Come, pass the cup round -
I will go bail for the liquor;
It's strong, I'll be bound,
For it was brewed by the Vicar!

 -The Teacup Bridinsi

 Would you give up your life for your friends? I mean, if you were actually in a position to do it, actually physically there, would you?

 The Doctor knows what he would do, he's been there so many times before, and even danced with death herself. But then, he has the knack of staying one step ahead of everything, death being no exception.

 Wil thinks he knows what he would do if he were placed into that situation. He imagines in his heart of hearts that he'd run away and leave his friends to their fate. After all, he's done it before, a long time ago.. But that all seems unreal to him now - dreamlike even.

 He sometimes wonders why so much of his past he either seems unreal, or so distant that he can't remember it properly in the first place. But that was another life, another him.

 Things change so fast, and people even faster.

 Wil is now marooned in the wrong plane of reality, in the wrong universe, in the wrong time, on the wrong planet; with a version of himself who hates his guts and an abstract pan-dimensional alien being with designs upon his mind. It is impossible for him to imagine how he could have possibly gotten himself any more lost, and in worse company had he tried.

 And then there's the creature. It knows where it is and thinks it knows what it wants. However, it is wrong. Very wrong, as it will discover, to its downfall.

 Existing, as it is, a creature of pure formless thought, within a specifically designed three dimensional form. Existing to drain the very thoughts of it's victims; and selecting a physical appearance specifically tailored to provoke a desired emotion in either the unreality of this subverse, or the altered reality of the otherverse that is - working on the assumption that they are not both one in the same thing.

 The young Paracastrian looked at the creature with an unfaltering gaze and smiled sweetly.

 "OK then. You can come in, but it'll have to be upon *my* terms."

 The creature quivered momentarily, as if sensing some kind of deception, but then, overcoming its brief lapse, it advanced. As it did so Wil visibly recoiled from its utterly abhorrent form.

 The creature gurgled in anticipation of the joining. "You find my form displeasing?"

 Wil shook his head. "Nonono... I- That is to say..." his words froze in his throat as the Vicar creature began to fold in upon itself, melting away into a brilliant aura of light which appeared to pulse every possible colour at the same time.

 "I will change; become what you want of me, whatever you secretly desire. Nothing shall ever be denied to you again while you love me truly."

 The ball of light hovered in the air for a few moments before speeding towards Wil, entering his forehead through the mental door that had been opened for it.

 Within a few moments the feeling abated a little, and she silently composed herself, casting a glance down at the still immobile form of the Doctor.

 It was if he were being transformed before his very eyes. As a bounty hunter he had learnt to assess a situation in a number of different ways, but it still surprised him that the most accurate gauge was still gut reaction. And glowing translucent kids did *not* bode well for whatever future they had in store for them.

 Wil turned and stared at the bounty hunter, his face a waxen mask, frozen in a ghastly smile. Before the startled bounty-hunter could react, a wave of energy tore though him utterly atomising his form into a million tiny particles which dispersed into nothingness.

 All around, the room began to fade, growing dark and passing like a random thought...

 At least he was 99% certain that he was awake. Looking around he found the comatose form of Angela beside him. So she had finally succumbed.

 He checked her pulse. She was still alive, but for how long was anyone's guess. He had to get her out of here or neither Angela, nor the child she carried would survive.

 There was only one place where he could take her on this twisted planet that might be a little safe.

 The Time-Lord picked up the human in his arms, paused to blow a stray lock of hair out of his eye, and strode out of the room, heading for a bridge with a blue box standing underneath.

 The strange thing was that it hadn't changed a bit.

 She looked around her childhood bedroom sadly. Where had things all started to go wrong for her?

 When she'd been young, things had all seemed so simple so...

 Everything is perfect, all is going to be well again...unless... She's five years old and afraid of the dark - isn't that silly?

 "But how can the dark harm you!" says her father. But she's not stupid, even for a five year old. She knows that it's not the dark, but what's *in* the dark that is the danger. Terrifying things.

 Things that swallow little girls whole.

 "Now then, stop that!" he calls irritated at her desperate pleading. "There is nothing wrong; monsters just don't exist!" But she knows that they do, secretly everyone knows that they do.

 Maybe if she's quiet it won't catch her. If she lies really still. But monsters always wait for the moment when you're unprepared for them, to get you.

 And this time she is so deathly afraid that nothing will calm her down, not cajoling, not threats, not stories - nothing.

 It's arrived!

 It's at the door!

 Eyes closed: pray, pray for him not to go out to prove to her that there is nothing there and everything is all right. Not again...

 She cannot help but look; she has to. There are some things that grown-ups just can't understand.

 But when she does, she is alone. All of her life alone, and it's all her fault, all her fault, all her stupid fault!

 And that's when the palms of her hands begin to bleed...

 The memory him was from his past, a party. He'd gotten so drunk... His memory downed a glass of ale and lurched about drunkenly. The memory suddenly grabbed hold of someone 's shoulders to steady himself and gave a loud belch. "Shorry, my frennd, zhat wash shupposed to be a shneeze.." And with that, the image threw up.

 The ball of energy regarded Wil's present self as the image faded again. "What is it that you want Wil, truly?"

 "Truly?" he asked. "Don't you know?"

 "I could." The ball of energy changed form, becoming tall and humanoid. A rather pleasant humanoid that he had encountered on his home planet, and had utterly failed to impress in the slightest.

 "So-"

 The image walked towards him slowly and steadily. "Maybe this is what you want." said the Vicar, her hair changing from a fiery red to a deep golden colour. "Maybe this is all you've ever wanted."

 Wil took a step back, but immediately met a wall that had suddenly appeared there. He opened his mouth to say something but nothing seemed appropriate.

 "Maybe," he said.

 As they embraced their mental forms began to liquefy and merge into one-another to form a single rippling ball.

 Only this place was filled with things half seen in the darkness. He couldn't think; couldn't reason. There was just the wide open silent blackness, and the path upon which he was running.

 And although he didn't realise it yet, he had made the jump back into a reality to which a nightmare might have been preferable.

 He entered the darkened library through the open door and headed towards the secret entrance that was known only to the Factioners. Upon pulling a book down from the shelf, a narrow passageway revealed itself. Tossing the book aside he walked through for the last time as himself.

 The discarded book "Your own transmogrification, and how to deal with it" slid from the nearby seat to the ground, the pages fluttering slightly.

 Arches of warm gray stone with partitions of stark, asymmetrical rose coloured glass lined the stark chamber adding to its powerful ambiance. The warm silence of the zero environment was delicately disturbed by a Tardis medi-comp as it gently hummed beside where Angela lay.

 The Doctor looked down at the small mechanically evolved lifeform he had befriended elsewhere in the Otherverse. He had always tended to get on with them. Despite the fact that Kat had stowed away, he hadn't minded. Especially as deep down, he rather missed Wolsey.

 Outwardly, it resembled a kind of square, segmented computer chip supported upon a volley of what were once metal connectors to a machine. However, the species had long since developed the ability to use them to walk as well as to join themselves to machinery. Above all, it looked like a dog-sized metal centipede.

 Like so many of its kind, Kat's brain wasn't as well developed as an organic, having the optimistic and friendly air of a child, personality wise. But with the added ability to store and process vast amounts of precise data. Maybe it was this simplicity that the Doctor loved.

 "Rheepy zeep deep deep?" inquired the small creature a little hesitantly, waving a few of the feather-like antennae which adorned its central processing unit, or head.

 "I don't know; I really don't," he replied. "Angela has been abused by people she trusted, her very essence taken away, hidden underneath a hotch-potch patchwork of implants and bepples. It's surprising that she has been able to fight the mental processing for so long." He ran a hand through his straggly hair, silently cursing himself.

 He should never have taken her here, taken her away from her universe. He should have dropped her with someone who could have helped her - somewhere the company would never find her. He could so easily have done it before.

 He'd never imagined that a world so close to a dreamlike dimension could be so damaging to someone who'd had her natural ability to dream suppressed. It was like a crush injury: remove the block too quickly and the patient ends up dying of shock from built up poisons.

 No, the only place that he could properly restore her to health would be her home planet. He had to get her there, he had to - and fast, to avoid the chance of massive mental seizure. Maybe, just maybe then, she would be able to dream again. If it wasn't already too late...

 The Doctor glanced at the readout curiously. Luckily, the stolen gliphonic data-carrying device within Angela's genetic structure remained inert. Hiding itself, as they did amongst the natural functions of the body, invisible to almost every kind of test. That was one less problem to deal with, at least.

 But as the devices generally only became active when the couriers received the activation/extraction codes from the intended recipient, it wasn't uncommon.

 Then there was Wil.

 He had felt the psychic disturbance as his young companion had taken the main consciousness of the Vicar gestalt into himself. It was now Wil's fight alone, and the only thing The Doctor could do was watch, and wait as two of his companions stood on the brink of death.

 It stood to reason why it had chosen a companion of his. Inside Wil, the creature's mind was safe from anything the Doctor could attempt. With only Wil's will to break, assuming that the otherwil hadn't already broken it.

 What could he or anyone else do, but try to stay alive for long enough to come through all this mess?

 The Doctor's moment of futility was eased a little as Kat gently nudged him, its antennae brushing his face in a reassuring way. He smiled and gave his cyberpet a light pat as he stared again into infinity, sitting on the floor of the huge chamber, such a tiny figure, and suddenly so terribly alone...

 "Mad!" he wheezed, "all mad...thought they knew what was going on when all the time it was here! Growing. You have to come and stop it before it tears the us all apart!"

 There was no response. However, he could faintly see the forms of the factioners standing at their places as if nothing was wrong, shrouded in shadow..

 "Well, come on! What are we doing here? We must--!"

 His words froze in his throat as the alcoves all began to illuminate, revealing an hideous abomination in each one. Each an ex-factioner turned Hordes, each real.

 The nearest writhed slightly and in a dull rasping voice intoned what he had repeated many times himself, believing it to be just words. Silly words - a window dressing to liven up a dull ceremony.

 Those same words had suddenly changed; became hostile and deadly. They dripped with evil.

 "We are the first. All shall become one with the group mind. Your place amongst the Vicar has been prepared."

 The nearest creature pointed towards a darkened alcove which suddenly began to glow.

 "No!" He whined, desperate to release himself from the trap he had walked into.. "I refuse...."

 But his body refused equally to obey his commands and continued walking towards the light of his place.

 "Become!" all of the creatures chanted in unison.

 Olf Gichzian felt his skin tighten and change colour as he watched helplessly. With one final blood-curdling scream he ceased to be himself any longer.

 The human form remained still for a moment, before bursting open with a sickening crunch and blooming in a mass of writhing tentacles...

 What had disturbed him? Was it..? He had been willing to dance. And to go on dancing forever.

 The Otherwil stepped up and looked his real self in the eye, suddenly filled with such utter vehement bile that he was momentarily lost for words.

 It wasn't the fact that Wil had lost the battle to the enemy so easily; he'd always known that he was weak. It was a far greater crime in his eyes that Wil had had the gall to be enjoying himself - a happy Wil meant an unhappy, powerless Otherwil.

 Otherwil's eyes narrowed evilly as he fixed the Vicar with a piercing white hot gaze of utter hatred.

 "Why Wil, I don't believe you've introduced me..."

 Toil, sorrow, and plot,
Fly away quicker and quicker -
Three spoons to the pot -
That is the brew of your Vicar!

 -v2

 To be continued...