Chapter 1: Vacation

(Welcome to my episodic crossover fic. This is episode ten, and while you can start reading here, you might want to visit my profile to get the whole story with Episode One: Frozen in Time)

Back to the Doctor

Get Marty Part 1

Tuesday

June 30^th

2015

“I’ll keep looking into this. If I find something, I’ll contact you,” Jack smiled at the Doctor, framed by the TARDIS doorway.

Rex stood next to Jack. “How the hell are you gonna get in contact with a guy who lives in a time-travelling phone booth?”

“Police box,” the Doctor corrected quickly.

“Whatever,” Rex rolled his eyes.

Jack smiled. “I’m sure I’ll figure that out.” He held out his hand and the Doctor took it, giving him a firm handshake. “And you,” Jack called over to Marty who leaned against the console, “take care of him.”

“Shouldn’t he be taking care of me?” Marty asked with a smile.

“It’s not you I’m worried about,” Jack winked, and Marty just shrugged.

“I’ll do what I can.”

The Doctor closed the door and Marty sighed. He was exhausted. He couldn’t think straight. He felt like he was on the brink of completely understanding what was going on, but he was too exhausted to finish putting the puzzle pieces together.

“So! Where to now?” He looked just as energetic and happy as ever, but Marty couldn’t return his smile.

“Sorry Doc, I just…” he sighed again. He thought again of the long list of places Doc Brown’s letter had, thought of how the rest of his life could be spent searching the galaxy for him, for a cure for Jennifer.

“I know!” the Doctor grinned, an idea coming to his mind. He quickly pulled a lever on the console and smashed a few buttons, and after a moment the TARDIS was wheezing and shaking.

“Where are we going?” Marty held the rail for support.

“We’re going on vacation!”

“Vacation? But we can’t just-” Marty quickly glanced towards Jennifer’s resting place. “We have to find Doc Brown! We have to save Jennifer.”

“And we will,” the Doctor said sternly, the TARDIS coming to a stop. “But you can’t keep going on forever. You look like you’re about to drop dead from exhaustion. You need to relax for a bit. You need to rest.”

“It… doesn’t feel right, taking a break while Jennifer’s…”

The Doctor put his hands of Marty’s shoulders, smiling at him. “We are going to save Jennifer. But you’re no good to her if you die from exhaustion.”

Marty looked towards the door, curious what was on the other side, desperate to take his mind off of everything to do with robots and rogue time agents, and slowly he nodded.

“Okay… let’s go.”

“Fantastic,” the Doctor ran down the ramp, grabbed his coat and with a flourish opened the door.

Marty followed and when he looked outside, expecting to see some serene relaxing environment, instead he was met with bright neon lights lighting up a huge city at night. Hundreds of people were milling around, some clearly drunk, a few dancing, and all of them enjoying what he could only describe as a masquerade ball. Everyone wore exquisite costumes and masks. There were animals and robots and courtiers and aliens he didn’t recognize dressed as other aliens he had never seen. The entire thing was so overwhelming to his senses he nearly stepped back in shock.

“Welcome to Halloweenland!” The Doctor jumped out, holding his arms out wide.

“… You just made that name up.”

“I did not. Look around you. Here it’s Halloween all day every day.”

“But… how is it possible other planets celebrate Halloween?” Marty stepped out, looking around with wide eyes. Every building had a mass of decorations on it, sparkly streamers and dangling trinkets and bright flashing lights. People were carousing from building to building, some which had bars or restaurants, or what just looked like clubs.

“Well, it’s not Halloween as you think of it. No ghouls or ghosts, it’s just the costume part. Halloween’s just the best translation I can come up with.”

“Why?”

“Well because their word for the holiday has no equivalent word in English-”

“No, I mean why do they celebrate Halloween every day?” Marty took a step back as an eight foot tall alien dressed like a purple tree with orange leaves waddled past.

“Oh, I suppose everyone likes dressing up, pretending they’re someone they’re not. The holiday just started out as one day a year, then it became a week, then a month, and before they knew it the holiday became one of the biggest tourist attractions in the galaxy. People fly lightyears to come and celebrate.”

“I was kinda expecting a spa…”

“Oh… would you rather go to a spa? To be honest the last one I visited ended… sort of… badly…”

Marty didn’t want to know. “No, this actually seems way more fun. I feel little…” Marty stared at a group of blue women wearing four foot wide hoop skirts, their hair piled into hairstyles so high Marie Antoinette would have been jealous, beautiful crystalline masks covering their delicate trio of eyes. “Underdressed.”

“Well, what would you like? There’s literally every costume you can imagine here. You could be a karillian gothound, or a snargled popping crow, or a Slitheen, or a…”

“Wait, give me five minutes,” Marty ran back into the TARDIS, and a few minutes later returned. He was still wearing his jeans, sneakers, and red shirt, but now instead of his jean jacket he had on a beaten brown leather vest, and was wearing a cowboy hat on his head. “Okay, let’s go.”

“What kind of costume is that?”

“I like cowboys…”

“You couldn’t even grab some cowboy boots?”

“Doc, if I’ve learned one thing since meeting you, I need to be ready to run.”

“Well… fair enough. Shall we?”

Marty closed the door to the TARDIS and they began walking through the streets. There were so many people they were constantly having to weave around to get through, and they had to shout over the laughter and singing around them.

“There’s a brilliant restaurant up this way,” the Doctor said, turning down a narrow alley, which was just as lively and energetic as the Main Street behind them. “They have Corinlinthian dancers.”

“Uh… you don’t say?”

“Corinlinthians learn to dance before they learn to walk or even speak.”

“So they just… quietly dance in place until elementary school?” Marty asked, but the Doctor couldn’t hear him and suddenly stopped to turn into the open door of a restaurant.

If possible it was even louder inside the restaurant. They entered into a lobby, a man stood by a curtained door leading to the main dining room wearing what Marty could only describe as a demonic clown costume. He had red face paint, with bright white patches around his eyes and an over-exaggerated smile. His clothes were covered in silver and gold patches, bells and tinsels hung off him, and as he moved he made a hundred little chimes.

“What are you you supposed to be, mate?” He narrowed his eyes at the two men.

“I’m a cowboy,” Marty shrugged.

“What, one of them things with the horns and black spots? You don’t much look like one…”

“Uh… different cowboy.”

“Oh… and you?”

“I’m a Time Lord,” the Doctor smiled.

“I thought Time Lords wore them funny cloaks with all the circles.”

“I’m a modern renaissance Time Lord.”

“Oh, uh… good costumes. Just the two then? Just in time for the Lady Chandrises’ performance.”

“Great!” the Doctor smiled.

The man moved aside and they went to the doorway, moving aside the curtain, and about to step through when they both stopped dead in their tracks. A tall robot made of stainless steel and blue eyes stood before them, the shape of a tear carved under its eye.

“Delete,” the robot said mechanically, raising its arm.

It was a Cyberman.

To Be Continued…

(Waaaaa~ I’m sorry I stopped writing for so long! I have a tendency to work so hard on something that it just wipes me out. I felt like the quality in the last few episodes I did was starting to suffer because I was trying to push them out so fast, so I decided to take a break, and unfortunately it took a long time for me to be motivated enough to return to this story. I’ve had the outline for this episode for a long time, but couldn’t decide what kind of vacation place to choose. I wanted it to be a fun and interesting place, somewhere I’d want to spend the weekend, and thought of some interesting club districts in Japan, so my descriptions were kind of based on that. As far as the Halloween theme went, well I wanted there to be something peculiar about this place, and it being so close to Halloween at the moment, it just sort of clicked. All right, please enjoy the next six chapters of episode 10!!!)