"Stark, there's another squad of them beaming down on the west side!" SHIELD Agent Natasha Romanoff crouched under the bed of an upturned truck, tracking the alien ship's activity on a gadget in her hand. "You better book it over there!"

"On it." Iron Man's voice answered in her earpiece.

"Hawkeye, I need backup down here!" Captain Steve Rogers shouted from where he was trapped between a mangled eighteen-wheeler and a squad of aliens, spraying him with a constant rain of ionic electromissiles from their extraterrestrial firearms.

A rapid succession of arrows hissed out of nowhere, plunging through the tightly-packed aliens. Their armored exoskeletons deflected most of the arrows, but a few found weak spots and five of the monsters went down.

"My arrows aren't very effective." Clint Barton – Hawkeye – reported as he let off another shot at an alien climbing the building toward him. "And I'm running low."

"We can't hold here for long!" Captain America called. The rest heard him clearly through their earpieces, but nobody responded. He paused to fend off another shower of electromissiles, then added, "We need help!"

"There's nobody left to call in!" Natasha shouted. "We've got Banner and Wilson already, and every SHIELD team that we could get here is already trying to maintain the perimeter."

Rogers took advantage of a lull to scatter the aliens with his shield. "Can we get the army?"

"There's already tanks reinforcing the perimeter, and they've been pumping marines in since we got here." Tony Stark's voice reported.

"How do you know?" Natasha questioned dubiously. "They aren't in contact with us."

"I hacked them before we got here. And I might have falsified the order to engage."

She shook her head. "Of course. Where are they? I haven't seen them."

"They've been coming in downtown." He explained, then switched abruptly to; "Watch it, Wilson!"

"Sorry." The Falcon complained as he smashed into an alien that had been about to open fire from below Iron Man. "Just saving you a patch job on that armor."

"Another squad beaming down, Stark!" Natasha yelled. "Three blocks to your left."

"I got 'em." Wilson swept clear of the buildings and soared toward where a tractor beam from the colossal vessel was lowering another cluster of aliens to the ground. "Good thing these bugs can't fly."

"Nuke the ship!" Stark proposed. "Who knows how many more of them haven't hit the ground yet."

"If we did that they'd mass-evacuate to the ground and we'd have even more of them to deal with." Black Widow dismissed the idea.

"Natasha, there has to be someone else we can call in!" Steve Rogers crouched against a wall, shield over his head, as the eighteen-wheeler exploded twenty feet away. "We can't hold them here much longer!"

"We don't – " She began, then stopped suddenly. "That's not right."

"What?" Barton questioned.

"There's something extraterrestrial materializing by the bridge on Fourth." She watched the screen of her gadget carefully. "But it's totally different from what we've been dealing with so far. Thor, I need you to check it out!"

"Right." The Asgardian cleared a swathe of aliens as he spun his hammer; a moment later Natasha saw him blast into view over the buildings, streaking toward the location she'd named.

Apparently the aliens had also noticed the strange object that had appeared; several of them were approaching it as Thor thundered down in their midst, crushing one as he landed and forcing the others back with his hammer.

"What is it?" Black Widow rolled onto her stomach to get a clear shot at a squad of aliens charging along the sidewalk across from her in the direction of the Hulk.

Thor waited till the racket in his earpiece of her guns going off had abated, then responded, "It's a box."

"What do you mean, a box?" She demanded, hastily reloading her firearms.

"That's what it is." He spun around as two squads of aliens came into view from different directions. "I could use a hand here."

"Coming!" Wilson's voice answered.

Thor backed up against the box, still speaking to Natasha as he fought off aliens. "It's just a blue box. It has a lamp on the top and a door on the front."

"That's it?" She shook her head. "That doesn't make any sense! It just materialized! That doesn't just happen!"

The demigod shrugged, still trying to keep the aliens away as more flooded toward him from every direction. "I don't know how it appeared, but the Nemehvores seem to be extraordinarily interested in it."

"The what?" Iron Man questioned.

"That's the aliens." Steve Rogers put in. "Were you asleep during the briefing, Stark?"

"Stow the chat!" Natasha snapped, cutting off their back-and-forth. "I need this line clear."

Taking her seriously, neither responded. Thor was shouting again, "There are more than a hundred of them trying to swarm this box! Wilson, where are you!"

"Coming!" The Falcon was going at top speed, but he had been a considerable distance away when he took off. "Just hold 'em till I get there!"

"I can't!" The Asgardian roared, flinching as a hail of electromissiles battered him. He was pressed back against the door of the box.

As he shouted, the blue doors swung inward suddenly. Anticipating being trapped in a space too small to swing his arm in, he braced himself to slam into the back wall of the box, but hurtled several steps backward before crashing onto his back on a hard floor.

A lean, wild-haired man in a suit was forcing the doors closed against an onslaught of aliens. He threw a bright grin over his shoulder at the shocked demigod. "Thought you could use a hand there."

Elsewhere, Natasha was shouting into her earpiece, "Thor! Thor, do you copy!"

"I found the box, but Thor's gone!" Wilson reported.

"He got cut off!" Natasha called. "Listen, there's too many bugs there for you. Stay clear and drop some grenades on them."

"What about the box?" He questioned. "They're swarming it; I'll blow it up if I start tossing grenades."

"Do it." She confirmed.

Meanwhile, Thor was speechless, gaping around at the expansive, shining room he found himself in. The odd man had rushed past him to the console at the center of the room, paying the Asgardian no further notice. He realized that he was still sprawled on his back, and quickly scrambled to his feet.

It was only then that he noticed a red-headed girl and a scruffy young man standing close by, eying him curiously. He stared at the two of him, panting, "It's . . ."

"Bigger on the inside!" The chaotic fellow at the control panel put in helpfully. "It is, isn't it? I hadn't noticed!" Then he grinned cheerfully at someone hidden from view behind the column which the control panel encircled. "I love saying that."

Thor snapped back to his senses and wheeled toward the door, shouting into his earpiece, "Natasha?"

"She can't hear you." The peculiar operator of the box told him. "The TARDIS cut off your transmission when you came in."

The Avenger shoved the doors, but they didn't budge. Furiously, he rained a shower of skull-crushing blows on it with his hammer.

"Oi!" The odd, mismatched man leaped across the room and seized Thor's hammer arm. "Stop that! That hurts her, you know!"

"I have to get back out!" The demigod growled. "All due gratitude for rescuing me from the Nemehvores, but open the doors!"

"Can't." Apparently deciding that his passenger wouldn't continue pounding on the doors, the man returned to the control panel. "Don't worry, though; we're in the time vortex right now. We'll get back right where we left – you won't have missed anything."

"Open the doors!" As he spoke, Thor strode rapidly across the room to the console and brought his hammer down on it. "Open them now!"

"Oi!" Incensed, the strange man interposed himself between his vessel's control board and the volatile Asgardian. "If you can't restrain yourself I'll have River do it for you!" He eyed Mjolnir. "Why don't you give me that for now, hmm?"

Thor shoved the hammer against the smaller fellow's chest. "You can't lift it."

"Don't be so sure." With a reconciliatory grin, the man took the weapon and carried it to the seat across the platform from the console. "Ooh. Heavy."

Thor gaped, even more stunned than he had been upon entering the box. "How can you lift it?"

"How can what now?" The lean man queried absently, whipping a green-tipped probe out of the inner pocket of his coat and flashing it across the hammer, then pointing it over his shoulder toward the control panel. "Scan that, will you?" He addressed the last part apparently to thin air, but a beep and a whir from the console indicated that his request was being carried out.

In the pause that followed, his animated eyes returned to Thor. "How can I lift it, you say?" Another beep from the control panel precluded his answer. He swung a screen from the side to examine it. "Hmm . . . oh! Oh, River, it's a selective spatio-gravitonic modulator! I can only lift it because the TARDIS is outside space and time."

"Doctor!" The red-headed girl advanced toward the control panel, indicating herself and the younger man by the door. "Humans, remember?"

"Right, sorry." He grinned, patting her shoulder cheerily. "The hammer is impossibly heavy unless it's being held by this . . ." He waved at Thor, searching for the correct description. "Um, this . . . large . . . muscular . . . chap."

"He is, isn't he?" She smiled at the battered Asgardian. "I'm Amy Pond, by the way."

He eyed her uncertainly. "My name is Thor Odinson."

"Odinson!" The box's oddly-dressed master threw up a hand, his smile widening. "Yes, you're the one who helped me when the Dark Elves were trying to restore the darkness and all that."

This only served to further confuse the Avenger. "I helped . . . what do you mean I helped you? I defeated the Dark Elves!"

" 'Course." The man winked conspiratorially. "That's what people are supposed to think."

"What . . .?" Thor shook his head, completely bewildered.

"And you were there when I stopped the Chitauri, too!" His smile expanded as he seemed to remember. "Oh, yes, you're rather handy with that hammer of yours."

"When you stopped the Chitauri?" The demigod spluttered.

He arched one eyebrow with a good-natured, quizzical grin. "Well, you didn't think they all fell down dead all at once just because Tony Stark flew a nuke into a spaceship on the other side of a transtemporal subionic rift, did you?" He chortled as though, obviously, nobody's that stupid.

Thor's jaw hung helplessly. "You . . ." He trailed off, unable to formulate a sentence.

"His technobabble confuses everybody." The redhead – Amy – assured him in a stage whisper. "It's best to just smile and nod."

"I heard that, Pond!" The stranger's hair flopped as he jerked his head around.

"Sweetie, I think Thor would like to be getting back to his fight." Till this point, the demigod hadn't noticed the woman on the far side of the console. She had a head of hair just as blond and much bushier than his own.

" 'Course he would. Be patient, River." The man nodded vigorously. "I'm calculating the best place to land, and I'm trying to determine how to disable the ship's weapon arrays, tractor beams and isotopic warp fields, and I'm trying to find a way to send them packing. If they have a command frame, the TARDIS should be able to crack it and send the ship on its way, but then I have to mop up the mess of Nemehvores in the city."

"He loves sounding smart." The young man who had been by the door had moved up to stand beside the redhead.

"He does that," River agreed.

"I'm Rory, by the way." The man by Amy introduced himself to a still-baffled Thor. "Rory Williams. Amy's husband," He added a bit possessively, obviously not too happy about how interesting his wife found Thor's state of muscularity.

"Yes, yes, Rory, we know, you don't have to keep reminding us." The man at the console spun on his heel, rubbing his hands together and treating them all to a self-satisfied grin. "Ready, everyone?" He straightened his bowtie. "Good. River, I'm sending you out with Odinson here. You need to help them stall for time while I take care of the rest. Amy, Rory, I'm going to need you two to fly the TARDIS around a bit."

"Whaat?" The pair chorused as one. Amy added, "Doctor, you know we can't do that!"

"Relax, Pond, I'm setting everything up for you – all you'll need to do is push some buttons. You'll be fine . . . unless you push the wrong ones, in which case she might implode." A reassuring grin accompanied this not-at-all-reassuring remark. "Thor, you might want to grab that hammer of yours again. And just so you know, I'm patching into the line your earpieces are on in case I need you lot to do something."

The TARDIS wheezed. He smiled affectionately. "Bless you. Alright, listen up, everyone."

"We are listening," Rory grumbled.

"Right." This didn't discourage the odd man in the least. "We're touching down three point five seconds after we left, but we're going to be a few blocks away – a squad of Nemehvores are about to beam down there. The two of you – " He indicated Thor and River with a sweeping gesture, "Need to contain them while I touch in with the rest of your team and the Ponds drop me off on the mothership."

"What?" Amy squeaked indignantly. "We certainly won't be doing that!"

Ignoring her, he clapped his hands. "Right! Here we are! River, here's an earpiece for you. If you get in trouble I'll be very upset with you."

"Be careful, River." Amy put in as the object of her concern headed for the doors, Thor in tow.

"That's what I said," The TARDIS's operator commented.

The two of them burst out the blue doors an instant after it materialized, River demolishing aliens at long distance with a ray gun in each hand, Thor keeping those at close range from attacking her while she devastated their approaching compatriots.

"It just disappeared!" Wilson shouted over their earpieces.

"It's materializing again!" Natasha yelled. "It's five blocks to your twelve o'clock!"

The Falcon scattered several grenades into the throng of aliens below him before swooping off in that direction. "I'll see if I can catch it."

"There it goes again!" Black Widow reported.

"What is this thing?" Captain Rogers demanded.

Natasha shook her head. "I have no . . ." She trailed off. "Wait, Clint, Thor said it was a blue box . . . could it be . . . ?"

"Be what?" He prompted as she made no effort to complete the question.

"Well . . . you know File One-two-twelve?" She clearly didn't want to discuss highly classified SHIELD information on a line that all the others could hear.

If Barton had anything to say to that, he had to cut it off as Natasha shouted, "It's materializing again! Steve, it's right by you!"

"I see it." Captain Rogers confirmed. "I'll check it out."

He broke from where he was crouching behind a half-shattered taxi and sprinted across the street toward the blue box. Aliens were also racing toward it from every direction, and he reached it just a moment ahead of them and had to spin around to fend them off.

"The doors are unlocked; you can come in." An unfamiliar voice spoke over their earpiece channel.

"Who is that?" Stark barked. "Nobody can hack this line!"

"Oh, please." The voice scoffed. "The TARDIS is offended that you think primitive technology like this is challenging for her."

"Who is this?" Natasha Romanoff demanded.

"I'm the Doctor." The response came cheerfully.

This announcement was met with utter silence from Romanoff and Barton. The Falcon dropped onto a rooftop, searching the streets around him for a glimpse of the box. "Doctor who?"

"Ha hah!" The stranger laughed approvingly. "Exactly! Captain, I really suggest you come in before that squad of Nemehvores with photon resonance projectiles get within range of you."

"In the box?" Rogers questioned disbelievingly. "Are you telling me you're in the box?"

"Yes, and you should be, too." The Doctor answered impatiently. "Really, you're about to have your particles dissolved. Ponds, bring him in here."

"I won't even fit . . ." He began, but before he could finish the blue doors swung open and he found himself being pulled in.

"I think you should fit just fine, Captain." The Doctor grinned from his place by the console. "Now then, I need your help on the ship. Agent Romanoff?"

He took her dead silence as an acknowledgement and continued, "Thor and River – she's one of mine – are dealing with the squad of aliens that just beamed down that you didn't mention because you're all too busy to handle it."

"What?" Stark demanded indignantly, but the Doctor continued.

"I'm borrowing the Captain here to help me out aboard the Nemehvores' mothership, but I'm going to have the Ponds – say hi, Ponds – fly the TARDIS around to places to draw the Nemehvores there. I'm going to send them across the street from Agent Romanoff first, so Tony and Sam should fly over there and back her up, got it?"

Wilson accepted the order without question and swept off in the direction of Natasha. Stark wasn't so keen on the uptake. "Hold your horses! What the heck makes you think I'm going to do what you say?"

"I'm the Doctor." He repeated impatiently as the TARDIS dematerialized. "Tell him, Agent Barton."

"Do what he says." Hawkeye affirmed in a dry voice.

"Thank you." The blue box, at that moment, was rematerializing in the belly of the alien ship hovering overhead. Fitting himself with an earpiece that he had tuned in to the Avengers' channel, the Doctor hurried out, Captain America following, hustled out of the TARDIS. As soon as the doors swung shut he spoke into his earpiece; "Right, Amy, can you hear me? Pull the black lever and spin the thing."

"Which thing, Doctor?" The redhead demanded, clearly nervous. "There are a kabillion things!"

"The one that you spin." He waved vaguely as if she could see the gesture. "Rory, give her a hand, would you?"

"I don't know which thing you're talking about, Doctor!" Rory protested.

"The one that I always spin when – oh, golly. Okay, listen, it's by a row of blue buttons."

"Found it." Amy announced. "You could have said that in the first place."

The TARDIS dematerialized. Nodding, the Doctor continued, "Right, good, now, I've already set the coordinates. All you need to do is push the lever back and flip the switch on the opposite side of the console."

The blue box rematerialized across the street from Natasha. For the first time since the Doctor had introduced himself, Black Widow spoke up. "I see it."

"Right. Iron Man and Falcon, you're on the way?" As he spoke, the peculiar man was leading a bewildered Steve Rogers along web-walled tunnels, his probe pointed into the darkness and whining quietly.

"On the way." Stark confirmed.

"Great. Wait until a lot of Nemehvores are massed around the TARDIS, then do your silly secret agent thing."

"What?" Wilson queried.

"Shoot them, blow them up, murder them, River-style, you know? The TARDIS won't be damaged, don't worry." The Doctor scowled. "Hate to tell you to do it, but it's the only way to stall till I can recall them."

"Recall them?" Barton repeated between arrows. "How are you going to do that?"

"Well, they're insect-esque, so chances are they have a queen of some sort . . ."

"You're guessing." Natasha interrupted disbelievingly. "There's nothing at all to suggest that other than their being bugs."

"There is so!" He contradicted her cheerfully. "The ship has no central command frame; it only has individual control arrays. So the only way they could make the ship work is if there's somebody giving orders to all the others . . . but the ship has no internal communication system, which means it has to be some sort of telepathic connection. But they can't all be sharing a mind because they're not organized enough for that to even be a possibility, so there must be one mind issuing commands to all of them."

"That's still a lot of guesswork." Stark put in critically.

"It wouldn't be much fun if I was relying on facts." The Doctor grinned dismissively. "Now then, Captain, you need to snap out of it; I'm going to be needing your help in just a minute."

"It's . . . bigger on the inside." Rogers was mentally still stuck on the TARDIS.

"Yes." The Doctor grinned. "Yes it is."

"Who are you?" The Avenger demanded, sticking close behind as the stranger navigated the network of tunnels.

"We already did this." He sighed. "I'm the Doctor."

"That doesn't tell me anything." Rogers snapped. "Where'd you get that box? It's not anything we have technology for."

"I should hope not." The Doctor rolled his eyes. "I'm not from Earth. I'm a Time Lord."

"A Time Lord?" Stark, listening to the conversation over his earpiece, echoed cynically.

"But you look human." Rogers remarked dubiously.

The Doctor shook his head vehemently. "I most certainly don't look human; you look Time Lord."

"And what's that?" Captain America gestured to the green-tipped probe.

The alien's face lit up in a smile. "That's my sonic screwdriver. It does stuff."

Rogers had fully shaken off his of it at this point. "What stuff?"

"Cool stuff." They abruptly arrived at a door. The Doctor ran the sonic along the edge of it and it popped open with an electronic click. "Now, you need to be super-extra quiet because we're going to pass a tractor beam port and there will probably be loads of Nemehvores waiting to beam down. Agent Romanoff, have you lot taken care of the bugs around the TARDIS?"

"Somewhat." Stark responded. "Now would be a good time to move your box."

"TARDIS." The Doctor corrected. "And I will. Amy, on the overhead screen . . ."

"Yes?"

"Select the next set of coordinates – it should have a fourteen in it. Then pull the lever and spin the thing again." He paused, listening to the whooshing sound of his vessel dematerializing. "Right, now push the lever and flip the switch again. Agent Barton, it's going to land in the street under you. Shoot some explosives down there, would you? River, go help him out."

"On my way, Sweetie."

"Who's that?" Stark reacted to the new voice.

"River Song, love." She told him. "I helped you with the coliseum bombing, remember?"

"Coliseum bombing?" He repeated, confused.

"River, that hasn't happened yet." The Doctor put in. "That was in 2022."

"Oh, sorry . . . spoilers."

"I love it when she says that to someone other than me." The Time Lord remarked in an immensely satisfied tone. "Thor, I need you to move to the intersection of First and Main; that's where I'm going to send the TARDIS next. There's a metal grid over an entire stretch of the street there. Amy will park the TARDIS at the middle of it, and if you wait for them to swarm her you can do your electric hammer thing and fry the whole thing."

"Understood." The demigod responded.

The Doctor put a finger to his lips, glancing at Rogers and jerking his head. They slid along the back wall of a wide, low-ceilinged room. A mass of aliens were gathered below a glowing section of the roof atop a wide sliding panel.

A sealed door appeared ahead of them. The Doctor buzzed it open with the sonic, then, as an afterthought, pointed his screwdriver in the direction of the cluster of aliens before scurrying through the doorway after Rogers.

As the door shut behind them, the Captain questioned, "What did you do just then? When you pointed your probe at the aliens."

"I was sealing the tractor exit; that'll help stall them for a bit, at any rate." He jerked into a run, still scanning ahead with the sonic. "Keep up!"

Rogers picked up his pace. "Where are we going?"

"Looking for the commander – like the queen of a beehive." The Doctor explained. "If they have one, I'm going to have to figure out how to get him – or her – to recall the rest."

"So you're saying you don't know how to recall them." Natasha had been listening in.

"You said we should do what this whack job says, Barton?" Stark complained. "He's clueless!"

The Doctor didn't seem offended in the least. "I'm not clueless, Mr. Stark, just crazy. Never clueless, always crazy – that's me! Pond, take the TARDIS to the next location. Thor, are you there yet?"

"Yes." The Asgardian responded briefly.

"Excellent. Pond, you don't need me to walk you through it again, do you?"

"No, I think I've got it." Any answered. "Just tell me when to move again."

"Agent Romanoff, after Thor does some Nemehvore-zapping, Amy's going to move the TARDIS to a spot a block over from your location. I'd start moving that way if I were you."

Natasha didn't respond, but he didn't waste time prompting her to be sure she was going where he'd told her to. Instead, he returned his attention to the Avenger tagging along with him. "Hurry up!"

"I'm keeping up." Rogers responded. "Couldn't you have landed your box closer to where we're going?"

"No, because I didn't know where we would be going." The Doctor explained brightly. "The layout of the ship is circular-symmetrical, so I'm guessing the control hub is at the center."

"Couldn't you have landed us there, then?"

"No; the further we landed the less likely they were to pick up the signal of the TARDIS landing. Have any intelligent questions?"

That didn't put Rogers off. "How long is it going to take us to get to the commander, then?"

"Well, assuming there is a commander, we'll get there a lot quicker if we take this." He flashed the sonic at a panel in the wall and it slid aside, revealing a compartment reminiscent of an elevator. "I love it when I do that. Oh, Pond, take the TARDIS to the next location."

The ceiling of the compartment was too low for either man to stand straight; as it accelerated rapidly to an intense speed, moving sideways rather than up, Rogers settled to one knee to steady himself and be ready to react quickly if anything unexpected met them when the doors opened.

They halted abruptly a moment later and the door hissed open. A large, domed room loomed before them, lined with computer screens. At the center of the room, a massive alien was crouched, glaring at them rapaciously. Unlike the Nemehvores the other Avengers were still battling on Earth, which were more like humans than bugs, this monolithic monster looked more like a mountainous insect than a human, although, granted, there were still elements of the humanoid visible in its structure.

"I love it when I'm right!" The Doctor's irrational grin stretched from one large ear to the other. "You'd be the emperor of the Nemehvores, I suppose?"

"I am the emperor of the Nemehvores." The alien's voice grated resonantly at an incredibly low register with a higher-pitched undertone.

"It can talk?" Rogers cautiously followed the Time Lord out of the compartment into the wide room.

"All sentient life forms can talk, Captain." The Doctor was busy scanning the emperor with the sonic.

"But . . . English?"

"No, it's not English." He explained patiently. "Since you've been in the TARDIS, you're part of her universal translation circuit, so you can understand any language in the universe. It just sounds like English in your head. Now then." He turned back toward the Nemehvore. "Be a good girl and recall your troops."

"Is it a girl?" Rogers questioned dubiously.

"Not sure. It gave itself a masculine title, but insectoid colonies like this are usually dominated by a female." The Doctor shrugged. "But girl and boy both translate to the same thing in Nemehvic, so it won't know the difference if I just called it the wrong gender."

While this exchange took place, the alien had hauled its massive bulk toward them, and stopped uncomfortably close as the Doctor finished his explanation. It swung its colossal head down to their level. "The emperor will not recall the Nemehvores. The emperor will eat you."

"Ohh, why does it always go this way?" The Doctor took a precautionary step backward. "This is the only chance I'll give you to call them back."

The alien responded by lunging toward him with sudden, unexpected speed, its jaw hinging open. Captain America reacted just as quickly as the emperor moved; he sprang between the two aliens, hoisting his shield to shoulder height and hunching his head behind it. The gargantuan jaws clanged around the edge of the shield and locked onto it, trying to haul it away. Rogers, though heavy for a human, was insubstantial compared to the weight of the Nemehvore, and only managed to keep a solid grip on his shield as he was pulled forward, further into the room.

"Keep it busy, will you, Captain?" The Doctor was already scurrying along the wall, flashing his sonic at the touchscreen panels which lined the room.

Rogers didn't respond; he was already being shoved back toward the wall, slammed against it, the alien's teeth still locked around his shield. He stabbed his fist into the insectlike eye looming behind the jaws. Hissing, the emperor jerked back, letting go of the shield.

"Okay, listen, Captain." The Doctor spoke unconcernedly as Rogers desperately tried to withstand another onslaught from the immense Nemehvore. "I think we can recall the troops on the ground."

"How?" The Avenger barked, tucking into a roll that carried him between the six clawing legs of the bug to the middle of the room.

"If the emperor is in trouble, the rest will know because of the telepathic link between them all." The Doctor paused, turning to watch the fight with an expression that finally showed some inkling of worry. "So if you get the upper hand in this, uh, skirmish, the Nemehvores on the ground will come swarming back up here."

"Great." Rogers grunted, smashing the edge of his shield into the top of one of the scrabbling legs as the emperor swung around to face him. A screech told him that the blow had been effective. "Then what?"

"Then I'm going to send the ship off."

"How?" Rogers scrambled back as the emperor lurched toward him.

The Doctor was back to scanning computer screens. "Not sure yet."

Slashing at the air in front of him with his shield, Rogers kept retreating as quickly as he could, circling the room. "Great!"

"Don't worry, I'll have it figured out by the time you get the Nemehvore troops back up." Was the response, probably meant to be reassuring. "And then I'll try and figure out how to get us out of here."

Rogers didn't answer; he was entirely focused on staying on one piece as he battled the emperor. The Doctor continued to talk, voicing his thoughts aloud. "There's no central command frame, but this is the command room; the emperor runs all the systems, connecting them all into one structure. Brilliant!"

A clawed, skeletal hand caught Rogers across the chest, laying open a huge slash in his suit and the flesh below. He snapped out an involuntary shout of pain, which finally captured the Doctor's concern. The Time Lord directed the sonic toward the hanging fixture which illuminated the room, yelling at the huge Nemehvore, "Oi! Emperor of the dung beetles! Yes, I'm talking to you!" He stood his ground, still buzzing the sonic at the light, as the alien swung around and lumbered toward him.

Just as it reached the center of the room, a shower of sparks exploded from the ceiling where the light was anchored, and the fixture dropped with an earsplitting crash onto the emperor's head. The Doctor nodded briskly to Rogers before returning his attention to the computers. "Your turn again."

Taking advantage of the Nemehvore's momentary incapacitation, Rogers hammered his shield down on the joint of the nearest of the emperor's six legs, getting in as many hits as he could while he had the chance. Just as the alien was recovering and reacting to the attack, a final blow snapped the leg completely off.

The emperor reeled away, screaming in a hoarse, deep-throated voice. The Doctor redoubled his efforts with the computers. "Nicely done, Captain; now every Nemehvore in the ship and in the city is on the way here."

"Well, that's what you told me to do!" Rogers protested.

"Yes, I didn't think you'd do it quite so soon, though." The Doctor waved a hand. "As you were."

The emperor, despite the loss of one limb, was far from finished. After its initial retreat, it had regained its fury at a safe distance and was now launching a renewed assault on Captain America.

The Doctor continued speaking aloud as the combatants slammed around behind him. "I've found two of the systems I'm going to need to send them off, but I still need to figure out how to lock the ship when . . . " He trailed off, scowling at the screen in front of him.

In the meantime, down in the city, Clint Barton's vantage point on the rooftops gave him a clear view of the Nemehvores swarming the TARDIS while Iron Man and Natasha Romanoff blew up swathes of them at a time. He did what he could to help with explosive-tipped arrows, but his quiver was running low, so he did what he could to conserve his ammunition.

Suddenly, all of the tractor beams on the underside of the alien ship switched on. Rather than sending more troops to the ground, though, they were operating in reverse; the Nemehvores standing under them were immediately levitated upward, toward the ports that had opened to release the beams. The rest of the aliens instantly stopped what they were doing and raced toward whichever of the beams were nearest.

"What's going on?" Wilson's voice barked in Barton's earpiece.

Nobody answered. Although Rogers and the Doctor were still in contact, both were too focused on what they were doing to explain what had happened.

After a moment, River spoke. "He recalled them."

"Ponds!" The Doctor's voice cut across the line. "I need you to bring the TARDIS here."

"Where's here?" Rory questioned.

"The command center . . . you don't know how to get it here, do you?"

"No!" Amy sounded indignant. "All I can do is fly from one set of coordinates to the next!"

"Right, and you don't have these coordinates." The Doctor paused, then shouted, "River, find the TARDIS and bring her here! And really, no pressure or anything, but the Captain and I are going to be mobbed and eaten alive by a million really mad Nemehvores, so if you could hurry about it, that would be wonderful."

As River sprinted in the direction of the TARDIS, Rogers, back on the ship, was gaining the upper hand against the emperor. The Doctor was making the finishing adjustments to one of the computer screens.

The door of the sideways-traveling elevator had closed when they first entered the domed room. Now, without warning, it slid open and the compartment's tightly packed occupants burst into the control room.

"Oh shhhugar!" The Doctor bounced on one leg, looking rather like a frantic crane. "Keep them busy, Captain, I'm almost done!"

"It was hard enough with one!" Rogers wheeled away from the emperor, backing toward the wall. "How long do you need?"

"Uh . . . I just need to finish this . . . but more of them will be here just as soon as that transport capsule can get back again. It can only take one load at a time, but the entire population of the ship is trying to get in here to defend the emperor."

Rogers didn't waste breath responding. He could hold out against the emperor or overcome a squad of ordinary Nemehvores, but a combination of the two was daunting.

"Done!" The Doctor spun on his heel, but his self-satisfied look evaporated upon realizing that two of the Nemehvores that had just entered were coming at him. He flashed the sonic at them and both recoiled, clawing at their helmets.

Moving quickly toward Rogers, who was backed up to the wall, the Doctor called, "I'll take care of the rest, you focus on the emperor!"

The sliding door opened again and another group of Nemehvores spilled out into the room and immediately launched themselves toward the two intruders. The Doctor swung toward them, buzzing the sonic, and they jumped back as if they'd received an electric shock. He repeated the action toward the aliens assailing Rogers; the only one unaffected by it was the emperor.

"River, where are you?" The Doctor shouted.

The whooshing of the TARDIS could be heard in the background as she answered, "On the way, sweetie!"

"Hurry up! We're already accelerating – we'll hit light speed in just a minute!"

"What?" Rogers' shield crashed through the shell on the emperor's shoulder, drawing an enraged screech. "We're leaving?"

"That's the idea!" As the recovering aliens rushed toward him once again, the Doctor had to give ground as he flashed the sonic about. Several of them reeled away, clutching at their helmets, but the rest came on; another sweep with the sonic took care of them for the moment, too.

With a hiss, the door of the transport capsule slid open again and another tight-packed knot of Nemehvores poured into the control room. At the same time, the TARDIS began to materialize at the back of the room.

"Into the TARDIS, Captain!" The Doctor flashed the sonic screwdriver at the new aliens, then again at those he'd already repulsed which were beginning to recover.

Rogers twisted aside, deflecting a headbutt from the emperor off his shield to the side, and sprinted toward the blue box, knocking aside the rank-and-file Nemehvore troops as he went. The Doctor was close behind, buzzing the sonic at any aliens that got close as he went.

They crashed through the blue doors into the spacious interior of the TARDIS. Rogers leaned against the wall, pressing his head back and gritting his teeth as the adrenaline rush faded and the deep rip in his chest began to throb. The Doctor dashed to the consul, ordering, "Rory, take him to the medical bay!"

"Right." The younger man approached the Captain, eying his injury. "This way."

He followed mutely, still gripping his gore-spattered shield.

The TARDIS rematerialized near where Black Widow, the Falcon, Iron Man and Thor were gathering, staring into the sky where the alien ship had disappeared. The Doctor pushed his way out the doors, beaming at them all cheerfully. "The Captain's just getting patched up; he'll be out in a minute or two."

"Doctor, what did you do?" Clint Barton spoke into his earpiece as he rappelled down the side of the building he'd been on.

"I set all the direction control systems to return to their home planet and locked them." He explained briefly.

"Can't they just come back?" Natasha Romanoff questioned.

"No, because I reversed the genetic control lock on the navigation system; the emperor can't decide where to send it anymore."

"Why won't they just use a different ship, then?" Stark asked dubiously.

The Doctor shook his head, clearly bored with their irrational questions. "Nemehvores colonize ships; they don't build fleets like you will. That was their only ship; it'll take them decades to build another." He paused, then added, "And I already took care of their next raid."

"What?" Barton reached them at this point, scowling. "How did you do that?"

"Oh, well, that's how I knew to come here in the first place, because Doctor Banner mentioned that I had said . . ." He paused, then shook his head. "Never mind. Spoilers."

Just then, Rogers appeared in the doorway of the TARDIS. His suit was still torn, but the flesh below it seemed to have been completely healed. Wilson glanced him over curiously. "What happened to you?"

"He's fine, don't worry." The Doctor waved dismissively.

Rory, just behind the Captain, was nodding agreement. "Time Lord medical facilities are a miracle."

"Not a miracle, Rory." The Doctor grinned. "Let's just say Gallifrey's medical science was the most advanced anywhere in time and space."

"Sounds good to me." Amy appeared next to Rory, smiling.

Just then, a group of cops that had been sheltering in the building across the street emerged from their hiding place, advancing toward the cluster of oddities in the middle of the devastated roadway. The leader of the policemen waved his handgun in what was meant to be a threatening gesture. "Look here, you lot are going to have to come in with us."

The others all glanced toward the Doctor. He raised his hands innocently. "Don't look at me. That's my cue to leave. Till last time!" With that, he ducked back through the doors of the TARDIS, shouldering Amy and Rory along with him.

A moment later, the blue box was gone.

A/N: Hey, guys, so I haven't posted anything on here for a while. Please take the time to review - even if you don't have much to say, I'd really appreciate you just letting me know you read it. Even if you just say "Did you write this on a sugar high?" or something, I just want to have an idea of how many people read it. Thanks. :)