Big Bang Generation Read Online Free PDF Page B

regenerations ago, visiting somewhere like Legion would have been nowhere on his agenda. These days, he quite liked living dangerously. After all, if you’re going to be over twothousand years old, you need a bit of excitement, a bit of a thrill to keep you feeling alive, avoid retreading the same old adventures and holidays that he’d had around his fourth or fifth regenerations.
    Of course, right now he had no idea how long he was going to be on Legion at all. Keri was unclear as to whether the postcard-sender that had brought them together here wanted them to wait or what they intended.
    And the Doctor had itchy feet – he needed to get moving.
    So he made a decision. He’d given Keri one of his seemingly innumerable cell phones. He’d picked up a job lot in Houston recently in exchange for helping a man solve a problem with a rather large mouse that may or may not have come from the planet Vermia a hundred years earlier and been asleep.
    So, while he stood on the street outside the White Rabbit, marvelling at the domestication of the Land Crows, he had his sonic screwdriver in his hand, zapping one of these cell phones, giving it universal roaming and linking it automatically to the TARDIS and a phone he himself had started carrying a few months ago when he and his friend Clara had got separated at a Sam Smith concert. Having sorted the phone, he slipped it into a pocket and flipped his sonic screwdriver in his hand, like a gunslinger, ending in a pose like said gunslinger.
    At which point a very tall, very muscular bright pink reptile tapped his shoulder. It looked rather like an upright crocodile, from a Disney cartoon.
    ‘Mine,’ it said.
    The Doctor shook his head. ‘I don’t think so, friend. Mine.’
    The pink reptile held out its hand. ‘Mine. Pretty green stick. Mine.’
    The Doctor just smiled. ‘I think if it was yours, it’d would have already been in your hand. The fact that it’s in my hand would suggest that it is, absolutely and irrefutably, mine. Goodbye.’
    Turning his back, he would later be told by Keri the Pakhar, was not considered good form by the Kenistrii. He would also be told that the Kenistrii were pretty famous for disembowelling their victims and eating them raw.
    Therefore as he turned away from this big pink crocodile, its mighty paw slammed into his back, sending him crashing into the muddy roadway.
    ‘Mine,’ it said with such a significant amount of menace and teeth-baring that the Doctor had to wonder if it might be a good idea just to give over the sonic and get the TARDIS to create a new one.
    A crowd gathered around the two of them, obviously expecting a fight. Indeed the Doctor could clearly see a number of bewhiskered and toothless old prospector-types taking bets from one another.
    Nice. Clearly the pink crocodile was odds-on to win.
    ‘Why do you want it?’ he gasped at the alien.
    ‘Mine.’
    ‘I think we’ve established that isn’t really true. But I do acknowledge you’d like it to become yours. Tell me why.’
    ‘Mine.’
    The Doctor blew air out of his cheeks as he got up. This really wasn’t going to be easy. He flipped the sonic once again, and then tossed it over to the alien. ‘Yours,’ he agreed with a tight smile.
    The Kenistrii clearly couldn’t believe his luck, then grabbed the Doctor in a big hug, nuzzled him and walked away with his prize.
    As the disgruntled grumbling crowd separated, arguing about their betting not resulting in an eating, the Doctor could see Keri, on a crutch, standing in the doorway of the White Rabbit.
    As much as it was possible for a four-foot-nothing giant hamster to register a mixture of weary annoyance and resigned pity, Keri shook her head. ‘Seriously, you’ve nothing better to do than challenge a Kenistrii hatchling, yeah?’
    ‘I didn’t challenge him…’ the Doctor protested. ‘He started it!’
    ‘Whatever.’ Keri hobbled back inside and the Doctor followed, fetching the phone for her.
    She took