This story is a prequel to an upcoming story about Jenny, Vastra and Strax as they travel the galaxy in search of a lost band of silurians. In this tale, the Paternoster Gang are brought to 2012 to deal with what appears to be a rogue silurian… These were released as short, one-page chapters on tumblr at .com, and have been compiled here.
Enjoy!
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Jenny Flint was not expecting visitors. When she heard a knock on the door (hurrying into her maid's outfit to keep her cover), she certainly did not expect the visitor she received.
"Hello!" he cried marvellously, a boyish smile on his youthful face - a fez tilted jauntily on the top of his coif of hair. "Sorry I'm late," he mused, absent-mindedly pushing past Jenny and into the foyer. "Is the mistress of the house at home?"
"Um…" Jenny said, unsure what to do with the Doctor. They had only met a few times, and it had always been utter madness. He twiddled his fingers idly as he waited for her response. "I'll just fetch her," she said, and scurried up the stairs.
"The Doctor?" Vastra asked as Jenny arrived, adding the final touches to her outfit. Jenny was surprised to find her dressed; she had been decidedly undressed a moment ago. "I wasn't expecting a house call. Whatever does he want?"
"He didn't say, miss," Jenny replied. "He's just… there."
"Well we shall soon find out, won't we?" Vastra said with a sly smile. "Change out of that thing. We may be needed, and playtime is over." She winked as she threw her veil over her face, and left the room. Jenny changed as she was told, and descended soon after.
What she found was once again not what she expected.
Strax was in full armour in the foyer, a gun in his hand and two on his belt. Vastra was similarly garbed for battle, with two swords at her waist, and Jenny's in her hand, ready for her. "So we are going, then?" Jenny asked, slipping into her heels. "Where to?"
"The future," Vastra said grandly. Jenny felt her stomach turn.
"Some might say the present," the Doctor giggled. "I would. Or would I? I certainly have spent a lot of time there."
"Here," Vastra said, handing Jenny her sword.
"Won't we be… conspicuous, ma'am?" she asked.
"One can only hope we find the future a more tolerant place." She turned to the Doctor. "We serve at your pleasure."
"Alright!" he declared, grandly thrusting his finger in the air. "Just no saluting! Understood?"
They all three nodded, and followed him out to his strange blue box. This will be the adventure of a lifetime, Jenny found herself thinking.
Jenny Flint stepped out of the TARDISand onto the streets of London, but they were not the streets she knew. The road was cobbled, yes, but the buildings were taller, the air thicker and hotter, the sky greyer. St. Paul's loomed overhead, but above it, great winged shadows coursed through the sky. Roaring carriages growled up and down the street in an endless stream. This was the future, the world the Doctor lived in.
"Twenty-twelve," the Doctor announced proudly. "Has a nice ring to it."
"This world smells choked by the fires of war. I like it," Strax growled.
"I assume you have brought us here for some purpose?" Vastra asked matter-of-factly. She, like Jenny, was hardly fazed by the onslaught of modernity. Vastra's own people were more advanced even than this future Earth, and together the two women had travelled to more distant destinations and to planets with more unfathomable wonders. Somehow, though, this future was even stranger.
It was the feeling of nearness and distance that made Jenny so queasy. This was London, this had been her home since she was a child. Behind her stood Paternoster Row, but everything was just different enough that she knew it was not entirely her own anymore. Foreign,and familiar. Uncanny. The worst, most unshakeable feeling of discomfort. Jenny reached for Vastra's hand, then reflexively drew away. Her heart skipped when Vastra reached out and clutched Jenny's hand once more. Vastra looked back at her lover. There was nothing but reassurance in her cool grey eyes.
"You still have that perception filter?" the Doctor asked. "I know you took it, you naughty minx. No unauthorized use of such a device is permitted but… Well… I know a guy. Well. Not a guy. More a… Fish." Vastra and Jenny only stared. "Well? Do you have it?"
"Of course," Vastra shrugged.
"Good," the Doctor said. "You'll need it. There's much to do." He skipped into the crowd. Hand-in-hand, Jenny and Vastra followed, Strax trundling along behind them. The Doctor powered on the perception filter and tucked it into his jacket pocket, casting a ring of blurred perception around them. Together, they disappeared into the crowd.
"First things first," the Doctor declared, grandly parting the crowds down Oxford street, "clothes! You can get away with walking around like that for a while. There's this thing in the future called 'cosplay,' - he pronounced it like it was a word from another language - "but that will just raise too many questions. Questions you don't want to have to answer! So first things first: we get you some modern clothes."
"I absolutely adore your enthusiasm, Doctor," Vastra said with a wink at Jenny, "but is that really the first thing we ought to do?"
"Oh, well there are a whole set of things weoughtto do," he said with a childish smile. "But it's most fun! So we'll start with that."
"What about Strax?" Jenny asked. They were protected from prying eyes so long as they were within range of the perception filter (Jenny shuddered to think what people saw when they looked at Strax), but she worried what the result of taking a violent Sontaran into a women's clothing shop might be.
"Strax can come with me," the Doctor said, patting Strax on his armoured shoulder. "We'll find him a nice bow tie."
"I share neither your primitive need to emblazon myself with extravagant garments, nor a desire to garb myself in frilly human fabrics," Strax grumbled.
"You also don't have a neck," Jenny smirked. Vastra stifled a giggle behind her gloved hand. "Here," the Doctor said, holding out a brown paper bag. Jenny took it, and saw - and felt! - that it was full of money, modern paper notes with pictures of a regal old woman on them. "That's probably enough," he said, scratching the back of his head.
"We'll be just fine, Doctor," Vastra said. To everyone outside the ring of the perception filter, she looked human. Jenny wanted to see, but her eyes lingered on her last glimpse of her love in all her green glory. Once they parted from the Doctor, Vastra would activate her own personal perception filter, and to everyone, Jenny included, she would appear human. "Where shall we meet?" Vastra asked.
"I will pick you up in style in two hours. Will that be enough?"
"Better make it three," Vastra said with a wink at Jenny. "Just to be sure."
"Right," the Doctor replied. "To the tailor!"
"No bowties!" Strax snarled. Jenny and Vastra giggled as they watched them disappear into the crowd. Vastra clicked her perception filter on, and transformed before Jenny's eyes. Tall, regal, fair of skin and dark of hair; a stranger, except for her cool grey eyes, and her thin, sly smile. "Where to first, ma'am?" Jenny asked.
"First things first," Vastra said, a mischievous gleam in her eye, "we need to get out of these bloomers. You're going to like 21st century underwear." She led Jenny by the hand a little further down the street towards a shop with a gaudy pink sign. "And so am I," she winked, and held the door open for Jenny.
"People really wear this stuff?" Jenny asked, scandalized at her own half-naked form in the mirror. She couldn't see Vastra, who was standing just outside the fitting room and had not been permitted to enter (what did they think was going to happen?), but she knew the silurian was smirking. Jenny had thought half-naked, when in truth it was more like 80%. She was used to bloomers that hung nearly to her knees, and apart from occasional sparring matches and lovemaking (both of which often ended in the same way…), she rarely had her belly so uncovered. It felt shameless, it felt… Wrong! And yet…
"Don't get caught up in what you think people might say," Vastra said through the door. "How's the colour?"
"I love it," Jenny said. Pale green. The fabric was actually comfortable on her skin, even the bra (though she felt it would become uncomfortable after a while). Above all, however, she wanted Vastra to see her like this. She had a half dozen other pairs with her, ready to try on, and a few little sets and other, more titillating items, some she had chosen while others were more Vastra's taste. She wanted them all. The future was sexy.
"Hurry up, love, we haven't got all day," Vastra said. Jenny made sure each piece was all the same size, and trusted they'd fit as well as the pair she had on. She collected them all, got dressed in her Victorian clothes - which now seemed tortuously restricting - and left the fitting room. "Well?" Vastra asked, a playful smile threatening to break across her face. She looked human; Jenny had forgotten. "Success?"
"Oh, I think so," Jenny said. Vastra smiled properly.
"Good," she said. "My turn. Come on. Let's make sure that girl isn't anywhere in sight. I don't know when I'll get the chance to show these off, so let's make the most of it."
Giggling, they hurried about the store, and made their way back to the fitting rooms. When they were sure no one was looking, Vasta slid the door open and Jenny slipped inside. "What are we going to do?" she asked.
"What do you think?" Vastra said with a wink. "Help me get this corset off."
Maybe that poor shop girl did have a point, Jenny thought to herself, as she unlaced Vastra's dress. The silurian's skin was pale and smooth underneath; the perception filter even modified Jenny's sense of touch. Jenny bit her lip at the feel of it.
Then a knock on the door broke the moment entirely.
"'Scuse me," the sales girl outside drawled. "One to a room, love. That's the rules!"
"Oh just a moment," Vastra snarled. "I needed help with my dress."
"A moment's not long enough," Jenny breathed.
"I know," Vasta replied, baring her breasts before turning away. "Rain check?"
"You're mean," Jenny said, and slid the latch on the door. She slipped out as Vastra bit her lip. They were pink. Jenny knew her heart wouldn't stop racing until they were good and alone...
After the excitement of the lingerie shop, shopping for normal clothes felt decidedly less exciting. It was improved, however, by the breathless anticipation both Jenny and Vastra held at the opportunity to be alone in this new world, this future.
Vastra was in a playful mood. She pinched and squeezed Jenny's bottom whenever she got the chance, and pecked her on the cheek and gently on the lips whenever they found themselves in a lonely corner of some shop. They tried once or twice to hide themselves in another fitting room, but no matter where they went, the salespeople were diligent, and they had little patience for the two women's ongoing shenanigans. Besides that, however, nobody seemed to pay them any mind. No snide looks when Jenny pressed herself to Vastra as they walked hand in hand. No second glances when Vastra bent down to give Jenny a kiss. Nothing. Jenny had expected things to be better, but that their love was so commonplace that it elicited no response at all was unthinkable before that day.
And she loved it.
They found themselves buying what felt like nearly all of three separate shops, as well as a handful of pairs of shoes - comfortable, flat, slip-on things that Jenny bought in two colours, as well as lace-up boots with a thick, broad, masculine heel.
Jenny filled her bags with skirts in various materials and in various lengths. The idea of an independent skirt was not entirely foreign, but it had certainly not been commonplace in her day-to-day life back in the London she knew. These shirts tucked nicely at her waist, and hung just below the curve of her bottom, in a way that made her breathless and afraid and confident all at once. And trousers! There were so many, and most of the women they saw were wearing them. And they were tight. Some Jenny didn't think counted as trousers at all. Besides the cozy black fabric that hugged to the shapely hips, thighs and behinds of many of the better-looking girls they came across, there was little left to the imagination. Jenny had to try them on herself, and when she did, bought no less than three pairs, in a variety of gaudy, bright, colourful styles.
And that was just the first shop.
"Do you know," Vastra said, as they walked arm in arm, bags weighing them down on either side, "that it is sometimes considered distastefully girly to shop so extravagantly in this time period?"
"Why would that be, miss?" Jenny said, nuzzling against the soft cotton of a jumper Vastra had bought herself. Her skirts were longer than Jenny's, her trousers a little looser, her tops fuller and offering more coverage (Jenny couldn't believe all the bare skin on display!), but it was still a dramatic change.
"I couldn't tell you, my dear," Vastra said. "But I have a feeling anyone not willing to feel a little girly now and then is missing out."
"Well that's a given," Jenny said, smiling like a child, like a fool. A fool in love. "Do you think we 'ave all we need?"
"For now," Vastra said. "The Doctor hasn't told us how long we'll be, but I suspect it will be up to us, in a way. Are you in any rush to return home? I would completely understand if you were…"
"I wouldn't say a rush…" Jenny sighed.
"I thought not," Vastra smiled. "Shall we find somewhere to sit? It's almost time for the Doctor to meet us."
"Let's," Jenny said. She hugged herself closer to Vastra as they walked on, just two lovers in the crowd.
The afternoon had dragged on almost to evening, and Jenny Flint and Madame Vastra sat across from each other in a Caffè Nero, a chain coffee shop that Vastra had suggested. Jenny had never had coffee in her life before, and according to Vastra, the coffee at Nero was done in an Italian style. The thought of it was obviously more excitingly exotic to Jenny than to any of the other coffee shop patrons; thin girls in threadbare tank tops with piercings in strange places, and tall, gaunt men with beards. Lots of beards…
Jenny's first sip of coffee had been a shock. It was thick, black, and tasted almost smoky; Jenny choked when she first tasted it. She resolved to stick with it, though, mainly because watching Vastra calmly sip from her mug made Jenny attracted to the sophisticated look it gave her. "Is the Doctor on his way?" Jenny asked, nervously trying another tentative sip.
"Don't worry," Vastra said, "he never fails to be on time."
True to Vastra's word, the Doctor appeared moments later. He was dressed the same as he always was, in a brown tweed coat and a loose, faintly-striped shirt, but Strax, on the other hand, had taken on a new look entirely.
And he did not seem happy about it.
Part of the peculiar effect was due to the Doctor's own perception filter, which changed Strax into a short, lanky man with balding hair and odd, wide-set eyes. He had that same, comical gap in his teeth, but they appeared to be more normal sized in comparison to the rest of his head. The rest of him, however, Jenny expected was the Doctor's doing, and it seemed like Strax was going to burst at any moment because of it. He'd been dressed, in actual clothes, not unlike those he wore in his guise as the butler of 13 Paternoster Row. They did not seem to fit his short, thin, awkward form, and appeared to balloon out of him, as they were clearly overtop of his bulky sontaran battle armour.
"Good afternoon, was it, Strax?" Vastra asked, glib.
"I think you have a very good idea that it was not, Madame Vastra. If you'll pardon my saying so." He stood up as tall as he could, but it only added to the comical figure he struck. "Soon, I hope I shall be able to bathe in the blood of my enemies, and remove these frivolous rags in glorious conquest." The Doctor grimaced comically. "I don't think so, Strax. Not much for blood, myself," he said. Jenny and Vastra giggled.
"So what are we doing here, Doctor?" Vastra asked. "In this time, I mean."
"Excellent question!" the Doctor replied. "If you'll just follow me, I believe I can show you."
"Can't you give us, I don't know… a hint?" Jenny asked.
"Why else would I bring in my resident silurian experts?" the Doctor asked. "This time has a problem. A big problem, it seems. My agents in the city report that we've got another one on the loose. He's wild, lost, mad, and out of time… And he's not very happy about it."
"Another what?" Jenny asked.
"Another silurian," the Doctor said dramatically. "That's why I need your help."
Jenny saw Vastra's eyes widen, and she held back a gasp. "What are we waiting for?" Strax grumbled, and the Doctor led them outside. Energized by this news, they followed him out of the coffee shop, and back into his big, blue box.
The game was on.