"Come on, Doctor, hurry up!" The Misfit stomped her boot at his repeated reply.
"I'll be there in a minute!"
"Doctor, we are going to miss it!"
"I'm coming!"
"And I swear to Gallifrey if you are wearing the duck costume again, I am going to shoot you!" He came out of the dressing room in the TARDIS with his regular brown suit on. He had on shiny fake gold sunglasses, hundreds of glittering bead ropes and leis around his neck, and a plastic margarita glass in his hand, filled with ginger ale. His cowboy hat had a fake parrot on it. He pulled out the red-buttoned silver remote and grinned his goofy grin.
"I'm ready," he chirped happily.
"Oh no you're not!" She lashed out and caught him playfully around the middle. The Doctor bent down so the Misfit could muff up his hair, tie, and suit jacked, untuck his shirt slightly, and upset his hat. "Now you look the part!"
"Allons-y!" he cried, bursting out of the police box into the street. Music and dancing exploded around them. As the Doctor closed and locked the TARDIS, the Misfit was swarmed by partygoers, leis and bead necklaces wrapping around her neck, several party hats fighting their way to her head. When the crowd spat her out again, she was covered from short, spiky blonde hair to booted feet with glitter, splattered with body paint, and strewn with bead necklaces and leis. A shiny blue had stuck in front of her thin, pinned up ponytail.
"Ah, Mardi Gras!" the Doctor sighed. The Misfit distastefully removed the party hat from her head.
"Yes, the aroma of drunk white girls and frat-boy vomit," she grumbled. "Why are we here again?"
"Follow me!" The Doctor took her hand and sprinted off through the crowd. After ten minutes of fighting through people partying, they entered a side road that ran between two rows of identical houses. They entered a filthy cream-colored house with cracked paint. They climbed the stairwell to their left and stopped at the door at the top. The Doctor pulled out the red and silver remote again. He soniced it with his blue and silver sonic screwdriver. The screwdriver lit up beneath the Misfit's gaze.
"What are you doing?" she asked, leaning forward to watch. The sonic clicked off.
"Come on and you'll see," he answered, smiling. They went out the door onto the roof. A few men and women stood there. Each pair had a silver and red remote, sending echoing beeps alongside the current Doctor's. "I create my own rift energy when I don't want to go to Cardiff," the Doctor said. "These are all me and my previous companions." The Misfit paced around a curly haired regeneration with a crazy striped scarf and a hat, then a white haired one in a suit.
"Isn't this a bit dangerous with only a cloak?" she asked. She paused for the answer. "Doctor?" She turned around. Her Doctor was standing in front of a woman with straight blonde hair in a Union Jack tee. She smiled and bounced, clinging to the arm of a different regeneration, one with short dark hair, big ears, and a leather jacket.
"Doctor, is it gonna happen soon?" she asked excitedly.
"Yes," the past Doctor appeased. He touched her nose with a fingertip. "Hush now." She giggled.
The Misfit turned back to her Doctor. He was staring at the woman sadly. "Doctor, who was she?" his current companion asked.
He looked at her, summing up everything she had meant to him, everything she was, everything they had been through, how they met, and how it ended in one simple sentence. "Her name was Rose," he murmured. He looked back at the woman.
The Misfit solemnly linked arms with him and took a step closer, laying her head against his shoulder. His other hand met hers and patted absently. Fireworks flashed behind the present Time Lords. They turned around and watched. "I'm sorry Rose," the Doctor murmured, Misfit hearing it through his jacket.
He seemed to cheer after that. A particularly big starburst exploded in front of them. "Wow!" he cried, grinning. "Would you look at that?" He leaned down closer to her level. "If you look closely, you can see the Rocurians falling through the sparks," he said, pointing. The Misfit looked closely, and sure enough saw the little bright creatures flitting through the white sparks. They looked like fairies, with tiny pointed ears, with crowns of frosted hair spiked up around their heads.
"Woah." One green one spun closer, flipping through the air.
"Most humans don't know this, but humans never truly learned how to make colored fireworks using chemicals or natural materials," the Doctor said as the Misfit reached out a gentle hand to the female creature. "The white sparks draw them in and they do all the work for fun." The Rocurian touched the companion's hand. It sent out a spark, which connected with her finger and traveled up her arm. It searched up her neck, over her face, and twinkled between the strands of her spiked hair. Misfit giggled, enjoying the pleasant tickle on her scalp. The show ended with all the Rocurians speeding up in a cylinder around the biggest firework. When it went, they spun off in every direction, and the two Time Lords could hear them giggling and screaming as they circled away and sped off into the night. The Doctor clapped and the Misfit whooped at the top of her lungs. The roar of the crowds rose around them from the streets. The music rolled up into the skies again, and more shouting ensued.
"Come on," the Doctor said. "We have to get going." They linked arms and skipped down the stairs and onto the street. They reached the TARDIS in a few minutes. The Doctor unlocked it while the Misfit accepted a fizzling sparkler from a young boy. A stray Rocurian circled around the sparks, giggling. Misfit spun into the open TARDIS door, twirling the popping firework in happy circles, the glowing magenta creature spiraling happily. A nozzle opened up on the console and blew white gas onto the sparkler. It went out and the Rocurian fell, coughing hard, onto the floor.
"Hey!" The Misfit bent and carefully scooped up the creature. She turned and glared at the TARDIS console. "Be nice!" The Doctor wandered over and put on his glasses. He smiled down on the creature.
"Well hello," he said. The Rocurian looked up at him, smiling. "Aren't you a little beauty! It is a good thing Rocurians are such good sports, or we would have a problem on our hands!" He gently took it from her hands and began stepping in narrow turns towards the door. "The monks of the galaxy! True, they have the ability to destroy the universe if they want, but they don't believe in violence and, ooh, they are very clever!" He opened the door and held out his hand. "Off you pop." He gently blew at her, starting her wings and sending her into the air, following the rest of the Rocurians into the night sky. He shut the door and turned back to the Misfit. "Well aren't they adorable little buggers! Great smart people. Very humble. Aren't offended at all when I say they've still got a lot of learning to do. They're about as far along as people are in the twenty-second century. Brilliant species, right brilliant!" He glanced cheekily at the Misfit. "And 'no fire in the TARDIS' was a rule from day one!"
"Yeah, yeah," she waved him off. She tossed herself onto the seat by the console. "Where to now?"
"Where do you want to go?"
She thought for a moment. "A café."
"A space café?"
"No." She picked up a mechanical bauble and fiddled with it. "Just a café."
The Doctor spun around, hands on hips, and stared at her with a disbelieving face.
"What?"
His hands flew in every direction, whole body shaking with the movement. "Time machine!" he cried. He put his sassy lecture face on. "Young lady, this is a time machine. Time And Relative Dimension In Space, or TARDIS. We have one of the last time machines left in existence. We have lists of millions upon millions of places to get food and drink, and you want to go to a normal Earth café!"
"Well, you go have a look through your intergalactic phonebook for places where I don't have to watch a snorkog down a knackleboc and we'll talk, but until then, I'm hungry!" The amount of sass the Doctor had used was returned tenfold by the snappy young Time Lord. The TARDIS took her side by wheezing thoughtfully. Misfit laughed. "Well, Doctor? Where's your list? It seems to be the only one agreeing with you." The TARDIS ceiling opened and a huge pile of papers tumbled out onto him. The Misfit laughed, holding onto the back of the chair to stay upright. "Oh my gosh, I love you," she said, slowly standing up and laying a hand on the controls. "Okay." She straightened herself nervously. She locked in the time coordinates carefully. "Right this second in time…" She stuck out her tongue, selecting a preset place in the destination mainframe. "…I want to go to London." The TARDIS wheezed complacently, starting the engines slowly, almost carefully, and dematerializing. The Misfit cautiously clicked a few stabilization controls. She felt the TARDIS come to a gentle rest on stable ground.
The Doctor stood up carefully, staring nervously at the door as he walked to open it. The last time the younger Time Lord had driven the TARDIS, they had ended up on a burning planet and barely made it off in time to get out of the way of the exploding star. His hand met the door handle. He opened it carefully. The hustle and bustle of London life sounded. The door shut again. The Time Lords locked eyes. They grinned.
Misfit ran across and hugged the Doctor, squealing excitedly. "I did it," she cried. "I did it, I drove the TARDIS and we didn't crash or fall off the edge or risk burning again!"
"Oh, good job," the Doctor praised, rocking her quickly back and forth in his embrace. "I'm buying to celebrate!"
"You always buy anyways," she laughed.
"Yes, but now we're getting muffins and donuts and your favorite coffee and biscuits and scones!"
"That's a lot!" the Misfit laughed.
"And all for you, my amazing companion!" The Misfit laughed and followed him onto the street. "You know, when I was learning to fly the TARDIS, I was pretty bad. Kept ending up on the wrong side of the galaxy!"
"Need I remind you that I nearly fell off of a whole planet!"
"It was cracking, it's not your fault!" They laughed for a second.
"Doctor, what was the Academy like?" Misfit asked.
He thought. "Huge, vast, and complicated, but necessary."
"Who did you graduate with?"
"Well, lots of Time Lords."
"Are any of them still alive?"
The Doctor looked up at the sky. "I think I know of one who is," he said darkly. "And if he's out there, he's up to no good."
"Who?"
He looked solemnly down at her. "The Master."