"Where are we going now?" Jenny asked excitedly
"Don't you ever stop?" the Doctor asked her, looking up from the console. He had meant to be stern, encourage her to calm down, but the expectant look on her face was too much for him, so he grinned back and changed his mind. He had been doing that a lot lately, ever since he had re-found his daughter on a deserted planet next to a crashed space-ship.
"I thought we'd go to Barcelona, how does that sound?" he asked her
"The planet Barcelona? Wow that sounds fantastic, I always wanted to go there!" she told him, her smile lighting up her eyes, melting the doctor's heart in a way that only she could. He turned and grinned at her, before bashing the handbrake down, and steering the TARDIS in the direction of the chosen planet.
Suddenly, the Doctor froze. Jenny stood for a moment confused as to why he had stopped so suddenly. If he didn't do something soon, he would stall the TARDIS and he got mad when she did that.
"Dad? What's wrong?" she asked tentatively. The Doctor said nothing, but held his palm up to her as a signal that she should be quiet. He was concentrating hard on something, and didn't want her to break his concentration.
"There!" he whispered suddenly, making Jenny jump. "Did you hear that?" Jenny shook her head. The Doctor rammed the handbrake back on and quickly ran up the stairs, his daughter close behind him. They had barely started searching the wardrobe for the intruder the Doctor was sure they would find, when the TARDIS jerked to life.
"Dad! What's going on?" Jenny squealed at her father.
"Did I put the handbrake on?" he asked. "I must have put the handbrake on; I always put the handbrake on!" Eyes wide, the doctor ran back down the stairs, followed so closely by Jenny that she crashed into him when he suddenly stopped about halfway down.
Confused, Jenny looked around to see what had made her father stop; nothing ever seemed to stop him once he got going. But when she saw what he was staring at, she understood immediately. Stood in the control room at the bottom of the stairs was a girl, about the same age as Jenny. She had long dark brown curly hair, and was wearing a sort of brown jump-suit, black gloves and knee-high black boots. Around her neck was a pendant that really didn't go with the rest of her outfit; it was bright red, blue and green on a gold chain. There was a holster for a gun around her waist, which the Doctor and Jenny were both glad to see was empty. But the fact that the girl was there wasn't what had made the doctor stop; people randomly appeared in his ship from time to time, he was starting to get used to it. What had made the Doctor stop was the fact that this girl, who he had never seen before was operating the TARDIS. And it wasn't just a case of pressing random buttons either, this girl knew what she was doing.
"Who are you?" the Doctor asked her.
"That's not important" she said quickly, without looking up.
"How did you get in here?"
"That's not important either."
The Doctor and Jenny moved slowly down the rest of the stairs and stood next to the console that the girl was now moving slowly round, pushing buttons, twiddling dials and pulling levers as she went. Jenny was scared. Not of the girl, that wasn't scary, that was weird, and weird was something she was used to. No, Jenny was scared of the Doctor. She could see something in his face, a sort of anger deep in his eyes that she didn't like.
The strange woman reached for another leaver; the handbrake, but before she could disable it and send them hurtling off to a time and place of her choosing, possibly with others like her with holsters that weren't quite so empty, the Doctor grabbed her wrist.
"I asked you a question." He said, almost through gritted teeth.
"Actually you asked me two. And I answered both of them." The girl told him calmly, looking straight into his eyes. For some reason this angered the doctor even more. He would never admit it, not even to himself, but he was scared, and unlike Jenny, it was this girl he was scared of. He couldn't explain it, it just was. It reminded him of how it had been with Jack, and how the TARDIS had travelled to the end of time to try and escape him; the Doctor had an overwhelming urge to grab Jenny and run as fast as he could in the opposite direction of this strange girl.
He let go of her wrist, but to Jenny's surprise, she didn't go for the handbrake. Instead she sighed and turned towards both of them, leaning against the console. "Look, I'm sorry ok, I had no other choice. And I thought my diversion would keep you for longer, so I didn't think you'd even see me at all. Stupid of me, I know, I mean, it's the oldest trick in the book, and you wrote the book. What I'm trying to say is…" The girl sighed "I don't know what I'm trying to say."
"Where are you taking us?" Jenny asked, a spark of excitement in her voice at the idea of going somewhere new that maybe even the doctor had seen before,
"I'm not taking you anywhere. I'm sort of, getting a lift, and then sending you back where you were going before." The girl had expected this to calm the pair of them down, but it had the opposite effect.
"You can't take us somewhere but not let us see-"
"-think you can just barge in here and take over-"
"-new and exciting and interesting-"
"-not even a single explanation-"
"-just a couple of minutes to see what it's like-"
"-and I don't care how hypocritical I sound-"
"ENOUGH!" the girl roared, sending Jenny and the Doctor into a shocked silence. Neither of them had realised until that moment that they were shouting, or even knew why they were so annoyed. "Shut up, and sit down" the girl commanded.
"But-"the doctor started
"Now." the girl told him, her voice loaded with authority and warning. Something about it reminded Jenny of the Doctor when he was talking to people who did bad things or put other people in danger. They both did as they were told and sat on the chairs next to the console.
"Stay there, and, I don't know, breathe through your nose or something. I forgot about the whole Time Lord thing. You know, I always wondered why you didn't react like this when we first met, but you were both acclimatised by then! Never mind…it'll all make sense to you sooner or later."
As she said this, the girl changed a few TARDIS settings via the screen, before turning off the handbrake, sending them hurtling through the vortex towards her destination.
"Wait a second, could you read that?" the Doctor asked suddenly. Both girls turned to him, surprised. Jenny was expecting a question more like 'what are you talking about'. Then again her father never really did what anyone expected him to do.
"Read what?" the girl asked.
"The writing, the gallifreyan writing on the screen." He exclaimed, pointing wildly, his voice getting oddly high pitched. The girl simply nodded.
"But… but, the TARDIS doesn't translate writing in here, who taught you?"
The column in the middle of the console stopped moving as he said this, causing the whirring to come to an end, enveloping them in silence.
"The same person that taught me how to drive the TARDIS. The man who taught me how to put it on auto as soon as the doors close. When I go, she's going to take you to Barcelona. Please don't follow me. The less you know about this right now the better."
When neither the Doctor nor Jenny said anything, the girl walked over to the doors and left without another word. And the second she closed the door behind her, the TARDIS whirred into life again, whisking them away to somewhere new. But in the same instant, the doctor was on his feet, racing around the console, trying to get them back to the time and place the girl had left. After two circuits, he grabbed the screen and, after putting on his glasses, analysed what was going in.
"Aaarghh! Oh this girl is good, almost too good!"
"Well she said she learned from the best" Jenny reminded him with a smile.
"She never said that." Her father told her, shooting her a perplexed look.
"Well who else could she have learned all that from?" the blonde girl pointed out. The Doctor sighed.
"I don't know" he said. "I really don't know,
At that moment the monitor beeped, distracting the Doctor away from his daughter again. "Ahh! The TARDIS has managed to save the previous location! Jumpsuit Girl wasn't that clever after all!"
"Are we going after her dad?" Jenny asked as her father bounded around the room, pulling levers almost randomly. Jenny couldn't help thinking that even if Jumpsuit couldn't outsmart the doctor (and, honestly, who can?) she was at the very least a better driver than him. "She did ask us not to follow her." She pointed out.
"I thought you had more curiosity in you than that Jenny" he said, as he pulled one last lever, bringing them to a stop with a jolt. "Are you telling me you actually don't want to know what she didn't want us to see?"
Jenny thought about it for a moment, weighing up the pros and cons. It wasn't exactly a hard decision though. Simultaneously, the pair of them grinned at each other, before racing towards the door, and the unknown world that lay beyond.
