Chapter Text
A lot of things were catching up with Andrew at once, namely the fact that aliens were real and on earth and also the aliens that were chasing him right now.
Neil seemed to know exactly where he was going so Andrew followed his lead. The street was unrecognizable, Karrdolisk fleets marched their way across the streets, using blue lights to scan through the buildings.
"Why aren't they chasing us?"
Neil's head whipped around as he shushed Andrew, but it was too late, the Karrdolisks were already turning to scan them with the blue lights.
"They are now!" Neil shouted back.
A wave or Kardolisks, running eerily in tandem, scanning the terrain around them with their blue lights.
"Karrdolisks have very limited senses of sight and hearing, so before you said anything, they didn’t know we were here.” Neil said, like Andrew should have known that.
"My bad."
"Don't worry about it."
Timelords were apparently better at running than humans, because Andrew was having entirely too much trouble keeping up.
“What are the blue lights?” Andrew called.
“Artificial eyes. Get out of range, and they won’t be able to see you.”
The Kardolisks began to slowly disappear, as they got slowly out of range of the blue light scanners.
Neil weaved through city corners and buildings until finally, the Karrdolisks were gone and Neil had brought them to a seemingly empty warehouse.
Neil shut the door behind them a
"So. You’re an alien." Andrew wheezed
“What, did you think I was lying to you?"
" Yes !" Andrew said, breathless from the run. "Okay. Fine. You're an alien."
"Yeah. Duck."
Andrew did and narrowly avoided having his face sliced off as Neil pointed some sort of glowing, buzzing knife at the singular octopus alien hiding outside of the warehouse. The knife was too far away to touch it but the door slammed and bolted shut before it could get in.
Andrew looked up at the knife.
"Sonic switchblade." Neil said, snapping it shut and looking entirely too self-satisfied. He turned and strode across the warehouse floor.
Andrew had a thought as he stood up and began to follow Neil. “WHy were the Karrdolisk’s all running together like that?”
“They’re kind of a hivemind. When one gets in range of another, they sort of meld together. Like psychic radio, or walkie-talkies. God, I love walkie-talkies.”
It reminded Andrew of something Stefan had said, that first day in the pawn shop "What happened to Stefan? Where did he go?"
"Well. I'm sort of... him." Neil sighed. "Time lords do this thing called regeneration. We get 12 lives, so if we die once, we get a new body, a kind of new personality, and we try again."
"Which life are you on?"
"Number 37." Neil said flippantly, like he hoped Andrew wouldn't mention it.
"I thought you said you only get twelve."
"Me too. From what I've been able to piece together, that's why I'm being hunted."
Andrew didn't say anything. Until an idea struck him. "Hey, If you're an alien, how come you sound like you're from the midwest?"
"Lots of planets have a midwest." Neil shrugged. He stopped at a blue box. The sign on the door said it was a police call box, but Andrew had not seen a real-life phonebooth anywhere
"What's this?"
"This," Neil said, voice brimming with pride, "is my TARDIS."
"Your what?"
"Time And Relative Dimension In Space. TARDIS."
Andrew frowned and said nothing.
Neil waited for a response, when Andrew gave him nothing, he said "It's my ship!"
Andrew rolled his eyes. "Cool…"
"Right? After you." Neil gestured to the box, which seemed entirely too small for two people. On the one hand, Andrew's brain was simple and really had no objections to being in such close quarters with Neil, on the other hand, he was on the verge of having an existential crisis and he didn't know if close quarters with a literal alien was going to be the thing to deter it.
Andrew closed his eyes, took a deep breath and stepped into the box.
The box was not tiny.
The box was just a hallway that led into a gigantic foyer. The light was golden, streaming in from some overhead lights that were too bright and high up for Andrew to make out. Descending from the vaulted ceiling was a glassy column, glowing blue. Surrounded at the base by a circular operating station. Covered in bits and bobs and buttons.
A dark hallway in the back seemed to lead to more.
Andrew stepped out of the box.
Neil was there, grinning at him. "Take your time."
Andrew took off around the box, skimming his hand around the four small sides, entirely too small to contain the multitudes inside.
Neil was inside the towering hall when Andrew came back inside.
"It's bigger on the inside." Andrew said, to confirm.
Neil grinned. "It would appear so." He walked over to a round thing on the wall and opened it to reveal a minibar. "Drink?"
"So you have all this stuff in your spaceship?" Andrew said. He was trying not to freak out.
He was failing miserably.
"Yeah," Neil looked incredibly pleased with himself.
"Then why did you want the pocketwatch?"
Neil looked sheepish. "I thought you were hiding the Karrdolisks in your shop. That's why I came in, the first time. The pocket watch was a… distraction."
Andrew frowned. "And the second time?"
Neil shrugged. "I guess I just really liked… that pocketwatch." They both knew what word was supposed to come after the significant pause. Neil grinned his way through a blush. Andrew did not believe that he still had a shot with this literal immortal, gorgeous being.
"So, let me give you the grand tour, this is the console, where the soul of the TARDIS lives." Neil grinned.
"It's alive?"
"In a sense. And back there." Neil waved a vague hand at a hallway leading back into a dark hall. "Is everything else. Wardrobe, library, swimming pool. That sort of thing."
"Why do you have a swimming pool?"
"Why wouldn't I have a swimming pool?"
Andrew paused. "Fair enough."
"So. I can take you anywhere, where do you want to go?"
"Does it do addresses, or do you need, like, coordinates?" Andrew tried to sound.
Neil smiled. "It does addresses. You want me to park my ship in front of your house?"
“Um. Yeah?” Andrew had not thought this through at all.
“Type that address in here.” Neil slid a keyboard around the console. None of the letters were in english. “Ah, shit, sorry. Give the TARDIS a minute, it’ll translate. All right, new face, let's have a look." Neil raced over to a hanging mirror in a small corner of the rotunda.
Andrew was slowly putting together that running was how Neil preferred to get places.
Neil inspected himself. He gasped. "I'm short! I mean, not that short, not like you," Andrew looked around the console for something to throw at him. "But that’s quite a few inches off… ooh.” Neil’s hand flew to his stomach. “New spleen. Gross. Wait.” his hand kept feeling around his stomach, he quickly pulled his shirt out from where it was tucked in his pants to reveal inches of scarred skin. Neil didn't seem to mind the raised bumps and slashes because he was singularly focused on his brand new six pack abs. "Oh that is nice . Andrew are you seeing this?"
Andrew hoped he wasn't blushing "I am, in fact, seeing this."
"God, I'm such a dish now."His eyes flitted up to his face and his smile disappeared.
“What?” Andrew said.
“Nothing. I’m fine.” Neil’s fingers didn’t seem to have received the message, they fluttered to the purple skin under his blue eyes. Even with a new face, he seemed tired. He pulled a strand of shaggy hair down in front of his eyes. “Red. Damn.” Neil watched himself in the mirror disdainfully for a few more seconds before springing away from it like it had never happened.
"All right, have your address down?"
Andrew typed it into the now-english keyboard. "How did the keyboard do that?"
"I told you, the TARDIS is translating." Neil absentmindedly stroked the side of the console like it was a cat. “Let’s get going. Brace yourself.”
The TARDIS began to shake before Andrew had the chance. The engines… or what Andrew assumed were the engines, began to emit a creaky, wheezing sort of noise.
Then suddenly it stopped.
Andrew stepped out of the doors. “Neil?”
“Yeah.”
“Remember when you said you’d park in front of my house?”
“What about it?”
“You missed.”
Katelyn, Andrew’s brother’s girlfriend, was sitting on the dining table, enjoying some coffee and staring at the spaceship that had just appeared in the living room. “Andrew, explain.”
Andrew sighed. The thing about Katelyn was, she was the only one of Aaron’s girlfriends that Andrew actually liked. That was mostly because she had done him a lot of favors. This also meant that she was entitled to an explanation. “Alien invasion at the store.”
Neil popped up behind Andrew and inspected the situation. “Damn it. The TARDIS is always wonky after a regeneration.“
Katelyn raised an eyebrow, presumably at the size of the box and the number of people in it.
“It’s bigger on the inside.” Andrew clarified.
“Riiight.” Katelyn drawled.
“I changed my mind. You have to start paying rent.” Andrew deadpanned.
Katelyn had been paying rent since she officially moved in, but before that, she spent most of her nights in Aarons room, despite living across town, and Andrew had joked that she should start paying rent.
“Andrew?” Nicky called from somewhere in the apartment. “Andrew’s here?” Nicky came storming out of the kitchen. “Thank god. Are you alright? Are you hurt?”
Andrew was quick to say “I’m okay, Nicky.” before Nicky started fawning. “Where’s Aaron?”
“He got back from work an hour ago, they let him off early. He’s napping in his room. I saw on the news that there were these weird things in the pawn shop. Some people think it was aliens. Aliens, like Kevin’s always talking about when he’s drunk, can you believe?”
“Yes.” Andrew said.
Nicky finally saw the box, and Neil in the living room.
“Andrew, what’s going on?”
“Neil, this is Nicky, my cousin, and Katelyn, she’s dating my brother. Nicky, Katelyn, this is Neil. He’s an alien.”
Neil waved a hand. “Pleased to meet you.”
“We have to get Kevin.” Nicky said immediately, and left to fulfill the aforementioned task.”
“Who’s Kevin?” Neil asked.
“Kevin Day, our neighbor.” Katelyn explained. “He’s an astrophysicist. He loves aliens.”
“No kidding?” Neil said. “I know him!”
Andrew whipped around. “You what?”
“He works for UNIT, I’ve worked with them a couple of times.”
Kevin banged the door open and stormed in.
“Kevin! So nice to see you. How’s UNIT, how’s your dad?”
“He’s angry that he had to deal with this shit again. Alex, what the fuck have you done this time?”
“Look, it’s not my fault the heads of the Moriyama Galaxy want my head.” Neil said. “And it’s Neil now.”
“How come every time I meet you, you’ve regenerated? How hard is it to stay fucking alive?”
Neil scoffed. “Pretty damn hard, Kevin!”
“I’ve managed to do it just fine.” Kevin said smugly.
“You’re also 27 years old.” Neil pointed out. Andrew wondered how old Neil was. “Besides, no one wants your head.”
“I might.” Nicky quipped.
“Look, the rest of UNIT is trying to deal with this, but the best thing to do is get you off planet.”
“Woah, hey, I can’t just leave the Karrdolisks here, they’ll tear the planet apart!”
Kevin sneered. “We’re more than capable of defending our own planet, Neil.”
“Right.” Neil glowered. “You humans and your big guns.”
There was a tense pause as Kevin and Neil stared off. Nicky cleared his throat.
“Sorry, just back-tracking a little here, they’ll tear what apart?” Nicky interjected.
Kevin sighed. “Can we move this discussion elsewhere?
“You cannot!” Katelyn said. “We’re in this now, we’re invested.”
“This isn’t a game.” Kevin said.
“No one here is acting like it is. It’s our planet too, Kevin. If we have any chance at all to defend it, then we’re going to take it.”
“You don’t have the proper training-”
“And that matters?” Andrew asked. Neil beamed at him. “Look, they had to get here somehow, right, and once they got Neil, they were going to get back to wherever they came from the same way, so we can either send them back, or get rid of their escape plan and take care of them on our soil.”
“Wow. Look at you.” Kevin deadpanned. “Master strategist. Except you don’t even know how Kardolisks operate-”
“Artificial eyes and psychic walkie-talkies, I got the gist.” Andrew said.
Kevin looked at Neil. “Look what you did, you infected him!”
“Look, they’ve got to be communicating over a frequency, right?” Andrew said. “If UNIT can find a way to jam it, then they’ll be cut off, right?”
Neil nodded.
“And if we can find some way to turn those lights off, or block it, Then they’ll barely be able to find anything. They’ll be alone, and in the dark, and easy to pick off.”
Kevin’s mouth was open, but he wasn’t saying anything. Andrew recognized this as his stupid in deep thought face. “That actually might work. If I can get my dad to agree, then we might be able to make that the plan.”
Neil grinned at Andrew with something that looked mostly like pride.
Aaron chose this moment to walk, bleary eyed into the room. “Andrew? You’re not dead.”
“Nope.”
“Good. Good job. What’s going on?”
Neil grinned. “Okay, let me explain.”