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((Preventing a paradox again. The Reader must be miserable.

Anyway, on we go! If anyone can figure out a way to get Sarah Jane Smith into this, that would be amazing; I currently don't see one, but would love her to show up.))


"Alright," the Reader said. She'd already deleted the sonic screwdriver readings; the sonic was still in her hand for the moment, since returning it the first time had led to her catching the Doctor scanning a part of her ship. Best to remove temptation. "So I'm to go to Soho in 2023, and return this key to Martha Jones?"

"Yep!" said the Doctor. "Simple. I'd do it myself, only, well..."

"Crossing your timeline, you said." The Reader sighed. At least she wouldn't stand out too much: she'd foregone Gallifreyan fashion for this Council meeting, as she often did, and instead wore black pants, a particular white t-shirt with some writing on it, and an unbuttoned blouse overtop that managed to combine pale yellow, green, and purple in a way that she, at least, thought looked pleasant. "Why'd you do that to begin with, anyway?"

"Oh, you know how it is," the Doctor said. "Forgot something, had to go back, then had to go forward--"

"Yeah, I know all about your forgetting things," the Reader muttered. She sighed, and pulled out the neuralyzer. "Alright. Off you go, then, and off I go--the sooner this is done, the sooner I can get back to...actually, on second thought, I don't mind not doing paperwork right now. Cheers."


Five minutes and a vague warning from the Doctor later, she had returned the Doctor to his place in the timeline and set off for Soho.

"Well," she murmured to the TARDIS. "It's kind of nice to just be running an errand, isn't it?"

The TARDIS hummed, and mentally nudged her toward a different lever.

"Right," the Reader said sheepishly. "Sorry. I have been listening to Emiranlanoamar, but...we've focused more on combat and Academy topics lately. Did you know there are moves to get free of someone who's holding a staser to your head? It's fascinating, in a grim sort of way."

The TARDIS hummed again, this time with a note of disapproval.

"Yeah, well, he does like to go on about how many times he's had his limbs regrown," the Reader muttered. She shook her head, and patted the console. "Don't worry--I'm not keen to follow that example."

They landed smoothly--she'd managed to get that down by now, even without the TARDIS' help--and the Reader checked that the key was still in her pocket before stepping outside. She gave a final pat to the door of the hexagonal garden shed that was the TARDIS' favored outward appearance and set off to track down Martha Jones.

"I do wonder what he meant about keeping an eye on the mirrors," she murmured to herself. The TARDIS gave the mental equivalent of a shrug before settling in to wait while the Reader was out of range.


Martha Jones, the Reader realized after a while, was harder to find than expected. The mirrors weren't particularly interesting, either: she stopped to look at several, but they all seemed perfectly ordinary.

"Soho," she muttered to herself. It was a strange sort of word, really, but rather fun to say. "Soho, Soho, Soho--"

She was just thinking how very, very bored she was getting when she happened to glance across the street and--

It had been several years. Five or so, actually, spent in HQ and learning how to stop looking around corners and jumping when a friendly--not unfriendly--non-enemy Dalek, anyway, rolled past or stopped for a chat about the inferiority of Time Lords or some weird sort of game night.

But that--that, right there, that was a Meanwhile, inside a posh London shop, and the shimmer of it made her hearts pound and her feet stop and her face pale.

Not here. Not now. Not here, how could it be here--

The shimmer shifted, approaching a store employee as he walked past--

She darted forward uselessly, even as her common sense screamed at her to run the other way, and the Meanwhile vanished. Just--vanished, disappeared entirely, leaving nothing more than the man's reflection as he walked past a mirror set into the wall and began to stack his armload of shirts on a shelf.

"Oi, move it!" someone yelled. She stumbled to the other side of the street amid honking horns, shaking too much to do anything but--move, get out of the way, get to where she could stand in peace--but she couldn't do that, there were people shoving past her, knocking her about as she stared into the store--

"Sorry!" said a familiar voice. The latest person to knock into her actually paused to make sure she was steady--and then stopped. "Are you alright? You look a little..."

With something of an effort, the Reader looked down a few inches. Martha Jones looked back, mild concern clearly visible on her face.

"I," the Reader said. She looked compulsively back at the mirror; she was vaguely aware of Martha following her gaze and frowning. "Er--I thought I saw--" She shook her head, and made herself turn back. "Never mind, I suppose--listen, I have to--"

Martha made a strangled noise and caught her arm. "Oh my God."

"What?"

Martha unfroze faster than the Reader ever had, and ran for the shop door. The Reader followed automatically, and nearly stumbled over her own feet when she glanced through the window again.

Cybermen. Cybermen in the shop, and no one had spotted them yet--

"Get out of the way!" Martha yelled. "Get out, get back, it's not safe!"

The people closest to the Cybermen turned; one shrieked, and backed away.

Another one stayed, tilting his head to one side. "Hey, isn't that one of those ghost things--?"

"Move!" Martha yelled, and the Cybermen vanished. She stopped short, staring.

"What in the name of Rassilon's moldiest mug cake," the Reader breathed. She made herself walk forward, fumbling out her sonic penlight to take readings.

Martha's stare shifted to her. Around them, customers were laughing--nervously at first, and then there was even some clapping.

"Good show," someone said. "These stunts just get better and better..."

Martha walked around them, and approached the Reader.

"Doctor?" she asked hesitantly after a moment. "You...look very different."

The Reader frowned at the readout, wishing it was telling her more than 'something might possibly be a bit off here.' "I'm not the Doctor. Which is a shame, as he'd likely be more help right now." She took another, equally unhelpful reading, then turned to face the human. "Er, actually, I'm here running an errand for him. He's crossed his timeline too much to come here again, as it turns out, so--here." She dug in her pocket and produced the TARDIS key. "I'm to return this to you."

Martha looked from the key to the Reader's face, frowning. "I don't understand."

The Reader frowned back. "What's to understand? This is your TARDIS key. He borrowed it, and I agreed to bring it back to you so you'd have it at the right time to avoid a paradox. It's hardly that complex."

Martha shook her head. "Who are you, again?"

"Er--the Reader," she said. "And I'd quite like to go home, honestly, so if you could just--" She offered the key again.

"Well, Reader, I'm afraid it is that complex," Martha said. "You see, I've still got my key."

"What?"

Martha pulled out a small keyring and held it up by the only silver key on the ring. "This is my key. The Doctor doesn't have it." She shook her head. "However it is you got here, you're too early."

The Reader groaned. "Brilliant. Just perfect. Why would he give me the wrong date?"

"I don't know, but we should probably stop standing in the middle of this shop," Martha said. She put her keys away and took the Reader by the arm, steering her towards the door. "Come on. Let's go to a cafe. We can have a cup of coffee--my treat, since you've come all this way--and you can tell me all about how you got here without the Doctor."

"Right," the Reader said, and wondered if she could get away with neuralyzing Martha and skipping forward a day at a time until she found the right moment to return the key.

"And how you got a shirt with Gallifreyan writing on it," Martha added, as they stepped out the door. "That's rather unusual in Soho."


--
((Whoever ends up writing the next bit--let me know, and I can pass on to you my thoughts on what's going on here. They're a bit incomplete, but worth keeping consistent, I think. I'd just rather not stick what's essentially spoilers on the Board :) ~Z))

I didn't think of the Key to Time because I've seen a regrettably limited amount of Classic Who--though, funnily enough, I do remember bits of the PPC version. It sounds familiar, anyway. But no, this is going to be a quest to return a New Who style silver door key--unfortunately, I didn't know Sarah Jane had a different type, or I might have written that in. On the other hand, I don't know how well I can write Sarah Jane, so while I'd love for her to somehow show up for a bit--even just a cameo--she's not going to be the main person involved. If anyone else can figure out a way to bring her in, though, absolutely feel free.

~Z

Here:
http://www.scp-wiki.net/decommissioned-scps-arc

Early in the history of the SCP Foundation, they had a spate of Mary-Sue SPCs, usually superpowered humanoids who stayed in the Foundation by choice and had to be treated nicely or they'd kill the researchers. Eventually, the site admins and better writers got very tired of this and had their author avatars decommission the worst of these SCPs. Now even the more powerful author avatars have been toned down or killed off, and Mary Sue articles are downvoted to oblivion and deleted. I have permission to write SCPs, but I've never managed a successful one. Most of mine were just judged "mediocre" and replaced with better ones eventually; I guess I'm just not that good at horror.

I wouldn't actually try to kill an SCP. What I'm more interested in is how the SCP foundation continuum fits into PPC lore. Is it quarantined, because their writers have to be approved? Or is it an in-progress canon that is aware enough of its own status as a work of fiction to weed out its own Sues? Usually a continuum is quarantined because th author has demanded no fan-fiction be written, but the SCP Foundation is just carefully curated, not completely closed.

If it's the latter, then the SCP Foundation might very well be a good disposal site for a Mary Sue. There's also room for collaboration or crossovers, or mentions of SCP objects and lore in missions.

But a) the Key to Time was a crystal cube, not a silver door-key, and b) let's not start that again. ^_~

Apparently we're going to Soho. Here's hoping there's more to the story by the morning! :D

hS

I know Ix mentioned it a while back, and the idea of immortality sounds great and all, but thinking on this more and more I come to realize that any other option I think of is all subject to "Can I use that to get to the Whoniverse?"

I just... If I could find some way to just work on a TARDIS or-- dare I think it, badfic-y as it sounds-- use some kind of weird Time Lord version of CRISPR tech to let me pilot a TARDIS? Man, I'd give anything.

I first read that as the Key to Time from that quest serial of Four's back in Who Classic.

... that in at least some religious groups (I'm speaking from experience in the LDS Church), the only person spoken of as performing the tempting is Satan, occasionally as 'the tempter' (though not, to my memory, 'foul tempter'). The idea as presented to me is that everyone needs to watch themselves, because Satan is always out to tempt you into capital-s Sin.

I'm sure the 'particularly women' message is still there, and I know that women and girls are given it rather more heavily (boys get 'avoid temptation', girls get 'avoid being temptation'), but it's not necessarily - as you say - easy to have awareness of.

(Also Eve's choice is cast rather differently, but that's very Mormon-specific, and probably not germane to the conversation at hand.)

hS

Because I should probably give one, right? So:

Thank you. I do believe you're sincere and mean well.

I would encourage you to think more deeply about the implications when you use a word like "tempted," though. Temptation does imply another person or agency doing the tempting in a not-nice way, with particularly negative connotations around women. (The story of Eve, "foul temptress" but never "foul tempter," "feminine wiles" but never "masculine wiles," you see?) That sort of awareness takes practice, so keep working on it. {= )

~Neshomeh

Email is f2pgritty@gmail.com

I've spent too much time on the Discord. I've become complacent with being able to edit my messages and get away with Zero Punctuation.

THe only reason I'm not up for this is a lack of watching POtC

“Why the hell is she coming along?” the Aviator demanded as she fell into step beside Morgan.

“‘She’ is coming along to make sure your antics don’t land the continuum in even more trouble,” the Notary said haughtily. “Especially after Yellow had to go and make a mess of things.”

The Aviator whirled on her. “You leave her out of this!”

“Why? She’s the whole reason we’re even going—”

“If you two are going to bicker like children the whole time, I’ll rescue her myself,” Morgan said testily, and unscrewed the lid of the bottle she’d snatched from the minibar.

The Aviator fell silent, fists clenching at her sides. The Notary simply smiled and folded her hands serenely in her robe sleeves.

Morgan’s TARDIS was right where she’d left it, and she opened the doors, stepping up to the control panels.

“Hey, old girl,” the Aviator said, putting a hand against the wall. “Look at you, aren’t you lovely—”

The TARDIS grumbled and did the mental equivalent of slamming a door in her face.

“She’s a bit grumpy,” Morgan said, flicking several switches. “And unsociable. You’re welcome to try flying her with me, bur you won’t get as good a performance.”

“Take the lead, Orange,” the Aviator said.

“I don’t know why you insist on talking to these things like they’re people,” the Notary said, sitting down in the pilot’s seat and crossing one leg over the other. “Then again, perhaps it’s a human thing.”

“She’s on the Council, Grey, she’s as good a Time Lord as the rest of us,” Morgan said. She pulled a lever, and the grinding of engines resounded as she initiated dematerialisation. “Alright, White, when are we headed?”

“Earth. London Soho, 2023,” the Aviator said, pulling the now-crumpled paper from her pocket. “She just wrote one thing: Watch the mirrors.”

“How ominous,” the Notary drawled. “Would it have killed her to be a little more clear on this matter?”

The Aviator scowled at her. “She’s probably just trying to prevent a paradox, Grey—”

“And you’d know all about those.”

“—and I know she’s got her reasons for doing it!” the Aviator continued, raising her voice.

“I will turn this TARDIS around and kick both of you out if you don’t shut it!” Morgan snapped.

She’d barely finished speaking when the TARDIS landed with a gentle thump, and the Aviator sprinted to the doors to throw them open before Morgan could follow through on her threat.

I hope you don't drown in the profusion of details I wound up shoving in; it's really easy to get carried away when you're doing such tiny lines.

hS

"I knew you had it in you." Morgan raised her bottle in salute, tipped it back and downed it. "Bon voyage!"

"Xa- Reader." The Aviator bit her lip and stepped forward. "I could... do you want me to come along?"

"I..." The Reader's gaze darted from her TARDIS to the Doctor to the key in her hand, never quite lighting on her fellow Council member. "Thank you for the offer, but I don't think you-" She winced. "I don't think that's a good idea."

"Ah." The Aviator's shoulders slumped, but she managed a superficially bright smile. "Well, good luck; have fun storming the castle!" She turned to Morgan, her white scarf swirling about her. "Did you say drink?"

"I always say drink," Morgan confirmed, cracking open another bottle and passing it to the Aviator. "I'm a walking cliche." She glanced up at the Reader and gave a little wave. "I don't want to sound like I'm nagging, but the longer you stay here, the more likely he is to start poking at things he shouldn't."

"Hey!" The Doctor glanced at the readout on his sonic screwdriver, then quickly stuffed it back into his pocket. "As if I'd do something like that."

The Reader rolled her eyes and took him by the shoulder. "You know I'm just going to delete whatever you've just recorded, right? Come on, back to the timeline with you..."

Morgan and the Aviator watched her go, waiting until the thrumm of her TARDIS had faded. Then Morgan shrugged off her ornate collar and set it down on the table. "All things considered, what say we declare this meeting closed and head down to Rudi's for another--?"

The door slammed back open, and the Notary stormed in like the wrath of spellcheck. "Did one of you do this?" she demanded, knocking Morgan's collar aside to drop her paperwork on the table. "Because it is not even slightly amusing."

"Hey!" Morgan ducked down and picked up her collar, checking the points for damage. "These things are... well, I guess they're not expensive, replicators being what they are, but-"

"Tigereye Castellan Morgan," the Notary chided, "someone has been meddling with my papers and you're worried about fashion accessories?"

"I'm sure that sounded much more scathing in your head." Morgan grabbed one of the sheets of paper and flipped it round. "Stupid questions, meaningless trivia, circles everywhere... this looks pretty much like normal."

The Notary somehow gave off the impression of scoffing without actually deigning to do so. "And if that were actual Circular Gallifreyan, you might be forgiven for thinking so. But-"

"But it is." The Aviator looked up from her own sheet, her face ashen. "This is... this is how we wrote it back on- on my Gallifrey." She bit her lip, looked at Morgan. "This is Xan's handwriting. And... and it says 'help'."

"Oh." A dozen emotions flashed across Morgan's face, and then she put her current drink down with a click and tapped a hand to her ear. "Pink? Blue? I need you to come in." She waited a few seconds, then tried again. "Blue? Pi- Purple?"

There was a quiet buzzing sound, and then the Disentangler's voice came through, tinny and filled with static. "We're, ah, busy right now, Orange."

"Is that Morgan?" the Agent's voice asked in the background. "Tell her we're busy."

"I did tell her we're busy," the Disentangler said, her voice growing fainter. "You just heard me [crackle] busy."

"Yeah," the Agent shot back, barely audible, "but I [crackle] really liste[crackle]..."

"Damn," Morgan said, tapping at her ear again. "Red? Are you there?"

"Welcome to the Department of Floaters Special Operations Division hotline," a digitally-tinged female voice came back. "We are very, very pleased to take your call. We are throwing a party in honour of your call. After the tone, please assume the party escort submission position and-"

"Okay, this is in seriously bad taste." Morgan slapped her communicator off and looked at the other two Time Lords. "It looks like we're on our own. Who's got a TARDIS?"

The Notary looked up from her attempt to salvage her papers. "I can-"

"We're not taking the photocopier," Morgan interrupted. "No offence, Grey."

"That is actually quite-"

"What about you, White?" Morgan turned to the Aviator. "Or has yours been confiscated again?"

The Aviator grimaced. "It's a bit of a mess right now... Ellie, you know..."

"Oh, fine, we'll take mine." Morgan picked up her collar, snatched another bottle from the minibar. "I warn you, she's not going to like me waking her up."

"I'm sure Dee would-" the Aviator began, but Morgan waved her into silence.

"No, no, I've made up my mind now." She started for the door, readjusting her trajectory on realising that she was likely to miss. "Come on, she's parked in the Courtyard... says she enjoys the sun, daft old thing..."

[Notes for the further story: Morgan's TARDIS is probably a Type 40 or something close to it. It's old and somewhat crochety, but doesn't talk to anyone except Morgan (mentally). I have no idea what the Reader's gotten herself into, but it clearly involves some timey-wimeyness.]

hS

(By the way, since you’re here, I thought I’d mention I finally started on the lineart for New Cal!)

Prompts with such short time limits are not for me, sadly, but I love that you guys are doing this and I'm in awe that so many of you can actually pull it off without just, y'know, hyperventilating the whole time and coming up with maybe a paragraph in the last ten minutes. ^_^;

~Neshomeh

... with how I'm writing them. So that's good! ^_^

Continuity: Keys (Part 2) should be coming shortly. Juuuust figuring out whose TARDIS they should be taking...

hS

...hopefully someone else is.

She just desperately wants things to go back to the way they used to be. She blames herself for everything that happened between them—after all, if she’d never gotten killed on the Rose Potter mission, if she’d just been more careful, she wouldn’t have ended up in such a situation.

She never blamed the Reader for any of it, though she suspects the Reader doesn’t lay enough of the blame on her. As far as Ave’s concerned, if she can just show the Reader enough how sorry she is that it all had to happen, then she’ll be forgiven.

Obviously that’s not how it works but she needs to cling to the reassurance that there’s some way she can make it okay again.

And oh boy.

So the last time we saw the two of them together, back in late 2015, they agreed that they could go back to neither the friendship they had as Rina and the Reader nor the friendship they had as Xan and Arinorelivandrisar. They agreed to try to move forward and, basically, redefine how they stand and who they are to each other a third time.

And now we leave that and head into unpublished headcanons. On my part, I just can't see this version of the Reader being able to completely move past it. It was a pretty big--and horribly recent--thing for her: over the course of about two years, she made it to HQ, struggled with finding a place there while grieving her planet (especially once she found out it had actually burned), had her TARDIS starting to die on her for a bit, and suddenly found out that, no, Arin hadn't actually somehow survived the Time War--she had been born a human. Which meant the Reader, at some point in the near future, was going to send her to her death. And she couldn't tell anyone. And then that happened, basically, and then she miraculously came back, and, really, how do you go about forgiving someone for lying to you your whole life before saving it? How do you forgive yourself for betraying that same friend's trust in return and sending her to what turned out to be a more temporary death than expected?

All this to say: even three to four years later, I just can't see the Reader managing to rebuilt anything past a sort of semi-cordial civility. I'm sure they've tried, and there's probably a friendship with Zeb (and Alex?) going on in the background, but the Fourth Reader just...isn't someone who can let the big things go, most times. She still detests Rassilon, she still hates what she had to do, and she still can't always look at the Aviator without being reminded of just how thoroughly they betrayed each other and why and how desperate and alone she felt while doing it.

And, of course, add residual memories from the Time War to work through...

So yeah. I don't see that relationship being properly mended until both of them regenerate, and we get the Fifth Reader and the Fourth Aviator...both of whom are pretty much just easygoing, joking blond guys on the surface. It gives them an actual fresh start and some new common ground. They get to ditch some of the angst and become bros, more or less. But, well, we're not quite there yet.

~Z

PS: Let me know if you have further questions or if there's some aspect I didn't cover and should! Apart from that, looking forward to seeing what you come up with.

Before I do anything with them, though, can you fill me in on the current state of things between Ave and the Reader? I'd like to play with that 'awkwardly denied', but don't want to mischaracterise it.

hS

I'm glad you enjoyed this one, and that Morgan came out IC! It's quite literally been years since the last time I wrote a ConCoun story, so you never know.

Yeah, this is Ten. I tossed in the screwdriver description as a clue in the text (probably could've described his clothes briefly, too, actually, but I didn't think of it), and there's a little note in the disclaimer (nearly just capitalized that and gave us another Time Lord! Oh dear).

As to the plothole, while there's probably some canon instance I could tie this to, I don't have a particular one in mind. My vague thought is that the Doctor forgot to return a TARDIS key to one of his companions who definitely had it later (I rather want it to be Sarah Jane, but I don't know if that'd work at all), and, well, I guess he's been going back and forth through the time in question a bit too much already, so...yeah. I bet it's in London in the twentieth or twenty-first century, though :P Alternatively, maybe he borrowed it off River for some reason and then had to get it back--but that would work better for Eleven, given I'm pretty sure Ten only met her the once.

(Ten: "Oh, well, you know." /rocks back on heels, ruffles hair awkwardly/ "A few. Maybe two. Or, well, three...four...")

~Z

More timefoolery! I adore these stories (and find the fact that we have such a precisely defined tradition of character-pilfering around them), and this is an excellent addition to the canon. Morgan seems suitably Morganish, so no changes needed there.

It seems like this is the Tenth Doctor, based on the screwdriver description and general personality; have I got that right? And... is this a reference to an actual canon plothole, or just a response to the prompt?

(I just noticed - 'I can't cross that part of my timeline again'. Doctor, how many times have you been back already? [Distinctly dubious look])

hS

Kind of by accident, honestly, but I started writing and suddenly it made perfect sense they'd be there. Well, half of them, anyway.

So here we go: "Continuity: Keys". Concrit welcome, especially from fellow ConCoun authors, given I kind of borrowed your characters unannounced (in, admittedly, ConCoun writing tradition. Still, if you want an apology, I'll oblige). Unbetaed, obviously.

~Z

PS: Man, more Continuity Council material has been a long time in coming. This is more of a silly little thing than a proper new interlude, but hey, maybe someone'll change that!

I challenged approximately everyone on the Discord to a write-off: I posted a prompt, we wrote for half an hour, and then shared and discussed. This was slightly more popular than I'd thought: we had ten takers, and several more intending to write from time zones that don't make an American evening time convenient.

I fully intend to carry on with these on Tuesdays! It's been fun and it should happen again.

The prompt was: "You're actually serious, aren't you?" she asked, looking down at the key.

And the fics are:

Untitled, by Grundleplith

Party of Fools, by Iximaz

Untitled, by Eatpraylove

Scimitars, by Four Moons Watching (cw: self-harm)

You're Actually Serious, Aren't You, by Aegis

Untitled, by Cicada

Explosions, by Tomash

Untitled, by Granz the Ice Cream Monarch

Key Prompt, by Larfen J. Stocke, Esquire

Grace's Tardis, by Delta Juliette