DISCLAIMER: All things Buffy are the creation and property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy Productions, and so forth. All things non-Buffy are the creation and property of many other individuals and corporate entities.

This particular story is the creation of Robert A. Black (that's me). Feel free to drop me a line and let me know what you think of my work. Good or bad, I'd like to hear it.

TIME CONTEXT: This story takes place between the Buffy episodes, "Nightmares" and "Invisible Girl." Confused? Refer to the Readers' Guide at the end of the chapter for hints and explanations.

It was not a dark and stormy night. There's no such thing in a town named Sunnydale. It was dark, but the air was calm and still, just like almost any other spring night - or almost any summer, fall or winter night as well.

At Sunnydale High School, things were quiet. It was not yet time for the crowning of the May Queen and other associated spring activities. The entire student body seemed to be gathering its strength for the whirlwind of events that would accompany the end of the school year.

As a result, no one was around when the tranquillity of the night was broken by a mysterious wheezing and groaning sound that seemed to come from nowhere. A bright blue flashing light appeared in midair at the front entrance to Sunnydale High. Within seconds, a large blue box materialized beneath the light. The box was slightly larger than a telephone booth, with double doors on one side. The words "POLICE PUBLIC CALL BOX" were written across the top of all four sides. After a few moments, the wheezing and groaning sound stopped, and the light on top of the box went out. The mysterious box stood alone in front of the school.

The doors opened, and a young woman stepped out. She was rather small, with short blonde hair and strangely shaped ears that gave her a distinctly elfin appearance. She seemed rather uncomfortable with her clothing, pink striped overalls and a red long-sleeved T-shirt, as if they weren't her usual attire. She also seemed confused by the sight of her surroundings. Glancing back into the box, she called, "Doctor? Aren't you coming?"

A tall bald man stepped out of the box and joined her. He wore a garishly multi-colored jacket over baggy checked trousers and a white shirt that had question marks on the collars. A stalk of celery was pinned to the jacket's lapel, and a long maroon scarf was wrapped around the man's neck. "Kes," he asked, "are you sure about all this? I look ridiculous!"

"I researched the historical database quite thoroughly," Kes replied. "I never expected Earth's literature to have a nameless character who was a Doctor, so when I accidentally found one, I tried to learn everything I could about him."

"And so this holonovel is supposed to be a recreation of this nameless Doctor's adventures."

"I thought you might like having a literary figure you could relate to," said Kes.

"All right, then," said the Doctor. "What am I supposed to do?"

"I'm not sure," Kes replied. "This doesn't look like the setting for any of the stories I researched. Usually the Doctor and his companions landed on an alien planet that looked remarkably like a rock quarry in someplace called Great Britain."

"We obviously aren't in a place like that," said the Doctor, looking around. "Perhaps the program is malfunctioning."

"Maybe," admitted Kes. "Then again, the Doctor's ship was supposed to be unpredictable. Maybe the program just has a random scenario generation subroutine."

The Doctor considered the possibility. "Well," he said with a shrug, "if that's the case, then I suppose it wouldn't hurt to look around." He glanced over and saw the school. "My guess is that we should explore this building first. The start of our adventure is probably waiting inside."

"You're the Doctor," said Kes with a smile. She stepped aside and allowed the Doctor to pass, falling in behind him as they went to seek out whatever dangers awaited them.

***

"I can't believe you actually wanted to come along."

The halls of Sunnydale High may have been quiet, but they weren't totally deserted. In fact, in addition to the occasional janitor busily preparing the building for the next day, there were two sophomore girls, Buffy Summers and her friend Willow Rosenberg, walking purposefully toward the school library.

"I mean, I had to come tonight," Buffy continued. "You must have better things to do."

"I already finished my homework," replied Willow. "And Xander can't make it to the Bronze until later. I figured you'd be finished by then and we could go together."

"You mean you don't want to spend some quality time with Xander on your own?" Buffy asked.

Willow hesitated before replying. Her long-unrequited affection for their friend Xander Harris was well known - to Buffy, anyway. What Buffy didn't realize was that these days, any "quality time" Willow spent alone with Xander would probably be filled with Xander asking how much longer he had to wait for Buffy to arrive.

"I'd, uh, rather see what you and Giles are up to," Willow said at last. "It sounded interesting."

"If you say so," Buffy replied. "I don't see what's so interesting about some weird kind of meditation technique. Giles says developing a spirit of tranquillity will help me 'hone my talents.' Do you think I can learn tranquillity in half an hour?"

Willow smiled to herself. Rupert Giles, the school librarian, was also Buffy's "Watcher," a mentor who helped Buffy develop the skills that came with her birthright as the Slayer, the one girl of her generation with the strength and skill to hunt vampires. Unfortunately, the Watcher and the Slayer did not always see eye to eye on the best way to develop those skills.

"Let me put it this way," said Willow. "If I get bored, I'm sure I'll have plenty of time to debug the new catalog search program that Giles refuses to go near."

Willow was about to continue her commentary on the librarian's computer phobia when she realized that Buffy was no longer listening. In fact, Buffy was no longer walking, either, and Willow had to stop short to avoid running into her.

"What is it?" Willow asked.

"There's something here," Buffy replied in a hushed tone.

"Vampires?" Willow asked, her eyes growing large.

Buffy shook her head. "It's something different. I can't tell what, but it's not normal."

Willow wished this was happening after Buffy's lesson of the evening, not before it. Buffy might have a better sense of what was wrong that way. As it was, both girls had to look around the hallway, trying to find something amiss.

Willow saw it first. "Buffy," she said, growing alarmed, "don't look now, but there's a puddle following us."

Buffy turned and saw it as well. A large puddle of silvery liquid was oozing its way down the hall, following the girls. As they turned, it seemed to notice them. To their great amazement, the puddle abruptly stopped and went back the way it came, disappearing around a corner.

"What was that?" Willow cried. Buffy didn't wait to reply. She charged after the puddle, and Willow had to hurry to keep up.

The girls ran around the corner and stopped abruptly. Two other teenage girls stood in their path, looking around the hallway in confusion. They both startled as Buffy and Willow ran up to them. Willow let out a startled yelp of her own.

"Wha... who are you?" demanded Buffy. Willow thought Buffy might have said it a bit too harshly. There was nothing about the girls that looked too unusual, except for the fact that the younger girl was wearing a thick stocking cap despite the warm California weather.

The younger girl spoke up. "I... I'm Alex Mack," she stammered. "This is my sister Annie. We didn't mean to scare you. We just... uh, we just got lost."

"Yeah," said Annie. "We were looking for the chemistry lab, but I guess we made a wrong turn."

"I'll say," agreed Alex. "This doesn't even look like Paradise Valley High."

"Paradise Valley?" Willow exclaimed. "That's clear on the other side of LA. You're in Sunnydale."

"Sunnydale?" the Mack sisters cried together.

"I don't even know where that is," Alex added.

"How did you get here?" Buffy asked.

The sisters looked at each other for a moment, deciding which one would answer. "It's a really long story," Annie finally said. "You'd probably be bored by it."

Buffy shrugged. "Well, if you need help getting home, I'm sure we can find someone to..."

"No, no, that's okay," Annie assured them. "We, uh, we have a ride."

"All right," said Buffy. "By the way, you two didn't happen to see a puddle of..." She stopped herself, not quite sure how to describe the puddle they had been chasing without sounding out of her mind.

"A puddle of what?" asked Alex, looking suspiciously innocent.

"Nothing," said Buffy. "Never mind. I hope you get home all right."

Buffy turned back to Willow, and the two girls resumed their walk to the library. Behind them, the Mack sisters turned and went the other way. Willow could have sworn she heard them talking about sewer systems and wrong turns through pumping stations.

***

Giles gave the girls one of his sternest looks as they entered the library. "I suppose you have a reason for being late," he said to Buffy.

"Believe me," said Buffy, "when you hear about what we saw, you're not going to care about training tonight."

Naturally, Giles suspected that Buffy was merely trying to distract him. A quick recounting of the girls' encounter soon changed his mind. "A living puddle," he said, contemplating the possibilities as Buffy and Willow finished their story.

"It had to be alive," said Buffy. "It knew when we saw it."

"And these two girls from north of Los Angeles just happened to be in the very place where you expected to find the puddle," said Giles, wanting to be sure he had the story straight.

"That's right," Willow confirmed. "You don't suppose they had anything to do with it, do you?"

"Right now, I don't know what to think," Giles admitted. "I suppose one of my books might offer some clues..."

Before Giles could go to his books, though, the library doors opened and two new strangers, a bald man and a young woman, entered the room. Buffy took one look at the way they were dressed and decided that tonight was definitely some kind of freak season. Giles would have to warn her the next time one of those was due to come up.

"Ah," said the bald man, "you must be the people who are in need of my heroic assistance." Indicating the woman, he added, "This is my friend Kes, and I - "

Buffy could have sworn the man was making a dramatic pause.

" - am the Doctor."

"I beg your pardon?" said Giles.

***

"Okay," Buffy said to the Doctor, "let me see if I've got this straight. You and your little elf-friend are travelers from another planet, and you've come here to help us solve the mystery of the smart silver puddle."

"That about sums it up," the Doctor replied.

"I thought beings from another planet wouldn't look like us," said Willow. "I always read that they'd look really strange." She considered the Doctor's appearance, then quickly corrected herself. "Well, stranger, anyway."

The Doctor turned to Kes and took her aside. "They don't seem very receptive to our presence," he told her. "Are you sure this program's running correctly?"

"The people the Doctor encountered didn't always believe him right away," Kes assured him. "Maybe if you help find out what this puddle they saw was..."

"I've been thinking about that. It definitely sounds like a Changeling to me."

"Doctor, the holonovel wouldn't use a species that was known to Starfleet," Kes reminded him.

Behind them, Giles was returning from the stacks, carrying several books. "I'm afraid we'll have to do a bit of digging," he said. "There's nothing in my books of lore that pertains directly to intelligent liquids, but there might be something in the ancient texts on..."

"Excuse me," snapped the Doctor, a bit irritated, "but I think you're wasting your time looking in those books. I'm obviously more qualified to handle the situation. Your best course of action would be for me to go out and find this being myself."

Now it was Giles's turn to be irritated. "And just what makes you believe you could do any better than we could?"

"Because," the Doctor insisted, "I'm the Doctor."

"You may be a Doctor," said a new voice, deep and resonant with a British accent, "but I'm the Doctor. The genuine article, you might say."

Everyone in the library turned toward the entrance and saw two new arrivals, another man and another woman, standing in the doorway. The man was very tall and had bulging eyes and a tangled mop of curly brown hair. He wore a large overcoat and a multi-colored scarf the same length as the Doctor's. The woman was dressed only in a skimpy outfit made of animal skins.

"Doctor, that man has a scarf just like yours," said the woman. The Doctor didn't know why the woman would be addressing him. He was surprised to discover that she was speaking to the tall man instead.

"Yes," said the tall man as he walked up to the Doctor. "He's obviously been researching my taste in clothing, more or less..." Turning to Kes, he added, "and his friend seems to have gotten some fashion tips from an old acquaintance of mine." He turned back to the Doctor and looked him straight in the eye. "But clothes don't necessarily make the man - or, in this case, the Time Lord."

"This has gone far enough!" the Doctor exclaimed. Speaking to the air around him, he shouted, "Computer, freeze program!"

There was a long pause, during which everyone around the Doctor began to give him dubious looks. Even more frustrated, the Doctor shouted, "End program!" The library stubbornly remained unchanged.

"Um, is something supposed to be happening?" asked Buffy. "Because the only thing I see is you losing your mind really fast."

The Doctor turned to Kes in exasperation. "What's going on?" he asked her. "Is this some sort of malfunction?"

"I'm afraid it's even more serious than that," said yet another new voice, this one with a Scottish burr.

"Now what?" cried Willow. The group turned back to the entrance and saw yet another pair of new arrivals - a little man who wore a Panama hat and carried an umbrella with a question-mark shaped handle, and a teenage girl who carried a canvas rucksack and wore a black bomber jacket that was covered with a variety of patches and badges.

"Hey, Professor," said the girl, also with some kind of British accent, "why is there an elf here dressed like Andy Pandy?"

"That, my dear girl," replied the tall, curly-haired man, "is exactly what I was trying to find out." He walked over to the shorter man, seeming to recognize him. "You probably already know I'm the third regeneration," he said. "Which one are you?"

"Sixth," the little man answered.

"Ah, so there are seven of me now."

"At least," said the little man. Eyeing the Doctor, he added, "but I don't think he's one of us."

"This has gone far enough," cried Giles. "It's long past time all of you told me who you were."

The tall man turned back to face the group. "It's quite simple, really," he said. "I'm the Doctor - the fourth one, to be precise." Introducing his companion, he added, "This is my friend Leela."

"And I," said the little man, "am also the Doctor - the seventh one." Indicating the girl, he added, "And this is my friend Ace."

"This is impossible," said the Doctor. "You can't be the Doctor. I'm the Doctor."

"Gee, and I thought I'd gotten too old to play 'Which of these things is not like the others?'" quipped Willow.

"Doctor," said Kes, "I know it sounds incredible, but both these men really are the Doctor - the characters I saw during my research."

"How is that possible?" the Doctor asked. "Are you suggesting the holodeck has added these characters to the program by itself?"

"That would be a reasonable explanation," said the Seventh Doctor, "if you were still on a holodeck. Unfortunately, you're not. I can assure you this is all very real."

"It can't be," the Doctor insisted. "If we're not on a holodeck, then I shouldn't be able to exist."

"It's obviously a side-effect of the multiversal interface that's happening around us," said the Seventh Doctor.

"The multi-what?" asked Buffy.

"A multiversal interface?" the Fourth Doctor repeated. "Are you sure?"

"Not yet," said the Seventh Doctor, "but all the signs point to it."

"Point to what?" Buffy asked again, growing annoyed.

"A convergence point," said the Fourth Doctor. "One where different alternative time-streams collide. Unfortunately, they almost always have an unnatural cause."

"You mean somebody brought you all here on purpose?" asked Willow.

"Exactly," said the Seventh Doctor. "And whoever it is, we have to find them and stop them before it's too late."

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