves!’
The Doctor lowered a lever, and the ship went quiet instantly, saved for the central column that was going up and down steadily.
‘Ha ha!’ The Time Lord said, clapping his hands together. ‘I told you it would work!’
‘Yes, but… where are we?’ Rory Williams asked, still holding on to the handrail, just in case things weren’t totally in control. Experience had taught him that you could never be absolutely certain with the Doctor.
The Time Lord looked at the scanner and resumed his frowning.
‘This is odd…’ He said before walking towards the door.
Jo followed suit.
‘Are you sure this is safe?’
The Doctor shrugged: ‘Safe doesn’t apply to humans. You are doomed to die, and you don’t know when and where. Especially when. That’s why you can never be safe. But I have a duty of care. So I’ll try to make sure that you’re safe by my standards.’
‘I feel better already,’ smiled Sarah Jane, while Rory rolled his eyes.
They stepped outside the Tardis and looked equally astonished when they discovered their surroundings. The Doctor was the only one who didn’t look surprised. In fact, he looked…worried.
‘What is this place?’ Jo wondered.
‘Where are we?’ Rory asked.
It looked like a giant ball pool with zero gravity. Black, blue, green, red, yellow and pink gems were hanging in suspension right above them, in an intricate set of rows.
‘Look! They are moving!’ Sarah Jane told them, pointing in the direction of a yellow gem that was indeed moving, creating a line of four matching colour gems that popped simultaneously, only to be replaced by new gems.
‘I can’t believe this!’ Rory exclaimed. ‘This is a videogame! We’re inside a videogame!’
‘No, we’re not,’ the Time Lord said sternly. ‘It’s far worse than that.’
Before he could explain further, someone stepped in front of him. A lizard woman, dressed in Victorian clothes, was holding a long sword with which she stopped a blast of energy that would have hit the Doctor.
‘Don’t stay there doing nothing!’ She shouted. ‘Help us!’
Another figure, also dressed in Victorian clothes and also holding a sword, showed up next. It was a young woman, with soft features.
‘How can we help?’ Sarah Jane asked, ready for action.
‘Madame Vastra. Jenny Flint. Nice to see that you haven’t lost your touch!’ The Time Lord said, before turning to face his companions. ‘Rory was right.’
‘Was I?’
‘No. But while we’re not in a videogame, this place acts like one. We need to play in order to survive.’
‘OK, so it is a videogame after all.’
Jo nudged him, and he winked at her.
‘From what I understand, it’s a tile matching puzzle,’ the Doctor explained quite seriously.
‘Yes, I think we all got that part,’ Sarah Jane told him. ‘The question is: how do we make the gems move? And what happens when we match them?’
‘Use your mind,’ Vastra said, before demonstrating by moving a red gem until it formed a line of four red gems. ‘Picture where you want the gem to go, but beware, you don’t have much time to make your move!’
‘And then what?’ Jo asked.
‘Then you get special abilities!’ Jenny replied. ‘I can turn blue and yellow gems into red for instance! And I’m very good with red! Madame Vastra’s colour is yellow.’
‘What are we up against?’ Sarah Jane enquired.
‘Difficult to say, really,’ Vastra replied. ‘It is as if every enemy the Doctor has was trying to disrupt his timeline. We encountered Sontarans, Weeping Angels, Cybermen, Daleks, Toclafanes… All of them seem to have gathered here.’
‘Alright. Let’s do this then!’
They took position next to each other, and focused on the gems. It wasn’t difficult to get them to move around, the tricky part, however, was to be fast enough to match as many colours as possible.
‘Doctor! You’re regenerating!’ Rory suddenly cried out without warning.
And indeed energy was floating around the Time Lord, who looked down at his hands with concern.
‘He’s not regenerating, he is building up energy for his special ability!’ Madame Vastra hurriedly explained. ‘We all got one or two. You’ll find it out as soon as you matched enough gems of your colour!’
‘And how are we supposed to know what our strong colour is in the first place?’ Grumbled Rory as he was matching a tile of green balls.
Energy instantly started floating around him as well.
‘Wow! I guess that’s how!’
They soon realized that their opponents had special abilities too, and that those were quite dangerous.
Madame Vastra and Sarah Jane discovered that they had yellow in common, and that their attacks were powerful. Jenny was red, and she would easily manage to get a health and technical bonus. The Doctor used black gems, and because he would frown when focusing, Jenny and Sarah Jane decided that his special ability should be known as “Attack eyebrows”. Rory was green, and he could restore stamina to the group.
While fighting, they had discovered that when hit, they would slow down, and become less effective, unless they matched pink gems or used Rory’s ability.
Jo, however, was struggling to find what her special ability was. Like Jenny, she had a special affinity with red gems, but she couldn’t figure out what to use them for. This was the strangest fight she had ever seen in her life, and she was a bit concerned about the outcome. She was lacking Sarah Jane, the Silurian or Jenny’s self-confidence, and feared that she would be useless. She was decided not to let them down, though.
The strange fight went on, and as Sarah Jane, Jo, Rory and the Time Lord became more familiar with the gem moving technique, they also improved to the point where Vastra and Jenny felt confident that the odds were turning in their favour.
‘The Doctor’s super ability will be activated soon, and then our opponents won’t stand a chance.’
Sadly, their current enemies, three spoonheads, seemed to be aware of that fact as well, and they aimed their next attack at the Time Lord who was stunned upon impact.
‘Doctor!’ Jo cried out, and rushed to his side.
He had fallen on his back, and she checked for any injuries, but he was just out cold.
‘What can we do?’ She screamed, turning towards Vastra, tears already gathering in her eyes.
‘You need to wake him up! We won’t stand a chance without him!’
And indeed, now that he was down, the team struggled to keep the spoonheads at bay. Their stamina level was getting dangerously low, and Rory couldn’t recharge his ability fast enough.
‘Doctor! Doctor! Wake up please! We need you!’ Jo begged him, tears now running down her cheeks.
She grabbed his jacket and shook him, but he wouldn’t react.
Then, it was Madame Vastra and Sarah Jane’s turn to be stunned, and Jenny stared at Rory in horror.
‘This is it. We won’t make it!’
They kept matching as many tiles as they could, but Jo could tell that they were outnumbered and weakening. She looked at the gems, and that’s when she saw it. Some of them were flickering, turning into pink on and off. If she could just turn all those black gems into pink, maybe that would buy her friends some time? As soon as the thought came to her mind, all black gems turned into pink. Jenny and Rory let out a cry of joy that woke the Doctor up.
‘What did I miss?’ He asked to no one in particular.
He was already up, studying the gems layout. Jo was already helping Jenny match red gems. With their stamina at full level thanks to her, they were back in business. Soon, Vastra and Sarah Jane were up too, and they all concentrated their efforts on defeating their opponents.
And then, it was over. The spoonheads disappeared, and so did the gems. The Doctor and his companions were alone in an endless white room.
‘Where are we?’ Rory asked for the third time.
The Time Lord ignored his question. Instead, he pointed towards his ship:
‘Everyone! Back to the Tardis!’ He urged them.
They hurried behind him, and relief felt upon them as they realized they were now safe.
‘It’s not over yet,’ the Doctor said sternly.
Madame Vastra took a step forward:
‘What are your recommendations, Doctor?’
He grinned broadly, and his companions knew instantly what this meant. Further adventures and further danger
‘Now that we know how to fight them off, we have a chance to succeed! Time to restore the timeline!’ He said, and he sounded quite excited.
The Doctor lowered the lever, and the Tardis took off, flying through the vortex.
