The Battle Sister's Bodice

Sister Anina skidded to a halt, her mouth slightly open, the bolt pistol held limply in her hand. When she had heard the strained roaring emanating from the convent's living quarters, she had immediately assumed the worst - that the orks who amassed a few kilometres away on the Heiranel Plains had somehow found a way past the convent defences and stolen into the heart of the complex. She was even more alarmed when she realised the sound had come from her cell.

She had not expected... this.

It was a tall, predominantly blue box, perhaps a little smaller than a saviour pod, sporting battered paintwork and frosted glass windows. She just had time to register the flashing lamp on its top, when the door in its side opened and a strange-looking man sprang out of it and threw a small glass bottle at her.

"Oh," said the stranger, wincing. "Sorry. My mistake."

Anina thought about raising her bolt pistol, but something odd was happening to her ceramite breastplate. The small glass bottle having broken and splashed its dark brown contents all over it, the armour seemed to be... dissolving.

"Erm... I was expecting someone else, actually. Or something else, rather."

Anina stared down as a clump of ceramite, curiously brittle now, broke away from her midriff. "What is happening?"

"Well, it's a new invention of mine." The stranger ran his hand through his hair, which flopped mischievously back over his forehead, almost but not quite obscuring his eyes. "Anti-Dalek chocolate sauce. Good for stopping alien invasions, or you can have it with ice cream." He grinned nervously. "Got a bit excited about it when I landed and sort of..." He broke off, glancing at Anina's chest for a moment and then away. "I got confused, I think. It was probably the bumps that did it."

Another portion of armour broke away, just below Anina's right breast.

The stranger was muttering again, bending down to examine the latest chunk of curiously crumbly ceramite. "Shouldn't have this dramatic an effect on your... clothing, though." He turned over the lump in his hand for a second before poking a long thin finger into it and bringing that finger to his lips. "Hmmm... tastes nice anyway." He straightened, fixing Anina with a piercing look. "What is this? I'm guessing primarily strengthened plastic and some sort of mineral-based compound?" He grinned. "A bit like bonded poly-carbide armour, then. Brilliant."

With an exhausted sigh, the rest of Anina's armour sloughed away from her torso and broke apart on the cell's cold stone floor. The stranger held her gaze for a moment.

"You don't wear anything underneath it, then."

Anina returned his gaze, evenly.

"No."

"Right." With a sudden, fluid motion, the stranger removed his jacket, an archaic-looking garment that, for some reason, had patches at the elbows, and draped it round her bare shoulders. "Can't have you wandering around half-dressed. You'll catch your death."

It took Anina a moment or two to realise that, while he had been covering her up, the strange man had taken her bolter from her. He was reading the inscriptions on its surface curiously.

Anina felt a sudden sense of panic well up in her chest. "Give that to me!" She'd intended her words to sound authoritative, stern, but she was embarrassed to hear the quaver of fear in them.

"'Suffer not the witch to live'?" the stranger read, his voice tinged with disbelief. "'Suffer not the witch...'?" He handed the pistol back to her. "You're a nun. A nun with a gun. How... interesting." He looked around him once more, his gaze resting lightly on the devotional texts on her wall, on the penance whip leaning against her wardrobe, on the heavily thumbed copy of The Precepts of Saint Mina on her bed.

"Who are you?" This time her voice was steely, the bolt pistol steady in her hand as she aimed at the stranger's head. "You appear like a daemon in my quarters, you desecrate my holy armour with your... sauce." She tightened her grip on the pistol, reassured by its familiar solidity. "Who are you?"

The stranger reached into his trouser pocket for his credentials. For a split second the paper on which they were written seemed to Anina to be utterly blank, but then the words that had been on it - that must have been on it all the time - became clear and she felt her stomach lurch. She lowered the pistol and her head, humbly.

"I am sorry, Inquisitor. I meant no disrespect."

She didn't see the stranger give a startled look at the small plastic-sheathed wallet in his hand.

"Inquisitor?" He nodded. "Right, yes. Inquisitor." Gently he placed his hand under Anina's chin, returning the wallet to his pocket. He raised her head up until she could see his eyes. They were twinkling kindly. "But you can call me 'Doctor'."

For the first time in a long, long while, Sister Anina of the Order of the Bloody Rose smiled.

And then he was a whirl of motion.

"But we can't have you fighting... things dressed like that, can we? I mean, I've desecrated your holy armour, haven't I? We'll have to get you a new..." He paused miming rather poorly the feminine form with his delicate hands.

"Bodice," supplied Anina helpfully. In truth, she was becoming rather comfortable with the sensation of the jacket's lining against her skin.

"Really? 'Bodice'?" The stranger - no, Anina reminded herself - the Doctor scratched his head thoughtfully. "Marie Antoinette used to go through loads of them. Tons, in fact." He was heading for the blue box, but paused on its threshold. "Kept on getting them ripped for some reason." He sniffed and turned around, offering her another kindly smile.

"What's your name, nun with a gun?"

"Anina," said Anina and she was mildly surprised that she hadn't prefixed her name with the title she had borne for most of her adult life.

Standing on the threshold of his strange blue box, the Doctor offered Anina his hand and said, "Well, Anina... Fancy going on a shopping trip?"

For the second time in as many minutes, Anina smiled. Then she stepped forward and took the Doctor's hand.