From: bradkwillis@aol.com (BKWillis)

Date: 01 Nov 2001 02:35:09 GMT

Subject: Re: A story we can all create..

"Well, pardon me," huffed Jo in a tone that held more exasperation than she
actually felt, "but I seem to have left my burnoose and kaftan back at Fort
Zinderneuf."

The Doctor gave her a sharp, appraising look.  "Kipling," he declared after a
moment.

Jo grinned impishly up at him.  "Nope.  'Beau Geste'.  Back in a flash." She
ducked back into the TARDIS to change.

The Doctor shook his head and knelt down, sifting his fingers through the
sand.  He examined it, felt it, let a bit trickle through his fingers, then
cast it abruptly aside.  Mere sand.  Utterly without remarkable qualities and
completely uninteresting.

The Time Lord felt something drone past his head as the sand erupted in a
small spurt to his left.  A fraction of a heartbeat later came the loud
crackle of a gunpowder weapon being fired.

The Doctor whirled about, ducking instinctively as another bullet burrowed
into the sand a yard away.  As he did so, a huge rush of wings thundered
overhead and away at blinding speed, the wind of its passage kicking up the
sand in a choking cloud.  As he waved it away and lurched for the safety of
the TARDIS, he could see his attacker wheeling back into the sky: a
reddish-brown bird of enormous size, on whose back rode a brass-helmeted man
who was in the process of holstering what looked like a flintlock pistol of
some sort and drawing instead a long and viciously curved sabre.

And there were more coming.

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