My Fair Life-Form
Tenth Doctor post-Donna story, suitable for all ages. Enjoy!
Chapter 1
On a sunny Sunday afternoon in London, a girl was running through a crowded mall.
Weekends. A carefree couple of days, released from school. Days given up to the pastimes of the youth. Hanging out at the mall. Browsing store windows. Checking out boys. A bit of harmless fun.
A boy was dashing after this girl. He was no teenage Adonis though; he had a large spot on his chin, his hair was greasy and he was skinny and gawky. The girl wasn't any Venus di Milo herself. Though she wore a diaphanous dress of floaty white material, she was only what could be called a slightly hefty girl; she was at that delicate stage where a woman's growth hasn't yet caught up with her ideals of womanly beauty, and others around her detect her lack of confidence. The boy chasing her certainly seemed to have cottoned on; as she scurried past a young couple with ice creams outside a snack shop, upsetting their purchases, he caught up an empty drinks can and hurled it at her. It bounced harmlessly off her shoulder, but the impact spurred her forward; her poor legs started to churn more hurriedly, and she was gasping for breath as she hurtled the length of the shopping plaza.
The boy followed her, and behind him came several other people. A couple of grown men swinging heavy-looking shopping bags; a gentleman with an umbrella; even a janitor wielding a mop.
"Don't let it get away!"
"Catch it before it leaves the mall!"
"Stop it! Don't let it touch anyone!"
"Halt, ya bloody creature!"
The pursued girl, reaching the end of the plaza, paused on the sidewalk, glanced over her shoulder in desperation, then dashed out into the street.
Just as a bus passed by the mall.
The cherry-red paint of the London icon whizzed by a foot in front of her face. She had been a second away from plunging straight out in front of it, and the only thing that had stopped her from going under it was the wiry, suit-clad body she was braced against. Still panting from exhaustion and shock, she looked up at the man who had caught her before she could fall victim to the city's public transport system. He was an older guy, probably at least past his twenties, but he looked strangely like a punk kid playing the grown-up in a stripy gray suit and brown trench coat. This was compounded by the Converse sneakers showing beneath the hem of a skinny-cut pants leg.
She was pushed up very close against him. She had run headlong into him, and as he caught her by the shoulders to stop her, she had instinctively latched onto the lapels of his jacket. She let go with a start and jumped back, her face flushed. After all, she'd never been that close to a boy before – she didn't even have a boyfriend yet – let alone a complete stranger!
Shouts came from her back. Both he and she turned to look. The running mob of men was rapidly approaching from down the mall.
"The bus didn't get it!"
"Quick, before it gets away!"
"Give the bloody thing a beating! That's what it deserves!"
"Knock it down! We've gotta contain it!"
"Someone catch it! Quick!"
"Run!"
This last word was directed at the girl with no warning as the man who had caught her grabbed her by the hand and pulled her down the street. She stumbled at the suddenness; he caught her elbow to hold her up, then kept dragging her along. He expertly wove in and out of the shopping crowds, his sneakered feet moving with an agility that was hard for a clumsy adolescent to keep up with.
They could hear the men progressing behind them, shouting as people got in their way. Man and girl rounded a post box; he made a swift ninety-degree turn and hauled her sharply down an alleyway. He flattened himself against the wall, motioning her to do the same. The girl held her breath as they waited, listening intently, as the pounding feet of the mob approached; then they passed and kept on going.
The man in the tan overcoat gave her an impish grin and looked very pleased with himself. The girl's heart was still pounding in her chest, and she managed only a weak smile of relief and thanks as she slumped against the wall. The man craned his head around the corner, straining for a glimpse of their out-maneuvered pursuers. Then he quickly drew his head back in and stumbled backwards down the alley as a knot of men turned the corner. The girl screeched and cowered behind him. Their hands were still clasped, and her nails bit into his palm. She had survived the traffic of the street, only to fall prey to the traffic of the footpath. They were trapped against a dead end; the alleyway led to a brick wall, which they were rapidly backed up against. The group of tough guys advanced menacingly upon them, their various implements, mops and umbrellas raised as though to strike.
"Caught it!"
"Get it now!"
"Show it what Earth can do!"
"Beat a warning into it!"
"Show it no mercy!"
"Whoa, whoa, whoa!"
The men paused uncertainly at the suit-clad man's sudden words as he stood, shielding the girl behind his back.
"It? What's 'it'? There's no 'it' here, you're trying to beat up on an innocent young girl!"
"Don't be fooled, Mister!" growled the man with a dirty mop in his hands. "That ain't no innocent little girl, it's a blood-thirsty alien!"
"What?! Says who?"
"Says it!" declared the teenager, who was armed with a tennis racket. "It was in the middle of the fashion show outside Sue-Ellen's Clothes an' told the whole mall it was an extraterrestrial. We all heard it!"
"It's a new age, man," said a fellow who was holding his umbrella menacingly like a fencing sword. "We Londoners have seen people disintegrated in the streets by life forms from outer space. The government doesn't detect 'em in time to save lives, so us citizens have to act first. We saw twenty-seven planets appear in the sky four months ago; this thing could've come from any one of them. We have to let 'em know who's boss before they all come back to enslave the planet."
The rest of the men shouted agreement with that. He felt the girl shiver convulsively against his back.
"Oi, oi, let's not get carried away! This isn't an alien! It's – she's – just a girl, and you're scaring her half to death!"
"But it admitted it! It said what it was!"
"Nah, don't you remember bein' a kid? A big joke's all it is. Having a bit of fun. Not the best time to pull a stunt like that, what with Autons and Sliveen and Sycorax and Cyberman and Racnoss and Judoon and Adipose and Daleks all appearing publicly within the space of four years; but it's all pretty harmless, really."
"How do we know that?" asked a man waving a shopping bag wildly to punctuate his words. "Just who are you anyway? How do we know you aren't in league with it? You could be another one of them!"
The men eyed the suit-clad stranger suspiciously.
He sighed and rolled his eyes. "Right, then." When he reached into his coat they flinched back fearfully as one body, but all he did was pull a wallet from his pocket.
"John Smith, Head of Centre Management," he declared in an authoritarian tone, showing the men an official-looking I.D. card in a flip-wallet. It had 'E.T. CONSULTANT' stamped across it in large letters, and displayed a picture of the man himself wearing spectacles. As though to complete the image, the man slipped on a similar pair of thick-rimmed glasses and regarded the mob seriously over their lenses.
"The shopping district has been employing consultation experts on alien life forms ever since a race called the Autons made a reported sighting at the Queens Arcade, just in case the general public should come under threat from extraterrestrial life forms at any time during trading hours. We're a much faster response team than MI5, Torchwood and UNIT combined. I was called in after security initiated a mauve-alert, but you ninnies chastised – and chased – my suspect before I could arrive on the scene. Now stand back and give the poor girl some room; there's an easy way to prove that she's 100 percent human."
The men shuffled back ruefully as the security agent replaced his glasses and identification in his coat pocket and instead whipped out a pen-shaped device.
"What's that then?" asked the teenage lad curiously.
"Species scanner. 3-second response time and 96 percent accuracy."
"You've been called on to perform quite a few tests before, then?" asked the man with the umbrella.
"No, actually, this is the first time a bunch of thugs tried to beat up a defenseless child, thinking she was an alien. Now come on, thatta a girl now, let's have a look."
Switching from a tone of biting sarcasm for a gentler, more coaxing tone, he disengaged the girl's clenched fingers from the back of his coat and turned to face her. She cringed away from the crowd of men, and though her eyes looked obstinately down, a large sob that escaped her indicated her distress.
"Shhh shhh now, easy, no one's going to hurt you," he murmured, shooting the mob a warning glance and resting his hands lightly on each of her shoulders in a paternal, comforting manner. "Now what's your name, young lady?"
"M-m-millie," the girl managed to stammer.
"Nice to meet you, Millie. Love the dress. Very Georgian." He knelt down so that his head was level with hers. "Now, these fellas here for some reason think you're an alien, but I'm going to prove that you're no more of an alien than me. I'm going to use this scanner to analyze your molecular make-up. Watch, I'll scan myself first." He held the end of the scanner over the tip of his left index finger, and as it activated it pulsed with a blue light and made a mechanical whirring noise that made the crowd start and become rather impressed in spite of themselves.
"You see, it doesn't hurt and the results are instantaneous. If it detects interplanetary material it'll make a shrill noise like a whistle. Now hold out your hand, Millie. It won't hurt you, and it'll be over in a second."
He held the still-stressed-out girl's gaze encouragingly for a moment; after a pause, with a slightly wary look in her eyes, she slowly held out a shaky hand. With a flourish, he positioned the scanner over her and activated it. It whirred monotonously. The entire crowd of men relaxed visibly, then looked slightly embarrassed.
"There you are, that proves that; and shame on you lot for terrorizing a young girl like that. I know who the fearsome creatures on this planet are; if aliens came here, they'd take us for a planet full of strong-arming bullies. Now I'm taking this girl back to centre management for questioning once I've managed to calm her down; I wouldn't be surprised if her parents tried to press charges for the hostility you unduly showed her, but for the sake of not having to report this humiliating incident to my superiors, I'll let you all go without taking down your names. Now scarper, the lot of you. You've done enough harm here, get on with the lot of you."
Like a pack of sheepish dogs denied a scrap, the men exited the alleyway with their respective tails between their legs, shame-faced and not meeting each other's gaze. The teenager hovered at the suit's elbow.
"That's some job you got there, Mister. I wouldn't mind being like you when I go for a career. Chasing aliens all day, it must be a lark." He glanced at the girl almost as an afterthought, and mutter a sullen, "Sorry. Nice panties." This last aside was delivered with a sneer at the girl's skirt, which at some stage of the chase had been split; she hurriedly tried to hold it closed with two clenched fists, her face turning crimson.
"Oi, that tennis racket has a price tag on it still. You're not shop lifting there, are you, sonny?" At these words the boy tensed; he stared at the racket in his hand like it was a red-hot poker, then he turned and fled into the street.
"Well, that took care of that lot," the Doctor said with a lop-sided grin as he replaced his sonic screwdriver in his coat pocket. Beside him, the girl, Millie, sniffled.
"Oh come now, it's alright now," he crooned sympathetically, sliding off his coat, then his suit jacket, and draping the jacket around the girl's shoulders to hide the gaping rent in her ruined dress. It came down to her knees, easily hiding the damage.
"It's not nice, being chased by mobs. I've been chased by loads more mobs than you. Yelling mobs, mobs with pitchforks, mobs with ray guns and mobs with plungers, rhino-headed mobs, mobs with tentacles. That mob wasn't half as bad as any of those. And I got rid of them, that's the main thing. I'm getting rather good at dealing with mobs."
"Thank you," Millie said tearfully, a charm bracelet jangling on her plump wrist as she pushed her hair back from her tear-streaked face. "You were great. You're awfully good at talking rubbish, aren't you?"
Halfway through a self-satisfied nod, the Doctor stopped. "Now hold on, it wasn't all rubbish. We-ell, maybe I'm not from Centre Management. But the rest was more or less true."
"Sounded like a load of bollocks to me," Millie declared stubbornly.
"How ungrateful! After I saved you from a mob! A mob with rackets, mops and umbrellas! Brollies can be very dangerous! Gene Kelly had a sharp brolly, almost gouged me in the side when I tried to talk to him at the stage door. Lovely chap, once he realized I wasn't a reporter."
"See, you're talking rubbish again!" Millie wagged an accusing finger. "You're a compulsive liar. What I want to know is how you managed to talk them into thinking you were a security guard by showing them a blank piece of paper. They sure were stupid to fall for that lot!"
The Doctor frowned. "What?!" he spluttered. "What do you mean, 'blank paper'?"
"You flicked it fast so maybe they didn't see it, but I saw the wallet over your shoulder as you put it back in your pocket and it was just full of white paper."
"What?! But… that's impossible!" The Doctor retrieved his physic paper and held it in front of Millie's face. "What do you see?"
Looking at him like he was delusional, Millie patiently replied "Blank paper."
The Doctor looked perplexed, glanced at the paper, then asked hopefully: "You can't see the first draft of the American Declaration of Independence there?" When Millie shook her head, he sat back on his heels, looking confused.
"But that's impossible. It should work on you. Unless… what's 600,456 minus 43,271?"
When Millie, surprised by the suddenness and irrelevance of the question, just gave him a bewildered stare as a means of reply, he rubbed the back of his neck thoughtfully and murmured more to himself than to her, "Well, that rules out that possibility. You're not highly intelligent. So why won't-"
Millie, looking highly-offended, thrust her hands onto her hips and interrupted indignantly: "Excuse me, I'm thankful you helped me out and all, but perhaps you could wait until I've gone before you start saying nasty things about me, if you don't mind. I've had a rough day, in case you hadn't noticed."
"Oh, oh, sorry," the Doctor muttered, looking slightly taken aback. "Where are you heading to? Back to the shops?"
Millie looked at her feet. Her white satin ballet flats were dirty, and the left one had a torn seam. They certainly weren't running shoes. "No. I-I can't go back there… I'd be too embarrassed. I'd rather go home. It's not far; I can walk there. My mum and sister are probably there already anyway; they'll be wondering where I am."
"Right, well you can't walk home alone in that get-up. What are you, only twelve, thirteen?" Millie nodded. "Well, I'll walk you home. Besides, can't let you keep that jacket. Charlie Chaplin lent me that suit. Well, when I say lent… I haven't returned it yet, but…"
Millie chuckled. "You talk a lot."
"I know," the Doctor replied with a wide grin. "It's always, always been one of my charms. And helpful; people I don't like find it really, really annoying."
"I don't mind it, actually," Millie admitted shyly as the Doctor gave her his arm and they walked side by side out into the street.