Bigger on the Inside

A Doctor Who and Pokemon Crossover

by Nocturne-of-Eclipse

Disclaimer: Doctor Who and Pokemon are registered trademarks of the BBC, and Nintendo and the Pokemon Company, respectively.

Amy and Rory were gone, and he was alone. He tried not to think of it. Tried not to remember—New York City, the angels, Rory dying and dying again and Amy, dear, dear Amelia Pond, her eyes steady on the statue as she stood in front of her husband's grave. Will it take me to him, Doctor? she had asked him, there's room on the headstone for another name. And now they were gone, lost to time that was fractured and twisted so terribly he couldn't save them.

The Ponds were gone.

And the Doctor was alone.

He didn't take River with him. He couldn't—couldn't bear to look her in the eye, couldn't bear to speak to her, couldn't bear to be near her. He knew she would look at him with pain, with pity and grief for the loss of his best friends, her parents, and he didn't want it, nor did he need it. She would try to pretend everything was alright, make her subtle, wise jabs. Sometimes it was like River knew the Doctor better than he knew himself, and he supposed in some ways, in some meetings that was true; life of a time traveller, after all. Still, he didn't want it, and if the Doctor didn't want something, he did what he always did best: run. And run. And run and run and run like the coward he knew himself to be until his problems were far, far behind him and he could pretend like they never happened, could bury himself in some crisis or another, straighten his bowtie, and have an adventure.

That was what the Doctor needed: an adventure. Something grand, something amazing, something fantastic. In fact, something like the alignment of the Velleity System, an occurrence that happened only once every millenia where the planets orbiting the star Vereles II, each of the twelve made entirely of glass mixed with different elements and thus each a different color, aligned in such a way that they reflected the star's light between each other and bathed the entire galaxy in a dancing rainbow aurora. To be fairly honest with himself, the Doctor wasn't quite sure why he hadn't been to the event before; it'd been one of the many dream destinations he wanted to travel to, and once upon a time he'd even been planning on taking Rose Tyler to see it, when it was only them. He'd never gotten the chance then. He supposed now was as good of a time as any.

"How does that sound, eh, old girl?" he said aloud as he threw switches, slapped on keys, pulled levers and danced his way around the TARDIS' console with all the grace of a drunken giraffe, "July twenty-second, twenty-four hundred AD in the Velleity System! I think it's a Thursday—you wouldn't think so, would you, these sorts of things tend to happen on Saturdays, but I guess they can't all be—oh, come on, don't fuss! I've been wanting to see this for ages!" He rambled and ranted as he usually did, half-hearted with only the TARDIS listening to him. It was more fun when he had an audience that could talk back, though he knew it wasn't the TARDIS' fault she couldn't. Still, this was why he had companions. Sometimes he just needed the feedback.

With her shuddering groans, only a few moments later the TARDIS fell out of the Time Vortex and into space, and the Doctor eagerly eyed the galaxy on the TARDIS' view screen, seeking out each planet whose name came to him in the whispers of the stars and time and space, but abruptly his face fell and his brow furrowed in puzzlement before a note of disappointment left his throat. "Nooooo," he groaned, "no, this isn't where we were going at all! You're always doing this, aren't you? There's nothing here, just this—this big asteroid, what, are the Daleks building a colony in it? Is that why you've brought me here?" The TARDIS hummed with the energy of the Vortex in reply, and the Doctor huffed and pouted. "I'm telling you," he continued, "there's nothing here."

He spoke too soon.

Suddenly there was a crash and the whole TARDIS shifted and shook as though something had hit her; the console sparked angrily and the Doctor barely had the time to catch himself on the safety railing behind him as his balance was torn out from under him. "What was that?" he cried as the TARDIS began to settle and he could right himself as best he could. The TARDIS chimed in angrily, but the Doctor ignored her and pushed off the railing and back to the console, holding onto the edge tightly as he leaned in to peer at the view screen once more.

It was unlike anything he had seen before; space was rent, like huge claws had torn at the fabric of the universe and split it apart to reveal a gaping wound hundreds of thousands of meters high. In the back of his head, the Doctor vaguely registered the mauve alarms going off in the TARDIS, but he ignored them, rooted in spot as he gazed into its depths and saw—something big, something huge and pink, and something darker, bluer, and there was fire, explosions, and the noise. Even from within the TARDIS the Doctor could hear fearsome, guttural roars that shook him and his vessel both, could see bright spheres that erupted into brighter, violent explosions that seemed to grow larger and larger.

Suddenly snapped from his stupor, the Doctor quickly turned back to his controls, a pressure in his hearts and his mind that made him want to turn tail and run, scurry back to the other side of the universe, maybe find a space cafe and stop for some tea instead. He began flipping levers and switches, reached to press his hand to the telepathic circuit as he pressed buttons with his free hand and one foot, but the TARDIS refused to enter the Time Vortex. Something was wrong, something was very, very wrong, and this rend had to be the cause of it, had to be the reason why the TARDIS was starting to make wheezy groans and struggled grinding like she was sick, like she was failing. Out of the corner of his eye he could tell they were drifting closer and closer to the rend. It occurred to the Doctor that something on the other side, something big, had caught them in its gravity field, but that didn't explain why they couldn't jump into the Vortex, didn't explain anything. Something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong.

It wasn't long before they passed through the rend, and though the Doctor fought tooth and nail with the controls to escape, the TARDIS was picking up more and more speed. The creatures he saw in the view screen didn't seem to notice the presence of the blue box that was flying between them and continued their battle; the blue one would roar, and the TARDIS would shiver and shake, her instruments going wild, and the pink one would roar in return and slash at the air with its massive claws, energy blasting forth to leave more scars. Occasionally it seemed their energies would collide, and the shockwaves threw the TARDIS around like it was a toy with a tiny rag doll man inside. The Doctor's movements became frantic, sloppy, and he hurriedly tried to divert power to the TARDIS' shields; the great beasts' attacks collided once again, and unprepared, the Doctor lost his footing as the TARDIS spasmed. The ceiling grew further away, and as he went down, his head cracked painfully against the safety rail.

The TARDIS sped up, vibrating with the fire of a gravity field, and the last thing the Doctor heard before darkness overtook him was the vessel's psychic interface. Stabilizers failing. Brace for impact in ten... nine... eight...