Doctor Who/Attack on Titan - The Last Siege Part 5

Only a few blocks away from where the Doctor’s blue box was parked stood a large multi-story building that served as Captain Smith’s temporary Trost headquarters. Just outside one of the windows of the topmost floor, a laundry line was hung between it and an adjacent building. The line was loaded down with all of the Doctor’s clothes; coat, shirt, trousers, bowtie, even his boots were washed, and left to dry out in the sun.

Behind this window was a large bedroom with an attached bathroom. The rooms were sparsely furnished with only the essentials; a bed, a dresser and mirror, a desk, a few chairs and the bathroom contained only a wooden stool, a bucket and a cast iron tub. This was the room that Captain Smith had arranged for the Doctor to stay in.

“It certainly was nice of Captain Smith to get such a nice room for me,” the Doctor said to Eren, Armin, and Mikasa, who were on the other side of the closed bathroom door.

“Yeah, he’s pretty generous, especially when he’s trying to get on the good side of a senior officer” Armin said, trying to make conversation. He felt kind of awkward waiting for the Doctor to finish his bath, but if he was going to find out more about who he was and if he could help staying was the best way to do so.

“And he got someone to do my laundry as well,” the Doctor continued, washing the soap out of his hair. “That’s quite generous indeed; don’t know if I’m ever going to get that smell out of my coat though. So tell me, these ‘titans’ are carnivorous?”

The three teens exchanged glances, then Armin nodded that it was OK to tell him and Eren answered him.

“Right, they only feed on humans though. They don’t do it to survive though, it’s more like they do it because they enjoy it.”

Eren paused, the whole subject making his stomach turn and his heart fill with disgust. He then quickly looked for something to change the subject, and found it laying on the desk across from where he was standing.

“What exactly is that thing on the desk,” he asked.

“That is a device that’s gonna tell me more of what I need to know about those titans,” the Doctor answered. “I placed the Sonic in the port on the right and it’s going to process the readings I got earlier.”

“It kinda looks like a typewriter,” Armin said, turning around in his chair to get a better look at it.

“That’s because it was,” the Doctor added. “I just added a few modifications.”

He then pulled himself out of the tub, thankful to be clean again and started to towel off.

“So until that is done processing,” the Doctor continued. “What else can you tell me?”

“Well, we’re still not sure where they came from,” Armin answered. He then went on to tell the Doctor about how the Colossal Titan breached the outermost wall five years ago after a century of relative calm, and that it had tried the same thing not long ago at Wall Rose.

“I see,” the Doctor said as he started to put on the uniform that was placed on the stool next to the tub. “So with the exception of that Colossal one I’m guessing that they aren’t very clever?”

Eren paused and then said no. Not wanting to tell him the whole truth until he got some more answers.

“It’s difficult to learn about something that you can’t get closed to without getting killed,” Mikasa added. “You know that first hand, Doctor.”

“Certainly do,” the Doctor agreed as he opened bathroom door and stepped out in the uniform that was lent to him. While Mikasa would never admit it for as long as she lived, she thought the Doctor looked pretty sharp and dapper in the military uniform, and she did her best to make sure he didn’t know she was staring.

“I can’t tell you what a pain all those buckles were,” the Doctor whined as he walked over to the desk, picked up a small box next to the typewriter/identification device and walked across the room toward the mirror. “What are those for anyway?”

“It’s for the 3D gear,” Eren answered, a little bit annoyed. “It’s what we use to climb the buildings and get to the titans. Now it’s my turn to ask a question: how were you able to convince the Captain that you were an officer?”

“Oh that’s easy,” the Doctor said as he fished into the pocket of his new jacket and produced the same billfold. However this time there was nothing in there but a blank piece of paper.

“Psychic papers, they project whatever I want people to see on them. Comes in quite handy,” he then returned the papers to their rightful place and then went back to what was in the smaller box he’d picked up earlier; a strip of brown satin dotted with orange and yellow specks that he began to tie around his neck.

“A bowtie,” Armin asked incredulously.

“Yeah. Bowties are cool,” the Doctor said proudly as he finished tying it up and turned to the three teens. “What do you think?”

Once again, the three of them weren’t sure what to say. Then Mikasa finally broke the silence,

“Well, you look a little more like an officer,” she said. Personally, she thought the bowtie looked silly, but somehow it made the whole outfit work; it fit him to a tea.

“Thank you,” the Doctor said, pleased that someone else thought the same as he did. “Now tell me, what was life like before the titans showed up? What do you remember reading or being told?”

Eren, Armin and Mikasa just looked back at the Time Lord, blindsided by the question. For some reason they couldn’t point out, they couldn’t remember reading anything or hearing anybody talk about what the world was like before the arrival of the titans. Even Armin’s grandfather never spoke about what his parents and grandparents told him about life before.

“Nobody’s ever really spoken or written about it,” Eren finally replied. “To be honest, the government’s forbidden any previous knowledge about the outside world going public.”

“And why do you think that is,” the Doctor asked rhetorically.

Before any of them could answer back, the device on the desk made two quick pings and started printing out a long sheet of parchment-like paper. The Doctor darted over to the desk and started to look at the results. As he read over them, his demeanor changed from carefree to serious concern, and the three teens could hear him softly muttering words like, “oh no,” and “that’s not possible.”

“What? What is it” Armin asked, now very concerned himself.

“You three,” the Doctor whirled around to face them, his face serious as a heart attack. “Come with me!...”

He then pocketed his Sonic Screwdriver, shut the typewriting device back in its case, and made his way to the window.

“We’ll go this way. And we’ll need your gear,” the Doctor said. “We’re more than likely being watched.”

He then opened the window and carefully stepped out along the ledge, making sure there was enough room for the teens to use their gear to get to the next building. At first the three teens weren’t sure what to do, but the sudden shift in the Doctor’s demeanor was enough to convince them that something was very wrong. They each slowly made their way out the window and onto the ledge, and using the same method they used in the alley, darted along the roofs with the Doctor locking arms with two of them.  

When asked where they were going, the Doctor told the teens to take him back to the alley and that they were going to the TARDIS.

“The WHAT,” Eren shouted.

“This thing,” the Doctor replied as he started to unlock the door of the blue box. “This is the TARDIS, it stands for Time And Relative Dimension In Space. Now get in...!”

“But wait,” Armin protested as the Doctor darted through the door. “How are we all supposed to fit in…”

Nothing could prepare Armin or his friends for what they saw as they stepped through the door. Inside was a vast open room of glass and polished metal. In the center of it was a large, glass column with a circular control panel around the base; where the Doctor was frantically flicking away at various switches.

“…there…” Armin squeaked looking up in awe at the room he was in.

“This…this place,” Eren gawked as he slowly walked toward the control console, not really paying attention to where he was walking. “It’s-it’s…”

“Bigger on the inside, I know,” the Doctor said, as if he was sick of hearing it all the time.

“Impossible,” Mikasa whispered as she looked around, her eyes wide in disbelieving wonder. “This is impossible.”

“Yeah, I get that a lot too,” the Doctor responded. “You three better hold on to something.”

He then pulled down on a large lever and the TARDIS suddenly lurched upward, nearly knocking the three young soldiers to the floor. As the whole room began to sway back and forth, Eren, Armin and Mikasa struggled to stay upright while the Doctor turned his attention to a TV screen that hung above the control console.

“C’mon, c’mon,” the Time Lord impatiently muttered under his breath. “Show me where you are. Show me where we are…”

By the time Eren was able to regain his footing, he had had enough. Enough of Sonic Screwdrivers, Psychic Papers and wooden boxes that were bigger on the inside. He darted back to the front door of the TARDIS, swung it open and was expecting to step out back onto the street, but instead there was nothing below him but the emptiness of space. He tried to pull himself back through the door but he was starting to lose his balance. Just before he could fall out of the TARDIS, Armin and Mikasa pulled him back in and the three of them tumbled backward and landed on the hard glass floor.

Then Armin and Mikasa saw what Eren had just seen. In front of them was the vast, inky blackness of outer space. The stars glittering and dancing across the dark sky, some of them so close Eren could swear that if he reached out far enough he could touch them. For a long time the three of them just stared in reverent wonder at the sky, then Eren finally ventured to speak.

“Guys…we’re in space…we’re actually in outer space…!”

“Eren, look down,” Mikasa said slowly as if not to alarm him.

Below them was a giant bright blue and green orb, covered in hazy white clouds.

“That’s our planet,” Eren breathed, his heart threatening to leap out of his chest with excitement. “That’s our world down there Armin!”

Both Eren and Armin had always dreamed of seeing the world beyond the walls, but this was more than they could have asked for. To actually see the world from space and the stars that surrounded it, it was almost a religious experience for the three of them.

Armin didn’t want to be a killjoy, but he suddenly remembered reading that space was a cold, airless vacuum so he had to ask just to satisfy his own curiosity,

“How are we still breathing?”

“The TARDIS is protecting us,” the Doctor replied, still absorbed in what the monitors were showing him. “And if you want to see something even crazier take a look up. That is where the titans came from.”

All three of them slowly moved their heads up. There, miles and miles above the planet and the TARDIS floated two gigantic, dark metallic colored shapes hundreds and hundreds of meters long and high. They could best be described as zeppelins that had been turned upside down, and they slowly hovered above them like giant vultures waiting on their prey to die. They were ships, warships to be precise, warships that had no business above that peaceful planet.

“Atmospheric cloaking,” the Doctor muttered to himself, still focused on the screen in front of him. “You’ve gotten clever. Now how are you able to keep these people in the dark about their past…OH, you HAVE gotten clever.”

He then typed in some commands on a keyboard right below the monitor just to make sure his hunch was correct. As the results scrolled across the screen he whispered to himself,

“So THAT’S where and when we are,” a small grin spread across his face. “Now this is starting to make more sense…”

“Wh-wha-what are those things,” Eren gasped, interrupting the Doctor’s train of thought.

“Those are warships, warships that have no business here or anywhere else for that matter,” the Doctor replied grimly. “You might want to shut the door, you’re letting a draft in.”

Eren quickly got up and shut the door of the TARDIS, hoping that whoever was in those ships hadn’t seen them. He then slowly started to walk back toward the control console, his friends right behind him.

For most of his short life Eren had known fear, but it was a rare occasion when that fear was mixed with wonder. This was one of those times. Everything he’d seen thus far had proven to him that all that the Doctor had said was real, and it scared him and filled him with awe all at the same time.
He stopped just a few feet from where the Doctor was standing and with his eyes locked on him said,

“You’re not human, and you’re not a titan either…What are you, Doctor? And can you help us?”

The Eleventh Doctor paused. This was not what he was expecting or even hoping to find when his TARDIS landed in that alley. However there was one thing the Doctor did know: he could not abandon these young people or their world when he knew there was even the slightest chance that he could aid them in some way.

He took a deep breath, looked up into their anxious faces, his eyes full of determined fire and replied,

“I’m a Time Lord. And a few hours ago I was desperate to get away, but now I’ve found myself in a place where I’m desperately needed. Yes, I can help you.”

Eren and his comrades’ expressions quickly changed from anxious to guardedly hopeful at the Doctor’s words. Then Eren stepped forward and said,

“Looks like I owe you a proper introduction, and an apology,” he then extended his hand forward. “The name’s Eren Jaeger. I’m sorry about calling you a freak earlier.”

“No offense taken Eren,” the Doctor replied with a chuckle as he shook Eren’s hand.

“Armin Arlert sir,” Armin said as he reached forward to shake the Doctor’s hand.

“Mikasa Ackerman, Doctor. Pleasure to meet you,” Mikasa introduced herself, nodding at the Doctor.

“Pleased to meet you all,” the Doctor replied smiling. “Now, Eren, Armin, Mikasa, you three better grab a seat. We’re about to land and there’s a lot I need to tell you about.”

End of Part 5