After closing time for a massive theme park, a mouse looked up at a statue of him and a human looking towards the future with the human pointing in the future’s direction. “…Iger’s not exactly seeing the same future as you, Walt,” sighed the mouse, the famous Mickey Mouse. “At this point, I’m not sure he sees the same great, big, beautiful tomorrow as you.” He then heard something that sounded like digging. “…It’s not him, surely!” said Mickey. The ground near him shifted as if someone was digging a hole from below! The digger then poked his head out and looked around. “BUGS?!” yelped Mickey. The digger, the equally famous Bugs Bunny, looked up in surprise.
“MICKEY?!” he yelped. He then pulled out a map and looked at it. “…Knew I should have gone north at Albuquerque.”
“You get lost there too many times, Bugs,” remarked Mickey. “Why not just avoid Albuquerque altogether?”
“Where’s the fun in that?” asked Bugs as he got out of his hole. He then saw where in the Magic Kingdom he was. “…Thinking about Walt?” he guessed.
“And how he’s spinning in his grave about Bob Iger’s current direction,” replied Mickey bitterly.
“There’s always SOME corporate drama,” muttered Bugs. “I wouldn’t be surprised if Warner Brothers adopts the same stance on AI content like Disney does.”
“None of our companies are really clean, are they?”
“Nah, not really. Other people already wrote the jokes before we did.”
“…You know, I DO hope Warner Brothers DOESN’T follow in our footsteps,” said Mickey.
“I hope not too, Mick,” agreed Bugs. They both looked up at Walt’s statue. “…Your kid’s still fighting the good fight, Walt. You and Lillian both know that, right?” Mickey smiled.
“I think your creators would be proud of you too, Bugs,” said Mickey. As Bugs was about to say something, a noise filled the air. Mickey heard it too. “…Bugs-,” he said.
“You hear it too, huh Mick?” asked Bugs.
“…I think I see it too!” said Mickey as he pointed to the TARDIS materializing. “…The Doctor’s real?! I thought that was a made-up show Disney+ streamed at one point!”
“Oh, the Doctor’s real, Mickey! I met her!” The TARDIS fully materialized and the Doctor and her team stepped out.
“Doctor, are you sure coming here early was a good idea?” asked Amy.
“Positive,” replied the Doctor. “It’s best to get ahead of a chronal surge when you can. That’s why we’re here and now.”
“So where and when IS here and now, exactly?” asked Lurra Rus.
“Mickey, is that a-?!” asked Bugs.
“Well, she’s no cast member here!” replied Mickey. The Doctor looked up and grinned.
“Well, well, well, the most famous cartoon characters in all creation!” she said.
“Bugs?!” asked Amy.
“Amy!” replied Bugs. He then looked at the Doctor. “…Doc?” he asked.
“Yes, it’s me,” replied the Doctor. “How far away from our Mars trip are we? Temporally speaking, of course.”
“That was a few months ago, Doc,” answered Bugs. “But what are you doing here in the first place?”
“Tracking an event called the Grouping,” explained the Doctor. “A series of chronal surges that tend to take someone out of their time and pop them in a different one altogether.”
“I…see…” Bugs didn’t REALLY see, but he wasn’t sure he wanted the Doctor’s attempt at dumbing the explanation down.
“Well, I need to take a few scans and-.” That was when a chronal surge washed over the group. The Doctor then clutched at her left-hand heart! She fell against the TARDIS to steady herself and catch her breath.
“DOCTOR!” yelped Lurra Rus. The Doctor panted as she recovered.
“…Me,” she whispered.
“Doctor?” asked Mickey.
“Doctor, hang on,” said Amy. “The Grouping plucked…YOU out of your time stream?”
“Yes,” confirmed the Doctor. “Twice over. …Both times, I ended up here. In this spatio/temporal location.” The Doctor’s breathing had returned to normal. “That chronal surge whittled me! Twice at the same time! You’ve heard that a man is the sum of his memories, yes? Well, a Time Lord even more so! Come on, let’s go see where I ended up.” The Doctor picked herself up and went to the side of the TARDIS…to find a floppy hat!
“…Doc, didn’t YOU used to wear that?” asked Bugs.
“That hat I wore when we first met,” replied the Doctor, “wasn’t this hat at all.”
“Excuse me,” called a man’s voice, “that would be mine.”
“Oh, here you are!” replied the Doctor as she handed the hat to the man. She then did a double take when she saw the man’s features. He put the hat on his mop of curly brown hair, he had a wide smile, a brown coat, and a ridiculously long multi-colored scarf draped around his shoulders.
“How do you do?” greeted the man as he pulled a bag out of his pocket. “I’m the Doctor. Care for a jelly baby?” The Doctor blinked, then took a sweet from his bag. “That offer applies to everyone,” said the man.
“…Doctor, that’s not-?” asked Amy as everyone got a jelly baby.
“I’m rather afraid so, Amy,” replied the Doctor. “That…is me. Was me. …That’s my fourth incarnation.”
“Oh, so you’re the Doctor as well?” asked the Fourth Doctor. “Perhaps you can account for my being here?”
“It was hardly my fault, you bohemian!” argued the Doctor as she stomped forward. “There was a chronal surge and whoOOPS!” Her foot landed on something tubular and she tripped, running into the Fourth Doctor. “Okay, what was-?!” The Doctor whirled around…to see that she stepped on a recorder. “…Now that looks familiar,” she muttered.
“A flute of some kind?” asked Amy.
“Properly speaking, it’s a recorder,” corrected the Doctor.
“And oddly familiar,” mused the Fourth Doctor.
“Madame, do be careful where you step!” admonished a new man’s voice. The speaker then snatched the recorder from the Doctor’s hand. The Doctor and the Fourth Doctor goggled in surprise as they saw that the man was a little fellow dressed like a tramp with black hair and a bow tie. The man pulled out a rag and cleaned off the recorder, then played on it a bit. “Ah, there we go!” he said, pleased with the results. “Still playable.” He put the recorder in his coat pocket. “Now then, perhaps introductions are in order, hm?”
“I don’t think that’s necessary, Doctor,” replied the Doctor.
“Wait a minute, you just called him…oh no!” groaned Lurra Rus.
“You know my name, Madame?” asked the new man.
“We both do, Doctor,” replied the Fourth Doctor.
“…Oh my word,” realized the man. “So my future, eh? Twice over? Just as well I turned up.”
“Doctor, if that’s another incarnation, which one is he?” Amy asked her Doctor.
“That would be our second,” answered the Doctor.
“I don’t seem to recall meeting that man over there,” remarked the Second Doctor as he pointed at the Fourth.
“He was trapped in a time eddy during our time in the Death Zone,” explained the Doctor. “He’s the one between Fancy Pants and the Cricket Player with the celery on his lapel.”
“Okay, so if this happened to you before twice over,” said Lurra Rus, “how do we solve this?”
“I don’t remember,” replied the Doctor. Her companions gave her a funny look. “Look, it’s something Rassilon put into our genetics.”
“Ah, so they know about Rassilon, then?” asked the Second Doctor.
“They met him…her,” replied the Doctor.
“Met her?” asked the Fourth Doctor. “She’s walking again?”
“Went mad, then traveled with me and went sane, hopefully,” explained the Doctor. “In any event-.”
“Rassilon made it so-!” By now, all the Doctors were talking. The three glared at each other. “…Go ahead. …Rassilon made it-!” Amy held up a hand.
“One at a time,” she said. She pointed at the Second Doctor. “You start us off, then Scarfy, then my Doctor can finish the explanation.”
“You see, Rassilon knew that, with our time travel capabilities,” began the Second Doctor, “we’d accidentally cross into our own time streams, despite all the precautions and laws set down.”
“So, while giving the Time Lords our ability to regenerate,” continued the Fourth, “Rassilon implemented a fail-safe that only the eldest incarnation would remember recall meeting one’s past.”
“But the past can’t exactly remember the future,” finished the present Doctor, “because the past would need to play out so the future would happen. Understand?”
“Yes,” replied Lurra Rus.
“…Really?”
“…No!” Lurra Rus looked pained at the explanation.
“Hold on a minute!” called Mickey. “So, if I’m understanding it right, they’re…alternate universe versions of you?”
“I’m…rather afraid you’re NOT understanding this correctly,” replied the Doctor. “They’re two of us. …Two of ME, to be precise.”
“Oh, no, no, no, no!” interjected the Second Doctor. “I’m sorry, Sir, I hate to be contrary, but I can see the incident has confused the poor girl-.”
“Excuse me?!” snapped the present Doctor.
“And I DO feel you deserve the correct explanation,” continued the Second Doctor. “You don’t mind, do you?”
“Yes!” argued the present Doctor.
“I didn’t think you would. You see, Mickey…I may call you Mickey, mayn’t I? You see, THEY are two of me!” Mickey looked lost at sea.