Welcome to Gaia! ::

*Lars accepts Firestorm's help gratefully. Her arm is beginning to go stiff and numb.
"We'll take him in there..." she says, pointing to the newly opened door with her good arm, "We can set up a defence. Make a plan."
She knows it sounds a bit lame but her head is swimming and she feels a little sick. When the dizziness subsides she gets up and her and Firestorm drag the unconscious Timelord into the next room, the others following.

Beyond the door is a huge cave covered in ice. As soon as they enter a chilly breeze surrounds them and their breath turns to steam in the air. It seems empty. Along the walls the pipes are the only thing visible - everything else is covered in ice. The occasional piece of machinery protrudes out like a strange metallic finger but otherwise nothing can be seen beneath the frosty white coating.

They set themselves up in a corner between two huge mounds of ice. There is only one door in - only one escape. But it's easier to cover. They watch, nervously waiting for the Timelord to recover.*

* Firestorm moves up to Lars and places her nose on her arm. Closing her eyes, she transfers some of her energy to Lars, healing her arm.

"There, that should to it. I can't do that too much, as I use my own energy to heal. For example, if i was really tired, i could not heal."

Turning to Penfold, she growls at him saying:

"I am not a 'thing' as you described me. I am a Dragonman from Pern. Also, if you provoke me, you will find yourself on the recieveing end of a Dragon temper. And that is not a pretty sight to witness."*

((Yay, the Lumpyheads have come to join the party! mrgreen ))

Meanwhile...

"Where? What?... are we there yet?" Penfold suddenly sat upright and found a rather peeved Firestorm staring coldly at him. He blinked in puzzlement, not having heard a word of her indignation at being called a 'thing'.

"Err... why are we still here? I thought I told you lot that the Cyber Control Room was instantly notified the second I opened the door. I mean, I did mention that, didn't I? Any second now a hoard of angry Cybermen could come bursting in! I really think we should be getting out of here..."

Penfold reached over and gingerly picked up Jiggy's fallen arm, a look of distaste upon his face. With his free hand, he fumbled through his pockets, pulling out a tiny, tattered pouch. He opened it up and stuck the entire arm in, then closed it and tossed the pouch to Jiggy. "It's a Bag of Holding: bigger on the inside than the outside." Scanning his surroundings, he quickly added, "Speaking of insides and outsides, is there another exit out of this chamber? Because it seems to me that if the baddies come barging through that door, we'll be a bit... trapped."

Meanwhile, outside the cave, the Sontarans don their helmets. Slowly and methodically, they enter the lair of the Cybermen.

((Shouldn't that be the Cybermen? I don't think we know about the Sontarans coming yet. sweatdrop ))


By this time, the Sontaran advance scouts Skolon and Stirg had reached the area protected by the Cybermen's automated laser systems. Although several of the blasters had been rendered inoperable during the previous skirmish, the remainder were still functional, and immediately began to fire at the two new intruders. "Pull back," Stirg uttered to his companion. "We must report this to the others."

Unfortunately, Skolon had taken a direct blast to his head, causing his helmet to spin around in a rather dizzying fashion. Momentarily dazed, the Sontaran continued to blunder forward, towards the direction of the doorway leading into the frozen cavern...


((Skolon is cannon-fodder, and should be treated as such! mrgreen ))

((I modified my last entry so that the helmet doesn't fall off. Ah, the wonders of the "Edit" button! smile ))


"Err -- Why are you all looking at me for?" Penfold asked in bewilderment. "Oh, I see... you want me to dress up in that gear! How absolutely smashing!"

It soon became apparent, however, that Penfold was neither tall, nor spoke in a particularly gruff voice, and thus did not make a very convincing Sontaran. Indeed, being quite a bit too short, he looked rather like a child dressing up in adult clothing. Although he could fake the voice to be almost barely passable, the size issue remained. "This is hopeless!" someone exclaimed in frustration.

"Hang on a minute. I've got an idea!" Penfold reached into his pocket and withdrew what looked like a small black flashlight, which the others had seen earlier and assumed was some sort of ray gun. "This, my friends, is a Tissue Compression Eliminator. A particularly nasty piece of work... when this little gadget zaps any organic substance, it shrinks it down in size. Used on a living creature, the effect is usually fatal. Of course we Time Lords generally try to avoid killing, so this particular version of the TCE has been modified to be non-lethal. It just midgitizes the target... like so!" He suddenly aimed the weapon at Firestorm and fired, decreasing her to the size of a child's toy.

The fiery Dragonman was obviously not amused, and was prepared to rip the Time Lord from limb to limb, even in her shrunken state. A rather terrified Penfold hastily said, "Hang on, hang on -- I can reverse the process! Just give me a second to tinker a bit. There! I've reversed the polarity of the neutron flow. Now it should function as an enlarging device... I think..."

Before Firestorm could decide whether or not she really wanted to be his test subject, Penfold zapped Firestorm again, and this time she began to grow. Unfortunately, he couldn't quite remember how tall she originally was, and Firestorm ended up 2 inches taller than she was supposed to be. "It works! Oh, jolly good!" He then quickly turned the weapon on himself, expanding his body to fill in the Sontaran uniform. "There, done!" he said smugly, beaming with pride. "So how do I look?"

*Firestorm shocks Penfold with a thunderouos growl and playfully knocks him over with her tail.

"Thats what you get if you experiment on me. Come on guys, we have to get out of here".*