Puff

The 3rd Doctor's always getting chased by monsters, one way or another.


"Jo, get in!"

The Doctor blazed by in Bessie. Jo stepped aboard. Thanks to the inertial dampeners it didn't rip her leg off. She climbed over the footboard into her seat.

She twisted around and stared behind them. "What is that thing?"

"Nervalan Puff Monster," the Doctor answered.

It didn't look puffy. It looked like some sort of alien greyhound, eight feet tall at the shoulder and smooth as a lizard. Narrow head full of jaggle teeth, lean hips, long tail, and a narrow ribcage that expanded and contracted to an alarming degree, stretching like the skin of a frog with every breath.

Bessie was going 80 miles and hour. "It's gaining!"

"I know," the Doctor said with exasperation, "I'm not trying to outrun it."

Jo turned back around and grabbed the side of the windscreen. "Where are we going?"

The Doctor's hair and ruffles snapped in the breeze, Jo tilted her hair out of her eyes, keeping one eye on the monster behind them.

"The airfield."

Jo stared at him. An alien craft had landed three days earlier. They hadn't been interested in invading, they'd just detected the Tardis's advanced technology and stopped to ask directions.

The Doctor had been delighted. The Brigadier less so. They'd all been invited to tea. It had been lovely, although it consisted of eating straw stalks that tasted like a cross between a wheat stalk and blueberry licorice. Crunchy, but a bit dry.

The aliens had left peaceably enough. Yesterday.

The Doctor squeezed Bessie's horn bulb, honking. "Get out of the way!" he yelled at the UNIT soldier's guarding the guardrail. "Don't fire!" he yelled again, irritably, as the soldier's raised their machine guns.

The Doctor did a full speed loop in front of the gate, the monster followed them, scrabbling with huge claws to find purchase on the asphalt.

It gave Benton just enough time to throw up the guardrail and jump out of the way.

Jo could hear the suggestion of his voice yelling, "Doctor?" as they sped through the gate.

They zoomed down the abandoned tarmac to where the clear, disc shaped ship had landed yesterday.

The Doctor screeched to a stop. The alien barreled right past them, puffing like a train.

The monster skidded to a stop then circled back with a bound. It grabbed Bessie's back seat in its teeth and picked up the rear of the vehicle, bouncing it twice. Jo shrieked.

The Doctor jumped out and faced the monster. "None of that now!" He waved down with his lean hands and the monster dropped the car and flopped down on its back, wiggling. Its expanding ribcage even more alarming from this angle.

The Doctor patted it on its ugly snout and lifted a device to his mouth. "You can decloak now, I've found him."

The crystal ship shimmered into view beside them, and two tall and gauntly slender aliens rushed out. They threw themselves on the large monster, making shrieking noises and rubbing and tickling.

The beast's ribcage expanded even larger, straining enough for Jo to see gray veins behind translucent skin. A flickering yellow glow blared through the skin and Jo's eyes went huge as the monster puffed out a fireball as big as Bessie.

The aliens shrieked in glee and jumped up and down.

Jo frowned, she didn't recognize these two. They were short. Taller than the Doctor, but shorter than the aliens she'd met yesterday.

A loud, melodious, but stern sound came from the direction of the ship. Jo turned, a bit stunned, and watched as the aliens from yesterday disembarked and walked toward them. One making obvious "stern mother" gestures at the rambunctious trio behind Bessie.

Jo turned a disbelieving stare on the Doctor.

He just grinned at her and smoothed his hair. "Well they couldn't very well leave without their pet."