Attempt #21: You've Seen Doctor Who, Right?

#BattleTheBeast Entry

"What's the plan here exactly?" Julia asked. They were waiting in England in 1942, staking out the phone booth they'd used to enter Fillory only hours before. Was it only hours? All the strange time dilation made it hard to tell.

"Well, remembering the phone booth gave me an idea. It's like Doctor Who, right? Time isn't a straight line. It's all wibbly-wobbly...you know. And I've always thought that when people have time travel, they never use it to its fullest effect. Like in Harry Potter, why didn't they just use the time turner to go back to the beginning of the school year and kill the rat before he becomes a threat? So the Watcherwoman sends us here, and we stop Martin from entering Fillory, and he never becomes the Beast. We stop the problem before he becomes a problem."

"So is this Harry Potter or Doctor Who?" Julia said with a smirk.

"I...just...shut up." Even now, when their lives, possibly the lives of everyone he knew and loved, were at stake, she was busting his balls. Just like old times. His heart was pounding and his palms were clammy, but he couldn't help but smile.

"You really think this will work?" Julia asked.

"Sure. I mean, maybe. Probably," Quentin said. "There! Jane's entering the phone box. We just need to find.."

"Martin," Julia said. "Over there!" She pointed to a building across the street, where Martin Chatwin was peering behind a corner, waiting.

"Okay, now!" Julia said, jumping out from their vantage point.

"No, Julia, not yet! It's too soon!" He jumped out and chased after her, trying to grab her shoulder and pull her back. "We'll run into--"

Just that moment, Julia ran directly into herself, from when they entered the booth earlier.

"...Us."

The moment she touched her doppelganger there was a flash of light, and ribbons of energy started crackling from the point where their bodies met. Julia screamed as their bodies began to meld, their features warping and sliding together, like conjoined twins reconnecting, or a cell splitting in reverse.

"Oh, this can't be good," Quentin said, and ran towards her. The coils of energy were streaming off of her, pooling on the ground and dissipating. The smell of ozone and a sound like a mixture of a tree ripping in half and a zipper zipping up filled the air.

"Oh my god. Oh shit."

"What is this? What's going on?" Quentin turned to see Martin staring at them, shock and confusion fighting for dominance.

"Martin! Stay back! I...just...stay back!" He didn't have to be told twice. He backed up to a wall of a nearby building and flattened himself against it.

Quentin turned back to Julia to find his other self already tending to her.

"What are we looking at here?" he asked.

"I don't know," other Quentin said. "Best guess? Universe freaking out at both of them being here at once, creating some kind of temporal glitch. And when they touched, it resolved itself--"

"By joining them both together," Quentin prime finished. Best stay away from his double, then. "Okay, how do we fix it?"

"I don't know! I'm you! You know as much as I do!"

Can't beat that logic. Quentin racked his brain for anything that might halt whatever was happening to Julia. Mordenkainen's Disjunction? That can separate a magical effect from an object, but it's typically only for enchanted items and there's a chance the item will get destroyed when the antimagic field expands. He could try Albini's Greater Unravelling. No, he'd fucked that up spectacularly last he practiced it; he'd tried it on a rabbit that could turn invisible, and literally turned it inside out. The stage magician he'd borrowed it from was not happy. Havel's Dissolution. Used to separate mixed liquids. Humans were mostly water...