Prayers to Broken Stone ((The Meddler VI/Allison Castiel))

[Rob "the Meddler" Goodfellow]

"Here's where the fun starts," Rob said cheerfully as he knelt and set to work on the lock. "See, planes that size ain't gonna have keys. So we don't gotta pick it, or hotwire it, or nothing like that. But, well, they're supposed to have a preflight done." There was a hollow crack, like breaking ice, and he inserted a lone tine into the lock. "That takes time, and expertise that I may or may not have. To be honest, I don't remember."

More metallic scratching. "But time's our biggest enemy, both figuratively and literally. Cos we're up against the calendar, we are, an' the bloody apocalypse is gettin' ready to start. So we're gonna cut some corners, and skip the preflight. Except fer makin' sure we've got fuel, that is. And that can be done from the cockpit." There was a sharp click, and the lock sprang open. Grinning, he pointed at the jet. "So grab the chocks from the wheels as we go past, an' as long as we've got gas we can be in the air before anyone realizes we're daft enough to nick it."

He tossed the lock over his shoulder, letting it bounce and scrape across the parking lot. "Ready? Right. Let's go!" With that, he shoved open the door and strolled towards the plane at a leisurely walking pace, acting for all the world like he belonged there. As he walked he ducked under the belly of the plane, grabbing the lines for the chocks on the back wheels and dragging them in his wake. Coming up from beneath, he jogged briskly up the connected wheeled stairs and pulled open the door.

"Quem é Você?"

On the other side of the door was a silver-haired man in a blue blazer, with a startled expression on his face.

"Olá!" Rob responded cheerfully. "Eu poderia ser o Doutor, eu poderia. Belo dia, não é? Oh, e eu preciso do seu avião."

"Como?" the man replied, sounding confused and skeptical.

With a sigh, Rob kicked him hard in the stomach and then chopped him in the back of the neck as he doubled over. "Acredite ou não, estou tentando ajudar," he said, catching the now-unconscious man and setting him in a chair. "C'mon, Alley-cat. Things have escalated, they have!"

Someone screamed.

"Quite a bit, actually," he sighed, catching sight of the woman in blue blazer and skirt who had just emerged from the back of the plane. She screamed again, and he winced. "Kin you calm her down, please? I need to get us airborne." And with that, he disappeared into the cockpit.

[Allison Castiel]

Allie listened carefully to Rob's instructions. Because, she was quick to realise, that's what they were, despite his casual way of speaking and his carefree demeanour. Somewhere, at some time in the past, she guessed he had been used to taking the lead. The Doctor had been a maverick, haphazard sort of authority figure – but nonetheless, there was something about him that made people automatically follow him. Rob had the same indefinable quality.

And she couldn't argue with a single thing he'd said. Time was their enemy. The whole world was living on borrowed time, rushing merrily towards destruction without even knowing it. It was like there was a giant clock in her head, ticking off the seconds, the minutes, the hours. Every delay they experienced, every moment they lost, meant that the wasps were coming closer and closer.

[Rob] tossed the lock over his shoulder, letting it bounce and scrape across the parking lot. "Ready?”

Allie nodded. There was no going back now. They would only get one shot at this. And Danny had died to get them here.  It was up to her to make his sacrifice worthwhile.  “Absolutely.” She was pleased that her voice betrayed not a single wobble.

“Right. Let's go!" With that, he shoved open the door and strolled towards the plane at a leisurely walking pace, acting for all the world like he belonged there. As he walked he ducked under the belly of the plane, grabbing the lines for the chocks on the back wheels and dragging them in his wake.

Allie took a deep breath and headed for the nose of the plane, doing her best to move just as confidently as her companion, even humming a nervous little tune as she went. She was just in the process of tugging the chocks free, when she heard the voice, and her heart sprang into her throat.

"Quem é Você?"

Although she knew not one word of Brazilian, the sharp, peremptory tone made it very clear that the man inside the plane was demanding to be told who they were. Craning her neck, Allie peered around the wheeled stairs, towards the doorway at the top, trying to see who they were dealing with. He didn't look like a pilot, to her eyes. The blazer he wore, while casual, was beautifully-tailored and expensive; his leonine face, beneath his well-groomed quiff of silver hair, was aristocratic and arrogant. This was a private plane, however. Perhaps he was the owner.

Rob tried to speak to him, but the conversation apparently didn't go all that well, since it ended up with the Time Lord efficiently rendering the man unconscious. To be fair, though, Allie thought wildly, it probably was a little bit difficult to explain why they were stealing his plane.

"C'mon, Alley-cat,” Rob snapped, galvanising her out of her startled paralysis. Tick, tick, tick, the countdown in her head was ticking away. Hurling aside the chocks, she scurried up the stairs, following as he dragged the limp figure of the man back inside the plane and settled him into one of the seats.

“But... we can't bring him with us!” she exclaimed, aghast. “What if he needs medical attention?”

“Things have escalated, they have!" Rob shot back, just as a scream echoed throughout the plane. Allie whirled around, to see a woman standing in the aisle, apparently having just emerged from the small lavatory at the rear of the plane. Her eyes were fixed on the unconscious male slumped in the front seat, her face white with terror. "Quite a bit, actually."

Was she the man's wife or girlfriend? Perhaps, but Allie didn't think so. She was much younger than he was, slightly overweight, and less sleekly groomed. Her clothes had the look of a uniform. Maybe a stewardess then, employed to cater to the owner's every need while in the air. Whoever she was, she was starting to panic, shrieking over and over again, the sound unbearably loud in the enclosed interior of the plane.

"Kin you calm her down, please? I need to get us airborne." And with that, [Rob] disappeared into the cockpit.

“Me?  What should I...?” Allie gasped, but it was too late, he was already gone.

Eyes wide, she turned back to the distraught woman, having no idea what to do. She thought she remembered reading somewhere that it was helpful to slap people who were hysterical, but that sort of approach seemed fairly unlikely to convince the woman that she and Rob weren't murderers or terrorists.

Instead, she edged forward, her hands outstretched, palms outward in what she hoped was a soothing fashion. “Ssssshhhhh... it's all right, we're not going to hurt you.”

If anything, the woman just screamed even louder, and started to back away. Allie had no idea if she even spoke English. Or maybe whether she was just too frightened to listen. Either way, her caterwauling was becoming a major problem, and had to be stopped, as quickly as possible. At this rate, she was going to bring every police officer in Rio down on their heads.

Left with no choice, Allie abruptly made up her mind. Like Rob, she didn't have time to be nice. With a single deft movement, she unshouldered her faithful rifle and snapped it up to aim the weapon directly between the woman's eyes.

“SHUT UP!” she hissed, making her voice as cold and menacing as she could, her brown gaze steely and uncompromising. She gestured with the gun towards the seat directly beside the slumped figure of the man, her meaning abundantly clear, despite the language barrier. “Shut up and SIT DOWN, before I put a bullet in your head!”

Even Allie was taken aback at how convincing she sounded.  Somehow, somewhere along the line, the quiet little antiques dealer from Chiswick had become a renegade and an outlaw. 

She just had to hope Rob's plan would be worth it.

[Rob "the Meddler" Goodfellow]

"So," Rob muttered as he dropped into the pilot's chair, "how hard could this bloody well be?"

For a moment there was a strange sense of disorientation. He remembered a... table, maybe? Hexagonal, with a glowing pillar in the center, and his fingers itched to do something. But the moment passed, and he was left examining the controls before him. "Lemme see... altimiter, that's good. Fuel - topped off, great! This must be the stick, that must be the throttle, and the rest I'll work out as we go. Now. How d'yeh start the bloody thing?" He scratched his scalp, then poked a button.

There was a crackle of static, and the cockpit filled with the sound of Portuguese radio chatter.

"Not that one," Rob murmured, stabbing a few more buttons. Finally, with a roaring whine, the engines came to life. More memories drifted past, gauzy and insubstantial, as he began to taxi out onto the runway. Half-glimpsed thoughts of the hexagonal table again, and a rush of adrenaline, and laughter. Then a Portuguese voice was on the radio, demanding to know where he was going and why he was on the runway. He ignored them, choosing instead to dig the battered block of dense electronics out of his pocket.

"What are you doing?" WOTAN asked.

"Y'still there, mate?" Rob asked. "I'da thought you'd have buggered off by now."

"Data transmission speeds were too slow to allow me to upload myself from the hotel," WOTAN answered, sounding sullen. "And the wifi networks are too sporadic and slow as well. Where are we going?"

"Off to save the world, Odin old son. Off to save the world." Rob pushed the throttle forward, acceleration pushing him back into the pilot's chair. "Gimme some tunes, wouldya?"

"I am not your jukebox or your virtual personal assistant," the AI grumbled. But even as he said it, electric guitars began to scream from the dense box. Rob laughed and began to sing along.

"Living easy, living fee, season ticket on a one-way ride." The plane hurtled along the runway, picking up speed until the nose began to rise.

"Don't need reason, don't need rhyme. Ain't nothing I would rather do..." Ahead, he could see a Boeing 777 coming straight towards the tiny plane as it foght for altitude. "Going down, party time." The big plane was on final approach, and clearly couldn't evade. So Rob banked hard, twisting the plane into a steep turn to starboard with the wing clearing the runway by inches. "My friends are gonna be there too...."

There was a roar of engines as the two planes passed, and then Rob was shooting skyward. "I'm on the hiiiiighway to hell.... on the highway to hell!" STill laughing, he leveled the plane out and looked out the window. "This is yer de facto captain," he called back out the cockpit. "If'n yeh wanna look out th' window, you'll see th' lovely city o' Rio de Janiero below us. It'll be a good five hours before we land, mebbe longer if'n me plan ta glide this thing ta stretch gas works out. An' thank you fer flying Doct-Air."

[Allison Castiel]

Face white, the stewardess – or personal assistant or whatever she was – dropped like a stone into the seat Allie had indicated, her hands raised meekly in the air.

“Now,” the blonde girl instructed, holding the rifle steady. “Buckle his seatbelt.” She gestured at the unconscious man's middle, so that the woman would know what she meant. “Then your own. Something tells me this could be a bumpy ride.”

Hesitantly, the woman did what she was told.

“Who you?” she demanded shakily, in lilting, broken English. “Why you hurt Senhor Gutiérrez? Many polícia come. You caught, you be sorry.”

Allie sighed, and settled herself in the single chair facing the two Brazilians. It was probably meant for the stewardess to sit on during take-off and landing. She looped the seatbelt around her slender waist and tightened it, contemplating the woman's question. For a moment, she thought about providing fake names. They were criminals now, after all, and providing your real name during a heist went against everything she'd ever seen on TV. However, she wasn't exactly a criminal mastermind. She doubted that she'd remember to call Rob anything else during the heat of the moment, let alone answer to a false name herself. So it really seemed pointless to try.

“My name is Allie.” First names, maybe. That couldn't hurt, could it? And if they didn't succeed in their mission, everyone was dead anyway, so it wasn't as if it would matter. “And his name is Rob. And we didn't want to hurt Senhor Gutiérrez. We just... need to borrow his plane.”

The woman glared at her suspiciously. “Why for you need plane? What bad thing you do?”

“We haven't done anything bad. But if we don't get to Roraima very soon, something bad will happen. Something very, very bad. Many people will die. We're trying to stop it happening.”

“Why for people die? What you-” The woman's interrogation was cut short by the whine of the engines, as the plane started to lurch forward down the runway.

Allie caught her breath and held it. The view outside the narrow windows started to whizz by, faster and faster, as the aircraft taxied down the asphalt, rapidly gaining momentum.

He was really doing it, just as he had said he would. He was really about to steal a plane and to catapault them into the air.

“What's your name?” she gritted out to the woman, raising her voice to be heard over the grinding noise of the wing flaps and slats being extended.

“Lilian,” the woman choked out, tears trailing down her face. “Lilian Varela. Please... please... I do not want to die.”

“Then I suggest... you hold on!” Allie replied, as the small plane seemed to suddenly vault into the air. The engines screamed as the acceleration increased. Allie's heart was pounding so hard that it hurt. They had no flight plan, no clearance from the control tower.  He knows what he's doing, she reassured herself desperately, fixing an image of Rob's face in her mind. He said he'd get us there and he's kept all his promises so far.

“It's going to be all right,” she told the panic-stricken Lilian. The other woman was panting loudly, hyper-ventilating in fear. “He just has to gain some altitude and-”

The plane veered wildly to the left, tilting almost vertical to its starboard wing as it went. Lilian shrieked hysterically, before launching into a spiel of rapid-fire Portuguese, which Allie guessed was a prayer of some kind, the words echoing around the cabin as the plane bucked and shuddered.

“Pai Nosso que estás no céu, Santificado seja o Vosso Nome, Venha a nós o Vosso Reino, Seja feita a Vossa Vontade, Assim na terra como no céu.”

Prayers don't help, Allie wanted to scream, jamming her eyes shut and clinging to her seat as tightly as she could, wishing the woman would shut up. We prayed when the wasps came, and it didn't change a thing. The ones who prayed died right alongside the ones who didn't.

And then, just when she thought she could stand it no longer, the plane righted itself again. It was still tilted at an angle, but now it was just the normal angle of ascent, as it climbed through the air, leaving the airport far behind.

Rob's voice came over the communications system. Allie could almost imagine the exhilarated sparkle in his eyes as he spoke. "This is yer de facto captain... if'n yeh wanna look out th' window, you'll see th' lovely city o' Rio de Janiero below us. It'll be a good five hours before we land, mebbe longer if'n me plan ta glide this thing ta stretch gas works out. An' thank you fer flying Doct-Air."

Shakily, Allie opened her eyes and looked at Lilian. “There, see?” she said, swallowing hard and trying to make it sound as if she'd never doubted Rob's success for a minute. “I told you he'd do it. Now... how about a nice glass of whiskey, while we enjoy the flight?”

[Rob "the Meddler" Goodfellow]

Time passed. Rob occupied himself with flying the plane, and most of that was spent familiarizing himself with the controls. He'd flown before, he was certain of that. But it was all muscle memory, with no conscious comprehension of the meaning of the gauges and dials. Sure, some of them were obvious. The altimiter, for instance. And the artificial horizion. But he'd nearly stalled the plane working out the flaps, and there were dozens of buttons that he was dying to press and equally worried about trying. But hey, they were up in the air and making progress!

He also occupied himself with his music, discovering that whoever he had been had wildly eclectic musical tastes. Haunting horns gave way to the blues to punk rock, followed by strings and a droning wail with no rhyme or reason. But then, something happened.

"Robin, love?" a sweetly feminine voice asked from the black box in the copilot's chair, and he froze. The voice was achingly familiar, one he knew better than his own. "This one's for you, my sweet Puck..." And then he heard harp strings whisper, and a song drifted through the air.

Where dips the rocky highland
Of sleuth wood in the lake
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water rats
There we've hid our fairy vats
Full of berries
And of reddest stolen cherries.

Time and place drifted away as he chased fragmentary memories down the lacy patchwork of his history. He could smell... sandalwood. Sandalwood and gun oil. And he could just barely recall a lovely face, with eyes the green of the heather and hair like copper, and could imagine her lips moving with the music.

"Come away oh human child," he whispered with the song, aware that somehow - on some level - the song was about him. Not that Yeats had written it about him, but that it had amused the singer to accuse him more than once of stealing a human child for his own nefarious ends. "To the waters and the wild. With a faery hand in hand, for the world's more full of weeping..." Weeping. He was weeping, now. For his lost memories. For the gnawing ache in his heart - his hearts - where the singer should be. He wept for the loss of things he didn't know he'd lost, that he couldn't remember ever having, and his hands shook on the yoke.

"Rob!" WOTAN shouted, electronic voice overwhelming the music.

He jerked to the present, then jerked at the yoke to pull the plane out of the dive it had gone into. Hearts pounding at a thunderous beat per second, he fought with the controls until the aircraft leveled out, then wiped sweat from a clammy brow. "Bleedin church," he whispered, then swallowed and shook his head. "Hey, Odin. Kin yeh do me a cheesey?"

"What?" asked the artificial sentience.

"Locate every ding dong... no, every sound file with that voice, right? And cut them from the shuffle." He swallowed, fighting back emotion. "No need to crash cause I'm woolgathering, after all." His hand still shook as he fumbled with the intercom. "Alley-cat? Hate to bug you, but any hope of a nosh an' a lily? I could murder a Bill Murray an' a ship, but even a cuppa an' a bag of jockies'd go down right now."

[Allison Castiel]

Allie flinched as the plane seemed to go into freefall, her fingernails gouging into the leather seat, biting her lip hard to stop herself from crying out. Lilian was doing more than enough shrieking for the both of them, her screams assaulting Allie's ears like a knife. Again, just as everything seemed lost, just as it seemed they were about to spiral to their deaths, the plane levelled out again.

Dizzily, Allie closed her eyes and tried to regain her breath, willing herself not to be sick.

“You sure... man know how to fly plane?” Lilian squeaked.

“Of course I'm sure,” Allie retorted, her tone a little more sharp than she intended. “It was probably just turbulence or something.”

“You trust him so very much?” The Brazilian woman sounded a bit incredulous at this, and Allie couldn't really blame her, after the bumpy start they'd had to their unauthorised flight.

“Right now, Lilian, he's all that I've got,” she responded wearily. “He's all that the whole world has got, actually. Him... and for what it's worth... me.”

At that moment, Rob's voice crackled over the PA system from the cockpit again.

"Alley-cat? Hate to bug you, but any hope of a nosh an' a lily? I could murder a Bill Murray an' a ship, but even a cuppa an' a bag of jockies'd go down right now."

Lilan's head jerked up at the sound, and then she looked back towards Allie, a shocked and anxious look on her face. “My English not so good. What he say? Who he murder?”

Despite the tenseness of the situation, a laugh bubbled up inside Allie. “It's all right, Lilian. It's a figure of speech. He's just asking for a cup of tea and something to eat. I think. Don't worry, sometimes I find it hard to understand him too, and I am English.”

Their flight path appeared to be butter-smooth now, at least for the time being. Cautiously, she unsnapped her seatbelt. “Do you have any food on board at all?”

“Of course. Senhor Gutiérrez insist on much food,” Lilian nodded. Warily, she followed Allie's example and slipped free of the seatbelt. “I get. I am... how you say... a aeromoça. Is my job.”

The blonde girl hesitated for a moment, but then nodded. Now that they were in the air, there wasn't much damage the stewardess could do, without endangering her own life. And if she had something concrete to keep her occupied, it might stop her incessant screaming every time Rob adjusted their altitude. Nonetheless, she kept the gun handy at her side, just in case. “Go on then.”

Lilian bustled around, opening lockers in the bulkheads, and quickly preparing a tray of food and a steaming cup of tea for Rob. “I take to him. Is my job.”

Allie was about to say that she'd rather take it in to Rob herself, when she was distracted by a slight movement at her side and a faint moan. Her eyes flickered downward, only to see the man slumped in the other seat beginning to stir. Senhor Gutiérrez, it seemed, was regaining consciousness. When she glanced up again, Lilian had vanished into the cockpit with the tray.

The Brazilian man moaned, his eyelids fluttering. “O que aconteceu? Onde estou?”

Allie had no idea what he was saying, but she could guess. Patting his arm awkwardly, in what she hoped would be a comforting fashion, she said, “It's all right, Senhor Gutiérrez. There was... a bit of an accident. But you're safe now.”

“Accident?” Like Lilian, his English was slurred and heavily accented, but still understandable, much to Allie's relief. “What accident? And my name is not Gutiérrez. It is Luiz Santos.” He tried to sit up, a shaky hand held to his head. “This is my plane. Who are you?”

She stared at him in confusion. “Not Senhor Gutiérrez? But your stewardess... Lilian Varela... she told me your name.”

“I have never heard of this woman,” he grunted. “I do not have a stewardess.”

Sudden alarm jangled in Allie's brain. What had she done? Snatching up the gun, she ran across to the door leading to the cockpit and tried to tug it open. But it was stuck fast. Frantically, she hammered on it with her small fists, fear tearing at her heart.

“Rob!!!! ROB!!!!!”

---

On the other side of the door, behind Rob's back, the figure of Lilian Varela momentarily shimmered, revealing a faint outline of a tall woman with flowing red locks, garbed all in scarlet, before morphing again into the image of a slightly overweight Brazilian air stewardess.

“How many açucar you like in your tea?” the heavily accented voice inquired sweetly.

[Rob "the Meddler" Goodfellow]

"How many açucar you like in your tea?" the stewardess asked.

Rob glanced up, noting her reflection in the cockpit window. "None, thanks," he said. "Coupla shakes of salt'd be great, if you have it. An' a dash of ketchup."

The reflected face looked horrified at the suggestion, but masked it quickly as she checked her tray. "Uhm... no salt, senhor. No..."

"Didn't figure you would," he interrupted, reaching back. "I'll just take it plain then, thanks." It was a solid, heavy mug, steaming faintly as he brought it to his lips. Then he heard a distant hammering sound, someone pounding on the cockpit door. Along with the hammering, he could hear Alley-cat shouting his name, over and over again. "Bleedin' church," he grumbled, feeling a little worried now. "Did wossisname wake up an' start causin' grief?"

Still holding the mug, he looked over the controls. There. A button marked 'piloto automático'. That looked promising. Probably wouldn't do more than hold the plane straight and level, he reasoned as he pushed it, but that'd do for a few minutes. "Hang on, hang on," he called, spinning the pilot's chair and climbing to his feet. "Hold yer tater, I'm on me way ain't I? Not like I'm not busy..."

He stopped, staring at the door. It was locked. Wheeling on the stewardess, he gestured angrily with his mug. "Whattya playin' at, you daft bird!" he demanded, sloshing tea around as he shook fist.

[Madame Clacice Beauvier]

“Daft bird?” The stewardess smiled at Rob, her face seeming to stretch oddly, like a piece of plasticine left out in the sun for too long. Or maybe, it was just the carelessness of someone who no longer saw any reason to hide. “Your charm never fails to impress, does it, Doctor?”

On the other side of the door, the banging and shouting continued to get more and more frantic.

“She's trying to warn you about me. How very sweet!” Evidently amused, the woman's speech was no longer distinguished by the broken, heavily-accented English she had used before. Instead it had a smooth, French lilt, as thick and syrupy as honey. “Poor, silly little girl. She really trusts you.” A peal of mocking laughter filled the cabin. “Such a shame you're only going to get her killed, along with the rest of the world.”

Contemptuously, she tossed aside the tray, allowing it to fall to the floor with a clatter. “You seemed to have some difficulty remembering me, when last we spoke. Perhaps I should refresh your memory.”

The entire time she spoke, the woman's appearance was morphing, slowly but surely. Before Rob's eyes, Lilian Varela vanished, her image briefly shifting to the familiar shaven head and angular features of Jem Sholto, before finally settling into the cold, beautiful face of the malevolent Time Lady Rob had last seen back in the Black Archive.

“My name is Madame Clacice Beauvier. I am one of the Children of Contempt. Daughter of the Emperor Morbius and his Lady; twin sister to Leofric de Sable, also known as Cardinal Grandier, also known as the Chaplain of Spite,” she sneered. “Too often, Doctor, have you thwarted my family from attaining their rightful positions of honour and power and glory in this universe. Irregardless of whether you remember us or not - today, that will end.”

Outside the plane, beyond the window of the cockpit ahead of them, black clouds were beginning to boil. Darkness garroted the sun, quenching the daylight, casting the sky into premature twilight. Without warning, everything began to buck and to shake.

Clacice flashed a wild, mocking grin in Rob's direction, clicking her tongue in mild censure. “You should be more careful, Doctor. It appears you are heading for some bad weather.”

A network of brilliant lightning flashed through the gathering clouds, and for just an instant, the resulting silhouette seemed to take the shape of a horrifying giant, with a roughly human shape and glowing red eyes. Then the lightning died away, and there was nothing visible but for the storm.

“You will find I have many allies beyond the dimensions of this universe,” Clacice hissed, her hand reaching for the bulkhead wall to steady herself, as the plane pitched and yawed in the growing tempest. “Allow me to introduce you to Ithaqua... the Thing That Walks The Wind!”

[Allison Castiel]

Dark clouds were beginning to stream past the windows with frightening speed, while the plane shook and shuddered like a wounded animal. Fighting to keep her feet, Allie redoubled her attempts to get through the door into the cockpit. Savagely, she kicked at it, over and over again, but with no result. The lock held fast.

“Are you lunático?” Luiz Santos exclaimed, as she backed up and threw herself bodily at the door. “Come and sit down! We are flying into a storm! You will get yourself killed!”

“You don't understand!” she screamed. “Rob's in danger! And it's my fault!”

“Rob?” The man's voice was blank. “Who is this Rob?”

“He's the one that's flying this plane!”

Again, the whole cabin convulsed, sending Allie cannoning into the wall, striking her shoulder hard. Doggedly, she clawed her way back to the door, trying to ignore the ravening blackness outside. Rain struck the windows like handfuls of pebbles, as though the droplets were trying to bore their way through the glass.

“Don't just sit there like an idiot!” she cried. “If he's in danger, we're all in danger. HELP ME!”

For one last second, Luiz Santos hesitated, weighing up his options. His head was aching like an absolute bitch, and he had no real idea what was going on here, or who Allie was, or why the pilot was in danger. But it was very clear that the plane was heading into deep trouble. And when you were trapped in a tiny cabin at 45,000 feet in the air, no matter how rich and autocratic you might be, it had a way of rearranging your priorities. With an abrupt flick of his wrist, he unsnapped his seat belt and snatched a heavy fire extinguisher from the wall, to use as an improvised battering ram.

“Stand back!” he snapped at Allie, before charging at the door with all his strength.

[Rob "the Meddler" Goodfellow]

"Bloody church!" Rob gaped. "Yer Jem! Or... what'd you say her name really was..?" He snapped his fingers, making a show of forgetfulness. Not that he had, really. It was only his memories of before Nelson's Column that were patchy.

“My name is Madame Clacice Beauvier," she hissed.

"Right, right. Classy. How'd I ever fergit that?"

Cracice's eyes narrowed with hatred. "I am one of the Children of Contempt. Daughter of the Emperor Morbius and his Lady; twin sister to Leofric de Sable, also known as Cardinal Grandier, also known as the Chaplain of Spite,” she sneered.

"Hang on, hang on," Rob replied, holding up a hand. "So... yer dad was some berk named MOrbius, also named Contempt? Or was that yer ma? Or was yer ma the twin sister this Cardinal Grand Spite bloke? Yer tossin' too many names around witout context, Classy."

Morbius. That was a name that perked his memory, just a little. Like he'd heard it somewhere before. But Leofric de Sable? Or the other titles she was tossing around? No effen clue.

“Too often, Doctor, have you thwarted my family from attaining their rightful positions of honour and power and glory in this universe. Irregardless of whether you remember us or not - today, that will end.” She made a grand gesture towards the window.

"Me thwartin', or me fergettin?" Rob asked off-hand, even as he glanced. "Church."

Clacice laughed like a mad thing as he stared at the massive storm front that had come up quite literally out of nowhere. Gale-force winds and thunder and lightning, like the bloody end of the world. “You should be more careful, Doctor," she mocked. "It appears you are heading for some bad weather.”

Before he could respond, a blast of lightning revealed a massive human sillouette, suspended in the sky, staring at them with malevolent red eyes. “You will find I have many allies beyond the dimensions of this universe,” Clacice hissed, her hand reaching for the bulkhead wall to steady herself, as the plane pitched and yawed in the growing tempest. “Allow me to introduce you to Ithaqua... the Thing That Walks The Wind!”

He stared for a moment, stroking his chin. "Ithaqua, hey?" Memories teased him, fluttering at the back of his mind as he spoke hesitantly, letting the knowledge tumble out. "Not one of the ysgaroth, no. More akin to the casts an' the daemons an' th' loa o' th' Eleven-Day Empire. A livin' monopole, sentience formed outta fields of magnetic force." He chuckled. "Must be costin' you somethin' fierce, callin' that thing this far into th' south."

Staring at the baleful crimson eyes, he contemplated. "Could get ridda that thing, if I had me enough power to generate an electromagnetic field o' me own..." Then, withouth warning, he spun and smashed the mug across Clacice's forehead. Heavy ceramic shattered, shards tearing at her skin and sending droplets of orange-red blood splattering across the walls and down her face. His left hand smashed into her forehead, slamming her skull backwards into the bulkhead.

"The problem with you, Classy," he growled, driving his knee into her stomach, "is you talk too bloody much!" A booted heel smashed down into the arch of her foot as he concentrated, trying to do something he was only barely aware he could do. "Shoulda just shot me, or put a bomb on the plane."

He punched her in the throat, knuckles first. As he did, he felt something - the grit and the grime that made up the dirty-looking lines in his palm - sing with wordless enthusiasm as they detatched and swarmed into the bleeding wounds on her face. "Vashta nerada, Classy!" he laughed. "Wonder what I kin do with yer stolen energies?"

In truth, he had no idea what he was talking about. But he could feel them, the swarming nanoscale things that made up the ebon lines in his hands, swarming her blood. Feel them transferring the bloody crimson energy she was enfused with, feel the stolen power coursing through his own nerves. "Electromagnets just need one bloody thing, Classy! Moving metal, and electricity!"

Computation flickered before his vision, computations fueled by the power leaching from her blood. Not much, nowhere near enough to do anything dramatic. But... enough to alter probabilities. His own eyes turned black, and crimson static traced his nerves, and lightning struck the plane.

"And you gave me both!"

[Madame Clacice Beauvier]

Then, without warning, he spun and smashed the mug across Clacice's forehead. Heavy ceramic shattered, shards tearing at her skin and sending droplets of orange-red blood splattering across the walls and down her face. His left hand smashed into her forehead, slamming her skull backwards into the bulkhead.

Very few things managed to take Madame Clacice Beauvier by surprise, but for once in her life, she didn't see the attack coming. The Doctor she had known had always been ridiculously averse to violence. He'd always chosen to fight with his intellect, rather than his fists. For a few moments, after her head hit the wall, the world spun crazily and she almost forgot to breathe with the shock of it. As always, there was no pain, nothing she could seize on to and use to fuel her power. The numb emptiness, the complete absence of physical stimuli, was like a yawning abyss, one that crackled with her rage.

"The problem with you, Classy," he growled, driving his knee into her stomach, "is you talk too bloody much!" A booted heel smashed down into the arch of her foot as he concentrated, trying to do something he was only barely aware he could do. "Shoulda just shot me, or put a bomb on the plane."

"I want to see your eyes as you die, Doctor!” she hissed, summoning her arcane power to deflect his blows. She could feel the vermilion energies unfurling inside her, surging to her fingertips, aching to incinerate the very centre of his bones. He was right about one thing. This game had become far too protracted. It was time to make an end.

She didn't have long. Outside in the churning sky, the Thing That Walks The Wind was reaching for the plane with his monstrous, icy hands. She had no real idea what he would do once he grasped it. Whether he would crush it instantly, or whether he would return with it, back to the arctic wastes of his dominion of Borea. She didn't really care. By then, she would have vanished back to her TARDIS, currently concealed in the rear of the plane, and she would be far away from here.

Her only decision now was whether she should kill the Doctor before she left... or whether she should let him suffer intense agony at the hands of Ithaqua, knowing that that hope of the whole world died with him. Both options were very attractive. It was just a shame she couldn't kill him twice.

A blow smashed towards her throat. She was just about to contemptuously flick it away, to taunt him with his puny strength, when she realised to her horror that his fist was swarming with shadows. Darkness poured from his hand, enveloping her head, latching on to the open wounds on her face. Immediately, she could feel her power leeching away, draining into the horde of shadow-creatures, and from them... into him.

"Vashta nerada, Classy!" he laughed. "Wonder what I kin do with yer stolen energies?"

Vashta nerada, she thought incredulously - oh yes, she had heard of them. The Shadows That Melt The Flesh. Swarming, microscopic carnivorous beings, capable of stripping a creature to its bare bones within milliseconds. Her power was keeping her safe from them, but for how long? They were feeding on her blood, gorging themselves on her arcane energy, weakening her by the moment. How was it possible that such creatures were living in symbiosis with the Doctor, of all people?

She slumped back against the bulkhead, barely able to see him through the swirling, sentient cloud of darkness that surrounded her.

"Electromagnets just need one bloody thing, Classy! Moving metal, and electricity... and you gave me both!"

She was no longer listening to his words. Instead, her lips were moving in a silent chant. He'd made one mistake. A small one, perhaps. But one that she would use to her advantage, to shatter his attack.

He'd spilt her blood.

The heavy droplets lay scattered across the bulkhead walls, miniature crimson offspring of the energy that flamed within. Even through the suffocating darkness of the Vashta Nerada, she could sense the location of every single one. They sang to her as she chanted, in apocryphal harmony. Quivering, the droplets began to run and to separate, each one splintering into ten others, which divided again into ten more. Tiny at first, but elongating at an alarming rate, they wriggled down the bulkhead, hissing and spitting. Venomous serpents, born of blood and fire, they converged on Rob, twining up his legs and biting viciously as they went.

“Now who talks too much, Doctor?  My blood answers only to me!” she managed to snarl, even as a blazing flare of lightning struck the plane, crackling across the conductive aluminum outer skin from the nose to the tail and enveloping them in a halo of white fire.

Outside in the storm, an unearthly sound rippled across the tortured sky, as Ithaqua threw back his great head and howled.

[Allison Castiel]

The bolt of lightning smashed into the plane with all the force of a punch.

Allie and Luiz were hurled backwards, away from the bulkhead door and back into the row of seats, the heavy fire extinguisher ripping from Luiz's hands and narrowly missing Allie's head as it clanged into the chair beside her.

“Santa mãe de Deus!” Luiz exclaimed in horror, as brilliant white light danced and crackled across the length of the wings. “We have been hit!”

Dazed, Allie couldn't find the breath to respond.  Outside, there came a spine-chilling wailing sound, rising above the scream of the rain. It was the most terrifying thing she had ever heard. Worse, even, than the approaching hum of a wasp swarm. Every atom in her body flinched away from the unearthly sound, every hair on the back of her neck stood on end.

“What is that?” Luiz cried, fighting the bucking of the plane, as he stumbled across to the windows.

“Don't!” Allie's voice was a weak, almost inaudible croak, her hands firmly over her ears.

But Luiz paid her no attention. His palms were flat against the wall, his nose glued to the glass, as he peered out into the storm. “There's something out there. Something huge, moving in the storm!”

“Don't!” Allie tried again. Dread welled up inside her, even though she couldn't have said why. “Don't look at it!”

“I can see its red eyes!” he shouted. “It's staring right at me. I can't-”

There was an enormous thunderclap, loud enough to shake the nearby mountains to their foundations, the very soundwaves buffeting the small plane like a leaf in a strong wind. In the blink of an eye, the storm had vanished, as if it had never been there in the first place. Bright sunshine poured in through the windows, bathing the cabin in cheerful, comforting light.

Much to his fury, Ithaqua had been banished, back to his own bleak dominion. But he had not returned empty-handed.

When Allie finally managed to crawl across to Luiz's unmoving and unresponsive form, to place a shaking hand on his shoulder, she found that his body was solid ice, his face frozen in a gruesome rictus of terror.

[Rob "the Meddler" Goodfellow]

"Shite!" Rob barked, stomping on the first crimson serpent. It splashed messily, coating the carpet and then reforming in a loathsome hissing form around his boot. "Oh, that ain't good."

“Now who talks too much, Doctor? My blood answers only to me!” Clacice cackled as lightning smashed into the plane once more.

"Fair cop," Rob allowed, stomping another snake back into blood and dancing away before it reformed. "Probably do ramble on a bit, don't I?" Think, mate, he growled at hismelf, kicking another snake and watching it burst like a distressing water balloon full of orange-red paint, how long's it take fer blood to congeal?. Clotting starts within about 20 seconds, he suddenly remembered. Full coagulation up to about fifteen minutes, depending on quantity and temperature.

Well, there went that plan. Little beasts probably carried some sort of horrible blood-born toxin or disease or some such. Even if he didn't, he didn't want to be nibbled to death by Classy's ebola snakes.

Lightning lashed the plane again, and something howled and roared and then stopped outside. Sunlight streamed in again as the storm clouds vanished. Which meant that one problem was taken care of. Rob stomped another snake, trying to ignore the way the droplets squirmed and formed into little hissing pumpkin-crimson worms. "Hang on..." he suddenly cried excitedly, hopping over two more serpents and grabbing at the wall. "C'mon, tell me I'm havin' a spot o' luck... yes!" He tore the CO₂ fire extinguisher from the wall and primed it, spraying the closest snakes with chilled white gas. Fog filled the compartment for a moment, and the nearest snakes were glittering corundium statues when it cleared.

"Yes!" he whooped again, triumphantly. "Blood freezes, you daft vampire berk!" More CO₂ blasted out, freezing the collection of hissing worms that wriggled towards him. "Which reminds me... what th' church is yer problem with me, anyway? Yeah, I kinda stomped all over yer patch, but in fairness y'did try ta have me boot doner shank me in th' underground, so I'd think we're even. If yer a Time Lord, why's it matter if'n I stop the freaky mutant murder wasps from eatin' the whole place?"

Another blast from the extinguisher froze the last one in place. "I mean, seriously," he continued, turning to face her. "Y'can't have enjoyed bein' the bloody Queen o' England, when that amounted ta livin' in a hole an' rulin' twelve score slowly dyin' folk, can yeh? Why not gimme a hand stoppin' 'em? Or..." A strange idea welled up out of the darkness of his fragmented, hidden memories, and he rolled it around his mouth for a moment. Tasted it, and realized he was calculating... something. "Or..." he continued, the words sounding strange to his own ears, "we could see what's goin' on, an'... see if it'd be safe to rear a few thousand o' the grubs. Neuter them, so's they can't breed, but let 'em grow to maturity. Turn 'em loose, an' let the world deal wit'a lesser version of th' bleedin' apocalypse."

It was as if he were a temporary prisoner in his own mind, listening to some buried personality pursuing a nightmare agenda he wasn't aware that he wanted. "Make 'em pull together, see? Unite humanity against a common threat, get 'em used to th' idea. Forget havin' yer little post-apocalypse bunker, Classy. Y'could be hailed as the bleedin' savior o' humanity!"

[Madame Clacice Beauvier]

Clacice was well accustomed to communing with Darkness and Shadow. They were the fundamental wellsprings from which flowed the power of the Pythian Bloodlore, the ultimate core of her strength. But a balance had to be maintained, bargains struck, protections put in place. The forces she called upon were no respecter of persons. One slip, and they would consume her, with greedy relish.

But not today. Leaving her scarlet serpents to deal with the Doctor, she fought back against the Vashta Nerada with renewed vigour, calling upon every defensive skill she could muster. Nevertheless, it was no easy task to overcome a swarm of hungry flesh-melting shadows that had tasted blood. Her energy was draining steadily away, and the weaker she grew, the stronger the Doctor became.

In the end, ironically enough, the sunlight was her salvation. By using lightning to electrically charge the metallic outer skin of the plane, the Doctor had cunningly generated a local electromagnetic field large enough to nullify the living monopole that was Ithaqua, banishing the monstrous demon back to the icy reaches of Borea.

And as Ithaqua disappeared, so too did the storm he had brought with him, the black clouds clearing in an instant, releasing a brilliant spill of sunlight. The glare splashed across Clacice's body where she slumped against the bulkhead, slicing through the swarm of shadows that enveloped her. In itself, the light wasn't enough to destroy the Vashta Nerada, but it was enough to slow them down. Enough to grant her the chink she required to summon a last desperate surge of power. Enough to finally cast the swarm from her, leaving her weak and shaken.

Glancing up, she saw the Doctor was filling the cabin with icy white gas, spraying a fire extinguisher back and forth. Her blood-serpents lay scattered across the floor, their writhing bodies petrified into motionless sculptures.

"Yes!" he whooped again, triumphantly. "Blood freezes, you daft vampire berk!" More CO2 blasted out, freezing the collection of hissing worms that wriggled towards him. "Which reminds me... what th' church is yer problem with me, anyway? Yeah, I kinda stomped all over yer patch, but in fairness y'did try ta have me boot doner shank me in th' underground, so I'd think we're even. If yer a Time Lord, why's it matter if'n I stop the freaky mutant murder wasps from eatin' the whole place?"

“You really don't remember, do you, Doctor?” she snarled. “You shamed my father, you murdered my mother, you separated me from my brother. You stole my power, the very thing that gives me life, and you mortally wounded my TARDIS. You stranded me here on this filthy, pitiful excuse for a planet, and you left me here to rot! And you dare... you dare ask me what my problem is with you?”

Another blast from the extinguisher froze the last one in place. "I mean, seriously," he continued, turning to face her. "Y'can't have enjoyed bein' the bloody Queen o' England, when that amounted ta livin' in a hole an' rulin' twelve score slowly dyin' folk, can yeh? Why not gimme a hand stoppin' 'em? Or..." A strange idea welled up out of the darkness of his fragmented, hidden memories, and he rolled it around his mouth for a moment. Tasted it, and realized he was calculating... something. "Or..." he continued, the words sounding strange to his own ears, "we could see what's goin' on, an'... see if it'd be safe to rear a few thousand o' the grubs. Neuter them, so's they can't breed, but let 'em grow to maturity. Turn 'em loose, an' let the world deal wit'a lesser version of th' bleedin' apocalypse."

It was as if he were a temporary prisoner in his own mind, listening to some buried personality pursuing a nightmare agenda he wasn't aware that he wanted. "Make 'em pull together, see? Unite humanity against a common threat, get 'em used to th' idea. Forget havin' yer little post-apocalypse bunker, Classy. Y'could be hailed as the bleedin' savior o' humanity!"

Little by little, she managed to drag herself upright, holding herself with regal grace. She refused to show this man just how much his swarm of shadows had weakened her.

“You sadly mistake my intent!” she spat. “I care nothing for this world or her people. I do not wish to be their Queen or their saviour. All I want is for them to die, in as much agony as possible. I am the Champion of the Eternal Pain. My power flows from Her beneficence. I have been using the anguish and distress of this world as a source of energy, to heal my TARDIS of the wounds you inflicted upon her. I caused this Apocalypse, Doctor. I was the reason that Dalek crash-landed here, and became infected with wasp larvae. And now that my plans have almost come to fruition, I will not allow you to negate this timeline!”

Drawing upon the very last of her strength, she hurled a gout of vermilion energy at the control console of the plane. A spiderweb of blazing red energy crackled across the dash, frying circuitry and melting instruments, filling the cabin with the stench of burning plastic.

“Good luck trying to land this plane,” she sneered. “Forty thousand feet is a long way to fall, even for you, Doctor.”

And with that, she reached into her pocket and activated the small recall device that she found there, opening a teleport channel to her TARDIS. The outline of her figure shimmered and vanished away.

Moments later, the distinctive hum of temporal engines emanated from the toilet at the rear of the plane, as her ship dematerialised.

[Allison Castiel]

Staring in shock at the Brazilian man's frozen corpse, Allie snatched her hand away, her fingers as cold as if she'd just immersed them in dry ice.

“Oh, dear God,” she breathed. “What just happened?”

An explosive snap rang out like a rifle shot, followed by another and another, the distinctive sound of breaking ice. Allie staggered backwards in fresh alarm. Fine cracks erupted across the dead man's agonized face, spreading like fractures in a porcelain vase, until the whole body was covered with them. A moment later, in front of her appalled eyes, he just... shattered, chunks of rock-solid corpse collapsing to the floor in a jagged, gruesome pile.

Choking back the scream that rose in her throat, she whirled around and caught up the fire extinguisher Luiz had been using as a battering ram such a short time ago. Frantically, driven by horror and panic, she slammed it over and over into the locked door, determined to gain access, despite the pain of the blows reverberating up her thin arms.

“Rob!!! ROB!!!!”