Black Rock City 2011 Guest Friendly Story

[Jack Harkness]

The man of glass turned his attention to his oldest friend as soon as her toughts reached out to him.
If she needed him elsewhere he would gladly go.
But it seemed these ships she thought about weren't expected.
And might even be dangerous.

In this case, he needed to hurry.
'I shall come back my friend, I promise you this'
The portal of light opened right behind him and with a simple step he was gone.
The golden swirls imploding on him and taking the Lux away.

[The Inventor]

The Inventor saw a fish car pull up and he felt an urge to follow it. He started to run to it, wondering how it worked, was it like a normal car or was it something completely different, or somewhere in between? Suddenly, while he was running, about two yards from the car he fell over, and his mind went completely blank. Then, in his absence of doing anything, his head hit the ground and he was dazed for a few minutes.

[The Meddler]

The man known as Christopher Mesler sat on the Hayes' couch, eating ice cream and watching the evening news and feeling slightly guilty.

"I really should help you two clean up," he'd insisted.

"No," Mandy replied. "You're a guest."

He'd smiled at that. "I've been a guest twice a week for a year now, Mandy. Surely, the bloom is off that rose."

"I don't mind if he helps," Jim added.

"That's because you're lazy, Mr. Hayes," she shot back, smiling. Then she looked at Chris. "You really want to help?"

"Yes."

"Then get out of the kitchen. There's not enough room for three of us here."

"We go now to live scenes from the Burning Man festival," the television announced. He dug up another spoonful of 'Chunky Monkey', and bit into it. In the background, he could Jim say "Hon, I've got a call. I'll be right back."

The footage from the festival was jerky, like scenes from a war zone. Curious, he sat up and leaned forward. He didn't really care what the newscaster was saying, but there was something about the images...

The camera panned up, revealing a distinctive ship in the skies above Nevada. Cold shock clenched at his gut.

"Yeah?" Jim asked in the background. "Crap. No, no, I understand."

More images showed figures in silver and silver mesh wading into the crowd. "No," he hissed, "No. No, it can't be. I wiped you from history."

"Mandy," Jim was saying, voice serious. "There's a red alert."

"I'll get them to safety, Jim," Chris said, standing. "Go."

---

The Specter's ready room was abuzz with activity, as the twelve cyborgs armed themselves. Artificial skin had been stripped from prostheses, the better to integrate with the powered armor they wore - both to increase their capabilities and to protect the soft organic bod parts.

"Hell," observed Sgt. Kayl Hoaloaka, "At least our last op was Afghanistan. We're still desert camo."

"I don't think that'll matter, Ho," Captain Hayes responded. He was the most heavily rebuilt of the twelve, a fact made abundantly clear without his false skin and fake eye coverings. "We're dropping into a combat zone."

"Right," Colonel Walters said, pointing to an image of one of the silver mesh covered robots. "We have not positively identified the EBEs in question yet, but we have tentatively identified them as..."

The door swung open, and Chris walked in with a large sack over one shoulder. "You've assigned them the code phrase MOONDUST TIN SOLDIER," he stated. "They are better known elsewhere in the galaxy as Cybermen. They are from a planet known as Mondas, which you will never hear of anywhere else because it never existed."

He set the sack down, opened it, and began tossing the contents to the soldiers. "Here. Merry Christmas." The objects were helmets, like a cross between K-pots and motorcycle helmets, with reflective visors that covered the whole face.

"Cool," said Hoaloaka. The others looked at them curiously.

"You are not going to war with them, not looking like them," Chris stated. There was a hard edge to his voice.

"Uhm," asked Sgt. Martins, "Chris?"

"Yes?"

"If this Mondas never existed, how do you know about it?"

He smiled without humor. "Because," he said flatly, "I destroyed it. Four and a half billion years ago."

---

The V-32 Peregrine (a vectored thrust variant of the Osprey) screamed over the desert at three hundred miles an hour.

"So, let me get this straight," Hoaloaka asked. "The twelve of us are gonna drop right into an army of alien cyborgs. Our nearest ground support is more than an hour away, and air support is limited because of the civilians?"

"That's about the size of it," Captain Hayes answered.

Silence.

"We are gonna be some bad mo-fos!"

Captain Hayes looked at Chris. "Are you sure you should have come?"

Chris looked back, brown organic eyes meeting dull silver optics. Jim shivered at the look of ancient hatred he saw. "Yes."

"Just checking."

Silence.

"Hey, Chris?" Hoaloaka yelled. "Give us some mood music, would you?"

The man known as Christopher Mesler - and Jim shivered again, realizing just how much of a mask that name was - smiled with genuine humor. "Right. I've got just the thing here." War drums began to beat, and bagpipes began to skirl.

[Owen Harper]

Crazy lady, Owen reached up trying to get Sarah Jane down. “Sarah Jane, down,” he said to her. The woman was wild and crazy and Owen did not want anything happen to her. The woman had soul. She was bigger than life. He wondered Sarah knew that. The Doctor must have because he had Sarah Jane with him. He had wondered how many times did the Doctor died when he travelled Sarah Jane.

[Alec Harrison]

Blue knew Sarah Jane? Sometimes, the Doctor was so wrapped up in being do much older than his companions, he forgot that the Djinn dwarfed him in age.
"Brilliant, that one. Bit random, but always unpredictably awe-striking." he said with a smile.

He stopped, now about twenty feet from the enormous Tardis. Was Ms. Jane around here? There was a woman who looked like her mother, but he doubted it was her.

Of course it was her. He felt like he should apologize, but they were only his thoughts. Besides, she had aged very well.
"I assume that you wanted me here? I've recieved quite a few invitations in my time, but this tips the iceberg. I'm deciding whether I think it to be ingenious, or rather absurd. I come to the conclusion, it is certainly both."

Before she noticed him, a car picked her up. Specifically, a Fish Car.
"That's rubbish luck."
He didn't see any reason for her to run off like that, until he saw...the metal men.
___________

Alec bit his lip, an uncanny habit he and Susan seemed to do, as if Harrison had a puppet-master who had run out of opening sentences.

But that was absurd.

“Sometimes, Harrison,” she said, an icy edge to her voice, “I wonder if you remember that I’m also from Gallifrey.” Her blank expression shifted, and her lips twitched slightly into a smile. “Savvy?”

"Well, Foreman," he shot back teasingly, "I wonder if you remember my sincere hatred of my surname."

He took her hand, awkwardly bracing her fingers.
"Shall we start with the amazingly blue box, or the..."

The sound of marching interrupted him. He turned his head, fear already visible on his face.

"...Cybermen."

[Owen Harper]

Owen was looking dead pan. Lets say he looked more dead pan. He was looking over at Sarah Jane, "We got Cyberman and you said don't let Torchwood know?" asking Owen. The odds are way against them. They were Cybermen and he had encountered one but the WHOLE team of Torchwood had to deal with one and she was not a FULL Cyberman.

[Sarah Jane]

When the Driver of the car began to wail with fear, she and Owen had gotten out. They were now running at top speed toward the chaos ahead. She shot a firm look over at her friend who was more than keeping up with her regardless of his space suit.

"Exactly, Owen!" She nearly shouted. "Torchwood protects England. I protect Earth. There has to be a second wave of resistance if we fail here!" Luke is in England, she left unsaid, but almost shamefully, she is pleased that she has the excuse of the entire continent of the Old World to keep Torchwood close to her home. Her family. Owen was also her family, but it was different. Owen was a soldier. And right now she needed him. Earth needed him.

Sarah Jane shot a look behind her. Some Burners who had spent time in the big, cool bouncy room of the inflatable TARDIS, some who had heard her speak were running along behind her. Good, she'd need them as well, for the moment.

The pair was closing in on the horrible scene ahead. Cybermen plunging primitive headgear into the swarms of humans around them. Hurting them. Converting them. Wickedly enticing with whatever hardware they were brandishing to the wildly open minded souls around them, though some of the more lucid humans did flee.

"Run! RUN! Get OUT! RUN!" Sarah Jane screamed, plan forming. The chorus behind her shouted together, echoing her desperate words.

"Run! RUN! Get OUT! RUN!"

She and Owen had speed, and she used it, zipping into the crowd and threading her way into the violence of flesh and metal. even as her mind wove a plan at breakneck speed. She had to be near the middle of it all to make for the least human casualties. Finding near center, she spins, hauling Owen to a stop, yanking him around to face her.

"Owen. Watch my back. Turn off your audio." She said simply, but aching plea in her eyes. "Don't leave me." And with this, she slammed shut face plate firmly shut. She took the Sonic out and aimed it up. adjusting it by touch to the frequency she choose. She cranked it up to almost it's highest setting of output.

There is much debate about the existence of the so called "Brown Note" A frequency, when experienced, will cause any human listener's bowels to cut loose. It dose exist, but Sarah Jane did not use it now. She used the frequency that would scream to any humans system - "RUN". This she dialed, locked her own legs, grit her teeth and broadcast it to the underside of the ship to help it echo all around. It screamed through her system.

"RUN"

And run they did, those who had not yet been overcome by Cybermen began to run as surely as people on fire.

Sarah Jane screamed, but it was lost in that searing sound. It took both hands and all her determination to hold the Sonic, and hold her ground.

[Susan Foreman]

“Brilliant, that one. Bit random, but always unpredictably awe-striking,” the Doctor said fondly. Blue nodded in agreement, stretching his human form. He wasn’t sure if it was psychological or if there was some actual basis, but he always seemed so cramped when he wasn’t in his energy form.

“She is an amazing person,” Blue said, leaving out a few details. He wasn’t sure if he was allowed to speak of the school he had been hired for or even what he had done there. Would the universe explode? Very unlikely, but Blue was grievously uninformed about time travel and its dangers. He followed the Doctor closely, looking at the inflata-TARDIS. “It is a rather grand invitation. A bit too grand to be a coincidence?” he mumbled. He knew that his masters had the tendency to stumble into situations that were both dangerous and in-need of stumbling-into, but this?

There was absolutely no way that they could have merely waltzed into a plot like this. Right? Deciding to interrogate the TARDIS and her methods later, Blue focused his attention on the car that was driving away. “Do you want me to follow…” he trailed off, looking at the line of robots marching along.

Blue edged in closer to the Doctor, wary. “What can I do?” he asked.

---

“Well, Foreman, I wonder if you remember my sincere hatred of my surname.”[/color][/i]

Susan, as though she hadn’t already been flustered enough, nearly let out an over-the-top girly giggle as he took her hand. (But, as per usual, she refrained herself stoically). “No,” she replied, clearing her throat and her mind. She focused on solving equations while looking around them. “I know how much you don’t like it. I, however, found it lovely, Har-ri-son,” she enunciated.

She followed his eyes to the Cybermen. “Hm. I’m sure the Cybermen are only here for the blue box. Therefore, I vote box!” she said, registering his fear. She lifted her other hand awkwardly, and patted him. “We should probably stay out of their way. I have a death wish, but not a ‘turn-me-into-a-Cyberman’ wish.”

She pulled Harrison into the throng of people.[/size][/font]

[The Master]

"RUN!"

The speed of sound at sea level is 340.29 meters per second. The signal from Sarah Jane's "sonic lipstick" took some 2.938 seconds to reach the ventral hull of the cybership, and another 2.938 seconds to rebound.

within seven seconds, therefore, Burning Man was a mob scene. Those nearest the Cybermen ran blindly, screaming, a howling mass seeking to escape the chromium terrors that preached of equality and peace while stabbing people in the heads.

"RUN!" Sarah Jane's amplified voice thundered again.

The Burners further out, only dimly aware of what was transpiring, joined the paniced rush without knowing why.

"RUN!"

The Cybermen at the epicenter of the panic watched the humans flee. They did not feel irritated or frustrated, and they did not suffer the effects of Sarah Jane's sonic command. They were beyond emotion.

"aN AcouSTIC wEApon Has beEN dEplOYed AgaINst uS," one of the Cybermen reported. "tHE wEApon Has cAUSed tHE huMAns tO fLEe. I aNtIcIpaTE a SixtY-tHREe pERcENt redUCtiON iN OpEratiONAl efFICiENcy."

"Be adViSED," the CyberLeader answered back, "aUDio stResS pATteRN aNAlYSis OFferS a sEVeNtY-sEVeN poiNT tWO tHREe pERcENt pRObABilITy tHAt tHE wEApon Has bEEn dePLoYEd bY SARah JanE SMIth."

"tHE namE iS unFAMilIAR To mE," the Cyberman said.

"shE iS a huMAn, and oF No iMPOrt iN And oF hERsELf," the CyberLeader answered. "bUt shE iS knOWN tO bE An asSOCiaTE oF tHE tIMe loRD knoWN As tHE dOCtOR. PRocEEd On tHE asSUMptIOn tHAt hE iS prESeNT."

"UnDERstOOD," the Cyberman answered.

They spread out, triangulating the source of the signal. Then, with no further words, they turned and advanced in that direction.

[The Meddler]

"ETA three minutes," the pilot called.

"Right, then," Captain Hayes announced, "Saddle up!"

The assembled Specters locked their helmets in place, executed final weapons checks and slung them, and took their places by the exit ramp of the Peregrine.

"We're dropping into a hot LZ from 300 meters," the Captain reminded them, "The hostiles are mixed in with civilians. Watch your fire, and resort to hand weapons as necessary."

Christopher Mesler hefted his cane and stood by the Captain. Jim stared at him, face invisible behind the mirrored bowl of his helmet.

"What the hell are you doing, Chris?"

Mesler grabbed the web harness strapped over Jim's armor. "Dropping into a hot LZ, to borrow your phrase."

"Chris, seriously. This is..."

"Not open to debate."

The exit ramp dropped, revealing the ant-like figures of the Burning Man crowd some three hundred meters below them. Captain Hayes shoved Chris back. "On the bounce!" he shouted, and lept from the open door.

Something slammed into his back as he went into freefall. For a second he thought one of the other Specters had mistimed his jump, before he saw Chris' arm wrapped around his neck.

"I told you, Jim!" Mesler shouted, "This isn't open to debate!"

---

Captain Hayes flexed his knees deeply as he hit the sun-baked earth, his mass and velocity driving his armored feet slightly more than ankle deep into the hard-packed ground. Burners scattered around him as the shockwave of his impact added to the general atmosphere of panic.

"RUN!" The armor damped out most of the effects of the sound.

"What the hell was that?"

Chris clambered off his back, apparently none the worse for wear, looking at the cybership with interest. "That," he said, "was our intrepid guest."

"Miss Smith?" Jim asked, surprised.

"Yep. Allowing for the distortions of volume and autotuning to a specific frequency... oh, by the way: two hostiles on your left."

Captain Hayes spun, bringing his large-bore submachine gun to bear on the approaching Cybermen. Before he could squeeze the trigger, another Specter crashed feet first into one of them, crushing its torso into the baked earth.

"Yeeeee-haw!" Hoaloaka screamed, flexing his knees and using his momentum to drive a piledriver-like fist to the back of the Cyberman's head. It crushed like an egg, spewing grey pulp and reddish-brown fluid.

Hayes squeezed off two shots, twin sounds like God clapping His hands. The second Cyberman staggered under the first impact as the round deflected off its armor, then produced an electronic squeal and crashed to the ground as the second .50 HEAP round punched through its torso and detonated.

Captain Hayes stared at the fallen cyborgs. "They... they look like... us."

Mesler wheeled on him. "Have I cut your emotions out? Have I?"

"No..."

"Are you an unfeeling machine? Have you voluntarily cut away the things that make you human?"

"No..."

"Then you are nothing like them!" Mesler's voice was cold and harsh now. "But that is what they will do to you, to your family, to your species, if they are not stopped here!"

Captain Hayes nodded. "Right, then," he said, the intial shock fading. "Specters! On me!" He turned, surprised, as Chris headed towards the big blue thing in the background. "Where are you going?"

Chris looked over his shoulder. "To go find Ms. Smith. I suspect she will prove invaluable!"

[The Inventor]

"RUN, RUN" was what The Inventor heard as he got up. Searching his pockets, he found his locater, which he used to find the source of the sound. As soon as it was done calculating frequency and bounce-back ratios, the locater served to direct him to the source. The Inventor started to run as fast as he could towards the source of the sound, regardless of its meaning.

[Owen Harper]

The dreaded sounds beating in the air. The marching of the new wave of Cyberman are known to scare everyone. The silver shinning emotionless soldiers are here for one thing.

"DELETE!"

Lifting there hands, the walk by catching victims as the place the cold metallic hands on people's shoulders, heads or whatever they can get. They get shock for their life and the drop like flies. The smell of burned flesh could be smelled in the air.

Row and rows of Cyberman came marching in the scene. "We will make you better," ALL Cyberman chanted all together as their metallic voice boomed the air.

Humans and aliens alike fallen. "You will not resist," the spoke to some humans who were bold and brave as they raise their hands to surrender to the cyberman. The ones who surrender are not aware of the foolish mistake. They are better to be dead.

The prisoners of war had been soaring as the Cyberman marched the captured humans. Who soon will be joining the ranks of the cyberman. "We will RULE the world!"

--------

Owen had not pulled a weapon. He was stoned shock at the cybermen. How quick they came out and started taking control.

"SARAH JANE!---" Owen grabbed for Sarah Jane. "We need to hide...."

Fiver cyberman started to shoot by them, the Cyberman are attacking the men who were shooting them. "Foolish! DELETE!DELETE! DELETE! YOU ALL WILL BE DELETE!" the tone of he Cybermen sounded a little deeper in anger which was odd for Cybermen.

More ships came to down from the heavens. Who will save them?


To make things worse, the Cybermen have portable Cybermen converters. RIGHT in combat they started the process. People are heard screaming! Their souls being torn out of them. They lost all their will. All their dreams! All they loved slipped because they became weak. The total mass of the attack of the cyberman was too much. It looked like a losing battle.

[Sarah Jane]

After the first two seconds of that terrible frequency, she knew she could not stand against it. There might as well be fire licking at her heels. It felt good to run, and turned out to be wise, for the Cybermen came after them even as the went after the rest of the humans. She was not running away, but simply doing a deadly dance with Owen as they zipped around this or that pair of arms reaching out with one of those terrible pinch - on Cyberhelms. She shuddered to think what effect these horrors had on those forced to endure them in this bloody pithing. She avoided these people as well, upright or prone, not ready to learn more yet.

She was too busy trying to stay alive, and keep the tone going long enough to get all the humans doing what they did better than Cybermen. Run. Surely if the metal riddled creatures wished to shoot them, they could have, normally would have, but there seemed to be a greater plot in the making. Apparently, at this point, warm human bodies were preferable to cold ones.

Owen called retreat. She was surprised they'd survived this far.

"Right!" She shouted back and started pelting away from the eye of the storm. "I need one of these guys!" She insisted as she came across a sad lot of Emo kids who had been speared and altered by the Cybermen. She grabbed one, and next thing you know she and Owen were in quite a wrestling match.

She didn't see the full metal Cyberman coming up behind them. Too many things on her mind. She feared for Tess and Tessa, her daughters future hanging in the balance, she could only hope that Tessa, the elder of her, would know when to run, and know how important it was to keep the Inoculation (later to be known as Earth's Balls) being scattered out to the people. More important than ever.

She didn't even smell it coming.

[The Inventor]

Finally arriving at the source of the sound, The Inventor saw that it was the woman who had been handing out the balls. That was when he saw the menacing metal man coming up from behind her. With a sense of urgency, he took out his sonic screwdriver, set it to full power, and blasted the metal man with it, causing to temporarily stop all functions. Following the blast, The Inventor ran forward to the woman, said, "I'm The Inventor, now come on before old metal face behind you wakes up again." and runs hoping that the woman is close behind so he can ask her about the intriguing balls.

[Sarah Jane]

The Sonic. It nearly made her jump out of her skin, for she was fairly certain she had the only one on Earth. For a moment, she had thought it was the Doctor, but a few words from his mouth, and she knew he was not.

However, for the moment, he was just as useful, for the Cyberman was frozen, just feet away from her.

"Right! Owen, with me!" She shouted, and chased after 'The Inventor'. The scuffle had brought her to her senses. Sarah Jane recognized how much trouble they were in, let go of the poor Emo kid who now was sporting a terrible brain piercing and an attitude to match.

She'd discarded plans A, B, C, D, and E, but now that she suspected that her sudden guide was a Time Lord, a half dozen new plans formed in her mind. Each one broke the laws of time.

Plan L, though, began to form, and she found some hope there. She glanced back to make certain Owen was still with her.