Peri: The Vampire Slayer

Gargril crept into the old family crypt. There had been scurrilous rumours against his family's name these last few days and he intended to put a stop to them once and for all. The old oak door was heavy and rusted at the hinges but it opened enough to allow access.

The inside was as to be expected. Rows of sealed coffins stacked neatly with due reverence. He sighed a breath of relief and turned to leave.

Blocking his way were a group of people who appeared to be old ancestors. Their portraits hung on many of the walls in the older parts of the castle.

Gargril screamed as the night horde descended on him.

Peri liked this part of ... Rumania? All the rare plant species were valuable additions to her collection. "What was the name of this place again? Lusitania?"

"You know Peri you really need your hearing checked. This ..." The Doctor swung his arm in a theatrical gesture. "This is Transylvania. Home of dark legends and folklore."

"Oh great; you bring me to creep central where any moment now I can expect some amorous vampire lord to bite my neck."

"You've been watching far too many movies for your own good. You should get out more, take in the clear forest air."

"You're a fine one to talk. You sit around the TARDIS all day moping and eating hotdogs."

"I do not eat 'hot dogs'. On occasion, very rare occasions at that, I may lower my standards to sample the garishness of a beef burger. Never a hotdog though, not after that time in New York."

"Yes we had to run pretty fast from that irate taxi driver."

"Yes, well my digestive system rejects all poisonous foodstuffs."

"Hey look at this." Peri held up a bluey green plant. "I've never seen a plant like this before."

"It's not a native."

"It was brought in for elsewhere? I wish people were more aware of the damage that causes to the eco system."

"I mean it's not native to the Earth. This Peri is an alien life form."

"Not a Krynoid is it?"

"No this is just a harmless plant. But how would a seed get here? Of course it was brought here on a ship by accident or design ..."

Gargril lurched through the ruins of the castle. There was only the hunger driving him on. He needed to stop the hunger but it never lasted, the hunger was eternal. He saw two people, victims he thought. The male was strong and powerful. Take him out first and leave the female for later.

The Doctor turned around in time to see a rag clothed man jump at him. They wrestled but the Doctor was overcome.

Peri picked up a fallen branch and tried hitting the attacker but her blows were ineffective.

The Doctor stared into the fanged mouth of the stranger and gagged on his breath. He searched his pockets. He had just the thing somewhere.

Peri resumed her attacks but she still couldn't cause any damage. She would throw stones but she might hit the Doctor. In fact the first four stones did. "Sorry."

Inside a pocket the Doctor found the clove of garlic. He managed to stuff it into the vampire's mouth and it began to scream.

Peri struck the vampire in the back with the broken end of the branch. She was shocked when it sank into its body.

Gargril looked down to see the pointed end of a branch burst through his rib cage. The hunger died inside him. "Free! Free!"

Peri and the Doctor dived for cover as the vampire exploded in a mess of blood and bone.

Once back at the TARDIS Peri stored her samples and went to have a three hour bath only to find the Doctor had beaten her to it. "Hey don't use up all the hot water."

3002: A Space Oddyssey

The Doctor burst out of the bathroom, dressed in a bathrobe that was identical to his usual 'colourful' coat, knocking me to the floor in the process.

"Hey watch where you're going." I got to my feet. "You could at least help me up Doctor."

"Hurry up Peri." The Doctor hurtled off in the direction of the console room. I had to run to keep up with his pace.

"I was thinking about that alien plant you discovered."

"What about it?"

"I remembered that I have seen it before somewhere. On the planet Europa to be exact."

Europa, Europa. I had heard the name before. Of course, one of the moons of Jupiter. "I thought you said Europa was a giant ball of ice Doctor."

"At the moment it is but in the future it is a lush jungle paradise."

"They must have invented a doozy of a terraforming machine." I chirped.

"Doozy? Doozy? DOOZY? I wish you would learn English Peri."

"What kind of plant is it Doctor?" Changing the subject with the Doctor was an art form. I had to pick just the right time and choose a topic he could wax lyrical about until he forgot what he was on about.

"Its a common bjun weed, it's as abundant as an Earth daisy. It's not harmful in anyway, in fact I have a recipe for bjun salad somewhere."

"Sounds delicious." Sounds dreadful more is closer to the truth. Why was he so obsessed about food now I wondered

Europa was a pleasant surprise. I was expecting a bit of a chill but it was surprisingly warm. I was glad I had kept my favourite peach shorts on as jeans would have been uncomfortable with the humidity. "My it's hot here." The gravity was low to; I felt twenty pound lighter, which was nice.

"Look in the sky Peri."

I looked up at where the Doctor was pointing. "Hey they moved a planet closer to the sun, neat."

"That's not the sun Peri, that's Jupiter or Lucifer as it has been renamed. Almost a millennia ago Jupiter mysteriously ignited and became a companion star to the sun."

"All the moons now have their own sun, life will find a way." A sudden thought stuck me as I remembered that cheesy film. "There's not any animal life here yet is there?"

"Don't expect any dinosaurs Peri. The gravity is not high enough for anything over about ten feet to evolve and flight will be difficult."

I gathered as many samples as I could. This would really get me back in Professor Kingsland's good graces. Then something brushed against my leg and I screamed.

"Don't move Peri, keep absolutely still."

I dared not even breathe until the Doctor had picked up a small rodent. It resembled a large mouse but its fur was green and its eyes a nice shade of pink. "That's the weirdest mouse I've ever seen."

"It was a mouse, but look at how the native flora has changed it. Some kind of genetic drift I suspect. The only time I've ever seen anything like this was when the Daleks cultivated Krynoid pods to make the hybrid Varga plants. Very nasty I can tell you."

I looked at the mouse again. Its fur was twitching and it made noises like it was in pain. Then a spike burst through its skin followed by another and another until it looked like a cactus. The Doctor dropped the creature and it scuttled away.

"Well there's something you don't see everyday. Hostile take over of one organism by another."

"Shouldn't we get back to the Tardis?" I didn't want to stay here a minute longer."

"Yes we've got all the answers we need."

"We have?" I couldn't see what we had learned by a mouse turning into a plant.

"Yes. The contamination from a Dalek experiment wound its way here by means as yet unknown. Then explorers managed to take a few seeds back to Earth. These seeds then somehow managed to be taken back in time where we discover them just before our undead friend takes a liking to your jugular vein."

"That was romantically put."

"Now we need to know how these seeds ended up over a thousand years into the past."

"Some kind of time experiment?"

"Possibly."

The Doctor set the co-ordinates and we were off onto another adventure. I had more important ideas like going for a long soak in the bath. Just the thing to soothe away all the rigours of the day.

The Peri Brown Picture Show

Jang Felkin adjusted the sensors once more, these readings had to be wrong. They were showing a steady build up of chronometric particles and peppermint quarks. "These readings simply can't be right. It would mean a second capsule was about to phase into this very room."

On cue the blue police box shape of the TARDIS materialised with its habitual vworpesqe soundtrack.

Felkin backed away from the strange box as the door swung open and two figures emerged. "Please don't kill me, I surrender." Pleading for his life seemed the best bet he hoped.

The taller of the two strangers smiled. "We're not interested in all that invasion nonsense my dear sir. We're here to investigate some illegal time travel experiments. My assistant Miss Brown will give you any more information you require."

"Thanks a lot Doctor." Peri whispered quietly. "Now if I could just take your name sir, for our report."

"There's going to be a report? Felkin, Jang Alang Felkin."

Elsewhere inside the complex other visitors arrived. They brought with them a very special cargo which needed the base's facilities.

The Doctor examined the equipment and sucked air through his teeth like a mechanic about to treble the price of the bill. "I'm afraid this is going to have to stop. This equipment is far too dangerous. The Maxiquillizoth drive is leaking and the Hooperafizza seems to be missing entirely, very nasty."

"Nasty?" Felkin enquired.

"Oh yes, this machine is a menace to anyone who uses it."

"We've had ten test flights and the pilots have all been checked out."

"Ten? Then it's worse than I feared. The Time Lords must be aware of the problem. I can only hope their agent is already at work."

"Doctor, remember Telos?" Peri had a bad feeling about the whole situation.

"What about Telos? Oh I see. No, I won't do it. Not again. I refuse to be the one who does your dirty work anymore!" The Doctor could feel them watching him somehow; like a goldfish in its bowl.

The others set about their task, the necessary equipment was acquired and made ready for the grand experiment.

"Who built this shoddily constructed pile of clapped out spare parts?" the Doctor asked.

"Erm I'm not sure, we sort of found it and brought it here."

"You sort of found it?"

"Yes, it was floating around in the middle of a load of pieces of spaceships, almost as if it had been on a ship that was involved in a collision of some sort. We found a few of these as well." Felkin removed a sheet to reveal an assortment of broken Dalek shells.

"Daleks. From the look of these colourings two separate factions of Daleks. Exactly like the ones we saw on Necros Peri. Two Dalek ships collide either by accident or design. This pod is found later on, along with the remains of several Daleks." The Doctor paused. "That doesn't explain the seeds though."

"Maybe the seeds were in the time machine."

"That's not a time machine Peri, it more a sort of temporal storage unit. Of course, the Daleks would carry any biological samples in stasis to prevent growth. Bacteria, seeds, the occasional prisoner before execution."

"Did you find any seeds, Mr. Felkin?" Peri asked.

"Well it's not really my field but if there was then the biolabs would have them."

"You had better take us there. Varga plants are highly adaptable to all lifeforms."

The experiment was ready to begin. The sonic oscillator was cranked up three notches and the various other devices began to kick in. Streams of coloured liquid filled the tank containing a heavily wrapped body.

The Doctor and Peri followed Felkin into the main biolab. It was full of agitated cacti.

"We're too late. Some of these people must have been like this for months." The Doctor pointed to the large pile of torn clothing on the floor, indicating a number of recent victims.

Peri stifled a scream as a thorn was fired into her arm.

"We should leave and have this room flamed, it's the only way, I'm afraid."

"Yes Doctor, you're right. I'll contact the departmental head and get permission."

Peri tried to tell the Doctor she was infected but she couldn't speak properly. The Doctor put his arm around her thinking she was more upset than she actually was.

"Lets get back to the TARDIS, I think we've seen enough for now. We can trace the flight paths of the two Dalek ships from there."

Felkin watched in amazement as the blue box vanished in the same manner it had arrived.

Inside biolab two the experiment was at an end. The bandages were cut away and the bandaged body stood up. The bandages were cut away and Peri smiled.

"How do you feel Peri?" the Doctor asked.

"Human again." Peri smiled as she got dressed, but the recent events would give her nightmares for months to come...

Vampire, Varga, Doctor, Dalek

The first Dalek ship proved just to be a standard attack vessel with nothing out of the ordinary.

The second vessel, the one where the temporal stasis pod full of Varga seeds had come from, turned out to be far more interesting. It has a partially automated ship with two Dalek guards only along for escort duties.

Peri discovered this when she was captured by them shortly after the TARDIS materialised.

The Doctor searched all over for Peri, frequently stopping to lambast her carelessness.

The Daleks were about to exterminate Peri when she suddenly began to turn into a Varga plant.

"Oh my head, feels slow and fuzzy. Why do I keep liking you all of a sudden and why are my arms green?" Then she remembered the Varga spine hitting her leg back at that research base. She had forgotten about it completely when she could find no trace of injury. It must have been a hallucination she had told herself until she obviously believed it.

"You serve the Dalek empire, you are a Varga now." The Daleks chanted in their peculiar, yet sinister, monotone.

Inside a sealed cargo bay the Doctor found it had been stripped out and made to look more like a tomb. Then he saw boxes, lots of them. Each was embossed with the mark of the great vampire. "I was wondering when something like this was going to show up." The Doctor mused. "The Time Prophet said that time was circular, I just didn't expect it to be this neat."

Peri had thrown away the unwanted reminders of her lost humanity and hoped this would please her masters. The Daleks were the perfect beings after all and she had been created to serve them. Willingly she told them about her former friend and colleague, and she was pleased when they ordered her to hunt him down and kill him.

The shadows suddenly got darker and the Doctor turned around to see a Varga that somehow reminded him of his companion.

"Doctor, you must be killed. I serve the Dalek empire and you are its enemy."

"Oh Peri, no. How could they do this to you?"

"Please do not resist and I will make it painless. My poison thorns contain enough venom to end the life of even you."

"Enough poison to find an antidote?" An idea struck the Doctor, but he would need a distraction.

The two Daleks viewed the Varga's progress on a monitor. "The Varga still retains affinity to its former associate," the first Dalek intoned.

"Such weakness will soon be irradicated from it," the second replied.

The Doctor produced a small pocket knife and cut his hand. Then he wiped the blood over a bulkhead. He smiled as the boxes began to rattle and open.

Ten vampires emerged and the bulkhead was clean in seconds.

"Now, erm I wonder if you would be so kind as to contain my friend, she seems to have gotten a little too involved with her study."

"Why should we help you?" the first Vampire asked.

"Because if you don't she's about to poison me. Then how good will my blood be to you?"

"You have a point," a second Vampire stated with a toothy smile.

The Vampires managed to hold down Peri despite her best attempts to infect them. The Varga poison just wouldn't affect their undead bodies as she was bundled inside the TARDIS.

The Daleks fired at several Vampires but the damage was minimal. It was then that a variety of alert warnings began to sound out.

Inside the TARDIS the Doctor frantically set the controls to take him forward in time to the research base. "It was my own temporal wake the TARDIS detected. I should have checked for such a simple probability as that."

Later, much later Peri found herself back inside the TARDIS, all traces of the Varga infection had been removed from her body. "What about our hungry friends?" she inquired.

"While you were being treated I took them to Earth, in the middle ages. They were so grateful as I left them on a desolate moor, only a few hours before dawn."

"So they couldn't survive? You killed them?"

"One or two of them must have survived; remember all the Vampire stories in your planets history? Then our recent encounter with one of their number? Anyway it's all over now Peri, the wheel has come full circle."

"What do you mean?"

"We were at the centre of a crude loop in the fabric of time. Part way between a chronic hysterisis and a full blown paradox. Very nasty too. We had to play out our roles and make the loop complete or we would never have escaped."

"So now we can have a really nice holiday? I really could do with a few days rest and relaxation."

"I don't see why not, I have somewhere delightful in mind, a place of dreams and wild excitement."

"Oh no, not Blackpool again." Peri sulked.

"What was wrong with Blackpool, wretched child?" The Doctor's shouting could be heard three light years away.

"Well apart from being almost killed every few minutes it rained on the one day I did get to spend sunbathing."

"Well there's always the sun kissed shores of Bermuda."

"Bermuda? Great, I'll go and pack."

The TARDIS altered its course inside the space/time vortex; it's occupants busy preparing for some well deserved rest.