Monday, July 13, 2020

"Escape From the Technodrome" - Part Three



Part Three

            I am Doctor Idiot!

            I said that about myself once – out loud and with no one else to hear me, of course. It seemed like that name best suited the woman who was being escorted by two robot ninjas in an alien fortress she should’ve thought twice about infiltrating alone. I should’ve stuck by with my fam. Followed April to whatever it was in the sewers she was taking us. Or I could’ve at least let them in on what I found further underground.

            As we arrived at my holding cell inside the Technodrome, I turned to my escorts and tried to reason with them, “Can’t I just have a second to…?”

            Word of advice: never try reasoning with a robot ninja.

            One of them backhanded me across the face. I’ve had my share of slaps – some of the hardest at the hands of River Song and Jackie Tyler – but getting one from a robot hurt like the dickens. This one left a nasty cut to the side of my face. It was pretty deep, breaking the skin and bleeding out within a second.

            “That wasn’t nice,” I scolded to my attacker. “I just got this face!”

            Not that they cared. They shoved me into the holding cell without pause.

            Surrounded by wall-to-wall chrome, I was left to my own thoughts. And what I thought most about was how Neas’s help would be much appreciated right about now. The Gladiator of Gallifrey – a Time Lord who became lost to the infinite dimensional corridor after escaping the Time War at my urging. I crossed paths with her (or him sometimes) once or twice in the past, when my TARDIS mistakenly left the time vortex and entered the infinite D.C.


            Only now, the Gladiator was nowhere I needed them. I was entirely alone in this.

            Or, so I thought, until I sensed some movement in the shadows of my cell. Alarmed, I reached into my coat to pull out my sonic – only to be reminded that I lost it back in the main control room.

            Fists clenched, I stared into the shadows and demanded of my cellmate, “Step out, whoever you are, and show yourself!”

            They did as I requested.

            Before I knew it, I wasn’t looking at the giant monster that my wild imagination anticipated for me to see. In fact, it was totally the opposite. I got the shock of my life (which is saying a lot for a two-thousand-year-old like me) when my cellmate was another friendly alien.

            And not just any friendly alien – this one was E.T.!


            He waddled out from the shadows with his very short legs, staring at me with those enormous, adorable blue eyes.

            “Bless my soul,” I gasped in a breath of geekiness. “I can’t believe it’s you! I’m a big fan! Seen your movie so many times! Can never get to the ending though without crying – not ashamed to admit that!”

            His long, snake-like neck extended to match my height, staring closely at the cut on the side of my face. “Ouch,” he said in that classic raspy voice of his.

            “Yeah, one of those micro-brains got me good…no biggie,” I brushed it off.

            But E.T., ever the caring one, used that special glowing finger of his to touch my cut and heal it instantly. The skin where the gash used to be was now flawless, like it was never there. To see this trick happen on a movie screen was one thing; to have it happen to me up close is something special.

            “Thanks for that,” I expressed. “You just saved me a regeneration. Matter of fact, I could’ve used you thirteen lives ago!”

            In my excitement of meeting the E.T., I only just realized him to be the other specimen that living brain (“Lord Krang” was what I heard his subjects in the Technodrome address him as) mentioned.

            That brainiac is gonna dissect both of us! And I wasn’t having that happen – especially not to E.T.!

            Escape was a high priority for us. But that was impossible without my sonic, which had to be in the possession of Krang by now. No doubt the brainiac was in the process of trying to dismantle it to find out how it worked. Good luck with that, brainy! My sonic’s made from Sheffield steel!


            The best I had at my disposal was a stethoscope, which I used on the chrome wall to listen out for a power source that I could tamper with. Luckily, I found one hidden behind a wall panel that took little-to-no effort prying open.

            Knowing E.T. to possess telepathic abilities (in addition to his healing), I came up with the idea of overpowering the Foot Soldier guards outside, as soon as I rewired the cell door to open on its own. We expected the guards to rush in to see what was going on; however, neither of them showed up. I looked out to see what the delay was, only to discover the guards had already been taken down.

            By what? I had no idea.

            That’s when I saw them – four familiar anthropomorphic turtles in ninja garb.


            “The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” I identified them out loud.

            “Yeah, and you must be the Doctor Dudette we’re here to save,” Michelangelo (“The Party Dude”) deduced.

            I was even more impressed to see Yaz, Ryan, and Graham accompanying the famous Heroes in a Half-shell. “Thanks for the rescue, team! But how did you find out where I was?” I asked them.

            “Well, when we didn’t see ya with us by the time we got to the Turtles’ sewer lair, they helped us to go and look for you,” Graham explained.

            “Lucky for you, we found that hole you fell through,” Ryan stated.

            “Is that E.T.?” Yaz asked, indicating the other famous character that I met.

            “Yeah, he’s another story we’ll have to figure out later,” I deferred. “That Lord Krang bloke has me sonic, and we need to get it back from him.”

            There was uneasiness in Graham’s face as he told me, “That ain’t all that he has.”

            “On the way in here, we saw Bebop and Rocksteady luggin’ in the TARDIS.”

            This news Ryan laid on me was the last thing I needed to hear, when this situation was already out of control.

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