Subject: She's back ... and it's about time!
From: adives@aol.com (ADIves)
Newsgroups: alt.tv.x-files.creative


Sorry, but I just couldn't resist one last outing for Doctor Scully, Guardian
of the Cosmos ...

Title:          The Ninth Doctor
Author:         Adrian.D.Ives
E-Mail:         ADIves@aol.com
Rating:         G
Categories:     Humour
                Doctor Who(?) Crossover
Summary:        More adventures with Doctor Scully, Guardian
                of the Cosmos.
Spoilers:       None.
Disclaimer:     The X-Files, Mulder and Scully are the intellectual
                property of Chris Carter, Ten-Thirteen Productions
                and Fox Television.
                Doctor Who is copyright BBC television.
                All other copyrights are hereby acknowledged.
                This story is fan fiction and has not been
                produced to profit from the commercial property
                of the copyright owners, nor to deprive them
                of revenue.
Status:         This story may be archived or forwarded (provided
                that the author is clearly identified and the disclaimer
                above remains intact). It may not be distributed for
                profit.

* * *

The X Files: The Ninth Doctor
by Adrian.D.Ives

There were probably any number of ways she could approach this 
particular assignment, but the procedures manual was quite clear on 
one point: No attempt should be made to tackle an armed or dangerous 
suspect without backup.

So she had picked up her phone and called Mulder.

And now they were both completely surrounded by the group of six to 
eight year olds. The most dangerous children of them all.

Mulder looked at Scully.

Scully looked at Mulder.

"Scully. What are we doing here?"

"Making our contribution to Bureau Volunteer Day." Dana explained. 
Every year the Bureau organised volunteers from within its ranks to 
do small projects for the local communities.

"You mean *you're* making *your* contribution to Bureau Volunteer 
Day." Said Mulder. "I'm just here to give moral support."

"So support me."

The children pressed closer. Fox sat cross-legged in the rapidly 
shrinking clearing at the centre of the classroom. He cleared his 
throat. "OK, kids." He started. "Today we're going to talk about 
profiling serial killers. The first -"

Scully dug him in the ribs and cut him off. "Ow, Scully. What was 
that for?"

"Mulder. These are children. You can't fill their heads with stories 
about mass murderers."

"Oh, OK." He sat still, looking around at the anxious faces of the 
children.

"Well?" Scully urged him on.

"What do you mean, Well?" Mulder looked completely dumbfounded.

"So what are you going to talk to them about?"

"What am *I* going to talk to them about? Scully. This is your 
assignment."

She thought for a moment. The children waited. Mulder waited.

"... Uh ... Children." They pricked their ears up, waiting anxiously 
to hear what Dana was going to say. "Well ... One of the first 
principles of modern pathological medicine is -"

"Scully." Mulder tapped her on the arm.

"- to follow sound and proven procedures that -"

"Scully."

"What *is* it Mulder?"

"I don't think you can start teaching a class of six to eight 
year-olds forensic pathology. I can't see it being very popular with 
their parents, when they go home and start dissecting the doberman."

"Oh."

By now the children were getting restless. "Tell us a story." One of 
them said. Then they all piped up. "Yes, please Miss Scully, tell us 
a story." Support for the idea spread through the group of infants 
like wildfire, and soon they were all screaming out for Scully to 
tell them a story.

"Alright." Said Dana, holding up her hands in surrender. "Alright. 
Quiet. So that I can tell you a story." She looked at Mulder.

He grinned back at her. "This'll be good."

Scully took a deep breath, before launching into her prose.

"Far out in deep space." Scully began. "Far, far, out. Further than 
anyone could see with a telescope. Further than anyone would ever 
want to see. The Time Ship tumbled through the stars."

Slowly a hush descended over the children, as Scully continued 
enthusiastically with the story. Even Mulder was sitting 
attentively, though he did keep grinning in a particularly 
irritating way, which Scully assumed was deliberately calculated to 
put her off.

"And inside the Time Ship, which looked on the outside like a 
Passport Photograph Booth, but which was actually a huge machine for 
travelling through space and time, Doctor Scully and her schoolboy 
assistant Billy Mulder were deciding where, in all of the cosmos, to 
go to next."

"Well, there's the great Mograthian Mule Trees of Megatrax Seven." 
Doctor Scully considered, pacing excitedly around the console room 
of the Time Ship. "Or, what about -"

"-Somewhere more exciting than Mars." Suggested Billy Mulder, 
chewing on a sticky length of liquorice string.

"There's nothing wrong with Mars." Said the Doctor. She stopped, 
looked at him with a questioning stare. "Well. Not much wrong with 
it."

Mulder continued chewing on the black confectionary, his tongue 
turning an awful shade of tres noir.

"I mean, I suppose it's a bit dry." The Doctor continued. She 
wandered across to the scanner control, tapping the fingers of both 
her hands together. "Well, by dry, I mean completely and utterly 
barren and incapable of supporting life."

Mulder coughed, nearly choking on the sweet.

"Apart from the Mega-Mice, that is. And they're dead now. Or at 
least they were. The last time we were there. Which might be in the 
future, of course. But, anyway, they don't count because they're 
just a bunch of psychopathic rodents hell-bent on universal 
domination." She was rambling. She knew she was rambling. It was a 
character flaw. A result of that last regeneration. Something hadn't 
gone quite right this last time around.

"Admit it. We're lost." Said Mulder.

The Doctor looked awkwardly at her young schoolboy companion. She 
picked up the tail end of her rainbow coloured scarf from off the 
floor, and slung it over her shoulder. "Well, not actually lost."

"Lost." Mulder repeated. Reaching for the sweet jar again.

"Oh, do put the chocolate brazils down, Mulder, there's a good 
fellow. You know they give you wind."

"Lost." Mulder said again, starting to sound rather repetitive.

"We are *not* lost." Said the Doctor, getting just a teensy bit 
irritated. "Well, not very much, anyway."

Billy Mulder looked accusingly at her.

She was about to say something, but the sudden wrenching sensation 
knocked them both flat on their faces, as the Time Ship rocked 
violently from side to side. And then the rocking became a spinning, 
and a rolling, and all manner of gyrations that made Billy Mulder 
feel very sick indeed. And the six helpings of double-chocolate 
fudge probably didn't help much either.

"What's happening?" He yelled.

The Doctor reached out for the base of the console, and gripped hold 
of it with both of her hands. "Time Rift!" She shouted, trying to 
make her voice heard above the din of the THX digitally re-mastered 
sound effects. "Hold ooooooooooon!"

Then, just as suddenly as it had begun, the vibrations ceased, and 
the Time Ship was still again. Still and completely silent.

Doctor Scully dragged herself to her feet. She brushed her red hair 
out of her face and began examining the instruments. "Oh, no. This 
can't be happening."

"What is it?" Asked Mulder, regarding the smashed sweet jar with 
considerable sadness.

"We've been shunted into an Exo-Temporal rift."

"Say what?"

"Oh ..." She waved both of her hands at him with irritation, as if 
she were shaking the dust from a rug. "... Not now, Mulder. This 
could be very serious. Now where did I put ..." She started rifling 
through the dimensionally transcendental pockets of her Edwardian 
long coat, pulling out and discarding all manner of strange and 
wonderful things. "Ah!"

She held up the egg timer in front of her. "Nope." She threw it over 
her shoulder. It just missed Mulder.

"Um ..." The scale model of MV Titanic was impressive, accurate down 
to the last detail. She tossed it aside. "Nice ship." She muttered. 
"Not much good around icebergs, though ..."

Mulder ducked, as the model liner shattered into a thousand pieces 
against the far wall of the console room.

"Aha! Here we are."

She lay the huge book flat across the central console.

  Time Ship - Model 82517
  Users Manual

"Now then ..." Doctor Scully started flicking through the pages of 
the manual. "... Here we are. Exo-Temporal Rifts; Getting out of, 
when you are stuck in one." She studied the page intently.

"What does it say?" Mulder asked, peering over the top of the 
console.

"It says: Avoid getting the Time Ship caught in an Exo-Temporal 
Rift, because there is no known way of breaking loose."

"Scully, don't you think you're going a bit overboard on the plot 
here?" Mulder asked.

"Be quiet." She said. "This is my story."

Just then, a low whining sound started to build rapidly in volume. 
First a whining, then a rumbling, then a deafening shriek that 
echoed throughout the cavernous interior of the Model 82517 Time 
Ship.

Doctor Scully and Mulder both pressed their hands to their ears in a 
hopeless attempt to shut the noise out.

And then the console room was filled with lights. Rainbow coloured 
lights, just like the scarf that Doctor Scully wore around her neck. 
The Doctor and Mulder were faced with a choice. Cover their ears, or 
cover their eyes. The light was becoming brighter by the second. 
Blinding.

Acting quickly, the Doctor unwound her scarf from around her neck 
and wrapped it around Billy Mulder's head, protecting both his ears 
and his eyes, and leaving him stumbling around the console room 
bumping into everything in sight.

Defiantly, she faced the alien being that was taking shape within 
her Time Ship.

"So. We meet again, Doctor!" Finally, Eugene Victor Tooms stood face 
to face with his ancient nemesis.

"Tooms! How did you do this?"

"Really, Doctor. It's your story."

"But I saw you sliced to pieces in the Electromastic Transuction 
Escalator on the planet Exeter Six Six. You can't be here! I won't 
believe it!"

"Oh, believe it, my dear Doctor." Tooms took a step closer to her, 
extending his elasticated left arm out and snatching up Billy 
Mulder, setting him down on the floor between them. "You see, you 
forgot one important thing."

The Doctor looked thoughtful for a moment. "Oh, no. Not the 
Quintadnium Neuractor? How could I have been so stupid?"

"Probably because you hadn't read the script of the previous six 
episodes." Mulder muttered, under his breath.

"Shut up!" said the Doctor and Tooms together. "This is our story!"

"But, in order to use the Quintadnium Neuractor you'd have needed a 
functioning mono-syplastic octo-spanner." She had trouble getting 
her tongue around the last couple of words, and they came out as 
"octopus" instead.

"Exactly, Doctor." Tooms whipped a baby squid out of his pocket and 
tossed it onto the console, where it landed with a plop. "And now 
you see the futility of your situation. Trapped here in your 
pathetic Time Ship. You - are - at - my - MERCY!!!"

"Not quite, old fellow." Said Doctor Scully, confidently.

"Do not play games with me, Doctor. Do not attempt to distract me 
with your puny prattling. You forget that I am Tooms. I am power 
incarnate. I am ... the ... superior ... being ... here!!"

"Yes, I know all about that, Tooms." She waved him quiet, and 
pointed to a button on the console of her Time Ship.

"What trickery is this?" Tooms stepped closer.

She pressed down hard on the button, and he heard the sound of a 
motor whirring behind him. He spun around, almost slipping on one of 
Mulder's half-eaten liquorice sticks.

The nozzle of the portable vacuum cleaner bore down on him from the 
roof and clamped onto the top of his head. He struggled to get free, 
but the suction was immense.

"Emergency waste extraction system." Said the Doctor, leaning 
against the console with one hand. "And seeing as you have a very 
*elastic* body, Tooms ..."

The suction increased. First the top of his head, then his nose, his 
mouth, his chin. Inch by inch, Tooms was sucked inside.

"Nooooooooo!"

"Bye bye." Said the Doctor. "Do drop by again. When you've got 
yourself back together."

With a slurp and a plop, Tooms vanished altogether, and the Doctor 
switched off the vacuum cleaner. "Tiresome fellow." She said, as an 
afterthought.

"Well, that's all very well, Scully." Said Mulder, not really 
sounding like a very convincing schoolboy. "But how are we going to 
get out of this Exo-Temporal rift?"

"Oh, that old thing." She smiled, stepped back, picked up the 
octopus by its tentacles and brought it down with a crashing 
Thwloppp! on the Time Ship control panel. At once, lights started 
flashing again. Instruments started showing readings again. The Time 
Ship was on its way again. "There you are. It just needs a little 
gentle tap every once in a while. Just to remind the old girl whose 
boss around here."

"I don't think there's any doubt about who that is." Said Mulder, 
going after the last chocolate brazil that was rolling about the 
console room floor.

"So, Mulder." Said Doctor Scully, a grin right across her face. "How 
do you like your octopus? Octopus Au Gratin? Octopus a l'orange? Or 
how about a nice ..."

"And the Time Ship tumbled on and on, crossing vast and totally 
unimaginable reaches of space and time. Taking Doctor Scully, 
Guardian of the Cosmos, and her young assistant Billy Mulder, 
towards their next exciting adventure ..."

The children stared at her. Mulder stared at her.

"Um, Scully." Said Mulder, leaning towards her. "A piece of advice."

She leant towards him so that he could whisper in her ear. "Don't 
give up your day job."

"Miss Scully." Said one of the children. A little girl with pigtails.

"Um, yes?"

"Why did Doctor Scully bash up that poor little octopus that never 
did anybody any harm in the whole wide world?"

Scully looked at Mulder.

Mulder looked at Scully.

And Scully starting thinking about what excuse she would be using 
next year, so as not to take part in Bureau Volunteer Day.

- END -